The Minnesota Atheists’ talk radio show this morning (9am Central) is all about gay marriage — we have a discrimination law suit working its way up the ladder in this state, trying to reverse the official homophobic policies around here. I think we should just bring in Jamie Kilstein to tour the state and explain the situation to everyone. That’ll straighten everyone out. No, wait, what’s the opposited of straighten? Kink everyone up?
(This video is NSFW, at all.)
Good luck, Minnesota!
It goes without saying that I ♥ NY!
Ooh, a shiny new one. Hi, fresh thread.
Discovered today a wonderfully prolific ring of orange birch bolete mushroom (leccinum vercipelle) on our front lawn – maybe a dozen or more of them, hopefully more on the way. When they grow up (in a few days, if we get enough rain), and if the snails don’t get to them first, they’re heading towards the skillet with some onion & cream – maybe even a bit of bacon. Seriously yummy.
The small ones look delightfully obscene with their perky little red heads rigidly stretching up through the grass. *giggle*
Hey, you nonphobes, there’s work to do.
Ah, lovely new thread. The old one was taking forever to load (Number 3 Son helped us to use up all 65GB of our allowance a whole twelve days before the end of the billing month by watching seventy+ episodes of some animé or other and we’ve been slowed to dial-up speed.)
Thank you for the petition link, René!
I’ll sign it as soon as it loads – in about ten minutes, at this rate. :-(
Grrrr. Cannot sign the petition, unless I’m a USanian. Could someone toss me a random state with a valid zip code?
Minnie:
New York, 12304
What?!
I thought we all lived in Morris, Minnesota.
–o–
Minnie, are you good with mushrooms?
We have some appearing regularly in the lawn after they took down the ash trees (I think it was). They look nice enough – before the maggots get into them, but that’s hardly a guarantee for their being edible.
the interesting thing about fungi, I find, is that they’re more closely related to animals than they are to plants. Isn’t that cool?
Damn. I didn’t know those two. To be fair to myself, I don’t recall seeing the second one before, but Marjoribanks, I’ve read.
Fuck you, English.
René: thanks for the link, and Audley Z: thanks for the code. Hope my depravity and deception doesn’t bork up the petition, that would be awful.
Anyway, added my tiny drop to what really should by rights become an ocean. I’m probably going to lose some sleep tonight, cannot help but keep thinking of the effect on these men’s lives if Mr. Makk ends up being deported.
So I can expect PETA to start tearing up my lawn any day now?
Thanks, Audley – I had to wait half an hour for the petition to load, and then found it was only for USAian postal addresses!
Sili:
my mushroom knowledge is limited, I only eat what I recognize -which is a challenge in itself, since we have hundreds of mushroom varieties here; some delicious, some lethal. Some both at the same time, unless you know what you’re doing (morels, anyone?).
But if you can manage me a pic, I can always try.
Tigger_the_Wing:
luckily, that’s not a problem for us New Yorkers, eh? ;)
Minnie / Sili:
Morris, MN 56267
Mmmm, mushrooms. I only go for the ones I can’t fail to recognize- boletus varieties and oyster mushrooms mostly. sauteed in butter or bacon fat, or used to make a cream soup….
Tigger and Minnie,
Let’s hope no one wonders about the influx of votes from Schenectady, NY, huh? ;)
As an aside, why the fuck won’t my phone stay logged in? Argh!
Sorry for the way I link this, but I’m still a newbie with the FtB, and besides my copypasta seems to be buggered at the moment, so I’m not just clueless but toolless, too.
Anyhoo. A dear friend of mine is enthusiastically endorsing this: http://www.businessinsider.com/shut-up-stop-whining-and-get-a-life-17-kick-butt-approaches-to-a-better-life-2011-8#youre-broadcasting-when-you-ought-to-be-tuned-in-1
She’s a business HR coach, and I appreciate her experience and all, but how come is it that just about everything in this grates my nerves?
My point (if there is one): try reading this guy’s ’17 easy steps to success’ from the point of someone suffering from depression. Then try not to scream with impotent rage at the condescending attitude of the author, and the mountain of additional and totally uncalled-for extra guilt that has just been dropped on top of you.
Yup, one of those days (actually, a good one).
English spelling, as it (does not) relate to pronunciation, is of course evulness incarnate. But some of these names go beyond evul and well into the ridiculous, or possibly even beyond ridiculous and into the sublime.
Aah, English place names – thanks for the memories! =^_^=
Bosham – Bozzum
Trottiscliffe – Troze-lee
Leicester – Lesster
Worcester – Wooster
Edinburgh – Edd in burra
And to make it particularly difficult for the dyslexic – The Reading Centre (which helps schools support dyslexic students) is in Reading (Redding) in Berkshire (Bark sher).
Oops! I meant British place names, of course. Sorry!
(You should try Irish, though…)
Have a great day, my lovelies! I’m off to make breakfast for my parents– scrambled eggs, bacon, bagels, doughnuts, and fruit salad! Om nom nom!
I’m on the second panel and I’m already annoyed. (Actually, the first one or even the title didn’t bode well either, but I tried to give the author a chance.)
I’m not one of the people who always blame others. I blame myself even when I know whatever happened isn’t my fault. And I’m pretty sure there are a lot of people like that, but thanks for pushing us all in that nice little pigeonhole and calling us whinging losers who can’t take some personal responsibility.
Also, this
is something that should be said to the author if they ever get sick or down on luck and dare complain. What an arse.
*off to read the rest and yell obscenities at the computer*
Welsh place names can be tough as well.
Try Eglwyswrw, which is only a couple of miles from me.
It is pronounced egg-liz-a-roo.
Minnie,
It grates at my nerves and I don’t have any depression to contend with. Bloody writer might as well have mentioned prayer and the secret too.
___
Rene,
Signed.
In the English place names, you forgot Berwick, pronouced as if it were “Berrick”. Perhaps we should bring in Lord Cholmondeley — who does not live in Worchestershire — to discuss this.
CBLF: And that’s pronounced chum-ly is it not?
I have been informed that ‘space ships go into outer space.’
I want to say a special thank you to P.Z. Myers for tackling the ‘Eat Right for your Type’ garbage. I was seriously hoping I’d see that mentioned here since I first heard of it.
No matter what CBS or the CDC says, it is NOT just harmless fun. People are taking their recommendations dead seriously.
Pah! Welsh w is exactly that: double u. “Eglwyswrw” thus becomes “Egluuysuuruu” or “Eglūysūrū”, hinting at its pronunciation.
I’m rather fond of the Welsh letter ŵ, me.
Sili @9,
To be fair to the language, those examples are really group exclusions by the nobs rather than actual pronunciations dictated by the language. Dalziel is an anomaly caused by the inclusion of Scots into the language while leaving out the extra letter that they have and rendering it as the closest in appearance, in this case Z (this is the reason Menzies is pronounced Ming-is.)
The affectation that amuses me most is the initial double lower case f, such as ffoulkes. This shows that your ancestors were somewhat illiterate and couldn’t recognise a script upper case F :D
@previous:
I stayed out of the court-case wrangling, but wanted to say that…
…since it’s my opinion that the true purpose (and abiding justification) of the public schools is not as a job-training enterprise, nor for the personal edification of students, but to prepare competent citizens to exercise the franchise, I’d say that the state has as much interest in History as in any other subject… if not more.
Now, I’m off to mow my lawn.
$3.99 for an eminently quaffable cleanskin cab merlot?
Oh, $2.46 a bottle if I buy a half dozen? That’s (thinks hard) umm, about $15-ish?
Well when you put it that way … why the everloving fuck not?
To the great Australian wine production glut! Long may xe reign!
Why is Menzies pronounced Mingis?
I thought I remembered the beeb covering this… it’s all down to the letter yogh, apparently.
I wish it was pronounced Yo rather than Yog, that would be too cool for words.
And I can mix and match?? Okay, I’ll have two of them, and two of them, and two of them, and I’ll see you next week!
Minnie The Finn:
Having just started reading it I’d say because you’re probably a decent human being and the author is probably a privileged asshole who had everything handed to him but thinks he’s a “self made man™”
Seriously Mr. Winget needs to take his own advice and STFU!
Yeah. Thanks. When I was depressed I “knew” it was my fault. I “knew” I was going nowhere because I was “lazy” and “didn’t care.” And knowing those things is what made me feel dead and caused me to cut huge bloody gashes in my arms with a fucking exacto-knife because hey, at least pain is feeling something.
Yeah, maybe we don’t really have it that bad and yeah, maybe we should be happy with what we’ve got and just move on. But peoples brains break for all sorts of reasons and heaping this, “it’s all your fault so stop whining” bullshit on them when they are desperately in pain simply DOES. NOT. HELP.
From the “Myths” section:
And if you’re a poor, whiny, loser you don’t deserve a fucking thing!
Ugh! Victim blaming bullshit like this pisses me off so much.
</rant>
What? No, the ‘A’ in PETA is for ‘Animals’.
You’re probably thinking of People for the Ethical Treatment of Opisthokonts.
@Sili
Someone once told me years ago that “Featherstonehaugh” is pronounced “Fanshaw.” Went to Google to check it out before posting, and discovered my memory was correct. Also discovered this fun page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_names_in_English_with_counterintuitive_pronunciations
I knew a dude that used to show up at PETA protests with a sign that read “Save the Congo Floor Maggot”. No one ever thought it was cool, and he was once informed that “Bugs aren’t animals, asshole”.
Unless the fungus is all cuddly and wants its belly rubbed, PETA is just like a honey badger.
PETA don’t give a shit.
Thanks, ms Finn,
I’ll try to grab some pics the next time they appear.
charismatic megafauna problem.
Minnie’s linked article fails to give advice to people with depression:
“Ah, jeez. Cheer up!”
Um…
Sili, should I be alarmed that you’re seeking fungal identification advice from someone on another continent? Because I am.
Guh, I don’t know why I just wrote that …
Nice of the wikipedians to also provide a link to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:IPA_for_English with those placenames…
Minnie, the more you post about your cottage life, the more I want to move to Finland, settle down and raise little Moomintrolls the rest of my born days.
Sili, if I (finally and dimly) recall correctly, you are in fact European?
I dunno Minnie, I look at it this way. To me it’s sort of like the “if you meet the Buddha on the road… kill it” principal. This book says to avoid things that make you depressed and hateful of yourself. If this book makes you depressed and hateful of yourself then put it down and don’t ever pick it up again. Actually if that was on the first page, I’d buy it.
Bet it’s not though.
Chris Rodda has just published short collection of links which are an excellent starting point for learning about Christian Dominionism.
Bugs aren’t animals’ asshole[s]. Now that’s a truism. Bugs don’t even have cloacas.
Today I should have marked 28 term papers from May for the class I left at the other school, since their new teacher is asked for them.
Today I drilled extra holes in my Billy shelving unit to make my manga stand closer together.
Oh dear …
–o–
I’m actually Scandinavian, but it may well be that we have other fungi than the Finns.
Still as a first point of call, Pharyngula isn’t too bad. If you say they’re no-go, then I don’t need to bother. If they look like something non-poisonous, I can go look for someone more local to ask.
I’m not going to go and have a look at this book youse lot are talking about, because just from the comments it’s obvious that it’s a load of nasty mean-minded shite that’s basically intended to make most people feel like crap so that a tiny handful of people can feel even more superior.
Mister Sleight of Hand got it in one:
Books like that continue to remind me of Barbara Ehrenreich’s Brightsided – the whole “grin and bear it” approach to, well, everything.
Good evening
Hubby’s off to work with a rented car, with the PoS being at the mechanics and me going to go to the car dealer this week to talk about a Citroen C5
You win a shiny new internet
@Mushrooms
They’ll always remind me of how my grandpa got caught trespassing “stealing” mushrooms when he was already 82.
I really miss him.
@Strange place names
I think a town-part near here tops them all
It’s written “Dudweiler Herrensohr” and you say “kalt naggisch” (cold naked)
OK, it’s actually two different names, but it drives strangers crazy.
@Holiday pictures:
Mostly zoo-animals, including mountain gorilla
Bugs Bunny?
Or insects?
Because the latter certainly have assholes, if by assholes you mean anuses. And I think you do.
I don’t quite understand this.
“This book will insult you, sneer at you, and express utter contempt for you! If this bothers you, don’t read it.”
How is that an incentive to buy it?
Happy SUNday horde. How about some good news? The results of my biopsy came in, I have to go in for “further treatment” what ever the fuck that means . But the important bit is:
Benign!
Woo Hoo! Free grog & swill for everyone.
Yay Patricia!
Hold on to the grog, I have to drive back to town first.
Patricia, OM
Benign!
Yipee!
“Benign” is a good word to hear, and must be a huge relief.
Especially after having to go through all that stress to find out.
Congratulations!
Giliell – Hey, you got your avatar. Nice.
Thanks! Yep it is a great relief. The ‘further treatments’ I find out about on September 8th. It had better not involve any more needles.
Patricia,
I think benign deserves a toast and a drink… cheers.
Particularly good news after the sheer awfulness of the biopsy process.
Well, congrats from thread-bankrupt lurkerdom!
Patricia:
HOT DIGGITY DAMN.
You must be feeling so relieved Patricia.
I will take you up on your offer of grog, but I have already had quite a bit today. Been watching the cricket and drinking beer. Then wine. Then vodka.
It’s not, in that case it’s a PSA.
That being said, some people find it empowering, and some people really *do* have a problem with entitlement and blaming others… so to be honest if reading some crap like that makes you go out and act better in the world then awesome.
But no one should be forced to endure it.
It’s kind of like those “bootcamp” workouts. For some people that is motivating, and for others it just lumps abuse onto them without addressing the reasons they may be unfit… or push them to hurt themselves by ignoring medical problems.
I guess the thing is with those kind of books is that they are far from some kind of therapy. So if they work for some people that’s great… it’s expecting them to work for everyone that is stupid and privileged.
IOW… it really doesn’t matter what that author says. The minute he pretends he knows what is in his readers heads he already showed his privilege.
An acknowledgement of that up front would at least be intellectually honest.
Oh and congrats on the good news Patricia.
Matt Penrold:
No whisk(e)y? I just bought a new (to me) small-batch single barrel rye yesterday that I’m looking forward to sampling tonight, both straight and in a Manhattan.
@Patricia: Huzzah!! Benign hooray :)
I raise a glass of this alleged shiraz in your general direction!
Benign is wonderful news. Vicariously glad!
Hive inspection this morning.
Not very exciting, but it gives you an idea of a routine inspection.
Do tell?
What is it?
woooooooooooooooooooooooooooot!
Patricia,
*confetti!*
That is awesome news! Hugs to you and here’s hoping the upcoming treatments aren’t torture.
Thanks! Hoping for the same for Caine. ;)
-0-
Went back over to Peg Aloi’s article at the HuffingtonPoo, now it’s 327 comments, every one is a porcupine stuffer for her. She should have listened to PZ.
Other good news, someone tipped off the pope, he’s kicking and squealing, but he knows he’s loosing.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/22/world/europe/22pope.html
-0-
Is that your Bulldog, Matt Penfold? I had one marked almost the same, she was one sweet dog.
@Patricia
That’s great news, I’m so happy for you
*throws glitter*
And thanx for the compliment
*sigh*
I wished the little one would finally realize that she isn’t supposed to take “falling asleep” literally…
Benign!
Yehah!!
[runs off to open a bottle of Marston’s Pedigree]
Hey! Excellent news Patricia! Don’t forget to inform the Pullet Patrol!
Because you’re a sane and decent person?
Just a guess.
Updated: Ctrl-F searchable comment numbers for Greasemonkey. It works all across FtB.
Here’s what it looks like.
Patricia, that is so awesome!
Jesus crispy fried christ, Ing, but that was uncalled for.
For those who missed last edition of TET:
Greasemonkey users (if you had killfile back at the old Pharyngula, you’re a Greasemonkey user)
Here’s your Comic Sans. And creationist Gumby.
It’ll have to be an in-joke, assuming that anyone else uses the script to be in on the joke… (it appears now that about a dozen are)
Usage:
<blockquote cite=
"creationist">makes Comic Sans and Gumby</blockquote><q cite=
"creationist">makes Comic Sans with no Gumby, and no blockquote margin line; this should work in the middle of any sentence</q>Remember, it has to be cite, not class or style.
This will be linked at the front page of the wiki.
It works for almost everyone now. If it doesn’t work for you, make sure you have this newest version of the script (which is still beta 4, nothing’s changed in the last couple days), uninstall old versions (Tools -> Add-ons -> Greasemonkey -> Manage user scripts), and try deleting !important rules in your userContent.css file, or just delete the whole userContent.css file.
(It doesn’t work for Patricia though.)
Patricia, I’m glad to hear your good news!
If you still want your Comic Sans and you feel like some troubleshooting, open up Firefox’s Error Console (where it will be in FF6, I can’t guess, but Ctrl+Shift+J might get you there), hit “clear”, reload the page, and then dump any errors that pertain to secretcomicsans.user.js either into this thread or my wiki talk page http://pharyngula.wikia.com/wiki/User_talk:Markovbaines
Or maybe People for the Ethical Treatment of Bugs & Spiders, also known as PETBS.
Regarding the eating of wild mushrooms, Bear Grylls says they’re not worth the risk–not enough nourishment to offset the possibility of mis-identification and poisoning.
