Comments

  1. says

    Jakehamby last thread
    The biggest problem with Esperanto as a universal language to my eyes is basically its ethnocentrism. To those whose native language isn’t Indo-European, it’s no easier to learn or use than a dozen-odd natural pidgins and creoles, and there aren’t enough speakers of it to make it worth the bother for anyone trying to learn a useful second language. English isn’t notably easy to learn, but has the advantage that a lot of people with money speak it, so if you want to get money from them by whatever means, it pays to speak it. It’ll remain a common lingua Franca for as long as that’s the case, pretty much. Lojban and similar languages will never be more than hobbies by their very nature. Basically, there are reasons why human languages aren’t like programming languages, and those reasons relate to all the ways that our brains don’t work at all the way computers do. Basically, Lojban is the Straw Vulcan fallacy given metaphorical flesh: no one actually does or can think in formal logic at all times for all decisions and communications, and will therefore not really find a language premised on that very useful.

  2. Crudely Wrott says

    From the previous thread.
    Portia admonished me:

    It’d be helpful it you would reflect upon the substance of the objection to the terminology.

    It was helpful, for that is just what I did. It only took a moment to feel justly convicted.

    I’m really not clumsy, it’s just that my feet are so big.

    I’m teachable, though.

  4. says

    Dalillama

    English isn’t notably easy to learn, but has the advantage that a lot of people with money speak it, so if you want to get money from them by whatever means, it pays to speak it.

    I disagree.
    English is much easier to learn at a beginners stage and very error-tolerant. No stupid gendered nouns, no (almost) subjunctive, conjugation is mostly out of the window, too, and you’re still understood when you say “he go to work”

    +++
    OK, tried to bed the little one into a position that resembles “lying on mummy’s belly”.
    Hope she can sleep now.
    If things don’t get better tomorrow I’ll take her to the doc again on Tuesday.

  6. chigau (違う) says

    When You™ reform English spelling, which regional dialect pronunciation is going to be used to decide said spelling?

  7. Crudely Wrott says

    Carlie, my youngest brother’s younger son has Asperger’s Syndrome. Lately he has joined a theater group and acting has been not only a pleasure for him but has proved therapeutic. He’s relating better to family and friends in general. Possibly because he has realized that he can role play. I’m not sure how that works but I’m glad that it’s making his relationships easier to maintain. He is glad too, as are his parents. And I. I hope that the next time I visit I can have a conversation with him. The last several attempts failed miserably. He didn’t have an understanding of metaphor and figures of speech. He took every word so literally. I was not wise enough to speak in definitive terms and he would walk off. It’s only lately that I’ve learned how I was wrong in speaking with him.

    I have just recently been made aware that my youngest grandson may be similarly afflicted. Final diagnosis is not yet official. He’s eleven years old. I’ll remember what I learned from my nephew and just hope that grandson’s affliction is less severe than nephew’s.

    Makes me wonder about myself and the genetics that may be present in my family.
    __________________________
    I have adopted sitting with my legs curled under me, yoga style. It seems to lessen my pain and makes it easier to sit with my spine straight.

  9. cicely says

    *moar hugs* for Giliell. Warm, plushy ones.
    –
    Extra servings of support for mildlymagnificent, and hopes for the best possible outcome for mrmagnificient.
    –
    *hugs* for Ogvorbis. With extra tentacles.
    –
    –
    That fissssssh looks very Golem-like, to me.
    –

  10. mildlymagnificent says

    Just a by the way on numbers of English speakers. Don’t overlook the single largest group of English speakers in just one country – India.

    And for those who fret about English spelling. Remember it has the largest number of words of any language, the verbs are dead easy to learn … with the great advantage of no changes for sex or age or status of listener or speaker ….. and the whole thing is written with a simple 26 word alphabet using not a single umlaut, cedilla or other diacritical mark.

    The other thing about spelling is that many rules take into account both the sound/ emphasis and the writing of particular words – the doubling/not doubling rules for words like mopped, referral, reference are a classic example.

  15. carlie says

    Crudely – my son with Asperger’s is also in theater in school, and very good at it. It suits him so well – there’s a script to follow, there are rules and he’s told exactly where to stand, what to do, how to act. I think that’s very comforting. And he’s good at imitation, and fantastic at memorization, and he loves the attention. Plus, the people who do theater tend to be caring on the whole, and they treat him well. He was so depressed after the last play ended because it was hours and hours every day of feeling like he belonged, of having friends. He can’t wait for the next one. I tried to get him doing stage crew for this year’s (they alternate which school does them which year) and that didn’t work out, but it might in the next round.

    Tony – I’m trying. What just got me rolling was how it sailed right over travis’ head and then some.

  17. mildlymagnificent says

    Doubling? We double the last letter of one syllable words when a short vowel written with a single letter is followed by a final sound written as a single consonant spoken as a single sound. So we double for robbed, but not for mixed – because the single letter ‘x’ is spoken as ‘ks’, and not for washed, because the single sound ‘sh’ requires two letters when written. We don’t double the final letter for looked or headed because the short vowel sound in those words is written with two letters.

    For multisyllabic words, you apply all those rules to the last syllable, with the added requirement that we only double the final letter when that last syllable is emphasised. (overlooking final ‘l’ which is never doubled in USA English, but always doubled in Brit English – so we write levelled when you write leveled) Gardening, opening, gossiping are all straightforward. The best examples of the difference arise with -er endings. Offering, bothered, gathering versus referring, conferring, preferred versus reference, conference, preference.

    I often wonder how Indians cope with spelling. If you listen carefully you can hear that any difficulty you have in understanding their quite clear English speech arises from emphasis rather than diction or vowel pronunciation. The rhythm of their speech mimics Hindi word emphasis rather than standard Brit or USAnian emphasis on syllables. I was listening to a business discussion on the car radio and I found it hard to follow until I realised that delivery was pronounced as de-livery with strong emphasis on the first and the following three syllables almost run into one.

    It can be quite fun, but pretty hard at first, to practise sounding out words with the emphasis in a different place.

  18. Crudely Wrott says

    Carlie, I am so glad to hear about your son and his experience in theater. It makes me so much more confident about my nephew’s future as well as Nathan, my grandson.

    I suppose that the cooperation and mutual dependency that is demanded in pulling off a performance must be a supportive and empowering environment for those like your son and my nephew and grandson.

    Thank you for providing such encouraging news. It reduces my worry and increases my hope.

    Mildlymagnificent wrote:

    And for those who fret about English spelling. Remember it has the largest number of words of any language, the verbs are dead easy to learn … with the great advantage of no changes for sex or age or status of listener or speaker ….. and the whole thing is written with a simple 26 word alphabet using not a single umlaut, cedilla or other diacritical mark.

    This. ^

    Now all I’ve got to do is learn some more of those words. Last time I checked there were in excess of 600,000 of them, not including technical and scientific terms.

    How many do I use? Probably less than one percent. Room for improvement? Or am I just not counting all of them?

  19. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Got the Redhead watching the Oscar’s red carpet fashions, so I was able to get this weeks big cooking into the oven. A chicken/rice/veg (if desired) mixture for several days worth of eats. A knock-off of the old cream of X soup dishes. Even I found it easy.

  20. Crudely Wrott says

    Here is a sequence of English words that you might go through your whole life without hearing.

    “Sauropod heads are essentially all mouth. The jaw joint is at the very back of the skull, and they didn’t have cheeks, so they came pretty close to having Pac Man-Cookie Monster flip-top heads,” researcher Mathew Wedel at the Western University of Health Sciences in Pomona, Calif., told LiveScience.

    I love my language.

    Link: http://science.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/02/24/17076293-how-dinosaurs-grew-the-worlds-longest-necks?lite

  21. says

    Ogvorbis,
    Yeah, I work for an organization that while not directly a branch of the govt, is run by a consortium for the govt, and so subject to these kinds of budgetary whiplash. And this time around I just not hearing any plans for contingency — its a bit frustrating, like fingers in our collective ears going “la, la, la”.

    A few years ago when there was the whole govt shutdown thing, what happened was everyone was told that we had to take 1 unpaid full week off out of every 5 (or was it 4), i.e. a 20% pay cut right off the top. We got some leeway in which week, but with overlapping schedules and needs from various colleagues it was a mess. And we were given strict orders not to do any work during that week — these are scientists has have an overdeveloped sense of devotion to work (we generally like what we do) — because legally if we did anything they’d have to pay us and it would cause trouble. Having gone several years now without a cost-of-living increase I’d like to avoid the whole “take a 20% hit for an indeterminate period” thing as well.

    —

    Acting. Yes, tried to get son into that at school, but we could never convince him to do it. He always been a mimic, and has the most convincing “I’m Batman” (an amazing gravelly deep voice coming out of 15yr old). I think he’d be great at voice work at least.

    —

    Took the dog out in the mushy snow for a run around. I’m huffing-and-puffing way too much for such a simple walk. I’ve got to start getting into condition for an event I signed up for in the first week of April.

    —

    Spouse is calling me in to the Dr. Who special….

  23. says

    Hello everyone!
    *hugs&chocolate&whiskey* to all that need it.

    Quick DarkInfant update: She’s got her first tooth in and another two are threatening to pop out any minute now. She’s only 4 months old. O.o

    In other news, I will be getting a new laptop on Wednesday, so hopefully I’ll be able to lurk less and participate around here more. Yay!

  27. ck says

    …Dr Who special? *dashes off*
    Whatever it is, it doesn’t seem to be shown in Canada. Next air date for any Who episodes is still set for March 30, here. :-(

  28. johnmarley says

    Is anyone else having the issue that the blog template doesn’t always load correctly in Google Chrome?

  32. Pteryxx says

    Yeah, the Doctor Who thing is BBCA running retrospectives of the first few Doctors, along with sample full episodes from back in the day.

    —-

    Random news:

    White House promises open access to all federally funded research

    John Holdren, Obama’s science advisor, issued a directive on Friday to all research funding agencies to develop plans to make the results of federally-funded research publically available free of charge within 12 months of publication. It also requires that scientists receiving taxpayer dollars to improve upon the management and sharing of scientific data.

    This comes as a petition response here:

    https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/response/increasing-public-access-results-scientific-research

    —

    http://www.salon.com/2013/02/24/the_myth_of_persecution_early_christians_werent_persecuted/

    Moss, professor of New Testament and early Christianity at the University of Notre Dame, challenges some of the most hallowed legends of the religion when she questions what she calls “the Sunday school narrative of a church of martyrs, of Christians huddled in catacombs out of fear, meeting in secret to avoid arrest and mercilessly thrown to lions merely for their religious beliefs.” None of that, she maintains, is true. In the 300 years between the death of Jesus and the conversion of the Emperor Constantine, there were maybe 10 or 12 scattered years during which Christians were singled out for supression by Rome’s imperial authorities, and even then the enforcement of such initiatives was haphazard — lackadaisical in many regions, although harsh in others. “Christians were never,” Moss writes, “the victims of sustained, targeted persecution.”

  33. says

    It was a Dr Who special on the 2nd Doctor (they’re working their way through all of them in celebration of the 50th anniversary; the new sequence doesn’t start until the end of March) was on BBC America, 7pm Central. I’m a bit confused about the timing of these specials; they seem to be once a month.

  35. Old Mr Bear says

    johnmarley:

    I’m using Firefox, and quite often FtB will be displayed in a reduced mobile browser mode instead of the full site mode.

  37. johnmarley says

    @Old Mister Bear.
    Yeah, that’s what it does for me in Chrome, too. Anyone know why? And is there a way of stopping it?

  43. Azkyroth Drinked the Grammar Too :) says

    Carlie:

    O.o

    I’ve been trying to train myself NOT to sit that way because I suspected it was contributing to uneven sole wear and long-axial torsional wear of my shoes, and possibly to gait or ankle abnormalities that were complicating my efforts to actively exercise via walking or running.

    I never noticed it was actively uncommon.

    (Crosspostedish from the linked blog).

  44. Owlmirror says

    Yeah, that’s what [reduced mobile stylesheet] does for me in Chrome, too. Anyone know why? And is there a way of stopping it?

    It appears to be a server-side issue. If there is a way to stop it, it is not on the client side.

  45. Owlmirror says

    I tried loading the previous two iterations of the thread, but I kept getting “Forbidden” and “Page not found”.

    </nerdjoke>

  46. Pteryxx says

    Heya Audley, glad to see you’re throwing in. I’m sorta managing I guess, not as active online due to saving my spoons for other things. (Not that I can always manage to resist jumping in when it’s not good for me, but y’know. Like that’s rare around here. <_< )

  47. mythbri says

    @Audley

    Glad to hear that DarkInfant is doing well, and teefs at four months! She’s a dental prodigy. I hope she goes easy on you.

  50. says

    Giliell

    English is much easier to learn at a beginners stage and very error-tolerant. No stupid gendered nouns, no (almost) subjunctive, conjugation is mostly out of the window, too, and you’re still understood when you say “he go to work”

    You have a point about the error-tolerance. I may also be confusing the ease of learning spoken English vs written English, where the seemingly random spelling adds significant difficulty. I would also venture to suggest that the extremely simplified conjugations and ease of creating impromtu pidgins stems from modern English itself being arguably a creole language.
    mildlymagnificent
    Best wishes for hubby form me as well.

    I often wonder how Indians cope with spelling. If you listen carefully you can hear that any difficulty you have in understanding their quite clear English speech arises from emphasis rather than diction or vowel pronunciation.

    This is not entirely true; how different the vowels will be is a heavily regional thing. That is to say that different regions of India often have moderate vowel shifts in their English, relative to one another, as do different English-speaking regions outside of India. Basically, vowels can be a complete crapshoot, IME.

    Audley
    You’ve been gone? My time sense is shit, I thought I’d seen you just a couple days ago. Welcome back.
    Tony
    dontpanic beat me to it.

  52. says

    dontpanic:
    Thanks.
    I’m nearly in tears at a bar after reading that, but I think I understand better.
    If I read that correctly (again, I have a slight buzz right now), spoons are something of a metaphor for a particular physical or mental condition that has an effect on the everyday activities of an individual that others-who lack the particular condition-take for granted.
    Getting dressed.
    Driving.
    Eating.
    Taking a shower.
    Making breakfast.
    Getting out of bed.
    Washing clothes.

    Damn. I feel ashamed that my privilege is showing. I had no idea how difficult things can be for others.

  54. thunk, acolyte of metatextuality says

    Hello everyone. Audley, hi, welcome back.

    And hi to other horders who may or may not be here now.

  55. Owlmirror says

    @Lynna, and anyone else who is interested in Mormonism,

    This is the first I had seen of an analysis on, and potential contemporary sources of, the Book of Mormon. It appears to be a thing, in the corner of the academic world that does literary analysis.

    Mormon prophet Joseph Smith (1805–44) claimed that more than two-dozen ancient individuals (Nephi, Mormon, Alma, etc.) living from around 2200 BC to 421 AD authored the Book of Mormon (1830), and that he translated their inscriptions into English. Later researchers who analyzed selections from the Book of Mormon concluded that differences between selections supported Smith’s claim of multiple authorship and ancient origins. We offer a new approach that employs two classification techniques: ‘delta’ commonly used to determine probable authorship and ‘nearest shrunken centroid’ (NSC), a more generally applicable classifier. We use both methods to determine, on a chapter-by-chapter basis, the probability that each of seven potential authors wrote or contributed to the Book of Mormon. Five of the seven have known or alleged connections to the Book of Mormon, two do not, and were added as controls based on their thematic, linguistic, and historical similarity to the Book of Mormon. Our results indicate that likely nineteenth century contributors were Solomon Spalding, a writer of historical fantasies; Sidney Rigdon, an eloquent but perhaps unstable preacher; and Oliver Cowdery, a schoolteacher with editing experience. Our findings support the hypothesis that Rigdon was the main architect of the Book of Mormon and are consistent with historical evidence suggesting that he fabricated the book by adding theology to the unpublished writings of Spalding (then deceased).

      http://llc.oxfordjournals.org/content/23/4/465.abstract

    PDFs:

      http://www.stanford.edu/~mjockers/pubs/LLCPreprintReassess.pdf

      http://www.matthewjockers.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/SmithAnalysisRevised-9-12.pdf

  56. Pteryxx says

    Tony: exactly. In my case it’s mostly just PTSD, so I’m learning I have to carefully weigh whether to get involved in (or even read) a given thread fight or not.

    Thanks for the fast linking, dontpanic.

  57. says

    Tony,
    I’m not completely enamored with the use of “spoons” as the unit of currency because I think it causes some confusion. In this analogy, “spoons” are the cost of doing everyday activities. At the start of each day the individual (especially those who “don’t look sick”) starts with some limited number of spoons and they spend them doing activities. It’s just that many people don’t recognize how many spoons they start with, while others are intimately aware of the limitations of their reserve.

    If you think of it in terms of actual money in the cost of such activities, and some people start with just a fist full of dollars or even a few coins in their pocket, while most have a fat wallet or a platinum credit card. Every activity costs something (a few cents, to dollars, to $20’s on up). That would make the initial reading a bit more straightfoward. On the other hand, using money as an analogy would have left it harder to reference in such shorthand in other contexts.

  58. broboxley OT says

    looking at the extended family children splashed across the fireplace mantle, one gone forever, one in jail because of a mental disorder the courts don’t recognize one lost to stupidity with prescribed narcotics, the rest. I has a real bad sad because I’m getting old, but I have finally realized that I can only affect those who want change.

  61. says

    Hey, it’s Audley! *waves*
    ====
    The “spoons” thing makes so. much. sense. Bookmarked for the times I have to explain that I only have so much energy, and need to “budget” it to get through my day.
    ====
    Partner’s train should be arriving in Seattle in the next half-hour or so — staying up until he messages me that he got home okay.

  62. Crudely Wrott says

    Broboxley, you have my deepest sympathy, small comfort as that may be. Take what comfort you can. You still have your own life.

  63. glodson says

    Ever have a day where you feel like everything you’ve done is wrong? It has been one of those days. Fuck. It might explain why I’m trying to get drunk now despite knowing I’ve got an early day tomorrow.

  65. glodson says

    Wow. I give up in the abortion thread on reading one person’s stupid comments, and then I find another stupid guy saying really stupid things. Fuck.

  67. Jacob Schmidt says

    I already commented about this in the other thread.

    I personally see no problem with my old nym. It’s not a play on “crazy”, but nonetheless, I see JAL’s point. It’s dissimilar enough for my tastes. I’d rather keep it, as I am quite attached to it. But, well, whatever. If it makes others more comfortable, I’ll change it, at least around here.

    Typing out c r a y ALT-122 ALT-122 can be annoying anyways.

  68. says

    @ Owlmirror

    Speaking of when religions were made up, I see in today’s newspaper (The Standard -Hong Kong) a full page advert for what looks like a new religion. The title reads: “The Utterance of the Returned Jesus”. The long spiel that follows is all written in the first person by something that reads like a cross between jeebus and sky-daddy but is perhaps merely a bad translation from the original Chinese (a bit of a giveaway that, being “omnipotent” and all). Apparently it has been alive for the past thousands of years preparing some Grand Plan.

    There is a website given (link) but, quelle surprise, I cannot open it from China.

    {relurks}

  69. says

    urggh
    So, I survived the night. Poor kid has been coughing and crying most of it.
    And I just HATE the infestation of German healthcare with woo. Called my pediatrician to ask what I could give her to ease the throat pain, got told the name of some medication. Bought it, took it home, looked at it, “homeopathic remedy”. Brought it back to the pharmacy, had a short discussion about this being “a good medication”, exchanged it for some throat pastilles and paid a whomping 21€ less…

    When You™ reform English spelling, which regional dialect pronunciation is going to be used to decide said spelling?

    In Spanish there’s something called “International Spanish” to make translation easier. And right now spelling doesn’t account for regional variation either. You could say there’s justice in it being fucked up for everybody….

    mildlymagnificent

    and the whole thing is written with a simple 26 word alphabet using not a single umlaut, cedilla or other diacritical mark.

    And that is an advantage exactly how? Because those signs carry information and are easy and simple to use, usually they follow rules and they mean that you actually can tell the pronounciation from the spelling. If we just stopped using umlaute in German, it would make life more complicated because those sounds don’t only exist, they also form minimal pairs.

    +++
    Oh, and if folks want something hard to understand, try Singalese…
    ++++
    Audley
    Yay for dark infant. #1 got her teeth early as well and pretty painlessly.
    (((hugs))))

    +++
    NOw back to bed…

  73. says

    Singlish=Singapore English la. Mostly English with some Chinese. Contrast to Hinglish, Hindi-English, which has a relatively high Hindi content.

    Spoons are a fantastic metaphor, but I do feel a bit uncomfortable when people just use it to mean “out of energy”. Routinely being too tired to stand up for long enough to take a shower isn’t the same thing as just being a bit tired.

  74. Nick Gotts (formerly KG) says

    theophontes@68,

    According to the website, God has been incarnated as a woman from north China, and this has happened because the Chinese are the lowest and most disobedient (to God) people in the world. Looks like the sect has grown out of one of the Chinese “house churches”.

  77. says

    I understood the “spoon” metaphor as the spoon being a unit of energy or activity, where a normal person has a near-unlimited supply of spoons, others have a smaller, limited supply and must be careful how they are used.

    As for my own spoon reserves, they’re perpetually low. Why? Dunno. Doc can’t find anything specific that would cause this lack-of-energy. (I’m pretty sure I’ve been tested for everything under the sun, and everything came back normal.)

    I’m wondering if this hasn’t been an ongoing symptom of Hep C. (Blood transfusion pre-1990.) My infection (chronic) is stable, has been life-long, and hasn’t been otherwise symptomatic. I’m now thinking maybe I should bounce this off the doc next time I’m in.

    Another factor is the meds I’m on, at least two of which have a warning label telling me that it “might make [me] drowsy.” These are not medications I can stop taking, they’re pretty much what’s keeping out of hospital and/or the ground. But I’m almost positive it’s not the meds, because I’ve been dragging ass since early childhood — long before I was on the more, ah, interesting medications, and while I was on freakin’ Ritalin, which is pretty much prescription meth, and… yeah. Nope. No energy. Lots and lots of jitters and anxiety and upset tummies and temper tantrums*, though.

    Throw in depression, ADD, chronic pain, Cerebral Palsy, and insomnia, and the fact that I have to consciously focus in order to block out the sensory input that most people just… ignore without effort (like the fact that your shirt is touching your skin) — and that last one takes a lot of fucking effort and concentration.

    At this point, I’m not sure I even care what the cause is — I’m just so damn tired of being tired.
     
     
     
    *The temper tantrums/meltdowns were — and still are — caused by exhaustion and over-stimulation. I am utterly unable to engage my rational mind when I’m in that state. I’ve gotten better at communicating my need for space/quiet, but there are still times when I just kinda… go boom. I don’t like it, because it makes everyone unhappy.

  79. rq says

    These are for carlie. This is your present, from me, and to everyone else on the abortion thread (yes, Tony @366 on that thread, you can put it on a t-shirt).
    Art critics, I admit, I haven’t done a drawing in years but the image induced by carlie was just too good. Thank you, for that.

    Giliell
    I hope you get better fastfastfast! *warmteaandlozenges*

  81. carlie says

    rq, those are magnificent! :)

    Hi Audley!!!!!

