This is the promo video for CFI’s “Living without religion” campaign — nicely done!
We await the communicators who will complain that it is unscientific and destructive.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
The Google ads for “Online Christian Universities” are a nice added feature.
A bit saccharine for my tastes, but that’s mostly because I’m a cynical prick.
The claim would be that theists have all of that, plus God. So deep, you know.
The one flaw in that reasoning is that they don’t have God any more than we do.
We’ve seen that before, just so you know–not complaining that it’s here again.
Glen Davidson
Brilliantly done ad. Yes, it’s touchy-feely, but I think we really need some of that (along with our firebrands). People in the US really do see atheists as not fully human. It needs to be demonstrated over and over that we love people, we have careers, we have worries, joys, interests, grief. All of it. Because we’re humans too.
Jayne hat @ 0:35 !
“You don’t need God…” could play to the goddists who think atheists are willful brats who are just pretending to not believe in god.
So what’s the goal of this commercial? Please cite at least three peer-reviewed papers published in reputable journals which show this specific commercial reaches that goal precisely or admit the commercial was a complete waste of resources and energy which could have been better utilized by sucking up to Christian fundamentalists.
I don’t know, isn’t it a bit strident (or is it shrill, I can never remember)? ;)
Oh, hello Thread. Sorry I haven’t posted lately. Real life has been kind of busy. And now I have to go to sleep. Good night, Thread. Good night, Pharyngulites.
Needs more cowbell. Or more strident. Either.
Meanwhile, back in NewZild, we have billboards advertising ‘Hope’, with the line that ‘Some people say there’s probably no God…. What if they’re wrong?‘ The atheist billboard campaign obviously struck a nerve :-)
Hasn’t that ad been out for a while now? I’m certain I’ve seen it (or perhaps something extremely similar) before
Maybe propose a response sign, “Then we’ll look like morons when we’re dead rather than when we’re alive”
Walton (@previous):
Take it from a college-expense-paying parent: If they say they’re happy for you to spend as you need on food, they mean it… so make them happy! Ditto for books and clothes and whatever else you need that they’re happy to pay for. Getting our “kids” safely (=well fed, clothed, shod, and happy) through college/grad school is the
SuperbowlWorld Cup for us parents; don’t deny us our glory! ;^)And you needn’t wring your hands about privilege here, either: Just be appropriately grateful, and be prepared to “pay it forward” by making the world a little better whenever you get the chance. Nobody needs to apologize for getting educated… and that includes eating while you do so!
****
‘Tis (@7):
Now that’s funny, right there; I don’t care who you are!
Well, it’s been a busy couple of weeks here in Exeter, NH. The academy is gearing up to take precocious teens and turn them into degree-bound college students. Youngest brother’s newest class meets Tuesday morning and thereafter I’ll see little of him.
We did find time to rebuild the carburetors on his outboard motor and rewire the boat trailer lights. I’ve had ample time to perform (yes, perform) maintenance on V-Ger and make improvements to Brother’s table saw.
V-Ger is a 1995 Plymouth Voyager Sport Edition Mini-van. 3.3L V6, power assist all round, beefed up suspension and anti-sway bars and a really nice attitude when it comes to getting down the road. The odometer records a little over 216,600 miles while the engine has about 100,000 fewer miles. I feel we are well suited to one another; both older models, high mileage but well preserved. Not in too bad shape for the shape we’re in.
Once the east flank of the Appalachians are dry (might be a week!) we will be heading south together along the two lane blacktop roads, just sort of easing our way down country. Each mile, savored and deliberately, not hurriedly, driven will bring me closer to Eldest and Youngest Daughters and two small creatures said to be my grandsons. What wonders must lie ahead!
Oh, I should mention that the third annual UFO Festival went off without so much as a death ray this weekend. Truth be told, I helped to inflate the few dozen blow-up little greenie aliens that were spotted about town. Hoot and a half. Last year my mother attended and had a wonderful time.
I’m sorry that I haven’t had the time to keep up with the unrelenting horde advance that lays waste to ever rising numbers of TET incarnations. I’m without the knowledge needed to say to the one, “Oh, so sorry. Courage, friend.” or to the other, “Way to go! Do it some more!”. So I can only extend the most general of genialities and best wishes to the godless and the godly alike and trust that they are received with gusto equal to their offering.
I draw closer to grandparenthood. Er, any sage advice?
With respect to the above video: I am encouraged whenever I see people of no faith speaking up plainly, honestly and earnestly in the public arena. More of the same can only help even if some people are discommoded. I like that word, discommoded. Like, Shit or get off the pot! Bravo CFI! Encore!
Bill Dauphin to Walton:
Don’t forget, you’re (Walton) also part of their retirement plan.
Well, if being a bit saccharine is going to make people sit up and actually take notice, fine. I wonder how many people who’ve seen the commercial were all, “Hey, that’s so-and-so!” or for the more religious, “OMG, say it isn’t so!”
———————————
Most recent development in C’s death (previous thread): Turns out he’s been hitting the meth for a while. And all his friends knew. I don’t know if any of them tried to get him help, but if they did, I can only assume he refused. Also, he lost his job and had his menu stolen either after or before he and his last boyfriend broke up. It’s like a triple-whammy. He was never very good with dealing with so much piled on, crystal meth? Oof. Now we’re waiting to see if it was an overdose, or something else.
———————————
I love it when they give you free stuff for signing up for a race…but what am I gonna do with this gift card? 500 bucks and all I get to pick from the site is sunglasses (I have two pairs of those already) and watches? Maybe I could use a new watch for work so my Timex can get a break now and then….
Posting this here because it doesn’t currently fit anywhere else. FYI, for those who wonder what happened to the USA.
The bottom line. There isn’t any correlation between lower taxes and economic growth. During the Clinton years, the economy boomed. Bush cut taxes and the economy died. What those tax cuts did was starve the federal government leading to huge deficits and a huge national debt.
Cheney once said, “Deficits don’t matter.” Another thing he got wrong.
what a nice video and it wasn’t in anyone’s face.
Unfortunately many people will be offended and upset by it.
I’m a Christian, but I do say that I love the idea of ending strife between sects of people. A lot is clouded in different interpretations, but the Bible does talk a lot on the human condition regardless of one’s belief. So, One who holds completely different ideas than myself should be able to understand that their is a neutral dislike of hatred ingeneral among human kind, though much of the population is too proud to show it. In other words, I feel deprived as people feel as if they have to become an enemy if their beliefs differ from mine, or as my group of friends with similar beliefs scoffs at another with differing beliefs because pride and natural exclusive behavior dictates us to do so. Simply said, it’s destruction, and much definitely against the flow of communication and innovation which has so strongly engraved itself into humanity.
In a less personal and more global note, I also see this type of destruction in regards to knowledge itself. In Leon Uris’s book “Exodus” one of the Jewis protagonist and his father carry out a conversation on the grounds of knowledge. The discussion arises as the son fears that his father, a very orthodox Jew, would be angry that he’s studying into something slightly controversial. His father than mentions that he never was enraged, as he would imagine, by his son “reading into something,” even reading the New Testament. Why? Because of knowledge. The father knew that knowledge was to be treasured. Similarly, others sometimes look down on the fact that I read texts and and many other media sources for physics quite regularly. They consider it to be unchristian to repeatedly read something which may be contrary to scripture. On the other hand, many also look down on me for reading books and articles from Answers in Genesis, which is said to be false science, and thus, idiotic. On every imaginable side, there is disdain. I can honestly say that I very much appreciate any attempt to end it, and I pray for its success.
Crudely Wrott:
For some strange reason, I “heard” that in Garrison Keillor’s voice! ;^)
Hello all. We’ve been talking about software name changes at work and it reminded me that I’m getting bored with my nym. I’m not blogging these days (not cooking much either, and won’t be until this bloody fatigue wears off.)
I like Alethea, which someone somewhere mentioned recently as their goddess – meaning truth/reality. (But who? My search-fu seems poor today.) It’s not taken already is it? I don’t want “aletheia” as it’s too much of Heidegger.
Alethea Claw. Alethea H. Claw?
Alethea Harpy/Hyena/Hecate Claw?
Hmmmm.
Cath, you refer to Deacon Duncan at
http://freethoughtblogs.com/alethianworldview/
—
Joseph, sorry to hear about your Christianity.
(I hope you get better, in time)
Well, Answers in Genesis is idiotic, I’m afraid. They’re an organization dedicated to the promotion of a hardline creationist viewpoint which is contradicted by mountains of empirical evidence. For the most part, they either misunderstand or wilfully misrepresent the scientific ideas they’re attacking.
Plenty of Christians – including plenty of Christian biologists – accept the reality of a 4.54-billion-year-old Earth and of biological evolution. You seem like a well-intentioned person, and I hope that, if you investigate the scientific evidence for yourself with an open mind, you’ll come to the same conclusion. Whether one believes in God or not, evolution is a well-documented reality.
Theophontes (from previous TET):
Oh I’d be happy to send you some if and when I get it going. You’ll need to remind me, as it’s likely to be several weeks before I’ve got a good stable one. Email is spokesgay at gmail. Latest batch is going nowhere, so I started a new one today. It’s such a hit and miss process. I’ve read that you just need to keep trying; everyone has failed bread starters. Do use whole grain flour as it usually works better and faster as it has more microorganisms. I confirmed this watching how much faster my whole wheat starter took off as compared to the white flour one. Too bad it died!
Bill Dauphin, avec fromage (sharp cheddar?):
I felt a just the least bit Keiloristic as I typed that line. Rather enjoyed it, too. ;^>
I offer my substance to Tpyos. There is no escape.
Thanks, John! Searching pharyngula was clearly my mistake.
James Randi is coming to Edmonton!
—sorry if this is old news, I just found out :) :) :)
link
Aliasalpha @ 13: lol. My usual response is along the lines of “well then, if it turns out that you’re right & I’m wrong, I may be in for a nasty post-mortem surprise!”
John Morales
May I use this on my Xmas cards this year?
When Helen Killer announced a contest and promised that THERE ARE BIG ASS PRIZES, I was instantly reminded of XKCD’s Hyphen.
Then I remembered her fascination with Goatse and realized the hyphen probably works whichever way it’s placed.
***
Bill Dauphin, the Russian bookstore will have your book ready for me by next Sunday, so I hope to mail them both on Monday.
Sorry it’s been taking so long, it’s only partially my fault.
PZ, you just don’t understand that sophisticated communication. And you can’t be taken seriously until you do.
Re:grandkids
My aphorism is “Grandchildren are your reward for not killing your kids”.
One of these days I am going to make up some t-shirts.
————
If I’m wrong about god I plan to go before him on judgement day and spit right in his eye.
*mutters “Fucker”.
otrame
If we are before God at the same time, while you are spitting I will run in and bite His Ankle. OK?
All knowledge is dangerous when applied properly.
Children are their grandparents’ revenge.
(Thoughts for today. :) )
Has anyone heard anything further from pastorized Mike, the Florida dude who wanted to make an online atheist registry?
I have some money riding on my ranking relative to PZ and the Canuck loonie is still above the US greenback. The US dollar may trust in gawd, but she/he/it/them/FSM doesn’t trust it.
Next time someone accuses me of being an atheist because I hate god, I’ll respond:
Yeah. I hate god. The same way I hate Dolores Umbridge or Saruman the White.
To the Christian guy. You know what my favorite bible verse is? John 18:36
“Jesus said, ‘My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place.’
I wish all Christians would learn that. Why don’t they leave terrenal politics and science alone? Listen to Jesus: His kindgdom has nothing at all to do with the Pennsylvania board of education or with the national anthem of a particular country or with what’s going on in a particular uterus.
