It’s just not right that I’m so drab and the flamboyant cuttlefish can be so…flamboyant.
(Episode CCLXXV: You aren’t in church right now, are you?.)
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
It’s just not right that I’m so drab and the flamboyant cuttlefish can be so…flamboyant.
(Episode CCLXXV: You aren’t in church right now, are you?.)
Go Lepidoptera!
runs
Horses are the only animal that needs a style, wait sorry thats stile.
Have you ever really, really looked at your tentacles?
Glen Davidson
Maybe you should do something like that with your beard PZ… christmas lights maybe?
I, for one, welcome our newly terrestrial octopus overlords. (eek!)
testing
Sorry, for those who might care, I (Mr. Fire) am not morphing to avoid anything, I’m just fussing over this new ‘nym that I’m trying out.
Oh man, I almost wish I hadn’t subscribed to Make Magazine. Projects which have proved irresistible: helicopters, Ping Ultrasonic Sensor, mousebot kit, Time Watch Kit (so geeky, it would make geek hearts melt) and…electronic embroidery. Yep. Yeah, I need that last one like another hole in the head, but it’s so intriguing. Augh!
PZ, you need to drop your mild-mannered college professor alter ego. Give us the word, and the good ship Cuttlefish will be built for your pirating activities.
Eeeeeeeee, a Steam-Powered BoilerBot! Must make.
That, and an exorcism.
–
Well damn, just rub it in our faces, why don’t you, cuttlefish? “Look at me, I can turn my skin black edged with Day-Glo yellow!”
Go on being outrageous. Just don’t expect me to not think of calamari when I look at you.
Oh yes, even more proof of the infinite superiority of cephalopods to cats.
The best I can do is get a bright red face when I work out (one of the joys of having exceedingly pale skin). But I can’t do it in stripes, or make it oscillate like that. Imagine how awesome that would be at parties!
OTOH, do you really want cats to have chromatophores?
–
Eat your hearts out, rave kids.
Okay and test,
I know cnn is most conservative, but really, warning that content about myths (re: atheist lincoln tunnel) is what? Scary, a homeland alert, a difference of opinion? Fox News I would just shrug my shoulders…am I that naive?
Genetic engineering + humans + flamboyant cuttlefish –> rave kids of the future!
Last thread (I didn’t have time to post yesterday, sorry), thanks Erulóra Maikalambe and KG for reassuring me on the humanity of at least some humans.
Caine, I really like the Susan bookmark. I first saw Hogfather as a movie on TV sometime around Christmas and it was so delightfully weird. Only later did I read some of Pratchett’s books.
SallyStrange: Personally I’d rather be spliced with a blue ringed octopus.
Because they’re pretty. Yeah. That’s right. Just because they’re pretty. No other reason….
aladegorrion, I have the Hogfather DVD. The book is one of my faves, I usually re-read it every December.
Oh, Coyote. We know you too well by now… if there’s no potential for lethal weaponry involved, your sincere interest is less than likely.
Thanks for making me google “blue-ringed octopus,” though. Cool! Of course, in such a genetically-engineered future, producing an antidote to the venom from one’s own genetically enhanced glands would probably be a snap. So, back to square one, though still looking very pretty…
Cross posted on PET: I got into an argument with a potential police officer who says “if you didn’t want anything bad to happen to you, you should not have been there” type victim blaming. Now I know which police officer I can count to ignore my rights.
Yes sallystrange, I guess I’m just an open book like that. :)
Speaking seriously, they are incredibly beautiful. Blue is one thing, I happen to love blue, but that electric blue just takes it up a few levels.
I’ve always wished there was a small, aquarium-sized, freshwater, easy-feeding captive bred octopus or cuttlefish of some sort available on the market. Sadly, such does not exist, despite life’s seemingly endless diversity.
Still, a man can dream.
Gyeong Hwa: I know it’s just anecdata and opinion, but almost everyone I’ve known whose talked about wanting to be a police officer has been kind of a douche.
Caine, I am thinking I should watch it again this December, as I recall starting somewhere in the middle of it. Maybe I’ll acquire a couch and/or more chairs so I can introduce some friends to it.
Laughing Coyote:
Oy, tell me about it. I’m glad I know at least one sane (former) police officer though.
Oh her Mormon friends just said “things are worse in other countries, so you’re lucky”. Damn Facebook.
Whoa, blue-ringed octopus venom and its effects are CRAZY. Wikipedia says it is from bacteria that actually live in the octopus and in the other critters that have the same toxin. Biology rocks. On that note, good night!
…
QFT. Religion never came close to the sense of wonder it gives me.
Anybody heard from llewelly lately? Seems it’s been a while.
ahs:
Yes, he posted not long ago. He did post a couple of months ago, saying that a new job and other day to day life business meant he’d rarely have time for Pharyngula. Something had to give, and that something was posting here, unfortunately.
This seems worth reposting, from Cliff Hendroval:
Thanks, Caine!
Ah, well, as bad news goes, that’s pretty good news.
Blue is definitely the BEST color.
SallyStrange:
Maybe for you. I don’t like blue.
Llewelly has been very busy, to the point of being forced under a rock IRC.
@ [good ideas for books]
I shall be aquiring this soon: Link: Eating Smoke by Chris Thrall
(ex Royal Marine falls into drug habit and paws of the Hong Kong triads)
gad
I go off to meat-space for a few hours and miss tons o’ fun.
and sad
Anne McCaffery
what color do you like, Caine?
two and a half days ain’t fast for a Thread
That cuttlefish was walking…
Ah, Anne McCaffery. I loved her when I was 19, but as she and I got older her books got glurgier and glurgier until I couldn’t stand them. Must be time to reread some old ones, in memoriam.
Speaking of books, I just reread On Stranger Tides, after maybe 2 decades. Very interesting after seeing the latest Pirates movie – the credits list it as “inspired by”, not even “based on”, the Tim Powers book. Well, the connection is extreeemely loose; in fact very hard to spot at all. And the book has zombie pirates, which is notable since the first PotC movie had zombie pirates, but the one supposedly based on a book with zombie pirates? No zombies!
Oh well. Both were fun, but the Powers is deeper and richer and does some pretty damn good quantum voodoo magic, with nice science shout outs.
Happy Day, everyone.
Power Balance, the maker of the scam bracelets, is just about done.
http://www.sacbee.com/2011/11/22/4072303/firm-that-gave-its-name-to-kings.html
I’m happy to see this…
TLC:
I like a lot of them, however, red is my favourite.
Does anyone have a link to the custom FtB killfile handy ? I just reinstalled my OS on an SSD, and cant seem to find it. Btw, this is a friggin revolution, this thing is so fast it’s unbelievable.
Caine: Nice. Red is the baby’s favorite color too. I’m pretty partial to it myself.
@Sally
“Eat your hearts out, rave kids.”
Shake your ass!
Shit! Here.
I have really fond memories of McCaffrey too, luckily I must have avoided the later stuff.
This household recently discovered Tim Powers too, (at PZ’s recommendation.) Brilliant stuff, only one available in the library where I work here, so we’ve been interloaning from all over NZ.
$5.00 NZD for that service – bargain. We’ve ordered NZ’s only copy of a book of illustrations based on Lovecraft’s work – all the way from Dunedin in the deep south.
I like blue-greens for everything.
I like purples (for clothing)(on me).
I hate yellow and orange (ditto’s).
rorschach: The killfile should be available on the Pharyngula wiki. I gotten quite a bit of use from it this week with all of the authoritarian trolls on the OWS threads.
I know people from Dunedin.
rorschach try http://pharyngula.wikia.com/wiki/Greasemonkey
Colours: I prefer blue and white (preferably vertically striped) for clothing, and green for everything else.
Dunedin, Fl?
It staggers me how the displays of so many creatures fit right into the comparatively tiny part of the electromagnetic spectrum we can see. The explanation behind it must involve an old man with a beard…
Blue and white are my favorites. I made my best Magic:The Gathering decks with those.
If we’re talking about favorite color combos, then mine is ‘venom/poison’ hands down. (bright green, yellow, orange, red or any combination of the above on a black background).
Clothing wise, I tend to wear blacks, browns, dark blues and maroons. Bright colors do not suit me.
He comments on the PET.
BTW, has anyone heard from Rutee? Haven’t seen much of her.
There’s Dunedin in Florida too?
Talk about a climate difference.
I really like Dunners, my eldest girl is at university there – (home for the holidays now.) Unlike most NZ cities it’s had the sense to retain its old buildings, lots of them are a bit frayed and run down, but it adds to the character. Also, they were built with money from a gold-rush, so they’re pretty impressive.
Yeah, it’s an edgy cool city, beautiful harbour – just really cold.
Hee! Properly rave-ish.
“Shake your ass” made me think of Richard Cheese, the guy who does lounge versions of pop/rap/heavy metal songs. The first one I heard him on was covering Mystikal’s “Shake ya ass.”
So thanks for the giggle.
Apparently Dunedin has some of the steepest streets in the world? On account of them transplanting the street plan from Scotland directly to the Southern hemisphere? Several NZers told me this while I was there. I never got down to see it for myself, though.
Unfortunately a lot of the authoritarian type people seem to be attracted that profession.
@Sally,
Heh. That reminds me of this one time me and some college buddies went to a piano bar in New Braunfels and after the older crowd left we got the guy to shut it down by doing “Spread For Me” by Outkast.
Would I rather listen to Janis Joplin on the radio or someone humming to her song in a really annoying, high-pitched tone? Hm, a dilemma.
People generally get on my nerves. Today, I fell murderous.
Also, I like most colors, but especially in dark tones. Blue is probably the favourite of the favourites, though. Or purple.
My brother wanted to be a cop. Still does, I think, but he has to lose some weight. Anyway, he is a really sweet, gentle guy, but he also has an authoritarian streak–not that he wants to be an authority, but he likes having authority. I’m so glad my family were able to talk him out of joining the army–now he’s an EMT and a firefighter. He likes uniforms and structure and people telling him what to do. Who knows–if he became a cop perhaps he would start acting like an asshole.
Ah, thanks guys, got it !
Seriously, solid state is the way too go, you have to try it ! So fast !
Yes, Baldwin Street, I’ve never heard of the transplanted city plan – but it wouldn’t surprise me.
I gave birth to said daughter in Darwin Hospital, Aussie. The plans for that building were identical to a hospital built for, and in, deepest, coldest Canada. Idyuts.
Every year in Baldwin Street they race small, spherical candies called Jaffas down the hill. (They have a chocolate festival – there’s a Cadbury’s factory there.) Reason to love Dunedin no…
Yet I have two coffee cups. Reddish brown earth tones both. One is redder, the other browner and both hold coffee the same.
Now, what I am confused about is whether or not PZ can rhythmically coruscate or not. I’d just always assumed he could, being so damned squiddly and all. I’d be delighted if he can and, honestly, only mildly disappointed if he can’t. Probably because I’ve never had the opportunity to examine him close up under controlled conditions. Color me some shade of grey just now.
I prefer non-pastel shades, but also prefer non-dayglo. Purple is good, burgundy type reds also good. But a good rich green or blue is also nice. Orange.. not so much.
How ’bout the orange in the sky at sunrise and sunset?
Sometimes one of my coffee cups reminds me of time; beginnings and endings.
I have one piece of orange clothing. I don’t mind sunset orange, but bright day glo orange? Yuck.
I have a friend who’s a synasthete – for her, everyone’s name has its own colour. Sarah is a warm lemony yellow, David is a rich chocolate brown etc.
She recalls talking to a guy who had a pink name, (can’t remember it) who was wearing a vivid green shirt. She just couldn’t get his name out, because the colour was so wrong.
Like right now I hear the beginning of a rain shower. It’s tap tap tapping on the metal roof.
I’ll be sleeping soon and will not hear the end of it. Just knowing that some rain is falling now is sufficient.
Tomorrow the sun will shine here and the few leaves that still cling to the trees and the ones that lie smooth on the ground will echo my coffee cups and the light of the sun near the horizon. A smooth, soothing spectrum.
Sleep well, ye horde. May you dream in colors of the earth and of the sky.
—————————-
People, it’s official!
Waiters have become completely obsolete!
Now just imagine tables with touchpads/card readers for digital money.
—————————-
Unh.
University hit by new climate leak ahead of talks
Ahh.
Acceptable Parity – Four Ways Men Stunt Women’s Careers Unintentionally
Have you seen this land walking octopus: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjQr3lRACPI ?
MOrning
I feel like something the cat dragged in.
Being sick = needing my sleep
Having sick kids = not getting much of it.
But I’ve got everything to make more christmas cookies. I’m not relying on the usual baking-marathon I used to have with mum.
Colours: blue, red, green, purple, even the raspberry-shocking pink. I like bright colours, although yellow and orange don’t feature much.
wboton:
Have you seen this post, right here on Pharyngula?
@Caine:
re:bookmarks:
I only started reading the series (almost through Color of Magic) aaand… I recognize Death… and… maybe Rincewind?
First Approximation – Rutee disappeared from the corners of the internet I saw her in quite awhile ago. I tried messaging her on FB a couple of times in the late summer, but didn’t hear anything back. I’m not sure if she was just taking a break or decided that social media just sucked altogether.
*hits self in head*
german culture weirdness : Noah
rorschach, you install an OS into a computer system, you only store it into a storage device.
RAM disks have been around for ages (I ran one in my DOS system around 1981!) — and though OSs are big these days, they still fit into memory. The only speed-up is data access; I suspect you’re just seeing your swap file running on the solid state device.
Katherine Lorraine:
Yep, you’re right. :) Left to right, they are Granny Weatherwax, The Librarian, Nac Mac Feegles, Death and his granddaughter Susan Sto Helit, Carrot and Sam Vimes of the Night Watch and Rincewind.
And another one by Ernst Gottlieb Bielke, aka Bruce Low :
Das alte Haus von Rocky Docky
Nonsense. The SSD has a data throughput of 520 or so Mb/sec. I run a SATA 3 capable motherboard with 1600 Mhz memory, and until today the data transfer rate was capped at around 40Mb/sec. This thing is just beating everything that came before.
Oh man, Amanda is really in fine form ! Amanda Palmer and Neil Gaiman are having a special event in Melbourne on New Year’s Eve, I might attend ! Anyone else in ?
*hits self in head*
No, Carlie, don’t do that! I clicked on the link you posted and was filled with delight and awe—I’d obviously missed it.
@ Rorschach
I have my kernel and other important wobbly bits of the OS on a SSD. My /home folders and data on a regular HDD. Oh, and 8GB RAM. Best bang for one’s buck. (Just storing crap on SSD is waaay too expensive.)
Having said all of that, I usually just hit the power-on and go and make tea anyway. So startup speed is irrelevant. Everything can run in the sea of RAM, so it more than fast enough and lots left over for the virtual machines.
If I ever have a need for crazy speed, I install puppy linux and get it out of my system.