    Nick, congrats on the research!

    Giliell, hope things get better soon.

    Good news, Katherine. Is Toc taking his medicine well?

  82. says

    @Carlie:

    He actually ate the pill without my hiding it in his food this morning. I have to still figure out how to keep Snip away from it when I give it to him. Of course, he was upset cause he thought Toc was getting a treat XD Poor baby probably thinks he’s being replaced. Completely silly, given the fact Snip is usually asleep on my bed, and I’ll let him curl up on my lap while I’m playing games on the computer. Snip’s mah baybee. Toc’s Snip’s brother.

  84. says

    [new cult]

    Actually many of you will have heard of this group before…

    The strange advert I found is here: The Standard (page 15)

    The site I linked to before is run by huwenshia of
    Guishan, Taoyuan County, in North East Taiwan

    Also runs kingdomsalvation.org

    On the same address has “dongli” running hidden-advent.org (going back to 2005).

    Also check out:

    Quasi-Christian religious group the Church of the Almighty God accused of spreading rumours that world will end on Friday [Ed: 21Dec 2012]

    Link

    Or Chinese report:

    China’s “Almighty God” Rises with Threat of Apocalypse

    Link in English.

    They are also known as “Eastern Lightning”. Link to xtian report (interesting how clearly xtians see the the bullshit of other sects)

    …

    For many years we have had F*alun G*ng advertising with gruesome signage in Hong Kong, particularly around the Kowloon ferry terminal. Nowadays I have seen everything replaced with endless signage denouncing the same group. (image) There is no shortage of cults here.

  86. says

    Just dropped by to see rq’s gift for carlie and read the whole thread (backwards)–at 85 posts it was kinda manageable.

    @rq did you ever have a chance to try any of the bread recipes? If you did, hope they turned out okay.

    @Crudely Wrott There was a story on Hockey Day in Canada a couple of weeks ago that might be of interest to you. It’s about a boy with autism on a peewee hockey team in Vancouver. http://www.cbc.ca/sports/hockey/nhl/video/#id=2333486292 (Hope the video is accessible to non-Canadians.)

  87. rq says

    Ibis3
    No, moving + flu (whole family) = not much time for recipes. :/ I do have them saved, however, and seeing as how the whole family’s feeling a bit more alive this week, I hope to give at least one a try in a couple of days! I will, of course, let you know how it all turns out (by that I mean I’ll leave a note here in the Lounge ;) ).

  88. Ogvorbis says

    Good morning, all.

    Depressed. Tired. Feeling like shit. Feeling selfish. Not good. Bad nightmares. I hope that y’all are having a better day.

  90. Beatrice says

    Good afternoon all
    I have no idea what rq’s drawing refers to, so I better look what I’ve missed since yesterday.

    Ogvorbis, *hugs*

  93. says

    No pressure, rq. Please don’t feel obliged to try the recipes at all if you don’t feel inclined or don’t have the opportunity or whatever. (Ever notice that no matter how sincere one is about saying such things, it always comes off as some kind of passive aggressive snark? Sigh.) I only occasionally check in on the Lounge thread so I wasn’t sure if you’d already left me a note here.

  95. rq says

    Ibis3
    It’s ok, I won’t feel bad if I only get a chance to try them 20 years from now. ;)

    +++

    By the way, has anyone heard from FossilFishy lately regarding the house and/or bushfire?

  96. Portia, who will be okay. says

    *HUGS* for Oggie. So sorry you had a terrible night.

    -`-`-`-`-`

    This Monday is being Mondayish. But, I stopped for coffee at my favorite spot. Their flavored brew of the day is “Highlander Grog.” :D I wasn’t sure what to expect but it is pretty tasty.

    `-`-`-`-`

    Much love to all, I have a mountain of stressors today and have to get back to it.

  97. Beatrice says

    Tony,

    I’m good for now. All of you were doing a great job there, and ..well.. I’m skipping travis’ comments and just reading the replies. It makes me less ragey.

  98. glodson says

    I’m re-reading the mess left in the Canadian Abortion thread. Those comments that looked stupid when I was drunk look even stupider now that I’m sober.

    Let’s invent hypothetical situations so that I can make an argument as to a specific time when I can rob a woman of her autonomy over her own body! That always sounds like a really good idea.

    Shit, I better leave a note that I was being sarcastic, as that seems to be a rather decent summary for the point a few people were trying to make in that thread.

  99. Beatrice says

    I got to the “if I had had children I wish the first one would have been a daughter because a daughter is always there for her dad” bit by brubakerknows.

    *barf*

  100. rq says

    Beatrice
    That one made me *barf*, too – especially since it was said as a matter of fact, without a trace of irony or sarcasm or self-awareness. And as a daughter, I resent the implication that I should be, by default, stuck caring for the elderly parents (although it does happen, mostly because I have children so that automatically makes me more likely to care, right), and that my brothers shouldn’t even be considered candidates.

  101. rq says

    Oh and later he also casually mentions that he got to do all the easy jobs – like mowing the lawn and stuff – for his parents, while his sisters did the difficult stuff, and never once mentions that he even tried to help them.

  102. glodson says

    It is good to know that brubakerknows wants a daughter because it will be a greater benefit to him later on down the road.

    I know I am devoted to my daughter in the hopes that she’ll grow up and be there for me.

    …

    Wait, no. I’m devoted to my daughter because she is my child and I want to do the best I can for her, and hope she grows up as an independent woman who is able to talk to her father about anything, and will always know that her father will do his best to help her through life which is why I feel it is my duty to understand gender issues now so that I can be a decent guide for her later as she grows into adulthood, and even beyond.

  103. says

    No doubt you have been hearing the new Republican meme on news programs, namely that the sequester was all Obama’s idea, and that Republicans gave him the tax revenue he wanted, so to hell with Obama — he is at fault, he is to blame, and he will not compromise, etc.

    Even veteran journalist Bob Woodward has jumped on this rickety bandwagon. Woodward is wrong.

    …Tim Noah argued that the White House came up with the sequestration policy “in roughly the same sense that it was Charles Lindbergh’s bad idea eight decades ago to fork over the equivalent in today’s dollars of $840,000 to a German-born carpenter named Bruno Hauptmann…. The sequester was a ransom payment.” Noam Scheiber added that saying the sequester was Obama’s idea is “like saying it was your idea to give wallet to mugger when he said, ‘Your money or your life.'”

    Republicans were threatening to crash the economy on purpose and Obama was scrambling to satisfy their demands before GOP lawmakers pulled the trigger and shot the hostage (which is to say, shot us). The sequester then became part of the plan that Republicans proceeded to vote for and brag about, before they came up with the “this is all Obama’s fault” talking point in the hopes of winning a bizarre public-relations fight.

    After Republicans created a crisis, both sides created the sequester, and both sides now consider it dangerous. The point that matters, even if Very Serious People in Washington are reluctant to acknowledge it, is that only one side is prepared to compromise to resolve the problem.

    Which leads us to Woodward’s second, and more dramatic, error.

    For the Washington Post legend, Obama is “moving the goal posts,” since everyone realized in the summer of 2011 that the sequestration cuts were supposed to be replaced with a different set of cuts — and no new revenue. It’s unfair, Woodward argues, for the White House to suddenly expect a balanced compromise when that was never part of the original plan.

    Woodward is plainly, demonstrably wrong. It’s not a matter of opinion and it’s not an answer found in a fuzzy gray area in which both sides have a credible claim.

    When the Budget Control Act became law to end the Republicans’ debt-ceiling crisis in 2011, a “super-committee” was created to find an alternative to the sequester. Was the committee’s mandate to find a cuts-only policy? Of course not — even Republicans accepted the fact that some revenue would be part of a solution. President Obama, when signing the BCA, explicitly said, “You can’t close the deficit with just spending cuts…. It also means reforming our tax code so that the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations pay their fair share.'”

    Brian Beutler added that Woodward “is just dead wrong.”…

  104. says

    Does Bob Woodward have early alzheimer’s disease?

    …after learning of the criticism, Woodward emailed Politico’s Mike Allen with a defense that made matters worse, flubbing several key, basic details, suggesting he’s even more confused about the debate than was evident from his mistaken op-ed.

  105. cicely says

    *hugs* and sympathy for broboxley.
    –
    Katherine Lorraine: Glad to hear that Toc is doing better…and may you awaken one night to two kittehs on your bed, curled up together.
    :)
    –
    *hugs* for Ogvorbis. And *bacon* (which somehow, first try, came out *ibacon*. Cyberbacon vs. imaginary bacon: which one is crispier?).
    –

    By the way, has anyone heard from FossilFishy lately regarding the house and/or bushfire?

    An excellent question.
    *begins worrying*
    –

    And as a daughter, I resent the implication that I should be, by default, stuck caring for the elderly parents (although it does happen, mostly because I have children so that automatically makes me more likely to care, right), and that my brothers shouldn’t even be considered candidates.

    Waitwaitwait. I thought that the rationale behind selectively aborting female fetuses was that a son would stay with the family and support his aging parents (with his wife doing the icky, physical parts, natch!), while a daughter requires a hefty bribe for some man to take her off your hands a dowry, and any resources you put into her upbringing (education, for instance) are wasted.
     
    Which is it?
    –

  106. rq says

    cicely, it’s this.
    As for daughers-in-law, well, common knowledge rumour has it that, should the daughter-in-law, whose Husband is the only Child With Offspring, not fit into the general family dynamic (that is, she disobeys the patriarchal Matriarch), the actual daughter will care for ailing parents, even though all will make more demands of travel and aid of the (only) Childful Couple in the family, because Children Make You Care More and Better.

  107. Portia, who will be okay. says

    rq
    I’m not to the relevant comment in that thread yet, but I love the drawing :)

  109. cicely (a Bearer of Very Little Braaaiiinzzz) says

    (Incidentally, fuck Mondays.)
    –
    *hugs* for iJoe, with plenty over to share with BossNurse, if needed. If not, save the excess against future need.
    –

  110. Esteleth, Ficus Putsch Knits says

    Blearg.

    Went to bed last night feeling mostly human.

    Woke up today with a head full of fog. Ate something. Quickly concluded this was a bad idea.

    Went to work anyway. Got Work Done.™

    Am now back home, sipping tea.

    Today can be summarized as me saying that I’m grateful that I managed to not pass out either at work, or while driving.

    —
    *hugs* for Oggie.

    —
    Crudely Wrott, plz to be checkin ur emailz.

  112. Azkyroth Drinked the Grammar Too :) says

    Yes, my white-port-and-stilton mac and cheese is better with more of the alcohol evaporated out of it. Somewhat surprisingly. O.o

  113. says

    At the risk that providing you all with a new chew toy would be better posted in Thunderdome:

    I’ve been working a bit with the organizers of an astrobiology-themed social network called S.A.G.A.N ( http://saganet.org/ ). They are basically trying to use Facebook to organize various science outreach programs.

    On March 5, S.A.G.A.N. will be hosting a webcast Q&A with Paul Davies, who has done important work in cosmology and theoretical physics but has also been associated with some dubious ideas. In increasing order of wooishness: panspermia in the form of life coming to the early Earth from Mars via meteorites, the arsenic-based life debacle, and the suggestion that origin of life would be understood through information theory rather than chemistry.

    Davies has also made some rather outrageous statements with a theological bent. In particular, he asserted “the faith scientists have in the immutability of physical laws has origins in Christian theology” and “the claim that science is free of faith is manifestly bogus”. For that Jerry Coyne, Sean Carroll, and PZ all jumped on him; while the Templeton Foundation praised him.

    In the interest of increasing S.A.G.A.N.’s traffic, I invite the Horde to ask Davies annoying questions.

  114. Beatrice says

    I saw bits and pieces about the Oscars. Mostly sexist bits and pieces, like the opening number called “We saw your boobs”. There’s a close-up of Charlize Theron looking like she wants to kill someone Seth MacFarlane, and Naomi Watts looking frozen horrified, while their names were listed.

    Wtf?

  115. says

    Owlmirror @55: thanks for posting that summary. I saw the research earlier, but have never posted about it.

    One more proof that Joseph Smith was a scam artist. It certainly puts a large hole in the mormon argument that there was no way the relatively uneducated Smith could have written such a marvelous work of literary excellence. (Quite apart from the fact that a majority mormons also prove with that argument that they know fuck all about literary excellence.)

    On another subject, Rand Paul has failed at reading comprehension and at science … again.

    Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) offers another fun example.

    On Fox News on Thursday night, Paul said the military has spent $5.2 million studying goldfish and advocated yanking funding for such programs to cut the budget.

    “In the military they have $5.2 million they spent on goldfish — studying goldfish to see how democratic they were and if we could learn about democracy from goldfish,” Paul said on Fox. “I would give the president the authority to go ahead and cut all $5 million in goldfish studies.”

    At first blush, Paul sounds like he has a point, right? If policymakers are looking for funding to cut, $5.2 million to “learn about democracy from goldfish” seems excessive, at least at first blush.

    But Princeton science professor Iain Couzin filled in some of the gaps to Poltico: “[Paul] got the funding wrong and the species wrong, and he misrepresents the work we’ve done.”

    Apparently, the research has nothing to do with learning about “democracy” from goldfish — they’re not even goldfish — but rather, is intended to “lead to advances in technology for robots that work on deep sea oil spills and radioactive leaks.”

    Couzin said the research has “direct applications to human security,” adding, “Perhaps Sen. Paul should read our papers before he comments on them and perhaps he should consider more broadly how science can help society.”…

    http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/02/25/17088176-rand-pauls-failed-fish-tale

    http://www.politico.com/story/2013/02/scientist-guts-rand-paul-on-fish-study-87964.html?hp=r5

  116. says

    @Giliell @70:

    I was wondering, since Singalese isn’t a usual English name for any language – although that it is used in a few other languages to refer to Sinhala (spoken by 16 million people, mostly in Sri Lanka). My Tamil-speaking friends tell me that Sinhala is hard for them, since while it has a lot of Tamil loanwords and a similar grammar, it is loaded with material lifted from three or four other languages.

  118. cicely (a Bearer of Very Little Braaaiiinzzz) says

    Couzin said the research has “direct applications to human security,” adding, “Perhaps Sen. Paul should read our papers before he comments on them and perhaps he should consider more broadly how science can help society.”…

    And perhaps the moon is made of delicious toffee.
    (In tones of Disgruntlement With It All.)
    –

  120. Esteleth, Ficus Putsch Knits says

    …I learned a bit of trivia today.

    The common name for thiamine deficiency, beriberi, is derived from the Sinhalese word beri “I can’t!”

    That is, people suffering from beriberi would be asked to stand, they’d attempt to, fail, and say this. And thus the origin of the term.

    Pardon me, I’m going to go cry.

  121. broboxley OT says

    I would settle for lawmakers to just read the crap they pass BEFORE they vote on it. Bad enuff they let the corporations write the bills

  123. says

    @Beatrice YES! I watched the Oscars and it seemed like it was 90% sexist jokes with about 10% racist jokes thrown in for good measure. The bit about the Boobs song (ugh, I say as I type that) –there was a framing set up that you might have missed. They had Bill Shatner as Captain Kirk come from the future and tell Seth McFarlane how horribly received he would be (worst Oscars ever) for all his tasteless (i.e. sexist) jokes. He says, like what, and then “Kirk” runs the clip of the song, along with the reactions from Theron etc. In other words, they knew how awful and sexist it was, but put it out anyway with a big sign saying “this is just a joke, so you can’t get mad at us for real”.

    In addition to the examples in your BuzzFeed link, there was also a skit with Sally Field where Seth McFarlane meets her in the Green Room and sexually harasses her (going on and on about how hot she was as the Flying Nun even after she tells him that he’s making her uncomfortable), which eventually succeeds in “seducing her” and they leave together after a passionate kiss (also after a dig at Adele who is supposedly busy “shouting” (I think that’s the word he uses, but I don’t recall) so no one will notice them leaving).

    As far as sexist crap, I really do think it was the worst Oscars I’ve ever watched.

  125. Beatrice says

    Ibis3,
    You’re right, I didn’t know about the part with Shatner. His participation makes me sad.

  126. says

    Can I also say how much the comments on the BuzzFeed article make it even worse? All those people condoning it because it’s oh so funny and he made fun of men too and the women were in on it so take out your tampon and get a sense of humour or think of poor Dear Muslima. It makes me feel like we’re never going to make any progress and women will be ground down forever.

  129. carlie says

    We watched a few episodes of community instead.

    Oh sure, go and make me depressed. *pout* It’s just not right any more, is what it is. It’s just not right.

  130. Portia, who will be okay. says

    Wow. I am also glad I skipped the Oscars. I was invited to watch them with a friend who likes to make sexist jokes and is totally unreceptive to my perspective on those things, so I’m glad I saved myself the stress.

  132. Beatrice says

    I didn’t know about Sally Field either.
    I’m sure the problem was her lack of humor.
    /sarcasm

  133. Beatrice says

    Form Portia’s link:

    Getting Charlize Theron and Naomi Watts to pre-record looks of mortification didn’t help, either. (It was hard to tell watching at home, unless you were keeping track of what each woman was wearing, that these weren’t live shots.) It just seemed like a way for MacFarlane to make fun of viewers for being prudish and not “getting it.” (See, the cool girls think that it’s funny!)

    Oh.

  134. Parrowing buıʍoɹɹɐd says

    carlie:

    Is something going on with the ongoing saga that is Community again?

  135. Ogvorbis says

    Thanks to all for hugs.

    TRIGGER WARNING

    I’m kicking myself because of a comment made on another thread. About the other boys knowing what a particular boy scout leader was doing. So now I am wondering — did they know? were they thankful it wasn’t them? did they not know? and, most important, why did I not even think about the boys who were not chosen? Shit. I’m depressed (again). I’m feeling guilty about my selfishness (which is new). How the fuck can ~2 years fuck up an entire life?

    Sorry about dumping here.

  136. Rip Steakface says

    Went on a trip this weekend for jazz band. While on the bus out to the place (long ride, ~8 hours), someone took out some speakers and played this song. It’s a calm, understated hip-hop song with lyrics passionately promoting gay rights… and it’s beautiful. Even if you think hip-hop is the worst thing to happen to music since the last terrible thing you think happened, listen to that damn song.

  137. carlie says

    Parrowing – new season turning out to be not quite right, as predicted. Hopefully it will get better.

    The Oscars – I let my 13 year old watch it for the first time – he was really excited about the animation awards. I wasn’t in the room. Now I”ve seen the video of the opening number, and I feel sick. This is what he saw as the paragon of movies?

  140. Parrowing buıʍoɹɹɐd says

    Thanks, carlie. I thought maybe it had been stopped abruptly again. I’ve been feeling that way about this season so far, too. :-/

    *

    Thanks for the book rec, Giliell. It’s going on my list.

    *

    Hugs for Ogvorbis

    *

    I can’t count how many times people have tried to convince me that if I just sit down and watch a season of Family Guy, I’ll enjoy it. I’ve probably seen about a season’s worth just in passing (and I’ve sat through the occasional episode to appease whoever was trying to convince me), and I have never ever regretted my decision to not seek it out. Also happy I didn’t watch the Oscars last night.

  144. glodson says

    At one point, very early on, Family Guy seemed to make jokes at the expense of sexism and homophobic remarks. But then they realized that the asshole market was quite large and making sexist and homophobic jokes were just easier, so that happened.

    I’ve stopped watching altogether. I’ve come to realize that Macfarlene is a hack, and I shocked that his Nazi joke at the Oscar announcements didn’t raise more eyebrows.

  145. glodson says

    I just read the articles linked about the Oscars. I am so happy that I didn’t watch. What a bunch of crap. I was being kind when I called Macfarlene a hack.

    Sexist and racist, what an entitled douchebag.

  146. broboxley OT says

    missed the oscars, dont watch them, rarely if ever do I watch the movies associated with them. Sounds like I didn’t miss a thing. However from the comments, maybe lenny bruce isn’t as funny as I thought he was

  147. David Marjanović says

    AAARGH AAARGH AAARGH!!! I procrastinate for a weekend, then decide to pop in here to dump a few links so I can close the tabs this computer can’t deal with in the long run, so I can work better – and I find that there are several highly interesting discussions going on!!!

    So:

    Opinion 20: Esperanto is rubbish – for rather technical reasons! A long, very interesting, and very entertaining read; when you’re done, read or at least skim the Wikipedia article on Esperanto phonology.

    Opinion 16: English spelling doesn’t need a reform – it needs a bloody revolution! A much shorter article about real and imagined problems with reforming the English spelling system, which follows rules over 85 % of the time !!

    Also:

    The Bad Men Project

    And sterile Internet hugs to Giliell and family.

  149. says

    Another matter:

    The news informs me that only ~50% of Russians polled by the Moscow-based Novye Izvestia paper “believe that the Chelyabinsk bolide was caused by a meteor”. The remainder make claims that span all manners of nonsense: US weapons test, Russian weapons test, message from God (echoing a Chelyabinsk-based Orthodox cleric), a UFO, and a deadly space virus. Other outlets have polled different samples of the population, but find either a slight majority or a large minority of denialists.

    And all this when the thing was recorded from dozens of different cameras, so that you can track its trajectory by watching the fraction of them that were uploaded to Youtube, and when anyone can go over to Lake Chebarkul and search likely spots for pieces.

  150. triskelethecat says

    Haven’t been here for a while, but this is just a dump and run. I’ll try to be back later!

    Don’t know if this will fit anyone but if you’re jobhunting and want to be in Ohio…. there are worse states.

    http://tinyurl.com/b8t4vzm

  151. Menyambal --- son of a son of a bachelor says

    Rip Steakface, thanks for the song link.

    Family Guy is only watched by the snarly-jerk teen of this extended family, the fan of messed-up people and folks getting hurt. I do find some few bits amusing, but those parts seem to be followed by a minute of inaction, as if they are waiting for the audience to get the joke, or maybe to laugh at the uncomfortable pause (or maybe just padding-out the show).

  152. David Marjanović says

    “Sauropod heads are essentially all mouth. The jaw joint is at the very back of the skull, and they didn’t have cheeks, so they came pretty close to having Pac Man-Cookie Monster flip-top heads,” researcher Mathew Wedel at the Western University of Health Sciences in Pomona, Calif., told LiveScience.

    And it’s not just Matt Wedel. This is how people who work on sauropods talk. Because sauropods are so awesome!

    More petitions and fundraisers:

    NRA members mostly support the ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, but the leadership doesn’t, and therefore Sen. McConnell (R-KY) doesn’t either. There’s a petition to him to reconsider, and there’s an ad with a hunter saying he’d be a bad hunter if he needed that kind of weaponry that will be aired in KY if enough people donate.

    A pipeline is planned through British Columbia to bring natural gas from fracking to the sea. It seems like the people who live there weren’t really informed much, let alone asked what they think about it. They’ve been protesting on site for a long time now and would like to keep that up.

    Michele Fucking Bachmann is on the House Intelligence Committee. Off with her!

    Petition to “[s]upport Support the Private Student Loan Bankruptcy Fairness Act, which is common sense legislation that would treat privately issued student loans the same as other types of private debt in bankruptcy, providing much needed relief and consumer protections to college students and recent graduates who are struggling with excessive debt.” Requires a 5-digit ZIP code. Go, Chris Gibson!

