Sad to say, this video about prospects for the presidential election is just too true.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Sad to say, this video about prospects for the presidential election is just too true.
There is one way of avoiding the problems of getting powder to dissolve in liquid when making hot chocolate/cocoa. That is to use grated eating chocolate. It grates best if you keep a bar in the freezer. Just grate, put in the mug and and hot liquid (which really should be milk). Delish – even more delish when a glug of whisky is added as well.
Daisy:
:(
Come to New York– we’ll get married and I’ll add you to my (albeit kind of shitty) health insurance plan.
(Can I have a Fake Wife™ or is that intruding too far into Josh’s territory?)
Seriously, though, take it easy if you can for a couple of days!
I kinda want a trans pride lanyard. Or failing that, a pin I can attach to a plain black lanyard.
Being poor, I cannot afford new books. But I do love public libraries. Here is a list of what I currently have checked out.
The Company Of The Dead by David J. Kowalski
The Discovery Of France: a historical geography from the Revolution to the First World War by Graham Robb
Moby-Duck: The True Story of 28,800 Bath Toys Lost at Sea and of the Beachcombers, Oceanographers, Environmentalists, and Fools, Including the Author, Who Went in Search of Them by Donovan Hohn
The End: the defiance and destruction of Hitler’s Germany, 1944-1945 by Ian Kershaw
Drift : the unmooring of American military power by Rachel Maddow
Philip K Dick:Four Novels Of The 1960s
Those novels being The Man in the High Castle, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldrich, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and Ubik.
London: the biography by Peter Ackroyd
Big Star : the short life, painful death, and unexpected resurrection of the kings of power pop by Rob Jovanovic
The Dark Valley : a panorama of the 1930s by Piers Brendon
BEER NERD SCIENCE!
I’ve never tried it with whiskey (that’s a good idea) but I don’t have too much trouble getting the powdered chocolate to dissolve the way I fix it. I add the powder first to the mug, since I’m almost always fixing it for myself, add a small bit of milk, and then use a spoon as a pestle to grind the milk/powder slurry until it’s relatively consistent. I do the process repeatedly with more milk until the mug is more or less full. It’s hard on coffee mugs, but I think it’s effective.
That is the correct way to dissolve such powders into a liquid.
I much prefer half pure cocoa and half brown sugar, well mixed, then dissolved in a little hot water to form a paste. That gives me a chance to make sure that there’s no dry powder left. Then I add & stir a little more hot water to thin the paste to a liquid, then hot milk or milk to be microwaved depending on the laziness factor. A tiny bit of cinnamon for them as likes it is also nice.
Sorry about the HuffPo link, but it’s an interesting article on Planned Parenthood and the anti-choice zealots tactics.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/23/planned-parenthood-live-action_n_1446527.html
A couple of things:
-Half of all abortions terminate pregnancies of female fetuses? You don’t fucking say!
I can’t facepalm hard enough.
-While it appears that there are some sex-selective abortions, that seems awfully late, you know? I was told that we wouldn’t be able to determine the sex of Darkfetus ’til the 19th week and I was under the impression that 2nd trimester abortions were pretty rare.
There days I do not add any sugar to cocoa, and I find most hot chocolate far too sweet.
Good morning, everyone. Winter (or at least early spring) is back with sn*w and most of our earliest-ever wave of red admiral butterflies is going to die. Butterfly sightings can be reported at ebutterfly.ca.
Pure cocoa has no sugar. That’s why I like it. The way I make it is less sweet than pre-mixed “instant hot chololate.”
Incidentally, the world’s best chocolate syrup is 1/3 pure cocoa, 1/3 icing sugar, and 1/3 water, cooked up together.
Oh, I love making my own cocoa on the stove. Like to use less sugar as well, and heat until it thickens and is awesome. I’ve never used whiskey, but I have used stuff like Amaretto.
Brownies soaked in scotch are really good, so I assume that a shot of whiskey in hot cocoa ought to be good as well. :)
Posting for the DC area organizing-type people. We are trying to do some fun summer organizing. Please drop a note to the poll if you’ll be around.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dE54UUJlRFlMQWRtLWprREZEcWhXemc6MQ
No, not whiskey, whisky!
Ah, sorry. I have both, so I’ll try whisky.
Whisk(e)y reference guide
Irish, American – e Whiskey
Scotch, Japanese, Canadian, Indian, Welsh – no e Whisky
Though that is not hard and fast, but mostly is. A few american bourbons use whisky (Makers Mark, Old Forrester, Dickle)
Some other countries don’t follow hard and fast rules though most tend to go Whisky no e.
And My goal is to drink all of them and review what I can.
#1, etc. re drinking chocolate: I once bought a bar of specifically drinking chocolate, which one was supposed to melt into hot milk. It may have been Goya brand. I recall it was chalky and disappointing. I like your idea better. Perhaps it is for chocolate as it is for wine: if it’s not good enough to drink, it’s not good enough to cook with.
Markita Lynda, #12: I will try that. I’ve taken to making my own hot fudge sauce to avoid corn syrup and the other crap in the store-bought kind. There are many forumlae on the intertubes.
I’ve had pretty good luck with Dagoba drinking chocolate, which is powdered rather than bar form. I use a heavy concentration of chocolate and make thick and crazy rich.
Peated whisky + chocolate = delicious. That is all.
Audley, that’s kind of you, but I’m none too good with babbies.
My best friend, who is an R.N., has browbeaten me into agreeing to go to the doctor. I’m seeing my usual one, who’s 45 min. away but whom I’ve been seeing for well over a decade, in a few hours. Office visit plus x-rays in same building will come out to around $500, which sucks, but doesn’t suck as much as two grand.
Left-overs:
*raising hand*
Another clarinet player (though I like bass clarinet better, both to play and to listen to myself playing; if only the damned things weren’t prohibitively expensive….) here; also, oboe. But the trippiest (doesn’t look right with two ‘p’s, but one makes it look like I’m dicussing offal) music-playing experience I ever had was playing medieval/Rennaissance music, on a tenor recorder, with about a dozen others. Wow! It left me seriously buzzed for the rest of the day. It was what I think of as a “religious experience”.
–
Yeah. I read that this morning, and if that isn’t world-class douchebaggery, I don’t know what is.
–
Ms. Daisy Cutter, my sympathies to you and your wounded appendage.
*hug*
Keep us in the loop, ‘kay?
.
.
(“Cause some of us are compulsively nosy, that’s why.)
–
And anyway, what with Jeezus coming back Any Day Now, there’s no point in thinking long-term.
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Hi, forelle!
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With a touch of cinnamon in it!
:-6
–
–
Daisy,
How sad is it that my first reaction was “$500 is pretty cheap!”? *headshake*
Everytime someone from the US posts about the cost of medical treatment it makes me so grateful for the NHS. I just can’t imagine what is must be like always being worried about getting sick or injured because of the cost.
It is not really a problem for we working poor in the US, (And all poor people period.) we should have faith that if our jealous and merciful god wants us to get well, he will provide the means.
INVISIBLE HAND INVISIBLE HAND INVISIBLE HAND!
For reasons that I do not understand, “INVISIBLE HAND” brings to my mind the song Deus by The Sugarcubes.
I asked myself why this is. She refuses to answer.
Ms. Daisy, I’m glad you’re going to have the foot examined – but not about the cost. :(
The video is funny in a “laugh so you won’t cry” kind of way. Talk about being stuck between a rock and award place. I had a call front eh DNC the other week, asking for financial support. I said I am waiting for the president to speak up about women’s rights (this was just in the middle of my funk over the reproductive rights attacks) and the woman (!!) on the other end of the line actually said to me – she ACTUALLY said to me, “Well, if you don’t support the President, you will get a Republican and that will be worse!”
I believe i nearly lost it. I tried to articulate my position, but the rushing in my ears was overpowering.
I think I babbled something about “DOn’t you use that kind f threat on me – the president won’t get my vote or my money because he or the DNC thinks I have no other choice!”
But I was seriously upset and depressed after. This is really a thing? Coming straight from the DNC? Vote for us because we are the lesser of two evils? I am not so sure about that anyway – I don’t think they are worse, but using women’s humanity as a bargaining chip – and letting that chip be cashed in – is hardly much different from open anti-woman action, is it?
Stupid autocorrect. “Between a rock and a hard place”
Yesterday I was feeling almost cheerful after the trans employment protections ruling. But the Tennessee legislature has decided to join the zygotes are people crowd, with a bill that puts miscarriage under jurisdiction of law enforcement all under the guise of pretending they are protecting pregnant women.
New Civil Rights Movement link.
Knoxville News Sentinel coverage.
Rev,
Why yes, if we just got rid of all government regulation of healthcare, the costs would magically come down and unicorns will shit Philly cheesesteaks and belch Mountain Dew! *jazz hands!*
In further sadded news, we found the next of Chamomile’s siblings. Only two out of the five were still alive. One was seriously bloated, the other kept gasping every now and then. After giving itty bitty kitty enemas to them both as they were full of poo, I was gently rubbing the bloated boy kitten’s tummy when I felt a really large, really hard bladder. I had been stimulating him for half an hour at this point. He just couldn’t release enough urine for some reason. And girl kitten kept going downhill, so they both ended up euthanised. :/ At a week old, they were still smaller than a normal newborn kitten.
In better news, my rescue ratsnake is improving! His previous owner fed him live rats and as his vision started going, the rats started winning. He has major scarring all over, will likely lose the last two inches or so of his tail, has a permanently scarred over nostril and the other is stenotic. Plus he’s blind.
However, the majority of his infections are dramatically decreased, he’s active and inquisitive and very tolerant of handling and his injections. I’ve named him Ratbait (he was formerly “buttercup”…).
Two weeks ago:
http://img191.imageshack.us/img191/7065/ratbait6.jpg
Today!:
http://img220.imageshack.us/img220/5526/ratbait4122.jpg
Please don’t mind the white stuff (silver sulfadiazine) and the cat hair stuck to it. :P
My rescue Chihuahua is also going to an official rescue this sunday to find a permanent home. I’m such a sucker for broken animals. :/
Invisible Man-Breeders
My booklist has grown leaps and bounds, as always. Thank you to everyone for sharing what they’re reading.
Daisy, ouch, ouch! Take good care of your foot, but if you did manage to break a toe or two, take it from me that a hospital visit would do absolutely nothing outside of confirm the break[s] and possibly tape your toes. A really well cushioned sneaker can help you get back to walking in a mostly normal fashion.
Rowan,
Oh sad! Sorry to hear about the kittens.
It sounds like the broken animals could do a lot worse than you, though. :)
(What is it with reptiles always being covered in cat hair? My turtle constantly has a little beard and she hates it when I try to pick it off!)
Gotta go but I decided that I had to make myself smile first.
Cannonball
rowan, that’s awful! I’m glad your rescued snake is getting better, though.
Forelle, thanks for the intro. Welcome to TET.
Sorry, Daisy :-( I’m currently going through a self-diagnose, self-treat health issue. I hope I’m right, because if I am, this is an easy and affordable treatment. If I’m wrong, it’s quite a bit more concerning.
Isn’t life as an uninsured/underinsured USian so exciting?
Re: Cocoa
Another excellent way to do it is to mix the cocoa powder with honey. I like the taste of honey more than sugar, so I just do 1.5-2 to 1 cocoa to honey and stir it up until it’s a nice syrup. I add cinnamon as well. And sometimes cayenne. And sometimes whiskey (rarely whisky, which is often too delicious to adulterate, even with cocoa).
I’m having a highly unproductive day. It’s just me being shitty somehow. I can’t quite put my finger on it. I’m just failing at everything I try to do. And by everything I try to do I mostly just mean getting my passport. But still.
Poor baby kittehs.
:( :( :(
–
Re: Reptiles and cat hair…. I don’t know! D: It seems that half the time I get a really nice photo of one of my snakes… there’s a cat hair stuck to them that seems really glaringly obvious. >_<
I really do feel like the queen of the broken animals, and it's part of why I became a vet tech. Heck, I even had a betta that appears to have had a stroke/brain tumor who after a seizure, and three days spent shaped like a U, permanently swam tilted at a 45 degree angle and had to be carefully fed as he couldn't aim right. But he lived for another 6 months. And an anole that went blind that I hand fed… and the amazing auto-immune disorder doggy that no one knows exactly what he has and… and I could go on for *hours*. O_<
But I love 'em all and wish I could help far more than I can.
FFS, Lefties. It’s ok to speak ill of the dead. You do not have to “be fair” to horrible people who spent their lives doing horrible things including shitting on everything you want in a society.
Can the progressive voice please grow a spine and gonads and just say “SO and SO died…good”. It’s pathetic how everyone keeps offering the olive branch to the Right when their figures die despite never fucking ever getting the same pleasantry. It doesn’t make our side look moral or fair, it makes us look weak and pathetic and like we won’t even argue our side of an issue.
Iiiiinteresting.
Some of our kids have arranged a discussion evening about religion. Not that usual here. Guess I’d better show up.
Apparently one of our politicians – I don’t recall who – has said we should aim for a “religion neutral” society. As it turns out one of our wingnutty, old geezer, priest ex-MPs has a daughter who’s followed in his footsteps, and now an MP in her own right. Her reply was something along the lines of “why don’t we try not eating for a coupla months while we’re at it.”
Lovely.
She’s one of the invited speakers. Luckily the Atheist Society is sending their communications director as well. Here’s hoping he doesn’t suck.
If American Atheist’s communications director is any indication, be prepared to lose. Hard.
But I’m pretty sure he’s some kind of fluke. He’s remarkably stupid and ugly* by any standard.
*I’m not always sure how this translates to non-Southerners. It refers to actions. “Don’t be ugly” is a very common phrase here, but it seems to be pretty exclusively used in this context in the South. Can y’all weigh in and tell me if I need to ditch it when on the internet?
Yes, what is the deal with “communications” people who cannot communicate effectively> (puzzled and flummoxed)
Ing 45 – Did I miss something? No wait, that’s lame- I’ll scroll back to see what I missed
I got the context, I think, but that may just be because I know we’re not likely to judge based on looks here.
–o–
All booked for the Köln conference. Only need the ticket to go from there to Berlin with DDMFM on Sunday.
And of course a hotel …
Rev. BigDumbChimp (last thread) Do you have to get the milk pool up to 88 mph for it to work?
Ms. Daisy Cutter, sorry to hear about your injury. Hope it heals well and quickly.
Ing, who died?
My guess is Ing is reacting to Ed Brayton’s post on Chuck Colson.
@Ing
Like the way the lefties did to Andrew Breitbart? That dishonest scum of the Earth? Ugh!
Thanks, Kat.
I think Ed’s right- he’s not being nice to Chuck Colson just to be nice. It’s not quite the same as the liberals who fell over themselves when Breitbart died trying to prove that they didn’t really hate him and he wasn’t really a monster. Those were milquetoast lies.
Honestly, I don’t know much about Colson, but if Ed’s telling the truth, we should acknowledge what he did for prison reform, since so few people are even willing to admit that there’s a problem with our system.
5 Gender Stereotypes That Used To Be the Exact Opposite
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I’m just gonna say there’s no such thing as a soul, no it’s not a logical possibility, not it’s not material and no, it’s not a fucking back up unit for the brain.
Saying here because if I respond to the idiot proposing all the above in the NDE thread, my temper is going to explode.
*Goes back to work on Zombie Duckie. Soothing. Breathe.*
Poll: Say you’re in a cafe and you think you may have met a woman before. Do you:
A. Go about your business unless she gives you a cue that she’s interested in engaging (like maybe talking to you or looking in your direction for more than a glance)
B. Sit as close to her as possible and stare relentlessly until she looks in your direction, at which point you say, “Have you met me?” When she says, “I don’t think so,” scoff and say, “Well, you’d remember.” Also, keep staring and making guttural noises so she’ll look your way again.
C. Satisfy yourself that this fascinating mystery may just have to go unsolved
Unrelated*, sometimes I hate being in public.
*Not really
Caine,
The self satisfied wankery in that thread is why I ducked out, too.
Here I am, just trying to avoid work and I can’t even read a decent discussion about NDEs without some jackass coming along and ruining everything.
It’s not just Ed on Chucky’s death and it is just the pattern. I imagine that if Chuck Norris kicked it we’d hear liberals talking about how great an actor he was (itself a false and laughable notion)
Chucky did more harm than good and his good actions were undermined by his more virulent activism in favor of theocratic fascism. The fact that he gained some empathy and wanted to help doesn’t magic away the harm he did (also I’m not even sure that it’s a point in his favor that he had to go to prison to learn empathy for those people). I’ve seen people argue against credit for Bill Gates because his charity efforts are in direct opposition to things he promoted when he was in business. Chuck Colsten failed at being a good human being, and even when he tried to be good he failed because he focused too much on spreading hate and stupid. There are far better, actual reformers and activists out there that should get support over a Johny Come Lately crook and bigot.
Audley:
Seriously. I was enjoying the discussion and was getting prepped to say that although I have been *very* near death more than once and have spent most of my life seriously sleep-deprived, I’ve never had an NDE/OBE. I’ve always been curious as to why it’s never happened to me.
Anyway, along comes asshat and sours everything.
Good evening
Ahh, when I came home from work today, the kids were in bed and Mr. was doing the housework. If life could always be like this…
rowanvt
I’m sorry about the kittens. But it’s good that you found them and could stop their suffering.
++++++
And since chocolate is always good:
I found a recipe for real-really-real French mousse au chocolat and the second best thing is that it’s dead easy.
Best thing is that it’s very delicious.
6 fresh eggs
100g confectioner’s sugar
200g chocolate (depends on what you like)
-Melt chocolate
-beat eggyolks with sugar almost white
-beat eggwhites with a pinch of salt
Carefully mix chocolate and eggyolk
Carefully mix in eggwhite
Put in bowl or glasses
Put in freezer for 24 hours.
That makes it not much of a spontaneous goodie, but perfect to prepare.
The crux of my issue with praising his prison activism.
If someone who had done JUST his activism his whole life died would he get the same level of attention? No, Chucky is only of note because of his crimes and semi-self serving activism. His negative actions actually inflate people’s view of his positive ones.
Ing,
Obviously I don’t know enough about Colson!
I apologize for feeding trollenstine over on NDE, I thought it was making an actual point.
@Audley
Maybe I’m too emotional about this but considering he started his career as a criminal for Nixon, and never stopped working to marching our politics further and further towards the right, and his prison activism was coupled with his prison ‘ministry’ which was a joke and self serving self rightous wank, I’m of the opinion that he sucked and we’re free of one more asshole now that he’s stopped talking.
Ing, there’s no need to apologize, chomp and/or discuss away!
I thought they were making the point that some soul COULD be possible just from a phylisophical naturalistic POV, my point was yes maybe, but it’s not the self. Even if it’s some automatic analogue->digital copy/backup it can’t be the original self, it’s a copy…especially if we’re assuming a speed of light delay.
Unless they mean that the soul is somehow like a quantum entanglement cohort of the mind made by the physical brain…
THIS!
Jules: A.
–
O.o
I guess we could harvest all their noses for firewood. Or broomsticks.
–
Forelle@151 (second page last thread), re: sockpuppetry, I believe that just changing your nym doesn’t constitute sockpuppetry. People here do it all the time and it’s not really a problem. Using more than one nym in the same thread and doing so to make it seem as if there are others agreeing and reinforcing whatever your point is, is definitely sockpuppetry and wrong.
Anyway, for my part, welcome! In my opinion, as long as we can keep it civil, or at least within our host’s and communities’ rules, disagreement is the spice of life!
Russel Glasser gives so far my favorite assesment of Colson
https://proxy.freethought.online/axp/2012/04/23/the-world-experiences-an-infinitesimal-decrease-in-bullshit/
I cannot remember where I read it, but the best commentary on the death of Colson was by someone who pointed out that since he only took an interest in prison reform after doing time himself he does not deserve as much credit as someone who never did time, and in any case the good he did was not enough to mitigate all the harm.
Ahhh, sorry, fridge, not freezer
Good night
Civil? Really? There are a lot of words that can be used to describe Pharyngula (challenging, exciting, brilliant) but civil is not often the first one that springs to my mind.
Ms. Daisy Cutter, :-(
The boss didn’t ask you personally, but the Workforce Monolith.
I suppose that’s precisely why you hate the work environment.