Walton:
Oh, dear. My political opinion has frightened a tedious, verbose upper-class twenty-something who crossed the Atlantic just to move from one ivory tower to another and who somehow manages to support both monarchy and statism. Whatever shall I do?!?
Guess what, Walton? Sometimes there are no moral choices. There’s only the bad choice and the worse choice. And taking no action at all is a choice, and its consequences might render it worse than any or all of your other ones.
Quite frankly, I think the lives of a pack of warmongering, slaving elitists are greatly outweighed by those of all the African-Americans who died from Reconstruction up through the present day at the hands of racists, with or without badges or gavels, plus those of people of other races who stood up for them and died for their efforts. And that’s not even touching on how racism has fucked this country over in other ways, such as Southerners giving universal healthcare the thumbs-down in the 1950s because why should those lazy [slurs] get anything free from the gubmint?
If you’re ever put into a serious position of power in which you’re charged to navigate vast gray areas of morality, FSM help anybody whose life, limb, or livelihood depends on you.
Make that, “manages to support both monarchy and anarchism.” It’s early here.
Have any others noticed that when you try to read the previous episode of The Thread, you only see 89 comments instead of 889 comments?
— — — — — — —
Title of other thread: -Fearweather atheists? I thought atheists were supposed to be storm-like, blowing in and spreading a darkness like the cloud from Mount Doom.
I have bought Pratchett’s latest Discworld novel but I have postponed reading it, knowing it might well be his last novel.
Anne McCaffery wrote mostly for a teenage readership, the only novels I liked (I found her books in my twenties) were books 1 and 3 of the crystal singer series. Still, it’s sad that she is gone.
Was she 66? A surprising number of people I have known or been familiar with have died this year me rely aged 66. Replicants with a pre-set maximum life span?
@Birger:
If a thread goes past 800 comments, it goes onto a second page.
Cross posted from PET:
Is this Old News©?
Is it okay to basically take a story you’ve worked on for several years and redesign it from the inside before your fourth draft is finished? I realized I had a few glaring deficiencies in the story, and it’s to the point where I simply must re-write basically the entire thing – though I have a lot of stuff I’ll keep, vast areas of the book will be gutted / edited / and re-written…
Frustrating, writing a novel.
Caine, Fleur du Mal, @lastTET,
That is some fine looking big iron. The ice reservoir looks like a good idea for cooling stews down quickly – have you tried that? As in compared to filling a plastic bag with ice and setting it right into the stew?
For my first use ever of a brining bag, I don’t think I got my technique perfect (couldn’t single-handedly get enough air out to totally submerge the bird, but it’s OK, I just inverted after the 1st 8 hours), but it is well worth the price.
I ended up putting the turkey/brine filled bag into my 5 gallon soup pot anyway just to sort of compress the bag around the bird, better distributing the liquid, and instantly bonded with it. Moving a 5 gallon tank full of turkey brine from the sink to the fridge invariably involves sloshing, which is a pain in the ass. When embaggened, well, need I say that sloshing is not an option, and the cook simply blunders the whole assembly about as if knowing what they are doing, slosh (NB: this means yucky spills) free.
Bag appears fairly durable, so I expect to get more uses out of it.
Ah, after reading the article, I see that the ice reservoir has to do with the basting. I doubt it would be a good way to cool a stew.
STUPID rain!
*fist shake
I’ve got two turkey’s to smoke today and it’s raining.
@Rev BDC:
You can smoke ’em indoors, can’t you :D
Wooooooooooooow, this instance of the thread is remarkably short so far :/ Consider this a delurk ‘n bump!
Also, how ’bout them turkeys?
There is a local specialty here, called turkey with mlinci. I love it, but what I love even more is the pie I make the next day with the leftovers. I chop up the leftover turkey, add any and all vegetables I can find in the fridge (usually, that’s quite a variety) and fill a big dish with some delicious comfort food. Yum.
You’ve probably seen this story in several venues, but not on Fox News.
The NY Daily News version notes that, as we suspected, Jon Stewart provides his viewers with more facts, with more news, than does Fox News.
We are the 1%
Yeah you can though it makes the next month or so in the house a bit, um, campfirey.
@ Kitty
This is absolutely OK. It sounds like you are discovering the “Design Cycle” ex nihil. What you describe is quite normal in designing anything of a complex nature. Essentially the process needs to loop back on itself, carrying the criticisms and ideas generated in the previous cycle (it evolves). It is good to embrace this process and define it’s stages for yourself. Ie: You think not just about the story, but also about how you think about the story.
My guess (it varies): Aha! —-> write a lot —-> review/ criticise —–> realise you have to adjust (low point)——> Aha2! —–>{repeat endlessly or until you are at peace with the result}
But we are impressed at your courage and stamina (I wouldn’t even try).
Of course it’s because it’s the same part of the spectrum they can see…that everything that can see can see, and that is used for photosynthesis and sensed by plants for seasonal timing purposes etc.
And that’s because a) it’s the range of wavelengths whose photons pack enough energy to interact with matter (be absorbed) but not enough to damage organic molecules and b) it represents a big chunk of the solar radiation that reaches Earth’s surface.
We’re just about to see the end of our latest pelting of rain, the very last of which, at Schloss Cannabinaceae, will be manually sopped up from the dungeon :(
However, I’m high-roasting so there would not have been rain-related issues anyway.
A buddy of mine does his smoking in the garage and so doesn’t have rain issues. That is also where he cooks meat in a chamber infused with hot vapors from pyrolyzed wood, so no rain issues there either.
I may have said this before, but I’m hoping to get him to smoke some mushrooms that I am growing on logs from a tree he just lost, with further wood from said tree, then use the chunk charcoal he is accumulating from smoking other stuff with wood from that tree, to cook the meat part of a meat-and-musshroom dinner.
Incestuous carbon-neutrality, that sounds fun!
@Birger With the old TET go to the bottom and click ‘older comments’ to get the previous 800.
And Anne McCaffrey was 85 when she died. Not 66.
Don’t remind me.
Mr. doesn’t like whole fowls so anything from roast chicken over duck to goose and turkey are not on our menu *sigh*
Yeah Mrs. BigDumbChimp uses the garage as an exercise room so I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t be too happy smelling hickory and apple smoke while doing viṅyāsas for the next few weeks.
I’m tough, I can handle the rain. I’ll just have to futz with the temp more. Plus it’s ten here and Noon is just around the corner and the fridge is stocked with beer for the Holiday week and visitors and I took Tuesday and today off on top of the Thanksgiving holiday days off.
I normally do most of the Thanksgiving cooking but this year my Mother in Law just had knee replacement surgery so I’m doing it all. Two smoked turkeys that I’m doing today, fresh made Orange Cranberry Ginger chutney, Fresh baked rolls (Mrs. BDC is doing these), roasted Brussels Sprouts with pancetta, Quinoa with roasted Sweet Potato, dried cranberries and walnuts, Goat cheese potato gratin, and for desert Sweet potato Creme Brulee and the southern staple, fresh coconut cake.
Then football at our house so I stocked up.
Dogfish head Chickory Stout
Dogfish head Imort Ale
Sierra Nevada Estate Homegrown Ale
New Belgium Fresh Hop IPA
Couple of bottles of Allagash Hugh Malone Belgian IPA
And for the change up and visitors
New Belgium Prickly Passion
New Belgium Frambozen
And one of our local breweries newly canned IPA
Westbrook IPA
And the shitty smoker I bought 10 years ago
Plus, we’re taking my niece to see the Muppet Movie this afternoon.
Life, sometimes not so bad.
@Theophontes:
Thankfully it isn’t a complete overhaul of the story. It’s going to require a few minor adjustments (for the better of course) to the story to put things in places they’ll be better.
For example: previously, the main character was in one forest near a farming town (Tiyris) midway between the cities of Tavsere and Moore. In order for him to be able to meet the princess from Moore and a ranger from a more easterly city (Seiis), the princess and ranger traveled south for a few days to Tiyris for no apparent reason. I have now moved the main character’s tribe to the forest closer to Moore – and here’s the kicker – which was where the princess and ranger met in the first place *facepalm*
@ Kitty
Aaaaaah …. SPOILER ALERT!
I like the colour combination of red and black.
And I am mildly tired of the colour combination of gray, forest green, and cordovan brown.
@Theophontes:
Not… much of a spoiler. That all happens by chapter 5.
*sigh*
I’m under the impression that my washing machine is leaking.
My not-even-two-months-old washing machine.
Of course it would be a matter of guarantee, but an annoying one
For you language peeps, this popped up on a /. thread:
— James Nicoll
Katherine, your story has a princess? I like it already. :-)
Everyone is missing the point: honorable blogmaster P-zed bitterly laments his drabness and anti-flamboyance, and hopes that we can come up with a solution to his problem.
It is entirely regrettable that as yet, tattooists cannot insert chromatophores under the client’s skin, so waves of purple are not possible in the present state of tattoo technology, but some makeshifts could fill the gap. Among the ways in which the adorable P-zed could heighten his flamboyance quotient are…
1. Dye his hair purple and his beard bright blue. An orange moustache would not be out of place.
2. Always wear tie-dyed hippie-style shirts.
3. Get those earlobes brought up to date with big holes in them and brightly colored eyelets to keep them open.
4. Steal a page from the competition and start wearing fancy cowboy boots at all times, a la Jerry Coyne.
5. A septum spike would be the finishing touch to the ensemble.
Yeah Mrs. BigDumbChimp uses the garage as an exercise room so I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t be too happy smelling hickory and apple smoke while doing viṅyāsas for the next few weeks.
I’m tough, I can handle the rain. I’ll just have to futz with the temp more. Plus it’s ten here and Noon is just around the corner and the fridge is stocked with beer for the Holiday week and visitors and I took Tuesday and today off on top of the Thanksgiving holiday days off.
I normally do most of the Thanksgiving cooking but this year my Mother in Law just had knee replacement surgery so I’m doing it all. Two smoked turkeys that I’m doing today, fresh made Orange Cranberry Ginger chutney, Fresh baked rolls (Mrs. BDC is doing these), roasted Brussels Sprouts with pancetta, Quinoa with roasted Sweet Potato, dried cranberries and walnuts, Goat cheese potato gratin, and for desert Sweet potato Creme Brulee and the southern staple, fresh coconut cake.
Then football at our house so I stocked up.
Dogfish head Chickory Stout
Dogfish head Imort Ale
Sierra Nevada Estate Homegrown Ale
New Belgium Fresh Hop IPA
Couple of bottles of Allagash Hugh Malone Belgian IPA
And for the change up and visitors
New Belgium Prickly Passion
New Belgium Frambozen
And one of our local breweries newly canned IPA
Westbrook IPA
And the shitty smoker I bought 10 years ago chugging along.
Plus, we’re taking my niece to see the Muppet Movie this afternoon.
Life, sometimes not so bad.
Little things mean a lot.
Youngest daughter just made a special stop here to drop off a bouquet of snapdragons for her old Dad who is content to keep looking at them while the world goes by.
They are pink and yellow and sitting right beside my keyboard. I am so in love.
.
(stripped two links from this comment which seemed to be stuck in moderation limbo — apologies for any as yet unseen double post)
@Walton:
Yep. Princess Mirus Salena – she’s Spiritborn, which is to say, one of a few rare people born with the ability to speak to spirits and whose dreams are particularly prophetic. At 18, though, she’s completely lost the ability to see spirits (she can still sense them) but her dreams are still prophetic. She sort of falls into the “Rebellious Princess Trope (TVTropes) but only in that she doesn’t like being the solution to all her country’s ills.
Home appliance note: When we bought our Multibore house, one “benefit” was a warrantee that all major appliances would last at least a year.
The hot water heater did not do so*. While technically the warrantee will cover the loss, the better contractors (in MD anyway) won’t do warrantee jobs because the warrantee companies are such shits about paperwork and timely payment. However, any number of incompetent contractors apparently can’t find any other jobs but warrantee jobs. Thus we were without a hot water heater for a week, and had a gas leak once the assholes had “finished” their job.
If there is a warrantee next time I buy a house, I will include asking to not have, and not pay, for it.
*In an instance of pure luck, we had just sat down in the basement to watch a DVD. As often happened, we heard the water heater kick in. However, there was something different about the sound so I went to investigate. Evidently something had “given” and hot water was leaking all over the place. At least we were able to manage the problem while it was happening rather than waking up to a completed mess.
Lest we should have any doubts that Republican candidates for the Presidency of the USA want to establish a theocracy:
Republican candidates went on to recommend that judges should be purged based on public opinion.
They redefined “freedom” to mean freedom to do what you ought to do according to Christian leaders.
Santorum wants to abolish the entire Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Michele Bachmann believes using water boarding as an interrogation technique is just fine, and is justified by American Exceptionalism, which is in turn based on Judeo-Christian values.
This right-wing christian will to impose a sort of sharia law in the name of Jesus was made in public comments at the Thanksgiving Family Forum.
The National Organization for Marriage posted a video of the whole thing.
Anything these dunderheads think is “immoral” should be outlawed … according to them. How this plan jives with “small government” is a mystery.
Rev, that Chicory Stout is an excellent brew, as is the Allagash. I’d like to try that New Belgium.
I’m only in charge of turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes, and beer.
That post was held in moderation (a bunch of beer links)nso that 10:00 o’clock time has now turned to 11:45 time.
Rev:
I’ve had some Allagash beers. Quite good.
My Thanksgiving Day brews are Sam Adams Cranberry Lambic and some Harpoon Octoberfest.
Wow, I had no idea those things were so CUTE! They almost look cuddly! And I’m fascinated with their groovin’. And those cute stubby front…er…whatever-they-ares that they seem to use like hands or front feet? Awesome!
Lynna: Well, I think the only appropriate response here is the old chestnut… the Republicans want government to be so small that it can fit right into your bedroom. (And evidently they also want to destroy the independent federal judiciary.)
I’m not sure what Gingrich is on about. Robert George is a respected legal theorist – albeit a conservative and reactionary – so I doubt his actual argument was as incoherent as Gingrich’s. Though I just googled and couldn’t find what, if anything, he actually said on the subject.
Walton
By now I only hope it’s not contagious ;)
Cannabinaceae
When the old washing machine died I had a problem even getting somebody to look at it.
Well, at the moment there’s no noticable water leaking (we, meaning the radiator, already flooded two floors below ours once. Neither our fault nor our “problem”, but it’s not something you want to do to your neighbours again).
In case of a warrantee I found out that the best way is to make sure the company understands that this is not my problem. It’s theirs and they’re going to fix it to my satisfaction or they’ll solve it to the satisfaction of my lawyer.
Lynna, the mindset of the Republican front crawlers should be deeply disturbing to anyone who takes seriously the exceptional freedom of American citizens from the self-assumed authority that most of humanity has historically lived under.
Unfortunately, that subset of American citizens seems to be dwindling.
These . . . “persons”* . . . are not leaders. They are thugs in choir robes.