  153. David Marjanović says

    And all this when the thing was recorded from dozens of different cameras, so that you can track its trajectory by watching the fraction of them that were uploaded to Youtube, and when anyone can go over to Lake Chebarkul and search likely spots for pieces.

    Well, that happens when people aren’t used to the fact that lumps of steel fall from the sky, but are used to the government not telling them the whole truth about pretty much anything.

    (…Yeah, it’s not really steel, but…)

  155. says

    @David:

    I get some of the motivations, but this isn’t just a question of mistrusting the Russian government – it’s a question of mistrusting everyone who was injured by the shockwave, who had a dash cam attached to their car that happened to be looking in the right direction, or who has picked up the pieces. Plus everyone with an infrasound microphone array and the weather satellites that all saw the bolide go down.

    Like with the moon landing denialists or the UFO enthusiasts, I must conclude that at for a significant fraction of the population evidence has ceased to be relevant.

    But perhaps I speak from a privileged position. I am quite aware of what falls from the sky and how often it falls.

  156. says

    David M. @148

    Kickstarter project: Grieving for the Living: Effects of Disownment in Adulthood – going to be a book.

    I should point some ex-mormons to that kickstarter project. The fit is almost uncanny.

  157. David Marjanović says

    From last subthread:

    One of the problems people discovered when trying to speak Esperanto early on was the lack of swear words. How do you import obscenities into a brand-new language?

    Interesting. Esperanto does have a prefix and a suffix that both express contempt…

    Anyway, we’re stuck with English at least for the next couple of generations, but it’s interesting to imagine what language people would really be speaking on the Starship Enterprise in the 24th century, I think.

    Two things are for sure:

    1) English won’t stand still;

    2) I’d expect there to be lots of Vulcan loanwords related to spacefaring. In Star Trek, there’s one, and that’s only in Enterprise where they retconned the “M-class planets” as “Minshara-class”.

  158. says

    @David:

    I always assumed there was a Translation Convention in force for Star Trek. We don’t often hear aliens speaking in whatever language they’re actually using (except for occasional Klingon and Vulcan), but get everything in English / whatever dubbing has been done. Likewise, Federation Vernacular English (or whatever it is that Starfleet uses) was being translated into late-20th-century American English.

    I may be starting to apply Fixer Fic to Star Trek, which the more serious trekkies I know say I am not allowed to do anymore. I once re-wrote the whole setting and came up with something like Schlock Mercenary instead.

  159. vaiyt says

    More dealing with the diploma business.

    I’m trying to keep the negativity under control with help of my online friends and gaming… which brings out guilt for spending too much time in front of the computer -_-;

    Thanks for all that offered hugs in the meantime. I’ll work on proper thanks when and if I get out of this.

  160. says

    Food stamps for pets?
    “When man falls on hard times, what’s his best friend to do?
    A new donation-based program called Pet Food Stamps aims to provide food stamps for pets of low-income families and for food stamp recipients who otherwise could not afford to feed their pets, reported ABC affiliate KVIA in Las Cruces, N.M.
    Based in New York, the program is open to anyone in the United States. More than 45,000 pets have already been signed up in the past two weeks, according to the program’s founder and executive director Marc Okon. Once need and income is verified, the families will receive pet food each month from pet food retailer Pet Food Direct for a six-month period.
    “We’re not looking for government funding at this point,” Okon told ABCNews.com. “Should the government be willing to provide assistance further down the line, we will look into it.”
    The only way to apply for the program is through an online application, but Okon said applications would be accepted through mail once the program moved to its new office.

  161. ck says

    David Marjanović wrote:

    Petition to “[s]upport Support the Private Student Loan Bankruptcy Fairness Act, which is common sense legislation that would treat privately issued student loans the same as other types of private debt in bankruptcy

    Wasn’t it just a few years ago that the law was changed to specifically exclude private student loans from bankruptcy forgiveness? The excuse was that it had to be excluded because of massive fraud by those who would take them, and then declare bankruptcy immediately after college was complete to avoid paying back their loans. I’m increasingly suspect of those who claim massive fraud these days, though.

    Tony the Queer Shoop (supporter of unrestricted access to abortion) wrote:

    A new donation-based program called Pet Food Stamps aims to provide food stamps for pets of low-income families

    Uhg.. Frankly, food stamps is a bad idea for humans, let alone pets. Let the charity recipients spend their ‘gift’ on whatever they please without someone else acting as a paternalistic gatekeeper for the money.

  162. broboxley OT says

    ck #161 even worse, if you have a drug conviction, no food for you, go steal if you are broke and hungry

  163. David Marjanović says

    Hi, David M. [waves] Are you still living in Paris?

    *wave* :-) No, I started my second year here in Berlin a few weeks ago. My first postdoc! Before that, I spent a year at home in Vienna.

    I get some of the motivations, but this isn’t just a question of mistrusting the Russian government – it’s a question of mistrusting everyone who was injured by the shockwave, who had a dash cam attached to their car that happened to be looking in the right direction, or who has picked up the pieces. Plus everyone with an infrasound microphone array and the weather satellites that all saw the bolide go down.

    Of course. That’s part “they’re probably in on it”, part not thinking it through.

    Likewise, Federation Vernacular English (or whatever it is that Starfleet uses) was being translated into late-20th-century American English.

    *lightbulb moment* Makes sense… though we do get exposed to plenty of new words for new concepts, like “tricorder” and “phaser”.

    Wasn’t it just a few years ago that the law was changed to specifically exclude private student loans from bankruptcy forgiveness?

    Yes, and that’s what the petition is against.

    Accusations of massive fraud always make think they’re launched by people who’re trying to say “I’m an asshole, so everyone else must be, too”; but then, I think university should be financed by taxes in the first place… it’s an investment by Us the People.

    Frankly, food stamps is a bad idea for humans

    Quite. Over here, they were abolished for everyone as soon as the aftermath of WWII (die Nachkriegszeit, “the after-war time”) was largely over.

    even worse, if you have a drug conviction, no food for you

    Hooraaaaaaaaaay.

  165. Portia, who will be okay. says

    Peezus H Christ. I posted on fb about the Boobs song at the Oscars, and got this from a middle-aged white dude:

    I just listened to the song…..and watched the reaction of some of the individuals…..one comment of reflection….don’t want someone commenting about that reality…..don’t consent to do that in a movie…..now for gender balance it might have been fitting to do a two part song….the second part dealing with male asses seen in the movies…..[it would be better to have him sing about penises…but can’t do that as that changes the picture rating]….finally, I understand he is offensive and to anticipate less during the show is naive…..

    …wut. This is from a gay man who posts about gay rights. I would never think of calling him naive for calling out homophobic crap. I don’t even…

  166. cicely (a Bearer of Very Little Braaaiiinzzz) says

    itteh bitteh diversiteh committeh ^_^ *squee*

    *sqeee!*
    –

    […]and a deadly space virus.

    I dunno; that strikes me as a bit big for a virus…ST:TOS giant space amoebae aside.
    –
    triskelethecat!
    *pouncehug*
    –
    Good news! Nephew-in-Law’s diagnosis: chemically-induced psychosis. Apparently he’d simply been on the muscle relaxant far too long (and this was among those options listed in the fine print under WARNINGS, and Side Effects).
    –

  169. David Marjanović says

    More catching-up…

    English is not only the most commonly spoken language on the planet (someone correct me if I’m wrong), it is the lingua franca of science,

    100 years ago, there were German, English, and French, more or less in that order, with the proportion of German apparently increasing. The motto of Stanford University, which was founded around that time, is in German.

    Two world wars later, science was a US thing, because everyone else was too dead or too poor to invest serious money in science. (Oh, sure, there was the Soviet Union, but they were stewing in their own juices… and still are, because they got poorer and poorer.) So, practically all science was in English. Nowadays, the Chinese are beginning to flood the “market”, and there’s plenty of science published in Chinese – but because learning to read (let alone write) Chinese is so much harder than English unless maybe if you’re Japanese, and because English is so global already while Chinese is only of use in China, most Chinese scientists speak understandable English now.

    the official language of aerial transport and flight control

    US and UK out-investing everyone after WWII.

    and it has more words than any other language.

    1) Spoken by many people; 2) used right now in contexts where words are created (you mentioned science); 3) plenty of synonyms (often doublets where one synonym is of native origin and the other is from medieval Norman French); 4) quite some dialectal diversity, with words originally limited to one or a few dialects occasionally cropping up in the standard language.

    Also, there’s the Oxford English Dictionary, which allows you to count the words fairly easily. Comparable historical dictionaries don’t exist for many languages. For German, one was made (by Jacob Grimm) in the late 19th century, but it’s only being updated now, a process that is taking decades.

    It has, therefore, at least the potential of being more expressive and more precise than other languages.

    In some fields, particularly science right now, yes. 200 years ago, English was seemingly hopeless in that regard, and French was more or less in that position.

    sexy-times and snuggles — aaah. ^_^

    :-) :-) :-)

    Because I don’t know any other language that is that fucked up. I mean, Irish has a weird spelling system, but at least it’s regular.

    Yep, the English spelling system is worse than French*, worse than Tibetan**, worse than Mongolian-in-the-Mongolian-alphabet***… Irish does lots of weird things****, but yes, it is mostly regular.

    * If you only know how to pronounce a French word, good luck guessing the spelling. But if you know the spelling, you can figure out the pronunciation with precision. The only exceptions are proper names and a few short common words.
    ** Silent letters on both ends of words! Like… Double French!
    *** Spelled the way Genghis Khan pronounced it. Like English, Mongolian has changed a lot in the meantime; for instance there’s something very similar to the English silent gh. – Mongolian in the Cyrillic alphabet is a wonder of clarity, almost as clear as a Soviet alphabet can get.
    **** How is “four men” spelled again? Ceathar fhear or something? I’m told it’s pronounced [kʲʰaraːr]. Like English silent gh on steroids.

    If left to their own devices, they say it ‘theh’, with the ‘-eh’ kind of like the ‘ai-’ sound in ‘air’.

    Yep. Turns out English words never end in /ɛ/, unless you count meh and feh – that’s quite unusual from a Standard Average European perspective.

    My favorite bit of English-is-weird is the letter cluster ough.

    Isn’t that part of an off the wall spelling of “fish” using some of the quirks of English?

    The mentioned ghoti has occasionally been extended to ghotiugh, with ugh as in though.

    Marc Okrand being the joking type, the Klingon word for “fish” is of course ghotI’, with all five letters of that word pronounced regularly: [ʁotʰɪʔ].

    Often, English gh makes etymological sense; th-ou-gh corresponds 1 : 1 to German d-o-ch. But sometimes, as in ghost or ghastly, the h is completely spurious.

    Endless thanks, Joe. Esteleth is an angel (I’ve said so before) and you are too. The Horde is made of loving concern. I’m gobsmacked and not sure how to handle it. Folks I only know through their written words are literally providing for my survival. My astonishment continues unabated.

    *dumps heap of hugs on the floor*
    *goes to bed*

  170. David Marjanović says

    quite some dialectal diversity, with words originally limited to one or a few dialects occasionally cropping up in the standard language

    I mention this because any large German dictionary contains a few words that I, a fairly well-read holder of a doctorate, have never encountered before and that I can’t even guess the meaning of.

  171. pharm scigrad says

    Arrrrggghhh… I need someone to tell me this is as ridiculous as I think it is:

    A change in our ‘perception’ will change our ‘reflection’. Light does not travel, it reflects itself giving the illusion of travel. — deep thought to ponder.

    I swear, the stuff about how cancer was because your cell receptors felt your anger and your cancer DNA is exposed and blah blah was… whatever, I KNEW that was bogus, (and said as much in a PM to my friend) but this is just so, so… it makes me stutter. I don’t want to cause a flamewar on my friend’s wall, but she was the one who asked me to comment on her question in the first place and now I’ve got Mr. DeepThinker on there spouting off all this mess – it is taking a lot inner strength not to push caps lock and go Horde on him. Especially when there is someone else on there commenting that there is a lot of truth to what he is saying. ><

  172. says

    Oh my Dog…

    I have the flu AND the shits. I feel HORRIBLE. I could DIE!

    On the other hand, do you know what happens when you actually bell a cat? The cat hears the bell, hates the bell, desperately wants to get away from the bell, and completely can’t get away from the bell. So the cat runs from room to room, under and over and around everything, before giving up and sitting perfectly, completely still.

  173. ck says

    pharm scigrad,

    You could just try to out deepity him, by getting ridiculous fake quotes from a Deepak Chopra generator and posting them. And always remember, “Our consciousness is the continuity of ephemeral acceptance”, whatever that means.

  174. says

    vaiyt-

    Ugh, that’s completely horseshit and it sucks how universities always wait until the last minute to let you know about stuff like that. Hope you can work it out with the minimal amount of bullshit and life disruption! *Hugs*

    cicely-

    At least you now know what’s causing it, so the nephew-in-law can get back to feeling all right.

    On Oscars-

    Yeah, there seems to be a distinct strain of man who seems to be wanting to defend Seth MacFarlane’s hackneyed rote privileged old men’s club routine as some sort of great comedy that one could only complain about if one was a humorless feminist.

    The problem about the defenses though is that they in no way resemble other defenses of legitimately challenging and daring comedy. No specific citing of which jokes in particular struck them as funniest or why those particular jokes were high comedy, but rather a bunch of “he was hilarious” and “I laughed at everything” with no real information other than defensiveness.

    It’s almost enough to make you suspicious that they’re defending the sexism in general and are unwilling to stand up and admit that in public.

    Impending Unemployment Update-

    Just heard back from the summer job I applied for (and which I thought I interviewed pretty well for (I made the interviewer laugh a lot and was directly complimented several times by the interviewer)). I didn’t get the position and the rejection letter was a bit oddly phrased. Trying to not read anything into that as it was probably just a form rejection letter and an honest hiring decision on their part, but I’m starting to get a little bit worried about my employment chances with my not-passing body type and starting to wonder if I need to go back in the closet for the short-to-medium term just to become financially stable.

    Fucking oppression, man. I really miss Denmark and its not giving a damn about my gender presentation awesomeness. And I miss not feeling paranoid all the damn time.

  175. JAL: Snark, Sarcasm & Bitterness says

    Jacob Schmidt,

    Thank you for changing your nym and not making a thing about. While you may not have meant it to mean crazy, and I may have been the only one to bring it up here but there’s plenty of people who do use crayzz that way and there’s slang “cray-cray” for crazy as well. I really appreciate the change but I was just so uncomfortable I didn’t like using your username, which would have just been rude when talking to you.

    Sorry I didn’t respond sooner. I ran away from that threat right after that because that douche’s “daughters are always there for their fathers” just pushed me too far. It brought up a lot of issues I had growing up.

    Often I comment only because something compels me to yet I can’t follow through for long because those same things repulse me away. (You guys don’t repulse me, the douchenozzels spewing toxic shit do.) I hope that makes sense.

    —

    In awesome news today, I got a lot of great books from Pteryxx who kindly included a plastic Easter egg filled with jelly beans that Little One has named Nemo (because it was colored like Nemo). It totally made our day. =)

  176. says

    pharm scigrad @171

    But light does travel. It is both a particle and a wave, both of which have direction and temporal positions that we can actually track and visualize with nifty experiments (like using a surface of water to view how sound waves travel in a medium).

    I mean, before we can get to the bizarre linguistics/physics bait and switch and everything else wrong with it, that’s the part that’s just jumping out at me from the get-go.

  177. JAL: Snark, Sarcasm & Bitterness says

    Randomly from the bottom of the Thread since there’ no way to really catch up:

    Endless thanks, Joe. Esteleth is an angel (I’ve said so before) and you are too. The Horde is made of loving concern. I’m gobsmacked and not sure how to handle it. Folks I only know through their written words are literally providing for my survival. My astonishment continues unabated.

    QFMFT
    Seriously, felt the same way when y’all saved me. Twice.

    ===========
    ==========
    o.O
    Thank god I didn’t watch the Oscars. I don’t like that kind of crap when it’s done well, this year just sounds like the worst ever and done on purpose. Ughhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
    =============
    ============
    Cerberus from Time Forgot

    Impending Unemployment Update-

    Just heard back from the summer job I applied for (and which I thought I interviewed pretty well for (I made the interviewer laugh a lot and was directly complimented several times by the interviewer)). I didn’t get the position and the rejection letter was a bit oddly phrased. Trying to not read anything into that as it was probably just a form rejection letter and an honest hiring decision on their part, but I’m starting to get a little bit worried about my employment chances with my not-passing body type and starting to wonder if I need to go back in the closet for the short-to-medium term just to become financially stable.

    Fucking oppression, man. I really miss Denmark and its not giving a damn about my gender presentation awesomeness. And I miss not feeling paranoid all the damn time.

    Holy fuck, that sucks! I’m so sorry. =( *hugs*

  182. strange gods before me ॐ says

    Uhg.. Frankly, food stamps is a bad idea for humans, let alone pets. Let the charity recipients spend their ‘gift’ on whatever they please without someone else acting as a paternalistic gatekeeper for the money.

    As you noted, this is a charity. A charity with a gimmicky name. Unlike actual food stamps, it’s not tax money, so there’s no requirement for anyone to give. People donate to what moves them, and those who want to give money directly to people in poverty already have ways of doing so. The set of people who would give though a charity like this is not a subset of the people who would give directly. Therefore, these donations can either 1) satisfy your criteria for non-paternalism, or 2) occur at all. But not both.

  183. pharm scigrad says

    ck – That is a rather brilliant idea, which made me laugh (a sorely needed laugh, I might add). Some random Chopra quote would probably be just the thing he was looking for out of me. Apparently my suggestion that we keep our modern, evidence-based approach to medical care while making changes to fix how it is delivered to patients and reimbursed by payors was much too myopic. He called me out directly, more on topic this time (regarding my comments on health care and pharmaceuticals versus natural/holistic alternatives) with a very long winded comment that began:

    I agree with much of what you’ve said but encourage you to zoom out… make a paradigm shift and look at the entire picture from a birds eye.

    ><
    *********************
    Cerberus from Time Forgot – I did take physics, but I can't say I particularly enjoyed it. I know light is both a particle and a wave – pretty damn sure it travels, sun being where it is and all, but it is always nice to have confirmation of that from people more sure of these things than I. Never took philosophy, even though I technically have a degree in it (pretty strange thing, come to think about it), so I've picked all that sort of unraveling of horrible argument from the internets. I'm very glad to know that my bullshit detector is functioning correctly. Thanks.
    *********************
    Tony the Queer Shoop (supporter of unrestricted access to abortion) – LOL – Game. Set. Match. I think you win an internet for that. I don't know if I can give out internets, but if so, you get mine. :)

  184. opposablethumbs says

    Cerberus, that is so shite :-( chocolate and wishes for a better outcome. .

    Hugs to Ogvorbis – hope you’re feeling better????

    It feels a little odd to say good news, cicely, but it really is, isn’t it. Hope the change of drug regime works well and soon.

  185. John Morales says

    David,

    Opinion 20: Esperanto is rubbish – for rather technical reasons! A long, very interesting, and very entertaining read; when you’re done, read or at least skim the Wikipedia article on Esperanto phonology.

    Cripes!

    A long, very interesting, and very entertaining read, indeed — but I wish I truly understood more than a small part of the technical stuff.

    (I’m taking a break now, but I’m up to “F”)

  187. says

    Morning
    Kid is slowly getting better, at least she got a good night of sleep, has eaten breakfast and is already fit enough to throw a tantrum when things don’t go her way.
    Me, not so much.

    iJoe
    You can sit right next to me in the “feeling bad and being contagious” corner.

    David

    **** How is “four men” spelled again? Ceathar fhear or something? I’m told it’s pronounced [kʲʰaraːr]. Like English silent gh on steroids.

    H mostly eclipses the sound before it, as in “Baile atha Cliath” (Dublin), except in the combination with bh and mh when it becomes “f” (dubh (black), Niamh).
    What makes it really weird to learners is the way in which prepositions and stuff add letters which then eclipse other letters and stuff. So, “in Dublin” becomes “i mBaile atha Cliath” with the m eclipsing the B (maille). But that shit is regular and you can go from spelling to pronounciation (though vice versa is hard)

    ++++
    Ahhh, capitalist economy. World’s largest chemical company makes record profit, stock dumps.

  189. Nick Gotts (formerly KG) says

    The doughty-faced ploughman from Scarbourough fell into a slough and coughed and hiccoughed. – Esteleth

    Hmm, that repeats the “ow” sound three times, and misses some!

    The rough-coated, dough-faced ploughman strode coughing and hiccoughing through Scarborough.

  190. Nick Gotts (formerly KG) says

    To those whose native language isn’t Indo-European, it’s no easier to learn or use than a dozen-odd natural pidgins and creoles, and there aren’t enough speakers of it to make it worth the bother for anyone trying to learn a useful second language. – Dalillama

    I’m not sure that’s true, because there’s an international Esperanto community, mostly well-educated progressives, and I’m told many of them are ready to offer hospitality to fellow-Esperantists.

  192. says

    Hai! It’s not that I don’t love you anymore, I’m just busy. SO is here for a week, I have night shifts, and am generally enjoying myself…Talk soon.

  193. Ogvorbis says

    Hugs to Ogvorbis – hope you’re feeling better????

    Not really. Another shitty night. I thought I had achieved equilibrium, but I guess not.

  195. richardh says

    pharm scigrad

    A change in our ‘perception’ will change our ‘reflection’. Light does not travel, it reflects itself giving the illusion of travel. — deep thought to ponder.

    Never mind the physics, you could start by pointing out the fallacy of equivocation. The “perception” and “reflection” in the first sentence are being used in some psychological sense. The “perception”of light is biological, its “reflection” is physics. Any connection between these meanings is coincidental. This “argument” is essentially isomorphic to the as-above-so-below woo-meme.

    Oh, and the physics is nonsense too (trust me, I’m a physicist!). In classical physics, Maxwell’s equations combine to produce a wave equation; the uniqueness theorem allows us to construct Green’s functions which advance the solution in time; informally this can be represented as Huygens wavelets spreading from at every point on the wavefront. (The quantum explanation is left as an exercise for the reader…)
    If you want deepity word-salad, you could say that the light propagates itself. There’s probably a bad agricultural metaphor lurking somewhere in there.

  196. broboxley OT says

    A change in our ‘perception’ will change our ‘reflection’. Light does not travel, it reflects itself giving the illusion of travel. — deep thought to ponder.

    if one does not have a reflection, does light cease to exist?

  198. Portia, who will be okay. says

    Cerberus

    Trying to not read anything into that as it was probably just a form rejection letter and an honest hiring decision on their part, but I’m starting to get a little bit worried about my employment chances with my not-passing body type and starting to wonder if I need to go back in the closet for the short-to-medium term just to become financially stable.
    Fucking oppression, man. I really miss Denmark and its not giving a damn about my gender presentation awesomeness. And I miss not feeling paranoid all the damn time.

    Damn, I can’t even say how much that sucks. I’m really sorry you have to deal with it.

    JAL

    In awesome news today, I got a lot of great books from Pteryxx who kindly included a plastic Easter egg filled with jelly beans that Little One has named Nemo (because it was colored like Nemo). It totally made our day. =)

    :D :D :D

    *get well teddy bears and chocolate* for Giliell and Joe

  199. opposablethumbs says

    Not really. Another shitty night. I thought I had achieved equilibrium, but I guess not.