Sure. I just like to make sure I understand it as well as possible first before I retreat to “different strokes for different folks”. You seem to be saying “don’t even try to find out”.
They turn exceedingly cute over time – but that takes a while. Few newborns are really cute.
Easily, but most other people will arrive on the 19th and leave on the 22nd or so, right? I’ll miss a lot of fun :-(
What, finally, is in the freezer?
3 1/2 large screens on the first try… nice first try :-)
What for? I’m surprised you care. “On the Internet, nobody knows that you’re a dog.”
I never introduced myself either. I’ve just been leaking information over the years.
*squee*
*happy happy joy joy*
I gazed at it for a long time and then read the associated website! It’s awesome! And it explains a few things that had confused me or that I had misinterpreted :-)
Hmmmm. :-) :-) :-)
I’m out of words. I’m simply out of words.
Impressive. But the idea behind this is even better, even if the actual execution may not be.
I like the comment.
Not too many subthreads ago; “I can’t keep up with Teh Thread anymore”.
Wow. New benchmark for evil.
There’s a trick I was taught right here on this very Thread… oh, perhaps by Jules. I use it almost every day now:
Put the cocoa in the mug. Then put honey in. The cocoa doesn’t even need to be the “strongly deoiled” version for losers, it can be the cheap “weakly deoiled” version (just don’t spill that stuff anywhere else). Stir that till all of it (fairly suddenly) turns into a fully homogeneous, very dark, somewhat disgusting-looking paste. Then pour the milk in; the milk can be at fridge temperature. The paste is better soluble than commercial preparations like Nesquik; the stirring may take up to a few minutes, but all of the paste will dissolve. Then microwave it and drink it.
The more liquid the honey is, the more quickly it works.
How sweet or bitter the drink turns out depends on how much cocoa you put in, not so much on the honey. You like eating chocolate with 70 % cocoa or more? Make sure there’s a big heap of cocoa on your teaspoon.
Allons, enfants de la Courtille,
le jour de boire est arrivé !!!
Yep.
Most of them do. And most of those aren’t even geocentrists.
The effect of widespread literacy and telecommunications hasn’t usually been as large as it could be. Few people talk like a book or a radio/TV newscaster. Accents, vocabulary and grammatical features still often serve as markers of cultural identity (usually geographic, sometimes of social class – always tribal in some way).
The main reason why there isn’t more diversity in the US is that most of it, especially the west*, was settled so recently. In spite of widespread literacy, telecommunication, and the famous American mobility where people will move 3000 km for a job, the Northern Cities Shift and the Southern Cities Shift are right now rotating the vowel system in opposite directions – and the Wikipedia article on the Northern one says:
“The shift is mainly found in European American speakers. Speakers of African American Vernacular English show little to no evidence of adopting the shift. It has also not been adopted by Canadian speakers, despite the geographic proximity of millions of Canadians living near the United States border in the Great Lakes region and along the Saint Lawrence River.”
This reminds me of how, in Baghdad and other such places, there used to be a Muslim dialect, a Jewish dialect, and a Christian dialect of Arabic. (The Jews mostly or entirely left after 1948, the Christians have been fleeing since 2003.)
In Great Britain and those German-speaking places where full-blown dialects still exist, they tend to become more regional than micro-local nowadays, but they only become a little more similar to the standard language than they were 50 years ago.
* I’ve been told “you can learn to hear the difference between a Montanan and a Texan, but it’s like two villages in Norfolk 20 miles apart.”
That’s the interesting thing about beer. :-)
*wistful sigh*
(Yes, I do want everything, and I do want it now. This has been today’s edition of Simple Preemptive Answers to Simple Questions.)
*blink*
Any connection to Master Yoda? Is the brand older than Star Wars?
Impressive!!!
Well, they’re right, and you know they’re right. It’s depressing because it’s true.
…That’s really interesting.
Ah, I know that. I have that a lot.
Fortunately, every few days or weeks, it’s punctuated by a “four thousand throats can be cut in one night by a running man” phase.
…
*pounce* *hug* In that case, try again! Try, try, try! What’s the first step you need to take?
If that’s difficult, tell me. The abstract that might possibly rock a very tiny world is now submitted.
From there:
ROTFL! Day saved!
Also from there:
Oh, I think it’s much worse: it’s the patriarchal equation of men with grown-ups and of women with children.
Also:
Frankly awesome.
(Though I’m sure it was used as an excuse for rape a lot.)
Again 6 links in a comment, again it gets held up for moderation. Is it enough if I delete just one?
Ms. Daisy Cutter, :-(
The boss didn’t ask you personally, but the Workforce Monolith.
I suppose that’s precisely why you hate the work environment.
Sure. I just like to make sure I understand it as well as possible first before I retreat to “different strokes for different folks”. You seem to be saying “don’t even try to find out”.
They turn exceedingly cute over time – but that takes a while. Few newborns are really cute.
Easily, but most other people will arrive on the 19th and leave on the 22nd or so, right? I’ll miss a lot of fun :-(
What, finally, is in the freezer?
3 1/2 large screens on the first try… nice first try :-)
What for? I’m surprised you care. “On the Internet, nobody knows that you’re a dog.”
I never introduced myself either. I’ve just been leaking information over the years.
*squee*
*happy happy joy joy*
I gazed at it for a long time and then read the associated website! It’s awesome! And it explains a few things that had confused me or that I had misinterpreted :-)
Hmmmm. :-) :-) :-)
I’m out of words. I’m simply out of words.
Impressive. But the idea behind this is even better, even if the actual execution may not be.
I like the comment.
Not too many subthreads ago; “I can’t keep up with Teh Thread anymore”.
Wow. New benchmark for evil.
There’s a trick I was taught right here on this very Thread… oh, perhaps by Jules. I use it almost every day now:
Put the cocoa in the mug. Then put honey in. The cocoa doesn’t even need to be the “strongly deoiled” version for losers, it can be the cheap “weakly deoiled” version (just don’t spill that stuff anywhere else). Stir that till all of it (fairly suddenly) turns into a fully homogeneous, very dark, somewhat disgusting-looking paste. Then pour the milk in; the milk can be at fridge temperature. The paste is better soluble than commercial preparations like Nesquik; the stirring may take up to a few minutes, but all of the paste will dissolve. Then microwave it and drink it.
The more liquid the honey is, the more quickly it works.
How sweet or bitter the drink turns out depends on how much cocoa you put in, not so much on the honey. You like eating chocolate with 70 % cocoa or more? Make sure there’s a big heap of cocoa on your teaspoon.
Allons, enfants de la Courtille,
le jour de boire est arrivé !!!
Yep.
Most of them do. And most of those aren’t even geocentrists.
The effect of widespread literacy and telecommunications hasn’t usually been as large as it could be. Few people talk like a book or a radio/TV newscaster. Accents, vocabulary and grammatical features still often serve as markers of cultural identity (usually geographic, sometimes of social class – always tribal in some way).
The main reason why there isn’t more diversity in the US is that most of it, especially the west*, was settled so recently. In spite of widespread literacy, telecommunication, and the famous American mobility where people will move 3000 km for a job, the Northern Cities Shift and the Southern Cities Shift are right now rotating the vowel system in opposite directions – and the Wikipedia article on the Northern one says:
“The shift is mainly found in European American speakers. Speakers of African American Vernacular English show little to no evidence of adopting the shift. It has also not been adopted by Canadian speakers, despite the geographic proximity of millions of Canadians living near the United States border in the Great Lakes region and along the Saint Lawrence River.”
This reminds me of how, in Baghdad and other such places, there used to be a Muslim dialect, a Jewish dialect, and a Christian dialect of Arabic. (The Jews mostly or entirely left after 1948, the Christians have been fleeing since 2003.)
In Great Britain and those German-speaking places where full-blown dialects still exist, they tend to become more regional than micro-local nowadays, but they only become a little more similar to the standard language than they were 50 years ago.
* I’ve been told “you can learn to hear the difference between a Montanan and a Texan, but it’s like two villages in Norfolk 20 miles apart.”
That’s the interesting thing about beer. :-)
*wistful sigh*
(Yes, I do want everything, and I do want it now. This has been today’s edition of Simple Preemptive Answers to Simple Questions.)
*blink*
Any connection to Master Yoda? Is the brand older than Star Wars?
Impressive!!!
Well, they’re right, and you know they’re right. It’s depressing because it’s true.
…That’s really interesting.
Ah, I know that. I have that a lot.
Fortunately, every few days or weeks, it’s punctuated by a “four thousand throats can be cut in one night by a running man” phase.
…
*pounce* *hug* In that case, try again! Try, try, try! What’s the first step you need to take?
If that’s difficult, tell me. The abstract that might possibly rock a very tiny world is now submitted.
From there:
ROTFL! Day saved!
Also from there:
Oh, I think it’s much worse: it’s the patriarchal equation of men with grown-ups and of women with children.
Also:
Frankly awesome.
(Though I’m sure it was used as an excuse for rape a lot.)
Huh. So 5 links is OK, 6 is not anymore. ~:-| Good to know.
I AM the workforce. I am the only employee. I assure you, it was personal.
Am I missing something or is the NDE thread over a point that is trivially apparent that the transhumanists are just refusing to acknowledge?
David:
Well, I do. Deal with it.
Ing:
Nope.
I’m Marjanovićing Marjanović.
This is sad. That is all.
Yep. I even repeated earlier in this thread. I’m happy it’s getting some mileage for someone else. I do it almost daily for use in my coffee.
That’s probably the problem. I had one of those just a few days ago.
I just failed to remember that I needed my birth certificate. Until I got to the agency (but not all the way inside). So I turned around and drove 30 minutes back home…to discover that I’d left it at my mother’s (which is only 3 miles from the agency, but she’s not home until, well, just a few more minutes!) Luckily I’m not doing my nanny job tomorrow either, so I have time to go back in the morning.
Operation DDMFM’s Dishes is still on target.
Cicely, I think A. would be my choice too. I finally left the stupid cafe because the guy wouldn’t. let. it. go. As I walked out, I gave him the biggest go-to-hell look I could muster (which, from what I’ve been told, is pretty damn scary). I almost turned around and said, “I’m leaving because you’re being creepy, asshole.” But I didn’t want to deal with him any more than that.
That sucks :-(
There is an actual group that formed to protest a library referendum.
Their name? The name that was handwritten on the financial disclosure forms they turned in?
Citizens Apposed to the Library Project. You can’t make this stuff up, folks.
JT Eberhard comparing Richard Carrier to the Hulk.
A bit of context for the outcry at Harvard. They’re using, what, 10 % of their endowment to pay for journal subscriptions!?!
…Oh.
*bacon*
*chocolate*
ARGH!
:-)
Beyond awesome.
First comment to “Apposed”:
:-)
I didn’t even notice they’re the first time. Am I going native?
…and I noticed their only when I submitted the comment X-)
I must go home and sleep.
Whoa! There is a there there!
Carlie:
This is my new favorite thing.
Was the financial disclosure form filled out with crayon, I wonder?
Ms. Daisy, ouch. I hope your foot heals quickly. *hugs*
Fuck. Lost my post to an errant backspace.
–o–
Grats!
Dunno. I was hoping I could just get you to get two tickets for your return, so we don’t end up on different trains.
As for the hotel, the one recommended by the organisers is full, but if I have the venue right, there’s one just around the corner called Hotel Am Chlodwigplatz. Doppelzimmer for €96-135 a night, but booking can’t be done automatically, and I don’t know if there’s something cheaper, more convenient. If you have a chance to look into it, I’d be very grateful.
One problem with having a hotel close to the venue, could be that PeeZed & co. most likely will prefer to hang out closer to their hotel, so perhaps it would be better to get something there.
FFS Ing, why do you keep listening to Savage Love Podcast anymore? It’s 3 weeks in a row it’s just pissed you off.
Oh Dan Savage, protip, bringing in someone to act as “your bi friend” who agrees with you doesn’t make it any less stupid. Even ignoring the stupidity of bringing in a biman to be the authority on a question about gay/bi female relationship. Head meet desk
Has anyone seen CJO recently? I have a nagging question now that I’ve started reading Ehrman (his good books), and I don’t know I can just mail Carrier without getting ripped a new one.
Damn. I guess the good luck had to stop somewhere.
Just had my insurance claim denied.
ImaginesABeach@75, For certain values of civil? Maybe not the best word to use, I guess I should have just gone for “within our host’s and communities’ rules”
David Marjanović@76, re: threadrupt, Thanks, that’s what I thought from context, but good to have it confirmed.
The first thing I noticed was effect.
From the suggested solutions:
Trouble with that is that the American Chemical Society is one of the biggest vultures out there. (But the members usually complain that the society seems to be for the industry rather than the members, so perhaps they just shouldn’t be called a “professional society”.)
::prances::
I just watched the vid embedded in the thread topic…
That’s… that’s not real, is it?
It looks like a “report” from the Onion.
Please tell me that it’s parody?
I suspect it had a lot more to do with dirty nappies.
Fuck it. I’m writing this entire goddamn day off.
Imma go have some hotwings and beer.
They are currently the only things within reach that I do not want to smash with a tire iron.
From the suggested solutions:
Is piracy in there as a suggestion?
No, I’m completely serious.
If not, it should be.
It has an impact on all other publishing industries; it’s time the academic journal publishers got off their asses and started lowering their outrageous rates.
If they start losing 50% of their profits to piracy… it will indeed make them rethink their business model.
Fuck it. I’m writing this entire goddamn day off.
Well, that’s an excellent thing to do, since it’s ANZAC day.
well, it is here in the future, anyway.
It’s a gorgeous sunny fall day, and I’m heading to the beach in a little while myself.
Kristinc:
Yep. One of my great-grandmothers had a photograph of herself with my grandfather and two great-uncles when they were very young. All of them in dresses with lace collars and boots. Long hair in ringlets, too. It was accepted dress and it was very convenient when it came to clean ups of all types.
Also, a lot of people couldn’t afford ready made clothes. Dresses/smocks are easy to sew and don’t use a ton of fabric.
Cicely: Thanks. Regarding the clarinet, one of the genres of music I enjoy is klezmer. Not sure if you’re into that at all. I’ve also got a few CDs of Middle Eastern music featuring such woodwinds as neys and shawms.
Audley: Yeah, $500 is pretty cheap for medical treatment in the U.S., sad to say. But my bill is about to double. I’ve been diagnosed with an avulsion fracture of the fifth metatarsal (and, yes, I winced when I read the definition). I need an orthopedic specialist or a podiatrist to fit me with a stability boot.
Fortunately, my parents have offered to pick up that part of the tab. I’m very lucky, and I appreciate it.
Nifty: Thanks also. And I wouldn’t have blamed you if you had lost it with that DNC caller. Then again, I’m the one who tore a strip of hide off an Obama For America caller the other year and hung up on him. (Fuck him, he took that job for ideological reasons.)
No, it’s not. Indifference is as dangerous as malevolence.
RowanVT: I’m so sorry about the other kittehs. But I’m glad the ratsnake is doing better.
Caine, if it were just a toe or two, I’d take your advice, but this is a bone in the ball of my foot.
Thanks, Jules. I hope your self-diagnosis and -treatment are correct, too.
Ing, I agree entirely. I just left the comment “Good riddance” on Ed’s thread.
Thanks, Ray, David, and Hekuni Cat. Thanks also, David, for the commentary on accents.
Caine:
Particularly important when they’ll be outgrown before long.
Oh, Daisy, Ouchety ouch ouch. I’m glad you’re getting treatment.
Holey Hell!
According to Maddow California is putting the death penalty on the ballot.
Any bets on how much Mormon money is gonna go into protecting tradition this time round? I wonder if the Catholics will get into bet with them again – it’s not like the listen to the Pope on any other matter, so why would they suddenly be pro-life in this case.
Anybody else find this piece on Zingularity somewhat reprehensible, in both content and tone?
The idea is to cash bomb Afghanistan, rather than the other kind. Not so bad in and of itself, but this goes off the rails for reasons I’m still trying to clarify for myself:
Fuck, but the term ‘shithole’ bothers me. If the fact that other people and their lands are beset by war and violence and squalor so offends your sense of esthetics, then turn on Dancing With The Stars and STFU.
Also too, they’re simple to fit: more forgiving of a little growth, and easier to hand down to future children even of different body types and sizes. And there are fewer liable-to-split-and-need-repairing seams than in a garment with a crotch.
If my understanding is correct, at least in North America the deal was that non-walking babies wore long gowns and toddlers got “shortened” to the knee-length smocks for obvious reasons. Although I wonder a bit how babies learned to crawl in long nightgowns.
So…any place he doesn’t live in is an automatic shithole? Is it a shithole because it has the misfortune of being war torn or because it’s filled with people he doesn’t like?
Someone’s privilege is showing.
Art: octopus woman by Sze Jones.
@niftyatheist
Yeah, the Democrats pretty much don’t give a damn. Heck, they are not even a liberal party, it is a center right party.
In response, I linked to another blogger whose bigotry is not in question who’s fond of the term shithole, in relation to India (as well as ‘elephant jockey’), and suggested using words different than the ones the simplistic bigots like.
Ms. Daisy Cutter, previous ep:
Well, stated simply, he wants to make the case that cities and the urbanization of the human population are good for the environment. One of his reasons is that they concentrate people onto smaller areas of land, and therefore, less land is effected by human activity. I would say, sure, humans are living on less land, but that doesn’t mean that the non-city land isn’t being used and abused in other ways. Another thing he makes a big deal of is the use of public transportation in cities, and that living in a compact city area decreases one’s carbon footprint. I think he’s largely basing this on New York City though, which is really the only city in America with a significant amount of its workforce using public transportation. And again, this is only a small part of one’s carbon footprint and how one affects the land around cities.
But like I said, I haven’t gotten past the introduction yet, perhaps he elaborates on these issues.
Jules@102 Yay, hot wings and beer!
Swee’Pea seemed to manage.
I think someone calculated that if we paid each other’s health costs it would be $47 a year –but I’ve no source for that.
Quebec has been running a provincial daycare program for ten years. It has allowed 70,000 women to stay in the work force, raised the GDP by $5 billion, and paid back almost 150% in income tax the amount expended on it, generating a couple of billion in tax revenue.
“We” meaning “you Americans.” $47 a month sounds more realistic.
I guess one of the things that pisses me off is the attitude that Afghanis are some sort of ungovernable savages. If they won’t respond to bombing, then just throw cash at them if they do the tricks you like, as if they were dogs, because fuck ’em. It’s too hard to understand how other people work, so treat ’em like gameshiw contestants… whatever… not my problem …American lives, blah-blah.
Golden shower=piss on them
Brownian:
Yep. I read that whole post, then clicked over to the link you provided in the comments. I feel like 50 showers won’t be enough after that.
@Browmian
And let’s not forget that part of the reason Afghanistan is in such a mess is because the superpower countries kept playing political chess with it.
Before British Received Pronunciation or “BBC English”(?), there were people who could tell which end of Ludlow you came from by your accent.
And the first comment is:
“Riots in the streets by students raised on $7 day care tell a different story.”
That’s right, everyone: socialism doesn’t work, especially when it works, because non sequitur I mad.
Honestly, is there even a point any more?
@Markita Lynda
Wow, that is amazing, being able to tell which part of a town you are from just by accent.
AFAIK, Afghanistan hasn’t had a truly united government in a very long time. The region has always been difficult to govern, even before it became de rigueur for every faltering Superpower to invade it.
Nope, they’re ungovernable savages. And trying to sort them out is costing American lives. Just throw them a few bills so they can wipe our semen off of their clothes and faces, and let’s get back to the casino.
Gosh, our foreign meddling was such an imposition on us. And this is the thanks we get?
David M
Uh, also, we tend to move a lot. The entrenched English accents seem bizarre to me.
Everyone lives within (USian view) a few miles from each other. They listen to the same radio, they watch the same telly … it’s bizarre to me.
+++++++++++++++++
Jules, when I’m in that situation I either walk over and ask “I didn’t mean to stare, but I think we’ve met before”, and it’s the truth, or I get the non-verbal cue and leave them the hell alone.
But I get non-verbal cues, which doesn’t work for everyone.
To me the guy just sounded like an asshat. It’s a sign of immaturity and insecurity to not accept a turn down gracefully.