*I consider the use of scare quotes well justified under the circumstances.
Hi all,
First, should probably make the obligatory long-time/kinda-first-time reader/poster shout-out before my attempts at derailing the conversation here :) Issues of sexism and discrimination have been on my mind a fair bit lately, and in no small part thanks to the writings of PZ and the comments made by the readership and commentatorship here. Enough so that this morning I woke up with a fair bit on the brain, and I need to get some of it down in writing so I can make sense of it. I couldn’t think of anywhere else to put it, not being on facebook or the like, so I’m hoping that here can be an appropriate place to rant and brain-dump.
I don’t know if background matters, but for the record I was one of the men in the world who, until recently, didn’t think that sexism was a big issue. As far as I knew, the battles had been fought and women had won equality and I was living in a fair, enlightened society here in Canada. The… kerfuffle? fallout? general all-encompassing embarrassment? – that I witnessed here and elsewhere over Rebecca Watson’s comments, comments that should have been a gentle ribbing and not-much-more, woke me up to the situation we’re facing as a society and I think I’m one of the ones who ‘gets it’ now.
So anyways, my Lady recently started volunteering with a local rape-survivor crisis group as a tech- and social-media-expert. We both grew up in loving families and communities that sheltered us from rape crimes, so neither of us have any experience with rape either first- or second-hand. The group gave us some DVDs to watch on the subject, which we did last night, and are what are prompting me to write out now to get my thoughts in order.
And though I haven’t read all the comments in all the threads relating to the topic here at Pharyngula, I’ve read enough that I know the sentiments have all been expressed here before in one form or another – so apologies for this lengthy post if you’re just scrolling past to get to the other conversations!
Anyways, the part of the one video that INFURIATED me the most was the court re-enactment scene. Despite the fact that the video was clearly budget-made and the acting wasn’t anywhere near oscar-worthy it really stuck out. The lawyer interrogating the victim was asking all sorts of great questions, such as ‘What were you wearing,’ ‘Were you wearing a bra?’ ‘Were you wearing panties?’ – all to build the case, of course, that the offender was ‘led on’ or something like that.
Does that really happen?
I wanted to jump into the role of the victim’s lawyer and shout, “OBJECTION!! This line of questioning presupposes my colleague’s client has no more control of his sex drive than a stray dog. If this line of defense is allowed to stand I suggest he be locked in the pound instead.” Or alternatively, “My client and I request a brief recess so I can change into waterproof pants, just in case beige is too close to provocative flesh tones that the defense starts humping my leg.”
And after mentally raping the victim in court with that mockery of justice, the statistic given for convictions? 2%.
There… just aren’t profanities profane enough to describe my revulsion at how it played out in the video. And from some of the stories the people here shared, I’ve got a feeling it wasn’t overly exaggerated, was it?
So this morning I woke up realizing I was trying to put together a viable alternate-victim-blaming scenario to walk the offender through, and it went something like this:
“I’d like you to close your eyes. Imagine that we’re at a golf club, in the lounge, having a beer and keeping an eye on the football scores. A mutual friend of ours has just introduced us to each other, and this is the first time we’ve met but we’re getting along alright. We’re getting along well enough that I ask if you’d like to have a round of golf together, my treat. Would you accept that offer?
“And most people would probably agree that seems quite reasonable. Now, it turns out that I am a really, really bad golfer. I’m so bad at golf, in fact, that by the seventh hole you’ve had enough and you’d like to leave. Would you agree that you’re justified to walk out and spend the rest of the day however you wanted?
“Now, what if I objected to you leaving? Would that give me leave to beat you with a 9-iron because you quit the game early? Would any other reason for leaving justify braining you with a golf club?
“No, certainly not. Would the fact that I paid for your round of golf be grounds for clubbing you with the 9-iron? What about the fact that we both had a beer or two back at the club, and maybe another few drinks out on the fairways? Would that justify my beating you? No? What if you were wearing a truly garish and offensive golfing outfit? What if the outfit was red, and I have a condition where I find red to be so offending that I’m blinded by rage – would my mental condition justify the assault?
“Is there any circumstance, barring self-defense, where I would be justified in attacking you with a golf club? Or are you well within your rights to end the game and leave if it wasn’t enjoyable?
“Your Honour, I propose that the events of that evening were analogous to our hypothetical game of golf. Regardless of my client’s initial interests at the start of the encounter, she is clearly within her rights to end the game and walk away, or have the accused leave her property, if she wanted the encounter to end. Maybe she found the accused’s attempt at lovemaking as pitiful as my skill at golf, doesn’t matter. The accused has just agreed that deciding to leave, provocative clothes and alcohol consumption are not valid excuses for assault. I hope that nobody here would side with the aggressor in that scenario just because the accused should’ve known better than to go out alone with a stranger to a secluded place where the nearest help probably isn’t close enough to hear any cries for aid.
“On the night when my client was raped, the accused had many options open to him for taking out his frustrations when she said no – the bathroom was unoccupied, had a convenient supply of cold water and a door that could be closed so he could use his hands unobserved, for example – but he chose to respond through violence. Saying that my client was ‘leading him on’ would be like saying he was ‘leading me on’ by agreeing to play golf but quitting anyways, and the assault is a crime in both cases.
“The accused’s records clearly show that he was not raised by bonobos in Africa, that he was not raised by wild dogs, but that he is, in fact, a member of Homo sapiens living in a free and democratic first-world society. There is absolutely no excuse that can be made for his inability to control his violent sexual urges that would not also suggest we consult with the Humane Society for ways to have his behaviour ‘fixed.’ No further questions.”
Sorry again for the length :P Would that kind of thing be the kind of set-up/analogy that could even be used in court? Would drawing those connections help increase our abysmal conviction rate, do you think? … Is it possible to take a focused law crash-course to become a lawyer for these victims to try and give them better representation? What can we DO to try and turn this into the fair, enlightened society I thought we lived in?
Thanks for letting me get this off my chest, and thanks to any of you who were able to sit through and hear me out.
-Dave B.
Via BB, brief interview with Robert Sapolsky on stress and baboons (and he’s an atheist, too):
http://boingboing.net/2011/11/23/robert-sapolsky-on-stress-an.html
Darned Internet, quit being interesting! Two links from Wired:
More MRSA found in US retail meat (including turkey). Tetracycline resistance points to antibiotic-dosed, confinement-raised livestock as the source.
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/11/mrsa-us-meat/
Having pepper spray as an option may encourage violence:
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/11/pepper-spray-psychology/
In high school, being ever fashionable, I had a shirt striped with these colors that I wore quite often. Stopped wearing it when my best friend told me it was my “shades of shit” shirt.
You were lucky to catch it. There was a tragedy just down a few blocks from me last month wherein someone had a new water heater installed, a few days later the neighbors called the gas company complaining they could smell gas even over to their houses, the company came out and searched outside only and said everything was ok.
Three hours later the house exploded. The only bit of solace to wring from it is that the owner was most probably dead from the gas long before it happened.
I would like to make a note on my beer comment above, regarding chicory stout. I tend to be a Reinheitsgebot beerist and rarely taste what I call “flavored” beers*. I happened to be at what was advertised to me as a beer and wine tasting, but it was only wine, but my host popped out a four pack of these and they were truly wonderful. Chicory and coffee.
*I wonder if there is a technical term for what happens when you say “flavored beers” in the presence of tasting hosts, then they say something isomorphic to “we prefer to think of them as bringing their fresh fruit essence blah blah blah”. I get the feeling that “flavored beers” is a term of offense, but using Reinheitsgebot in casual speech doesn’t feel right either.
OK, now I am really late for my single serving of coffee (8oz espresso, 8oz milk) and better hurry so as to avoid headache.
Don’t get me wrong, I love working for my agency, but I’ve been wearing these colours, five days a week, for over 20 years. I like weekends when I can get out of the green, gray and brown and get into my usual duds — brown, gray, and, well, mulch.
Am I the only one here who likes warm fall colors?
I have a feeling that the “walking octopus” video is going to become the new “flood story” around here.
Christ got pushed into the holidays, we can push him right back out thanks.
___
PTI,
Re: suffocation.
That sounds pretty scary, hugs if you want ’em.
___
I should note that I looked very seriously at becoming a police officer and I don’t think anyone liable to confuse me with authoritarian.
___
There are tones of just about any colour which I love. I wear neutral for the most part.
___
Katherine,
I would say that it is not just okay, but necessary to rewrite when you feel like you should rewrite. Who are you doing this for anyways?
___
Ogvorbis,
Does it help that your lament made me smile? No? Oh well then, forget I mentioned it.
___
DaveB,
Welcome to thread. I don’t think elaborate constructs like that fit into questioning, but I am not likely any more conversant with what is allowed than you.
But it does.
I always feel a little guilty about complaining about the gray and green (plus brown). I mean, I have my dream job. Yeah, it comes with a uniform, but I get the cool campaign hat, I get to wear the arrowhead and the gold badge, but I sometimes wish for some red (other than blood (I tend to get called first for first aid calls)) or some nice blue (other than the weird blue of coal smoke).
Ogvorbis,
I can understand some measure of your frustration, still, the way you presented it was flawless and made me read it twice before I realized what you were getting at. Well played.
Well if you had to read it twice, Dhorvath, then my writing was unclear. Sorry.
Glad you liked it, but I wasn’t trying to be obtuse or cute. ust honest.
You do yourself a disservice, I think you write very well.
Given the long weekend ahead and the rather large number of cells in my incubator that I want to use up today, I decided to drink enough coffee this morning to reach “hulking out” levels of caffeine. That turned out to be a little too much as my PI decided to leave a good number of the cells until we come back, and now all I’m left with is a fixing/staining protocol that I have to wait awhile to start on. I usually enjoy downtime in the lab, but when I’m up like this it makes sitting around patiently REALLY difficult. What’s more, most of the other labs are empty today so I don’t even have anyone to talk too much to.
Walton @126:
In 2008, one of PZ’s posts about Michele Bachmann prompted a discussion of her pimping Robert George’s theories.
Robert George is as good as it gets when it comes to the far right wing making an effort to produce logical reasons for their anti-human platforms. George is not really that bright. He got edumacated up to a point, and then he stopped thinking and started indulging in confirmation bias.
Here are a few excerpts from comments made on Pharyngula in the past:
Not sure I would even grant the Republican candidates the choir robes. They are thugs dressed in dirty dollar bills that they pretend are choir robes. “Thugs” is certainly spot on.
In response to the MRSA information and link in comment #131:
Seems to me that it would be a good idea to just wear gloves when handling uncooked meat. Then wash gloved hands with hot, soapy water. Then wash ungloved hands with hot soapy water. Cooking thanksgiving turkey all the way to 165 degrees will kill MRSA.
Quote above is from: http://www.rodaleinc.com/newsroom/special-report-mrsa-infiltrating-our-meat
Happy Thanksgiving, Thread*. See you on the flip side.
*For those of you not in the U.S. or Canada: no thanks.
Isn’t Canada’s Thanksgiving on a different day? I’m totally prepared to be wrong on this as it’s just something I think I remember reading when I was in elementary school.
I think that’s it then, I have a call in with my property management to default on my lease. Being good gets you loyal customers, but it seems that doesn’t speak about volume of business much. I don’t know as this will turn out well, but I may be a bit absent over the coming weeks.
Dhorvath – I’m sorry things are working out that way. Best wishes.
Dhorvath:
That sucks. Good luck and let us know what’s up when you can.
Dhorvath
I’m sorry to hear. Best wishes are sailing over the pond.
Big time sorries, Dhorvath. Hope you can pull back up.
David B:
Of course it does. It happens long before a court appearance, too. It happens whether one gets to court or not.
I should note, this is a detour, not a collision. Thanks all.
We have Thanksgiving in October, 2nd Monday is I think how it lands, and I understand it’s not nearly as big a deal as it is for our neighbours to the south. Shorter growing season means we have to have our harvest festival sooner :)
Thanks Dhorvath! And yeah – I have no idea about how courtrooms work, and even have pretty limited exposure to courtroom dramas :P Maybe I’ll just stick to the “Request a brief recess to change into waterproof pants, since the accused can’t control his drive” retorts?
Pop culture news:
The Muppets Christmas with John Denver album is currently on Amazon for $5. Best holiday record ever!
Community is fantstic television. Three seasons to set up a Beetlejuice joke.
Spouse, who normally cooks the Thanksgiving dinner, has been in bed sick all day. This morning he and child were both in throwing up mode. This does not bode well. Not only am I not sure if I can get everything cooked the way he likes it, it’s his favorite holiday so if he’s sick, I’d rather put it all off and cook the big meal Friday or Saturday.
Yeah, it was back in October. The 10th. We’ll let the belated wishes go this time, but for next year, please mark your calendars. If you’re still up for best wishes, Canadian Christmas is this week, and on the 23rd of December, we’ll be celebrating Lincoln’s Birthday.
I hope your rebound is swift and high, Dhorvath.
That would have been better with Michael Keaton.
When I lead singing on our Holiday Express train, and someone (always!) wants to do The Twelve Days of Christmas, I can tell who has that album: Ba-dum-dum-DUM! Four Calling Birds, Three . . .
Caine, Fleur de Mal:
That’s… so sick and revolting, I don’t know where to begin expressing the disgust. It was a shameful mockery of human interaction to watch it play out – and staring out from the other mirror is the cold rational knowledge that facts like that won’t go away just because you don’t want them to be true. Just… ugh.
Dhorvath – I wouldn’t doubt they tried.
Community has been my favorite tv show since their first Christmas episode.
Small bit of niceness: I bought a Moleskine day planner today, and it has a bunch of icon sticker sheets for various occasions. There’s one sticker that has two people, one with a heart on them, that I assume is for anniversaries (?) What I liked is that one sticker has a stickperson with pants and one with a dress, one sticker had both stickpersons with pants, and another had both stickpersons with dresses. yay!
Good luck to you, Dhorvath. I hope the chips fall in your favor.
It is physically impossible for me to hear that song without going BA-DUM-BUM-BUM!
Carlie,
That is pretty cool.
Carlie
The world is changing, even if some people would like it to move backwards. My favourite backery-supplies shop features a whole range of he-she-she-she-he-he brides and grooms.
Oh, and this one is for the Walton, me, and everybody who can’t get enough of princesses.
Good night
The stickers that is.
Here I am, crying into my coñac with a soggy cigar again. Manservant on holiday and Mariano Rajoy has won the bloody election. Absolute proof, there is no god.
Cannabinaceae, sorry about the appliance mishap, but a minor correction; you do not have a ‘hot water heater’, there is no reason to heat hot water, (unless you intend to make steam), you have/had a water heater. [/picayune] ;-)
+++++++++++++++++++
Ogvorbis, you write well, it’s just sometimes it contains so much info that I find myself reading your offerings to tpyos 3 times. Once for concept; once for detail; and finally just because it’s so much fun to read.