    :-((((((
    I’m really sorry to hear that. Two steps forward, one back? I can just barely, faintly imagine how hard this must be. I hope you get to another forward step really soon.

  201. Ogvorbis says

    I’m really sorry to hear that.

    Thanks.

    Two steps forward, one back?

    Sometimes it feels like one step forward, three steps back. Three years ago, all I knew was that I didn’t like being in cub scouts. That was easier.

    I can just barely, faintly imagine how hard this must be. I hope you get to another forward step really soon.

    I swear my brain is spending all my waking and sleeping hours coming up with ways to tell me this is my fault. I joined scouts. I never said no. I never told. I abused others. I recruited others. And, most recently, I never even thought about whether or not the other scouts knew what was going on. Which makes no sense.

  202. Portia, who will be okay. says

    It’s almost enough to make you suspicious that they’re defending the sexism in general and are unwilling to stand up and admit that in public.

    Well put. Have a cuppa tea* for hitting the nail on the head like that.

    *Or treat of your preference.

  203. dianne says

    Dropping in for a random rant. On the Catholic hospital thread, people mentioned doctors doing work arounds to get patients needed care in Catholic hospitals. I considered responding there, but decided that my rant was more general and so moved it to here. I hope you don’t mind. Anyway, here goes.

    Work arounds are depressing as crap. No matter why they’re needed. Every single employee in a hospital should have the patients’ well being as their top priority. Not ideology, not making the biggest bonus, not providing the prettiest rooms and the yummiest food, not even complying with the law. The patients’ best interests should ALWAYS be the first priority. It’s nice if that matches your ideology, provides a big bonus, allows you time to worry about the tastiness of the food, and complies with all laws, but those are secondary issues. If we’re not here for the patients’ health, why are we here? So I find having to do things like appear to be trying to cut costs so that the dean can get a big bonus annoying and would find having to make complicated excuses to save a pregnant woman’s life soul destroying.

    Why do we put up with this crap? When a high level hospital employee says, “You can’t keep taking uninsured patients, we won’t be able to make our bonuses” why isn’t that a career destroying statement? It should be. Why do we even consider allowing organizations that have as doctrine that certain people should be allowed to die when we could save them (gays with HIV, pregnant women in trouble) to have anything to do with hospitals? What’s wrong with people?

  204. dianne says

    100 years ago, there were German, English, and French, more or less in that order, with the proportion of German apparently increasing.

    And then Germany let its anti-feminist right wing nuts into power. See what happens when you do that?

  205. Matt Penfold says

    Dianne,

    It is not even in for-profit healthcare systems that there are such problems.

    A NHS trust (basically a part of the NHS that runs hospitals in a geographical area) was found to have so neglected patient care that the number of excess deaths may well have run into the hundreds. The reason for this neglect was that the trust managers put too much emphasis on meeting Government targets (on waiting times, cost savings etc) and too little on actually providing good care. Several other NHS trusts are now under investigation for similar occurrences.

    (For those wanting to know more, google North Staffordshire NHS Trust).

  206. rq says

    Would it be more correct to say, “Her Majesty, the Queen of Sweden, Silvia” or “Her Majesty, Silvia, the Queen of Sweden”?
    Is there a website for such protocol?
    (Translating.)

  207. glodson says

    A change in our ‘perception’ will change our ‘reflection’. Light does not travel, it reflects itself giving the illusion of travel. — deep thought to ponder.

    Cubert J. Farnsworth: I understand how the engines work now. It came to me in a dream. The engines don’t move the ship at all. The ship stays where it is, and the engines move the universe around it.
    Bender: That’s a complete load!
    Cubert J. Farnsworth: Nothing’s a complete load! Not if you can imagine it. That’s what being a scientist is all about.

    I think Chopra learned science from Professor Farnsworth and Cubert.

  208. Matt Penfold says

    Would it be more correct to say, “Her Majesty, the Queen of Sweden, Silvia” or “Her Majesty, Silvia, the Queen of Sweden”?
    Is there a website for such protocol?

    I would go for the latter, but are you asking specifically about the Swedish royal family, or more generally ?

  209. rq says

    Matt
    Specifically for her. Wikipedia says she’s styled Her Majesty The Queen, but I have to have the ‘of Sweden’ in there, plus her name.

  212. richardh says

    myself I’d drop the definite article, as the name makes it clear which one you mean, thus:

    Her Majesty Queen Silvia of Sweden

    but what do I know?

  213. says

    David M. @163

    *wave* :-) No, I started my second year here in Berlin a few weeks ago. My first postdoc! Before that, I spent a year at home in Vienna.

    Now I feel rude and stupid for not keeping up with you and your activities. [sad face] I’m only a little more than two years behind in the Pharyngula universe.

    Happy smiles for the postdoc position!

    I guess I could introduce you to my daughter, who admires your brilliance, the next time you travel to NYC. (She is married, so no sexual or romantic innuendo is intended.)

  214. Matt Penfold says

    myself I’d drop the definite article, as the name makes it clear which one you mean, thus:

    Her Majesty Queen Silvia of Sweden

    but what do I know?

    You could do that, but then you risk loosing making it clear what her official title is (HM Queen Silvia) as opposed to the qualification, which it makes it clear where she is queen of.

  215. opposablethumbs says

    I swear my brain is spending all my waking and sleeping hours coming up with ways to tell me this is my fault.

    I can see how that would happen. There must be a massive entanglement of guilt and denial-of-powerlessness and rage and fear and fsm-knows-what-all else going on at any number of different conscious and not-conscious levels. I know you’ve said that all this is staying on-line only for the present, but I’m glad to remember that you’ve also said you have rl options available should you decide at any point that you want ’em. Keep remembering what people have said around here: you were a child and the abuser was a powerful adult; you’d never think of blaming that child if it were anyone else; he undoubtedly deliberately forced victims to feel complicit (feel, not be – it was an illusion, part of his manipulation) precisely so they could not report and would feel more tied to him, and his doing so was just another aspect of his abuse, his power-play. A ten-year-old child on the one hand – and on the other a “pillar of the community”, physically and psychologically powerful in that context at that time, an experienced abuser and manipulator, actively helped by another adult, backed up by a massive, respected organisation – I’m not seeing any choice for any of his child victims there, and no-one would. If that were any other ten-year-old you would know through and through that they were not to blame; now you just have to let yourself know it for this particular ten-year-old.
    You’ve shown us in everything your online self does and says that you are a good person, Ogvorbis. He failed, remember. He failed to make you the least bit like him.
    Dammit. I hate so much that this happened. Imma send you another e-hug anyway.

  216. rq says

    Ah, royal protocol. I’m a peasant by descent, so I don’t even have a genetic gut feeling about how to say these things. ;)
    I’m going to go with Matt‘s suggestion about Her Majesty Queen Silvia, with the ‘of Sweden’ qualifier following, even though it sounds clumsy (but official title…), but thank you for your much-nicer-sounding suggestion, richardh.

  217. Nutmeg says

    Horde-sourcing some research, because I can’t for the life of me figure out search terms that give useful results:

    I’m looking for examples of studies where an organism has to reach a certain size, weight, body condition, etc., before it can undergo another developmental process.

    Is there a name for this that I don’t know, or particular magic search terms? Or does anyone have examples offhand? Vertebrate examples would be most useful but I’d be grateful for anything.

    Thanks! Here is a *pile of hugs and chocolate*, and I will catch up with all of you later.

  218. says

    Uhhh…light year? Yuck, those might have half the calories but the taste terrible. ::eye roll::

    Light can be slowed, that is what makes lenses work (index of refraction in glass ≠ 1) and give us mirages (not miracles, stupid autocorrect) by bending light due to differential slowing. But I disagree that it can be stopped. I sort of remember when that result was being hyped, and while I can’t be arsed to look up my objections again, I do remember feeling that it was pretty bogus and a twisting of what was really going on to “wow” the layperson.

    On the other hand, a semi-sensible deepity is that light in a vacuum experiences no time. This can be justified as a limit of the equations of special relativity. But, yes, light travels; no two ways about it. Trust me, I have a masters degree IN SCIENCE!

  219. says

    Ogvorbis-

    I swear my brain is spending all my waking and sleeping hours coming up with ways to tell me this is my fault.

    The worst thing about surviving things like that is the way the brain shifts and twists to stab again and again at our weakest points, coming up with horrifying fictions to lay us low, and make the scars fresh and bleeding again.

    But it is always just that. Fictions. That voice is trying to create for you the illusion of control by crafting an unthinkable nightmare and there’s a dark comfort in that. If you just did X wrong or could have done Y better (and certainly, your brain argues, doesn’t everything have a Y that could have been done differently in the clarity of hindsight), then somehow this is a story that couldn’t happen again.

    But there’s no X or Y that you could have changed with who you were walking in and who you were when you were trying to figure it out and survive it. The agency on your part was robbed from you by a cruel evil villain and all the blame is his and his alone. Did you do weird things around it? Only in the light of hindsight. I shook my rapists hands after he had done the deed. My brain still screeches to me about that and tries to wield it like a cudgel to rewrite and blame, but it does not change what did happen. Those scars, those flashbacks, those attempts at processing it in the direct chaos of unthinkable event, are all on the abuser who raped you, never you.

    And I’m not telling you that because you don’t already know it, but because speaking as someone who has been going through something a hundredth as powerful in uncovering the seriousness of my own assault, I know it helps to hear it from someone who isn’t yourself.

    You’re not Him. You’re not responsible for what He did to you. You were not personally responsible for stopping Him from continuing. You are not personally responsible for His existence.

    He is. He will always be.

    Good luck Ogvorbis, you will get through this. And if you ever need us as a sounding board to confirm that things your head says are the bullshit you suspect them of being, you can always do so and we can always be there for you.

  220. says

    Actually, I think I misspoke. I’m pretty sure I met the requirements for a masters degree along the way to being a fully certified quantum mechanic, but you know, I don’t think I ever got a pretty piece of paper that would “prove” it. Hmmm.

    Okay, I’m in deep avoidance mode from two work tasks that just make my brain want to squirm….

  221. Portia, who will be okay. says

    Okay, I’m in deep avoidance mode from two work tasks that just make my brain want to squirm….

    Ooh, ooh, me too! I’ve started a corner of the Lounge for that. Have some tea.

  222. thumper1990 says

    @don’tpanic

    Light can be slowed, that is what makes lenses work (index of refraction in glass ≠ 1) and give us mirages (not miracles, stupid autocorrect) by bending light due to differential slowing.

    I’d be willing to bet at least some “miracles” have been caused by that phenomenom.

  223. Azkyroth Drinked the Grammar Too :) says

    I agree with much of what you’ve said but encourage you to zoom out… make a paradigm shift and look at the entire picture from a birds eye.

    “…but I can’t see into the ultraviolet.”

  224. says

    thumper1990 @222

    Yup. Probably many, but at least the myth of Brigadoon is created by a mirage effect called Fata Morgana where that bending light causes parts of land or castles out on the ends of peninsulas (where they were well guarded) could look, from far away, like castles floating in the sky.

    Same with the Flying Dutchman and ships on the horizon. It’s the same principle that causes the mirage illusion of oases in the distance.

  225. Nepenthe says

    Howdy.

    Thanks to Portia, ck, JAL, Giliell, and anyone I may have forgotten for musing on my non-questions about dating.

    I have no idea what’s going on in this thread, as I’ve been busy becoming smitten and reuniting with my kitteh, who is now out of both the woods and the bathroom.

  226. says

    Azkyroth, I think I’d be more likely to try to view the material that started this sub-thread in the infrared.

    For the non-physics nerds: moving away from things at high rate of speed shifts visible light from that object to the lower frequencies (red, infra-red, on out to radio waves), while moving towards them shifts to the blue (then ultraviolet and on up to gamma rays). All this as in: universe expanding, everything moving away from everything (as space itself expands, ala raisins on a balloon in the 2-D analog) means distant galaxies are “red shifted” (the further away, the more faster they’re moving away from us so the more shifted into the red do their spectra appear). /science-nerd

    Portia, yes, thank you, tea would be lovely.

  227. Ogvorbis says

    TRIGGER WARNING

    Keep remembering what people have said around here: you were a child and the abuser was a powerful adult; you’d never think of blaming that child if it were anyone else; he undoubtedly deliberately forced victims to feel complicit (feel, not be – it was an illusion, part of his manipulation) precisely so they could not report and would feel more tied to him, and his doing so was just another aspect of his abuse, his power-play.

    I do remember. And my mind is filled with what I did, not what he did. What I did to others, not what he did to me. When I treated others as objects (or forgot them, or set them up), not when he did the same to me.

    You’ve shown us in everything your online self does and says that you are a good person, Ogvorbis.

    Thanks. I appreciate that. Of course, I read it and the back of my mind says to me, ‘Damn. You really fooled them!’ Which I know is not true but there is a part of me that believes it.

    If you just did X wrong or could have done Y better (and certainly, your brain argues, doesn’t everything have a Y that could have been done differently in the clarity of hindsight), then somehow this is a story that couldn’t happen again.

    I think far less on what I could have done to protect me, or prevent me being hurt, as I do kicking myself that I didn’t do anything to protect them (them being fellow scouts who were abused, fellow scouts who were not abused (and no, I have no idea how that one makes any sense at all), the girl I hurt, and future victims of the same asshole).

    You’re not Him.

    At the very least, I have pretended not to be him for long enough that who I pretend to be is who I am.

    You’re not responsible for what He did to you.

    That one I agree with and it has stabilized there.

    You were not personally responsible for stopping Him from continuing.

    That is the place it breaks down. I feel like my actions and inactions exposed others to abuse.

    You are not personally responsible for His existence.

    And that’s one I never even thought about. I don’t think I ever thought I was.

    And if you ever need us as a sounding board to confirm that things your head says are the bullshit you suspect them of being, you can always do so and we can always be there for you.

    Thank you, all of you, for being that sounding board. Sometimes the act of typing it out is cathartic. Sometimes your good thoughts, your advice, your honesty, helps beat back the bullshit.

  230. says

    coHowdy folks…

    Hugs and chocolate and booze as needed.

    Ogvorbis I know you’re going to find your way to a better place. The trail is long, and dips back into the dark part of the woods more than it should, but I honestly think you’re going to find more and more time is spent in the bright daylight as time goes on.

    Nepenthe glad to hear about your cat.

    I’m going to go back to huffing adhesive fumes now.

  231. says

    Ogvorbis @227

    You were not personally responsible for stopping Him from continuing.

    That is the place it breaks down. I feel like my actions and inactions exposed others to abuse.

    It’s the “victims of oppression are not personally responsible for undoing oppression” problem.

    We understand culturally that undoing systems of oppression whether they be molestation networks or systematic discrimination is mostly going to be undertaken by those most affected by it (survivors and the like). And we understand that a lot of the cultural momentum is going to come from those communities standing together and that is better for all to stand together as one and help push away those oppressions rather than turning a blind eye.

    But here’s the problem.

    So often that cultural understanding is wielded as a cudgel both by outsiders and by one’s self. Suddenly it’s not a “good thing” to have done that, but rather it’s treated as mandatory, as something expected of discriminated groups. If they don’t have the emotional resources or have processed through the oppression enough to fight back, they are often treated like shit by others and themselves for not magically fixing the problem on their own.

    And it happens especially hard to rape victims because so often the processing of trauma occurs long after it makes sense to fight back against the specific rapist. So instead of coming together in solidarity and helping each other through difficult times, we’re often at home kicking ourselves because we didn’t have the resources at the time to make sure that bastard was taken off the streets and could never victimize another person again.

    I shook the hands of my rapist and let him go on to molest others. My partner spoke praises of her rapist to people he probably has gone on to rape, because he got in her head and make her feel guilty for “disrupting his life”. But we are not personally responsible for stopping Them. We are not culpable for Their crimes because we didn’t have the resources to fight back then and stop it. No matter what our brains tell us. No matter what your brain tells you.

    As opposablethumbs noted, experienced rapists are great at getting into people’s heads, encouraging their victims to blame themselves and help protect them, to dismiss the pain and tragedy and even help them acquire new victims. And they are strongly supported by a very active rape culture that enshrines them, that encourages victims to self-deny to avoid the terror of the “false rape accusation” or even to lack the resources to process what happened to them until it is much too late to do much.

    And that’s never their fault. You didn’t have the resources then, as you do now, to process what happened and be ready to help others end the oppression.

    And that’s what you can do for those victims now. That’s how you can fight against that oppression today here and now. Simply telling your story and being there when a current victim of someone lets you know what is happening to them. Providing that counter to the narratives in their heads and in society so that generation can process faster, so that generation can have more support. And brick by brick, step by step, this is how the Hims out there will be stopped and rooted out.

    You’re not responsible for stopping Him then. You’re not responsible for stopping Him now. You may even have done things you’re not at all proud of. But it’s the price of healing and nothing else. No matter what your lying-ass mind says.

  232. Ogvorbis says

    The trail is long, and dips back into the dark part of the woods more than it should, but I honestly think you’re going to find more and more time is spent in the bright daylight as time goes on.

    I feel like I’ve almost gotten out of Mirkwood and then, bam, right back in. I hope I find sunshine.

    You’re not responsible for stopping Him then. You’re not responsible for stopping Him now. You may even have done things you’re not at all proud of. But it’s the price of healing and nothing else. No matter what your lying-ass mind says.

    Thanks. I still feel like I have done something wrong that I didn’t stop him back then and have no real way of stopping him, or others like him, now. I sure hope this is part of the price of healing.

    Hugs to you, iJoe and Cerberus.

  233. Portia, who will be okay. says

    Hugs to Og.

    Yay for Nepenthe’s kitty.

    Tea all around.

    It’s quite snowy out there. This system looks like it’s stretched all the way across two states.

  237. vaiyt says

    If they don’t have the emotional resources or have processed through the oppression enough to fight back, they are often treated like shit by others and themselves for not magically fixing the problem on their own.

    And whenever they do fight back enough to get others to recognize their situation and stop treating them like shit, it gets turned around and interpreted as a gift from the oppressors. With time, history lessons erase the fights and keep only the turning point. Like: “oh, so and so signed an emancipation document out of the magnanimousness of their heart, and suddenly the slaves were free! Yay!”

  238. says

    <sad-whinge> Snow? If I only had an office on the outside (rather than atrium) side of the corridor I could see the weather as it happened.

    I wonder if the college where my wife teaches is going to cancel night classes so she doesn’t have to go out tonight — I can’t imagine that the roads are going to be in good shape when she’s done at 11pm.

    Portia, could I have a spot more of tea please, thanks.

  239. Portia, who will be okay. says

    dontpanic, I’m currently brewing a lovely vanilla chai. Hold out your mug.

    Are you in Winter Storm Rocky as well? I hope the college cancels. The winds are going to make it drifty and the warm temps will make the snow heavy. Hope you and your wife stay safe!

  240. says

    Chai? I heard of it, but never actually tried it. Thanks.

    No, the (overly flat) midwest. [Figures out that “Rocky” isn’t a reference to the Rocky Moutains, but that winter storms are named … when did that start to happen?] Yes, I guess so. Just started to hit us in the last few hours. [Wanders across the hall and back] Hmmm. Pretty white out there and blowing hard. At least I will make it home tonight; can’t say that for all my colleagues, some of whom were going to fly out (homeward bound) or start a 4hr drive after the end of the work day. Neither of which I think is going to happen for them until at least tomorrow.

  241. Portia, who will be okay. says

    Yeah, the Weather Channel started naming winter storms this year for the first time. They were super creative with the preceding one, which was called “Q”. It’s supposed to last til tonight at midnight, I hear. Well, for around here, anyway. I don’t think anyone’s flying anywhere for a bit.

  242. Portia, who will be okay. says

    Oh, and my chai isn’t like the sugary mess Starbucks, et al, calls a chai. : )

  244. says

    Ah, but I like sugary messes … coffee, to me, serves as a cream and sugar delivery device. (Just as bread acts as a butter delivery device to my son.) Though having never had one, I can’t tell whether I prefer your non-mess to Starbucks “chai”.

    Oh, so this is the first year for winter storm names. And the weather channel has taken it upon itself to be the designated designator. Hmmm. And … we’re already up to “R”. Whoa, think they’ll run out of letters?

    Ooops, off to a seminar about the russian meteor strike….

  245. Portia, who will be okay. says

    I admit to being a tea snob :) I’m in the camp with your son as far as bread’s purpose in life, so…to each their own.

    I hope they do run out of letters…I’d like to see more creative than Iago and Gandolf and Xerxes…

  246. says

    *Hugs* or other desired gestures of support to Ogvorbis, Cerberus and others who need them.

    Oggie, reiterating what the others have said; there is no way that you could reasonably be considered culpable for actions taken under such levels of duress. Even adults are not held responsible for things done with a gun to their head, much less children. I use that metaphor advisedly; you were under a compulsion as real as a gun to the head, and arguably a worse and more compelling one. As I said earlier, you had literally no options that would have changed anything; In that time, at that place, no one would have believed you or tried to help you even if you had told them, and almost certainly would have made your life even worse because of < insert victim-blaming bullshit here >. You can’t be blamed for not having magic superpowers, and that’s what it would have taken for you to be able to change the situation. There certainly are people who could have changed it, starting with the abuser, who could have stopped/not started, but none of those people were you, or his other victims.

    dontpanic
    It’s more that the Weather Channel has decided that they should name winter storms, and started doing it. AFAICT no other weather service does it or pays attention.
     
    Stuff about my home life

    Poor D is in a hell of a situation. Her ex-gf has their daughter, and has moved to California with her (We’re in Oregon). Last night she told D that she’s not going to let her be in touch with the girl anymore. D has no legal or practical recourse, as they weren’t legally married and she’s not the biological mother. She’s also not in a situation where she can raise a child even if she could try to get custody.

  247. Portia, who will be okay. says

    Poor D is in a hell of a situation. Her ex-gf has their daughter, and has moved to California with her (We’re in Oregon). Last night she told D that she’s not going to let her be in touch with the girl anymore. D has no legal or practical recourse, as they weren’t legally married and she’s not the biological mother. She’s also not in a situation where she can raise a child even if she could try to get custody.

    Fuck DOMA. : ( That’s awful.

  248. rq says

    *hugs* for Ogvorbis (it was not your fault and you are not responsible), the ever-eloquent Cerberus (I know you weren’t talking to me, but what you said resonates a lot with other guilt-inducing aspects of my life, so I take your words to heart…), Dalillama (and D by proxy, because that just sucks more than words can say), anyone else still under the weather (health-wise)…
    *moreteawithcreamandsugar* for dontpanic (I’m with you re: coffee as vehicle, and your son re: bread-and-butter – today, when buttering some bread for lunch, I decided to weigh how much butter I put on it, mostly because I’d just unpacked the kitchen scale; 6 grams – and that’s not even a lot, for a 30 gram slice of bread.), also a *warmblanket* for Portia. (You and dontpanic and whoever else under-the-weather joins you can share the tea and blankets out in that little cozy corner of yours. :) )

    Today is one of those days. Just… those days. Today I don’t belong anywhere and getting (some) laundry done just doesn’t cut it for productivity. Today I say, I have had enough and I want out and Fuck this shit and me-me-me-me-me!!!.
    Tomorrow will be different. Right? Right. I’m off to make that happen that much faster.
    (Good night.)