Even if you can’t tell originally, a “no” means no.
Yes, we need to ram that statistic down everyone’s throats. Affordable daycare for everyone enables women to work, provides jobs in the daycare centre, socializes and stimulates children and feeds children, and pays back the government at a profit!
Brownian and others:
Is that guy actually suggesting dropping money out of the sky on them?
Because I swear I saw that sort of thing on The Simpsons (or was it Family Guy?) and it didn’t work out so well IIRC.
That’s such a bullshit spineless way to say fuck all. When? What makes it different than other places that have had dynasties and uprising and all that bullshit?
I’m fucking tired of this shit. If they’re ungovernable savages, then say so and why. Coy aspersions can lick my fucking taint.
David Marjanović:
I like this image :-)
Oooooo!! Cosmos is on Netflix instant!
Jeez, I’m almost crying just watching the intro to the first episode, and I was too young to even watch it when it first came out.
sili –
AFAIK, they don’t use any endowments to pay their $5.7M. It comes out of the Library’s operating fund.
Sure, Harvard is rich, but the fact that the Faculty Council is asking their schools to make this change, and offering ways to do it, is amazing.
Shifting the hit count from $40,000/year publications to open source pubs is brilliant.
The research has usually been paid for by public funds, the peer reviewers do it for free, the authors have to pay big bucks (hundreds to thousands of dollars) to get it published. And where does all the money go? To publishing houses that didn’t do squat.
Brownain: OK, if you you want to take the discussion in that direction and be a fucking idiot about it, I’ll clarify myself. Afghanistan is difficult to govern because it is more of a loose confederation of tribes than a nation. That says nothing about the people themselves, but it does say quite a bit about the various attempts to govern the region, which nearly all attempted to impose a European style system where is was simply not relevant. Cultural relativism is the concept to grasp here. The fact that a historically tribal (that is, within the last four to five centuries) culture is difficult to govern does not make it “Savage” in any way. I’ve never liked the word anyway.
Huh. As far back as 1838 the Afghanis didn’t know enough to lie down for their colonialist betters. What is wrong with those people, anyway?
Thanks for the welcomes, and Ray, thanks for your explanation of real sockpuppetry.
Ms. Daisy Cutter, I’m sorry about your foot. That sounds — ouch. Though at least you have a diagnosis now — your friend did the right thing.
Carlie:
Last year, I put all the Cosmos discs on the netflix queue and we sat just as entranced as we did when they first hit the airwaves way back when. We were both in tears much of the time. Sagan’s voice, awe and enthusiasm is much missed.
A.R:
Oh you are so full of shit. Again, a topic you know absolutely nothing about, but you’ll spew bullshit because you want to sound like you know something. You really need to learn to shut the fuck up when you don’t know what you’re talking about and go forth and click your self towards some free education.
Caine: Know nothing about it? You’re speaking to an Anthro-soc minor. If you would care to read my above comment addressed to Brownian (substitute your own nym where appropriate).
Ms. Daisy, I was afraid you’d fractured a bone in there. :( Still glad you went – still bummed at the expense. Same same. Hope it feels a lot better soon – baby yourself. Foot pain is the worst – so give yourself lots of TLC! (and no, Laughing Coyote, I don’t mean you! :D)
Brownian, when you quoted that bit about Afghanistan, saying you weren’t quite sure what it was that set you off, I read and thought, “Well his problem is this si so full of WTF? that he probably doesn’t know where to begin!”
Lard flying thundering jumping jeebus in a coffee can, could that post be any fuller of privilege? No, wait, not privilege – I was mistaken sorry – blinding ugly racist superior dehumanizing garbage. Yes, that is closer – though I may be being too kind.
Please do.
Oh, I see. So, by “even before it became de rigueur for every faltering Superpower to invade it”, you were referring to the time when presumably the Afghanis themselves were imposing irrelevant European style systems of governance on themselves.
Sorry for being a fucking idiot. I still don’t understand why the Afghanis were trying to impose a European style of governance on themselves before the European superpowers (England, Russia) found it de rigueur to invade it. Or did you mean those European-style Pashtuns and Durranis?
Huh. Dropping money from the sky *would* be better and cheaper than bombs and bullets. Pity about the racism/xenophobia in the article, though.
Hi to Forelle! I feel for you, because I have made a similar misstep – read a blog for ages, agree, get to know and like the regulars, then finally post on a disagreement point. Whoops – that went badly. So yeah, just because you know them doesn’t mean they know you. It’s an illusion like thinking you know people on TV. (If tigtog is reading, hi! One day I may post on Hoyden again.)
Speaking of consciousness, I had a weird to me (but very mundane) experience last night: I fainted. I’ve never done that before, not have I ever been unconscious other than sleep. So one second I was standing at the bathroom sink, and the next second I was lying on the floor. No NDEs or OBEs or dreams or even an experience of blackness, just a complete skip. I’d always imagined unconsciousness as being like sleep, but there’s a different quality to it.
Apparently I was out for about 30 seconds, and the Bloke was trying to get me into rescue position, and calling to me, and considering calling an ambulance. Don’t worry about me, though, it was nothing. I was at the sink because I’d cut the skin off the tip of a finger – a minor injury but bloody, and remarkably painful when I tried to wash it. What with that, plus the stress/sadness of the last week, plus my BP being now a bit too low, it’s quite explicable.
Brownian @144: European-style was the first term to come to my mind, but “highly centralized government” would better.
And you’re speaking to an anthro major, pol sci minor here. But do go on to explain cultural relativism to me again.
Addendum to my 146: The point is that historically tribal cultures are often highly resistant to centralization (be it by colonialists or other tribes). This however, says nothing about how “civilized” they are. Cultural relativism again.
Are you fucking kidding me?
You really are full of shit, A.R
Question for the gamers/infosec-ers of the Horde.
I get email:
I have never heard of Riot Games, League of Legends, nor have I ever dealt with LeaverBuster. And I’m pretty sure that, even in my cups, I would never have registered with an ID of “agiantd1ck”.
Anyone have any idea what’s going on here?
My default position is ignore but I’m concerned that I might need to take action. ~@:-/
Do clarify.
Geez, Alethea, I’m glad you’re okay. I only ever came close to fainting once in my life and that was a few minutes after I had an IUD inserted. I fought it off, but for a moment there, that was one of the weirdest sensations I’ve ever experienced. It’s hard to explain.
Look, you fucking bag of stupid. I FUCKING KNOW THIS. GO FUCK YOURSELF. THE WHOLE FUCKING POINT OF THIS WHOLE FUCKING RANT IS THE OVERUSED FUCKING IMPLICATION, FIRST BY ZINGULARITY, AND NOW BY YOU, ASSHOLE, IS THAT THE AFGHANIS ARE ‘UNGOVERNABLE’. MY USE OF THE TERM ‘SAVAGE’ IS PARODYING YOU, ASSHOLE. YOU!
BECAUSE BEING GOVERNED DOES NOT REQUIRE BEING GOVERNED BY A HIGHLY CENTRALISED GOVERNMENT. JU|’HOANSI GOVERN THEMSELVES WITHOUT ONE. SO DO/DID THE INUIT. AND EVERY OTHER HUMAN SOCIETY FROM FORAGER AND SO ON, UNTIL THE RISE OF HIGHLY CENTRALISED GOVERNMENTS.
YOU’RE THE ONE THAT CLAIMED THE AFGHANIS WERE ‘DIFFICULT TO GOVERN’ BECAUSE THEY WEREN’T RECEPTIVE TO EUROPEAN STYLE—SORRY, ‘HIGHLY CENTRALISED’—GOVERNANCE. YOU.
SO FUCK. RIGHT. OFF. WITH. YOUR. HALF-ASSED, BIGOTED, HISTORY LESSON, ASSHOLE.
Alethea, I’m glad you are OK! People have had injuries from hitting tiled bathroom floors (and by “people” , I mean Nifty people). I know just what you are describing. One second doing something, next second wondering why your body feels so cold as you realize you are on the cold floor.
I think the strangest part is how instantaneous it is. No sense of sleep at all – not even of blackness. Just one second here and then next second there and no apparent time lapse between.
Well, by equating ‘difficult to govern’ first with resistance to ‘European-style’ government, and then clarifying that you meant ‘highly centralised government’, you’re clearly shifting the goalposts because I showed that 127 and 137 are inconsistent and you want to win. But in doing so, and explaining that you innocently conflated ‘highly centralised’ with ‘European’ (presumably to cover that you omitted the Pashtuns and Durranis from your ‘European’ explanation) you also came across as a bit of a bigot.
Did you really need me to explain what you know, or is there some reason that you aren’t aware of what you write?
Alethea, I’m glad you’re okay! I’ve fainted twice before, and once it was onto a tile floor. I chipped my front tooth and the dentist had to reattach a bit of it with cement. (That was a long time ago, and thankfully the tooth turned out well.)
Hmm. Both times I fainted, I did have a sensation of dizziness and vision blurring, so it wasn’t completely instantaneous. I don’t remember the falling down part, though, and it didn’t seem like any time passed while I was out.
Bravo, Brownian – (pouring a nice drink into USB)
Maybe it wasn’t intentional, but A R you sounded like some sort of 19th century stuffed shirt tch-tching about how the civilized countries just have always had their hands full with these uncouth savages in ( wherever in the world they’ve fucked up peoples’ lives/societies and everything else for colonial gain). I’m no anthropologist, but I sure think condescension is kind of shooting out of your post. Maybe you know the facts, but wow, you don’t seem to have learned anything about the humanity of people all over the world (tip: we are all alike everywhere- human – there are no inherently “difficult” people). JUst my 2 cents
A.R to Brownian “OK, if you you want to take the discussion in that direction and be a fucking idiot about it, I’ll clarify myself.”
Yep, safe place. And these people are friendlies.
+++++++++++++++++
IRT Afghanistan? We spent billions of tax dollars supporting the Taliban, and then they used the weapons we gave them to host Al-Queda. Now we’re spending billions of dollars to defeat them.
Since we’ve done this and failed, and everytime we’ve done this and failed, nope, no reason to stop arming people who will eventually use our weapons against us.
One would think that the USSR, the US, the UK, &c, would have figured out by now it doesn’t work.
If you’re gonna dump loads of cash on people, do it for the poor in the US. That will boost the US economy, poor people spend it, rich people save it.
Or, if you’re going to suggest dumping it on Afghanis, put some fucking thought into development—don’t just half-jokingly suggest tossing them bags of cash to fight over because you’re tired of being reminded that Afghanistan exists whenever an American soldier is killed there.
Brownian: I think you’re misunderstanding my original point. My point was that Afghanistan is difficult to govern in a centralized manner. That’s fucking it. No implications. They governed themselves quite nicely before the multiple interventions by various superpowers. And I’m sure that they could do it again if everyone else would stop interfering with their governance.
Niftyatheist:
No, he doesn’t.
The Sailor:
You are more than welcome to shut the fuck up about this. Ms. Daisy Cutter went out of her way to explain safe space to you and you’re still acting the idiot. By the way, you have zero room to talk on this subject, as you’ve actively attempted to make this an unsafe space for some people, all of them women.
OOH! We’re seeing another activation of Caine’s Majikal Brain Reader™. Seeing one or two posts about a topic doesn’t always give a good idea of what someone knows.
*sticks head in to see if David is enjoying map*
Aw, it’s like watching a kid in a candy store . . . *sees last posts*
*leaves*
*pops back in*
Anyone know anything about this? Found a link to it on another site. Looks interesting, but I’m not ready to commit to anything yet.
*leaves for real this time*
A couple of misc.
Abortion is a dandy and in some circumstances necessary means of birth control. Those societies that enable its use to increase the proportion of males, however, deserve what’s coming to them. There won’t be enough girls to go around, and won’t they be surprised to find out who their darling extra boys decide to fuck. Serve ’em right.
Chocolate bars melt nicely in a little rich milk or cream. Best. Hot. Chocolate. Ever.
Nutmeg, you’re right. I forgot the time I fainted when I was younger, I first felt hot and nauseated, followed by cold and blind/deaf…then wham, someone hit me on the back of the head with the floor. NO graceful slide to the ground for me.
But my more recent misadventure involved feeling a bit dodgy. sitting on the side of the tub and waking up wondering why my chest and cheek felt so cold. No time lapse in between (for me). Went to bed with a lump just under my hairline – next day it was a goose egg, of course. A week later, I had a black eye and purple forehead. Over the next few weeks, the blood worked its way all the way down my face. I was a mess. But it could have been worse.
Althea, glad you’re OK now. Take it easy, though.
I almost fainted once–started swaying and blacking out — and only realized it as I recovered. It made me realize that if I died, I wouldn’t even notice, which is reassuring in a way.
Look over at JT’s blog where they want sponsors for Bowling for Abortion [providers].
Re Chuck Colson dying, his ‘prison ministry’ was effective only when he cooked the statistics to include getting a job once out of prison as part of completing the program. For people who just completed the attendance requirements, recidivism rates were actually a bit worse than for people who didn’t attend. So he didn’t do any good after all.
Men competing over limited women for breeding purposes doesn’t tend to end well for the women.
Oddly, when people argue on this thread, I usually learn something I didn’t previously know.
Markita Lynda RE: Chuck Colson: I read something like that as well. Besides that, people who get jobs upon leaving prison tend, IIRC, to have lower recidivism rates. (Link to source available upon request. I’d post it now, but I’d have to spend thirty minutes or so searching my history for it.)
Yeah, I’m fine thanks, Caine, Nutmeg & nifty. In retrospect I was lucky that the Bloke was there – I’d called him to help me get the bandaids and stuff – and he caught me as I fell. So no hard knocks on hard surfaces. I will be seeing the doc soonish to check on my BP meds (among other things), but not for a week or so. I’m really not worried.
I’m off to Perth tomorrow for a visit to friends, followed by a conference. It’s mostly at a conference centre, but we also have a technical workshop at the zoo! Is this happening in other countries, too – that zoos have function rooms for hire for parties, seminars etc? It makes sense for birthday parties and similar celebrations, but it seems very odd for a professional meeting. And one that’s not even anything to do with zoology or any other form of biology.
Usually when I say I’m threadrupt, I mostly mean I’ve had to roughly skim the last few hundred comments, but this time I’m literally nearly two full days behind, with no reasonable hope of catching up. I’m’a skip to whatever’s current the next time I have time to read, but I did want to chime in just once on the stuff I just spent ~15 minutes reading before I realized I hadn’t hit “refresh” since Sunday. No doubt the moment has passed, and I’ve probably missed much valuable talk in the meantime, but…
Nutmeg (and others in similar situations):
I don’t understand “forced” here: If anyone’s putting pressure on you to drink that can’t be handled by “No, thank you” followed, if necessary, by “No, really; what part of ‘no, thank you’ did you not understand,” then the next step is to ask the bartender/manager/host to throw the jerk out.
The key word here is, as at least a couple others mentioned, is jerk. When the conversation is about things “everybody does,” one has to remember that some fraction of “everybody” is always going to be jerks; that fact ought not indict the activities we’re talking about. If somebody tries to force you drink or dance or eat something you don’t like or socialize in a way you don’t prefer, the real issue is forcing, not the thing being forced, and those people are not your friends.
I really do understand that it’s frustrating not to “get” what’s appealing about a popular activity, and I also understand that it’s not always possible to find your “tribe” or to avoid the social costs of not participating.
However… sometimes in an effort to turn a liability into an asset, folks (and I’m not pointing at anyone in particular here) tend to come off sounding like the things “everybody does” are — perhaps because they’re so popular — not worth the time of the smart set, but are instead the foolish, pointless pastimes of the middle-brow masses. That is, mundanes.
This time it was drinking and dancing; in the past (’round here) it’s been dating or liking musical theater or sports or watching TV; in various forms of fandom, it’s reading/watching anything other than [favored genre]. In every case, it’s a matter of defining the cultural majority position as stupid and unsophisticated.
Of course, that’s a fair assessment a nontrivial amount of the time, but it’s not fair to automatically assume that people who like things that are both [a] liked by a lot of other people and [b] not pleasing to you are therefore undiscerning rubes. As a thoughtful, well-educated person who likes drinking and dancing and sports and musical theater and used to like dating (when I was single) and reading Moby Dick (when I had time for big novels), I’ve more than once felt a little bit dissed in these discussions[1], and unless I’m misunderstanding, that’s what Ms. Daze and others were getting at in pushing back against words like mundanes and sheeple.
Sometimes “what do people see in [X]???” really is an expression of curiosity… but all too often, it’s an expression of sneering belittlement (whether born in the somewhat understandable self-defensive reaction of people who feel socially marginalized or just the pointless smugness of genuine snobs). And sometimes it’s hard to tell which (even counting the punctuation isn’t always a reliable gauge).
OK, now I’m headed back to the brain-bending swirl of housework, political work, and family stuff that’s been keeping me from keeping up….
***
[1] Mind you, I absolutely understand that feeling “a little bit dissed” is a tiny problem compared to feeling truly socially isolated. But even admittedly tiny problems sometimes elicit expressions of mild exasperation on teh intertooobz™.
Sili, Richard Carrier is answering queries in his discussion, too.
As we get older, it’s good to sit on the side of the bed for a moment, then get up, to let the blood stay in our heads and keep our balance. It prevents falls.
I’ve only fainted once. Someone was demonstrating a certain martial arts type strangling technique on me. With my permission of course. It felt weird.
The scary bit is I’m pretty sure I still remember how it was done. Not wearing a shirt renders the attack completely ineffective.
cm’s changeable monicker @150, block as spam, delete e-mail, ignore. Could be spam, could be phishing.
Oh, I see now. I don’t know what your issue is, and I don’t know what I’m expected to do about it. If you’ve got a problem with me, let me know.
That’s not what “The region has always been difficult to govern, even before it became de rigueur for every faltering Superpower to invade it” means.
Whatever. I guess you meant something else. What you wrote in 160. Fine.
Ing@167
IIRC the shortage of women in China leads to bad outcomes for both women and poor men. The first becomes a “commodity” with all the attendant misogyny (including abduction of women for forced marriage) the second face no prospects of finding a partner.
The former outweighs the latter…..in case anyone thought I thought they were equivalent.
*boozes* and sympathy.
–
Possibly stupid question: wouldn’t dropping bales of $$$$ on Afghanistan result in inflation/less buying power per dollar?
–
Sorry Caine, you’re wrong. “By the way, you have zero room to talk on this subject, as you’ve actively attempted to make this an unsafe space for some people, all of them women.”
Tell that to ChasC and John Morales.
You know, a lot of the time I don’t know a gender, and I never care.
When epithets and shouting are involved (see above) it’s not a safe place. I’m not saying it should be, but just because you declare it safe does not make it so.
But if you, as of course the ruler of teh land want me to leave, I’ll leave and stick teh flounce … oh, wait, no I won’t.
You aren’t in charge, I contribute to this community, and I add to it.
++++++++++++++++++++++
Fainting: When I was much younger, I had non-epileptic seizures and random fainting. Spent way too much time in hospitals. I will admit that I enjoyed scaring the doctors with my (for an eleven year old) advanced medical knowledge. I can only imagine what that all cost. Feeling some serious PPO-related guilt here.
Brownian: (I need to learn to refresh). My 127 was indeed horribly phrased and Imperialist-sounding. Dashed that one off too quickly.
Cicely: If we’re actually talking about a guy flying around the middle east dropping big bales of money on villages, I dunno if there are any non-stupid questions to ask.
It’s not ‘funny’, but I can’t help but picture crates of money crashing through roofs and flattening panicked villagers like big cartoon anvils.
Argh! Mr Darkheart just announced that he’s shaving his beard tonight.
A.R., actually someone had mentioned it up-thread. Even without a study, it’s understandable that someone who can support them selves and structure their time is probably more likely to ‘rejoin society’ than someone who is desperate for cash and at loose ends.
Fuck you. Considering I almost stopped coming here or considered changing names because I thought he might go cyberstalker on me, you should not bring his name up about ‘safe space’.
Yeah, me too.
–
Welp, since my monitor’s screwed (so blurry as to be hard to read) I guess I’ll call it a night.
–
Perhaps this would be one time the Teabaggers are right. Drop teh gollldzzz on ’em!
Totally OT, and I haven’t read the thread, but I’m *dying* to hear everyone’s take on the idea that comic sans might actually be GOOD for you!!