Of course I’ve also seen him climb down into an abandoned mine shaft with a makeshift torch, and justify that risk by pointing to the rusty nail he found inside. I suppose I should consider the source…
It’s almost a pity that they had to do all that poking for nothing.
But congrats anyway, Patricia.
–o–
I won’t be getting up early to mark termpapers: Mozart’s Requiem’s at the late Prom.
–o–
3 Mins, 12 Secs …
Bear Gryllis is a tool.
/well poisoned
I don’t eat mushrooms for nurishment, I eat them for taste.
Benjaman Radford claims his interest in the chupacabra is “not sexual” (about 27:05)
Aw. I wanted tobe the first one to point out that Bear Grylls is an evangelical nitwit, but Rev beat me to it.
Shucks.
Did anyone try bribing Daniel T Martin into giving us a killfile yet?
yay Patricia :-)
fine, that leaves more mushrooms for me (well ok, I’ve never gone mushroom hunting in the US, but I did almost every year when still living in Germany. how is one supposed to make christmas pierogi without going mushroom hunting in the fall?)
Set: 1 Min, 52 Secs
Great news, Patricia!
From FSTDT:
Erk. Is the most recent version of killfile really 20091002.1?
Hooray Patricia!!!
Rev – I thought it was pretty neat. :)
@1st Approximation
What the freak?! Is that comment for real?
From Minnie’s link:
woo
wut. medical knowledge is entirely unrelated to one’s ability and/or willingness to conform to a healthy lifestyle. Also, not all forms of “unhealthy” are something a person did to themselves
Someone needs to read “Brightsided” and those studies saying that depressed people have a more realistic outlook on their chances of success at something.
Dangerous patriarchal bullshit
Because being realistic is Ebil!!!!
I’m pretty sure that’s what caused the current recession, and probably every other financial collapse and market bubble and subsequent burst.
Karma isn’t real, and most people who have things don’t have them because they “deserve” them.
say that to a person suffering from chronical severe depression, and you’re basically telling them to kill themselves.
I do however enjoy not being homeless and starving. That’s nice advice if you live in Sweden, not in the USA.
woo
AKA “dislexics are bad”. Seriously, I’m not going to break up with my boyfriend just because he prefers to get his information in video format because he has some form of reading disorder. Smart, inquisitive people are smart, inquisitive people. Now, if that had said “don’t hang around people who hate books”, that would have been different, since there’s audiobooks and it takes a special kind of aversion to intellectualism to actually hate books.
consumerist capitalism in a nutshell, and obviously bullshit.
On mushrooms
Say, I wonder, when humanity began to first eat mushroom, I wonder how they tried to pick between the poison mushrooms and the good ones. I imagine that at first it was trial and error and quiet a few unfortunate blokes died trying some.
question:
isn’t it cultural appropriation for a non-Israeli non-Jew to wear a yarmulke? (Beck and Barton in Israel
Good morning, Threadshine. :)
–
‘Shrooooooms! Sauteed with garlic in butter. Drained and tossed with big chunks of bacon. *droooool*
–
The spelling vs. pronunciation trainwreck of Celtic names is why I will never be an SCA herald. I think we have to assume that it also leaked out all over those bizarre British names, via some sort of linguistic Law of Contagion.
After all, words are magic.
;)
–
Woo-Hooooo!!! Awesomeness! ‘Shrooms and bacon all around!
–
Vampire Hummingbirds.
–
But the Mormons follow the prescriptions of a Jew, so it’s totes okay.
But standard practice if for gentiles to wear a kippah when attending Jewish functions or visiting holy places – cover your head before God an’ all that.
So depending on where the Beckster is hanging out, it’s prolly alright.
<“Better drink my own piss” joke goes here>
ah. I’m guessing that’s near the Wailing Wall, so I guess that would make sense. It’s still looks decidedly not right, but it’s not my culture, so I won’t argue the point :-p
The Pfffft speaks:
Yeah, well given he decided that sleeping rough in the wild was a bit much and decided to stay in the same hotels as the film crew and simply pretend he had spent the night roughing it, I do not really give a toss what that fraud thinks.
Bear Grylls is the showoffy guy who’s always dramatically traversing rotten logs over mountain waterfalls and swinging down cliffs like tarzan, right?
I much prefer Les Stroud. He understands survival. Bear Grylls is just a showoff, and anyone who tries to survive according to his advice is likely to end up dead.
Rev. Bigdumbchimp: Fascinating video. I got a question: At the local beekeepers, they sell various types of honey… ‘clover’ honey, ‘blueberry’ honey, and my favorite, fireweed honey, among other varieties. These aren’t ‘flavored’ honeys, it comes from the flowers the bees visit. I specifically asked them that question when they showed me.
So my question is, how do they possibly control the hives enough to make sure the bees are only visiting one type of flower like that? I literally cannot conceive of it.
Thanks. Next video I’m going to set up the tripod much closer in and above the hive so you can really see what’s going on.
This was the first vid attempt. I gaffer-taped it to my photography tripod. Worked pretty well actually. Will do it again.
That is unless I get a new DSLR with video soon (come on D800 *fingers crossed), then I can just put it on the damn ballhead.
The simple answer is that they cannot. However bees do prefer some plants to others, and hives can be positioned such that there are a large number of the plant in question within range.
Also some plants have more of an impact on the taste and aroma of honey than others. The typical types of honey come from plants that significantly effect the taste and smell of the honey produced.
The don’t control the hives other than they just put them in an area that is dominated by that one plant.
So for example tupelo honey is made by bees that are in tupelo forest. So much food source that there is no need to go elsewhere.
Orange blossom is from bees placed in orange groves.
Same with anything else. Obviously some are easier than others.
in case of clover, dumping them on a monoculture, mostly (though I don’t know how “fireweed honey” works, since I doubt there’s fireweed monocultures anywhere). My favorite honey in Germany was “waldhonig” and “tannenhonig” (forest and fir honey), which were made by placing the beehives in a random forest for the bees to collect honeydew for the former, and a stand of silver firs for the latter.
That’s what I figured, but then I hear bees will forage in a 5 km circle around their hive…. I guess this circle shrink dramatically when food is abundant?
I’ve always wanted to just eat a honeycomb. The local beekeepers sell honeycombs for munching, but they’re expensive as hell for just a little bit.
Fireweed monocultures exist in nature, sort of. It’s called ‘fireweed’ because it’s the first thing to spring up here after a forest fire or a large clearcut. Quite beautiful. The local natives considered it a ‘sacred’ plant, and fireweed is one of the only plant motifs that show up on totem poles (that I’m aware of)
For more info on that look up “flower fidelity”.
Not only does it help produce single flower honey, it’s also very important for pollination.
One of my favourite honeys is heather, which in the UK is pretty each to produce. You just need to put the hives on heathland where heather is pretty much the only flowering plant.
It helps that heather produces a strongly flavoured honey, so that nectar from other plants gets rather overwhelmed.
Suspiciously Specific Denial.
AFAICT, but you never know for sure with Poe’s law and all. Anyway, it’s not even close to being the worst at FSTDT. Just to give you a taste:
Hmmmm.
Didn’t PZ junior join the cavalry? Wonder if this new blogger joined by introduction through Connlann.
Exactly.
That’s because, as you can probably guess, producing comb-in honey is much harder than regular extracted honey.
Fireweed honey is the opposite. Really light colored and subtle tasting. Apparently the best fireweed honey is almost completely clear. They told me it’s their most expensive because it’s the most easy to ‘ruin’ if it gets contaminated with other honey.
Yeah, Jadehawk, every man is expected to wear a yarmulke at the Wailing Wall.
I don’t know about the US, but here in the UK farmers can be quite keen on getting apiarists to put hives on their land. Normally there is no financial transaction, but tradition says that the landowner should be offered a good number of jars of the honey.
fascinating. thanks!
if I ever stumble upon some fireweed honey, i’ll have to try it
That’s my “I went to the Creation Museum and all I got was stupider” T-shirt.
The lady checking me out at the country store on the way to my Hive was checking it out. I don’t think she liked it.
I am told that some plants produce either not very nice tasting honey, or at the best, indifferent honey.
I am also told that oil-seed rape is one such plant, which is actually a favourite of bees. This apparently is a problem in the UK because oil seed rape is being grown in increasing quantities.
If that’s also known as ragwort, then yes.
Oooh I brought back jars of these when I came back from there, along with Acacia honey. It was so good! It’s all eaten up now though :(
To be honest, the North Dallas wildflower honey actually does taste pretty good. I like to buy random fancy honeys though. See… honey is my favorite sweetener.
rapeseed = canola
rapeseed = canola
ahh right
They look somewhat similar, in that both have bright yellow flowers, but as Jadehawk has said oil-seed rape is what produces canola oil.
I recently discovered I’m allergic to honey. (…I think.) It was pretty sad because I absolutely adore honey. I’m hoping that either I misidentified the trigger for my symptoms – the inside of my mouth felt like I’d scalded it, but I hadn’t – or I’m allergic to a specific type of honey, but I don’t know how to even figure it out.
Yeah one is mustard family the other is Asteraceae
That sucks. I’m sure an allergist could tell you after some testing.
I’d go so far as to say it would be dangerous to NOT wear a yarmulke (or otherwise fit in “appropriately”) at the Wall.
I know some people who have hayfever can have problems with some honey. Luckily although I suffer from hayfever I do not seem to have a problem.
Haven’t caught up. Classical Cipher, your symptoms sound like pollen allergy.
I’m having fun on the Sb thread about Ron Paul. There’s someone called badmedia who isn’t an engineer, but a computer programmer, yet is completely convinced of his crackpot ideas about economics, biology, physics, and a bit of politics and theology. It’s hilarious!
The best part so far is a comment by Militant Agnostic:
Gave me a lightbulb moment.
I’ll post some toothy goodness soon.
Argh, please don’t talk about allergy testing.
I recently had an argument with Mr. about getting our eldest tested. I mentioned several times that she had a rash that doesn’t seem to bother her much and that doesn’t seem to react to treatment either.
Well, since kindergarten closed for the holiday, it’s been gone, so I suppose it’s something there. Since they recently moved into freshly renovated rooms, I don’t think it’s anything “inside”. Since they don’t have any toys or stuff we don’t have either, I also don’t think it’s the toys.
Well, that leaves the lunch. Well, big kitchens often use food additives or ingredients with additives that I don’t use, so that would make sense.
So he wanted to have her tested and I declined.
Allergy tests are not nice and a result would currently be useless information. As long as the symptoms are mild, I won’t take her off the lunch there and thereby exclude an already rather shy and awkward kid from an important group activity.
He still thought she should be tested and I told him that he’s free to take two days off at work, explain to her why he wants this done to her and take her to the doc for testing.
It’s surely not something I’m going to do at this point.
I know he had himself tested so now he knows exactly what wheets and trees he’s allergic against (yeah, I know), but he underwent that useless examination for himself, nobody else got an itchy back…
On another topic:
beer and red “licorice” do NOT go together well.
All the robots http://static03.mediaite.com/themarysue/uploads/2011/08/wheres-wall-e1.jpeg
I thought it was only plants that could bust out from underneath asphalt. Yesterday I saw the fruiting bodies of mushrooms that had done the same. Since they live off the detritus of decaying plants I assume they live off the roots of birches planted along the street.
Bythe way, what do anglo-saxons call asphalt in daily language?
How would I, in theory, find a wild beehive? And if I wanted to harvest a bit of said wild hive, how would I do it and ensure the colony would survive my depredation?
Giliell – it could also be the cleaning solutions they use, or a number of other things. I’d wait until school starts back up and see if the rash comes back, then at least you’d know what to go to an allergist with (it seems to be something inside v. outside, etc). Also, have you visited the playground on break? If not, it could be related to whatever plants are there also.
Being that young, allergy testing is shitty to go through, to say the least. What is the setup at her school? I would think you could send a lunch from home and she would still be in the lunchroom with the other kids.
You might want to see a dermatologist first if if comes back – if it’s just a rash, it could be something like eczema, which can be induced to further breakout by stress or even low humidity levels in the building or such.
Tar
BTW, serious caching problems here. Not only are comments not showing up after I make them, but I’m getting conflicting info. I made a second follow-up comment about eczema, and it didn’t show up for me right away the way the first did. Did a control F5, nothing. Opened it on another browser entirely, nothing. Went back to the original and refreshed a few times, nothing. Then all of a sudden, it shows in the recent comment sidebar that I have posted two comments. I click on the more recent one that I haven’t been able to see yet, and go to… the bottom of the page, which still doesn’t show it. Eh?
And on submitting the complaint comment, now the one I could never see before is there, but not the complaint comment!
hotshoe, please drop me an e-mail!
Toothy goodness for Jadehawk: Heterodontosaurus tucki (pics behind paywall); Smok wawelski (not a joke, pdf with pictures freely accessible).
Heterodontosaurus is an ornithischian dinosaur, and this thorough redescription of its skull is the first paper I’ve seen where one of the authors has been dead for about 15 years. Usually, dead people only publish manuscripts they began during their lifetimes… so maybe this paper (which I haven’t read yet) was really long in the making!
Smok was being sold as Poland’s second or third first dinosaur for years. I haven’t read that paper yet either, but in the abstract, the authors try to keep open the possibility that it might be a dinosaur… everyone else, however, says it’s more closely related to the crocodiles than to the dinosaurs, even though, superficially, it must have looked and lived much like a middle-sized carnivorous dinosaur. There’s a very interesting, if short, story behind its name… it used to be called “the Dragon from Lisowice” (smok z Lisowic in Polish), and the “dragon” part has been kept, but there’s been great strife about whether to call the site Lisowice or Lipie Śląskie, so the authors evidently decided to split the difference and name their beast after a famous dragon from Polish folklore, the one associated with the Wawel hill in Cracow where the royal castle of Poland stands and the kings, the interbellum fascist dictator Piłsudski, and now the president Kaczyński are buried.
I remember the allergy test. I turned out to be allergic to animal fur and feathers according to them- huge load of horseshit.
Ah, allergy test when I was a child. Allergic to milk and kittehs. Lived with a cat for years without problem, and never stopped drinking milk and eating cheese.
I’m having a similar problem as Carlie. On Sb, when you click “submit”, the comment immediately reaches the site, but reloading the page may never end (I sometimes have to cancel and reload manually). Here, reloading is fast, but the comment is usually not there yet! Sometimes I have to reload manually twice more to make my comment appear.
And right now, I submitted a comment that still isn’t there after four reloadings. That probably means it triggered moderation – which does not give an error message as I already found out when the link limit was lower. If this comment goes through and the previous one still hasn’t, I’ll try again…
Comments (always? often? sometimes?) post after a short delay, that’s all. The ‘recent comments’ indicator shows them sometimes slightly before they actually post to the thread.
Patience is all that’s required to deal with the problem, afaict.
Patricia – Hurrah! Excellent news!
Also, I just finished reading “Brightsided”, and it is a very good book! For anyone looking for the UK/Australian edition, it’s called “Smile or Die” round these parts.
Huh. It really hasn’t come through. And comment 146 took reloading several times, going to another thread, and then going back!
░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░
hotshoe, please drop me an e-mail!
Toothy goodness for Jadehawk: Heterodontosaurus tucki (pics behind paywall); Smok wawelski (not a joke, pdf with pictures freely accessible).
Heterodontosaurus is an ornithischian dinosaur, and this thorough redescription of its skull is the first paper I’ve seen where one of the authors has been dead for about 15 years. Usually, dead people only publish manuscripts they began during their lifetimes… so maybe this paper (which I haven’t read yet) was really long in the making!
Smok was being sold as Poland’s second or third first dinosaur for years. I haven’t read that paper yet either, but in the abstract, the authors try to keep open the possibility that it might be a dinosaur… everyone else, however, says it’s more closely related to the crocodiles than to the dinosaurs, even though, superficially, it must have looked and lived much like a middle-sized carnivorous dinosaur. There’s a very interesting, if short, story behind its name… it used to be called “the Dragon from Lisowice” (smok z Lisowic in Polish), and the “dragon” part has been kept, but there’s been great strife about whether to call the site Lisowice or Lipie Śląskie, so the authors evidently decided to split the difference and name their beast after a famous dragon from Polish folklore, the one associated with the Wawel hill in Cracow where the royal castle of Poland stands and the kings, the interbellum fascist dictator Piłsudski, and now the president Kaczyński are buried.
Is asphalt the raw material, for you, or is it the finished road surface? Raw material, yes, tar. If it’s the road surface, I’d say we call it tarmac (or used to, anyway). Hmm, tarmac for roads – but an asphalt roof, definitely! Consistency? What’s that?!?
I’m getting the opposite – comment 148 is in the thread, but not in Recent Comments. And my missing comment still isn’t in either place. Maybe now…
Trying in parts. I’m under the impression that links sometimes trigger moderation even if there are only two of them.
hotshoe, please drop me an e-mail!
Comment 151 went through immediately, and reloading took me to the comment as usual in WordPress, not to the top of the page.
Sooo, here’s toothy goodness for Jadehawk, part 1.
Heterodontosaurus is an ornithischian dinosaur, and this thorough redescription of its skull is the first paper I’ve seen where one of the authors has been dead for about 15 years. Usually, dead people only publish manuscripts they began during their lifetimes… so maybe this paper (which I haven’t read yet) was really long in the making!
Fuck it. I’m giving up, going to bed, and retrying tomorrow if necessary. Yes, the URLs of Wiley articles look dodgy. Deal with it, akismet. Deal with it!