+++++++++++++++++++
Today my school sent out the yearly ‘ghost employment’ warning to all staff and faculty warning us we could not give our employees the day/afternoon off early.
I went down to complain to the admin person who sent the email, but she had left early.
+++++++++++++++++++
Dave B, welcome.
My TG beer posturing: Otter Creek Red Ale, Widmer Brothers rotator (this batch is called X-114 IPA), Yards American Pale Ale*, and Flying Fish Belgian Dubbel**.
I Q.A.’d the Otter Creek last night. I’ve just finished butterflying, patting dry, and tying up the bird and my back is breaking, so I will switch to Q.A. on the other three as I finish getting other preparations underway. For example, I think I will brown and braise the backbone and use it to supplement the giblet gravy. No pan gravy, as the drippings, absorbed by the lining of sliced potatoes in the roasting pan**, will have been eaten before anybody sits down.
*A frequent contender for house beer, although at the moment Titan IPA takes that slot, none of which I myself got for TG. B.I.L. may bring some, although he’s heavily into something called “471” at the moment, so that’s what I’m guessing. He does sometimes surprise, though.
**They prevent the juices from burning in the pan at 500F, turning into awesome potato chips during the roasting process. The ones that don’t quite brown get drained and incorporated into the mashed taters, the drained liquid gets added to the gravy, so there is a small amount of drippings I guess.
Amen Sister!!!!
Dang, my iPod nano 5G battery won’t properly charge. What’s worse, the only after market battery I found was an 1/8″ too long. It’s one thing to make something easy and intuitive to use, its another if you need a new non-replaceable battery every other year.
Oh, yes, and the other part of my Comment That Would Not Post: Dhorvath, had there ever been Amber prequels, I, too, would surely have read them….just as I would surely have watched a sequel to The Matrix, had there ever been such a thing.
–
The Hogfather DVD is one of our seasonal traditions! We all get together with munchies and make a night of it. :)
–
Second-best, after purple, which tends to make my skin look bright yellow. Oh, but I love it so! Guaranteed to grab hold of my eyeballs anytime I’m passing clothes racks. For wearing without having people wonder if I might be jaundiced, darkened turquoises, and colors in the burgundy/wine area. Of course, since I default to black tee shirts with stuff on ’em, usually with black jeans, these preferences are usually moot.
–
Huzzah!
–
*hugs* and sympathy for Giliell. Take care of yourself, y’hear?
–
It’s your story; you can do with it as you will. Maybe save any swathes you’re cutting, for later use in some other story? Cannibalising your out-takes for spare parts is an author’s right.
–
Hi, Dave B; welcome in! Your courtroom drama sounds like the stuff of fantasy! In real life, I’m sure the opposition would call objections no later than “the accused had many options open to him for taking out his frustrations when she said no – the bathroom was unoccupied, had a convenient supply of cold water and a door that could be closed so he could use his hands unobserved”.
–
Dhorvath, I obviously missed something, but my best wishes in…whatever is next.
–
Carlie, you have my sympathies; but just think how Thankful your spouse and kid will be when the sickies are all over! :^
–
RationalWiki is just terrible.
Their attribution of fractal wrongness is wrong by at least 6 years.
Ah, but some of them are poorly insulated, and therefore if you touch it you realize you do indeed have a hot water heater. :p
No.
And your rash query left me no choice but to report you to the Fiction Police. Expect the sound of jackboots at your door momentarily.
It’s for your own good.
cicely,
You missed nothing, today is the first I have mentioned the issue on here.
The Sailor, I regret to inform you that you are wrong. The heating unit heats water until it is hot, then as it gets ever-so-slightly less hot, the thermostat kicks its little furnace back on, maintaining it between 140F and slightly less than 140F, or whatever we have it set on (practically scalding and yes I’ve heard it can be dangerous, but when I rinse, I want to be as effective as I can stand). Viola: a hot water heater. I’ve stayed in B&Bs in Europe, though, where the heater actually heats cold tap water, and often requires a lecture from the landlord in proper usage.
Our mishap happened about 10 years ago, just after we bought the house. I wish there had been another warrantee: MisterHobbyMan, the previous owner did a lot of his own, er, what competent people would call repairs or maintenance or remodeling. And wasn’t very good at a lot of it (although the deck he built has been a joy).
The reason I could tell something was wrong ten years ago was because we heard the furnace kick in, which is normally followed by what sounds like a pump turning on. When the pump turning on was followed by a gurgling, hissing noise, I decided to investigate. When I’m working in a lab, I investigate practically every sound I hear, until I’m familiar with the “sound” of the lab. It’s interesting how you can be absorbed in a project, ignoring everything until a novel sound happens, often because some “event” has occurred
Our hot water heater is insulated.
Dhorvath, I like your attitude.
Good luck!
I believe it was Heinlein who said (somewhere in his words of wisdom in Time Enough for Love), every author/artist needs someone standing behind them to hit them over the head at the proper time to prevent unnecessary reediting.
ObLink: “Banana Boat Song (Day O)” – 1956
(Not that cheery, really)
@pelamun, ahs, prevthread:
The same goes for speaking in tongues. Unclear what to make of this. ;)
Ours wasn’t working this morning. I bathed in the sink with a washcloth and a kettle of boiled water.
I told everyone at work this as we waited for the chronic latecomers to show up for a meeting, and complained that I still felt greasy. While doing so, I quietly took a handful of hand sanitiser and started unbuttoning my shirt.
The spreading looks of horror as realisation dawns is what keeps me going some days.
Don Quijote,
Sancho Panza gets holidays?
Yeah, I know – I’m a hopeless optimist most days :P But I’m going to try and hold on to the outrage as long as I can, at least, and try and turn it towards something, somehow, that I can do. Don’t know what, where or how yet – but I’m not going to give up without fighting for the world I thought we lived in.
Dave B:
Yes, it’s revolting and the more you learn, the less happy you’ll be. However, it’s good in the sense that it reinforces just how important it is to be aware of entrenched sexism and to stomp on it every chance you get.
Wow. The Widmer X-114, quite light in color, packs a very smooth body with extremely well balanced hops profile. I would call it a double Boddington’s with extra hops, myself. Very dry, but not metallic, aftertaste.
Carlie:
I love Community. But it’s too bad that it’s being “suspended” (or whateverthefuck) in January.
Trust me, it totally nailed the community college experience.
Brownian
Next time you bathe in the sink, remove the bacon frying pan first.
Cannabinaceae, you have a hot water maintainer. My bad.
Side note: Isn’t it weird that that we keep water hot all the time and only use it occasionally? I sometimes wish I owned my own home and could afford an on demand water heater. I also wish I could live on my boat.
Nothing makes you more conscious of water/electricity/sewage usage than being on your own micro-eco.
Blue is the best color because it is the quietest color, followed by purple, which is a low, unobtrusive hum.
Orange is the worst color; it sounds like screaming. Brown (solid) is next as it sounds like being sick feels.
I could elaborate further, but I won’t as it still sounds weird to me. I still remember trying to explain to my parents why I simply couldn’t play in the new plastic playhouse because it was too loud (brown, orange-red roof, yellow shutters)
The Sailor, I too would like an on-demand water heater. What I want more is a turnkey photovoltaic one-room A/C system, or maybe even heat pump, to help maintain homeostasis in one room of the house while the rest of the building is allowed to fluctuate with the outside temp.
Nerd – “I believe it was Heinlein who said (somewhere in his words of wisdom in Time Enough for Love), every author/artist needs someone standing behind them to hit them over the head at the proper time to prevent unnecessary reediting.”
I prefer ‘writing is not writing, it’s re-writing’.
But yes, Kitty, it’s fine to slice and dice your work, but keep the discarded parts for future reference. (I love digital copy and paste, I used to scissor paragraphs out and re-arrange them. Then I’d have to re-write them. This was hand written in ink, with all the circles on the front and the arrows pointing [/Arlo Guthrie reference] to scribbled words in margins and crossed sentences.
@Dave B, #163, if you’re upset at how it makes you feel, I’d hesitantly aver that perhaps you might be thinking about the wrong person. (I may well be wrong, in which case, please ignore me.)
picool, when I read your comment @193 and replace ‘is’ with ‘I perceive it as’, then your comment makes sense and tells me about you.
#147 cleaning a cutting board with hot soapy water will not kill 1 germ. Use bleach with that concoction to kill germs. Rest of the advise was sound
O hai! I can has Humboldt Foundation grant! I can goes Berlin in January or February or so! ^_^
In worse news, I haven’t even tried to catch up. I was busy (I’ll submit the next paper this weekend, and a big paper it is), and then I made a short trip to Paris, and my nose doesn’t let me sleep much lately. See you tomorrow.
broboxley @ #147 “cleaning a cutting board with hot soapy water will not kill 1 germ. Use bleach with that concoction to kill germs.”
Cleaning with soap and hot water physically removes most germs.
Killing most of the germs thru chlorine or other poisons just results in stronger germs. The evolve faster than we do.
John Morales,
I’m a 21st century Don Quijote. I provide holidays, holiday pay, health, dental, paternal and transportation. Also. I now know a windmill when I see it.
Those of you who may remember our cat that we had to have her ears removed, has died. The cancer was inside her skull as well.
Anyway, we have 15 more and 2 more have decided to join our family and abandon their owners. Also, we have mice.
Polygamy update, this time from Canada. Info from CBC News article:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2011/11/23/bc-polygamy-ruling-supreme-court.html
John:
Yes, thank you.
Sailor #200 if the water is hotter than 165F degrees it will kill germs, kind of hard on the hands tho. Soap is a degreaser not an anti-bacterial agent. Unless of course there is sufficient lye in it.
Winston Blackmore, the fundamentalist mormon bishop from Bountiful, Canada tried to argue for polygamy on the basis of religious freedom.
The idea that harm to people should be allowed as long as it falls under the “religious freedom” umbrella was dealt a blow in Canada. May that idea crack and fall apart everywhere.
Don Quijote, if you have 17 cats and you also have mice, might I suggest that you are tilting at windmills, or did I just walk into a trap there?
Great news. Tell us the strength of the grog you want transported to your position, along with any of the noshes we supply at the Pharyngula Saloon and Spanking parlor.
David, huzzah and congratulations!
Don Quijote, sorry about your cat.
Woo hoo! Conga rats to David!!!11!!!!
+++++++++++++++++
broboxley, I said physically remove, not kill. If you keep using anti-bacterial methods you are just selecting the next gen of bacteria that will kill us.
Soap and warm/hot water is the best defense, unless one is already compromised.
I had begun to wonder why there were no communications from David M. Congratulations!
David,
Yet another indication that you’re as smart as we all think you are. :)
(You have your priorities straight!)
#209 Sailor beg to agree to disagree and leave it with a link
http://www.ehow.com/about_5347507_invention-antiseptics.html
Semmelweiss, a Hungarian obstetrician working at Vienna General Hospital, made a study of the outcome of births at his hospital. The study revealed that 20 percent of women who gave birth died from puerperal fever when a doctor performed the delivery. When treated by a midwife, only one out of 30 women died from the infection. Although Louis Pasteur had not yet proposed the germ theory of disease, Semmelweiss realized that one difference between the doctors and midwives was that doctors would treat several patients in a row, while midwives would deliver one baby and then go home. Medical students in particular concerned Semmelweiss, because they would show up for rounds at the hospital after having performed dissections on cadavers for their anatomy class. He feared that the blood and tissue on their hands, not always completely washed off, was contributing to infection.
Semmelweiss and Hand Washing
Acting on this theory, Semmelweiss asked doctors to wash their hands with a chemical containing bleach, and the fatality rate of women who giving birth dropped to 1 out of 60. When Hungary rebelled against Austrian rule in 1849, sentiment against Hungarians ran high. Semmelweiss was let go and the policy of hand washing ended at the Vienna hospital.
Ha ha ha, check out the line layout bug in the following! Not only is preview your friend, it is your straight man! Not only that, if I place this text after the following, the bug disappears!
I call these folks the “Whole Earth Ribosome“
@David Marjanović, I owed you an answer on the “Why are boys” thread. I think I answered it with Google:
http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=398425
—
Germs. Antibacterial detergents?
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=antibacterial+washing+up+liquid
(I’m also a big fan of boiling water.)
—
ChasCP:
Good to know they’ll be passing by.
(Unless you meant the airline formulation, in which case, *glare*. “Gates will be open momentarily.” What is this, Prince of Persia?)
I can has “CONGRATS DAVID!”
The Sailor and broboxley OT : my input is that I question the ability of bacteria to evolve resistance to fresh 10% bleach solution. The standard sterilization habit of all microbiologists, AFAIK*, is fresh 10% bleach.
But: to be sure, I would use detergent to remove as many microbes as possible before applying bleach. I would also, if using bleach, elect to use a fresh 10% solution.
I’m much less skeptical of microbes evolving higher resistance to 1% bleach (e.g.the bleach one probably has in one’s spray bottles under the sink, unless one is even more inattentive)
*I am one. 70% ethanol is also frequently used; I generally use one after the other.
Ah, and now W.U. has just shouted up that she is done in the kitchen. Time for further preparations and Q.A.
Anyone else find their kill file not working?
broboxley, what part of ‘already infected’ do you not understand?
And you are referencing articles over 100 years ago. These days we know better. It’s science, it advances.
In case anyone else thinks they should purchase anti-bacterial soaps or washes or face cleanser or &c, &c, &c?
Do not do this!
I have a difficult time understanding why regulars on this blog do not understand why minor amounts of substances that kill ‘germs’ don’t imply that those ‘germs’ will evolve and killz humans much, more, better.
Comment by Ing: HEY I’M OVER HERE!!!!! blocked. [unkill][show comment]
Works for me!!!!!
mine has stopped working.
Ah. Never mind. Solution was embarrassing.
Ing:
I’m not having any trouble. Did you look at greasemonkey to see if came unchecked for some reason?
from the side bar
http://freethoughtblogs.com/wwjtd/2011/11/23/christinas-take-on-my-first-weekend-in-polyamory/
very interesting
glad to see polyamory getting more info out there
GreaseMonkey/killfile is working for me. Just no one in my dungeon at the moment. Although a couple of trolls are working on it…
cicely @ 10:
eh? what? not sure what the joke is.
A friend of mine had his house built from scratch, and installed on-demand water heating. Something about the mineral content (well water) messed the heater up, and he was forced to un-install it.
–
<singing> You can get anything you want
At Alice’s Restaurant. </singing>
–
*confetti*
–
Don Quijote, I’m sorry to hear about your cat.
–
Horses are Evil.
Eeeeeeeeeeevil.
–
Is it just me, or does foreplay in porn clips tend to be hotter than the actual sex?
————————————–
Dhorvath,
It’s hard to not feel that way at some point most days. Hugs accepted.
—————————————
Writer’s block seems to be gone. Not spending as much time messing around instead of working on my writing. Now all that remains is to…well, do a lot of writing-related stuff.