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/01/the-benefit-of-ugly-fonts/
Audley:
Why for?
Oh yes, good ol’ Sven, who never lost an opportunity to indulge in misogyny or to tell people just how many folks were in his killfile, especially those OMs or who just had to announce how utterly uninteresting and stupid most of us were before flouncing off the last time.
FYI, Sven got a lot of patience and chances from people here, over and over and over again. There’s only so much you can do.
I’ve been knocked out once, and fainted twice.
The first was a punch I didn’t see coming (pro tip: never question a fellow nick-named Hercules about your right to travel wherever you want) and resulted in a broken jaw.
Apparently, from witnesses, I was knocked back, hit the wall, and slid down and was unconscious for several seconds. To me, I got hit and jumped back up and tackled the guy. I wondered why he looked so surprised. The cops broke it up before he could injure be worse. It doesn’t always pay to challenge a bully.
The last 2 times have been in the last 5 years when my BP meds were adjusted. Stood up too quick and had no idea why I was on the floor.
All 3 times it was lights on, lights off, lights on again. Zero transition time.
GASP! Not before the hockey playoffs are over!?!?!!1!!
Books: (late, I know, but I’ve always been slow off the mark)
Currently reading:
99 things… Great Christina
God is not great. Hitchens.
The Far Country. Nevil Shute
Flash & Bones. Kathy Reischs
On the to read list is Carl Sagan’s Demon Haunted World.
I’m not making much progress on any of them. Seem to have very little spare reading time these days. I’m probly spending too much time reading pharyngula threads to allow for traditional reading.
Brownian, I have nothing against you, or anyone else here, I was just pointing out how hostile it can get.
Ing, I did not know that about ChasC and you, I was never a fan of his. I was glad when he left voluntarily.
Catnip:
I just finished that, did a lot of highlighting and note taking.
I read that some time back. Definitely parts I disagreed with, however, over all very good.
Could have fooled me
Caine,
Mr Darkheart likes to change up his facial hair every few months. I can’t really blame him for getting rid of the beard– he kept it for over a year ‘cos I like it so much– but it still makes me :(
Not quite gone yet…
Markita Lynda:
Hrmmm… $47/mo. × &12 mo. = $564/year
Now, I have reasonably decent employer-“provided” health insurance, and my share of the annual premium (for me, my wife, and my daughter) is ~$6700/year (that’s medical only, not including dental or disability). Admittedly, that’s pre-tax money so figure that the impact on my after-tax earnings is ~$4500 to $5000. On top of that, deductibles, copays, and coinsurance add at least another $1000 in the best of years (if we have a really bad medical year, we could theoretically spend up to $7500 over and above our premiums before we hit our out-of-pocket maximum).
So even if your estimate above is optimistic by a factor of 10, and universal publicly funded single-payer healthcare would increase my taxes by $5640/year — that is, if national health care would increase my income tax bill by more than 1/3 — I’d still be better off than the best possible year in my current situation.
And my situation is better than (I’m guessing) 90% of my fellow ‘Murricans.
People who bloviate about how we “can’t afford” universal health care are either lying or not paying attention to their own finances.
I haz spoken!
Speaking of books – I’m quite keen to get Bruce Schneier’s Liars and Outliers, and I have found an epub for sale at O’Reilly. I can get 3 books for the price of 2, if I order 2 more from them. But I can’t quite decide what else to get, if anything. I don’t need technical books very much, I already have most of what I need and they have nothing on SAS. Something a bit more general and popular sciencey would be nice. Or maybe an SQL cookbook kind of thing.
Any suggestions? I have the Geek cookbook already. The manga guide to multiple regression looked good – nice refresher and logistic regression is something I never learned in depth – but it’s not actually released yet.
Ing
Why? Seriously, why?
Bill Dauphin@171, I remember “mundane” from the Xanth series of books (I thought the first three were great, the rest, OK to meh) as meaning non magical/not from Xanth, much as “muggle” from Harry Potter has been used. Interesting to learn that gamers and other groups use it that way too. They seem to want to separate/put themselves above those who they consider to be uninteresting/normal/average people. I guess we all need to feel special or part of an in group?
Just some random thoughts on the subject.
niftyatheist:
Heh! I have a friend at work who’s a huge Red Sox fan and always grows a “playoff beard” (well, always except for last year, of course!). He was filled with consternation last month when I decided to grow a playoff beard for… the UConn women’s basketball team’s run through the NCAA tournament.
Mind you, he’s got no problem with women’s sports; he just hates college basketball across the board.
FUCK! Just got a call from the lab tech. The -20 plasmid freezer just took a shit. Here’s hoping I didn’t loose all of my samples. FUCK!
Audley:
Aaaw. :(
Alethea, I’m going to be starting Periodic Tales: a cultural history of the elements, from arsenic to zinc by Hugh Aldersey-Williams and I’m going to be getting The Geek Atlas: 128 Places Where Science and Technology Come Alive, by John Graham-Cumming.
Ing, that’s pretty fucking paranoid. Rest assured that your fears were always ungrounded. To me, you were an annoying guy on Pharyngula; that’s it.
Caine, fuck you.
You can search the archives here & @ SB forever and you’ll never find even a single comment from me that could be fairly characterized as ‘misogynist’. Not one.
Here’s another suggestion: count the number of times I’ve typed the word ‘killfile’ compared to the number of times you have.
You’re so full of hypocritical shit.
Sailor:
*shrug*
A. R @201, Damn, I hope your samples can be gotten to a backup freezer in time and are still useable.
Today’s video _is_ from The Onion, but you could have replaced it with Rachel Maddow’s documentation about how Governor Ultrasound, Bob McDonnell, is claiming that twenty years of being on the record as opposing abortion even in cases of rape or incest was just a misunderstanding by the media. Now that he’s desperately chasing a vice-presidential candidacy, that’s too extreme and all of a sudden he’s changed his tune about women letting Big Bob decide that they should bear their rapist’s child. He never said it. He was misquoted.
…unfortunately, this story is real (transcript).
Video: GOP politicians truggle to disentangle from party’s fringe.
Oh great, look whose back. Cause he apparently hates us all so much he just has to come back to let us know whenever we talk about him.
I fucking knew he would do it too, knew that he would never really actually leave.
Ray, r.a.y.:
It’s one thing for an author to use that sort of vocabulary to differentiate between magical and nonmagical people in a fictional universe where that’s a “real” distinction[1]; another thing altogether for fans to use a word like mundane to mean “unworthy people not smart or cool enough to like — or even understand, probably — the smart stuff we like.”
***
[1] Though you’ll note that even within the fictional Potter-verse, muggle becomes, for all but the most enlightened characters, a discriminatory term, sliding into outright racism on the lips of the Deatheaters. </geek>
yes yes yes you’re pure and blameless. Now go stick your cock in a power socket for me k thx?
Ray: Yeah, they moved everything to the -20 across the hall.
ChasCPeterson: Kindly re-flounce.
Hahahahahahaha, hey Chas, know what else is ‘pretty fucking paranoid’? Popping back into online communities you apparently left long ago when your name is mentioned. Can’t have people talking about you on the internet now can we?
Bahahahahahahahaha.
Bill, I understand from a couple of my east coast friends that we are not to mention – last year (tip toes away from the red sox)
I can’t blame your friend re basketball (it’s my least favorite spectator sport), but I have to give you a virtual thumbs up for supporting women’s college sports! Mr Nifty says they get short shrift even though the games can often be electrifying (to him – I hate basketball, as I said lol)
Did someone just say something?
TLC: Agreed. Thread stalking for your ‘nym is very trolly. A bit too much like the one who must not be named for me.
Goodness me, I thought you left. You certainly made a huge enough stink about leaving numerous times. Not surprised it was a lie. Oh and fuck you too, dear.
The fuck I can’t. The fact that you don’t think your crap was misogynistic has nothing to do with the fact of it being misogynistic. You also seem to forget several incarnations of TET being basically a massive discussion of your misogynistic crap. A number of other peoples will happily back that up when they see your protestations. Yeah, you’re a saint. Ready up that next flounce, now.
I realize it’s awfully paranoid of me to be slightly concerned about the stability of someone who makes a stink proclaiming me their enemy but yeah silly me. Always worried about people who go off and declare me an enemy.
I have nothing to say to or about ChasC/Sven, except that this…
…has me pondering what sincere shit would
looksmell like.8^)
***
Also, clarification of me @196: I realize the $47/mo. estimate I took as my jumping off point was a per person cost, and that impact to any given taxpayer would be proportional to that person’s taxable earnings, and thus would be distributed according to a progressive (hopefully even more progressive in the future than it is now) curve rather than a flat per-person amount. Even so, I think it’s highly likely that my share of even the most “gold-plated” imaginable universal coverage would be less than I’m currently paying, while providing me (in addition to health care itself) the considerable extra benefit of a broadly healthier and more just society in which to live.
It’s really not about what we can afford; it’s about what kind of society we want. Too many of my fellow ‘Murricans seem to want a society in which anyone who’s not already rich can go fuck themselves… and they want that not because they can’t afford anything else but… and it’s hard for me to believe this, but it’s hard to understand it any other way… they simply hate the unwealthy.
Just saw auto correct fixed “Greta” to be “great”
Gotta love auto correct
Bwah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!
After all this:
That was almost a month ago. Is Chas still checking in to see if anyone’s talking about him? Why, I think that’s the most pathetic thing I’ve ever read.
At this point, telling you to fuck off just seems needlessly cruel.
Have a nice day.
A.R., are you dashing to the lab?
Health insurance premiums vary by province but are comparable. They are paid by a combination of employer tax and payroll deduction. If you make under $20,000 the premium is zero. For individuals, at $21,000 it is $5 a month or $60 a year. From $25,000 to $36,000, it’s $300 a year. At $70,000, it’s $600. It tops out at $900 for people who make $200,000 a year. And that’s taxable income, not gross, so you get a whole pile of deductions first, e.g. personal deduction of several thousand, deductions for dependents, tuition, allowable child care expenses, retirement contributions and so on. Furthermore, *No resident is denied access to Ontario’s publicly funded health care services for failing to pay the Ontario Health Premium.*
source: http://www.fin.gov.on.ca/en/tax/healthpremium/rates.html
I found this:
“The bipartisan NCHC looked at four options: employer mandates, extending existing federal programs like Medicaid to all those uninsured, creating a new federal program for the uninsured, and single-payer national health insurance. All the options saved billions of dollars compared to the current system, but single payer was by far the winner, saving more than $100 billion a year.”
then there’s wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_Canada
This is what it costs the government, not what we pay:
Health care costs per capita vary across Canada with Quebec ($4,891) and British Columbia ($5,254) at the lowest level and Alberta ($6,072) and Newfoundland ($5,970) at the highest.[14] It is also the greatest at the extremes of age at a cost of $17,469 per capita in those older than 80 and $8,239 for those less than 1 year old in comparison to $3,809 for those between 1 and 64 years old in 2007.[14]
Comparision
In 2006, per-capita spending for health care in Canada was US$3,678; in the U.S., US$6,714. The U.S. spent 15.3% of GDP on health care in that year; Canada spent 10.0%.[5] In 2006, 70% of health care spending in Canada was financed by government, versus 46% in the United States. Total government spending per capita in the U.S. on health care was 23% higher than Canadian government spending, and U.S. government expenditure on health care was just under 83% of total Canadian spending (public and private) though these statistics don’t take into account population differences.
I don’t understand that last sentence! It’s from Wikipedia.
Bill Dauphin: Exactly. Can you imagine what would happen if the metric fucktonnes of money the U.S. overpays for shitty coverage were directed to a universal plan? I can easily imagine a strongly progressive “premium” as a viable long-term funding model. And if we did it right, we could have the healthcare that we give the rich people for everyone. Fuck gold-plated, go with solid platinum. We’ve got the money, we need to invest it in things the actually help “Our Fellow ‘Murricans.” First place to get money: the “blow brown people to tiny bits with flying death robots” fund.
OK, it looks as if the URL for the shop I’m looking at is blocked for some strange reason. It’s (http thing) shop. oreilly .com
Aaaanyway, PZ might possibly unblock this from spam filter in which case sorry for dups, but here goes –
Thanks Caine, but I’m after O’Reilly specifically.
Wil Wheaton’s autobiography looks fun. The manga guides look great but the only one that interests me isn’t out yet (others look too simple, except for the mol bio). There’s a couple of lovely ones on data visualisation, but over $30 for an ebook?? Well, maybe. Mind Hacks looks quite interesting but is it too pop-psych??
Aaaaarrgh!!! Bookshops are SOOO tempting. I have 12 things in my cart already for consideration, and clearly I need to delete several of them. Especially the $0 ones because the buy 2 get one free deal actually averages the price of all items in your cart and gives you that amount off for 3. (Or twice that for 6 etc.) It’s not just the cheapest one, which is nice of them, but you do need to drop the free ones.
Markita Lynda: Yeah, I don’t live too far away, so I’ve just arrived in the lab. Thank FSM for smartphones and extra freezers.
So you’d pay according to your income, your wife would pay according to hers, and your children would be covered. This is medical, not disability. It doesn’t cover dentists, eye exams, or prescriptions, but most people get that coverage through their employer or buy supplementary insurance, which usually covers 80%. Seniors pay about $3 for a prescription. There aren’t a lot of co-pays. You could spend a week or a month in hospital and pay only for your TV rental.
Tell them you want it!!!
BTW, am I the only one who thought “merkins” when Bush said Americans?
I have the molbio manga it’s very cute
^^^That is what Obama should ram through in his second term, if at all possible. Once people have it, they won’t give it up.
Squeeeeeeee. My instructor looked at the current draft of my very first college English paper ever, said it was “phenomenal” and told me not to bother coming in for the optional paper conferences at the next class period because I’ve already written an A paper.
Althea, if they’re the Tufte books, they might just be worth it.
http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/books_vdqi
Oh, Kristin, good for you!
kristinc: Conga rats!
Markita Lynda: Yep. People resist the idea of Universal before they have it, but once they do, almost nothing in the world will make them give it up.
Kristinc, congrats! That is fantastic news.
@Markita Lynda
Unfortunately, Obama is a center right politician. No way he will ram a universal health care bill through. Instead, he will be satisfied with the health care bill he passed during his first term and show off the stupid compromise he did with the Republicans.
Yay! That’s fantastic but not surprising, because you’re an excellent writer here, kristinc :D
—
Today didn’t go terribly well. I am afraid that Tuesdays are just going to always be bad days for me. On the bright and surprising side, the class I worry about most went QUITE well! It was all the stuff leading up to it that wasn’t good. And some of after. Now I’m thinking maybe just bed, or maybe watching a movie while pretending to study.
—
Lol, Chas.
I’m still hoping that he’s lying low and giving them rope until he’s the one with the solid majority. That stupid Norm Coleman contesting the election til his last gasp kept the Democrats’ majority time down to an eyeblink.
Bill Dauphin@207, Good point. “Unworthy” captures the attitude I think. Most people want and need to feel special somehow, unfortunately some do it by putting others down instead of making themselves better.
With that, I’m off to bed. Tomorrow is a 14 hour day split between two jobs. Yay. Fair morrow to all.
P.S. Show Me Love is pretty great. Loving Annabelle less so; I feel lukewarm.
CC:
Have you happened to notice how often you’re surprised you did well? Stop being so surprised – you’re good.
Well, now I have! :D
Thanks. That is a good thing to notice. ^.^
Caine:
Mr. Hekuni Cat and I just finished watching Cosmos the other day. It was wonderful. When we finished watching the episodes, my first impulse was to watch them all again. This didn’t happen due to time and other constraints, but I was very tempted to do so but also sad there were no more episodes to watch.
Ms. Daisy, take good care of your poor foot, and don’t rush your recovery. (I broke my right big toe a few years back. It was more trouble than I hoped it would be, but it could have been much worse.)
kristinc, congratulations!
A. R’s eeeebillll plan for Universal Health Care for the U.S.
1. Charge everyone a “health care premium” based on what it is expected an individual can afford. No one pays more than 1,000/year (the ≥1,000,000/year bracket). People making ≤30,000/year pay nothing.
2. Additional funding to come from a 5% cut in the Pentagon’s operating budget (not to come from Veteran’s services), and a $10 excise on corporate financial transactions in excess of ten million dollars.
3. All funds collected go directly to a federally administered superfund overseen by the CBO. No congressional redirection of funding allowed without a 75% majority and a Presidential signature. No redirection to remove more than 10% of the Superfund’s budget
4. Superfund to be broken down into five Funds: 1. Hospitalization and Acute care. 2. Outpatient care and rehabilitation. 3. Prescription drugs 4. Auxiliary health services (Dental, auditory, vision coverage for those making below $60,000/year, everyone below 100,000 gets a small voucher to help pay for their own coverage, which would be heavily regulated)
5. Research funding for dispensation to the NIH research fund. (Less than 2% of Superfund)
Thoughts anyone?
Also, Ms. Daisy Cutter, ow. For both the foot and the cost. Ow. :( I hope it feels better and heals properly soon.
A.R.:
Roll in the existing Social Security payroll taxes and (as necessary) double the premium (still cheeeeeeep), increase the defense cuts, and reduce the threshold for the $10 excise, and then let’s add full retirement pay, disability insurance, and unemployment compensation. IOW, let’s create a true, comprehensive Social Security system, eh?
Or does that make me an Evil European-Style Socialist®?
Bill Dauphin: Definitely. I’m actually making a spreadsheet that could be used to calculate that sort of thing. You just change the variables like premiums, excise limits and amounts, and defense cuts. The output will be the total amount raised, compared to the need plus 15%. I could easily factor in Social Security tax into that as well.
\\
Oh, and that wouldn’t even be European. What we’re inventing could be even better!
Also, let’s include at least tax credits, if not direct government funding, for child care costs… including for the fair market value of child care provided by a stay-at-home parent.
Wow, socialism feels good!
@Bill Dauphin
I would love me some Evil European-Style Socialist®. Unfortunately, America is not evil or socialist enough. :)
I for one welcome our new Evil European-Style Socialist overlords.
But… but if we embrace socialism… Won’t we all become communists?
Slippery slopes and all that?
At least that’s what I was always told.
TLC
You’re Canadian.
You live in B.C.
It’s too late for you!!!
Chigau: True.
When I sworded my thumb it really came home to me and I was genuinely grateful that after cutting myself up, I could go see someone who would stitch me back together without even having to think about what it’ll cost me. They even threw in a free tetanus shot! (though I might have preferred a lollipop).
It’s stuff I never thought about before reading pharyngula and realizing that it’s NOT like that elsewhere.
There is a problem. My “premiums” scheme only raises $14,041,590,000 per year. We need at least $2,287,500,000,000 to cover the full cost. (305,000,000 million people at 7,500 each). I you want the data with the full premium rate schedule (Excel format), e-mail A.R.7777723 @ gmail.com.
TLC
I got a free tetanus shot when I closed my swiss-army-knife one-handed!
There was a little sign on the check-in-counter:
“Tell us if you’re bleeding.”
That begs to be made up into a cheery badge for everyday wear.
kristinc: Congrats on the paper grade and the compliment from your prof! I’m sure you will continue to do well. Here is a cake just for you!
A.R.:
Your premium structure is too low: Your $1000 cap for millionaires and above is 5× less than I currently pay with a household income of (in very round numbers) of about 1/10 that… and that’s for my share of an employer-subsidized policy that still leaves me with the potential for thousands of dollars of out-of-pocket after premiums. Even I can afford way more than $1000/year for full comprehensive coverage, and millionaires and billionaires can afford waaaaaaayyyyy more.
And I prefer to call it a tax rather than a premium, for philosophical reasons: Folks would not be paying for their own healthcare; they’d be paying their share of the cost for the whole country’s health care.
Also, despite making my living working at a defense contractor, I have to admit that we can probably afford to cut more than 5% out of defense operations.
In addition, since I assume we’re talking about cradle-to-grave coverage, meaning this would replace the existing Medicare system, have you added in what’s currently collected in Medicare payroll tax?
Finally, does your $7500/person/year figure take into account the savings in administrative costs throughout the system that will come from the unification, consolidation, and rationalization of the claims submittal and payment processes? Not to mention taking insurance-company profit out of the equation?