  249. Portia, who will be okay. says

    *hugs* rq. Tomorrow will be better. So much better.

    ——

    Incidentally, I just made a hair appointment for a drastic haircut tomorrow. Maybe I have enough to donate….anyone know which organizations are reputable? I know Locks of Love has been criticized.

  251. rq says

    PS Portia – you, too? You need 8 inches as a minimum and I’d had the website all bookmarked (there’s more or less one organization that I found to which I would send it for free), but I’ve since lost the link. But I’ll be looking it up soon, too. Just need an extra inch so I don’t end up shaving my head just for donating the rest. ;) I hope the haircut is spectacular!

  252. Portia, who will be okay. says

    Thanks rq! I’m a bit nervous. I haven’t found one for less than 12 inches, which I don’t have to spare. But good to know there’s at least one out there, I’ll keep looking :) I’ll ask the salon too, come to think of it.

  253. Beatrice says

    Anyone in the mood to deal with a… person on the Dan Savage thread? I’m currently nearly speechless and I’m sure someone else could handle this can of worms better than I could.

  256. Ogvorbis says

    You need 8 inches as a minimum

    Pulls open front of underwear. Looks.

    I’m a bit nervous. I haven’t found one for less than 12 inches,

    Looks again.

    And I messed up, they want 10 inches

    Gives up and feels inadequate.

  257. rq says

    Beatrice
    You made me look. Now I won’t be going to bed immediately. (It’s ok. I’ll go to bed later.)

  258. Portia, who will be okay. says

    Beatrice, what the what is going on in there, I agree. Jebus. Makes me a little sad that the Peez (I used it Joe!) is so on board with Dan Savage as the Humanist of the Year. : / He’s up there with Ryan Murphy in my estimation.

    Og: I laughed aloud.

  261. Parrowing buıʍoɹɹɐd says

    Thank you, thank you, thank you to rq, Beatrice, and Portia for saying what I needed to say in the Dan Savage thread but couldn’t because I’m still too anxious. ♥

  263. Beatrice says

    Parrowing,
    I didn’t even say anything, I was completely dumbstruck by that comment and =8)-DX approval! I’m still all “!!1eleven!”

  264. says

    Beatrice @253

    Yeaaaaaahhh. (Exasperated sigh)

    This is why I don’t like Dan Savage as much as I should for things like It Gets Better. His position as “the one big sex show advice person” means that his various internalized garbages often filter down to the disciples and make them worse people instead of better.

    Dalillama @246

    That is fucked up beyond relief, both on the part of her ex-partner and a fucked up system that doesn’t provide the same protections to all families.

  265. says

    THE PEEZ!!!

    Thanks Portia! We’ll make it stick!

    Dan Savage is… hit and miss? It is hard to drum up huge enthusiasm for him either way I guess? I certainly can see why people would want to give him an award, and I can see why other people would object, and I can’t respect anyone who would simply dismiss the criticism because he does some good. I just wish- and I find myself saying this in a lot of venues- I wish that people who suffer one form of discrimination would stop and think just a little bit harder when talking about people who suffer from a different form. Black TV shows talking shit about atheists, anti-trans* feminists and their shit, atheists attacking feminists, and on and on. We mostly seem to get it when we’re the target, so why do we ignore it when other people are the target?

  266. dianne says

    They were super creative with the preceding one, which was called “Q”.

    I still want to hope that somewhere TWC employs a ST:TNG fan who suggested the name. Or even a James Bond fan.

  267. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Ugh, Winter Storm Rocky is moving though Chiwaukee (ironically from the south). I came home to commode and feed lunch to the Redhead. Don’t think I’ll go back to work, as the roads are covered with thick, slippery slush, the unsafe drivers out in force, and I really don’t have anything that pressing. Fortunately, I voted in the local primary election this morning before the storm hit.

  269. says

    WTF is a “Winter Storm Rocky”?

    … oh, it is the thing HOLDING UP DELIVERY OF MY MOTHERFUCKING AMPLIFIER CORNERS?!?! Goddammit. How the fuck can this be happening to me? Why is some storm specifically targeting me and fucking with my shit? How? Why? WORST THING TO EVER HAPPEN TO ANYONE, EVER!

    … I imagine that’s what it is like inside the head of Stephen Colbert(the character, not the actor) pretty much all the time.

  270. says

    Hmmm. This Senate bill does not sound like a good idea. Business-first, anti-big government forces are once again voting to restrict individual freedom by way of bigger government.

    To some, the undercover videos purporting to show mistreated animals or inhumane working conditions are the only way to expose practices that the public needs to know about.

    To some farms and businesses, though, those videos are misleading threats to good companies that ought to be made illegal.

    Tuesday, a Senate committee sided with those businesses, voting 7-2 for a measure that would make it illegal to photograph or videotape a farm or industry with the intent to embarrass, annoy or harm the business.

    In its current form, whistleblowers — including journalists documenting stories or members of the public who post such videos on YouTube — would face legal sanctions. …

    Link.

  272. says

    Another bill from the state Senate of Indiana would remove one of two mandatory, medically unnecessary, vaginal ultrasounds for those sinful females seeking an abortion. So, they now plan to fuck you over just once, (and make you pay for the privilege), instead of fucking you over twice.

    The Indiana Senate today eliminated a requirement that women undergo an ultrasound after obtaining a drug-induced abortion, but kept the mandate that she have one before taking the drug….

    Link.

  273. Parrowing buıʍoɹɹɐd says

    I think that’s a pretty accurate description of what goes on inside my father’s head, iJoe. Last time I went on vacation with my parents, he dropped and couldn’t find his hotel key card (it was on the hotel room floor about two feet from where he was when he had noticed it was missing). Instead of looking in the obvious places and then giving up after a minute or two to ask the lobby for a new one, he raged and stormed about the hotel room, cursing everything he could think of. I kid you not, these words came out of his mouth (and not in a joking way, but in a way that made me wonder how quickly I could reach my phone to call the cops if I needed to): “Thanks a lot, God. Is this what I deserve? Is this how you’re testing me now?” He is a strong believer with a severe Job complex. He has certainly interpreted dangerous storms that have killed others to be actually all about him.

  274. cicely (a Bearer of Very Little Braaaiiinzzz) says

    *hands iJoe a bucket*
     
    *make that two buckets*
     
    I’m sorry you’ve become ill-er. This, too, shall pass.
     
    The cat will (almost certainly) soon get used to the bell. In fact, my late Midnight-cat got so used to the bell as to be unnerved if he temporarily misplaced his collar, and would slink around as if he expected something dreadful was about to happen to him—probably a bath. After all, collar removal is what happens just before a cat is subjected to the Flea Banning Water Torture.
     
    Your description of your cat’s panic at being belled reminds me of the time Midnight walked through the hand-loops of a plastic WalMart bag in such a way that it got stuck. Said bag was being used for Halloween Candy Overflow Storage, which gave it weight, and the plasticiness gave it crinkle, and he ran and ran and ran, and it kept chasing him…. Eventually we were able to tackle and un-bag the cat. He needed a lot of cuddles after that.
    –
    Cerberus-
    Indeed! And recognise his wife and son again! And maybe get to keep his shitty job!
     
    Also, *hugs* against the forces of oppression, and against the general sense of paranoia.
    –

    Monty Python meets J.R.R. Tolkien.

    Awesomeness!
    –
    Hai, rorschach!
    –
    *hugs* and encouragement for Ogvorbis. Just because it was a plateau rather than an equilibrium doesn’t mean that it wasn’t worth having! Or that equilibrium will never come.
    –

    “Foudre makes the excellent point/sums it up with, “why hire a black model when you could just paint a white one!””

    :( :( :(
    –

    Why do we put up with this crap? When a high level hospital employee says, “You can’t keep taking uninsured patients, we won’t be able to make our bonuses” why isn’t that a career destroying statement? It should be. Why do we even consider allowing organizations that have as doctrine that certain people should be allowed to die when we could save them (gays with HIV, pregnant women in trouble) to have anything to do with hospitals? What’s wrong with people?

    Selfishness, and greed, and a desire to be on the winning (PR) side. Possibly in reverse order.
    –

  275. cicely (a Bearer of Very Little Braaaiiinzzz) says

    I swear my brain is spending all my waking and sleeping hours coming up with ways to tell me this is my fault. I joined scouts. I never said no. I never told. I abused others. I recruited others. And, most recently, I never even thought about whether or not the other scouts knew what was going on. Which makes no sense.

    You said it yourself, the other day: control of self, at all costs! Your brain is just trying to back-date it to your childhood, before being under your own control was even possible. To retroactively control your ability to control, if you will.
     
    Give your brain a right ding around the ear-hole.
    –

  276. cicely (a Bearer of Very Little Braaaiiinzzz) says

    Uhhh…light year? Yuck, those might have half the calories but the taste terrible. ::eye roll::

    And they have this really odd mouth-feel, like maybe they used too much ground up sea weed to add bulk. Blech!
     
    No amount of “chocolate” coating can make those things edible!
    –
    Nepenthe: Yay for recovered kitteh! At last, your bathroom can breathe free!
    –

    I think far less on what I could have done to protect me, or prevent me being hurt, as I do kicking myself that I didn’t do anything to protect them (them being fellow scouts who were abused, fellow scouts who were not abused (and no, I have no idea how that one makes any sense at all), the girl I hurt, and future victims of the same asshole).

    Survivor’s guilt.
    As adapted to the trauma-at-head.
    –

  278. cicely (a Bearer of Very Little Braaaiiinzzz) says

    Dalillama: Sorry to hear about D’s situation. That is a major mass of suckage, right there.
    –
    Ogvorbis: I lol’d.
    :)
    –

    We mostly seem to get it when we’re the target, so why do we ignore it when other people are the target?

    ‘Cause we’re all special, special snowflakes?
    Empathy failure. Redo From Start.
    –

  279. strange gods before me ॐ says

    Stigma as Ego Depletion: How Being the Target of Prejudice Affects Self-Control

    doi 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2006.01695.x

    This research examined whether stigma diminishes people’s ability to control their behaviors. Because coping with stigma requires self-regulation, and self-regulation is a limited-capacity resource, we predicted that individuals belonging to stigmatized groups are less able to regulate their own behavior when they become conscious of their stigmatizing status or enter threatening environments. Study 1 uncovered a correlation between stigma sensitivity and self-regulation; the more Black college students were sensitive to prejudice, the less self-control they reported having. By experimentally activating stigma, Studies 2 and 3 provided causal evidence for stigma’s ego-depleting qualities: When their stigma was activated, stigmatized participants (Black students and females) showed impaired self-control in two very different domains (attentional and physical self-regulation). These results suggest that (a) stigma is ego depleting and (b) coping with it can weaken the ability to control and regulate one’s behaviors in domains unrelated to the stigma.

    https://cdn.anonfiles.com/1361919148959.pdf

  280. David Marjanović says

    Aaaaaaaarrrrrgh! A thread on science theory! And stuff! And everything! And I just spent all afternoon & evening working nonstop on the page proofs of my next paper*, and it’s almost midnight, so again I have to go home and to bed without switching the computer on!

    * Accepted 29 November 2011. Published 29 March 2013. *epic facepalm* Sure, there aren’t many journals that publish papers of this length, but if I’d known in advance that this journal would take so long…

    cicely! What did you do to earn your new epithet? ~:-(

    Link dump:
    Petition to stop predatory payday lending in the US.
    Petition to all EU finance ministers to do what the EU Parliament wants and stop big banks hiding billions in tax havens.
    Artist makes large pictures from banknotes. Very pretty. In German, but I didn’t listen anyway, because I don’t have sound here…
    The name Tetrapoda was coined by H. Credner sometime before 1911, says the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica! The plot thickens!!!

  282. Portia, snowbound says

    Fuckfuckfuck. My brain isn’t working very well. Just went on a med call that was a fatality. I rolled my ankle walking through the snow to the station. it hurts.

  285. Portia, snowbound says

    Thanks, Beatrice.

    …I’m now with you on the “eleventy” type reaction to the stuff in the DS thread.

    Strange gods:

    Does that explain why I often lose my composure when people say nasty sexist crap to me? Or am I misreading the excerpt you’ve posted.

  286. throwaway, promised freezed peach, all we got was the pit says

    Fuckity fuck. I’m totally pissed off right now.

    Smith was the only audience member who stepped out of the courtroom.

    “…our most gracious Heavenly Father, we come to you today with sad hearts,” Sammons said. “We’re so sad that we as a nation have let such a small minority group tell us what to do. Lord, I ask forgiveness for myself, but I’m of the old school where we don’t run, we fight. So, forgive me for that.”

    “Lord, we ask You to be with us always today…we just ask Your special blessing for this court, this good Christian bunch of people that are always trying to do the right thing for the county. We ask all this in Your Son’s precious name. Amen.”

  287. Beatrice says

    Portia,

    Yeah, I responded this time, righteous anger and all. And just as I was preparing to finally go to bed :/

  289. throwaway, promised freezed peach, all we got was the pit says

    I do think Smith messed up by stepping outside, though. The statement of Caywood’s that “Anybody who’s uncomfortable with this, we’ll give you a moment to step outside” was non-binding, and could actually hurt any challenges in court. Couldn’t it?

  290. Portia, snowbound says

    Couldn’t it?

    No. Unconstitutional is unconstitutional regardless of who’s present. (If I understand the issue correctly, that is. Apologies for my addled brain if i have not).

  291. opposablethumbs says

    Portia, I’m sorry. And dianne #203 – this, many times this. I forgot to say earlier that I only wish more people thought the same way that you do.

  293. throwaway, promised freezed peach, all we got was the pit says

    No. Unconstitutional is unconstitutional regardless of who’s present. (If I understand the issue correctly, that is. Apologies for my addled brain if i have not).

    OK, that makes sense to me. I’m sorry for barging in with my own issue. I may make a showing since it’s in KY in support of the challenge if one ever arrives. Christians really are running roughshod over the Constitution and the First Amendment. SMFH.

  295. Beatrice says

    After this lovely “What is this? I don’t even…” interlude in the Dan Savage thread, I’m really off to bed.
    Good night. Have fun polishing those fangs.

    *notices Cerberus’ comment*
    That was really good.

  296. strange gods before me ॐ says

    Does that explain why I often lose my composure when people say nasty sexist crap to me?

    It might have something to do with it, but this paper was studying effects of subtly activated stereotype threat, while you’re talking about overt attacks on your identity, the effects of which probably eclipse what was studied here.

  297. triskelethecat says

    @Cicely: (returns pouncehug) HI! I’ve missed you guys. But this WordPress login has been driving me buggy…

  298. Portia, snowbound says

    Night Beatrice!

    Strange gods:
    I’m gonna reread that sentence a few more times and maybe I’ll form a coherent thought about it.

  299. carlie says

    Hi all. Hugs or chocolate all around, whoever needs what. I’d chime in on the Savage thread, but I’ve spent the day on office politics and still have quite a bit more on it to do tonight in addition to all the lecture prep for tomorrow I didn’t get done today b/c politics and I’m totally wound up and need to work out but I don’t know if my lungs will let me, so maybe I’ll try and then collapse and then not be able to get anything done at all. :) But yeah, thanks to those who are pointing out the number of ways in which he is not exactly stellar in all more than a couple of areas.

  300. strange gods before me ॐ says

    Portia, it might help to know that “stereotype threat” is a term of art.

  301. triskelethecat says

    @Portia: so sorry about the snowbound. I’ll send you some more tea. My BFF who has an evil twin inside introduced me to Teavana. While overpriced, their chais are really delicious. But I’m really glad I haven’t found one nearby (nor have I looked). (pours Portia a fresh cup so she doesn’t have to walk on the ankle)

    Oggie: Just keep telling yourself that YOU ARE NOT AT FAULT. It’s not easy. I understand that. I feel guilty about not confronting my rapist – and VERY guilty about his suicide a few years later. I keep wondering if my silence contributed to it (long story as to why). But the sunshine does come out. You will probably always have triggers. Keep working on it. We are all here for you (and smack the little demon in your head who says how fooled we are).

    Lynna: so nice to “see” you again!

    I’ve been hanging out on PET much more than here. Since I use multiple computers, WordPress has decided I’m evil and causes a lot of problems if I try to log on from other areas. And, since I’ve changed jobs (yes, again, now almost a year in the new position) and my employer has decided that while I can *read* Pharyngula I can’t *comment* on Pharyngula…I don’t stay current with the Lounge. But I do think of you all. And I’m going to try to come around more often.

  303. says

    Good news!

    BossNurse had a visit from her company’s executive team to do a “mock” inspection of the facility in anticipation of the annual state visit. Since A) this is the first time she’s done one for this company and B) this is the issue that got her fired from the job in The Place That Shall Not Be Named, it has been a pretty stressful day for her… and for me too!

    Well, I just got a text, all went well and she’s on her way home only a few minutes later than normal. My wife has had a pretty rough 18 months, professionally. This is hopefully going to be a big huge confidence booster for her, and a sign of good things to come.

  304. Portia, snowbound says

    Thank you very much, triskelthecat. That’s just what I needed.

    I went to a Teavana once. It was surprisingly high-pressure sales. It was an hour away. S and I made good our escape because we felt intimidated, ha. (Bad tea snob…). Maybe I’ll order some chai from them though.

    Being snowbound isn’t so bad, per se. I don’t have to drive anywhere til tomorrow, at which time most of the deep stuff should be cleared. I’m cozied up in my recliner with a lap blanket and an ice pack on my ankle. If only my knitting weren’t too over there right now…

    …goodness I sound delightfully geriatric.

  306. strange gods before me ॐ says

    Rephrasing: Saying sexist crap to you is an open insult to you, even if indirectly. This study was about what happens when race or gender is merely brought to attention in a context associated with stereotype, such as young women taking a math exam; the study found that ego depletion results. Ego depletion because of gender salience might be one relatively small effect of saying sexist crap to you, but the bulk of the reason why you lose your composure was probably not studied in this case. That larger reason might also be ego depletion, but probably not ego depletion due to mere salience of gender in a context associated with stereotype.

  309. Portia, snowbound says

    Thanks for the further explanation, strange gods. So, if I’m a young woman taking a math exam (or…the LSAT), my mental struggle with the idea that I am inherently less able at that activity is lessening my ability to actually be good at that activity?

    Thanks Joe : ) You’re right, that’s a great idea!

    Audley:

    Hoooooray new laptop! hooooray for Audley Lounging with us!

  310. carlie says

    I’m lucky to have a local tea shop that sells a number of interesting blends. The one I’m going through right now is a black tea with rose petals. They even have one that has popcorn in it – I haven’t dared try that one. I’m tempted to try a “mulled wine” flavor tea they have, but I worry it will be too tart and I haven’t got up the nerve to ask them to brew me a cup (they totally would, but I’d feel like a high-maintenance customer).

  313. birgerjohansson says

    Threadrupt.
    Got sick Sunday, too brief to be stomach flu, but those 12 hours felt like an eternity. I only got enough strength to go buy new food this Tuesday evening. Cicero (feline monster) has been great company.
    Summary of Italian news: Nobody wins election. Berlusconi will not go away unless someone hammers a stake through his heart or dumps a ton of garlic on him from a great hight.
    Summary of Swedish news. People were born. People died. Politicians bickered. Springtime seems to be a month early.
    — — — — — — — —
    Swedish documentary about ´Merican bloke who becomes an underground musical icon in apartheid South Africa without knowing about it for thirty years (“Searching for Sugarman”) gets Oscar. Convoluted fate but fascinating.

  315. strange gods before me ॐ says

    So, if I’m a young woman taking a math exam (or…the LSAT), my mental struggle with the idea that I am inherently less able at that activity is lessening my ability to actually be good at that activity?

    Yes; and that is a description of stereotype threat. (These effects can be reduced or eliminated in various ways.)

    The study linked in 279 found that stereotype threat also causes ego depletion, thereby indirectly affecting performance at other activities unrelated to stereotype contexts (in this study, the Stroop task used in various areas of research, and the handgrip task which has been common to ego depletion research).

  316. Portia, snowbound says

    Thanks for humoring me as I put the pieces together, strange gods. That’s really interesting.

  318. birgerjohansson says

    Improbable Joe, you have my sympathy.
    — — — — —
    I live in bloody Sweden, and I don’t care how the nobs structure their titles. A least being big honcho of some minicountry like San Marino would have a coolness factor. Big countries and their ruling families come with a historical luggage that is bloody and repugnant. Except possibly Iceland, if it counts as “big” (but it is blissfully free of nobs).
    — — —
    Soon two hours past local midnight, no wonder I am rambling.

  320. birgerjohansson says

    I hope stereotype threat can account for the statistical blip that created books like “The Bell Curve”. Not that facts wil stop a bad meme, racial inferiority will live on in memespace alongside The Elders of Zion.
    — — — — — —
    Hang in there, Joe!
    — — — — —
    Regarding Iceland, do Ice Giants count as nobs? I forgot to check.

  324. Portia, snowbound says

    Tony
    I am indeed jealous. You better make ready your couch if you plan to keep taunting me :)
    I’m mostly just upset about the snow because it cost me one pain free ankle!
    And you are very punny, my friend, you make me smile.

  325. carlie says

    I’m gonna pick a fight –

    I love chai tea, but I drink it straight.

    Because milk in any sort of tea is an abomination.

    *ducks*

  327. says

    Hello again, everyone!
    Carlie:

    I’m lucky to have a local tea shop that sells a number of interesting blends. The one I’m going through right now is a black tea with rose petals

    Ooooo, jealous! I’ve had Twinings Rose Garden tea, which is delightful, and I can only imagine how good a hand-blended loose black/rose tea is!

    (Please bear with some intense typos– still getting used to this keyboard.)

  328. ck says

    Business-first, anti-big government forces are once again voting to restrict individual freedom by way of bigger government.

    Given the crap the government already does (Bradley Manning, the source of much of the WikiLeaks data, has been in prison waiting for trial for over 1000 days now) to prohibit its own embarrassing secrets from getting out, it’s only fair that big business be allowed the same benefit. At least this law won’t have a maximum penalty of 30 years imprisonment or execution, unlike those targeted by the espionage act. I’ll bet the anti-big government forces have little to no problem with those laws either (except that many may think they’re not being used enough). Let’s just re-brand it “economic terrorism”, then we can do anything we want to those who get in the way.

  329. broboxley OT says

    #321 Gunpowder Chai like my nan made
    boil 1.5 cups of water. Add 3 heaping teaspoons of loose black tea. Steep 5 minutes, strain into cup, add two spoons of sugar and some evaporated tinned milk. Guaranty the energy boost .

    Tony, I was thinking of black holes :-)

  330. triskelethecat says

    Hey…YAY! I got my program to work and log me in on the laptop!

    @Carlie: HI! I miss you!

    @Carlie and Portis: definitely no milk in tea, usually, even chai. However, sometimes on VERY rare occasions, I will hit Dunkin Donuts for a Chai Latte – usually when I really need a sugar fix. And yeah, Teavana IS high pressure – I had a $25 gift card and the first thing they did was show me tea pots that cost over $100.

    I did buy 2 kinds of chai, and 2 of their airtight tea containers, because I could use them – I have several kinds of loose tea that dear Walton sent me and I haven’t dared open because I have nothing to keep it in. And, I may buy more of the chai once in a rare while. It’s very good.