Hey! Part 1 finally got through! Due to the restructuring, I didn’t get to mention that the pdf, which contains all the pictures, is behind a paywall, but nice pics should be out there somewhere.
Part 2, freely accessible, is Smok wawelski. It was being sold as Poland’s second or third first dinosaur for years. I haven’t read that paper yet either, but in the abstract, the authors try to keep open the possibility that it might be a dinosaur… everyone else, however, says it’s more closely related to the crocodiles than to the dinosaurs, even though, superficially, it must have looked and lived much like a middle-sized carnivorous dinosaur. There’s a very interesting, if short, story behind its name… it used to be called “the Dragon from Lisowice” (smok z Lisowic in Polish), and the “dragon” part has been kept, but there’s been great strife about whether to call the site Lisowice or Lipie Śląskie, so the authors evidently decided to split the difference and name their beast after a famous dragon from Polish folklore, the one associated with the Wawel hill in Cracow where the royal castle of Poland stands and the kings, the interbellum fascist dictator Piłsudski, and now the president Kaczyński are buried.
@Marjanovic
The same thing happened to me two endless threads ago.
akismet blocks links to scientific articles? how odd. i don’t think it does that on my blog, and i think the only time someone ended up beign caught in the spam filter who wasn’t a spammer was when David M posted about seeing billboards for injury lawyers in the US (at least, i think it was injury lawyers; might have been some other kind of lawyer)
Part 2 still isn’t through, even though the URL in it looks less dodgy. I give up for today.
The lawyers were malpractice lawyers who advertized being lawyer of the year. Not just big billboards, but even ads in bus stations. Quite the culture shock.
I’ll try the naked URL: http://app.pan.pl/article/item/app20100045.html
Jadehawk, your comment appeared, disappeared upon reloading, and then reappeared. This is not logical.
O yeah: Tar AKA Bitumen.
Also “Stabiliser Bottoms” to us old Abqaiq hands(/obscure jargon)
@1st approximation
Lol, I thought that it was suspiciously specific denial too. I think TV tropes is someday going to end up ruining my life.
Seeing Jamie Kilstein live at the GAC last year was one of the (many, many) highlights. I’ve been listening to him and his wife Alison Kilkenny on Citizen Radio off and on ever since. Which reminds me that I’ve really got to get my shit together and start listening to more podcasts.
Patricia, that’s the best news I’ve heard in a very long time!
***
So I’ve been informed that Gurdur is saying he’s going to find out my real name and “go to town with it.” This started with bluharmony cliaming that I’ve called her a liar (don’t know if I used that word, but close enough, and it’s plain that she’s lied unless she has the memory of a fruit fly) and that I “accused” her of being grammatically inept and dyslexic, presumably on the “beyond parody” thread. I said neither of these things, and don’t consider dyslexia an accusation. ichthyic asked if she might be dyslexic, and I pointed out in response to him that English isn’t her native language and that she’s a sloppy writer, which she agreed with. Later, she started addressing comments to me about her writing as though I had been the one calling attention to it. Even after I told her that I/we were far more interested in evidence and honesty than in writing quality, she continued to address comments to me about her writing and how she wasn’t dyslexic. When I told her I had never said anything about dyslexia and that she was extremely confused, she paid no attention.
She’s threatening a lawsuit – which would otherwise be hilarious – and for some creepy reason calling on people to provide my real name at ERV, which is disturbing because of people like Gurdur. I think it needs to be established once again that outing pseudonymous bloggers who haven’t abused pseudonymity like Wally Smith, especially for the purpose of exposing them to abuse, is totally unacceptable. You do not do that. If he’s threatening this at ERV, Abbie has the responsibility to put a stop to it. It doesn’t matter what you think about pseudonyms generally, you should recognize that this is beyond the pale and speak out against it.
You’d have to find it and any harvesting of wild honey would result in the destruction of the hive.] because you have to crush the comb in wild hives.
That’s why the langstroth hive and other man made hives were invented.
Ha! This beyond parody thread?
QFT. Attention needs to be called to this and it needs to be stopped, and if Abbie has a shred of integrity (sadly I very sincerely doubt it) she won’t allow it to go on on ERV. I’m so sorry this is happening to you, SC.
Patricia, the new pullets are twirling behind the bar, keeping me from pouring swill and grog to the paying customer, due to your the good news on the health front. Only you can get them out in front of the bar. Help!, I’m getting dizzy.
I’ve had a few years of experience with Gurdur, prior even to setting up this blog. He’s a narcissist with delusions of competence; he used to brag about being an expert at forum management, yet every forum he ever participated in flamed out, with him at the center of the drama, and now of course, he’s a nobody with a poorly-trafficked blog and an ugly reputation.
I wouldn’t worry about him at all. He’ll flounder about incompetently, putting on a grand show of authority, and accomplish absolutely nothing. If he’s active on ERV, that’s a good sign — he’ll fracture them further and eventually stir up a little civil war.
But yeah, if he’s calling on people to help him crack a pseudonym so they can begin petty civil action, there’s a word for that: witch hunt. That seems to be all that gang is about anymore, is stirring up hatred for someone and then demonizing the hell out of them. Sorry, SC, looks like it’s your turn.
On the bright side,
*TWIRL!*
Wow. FFS SC I’m sorry that’s happening to you.
Isn’t threatening a person with “going to town” with their identity basically a promise to commit libel?
I’m just sick about this. Not just on your behalf, SC, though that too, but for all of us. Given the importance of pseudonyms, this is nothing more or less than an effort to intimidate you and those who agree with you into silence. Gurdur’s ineffectualness is beside the point – that some people now consider this an acceptable thing to advocate and condone matters, a lot.
Thanks, PZ. It’s super creepy.
From blu:
That is a threat (a ridiculous one, to be sure). If you continue to come here or post at other blogs where I comment, I will continue to point people to your contradictory words and false claims. What I’ve said about you I’ve supported with evidence, as anyone can see. If the evidence of your own words defames you, then you’re defaming yourself.
For a bit of international news, it looks like the days of Muammar Gaddafi’s regime is numbered. It looks like Libyan revolutionaries captured the center of the capital Tripoli and many of Gaddafi’s sons:http://english.aljazeera.net/news/africa/2011/08/201182122425905430.html
Thanks, Algernon and CC.
Yes.
Yeah, incredible stuff going on all day in Tripoli; I haven’t gotten anything done because I’ve been following what’s been going on. Three of Gaddafi’s sons captured, including Saif al-Islam, and most of Tripoli has falled. It’s 3 AM there now but thousands of people are still out in Benghazi celebrating.
OTOH, there was this tweet a few minutes ago (Mermaid Dawn was the name of the rebel offensive towards Tripoli):
Interesting pic from last year’s Arab-Africa Summit: http://i.imgur.com/qDbpf.jpg L-R: Ben Ali, Saleh, Gaddafi, Mubarak. How quickly things change.
Just registered with FTB. I have previously posted as “Standard Curve”, but only infrequently, and usually just attempts at humor rather than incisive commentary.
I decided my nick wasn’t absurd enough.
There, that’s better.
what was that about calling someone a liar being actionable behavior, and people needing to watch who they call “liar”…?
such a hypocrite. anyway, I’m quite sorry she and gurdur are doing this to you, SC.
Rev. Bigdumbchimp: OK, if I find a wild one I’ll leave it completely alone. Thank you.
SC, Classical Cipher, and Algernon: I used to be a big ED fan…. ‘go to town’ could potentially mean much more than them saying untrue things about you, or imitating you.
That’s the last bit of goodwill Bluharmony had from me. She’s a little shit-stirrer who plays innocent. The worst kind. Kill it with fire.
Wow. I didn’t think my opinion of Abbie could sink any lower, but if she lets Gurdur stir up this kind of crap at her place and doesn’t stop him, then suddenly there’s a new floor to sink to.
and, they’re digging up that shit abou SC at Gred Laden’s up again. this is precisely why I have no inclination to forgive GL for that series of posts, lucidity on the congo and elevatorgate notwithstanding
If you’re interested, assuming you’re in the US, contact your state’s agriculture outreach. They probably have a list of local beekeeper groups. You can learn a lot from going to their meetings. I did.
Plus there are a bunch of great books out there. My favorite one as a “beginner” book is The Backyard Beekeeper. It’s very informative on not only the mechanics of beekeeping, but of the biology, social structure and management of keeping bees.
@Midnight Rambler
Indeed, and hopefully, Bashar Al Assad will be next. Also, it looks like president Chavez from Venezuela is pro dictatorship. Apparently Chavez is vehemently against this. I guess just like there is crank magnetism, there is dictatorship magnetism.
Okay, the stupid comment delay thing is ridiculous. What the freak.
Thank you Rev, but I’m already pushing it with the chickens. I’m sure the neighbors would throw a fit if I kept bees, no matter how many times I patiently explained that they won’t attack unless disturbed and help pollinate all those pretty flowers.
Though…. maybe……….
Re: pseudonyms
I understand some people might need the anonymity of an online name and “outing” someone for what they say online is indeed crass and all. But haven’t some courts actually held one or two people liable for what they’ve said online?
I suppose it’s not a big deal to me, a couple here do know my real name, but I’m doubting that any damage could come of that.
I used to frequent the bad places on the internet myself. That’s why I’m so upset by this.
It’s more than crass. It can subject people to physical danger and real discrimination.
Relevance?
@ibyea
you can say “fuck’ here apparently.
Unless of course you meant its a freaky thing, in which case, thumbs up for word choice.
@CC
still trying to catch up with the TET (been busy IRL)
gleaned that some happy idiot at ERV was trying for an outing of SC?s real name. if you like perhaps crass was too light a word.
Unrelated, but my gob is smacked.
Via Feministe, Republicans want to increase payroll tax.
When NEWT GINGRICH is the voice of reason…sheesh.
Yes. And yes, crass is too mild a word for something that can get people hurt, killed, or fired. Relevance of the possibility that people can be held legally responsible for things they say online to this situation?
Well, that’s different. See, increasing the upper-level income tax and capital gains tax would be a tax on the job creators. Raising the payroll tax would just be a tax on the moochers and parasites.
You just have to have the right perspective, that of a psychopath.
As an aside, does anyone know how to block the dashboard bar that comes up at the top of the screen when you’re logged in? It’s very annoying that it blocks the first line when you’re scrolling down. If you know of a way to block those kind of things everywhere that would be even better; AdBlock and NoScript don’t seem to work (or at least you have to have other scripts active for things to work, and that lets it in).
Midnight Rambler reminds me.
I know there are gonna be differences between the FTB and Sb versions, but could we get back the ‘jump to end’ link at least on TET, that would be nice.
Yeah, my thoughts exactly. windy, who was commenting there for a while (which I found very sad), asked me at B&W – in the context of talking about Watson’s remarks about McGraw, whether if Laden had said what he did about me in a conference talk I would have been angrier. I thought about it and responded to her honestly (no, I wouldn’t have, but it would have been bizarre in that case), but noted to myself that her reference to that in this context seemed rather egregious.
There’s something wrong with people repeating or spreading something like that without making clear that they don’t believe the accusation themselves, or bothering to determine its accuracy.
Patricia, yay on the benign!!
Dhorvath and giliell, thanks for the kind words yester-thread. It helps.
I am fascinated to know how the flower-specific honeys are made. Personally I’m not a fan of honey, but bees are nifty. I know of a hive in an oak tree and it’s neat to see the comb in the opening of the tree and hear them buzz from the trunk.
SC, that’s horrible that people are threatening you.
I too was appalled by that article on how to “improve” your life. Ugh. I mean, it’s hard to really FEEL others’ way of thinking, but why is it so hard for some to understand that not all of us can just flip a switch and be cheerful? And that not all people are so lucky as to be born where they CAN make something of their circumstances? I am going to look for Bright-sided. I think I had heard of it before and am now quite interested to read it.
her reference to that in this context seemed rather egregious
And by “egregious” I of course meant “gratuitous.”
Seriously, brain?
Let me add mine to the choir of voices condemning threats to violate SC’s — or anyone’s — anonymity. I’ve always posted under my own name (even back in *Prodigy days, when I used a nick, I was never anonymous), but even so, I absolutely support anyone’s right to remain anonymous for any reason.
I don’t know why there seems to be an assault on anonymity lately (Google+, SciBlogs, etc.), but I don’t buy the idea that anonymity harms discourse on teh intertoooobz: For every idiot empowered by hir anonymity to engage in pointless incivility, 10 good people are empowered by anonymity to speak the unfiltered truth. It’s (on net) all good,
I hesitate to ask, but….what does this mean?
I’m glad you did ask, ‘cuz I was wondering, too.
Not disagreeing with anything you’ve said, but I just want to point out that I’m not anonymous. I’m pseudonymous. I’ve been posting under the same name for almost four years. It’s me and my reputation, as it is for many others.
SC: Anything from ordering 50000 anchovy pizzas to your house to full on IRL stalking. Of course, this is only if ‘the wrong people’ get ahold of that kind of thing. Somehow I doubt much will come of it…. but the threat to ‘go to town’ with your personal info definitely implies intent, extremely nasty intent.
I would fight this tooth and nail if there was something I could do. Something very disgusting about Bluharmony’s ‘hugs’ and ‘I consider you a friend, PZ Myers!’ after this. What a little weasel.
@Puttin’ On The Foil; Welcome. Oh, I’m shufflin’ lines around, guys. I’ll let you know when I get it straightened out.
Re: Pseudonymity, like has been said by people smarter and better than me: Total bullshit move by a coward looking to round up a posse.
This is the entire discussion on that thread regarding dyslexia:
332, Toasted Rye, as a self-reference: “I simply got tired of arguing with myself over this issue. Forgive typos. Phone typing is hard for the dyslexic.”
623, Ihthyic, as a question to bluharmony: “just curious… are you dyslexic by any chance?
I notice you commonly use incorrect words, though it’s obvious what you meant.
not just typos.”
632, SC responds to Ichthyic after blockquoting the prior: “English isn’t her native language, and she’s a sloppy writer.”
704, bluharmony, misattributing the question and the response: “Salty: Also, just because I’m flustered and mistype, as I’ve noticed going over my contributions, doesn’t make me dyslexic. It just makes me frustrated,”
716, SC responding after blockquoting previous: “I said nothing about dyslexia. You’re extremely confused.”
Aaaaand… that’s it. That’s the entirety of it.
And when exactly did calling someone dyslexic become defamation of character?
Midnight Rambler,
In the user profile area, choose Edit My Profile from your name in the upper left corner, then uncheck the box next to Show Admin Bar:
[ ] when viewing site
Kind of counterintuitive.
Around the same time ad hominem was “redefined”.
I posted that summary at ERV too – we’ll see if she responds there or not. I felt pretty slimy posting, but I didn’t want that lie to stand unchallenged (especially after I saw further up that thread that they were cackling that people who post at Pharyngula must be too scared to post there, or something like that. It’s hard to figure out the meaning of the sentences through the feces smeared across the other side of the screen).
Such a lot of stew from so little an oyster!
–
This. Obviously, they would then be able to do anything a person who can find you in meatspace can do. Plus, potentially, finding your employers and family, harassing them, and sending them sensitive pseudonym-linked information. (I don’t know how much of a concern this is for you personally, but for a lot of us it could be pretty bad.)
CORRECTION: I haven’t posted there, I got moderated. Interesting. Maybe Abbie’s changed her filter to cull out anything with links to Pharyngula. I haven’t posted enough there to draw the attention enough to get banned, I don’t think. Hm. Maybe it was a random snag.
SC, that is some bullshit. I called bluharmony a liar. Clearly, and deliberately, and more than once. So did Jadehawk. But she’s going after you? Fuck that noise.
—————-
File under “awesome problems”: I got entirely too much sleep today, and hence accomplished little, because StrangeBoyfriend, returning from a 2-day stint at an outdoor music festival in which he slept barely at all, insisted I lie down with him while he napped and kept grabbing me in an affectionate bearhug whenever I tried to get up.
:DDD
———–
Also last night I played a contra dance gig with my dad and his band, something I haven’t done in years. The dancers LOVED it! Sample comment: “I hope the Grange has its fire insurance paid up, because this band is gonna set the hall on fire!” Odds are good that dad’s band will be back again soon.
—-
Patricia, so happy to hear it’s benign! *raises glass in toast*
On the drive home from work today, I saw these bumper stickers:
and
I am mildly dyslexic and I do have to wonder about dyslexia being a slur. But, then, what do I know?
Carlie –
Which thread were you posting in? I want to try. Both Jadehawk and I deliberately called bluharmony a liar, then quite clearly begged her to try suing us, as she had threatened. I’d really like to point out the lack of clarity in seemingly avoiding attacking the people who really did call bluharmony a liar, while simultaneously engaging in a crass personal attack on a person who did not.
Thanks, Lone Coyote (and thanks to you, Jadehawk, aladegorrion, Carlie,* and Bill,…and I hope I haven’t missed anyone).
Gurdur, I’m certain, has very nasty intent.
*I hope your comment will appear. That was such a strange claim, and the one about my calling her “grammatically inept” was just pulled out of thin air.
Awwwww!! I want this. :oD
So did I (like twenty times… really), and Nerd, among others. Not that I’m volunteering us to be next on Gurdur’s list of potential stalk-ees, but… Between that and the “dyslexic” thing, it’s very clear that this is not actually about what was said to bluharmony – this is about SC. It’s personal, and that is scary as hell.