Luke 20:25 is also pretty good.
This is an offensive ad……..hahahahaha……
It finally stopped raining up here in Washington, and now the Olympic National Forest is on fire. Some idiot, unused to dry conditions, left their campfire burning. According to latest reports, it’s about 100 acres, but conditions promise to be hot and dry (yes, even in the Olympics).
We’re in no danger – there’s water between us and the fire – but the air smells strongly of wood smoke.
For people familiar with the Olympics, the fire is near The Brothers, along the Duckabush Trail.
SallyStrange, I think that will go over their heads. Try the Grinch.
The Australian atheist campaign should fire back with, “What if you should have been worshipping Thor? (and a whole rotation list of other gods & goddesses).
The thought of spitting in God’s eye makes me almost wish he was real.
HAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWCCCKKKKKK…………..
Part-Time Insomniac, Zombie Porcupine Nox Arcana Fan
You know, that’s why I don’t buy into the “people only hurt themselves with drugs, just let them have whatever they want”.
First of all, they don’t only hurt themselves. I’ve been dealing with this shit for too long to believe that
Secondly, there’s some shit that’s simply too damn poisonous to be used, it can only be abused.
As for the coupon: take the stuff, sell it on e-bay, give it to charities, give it to friends, whatever. Unless, of course it’s one of those where you have to spend 2.000 to get the 500 discount….
Joseph
You pray, we work (probably not on the same goals as you) and we’ll see who gets results. You know, a lot of people here read AiG. Everybody needs a laugh once in a while and it’s good to know what stupidity they’Re up to now, so when you run into that idiocity in a discussion or debate you won’t be stunned by the sheer stupidity and they’ll take it as victory.
The are rather common in Germany. Next to: Be nice to your kids, they chose your nursing home
That too.
That should make the envangelicals very happy – imagine all those people nearby who are just waiting to be saved.
Good propaganda video, but it’s not what I really want. Most Abrahamists are semi-decent people who deserve our trust and respect. However, an influential minority of them are amoral schemers who must be put down by force. They do not believe in right and wrong as we atheists do. They believe in the power of an asskicking God who can torture us in Hell forever or give us bliss in heaven. Nothing is right or wrong for them. Whatever god commands is correct according to his sovereingty. Some of them have a basic human decency we can appeal to, but others do not. There is no solution for our survival as secularists except to acquire the means of influence and power to completely squash the Abrahamists.
I do not know what form this power over them will take. Surely we must gain the power to openly proclaim our basic goodness against their control of all aspects of our media. Atheist billboards already do this. But secularists must gain more power. We must make things such that no one would dare introduce ID in a school board meeting.
You have to remember, Abrahamists qua Abrahamists do not believe in right in wrong. They understand nothing but power. We have to acquire the power to crush them. Nothing less than our boots on their faces will stop them. You don’t like the Orwellian metaphor? Screw you! Peope who believe in the magic man in the sky have removed themselves from rational argument and people who believe that the only standard of right and wrong is determined by their authority=asskicking God need to get enough secular asskicking that they give that shit up.
Atheists can never be safe and free until religious people are an oppressible minority. As long as they have influence, they will beat us, put us into special education, send us to torture camps, and molest our children. Crush them, crush them, crush them.
I don’t remember if I’ve linked to this before… but even if I have, it’s worth linking again.
“The Mountain”, by TSO Photography.
Soundtrack: “Nuvole bianche”, by Ludovico Einaudi.
chigau, please feel free to use anything I post here however you wish. :)
“24/7 isn’t the only way: A healthy work–life balance can enhance research” http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v477/n7362/full/477027a.html
Scientists should make time for play to complement their intense work, maintain creativity and keep the ideas flowing
— — — — — — — — —
Good music is a good substitute for the emotional component of religion.
Here is Patti Smith at a Stockholm concert after receiving the Polar Music award (Swedish-text article) “Patti Smith på Konserthuset, Stockholm” http://www.dn.se/kultur-noje/konsertrecensioner/patti-smith-pa-konserthuset-stockholm
Found at Nature:
“Neuroscience vs philosophy: Taking aim at free will” http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110831/full/477023a.html
@Francisco Bacopa #47
Well somebody’s cranky.
RE: Favorite Bible Verse
I like the one where Jesus tells his disciples that he speaks in parable specifically to confuse people into going to hell.
I don’t remember which one that is, though.
Also before Fox Newz.
The video’s conclusion says, in effect, “We atheists accept that God is, but we think we get along OK without Him.” It’s a plea for theists to accept atheists. Unfortunately, it provides theists no reason to stop believing. Suffice to say, I was not impressed.
Rule 34? Also, Urban Dictionary. I’m not looking, just betting.
Over here (NL), there’s usually a disclaimer that it’s “not valid in combination with other offers”. Then again, there’s not much couponing going on here (that I know of).
Pharyngula (well, FTB, actually, uses its own WordPress installation. Which means WordPress in the big bad world outside FTB doesn’t know you, nor your account
JenniferA, I don’t find it quite as blatant, but you do have a point.
(That said, I suspect its purpose is awareness-raising rather than proselytising)
SQB, I just Googled
menstrual pornwith safesearch off. Your bet is safe.(What’s the rule I just obeyed?)
I like the one where Jesus tells his disciples that he speaks in parable specifically to confuse people into going to hell.
It’s in two of the Gospels outright, Matthew 13:10-15 and Mark 4:11-12.
Luke, alludes to a similar sentiment in 8:10.
Joseph. try some David Hume, a bit of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, and some Richard Dawkins, if you really want to see the “other side”– how the rational, humanist side lives. You might be surprised that we do not in fact eat babies or carry out pogroms. Mostly we eat baby ruths and write programs.
Rule 34:
@Aquaria #58
Yeah, those are the ones. Thanks.
It’s just so cartoonishly evil. I can just see Jesus with a huge Snidely Whiplash mustache, twirling it and saying “My eeeevil plot will work, and they will be confused into eternal damnation! Nyeh heh heh heh heh!”
They really should change that to “You don’t need a god…”
Other than that, it’s very
militantnice.When did glasses get so expensive?
I remember just a couple of years ago, when glasses were being advertised at 2 pair for $99, including eye exam. Now, just the eye exam is more than that, and glasses are $200+ per pair.
Could someone point out a decent deal on glasses? I’m wearing my old, scratched-up backup pair, since I managed to step on my main pair…
Never a great start to a post. I second what DLC said: pick up some Hume/Sagan/Dawkins.
My first thought was : this is going to be so much fun and don’t have time. And then the power went out….. So now I have even less time.
Oh well, I’ll make some popcorn and settle for a read in the evening.
And I haven’t even watched Doctor Who yet! If God existed, I would suspect he’s pranking me. Nothing really bad, but everything I do (especially the important stuff) somehow goes wrong lately and it’s making me pretty miserable right about now.
The question is not so much when did glasses get so expensive, but when did they get so shitty. Every place has 500 types of exactly the same kind of wide-but-short frame that is both hideously ugly and annoying to look through. I’m still wearing glasses that are 14 years old. All I want is to get a new pair that’s exactly like the ones I have now, only without the scratches and crap. Why is that so freaking difficult?
Re: glasses
Here, you can usually get old models of glasses 50% off when they get glasses for the new season. I managed to find almost the same model I’ve been wearing since 18 for practically nothing. Also, if you are going to buy glasses at their place, you usually get the exam for free.
Grats German gamers!
Midnight Rambler:
You could try here – I’m wearing a pair from them right now!
Department stores often have deals on glasses, as do the optics centers at super Wal-Marts.
SLIGHT DOCTOR WHO SPOILER
So annoyed – my usually-favorite place to dissect Doctor Who episodes has been taken over by people whining that it doesn’t make any sense for a boy to have a dollhouse, that it should have been a girl or some toy other than a dollhouse, because why would a boy have one???
Hmm, I have a question here where I’d be interested in the male vs female perspective.
It came up when Mr and I chatted about our neighbours. Talking about our next-door neighbour, Mr. observed that he might be intimidating. He’s not very tall, but heavy built with muscles that come from work and not the gym. He hardly smiles, but as far as I can tell he says hello and goodbye, sweeps the floor when it’s his turn and receives our parcels when we’re not at home.
I said I don’t find him any more intimidating or not intimidating than any other man in the house. I know that I wouldn’t stand a chance against most of them, so the fact that he’s got some extra-power doesn’t change things for me, I make my evaluation be their behaviour.
So we were thinking about whether men make their evaluation more on the basis of whether they would stand a chance against that other man or not.
Any thoughts?
Evaluation on safety? I (cismale) usually look more at their personality rather than their build. One of my neighbors is pretty strong-looking, but he’s also got a fairly young kid (under two years) and always smiles and says hi to me, so he doesn’t feel intimidating to me. Maybe away from his family, like at a bar, the impression would be different.
Carlie,
=~( It wasn’t even pink!
You’re welcome to bring it up here as far as I’m concerned. Did you see the paired Confidential? The boy was in it a bit too, and he was hella funny. Totally showed up Arthur Darvill outside the mansion.
My You tube ad was for the Morons!
How cute. I see a lot of religion ads here on FTB, they appear to have a very ad algorithm for ad placement.
What the fuck?
This is scary violent authoritarian bullshit. Religious people have civil rights too (and if you think all religious people are conspiring to send you to a torture camp or molest your children, then you have a serious problem with paranoia). Advocating violent oppression of any group of people is not ok.
(I’m guessing that you’re trolling in order to test the reactions of people here. But on the offchance that you’re serious, you need some help.)
Probably.
But the logic is fucked up anyway. Some small group of any population want to crush people, rape them, kill them, kill their children, torture them.
The goal is to identify those people without turning into them. The people who ideally are best at this are actually the people within the group in question.
Now, the trouble religion brings? To me that’s another issue. It can help those people operate under cover. But “crushing” the religious because those people exist among them with more shelter is pathetic. By that logic we should crush the species then.
Since we are complaining about glasses — has anyone else noticed that it is getting hard to find glass (as opposed to plastic) lenses now? I work in construction and the grit eats away at the softer lenses. Also, the “executive” bifocal with the bifocal cut completely across the bottom of the lens has disappeared. Now I have to move my head to scan across a wide page instead of just shifting my eyes. :<(
I’m not the original poster, but I think it’s not an exaggeration to say that there a faction of Christians (the Bachmann/Palin/Perry/(add your own here)-crowd) that would like to send atheists to bible camp, which would amount to torture and molestation. Hell, they even do it to their own kids.
I don’t agree with the violent solution, but I agree with the analysis that religion to them is a matter of power and that they need to be removed from power for people who disagree with them to be safe.
Joseph, I assume you are a well-meaning person.
But if you read Answers in Genesis, for your own protection you need to be aware it is a site run by intellectually dishonest ultra-far-out nutters who believe every single word and comma should be interpreted literally.
And God help you if you question the reliability of the King James Bible translation.
I believe the term Martin Luther used for this kind of assholes was “dunkelmänner”.
And in regard to evolution (which the writers of AIG claim is false) ALL mainstream churches in Europe have accepted evolution because it fits the evidence and …well it simply makes more sense than everything materialising ready-made, like Pallas Athena from Zeus’ skull (another creation myth that makes no sense). The evolution-opposing fundies in USA are a minority among Christians in industrialised countries.
The reason for this geographic oddity seems to be that fundamental christians in USA are part of a wider socio-political antimodernist reaction.