My concern about single-payer, honestly, is not paying for it so much as how to get to it from where we are without instantaneously destroying a whole industry. You might say, “Meh. Insurance companies; couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch,” but my concern is for the regular people who work in the industry and/or have an interest in industry stock through mutual funds, retirement accounts, and pension plans. One thought I’ve had, and this is probably nonsensical, but… what if we (i.e., the Government) simply purchased every issuer of health insurance at its current market value? That way we don’t wipe out stockholders’ value or put a whole industry’s worth of workers out of a job, and we could gradually convert/consolidate the existing industry infrastructure into a single federal health care administration. This plan makes so much sense to me that it has to be wrong somehow, eh?
Bill Dauphin: My spreadsheet is very flexible, so I can do quite a few things with it. I currently have Military cuts set at 10%, corporate tax set at $50 for transactions above 2,000,000. I’m working on integrating medicare income as well. Reorganizing the tax structure may be a bi more difficult. Do you have any ides in terms of models? In terms of spending, I’ll have to look into it more to determine the actual amount paid less extraneous overhead. Insurance companies will always exist for some purpose or another though. Probably to give super luxury insurance to the rich.
Question for beer drinkers and beer connoiseurs:
I’ve got the urge to drink some stout tomorrow. But the only brand I can even think of is ‘Guinness.’
Are there any other good brands or varieties that are commercially available in your average canadian liquor store?
TLC: Murphy’s and Beamish are the only ones I can think of off the top of my head.
Set
2 min 21 sec
I hate Set.
just to stick my nose in again:
That’s the consensus, and I agree, but I point out again that in the example I gave, the people pressuring me to drink were my co-workers. As in, my lab-mates, my supervisor, my boss, and the other scientists and PIs from our department. Failure to conform (and, probably, my horrified expression as folks got drunker) got me kicked out of the social gathering and almost fired on the spot. So, I appreciate folks’ advice on how to make better excuses and/or camouflage. Sometimes finding less jerky companions isn’t a viable option.
Bedtime for me. I’ve made enough adjustments to get the total coverage to 61.55% of total needed. Thinking about a small tax on dietary supplements taken without medical direction.
Holy shit Pteryxx. My first instinct would be to throw it in their faces if I was confronted by such peer pressure, but as an unemployed guy I can sort of ‘afford’ to say things like that.
A few months back, a dealer friend of mine offered me ‘Oxys’. I told him that I only smoke pot and drink and nothing else, but that I wouldn’t judge or anything if he and his lady friend chose to do a couple. At that point it kinda got interesting for me, taking mental notes on how the drug seemed to affect them. My conclusion was that declining the offer was ‘a good decision’.
He has since tried offering them to me a few other times, but I think it’s more because he’s forgetful than any actual attempt to ‘up the pressure’.
Sometimes, I get a bit of a ‘thrill’ from navigating these situations. Like one time at a friends house when a very large man tossed a bag of weed on the table and told someone to roll a joint. I like rolling, so I immediately rolled one, and I just figured the guy was too lazy or hamfisted to do it himself. I hadn’t noted the way he kept his right hand cleverly concealed in his pocket.
It was only later that a friend of mine informed me that the reason he got someone else to roll it was because all the fingers on his hand had been chopped off by a machete in some failed drug raid or other.
Anyways, Pteryxx, I dunno what else to say except that that really sucks.
TLC, no worries, it was years ago. I’m just still wary around people drinking in groups, or work-related social functions.
@TLC: I have no idea what you get in Canada. Guinness is quite mild and less full-bodied than many other stouts, so it’s not a bad starter if you don’t normally drink stout. Get the cans with the “widgets”, not the bottles.
I’m wary of people drinking in group due to potential fights. If they’re a ‘fighty’ crowd, I’m gone, and anyone who tries to implore me to stay might as well be shouting at the sky.
But I haven’t let myself get suckered into drinking with a large group I don’t know for a long time, not since that fateful new years eve fistfight.
Alethea: Yeah, guinness is pretty good. But Guinness is the end of the stout universe as far as my experience is concerned, and I’m just not OK with that.
If I can’t find anything though, then guinness it will be.
Me:
I no sooner say that, than a flounced returns to give an example if the opposite & make me at least pleased that I included the “usually”.
****************
Congrats Kristinc.
Well done CC!
Pteryxx. Hard to conceive of work mates engaging in such activities. Not sure about your current situation, but here, not only would the “peers” & supers be in hot water legally, but my company’s own HR policy would look very poorly on a manager who allowed such a situation to develop. Glad it’s in the past, and hope you never need the strategies.
TLC if I picked up right that you’re in BC, then, although I can’t remember names (sorry) but I do remember trying some very nice local dark ales & stouts in Vancouver 3 years ago. Might be worth trying to find some local brewed. They were certainly worth the find.
Well, I play League of Legends so I can explain regarding the game and the Tribunal. However, since you don’t play or have an account, I can’t tell you if it’s phishing or a scam. The only information needed to play is an email (it is free to play) and if you buy optional skins for the character with money. Riot has had issues with patch and game bugs lately so I suppose it could be a simple mistake. I haven’t heard of a scam for those emails, but it’s possible.
Catnip: Yup, I’m in BC. Though, not in vancouver.
I’m up in the fraser valley. I’ll make no secret of the town… the Sardis end of Chilliwack (the most disgusting part of the most beautiful province, something like the inside of a supermodel’s colon). Not sure about the local microbrewery scene, but I have a feeling I’m kinda stuck with whatever the local liquor store carries.
Yes, I can see you’re going to be stuck with the local supplier.
I’ll ask my colleague tomorrow & see if he remembers the brand (long shot!) that we drank.
Yay kristinc and Cassandra! ::tries to pour small box of confetti into USB port:: ::wonders why the computer has indigestion and the dog has multicoloured flecks stuck to her nose::
A.R. and Bill – fsm yes, socialism (what very little there is of it around here) feels good and I wish we had a hell of a lot more of it. It’s especially weird in the case of US healthcare when the rabid hatred of anything that smacks even remotely of socialism results in people getting less healthcare for more money. And of course lots of lawyers and insurance companies so overfed they burst their buttons while the grease is dripping down their chins.
The Sailor:
Futile flattery and jaundiced perception is mildly amusive.
I asked my local favorite liquor store if they had any sort of mead or ever got it in, and the girl I asked didn’t even know what ‘mead’ was.
Ah well, I still like them there. They almost never ask me for ID. Also there’s that girl who works there. I don’t mean to objectify or anything but seeing her face and hearing her voice definitely isn’t an unpleasant experience.
Good morning
Well, #1 has just lost the privilege to choose her own clothes in the morning, I think we’re in for some rough days….
David D.
The “dat-wat”-line runs through my region (this means the dialects where das becomes dat and was becomes wat) and divides the state into pretty distinct dialects. The saussage factory I worked in was very, very close to that line and so you’d get people who spoke the two very different dialects together. On my first day, one of my co-workers asked “Beisch dau nau dau”. Didn’t understand a word.
But it’s true, you’d now simply divide the Saarland into Saar- and Moselfränkisch, while there are still some words my dad pronounces differently than my mum.
We also tend to lose our “special words”. I’m really trying to use them but I often catch myself using the standard German word.
Not exactly.
Remember we’re talking about times without diapers or washing machines, so it made lots of sense to put children into dresses because trousers, especially in times without snaps and zippers were also “complicated” to open and took a while.
The gender distinction in children’s dress came when they started to understand that gender-behaviour might not be as inate and biologically fixed as they thought it was and therefore needed to be learned.
There’s Pratchett for all occasions of life:
The dress had been taken in and taken out so often that it should have been taken away.
Sili
Shit, what happened?
Alethea
I’m glad you’re OK.
If it was the first time you fainted, you’ll probably “recognize” the signs next time around and sit down. Most people only really faint once (or twice).
The first time I fainted was at the sink, too. I tried to steady myself. My dad, who was luckily standing behind me, said I was going down with my toothbrush in both hands.
Yay for kristinc
TLC,
Such imagery!
I see we’re having group therapy today, haven’t had one of those for a while…Hi Chas !
I worked today, it’s ANZAC day here, a public holiday where the current generation celebrates Australian and New Zealand soldiers who, led by English generals, thought it to be their patriotic duty and a good idea to walk into German machine gun fire on some remote Turkish beach 97 years ago. Keeps patriotism alive, I guess, although to the casual observer it does seem quite ill-advised, and one is tempted to ask “what did you think was going to happen ?”
Anyone ever been to China, any thoughts on taking laptop/SD card with books on it/books ? Any problems to be anticipated ?
rorschach, I hear the bitter reality of Europe’s history in your bemusement at Australia’s pretensions.
Patriotism.
Kinda makes me glad (in a fucked up sorta way) to have grown up as an outsider. Since no ‘tribe’ would really have me for long, my sense of tribal identity isn’t too well developed.
Mindless blind loyalty to anyone or anything just pisses me off.
Also thanks, John Morales, I think.
Ignoring the people, one of the biggest problems with chilliwack is the smells. If it’s not cowshit (which I actually like if its ‘clean’ cowshit and not that diseased-smelling cow diarrhea), it’s that goddamn brussel’s sprout field that someone left to rot all winter for some reason (smells like farts, decaying flesh, and garbage all at once). If not that, there’s plenty of exhaust to go around, both locally produced, and imported from everywhere between here and Vancouver. Prevailing winds and the condition of being a ‘valley’ ensure a constant stream. There are also innumerable back alleys that smell like any combination of feces, stale liquor, vomit, or piss.
TLC: Patriotism is the sublimated form of pack loyalty — they appeal to the same instincts.
TLC,
Be in no doubt then; poetic, it almost was.
John M,
I’m not bemused, these guys had 85% fatalities, but I am rather aware of how those events are being exploited every year for the grooming of nationalism and patriotism.
rorschach, fair enough.
Threadrupt!
I have bought and been watching the Don McLeroy episode of the Colbert Report so I can see what this new film is about. I found out via this show about an Arizona anti-abortion bill defining that “life/pregnancy starts at ovulation/~2 weeks before conception”. Okay, so Colbert is a comedy show, so I hope this isn’t true, and I’m not googling, sod it, it’s too early to be that depressed.
If it is true then I demand equal treatment under the law for men. This misandrous culture must stop oppressing men. If women’s ability to grant life is recognised 2 weeks before conception then I demand we outlaw menstruation as the murder it undoubtedly is. Coupled to that, men, as the other half of the equation here must have their full reproductive abilities recognised. Therefore the emission of semen in any manner that doesn’t lead to conception is also murder, and should be prosecuted as such.
I’m turning myself in. I’d like 11763565165646567546763443432234011 previous offences to be taken into account. I accept full responsibility.
Louis
Louis, hm.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ejaculation#Volume×
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semen_quality
=
Spermatozoa per ejaculation.
(I’m almost tempted to check your arithmetic)
John,
Okay, okay, I may have underestimated slightly.
Louis
Wise choice Louis, I don’t think you’d like what you find.
John Morales: DO IT! FOR SCIENCE!
TLC:
I leave it as an exercise for the reader.
Postscript:
Many moons ago, when I was very young and played far too much rugby, I calculated how many ejaculations it would take to fill a 2.5L “Winchester” bottle, like the ones solvents were bought in in the lab.
I assumed the average volume of ejaculation to be ~5mL, and the average frequency of sex to be 2 times per week for couples in a long term relationship.* Using this I worked out that at 10mL per week, the average couple had caused the emission of roughly 500mL per year (give or take a week or two for errors/low emission weeks/arguments and so on). Therefore, if a couple was together for 5 years, the gentleman (or perhaps each gentleman) would have been caused to emit a whole Winchester of man fat.
Thus was born the Grand Unified Winchester Theory of Relationships.
Some people think that when a man reaches his male menopause, his mid life crisis, he buys a sports car or Harley Davidson and tries to compensate for his flagging youth by making not so subtle brags about his virility. I think this is nonsense. The real braggers are those men with mini-vans, people carriers and large family vehicles. What these men are saying with their vehicle choice is “LOOK HOW PRODUCTIVE MY BALLS ARE!”.
I think, therefore we should skip the middle man, strip away this hypocritical veil of shame and prudery and stop hiding the bragging behind a socially acceptable veil of vehicular purchase. Don’t tell me when your wedding anniversary is or show me your 7 seater, tell me how many Winchesters of spongle you have shot up, around or over your beloved.
What worries me is it is my parents’ 40th wedding anniversary this year. I am not sure if the speech I have prepared commemorating their 8 Whole Spunky Winchesters together is going to be well received.
Louis
* Standard models of early stage high frequency shaggage followed by longer period slow decline on copulatory frequency apply.
John Morales: Is that your way of telling me to do the homework myself?
Cause I don’t like homework much…
Talking about men in midlife : Time to start chewing Oregano
Louis: You may or may not have left something out of your calculations… namely, the ‘solo efforts’.
One of my friends has a friend who’s married to a woman who gets all jealous and insecure if he masturbates. She figures she should just automatically be able to fulfill all his sexual needs and should be ‘enough for him’.
I keep my mouth shut, but I think my friend has tried to explain to her ‘how it works’. I don’t think she gets it. Alternately, she’s just a very jealous and insecure person. It’s possible.
Marriage. Fagh. If two people are going to be together for life they will be, with or without a silly certificate or ritual.
One thing I know: I feel very bad for my friend’s friend.
Arrggghhh!!!! I hate wordpress.
Try again with that Oregano
TLC,
I’m thinking that this is more a practical exercise than an academic one.
I have some instructional videos and aides memoires…well, I say, that *I* have them. Obviously, *I* don’t have these things. A friend of mine does. Not a good friend, just this guy I know.
Louis
re: “pregnancy begins weeks early”
They’re using the trick that in obestetrics, pregnancy is actually counted from last period onwards.
That means that 2 weeks after ovulation, roughly, you’re in week 4.
That is a tool in OB to calculate you due date* because it’s the only actual date that you have, since unless you’re getting IVF you don’t know when fertilisation occurs.
Also, 40 weeks make a nice round number.
Now they’re using that tool as if it actually meant anything beyond “being a handy tool for calculation.
*Which isn’t a magical date either. Also, fetuses never seem to be able to remember them anyway.
TLC,
Refractory, I am.
(I’m not one of those that is easily enthused; quite the contrary)
TLC, #293,
1) I deliberately ignored all contributions to a gentleman’s productivity derived from solo sources. Considering between the ages of 12 and 19 the average youth ejaculates twice his own body weight on a weekly basis, I think this would unnecessarily bias the calculations in favour of solo contributions, an hide the amount of baby gravy emitted for purposes of reproduction. Or at least for purposes of practising safe sex.
I like practising safe sex. I’m not very good at it, I don’t think I’ve got it quite right, but I am a perfectionist. Another few years and I reckon I can stop wearing my hard hat and hi-vis jacket. The wife does object to me putting cones out though…
2) My guess would be option B with your friend’s friend’s wife. Or perhaps your friend’s friend acts (or many previous partners of said wife, if they exist, have acted) like a gigantic douchenozzle and his wife has cause to be extremely sensitive about what he does with his willy. Even solo. The inner machinations of a very distant person’s marriage are obscure to me! My crystal balls do not work at that range! Salt. Pinch. Potential victim blaming concern!
Differences in libido are often causes of marital tension. The large current of sex negativity in our respective cultures doesn’t help matters. {Sigh} We’ll grow up one day I hope.
Louis
Giliell,
Good point (and serious one amongst all my frivolity and silliness). I’d forgotten about that. Ahhh memories from my beloved got preggers.
Memories, memories…
…and now I have had to take a day off to take snotty, constipated,* moody, child to get some jabs (Vaccination FTW. We’ll have double.) and see about a new school.
Those memories were so sweet. Resplendent as they were with predictions about the future, the wonderful future where my son, aged 1 would look up at me and say “Daddy, tell me about the natural product you worked on during your PhD. Tell me all about the proposed biosynthesis of it and your attempts at emulating this.”.
The reality, of course, was that aged 1 he usually crossed his eyes and shat on my boots. On reflection, perhaps some sort of nappy would have been a good idea. Ah well, you live and learn…
Louis
*During the typing of this very post, his constipation has ended. I realise that might be too much information for some, but don’t worry, I will provide photos later. Where are you all going?
KG, #298,
It’s as if no one in Europe has even heard of John Maynard Keynes.
Mind you, I am not an economist, nor do I sock puppet as one on the internet. My vague, exceedingly ignorant and probably erroneous recollection of history is the depression of the 20’s/30’s was combated by some form of Keynesian economics. But, as “hinted” at, I know five eighths of six tenths of nineteen two thousandths of sweet fuck all about economics so I am more than happy to be corrected by those more economically literate. {Looks pointedly at ‘Tis}
Louis
Louis,
Enviable domesticity.
Me, I got the flu jab on Tuesday, courtesy of responding ‘yes’ to a work email enquiry — and free of charge to me.
(Enlightened employer. Sore shoulder for a few days, this year)
John,
I’m not sure about enviable, but I’ll take your word for it! The grass definitely looks greener on the childless side of the fence some days. Mind you, when I tuck him into bed at night and say “Darling it’s sleepy time” and he copies me,* my heart nearly breaks apart from all the parental love and joy in it. So it’s swings and roundabouts I guess. Comedy beleaguered father routine aside, of course.
Louis
* I have been experimenting with just how far I can get this sleepy verbal copying to go. Quite far it seems, although the words that stick are….interesting. I started using complex chemistry terms to see if he could get his toddler tonsils around them. Our bedtime repetition routine currently runs “Darling it’s sleepy time” {Son repeats this} “I love you” {Son repeats this}, son then spontaneously says the word “reaction” (perfectly) which is about all the chemistry jargon** he can remember from his father’s babblings. It’s about the cutest thing EVAR, and makes me laugh like a hyena every time.
** I thought I caught “sigmatropic rearrangement” the other day, but he had just sprayed water everywhere.
Two things:
As an economist of a decidedly Keynesian persuasion, it’s a matter of dogma with me that Keynesian economics was useful in ending the Great Depression. However most other economists agree with this idea so it’s not too farfetched.
I have just made a cup of cocoa using the Matt Penfold Grandmother™* method. The resulting sludge, while greatly reduced, is still present. However I will not be using the DDFMM™ method of cocoa preparation because I don’t think honey and cocoa will go well together**.
*I realize I may have slighted one of Matt’s grandmothers. Possibly it wasn’t Berthatrude Penfold who told him about the Matt Penfold Grandmother™* method of cocoa making but his other grandmother, Pansy Smith-Smithe-Smyth, who instructed our Matt when he was just a sprog.
*Remember, folks, David is the guy who thinks raw carrots are nasty and who cleans his plate by licking it, so his ideas about food and food preparation may be questionable.
His memories were killed by New Labour and Gerhard Schröder.
Louis
As a matter of interest, are you getting chicken pox vaccination in the UK now?
I remember there was some discussion about its use and benefits.
Talking about chicken pox vaccinations, the upcoming Soccer Euro 2012 in Poland and the Ukraine is promising to be one big Measles party :
Ukraine tells fans to get measles jab
Rorschach
I’ve been to China many times with laptop and USB drives & no problem. You may even be able to access ftb (although I don’t know that) if you have time, you could set up a VPN back to a western country & then you’ll be able to access irrespective of whether ftb is blocked. Assuming of course you have Internet access in your digs.
Enjoy your trip & good luck!
I remember this general topic coming up in conversation with a bunch of folks one time … the impression I got was that many blokes attracted to the opposite sex are upset for some reason to think that she masturbates (for her own pleasure, that is, not to titillate him).
I’d hazard a guess that there are several factors involved, one being unconscious assimilation of the idea that she and her sexuality exist only insofar as they relate to his pleasure, the other being the macho-stud-myth that he and his mighty piston must satisfy her to within an inch of her life, any place any time, so if she masturbates it means he’s failed. A patriarchy twofer?
Gilliel,
1) Ah yes, NuLab Killed Keynes. Indeed. Isn’t it strange how the “acceptable” British Left looked/looks remarkably like much of the British economically right?
2) We haven’t given our son the chicken pox vaccination simply because we didn’t know about it, and at least in our area, isn’t offered in the standard panoply of vaccinations. We’d have got it if it were. Mind you, that ship has sailed! Vaccination should no longer be a problem.