Back from Idaho, state and city seem to be much as I left them. It took a little longer for me than it does for most people, but I have comprehensively decided that I need to put and keep plenty of distance between myself and my hometown. I don’t like what it represents for me. But still, I got to see and climb on some real mountains, so that’s nice.
Not going to comprehensively catch up, but I can see we’re still having trouble with certain internet folks. How outside observers to the elevator fight like, say, Russel Blackford can place any sort of equivalence between the Pharyngula camp and the Slimepit just boggles my mind. The commentariat here may have, as BartSimpson would put it, a rep for being rude, but we’ve never flung around insults about peoples’ sexual organs or significant others or tried to out any pseudonymous internet personalities.
I always look up the word ‘egregious’
Well, I posted at ERV, pointing out that SC did not call bluharmony a liar, while several other people did, so clearly this is a personal vendetta.
File under “tilting at windmills.”
I do hope nothing comes of it. I’d love to post under my real name, but not until I’m no longer an umemployed entry-level job seeker.
Carlie @212: When I was going through ERV trying to figure out what the deal was there, someone mentioned that any post with any link, even just one, gets flagged for moderation. They claimed it was an Sb thing, but the old Pharyngula didn’t, so if it’s true it’s her own settings.
Therrin: Thanks, much better!
@sandiseattle
I meant a bit of both. I don’t mind saying fuck, but you see, when I was a kid, I was told to not use curse words, and I didn’t mind, so I did what I was told. Because of that, I barely use fuck and shit and stuff, but when I am really angry, I can. Also, it is kind of embarrassing to do it because when I do it, my brother is like OMG! He does it jokingly, but it is still kind of embarrassing. :)
:D When I noticed that someone was asking about asphalt above, I was thinking about how much I love tarmacadam (and just tarmac).
I learned several new words today, including miniver (knew of the fictional Mrs., but not the root), castoreum, and monadnock (familiar word – didn’t know what it meant).
Funny – growing up in New England, I knew about (and climbed) Mt. Monadnock, but I never heard of it used as a word.
SC:
Good point; please pardon my conflation.
Patricia – Yay, benign! =^_^=
*Does a happy dance*
SC, I followed that whole dyslexia thing, and wondered at the time whether she was picking on you about it, simply because she ‘knew’ you from the other site and didn’t know Ichthyic.
In any case, I thought the woman deranged and/or drunk. Then she said she was sick and typing in bed, as if that’s an excuse for posting rubbish. I’m chronically sick, always in bed when on the net (I loooove my MacBook) and often typing in the dark. So I always re-read what I have typed and check it for rubbish as I go along. Sometimes re-typing a word several times if necessary. If she is at all competent (and she should be, seeing as she says she’s a lawyer), why can’t she do the same?
As Ichthyic pointed out, some of her mistakes were howlers – who posts ‘worse’ when they mean ‘better’, ffs? And then to attack SC for it, when SC had (up to that point)actually been onher side over the mistakes? How wicked is that? Poor SC! You don’t deserve that.
Besides, dyslexia isn’t an insult, let alone an accusation.
The only threats have been from her, not towards her.
Hi everyone
Just noticed something weird with the website and wondered whether it was just me: if I go to freethoughtblogs.com and from there click to pharyngula, the most recent post that appears is from August 11th. Same happens at freethoughblogs.com/pharyngula. The only way I could navigate here was to click through from my RSS feed reader. Even clicking the banner above this post takes me to the Pharyngula home page, but from August 11th. What am I doing wrong??
Curious Chloride, did you try hitting “Refresh”?
Curious Chloride:
Known caching issue. I think someone’s trying to fix it. If you force a refresh (for me, ctril-f5 does it, but others have had to clear their temporary files and such), it seems to fix it for that attempt.
Rey Fox,
not quite so; there was considerable interest from many people besides Pharyngula posters in knowing the real-life details of “Tom Johnson”, who many of us had the misfortune to interact with (either at The Intersucktion, or You’re Not Helping), and likewise a number of people who identify in the blogosphere by their real-life names were targets for his defamation campaign.
If someone is using a pseudonym (or in the case of Wally Smith, employing an entire closet gallery of sockpuppets) for the purposes of character assassination and libel, then I tend to be of the view that that negates their right to keep their real-world identity secret, but only weakly so: if one were to insist upon that, then there would be no whistle-blowers or Wikileaks if anonymity weren’t worthy of strong protection.
In any case, the targetting of SC looks very wrong-headed – bluharmony put in an appearance at B&W several threads ago and the variance between her comments there and her comments on ERV were noted by many of the posters to illustrate that she can’t maintain a constant line on the topic. Going after SC (rather than anyone else) looks like another witch hunt – and it’s never a “wizard” hunt, is it?
As for posters here “being afraid” to post on at ERV – if I had never been tempted to post there before, why would I be more interested to do so now? Ick.
Refresh did the trick, thank you!
(And now I feel dumb, so back to lurking it is…)
David Marjanović:
email sent.
If it didn’t go through, you can email me at
leslierussellgreen at that mail company which so many people use, that one which sounds like hollering or yodeling.
Ever since creating a WordPress account to log into freethought with, I’ve found that the cache/refresh problems have resolved themselves.
If one were actually to tell all sorts of damaging lies about someone – which SC did not do to bluharmony – in what situations and on what grounds could one be held legally responsible for defaming a pseudonym? I’m finding plenty of information on defaming a meatspace person using their “real name” while yourself using a pseudonym, but not a whole lot on defaming a pseudonymous commenter.
I disagree. This was a person who was being dishonest and just plane annoying intentionally. I can’t think of anything more irritating than that false politeness and subjugation.
Apart from the very sloooooow nature of posting at the moment (as I posted above, am currently at dial-up speed) I seem to be having none of the problems that other people are having with regard to disappearing posts and/or out-of-date threads. I feel very fortunate.
Oh dear, I’ve just tempted the internet gnomes, haven’t I? o.O
Philip Legge, I agree! The targetting if SC seems very deliberate and only vaguely, if at all, related to what she has posted on Pharyngula. Plus, like you, I’m certainly not about to start following a new (to me) blog after what has been going on; I have better things to do with my energy. Like cleaning up cat vomit (brb – she’s just coughed up a furball).
Why is the “Beyond parody” thread, which has been closed for nearly two days now, #1 on the “FtB most active” chart? How is that thing determined, anyway? Highest number of posts in the last 48 hours? Last four days? Last week?
Something tells me that bluharmony will turn up at Pharyngula again with bleating about how she totally respects everyone here and why can’t we discuss feminism nicely and how she just wants us all to be friends. If she can claim that she respects Watson as a speaker after trying to get her banned as a speaker, why not this?
If he didn’t, I probably would have. The servile simpering bullshit becomes all the more repulsive now that she’s realized it won’t work and decided to throw her lot in with stalkers and creepers.
Blueharmony: If you’re reading this, you are a fucking liar, and you have dogshit on your soul. You want my real name so you can sue me?
I will however say that if it was read as anything sexist it wasn’t my intent. It was meant more as a smack to pull yourself together and act like an adult. I apologize if anyone read it differently. Though obviously I don’t apologize for any offense to the comment’s target.
Oh no! I hope this ‘bluharmony’ person never gets my real name!
Also xir latest actions do show that I was right about being a shitty lawyer.
Guys, even though it’s not physically possible to carry out a threat of physical violence in response to non-physical offenses, it’s still inappropriate. I sympathize, but nevertheless.
I keep wanting to type out my real name as a challenge, but I keep thinking better of it.
Fact is, anyone who wanted to stalk me would be smart to keep it online, where I can’t get my hands on them.
I don’t want to sound like an internet tough guy, because I’m not a tough guy, but if I feel physically threatened, I’m a very violent primate.
OOOH OOOHH AAAAAHHH AAAAAAAHHH
… I just realized how insensitive my last comment could sound.
I didn’t intend to mock SC (or anyone else). If anyone, I intended to mock this ‘bluharmony’ person, and/or myself.
I’m not sure exactly what you mean, but I think I disagree. It’s very possible. I watched a creepypasta forum get literally torn to shreds. Someone was stalking the head admin IRL, going so far as to even kidnap her dog. You read me right.
I love my dog… makes me sick to think about.
Fair enough
^^^^an agreement of wrongness^^^^
((I don’t think my first comment was a ‘threat’ as much as a hyperbole to express annoyance, but it clearly could be read as that so I take my blame points))
That’s great. Now if only I could see your gravatar at full size.
Oh fuck, I just totally misread Sallystrange’s post. She was referring to Ing saying he’d ‘backhand’ bluharmony. Herpderp.
Yeah, it’s not possible to reach through the series of tubes that make up the internet and slap someone. I personally didn’t see it as a threat or uncalled for, but that’s just me. I’m weird.
Classical Cipher, IANAL, NDIPOOT – I really don’t know what the legalities are with defaming someone who is widely known on the Internet by their pseudonym, rather than their real name. One view seems to be that a whole lot of stuff posted on blogs is in cyberspace, and there it should remain – there should be no attempt made to take account of it in meatspace, and treat it as libel that might be actionable against the individual’s real identity. Somehow, I don’t think that cyberspace/meatspace division would actually hold up. (Abbie Smith’s “Bad Form, RW” post of course suggested the contrary: “Rebecca broke one of The Rules of the internet: Do not bring MySpace drama into MeatSpace.”)
Tigger, I would be inclined to think that the selection of SC for this witch hunt has more to do with her having thrown out the moniker of “gender traitor” at Miranda Hale and Abbie over a month ago, and which within only a few days SC admitted was not a good term to have used. The denizens of the slime pit are gradually drawing up the List of Enemies of the Righteous Liars for Penis™ (retch).
I’m going to places without internetting for FOUR days!
How will I survive?
the horror
Sorry all, I was unclear just now:
“treat it as libel that might be actionable as though it had been made against the individual’s real identity.”
That’s assuming the target of the libel is pseudonymous; as opposed to the converse case (in my earlier post) where the utterer of the libel was the one using a pseudonymous identity. I didn’t intend to confuse the two cases, but they are different (and that might have real-world consequences too).
where did she pull that rule out of?
from; or what.
I can.
I wonder what the other seven tentacles are doing?
Dunno, Jadehawk: maybe the same place where she got the photo of the anteater, captioned “Come at me bro”? It was a good rant, with the counterblow being aimed squarely at PZ’s “Always name names” post at the old Scienceblogs Pharyngula.
I thought it might be one of the rules listed here but my eyesight fails trying to read it.
Philip Legge, thanks for the likely explanation. I couldn’t understand why SC was being targetted when people who had actually had a go at Bluharmony were being ignored. Now I have another reason to distrust Blu.
Three effin’ days with no internet. Bah! Heading into town tomorrow to see about getting a new wireless unit. :sigh:
*postures threateningly at your current wireless unit with a pitchfork*
Okay, that’s it! I’m getting my caffeine tolerance back to normal before school starts, which is fine, but there is no reason I should be forcing myself to stay awake when I’m sleepy. Goodnight, Thread!
Thanks everyone for the good wishes! I called my parents to thank them for passing me on the good genes.
The new bike got started up and I heard her RUN today, wow! Look out Tuesday, I get to ride.
-0-
Strange Gods @83/84 – I’ll try one more time to get the Comic Sans with your codes.
-0-
Nerd – the little chickies are getting their first feathers & will be going out into the yard. Today we had a hawk slam into the juvenile wrens, taking two – so you will just have to deal with the ‘Chicklettes’.
Chigau –
Alcohol, sex toys, drugs.
Is that helpful?
It’s a possibility – I think. I would not assert though, that it must be the case. Incidentally, when blu turned up over at B&W to troll the “More dog whistle” thread, she initially posted under the nym of “Gender Traitor”, and openly invited the name calling before later pulling the trick, “We feel you are being cruel to us.”
The criticism she received, however, was not excessively cruel, but was mainly directed at pulling apart the flaws in her arguments and pointing out instances of her contradictory statements and dishonesty on the then-current ERV thread; naturally she chose to largely ignore those, and instead take insult at the more robust language directed at the fact that she was trolling. Consistency is not her strong suit.
Patricia:
Woohoo! That is the best news, Patricia. *whew*
On that note, I’m off to bed.
[No, no news yet. I’ll assume the lack of news means I’m not intent on dying just now.]
Patricia: I recently got a pen and coop set up for the two chickens. This is their first night sleeping outside. It’s weird not having them in my room.
I’m thinking of raising quails for meat and eggs now. Is this feasible?
OK, ignoring what anybody else has written, will come back to that later, just need to let off.
Damn, damn, damn.
Gran is waiting for her surgery. Surgeons want to operate, anaesthesiologist refuses because of her heart. So we’re waiting to see what will happen.
Fuck
Caine, no news is good news, right? Yours will be diagnosed as benign too, I’m sure.
I hope you don’t have to wait too long, though. I’ve aways found the waiting for results to be the worst part.
Patricia, great news about the bike! Have you named her yet?
Enjoy your first ride! My last ride was in October 2006. I didn’t know then that it would be my last, of course. I had always planned to ride until I was too sick or disabled to manage it, but had imagined that would be in my eighties, not my forties. I had to sell the Moto Guzzi. I gave the GoldWing to my daughter and although she’s happy to ride it she refused to accept ownership; she says Tigger the Wing will always be my bike.
Caine – I was thinking of you all day today while we were off celebrating. My doctor has gone on vacation, so I have no idea what the ‘further treatments’ are, but to hell with that – benign – is enough to hold a hillbilly hoe-down. I hope you get the same! *smirk*
-0-
Lone Coyote – Our method of putting the chicks out has been the same for generations, where we bought chicks to go with the ones we naturally raised when I was on the farm.
In town – I keep the chicks in a dog kennel with a light, food and water. Then a doggy exercise pen on newspapers, littered with cedar chips is added to the kennel. When the first feathers appear, the chicks go out into the yard, with the exercise pen covered over the top, so hawks & cats can’t eat them, back in the house at night. When the chicks are half feathered, they spend three days & nights (I don’t know what science THAT comes from) in the coop – wire door during the day – locked up at night. Then they have imprinted to the coop, and out they go.
Chickens are extremely territorial, and they will stay in their space. Quails are wild, you will have to fence them completely, top, bottom and sides. They won’t love you. I’d stick with chickens. If you want peace, quiet & eggs – don’t get a rooster. If you want riot, rape, constant noise & chicks – get a rooster.
We have more or less 300 pullets on 5 acres, running around singing, laying eggs and doing chicken stunts – NO roosters.
Only a republican could tell you how many battery hens we could put on five acres, probably 500,000.
Bottom line, if you could have the space for three chickens, I would do that. Two will be freaked out – looking around all the time. With three, or any odd number, at least one will be eating, or laying, and you will have calmn.
(/chicken rant)
Giliell – Oh FUCK, this is where one just doesn’t know what to do. Hugs, hugs, and hugs.
-0-
Tigger – I knew your nym was a Gold Wing. My dad had one in between Harley’s and his last old Indian. He wanted to see which bike was best. He has Harley’s, and the old Indian, but he liked the Wing as well. We have Hummers and Sprints too. Damned hillbilly’s never throw anything away. *grin*
The bike has a name from Sturgis in 1993 – “Stinky” is painted on it. It’s an 883 with a factory 1200 kit dropped into it, always woman owned, and the last owner said it’s slicker than sour owl shit.
Sounds good. ;)
Oh I know about chickens and roosters. The pen is closed in on all sides. I don’t expect the quails to ‘love me’ like the chickens do, I expect them to taste good.
The chickens ended up imprinting on my bedroom as their ‘coop’, spoiled hens they are. I’m getting them used to an actual pen now.
They also haven’t laid anywhere I can see in the last few weeks… which makes me wonder if I’m gonna find a layaway nest somewhere.
With the two chickens I have, only one is freaked out alot. The other one is ridiculously tame and easygoing. Nothing bothers her, absolutely nothing. I do want to get a third hen though. More constant eggs. For the most part though, Lucy and Jude are pets. (A third one would probably be named Ms. Robinson).
It would be nice if I could keep a rooster here… they do have a certain cocky charm about them. And I could keep an actual population going. But the neighbors would definitely complain.
A third possibility is a runner duck or two. I’m told indian runners are good layers.
Oh gawd – roosters and ducks = evil children and drunks. Good luck with that.
Giliell, I hope they sort it out quickly. Poor woman! There must be some way they can do it. Meantime, gentle hugs to all.
Patricia, what a lovely bike! Not sure about the name, appropriate though it might be if the comparison is correct. Son-out-law restores, customizes and/or trikes an assortment of bikes, so our sheds/garages (previously cow and calf sheds) always have a large number of different bikes in them. It isn’t just hillbillies! We had several old tractor carcases to dispose of when we moved onto our land (plus an old well full of cow skulls, for some reason).
Our neighbours have hens. They put up a day-run in our shrubbery and moved it around for a few weeks until the birds had weeded it all for us! For a while they had a couple of roosters (as a result of letting a broody hen hatch some donated eggs) which wasn’t fun. Especially at 3am.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
@#%^$^ slooooow internet! (#$^%^I# teenagers!) It takes several minutes to refresh the page and I keep missing posts. :-(
If I didn’t have nice neighbors on either side, I would get ten roosters just to spite the morons who live behind us. Their stupid untrained dogs bark at us all freakin day, day in, day out.