(I have tried to find another country with a similar anti-modernist backlash, but the only example I can think of is Poland)
Thus the views of religious fundamentalists correlate strongly with the views of Tea Party followers, and just about every Republican politician (there are a few exeptions like David Frum, but they are too few to matter). These views are also broadcasted by conservative talk radio and Fox News, not because the owners necessarily share them, but because the views represent a politically useful, easily manipulated demographic.
Don’t forget Rule 34A… If you think of it, and look it up, and there actually is not any porn of it… you now have a moral responsibility to create that porn and put it on the internet.
So be careful what you search for.
On an unrelated note… I’m a person with a lousy school science education and a curious layperson with a public library card’s understanding of science… if I can afford to subscribe to ONE science magazine with the goal of learning about current stuff and broadening my understanding, which one should I choose?
Gilliel: I think it’s more about behavior than muscles. Males spoiling for a fight seem twitchy and restless to me. MAybe I hung out in bars too much when I was younger, but they just kind of have a gestalt.
I avoid the hell out of those dudes.
Physical strength plays much less into the gestalt than demeanor. A little guy can smash a bottle over the back of your head as easily as a big one could.
Gilliel: I don’t find muscles any more intimidating. It’s the way people act, and the way they carry themselves. Believe me, a flabby out of shape guy that stands at 5’6″ can be dangerous as hell.
No idea about how guys assess risk though.
for example, “Living without religion”
Some christians have taken over the comments and they talk about anything other than the article or video or subject at hand. This is typical now of your blog and the articles.
your new site is hardly worth the effort to sort out the comments.
Professor Myers you have been hijacked, Sir.
Re, weird and horrifying bible verses. One of the most commonly quoted is about what will happen when jesus the godman comes back to rule. Everyone who wasn’t looking forward to it will be hauled before him and killed. Right now that is somewhere around 6-7 billion people.
In Matthew, jesus recommends that men cut off their testicles “if they can accept it”. This is one recommendation that the fundies always completely ignore. No one ever does this any more.
Jesus also claims at one point to bring not peace but a sword, has recommendations on how to beat your slaves, and spends a lot of time rambling on about how evil the Jews are. That last has echoed down through ages as the basis for 2,000 years of antisemitism that killed many millions in one atrocity or another.
But you can’t blame the jesus of the bible too much. He is just a fictional character reflecting the agendas of multiple writers.
Have you seen today’s Google Doodle?
joed: wha? This is the endless, homes. Comments aren’t supposed to be in reference to any particular thing.
joed, you *did* notice that this is an open thread, yes?
contentedreader,
Well, what science do you like? How much work are you willing to put in? A couple of decades ago, I would have said Scientific American for general science. However, it’s been dumbed down like NPR. Science and Nature have pretty good coverage in their news section +actual science papers. You could join American Geophysical Union as an associate member for $20 and get EOS and (I think) Physics Today (which used to be good when I wrote for it).
For general layman science, I’d say Scientific American, though I wish Jearl Walker was still writing Amateur Scientist.
Therrin – BBCA doesn’t show the Confidentials. :(
contentedreader – is there a reason to subscribe rather than reading the library holdings? I’d suggest
browsing a few for a few months to find out which one suits you best. They all have different emphases and styles. And of course, nothing that comes in the mail will be “current” except to about a month back.
Apparently I hadn’t cleaned the litter box quickly enough, because the cat just told me about it by wetting the entire floor area about 3 feet in front of the litter box. Man, old cats are cranky.
“…who believe every single word and comma…”
Point out to them that in the earliest manuscripts (they’re not capable of comprehending that we don’t have ANY originals) punctuation was unknown & “single word” is also a problematic matter due to the writing techniques of the day. “Chapter and verse” is a phrase that would have been quite meaningless to the early writers since they did not employ those devices. Nemmine the finer (?) points of theology; the physical, graphical manuscript issues begin the shaking of their very suspect house of cards.
joed – the introductory video is just for fun. All threads labeled “Episode” followed by a roman numeral are versions of the endless thread, in which we can talk about anything we like, from creationism to cat piss.
contentedreader: I suggest that you invest your money in used books rather than magazines. There are a number of good science blogs that you can read for a quick science fix. Most of the magazines are really not worth the price.
True, but irrelevant. And a strawperson.
Most of the fundie xian leaders are that way though and they are power hungry wannabe theocrats. They are almost all xian Dominionists and torturing people and molesting children would just be a warmup. They would end up killing millions of people at least if they could, maybe hundreds of millions.
They say so themselves, often. They aren’t hiding anything whatsoever.
It doesn’t matter too much what their supporters and followers would do. The average Russian or Chinese isn’t any more homicidal than the average American but Stalin and Mao still managed to kill an impressive number of their own people.
As far as threat assessment of male homo sapiens goes, behavior and alcohol are prime indicators to me. If anything, I have found “strong” guys to be a lot more easy going than “little” guys with a Napoleon complex.
I remember sitting with one big guy in a bar. He was by far the biggest guy in the bar. I noticed he was eying a littl, loud drunk guy on the other side of the room. I asked, “What?”
“Oh. The punk up by the bar. He’s going to pick a fight with me. I can always spot ’em. He wants to prove he’s a man by taking on the biggest guy in the bar. That’s me. I think we should leave.”
Sure enough, even as we were paying the bar tab, the little guy came over and “bumped” the guy I was sitting with. We just walked out. Stupid and drunk with something to prove is much more of a threat than big.
Benjamin –
I buy my eyeglasses online at zennioptical.com. The only tricky part is you need to know your pupillary distance. You can try to measure it yourself (they give you instructions), or you can try to convince your optometrist to measure it when you get your prescription.
Try Turkey. And for that matter, most of the Moslem world.
Societies dominated by anti-modernist fundie religions end up stagnant places going nowhere. That is at best, sometimes they end up with cycles of violence (Iraq, Afghanistan) or just collapse (Somalia).
@contentedreader you don’t actually specify what country you’re in – a lot of people here are Usanians, but another lot are not – just in case New Scientist is of any interest. Subscribers get access to everything on their website (so slightly less delayed than the paper version plus searchable archives).
Actually I’d be grateful for the opinion of more knowledgeable folk than I on New Scientist myself (considered as a general science mag for the non- or baby student scientist: how reliable it is, whether it’s better in some areas than others) – anyone?
@91 Carlie,
Thanks for the info–now I know, I wont try to filter or sort comments.
I think this is the point that needs to be made more. People need to recognize that this is a terrible direction to go in. One that will destroy our country completely and possible take a good chunk of the world with it if it gets the chance.
Alison @ 11,
Google does not return any hits for this, do you have any links to articles or pictures ?
There needs to be a billboard right next to it saying “Some people say there’s probably no Loki…. What if they’re wrong?”
Hijacked?!?
*scrolls up*
Oh.
————–
Listen guys, I’m about to kvetch about relationship stuff, OK? Fair warning.
So, yesterday I’m at the fair working & StrangeBoyfriend (SB) calls me. He just got off the road after a long, sleepless weekend. He wants to know if I can think of someplace, a Chinese resto perhaps, will take a check b/c his debit card is expired. I suggest going to a supermarket deli. He rejects my suggestions & hangs up. The next time I see him it’s late & he’s out cold.
This morning he tells me he went to a friend’s house and got some food there. He tells me I was unhelpful, I should’ve taken a break from work to run over & care for him. WTF.
Okay, whatever. He’s telling me this & other stuff and I’m like, it’s early, can you please stop talking & let me sleep some more? Ok. He rolls over & is quiet for a minute. Then he’s like, did you file for unemployment? No, I made too much money last week. What’s that, I was supposed to lie on the form so I can make sure to have money to use when we drive to MD to search for apartments for him? Oh, I guess I misunderstood you.
raven,
Eh, what? Are you actually defending Francisco Bacopa’s bizarre tirade? I can assure you that I wasn’t constructing a strawperson of his words; I was responding to them directly (and if you doubt this, you might want to try reading what he posted).
Yep. Dominionism is a very dangerous and scary ideology, and those who advocate it should be actively opposed and removed from positions of power. And I entirely agree with you that it’s frightening how much influence the authoritarian fringe of the evangelical movement has in US politics; it’s frightening that fanatics like Bryan Fischer and Matt Barber (who advocate imprisoning gay people, outlawing adultery and fornication, and imposing Christianity as a state religion) are considered mainstream figures in the Republican Party. Although they’re not the same as the Rushdooneyites who advocate mass homicide and a return to the Mosaic law, the difference is one of degree and not of kind.
However, this doesn’t make it reasonable or acceptable to advocate that religious people should be “crushed”, “squashed” or “put down by force”, as Bacopa was arguing. For one thing, there are millions of religious people who are not dominionists or fundamentalists, and who do not advocate theocracy. There are plenty of peaceful, progressive, feminist and pro-LGBT Christians, Muslims, Jews, and adherents of other faiths. For another thing, even those who hold reprehensible views are entitled to freedom of expression and civil liberties; although fundamentalist religious fanatics are very scary and their agenda should be opposed, this doesn’t mean that advocating retributive violence against them is ok.
SallyStrange
Why are you in this relationship?
…Con’t b/c my phone doesn’t like long posts…
So after another pause where I think maybe I’ll get back to sleep, he asks what’s going on w/ the copy editing thing. Shit! I think, did I miss it? Normally its at the end of the month and I’ve been working long hours & exhausted, I haven’t checked my email since friday. I start freaking out a bit.
At this point SB really lays into me. I’m irresponsible. Why is it so hard for me to make being responsible part of my daily routine? When he got back there were dishes in the sink. I drank all the beer. What was I doing on the computer for an hour last night? Watching a TV show? Is that what I was doing the whole time he was gone?
I get up and say that I’m going to go do my laundry. No, I’m not going to explain myself to him b/c clearly he has it all figured out. I think to myself: I’m not going to tell him that I drank more beer than the 3 that were left. I’m not going to point out that I actually washed all the dishes except the ones I used yesterday.
He is right that I need to be more organized, but this is BS. I don’t deserve to be treated like this.
Do I?
Sally Strange,
Err, what the hell? Kick off your work because he didn’t plan his day well? And then complain about you and unemployment? And for crying out loud, did he actually complain about the dishes? I am so sorry that he is acting all entitled and selfish like that. Maybe a break is necessary for deeper reasons than geography.
___
Sili,
Thanks for that Ravel.
___
Walton,
Food in a large shared kitchen is going to cost you. People will take anything you store in the kitchen, many without even realizing the impact of doing so. Are you permitted to store dry goods in your room?
___
Benjamin,
You can’t make a sandwich? PB&J will last under nearly any circumstances if you don’t have the peanut problem. Cheese and jam is actually very good and so long as you don’t keep it in direct sunlight will do well anywhere people are comfortable.
___
Giliell,
I am not a violent person, so thoughts of how capable a person may be if an altercation came up is not in my list of judging a situation. A moments reflection suggests that I consider anyone who would leverage their size/muscles/training to win an argument as pretty much an admission that I am correct. However, I am also large for my height with a fair build (178cm, 110kg) and I get told regularly that I am imposing/intimidating despite being a meek mouse physically. I guess this means I also have never really had to deal with the idea either.
Given how many people have told me that I am intimidating, despite my abhorence of physical confrontation, I think there are a lot of people who do that, see the package and decide that they know what it is capable of.
Good question chigau. I’m about to get out of it too, so…
To answer your question
1. Mind-blowing sex
2. Lots of love & mutual support
3. Converging issues – my parents were way too permissive, his were abusive.
En bref, as it were.
No.
Sounds like he’s reconsidering you as a girlfriend. Get ready. Or beat him to the punch.
…but I’m really not a great person to ask.
At the risk of pissing you off, that right there sounds like a recipe for disaster.