  334. Portia, snowbound says

    Yeah, Tony, Leviticus 72:345 “Thou shalt not combine the milk of a cloven-footed beast with the leaf of ebony. Those that breaketh mine commandment shall have their teapots shattered and their tea balls crushed, for it is an abomination.”

  336. triskelethecat says

    @Tony: I will happily join you in a pitcher of LI Iced Tea. Make mine double shots, as long as I’m not driving… Haven’t had the Long Beach version but I’m willing to try.

    Nah, milk just generally makes tea nasty.

  337. cicely (Hell, YES, I'm ready for a Real Change) says

    David: Let’s just say that Monday was a Very Bad and Stupid Day. I couldn’t brain to save my life, and my hands and feet were, as the book says, deft as crowbars…not an advantage when trying to cut and mount fiddly little bits of silver doily onto a plastic easter egg, or when not trying to Zombie Walk.
     
    But that reminds me that I should go ahead and change it.
    –
    *hugs* and *soothing liniments* for Portia and her ankle.
    –

    On perceptions, via PET: We Aren’t the World.

    Interesting!
    –
    iJoe: Glad to hear that BossNurse’s “mock inspection” went well.
    :)
    –

  338. says

    Portia:
    LOL!!!

    ****

    Gosh, did someone start a War on Women in the United States? Nah. Couldn’t be. /snaaaaaark

    The Indiana Senate on Tuesday approved new restrictions aimed at clinics that offer the abortion pill, requiring them to perform ultrasounds on women seeking the drugs.
    http://news.yahoo.com/ind-senate-approves-tougher-abortion-pill-rules-235406025.html

    ****

    ::blinks::
    Cardinal Keith O’Brien is resigning???!!!

    Pardon me while I go back and recover my gobsmacked so hard it is lying on the ground 5 feet behind me jaw.

  340. Portia, snowbound says

    Cerberus
    I applaud you again for your most recent comment on the Savage thread. I wanted to particularly call bullshit on the “response” to Beatrice but couldn’t form the thoughts.

    …and what’s NRE?

  343. Rev. BigDumbChimp says

    Anyone in the Austin, TX vicinity I will be your forever admirer and doter upon type uncreepy Internet person if you send me Jester King beer.

    We just had them here at a beer festival and there was some limited supply and promises of more to come but I must have more.

  345. Esteleth, Ficus Putsch Knits says

    Allo!

    A few of the things that are making Esteleth grumpy:

    (1) It is sleeting.

    (2) It is supposed to keep sleeting all day tomorrow.

    (3) My iMac is in the shop, for the LCDs suddenly exhibiting mass death. So I type this from my MBP. The good news is is that not only do I have AppleCare, the iMac is still under warranty. The bad news is that the iMac is eighteen months old.

    (4) The sick that I had this weekend cleared up today, making me feel human again. Until around 6 pm, when it returned with a vengeance of “lol, you didn’t need your lower GI to work, right?”

    (5) Co-worker is a sanctimonous shit. He emailed me a paper he found in Cell Stem Cell on Friday morning (observant Horde members will remember that Friday was when the sick started). Today, he asked my opinion. I honestly said that given that I was struggling with a fever all weekend, and playing work catch-up when not, I hadn’t had the chance to give the paper the close reading it deserved. Said I’d give him said opinion tomorrow. Got snotty, said that when he’s laid up, he reads in bed.

    (6) Have since read this paper. It is okay. Not stellar, but okay. Worthy of Cell Stem Cell, but not glorious. And not a huge game-changer for my research, like he implied when he emailed it to me.

    (7) IT IS FUCKING SLEETING. Because emphasis.

  346. says

    Maybe I’ll work from home tomorrow. I feel a sore throat coming on — thought I’d missed out on the fun the rest of the family had … but perhaps not. ‘sides my stress levels are high.

    E-mail exchange w/ grad student: Me: Get a copy of software package X. Him: Couldn’t. Me: it’s just like package Y which you have in hand, so use cmd. Him: tried cmd, didn’t work; should I do cmd –proper-flags. Me: yeaaah, that’s how you got Y isn’t it? try it. Him: oh, that worked. Me: [facepalm]

    person-to-person exchange w/ post-doc: Me: okay, you have two programs (A and B) each of which does 1/3 of what you want done, so combine them and add the remaining 1/3 to tie it all together. Him: [shows me C++ source for A with run B.exe dropped in the middle of a routine]. Why didn’t this compile. Me: [headdesk hard] Try scooping out the guts of B from the source code and putting it in A…

    Left work at 5 (a little earlier than usual for me) in anticipation of the effects of snow (and as a result of the aforementioned incidences + others). Roads are generally clear, and conditions aren’t too bad. Until I get to my street (a closed court at the with our house at the end on top of a hill) — city hasn’t been by yet (the big trucks only use us to turn around, a small truck to actually plows the street).. Turn the corner, start slip-sliding a bit but manageable. Until I see a pickup plowing one of the driveways backing out quickly right at me. Honk, stop. He quickly pulls forward. Self: “Oh, hell, I’m on a slope with no forward momentum. This will be fun.” Actually it wasn’t so bad; a bit of spinning tires and then it caught.

    Wife’s evening class was cancelled, so I took the opportunity to replace her windshield wipers while there was still light. Then shovelled too much snow (back hurts) so we have some chance of getting out in the morning. And now I’m still avoiding the work I’m supposed to be doing.

    Tea. Yeah, maybe I should go make myself some tea. Wonder if we have any “Good Earth”. That’s nice and strong and soothing.

  350. Portia, snowbound says

    Esteleth:
    Sleet sucks. So do relapses and snotty co-workers. *hugs*

    dontpanic:
    Glad you and your wife are both safe.

    Tony:
    Damn, indeed : ( My alma mater here in town ran an “active shooter scenario” drill last week. Hope they never have to know the real thing.

    =====

    I might have to go out in the snow tonight. The joys of being a small town lawyer.

  351. says

    Oh, joy. PTSD flare, feeling numb, can’t sleep, no appetite, and just wanting to curl up and hide until it goes away. (Which I know from experience does. not. work.)

    On top of that, one of my very important meds is out of refills and the pharm needs to call my doc — until I get the refill, I’m rationing the last few tablets, and horribly undermedicated. (Not. Helping.)

    I am really fucked up. Dunno how Partner can find me lovable at all. Don’t deserve love.

  352. Portia, snowbound says

    You DO deserve love, WMDKitty. You do.
    I hope your meds come through quickly. *headbonks*?

  354. says

    Awww. It is so nice when people compliment you.

    I’m sitting at Emerald City, having a few drinks and socializing with a few people I’ve never met (some very friendly ones). This gentleman just walked up to me, noting that I was on my laptop and asked if this was my office. Apparently he’s noticed me here before. As a bartender, I have some awareness of the people at my bar and that often translates over even when I’m on the other side of a bar–so I noticed him as well. Not in a I think he’s an attractive guy way, but in a this is a fellow bar patron. He just told me that I’m the most handsome guy in the bar every time he has come in. Awwww. If mocha skin could blush.
    (he has a lovely British accent)
    ****
    And I just had a lovely conversation with a heterosexual couple about how gay people should not exclude non gays from the bar scene. This was a couple that attended a local pageant called the Zeus Ball (related to Mardi Gras), and they were criticized by a few gay people for being there. I get the idea that there are not as many gay areas as there are heterosexual areas, and gay people need these spots to be themselves…but DAMMIT, when you have people who are accepting and friendly and actively want to show others their support, why the fuck do you want to drive them off?

  359. Portia, snowbound says

    WMDKitty
    *offers hanky, shoulder*
    I’m sorry. Is there anything you can usually do to get through such a tough time more quickly? Sorry if that’s a stressful question. : /

    Tony
    You are handsome. And yes, that’d be the weather. It was mostly bad because the warm temps made the snow so heavy along with being deep. It’s slushy and that’s just going to freeze and get more snow on top of it overnight. Thank goodness for my little carport so I have minimal clearing to do in the morning. I may cancel my hair appointment after all.

    …I really hope I don’t get the call from a jail that I expect to get tonight.

    Joe
    Puppeeee cutteennnnesss :D

    ====

    My ankle was feeling ok after elevation and ice so I moved around the house doing this and that and it quickly started hurting again, pain radiating up my calf. Whiiiine.

  360. cicely (Hell, YES, I'm ready for a Real Change) says

    *scritches* for WMDKitty. A *catnip mousie* is also available.
    –

  363. Portia, snowbound says

    Tony:

    Not being gay, I don’t have any weight in the conversation, but …if there were straight people who were gonna whine and not understand why anyone would be annoyed at their presence in non-straight space….those might be the exact people who should be run off? I dunno.

  365. says

    Portia:
    Actually they weren’t really complaining. They were stating it in response to a comment I made about heterosexuals being welcome here.
    I can see the other side of the point, but I just cannot get past the idea that on the whole gay people want to be accepted into society and not marginalized or discriminated against for being different, so to hear of gay people that will treat others in that manner annoys me. Also, while gay rights have been advanced significantly by people in the queer community, we have also benefitted by those individuals who are heterosexual and love us. I think alienating them is ultimately harmful. I do want to retain those spheres that we queers can enjoy as places that we can be ourselves and be comfortable, but does that have to be at the expense of our allies?

  366. Portia, snowbound says

    It’s totally up to you to conduct your activism, or what-have-you, however you like. I can only frame the ideas as how I would feel if the same thoughts were applied to women/men dichotomies. *shrug* No one is saying I have to take care not to alienate sympathetic men, though, so I’m gonna shut up about it because I think Rule Number One of being an advocate for a marginalized group you don’t belong to is to not tell them how to feel about issues that affect them and not you. So, run on sentence. :)

    Portia’s shutting it now :)

  369. says

    All I can do for now is put the sharp objects out of reach and ride it out.

    Fuck, I don’t even know what triggered me this time, and that bothers me more than the PTSD itself. If I can figure out what pushed my buttons, I can usually find a way to cope with it or convince myself that I’m okay (or will be okay). The unknown… yeah. I know I’m going to sit and obsess and work myself into a knot trying to figure it out, and that can be dangerous because that “dark” part of me always tries to talk me into doing stupid self-harm-y things. This leads to me trying desperately to distract myself with anything — books, video games, fanfic — and staying up for days on end until I just crash.

    I really need professional help. And possibly a medication adjustment, because the stuff I’m on, it keeps me functional and mostly-stable, but it’s not, you know, 100% effective.

    But then again… what if this is as good as it gets?

  371. broboxley OT says

    important point

    CALVARY CHAPEL, in retrospect, seems addictive to certain personalities the way alcohol is addictive to others,” says Larry Fike. “If you have certain kinds of hang-ups or problems, Calvary can act as an addictive kind of salve.”

    being a complete dennis around any religious discussion makes me very annoying, on retrospect on this board it may be annoying here as well
    http://www.metroactive.com/papers/sonoma/04.02.98/calvary-9813.html

  372. says

    One of the stories I shared with the couple:
    Back when M was alive, he and I went to Atlanta, GA for Gay Pride. While we were there, we met a bunch of really fun people, all of whom were gay men, except one heterosexual woman, A (probably 9 or 10 of us in total). A loved her gay men. In fact, IIRC, she said she spent more time with gay men than any other group of people. We all went to a gay sports bar called WOOFS. While there, some of us played pool and A was watching us. At some point, a couple of gay men at a table next to ours made some comments I overheard. Something about “What is *she* doing here. There’s a bar down the road for her kind.”
    I was not happy, and I said so.
    I went off on them, much to the surprise of the rest of the people in our group.
    I’m the kind of person who wants to *include* others, not exclude them (obviously if you hold moral views I find reprehensible, I have absolutely nooooooo problem excluding you Hello Slymepitters)

  376. Tigger_the_Wing, Ranged Throngs Termed A Nerd With Boltcutters says

    Hi Hordely people, I’m so sorry that I haven’t been participating much recently, here or on PET. Not enough spoons. It’s taking me far too long to recover from the virus infection. Even reading, let alone commenting, leaves me drained and I currently have a three-second attention span. :-/

    But I would really, really appreciate some advice, so I’ve spent the afternoon composing this. I hope it isn’t too much of a teal deer. Please feel free to ignore this! (Cross-posted to PET)

    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    I saw my GP on Monday and we did the usual four-weekly summary of my pain levels and form-signing necessary for me to get another four weeks’ worth of Norspan patches.

    We discussed my other medications and which ones were actually useful in controlling more than one of my many and varied symptoms/disorders. I made my usual apologies for being ‘complicated’, she made her usual comment about how it was ‘interesting’ and then I joked that I couldn’t possibly be the *only* one in the world with my suite of disorders – no-one could be that unlucky! – and there’s probably a rare syndrome out there somewhere that fits me, but no-one has thought of applying it to me yet. And then I showed her how I had confused the pain specialist by being able to bend down, legs straight and knees together, and put my hands flat on the floor, despite over thirty years of Ankylosing Spondylitis in my spine.

    She reacted as if a lightbulb had gone off in her head.

    “I think I know what you’ve got, and it IS a rare syndrome!”

    She sat back at her desk, got onto the computer and went to the NCBI bookshelf and showed me:

    “Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, Hypermobility Type”

    We went through the article (she printed it off for me, so I could read it later) and it covered all my previously-assumed-to-be-unrelated symptoms. Seriously. Cardiovascular, GI, musculoskeletal, CNS; even things I hadn’t considered personal health problems at all, like my pregnancies ending in premature rupture of membranes and very fast labours, and nearly dying from blood loss after having my daughter.

    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    So, my dear Horde friends and acquaintances and adopted grandchildren, what do I do next? Does anyone in Australia know of someone who specialises in EDS? I’ve tried looking (online) myself, with no joy yet. My GP (who is Canadian, btw) says that the few EDS patients she has seen over the years, have had to travel to London for specialist help! Can I manage this myself? Sorry, I have a zillion questions!

    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    P.S. My sons all have hyper-mobile joints to some degree or other. I recall my mother being able to put her hands flat on the floor when she was younger too. Partly why I never considered it seriously abnormal. Like being on the Autism spectrum, when it is your family’s ‘normal’ you don’t think about it. Oh, and while reading the 20 pages of printout the GP assigned as homework, I recalled an incident that took place about fifteen years ago; when a young man with Marfan Syndrome asked me if my eldest son (the concert pianist) had been diagnosed with it.

  378. says

    Tony

    I do want to retain those spheres that we queers can enjoy as places that we can be ourselves and be comfortable, but does that have to be at the expense of our allies?

    Yes and no. Basically, a lot of gay people have taken a sufficient degree of shit regarding it that they basically can’t relax and let their hair down among groups of straight people, especially those they don’t know well. Combine this with the fact that straight people, like other privileged groups, tend to dominate the spaces they’re in, intentionally or not, and you have a significant proportion of the gay community who would rather that they stay away entirely. This is aggravated by the fact that as straight people start to dominate the environment, it changes to be more enticing to straight people, ans soon you find that they’re making up more of the crowd, and you’ve lost all the reasons you had a gay space to begin with. There is another dynamic too, which I think may be in play in the story you told in #372: A lot of ‘gay spaces’ are really ‘gay men’s spaces, and there’s a large current of misogyny running through many parts of gay male culture. Simultaneously, the existence of bars where they can go with a low likelihood of being sexually harassed, propositioned, or assaulted it often a draw to straight women. Some gay men have a problem with this, but it’s a largely separate thing from straight couples/straight people looking to pair up start coming into things.

  379. chigau (違う) says

    So, I’m catching-up, bottom-up on several threads, in the wrong order.
    but
    I am having a bath to get clean and wash my hair
    whilst preventing my left knee’s wound-dressing from becoming wet
    and balancing the net-book on the edge of the tub
    and I need a drink.
    *hugs for everyone*

  380. Akira MacKenzie says

    A couple of weeks ago I posted about my friend Jim’s Burzelic’s efforts to crowd-fund distribution of Misfit Heights, the zombie/puppet/musical film he co-created. Well, with 14 days left, they just met their $5000 goal! I don’t know if any Pharynguloids contributed, but if so, thanks so much. Jim has worked really hard on this project, and it’s great to know that it will finally get out to general audiences via the net.

    There is still time left to donate, so if you’re interested, stop on by: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/unfetteredent/misfit-heights

  382. Portia, snowbound says

    Sorry, Tony, was composing a reply and got a collect call. Well, first I got a call from my brother (he never calls, I still feel like a giddy eight year old when my big brother gives me attention :D) and then got the other one. I was composing a reply which is half finished. I shall abbreviate as follows and expand maybe in an email to you later:

    I just don’t want anyone to feel like I’m straightsplaining, so anyone else feel free to correct me.

    That refrain of “Don’t be mean, they’re on our side” grates on my nerves a little bit when I hear it wrt feminist issues because it’s a unique type of silencing. I particularly hear it, though, from men who think I’m just a touch too aggressive or abrasive or unapologetic about calling out their perpetuation of insidious sexist tropes.

    The most recent example I can think of was that fateful Valentine’s night with Jerk. We were talking about how I approach a sexist remark and its maker. I said it’s really not about the remark after a while, it’s the response. When I get a thoughtful and/or contrite response, I smooth out my ruffled feathers and have a conversation. When I get a defensive response, I go in guns blaring. Jerk suggested that this was the problem with the discussion, me being too mean. We all know how he turned out.

    So it’s a button for me, and it may not be for everyone. I’ve seen it before *cough* JT Eberhard*cough* with other men, too. They say that if only we were nicer, and held their hands, and didn’t deny them access to our spaces, then we’d all be on the same happy side and they would be the best allies they could be! But what they fail to acknowledge is that by barging in and acting entitled to entrance or explanation or education, they are not fighting unearned social privilege, they are exercising it.

    Dalillama’s point about attitudes towards women in the gay community are well-taken. Especially in light of the Dan Savage conversation…

    Ok so that was less abbreviated than I planned.

    WMDKitty – *scritches*

  384. says

    Dalillama:
    I didn’t think of the sexist element of it. The couple I’ve been talking to have given me a bit of information, but really, I wasn’t there, so I don’t know the full context of their treatment. I can only speculate.
    My situation is one I can talk about. I don’t know the motivation of the guys in question, but they made A feel very unwelcome, and me, quite mad. Actually, IIRC, I was at the point of being so mad I was shaking.
    I completely see where you’re coming from, and considered that as one reason some gay people are resistant to heterosexuals intruding in one of the few spaces for us. In fact, the bar I come to has a Drink N Drown night twice a week, and many heterosexuals come out for it (pay $10 and drink all you want from 9-1). There have been nights when I’ve seen many attractive men, only to realize they’re hetero (I keep wanting to use the word straight, but after someone commented here a few weeks ago about that word, I’ve been avoiding it), and I’ve been frustrated. But I usually remember that I *want* heterosexuals to be comfortable around queers. I want them to think of us as no different than anyone else. So for me, I weight the ultimate benefits of acceptance against the costs of them “intruding” on “my” territory.

  385. says

    Portia:
    ok, I can grok that completely.
    I *think* this couple was different, since it didn’t seem that they were complaining about the way they were treated, more stating it as something that occured. They mentioned nothing about creating a fuss. I’m of two minds on the subject. I can completely understand the frustration of having heteros (is it ok to abbreviate the word this way) “intrude” in queer spaces. I just try to look at the long term benefits. Perhaps I’m being overly optimistic, but I think the day will come when being gay is such a non issue that only a smalllllll minority will take note of (for instance) two men holding hands walking down the street.

  386. Portia, snowbound says

    Anybody have a spare hug to toss my way? Stressful work situation. Court in the morning. Personal element. Need to sleep but too nervous.

    Only speak in sentence fragments.

  387. says

    Well golly, I’m reminded of some of the frustration I’ve felt dealing with joey in the Thunderdome. His absolutist position doesn’t allow for the nuances of human interactions. Seeing Portia and Dalillama’s comments on this subject has been a reminder of the nuances of so much of how we interact. My experience…Dalillama’s…Portia’s…none of them are “right” or “wrong”. They reflect the complexity of our interactions with others.

  390. Portia, snowbound says

    I’m gonna snuggle this virtual kitty and try to wind down so I can be something like functional in court tomorrow. I ♥ you all, good night!

  396. chigau (違う) says

    I just read this comment on another blog

    So what if they had to choose between garlic and Nutella?

    I refuse to give context because the question is so Important® by itself.

  397. throwaway, promised freezed peach, all we got was the pit says

    WMDKitty

    Crazy how they can’t hear their own names, but if you run a can opener, they’ll hear it from a mile away, innit?

    So that’s why you name them *WHRRRZZZSHHHH-GNK-TING*

  398. Beatrice says

    Ugh

    Morning.

    *Scritches* for WMDKitty, *hugs* for everyone

    Cute dog photos, Joe and dontpanic.

    I skimmed the fathate thread, and saw the werewolf bit, but can’t respond now. Cerberus probably did a great job anyway. I’ll read later.

    Have to go to work soon.
    Ugh

  399. says

    WMDKitty @351

    You are plenty lovable. And those of us who love people with a lot of scars (whether internal or external) stay because we want to. Because that person is beautiful, lovable, and so very worth it. Because they bring so much more joy to our lives than they bring frustration or rejection. And because we understand that what is going on isn’t either their fault or our fault, but the trauma and the healing thereof.

    You will get through this and all through it, your partner will still love you just the same and ze’ll tell you much better than I could. *Appropriate Physical Gesture of Affection*

    Portia @386

    *Strong Hugz*

    Portia @340

    NRE means New Relationship Energy.

    Basically, it’s the term for that heady rush of novelty, excitement, connection, possible intense sexual chemistry, overromanticization, and overall endless good feeling people often have at the beginning of new relationships. You know, the whole “we get along amazing, the sex is godly, we laugh together all night, and I don’t think it’s a bad idea to move across country and get a new job for this person” kind of near-drunken blindness that can strike us when we’re exploring a hot new relationship.

    It’s a period that lasts anywhere from a day or two to a year (though usually around 3 months) and is largely responsible for relationship structures like “serial monogamy”, dating new partners briefly, rapidly in succession so as to always be experiencing NRE.

    Pretty much most cultural depictions of love show NRE as “true love”, which is why the “happily ever after”s always seem to come so quickly after they first meet and “everything is wonderful with this person”.

    It can also be dangerous, because NRE can especially blind us to red flags and many abusers exploit this to disconnect potential victims from their support networks in this period so they’re already stuck by the time things are starting to go sour.

  400. says

    Tony

    Most cats do know their name, yes… but they have very selective hearing!

    Cerberus

    It can also be dangerous, because NRE can especially blind us to red flags and many abusers exploit this to disconnect potential victims from their support networks in this period so they’re already stuck by the time things are starting to go sour.

    Ayup. That’s how I ended up stuck with the Jackass. By the time I twigged to his games, he had me ground down to nothing.

  402. chigau (違う) says

    Azkyroth #401
    speaking for myself
    because the IT crew came in on the so-called weekend and re-configured the whole shebang.

  404. Azkyroth Drinked the Grammar Too :) says

    They say that if only we were nicer, and held their hands, and didn’t deny them access to our spaces, then we’d all be on the same happy side and they would be the best allies they could be! But what they fail to acknowledge is that by barging in and acting entitled to entrance or explanation or education, they are not fighting unearned social privilege, they are exercising it.