Oh and you should hear those owners trying to ‘control’ their dogs… “BUDDY! DIESEL! COME ON! COME ON BOYS! COME ON! PLEASE? I’LL GIVE YOU A TREAT! I’LL TAKE YOU FOR A WALK! OH COME ON! PLEASE?”
Morons. Absolute morons. If you have to beg your dog to listen to you, you fail as a dog owner.
The Lone Coyote,
Extremely plausible. I suggest you go on an egg-clutch hunt.
Thank you all
Damn, gran is in ICU. They suspect that she had a heart attack which wouldn’t surprise anybody since that is what happens every time she has to get off the Marcumar for some reason or other.
The whole situation is made worse of course by mum finding comfort at the bottom of the bottle again and our dad being a complete idiot about it.
Shit, shit, shit.
@Carlie
Hmmm, there’s nothing unusual in the playground and the rash already started back in winter. Cleaning stuff could be a solution, too.
Stress I’d say no, because she usually bites her nails then but hasn’t done so in a while.
It would be possible to bring her lunch or ask them to make her a “Butterbrot”, but it would still single her out.
So I think I’ll just sit and wait. So far she only complained when I tried to apply the pimecrolinus cream which burns a bit. I stopped doing that when I figured out that the rash will come, “bloom”, heal and return totally indifferent to whether that stuff is applied or not.
On the other hand, this really is a minor problem right now *sigh*
@Salty
Fuck them, that’s bad.
Apart from blue’s absolute lack of grasp of reality, “outing” people’s names on the internet is bad business. I think my post here shows well why: there’s a lot of personal information written under pseudonyms that affect people IRL.
@The Lone Coyote
I hope your neighbours don’t have children as well.
But it could be worse. Mr.’s former best friend has an agressive dog he lets run around free quite often. When that dog got into the backyard of a friend of mine and frightened her three children, his reply was that she should fence her garden propperly if she didn’t want his dog in it.
There are reasons why he’s the former best friend…
Can someone confirm this please ? You can’t do a videocall to an Iphone from a non-Iphone ? YHGTBFKM !
@Rorschach
I don’t think non-iPhones support Apple’s FaceTime. Is Skype available for the non-iPhone?
Yeah, but that’s not really the idea. So no videocall without FaceTime, and FT no speaky to non-Iphones ? What proprietary garbage ! (I’m just disappointed, was going to surprise the kid, but apparently no can haz)
Also, surprised to see the Justicar has some common decency in him (#1912). Good on you mate.
TLC:
My neighbours moved? Wait…
All my sympathies. The people across from us, 3 dogs, outside constantly, dogs constantly bored, constant barking. Apparently, the owners don’t have ears. Or brains.
I’ve figured it out ! How to make videocalls from Iphone to non-Iphone (android) via 3G, 4G or Wifi : download an app called Qik from your phone’s market/app store, register, and off you go ! It’s apparently the only way to do this atm.
SC, lemme see: Gurdur is seeking to “out” you and “go to town with it.” based on a threat of a (frivolous) lawsuit by Bluharmony (the known liar)?
My opinion: “Dumb and dumber”, but despicable instead of good-natured.
(This is all being documented in the cloud)
@Rorschach
Apple have said they plan to open source the FT protocol. Up to other people to implement in other products.
Caine,
Huh.
Where I live, there are council laws applicable to control of nuisance animals, and barking dogs qualify as such. It’s just a matter of reporting and (if necessary) documenting the problem.
Don’t you or The Lone Coyote have something like that?
PS: http://www.dogsncats.asn.au/site/page.cfm?u=854#faq_179
John, I live in rural ND in a town of 79 people and this is our mayor. Russ is a nice guy and all, but any attempt to talk with him results in having your ears talked right off your head for hours (he keeps talking even as you’re walking away) and he might manage to tell the folks across the way to hush the dogs up some, and it might be quiet for a day or two. Maybe. Basically, there’s not much point complaining.
Caine, I see.
Again, here, the law is State law, not Local Government law, though LG is the first point of call for ordinary assessment and (if necessary) enforcement.
(Which is to say, our Mayor gets no say in the matter)
—
Hm, it probably seems sorta Socialist to youse yanks… ;)
John, if I lived in Bismarck, I could lodge a complaint and it would be dealt with, much the way it works for you. However, it’s different when you’re rural. What can I say? People live in the sticks because they don’t like rules. ;p
As you say, Caine.
Caine, my neighbors are much the same. There are also a lot of people with roosters, most likely for illegal cockfights, and you can hear both for about half a mile. One I did talk to about his dog, and his attitude was “dogs bark, that’s what they do, if you don’t like it don’t live here.” When your neighbors are permanently found 100 yards down the road and most likely heavily armed*, but the cops are half an hour away, do you want to take the chance on getting on someone’s bad side?
* Another guy down the road and his son were recently arrested for having 500 marijuana plants, being a felon in possession of a firearm, and violation of parole for sexual assault – nice bundle.
Midnight Rambler, um.
(o_O)
Midnight Rambler:
Yikes. There’s nothing like that here, but yeah, everyone has guns and there are no cops, yada, yada, yada. Any uh, illegal activity is kept extremely quiet.
Seriously, I wouldn’t dream of calling the cops unless someone was dying, they aren’t particularly welcome in Almont. I wasn’t exactly impressed with the new CoP in New Salem, asshat came to cruise Almont, and kept stopping in front of our house, looking at the hops. Yeah, like I’m gonna grow 12 foot high vines of weed at the very front of my property…
:eyeroll:
Goood morning Pharyngulites!!
Good news everyone, I am in possession of an adorable (yet terrible) ball of fluff!! My kitten has finally arrived and he is so damn cute. He has this habit of interjecting himself into everyone’s business.
Hopefully he’ll be happy at my apartment. If I start to see signs of depression, I’ll have to get another kitty for him to play with.
Set: 49 seconds (easy today)
New blogs are showing up on the FtB front page, but Dispatches seems to have disappeared. Poor Ed, it’s hard to be the boss.
@Katherine
Pics or it didn’t happen!
@RemembersABeach
Hmm, it’s still showing up in the sidebar
Damn, this should have been my day of housecleaning, but instead I’m sitting here like a deer in the headlights watching the phone. So far they found out that gran caught pneumonia. On top of everything. :(
so… sleepy… must finish work before school starts…. zzzzzz…..
With respect to pseudonyms – Orac has a new post that’s relevant: http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2011/08/the_consequences_of_blogging_under_ones.php
Good morning, Katherine! Happy kitty day! =^_^=
(I love being able to say “Good morning” to people when it’s my bedtime!)
Earlier this evening I was watching a medical programme for the nostalgia – Surgeons. It’s set in Ireland and, in between the gory bits, there is the scenery to assuage some of my homesickness.
Anyway, I mentioned, pointedly, to hubby how bad men seem to be at seeing doctors for chronic conditions until it is too late and he announced he has a CT scan scheduled for tomorrow morning. He confessed he finally went to see his GP about his chronic cough some weeks ago, but put off booking the scan…
So I tried not to get too annoyed about his keeping me in the dark as he didn’t want me to worry (as if I wasn’t even more worried that it seemed he wasn’t doing anything) and instead tried to seem pleased that at last he is getting it investigated.
I would like to ask the horde what chance there might be of a chronic cough having a benign cause? He’s 56. He gave up smoking 33+ years ago, after smoking quite heavily for around ten years (roll-ups and pipe mostly) but remained a heavy drinker until about nine or ten years ago, when he realised he was an alcoholic and managed to give it up. I am, of course, worried that it is lung cancer. His older brother lost half his tongue to mouth cancer about six years ago, but he’s a lifelong smoker and alcoholic who still hasn’t given up.
I thought that some time after giving up smoking, it was as if one had never smoked? Or is that a tall tale?
@RemembersABeach:
I’m in the same kind of boat as that. Though I’ve not had any serious threats of being revealed to anyone, it’s still scary as a transgendered person to have to worry that some nutbar out there would be able to find my blog, pull my name and contact my employers. Because ENDA statutes haven’t been passed, they might be able to fire me (although our head honcho passed a wide-sweeping “no discrimination” policy, doesn’t mean I won’t be thrown into a situation where they’ll try to force me to quit.)
@my 299:
Additionally, I don’t want my family to know. That would be terrifying.
@Gilell:
Yesyes, I will get pictures of the cute. He’s hard to photograph since I haven’t got a camera and have to manage my webcam into position to take the photo – and he’s usually dashing around like a nutball so yea, good luck.
Well, that was predictable. Everyone ignored SallyStrange’s posting of what SC did and didn’t say with regard to dyslexia, and then when I asked about that, was told that she was confused but everyone else was a liar. It was on the level of “I know you are but what am I”?
Tigger, there’s lots of options for chronic coughs before getting to cancer. I can offer you asthma, pneumonia, pulmonary embolisms, and plain old stubborn infections needing a different class of antibiotics. (I am having tests for some of these.)
SC, I hope all goes well for you. Gurdur is a nasty piece of work, although I’m not aware of anything he’s done in “real life” as opposed to internet drama. And if you don’t mind explaining, what did Greg Laden do? I seem to have missed that, and remain a bit clueless about where his bad reputation comes from.
Cath- what did him in for me was that he once took a commenter who was arguing with him and first edited the person’s comments without making a note that they were edited (“edited” meaning “rewrote and took important context out”), then when challenged on it, defended his right to do anything to any comment on his blog that he wanted to and backed it up by changing the “posted by” on that commenter’s comments from his pseudonym to his email address, which had his IRL name prominently as part of the email address. He took it down about an hour later, but just that he was willing to expose someone like that for disagreeing with him was beyond the pale.
Later there was a big blowup with SC, which involved him making nasty insinuations about what SC said and did. It was really ugly.
Kat:
What’s kittehs name?
Thanks, Cath. Glad to know there are more options!
The cough started more than a year ago. He was tested for asthma and any and all infections. All tests were clear and he was told to come back if the cough didn’t improve. Eventually he went back. I’m assuming that the lack of any obvious infection is why the CT scan has been ordered.
It’s not a severe cough, just persistant. Had it been severe, no doubt he would have had to do something about it sooner. He sounds as if he is trying, and failing, to clear a tickle in his throat every so often. It has become a normal background noise. :-(
Still, we should know one way or another tomorrow.
@nigel:
His name is Snip. He’s a tuxedo cat but the white that’s supposed to be on his chin is across his cheek instead. It’s so cute :3 Snip is an adorable terror.
Aw, blu’s told me to go die! I feel so warm and fuzzy inside at her kindness and desire to discuss things in a rational and nice manner.
@Kat: Great name! I look forward to pics, however fuzzy and cute.
@Carlie: But blu’s only about peace and harmony and can’t we all just get along? Why, she’s always defending us over at ERV! She said so herself. And she wouldn’t fucking lie.
Of course she wouldn’t, because she told us she doesn’t ever lie. We can believe her on that. Never mind that she usually gets confused and writes things that aren’t true, we can believe her that she never lies.
Interesting. The new blogs that showed up on the FtB frontpage this morning are not showing up now, and Dispatches is back.
Tigger_the_Wing.
Acid reflux can cause a minor chronic cough. Also catarrh* (inflammation of the mucous membrans of the nasal passages). My husband has a chronic health condition which is not serious at the moment but it is always worrisome. I hope all turns out well for you – I know how wearying it is to worry every day.
* a very interesting word with that cool “rh” at the end. Had to look it up – wikipedia says:
—
sorry in advance if this double posts
There must be some good news waiting around the corner. It can’t be all bad, can it?
Guess it can. Apart from the more important worries about gran, the PoS will cost 500€ (700$) to repair and they have the audacity to call a problem caused by shitty construction “wear and tear” so the extended warranty doesn’t apply.
Sorry for all my recent whining, I hope to come up with more cheerful things next
@Tigger (pfff, and there was me thinking your nym was about Winnie the Pooh)
Husbands can be fun.
I agree with the others, there are plenty of possible reasons that are not cancer.
I hope you really get the results tomorrow. Since our government decided to favour self-employed specialists over hospital-hired specialists, my aunts CT-scans took always about a week to move 3 floors upwards to the oncologist…
Birger Johanssen:
Well, asphalt is made from long-decayed plants :p
Around here (.au), bitumen.
…
Ing:
I submit that threatening to “backhand” someone, even as internet hyperbole, coming from a man to a woman, carries a crapload of gendered baggage.
…
Gileil: Hugs :/
…
Tigger_The_Wing:
Orly?? Is son-out-law on this continent?
…
Katherine Lorraine:
eeeeee!!
Tarmac, short for tarmacadam, in the UK.
I live in a fairly urban area actually. Urban enough that I’m not sure my two chickens are completely ‘legal’ (though, just try n report me, I say.)
As for the dogs, yeah, the owners do nothing. We’ve resorted to blasting the garden hose or just yelling ‘SHADDAPPPP!’ in the loudest voice possible. It works about 10 percent of the time.
Dad’s talking about tossing some antifreeze-soaked bread over the fence, but I think it’s just the irritation speaking. I’d never be sociopathic enough to kill someone’s dog/s.
Sorry, Suburban is more accurate.
Wow, the idiots are out in force on the Ron Paul thread.
Carlie, thanks for trying, but it seems hopeless.
bluharmony:
She addresses her comment to Carlie, quoting from Carlie, and then follows it with “– Salty.” It’s utterly bizarre. Even several of the people there have recognized that I didn’t call her dyslexic** (I didn’t call her grammatically inept, either), and she continues to say I did. She quotes me calling her dishonest, so she had to have gone back to find those comments, and can obviously see that I had quoted her own contradictory statements.
And then:
Dyslexia is a form of mental illness? WTF?
*Carlie’s all-caps took the form of “SHE MADE NO DYSLEXIA REMARKS” after blu had once again referred to these imaginary remarks by me.
**For some reason some of them seem to think the only lie people are referring to is her claim that I called her dyslexic. That thread is where reason and evidence go to die.
Neil deGrass Tyson interviews Ingrid Newkirk, co-founder of PETA. (web page)
I enjoy most episodes of StarTalk radio, but I don’t like this interview. Neil seems to not know how research on animals is regulated. He seems not know the difficulties of simulating animals with computers for drug testing. Neil seems clueless about the problems with PETA’s suggestion that Ben Jerry’s use human milk for making ice cream. His comedian co-host Lynne Koplitz seems to have no concept of the ethics of experimenting on prisoners – and niether does Neil or his animal behaviorist co-host Peter Borchett.
The only good criticism of Ingrid Newkirk’s views made is by the comedian Lynne Koplitz, who, despite being clueless about the ethics of experimenting on prisoners, at least recognizes that people or animals who cannot feel pain can still have needs, wants, and goals, and sees the inconsistency in Ingrid Newkirk’s stance of not caring what happens to the animal if does not feel pain.
Heh :)
I heard about cheese made from human breast milk before. Apparently it was crumbly, oily, gross, and unpleasant tasting. Kind of a sweaty feet flavor.
oh
fuck
http://icons-ecast.wunderground.com/data/images/at201109_5day.gif
Guess where landfall is as of right now?
Hopefully the path will keep drifting east.
Sigh
from facebook
”Please don’t fear the hurricane… Send out love for the ocean, and feel gratitude for your safety and stability on Earth. SEE it veering away or dissipating. It is the collective fear that will create fearful outcome. ♥ Om Shanti”
*hug* for Giliell. By the time I read this, the situation will no doubt have been sorted out, but still, *hug*.
–
Katherine Lorraine, congratulations on your ball of fluff. IME, single kittehs get bored easily and look for excitement in the oddest places and at the expense of your stuff. You have been warned! :D
–
:(
adds *chocolate* to *hugs*
–
adds *booze*
–
Dyslexia -is- a learning disorder, so I suppose it could be called a form of mental illness.
It also varies a lot from person to person. I can read no problem; it’s when I try to read something and then write it out, or when I’m taking words in my head of voice and writing them down, that things get all wonky. Don’t even think of asking me to do that with numbers.
However, that doesn’t in any way imply a lack of intelligence or anything else. Nor is it an insult, no more than being left-handed or fair-skinned (each of which requires some compensations for normative functioning).
(My usual joke: .skcus aixelsyD)
@cicely:
Only things I’m worried about are small cords. Snip’s already found a secret hiding spot between my stove and the cabinets and the wall (I’ve looked back there before – just a big open area with nothing in it. Can’t block it either cause it’s a huge opening.)
…because Earth is self-evidently a completely safe and stabile place, what with all the earthquakes and volcanos and shit. :P
–
Gilliel,
Best wishes to you and your grandmother.
Dyslexia is not a mental illness. It is a disability. No amount of psychotherapy or pharmacotherapy will remediate a reading disorder. You are born with it. You die with it.
Lone Coyote – My neighbor found a lovely way to stop the very loud and annoying dogs behind her from barking into the night( and we have benefited as well)…
Google: Outdoor Ultrasonic Bark Deterrent
Patricia,
Yay on the good news.
___
Mushrooms don’t belong to the two food groups and as such should be stomped when found and never eaten.
___
Mmm, heather honey.
___
SC,
That’s just scary. Attacking an opponent’s personal life because someone can’t deal with an argument is low and completely out of line. I hope this doesn’t affect you in meatspace.
___
Giliell,
Oh, that’s hard. Hope they sort it out quickly, waiting is so difficult for everyone.