Indeed, Dhorvath, both geography and the other stuff are at play in the upcoming split. Had I been more chatty about the issues I deal with in this relationship, you probably would have picked up on it before. But I’m not fond of sharing relationship stuff like that in a forum like this. This my getaway, my amusement. Y’all are not my therapists, you know?
There is love there. But as I have mentioned before, he grew up in an abusive home, and the expression of the love is… distorted. He has changed his approach enormously during the past few years; I’m genuinely proud of him for that. This was just a particularly egregious example.
OK, purple potatoes look funny, let’s see how they taste.
Thank you for all your replies. Seem like one of those things some people do, some don’t. I personally also go for behaviour and situation. As longs as they don’t set my alarm bells off, I file everybody under “we can’t help how we are made” (by evolution, of course ;))
well, I also experienced the opposite: A kitchen with about 20 boxes of cereals: Nobody could remember anymore whose box was whose so they kept on buying new boxes. As for dry goods, sometimes locks can be used on cupboards. If you have a “private compartment”, some of the baby-safe devices might help. They can usually be installed withut any damage to furniture, require a magnet to open and will at least prevent unintentional “theft”.
I still hate my former housemate (the incarnation of all prejudices Europeans have against Americans) for stealing my eggs because “oh, I thought I had bought some”.
Oh, and here’s a very cheap recipe, although it cloggs your arteries rapidly.
Grandma’s semolina dumplings (serves 2)
-1/2 l of milk, bring to boil, add salt and nutmeg
-125g (about 4 ounces) of durum wheat semolina, stir in, turn off heat and let soak for a few minutes, don’t stir again.
-melt butter in a small frying pan. Dip a spoon into the butter, scoop up small dumplings and put into a bowl.
-Add two or three spoonfulls to the butter rest of the butter, fray crispy.
-heat some more milk, salt lightly, pour over dumplings
-add fried crumbs
-Maybe a salad would be a good idea at this point.
SallyStrange,
I am pleased to hear that there were positives and sorry that you felt a need to defend the relationship. I am not a therapist, that much is true, but I do care and find it hard not to comment when someone who I have shared much conversation with is having a rough go in life. Take care of yourself, this won’t be easy, but it can be good.
The only quibble I have is that I would not have capitalized “God”.
There is no god named “God”.
I would have said “a god” or “any god” instead. To make it clear that I wasn’t merely talking about the Christian god, but also Allah, Brahma, Quetzalcoatl and every other god ever worshiped.
The rhythm guitar player is playing a wrong chord in the background music. It’s your typical overused I / vi / IV/ V progression in the key of C. On that second chord, the band is playing an A minor, and the guitar is playing a big ol’ A major strum. It makes me grit my teeth.
SallyStrange, I’m agreeing with everything that Dhorvath said at 112. Stay strong and don’t forget to stand up for yourself. I’m coming up on the one-year mark of my last relationship unraveling, and although there are days when I get downright sad, I do know what we are making the right decision for the both of us.
What Dhorvath said. I hope I didn’t make you feel worse.
SallyStrange @107
those sound like good reasons for an abiding friendship.
Maybe not so much for the living together.
But that’s a done deal in this case.
Perhaps the old saying about absence and fond hearts will happen.
——-
Shared kitchens.
Put your name and a date on everything you store there.
or label everything as a urine sample or science experiment.
SallyStrange
Sorry to hear about SB obviously forgetting his brains in MD.
No, really don’t deserve to be treated like that, especially since nobody who insists on talking about those issues right after you asked him to stop for the moment has a genuine interest in solving the problems.
*hugs if you want them*
But sometimes when we’re under stress ourselves, we take it out on the people we love the most, partly because they are so keen on forgiving us afterwards.
SallyStrange:
Since the FtB transition, I’ve been in and out (mostly out) of teh Thread® (because the new site is blocked at work), but don’t I recall you commenting, not long ago, that StrangeBoyfriend was suddenly interesting in having kids, and that that was not, according to you, an unwelcome development?
Surely you don’t need to be told this (but since when has that ever stopped me?), but you must push “pause” on that plan until you two have got yourselves sorted out. Maybe it’s just economic-uncertainty stress that’ll resolve itself when things get better (I trust things will get better), or maybe it’s more to do with the deeper differences you hinted at… but in any case, y’all’s partnership needs to be on firmer ground before you apply it to parenting. </paternalism>
****
PS to Forbidden Snowflake: Thanks so much, and no sweat about the delay; I don’t really need them ’til November… and even if I didn’t have them by then, I’d just make ’em Christmas presents.
On sharing kitchen space: If you remark loudly and often that your lip herp flare-ups have become more frequent, AND label your food, you will thwart both the careless mooch and the active thief.
A reputation for communicable disease will save you from many a socially awkward situation.
There was a clerk at a grocery store that used to chat me up every time I checked out. Unable to take it anymore, I bougth the largest package of Immodium that they sold, and told the clerk that I needed to hurry because of a blistering case of the shitz brought on by an incurable amoebic infection.
THAT was a chat killer 4-eva.
Awww… that was a bit mean of you. :-(
It may backfire, though, like a label “I spat in this” only to find “me too” scribbled on later.
Bill Dauphin, no worries on that front. It was welcome talk, but talk only.
Algernon, your comments didn’t make me feel bad. The situation, yes, but not your (accurate) observations.
In truth, “boyfriend/girlfriend” is probably a mislabeling of our relationship. “Deep abiding friendship,” as Chigau said, is probably more accurate, or perhaps “it’s complicated.”
I am going to take our time apart as an opportunity to look at my own needs and goals and work on the things I need to work on in order to get my life on track. Hearts may grow fonder, or not, but I do know that I can count on SB’s friendship. Which is much, much more than I can say for any of my other exes, so to my mind that’s a definite improvement.
Doesn’t make it any easier to deal with, though.
So I had a dream last night: I was at a Catholic Boy Scout something or other that was being led by the Pope, and it was going along fairly well, or at least as well as such things can go, and a 12 year old boy of my acquaintance, who looks about as threatening as used dishwater, got up and gave a lecture about the importance of not wanking and explaining that he wore a medallion of the patron saint of not wanking to protect him from the sin of wanking. I was so irritated that later, at a refreshments type social hour, I went up and ripped the stupid medallion off his neck (why yes, the saint did have a crucifix covering his groinal area) and yelled at the kid for being stupid. He cried. All the Catholics were mad and began talking about how the Virgin Mary and the Three Kings were really superhero transformers who would deal with people like me. I spent the rest of the dream feeling guilty for being mean to a 12 year old boy and hoping his mom didn’t notice me. And wondering why people could be so delusional as to think that imaginary characters of one variety would turn into a different type of imaginary character and emerge into the real world to plonk me.
When I related this dream to the Mattir Family this morning, SonSpawn suggested that the Patron Saint of Not Wanking™ should be St. Hansoff, pronounced with a German accent.
I now return you to your regularly scheduled Labor Day discussions of the StrangeBoyfriend, why we are not on topic, and what to do about the death of Josh’s yeast.
Oh man. It’s raining. Raining HARD. I really hope we don’t get any more flooding. VT just can’t handle it right now.
I think I had this dream. Except they were Gundams and the Virgin Mary was the Wing Zero with Heero simultaneously being Heero and the baby Jesus suckling her breast.
Used to have such interesting dreams…
Shared Kitchens:
Cultivate a taste for Kimchi, Epoisse and Offal.
OK, just collected Daughter #1 from her first ever “I go there all alone” birthday-party (She’s a rather shy girl among other people). But no problems other than wet pants. She would have had to talk to somebody in order to find out where the toilet is…
Mattir-ritated | 5 September 2011 at 11:34 am :
Autobot or Decepticon?
Either way … I really hope the freak who made Passion of the Christ doesn’t hear about this. If you thought the Michael Bay movie was bad …
Mattir: Sounds like a great opening to a surrealist novel.
@ Josh
Sorry to hear about your sour dough not working out. I will mail you soon with some links that might help. No rush wrt the dried culture, I’ll be cheering from the sidelines. I realise it is quite a thing to get going. One can order online with a credit card (which I don’t have), but more important, I think it kind of cool to have a culture all the way from New York. If the culture is good we could even make a kind of “chain-bread” posting this around the world.
@ Joseph #20
Christianity has to lie. The reason for this is that everything it has to say about anything simply jars with reality. The more literal the babble is taken, the more the xtians have to lie because this disonance is so much more the stronger. The minute you become honest wrt reality you are breaking the spell of superstition. (This is true of any so called religion. If you want to see this – as a xtian – I recommmend that you observe how this phenomenon occures in other cults. It will be so much easier to see and understand when it’s not all about you.)
If you read “answers in genesis” and believe anything there, you are being willfully obtuse. It is false science and a complete waste of time. For your own sake, stop. Life is too short and you are NOT getting another one.
As far as disdain goes. If you chose to believe in superstitious nonsense, you are likely to experience disdain. If you open yourself up to science and rationality you will experience acknowledgment and respect from people here.
Cultists won’t feel disdain for you. They will feel fear when their game is up. This might express itself as defensive mockery of your new position. Most would take this as a badge of honour. (There are many xtians and ex-xtians here.)
@ Francisco Bacopa #47
Obvious troll is obvious.
Humanists can never be safe while people are oppressed. Atheism is trivial.
……………………………..
Re Cheap, quality books.
There is an entire library of great books online that can be downloaded for free. Even if you do not have a kindle or other ebook reader, you can get a lot of classics and history books for free and read on your computer. I have a lot of the Greek classics, all of Mark Twain and all of Darwin, etc,etc, … all downloaded for free (or 99c) online. You could probably get over a hundred top quality books with one $25 Amazon card.
Here an interesting quote from a free book (An Account of Egypt by Herodotus):
Meroe is in present day Sudan. I have had the great fortune to visit these. The tops of the pyramids where all blown up by an Italian fortune seeker.
The interesting point here, though, is Herodotus’s account of Zeus (…Deus… God) and his Son. (Born to a mortal woman,killed and then “reborn” from Zeus’s thigh). Looking surprisingly like jeebus and sky daddy ™, with a cult following prone to following prophetic…er, prophets. With about 400 years to spare, I wonder if they ever made it to the Levant. (Herodotus certainly travelled very much further than that just for teh LOLz.)
Walton: I guess. It seems nicer to me to take on the mantle of “unsufferable” in extricating oneself from an uncomfortable social interaction than putting that label on someone else.
I would have gone to a different grocery store or done my shopping during a different shift, if I had a car and any interest in buying food earlier than 11PM.
And you really shouldn’t be caught without some Immodium in the house.
@ Walton
You need these… LINK.
RHINEBECK:
If you are attending Rhinebeck, please email oniongirlsays at google mail dot com with the best email address for the organizers to reach you.
If you WANT to attend Rhinebeck, please email oniongirlsays at google mail dot com with the best email address for the organizers to reach you. :)
Why can’t people learn to check their emails regularly? I’m trying to buy a washer and dryer from this person on Craigslist but he hasn’t responded to my email. He said he wanted to sell it today, but he didn’t give a phone number. I emailed him 3 and a half hours ago and gave him my phone number, but no response yet. I haven’t done laundry for a month!
theophontes @131
The cult of Dionysus certainly was spread throughout the classical Greco-Roman world. And you are not the first one to notice the similarities between the worship of D. and Jesus. Scholars have written about the parallels between Christianity and religion of Dionysus as early as 19th century. There’s a resurrecting deity (a very widespread archetype found in many cultures in every continent), a ritual meal, symbolic meaning of wine etc.