My son didn’t get chicken pox particularly badly. It confused him vastly more than it distressed him. He just used to come up to me and look at me with curiosity as it was clearly Daddy’s responsibility to explain why he was itchy, feverish and felt like crap.
Louis
P.S. ‘Tis, could I pick your brains/experience and ask for a couple of book recommendations for a person interested in economics. Particularly those with a Keynesian bent, because the little I know makes me think I lean that way too.
Ah thanks for that ! I was reading the instructions on the customs website today and it said something like “any media with content deemed detrimental to the culture/ethics of China” is taboo. And I have like 500 books on my SD card in the lappy alone, just don’t want to get in trouble with something like that.
Interestingly, it also says don’t bring western magazines, because the photos in them may be considered pornographic.
rorschach, clearly, a catch-all clause.
I think it may be tied to those silly ideas that if somebody masturbates then their partner is not satisfying them sexually and the whole relationship is dooooooooooooooooooomed.
I admit that it took me a while to get over that stupid, too.
I’m wondering now if German health insurance would cover measles vaccination for adults who want to go there or whether that counts among “travel vaccinations we’re not paying for your pleasure*”
I’d really, really like to make childhood vaccination mandatory with only medical excemptions, but that would cut into paternal rights to cause unnecessary sufferig to your child.
*ye-es, pretty fucked up policy. Getting Hep A vaccination means you have to cover it in most health-plans. Getting Hep. A instead means treatment covered under healthcare.
Makes total sense to me.
I can’t find a trans pride lanyard, I have a sad :(
Can you knit a lanyard?
Also yay for my new toy, I’m now writing on the train again! *cheer* I finished one chapter, made edits to the previous chapters, and have started the next chapter with the most interesting character I’ve come up with – Rassul the Librarian.
Rorschach.
Yes it’s a catch all. They want the clause to make sure they can jail you if you are actually caught disseminating seditious literature to the Chinese populace, but they don’t check you at the airport. If you’re not engaged in seditious activities, then they don’t really care what [irony] corrupt capitalist pigs [/irony] do with themselves.
Louis. Welcome back! We’ve missed you! Or at least I have. Your proposed speech & associated calculations have indeed tickled my funny bone.
Ummmm just read that back. Not quite meant as it may read.
On the question of masturbation within relationships. What a thorny topic!
Priority 1 in BR: partners orgasm. If not by “conventional” means, then whatever works for them.
Priority 2: self.
With both working to this. Brilliant.
On another topic. SO made boeckehoffe consumed with Hugel Gewurtztraminer. In celebration of life of SO’s late mother. Delicious & sad.
Hm, this is interesting, I shall make you privy to a conversation I am having right now (names redacted of course) :
it is raining today all the Liaoning provience
(21:37:35): me: oh, here too, heavy rain, and cold
(21:37:37): it is human made rain
(21:37:44): me: human made rain ?
(21:38:22): Artificial rainfall
(21:38:27): me: how so ?
(21:39:28): we studied about it at high school
me : if we had artificial rain, we would use it in the deserts ?
(21:42:38): we use it the whole city
(21:42:56): it is drought this year
I wonder what that means ! Are the Chinese onto something ?
Rorschach
Sigh!
If only we could have that power! :-P
rorschach
IIRC, it works by blowing chemicals into the air to make it rain down. It was a bit of a news item before the Olympic games in China.
So you can’t really change weather but only control when it’s going to rain.
Catnip
Hmmm baeckeoffe
It’s “Baker’s Oven”, since the original dish was leftovers the women would cover with dough and put into the cooling community oven while they had other things to do ;)
Just heard on the UK classic FM news that Donald Trump has been telling the Scottish parliament that wind turbines will destroy the Scottish tourist industry.
*headdesk*
Fukk. No desk.
Head just hit floor.
That clown is evidence there is no link between income and intelligence.
Giliell,
Thanks for the extra inf. SO’s M was an Alsaciannophile (is there such a word?)
Isn’t it interesting that some of the nicest food has such origins?
SO currently zzzzz with feet on catlap ^_^
Does life get better?
Oh, and thanks also for the spelling correction! :-)
Ever eaten Paella?
And since there’s Pratchett for eveything:
Things like sharkfin soup would never have been discovered if people had been allowed to eat the shark…
In other news, my iron just died…
On paella, I am a novice. Not having had the funds to explore restaurants in the last 10 years, and prior to which I’d not heard of it, so, surprisingly I haven’t.
Pratchett does have something for every subject!
On the iron… Ugh! Last iron to die on me died as a result of spontaneous Discombobulation caused by sudden & unanticipated impact with a floor. Okay, I dropped it. It fell apart. I was confused about how to mend it. I resolved the confusion using the bin.
On the bright side, you now have a perfect excuse for not completing the ironing.
Still, pain when stuff does that.
Iron just died? Pfff small beer.
My microwave died last night. Probably shouldn’t have tried to use it as an iron…
Louis
Just overheard on a radio show
I don’t
even
wait
huh?
I love paella!
That is all.
Huh, here’s a bit of my progressivism that I didn’t realize.
In chapter 3 of my story, the princess character is fleeing from bandits who assaulted her while riding. In my first few drafts she was wearing a dress cause women wear dresses and princesses probably would too. Now going back at it I thought, “wait a sec… it’d be vastly uncomfortable and would ruin her dress if she rode (cross-country) with a skirt on. Riding trousers it is!”
… women didn’t wear breeches while riding horses until the 1960s.
Well fuck it, my world is progressive, someone realized “riding in a skirt is annoying, women can wear pants, why don’t we ride in pants” and no one’s looked back since!
That is to say “trousers,” for those of you outside the United States where “pants” means “undies.”
My world’s progressive, but it ain’t that progressive.
My vague, exceedingly ignorant and probably erroneous recollection of history is the depression of the 20′s/30′s was combated by some form of Keynesian economics. – Louis
As it happens, there’s a piece by Simon Jenkins* in the Grauniad today about Churchill’s fuckwitted decision to put the UK back on the gold standard in 1925. Cue prophecies of disaster from Keynes, swiftly vindicated by a disastrous slump as inability to devalue led to a situation where nothing in the economy was growing except dole queues. In 1931, with anti-Keynesians in turn prophesying disaster, the “national” government (a Tory-led coalition) took us off the gold standard again, followed by a sustained recovery. My own view is that capitalism of any stripe will destroy the environmental support base of civilisation within the century if we can’t get rid of it, but at least Keynesianism could make us in Yurp a bit more comfortable while we wait for the end.
*Who is sometimes quite sensible, other times a complete twerp.
Except in case of those annoying women who actually like to ride side-saddle and make their special riding dresses themselves.
If side-saddle is not an option, there are things like a “Redingote” (actually Riding-coat): garments that are full-cirlce or more and that fit over the horse. Arwen’s cloak when she returns to Rivendell is such an item.
People who had horses also had the means to have clothes especially for riding.
And if this worls were logical, men would ride side-saddle.
I forgot to note: Jenkins sees the Euro crisis as a rerun of the gold standard shibboleth, to be solved by most Euro countries leaving the currency union, and he may be right – although I would think most of the Eurozone reverting to national currencies would be a lot more hassle than simply abandoning the promise to exchange your currency for gold.
I’m sorry, but I have now got a vision of women riding horses whilst they, the women, are not wearing any pants. And I mean pants in the English sense, not the American one.
I’m going for a bit of a lie down.
Louis
I should mention that, of course, the horses are wearing pants. I’m not a pervert.
Louis
… in a related story, the wind power industry reported that while Trump was present in Scotland, power yields from their turbines increased by a mean 112 percent.
‘It was remarkable,’ said a spokesperson. ‘There was just this incredible warm, moist wind out of Edinburgh. And it just kept coming. Seriously, bring that guy back more often, please.’
(/’Granted, said air was a mite stale. So could we amend that to ‘Bring that guy back more often, but get him some mouthwash?”)
Katherine
re: women and riding:
Forgot to mention: slits
(For Louis: in the garment!)
I admit that I haven’t been able to follow all your posts about your book, but if you’re aiming for something medieval-ish in economy, take care that the things make sense in themselves.
I’m a huge fan of medievalish fantasy and often read books by “new authors*, and at least I am casually disappointed when they mix ‘n’ match, like taking something “medievalish” that they like but forget that there are reasons why something was like that which they didn’t adopt in their world (this is especially annoying with fashion but I admit to being a fashion geek, so obviously many people wouldn’t realize that, say a Rococo dress doesn’t make any sense in a world where the view on the female body and on class is different).
Things that happened or happen in our world “make sense” within them, from a tank top with hotpants to a burqa. They should do the same in any fictional world.
*The con I went to for many years always had panels with young German authors so I read a lot of their stuff
In my mind, this even being a topic that exists is in the same realm as those couples who have only one joint email address and who never go anywhere without each other. It just doesn’t seem healthy to me to depend entirely on another person for anything you need. The idea feels very codependent to me, and just a bad idea – if you’re that entwined with the other person, then how can you possibly cope if something happens to them and you end up alone? On the other side, how can you cope with the pressure and obligation of being the sole resource for the other person?
On the full-circle skirts – but what did the women do with all the extra fabric now bunched up between? Does she sit on all the excess fabric so it gets all wrinkled, or splay it out behind her so she’s sitting on the horse with just pantaloons underneath, or whoompf it up between so it splays out in front right underneath the top half? I can’t figure it out.
RE: My eebilll simgle payer healthcare for the U.S. calculations: I’ve got about 61.75% coverage so far. I’d include the tax rates, but WordPress doesn’t take spreadsheet input very well
@Giliell:
The world is bizarre, that’s about the most of what I can come up with. It’s currently (at most) steampunk-level technology with magical proxies for some of the technology that we use every day – lightbulbs, for instance, in my stories they’d just be small globes of magical light that you can cast where you need some extra illumination. They’ve not so much perfected technology as they haven’t seen a use for advancing beyond being magical ‘MacGuyvers.’ (The tallis being the sole exception, trying to crack magic and figure out how to harness its energy, since it is an energy source.)
As far as I look at fashion, I try very hard to be realistic and practical as well as to show the progressive nature of my fantasy world. It’s not a world where women are denigrated as less useful than men – seeing as a goddess resides in the center of power of Seiis. Fashion is rarely restricted to gender. Admittedly I am no fashion historian, but I can’t see much reason that a woman and man can’t wear similar outfits.
I am coming into serious other issues though – I’m half figuring I’m going to just eliminate the Guardian Reef – but still maintain that the Cataclysm ripped through the rest of the world, killing most of the population. Those who survived fled to Cathemega. Plus there’s the “sem issue” since I want them to have been created by the humans, but I can’t decide whether it was scientific geneticism or “a wizard did it.”
I hate “a wizard did it” but for once it may be useful.
Complete aside:
I have spent my morning so far color coding maps.
*sigh* Sometimes I think a trained monkey could do my job.
(rage warning) Via BB and Shakes: Debt collectors operating inside hospitals, at patients’ bedsides.
and just to put the cherry on the crap sundae:
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/25/business/debt-collector-is-faulted-for-tough-tactics-in-hospitals.html
@Audley:
Or a computer program
Hi; quick question for the thread.
Does anyone who is planning on going to the Freethought Festival in Madison this weekend still need to find a room? I signed up a few months ago and snagged a room with two double beds at the University Inn, which is just a few short blocks from the Humanities building where it’s all taking place. It’s probably the hotel closest to the action.
But — I have to cancel. My sciatic nerve is acting up and both sitting and walking is pretty much out for a while (sad and pissed at that, but there it is.)
Before I call the reservations, however, I thought I’d check with the Pharyngulites and see if anyone would like me to hand the room over to them; I’d tell the clerk to hold it for ‘my friend’ and you would then call. No, I’m not paying for it (it’s $139 each night — Friday and Saturday — which is steep, but not as pricey as some and of course there are two beds so one can share.) My understanding is that most of the rooms near the campus are gone by now — and it’s such a prime location I’d prefer it go to a Freethought Festival attendee. Feel free to mention to anyone.
I’ll check back here throughout the day, but must cancel by this evening to get my deposit back. Hope it finds a good home.
Katherine
Ah, I see.
In that case: die, riding dress, die!
I have nothing against “a wizard did it”, if this is how things are possible in that world
++++
Precious 4yo logic:
One of the houses on our way to kindergarten is getting renovated, so there’s a construction fence around it.
#1 took a look and exclaimed indignatedly: “Mummy, look, they locked in the trees!”
@Giliell:
Eheh. Yea, die riding dress, die!! Now dresses are for fashion reasons and comfort than any other reason. Men and women in dresses, not unusual. Men and women in trousers, also not unusual. Men and women wearing the same dress to the same ball – now someone’s gotta go home and change.
I don’t like “a wizard did it” for most things – say, the moons of my world, which is why I’ve decided that the smaller moon just has a really, really low surface albedo. This, as I said, may be the one place “a wizard did it” will be useful, since genetic manipulation is a super high level science and requires a LOT of technological advances.
Steampunk outside Cathemega I can abide. Cyberpunk… now we’re getting weird.
Totally and irrevocably threadrupt.
Made chicken pot pie on Monday (yes, it had peas (as have the paellas I have made)).
Went to a gallery opening at Boy’s school where he had a painting in an exhibit he helped put together called “The Art of Batman!”
I’ve made paella a couple of times — sausage, chicken, pork, veggies, etc. Never had it at a restaurant. I need to try that some times.
It worked for Lady Godiva. And now she makes excellent chocolates and doesn’t have to deal with horses ate all.
When my dad was at Grand Canyon, he spent an entire year colour coding the rock formations on USGS maps. On each map, he coded one formation. Which isn’t too bad with the ones that are continuous (Kaibab limestone, for instance). But the formations below the great unconformity gave him a great deal of stress.
I offered to help. He told me that, at this point, that would not help.
So a trained monkey might help. A ten-year-old boy? Not so much.
TLC,
This is very much how I feel about the whole rigamarole. However, marriage is still a useful state to be in so I wouldn’t class the certificate as silly.
Kat,
Somehow that makes me feel worse. :(
My microwave died last night. Probably shouldn’t have tried to use it as an iron…
Trying to picture how…
@Audley:
Sorry! *hug!!*
You’re probably doing it a lot better than a computer program ever could. Silly computer programs, they can’t even handle a 2.
Hath thou not a Corby Trouser Press?
Oggie,
My maps aren’t nearly that terrible– just color coding delivery routes to make dispatching easier. It’s time consuming and bo-o-o-oring, though.
@342: Ethics question: If one found a debt collector at one’s patient’s bedside, is punching them (the debt collector, not the patient) ethical or unethical? How about telling them “Get out now!” in one’s best Vincent Price voice? What about summoning the hospital ethics committee and demanding that the debt collector spend the next 6-8 hours in a prolonged discussion of the ethics of medical debt collection? Just asking questions, you know.
Are you allowed to get creatively cruel with the routes? Left turns across eight lanes of traffic? Send the vegan through the stockyards? Send a Tea Partier past a mosque?
Someone was talking about relative distances earlier (I think it was Sailor), and made me think of this.
I have a friend flying out from England; he’s taking trains all around the US, and will be in Los Angeles just before Memorial Day, so he and I are going to drive up the coast so he can both get a more up-close view and so I can take him to see the redwoods.
We were talking about driving distances and such, and it took a few email exchanges back and forth before I realized why we weren’t quite meshing in our discussions: turns out California is larger than the UK. (relative sizes, approximately)
Which explains why, when I was talking about taking a couple of long driving days to get up the coast, he couldn’t understand why we’d be driving so slowly :)
dianne: Go with a combination of “Out, now!” and ethics committee.
A.R., also, with the savings you get by taking the insurance company’s obscene profit out of it, you need only about 4,500 each. Add in the savings of people actually getting screening for incipient conditions such as diabetes or heart problems, pre-natal care, physio or other therapy or medications to keep their bodies in good shape, free nutritional counselling, free vaccinations to prevent acute illnesses, and your basic health costs will drop.
Markita Lynda: yeah, the 61.75% figure is derived from an individual cost estimate of $4,000 based on what you mentioned above. At 7,500, coverage is 32.93%. And that’s with the above mentioned corporate transactions tax, a 3% sales tax on dietary supplements, and a 1% tax on OTC medications. Can you think of any other revenue sources?
“From Land’s End to John o’Groats” = about 900 miles, right? That’s from Cornwall in England to Caithness in Scotland.
Some of Newfoundland looks like a little bit of Cornwall left behind when the Atlantic opened up.
Oggie:
:D
I wish I could, but the maps are broken up into various regions, so I don’t get into that much detail.
I just torture my guys by sending them into the boonies when they piss me off.
Legalize recreational drugs and use the proceeds to provide health care and (voluntary) drug treatment for all.
I think it was closer to Iberia than the British Isles.
‘Course, that was a littel before my time.
Part of the health care premium is paid by employers on a per employee basis, but I don’t know how much it is. They get to deduct it from their taxable income, though.
I used to live in the boonies. Even attended Boonsboro High School. And Boonsboro Middle School. If that wasn’t the boonies, what is?
Markita:
It’s straight-line about 600 miles; driving wise it’s 800ish, which is most of the length of the California coast taking Highway 1 (Pacific Coast Highway).
I think what really got him was me telling him that a full day’s casual driving along PCH wouldn’t even get us to San Francisco.
Ontario employers pay on employee remuneration at this rate:
Total Annual
Ontario Remuneration Rate
up to $200k 0.98%
over 200k – 230k 1.101%
over 230k – 260k 1.223%
over 260k – 290k 1.344%
over 290k – 320k 1.465%
over 320k – 350k 1.586%
over 350k – 380k 1.708%
over 380k – 400k 1.829%
over 400k 1.95%
Employer Health Tax rates last changed January 1, 1990.
So for an employee making $40,000 they pay about $400.
That seems quite bearable.
Random note: “boondock” is (I’m pretty sure) the only word in English that was “borrowed” from Tagalog.
Diane: “Out, now!” then ethics committee. Standing before them.
A.R., I think you’ll find some people might be working out the numbers here: Universal healthcare is possible in the U.S.. They may have figures or ideas you can use.
Morning All! Totally threadbrupt, but just signing in to say Hello, hopefully to read up a bit and then to write.
Gilliel: “And if this worls were logical, men would ride side-saddle.” you made me chuckle (I’m currently writing about tangentially related things) – it wasn’t for protection, don’t ya know – it was to prevent the womenfolk from getting any sexy ideas!
Markita Lynda and Ogvorbis – makes me smile to se Newfoundland mentioned anywhere unexpectedly. I’ve heard visitors to that rocky piece of heaven describe it as similar to Ireland or other Birtish Isles and I’d also learned in school that it more likely broke off from somewhere around what is currently the north west African coast. I always preferred the latter thought – especially during looooonnnnnnngggggg wet foggy winter/springs!
HAHA!! Sorry “threadrupt” — serves me right for trying to use a new word!
Ogg,
If you’re at all familiar with the Catskills, then you know what kind of boonies I’m talking about (and no, I’m not talking about the resort towns). :D
As in, “Here, take this piece to Conesville. It’s about two hours from here and over half an hour away from the next closest town. And remember, the only way in is one that cruddy dirt road and the customer doesn’t tip. Ta!”
niftyatheist: Have you lived in Newfoundland? The east coast of Canada is pretty high on my list of places to travel after I graduate. Any recommendations for parks, hikes, interesting ecosystems, etc.?
This is something which I notice a lot in discussions online with people from Europe – especially when talking about their enviable, but far more easily achieved and maintained, public transport systems. I am sometimes irritated by the assumption that North Americans are just too attached to cars etc to do what more sensible Europeans do, but then I remember that many people simply do not really comprehend the vastness of the distances (and the often very sparsely populated expanses between major metropolitan areas).
@niftyatheist:
Tch… my world is progressive. Sexy ideas are common.
Morning Nutmeg!
Yep, born and bred Newfoundlander. Ex-pat now, however.
I sure can recommend stuff! For hiking, check out this website for the East Coast Trail: http://eastcoasttrail.ca/ Nearly 550km of hiking glory! Some of my friends participated in the early stages of building (the official version of) this trail back in the 1970’s.
There are provincial parks (though not as many as when I was a teen) and the two national parks (Terra Nova and Gros Morne) are spectacular.