    I don’t know. Speaking as someone who predominantly experiences privilege from the other side as the (lived-experience, I’m sure this isn’t “intentional”) calculated withholding of explanations of things that my failure to “just get” is treated as a deep, devastating character flaw* I find this sort of phrasin g really difficult to get behind.

    I’ll try to think about it more.

    *we HAVE collectively grown the fuck up and admitted that people not on the autism spectrum have nontrivial privilege, right?

  406. Azkyroth Drinked the Grammar Too :) says

    My experience suggests it’s qualitatively different but that there are insturctive parallels that ight be drawn. I just remember whether it “really counted” as privlege being an issue the last time I didn’t/couldn’t hold back my feelings on the m,atter, thought I suppuse someone will be along to “coprrect” my experiences shortly.

  408. says

    Azkyroth

    Point is, we all end up getting the short end because the “normal” folks just don’t grok our experiences. They have the privilege of having working bodies and properly wired brains.

    In high school — I don’t recall the precise circumstances that brought it about — some able-bodied students spent the day (or was it the week?) in wheelchairs. I had people come up to me after that, saying they really had no clue how hard it is to do everything from a seated position. I don’t know how much reach that had, but I like to think a few minds were opened by that.

    It’s too bad you can’t temporarily tweak their brains so they can have a taste of what life on the spectrum is like.

  410. Beatrice says

    Azkyroth,

    Please, understand that when people make comments such as the one you quote in your #404, it is referring to the vast majority of people who deliberately don’t understand, not because of being on the spectrum, but because of being assholes.

  411. Beatrice says

    Ok, not necessarily assholes all of them, but not on the spectrum either, but being privileged.

  413. opposablethumbs says

    tigger_the_wing, there’s someone I know of in another part of the internet (livejournal) who has Ehler-Danloss and quite often mentions things going on in relation to it on her LJ. She’s in the US, so I assume she probably won’t know particularly about people or resources in Australia, but she seems knowledgeable about the condition itself and about managing it, and into passing on info. I don’t “know” her particularly well but would you like me to ask her permission to link you to her LJ so you could contact her? Just a thought.

  414. rq says

    *hugs* to those who want/need, substitute for *scritches* or *shoulder-pat* as desired.

    No FossilFishy anywhere? Anyone have email connections? Starting to worry…

  415. says

    Morning
    So, the kid is coming to life again, she even picks fights with her sister again AND she slept in her own bed all night (sick kids are allowed in the parental bed). And I’m beginning to feel mostly human again, too. Still, my throat hurts like I tried to drink some troll cocktail in Ankh Morpork.

    Assorted hugs all around
    tea
    Don’t hit me, don’t hit me. I usually drink mine cold, but not real tea-tea but the herbal, fruit and Roiboos varieties. Tastes better than water, especially if you carry it half a day in a bottle. My sister does the sugar delivery with coffee. I think she’s at cubes per cup now.

    Dalillama
    Oh shit that sucks. Being denied access to my children is about the worst thing I can imagine and I don’t pretend that this is due to blood and genes. (hugs)

    Joe
    Yay for Bossnurse

    birgerjohanson

    I hope stereotype threat can account for the statistical blip that created books like “The Bell Curve”. Not that facts wil stop a bad meme, racial inferiority will live on in memespace alongside The Elders of Zion.

    I’d first like to see some reliable tests for a “general intelligence” first. Because so far I don’t see them. And I’d like to see somebody control for factors like prenatal care, maternal health, healthcare, infant and childhood nutririon and education…

    Tony

    And I just had a lovely conversation with a heterosexual couple about how gay people should not exclude non gays from the bar scene.

    I can understand their frustration. It drove me nuts to be the first to arrive to a night out and then being subsequently ignored by the waiters until our gay friends showed up, but I can understand that gay people aren’t too happy to have their spaces overrun by hipsters, which was an issue at that place and time. It felt for the gay community like they were driven out of their spaces, being reduced, again, to some cliché that was part of the “flair”.
    In my experience, and I know this sounds snobby, you had to be the right kind of straight person. Somebody who didn’t go to a gay bar or disco because of the “exotic flair” but because I wanted to spend time with my friends who happened to be gay.

    Alethea
    Not much help here, but yay?
    I mean, there must be somebody in this world who knows this stuff.

  416. dongiovanni says

    I suppose I should introduce myself. Long time lurker, first time poster. I’m an atheist. The religion I don’t believe in is the Anglican flavour of Christianity. My hobbies are Opera, roleplaying, HP Lovecraft and trolling the catholic church.

    Sorry if this makes me appear egotistic and intrusive, I’m like that a lot of the time.

  418. carlie says

    Tigger – I know nothing about it, but congrats on getting a diagnosis at last. It must feel good to at least be able to put a name to it and wrap everything up under it.

    Welcome, dongiovanni!

  419. richardh says

    On Fata Morgana, mirages and the like, read Minnaert’s classic The Nature of Light and Colour in the Open Air , one of my all-time favourite non-fiction books. It explains all kinds of interesting atmospheric phenomena in a mostly non-technical way, and I’d recommend it to anyone who ever goes outdoors and notices things. Bonus points for anyone who manages to see Haidinger’s Brush after reading it!

    (I don’t have the time to be a regular here and really get to know people, but if it’s not too presumptuous, please consider this a kind of abstract *hug* for anyone who’s feeling in need of one!)

  421. carlie says

    Hello, richardh!

    Snow day.
    Child 2’s reaction: Yay! I’m going to make myself eggs and watch tv!
    Child 1’s reaction: Yay! I’m going back to bed.

  422. says

    Hi, Dongiovanni & richardh!

    I’ve just been out singing, so I am very happy! Bach Magnificat, just glorious. I’m thrilled to be back in choir after so long. Even though an evening rehearsal is still quite hard for me, and I seem to have lost an octave and a half that I hope will come back with practice. My bottom notes just disappear, very odd. I managed to get the odd E&F above middle C when in context, and my top A seems to be back so that’s already better than last week where I had only one octave G-G.

    Anyway, I feel I’m very slowly getting my life back. Weekly choir and yoga this year, and gentle relaxing holidays with my friend. I’m pissed off that I couldn’t go to Vietnam with my bloke and ride Urals down the Ho Chi Minh trail, but there will be other adventures one day.

    Giliell, were you confusing me with Tigger just now? We do both have health problems and live in Canberra, but other than that we’re not the same!

  423. Ogvorbis says

    Happy Thursday.

    Wife has a two hour delay. She will be working her street corner in rain and wind. Bleah.

    triskelethecat:

    Thanks for the support. And hugs to you.

    WMDKitty:

    Safe hugs.

  427. Ogvorbis says

    WMDKittty:

    I trigger myself all the time.

    TRIGGER WARNING:

    As I lay awake last night trying to sleep, I kept going around and around and around with the idea that future abuse was my fault, that I should have told.

    But I did tell. I did tell. I told the den leader of (I think?) the Webelos. I didn’t go into any real details, but I told him that Abuser had been doing things to some of the boys. And I was told that I was a liar. How dare I accuse him, a good family man, of doing anything? And was told that if I said anything, how would he support his wife and children? So I was made to apologize to him. In person. Just the two of us. Alone. And he punished me for lying about the way that he taught us. And he punished me by doing the exact same thing that he was punishing me for accusing him of doing.

    So fuck this shit. It was not my fucking fault. I told and wasn’t believed. I told and was informed that I was lying. I told and was raped again to punish me for lying about him raping me. I told and it got me nowhere.

    A year later, he left and moved down to west central Arizona and scouting kinda collapsed. I wonder if someone else told the right person? A kid who was not known for telling tales told and was believed?

    And I wish to hell that my mind would let these memories out without all the angst. Damnit, this memory is good news for me, this memory is a positive, why do I have to go through so much shit and guilt to get there?

    And when I think back on this, I sound like a fucking textbook case of child abuse. I volunteered to join the scouts which put me in a position to be abused (guilt!). I was manipulated into drinking too much soda to put me in a position that was so embarrassing that I would be afraid to expose the rape in fear of my wetting my pants would become public knowledge. He took photos of me with other boys which shamed me. I was manipulated into abusing others, into bringing others into the abuse which meant that I was not only complicit, but saw myself as an abuser. Strangers, a couple with two children. walked into a campsite while I was being abused and the apologized and kept going! And when I told, no one believed me. And I have spent most of my life blaming myself. I sound like a fucking cliche.

    And now, rather than feeling depressed, I feel fucking angry. Mad. Where the fuck were the adults who were supposed to be adults? Why didn’t the parents say something? I did what I was supposed to do and got punished again. FUCKING ASSHOLES!!!!

  429. rq says

    *somanyhugs*, Ogvorbis.

    +++

    In other news, I think I just came this close to burning the house down. O ooo…

  430. Pteryxx says

    *all the hugs for Ogvorbis*

    —trigger warning—-

    Not only was none of it your fault, you DID try to stop it. You did try. You DID try.

    You’re not a mere cliche – the textbook example is the abuser’s, by cultivating a family-man, nice-guy image as a pre-emptive defense against any victim that might come forward. It’s ‘How Predators Get Away With It 101’.

  431. says

    Moments of Mormon Madness: BYU professors of very little brain are digging around in Egypt, looking for proof that the mormon Book of Abraham (one of Joseph Smith’s many scams) is historically accurate.

    Legitimate professors, real Egyptologists, view BYU professor Kerry Muhlestein with scorn [emphasis mine]:

    “I watched the three videos, and I don’t agree with any of it. The ancient Egyptians had no concept of Abraham, so I don’t know where he gets these comparisons… And No, most Egyptologists do not agree, despite what Kerry says. I know Kerry, but I do not have much respect for his work. Now I have even less. The fact that he is digging in Egypt is even more worrisome… This PhD was awarded before I arrived at UCLA, although I know that Kerry finished his text based dissertation after only two years of Egyptian language training, which is rather laughable.

    Have you read Robert Ritner’s work about this in Journal of Near Eastern Studies? It’s the best out there… Kerry is just spinning out the same Mormon rhetoric. What is different is: Mormons are funding PhDs in Egyptology and Biblical Studies and then funding positions at BYU and elsewhere and passing these people off as experts, when they are only ideologically driven researchers, not experts interested in actual evidence.

    Excerpt is from an ex-mormon discussion going on here:
    http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,808394

  433. says

    A Moment of Mormon Madness that neatly illustrates the fuck-the-victim attitude toward suffering:

    When I see the physical and emotional pain Ashtyn is going through, I feel sad and have shed tears with and for her. However, if I had the ability to take this cancer away from her, I wouldn’t. You heard me right. I would not take this cancer from her. Why would I rob her of this life changing experience?

    Ashtyn chose this before coming to earth. She knew the pain she would experience. She also knew the blessings that would be hers from going through it. Lives would be changed. Her life would be changed. Every moment of her trial will be worth it. She will never want to give back what she gains and what she learns. It will be precious to her. So as a mother, why would I ever take that away from her? I am happy for her that she is the kind of girl that God has trusted to go through this with faith, strength, and dignity. God has every confidence in her. I do too.

    From this mormon mommy blog: http://ashtynsarmy.com/she-chose-this/

  434. jose says

    Gotta love Ed Clint. Oh, you criticize evo psych? Here’s some new research that improves on the aspects that have received criticism. That proves your criticisms are wrong. No, Ed, all that proves the criticisms were effective! :D

    His post is giving me some serious giggles. He so thinks he has shown critics! You show ’em, Ed! ^__^

  436. says

    [rant]
    This college wants to drive me crazy.
    So, you may remember that some weeks ago I despaired about not being able to find the central exams secretary which I was told to hand in some applications by the central exams comitee, only to find out that those things are actually the same and went there and handed stuff in.
    So, now I get a mail from a third secretary (exams secretary of the faculty) which asks me to hand in that application plus my high school diploma.
    I write back: Well, I handed in the application, but I didn’t know I had to hand in the highschool diploma again because I didn’t start college now, I only changed to a different mode.
    I get a mail back (in a tone that says “don’t waste my time, silly girl”) saying that I only changed with the Central Students Secretary (another institution…) but I need to hand in that application.
    So, I worte back that I handed in the very application she sent me at the central exams secretary as required by the central exams comitee, but I’m happy to send it in again if she’d like me to.
    I haven’t heard from her since, I hope that’s because she gets her stuff in order…

  437. says

    Expect to see Fox News, Rush Dimbulb, and all right-wing bloggers repeating on an every-five-minutes cycle the “fact” that Obama Care will increase the deficit. Alabama Republican Jeff Sessions is the perp. You can view a video of his presentation to the Budget Committee, and read analysis here.

    … [Sessions speaking]”According to the GAO under a realistic set of assumptions the health care law will increase the deficit by 7/10th percent of GDP or roughly $6.2 trillion over the next 75 years. $6.2 trillion unfunded liability of the United States. In other words, the GAO reveals that the big tax increases in the bill come nowhere close to covering the massive spending.”

    That seems like a pretty big deal, doesn’t it? For several years, literally every independent study of “Obamacare” has shown that the law will save the nation hundreds of billions of dollars. And yet, there was Sessions pointing to a GAO study that suggested the exact opposite. Indeed, the far-right senator boasted, “The results of this report confirm everything critics and Republicans have been saying about the health care bill and reveal the dramatic falsehoods that were used to push it to passage.”

    How’s that possible? As Igor Volsky explained, “The Alabama senator asked the office to estimate what would happen if the cost containment provisions in the law — the Independent Payment Advisory Board, excise tax on high-cost plans, and reductions in Medicare payments to providers — are ‘phased out over time’ while the coverage provisions remain.”

    This is roughly the equivalent of the Boston Celtics’ coach asking someone on his staff, “Figure out what our record would be if our opponents’ points didn’t count.” Then, soon after, the coach called a press conference to declare, “Good news everyone! We’re undefeated! We’ve won every game in a shutout!”…

    By the same logic, Jeff Sessions can prove that my car is an ineffective method of transportation if he takes away its engine and wheels….

  438. says

    In reference to my post @437: A summary of conservative media echoing Jeff Session’s misleading claims is presented here.

    Excerpt:

    Limbaugh: GAO Said That “Obamacare Will Increase The Long Term National Deficit By 6.2 Trillion.” Rush Limbaugh also discussed the GAO report, saying it showed that “Obamacare will increase the long term national deficit by 6.2 trillion.” He added: “It’s not saving anybody any money. It’s not reducing your premiums by $2500. It’s not balancing the budget. It’s not reducing the deficit. Obamacare — another way to put this — Obamacare will result in this country spending $6.2 trillion it otherwise would not spend. It’s the only way to look at this. If we had not made any changes in our health care system, we wouldn’t be spending this 6.2 trillion.” [Premiere Radio Networks, The Rush Limbaugh Show, 2/26/13]

  439. Ogvorbis says

    So if the revenue and cost containment measures are removed, the health care reform act will cost more? Shocking.

  440. Beatrice says

    What kind of a fucking idiot asks a person working nearly for free how come they aren’t working somewhere better!?

    And how come there are so many such idiots at a single place of work!? I’m starting to realize why are country is fucked. The people here are obviously absolute morons.

    One of these days I’m going to answer one of them with “Well, it was a tough decision, but in the end, the amazing salary decided it”. Maybe they won’t even get the sarcasm.

    And now I almost cried in the tram because I didn’t get the ticket to a movie today, a movie I could only see today and for which you could only get the free ticket today.

    Yep, I’m perfectly right in the head. Sure.

  441. Beatrice says

    And my father never ever greets me when I come home. I mean, I know being a nice person is not his thing (this is the person who, when you tell him you are going out, often answers with “what do I care? go”), but he could at least mutter a fucking acknowledgement to a member of his family .

  442. says

    Morning folks.

    Beatrice, sorry you missed your movie. Especially since it was free. :(

    Azkyroth, the assholes can get bent. Your experiences are real and valid, and no asshat can come around and “correct” them for you after the fact. And it is of course a matter of privilege when people tell you to “just deal” or complain when you don’t “get it”.

  443. Beatrice says

    Um, sorry for excessive venting about all kinds of stupid things.

    I forgot what I want to comment on, so I’ll just leave some *hugs* here, extra for Ogvorbis. I’m glad you made another breakthrough.

  444. Matt Penfold says

    Why, when calculating the cost of healthcare, do those opposed to universal healthcare never take into consideration the cost of not providing healthcare ? I know they are bit harder to calculate, and require a bit more work, but they are doable.

  445. glodson says

    Why, when calculating the cost of healthcare, do those opposed to universal healthcare never take into consideration the cost of not providing healthcare ?

    I would guess they already know how that would roughly work out. Or worse, they already have done the estimations and want to ignore that little problem.

  446. JAL: Snark, Sarcasm & Bitterness says

    Ogborbis,
    *more hugs*

    ———–Trigger Warning!——————-

    Pteryxx,
    all the hugs for Ogvorbis*

    —trigger warning—-

    Not only was none of it your fault, you DID try to stop it. You did try. You DID try.

    You’re not a mere cliche – the textbook example is the abuser’s, by cultivating a family-man, nice-guy image as a pre-emptive defense against any victim that might come forward. It’s ‘How Predators Get Away With It 101′.

    Hell, even if the abuse isn’t the textbook family-man, nice-guy image the people around them will lie, pretend and deny to themselves and others in order to create that image for the abuser.

    My father was not a nice-guy, family-man. He was an alcoholic, partied, left me alone for weeks to go hunting (best weeks of my life), and worked two jobs to support his habit. Yet we still needed friends to keep the power on and the friend of the family landlord kept giving us breaks on rent.

    He was the golden boy football player, son of a firefighter and a teacher who joined the Army to serve his country. Hard to get more “down home American boy” than that. But he wasn’t the good guy anymore and every one knew that – they just couldn’t admit it. So they looked the other way and I often found myself lying to cover my father (to make him look better). Family, and his friends would scold me for lying IF the lie didn’t work, make sense or didn’t make him look good. They needed the Golden Boy. They kept the Golden Boy going and I was sacrificed to make it happen. He’s still there, still going and now I’m just the ungrateful bitch who my mother turned against him and his family. *snort*
    He’s still using me.

  447. rq says

    Beatrice
    *hugs* and a hot chocolate! Or something… :(
    Can I ask what movie it was?
    And *morehugs* about just having (another?) crappy day.

    Giliell
    I had a similar situation with work when I went back after #2, I had to get a new photo ID, which means hand in some salon photos and all that crap. So I handed in a set, my boss handed them up the chain, and a week later… I get a note on my desk saying Hand in those photos! from someone in bookkeeping. After a few phone calls, I ended up handing in a second set the next day. A week later, I got another note with strong words about my attitude towards the job and a phone call from bookkeeping about not having handed in any photos. So I called the lady who was supposed to receive the photos directly, and told her I’d handed in photos twice (my boss backed me up). She spent about a minute looking through a filing cabinet, at the end of which I heard a mumbled “I guess the new girl put them away abitdifferentlythankyoubye…” Had similar issues when I tried to correct my address, which they’d written wrong even when I’d submitted it correctly, twice.

    tl;dr: I hate official institutions like that, because nobody ever seems to know what someone else is doing, and if something goes missing or doesn’t appear, it’s obviously because the person submitting did not submit. I ♥ NOT bureaucracy.

  448. Beatrice says

    rq,

    People are idiots and I’m frustrated with everything in my life.

    Thanks for the hugs and chocolate.

  449. cicely (Hell, YES, I'm ready for a Real Change) says

    Plenty of spare *hugs* for Portia.
    –
    Tigger: Surely, if at last you know it’s True Name, you are in an improved position to correctly treat it?
    –

    So what if they had to choose between garlic and Nutella?

    I refuse to give context because the question is so Important® by itself.

    :) :) :)
    –
    dongiovanni, Welcome In! Opera doesn’t do anything for me, and while I don’t troll the RCC, I do derive considerable pleasure from their current cockroaches-scuttling-for-the-baseboards reaction to the exposure of their personal and institutional misdeeds. Roleplaying games (tabletop!) and HPL, on the other tentacles, touch me where I live.
     
    So…*dangling bait*…what are your views on Horses and peas?
    –
    Howdy, richardh! *returning abstract hug*
    –
    Ogvorbis: *hugs*. It was indeed not your fucking shit. The adults you told were derelect in their duties/resposibilities. They preferred (like the Catholic Church) to take the easy way out, refuse to listen to the victim, and cover it all up. Fuck ’em sideways!
    –
    Giliell: Glad to hear that you and the offspring are feeling better.
    –

    In other news, I think I just came this close to burning the house down. O ooo…

    Deliberately, or by accident? And in either case, where were the Horses, when this was going down? ‘Cause if you can’t see ’em, there’s no telling what They were getting up to.
    –
    *chocolate-covered hugs* for Beatrice.
    –

  451. says

    This is a follow up to my post @431. Dr. Kara Cooney, who was the star of her own TV show Out of Egypt on the Discovery channel, is the professor quoted in the scathing opinion of mormon “Egyptologist” BYU professor Kerry Muhlestein.

  452. Janine: Hallucinating Liar says

    Lynna, what you have linked to at #433 is truly one of the most ethically reprehensible things I have read.

    She choose to have cancer? She fucking choose to have cancer?

    This is the flip side of The Secret. (Ask me again why I have New Age as much as any other religion.)

    I think it is already time to reread Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America by Barbara Ehrenreich.

  453. Crip Dyke, MQ, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden says

    Og –

    You deserved different. You deserved to have your autonomy and body respected. You deserved to be taken seriously when you told others that they hadn’t been respected. You deserved so much.

    And your reaction is completely understandable, even the part when you were upset with yourself. But I’m glad you’re at the anger stage because it’s now when it’s a bit easier to here something with less risk of it sounding as if you are being blamed again: You deserve to be treated better by yourself.

    I hope the anger doesn’t turn inappropriately inward. THose patterns can be hard to change, and I hope to goodness gracious that this shift for you augures a shift both profound and important. You deserved better. You still deserve better than this aftermath, even from yourself. I hope you get it, and soon.

    My absolute best,

    CD

  454. opposablethumbs says

    Drive-by hugschocolatebaconandwhisky to all who would care for some, and holy shit Ogvorbis that sounds pretty major. You did report, in spite of everything, and the bastards let you down wholesale. I don’t know whether to be furious again or glad that this particular memory has come forward.
    .
    Janine, yes to spitting tacks at this aspect of New Age crap as much as any other – victim-blaming by any other name is just as fucking vile. Even if it’s the parent desperate beyond reason to find a way of bearing their own pain by denying reality, it’s just as vile in what it says about the child.

  455. says

    So, back from work, so I should be physically and financially able to go grocery shopping tomorrow*

    rq
    Yeah, blame it on the new girl…
    I have no problem sending them the fucking stuff again, but
    A) how am I supposed to know?
    B) I feel like Asterix in the movie when he needs to get a certain certificate…

    beatrice
    Yep, people are idiots.
    Have you tried excessive politeness with your dad? Like saying “Yes, dad, I’m also very glad to be home and to see you” It works with mine….
    *No, we’re not in dire straits. It’s just that I usually time the week’s expenses so that I try to get along with a certain amount each week. But I was a hog on Saturday… And actually, since the only healthy person ate in kindergarten anyway, there wasn’t really a need for it so far

  457. Azkyroth Drinked the Grammar Too :) says

    Please, understand that when people make comments such as the one you quote in your #404, it is referring to the vast majority of people who deliberately don’t understand, not because of being on the spectrum, but because of being assholes.