Maybe the world would have been better off with some of those classical, exstatic cults winning the day instead of the life-denying Christianity. Always wanted to be a maenad…
Seconding ImaginesaBeach for zennioptical. When I was looking for new glasses, I figured I’d order from them if Lenscrafters didn’t have anything I wanted. I may still try them in the future – their products look very good.
———————————–
Sally, sorry to hear about the friction between you and BF. Maybe some time apart could prove to be good.
————————————
Gillel,
I’d like to know how people can believe that drug abusers only hurt themselves, when they have family and friends who are worried about them, and rightfully so.
Hmmm, selling or charity are definitely options. And I don’t think you have to spend a certain amount to get the discount, the company is pretty clear on how the card works.
I need some cheering up, so I though I’d post some pics of niece #1 playing with crocheted cephalopod #3 (#1 cephalopod went to the son of a friend of mine, this cephalopod belongs to niece #2, but she’s still working on holding her head up).
The octopus has the upper hand!
But the baby fights back!
Mmm, cephalopods are tasty.
Dhorvath:
I can make a sandwich… but I can’t make a sandwich that’ll last six hours in my backpack without becoming a formless wad of goo.
####
My last pair of glasses was from Walmart Optical, and they’re the ones I cited price-wise. Yes, even Walmart is too damned expensive.
And part of my problem is that my head is wide. It’s rare to find a bargain frame that fits my head.
DAWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!
Benjamin “(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻” Geiger
re squishy sandwiches
Tupperware!
Or when next you get to an “Asian” grocery store pick up a bento-box.
Is your childhood lunch-box still in your Mom’s basement?
Carrying a vintage 6-Million-Dollar-Man lunch box would now be the epitome of cool.
Where does (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻ come from? It’s been everywhere lately.
–o–
And dying. Jesper Klein was a great comedian, but to most of my generation and those younger he was mr Children’s Television incarnate. The analogy isn’t perfect, but think mr Rogers.
chigau:
I actually bought two plastic sandwich-holders the other day, but that’s not the problem. The problem is that the filling soaks into the bread and turns it into mush, plus the constant shaking turns the sandwich into a wad of goo.
The only way I can see to solve the problem is to carry the ingredients separately and mix them right before eating. Mmmm, sandwich epoxy.
Sili:
Know Your Meme.
Bejamin “” Geiger
Taking the fixings separate definitely works.
Also a wide-mouth thermos for soup or stew, if you don’t have access to a microwave.
Have you tried pimento spread? Or butterscotch pudding?
I guess I should say the octopus has the upper tentacle.
Here is a picture of niece #2.
She looks so serious and frowny all the time, I’ve taken to calling her Tiny Winston Churchill.
Fortunately my sister’s sense of humor is about as nerdy and sarcastic as mine.
Long lasting sandwich.
Chunk of bread
Chorizo
Chunk of cheese
Knife
Leather flagon of wine (large)
Benjamin, are all your preferred fillings very moist? Or are there any you like that won’t soak in (it’s just that when I make a packed lunch for the Spawn they usually prefer a ham and (cheddar) cheese sandwich on crusty bread (e.g. French stick) wrapped in cellophane to keep it together, plus loads of fruit in a plastic box and nothing ever gets soggy (bread lightly buttered; no mayo). But I can’t remember if you’ve mentioned earlier that you don’t eat ham, maybe, or maybe that you prefer soft bread. Also, I guess you are dealing with higher temperatures so you need an icepack too)
‘Tis, I wish I could have sailed today. The temps were fine but the wind was too much for me to sail solo (15 gusting to 35). We’ve gone from 97F to 67F in a day!
I finally got my (Johnson 9.9.) outboard running, turns out little buggers just crawled up the pee hole. I reamed that tube and everything seems to be OK. (Why yes, I just went to the urologist, why do you ask?)
True enough – but the “War on Drugs” compounds the harm, and makes life worse both for drug-addicts and for society as a whole. Sending drug users to prison typically makes their problems worse (since they generally emerge traumatized, suffering from an untreated addiction, and unable to get a job or rebuild their lives), and driving the drug trade underground and into the hands of organized crime makes it more dangerous, not less. Not to mention the racial and socio-economic divide (ethnic minorities and the urban poor are disproportionately likely to be arrested and imprisoned for drug use, by a huge margin), the violence and civil-liberties-violations committed by police every day in the course of the War on Drugs, and the immense cost to the taxpayer (money which could be far better spent on providing rehabilitation and mental health treatment).
I don’t pretend that legalization will magically make the problem of drugs go away; but the approach of criminalizing drug users and suppliers has been a total, unmitigated disaster. All drugs should be legalized, not because they’re harmless to society (they aren’t, and I don’t know anyone who would make such a claim) but because the process of criminalization makes the social problems of drug addiction worse, not better, and causes vast unnecessary suffering and trauma to drug addicts and their families and communities.
Generally speaking, trying to eliminate a social problem by arresting people and throwing them in prison doesn’t work very well, and tends to make things worse. (This is a good rule-of-thumb for most public policy issues: it applies to a whole range of things, from racial hatred to the burqa.)
(It’s also important to distinguish between different kinds of drugs. Marijuana is relatively innocuous, has few proven ill-effects and is far less dangerous than either alcohol or tobacco, and is enjoyed by plenty of people sensibly and in moderation; there is no reason why it shouldn’t be legalized immediately, and sold over-the-counter to adults just as alcohol and tobacco are. There’s a big difference between this and “hard” drugs like heroin and other opiates.)
Like this?
On a side note: I see you’re playing your usual game, posing a problem and then adjusting the parameters so that each offered solution turns out to be invalid. I think you should take an agile approach instead of doing big design upfront.
Also, you really should try doing stand-up comedy. Or if that’s too tiring, sit-down.
Good evening
SallyStrange
Your nieces are uber-cute, yes, Winston Churchill, too. They do have a special charm at that age. Well, they have a special charm at any age so far. Well, needless to say we haven’t made it to puberty yet.
I like the octopus. I just bought some crochet patterns for small animals. I don’t really know why since I haven’t crocheted in ages…
Language question
Has Tupperware become a name like Hoover or Kleenex?
Language stupidity
Yesterday daughter #1 climbed onto my lap, looked at the computer and said “ohh, da ist ne Krokodil-Ente” I thought it was one of her little stories again until I realized that I had Pharyngula open and there was the crocoduck. But my mind had never translated it into German…
She looks she’s pondering a Republican presidency in 2012.
Which is to say, she’s pondering the implications of a Republican presidency. Although with a little legal wrangling, she probably could be a GOP front-runner. Unless she has a little sibling still in the womb that would be willing to run.
QFT
It’s really stupid to speak about “drugs” as if they were all the same. I’m in favour of legalizing soft drugs. On hard drug, I’m not sure about. However, a more treatment-based approach, as opposed to the current incarceration approach, would definitely be a more humane (and probably more effective) way to deal with the issue.
starstuff91: I have a washer and dryer I need to sell. But I’m probably too far away from you. :-(
Former deli employee trick: If you are making a sandwich that includes meat and cheese, be sure the cheese is against one slice of bread and lettuce is against the other. Save the condiments on the side. The cheese and lettuce will prevent much of the gooeyness from happening. Another solution is to make a tortilla wrap instead. The tortilla might get gooey, but if it’s wrapped tightly, it should still hold.
Yeah, but on one side the disdain is well deserved. (It’s the side where a guy puts two of every species on a big boat and rode out a global flood.)
So finally I can start to catch up (till my own comment 411 of subthread 249). And once again it turns out how useful it is to read every comment on TET. Not only do I learn about the weather in Seattle (like Paris, only serious), there’s this:
Poll? The latest, biggest and fattest three molecular analyses of both nuclear and mitochondrial DNA have found “ratite” paraphyly with respect to tinamous, and now there’s a morphological analysis (though only of palate characters, IIRC) that finds the same result. There’s no more question about it. I would complain about this poll if it were still open. ;-)
Anyway, the results were:
*lightbulb* German Holz “wood”. Nowadays only the material, but in earlier times also “forest”. Pʰol ende[ ]uuodan uuorun zi[ ]holza…
Subthread won!!!
*culture shock*
Do that many people consider these things fun?
:-) :-) :-) :-) :-)
Full of win.
*officially lays down blogpimp hat*
:-) :-) :-)
:-) :-) :-)
:-) :-) :-)
*snort* :-D
Hm. Probably you don’t see much but movement out of the corners of your eyes. Elsewhere, you see too much other stuff that distracts you.
But “huge moving black dots”… I never get that. It’s probably just you.
:-D
Wrong thread.
I don’t want to believe my eyes.
Really, WTF?
Did you just seriously mock somebody who asked for clarification!?!
In short, you tried to bully us, failed, and now demand that we find bullying funny.
*burp*
Hint: “this is how I want to commute to work from now on” doesn’t mean “look how courageous I am and how long my dick is”. It means “I want to be able to fly”. Moron.
Oh snap!
Teh awsum.
Yep, two foreign languages at the same time doesn’t go well (at least not quickly). Leave some time between them. A year or three… :-(
*blink* What are you studying???
:-)
And now the oh-we’re-so-totally-not-neo-nazis-we-hate-strangers-just-so stay in the state parliament of the northeastern corner of Germany, having won 6 % of the vote. The Greens, for comparison, have 8.4; the neo-communists (“The Left”) have 14.
Argh.
Wikipedia is your friend. ^_^ *hug*
The Itchyyyyyy and Scraaaaaaatchyyyyyyyy Shooooooooow !!
In Austria, yes! In fact, it was only a few years ago that I saw it spelled and figured out it’s English. (The -ware part is replaced by -g[e]schirr, “dishes”.)
And so, to bed.
Gilliel – Glad the daughter survived the party. Even with wet pants. My son can be very shy in new situations, and I could see that happening.
Benjamin – I second putting condiments in a separate container. Or you could do like my hubby and bring a weeks worth of sandwich fixings to work and leave them in the fridge and just assemble as needed.
I am so glad it is finally raining here. I think it has been 3 weeks since it has rained. Although the tornado sirens are a little disconcerting.
The forest fire in the Olympic Mountains that I mentioned last night has grown to nearly 200 acres now. It’s in a very difficult-to-reach area. The good news is: crews from Oregon have arrived to help.
The fire is now big enough that the smoke can be seen from Seattle.
Hard drugs / soft drugs.
caffeine?
refined sugar?
sugar-free cola?
Almost everything is OK used “sensibly and in moderation”.
So, it’s now past 5 pm and still no call from washer and dryer guy. It’s too late for me to rent a truck to pick anything up now so I guess I have to go another day without clean clothes.
Walton
Well, I never said that criminalizing people would solve the problem. In Germany, for example, owning drugs is illegal, using them isn’t. This distinction was made exactly in the effort to decriminalize people who are basically victims and ill, to make it possible for them to seek help and to help them without circumnavigating laws.
I totally agree that “drug” isn’t “drug”. My most favourite ones are alcohol and coffee. I use them. I am aware that especially alcohol might have a high risk, given my family history of alcohol abuse.
But I still say that there’s stuff that can’t be used. You can use alcohol, cigarettes, canabis and probably a hell lot of other things I don’t know of responsibly. Your body might suffer some damage, but it might be “within a range” we generally accept.
It can go wrong, for sure, but it doesn’t have to.
And there’s stuff that ca’t be used. Stuff that’s so damn toxic, so damn addictive that a single time is very likely to fuck you up for the rest of your life. that stuff doesn’t belong into anybody’s hands any more than automatic weapons and botox.
Legalizing the stuff that can be used might solve some problems, like criminalization. It might also seperate the two markets so the casual pot smoker doesn’t get sold or even given some of the other stuff.