If you want to see icebergs, come in June. If you want better weather, come in August, September or October. Whales frolicking within sight of shoreline on east coast from late July through early September (give or take a few weeks).
Katherine Lorraine
This is why your series is going to be a blockbuster! :D Keep writing! And don’t fret about changing things up and even discarding characters (even if they seemed important in earlier writing), as your ideas develop, go with it! I cannot wait to see your books out there!
Nutmeg, oops! hit post before adding “I hope you will visit Newfoundland some day – it takes a little more work to get there (many people get as far as Cape Breton, NS and then turn back and say it’s good enough*) – but you won’t be sorry!
* I have really dear next door neighbors who told me they had visited Newfoundland years ago. After a few minutes chatting, it became apparent that they were referring to Cape Breton Island, so I gently explained that they got close, but not quite to Newfoundland. They seemed to think it made no difference – NL, NS, tomato, tomahto. It’s been 8 years of being quite close next door neighbors, and they still say they have been to Newfoundland – holding forth on the subject to other neihgbors with the confidence of expertise at a recent party, in fact. lol I don’t even bother to mention the error anymore.
Thanks, nifty! The East Coast Trail sounds right up my alley, but I should probably improve my hiking skills first. I’m going to try to do the Mantario Trail this summer, so hopefully I’ll be ready for some sections of the East Coast Trail by the time I start traveling.
If you like fossils (and who doesn’t?), Newfoundland’s Mistaken Point has some of the oldest multicellular fossils in the world: Ediacaran assemblage where they have just this year identified an organism with structural support spicules that link it to the Cambrian induration. <–NEW TRANSITIONAL FORM ALERT!!!
Oh, and icebergs can start as early as April (especially now with warming oceans – which is totally NOT HAPPENING, amirite climate change deniers?) and throughout May, too. But when I was young, early June was as likely a time for sightings and also more useful for a school-schedule. One year, I remember the navy (or maybe coast guard) – planted a Canadian flag in a huge berg* just outside St. John’s harbor in celebration of Canada Day (July 1)
* don’t try this! They used a hovering helicopter, the guy planting it was lowered down and attached to the captor for a quick getaway should the iceberg roll – which happens suddenly and with deadly results for anything nearby in the “warmer waters” of the south Labrador current. People cannot safely climb up on icebergs.
“How anyone can love a crying bag of poop.” That’s OTHER people’s children, at a distance. Babies emit pheromones from the skin of their scalp that make us feel good. You’ll notice how often people bend over babies and unconsciously sniff their heads. They don’t cry and poop all the time but spend hours sleeping and smelling good; they have the large-headed big-eyed shape that says ‘cute and lovable,’ and as long as they’re breast-fed the poop smells merely buttery.
Yah, when I go to visit my cousins it’s a five – six hour drive; it’s five hours to see the stepdaughter, two hours to see my son, one hour to see my granddaughter–and that’s outside of rush hour, when it can take two hours to get out of Toronto if there are no accidents.
niftyatheist:
Semi-related but not really – I used to fly a lot at my last job (well, once a month or so). Quite often I’d be sitting next to people coming into Los Angeles for the first time.
The approach to LAX comes in from the east over the 10 freeway around Palm Springs. Lights start showing up there, and people usually start up with, “Oh, we’re about to land. There’s L.A.”
To which I giggle and reply, “No, you’ve got about 20 minutes. We’re still 90 miles from the airport.”
And then they guffaw, and look at me like I’m crazy, and then sit and stare awestruck out the window for the next 20 minutes as we pass miles and miles and miles of lights, as far as the eye can see.
The Greater Los Angeles Area (L.A. Metro + Riverside, basically) is huge, and it’s basically one continuous “city”.
When we drove across Canada a couple of years ago it took us nine days, including three to get out of Ontario (although we didn’t push it and stayed in cottage country the first night).
Markita #379- lol I have picked blueberries near Mistaken Point. :) Also the west coast of the island has ancient tabletop mountains which are apparently very interesting to geologists. Gros Morne National park is midway up the west coast of the island (it is named for the largest of those mountains there). The scenery is pretty awesome on both sides of the Island (and in between, though I haven’t spent a lot of time inland), but the wealth of interest from a natural science point of view is also vast.
OK, once again, I could go on and on! Better spare you all and get back to work! Try not to fill up this thread too much while I am gone, you speedy and verbose horde!
And we stopped about five hours short of Vancouver.
Correction: We drove from the *center* to the west coast.
niftyatheist
Re: Newfoundland (and Labrador) Nova Scotia confusion
It’s because you all talk funny.
(especially if your neighbors are in Toronto)
Picking wild berries is an experience everyone should have.
I’ll try.
There’s got to be something cheaper. I’ll look. May take till the weekend, though.
Youth hostels?
chigau #387, Nah, my neighbors are Swedish-Americans and we are in Chicagoland – so no familiarity with east coast dialectical differences nor central Canadian jokiness. They are seriously mistaken, and figure what the diff? As much as my fellow Canadians of the Toronto variety might razz on Newfoundlanders and other east coasters, it has never been my experience that they would not know one province from the other! :O!
Markita Lynda #388 – I cannot agree with this strongly enough. The sunshine, the breeze (blueberries grow really well on windswept barrens – I prefer the kind that overlook the sea) and the intensely fragrant and sweet fresh blueberries – nothing like the farm-grown enormous high bush ones that we find in supermarkets – the entire experience is wonderful! Add a “boil-up” on a camp stove right out in the barrens, sitting on some of the plentiful boulders that are scattered all over the Avalon landscape – drinking a hot mug of tea and finish the meal off with fresh blueberries and cream!
uh-oh homesick! Now I really must go back to work!!!
Who would have thought that worrying about deficits during a downturn was a bad idea? UK officially back in recession.
One last thing for Nutmeg: that east coast trail can be hiked in little bursts. It offers 540km of trail, but you needn’t be committed to hiking the whole thing! You can hike for an hour, an afternoon or a day – or longer if you want. The idea was to make a decent trail system for locals who want to just get out and explore. There are also plenty of walking trails within the city of St. John’s, too. The Rennies River trail being just one http://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g154964-d2248795-Reviews-Rennie_s_River_Trail-St_John_s_Newfoundland_and_Labrador.html
I remember when the Rennies River was terribly polluted and the trail was just a narrow footpath that we used to go back and forth to school (until parents found out and put a stop to it)- local people started a clean up campaign for it and other rivers and parks in the city and the trail system idea came into being (roughly concurrent with the East Coast trail idea). TOday, the river is crystal clear and the trail system is enviable.
Great thundering time-thrift! I. must. control. myself. (Really going to work now)
And, after the floods of last year, some of the roads to get from point a to point b (without driving through c, d, e, f, and g) no longer exist. Yeah. Serious boonies.
Eh, if you treat ’em like people they aren’t too hostile.
Oggie,
At least in the northern part of the Catskills, the major roads have been fixed. In fact, they even bothered to fix the non-swept away ones!
(The dirt road I mentioned? I wasn’t kidding about it. It was ten plus miles of unpaved road that was the only road through a couple of hamlets, with no discernible speed limit. It was paved during the storm clean up.)
Still have no idea about the speed limit, though.
My experiences exploring some of those back roads in the Catskills (lovely area) is that there are three speed limits: tourist, 15mph; local, 30mph; UPS truck, 70mph. And it works far better than my description would imply.
Louis @286, it’s true; and the reductio ad absurdum has been tried. A female legislator countered with a bill to limit male ejaculation to inside vaginas, which brought the proposer of the ‘personhood before conception’ bill out of the woodwork to say without irony that her proposal would be an unconscionable limitation on men’s freedom to control their own bodies.
DAMNIT! And that irony meter had a five-year warranty. It even went all the way up to 11! Blown already. Tough day for irons, irony meters and microwaves.
Oggie:
Woo hoo! I’m on par with the UPS drivers!
(Actually, I used to drive between 55 and 60 on that dirt road, but I’ve never passed anyone else. (Maybe I will now that it has been paved.) Trust me, I’m talking about an area that tourists would never set foot in.)
Audley:
Don’t bet on it (for me, at least). I’ve got a DeLorms and know how to use it. I love those little bitty back roads.
But I, though I can use it, do not know how to spell DeLorme.
The *hospitals* are hiring debt collectors to hang out in emergency rooms and dun patients for previous services.
@Those discussing economics
And that’s why I am hoping that Hollande will be elected in France. He might break the austerity orthodoxy among European leaders.
It’s easy to pay for healthcare in the U.S. is you just cancel the antiquated rules that say a company that opens a single oil well pays no tax in that year and make them start paying a sensible corporate rate on their profits, say 12%.
Richard Austin @376:
“Cooties” is from the Tagalog word for head lice and “ylang-ylang” is a flower for which we use the Tagalog name.
And I won’t even mention “tamarau” for the Mindoro Island water buffalo!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_words_of_Tagalog_origin
That’s not a lot of words, actually. Hindu has given us many more familiar words like bungalow and pyjama.
Oh gag gag gag. I hate this! Someone in my work just sent an ‘all-employee’ email with some information and at the very bottom above her signature:
Ugh, I hate hate hate that.
But who gave us the ottoman?
Oh. Right. I knew that one.
Ok old threadziens, whatever happened to that ID supporter that was in the navy or air force and liked to walk around holding DaveScot’s jock.
Really idiotic but so full of himself.
I know that’s not a lot of info but I was trying to remember what his name was. He used to get abused at ATBC
Caine, Forelle, Nifty, Hekuni Cat, CC: Thanks.
Brownian: Yes, that piece is reprehensible, for the reasons you elaborate (and what Ibyea says as well), as well as the disregard of how safe it might be for any given Afghani to turn in “local terrorist creeps and heroin smugglers.” I left a few comments there.
Cheers to your comment at #154.
Rey Fox: Thanks. I’d be interested to hear your further thoughts on the Glaeser book when you’ve finished it.
Sailor: Some Americans move a lot, some don’t. I can only speak for New England, whose residents have traditionally been pretty rooted, although that may have changed in recent years.
Alethea: That’s scary. I’m glad you didn’t injure yourself when you fell.
PDXY: Scarcity of women does not improve women’s status. That takes education. Catnip has already referenced the phenomenon of grown men kidnapping “brides” from other villages. Sibling incest also increases, with catastrophic results for any offspring of such unions.
Bill D., #172: Aside from Pteryxx’s caveat that these were co-workers and therefore were not easily avoidable: Agreed.
And, honestly, the divide here isn’t strictly between people with ASDs and the neurotypical. There are people with ASDs who do things ranging from drinking at pubs to dancing at clubs to playing in bands to running for office…. and these are all anecdotes from friends of mine on the spectrum. And then there are NTs who are just really introverted and not partial to drink.
They need some kind of social hierarchy in place to feel comfortable. If it’s a hierarchy in which they themselves would be fucked over, they just tell themselves lies.
Catnip: Pteryxx is in Texas, which has little to no protections for workers.
Kristin, good job. You too, CC.
Louis:
I’m okay with this.
Giliell:
**sporfle**
Pteryxx, #342: There are no words. None. Except that I’m masochistic enough to dip into the comments, and, of course, two of the shit-headed FREEEDUMMMMBB ones are from Tex-Ass.
Dianne:
I’m all for insertion of IV needles in uncomfortable debt-collector orifices.
Markita Lynda: Universal healthcare in the U.S. might be fiscally possible. Politically is the problem.
Babies smell like shit and sour milk to me. And I disagree that any form of feces smells like butter, unless you mean rancid butter.
Kitty, I hate those types of .sigs too. Even without the gawd crap, it would nauseate me. The gawd crap is the dingleberry atop the diarrhea sundae.
Replay to all with an Ingersoll quote in your sig?
(/’There can be but little liberty on earth while men worship a tyrant in heaven.’)
Oggie,
If that’s the case, I’m talking about route 990v through Gilboa, NY. (Heading east through town, and continuing after the route ends through West Conesville, Conesville, and Manor Kill. Eventually, you’ll hit “civilization” again!) Like I said, not as much fun now that it’s paved (and the towns are extremely depressed).
@Daisy:
Ugh, yea. I don’t even care about the God part. It’s the whole saccarine sweet, gag inducing-ness of it that bothers me. It’s like a bad Hallmark card, geh.
@AJ Milne:
*snrk* No, not gonna do that. I’m a few weeks away from willingly walking around with a trans-pride symbol on my lanyard, though. That’ll be enough to bother the goddites.
I don’t think it’s that they hate the unwealthy; it’s that they despise them, and relish despising them, and on no account want to close that “despicability gap”. Remember: the greater the gulf between you and the Great Unwashed, the more God-like you look. And it’s that God-like feeling they get off on.
–
*high five* for kristinc!
–
…and *high five* for CC as well. :)
–
Peas…well, okay, peas and carrots…are the reason why I don’t eat chicken pot pie. It takes too long to pick ’em all out (which doesn’t get the pea cooties, in any case), and I’m just not that fond of vomitting.
–
Oooh! I saw that, almost-certainly on Jon Stewart. I lol’d and lol’d and lol’d. And aspirated Diet Rite. At the same time.
It warn’t pretty.
–
While you’re waiting for your own healthcare… Canada just opened a new immigration class of skilled workers. You can look up the requirements and see if you have enough points to immigrate. I myself as a self-supporting person with some French and some university wouldn’t qualify–which I think is most unfair–anyone who doesn’t have an egregious criminal record should be able to put themeslves on the list. But that’s the way it is. It helps _a lot_ to have a job offer. The best tactic is probably to find a job with a company that has Canadian branches and offer to transfer. If you have a job offer in Canada, your healthcare is covered from the day you arrive.
You can also visit for six months or so. These jobs do not require work permits.
And speaking of DaveScot, whatever happened to that gasbag?
Katherine
Can you write back anonymously and say “and ignorance keeps you pestering everybody with nonsense?”
Like that your world is progressive. It’s not like dresses don’t have their ups.
The writers of my fauvourite German P&P RPG really tried to make the game more progressive by eliminating gender-dimorphism in size and strength and making homosexuality regarded as just a variation of normal. Oh, and there’s a common herb that grows everywhere that’s a perfect contraceptive *
The game is some 25+ years old now and there are still people (i.e. men)complaining that the girls are as strong as the men. How unrealistic. Magic? Elves? Dwarves? Lizzard-people? Dragons and Unicorns? No worries. Women being as strong as men? ELEBENTY!
*Sometimes this leads to spectacular fuck-ups like when they alternated pronouns in the descriptions of the professions, like when the “Swordfightress**” of X is introduced, prerequisite: men only.
Within that world, you have everything from misogynist slave-owner societies to pretty progressive ones.
**Yes, I is making word up to indicate that German has gendered nouns)
+++++
Distances:
Meiricans on the other hand seem to be eternally puzzled by the fact that we can fit so many countries, languages and cultures into so little space. I remember one of the American study abroad folks in Ireland asking me “You’re German, how do you get from Brussels to Amsterdam by train?”
How couldn’t I know?
++++++
Audley, why are you on a different continent?
I’m selling all that baby stuff cheap at the moment that you’re probably going to buy expensive.
Daisy re: rancid butter (damn phone refuses to copy-pasta):
Thank you! That is exactly how I feel.
But, I’m still a little freaked out that Darkfetus has become human shaped, so maybe I just don’t react to this stuff the way a lot of other women do. I mean, it was all well and good when I was 7 weeks along and it was a little, throbbing blob on the screen– now it’s got hands. And feet. And it’s inside me.
How is that not total nightmare fuel??
Pteryxx, if in doubt about the ‘social drinking’ situation, you can go a long way with a half-filled drink and a big grin for anyone who looks at you. The SO ran into a famous prize-winning author who was reputed to drink a lot and noticed that he just made his drinks last a long time. And having run into a host who would get downright nasty if you didn’t take another drink, I found I could just keep my glass full with the third one. I feel for you, though!
Great. When I need a diuretic, I’ll know just where to turn.
“And living waters shall flow from their bellies…”
That’s very…vivid. It does seem to fit the motif, however.
Audley, stop looking at it! When it first moves, it will feel like a fish inside you–fishes are OK, right? Only later does it progress to stretching, writing on the walls, and sitting on your bladder. And you won’t be able to take a full breath or eat a full meal. But it’s all temporary!
Ms. Daisy Cutter, cow’s milk feces smell bad. There’s a reason for breast-feeding that doesn’t get mentioned very often. But also, there’s convenience! No scrubbing bottles. No getting up in the middle of the night to warm them. Just hand me that baby…
Giliell,
Noooooooooo! *shakes fist*
I’m trying not to buy expensive– I’ve bought a very gently used crib for a fraction of the original price already and I’m trying to find a cheap changing table. But, of course the crib is one of those where one of the sides slides down, so my dad’s gonna help me secure the side so it’s no longer a death-trap.
@Giliell:
Alas, no anonymization.
Yea, pretty much the smae sort of idea. It all depends on the person whether or not they’re, themselves, strong. If a woman trains hard she can be one of the strongest fighters in a group. No one is denied access to anything, and some of the fiercest warriors in legends have been women.
Same with homosexuality and transgenderism. While the world is limited in its ability to physically deal with the issues of transsexualism (surgery is extremely limited, magical healing takes the place of the majority of things that’d need surgery) there are enough “MacGuyver-ish” methods through magic to allow a person to display themselves as their desired sex.
Oh, and my world, too, has a pretty much perfect contraceptive in herbal form.
Markita:
The image image is burned in my brain! I gave the ultrasound pics to my mom, so they’re not hanging around.
I actually think things will get easier once I can feel Darkfetus moving around. More real, anyway (if that makes sense).
You have a good point. I’ve gone camping with my friend’s friend (and my friend), but I don’t know him all that well. He’s big, blonde, and seems to be a fairly nice guy in his way. OTOH, he won’t hesitate to bone someone else if he can.
It isn’t the most progressive crowd I’ve run with, but I like them because they seem to at least consider the ‘progressive’ ideas. Particularly my friend. I remember one day he told me “I noticed you make a point of not losing your temper on or around women. I want to be more like that.” He’s also one of the only people I’ve met who seems to listen when I talk about what I’ve learned about privilege and how it affects things like racism and sexism.
He’s black, and I remember one day we were driving with his mom and he got PISSED when he saw a big truck with a confederate flag on it. Probably more clueless ‘Dukes of Hazzard’ fanboys than actual ‘racists’, but still, I saw my friend’s point very well.
:-(
Hm. The Society of Vertebrate Paleontology is not for any industry. Yet, the publishing of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology was recently handed over to Taylor & Francis. Now there are more issues per year (6 instead of 4) at the same average number of pages per issue, there will be (maybe already are) more Memoirs, and the membership fee has not increased. I conclude that not all professional societies are equally good at it.
I like the model of Acta Palaeontologica Polonica or Vertebrata PalAsiatica: they’re financed directly by taxpayer money (Polish/Chinese academies of sciences) at no cost to authors or readers. APP has been online for free for a long time now, Vertebrata PalAsiatica has recently followed suit.
Professional scientists either have legal access, or they send the pdfs (or even dead-tree reprints) to each other. In this situation, the publishers make up to 42 % profit. I don’t think it’s feasible to increase the begging-and-sending so far as to seriously cut into those profit margins.
Laypeople, if they find a citation at all, are almost always successfully deterred by a paywall; they tend not to know they can just write to the authors.
*twitch*
Even today, an extremely “dark L” means you’ve grown up in or close to the 12th of the 23 districts of Vienna. I once had a classmate who was incapable of pronouncing any other kind of L.
(I only went to most of middle-/highschool there.)
And in spite of all that, as I said, their accents are diverging more than they’re converging.
:-) :-) :-) :-) :-)
:-(
Doesn’t look convincing. But just one click away is this, with the best sign ever!
(Czech and/or Slovak, probably fake because the thing on the C should be pointed, not round: literally “interdiction of translating”.)
(Except the biggest one: the Rebeccapocalypse.)
I’m with comment 218. :-)
:-(
You’re mentioned, and less than an hour later you show up after almost a month of absence?
That’s scary.
You’re trying very hard to make it look Ing’s fears aren’t ungrounded at all.
Well, you’re not trying. Probably you don’t care at all how you come across. That is the problem.
Seconded.
*hug* ^_^
+ 1
What, that far south… oh yeah. Yeah, it does! (Even more detail in the text here. Not available in English… maybe I should translate the article.)