(I mean, I have spoken before on this subject. At some (perhaps unduly tendious) length.)
–
T.E.D.I.O.U.S.
Hail Tpyos!
–
cicely,
That “something’ was likely deposition of minerals on the elements impeding their heat-transfer efficacy; that someone wasn’t forced to uninstall it, they could’ve instead put a water-softener between the water-source and the heating apparatus.
@ cicely: not sure I agree, IMO i could take ’em or leave ’em.
Muppet movie = awesome.
that is all
PTI,
Dunno, I haven’t watched porn since I was a teenager, when I decided it was like watching people eat nice food.
(I’m happy to do it, but watching it doesn’t “do it” for me (where ‘it’ refers to sexual activity)
cicely – “Is it just me, or does foreplay in porn clips tend to be hotter than the actual sex?”
1) There’s foreplay in porn clips!?
2) Hmm, it depends on the definition of sex.
3) Seriously tho, I’ve never understood why people want to watch other people having sex when I’m not having sex.
Rev, I listened to an interview by Terry (sp?) Gross on NPR today with one of the creators. The new Muppet Movie sounds like a fun experience. Imma thinking I might ask a date to this flic.
#219 sailor, no you are correct in antibacterial soap mouthwash etc, but bleach will disinfect a cutting board contaminated with listeria, soap and water probably doesnt. You ever stop to wonder why hospitals are mers sites? You think it may be because the harsh disenfectants used in prior years have fallen in decline?
@sandiseattle:
Ah, but ya see, the problem is that They’ll take you, and leave you—an enfeebled, withered husk, bereft of humor, hope or happiness, a hollow reed endlessly sounding Their dirge of horror and despair.
–
1) Misattribution; it was P-TI who asked about the foreplay.
2) Sometimes; it varies, and often depends on the definition of foreplay.
3) Different strokes, different pokes….
–
oh cicely, did your pony break your heart? :-)
Seriously, I’ve been on a horse twice in my life and in a horsedrawn carriage about half a dozen times or so. I do understand attachment to a pet/animal and the heartache of losing one.
broboxley – “You ever stop to wonder why hospitals are mers sites? You think it may be because the harsh disenfectants used in prior years have fallen in decline?”
Actually, no. It’s because they use anti-bacterial agents. And hospitals are no more dangerous than they ever have been. Staph and strep are still rampant, especially in ORs. Depending on the surgery, meat and fluids get transferred to a lot of surfaces. Including floors and ceilings.
The hospital is the last place you want to be if you’re sick/The hospital is the first place to be if you are sick.
Quite the conundrum, eh?
Bravisimo, Herr Doktor. Muy bueno!
==============
In other news, has anyone seen THIS? Seriously? An app so your kitty can bat and paw at your ipad? Has the world gone insane and I jsut missed it? Or has it always been this way and I’ve just been to wrapped up in myself to notice?
boy is my face red, cicely & PTI, I apologize.
++++++++++++++
Matt & Trey were on acid when they won the Oscar.
picool – so you have synanthesia? I’ve always thought that was fascinating.
OOOOOOO!!!!! Sweeeeet!!!
The…what? No. They have MRSA because people schlupp germs from room to room so they can all do horizontal plasmid transfer, and bathe them in low levels of chemicals that provide the best environment for resistance to arise and thrive. Hospitals that drop the use of antibacterials and antibiotics drop their rates of resistant staph and other nasty germs by very large percentages.
Strong bases (bleach) and alcohols, on the other hand, simply physically destroy the cells and there isn’t much way to evolve around that, and physically rubbing the bacteria off reduces infection rates. It’s all the fancy “let’s stop its metabolism and cell wall building mechanisms” chemicals that are easy to defeat.
Ain’t just you.
And it’s not even Thursday yet.
sandiseattle: I have never let any pony into my heart, nor any horse either. Not even the ones with wings and/or horns. And it is solely to this that I attribute my continued possession of said organ.
Seriously, I’ve ridden horses, and their alleged appeal completely escapes me. My sister, on the other hand, was always completely horse-crazy from as far back as I can remember, which would put me at about 5; so I have seen the results of Their sinister influence at first hand, even from earliest childhood. In our teens, we were…acquired…by one of the fell beasts, an enormous, brimstone-snorting monster by the name of Julio. Ours was purely a hate/loathing relationship, though I have to say that He started it.
.
.
.
(Also, it is a bit. Just go with it.)
–
Re synesthesia:
Sometimes, when I’m relaxed and dozy, a sudden noise manifests itself in my consciousness as a flash of light (not just sound).
(Alas, that’s as close as I’ve gotten to it — like Carlie, I find it a fascinating thing)
I used to have a horse. I had to give him away though. Someone attacked him and injured his face, and though the vet was able to help him out, he just became too aggressive and flighty for me to deal with.
I miss him though. Willy was a nondescript mongrel pony with short legs, useless for any kind of competitive sport, but absolutely perfect for a guy who just wanted to ride a decent horse around.
Horse riding is one of those things that I was automatically good at. The guy who taught me just stuck me on top of the half-wild bronc that he had tamed a week earlier, and everything fell into place. We ceased to be horse and rider and became…. some sort of mutant centaur… thing. Really.
It was like I was barely aware I was even in control of the animal. It felt like some sort of crazy mindlink, though of course rationally I know it’s all because of subtle cues between horse and rider, leg pressure, slight changes in balance, etc.
There was one horse, old enough that he’d never see middle age again but still strong enough to ride, who was such a good natured animal I didn’t even bother with a saddle half the time. Just slip on a blanket and a bridle and get going.
^ This. Bleach and alcohols are more or less slate wipers, and evolving resistance to them is only slightly easier than evolving resistance to boiling or autoclaving. Antibacterial chemicals are not only simpler to resist, they don’t work at the low doses and short exposure times typical of personal care products… to disinfect your hands with one, you’d basically have to plunge your hands into a basin of pure antibacterial soap for 15 minutes. They just fill the local environment with trace amounts, perfect for inducing resistance. (I hate ’em with a passion.)
It’s quiet.
,
,
,
Too quiet.
–
PZ, we have a self-declared troll on the first ice cream thread, by the name of Pogsurf.
Just woke up. What day is it?
/I need a job.
djfav:
Job-seeking day, you slacker.
(Get to it!)
djfav:
Depends on where you are in the world. For me, it’s Wednesday, 10:07 pm. Dunno about you.
Well, Beverly managed some magic on Top Chef tonight. Even so, crying at the rodeo? She’s seriously wound up tight.
Wednesday? I’m against it.
Well this isn’t related to anything in this thread but I just asked Yahoo Answers if a band I like is religious, and the answer made me laugh.
Q: Are the members of DIR EN GREY religious?
“Best” Answer
A: Don’t know. Anything not of God leads to darkness and apostasy.
John 12:35 Romans 10:9
I love the fact they admit that they don’t know, but immediately regurgitate GOD IS TEH BESTZOR!!1!
I wish there was a “Hitchslap” button on Yahoo Answers…
Never shake hands with a doctor, you don’t know where they’ve been. My MD friends told me that.
If you use an alcohol or bleach based scrub your skin gets dry and cracked. Very inviting to organisms. If you use anti-bacterial soap you’re just encouraging the worst of the worst little fuckers.
Plain soap and water, scrub up, glove up.
“Job-seeking day, you slacker.
(Get to it!)”
Yeah, I’ve been slacking off. Some guy had promised to call me about an interview last week, but didn’t. And then there was that job fair. Not to mention all the time I’ve spent following up on Work in Texas. But you’re right. I’m just lazy. Grrr.
Sailor: Very true, but when you work with Ebola, dumping Lysol on your previously triple gloved and Lysoled hands is so reassuring. :)
TheSailor, depends on your skin, the climate, and how often you get the bleach or alcohol on it… my hands can take four or five washes in a day without getting cracked, but I’m the exception. Can’t beat an alcohol rub for portability, either. Long-term, soap and water’s still best of all.
djfav, you have my sympathy no less than my encouragement.
You and me both, babe. You and me both. Gotta get off my ass. I have a pile of job openings I should be writing CVs for.
djfav, Morales thinks he’s funny, he was trying to show sympathy.
Now glove up.
Jinx, John. Sorry about that chief.
Currently listening to Bolero and watching 2 1/2 Men.
Sorry. I can be rather humor-impaired at times.
Hey, finding a real job in this shitty economy is no laughing matter! I know exactly where you’re coming from. No need to apologize.
“Hey, finding a real job in this shitty economy is no laughing matter!”
That, and I’m not sure the certification I’m about to receive has prepared me to re-enter the workforce.
Quick. Is there anything a person can do at home to relieve the pain of an ovarian cyst that isn’t likely to make it any worse?
I tried googling home care for these things, and the stuff that came up was the kind of antiscience pigshit that Myers spits on.
Please and thank you in advance for your help.
Now I’m listening to Doris Day singing 10 Cents a Dance.
+++++++++
djfav, IHO Sally is right.
When Doves Cry is playing at the moment.
Why, yes, my iPod is on random, why do you ask?
sandiseattle
Watch this.
pssst cicely
.
.
.
PEAS!
TLC, a hospital.
Also opiates.
Pot couldn’t hurt.
Go with #1.
TLC: See the Pfft: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ovarian_cyst#Treatment
she has an ultrasound scheduled tomorrow, Sailor.
Pot isn’t an option for her. Some people should NOT smoke pot, and she is one of those people. Without giving out too much personal info about her, pot is a BAD idea.
It’s not the certification’s fault. I don’t know that anything could prepare you for entering the current workforce. Unless you’re a computer engineer. Apparently they’re in high demand.
Happy Publication of On the Origin of Species day everyone!
TLC,
Take painkillers?
—
But yeah, not really a joking matter — AFAIK, the only remedy is surgery.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ovarian_cyst#Treatment
Dammit, the local wings place closed early! I haz a hungry, and also a big bottle of Ommegang perfect for drinking while eating wings. I love holidays, but I curse them too!
A.R.: Thanks. That’s where I should have gone first, that was exactly the kind of stuff I was looking for.
Unfortunately she poopooed every single one of the suggestions over the phone.
:(
I hate feeling useless while she suffers.
[belated]
Um, I see A. R has already noted that.
<blush>
John Morales: she’s scheduled for an ultrasound tomorrow. She’s wary of too strong painkillers, for both personal reasons and because she doesn’t want to sleep too heavily in case the baby wakes up and needs her.
TLC: Tell her that Ibuprofen (at 400 mg every 6 hours) is quite safe, non-addicting (it’s not an opioid, it’s an NSAID like Aspirin, but safer), and will not prevent her from waking to tend the baby.
TLC, I figure this palliative has occurred to you, but can you go over and spend the night?
A.R.: I told her I could get her some of that… and guess what.
She poopooed THAT too. and decided she’s just gonna try to go to bed. Apparently she’s already taken some t3s anyways.
She’s CRANKY. Understandably so, of course, and I have plenty of patience.
I just wish I could help her.
Caine:
My Poor Ol’ Pappy (rodeo bull rider in the 30s) always said that a real hand won’t cry until the rodeo is over and the check is cashed and home is in sight.
Ok, but remind her that the codeine in t3 could mildly sedate her, and the she cannot consume alcohol or any other non-NSAID pain reliever for about 24 hours after taking one of those (the paracetamol)
“It’s not the certification’s fault. I don’t know that anything could prepare you for entering the current workforce. Unless you’re a computer engineer. Apparently they’re in high demand.”
The cert is in Web development. I’ve been looking for harder stuff to do outside of class because the work I’m given feels just a little too easy.
It seems in the last year or so everybody up and decided to start using HTML5 and that’s not in the program, or even finished yet. CSS3 is fun stuff, but there isn’t much browser support for it yet. I only started using it a few weeks ago because I was caught off guard in an interview by someone who expected me to know it already. It won’t even validate at this point. And then there are the people who still want to use Flash, even though Adobe is well on its way to giving up on that front. Lots of stuff happening. I just have to try to keep up.
No worries, Sailor. :)
Rey Fox: I feel better now. It’s been that way since I started watching porn – I’ll sometimes restart a clip just to watch the foreplay over and over again.
———————————————-
I used to want to own a horse. Now I’m not so sure. I used to take riding lessons, which I enjoyed. None of the horses I rode was ever a devilish thing, and I met only one who was either the stable clown or maybe depressed and trying to hide it.
———————————————–
evader: Helluva non-answer there. The poster may as well have said, “I don’t know, but did you know x plus 9 equals kitten?”
———————————————
Off to bed. Might not be able to log on, so just in case, Happy Turkey Day!
Sitting in the Park
TLC,
You are, just by being there and caring.
It may not be much, but it’s something — and it’s the best you can do. And I’m pretty sure she knows if you could do more, you would.
(She ain’t alone, and that’s important. Good on ya!)
@ djfav – Oh well, sounds like something at least slightly useful. I’ve been able to teach myself a bit of html and CSS on the fly. I’m sure with your experience you can easily pick it up as you go. *encouraging noises, hugs, chocolate*
Hey y’all – great interview over at Black Skeptics: http://freethoughtblogs.com/blackskeptics/2011/11/17/black-non-believers-of-atlanta-interview-with-mandisa-l-thomas/
A.R. , The Sailor, and John Morales: Thanks a lot, I appreciate all the help and kind words. I’ll continue to do whatever I can.
Crying at the Rodeo
is that the latest C&W hit song?
PTI, I put children, horses, motorcycles, racing sailboats, &c. on the same level. It’s much better if your best friend has one.
Spirit- Animal Zoo
+++++++++++++++
@ djfav, think of it as learning a way to think. Then you know you can adapt to the new versions. Learn on your own.
In a job interview it’s acceptable to lie if you can learn what you’re doing faster than they can learn you don’t know what you’re doing.
Poisoning Pigeons In The Park
It has the word “park”.
Yeah, this.
Running With The Devil”
I’ve just had two days paid employment. Shoveling shit. Yes, literally, shoveling shit four hours a day, and the rest of the day, general cleanup, etc,
I’m going to be offered a permanent, nearly full-time job. 5 seven-hour days per week.
I dunno.
What kind of shit?
Shoveling animal shit would actually be OK with me- it implies that I’d be employed close to animals, which are my kinda people.
I just turned my cell phone off. Tonight is my Friday, tomorrow is my Sunday, the day after tomorrow is my Saturday, Saturday is my Saturday, Sunday is my Sunday, and Monday will be just what it is.
The last week and a half I’ve felt like Thomas Edison … I found a thousand things that don’t work.
++++++++++++++
“In a job interview it’s acceptable to lie if you can learn what you’re doing faster than they can learn you don’t know what you’re doing.”
Not when the lead programmer is sitting in the interview and asking you very specific questions.
Is this the sturm und drang edition of TET?
I’m watching Trainspotting. It seems to fit the theme.
(OMG,OMG,OMG, the baby!,ZOMG these people! I can’t look away!)