Yes, I’d like it to be damn hard for my kids to have access to the extremely dangerous stuff. I know that nothing will prevent them from doing so if they really want to, but I don’t want it to be possible for one of their 18 year old friends to go to a shop, buy meth and invite them at age 14 to share as a casual treat. Children and teenagers are easy to impress. We need to protect them from ruining their lives at an age where we hardly consider them to be able to make rational decissions. Age limits don’t solve that problem.
The whole topic hits close to home. When I was 20 we had to cut my cousin, who grew up with me like my brother, from the ceiling. Fortunately he survived. Extasy and other stuff have ruined his brain and his body. They triggered a latent schizophrenia. Basically, his life is over. His body is too damaged to do manual labour, his brain is too damaged for a white collar job. He cannot even hope for a sex-life, because the psychospharmaka he has to take so he doesn’t attack his dad with a hammer anymore also render him impotent.
So he remaining 40 or 50 years of his life will mean that he’s on wellfare, getting an occasional easy job, depending on his parents at age 32 with no chance to ever change this.
I’m not even talking about the pain he caused to the people who love him the most. I’m not talking about the cost and damage to society. I’m talking about the damage to him, about his ruined life because some people thought it OK to make lots of money with something they knew would do this to him.
Do I want them to be respectable citizens earning an honest income by poisoning kids?
David M.
Please, don’t call the Linke “neo-communists”. Marx would revolt in his grave.
starstuff91
Only partial joking.
Do you have a bathtub?
and someplace to hang-dry?
You could do your socks and undies and t-shirts.
I’m all for free range kids and all that, but seriously, in what strange alternate universe are glass marbles a suitable toy for 2 year olds in general and my 2 year old son specifically, who I caught yesterday, trying to put his older brother’s hearing aid in his mouth? Has the staff at his daycare lost its marbles and is that where they’re coming from? Or am I an overconcerned parent? (Come to think of it, that’s not an exclusive or).
I’m going to address this tomorrow and take him home (fortunately, I have that option) if not dealt with satisfyingly.
Benjamin Geiger: Have you considered bringing a pasty for lunch?
IMO, pasties are delish. And also, made for abuse. There is nothing in your backpack harder on lunch than a cornish miner.
No, and it would be nice if people would familiarize themselves with with the context of and basis for comments before intervening and mischaracterizing my remarks.
@ chigau
Yeah, I have a tub, but I don’t have laundry soap. By the time I pick up some laundry detergent, I’ll probably be getting a washer and dryer. I’m hoping to get one tomorrow, if anyone will respond to my emails.
QFT. They do need some supplied liquid. Beef/lamb gravy would be traditional, but in Dah YooPee, ketchup. And ketchup can be left at RT for days after it has been opened, due to the acidity of mixture. I wouldn’t keep it in your car though…
Philosophy?
Danish uni students are always shocked to discover they have to know German. Apparently Schopenhauer was translated for the first time only a few years ago.
So, mayonnaise is pretty much out.
Oh for cheese and rice. My daughter’s little neighbor friend was over and after she left we found the cat run unlatched. One or both of the girls opened the run (against strict, express, explicit rules) “to play with” one of the cats, and now he’s missing and we can’t find him.
Back on food traveling – I would guess not many people could take advantage of this, but if you have any old white plastic film canisters around (the kind they used to sell actual film in!) they are watertight and can be used for salad dressings etc. to take along for lunch. The black ones with the gray snap-on lids won’t work, it has to be the white ones with the lids that kind of snap in.
Also, Starstuff, I’ve washed undies with my shampoo before. Just saying. Hand soap works too. They used to advise frugal-housewives-in-training to save the ends and slivers of scented soap for washing delicate laundry.
@kristinc
I could probably do that. I only have one pair of clean undies left at this point.
Mayonaise, on pasties???? Sacril…SSSWWWWOOOOOOONNNN…..
Giliell: I don’t think we’re particularly in disagreement. And I’m sorry to hear about what happened to your cousin, and apologize if I was insensitive.
FWIW, I wouldn’t suggest that heroin, meth, etc., should be sold legally in corner stores, by any means. I wouldn’t legalize those substances, in the sense of allowing them to be sold as uncontrolled commodities in a free market (something I should have specified in my earlier post). Rather, for hard drugs, I’d adopt an approach similar to that taken in Portugal in 2001, where possession of hard drugs attracts administrative rather than criminal penalties; the available responses should extend only to confiscation of the substance, referral to drug treatment where appropriate, and a possible fine.
However, none of this applies to cannabis – which should be legalized, taxed and sold in a regulated market, much as alcohol and tobacco presently are. Plenty of people smoke a joint in their own home from time to time (whether for relaxation or for medical reasons) without suffering any significant ill-effects.* This is no more of a problem than people drinking a glass of wine in their own home from time to time, and it makes no sense at all that the former, unlike the latter, is a criminal offence in most countries.
(*The claimed link between heavy cannabis use and schizophrenia is very tenuous: although there is some evidence of a correlation, the causation may well run the other way round, considering that many people use cannabis to self-medicate for mental health issues; and those affected are a tiny proportion of all cannabis users.)
Whew, “missing” cat was hiding in the house after all. (He must have run inside to avoid the neighbor girl trying to love him and cuddle him and call him George.)
I like the one where Jesus tells his disciples that he speaks in parable specifically to confuse people into going to hell.
That would seem to be an extremely uncharitable reading of the text, especially as it appears in the context of “the good news” by which the evangelist means its hearers to be saved. The fact is atheists in reading the gospels with nothing but hostility miss the point these ancient writers are trying to get across just as much as Christians who read them naively. For me there’s value in the biblical texts solely as a surviving record of how ancient persons thought about things and conceptualized their experience.
The passage in Mark 4 cites Isaiah 6, Isaiah’s “comission” from god to be a prophet. God tells Isaiah to say this to his people:
So there’s a theological perspective here similar to that expressed in Job and that runs all through the prophets. And it’s genuinely a puzzle to the authors of these texts why, if god is a just and merciful god, and master of all things, he should have made his people so stubborn and “hardhearted”. The answer here, as unsatisfying as it may be to a modern, humanist rationality, is that this is the nature of righteousness and the divine wisdom. If doing the right thing (defined as acting in accord with the divine will) were as easy as “turning” and “being healed,” then it follows that the chosen people would not be such assholes all the time. Since they are, god has made it such that only a righteous remnant (the “stump” of Israel in Isaiah) can truly come into god’s grace. A hard fact for the people, but ultimately another expression of the divide between human shortsightedness and selfishness and the difficult path of obedience and righteousness even (especially) in the face of worldly concerns.
So too with the usage in Mark. Now, instead of the stump of Israel of Isaiah, the new sect of Jesus believers are the elect or the remnant of the chosen people, “those inside” to whom is given the secret of the kingdom. I take these verses more or less as apologia for why more Jews weren’t flocking to this new piety of salvation. The message of god must be given in cryptic parables because if it could be spoken plainly in worldly, human terms then achieving a state of righteousness would be as easy as simply tuning around. All sectarians think this way: my esoteric message isn’t being received. The reason is that it’s difficult and a hardhearted people won’t receive it. You could hardly even have a sect without this exclusivist understanding of righteousness and salvation.
Furthermore, I think we have a cryptic clue as to how the evangelist intended his text to be read. Jesus prefaces his scriptural citation by saying “Do you not understand this parable? How then will you understand all the parables?” This sticks out for two reasons: one, the Parable of the Sower is not a particularly cryptic allegory, and two, there really aren’t very many parables as such to follow in Jesus’ teaching in Mark. (Matthew and Luke add a great many more in their versions.) Most commentators take the following set of thematically arranged sayings as what Jesus means by “all the parables,” but I think the author means us to understand that the text itself, the gospel, is a parable, a fiction, that, when properly understood, leads the hearer to turn and be saved. It is a sad truth for him that it will most often fall on deaf ears due to the worldly entanglements he outlines in the parable itself, not a source of satisfaction that he has confused people into not being saved.
And now I’ll knock it off with the atheist bible study.
starstuff91
Soap is soap.
Put water and soap (dish, hair, person) in the tub.
Moosh your undies around.
Drain the tub.
Do it again with rinse-water.
——
You could actually get in there with the clothes.
and maybe a friend :)
Pepto-bismol cures everything.
On tupperware: I…kind of like squooshed sandwiches. I’m the one who smashes grilled cheese while making it, and puts potato chips on bologna sandwiches and then smashes them to get them all crumbled right…
Also, on the shared kitchen – wrap everything that is refrigerated or in the freezer in foil with your name on it in Sharpie. Foil is hard to get into and re-wrap without being noticeable, so most people won’t pry into what it is just to see.
I got engaged. Just a FYI if anyone cares
@ Ing
Congratulations!
Walton, do you happen to know of any good references for debunking the cannabis-schizophrenia “link”? I’d like to be in a better position if arguing about it. (completely agree with you re Portugal and hard drugs vs cannabis, btw).
The biggest barriers to decriminalising drugs (apart from the politicians …) presumably include the people who make their living out of having them criminalised – people in organised crime and sectors of law enforcement whose whole career is based on an ongoing and unwinnable “war”.
I remember reading that before heroin was made illegal in the UK (up to the 1950s) there were about 500 registered addicts; now it’s illegal and we have, what, ten or twenty times as many? More?
Rorschach @ 100 – I’ll see if I can find a place to pull over & photograph the one I see when driving into town.
To those talking about Dr Who – *puts fingers in ears & chants lalalala I can’t hear you!* – our TV channels are behind the times & won’t show the second half of the latest series for a while yet, & the govt has enacted new legislation that can see folks lose internet provision after 3 complaints regarding illicit downloads :-(
Congratulations, Ing!
@ Ing
Congratulations!
(to be married?)
And conga rats with good wishes to Ing.
Oh, I saw Debbie in that video for a sec. *waves*
@ alison
This is the most recent episode:
http://www.mopvideo.com/doctor-who-2005-s6e9-night-terrors/
So, mayonnaise is pretty much out.
This is a widespread belief, but it is a myth. Mayonnaise is *not* more prone to spoilage than other foods. First of all, it isn’t like old-timey mayo made with raw egg yolks. Commercial mayonnaise is pasteurized. In addition, it is on the acidic side because of the vinegar in it.
Mayo left out in the sun is certainly unappetizing, but it isn’t the danger almost everyone thinks it is.
Francisco Bacopa @47:
“You cannot use extermination as a method for settling your petty grudges with the
townspeoplerelgious.” (Quote joyfully misappropriated and mangled from Bored of the Rings.)Or to put it another way, how is this in any way different from what a certain, small minority of theists want to do to atheists, and which I assume you would fail to endorse on the grounds that it would be immoral, unethical, unfriendly, and wrong?
–
Oh yeah! I can get a much higher quality of “ecstasy” playing music with a group than I ever got out of religion-based activities like praying, or contemplation of the Wonder of God and His Creation.
–
I thought that was “Faux News”?
:)
–
Is there a Payless Optical where you live? Here at least, the cost is substantially cheaper than that.
We also have a place called America’s Best Contacts and Eyeglasses, advertising “2 Pairs of Glasses for $69.95 with Free Eye Exam”. If you don’t mind plastic rims and lenses, and if there’s “a store near you”, they may suit you.