_
Also, I hate extended warranties. What a load of bull.
___
Kitty has a kitty. Nice.
MinnieTheFinn, I happened to be outside from midnight to sunrise that night: there was an underground dance party in the forest a few kilometres outside the city. The sky was a bit cloudy so I only saw the brightest stars, but the moon looked nice indeed.
Actually I don’t dance, and don’t enjoy trance music at all, but I just hung out at the chill out zone drinking a few beers and smoking joints. The atmosphere was really friendly, and the absurdity of it all amused me to no end.
I’ve also always enjoyed these dark, relatively warm August nights.
She’s a total loon. One of my wife’s former clients. I’d block her on facebook but it’s a window into dumbfuckery.
She hits ALL the woo topics.
With regards to mushrooms: a friend of mine once told me that in Ukraine (her ancestral home) people used to put unfamiliar mushrooms on the tip of their tongue and wait a bit. Tingling sensation: poisonous, spit it out. No tingling sensation: probably okay, cook and eat.
Seems a fairly unreliable method. Indeed, the same friend got really sick from eating some mushrooms that were NOT chanterelles one time.
I can’t stand mushrooms, the texture makes me gag, so it’s all academic to me.
Tonight I leave for NYS to meet niece #2 for the first time and niece #1 for the second time! I’ll wave at Audley as we go by Schenectady. Hi Audley!
SallyStrange – whereabouts in NY are you going? I hope it’s a good trip!
Thanks, but I have my own dogs, two very well behaved animals who definitely do not deserve to be punished for the neighbor’s assholery.
I just use the garden hose usually.
As far as I know, Ing has always made a point of not providing hir gender. People tend to use “his” but Ing responds to either. Someone can correct me if this has changed.
Where in NYS? Why I’m going to ONEONTA, home of the USA Soccer Hall of Fame, otherwise known as Cooperstown’s poor cousin, otherwise known as “Stoneonta” to the many State and private college students who frequent its many, many bars.
It’s a 5-hour drive.
————————–
I didn’t read Ing’s comment as sexist necessarily, though it could be seen that way. Just an inappropriate way of responding, even if the other person is lying and threatening to sue and being generally stupid and irritating. And yes, Ing does make a point of not revealing gender.
I will never catch up with the Thread, so my apologies and I’m going to jump in now because otherwise it will be never.
Nice new digs! Uh, sorry if I’m asking for something the remedial class has already covered, but is there a reason WordPress won’t accept my regular WP username to log in to FTB? Do I need to re-register, because I don’t see a link to do that anywhere?
Hoping everyone is doing pretty much okay. Yay for benign! Yay for kittens moving in and chicks moving out! Serious boos for sick grandmas and a hug for Gilliel.
I have been a) building a new bed, b) away at the beach, c) seeing Les Miz on stage for the first time and c) stripping 70+ year old wallpaper from my bedroom.
kristinc, so nice to see you again! Yeah, you’ll need to re-register. Link is on the login screen, under the login fields, in little tiny print.
I’m trying to come up with some new flavor names here, but I’m whiffing. I’ve got nothing. Little help?
Finally got a paper that’s been rattling around for over 2 years while my coauthors and I play passive aggressive with each other accepted.
Magic Poopey Head powers, activate!
Dyslexia is not a mental illness. It is a disability. No amount of psychotherapy or pharmacotherapy will remediate a reading disorder. You are born with it. You die with it.
There are, however, a number of therapies which can help make reading easier and improve the lives of people with dyslexia. There are also degrees of dyslexia. I’m mildly dyslexic and learned to read by brute force, treating words in English as ideograms, much like Chinese. Too bad no one thought to teach me Mandarin when I was a child…oh, well, too late now. Anyway, I still have the occasional…odd…moments. Like if I see a sign on a door reading, “Please knock before entering” I will inevitably read it as “Please enter before knocking” and think “huh?” before sorting it out.
Neil seems to not know how research on animals is regulated. He seems not know the difficulties of simulating animals with computers for drug testing.
Duh. He’s an astronomer. Why should he know that? Well, he would if he’d talked to his nominal research supervisor at the AMNH about the upcoming interview, who could in turn have asked his partner about the major points…Really, this is a TVTropes worthy case of did not do the research.
I had always wondered what catarrh was. Now I know (Dad always told me that if I wasn’t careful, I would learn something new every day. Looks like I wasn’t careful.)
There are very, very, very few phrases in any language which are universal truisms. That is one of them.
I have tried three times to comment there. My comments have never shown up (which I don’t understand — it takes me quite a while to build up to full-blown outrage (or maybe I don’t know what I’m doing)). Reading that quote makes me want to go back there and put even more comments in moderation. My brain processes information in an unusual manner, therefore I am mentally ill?
Wait. What? Learning disorders are mental illnesses? When did this happen? The US Army accepted a mentally ill recruit for training in Military Intelligence (go ahead, insert your jokes here)? No wonder the military is fucked up.
At last, some rationality. Thank you, Psych-Oh!
And I would add that an understanding teacher, at the right stage of development, who is willing (and able (there were 15 kids in my 3d grade class that year) to teach some coping strategies (some of which worked for me) can do wonders (for some).
There are four food gropes: Beans, Bacon, Whiskey and Lard.
Now this is where my profession destroys my ability to grok. I hear Oneonta and think, “Ah, the town in NY wherein the Delaware & Hudson Railroad had a large railroad yard and engine servicing facilities, and also interchanged with the New York,Ontario & Western Railroad, and is close to the location of the incident of the Famous Flying FTs.” I am acculturated to think of everything in historic railroad terms.
——-
kristinc:
Welcome back.
——-
And I have, currently in the oven, a fresh basil and roasted garlic foccacia which we will consume with leftover ragu Bolognesa.
I’d imagine this would be very difficult over the long run, which would explain why Ing has not quite achieved a 100% success rate.
Interesting. I’ve only just picked it up after Plait plugged it.
I’ve only listened to the
Samuel L. ActionMorgan Freeman episode, and I wasn’t terribly impressed.How about: “The Mother Load”
Catching up:
Hooray, Patricia!
Hugs for Giliell.
Daaawww for Katherine’s new kitteh.
I liked having ducks. We tended to have two or three ducks and had a chicken for a while when I was kid. All were decently comfortable with us; I used to have to fight with the ducks to keep them out of my kiddie pool. Our hen used to aggravate my childhood dog by flying up to get treats above the dog’s head. The one mallard we ever had (named Pavlov, naturally) would come when you whistled; we fed him grasshoppers caught while gardening so he was very happy to be summoned.
Oh yeah, Ogvorbis, thanks for reminding me! That is something I learned growing up there actually: Oneonta was once the home of the world’s largest roundhouse. Roundhouse, right? Where they housed the trains? Forgive my ignorance.
There are so many old railroad beds there, you can walk from town to town on them if you’re so inclined. And I have.
slignot,
“naturally”?
@Sili, it was an operant conditioning joke.
Damn wiki.
Anybody who wants to troubleshoot: are you getting this error when logged in at http://pharyngula.wikia.com/wiki/Special:EmailUser/Markovbaines ? (no need to try to send an email; the error should show up immediately when you’re logged in to your wiki account)
Swearing and pounding on the machinery do not help.
No.
sgbm:
Horses-not-zebras: Do you have a valid email address in your preferences?
####
I’ve survived one class. Here’s hoping the next one is less painful.
Also, I found out that eight of the students are unlikely to get credit for the course, as they’re Engineering majors (who aren’t allowed to get credit for it).
Strange Gods – Naughty Marvin is sleeping in his deck chair after doing all this re-do stuff @82/83.
I’m at a loss as to what we are or aren’t doing correctly. This is going to give me a complex. *snort*
“The Best of the Breast”?
(The obvious name for the bottled product along the lines of koumiss would be “Nipple Tipple”.)
–
kristinc, welcome home. :)
–
Benjamin – Congratulations! Have some grog.
Ogvorbis:
Well my understanding (and I could be wrong) is that the phrase “mental illness” is no longer really used; instead, it’s “mental disorder” to both the APA and WHO. Both classify dyslexia as a mental disorder. So, the official line is a bit fuzzy, especially as the term doesn’t necessarily “exist” nowadays (IIRC, the WHO regards the terms “illness” and “disorder”, as well as “disease”, as pretty much synonymous).
For the record, I don’t consider myself mentally ill because I’m dyslexic. But I don’t think the association is impossible, given the nature of the descriptions. This is a case where severity and connotation probably come into play.
So at 343 we have the blockquote bar, but no little gumby. Then no comic sans. That’s a weird out come.
Dammit.
Hey there
Thanx for the hugs (and the booze)
Gran is confused and disappointed but stable, so I hope the next days will get her to a point where they can attemmpt surgery again. On the plus side they (if you can call it that) now think that her bad heart rates came from the pneumonia, not from a heart attack.
And something almost funny: Mr. told me (we had only briefly talked this afternoon) that the people at the garage had also given him the option to fix the problem with the PoS “for good” (as if we’d believe them. Actually, there’s nothing Toyota could do right now that would convince me that they could fix the damn thing for good): It would involve an exchange of almost everything connected with the turbo-loader and the exhaust-system and cost a mere 3.500 € (yep, 4.900$). Their usual clients must be pretty stupid…
Positive:
Got a nice SMS from one of my students (I teach Spanish for adults) who’s looking forward to me and the new semester.
Wow, if Dyslexia is a mental illness, so is being colour blind.
RE: Ducks and roosters
When I was a kid, we had a pair of Indian Call ducks. We’d put a small kiddy-pool in the ground for them to use. I also had a pet Bantam rooster named Chanticleer. We noticed one day, that he had started getting a bit “frisky” with the hen duck. A few days later we found him, floating face-down in the duck pond. I’m not saying it was the drake who “did him in” but….
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Caine, I like your mayor. Growing up, we lived outside any city boundaries, but the mayor in the nearest city was the guy in this photo.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Patricia:
Wheee! An extra twirl from me on your behalf.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Katherine: Congratulations on your new ball o’ fluff. My kitteh also likes to have places to hide. I find providing certain places where she knows she’ll be safe and undisturbed helps keep her from seeking new (and possibly dangerous) hiding places. Another bonus is knowing where to peek when she’s disappeared.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
As I understand it, there is a difference between macadam, tarmacadam, and asphalt. “Macadam” predates asphalt and was actually used in places by the Romans.
Tarmac/tarmacadam is a macadam road with tar added.
Asphalt/bitumen is found in newer roads and is replacing tarmac/tarmacadam.
Though the idea of ice cream made from breastmilk is just…weird…nonetheless my love of puns could not resist the challenge:
Fudge Nipple
Expresso [lactation joke]
Latte Letdown [another lactation joke]
Double Chocolate
French Lace Vanilla
Nipplolitan [Neopolitan]
Bustier pecan [butter pecan]
Sleepytime
Leaky Lane [lactation joke, re: Rocky Road]
Well, how about Nipple Ripple then?
I can see the third one being related to gropes, but not the other three.
Also, I was informed recently that bacon has jumped the shark. ‘Bout time.
Pretty sure colourblindness resides in the retina, not the processing area.
I got the operant conditioning, I’m just not sure what salivating dogs have to do with mallards. Is it a dog/duck pun? I didn’t think those worked for native speakers.
Hey all – I have a weird medical question. I have rather an abundance of brown, freckle-like moles on my arms. Recently several (fourish?) of them scabbed over, then healed as though they had been wounds, with the scab falling off and a little tiny scar-like mark left behind. One or two of them got raised and reddish before disappearing, but they’re normal-looking now. I will be seeing a doctor at some point about this, because it’s strange mole behavior, but I haven’t been able to yet. My question is, is the situation urgent enough that I need to find a clinic here in Sacramento where I’m visiting, or can I wait tennish days and see my regular doctor in North Dakota?
I’ll have to check on that. There are at least three roundhouses (one extant) in the US which have claimed ‘largest’ at one time or another. One of the problems with ‘largest’, ‘biggest’, ‘longest’, ‘most powerful’ and other superlatives when one discusses railroad history is that, depending on just what definition one uses, there may be multiples of each.
For instance, the Union Pacific Big Boys are often referred to as the largest steam locomotives ever built. They are the heaviest reciprocating steam locomotives, but the Jawn Henry steam turbine of the Chesapeake & Ohio weighed more. As for power, ALCo figured the theoretical horsepower at ~7,200hp, but that was assuming high-BTU coal. In service, they usually developed around 6,000 to 6,400hp (between 30 and 45mph) which puts them behind the C&O Allegheny (2-6-6-6) locomotive, and the Pennsylvania Railroad’s Q1 and Q2 engines (of 4-4-6-4 or 4-6-4-4 wheel arrangement). Other locomotives had more drive wheels, more cylinders, more tractive effort, and even more length but, the Union Pacific Railroad’s public relations films have firmly set the UP Big Boy’s as largest.
So inclined. Which is odd, because railroads tended to try to avoid inclines. Which is one reason the O&W disappeared completely.
I’m not in the mental health business, but, for me, as a layman, I prefer cognitive or learning disability.
Here – latest blog post has a picture of the cute!
http://criticallyskeptic-dckitty.blogspot.com/2011/08/zomg-kitty.html
Oh my, she says, maybe sending the entirety of Pharyngula’s TET to my blog is a bad idea – she says. Or maybe it’ll gather more followers, she says! Kekeke, using the lure of the cute as an exploitative method of generating interest. Kekeke, can you say “extortion?”
All Hail Tpyos! That should, obviously, be group. Not grope. Group.
Um, I think it was eaten by the shark.
Kitty, you ARE the cute. Well, Snip’s the cute too, but there won’t be any ignoring of you!
Well, that’s that. Bluharmony went all bizarroworld on me some more. My desire to try and interject a modicum of truth into the pit has been fulfilled and is now gone. They’ve devolved into being entirely unintelligible. Which is good, because that was a lot more page hits than I ever wanted to give Abbie in the first place. Now I know for sure there’s no point in even trying. I declined another ERVite’s attempt to goad me into an argument, and let them know I’m around in other places should they ever want to try to crawl out into the normal universe, and now I’m done. Huzzah. I guess I broke the rule of trolldom – if we all ignore them, perhaps they’ll tire of doing nothing but griping about other people. I shall now do my part in the ignoring.
SallyStrange, that’s a part of the state I haven’t been to. I hope you have a good time.
Classical Cipher: aha, there it is! I don’t know how my mental processing rendered that link as invisible when I was looking for it. All registered now. I feel like I’ve moved my boxes in and arranged my little nick-nacks on the shelf.
Hi, Brother Ogvorbis! Hi, cicely (aw, you made me feel all warm and fuzzy)!
I kept a little flock of contraband hens for several years and they were so much fun. When I called them they would come pelting across the yard, wings flapping, heads down and necks outstretched like the little dinos they were. They would spot watermelon from a long way away and come running to beg (I read that chickens see very well in the red spectrum). The only downside to them being so friendly and used to treats was that if I tried to eat a snack in the yard they would practically climb into my lap trying to help themselves to a share.
I’m a bit late but ….
Yay! Patricia!
Gillel:
Actually, colour blindness is classified as an eye disease, since it’s actually an error in vision.
—
Erm, I think I need more caffeine. I’m getting too specific.
—
My sister and I “had” ducks once – my mom’s friend owned a farm, and we went with her husband to the local store and picked out two ducklings. She named hers Quackers and wanted me to name mine Milk; of course, I named it Cheese instead :)
Cheese ended up being a male and kept for years, and Quackers ended up being a dinner at some point.
@Classical Cipher:
Ehee, thanks :3
@Sili, well, he did sort of think he was a dog, actually. (Once got him into some trouble with the neighbor’s dog. He wanted to play, and the dog wanted to eat him.) But it was mainly a comment on the fact that he’d been conditioned to expect food when you whistled and would come running find you from whatever corner of the yard he was in. Not sure if ducks salivate much, but if he was capable, a whistle would almost certainly have produced that response. It was a truly strange behavior in a duck.
@Classical Cipher, while I’v never had any of my moles behave thus, I would guess it’s probably not so urgent that you get it fixed before you return home. I’ve had a couple scares with moles and the like where they haven’t behaved quite normally, but those have mostly been benign. (But with the paleness and family histories of skin cancers and melanomas, I watch them very carefully.) I have one mole on my neck that’s been steadily shrinking for the last 6 years or so, with a fading white halo, for example.
The scariest thing I’ve faced was an outgrowth of a blood vessel outside my skin. At first I figured it was some kind of blister/infection, but it bled like crazy and eventually got bigger. Like you, I was on vacation as it got worse, so by the time I got back and had it dealt with, it was the size of pea. Came back as benign, but having my blood vessels do strange things (like growing outside my body) freaked me out.
Classical Cipher: No idea about the moles, but for years I had this mole in my left armpit. In the summer, it would sweat, and it would itch and sting like crazy from the friction of swinging my arms while walking.
Eventually it just pissed me off too much, so I ripped it clean off. Took a week or so of ‘working it’ and gritting my teeth, but it was definitely worth it.
@Lone Coyote
Just reading that made me cringe.
Also, hello everyone!
@Kitty, Snip is adorable! Spouse has this fuzzy idea of getting a cat at some point, but it would be fairly difficult to find a cat that would fit in with our group, I fear. Between the friendly dog who wants all creatures (including cats) to play with her, and the parrot who I’d prefer doesn’t get eaten, scratched or harmed, I think cats may not be in the cards for another ~30 years.