Aqualung
+++++++++++++
**********WARNING: ROCK & ROLL STORY*******
The act I was working with was on the same bill as Ian Anderson and David Crosby. We were playing at the Spectrum in Philadelphia.
We shared a dressing room. That’s OK, it was the 76’s locker room, we had plenty of room.
I cranked up my portable Commodore 64 and plugged my modem into a phone line. I dialed up into a local SprintNet (?) and dialed down into my local LA BBS. David wanders over and goes ‘Cool!’ as he’s looking over my shoulder. Turns out he’s a member of a BBS The Well (?) in San Francisco which my BBS had a sister agreement with.
We typed messages to each other for months. It was novel as hell back then. Now get off my lawn.
Oh, and the guy I was working for? Warren Zevon. (I gots a better story for that night, but it’s a might embarrassing.)
TLC: none of my business, but I’d suggest you (gently) insist on going over to be there with her. Just in case she feels worse at 2 AM, or the kid needs something… think of some good excuses, say it’s no trouble, or you’ll be up all night worrying. (Which you might be, you fuzzy warm heart.)
But the main reason to be there is to distract her, because distraction can really help blunt pain. So can having less to worry about, as may be true if someone trustworthy is there to help manage things.
Good luck, TLC, both of you.
TLC
I kinda like Pteryxx’s suggestion.
—
other thought
and I think the crocoduck’s head should be about 75% it’s current size.
Horse shit.
Pteryxx: If she calls again, I’ll try that. But I won’t call there in case she’s sleeping.
hotshoe
Horse shit isn’t so bad.
It makes good fertilizer, especially after composting.
Working for a stable can be a pretty good gig.
Ah, mucking out the stalls. Been there, done that. But nobody was paying me and the goddamn horse bit me on the ass when I bent over the feed bin.
It could be worse, you could have been pea-picken.
(where’s blf when you need him?)
Been there done that four hours a day ?
I dunno.
It’s stable employment, what else can you expect in an economy like this?
Horse shit? Too bad, if it was cow shit you could use it to make an excellent clay plaster.
I’ve been watching the finale of Dancing With the Stars… It’s actually even better than I thought it would be. They brought back a lot of the people who got voted off and let them perform pretty much whatever they want. It’s worth checking out Carson Kressley’s (mildly) gender-bending performance to “Vogue,” as well as Chaz Bono shaking it hard to “Big and Chunky.” Man, I love that show. I suppose most of you think it’s silly, but to me it’s like the modern incarnation of vaudeville. Pure, sparkly entertainment.
I dealt with chicken shit for long hours of the day for a while, and it was really not worth it all. Then again, chicken shit is way more smelly than horse shit. So I dunno. I wouldn’t judge it on the basis of the shit itself, which is fairly innocuous in my experience, but on the experience of shoveling. Is it going to wear you out and make you unhappy? If so, probably not worth it.
Regarding shit: I’ve dealt with goat shit as a fertilizer back when we had goats as kids. It’s one of the best fertilizers you can imagine, and it comes in a pelleted form!
Horse shit?
Not a bad job.
So Happy Together
Keely Smith – Fly Me To The Moon
Oh, I don’t think there’s any real doubt I’ll take the job. My family would kill me if I didn’t. I haven’t had steady employment in so long … I do some free lance garden work that I really love but I can’t make enough money at it to put gas in the car much less shoes on the kid’s feet.
It’s a legitimate operation. They’re paying taxes and they’re not hiring illegal immigrants. They’re insistent about people’s health and safety. There is ice water in hell.
Que Sera, Sera (Sly & The Family Stone)
LFO – Freak
“we had goats as kids” … sorry, I just couldn’t let that one pass. Stable employment? … yeah, I couldn’t resist, twice.
That’s just Sailor, he thinks he’s funny.
+++++++++++++++++
Cry Me A River (Julie London)
Rick James – Super Freak
(BTW, I got a disgusting tale about Rick James, but who doesn’t?)
Hmmm… I’m too fortunate to have any right to whine, but even so, there are days at my office job that make me pine for a way to meet my financial obligations by doing purely physical work, no matter how hard, dirty, sweaty, and smelly, rather than the metaphorical shit-shoveling I have to do in fact.
The moments pass… but that doesn’t mean I don’t really feel them.
***
Sorry I’ve been missing out on the Top Chef talk. Hopefully I’ll (finally!) get caught up over the TG break, and then I can join in.
Hmm…I think I’ll go with a commercial theme. The previous was featured in a Hummer ad. This one was used by Levi’s Jeans.
Mr. Oizo – Flat Beat
And this one appears to be a commercial for power tools, but I could be wrong. (probably NSFW)
Benny Benassi – Satisfaction
♥♥♥♥♥
I never minded shovelling horseshit when I did it. I actually kinda like the smell. Horseshit doesn’t smell too bad at all.
Unless it’s not the kind of horseshit that comes from the anus of an equine.
The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway
(I did mention all these songs are random play on my iPod, didn’t I?)
http://ssrn.com/abstract=1722771 Constitutionalism: A Skeptical View
Go ahead and skip to page 14, the section titled “Constitutionalism and Constraint”. There’s nothing terribly interesting before that.
+++++
Unique among authors of legal commentary, Jeremy Waldron actually explains a few pages later — I swear, this is real quote — “why I am being such a pain in the ass”.
“(I did mention all these songs are random play on my iPod, didn’t I?)”
Honey badger don’t care.
“It’s not that I care particularly about the integrity of the constitutionalist tradition. It is a pompous heritage, and where pomposity comes in, equivocation is seldom far behind.”
Human League – Don’t you want me?
@ Josh
I have left the squeeeeeeeee in your inbox to prevent another TET crash. Yes, as you would guess from that, Teh Supreme Goddess, Ruler of Typos and Yahwe, Her Divine Majesty Etc Etc Etc, Phoenicia (PBUH) has arrived.
She will soon arise from the dead and be restored to life (takes about three days I gather) †
† I did not get any instructions. As High Priest you should be throwing the whole Phoenician Babble at your acolytes.
There’s an asymmetry in the perception of comments about such offerings — it’s fine to laud it, but not to diss it.
(I checked it out — it was interesting… until the ‘song’ cut in)
ALL nature videos should be narrated by that guy.
Horse shit isn’t so bad. We go out to a friend’s stables every year and shovel a truckload to put over the hop vines along with hay for over-wintering.
Nobody Knows Me Lyle Lovett
Never been to a rave eh John? It’s all right, you oldsters have your music, us middle-agers have ours, and the youngsters are currently inventing whatever the fuck it is we are all going to hate.
Sallystrange:
I would seriously watch a feature length nature documentary with original narration by Randall. He’s hilarious and as far as I know mostly correct.
my favorite is the one where he narrated over a bunch of african animals having what they call a “marula party”
Theo:
I’m delighted Phoenicia has reached you! I’m shocked, actually, considering I posted her only about 5 days ago in the US mail. That she made her way to your part of the world so quickly is quite a surprise.
Sorry about the lack of instructions – guess I was thinking more about illustrating Her Greatness. You know what to do anyway, though.
But just in case:
Empty the dried culture into a jar of tepid water. Let it sit until it softens. Whisk it thoroughly. Then add fresh flour and water, and set it to ferment on the counter at room temperature or slightly warmer. She should bubble up in a day or less.
Let me know how it goes!
SallyStrange,
Good guess. :)
—
PS thanks for taking my comment in the spirit in which it was intended!
I also ♥ Lyle Lovett.
For those who are interested, you can apparently buy a talking plushie honey badger from Randall. (There’s only 3,000!) There’s “Honey badger don’t care” gear as well. All proceeds benefit wildlife protection. That guy is pretty awesome.
Everyone is posting vididoes? Here’s Freddy Mercury.
What Do The Simple Folk Do?
If anyone asks, I will smack-talk Nikki Minaj until the cows come home. Kids these days and their “music.”
Also, I brought some dried Spawn of Phoenicia in my suitcase down to Virginia (a 700-mile trip) for US Thanksgiving. She’s raised two loaves so far, and one is crackling and getting all glass-shattery-crusty on the counter right now in preparation for our feast tomorrow. The rest of Phoenicia is bubbling away happily, but slowly, on the outside porch.
Good luck, Theo!
Have a great trip, Josh! Let me know when you get home, okay?
K Sally.I’ll be home late Monday of next week.
Just a Band – Usinibore
Okay now everyone be honest – how many music links do you actually click on and listen to? Myself? Not many. I feel sorta bad about it. I should be more adventurous.
@ Josh
Hey, what about some religious incantations, using bits of the pope’s body to symbolise a broken cracker (though crackers are ebil – no yeast) etc etc. I am concerned that we have already had a major schism with the gruberphiles (*cough*DrAudley*cough*) and yet we do not have religious ceremonies. Could a mint flavoured shisha stand in for a censer?
((I will check out the bread site for a good beginner’s sourdough recipe.))
………………………
@ Walton
Have you ever seen Kenny Everett? In my mental imagining he is standing in for you at the Pharyngula Saloon and Spanking Parlour. (At least the skits with posh accent. Don’t worry- the whole Saloon was designed by him…)
Linky.
Ladies and Gentlemen, the inimitable Etta James (it was a quarter till 3 when I started this comment).
Theophontes:
BOGGLE!
I’ve often imagined Walton (affectionately, Walton)as Kenny Everett’s ‘Angry of Mayfair.’
Will try and find a link…
“As God as my witness I thought turkeys could fly”
I loved Kenny Everett.
Doubting my ability to post a link successfully.
@ amblebury
No, not quite that character … ;)
But snuffling around, I did find David Bowie on his show. I dedicate this to all the MRA’s who might stop by here: Linky – Bowie and “Angry of Mayfair”
@ Sailor
We also had that, but in the 80’s. (SA was late to adopt this “duiwelsgoed” (goods of the devil) as Verwoerd saw TV as a corrupting influence.)
The Waltons was dubbed into Afrikaans (along with a lot of the better overseas shows) and came out as “Die Waltons”:
None. My wireless is not unlimited.
“Die Waltons”
Oh, yeah, how many times have I said that.
“Good night Jon-boy” **BLAM!**
Die Waltons indeed.
+++++++++++
I try to have enough info in my links that the songs or TV links are called to mind. It helps to be of a certain age.
Good morning
Kids had a better night = I had a better night.
#1 is back to her usual pain in the ass morning-self as opposed to the sick pain in the ass morning-self
(I can understand her, I don’t do mornings either, so it takes all my patience)
David M
Congratulations.
Say hello to the leg of the Brachiosaurus in the museum of natural history in Berlin from me (my favourite dinosaur. There’s a picture of 9-year-old me in front of that bone)
____________
So, I’m going to invest all my money in solar energy. Not that “all my money” is worth mentioning on a global scale.
The local, publicly owned energy company is putting up solar panels and they finance the investment with consumer credits. So we’re esentially cutting bozt the bank:
They get money for less than the bank interest rate, I get more interest than usual.
http://ssrn.com/abstract=896790 by Christopher M.F. Fairman
Ariaflame:
Anne McCaffery was 85? She must have been among the first SF writers in the magazine SF culture -well, maybe not among the very first, but just six years younger than Asimov, Heinlein and wossname, the Fahrenheit 451 guy.
Back then, the SF scene was pretty much a men’s club. Must have been tough to make inroads.
Honey badgers rock! And so did the late Kenny Everett.
Apparently, a slow news day — in my local news: Human spit build-up could cause bridge collapse
[Photo included]
I’m back in England for half a week or so. Exhausted from a transatlantic flight.
I hope I haven’t pissed people off irrevocably with my emotionally-unstable behaviour on the skeptics o’ sunshine thread; the whole topic provoked a full-on anxiety episode (a mental problem to which I am notoriously prone).
consciousness razor will, hopefully, be satisfied to learn that I’m part-way through After Virtue by Alasdair Macintyre (which has been sitting on my shelf for a month or so, after a friend sent it to me). He’s not the philosopher I would have chosen to read, since he’s a Catholic conservative type and a proponent of virtue ethics; but having been given the book, I might as well read it, and it’s probably also entirely healthy to read works from time to time that express a point of view diametrically opposed to my own.
So I am not unwilling to read philosophical works on the subject of meta-ethics, but I’m also not convinced that doing so is necessary to forming one’s own opinion on the subject, or likely to change my opinion; whatever language one chooses to dress it up in, I can’t see any coherent argument by which I, as a non-theist and philosophical materialist, can possibly escape the conclusion that there are no objective moral standards and that morality is just a matter of subjective emotion and personal preference, and that basic moral values are thus not susceptible of rational debate. (I gather from Macintyre’s book that this position is broadly similar to “emotivism”, a school of thought which he doesn’t like. However, I haven’t yet got to the part of the book where he defends his own alternative theory.) Macintyre, of course, is a theist, though – like other Catholic conservative philosophers I’ve read in the past, such as John Finnis – he tries to defend his views from a secular (and, in Macintyre’s case, Aristotelian) perspective, rather than appealing to religious authority.
(But if everything I’ve said above turns out to be either wrong or incoherent, I won’t be surprised. Sleep deprivation is not good for one’s reasoning ability.)
“the preliterate, superstitious abomination that is virtue ethics, enemy of human rights and enemy of reality. Against human rights, virtue ethics propose that one may become a better person precisely by ignoring another’s rights. Against reality itself, virtue ethics propose that an action may be good or bad, right or wrong, regardless of the consequences, measured only by the supposed virtue of the actor’s inner self. (The cults of action for action’s sake begin virtue ethics’ ultimate descent into atrocity.)”
burn it!
Plausibly of interest and likely of irritation to Josh, Official SpokesGay: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1708113
Have a nice visit at home, Walton!
Currently embarking on a journey to find local freethinkers and test my locality’s tolerance of secularism by posting up some atheistic flyers. Examples are on the Facegalt, er, -book page I made: Fraser Valley Freethinkers
Mrs. BigDumbChimp is over —–> there making a Fresh Coconut cake and soon some rolls.
Still need to do a few more prep things but mostly ready.
Rev:
Oh god, I loves me some coconut cake.
Seeing as thought I had TOTAL CATASTROPHIC BREAD FAILURE last night, I’m about to make a couple of loaves this morning. Since it’s the only thing I’m bringing to dinner tonight, let’s hope it works this time.
Well, my first attempt at French Macarons failed completely. Not spectacularly since nothing exploded, but they failed. I’ll try again and use those lumps for desert.
Is that where you help old grannies over the street even though that means they’re missing the bus that is just arriving on the side they were standing at?
Birger:
Ray Bradbury. There Will Come Soft Rains is my absolute favorite short story.
Walton:
Enjoy your trip home!
Okay, now I’m really really really gonna start this bread.
Yeah she does all the baking. She’s much better at it than I am. I’m not always good with the exact measurements and following recipes to the letter. I like to improvise.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Herzlichen Glückwunsch to David M!