–
@ alison
Here’s episode 8:
http://www.watchseriesonlinehere.com/doctor-who-2005-s06e08-lets-kill-hitler/
Ooh, I looked up dunkelmänner, and it is indeed the perfect descriptor for AiG:
1)obscurantists
2) shady characters
It’s almost as if Herr Luther knew MichaelBehe, Casey Luskin, Bruce Chapman, et al, personally. Shady characters indeed.
opposable thumbs wrote:
And – unless that’s included in ‘sectors of law enforcement’ – don’t forget that one of the biggest players in maintaining (and increasing) the criminalisation of drugs are the prison owners and employees. Some of the biggest lobby groups out there are those fighting to keep criminal incarceration as profitable an enterprise as possible.
I didn’t say that. Mayo on pasties for me is like ketchup on hot dogs for the Rev. BDC. Something not considered in civilized society.
But… Put ketchup on all the things!
Bah.
I am nearly entirely certain that Martin “Reason is the devil’s whore!!!!!” Luther was a dunkelmänner himself, and would have agreed with the creobots/IDiots.
@Ing, congrats, and don’t let it change you (except maybe a bit).
—
From the iPhone thread, James Goldsmith goes on Charlie Rose, vs. Laura D’Andrea Tyson, 1994. JBG is a more accurate predictor of the subsequent 15 years:
http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=5064665078176641728
“Texas Instruments, Motorola”. Hmmm.
1994.
Seventeen years ago.
—
More mid-90s prediction that turned out right:
http://www.slate.com/id/1910/
WE CARE (well, I do)!!!! Congragulations!
============
I just baked a nice, dense, crusty light rye bread (no mole asses). And the whole house smells of good bread.
Ing,
*confetti!*
*pops champagne!*
Woo hoo!
We™ make our own “ketchup”.
We have started from garden tomatoes, stewed down.
Did not work :(
Start from tinned tomato paste, flavour to suit.
yummy
Congratylatuons, Ing!!!
And yes, put ketchup on all the things. (but not the Ing)
opposablethumbs: There are some useful statistics and links to relevant studies in this article, for starters.
Now I am totally squicked out. Pasties? With mayo? You’re kidding. I hope.
Girl will not eat ketchup. When she was about six, she read the nutrition label on the ketchup and asked why there was protein in it. Wife answered, “Well, they don’t carefully go through each and every tomato checking for worms and other bugs. They just toss them all in.” And the kid who ate a lightning bug to make here butt glow has never consumed ketchup (or catsup) since then (except when used in, say, baked beans).
SQB,
Free Range != No Rules
Especially at that age. Definitely bring it up. If it fits in the hand, it goes in the mouth (and sometimes even if it doesn’t).
Carlie,
I think Ing would be simply delightful covered in ketchup.
Aside: In the American Woman’s Cook Book, it’s spelled “catchup”. I have never seen that spelling before.
Congratulations Ing!
contentedreader, I’d recommend looking for science-related blogs on the Intarweebz. After all, you demonstrably already have access, so it won’t cost you anything more than you’re already spending. :)
Also, I suspect the blog stuff of being more up-to-date, and it’s certainly more interactive; that’s what the comments section is for.
–
No.
And for all the welcome that relationship advice from strangers generally is, if this is representative of the way he usually treats you, it sounds like you need to kick him to the curb.
–
Mattir, I like this part best. It’s nicely surreal, and provokes a very amusing visual. :D
–
I think it’s because of the PR history that has been grafted onto it; the whole “marijuana is a gateway drug” and “all non-prescription drugs are Eeeeeevil” thing. I know a lot of older people who still believe it, in an almost religious sense, which means they’re unlikely to change their minds on it. More and more of them are dropping out of the voter pools and into the cemetaries, though, so I see it (eventually) being changed…provided the country doesn’t go to the dogs in 2012.
–
And that the lettuce isn’t wet. Any tomatoes should be kept between non-spongy surfaces (like cheese and lettuce).
–
Agitate gently. :)
–
Not in my experience. Pepto-bismol makes me barf. Quickly.
–
Ing: *confetti* and *champagne*.
–
Woot! I get to paint mealworms in lab on Wednesday.
starstuff91
um
Are you painting, on paper, images of mealworms or
are you applying paint to the mealworms?
If the latter, why?
So I was in the middle of this … wait, what? Ing got engaged!? Whoooo fucking wheeeaaaaahhh, yeah Ing!!!
Applying paint to the mealworms. It’s for ecology lab and we’re learning about the mark-recapture method of estimating population size.
Found it.
Arthur and Jamie – Doctor Who Confidential – BBC Three
No spoilers, assuming you already know there’s a boy in the ep.
Please. I would vote straight-ticket for dogs if they were eligible to hold office.
SQB:
This is an agile approach; the requirements aren’t all known up front. As an option is suggested, I mentally simulate it, and take note of any issues I can imagine. Those issues then become part of the requirement set.
Chigau:
Starstuff91 is painting the mealworms as an environmentally friendly substitute for confetti to help in the Ingabration.
I’m skipping ahead just to mention I’m watching The Green Room.
Judah Friedlander isn’t funny. Eddie Izzard is funny.
Oh, and there’s this guy I’ve heard mentioned here. Tim Minchin.
starstuff91
I am delighted to understand that “ecology” still exists as a legitimate field of study.
——
Brother Og’s confetti for “Ingabration” sounds good, too.
Hi, is my new nym showing up?
Benjamin, stop whining and go to Kmart or whatever and buy yourself a decent lunchbox. In Australia there are hundreds of varieties of lunchboxes, with partitions, room to store an icepack or a small frozen drink bottle, insulated carry bags etc etc. Kids’ ones with cartoon characters, macho ones with skulls and lightning and skateboards for the teen boys etc. Surely you must have something like those in the US.
Your sandwiches will not squish if you put them in a hard lunchbox, and pack them so they’re not rattling around inside their box. If your box is too big, get some sandwich or snack-sized ziplock bags and fill them with popcorn for extra padding and post-sandwich snack. Make a batch of sandwiches in advance and freeze them, if they’re plain things like PB&J.
A lot of food will keep quite OK in the heat. Avoid mayo like the plague, but a potato salad made with cold potatoes and an olive oil/vinegar/mustard dressing will be fine. Dried fruits and nuts are good for energy boosts and will also keep in the heat. Hard cured salami will be fine; rare roast beef would be dubious unless well stored. Single serve tins of tuna, sardines, meat can be opened on the spot. Hard cheeses are OK, soft cheeses dubious but the heavily processed ones are OK. Lettuce and cucumber will go limp, but sugar snap peas and baby carrots are more durable and good to snack on.
And it takes care of the hors d’ouevres, too!
Sammich construction techniques:
1. I don’t like tomatoes anyway, so that’s not an issue. And I can do without lettuce.
2. The ingredients themselves aren’t usually the problem. The problem is usually the condiments. (An obvious exception is PB&J; the J tends to soak through the bread with a quickness.)
I went to Sam’s Club today and bought a box of jelly packets, and I have a fresh jar of peanut butter, so I should be set for PB&J for a while with only the bread needing to be replenished regularly. I’m probably going to get some sort of small bottle with a tight lid to hold mustard and/or ketchup, or maybe just bogart a bunch of packets from a restaurant. (Possibly both.)
3. Mayo may not be significantly dangerous when exposed to air at room temperature, but it does tend to become disgusting.
While at Sam’s, I tried to buy mayo packets, but they were out.
####
Other notable purchases at Sam’s:
* 12-pack of 9.5oz mocha Frappucino, $14 (normally $2.25 per bottle)
* 5-pack of deluxe mac-and-cheese, $8 (normally $2.50 per box)
* 24-pack of 24-oz Diet Mt. Dew, $15 (normally $1.50+ per bottle)
* Bath sheet, $10 (my old one is beginning to unravel)
* 15-pack of Otis Spunkmeyer muffins, $7 (normally $1.50 each, I think)
####
Apparently JCPenney Optical has the 2-pair-for-$99 deal going right now. I’ll have to stop by tomorrow. (They were closed when I got there today.) I don’t think it includes the eye exam, but I have the prescription from my last pair (which is identical to the prescription from my previous pair), so if they’ll accept that, I’m good to go.
Another fantastic post from Mom-NOS about separation anxiety. This whole series is beautiful, as those of you who clicked on the earlier link may be aware, but this one really hit home with me. (For the people who might have missed the earlier link, also check out “A hair-dryer kid in a toaster-brained world.” Touching, lovely, tissues potentially needed.) Now, this kid’s class seems to be very much the exception – on this same blog, I’ve also found horror stories of classrooms far less inclusive and understanding.
You have no idea how much I wish that were an option :(
Classical Civs. Gender studies specifically. It’s because I’m supposed to learn the languages that most of the important academic work appears in. I’m supposed to be at an intermediate level in one of those three languages, plus my Latin and Greek, to be considered qualified for the grad school I want to attend. Not even particularly competitive – just qualified.
Yeah. It’s pretty interesting. It’s actually becoming a more important field of study as time goes on.
I’m looking forward to our field trips. We’re going to some really cool places.
Oh – I didn’t put it in my post – CONGRATULATIONS ING! I hope everything goes wonderfully!
BenG
PBJ sammiches for later:
toast your bread
put PB on both slices
put the jam between the PB-spread breads.
—
= no jammy bleeding
@Josh, so-called “mayonnaise” not made with raw egg yolks is not real mayonnaise. But you do have a point, in that most commercial mayo is less subject to spoilage, being made of gelatine and acetic acid and preservatives and other mystery substances. Possibly horse semen.
Congratulations, Ing.
I’m a little late to this, but Congratulations, Ing!!! Best wishes to you and your affianced.
Also, I, too, am curious about painting mealworms. Please explicate, starstuff91
It’s an experiment demonstrating the mark-recapture method. Basically, you capture a set amount of individuals from a population and you mark them (with the mealworms, we’re doing it with paint), then you release them. Later you go back and recapture another sample (the same size of the previous one) and count how many marked animals you have in that sample. Then you do some maths and you have an estimate of the population size.
Alethea H Claw wrote (of mayonnaise):
I guess that means I’ll be having mustard on today’s sandwiches.
Miracle Whip lasts longer than mayonnaise but not as long as mustards.
++++++++++++++++++++++
I ate at my favorite Chinese Buffet tonight. It’s owned by Koreans, Vietnamese work the front and Hispanics run the kitchen. They also serve sushi. And soft serve ice cream.
I haven’t tried the sushi, but thanks to the horde’s advice I tried the kimchee tonight. It was a lot more like cabbage boiled the Irish way than the fetid rotting glop I had in LA. In Koreatown.
We™ also make our own kimchee.
Mostly ambrosia
but we have produced a substance that could have been used for CBW.
it got the vermin out of the compost bin.
WOOO yeah for Ing and Ing’s Associated Person! Celebratory cheese, confetti, beverages, music, etc!
Wife’s aunt, down in Florida, was born in Korea. She makes her own kimche. She was very happy when she discovered Scotch Bonnet chile peppers for her kimche. Now, I like hot food. I love hot, spicey food. The stuff she makes scares me.
Hey, has anyone heard from Aquaria recently? Her mother is in the Texas fire zone and she was worried.
Oh it’s a robust scientific field*. Lots of political and economic leaders probably wish it didn’t exist, but it’s still hanging around.
* Though the “harder” physicists might sneer at it. Hey, you guys try studying things that are millions of times bigger than any laboratory and being actively destroyed.
Yep, she just posted a comment on another blog here at FTB. I don’t have any news though.
Rey, I agree with you, but we do have the technology and budget, what we don’t have is the will.:(
The Sailor wrote:
Wait – I thought in the US you called that ‘frozen custard’? Is there a difference? Or is it one of the regional variations, like ‘pop’?
Yes there’s a difference, frozen custard is much more likely to be found in the east/south, and it has the consistency of goop.