I swear Snip teleports. He’ll be behind the couch one second then across the room the next. And at the moment he’s currently making circuits around my apartment.
Ouch.
–o–
Thanks, slignot. Sorry for being slow.
–o–
Okay, you win the Weirdest Pet competition.
Still think it’s an inhumane way to keep a mole, though.
“500 years ago, yeast’s epic journey gave rise to lager beer” http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-08-years-yeast-epic-journey-gave.html
Lager: a gift to the world from Patagonian yeast! Can we officially label this yeast as part of the human metagenome? Metabiome? Meta-whatever.
Put unfamiliar mushrooms on the tip of the tongue…of a cow! Cows are experts at spotting poisonous mushrooms, presumably by smell. They love the non-poisonous kind.
Human milk: An episode of Family Guy had Stewie as tyrant ordering all milk should be from the breast of a celebrity. And in American Dad, in one episode they “harvested” the milk from the alien. U-ulp.
— — — — — — — — —
Factoid about tarmac. In East Germany, they used concrete as cover for roads since unlike the asphalt in tarmac it would not burn when exposed to the heat of nuclear explosions (in a war, most of the damage would have been from firestorms since thermal loading scales directly to bomb yield. By contrast, blast damage does not scale directly to the power of the bomb).
Hmmm, I feel that my joke about colour blindness being a mental illness just like Dyslexia disn’t make it across ;)
@Katherine
Yep, definetly supercute, that cat
*yawn*
Off to bed now. Tomorrow we’ll see…
Not according to wikipedia, although I’m sure most often it is a retinal problem.
@ consciousness razor
If you read the background section, it says it’s a problem with the retina; specifically, the cones.
You know when you’re scrolling up and reading from the bottom, and you see a post, and you read it, and you say “heh, I know who wrote that” before you even see the nym? Yep. The Lone Coyote is now officially one of those posters I can identify before I read the nym. TLC, in the very prestigious and important region that is my brain, you are now officially a regular.
—-
I’ve mentioned to some of the chatters in PET, but I’m going to mention it here too in hopes that it will help me actually get around to doing it – I have been thinking about writing a post either for here or for my blog about my idiosyncratic response to gendered slurs. Specifically I’m thinking of writing about the word “cunt.” It’ll have a good deal to do with my own personal history, but I hope it’ll have some interest beyond that, because I’ll be writing about the intersection between “dirty” words and hate words, and also about some kink stuff. Donno. Even if it’s not interesting, dammit, I’m going to write it!
Carlie – This will probably bring down a ‘visitation’ upon our heads, but I really wish we could send ERV’s blog Truth Machine, or the borer worm from Flash Gordon.
-0-
Classical Cipher:
Doesn’t sound urgent to me. I’m don’t play a doctor on TV, but I have lots of skin oddities myself and that doesn’t sound like any of the scary things we get told to watch out for. If they were melanoma they wouldn’t scab and heal, and as far as I know, melanoma is the only “urgent-care” type of skin cancer. There’s another type of skin cancer which will scab over and heal, but it’s not urgent, you can wait weeks/months/years from its first appearance.
Hey, how much longer are you going to be in Sacto ? Fancy a meetup there ? We’ve been talking with David Marjanovic about Nov. LA trip, but I’m actually in NorCal and I need to make a trip to Sacto sometime this year. About now would be good …
Patricia, no gumby there, but I see one in 343.
Patricia, both show for me.
CC, it sounds like the problem is more long-term; that is, you’d be ok with waiting until you get back to your PCP. Remember that the someone you see far away from home won’t have access to your medical history, and that can make a big difference in diagnosis.
ibyea @ 223:
I get ya. Curse words are not in my ‘everyday vocabulary” category. I use them from time to time but not as a general rule.
Birger Johanssen:
If I HAPPENED to be dating a girl who HAPPENED to be lactating at the moment… I’d probably consider sampling a bit just to say I did. That said, from all accounts human milk is lousy for cheeses and ice creams. At least that’s what I’ve heard.
CC: Thank you, glad to know I’ve made an impact. :) I have to admit, before I started educating myself about rape culture and how gendered slurs contribute to it… I used to love the word ‘cunt’. No misogyny in my mind, just liked the sound and shock value. Now that I’ve made a conscious decision to try to drop those words, I’m very interested in what you have to say on the topic.
Strange Gods – could the double slashes before the prompt order (is that even remotely correct?) have the codes shut off for me? I’m on a Compaq Presario with windows XP.
//
//
No wise cracks about my computer, I already know. Uppity geeks.
Preview shows the space after // as blank, it isn’t it has the codes.
@Patricia
I’m not sure about your problem but you made me chuckle. I was thinking “Why are you using Windows XP?” and then I read the part about no wise cracks. If I was less skeptical I might say you’re psychic.
CC
Thanks. Perhaps just me then.
+++++
Benjamin
Yep. It worked a couple days ago, and I’ve changed nothing in the meantime.
I’ll assume it’s a transient bug which will move on soon enough. If not, I’ll email Wikia in a couple more days.
+++++
Patricia
I think that’s the expected outcome if it’s not working. You would see a normal blockquote.
I’m at a loss too. If you’ve deleted the userContent.css file, which can be found:
On Windows 2000/XP:
c:\Documents and Settings\[Windows Login Name]\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\[profile name]\Chrome
Windows Vista/7:
C:\Users\[User Name]\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\[profile name]\chrome
I don’t know what else to do. Last option is to give me any errors relating to secretcomicsans.user.js from Firefox’s Error Console. Or give up. Sorry!
I think it’d be better to wait til I’m in LA – right now I’m staying with the sort of family that likes to know where I am at all times, and I’d prefer to do all my meetups when I’m living on my own and can kinda do my own thing without people getting worried. Sorry about that though, I can see how this would be way more convenient!
If you’re talking about this stuff:
starstuff91:
If you read the whole page, you’ll find it mentions other causes of color blindness in various places:
So my comment from yesterday is now through, several times. I guess it did trigger moderation?
Bizarrely, what is now comment 158 (by Jadehawk) first appeared, then disappeared again when I reloaded, then reappeared when I reloaded the next time. There are Things going on there That Man Wasn’t Meant To Know.
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Sister 1 compares me to a Vulcan more and more often. (She has started looking for evidence of green blood.) So which Enterprise episode did we watch recently? The one where T’Pol says “caffeine has little effect on Vulcan physiology”!!! It’s true!!! :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D
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Caught up till comment 660 of two subthreads ago.
You see, based on what people said last time we brought this topic up, it’s actually a new instinct for a new grammar, a grammar where no man has gone before. In some ways, it’s <Vulcan>fascinating</Vulcan>.
*facepalm* I’m sorry.
Thanks. Test:
Just the italics are stupid.
Let’s see if this looks different:
Day belatedly saved. ROTFL!
Judging from the back view, it doesn’t look like that’s deliberate.
Yessssssssssssss! Or, rather, in Rhinebeck (NY) from Oct. 14th to 16th.
Well, do you see an e, i, y, ae or oe behind the g?
Bookmarked.
What next? Reality overtakes fiction once again.
The lungs proper are indeed tiny, but the air sacs aren’t.
:-}
Because they could?
Over here, there were reports of blackbirds* imitating the ringing of cell phones before every cell phone had its own ringtone.
* Not what you think of, Americans. A thrush species where the females are middle brown all over and the males have black feathers while the beak, the eyes and the feet are yellow-orange.
Hey, Patricia, don’t feel bad. It’s only recently that XP lost its 50% threshold for computers. That’s all computers, not just Windows machines. So, you’re in good company. Or at least a lot of company, quality notwithstanding.
A double-slash usually comments out the current line only. At least for all the languages I’ve seen it used in.
That is, it wouldn’t work without the double slashes.
Ok I need everyone to think positive thoughts to move the hurricane away from landing on us in Charleston. Only your positive energy can move the hurricane away from us and some where else. Don’t think positive thought about the people where it might go, just these people. Actually just this person, fuck other people.
positive thoughts everyone
positive
remember
@consciousness razor
I though we were talking about the most common cause of colorblindness. My bad.
Anyway, colorblindness is a very interesting thing. I had a boyfriend in high school who was red-green colorblind. I used to draw things in red and green to mess with him. Good times.
…And everything can be improved by adding lasers! http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/3129.html
I know Vulcans can grin, but they can squee? :D
Strange Gods – We’ll give it another try, after shopping. The chickies need more feed.
Rev. – I will pray to Poseidon, and promise Eris I will eat a bunless hot dog on Friday!
Like this?
Working it with your teeth? Still, not exactly “clean off” to me. I’ve been eying this huge gross mole on my left collarbone for quite some time now, wondering if I could just…like a band-aid RIGHT OFF!
@Rey Fox
You could probably use a freeze away wart remover on it. But that’s probably a bad idea.
But if the hurricane is thinking negative thoughts, won’t that just pull it in?
Growing up, my parents used to tell me how lucky it was I was female specifically because of the bigger risk for colorblindness I would have faced being XY instead of XX. I have a number of close relatives that are colorblind (on both sides of the family), and am almost certainly a carrier for red-green. It was sort of a strange thing to be told, but I understood what they meant by it.
My grandpa was kind of funny about his colorblindness. He would ask for help in letting him know what color the lights were, and I was too young to grok that he didn’t need it.
Rey Fox: No, my teeth can’t reach my armpit. I was gritting my teeth while pulling and twisting it off with my fingers. If my teeth did reach my armpit, it wouldn’t have taken a week.
My slightly gross mole story: when I was in my early teens, laying in bed one night I felt a small lump on my own back (which, of course, I couldn’t see). Being an inveterate pimple-picker at that age, I scratched at it. The thing was it bled. Not huge amounts but for*ever*.
So I finally got out of bed and found my mother: “I scratched this thing I thought was a pimple but it won’t stop bleeding!” My mother helped wipe it off and clean it up, and discovered that it had been a mole almost a quarter inch in diameter and I had scratched that sucker right off. It kept bleeding for quite a while, too, even after being band-aided. Ruined a set of sheets as I recall. I still have a mole-shaped scar on my back.
All cats have this power. Earlier today, there were three cats (well, three-and-a-half cats) lying on the bed. I went downstairs. The same felines were now draped over the living room furniture. They did not pass me on the stairs. If we could harness this power, make it useable by humans, we could eliminate so much transportation energy use it would really help.
You realize today is opposite day, right?
Feh, some coyote you are. ;)
CC, I don’t know about moles. I’d get it checked, but you probably don’t need to rush it if you already have an appointment soonish.
No moles here, but I have a fluid-filled cyst on my eyeball. Been there a week. Can’t get an ophthalmologist to get me in for an appointment until the end of next month, even after I described today how it’s gotten twice as big since Thursday. I guess that means it’s nothing to worry about, but it’s really bugging me. When I go in for my allergy shot on Wed. I’m going to have the doctor see it and see if he can get me in anywhere sooner.
Wait. Do coyotes even have armpits? I know they eat moles (I’ve seen them do it), but moles in the armpits? Without armpits? Call me sceptical.
Patricia, I’d even go back and click on the page to see tm giving them what for. :)
Rev. BigDumbChimp | 22 August 2011 at 5:27 pm:
uh oh. The HWRF is not thinking positive thoughts for you.
The NHC official forecast looks, um, maybe a bit less negative for you.
The Lone Coyote | 22 August 2011 at 5:42 pm:
er. Next time, use an advanced surgical tool, like a box knife.
A whole hell of a lot less painful. Faster, too. Trust me.
Remember, though, do not, repeat do not, attempt that on an airplane. Would not go over well with the Department of Homeland Hysteria.
Sally:
*waves back!*
Hi Sally!
So I was at the beach a couple weeks ago and was sorely tempted by some pretty coral skeletons in the shops. Thank goodness for free wifi, because I was able to go back to the condo where we were staying, Google that shit, and determine that I could justify buying tourist coral about as much as I could justify buying tiger skins. Is that conclusion correct?
(Still shopping for coral skeletons, but vintage or estate instead. Prices on eBay seem to actually be less than the tourist shops wanted.)
Good morning, TET!
Thank you to all who reassured me about hubby. I asked him what he was worried it might be, and he said TB. I tried to reassure him that (a) he’s been vaccinated against it and (b) he’s had the cough so long that I would think that he would already have lost a lot of weight and be coughing up blood. My paternal grandmother died from TB and my father, then a teenager, barely survived after being stuffed full of that new-fangled streptomycin. My siblings and I were all vaccinated as infants. I hope I’m right that it is unlikely to be his problem.
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No, drbunsen, Son-out-law is not on this continent, sadly, but back home in Ireland. :-(
Awesome guy, actually. Best thing that could have happened to my daughter was getting together with him. They are one of the happiest, most contented couples I know.
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TLC, human milk is very sweet* – I’m not surprised it makes terrible cheese.
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Carlie, well done on your efforts over there. Sending you a refreshing tipple of your choice (and chocolate!) through the USB to aid recovery.
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*Breastfed five kids, including a pair of twins. Of course I tasted it. What?
kristinc: I’d say that sounds about right. I’m no coral expert, but I do know it takes years to build up, and moments to smash. Much more beautiful alive and growing, IMO.
That said, surely there’s sustainable coral somewhere…. (as an artist with a knack for carving, I’m always interested in natural materials like that)
Morning, all. Have you seen this about the US education fail and H1B visas? http://youtu.be/NK0Y9j_CGgM (See how this format of youtube link doesn’t embed?)
Carlie, thanks for the info about Laden. I had heard of the post-changing case, but without the identifying detail. That certainly moves it from a prank (no serious harm) to being definitely wrong in my book.
Lone Coyote: and it wasn’t even the knowledge that coral takes a long time to grow that really worried me. It was reading that a lot of the stuff is harvested (illegally of course) by dragnetting indiscriminately in the reefs. I guess there *is* sustainable and responsibly harvested coral, but a) it’s pretty much impossible to be certain that’s what you’re buying and b) tourist coral is not it, ever.
no shit Kristinc? Have they at least stopped the dynamite fishing?
See confirmation that positive thinking works.
I’m calling Oprah.
Aaahh! Pressed submit instead of preview!
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Classical Cipher, congratulations on your Molly!
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Giliell, I hope everything gets sorted soon. I hope your Gran is comfortable (good news about the heart!) and your vehicle woes are soon over.
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Thank you for the link to the photo, Katherine! =^_^=
You are both adorable!
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Tidbit: my father and half my sons are colourblind and so is at least one of my grandsons.
Dailysex, oops, I mean dyslexia, also runs through the family. Although either may be described as disorders or conditions, IMO neither is an illness of any sort.
So, has anyone here seen Rise of the Planet of the Apes yet?
I can’t wait for it to come out on DVD. It’s a great movie.
Have they at least stopped the dynamite fishing?
Looks like not. Cheezus but we’re a shitty species sometimes.
The good news is that apparently there’s enough of a demand for fake coral rather than the real thing that there’s an industry of “resin” coral. Even though it seems to be more expensive than real coral skeletons depending on species.
Now I have to determine if my lust after a capiz shell chandelier is also ecogically guilt-inducing.
“ecogically”, what the hell is that I don’t even. ECOLOGICALLY.
Rev. BigDumbChimp | 22 August 2011 at 6:52 pm
Better not. NHC just issued a special advisory substantially upgrading the intensity forecast. Irene seems to be Category 2 and undergoing rapid intensification. I hope everyone in the regions at risk is prepared.
Hang tight, Rev.
This article on Yahoo! titled “Scientists warn that aliens may come to destroy us” cites as its source this piece on International Business Times by a “staffer”, which says that *its* source is a paper in Acta Astronautica. Now, I couldn’t find any mention of the paper on the journal’s ScienceDirect website (either in the most recent issues or in the articles in press), but after some digging I found the paper on arXiv.
My basic question was, did the authors of the paper actually make the statement attributed to them in IB?:
Thankfully, the answer is “no”. The quote is from a “geographer” named Jared Diamond. Unfortunately, however, the authors’ original text is just as bad. Rather than presenting anything resembling an actual hypothesis or an analysis of actual data, they enumerate “possible scenarios” and cite a dozen or more science fiction books and movies while dashing off foundationless crap like this:
The most unfortunate passages IMO, however, are:
That’s right, an alien race might invest some obscene amount of resources to come here and exterminate us if they figure out that we’re putting out enough CO2 to alter our climate. This bit has already been picked up by climate-change deniers and will probably be given the royal point-and-laugh treatment on Beck and O’Reilly soon enough.
I have to wonder why Acta Astronautica, which seems to be mostly a hard-science journal and doesn’t appear to be trying to be Popular Mechanics or New Scientist, would publish this drivel (if indeed they actually have); there are much more appropriate venues for sensationalistic tripe like this.
The conclusion of this 33-page monstrosity?
If this is considered “mental training,” brothers and sisters, I’m skippin’ school.
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/08/22/rhett-s-daniels-litigious-bully/comment-page-1/#comment-19737
Rhett Daniels found us guys. Unless it’s a fake.
I believe the correct word for this is, motherfucker.
Time to check my hurricane kit.
Well, I’m heading off to bed.
I just watched the Little League team from small town Pennsylvania (28 miles from Williamsport) win big. These are fun games, especially since, occasionally, they make a play (or, rather fail to make a play) the way I did when I played (or tried to play) baseball.