Theophontes, the story about Cantonese having nine tones is more complicated (three of them, the 入聲 aren’t really different tones, and even the rest can be described as a combination of register and contour tones), but can’t go into much detail right now…
Happy Thanksgiving to everyone on TET! May you just enjoy the day in the way that makes you happiest! I’m at my parents so I am missing my baby but also avoiding the soon-to-be-ex in-laws drama. For those of you keeping track, my divorce court date is next Wednesday.
dfav, can you fake apache rewrite rules? I badly need some well paid help doing that
williamoxley@netscape.net
Rev,
Yeah, I do all of the baking, too. I really enjoy it, though, while Mr Darkheart finds it tedious. (Which is kind of funny ‘cos I’m much more impatient/looking for instant gratification than he is.)
Okay, the bread dough is rising now and it’s time for some Assassin’s Creed, I think. Back in a little bit. :)
@Birger
Yep. Anne was born April 1, 1926, but she didn’t start publishing stories until the 50s. Details at wikipedia
@ Dr Audley
Phoenicia (PBUH) arrived today (as you might have seen upthread). She is now having a warm bath to recover from her jetlag, before I feed her and put her into the oven to prevent her from catching a cold.
Hopefully she has risen in the next few days and can start sowing her rich bounty.
Have you tried making sourdough pizza yet? (We just had a delicious fresh vegetarian spelt pizza on the roof. Omnomnom.) Are you using a pizza stone to bake your bread?
I wonder if our starters (having the same mommy) will become different over time? Imagine if we can get speciation!
Yeah, I’m ADHD but she takes that to a new level. So I also find it amusing she can do the baking.
theophontes:
Yay, Phoenicia! Pamper her and she will treat you well. (Actually, if I haven’t fucked the starter up yet, then I think it’s probably pretty damned sturdy.)
So far, I’ve only made bread with Hans Gruber, but now that I know that I enjoy baking with him, I’m going to start branching out into other foods. I’m currently on the lookout for a good sourdough biscuit recipe.
I don’t have a stone, since I’m still a newbie at all of this bread-making business (and I don’t make pizza). It’s something I’m going to look into, though. :)
Okay, now I’m really going off to play some AC:R. I’ll be back in an hour or so.
Ariaflame, Dr. Audley Z. Darkheart;
For the benefit of readers in USA and Canada: Bookcloseouts.com is offering a lot of books at half p rice until Nov 30. Below are a few links and recommendations.
Life Sciences http://www.bookcloseouts.com/Store/Browse/Life-Promotions-Science-Sciences/_/N-1c9Z2je
Fiction http://www.bookcloseouts.com/Store/Browse/Fiction-Promotions/_/N-2jeZq2
Science Fiction: Futures from Nature http://www.bookcloseouts.com/Store/Details/Futures-from-Nature/_/R-9780765318053B 100 very short stories.
Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show http://www.bookcloseouts.com/Store/Details/Orson-Scott-Cards-Intergalactic-Medicine-Show/_/R-9780765320001B
Fractions (The First Half of The Fall Revolution) The future as seen from Britain’s Ken Macleod
http://www.bookcloseouts.com/Store/Details/Fractions-The-First-Half-of-The-Fall-Revolution/_/R-9780765320681B
Odd Girl Out (Timothy Zahn takes the railway to the stars –and is fighting the Modhri, a really original badass alien enemy) http://www.bookcloseouts.com/Store/Details/Odd-Girl-Out/_/R-9780765317339B
Other book titles I found that looked interesting:
Star Trek Crosswords Book 2
Gaudeamus
Gravity Wells
The Light of Other Days (by Arthur C. Clarke)
Lurulu (Ports of Call) by Jack Vance
Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded: A Decade of Whatever, 1998-2008 (by John Scalzi)
Our Lady of Darkness (Fritz Leiber writes a Lovecraftian tale of sinister things in urban California)
Urban fantasy: Check Kim Harrison,s “The Hollows” series, starting with “Dead Witch Walking” (Hollows, Bk. 1)
Also, there is a lot of titles by the late Robert Jordan.
“The Tale of the Body Thief” by Anne Rice is one of the few of her vampire novels I personally liked.
[PIZZA]: Linky. (Entertaining look at how to make the perfect pizza.)
Germs:
When I clean my lab bench with EtOH and bleach, I wear gloves. Every bench in every microbiology lab I’ve ever seen has a box of gloves on it (and a squirt bottle of 70% EtOH). On a side note, a typical dose of ampicillin (“amp”), used to keep contamination at bay when culturing cells, and to select for genetic transformants, is 50 micrograms per milliliter. I was conversing with a student one day, whose cultures had become contaminated despite using amp, and they said something along the lines of “can’t we just up the amp concentration?” I was going to say something disparaging, but self-censored. The stunned look on my face and saying something along the lines of “think about what you are suggesting” was probably enough to communicate the necessary information, something along the lines of “fuck no!”
TG:
My own W.U. is now beginning the bread and pie making processes. Fortunately, our neighbor is out of town and we can use her oven for the pies while ours is cookin’ turkey. I have a short break of a couple hours before I have to insert the bird and start on the gravy and taters.
Q.A. on the Flying Fish Dubbel: a high quality example of what I call the typical Belgian style. While I can like it, I don’t usually like it enough to drink more than one; however one of the guests is quite fond of Belgians (he likes to culture the yeast out of the best ones to use in his own home brewing). I can’t restart the Q.A. process until after the gravy components are put together, because the neck needs to be disassembled with the Very Sharp Knife and I don’t have a recipe for Human Blood Gravy.
Sitting up here in my office, I can smell the backbone, which I am braising. In fact, I have to go check it out just now.
Happy Thanksgiving to all who indulge in it!
Ah, before I go: I will bake, and I’m good at doing exact measurements, but I never seem to enjoy it much. Except that I do make pecan sandies pretty often (generally, right after W.U.’s kinfolk in Indiana arrange for a couple pounds of pecans from their farm to appear unannounced on our doorstep in Multibore, which I interpret as a suggestion that a couple pounds of pecan sandies appear unannounced on their doorstep).
[PIZZA]: Easy Linky ™ to part II…
At least one mormon bishop did report a pedophile to the police.
http://www.kptv.com/story/16113641/vancouver-sunday-school-teacher-accused-of-sexually-abusing-girl
The story reports that a man who taught “Sunday school” at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Vancouver, Washington molested a 9 year old girl over a period of several months. The alleged molestation included rape, and the sexual abuse allegedly took place during church service times, in the church building.
theophontes:
Thank you for the linkies!
The dough has risen properly, yay! No bread failure for me today, woo hoo!
PZ, if you’re reading, PaulG has gotten out of the dungeon.
^^ May not actually be the Dungeoned PaulG. Check the IP first.
Why don’t you tell PZ how to blog while you’re at it? Idiot.
Oh, how kind of you Caine.
The mormon church’s propaganda campaign is irritating me. The “I’m a Mormon” ads are misleading, since most of those unusual people would be looked at askance in any Utah mormon community.
The whitewash and lies about the history of the church, and about its current number of members, those articles (often written or sourced by mormons) are bought and swallowed whole by too many journalists … and by us.
It was a pleasure then to read Steve Benson’s takedown of one of the oft-repeated lies, namely that the LDS Church’s 1890 “Manifesto” ended Church-sanctioned polygamy.
http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,349215
Excerpts:
[Woodruff was the mormon church president, or Prophet/Seer/Revelator]
To top all this history off, there’s a thread on exmormon.org this morning discussing the fact that polygamists in southern Utah still attend “normal” or mainstream mormon churches, and that they are not kicked out. http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,349238
More excerpts from Steve Benson’s exposé:
Steve Benson goes on to document church-sanctioned polygamy in Mexico, and even polygamous marriages performed by church leaders in Utah — well after the “Manifesto” and well after Woodruff lied on the witness stand.
Show trials meant to fool the public, and statements made to the press, are still the modus operandi of LDS Church leaders. When they can, when circumstances allow, they ignore polygamy.
The Mormons: And the best part is that the only serious and remotely sane candidate for President is a Mormon. Think that says something about the Republicans as well.
^^ oops, meant Republican candidate ^^
The Walton has woken up from his nap.
ahs,
I agree with you on the subject of virtue ethics; it’s an unsatisfactory, and an essentially pre-rational, school of thought. But that’s precisely why I’m reading a scholarly defence of it, in order to challenge myself to engage with the arguments for a position I consider to be wrong. For the same reason I intend to read Kant one day (in translation, of course), despite disagreeing vehemently with more-or-less everything he stood for.
(Though if we’re talking about human rights, your preferred utilitarianism could also be criticized on that ground; a concern I’ve posted about here before, when we were discussing deontological versus utilitarian ethics. After all, in a strict utilitarian worldview there can, in principle, be no absolute or inviolable rights; a strict utilitarian, even one who believes generally in the usefulness of human rights as juridical constructs, must necessarily hold that it would be right to violate a human right if doing so would, all things considered, be to the net wellbeing of humanity.
Of course rule-utilitarianism, as opposed to act-utilitarianism, allows us to think about this a bit more deeply, and to recognize that there are circumstances in which observing a general rule of respect for a given right has, on balance, good consequences, consequences which would be undermined if the rule were to be violated in a particular case, even if one can easily envision circumstances in which violating that right on a particular occasion would have good consequences in itself. Freedom of speech is a good example of this. Society probably wouldn’t lose anything of immediate value if Rush Limbaugh were to be banned from the airwaves, for instance, and so an act-utilitarian could make an argument for infringing his freedom of speech; but a rule-utilitarian can respond that deciding to censor speech on a case-by-case basis in this fashion undermines the rule of freedom of speech, and therefore gives the state a dangerous level of power and undermines one of the liberties which is, as a practical matter, essential to political discourse in a functioning society. But I digress.)
@broboxley OT
“can you fake apache rewrite rules?”
Hmm…
*looks at some documentation*
I could give it a try. Should I just contact you at that address?
@broboxley OT
Also, this is what I was looking at. Is that what you mean?
Safer with regards to what exactly ? And Aspirine is not an NSAID, it’s an antiplatelet drug that in high doses (over 2g) has some antiinflammatory properties.
Hooray for Audley’s bread!
I’ll start getting the confetti ready.
Food is in the oven, mostly. Spouse is still hacking and sitting down frequently so as not to pass out, and just went for a nap.
I hope everyone has a good day.
difav #400 I ride herd on about 4k of them, if you understand linux and perl you can do that. Hit me up via email
Carlie:
Thanks! It would suck to show up for dinner empty handed.
Moniker (Waaaay back up there, forgot the number as I was scrolling – is there a ‘quote this’ button I’m missing?):
I don’t think that’s an accurate summary, no, so please indulge me while I try to clarify. I am offended and outraged that people have to go through these experiences and get treated like shit afterwards, that our society apparently doesn’t just metaphorically kick the victims when they’re down but full-on curb-stomps them before driving over them with a metaphorical steamroller!
But by accident of birth, I’m in one of the groups least likely to experience any of this first-hand. I’m not incensed and angry for my own sake but for those people in my life and wider community who do have to live under the shadow of rape, be it as a survivor or just under the shadow of fear. We live in the 21st century, dammit!
This is the future, and yet despite the shiny toys that science and technology have brought us we’re still, apparently, laboured with boneheaded-age (which, I think, may be most if not all of human history! :P) divisiveness, inequalities and pettiness I thought we, as a species, had outgrown. Oh, sure, there’s still some bad science/misconceptions to correct and the odd rogue element and ongoing attention to detail but as a whole society’s mostly on the right track, right? … Wait, what do you mean that my sisters, my wonderful Lady, our next generation will all still be struggling with basic rights issues and live with an ambient level of fear? Yes, there’s a personal level of feeling betrayed by the society I thought I knew at having my eyes opened – but there’s a whole cake under that icing.
And speaking of food, like most were when I came back and interrupted with a much-longer-than-anticipated reply to one of yesterday’s comments, the bread-talk is starting to make me hungry :P Should make something nice tonight for dinner…
@broboxley OT
Yeah, I think it’s way over my head. No experience with any of that. Sorry. Wish I could help.
I’m still a noob. *sigh*
Oh, theophontes! I missed this:
I’ve been using a basic (mild) sourdough bread recipe from King Arthur Flour. It’s easy to do*, relatively quick, and the bread is nice and chewy. :)
(I add 1 Tbs of oil to the recipe– it softens the bread up a little bit.)
*My catastrophic bread failure notwithstanding.
Argh, I should clarify, Aspirine is technically an NSAId wrt its Cox-1 inhibition properties, but not part of the “classic” NSAIDs.
@difav, yeah hard to find at the moment, good luck with your search
No, not on that ground. Not on the ground that violating another’s rights will make you more like Hercules: “just grant me a single glimpse into something perfect, something completely developed, happy, powerful, triumphant, from which there is still something to fear!“
rorschach, my PDR and the NIH disagree with you. Aspirin is a NSAID.
@broboxley OT, thanks. I’ll just add it to the rapidly expanding list of stuff I need to learn. :)
Sorry rorschach, I didn’t see your #408 before I commented. My bad.
Happy USThanksgiving Day. And today should be my Tuesday. So tomorrow is second Monday, then Wednesday, then Friday. So yesterday was first Monday.
Y’know, I’m starting to think you intolerant calendarists have the right idea.
Yeah, you’re right. Apologies, I should have been more specific. The criticisms are entirely different, of course. My point was merely that strict utilitarianism has been criticized, at times, for not allowing for any doctrine of absolute or inviolable individual human rights. Of course, whether that’s a feature or a bug is largely a matter of opinion.
(I’ve encountered some “natural rights” deontological libertarian types online – one turned up on my blog, for instance – who would criticize a utilitarian approach to public policy on the ground that it doesn’t place any theoretical absolute or non-transgressible limits on the power of the state, and that the concept of “net human wellbeing” or “net human happiness” is so vague and incommensurable that it’s basically a licence for unlimited coercion in the name of the greater good.
Of course, you, as a consequentialist, could coherently respond to this by arguing that we should have certain inalienable or non-transgressible limits on the power of the state not because those limits represent some mystical “natural rights”, but simply because of the entirely practical consequentialist concern that the state, being for the most part an instrument of the interests of the governing classes, should not be trusted with unlimited power. I don’t know if you’d actually make that argument, and I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but it would not be inconsistent with your expressed ethical standpoint.
Blargh. Clueless sexists make me a sad sadist.
I’d ignore them for a bit and go do my nails, but I’m under the weather, and it seems to have affected my dexterity.
Happy American Thanksgiving, y’all!
Walton, for some reason I’m pleased that you get to spend time back in England, hooray!
For myself, I’m going to indulge in the USian tradition of what I’m thankful for today: I’m thankful I don’t have to spend time with my family today. I love my siblings, I just don’t like them very much.
It’s 5am here and I’m at work, so the whole Thanksgiving thing is mercifully passing me by. Happy overindulging, USAnians !