    I try. I, at minimum, have a backlog of feeling trivialized and erased, and I have had the experience of having that distinction explicitly denied and the suggestion of its existence belittled before, and I was in a really bad emotional place last night. Sorry. :/

  458. says

    Janine @452

    Lynna, what you have linked to at #433 is truly one of the most ethically reprehensible things I have read.

    Yes, and that attitude is pervasive in the morridor. I suppose that mormon women and girls who are raped also signed up for that in the pre-existence.

    I ran into a lesser version of this mormon viewpoint when my mother was dying. All the hospice personnel were mormons. They never tired of telling me what a blessing I was receiving by having to act as caretaker for my mother. Those ladies would even call me on the phone to preach that shit. One of them insisted that I stop trying to earn a living while I was taking care of my mother because, “Now is the time. This is your opportunity to give. Your mother should be your priority.” Normal social boundaries are alien to them.

  459. Krasnaya Koshka says

    Lynna @433 — That is one of the most horrific things I’ve ever read. I’m stunned.

    Beatrice — Your comments on the Dan Savage post were wonderful. When I think Dan Savage, I think of his horrible advice to lesbians when I first read him years ago. I was disgusted by him and cannot help but be disgusted by him now. I never read anything by him fat-shaming so I can’t comment on that but I wanted to say:

    You’re absolutely right in what you wrote. And what rq and Parrowing and Portia and Illuminata backed up.

    I have no contract with my gf about how much weight she may gain or lose. That seems freakin’ creepy. I fell in love with my gf because of her thoughts and her voice and her laugh and the way she moves and the way she treats others. She’s an amazing woman and if she changes her physicality it makes no difference to me. I find her sexually appealing because I love her.

    My gf is a big woman. She was a Soviet champion rower in her youth (10 hours a day every day for ten years) so, while she is larger than most she’s also fitter than most and can run circles around nearly anyone. I call her a machine because she needs little sleep and never gets sick.

    She also has some sort of epilepsy that is degenerative. I don’t know if I believe this because her doctors also said she’d die by 40 and she’s now 45 (as is her twin). She definitely does have epilepsy and has seizures. I’m used to this. BUT even if she at some point was incapacitated it would not lessen my love for her. It would not lessen my attraction. (Of course it would lessen the sex, but who cares?)

    So I wanted to assure you, Beatrice, that your interpretation of a loving relationship is correct. You did the right thing and you made great arguments. I applaud you.

    ~~~~TRIGGER WARNING~~~~~

    Ogvorbis — Your thoughts often echo mine. I’ve thought the same things over and over but we really were just children and we hold none of the responsibility. It was not our fault. I promise you, it wasn’t.

    I was sort of blissfully not thinking about any of my past until it all hit me when I was 27 and then it kept hitting me at odd times afterwards. “If only I’d…” “But what if…” You have to stop that. I know it’s hard. None of it was your idea. And you fucking tried, man. Like I did. You told adults, like I did.

    Please, I don’t mean for you to stop expressing. I think it’s very good for you to do so. But it wasn’t your fault. You were a KID!!!

    Also, WMDKitty: Yes, it’s super easy for me to set off my PTSD though I never think I’m having a panic attack. I usually think I’m having a heart attack or something else fatal though I’ve been very fortunately extremely healthy in my lifetime. Not knowing what sets it off is the worst, I agree. I am accustomed to thinking I’m a loser or just stupid.

  460. Janine: Hallucinating Liar says

    And who is supposed to take care of you while you are jobless and having the blessing of caring for your dying mother?

    Oh, wait. You should not have a job. You should be married, have the blessings of taking care of a household and be supported by your husband.

  461. broboxley OT says

    looks like my new gig is in fargo nd start in two weeks….2 WEEKS HOLY FUCK! I NEED TO GET GOING

  462. says

    And who is supposed to take care of you while you are jobless and having the blessing of caring for your dying mother?

    Oh, wait. You should not have a job. You should be married, have the blessings of taking care of a household and be supported by your husband.

    Exactly, Janine.

    Any decent woman would have a husband and would be more than happy to kill herself with 24/7 care of an Alzheimer’s patient with cancer. I am not decent. I am fucking Satan. (Wait. That could be interpreted in more than one way.) I am Satan on wheels. Watch me roll.

    I did a damn good job of taking care of my mother. And years later I still suffer from PTSD as a result, though the negative effects, and the frequency of the flashbacks has diminished over time.

  463. rq the kutalikleptomanic says

    cicely
    re: burning down the house
    I believe no Horses were involved. Rather, I was a victim of Insufficient Information, brought on by Casual (or at least, Unconscious) Sexism, by being uninformed about the Imperativeness of the Plugged-in White Plug that Should Never Be Unplugged (and which also should be Checked First in case furnace heat and pressure are over the red line). *thinks for a bit* I take it back. I wasn’t this close to burning the house down; but this close to blowing (parts of) it up.
    Meh. Next time Husband gives me a furnace heating tutorial, I’m going to make him explain more than the one dial. (We’re currently on a manually-fed wood/coal heating system, with which I happen to spend the majority of hours, and yet I am kept in the dark about most of the functions of all the cute little dials. In my offense, I never asked, either…)

    Krasnaya Koshka
    I hope your gf is as fine as possible for as long as possible!
    And the fat-shaming conversations always make me think of my sister, who goes from overweight to fit back and forth quite (ir)regularly, through no fault of her own. It all depends on the state of her mind, her job, time, season, etc. And I hate anyone suggesting that she is 100% responsible for maintaining some sort of physical ideal because it’s in a relationship contract.

  464. David Marjanović says

    Link dump:
    The origin of ovoviviparity in coelacanths some 245 million years ago. With a link to the free paper.
    Discovery of what is claimed to be the hat of the Korean king who developed the Korean alphabet in the early 15th century. Contains what would be the earliest known specimen of writing in the Korean alphabet. I hope it’s genuine; would a king have “king” (the Chinese character 王) written on his hat, and that 3 times?

    *chocolate-covered hugs* for Beatrice.

    :-D

    And my father never ever greets me when I come home. I mean, I know being a nice person is not his thing (this is the person who, when you tell him you are going out, often answers with “what do I care? go”), but he could at least mutter a fucking acknowledgement to a member of his family .

    In isolation, that’d just mean he’s against useless rituals. He can see you, and he knows you know he can see you – so why say it out loud? For me, greeting is a chore. I sometimes avoid being seen by people who’d recognize me so I don’t need to greet them when I know full well we’re not gonna have a conversation anyway.

    “What do I care? Go” is an expression of trust: he feels he doesn’t need to know all the time where exactly you are, because you can handle yourself.

  465. David Marjanović says

    *scrolling up instead of going home*

    BTW, the paper I just finished correcting the page proofs of will be open-access! :-) :-) :-) :-) :-)

    Now I feel rude and stupid for not keeping up with you and your activities. [sad face] I’m only a little more than two years behind in the Pharyngula universe.

    But you have very good reasons for that! *shudder*

    Happy smiles for the postdoc position!

    ^_^

    I guess I could introduce you to my daughter, who admires your brilliance, the next time you travel to NYC. (She is married, so no sexual or romantic innuendo is intended.)

    I’m sure that would be interesting! I suggest the American Museum of Natural History as a venue ^_^

  466. says

    Ogvorbis-

    I’m glad you were able to recover that moment and use it to help fight the fiction of blame your mind is trying to create.

    TRIGGER WARNING. If it’s any help I can tell you that my partner did the same sorts of things after her rape. It was all her fault. She was asking for it. She did nothing to protect herself. She came on to him. Blah blah blah. Working through it step by step, it turned out she had done a lot of things quote-unquote “right”, removing herself from the situation, telling him no, struggling to push him off, etc… that she had simply erased in order to support this narrative that she was a terrible person who deserved it.

    It’s a sucky fight, but we’ve got your back and most importantly, we can remember what you say so when your mind tries to fight back, we can help you remember that you did what you could and it’s no one’s fault but your rapist (except maybe the douchebag who dragged you back to him).

    JAL-

    My partner’s from the same sort of family. Everyone is supposed to keep everything a secret in order to “protect” the family. It’s one of the big things that has made coming out and being an award-winning poet difficult for her.

    WMDKitty-

    All the damn time.

    TRIGGER WARNING. Ever since that thread where I actually acknowledged that what happened to me was rape, I’ve been setting myself off like a poorly-put-away machine gun. Usually it happens when I’m dreaming or have closed my eyes for a second. Nothing really happened to trigger it, but bam, there I am being raped again or feeling the feel of his rubbing on my thigh. In fact, random thigh triggers happen all the time. I’ll just be sitting and then I need to move to lying on my side, because in the open air, I can feel him pressing against me.

    In short, yeah, that sort of thing just happens. And it sucks.

  467. Ogvorbis says

    Ever since that thread where I actually acknowledged that what happened to me was rape, I’ve been setting myself off like a poorly-put-away machine gun. Usually it happens when I’m dreaming or have closed my eyes for a second. Nothing really happened to trigger it, but bam, there I am being raped again or feeling the feel of his rubbing on my thigh. In fact, random thigh triggers happen all the time. I’ll just be sitting and then I need to move to lying on my side, because in the open air, I can feel him pressing against me.

    Quoted, in full, for truth.

    TRIGGER WARNING

    Since I began remembering why I never liked cub scouts, the triggers have come fast and furious, some of them out of nowhere. The body memories are, for me, bad, but not the worst — the worst for me is listening to me tell me why this, that, and the other thing, are all my fault. And it seems like every fucking time I beat it down it jumps right back up with a new tactic. The strategy never changes, but the tactics my mind uses to beat me up mentally evolve rapidly. Now that I remember telling, and not being believed, my culpability is even less believable. I did try to stop him. I did. I really tried. I failed to stop him, but at least I tried.

  468. cicely (Hell, YES, I'm ready for a Real Change) says

    The origin of ovoviviparity in coelacanths some 245 million years ago.

    Shiny!
     
    And, David, you can have your *hugs* either covered in *chocolate* or wrapped in *bacon*, whichever you’d prefer.
    :)
    –

  469. Beatrice says

    David,

    In isolation, that’d just mean he’s against useless rituals. He can see you, and he knows you know he can see you – so why say it out loud? For me, greeting is a chore. I sometimes avoid being seen by people who’d recognize me so I don’t need to greet them when I know full well we’re not gonna have a conversation anyway.

    Well yeah, except that I’m talking about my father not someone who I might pass by on the street.

    If it’s supposed to be a random observation only tangentially related to my comment, fine. But since you continue to comment on my individual situation, that last sentence makes me feel really great about the whole not being treated like a totally random person by my own family.

    “What do I care? Go” is an expression of trust: he feels he doesn’t need to know all the time where exactly you are, because you can handle yourself.

    Oh fuck off. You serious?

    You’re welcome to interpret that “fuck off” as meaning “Thank you for that lovely comment, David. That is a perspective that hasn’t crossed my mind, but sounds really plausible. You are so smart and amazing” … but it actually just means “fuck off”. Well, you can add … “with this bullshit” in the end.

  470. strange gods before me ॐ says

    David is autistic. That means you’re oppressing him by telling him to fuck off.

  471. Beatrice says

    Before you say anything… my comment belongs to the thunderdome, I didn’t think of the Lounge rules when I posted.
    I’ll be off to bed anyway.

  472. Krasnaya Koshka says

    rq — Thank you! I do believe my gf’s stubbornness will carry her through. Well, hopefully.

    Also, I meant to say this quite a while ago: I’m happy to see you, Cerberus, commenting again.

  473. Beatrice says

    Krasnaya Koshka,

    Thank you for those nice words about me. Sorry for not answering, I wanted to go to bed so I didn’t want to comment any more tonight and keep myself awake longer. Now that I’ve answered David, I certainly don’t want to ignore you.
    I hope your girlfriend keeps proving the doctors wrong for many more years.

  474. says

    you can have your *hugs* either covered in *chocolate* or wrapped in *bacon*, whichever you’d prefer.

    Is that an exclusive or an inclusive one? Chocolate, bacon covered *hugs* for those who want them?

    —

    One of them insisted that I stop trying to earn a living while I was taking care of my mother […]

    Not that I would have thought of it at the moment if I were in the situation, but I wonder if a good comeback might be to ask them to get out their checkbook.

  475. birgerjohansson says

    Random link bombing:

    Bono ignites TED 2013 urging audience to become ‘factivists’ in war on extreme poverty and corruption http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/02/27/bono-ignites-ted-2013-urging-audience-to-become-factivists-in-war-on-extreme-poverty-and-corruption/

    —- —- —- —- — —
    Sexist photo makes Facebook joke 200 times more popular, and prompts rape comments http://www.michaelnugent.com/2013/02/24/sexist-photo-makes-facebook-joke-200-times-more-popular/

  476. feministdalek says

    Hullo Horde. Long-time reader, first time commenter (I think?…unless I’ve commented before and forgotten).

    I don’t have anything to particularly exciting or interesting to contribute, but I was wondering if someone would give me some tips/pointers on my new rat furbabies. I know there’s someone in the Horde (…Caine, maybe?) with a metric shit-load of rats, and as a first time owner I want to KNOW ALL THE THINGS!

    I just like the Horde/Pharyngula more than most other online communities, so I’d rather post here than anywhere else.

  479. glodson says

    Ever lurk a thread and watch someone run headfirst right into the brick wall that is the Dunning-Kruger effect? I think that’s unfolding right now in the Krauss and philosophy thread. I want to reply, but I don’t even know where to start with the idea that the theory of gravity aren’t falsifiable, that natural selection is not falsifiable, or may even be indistinguishable from intelligent design.

    I really don’t even know what to make of all this.

  480. ChasCPeterson says

    Rats enjoy nothing more than a large bowl of chocolate pudding on the floor in your bedroom. They may be raised efficiently and healthfully on a diet of pencil shavings, mandolin strings, Nutella, and common everyday dirt. Leaving your toilet seat open is the best way to make sure they have plenty of refreshing water to drink. Rats are delightful companions whose droppings (if fed as suggested) are inconspicuous and smell very faintly of cedar. Any normal household’s populations of dustmites, silverfish, cockroaches, centipedes, and hairy spiders will dispatch them before you can even notice! Playful creatures, rats really seem to enjoy chewing on polystyrene-foam food containers and climbing up khaki pants-legs, so give them the run of the whole neighborhood!

    hth.

  483. David Marjanović says

    the idea that the theory of gravity aren’t falsifiable, that natural selection is not falsifiable, or may even be indistinguishable from intelligent design

    *headdesk* Well, I wanted to read that thread tonight anyway, and I just made a good-sized amount of (very weak) tea – drinking that will take a while (caffeine doesn’t seem to have any effect on me), so I might catch up with it before keeling over and falling asleep.

    Excellent choice of venue!

    :-)

  484. David Marjanović says

    …Oh yeah. I forgot: Darren Naish @TetZoo tweeted 54 minutes ago:

    It’s late February 2013. You might not believe it, but 102 #rhinos have been poached so far >>THIS YEAR<<. One rhino per 11 hrs. HELP!!!

  485. glodson says

    *headdesk* Well, I wanted to read that thread tonight anyway, and I just made a good-sized amount of (very weak) tea – drinking that will take a while (caffeine doesn’t seem to have any effect on me), so I might catch up with it before keeling over and falling asleep.

    In fairness, he’s made the idea a bit more clear in that both Intelligent Design and Natural Selection are in the same boat scientifically, but philosophically Natural Selection wins.

    Don’t look at me like that. It is an improvement.

  486. Azkyroth Drinked the Grammar Too :) says

    In isolation, that’d just mean he’s against useless rituals. He can see you, and he knows you know he can see you – so why say it out loud? For me, greeting is a chore. I sometimes avoid being seen by people who’d recognize me so I don’t need to greet them when I know full well we’re not gonna have a conversation anyway.

    “What do I care? Go” is an expression of trust: he feels he doesn’t need to know all the time where exactly you are, because you can handle yourself.

    David, I suppose that’s a possible explanation but it’s unlikely to be accurate given that Beatrice has never indicated that her father is on the spectrum and there are other, more common and simpler explanations. Based on her comments, he also isn’t interested in attempting to understand why this behavior causes distress to her or meet her partway with it, either, so the internal reasoning behind it only carries so much weight even if you’re correct.

  487. Crip Dyke, MQ, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden says

    David!! Just the help I need: How are you on Arabic?

    Need something transliterated:
    النذل

    I’m pretty sure that I know the meaning, but not at all sure of pronunciation.

  488. strange gods before me ॐ says

    Great explanation. Now here’s a potentially illuminating question. Should it have been Beatrice’s responsibility to explain all that to David?

  489. Crip Dyke, MQ, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden says

    Welcome feministdalek!

    So god to see you here. I’m not a ratite, but yes, there are a number here and Caine is perhaps the rat-parent who is most often online and checking the Lounge. She’ll show up before too long, unless something is particularly off…

    ============
    BTW: for Gilliel – how’s the knitting?

  491. Crip Dyke, MQ, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden says

    Definitely of the good, WMDKitty. Wishin’ ya well.

  492. glodson says

    It is good, and here’s hoping you are feeling great soon.

    Now I have to go because a little three year old girl wants to play some rock-n-roll.

    I swear, I always thought my parents were in charge when I was kid. And now that I’m a daddy, I find my daughter is in charge.

  493. Azkyroth Drinked the Grammar Too :) says

    Great explanation. Now here’s a potentially illuminating question. Should it have been Beatrice’s responsibility to explain all that to David?

    “Responsibility” is probably not the right word. It would certainly have cost little and been helpful and compassionate – especially if Beatrice were aware of David’s disability, which I would assume she isn’t based on the response. Without having identified himself as autistic, that comment would, I suppose, fall under the same “other, more prevalent explanations” issue I cited – but if he’d made a follow-up post to the effect of “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to cause you distress. I have an ASD and the behavior you describe seemed familiar, so I thought I might be able to provide some insight into it. Can you explain what I did wrong?” I think the proper response would be an explanation like the one I gave rather than the “SHUT UP YOU’RE JUST MAKING EXCUSES ASSHOLE” responses that I usually observe in that kind of exchange.

    Whose responsibility should it be?

  494. says

    You probably already look at Bankers with some skepticism, that lot having earned more punishment than they’ve received, but how do you feel about mixing banking and religion? Are Bankers worse when the head of their bank is the Pope?

    In an article that is not very well written, but which contains solid information, Betty Clermont of Daily Kos provides a summary of Catholic financial shenanigans and an overview of the Vatican Bank or “Institute for Religious Works” as the criminals who run the place prefer.

    Excerpt:

    Vaticano S.p.A. (Vatican Inc.) by Gianluigi Nuzzi was published January 1, 2009. Documents obtained by a Vatican employee who didn’t want them published until after his death show the IOR functions as an “off-shore” financial institution for rightwing politicians, the Mafia, Italian tax-evaders and other disreputable characters. “The IOR…ensures privileges to be granted in exchange for political backing, legal provisions and business support.” …

    On September 21, 2010, the Bank of Italy’s Financial Intelligence Unit (the Bank of Italy is the country’s central bank and therefore has regulatory functions) informed the IOR that it was under investigation for possible money laundering using two Italian banks and issued notices against Ettore Gotti Tedeschi and Roberto Cipriani, director general of the IOR, for omission of procedures against money laundering. Prosecutor Nello Rossi said €23 million (about $31 million) in IOR transactions were seized from the Italian bank accounts. According to court documents, prosecutors stated the IOR deliberately flouted anti-money-laundering laws “with the aim of hiding the ownership, destination and origin of the capital.” Court documents also revealed suspicions transactions totaling €900,000 involved clergy acting as fronts for corrupt businessmen and the Mafia. …

    And there’s this: JP Morgan was convinced that the Vatican Bank was so unethical that Morgan cut ties with IOR. If, Credit really goes to the U.S. Treasury Department, and not to JP Morgan for this attack of conscience.

    Under pressure from the U.S. Treasury Department, JP Morgan Chase notified the Vatican on March 16, 2012, that it closed the IOR account in its Milan branch because the IOR was “unable to respond” to requests for information about the provenance of the deposits. JP Morgan had been requesting the information since 2010. Furthermore, JP Morgan reported €1.8 billion ($2,200,000,000) had been deposited in the last 18 months in that account. (And this is one account out of how many throughout the world?) At the end of each day, the balance was reduced to zero and the contents moved to an IOR account in Frankfurt. According to Spiegel, investigators suspected the account was used to launder funds from “dubious sources.”

  495. feministdalek says

    Thanks for the reception! Here is a list of What I Have Learned About Rats:

    1. They reallyreallyreally like edamame and cheerios. And now I have cheerio bits crunching underfoot juuust about everywheres.

    2. Running up pant legs will happen when you least expect that they will suddenly find your giant human body a nice habitat.

    3. They can make holes a foot wide in nice, long, flowy white curtains overnight. And then you will scoot the cage out from the wall a bit.

    I didn’t know you could give them Nutella! I thought that chocolate wasn’t good for them and would cause some pretty serious weight gain; so far, they seem to love gettin’ all messy with a teensy dish of pb or greek yogurt.

    Cerberus: yes, ugh indeed. I couldn’t finish it, but I just can’t grok the “I am responsible for being the living reality of my partners fantasy/ideal”. Yes, of course we have responsibilities to each other, and yes, physical attraction is a PART of the equation…but if that’s the most important thing in your relationship and a be-all, end-all, that’s pretty sad. If I just wanted someone to satisfy my desire for a fantasy-lover, why not save everyone living in the real world and just get a love doll?

    P.S. I love watching this community work. I read threads with as much interest as I do the actual articles; nothing negative about PZ, but the organic conversations that spring up in the comments are about as fun as the posts, and often as insightful and intriguing.

    If you’ll excuse me. I’m off to do some spermburgling and General Misandry.

  497. Portia, snowbound says

    Hey everyone, today was a rollercoaster. Made my first pro hac vice appearance totally unexpectedly. Now I have to do some drafting because the first half of my day was eaten by court.

    WMDKitty:
    So glad you’re doing better.

    feministdalek:
    Welcome!

    Azkyroth:
    It was definitely not Beatrice’s responsibility.
    ———————————–
    *waves at everyone*
    I know there’s stuff I’ve missed today. Pile o’ hugs here for the taking. And thanks to everyone who dished one out for me. They are appreciated : )

  498. Azkyroth Drinked the Grammar Too :) says

    Azkyroth:
    It was definitely not Beatrice’s responsibility.

    How would this be reconciled with the way any other disability is treated, or at least the treatment that’s advocated for?

  499. Portia, snowbound says

    It looks to me like David’s responsive comment would be applicable in the context in which Beatrice indicated her father was on the spectrum, yes? A preliminary inquiry to that effect might have saved him exacerbating her frustration.

  500. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Question for the medical experts. The Redhead suffered a hemorrhagic stroke. Is she more likely to suffer another hemorrhagic stroke, or an embolism stroke?

    The reason I ask is that her doctor wants to put her on cholesterol-lowering drug since her LDL is above 100, but from what I’ve seen with Google, that does increase the risk of another hemorrhagic stroke if her LDL levels get too low, like below 100…