1. Almost thread-bankrupt after five days visiting family.
2. Patricia— I’m so relieved for you!
Giliell, pneumonia as a “silver lining” is certainly…novel.
Dyslexia, color blindness, ADD, supertaster, synethesia….I don’t think of them as illnesses, so much as “conditions”, or “variations eligible for selection”, pro or con.
I could be wrong.
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Katherine Lorraine, your blog wouln’t let me post my comment, so:
–
slignot, I don’t even remember a time when I didn’t have at least half a dozen “blood spots”, which I’ve been told are just harmless extensions of my blood vessels. They come, and they go, and if I pick at them they’ll bleed like nobody’s business, but at fifty-mumble years of age, they still haven’t carried me off.
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Howdy, starstuff91. :)
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Sili, is that Pharygula at Sb, or Pharygula here?
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Cats not only can teleport, they can go translight, too.
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CC, they show up all right to me.
Also, conga rats for the Molly. :)
I spent the better part of the past two hours or so struggling to install a new set of blinds on a window. I finally get the thing in place, only to realize as I stepped back for a better look that a) it is not exactly centered, and b) the bolts are not quite in the right spots in the headrail.
I am SO not taking it all down just to get it right. If it falls down at some point, fine I’ll fix it. At least with the next set I’ll know to do more than simply make sure the brackets are straight and screwed in tightly.
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Three days off work starting Wednesday. Tennis tourney. The only real reason I could think of to use my unpaid vacation days. Not that I don’t enjoy tennis, but I think it’d be nice if I could just say, “Well, I can’t use those days during school time, so I’ll just use them to stay as home for a week and goof off,” without feeling guilty.
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Also spent over an hour helping the kids paint a map of the US on the asphalt in the schoolyard. If my arms aren’t a bit sore tomorrow, I’ll be surprised.
Does this help? I went into my Firefox Error Console and found this several times associated with the secret comic sans:
Error: paragraphs[m].setAttribute is not a function
Source File: file:///C:/Users/wink/AppData/Roaming/Mozilla/Firefox/Profiles/bor8tj0c.default/gm_scripts/secret_comic_sans/secret_comic_sans.user.js
Line: 17
And this once:
Error: blockquotes[n].cite is undefined
Source File: file:///C:/Users/wink/AppData/Roaming/Mozilla/Firefox/Profiles/bor8tj0c.default/gm_scripts/secret_comic_sans/secret_comic_sans.user.js
Line: 13
I dunno what anything is. I’m seeing gumbies some of the time and not seeing them other times.
Here we go again:
Fuckfuckityfuckfuck! I’m gonna start throwing Walnettos ™.
Why thank you, Weed Monkey!
I actually think that what’s happening on my end is that I’m able to view the first gumbified comment in a thread as gumbified, and not any beyond that. Is that possible? I don’t know for sure. Like I said, I don’t know what anything is.
Patricia, congratulations on your benign diagnosis, and good luck with your upcoming procedure.
Caine, here’s hoping your test results will also be benign.
cecily, I’m happy to hear that the antibiotics have done the trick.
SC, I’m sorry to hear you’re being harassed.
Katherine Lorraine, congratulations on Snip. Also, teleportation is a cat skill if you check their class stats.
Tigger_the_Wing, *hugs*
Giliell, *hugs* I have always found the waiting to be the hardest part of the process.
Rev, keep safe.
Oh, and Gileill, do keep us updated on gran. Hope she and all your family are doing well.
Hekuni Cat, thank you for the hugs. They injected hubby with a dye and posted him twice through the CT scanner. I feel bad as I was too poorly to go with him. Results in just over two hours…
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Patricia, I hope you get it working. I’ve decided not to try, in case I break the internet.
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If I hold a picture of an umbrella over the Google Earth image of the places threatened by the hurricane, will that protect everyone?
Said in comic sans
What was wrong with the old html code anyway?
Want a walnetto Tigger?
Only just caught up with the thread. The hell, was this month secretly designated Shit Hits the Fan Month?
Patricia, hope your surgery goes well. At least you will be able to ride your motorcycle when it’s all over.
Caine, may your test results come back with good news.
Hope your grandma recovers swiftly, Gilliell.
Katherine Lorraine, I don’t know about teleportation, but cats sure do have a talent for being stealthy. Enjoy Snip!
Here’s hoping this batch of nonsense dies down without anyone getting hurt, SC. Sometimes it seems people LOOK for a reason to be offended, and then it’s off to the races once they do.
To everyone I may have missed: Good luck, hugs, chocolate, grog, coffee, and all that great stuff. Bed calls.
Classical Cipher, OM:
I had my (pathologist) husband read your question. He says it can wait until you get home.
Thank you and your husband :) and thanks to everyone else who’s offered advice about this. I’m a little worried because I have a family history of skin cancer, but it’s basal cell, which tends to be somewhat less of a problem than most cancers. Still, nurr. All right, I’ll wait.
Better call it a night. We have some VA bigwig coming to inspect the veterans home, and then show up at our office. I have to grit my teeth and be a ‘team player’. Which means smile, say yessir, and don’t poke his eyes out with my stiletto knitting needles. *SNORT*
Our local paper is running a poll that, while doing pretty well (percentage wise) only has 23 votes, besides mine.
Should Taxes Go Up On The Super Rich?
– Yes, in fact I would raise taxes on any income higher than $200,000.
– Yes, but only those at the highest of highest levels.
– No. If anything, the 51 percent who are not paying any federal tax should pay some.
– Yes, I would raise taxes on any income higher than $100,000.
– Yes, I would raise taxes on everyone.
– No. No one’s taxes should go up.
– I don’t know.
Yes.
I think it was good, but flawed. The beginning, especially, didn’t really make any kind of sense.
But I am willing to give them a pass on that, because the rest of the story was very compelling.
I would like to see a primatologist’s comments on how much the ape stuff corresponded to reality.
CC
In theory, it helps. That and a description of the issue is the most informative you can be. It was working for you earlier, though?
Are you sure you’ve only got beta 4 on that particular computer? The problem you describe happened before, but should be cleared up now.
I can no longer reproduce that bug, so:
I like this! It’s the story of how a mother of an autistic child was able to help explain autism to her child’s schoolmates. It’s sweet and good :)
SGBM, I somehow overlooked beta 4! Thank you so much, that fixed it. I feel better.
The new site deletes ‘class’ attributes like ‘class=”creationist”‘, so I had to improvise with ‘cite’.
Sorry I’m not sure what else to do. My advice now is just to whine at PZ to bring back the old Comic Sans.
Ah, then your Error Console stuff was very helpful, because it let me say “I recognize that bug, and it’s supposed to be dead already.”
@Cicely, personally I would think of pneumonia as a “silver lining”, because then I would have a simple diagnosis and could get the right fucking drugs and get fucking better.
At the moment I’m feeling most afraid that I’ll end up having some mysterious chronic fatigue thing that makes everybody (including me) think I’m a loony or a skiver. Diabetes and thyroid conditions and kidney disease are also on the menu, which sound bad, but they all feel like better outcomes because they are understandable and have actions and/or drugs to take.
My asthma seems to be settling down quite well at last – I’m on daily “preventer” meds (seretide) but not taking the immediate relief inhaler much at all (ventolin) because my peak flows are just fine now. But the fatigue is still crazy annoying. I get a bunch more test results on Friday.
Classical Cipher, OM, thank you for that link! What a wonderful story, and a wonderful mother!
As someone with a ‘hairdryer brain’ myself, I love the analogy. =^_^=
I’m no primatologist, but I have the feeling it was fairly well researched. Shades of Oliver the ‘Humanzee’ and Koko the Gorilla. As I said, my favorite character was definitely the Orangutan. From what I’ve read (which is mostly anecdata) and seen on youtube, Orangs really do seem to be that introspective. In fact I was almost positive it was a real Orang until I learned ALL the apes were CG (except the hairless ones).
There were definitely weaknesses, but as you said the story is compelling. Compelling enough for me, for sure. For me, this kind of emotional investment in the characters is worth a few flubs and straying from absolute realistic ‘fact’.
Hello Pharynguloids. Or Horde, or Scrum.
I just spent 30 hours at Bronx Central Booking. My first arrest. I’m 36 but it was really disheartening. A snapshot of my own privilege.
Damnit.
I am not trying to be snarky. But it reads that way.
Actually, I am at a loss. I have been up for too long, and thought this would be a good idea.
It’s not like I was at war, I was just wayyyyyyyyyyy out of my element and saw the way people live. People not subject to the same rules I am.
It’s scary. That, I think, is what I’m getting at. Because we live in the same place, and yet…
Re Planet of the Apes:
needs moar bonobos!
Minnie the Finn: I actually kinda thought the freaky looking scarred chimp with the one eye was supposed to be a bonobo.
TLC (oh, cute =) Is that why you chose your ‘nym?):
Haven’t actually seen it yet, but I’m sure to keep an eye out on that character.
Did s/he have a lot of recreational/social bonding/stress relief sex?
No Minnie, actually he was probably the most ‘violent’ and frightening looking character in the movie. That’s what kinda threw me off. He definitely wasn’t peaceful.
Correct. Oliver Sacks has a wonderful book on the topic, The Island of the colorblind.
The visible spectrum of light for our eyes ranges from about 400nm (violet) to 700nm (red). We see grass as green because it absorbs all wavelengths of light except green, for example. Our retina is an area in the back of the eye that is made up of 2 different types of photoreceptors (facing backwards by the way, you have to ask god what he was thinking there), rods for seeing in dim light, and cones, which we use for color vision. Color vision happens when light strikes the visual pigments (a so-called Opsin plus a Vit.A derivative) in those cones, and we have 3 types of those pigments, one for a different wavelength each, tuned to blue, green and red wavelengths. These Opsins are each encoded by a separate gene (same with apes btw).
So, what kind of colorblindness you have depends on what defective gene for which Opsin you receive from your parents.
The Lone Coyote (sorry, but from now on you’ll always be Tender Loving Care in my mind, damn this pink ladybrain):
Oh. Major primatology fail. Unless the movie makers wanted to add a subliminal message regarding the corrupting effect of casual sex on one’s morals.
Minnie: He was one eyed and scarred up, and acted really spooky. I guess he wasn’t so much out and out ‘violent’ though… except for a scene at the end. I think he was supposed to be kinda mentally scarred, a bit messed up from his years in various labs, etc.
I better shut up about it now though lest I let slip a major spoiler or two by accident. This is one of those movies that really hit some notes for me, so I could go on about it forever.
Coyote:
yes please, no spoilers! Looking forward to watching that one myself in the near future.
Thank goodness Minnie, it was getting increasingly hard to avoid them.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDCiN3lMDlQ I dunno if I already showed this off or not, but this clip makes me smile every time. Gibbons need more love.
awwww, Pete is adorable =) (the gibbon’s cute, too).
Hi there, horde. I have just spent over two hours trying to reload this thread. :-(
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Anyway, Cath – I hope you get a definitive diagnosis with the results on Friday.
Not having a diagnosis always makes me nervous; what if I’m not getting the treatment that would clear it up really quickly? Or am I on the wrong stuff that will make it worse?
I look forward to when we will both be well and will be able to get together again!
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Hubby’s results (in the original gobbledegook):
So, good news – no cancer! =^_^=
Just minor (but irritating) lung damage.
It isn’t really important, but curiosity has set us to wondering what could have caused the lung damage. Could it have been the smoking? He gave up 33+ years ago. The severe head-on car crash he had 29 years ago? He had whiplash and internal injuries, and bruising from the seat belt.
His father, from his fifties onwards (hubby is 56), was suffering from similar lung damage caused by asbestos (from working in shipyards in the 1950s) but, a far as we know, hubby never worked with asbestos. Could dust have been brought home on his father’s clothes and been breathed in by the kids?
Hubby is speculating that the only reason he started suffering last year and not sooner is because a foot injury stopped his regular exercise (soccer, long-distance running and cycling) which had, he thinks, kept him super fit and kept his lungs open.
Sign number one of the owner of a kitten: tiny scratches on their hands. I’m trying to teach Snip that hands are not for attacking, course I imagine it’s a bit confusing to him when I play with him with those same hands… so whatever.
Classical Cypher:
Quite so. And I for some reason keep mixing hir up with Nerd “the only woman on Pharyngula” of Redhead XD. Apologies to all.
Looking forward to your post about slurs btw :)
*bawling*
…
Tigger:
Aw nuts. I hope to build a trike myself someday, and having someone local to yarn about it with would be great.
…
A question for the duck fanciers: is it absolutely necessary to provide them with water to paddle in? We’re tossing up between getting ducks or chickens for our house as spring approaches. My ex had ducks and a big old bath for them to swim in, and she changed the water every couple of days at least. It seems like one more maintenance chore to factor in to the decision.
On the other hand, I’m also vaguely pondering an aquaponics set-up, and thinking that duck poop could be a valuable nutrient in that system.
Cute Kitty’s kitty’s cute :)
The biting and scratching will lessen as he gets older. Just think of them as love bites :) I’m told that “love mauling” is the actual name of the behaviour.
I’m told Indian Runner ducks need less water than other varieties. I’d still probably try to provide them with a little bit of swimming opportunity.
drbunsen, I point to ducks, I point to water. That’s all.
Hello, everybody
Good news is that gran is stable and might have her surgery tomorrow.
We once had one that imitated my mum’s alarm clock and drove her nuts because it would start to “ring” half an hour before her actual alarm clock.
slignot:
Same here.
My dad is partially colour-blind. Not total red-green blind, but enough to have been turned down as a seaman.
So I definetly am a carrier. Kids have a 50% chance, so probably in a few generations when nobody will rememember the weird grandpa, there will be a little boy wondering what they actually mean by “dark vine red”.
Human breast milk
Na, didn’t like the taste.
My sister once put some accidentially in her coffee* and then spit the coffee through the room.
@Weird alien scenarios
Projection much?
Sorry, but I think it very likely that if such a civilisation exists, one that could travel through space, they must have a level of civilisation and technology that far superceeds ours. And I doubt that they managed that by stupidly plundering their planet and then setting out in search of other planets to plunder and creatures to enslave.
Hell, even we as a species in general understand that this is a bad thing to do at our pretty low standard compared to a civilisation that manages interstellar travel
CC:
I see them, except comment 443
*Not mine. She was a pediatric nurse and a mum in hospital had pumped a lot, had run out of bottles, filled it into a milk carton and just put it into the fridge
@drbunsen:
It’s cause he’s got kitten claws, which are a lot tinier and sharper than adult claws. I had one of my hands under my covers and he attacked it from above, went through a fleece blanket, a thermal blanket, and a flat sheet and managed to scratch me.
Since education is everything, I have decided to sponsor a girl in Jakarta, Indonesia through “Plan Nederland”. I would like to suggest to my fellow atheists* to do the same through http://plan-international.org/
________________
* The ones with a nickle to spare :)
It needn’t be a girl (or a boy) in Indonesia, of course.
Thanks. As I was hoping/thinking, the cone of possible paths has continued to shift east. We’re not out of the danger as we’re still very much in the possible landfall, but it’s looking more likely we’ll get a fly by with the west side of the storm, which is the less violent side. The people in Wilmington and/or on the outer banks of NC are more likely to get the full brunt if anyone does.
Hopefully it will continue the re-curvature pattern and just fly by or spin off into the Atlantic.
I think it was on Right Wing Watch – but I saw something this morning that was from one of those bigots that said something to the matter of “there’s two ways a boy becomes homosexual 1) they’re abused, 2) they don’t have a good relationship with their father.”
This canard is so common, and so ridiculous. I’m not gay, but I’m bisexual and transgender, and I was neither abused nor did I have a bad relationship with my father. He was, perhaps, a bit too forceful in his wishes for me to “man up” but never to the point where I felt like I had a bad relationship.
Killfile for freethoughtblogs (works for me) by doing the following:
1. Start FireFox
2. Press Ctrl + Shift + A. This opens your Add-on manager (you can also do this from the menu, but I’m working with a Dutch version, so I don’t know the correct labels).
3. Select killfile
4. Right-click and select ‘Edit’
5. Locate the line that starts with
var scenariolist. That is a list containing all domains that killfile works on, coupled to a list of the specific scenarios for that domain.6. Locate the entry for the wordpress domain in this list (somewhere below line 700 for me). It starts with
wordpress:[and ends with],some eight lines below that.7. Copy this entire entry and paste it below the wordpress entry.
8. You now have two entries for wordpress. Change one of them to freethoughtblogs, so that the entry reads
freethoughtblogs:[when you’re done. That is the only line you need to edit!9. Restart FireFox.
10. Kill.
Of course, updating killfile will overwrite this, so don’t update or do this again after updating.
Rev:
well, duh, that only shows that there have been some industrial-strength prayer meetings going on in your area!
Wilmingtonians (Wilmingtonites?) are obviously bigger sinners than your good neighbors, and you are enjoying the unearned privilege of herd immunity.
Glad to hear that you’re most likely to ride this one out, though.
Well Bachman and Perry have been running around like morons with their heads cut off down here recently.
Rev:
sure they didn’t run towards NC? Maybe hurricanes are sentient.
Kitty,
While you wait for your (OMG! Adorbz!) kitteh to grow out of the “attack everything that moves and a few things that don’t” stage, remember that if he gets too wild, you can scruff him to interrupt his behavior. If you do it right, he should just go limp.
It works on adult kittehs, too. :)