I’ve got a question for you folks: How the hell do you get an avatar?
Also: Am I the only makeup/nail-polish-bsesed Pharyngulite here? Anyone wanna talk femme-paints with me?
I’m flipping back and forth between NOVA Multiverse and the Packers v. Lion football game. I haz a weird mind.
Argh… just hearing it mentioned shakes me. Along with visions of the puppet Mary Robinette Kowal made for the stage play of it… (linky)
Happiestsadist – Great Christina here on FTB has been doing a series on fashion and stuff, if you haven’t checked her out yet.
I have, Carlie! I love that series. And Greta in general.
Don Quixote,
Sadness ensues. Sorry to hear about your cat, hugs if you want ’em.
___
David M,
The other kind of hugs your way, glad to hear things are going well for you.
___
PTI,
Foreplay is sex. Hotter? Now that’s a gestalt for me, maybe what you are watching biases in that direction because the things you see as hotter are what the performers or director actually prefer to shoot. I dunno, it’s a huge field and very formulaic so it seems that subtle differences need to dominate much of the time.
___
Cicely,
Horses seem scary, I think it’s the one eye treatment they always give me just before whickering.
___
Sandiseattle,
Yes, I found that article worth a read too. Got sucked into the comments a bit.
___
Pteryxx,
Them’s strong words. Slate wipers is going to stick for me.
___
Chigau,
Peas? Now that’s not nice, and calls for some reinforcements. Cicely get the tanks going, we are having another go at the invasion it appears.
___
The Sailor,
I had a feeling that was coming. Sitting on a park bench…
___
I suspect this a bit late, but this would not make my evening easier. When I am sick or in pain I don’t want anyone around, so maybe also an offer to take child for the evening.
___
SallyStrange,
I don’t listen to everything through and if I am familiar with an artist and don’t care for them I will just skip altogether, but aside from that I click a lot. I just don’t always have something to add by talking about what I hear.
Rev BDC @109, that sounds delicious.
I arrived in Denver last night to visit the SO, who’s working here, and had Fat Tire amber draft beer? ale? –whatever, it was good. This afternoon we’ve been invited to Thanksgiving dinner with a colleague of the SO–I’m looking forward to meeting colleague and family and trying an American thanksgiving.
This is cool. I recall, several TET’s back, lamenting my inability to find exactly this.
Colours: It is night time here, almost ready for bed and I am wearing an orange long-sleeved T-shirt with a pair of purple boxers (that a young Italian friend left at my house a while back.)
In the harsh light of day, I am normaly found in black or one of the colours from the neutral spectrum. Beige, tan, oatmeal(?). When I was younger I chose to wear clothes of a colour and style that would set me apart from other people, but now I prefer to go un-noticed.
Location: Happy Thanksgiving to all in US. I could google this: but what occasion is being celerbrated during your Thanksgiving?
Black Tuesday: . PLEASE, NO MORE BANANA REPUBLICS IN AFRICA
Lipwig,
What occasion? Why the very end of the farming year, or that is what is supposed to be the impetus: Harvest, cook, eat, say thanks for all the good shit.
Good evening
Colours: Daughter had her ballet class today again. My eyes are still hurting.
And something is wrong over here. Not only did I get my fair share of the prawns (if you can call 1/3rd fair since I weigh more than 3 times the kids combined), I even got more!
Oh, and christmas season is defintely drawing near, you know, the season of miracles. With a bit of help from my mum’s cousin, my father has finally realized that his wife is indeed an alcoholic, and that she needs help, and that she’s in acute danger of killing herself with alcohol.
First dinner finished (will be giong to future inlaws for second dinner). Roast chicken, stuffing, roasted Brussel’s sprouts, cranberry sauce, mashed yams, and cranberry lambic.
And watching the Lions – Packers game. And listening to my annual Alice’s Restaurant masscree.
@Theophantes
Durban in the 80’s
Gah, just heard that a German high school, where one of my friends teaches at, is being “infiltrated” by a so-called Free Church (read fundamentalist Christians).
Yes they do exist in Germany, and apparently they’re famous for denying evolution. Now the school building is property of the city, and the city rents it out for events when school is not in session, and sometimes the church rents it for their “Pray Day”. Fortunately, it’s not like in that one case discussed some time ago on this blog ago about an American pastor actually preaching to school kids during school time, but most likely these events are advertised on school grounds.
Students associated with that Free Church also offer a ridiculous service called “Pray Station”. Yes, like “Pray Day”, they use the actual English term, “Pray Station”, probably to make it sound like “Play Station”..
Argh…
Though my friend told me when on the last Pray Day event the pastor prayed for the school, for the teachers to give the right grades etc, the principal got so pissed that he asked the pastor never to mention the school again in his prayers….
Ibuprofen is quite a bit safer than Aspirin, considering the reversible nature of the antiplatelet effects, and the fact that it tends to cause GI bleeding less often. I personally avoid paracetamol due to the potential for liver damage.
In South Africa we have a fast food conglomerite called Nando’s that has always hit the nail on the head with their ad
campaigns:
Boy just brought this one up. The colour of hour shirt/top plus the closest object to your right equals your superhero name.
Which means I am Sage Envelope!
And Rizzo and Splinter are currently consuming, with a great deal of delight, mashed sweet potoatoes.
Closest to your right what?
I could be black mouse, black sleeve, black shoe, black chair, black dustbin, etc.
Ogvorbis:
would make me Olive Stoopidcat.
I kinda like that. Now off to figure out my secret superpower.
Think about it as if you were a history major. That make it easier?
Calling all skeptical thinkers interested in stopping South Africa becoming a mirrror of the apartheid era.
I can only now draw your attention to a major human rights issue: <a href=<http://mg.co.za/article/2011-11-23-secrecy-bill-black-tuesday-not-the-end-of-road.
Sorry
HTML fail
Ogvorbis: So I’ll be changing my name now to the Faded Black Scrap of Notepaper with Tea Stains!
That doesn’t quite sound superhero-worthy, but might make an alright minion for a depraved enough super-villain? Anybody hiring?
I think that The Olive Stoopidcat is looking for an unpaid minionintern. That work?
Err, so I am the Black Pseudo Socialist?
That can be better, The Soiled Sooty Pseudo Socialist.
Dhorvath:
That makes more sense than any of the others.
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Girl just reported that Fox News is freaking out becaue Obama’s Thanksgiving address did not mention gods or Christianity or church or religion.
Olive Stoopidcat & her amazing sidekick Faded Black Scrap of Notepaper with Tea Stains.
Hmm.
Our superpower might be extreme mental confusion upon the villains.
Oh, and FBSoNwTS has to be oriental with mad kung fu and/or ninja skills. I get to dress in tight lack leather.
Pick your oponent well and your work is already done.
@Father
no gods or Christianity or church or religion …?
This could go a slippery uphill from here.
@
MinnieThe Great, Wise and Merciful Master, Tremble Before Your Future Overlord, Olive Stoopidcat:It’ll take a bit of make-up to pull off, but with a good choreographer and a few stunt-wires it should work!
I am Blue Easy Chair.
Now I just need a good catch phrase.
I am a Purple Bean Bag
Dave B:
I personally prefer Mistress to Master.
But only because it goes so well with the tight black leather and the stiletto boots.
Lipwig:
If Olive Stoopidcat picked, say, IDiots as a supervillain, enough mental confusion is already there that OS’s job is already mostly done.
@
MinnieThe Great, Wise and Merciful Arch-Mistress (Tremble Before Your Future Uber-Overlord!), Olive Stoopidcat:Fixed!
Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to put the razor-edge finish on all the fine china so that it’ll make appropriately lethal thrown weapons…
So all we need is the right kind of villain and some stunt-wires.
I smell a franchise coming along.
lipwig – think we’re the Marvel and DC versions of the same original superhero?
Could I wear the tight black leather and stiletto boots.please?
I am…The Black bell hooks Book!
Carlie:
Sounds like a character from The Tick.
The crimefighting duo, Blue Easy Chair and the trusty sidekick, Purple Bean Bag!
I think this says something about us.
I have a feeling that Brownie Armchair is the lamest superheroine of all times
Ibuprofen is my favourite legal drug. Only I don’t do drugs that turn me into half a zombie for 24 hrs
Yep, I have a serious strange reaction to that stuff. I took it once after my dentist gave it to me. I only took about half the recommended dose and it left me feeling like I was flying while I was constantly running into objects (who put that wall there?)
I’m not much for makeup, but I can talk about nail polish as much as you want. Or at least until I get too tired, which might be soon. I can’t seem to get enough sleep these days.
Anyway, favorite nail polish colors: red, in every hue imaginable.
so how about the
Black Dictionary?
Sounds scary, eh…
Seeing as there are several objects very close to my right, do I have to combine them all into one name? That’d make me Burgundy Mousepad Soda Can Evergreen Cell Phone.
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Favorite colors: Blue (any shade), Purple (same), red (darker the better), black, dark green, gray (also darker the better), white.
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Ahhhhhh, they’re already playing Christmas songs on the radio! Make it stop! *turns on that Adam Sandler turkey song…then decides that Addams Family Thanksgiving clip might be a better choice*
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Guests are here. Laters!
Huh. I’ve just discovered that I’d filel away “limpid” completely wrong in my head.
I think I had it mean the same as “torpid” or summat.
I hate when that happens.
/twitter
Giliell: That is one of the most bizarre reactions to Ibuprofen I’ve ever heard of. Sure there wasn’t anything else in there?
Blue Easy Chair, Purple Bean Bag, and Brown Armchair will capture you and take you to the ultimate torture, the Comfy Chair! Poke her with the pillow!
Carlie:
But where do I, The Sage Envelope, fit in? Where do we stick The Sage Envelope?
I will have you know that with the correct application, even a pillow and a chair will have people writhing for release.
I’m watching a Roseanne Thanksgiving episode. Man, that was some good tv. It’s sad to see that there were some really good smart shows in the past, given the shit we have now. (get offa my lawn)
Father Ogvorbis, I would say that almost anything could be found in the couch cushions, including sage envelopes, but it might sound a bit more naughty than it ought.
Carlie:
How very efficient: An offering to Tpyos and a marvelously apt characterization, all in one brief phrase. Well done, indeed! ;^)
***
Apropos of nothing, but why does it seem to take twice as much time (not to mention twice as much space) to clean up after a traditional turkey dinner as to cook it?
Bill – ha! I didn’t even notice. :)
I see what you did there.
Bill D,
Hey, haven’t bumped into you in a while. I will take a stab at that: because of the way you cook. I spend much of my time during prep doing quick little clean ups so that things never get unruly basically to avoid just such a disaster cleaning effort at the end. The time spent cleaning seems to me to grow faster than the number of things to be cleaned, but I don’t have hard numbers to give it a big O notation. So I clean when there are five items here or seven items there and they are done in a trifle rather than that awful slog after dinner and desert.
Err, dessert. No one ever eats my desert.
And now off to future-in-laws hose for another Tday dinner.
And Girl just (quite accidentally) came up with a really good alternate name for next month: Distemper. The month of Distemper. I like it.
While my reaction to dental 800 mg ibuprofen wasn’t as bad (merely dizzy), I can attest to individuals being overly sensitive to a given NSAID. I do fine on naproxen, which got me past a case of shingles.
I am The Grey Speaker.
(the Grey Miniature Speaker With Fine Black Lines doesn’t sound quite so appropriate somehow).
We don’t stick Sage Envelopes, we push them don’t we?
Envelopes? We lick them.
theophontes,
Computers can turn off?
opposeablethumbs – you sound like an Auditor. :)
A.R.
Yep, just the ibuprofen. And I’m not going to take any chances with that stuff again. I usually take paracetamol, but i still have a handy supply of novalgin (tradename) left over from the tooth of Cthulu-removal.
——
So, second batch of macarons (made from an original French recipe from an original French cook book, I speak fluent kitchen French) turned out better. Not perfect, but usable.
Good night, everybody. Happy turkey-day, if you celebrate.
I can’t be, Carlie, I love chocolate too much! (and I haven’t yet eaten one that has caused me to cease to exist – might be a bit disconcerting, that)
Well, I’ve got a couple of chunks of beef simmering with onions, garlic, and Ommegang ale in my crock pot right now.
Oh, and I like Death. And also kittehs. (and dogs, even if they don’t talk. Except psychopathic poodles called (iirc) Big Fido).
Ahhhhhh!! Where?!?
*looks around wild-eyed, defoliant tank in one hand, flame-thrower in the other*
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See? Eeeeeeevil.
Yes; more peas will fit in a given amount of space than horses. Pea bites are very dangerous. And they bite you in the face.
Still AWOL.
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Um….very few. Almost none. At work it’s a problem in general, and at home I generally have the volume clicked to “mute”, because the sounds that come with Civ III make me crazy. So generally, a link needs to have something texty to interest me; for instance, just now I clicked the “Big and Chunky” link because I thought it featured “Chaz Bono shaking it hard”. I recieved a disappoint.
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I wouldn’t say that I’m obsessed with nail polish; I merely use it to cover my unsightly fungusy toe nails. As far as face paints go, I’m playing around with painting butterflies and such on my face; probably not what you mean, at all. :D
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Loaded and ready to roll!
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cicely:
Chaz Bono shaking it hard (at least until it gets taken down).
A thing of true delight. Thanks Benjamin.
I am the Tie-dyed Blue Coffeemug!
Wait, whose idea was that anyway? It seems highly biased towards producing stupid names, so I guess that it’s intended for making parody superheroes. Though the cat was closer to leg than the coffee is to hand, so I could get Blue Killer. Or Blue Spottytum.
Oh man, that was so awesome.
Huzzah! Denial of the situation is no help to anyone.
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Then quail in terror of the power of Orange Spray Bottle!
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Because you have taken on extra ballast, Gravity notices you more after the meal is eaten, slowing your movement rate by 1/2. Same effect as a Slow spell, only with more gravy.
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Oh, what my players wouldn’t give to possess such an artifact!
:D :D :D
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Thanks, Benjamin!
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If I didn’t know ahead of time that Chaz was trans, I would have assumed he was cis.
Salvation Army adds card swipe donations
Because nothing says Christmas like Interchange fees.
Random happy link via BB:
Saving lives with lucky iron fish
hmm
checkered bookshelf
that should drive fear into the hearts of bad guys
From the article linked @495:
Of course, we’re all familiar with the “flip side” of that lesson; that if you have good marketing, it won’t matter if the science is bullshit (*coughhomeopathycough*), people will use it anyway.
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My superhero name strikes terror in the hearts of geeks:
No Mountain Dew.
Would have depended on what time of day I answered. Yellow Coaster sounds kinda good. I couldn’t count the mouse because my hand was on it. And the coaster has to win out over the paper recycling bag and the file cabinet and even the three-in-one printer. But later on, I was wearing a maroon-and-gray plaid flannel shirt.