Bist du noch da???
…Or have I aimed way too far south?
Sure, but boys were kept in dresses till they were 5 or 6. Diapers should not be an issue at that age, the age at which things like school, The Seriousness Of Life™ and gender role enforcement start.
My mom hoped I’d be a day early. That would have been her 24th birthday. Instead I was 11 days late and was pulled out with that vacuum pump thingy.
(I’ve been late to almost everything ever since.)
It was sort of overdone in Austria then (money was pumped in well into the recovery), causing teh scairee debt.
If the food you cook is so bad that, when you’ve done your duty of legally emptying the plate, you’d rather throw the rest away instead of eating it all, ur doin it rong!
Concerning cocoa and honey, try different ratios, perhaps even different honeys; I’m pretty sure there’s an option for everyone in there.
And their many, many acolytes who followed what simply was a fashion.
No, the trifecta: add privileged ignorance of the difference between vagina (G-spot or not) and clitoris.
The wonders of communism !! See comment 319. Long tradition in the Soviet Union.
Heh.
Huh. I’ve never noticed.
How many people have functioning vomeronasal organs, and how many have a functioning connection between them and the brain?
If that’s what butter smells like in Canada… no, wait, I’ve eaten butter in Canada*, that’s not it.
But I do agree that there’s an upper limit to what the stench can get like.
* Halifax, if that counts.
For instance.
He will be. People just (love to) hate Sarko too much.
I just wonder how much difference there can possibly be between Hollande and, say, Schröder.
See also Mattir saying she was rather freaked out by the two strangers living in her belly.
Inside you?
It does!
Mine felt like bubbles. I still have a GI bubble once in a while that feels an awful lot like a fetus flipping around XD But yes, very shortly after the bubbles it was a wee fish.
I dunno much about vomeronasal organs, but I do know there is a certain scent that babies give off that isn’t unpleasant, and it does seem to emanate from the head.
Today while I was walking to an appointment I heard a screeling noise. That sounds like a baby bird, said I to myself — jay or corvid maybe? I cast around a bit looking for it and found, across the street, a starling fledgling with Mom or Dad keeping a watchful eye from above. It was the youngest starling I’ve ever seen. It had these HUGE feet that it kept tripping over as it hustled away from me down the sidewalk.
I’m all for insertion of IV needles in uncomfortable debt-collector orifices.
Jamshidi?
Wait until an inverted(?) footprint appears on your belly. That really freaked Wife and I out.
It’s also a scent that’s hard not to notice, because the usual way of holding an older baby/young toddler seems to place their head pretty close to your nose.
I dunno about newborns though. By the time I got introduced to ‘The Babby,’ she was already holding her head up on her own and crawling.
I hate to admit this, I really do, because it (rightly) makes me sound like a horrible asshole, but I was so pissed and jealous when I first found out my ex had a kid. But then one day she called me and I softened a bit. Once I met the babby it was already ‘too late’.
It was right around the time I started reading pharyngula and stuff though, so I learned better. And I’m glad. To think of all the things I would have lost and never found if I had remained stupid!
David:
It’s standard to get pictures from the ultasound to take home with you. I got half a dozen pics of Darkfetus from different angles and positions (even a close up of the feet) and a CD of even more pictures (including from the ultasound I had at 7 weeks).
Like I said, I gave the pictures to my mom, ‘cos it’s weirding me out to have a tiny human all up in there.
David D.
Almost.
Bist du neu da?
Was my first day, after all.
Yes, I’m in that light purple colour.
++++
I admit to loving the smell of babies. And yes, brestmilk-poop smells less than formuly-poop and way less than normal food poop.
Mr. swears to this day that the worst thing ever was the first diaper after the very first spaghetti bolognese.
++++
Sorry, Audley.
Got to get rid of the stuff. Kept it as long as I could because my best friend really wants to spawn (fuck you Germany for making it so hard for single women to become pregnant), but we really need the space.
I love second hand shops. Good to get stuff, good to get rid of it again.
+++++
Also, making bags would be easier if i could remember not to sew the lining shut.
From the comments on the article Pteryxx linked:
Dianne: That’d work.
Oh, maybe you were talking about feeling like there’s fishes inside you, David? Yeah, I dunno, I suppose I should expect a squirmy feeling?
(I am so lost w/out copy pasta.)
Oggie,
Aaaarrrghflaerghl! *hides in the corner!*
Ms. Daisy Cutter – good luck with the avulsion fracture – that’s the precise type that I had back in January. For what it’s worth, my orthopedist said that they heal better (if with significantly more aggravation of the patient’s mood) in a hard cast as opposed to an air boot. If you need, I knitted some sock bootie things to fit over my cast and can now pass them on if you’d like. Also, be aware that the avulsion takes about 12 weeks to heal fully. Mine still hurts very occasionally. The physical therapy exercises afterwards are very helpful (I’ll hunt up some links for the types of things the pt folks had me do). And ice. Lots and lots of ice, 2-3 times per day after the cast comes off.
Breastfed baby feces look more or less like cottage cheese and do not have that horrid fecal odor. That odor only starts once the kid starts eating something other than breastmilk. I had the same reaction to seeing the Spawns on ultrasound – there were these small naked strangers living in my belly. It was very very odd and physically intimate in ways that are hard to describe.
Today marked a win for Team Pharyngula. DaughterSpawn had a passive aggressive email from a scout leader basically asking her to quit her leadership position with a group of cub scouts so that a boy could have her job. This particular woman inherited DaughterSpawn when she took over this den of scouts and has not been happy about it, and there have been previous passive aggressive crap moves on her part. Last time, The Other Mr. M responded to DaughterSpawn’s complaints with “wow, what a bitch,” to which SonSpawn calmly said “Dad, bitch is a gendered insult and I’d rather you didn’t use gendered insults around me.”. So this morning, The Other Mr. M said “wow, she’s such a b – oh wait, that’s a gendered insult -passive aggressive asshole.”. There was much rejoicing as we drove off to tae kwan do.
I never saw that with either of mine. Did see the occasional elbow/heel movement across, though. Yeah, weird.
It does, however, give you a great weapon. Wake up Mr. Darkheart at 3:00am and tell him the baby is moving. Ask him to put is hand on your belly. And make him wait until the baby moves again. His arm will fall back asleep long before he does.
Kermie arms and Yeeeaaahhhaaa!
Oh, yeah. It looks so weird. I can’t imagine what that would actually feel like.
Mattir,
I hope you can get Mr M. to come along this time round.
Markita Lynda: Thanks for the information! I’m going to incorporate as much as possible into the Spreadsheet of Evil.
Ogg: I’ll have to do quite a bit of research to determine potential revenue and savings input. But a very good idea.
—-
Freezer: So it looks like everything by a couple of ppMW (Myc tagged) plasmids survived. Thankful those are pretty cheap. /relief.
That comment resembles a ceiling. It is way over my head. Huh?
Audley
You so need that “WARNING. Alien on board” t-shirt. You deserve one! Bonus power to freak people out :D
Hmm, yes, bubbles followed by tiny fish sounds about right. I may have been a bit on the lucky side, but personally I found that sticking to my normal levels of physical activity made me feel better (like clearing a friend’s garden, going to the gym, whatever) – I suspect that this probably varies quite a lot from person to person, though, and that what really matters is doing what you feel comfortable with and not letting well-meaning others tell you how you ought to manage (like well-meaning others on the internet? But – I – I didn’t mean me, I – I – ::spluttering and muttering::). But you already knew that.
Yay for second-hand shops – sproglets grow so fast at first that everything is always outgrown before it’s been worn more than a few times. The Spawn had loads of gorgeous stuff from second-hand shops for a small fraction of the price of new, even designer or hand-made clothes sometimes for a couple of pounds – and most of it was still in such good condition afterwards that it could still go to the Cancer Research shop for someone else to enjoy. I love re-using stuff!
A.R: I just looked up plasmids on wikipedia. Interesting, but quite a bit over my head.
Frozen pipes.
I was an idiot an didn’t check to make sure they were covered when I consolidated insures last year.
Og: Basically, I need to go look at the stats to find out how much money could be made/saved by such a policy. Probably quite a bit though.
TLC: Yeah, plasmids are great. What parts of the article did you have trouble with? I’d love to explain!
A.R: No specific troubles, just outside of my usual ‘education zone’. But if I, a stoner with no post-secondary education, am gonna hang out here, I figure I should at least make an effort to keep up. I’ll continue reading, but if I have any specific questions I’ll be certain to ask you.
TLC: OK. I should be here the rest of the night barring any more freezer defecation.
What policy did I suggest? Oh, the ‘legalize drugs, tax it, and use the proceeds to provide medical care and voluntary drug treatment’? That was a throw-away joke. Don’t make the mistake of thinking I have any useful ideas.
Oh wow, the article mentions ‘Gene Therapy.’ Now that’s cool. I’ve always liked the idea. So much heartbreak and pain comes from incurable genetic conditions.
It may have been a ‘throw away joke’, but that doesn’t preclude it being a potentially good idea.
Mattir:
I’m a little disappointed that you didn’t knit them a couple of tiny jumpers. XD
Seriously, I’m glad I’m not the only one to have the weirded out feeling.
Opposablethumbs,
Oh, yeah! I keep forgetting to order that shirt. I think I will with my next pay check.
I’ve finally gotten to the point that I’ve got enough energy to start doing my regular activities again, so I’ve just been excited to feel normal, you know?
Audley
No, you’re not alone.
To me the whole thing felt like sci-fi until they were out.
Lots of women feel best about the second trimester. Vomiting stops and the belly isn’t too big for being comfortable.
Oh, when it does, get one of the nursing pillows, even if you don’t plan to breastfeed. You can place it between your legs and get some sleep.
Sili
I’m sorry to hear.
++++
Woooooo, just finished totally awesome jeans.
For me.
Threadrupt, skimming…
NOOOOOOOOOOOooooooo…
TLC: You might also want to take a look at Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis.
Og: I agree with TLC. It’s a good idea.
We’ve got a No True Christian apologist.
Enjoy this old film clip of FDR blasting the Republicans.
Damn, I should go to sleep, but then I’ll miss the (no true) christian love thread. I hate when I only get the leftovers in the morning.
Giliell,
I’ve had two days in a row without morning sickness, yay! I’ve already got a body pillow to sleep with– both for my back pain and because I sleep best on my stomach and I can’t do that anymore, so snuggling helps.
Thanks, but it’s my own damn fault for not doing my due diligence.
Audley, Absolutely! It’s not “real” until you can feel it move. I hope Mr. Darkheart will be at the delivery. There’s another rush of hormones then that helps with parental bonding all round.
It’s not a partner masturbating that I mind, it’s their using a dirty sock to do it into. A clean sock would be OK.
Yeah, like arrested for receiving stolen property when I was 18* (not convicted of, arrested for, and it was set aside or whatever they call it), or having a DUI. Such egregious crimes.
* As a sound engineer on tour, I was initially refused entry into Canada for that … when I was 34. They also didn’t want to let the guitar player in for the DUI, even tho we were on a tour bus. Eventually it was straightened out by the tour company, but then we were subjected to a 6 hour ordeal of having to completely unload the equipment truck so they could check the serial numbers of all our gear to make sure we weren’t smuggling in electronics. Yea Canada.
Nice folks, great audiences, stupid border policies.
It also helps if you can at least try to crush every single bone in their hand :)
+++++
I’d like to have my hearing back, please.
I know that it must be some mechanical obstruction left over from the infection, because I can restore it by inserting my little finger and lifting the ear up a bit, so I think it will be ok in a few days, but it annoys the hell out of me.
All music sounds like the musicians didn’t check their instruments and didn’t care to practice.
Markita… that’s kinda nasty. A dirty sock? That’s not very conducive to the imagination, and if there’s one thing successful masturbation requires, it’s imagination.
I just tried some Waterloo stout to accompany steak and bacon. Quite good, though I think I’d prefer a bit more carbonation.
Beer: Hydration, intoxication, and nutrition all in one. I’m very interested in the ‘food value’ of beer.
Catching up since last night, but I thought I’d jump in quickly with a couple things:
TLC:
I don’t know what’s available to you in the way of micro/craft brews, but I’ve always been partial to coffee and/or chocolate stouts, and my local liquor store always has multiple choices of those. I can recommend the Imperial Coffee Stout from Long Trail (Vermont), and I’ve recently been enjoying Wolaver Alta Gracia Coffee Porter.
Also, Innis & Gunn is newly out with an Irish Whisky Cask Aged variety. It’s technically a Scottish stout (the original Innis & Gunn is a Scottish ale), and it’s very tasty.
***
Pteryxx:
Threatening your job and forcing you to leave a party because you won’t drink!?!? That’s genuinely horrifying, and while IANAL, I’m quite sure it would be actionable… except that I grok employees can’t always afford to actually take action on actionable things, esp. not in this economic climate. I can only offer my sympathy, along with hopes that you will (preferably sooner rather than later) find a significantly less awful place to work.
I have to add, though, that, in my experience, this sort of behavior is vanishingly rare (as in, I’ve never observed anything quite like it, through no small number of school- or work-related parties where alcohol was served), and shouldn’t stand as an indictment of social drinking per se.
Opposablethumbs typed:
Totally! A FoaF helped to build a log cabin when she was pregnant. I wouldn’t suggest really hard workouts in late pregnancy, though, because your heart will be working 40% harder than usual anyway to push around your increased blood supply. Just keep pleasantly active.
If you do situps, do a few extra (by compressing the belly muscles, not ‘efforting’ from the back) and that should help to support the extra weight.
Canada used to have a process for getting pardons if you kept out of trouble for seven years… that would erase it from your record. most people didn’t bother about it because who cared. But now with the new border security madness it might be useful… except that the Harper government has cancelled the process and I don’t know what, if anything, took its place.
Markita Lynda: Time travel needs to exist. We must go back and steal Roosevelt just before he dies, fix him, and get him into the oval office. Roosevelt 2012! More seriously though, I wish the modern Dems would give speeches 1/2 as witty.
Well well well, looks like finally there will be some sort of resistance to austerity in Europe: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/24/world/europe/call-for-growth-puts-pressure-on-german-led-austerity.html?pagewanted=1
Still, it worries me that the whole anger at austerity has caused people to vote for the extreme right.
@AR
While FDR was great in many aspects, I have a feeling he would continue the “tough on terrorist” stupid policies of Bush. He did put the Japanese Americans in concentration camps, after all.
Before I headed out to meet Ichthyic, I’d been making jokes on the PET about terming myself a Molly Woppy because I was becoming an OM groupie. That puts the following in better context. Richard Austin came up with the far more suave term Om nom, by the way.
‘Tis the morn! All joking aside peeps, getting together with fellow rationalists is a fine thing to do, I feel. Before I headed off to the GAC I made a point of reading Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s books, and was really keen to see her. Reading, subsequently, that roughly 100,000 female genital mutilations have been performed in the UK while the authorities turn a blind eye, (because black girls especially don’t matter?) well, if that isn’t an example that the world needs rational, decent people I don’t know what is. (I don’t have the exact stats and time frame for that, but one genital mutilation is too many.) Ichthyic was great at spurring spouse and I onto more political action – I’ve dipped my toe in the water, but it’s time for more. I didn’t say Ichthyic, that one of the reasons I faded toward the end of the evening, and lack of more political action on my part, is because I’ve not been too well this past couple of years, that’s stabilising now. So yes, socialising, having fun and being silly with fellow rationalists matters, because that way we become a more cohesive force – hey just look at poll Pharyngulation for proof of that one.
If the above is an ode to Typos, it’s because I’m at an hotel, with neither glasses or spiel chequer to aid my online ramblings.
Catnip: Does “Sasquatch” stout sound familiar to you at all? From “Old Yale” breweries? Apparently we do have a microbrewery in the Fraser Valley that makes stout. I’m about to try it with one of my chicken pies.
ibyea: True, the internment camps were an inexcusable dark spot.
*yawn*
I’ll leave the true christian atheist to the rest of you. I’ll take the cold leftovers tomorrow morning
Good night
opposablethumbs:
There are straight men who don’t think a woman getting off is wonderful (even presuming arousing him is not her purpose)? Inconceivable!!
Seriously, though, I’ve never been able to understand the (alleged) thought process of anyone who sees hir partner’s pleasure (not limited to sexual please, of course, but that seems to be what we’re talking about) as anything other than a great boon.
Speaking strictly for myself, as long as she doesn’t specifically harm me or the family, I want my wife to do whatever she needs to do to feel good and be happy; I can’t grok approaching it any other way.
More FDR:
I welcome their hatred (1936):
“Government by organized money is just bad as government by organized mob…. They are unanimous in their hatred for me and I welcome their hatred.”
Dr Audley Z. Darkheart,
What brand/model of crib is it? I worked in the baby retail industry for a good number of years, and many companies came out with immobilizers for their dropside models.
Internment camps for the Japanese. Canada did that too. My mother, who lived through that era, thought it was inexcusable, especially since Canadians of German and Italian descent weren’t treated the same way. To this day, Japanese-Canadians won’t gather into identifiable neighbourhoods, unlike almost anybody else.
In World War I, Germans, Austrians, Italians, and Ukrainians were sent to work camps in the north and west.
@AR
Another thing, didn’t FDR authorize the use of firebombing of major cities in Germany and Japan? Or was that Truman?
The Daily What:
Oh, barf.
People do that?? I mean, ruin perfectly good tequila with rancid piss water?
Therrin:
Off the top of my head, I don’t know. Currently the crib is in my storage room, waiting for me to start setting up the nursery. When I take it out, I’ll let you know.
Markita Lynda: Personally, I think much of it resulted from residual “Yellow Scare,” anti-Asian racism, and the increasing acceptance of “White” as a descriptor as opposed to identification of European peoples by country of origin. By WWII, Germans and Italians were harder to spot, had lower immigration rates, and had had more time to integrate themselves into society. /speculation
I agree. Racism again, yet, still.
Watched the second FDR video. Spooky prophetic. We can haz another FDR pleaze!
FDR on mortgages, gold, reflation, and labor standards.
Markita Lynda: You link is broken.
Note “If anyone is going to lose their home or their farm, send a telegram to the new home loan ….”
FDR on mortgages, gold, reflation, and labor standards.
Note “If anyone is going to lose their home or their farm, send a telegram to the new home loan <organization>….”
@AR
But seriously, though, on domestic economic issues, man, he was an awesome president.
ibyea: Yep.
I don’t want to stereotype people or anything, but I’m now going to stereotype the True Christian defender philisyssis:
“19 kids and counting” is listed among her favorites on facebook.
She is now in a little box in my mind. I can’t help it.
As mentioned before, Down Under has ANZAC day. I hope the association with Gallipoli functions as an antidote to militarism.
— — — —
-Are the modern anti-nausea medicines too expensive for use for pregnancies? Or do they require intravenous injection, making them too troublesome for use outside hospitals?
Ironically the horrible effects of the early sixties talidomide anti-nausea medicine was only caused by an isomere of the molecule. Unfortunately, the safe version of the molecule is unstable, and will slowly fold into the unsafe version.
BTW, stereoisomeres make us pretty safe from alien invasion. The critters would get sick and die if they have the wrong kind of stereoisomeres for digesting humans.
David Frum -the last surviving sane Republican- has written a satirical novel about cynicism in D C. I think it is titled “The Patriot”.
I disagree with a lot of Frum’s views, but I disagree with him the way I disagree with Swedish politicians -I go “the premise of your argument is flawed”, not “goddamn it, are you fucking insane!!!!” which is my reaction to 99% of ‘merican Republicans.
A little box?
I would have put her in a clown car, myself.
Beatrice:
She’s linked to her facebook profile? Oooooo, I missed that!
My bad, according to philisyssis, they are male, so who knows?
Yeah, in her nym.
Well, if she really fancies herself to be a troll, it could be deliberate. But I’m probably giving her too much credit.
He, then.
I wasn’t even sure when we realized it was a she, but apparently it was just someone’s false assumption.
I didn’t say Ichthyic, that one of the reasons I faded toward the end of the evening, and lack of more political action on my part, is because I’ve not been too well this past couple of years, that’s stabilising now.
I didn’t notice the fade, frankly. Happy to hear the health is improving! Seems we’re both on the mend then.
:)
I had a great time. Will be getting that curry duck again!