Frozen Custard: “In the United States the Food and Drug Administration requires products marketed as frozen custard to contain at least 10 percent milkfat and 1.4 percent egg yolk solids. If it has fewer egg yolk solids, it is considered ice cream.”
–
Therrin, I don’t know where you’re getting your frozen custard, but clearly, wherever it is, they’re doing it wrong.
Oh, okay – there is an actual difference. There you go. I don’t believe we even have frozen custard in Australia – or if we do, it’s called something else entirely, and I’ve never had it.
On the downside I now want to eat soft-serve ice cream, and I’ve no idea where I’d go to get some.
On another note:
when the Lords of HTML4 HTML5 HTMLwhatever start implementing all of their “deprecations”, will we be still able to make a single word bold?
Like, I even know what that, like, means.
Wowbagger @ 246 On the downside I now want to eat soft-serve ice cream, and I’ve no idea where I’d go to get some.
Mr Whippy!!!
Therrin:
We’ve got a bunch of frozen custard places up here and I think it’s delicious. Denser and more flavorful than softserve ice cream.
And with a silky-smooth texture.
–
I think that’s the cue for astrophysicists who study supernovas to raise their eyebrows.
/just sayin’
Thought I’d drop in before I (re)disappear into the work week to add mine to the growing pile of celebratory well-wishes for Ing! Woo-hoo!!!
And while I’m here…
Just as well: Mustard (in all its manifold guises) is the king of condiments. Ketchup is marginally acceptable in small amounts on burgers, but should mostly be reserved for dipping
freedomFrench fries, and should never be allowed anywhere near a hotdog. Mayno has many wonderful applications, but none of them has anything to do with burgers or hotdogs. I haz spoken!Also, Cicely:
Am I the only one who imagined Alton Brown in a full Men-In-Black government agent getup as I read that?
What the hell is “mayno”? <HailTypos!>
I really, really like the notion of Men-In-Black custard police.
Can we have some for hollandaise, too?
Congrats, Ing!
Boo to lobbyists who just want to get fat off the misery of prisons.
And a hearty “fuck you and the horses you and your family rode in on” to anyone else who’s being a blight on the face of humanity.
Bed. Tired. Laters, all.
Congratulations to Ing&SO! *Confetti and glitter mixed in proportion to your liking.*
Way of the Mister! We need it.
I didn’t do that on purpose. Damn. I’m an idiot at heart.
Er, um. Are the uniforms leather bustiers (sp?) and riding crops?
And a +1 for a typos while typing Tpyos.
And I’m off to bed. Hopefully, my dentist will be able to fit me in tomorrow. I have finally decided that the severe pain in my molar really is a problem.
You broke it :(
Next time, use anchor tags.
Mea Culpa.
Like this I hope.
It’s not in the preview.
Wowbagger, frozen custard is just icecream. Most homemade icecream recipes are based on a custard, as are house-made icecreams in fancy restaurants.
Standard commercial icecreams tend to use other thickeners like carrageenan and guar gums. The legal terminology doesn’t require egg in icecream bases here, so of course they don’t use it. Though we do have “ice confection” for when there’s not enough cream butterfat.
There are a few specialty places that do it here – see for example http://www.goodberrys.com.au/main-frozen_custard.html
Jebus href Christ!
Like Bullwinkle says, “Well…I’m gittin’ close.”
sigh. Alright. I’ll read a book. I’ll get it right if there ever is a next time.
Ing – congratulations!
Ogvorbis – Sadly, no. Mr Whippy is like rubber thongs: not as exciting as it sounds to the foreigner.
hyoid, the easiest way to post youtube links is to paste the URL in directly, then swap in “youtu.be” for the site name and drop everything from after the “/” up to and including the “=”.
Like so: http://youtu.be/zqv-y5Ys3fg
I can’t watch it at work, but I guess that’s what you wanted.
Feh.
Over at scienceblogs/dispatches, someone signing off as “Russell Rogers” left a smug, self-righteous little turd.
Brother Ogvorbis: Er, um. Are the uniforms leather bustiers (sp?) and riding crops?
I realised as soon as I’d posted that someone, somewhere, was going to think that :-) But no, as Althea said, the reality is nowhere near as exciting. Though I suppose it might work wonders for their adult market if the uniforms were as you suggest.
I’m 57 and living in California on SSI. I have severe myopia (ovoid eyeballs even) and astigmatism. So for me even the cheapest glasses are going to be pricey. Any good suggestions for fund raising out there?
As to God, God bothering, and religion; I don’t bother Him, He doesn’t bother me, and I leave fundies to their own insanities (having a few of my own, if some folks are to be trusted).
And for Ing, this old Sumerian adage, “For his pleasure, marriage. Upon his thinking it over, divorce.” :)
(That’s right, people were getting divorced before God made the world. :) )
Sorry if this is off topic. Is that possible in this thread?
Just a heads up to those with a Kindle. Jerry Coyne linked to this free molecular evolution book, The Logic of Chance: The Nature and Origin of Biological Evolution. It was free to me a few minutes ago anyway.
http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2011/09/05/free-kindle-edition-of-evolution-book/
I need to save this image somewhere and paste it in damn near every conversation I have on the local paper’s site:
http://i.qkme.me/eb6.jpg
@ psycholist
Wow, thanks! I have downloaded this.
For those withput a physical kindle, you can also read ebooks from Amazon by installing a kindle program on your computer/phone.
Kindle for PC and Linux (using WINE): LINK. This page explains how to set up a free kindle on your PC. For a direct link to the download look here: LINK. If you have trouble setting up on Linux you can ask for help on TET.
For users of Macs and android/iphoney/blackberry, you can find links on this page (left side, Link)
@theophontes
Thanks for mentioning that. There’s also Cloud Reader, which is an Amazon browser plugin. If your OS runs Chrome or Safari, there’s another way to read Kindle eBooks.
Apropos of nothing, here’s Classical Cipher’s Quirk of the Day:
I can’t watch people play musical instruments or sing. It’s impossible to keep my eyes on them – it’s almost painful or panic-inducing to try. I sometimes feel as though I am in danger of being obliterated if I look at them, or being sucked into them. I realize neither of those fears make sense in any way.
It only happens in person – watching them on the computer or television is fine. I don’t know if stages help or not (they help with my public speaking, so maybe).
I don’t know why this is the case, and to date I have never found anyone else who has experienced the same problem.
Has anyone here?
Never said frozen custard didn’t taste good. It’s not out here (PacNW), but I’ve spent some time in upstate NY, and watched it gloop down the chute from the machine into the barrel.
Classical Cipher,
It’s strange that that would be limited to music. Do you feel that way during a live lecture or presentation? What if PZ broke out in song?
Mr Kristin is washing the dishes right now WITH THE HOT WATER RUNNING DOWN THE DRAIN THE ENTIRE TIME.
It is driving me bugshit and I just had to share my argh. Apologies.
@ CJO #181
Please keep going, I enjoyed your post.
Apropos of your comments consider also Sallustius’s remarks (Link to free download of “On the Gods and The World”) in this regard:
” But admitting all this, how comes it that the myths are so often absurd and even immoral?”
He explains that the use of mystery and allegory is that it forces people to think. And that to know god, our souls must make the effort. ( a lot more than just saying: “jeebus is laaaawd”) It is there to stimulate the mind to explore more deeply.
(He wrote this in defense of paganism. Interestingly, xtians would be lumped with the rest of us as wallowing in “Atheiai” (“rejections of God”).
(The above linked text of is short and to the point and well worth the read.)
Good morning
Walton
Seems like we pretty much agree on this. The Portugeese approach doesn’t seem much different from the German one. Here you have in most bigger cities things like “Drückerräume”. Places where addicts can get clean needels, a hot tea and frther help if they want it.
Because having drug addicts is bad enough, we don’t need HIV positive drug addicts who then engage in high risk prostitution, infecting the Johns who then infect their partners and so on.
As for Canabis: Legalize it, legislate it like alcohol and nicotine.
Ing
Congratulations
Sandwiches
Come on people, generations of Germans grew up on “Butterbrot”. Really, if no mayo is the most serious problem you have, you don’t have any
Starstuff
I washed all my clothes for several months in a bucket with soap. Not fun, but possible. For hygene, put your underwear in a pot and heat on the stove.
No. I still have trouble making eye contact with the speaker and feel awkward when I do, but it’s nothing like the discomfort and irrational fear that happens with music. And with people playing instruments, it’s not limited to eye or face contact; it’s also – I would say mostly – their hands.
In a speech? I’ve never been in that kind of situation, so I don’t know. I realized I do know if stages help – I’ve been to musicals, and stages appear to completely alleviate the problem, as though I were watching a screen. As I said – no freakin’ idea. From what I’ve put down in words here, I think it might be some kind of an interaction thing…?
Oops !
Paging PZM ! I registered my nym very early in the FTB moving stages, and can’t for the life of me remember my login/pw now. When you get a second, can you descend into the database and pull it out ?
@ CC
Or as if the center of gravity has shifted towards the musician? (The kind of feeling you get in an aircraft when it slows and you feel as if it is falling forward though it obviously isn’t.) Yeah, there is something special happening there.
Curious. Most Finnish drug addicts don’t do heroine, that’s ridiculously expensive. They prefer amphetamine even if that’s pretty much the opposite.
@CC: I can’t say I get the same effect, but I do know I’m highly fascinated by watching a skilled musician play. I find myself drawn right in.
I think it’s because making music is one skill I have little to none of, yet I’m still interested in. It’s something awesome they can do that I can’t. Make sense? I dunno.
What a day. Been going for lots of walks with the ex and the kid, and I have a fairly good mental map of all the places around here with accessible fruit trees. I’m pretty sure baby has never eaten so well, she’s always been a bit picky about her food but she just beams right up whenever I gather some berries or apple for her. Now if only her mother was more OK with the hunting…
Kirstinc
A typical attempt to do things so badly you feel tempted to do them yourself instead?
Mr. Giliell tried that one with the laundry. Since it didn’t work he takes now great pride in being a laundry-doing man whose pants are still the same colour they were when he, ehm I bought them.
Headline news: Gravity is still working, earth still revolves around the sun, mummy still won’t brush your hair if you don’t get dressed in time.
I’ve been doing things a bit differently lately and most of the times it works really well. But once in a while, daughter #1 will still try if the old routine of begging, nagging, threatening and finally doing things for her might still work.
TLC
Hmmm, have (both of) you become so anxious about her eating that you make a fuss out of it? Because I’m just recovering from that…
Marble update
Today, I took my son to daycare (it technically isn’t daycare, but close enough — he only goes there for a couple of hours, call it pre-kindergarten if you like). There was a marble track out, for the kids to play with. My son was drawn to that immediately and started playing with it. I played with him, but when one of the staff came over to introduce herself, I voiced my concerns. She agreed and put it away.
I had to point out several other stuff, though — tiny wooden blocks, a wooden doll with its head loose, a small plastic farm animal. I thought they were supposed to be the professionals? It’s not that they’re unwilling, but I seriously doubt their judgement and their attentiveness.
I called the inspection yesterday, will do a follow-up today. This shouldn’t be hard, dammit. If a toy comes with a warning “not suitable for kids under 3 years old”, it probably isn’t, especially for unsupervised or semi-supervised play.
And of course, Ing, let me join the rest in congratulatIng you and your SO. That’s fuckIng amazIng!
I disagree. Of course you should give it some thought, but mentally simulating it != actually doing it. You don’t have to get it right the first time. Things you imagined to be problems may not turn out to be, while things you didn’t think of may turn out to be real problems.
Unless you suffer from diabetes or some other medical problem like that, not eating on time won’t kill you. Buy some instant noodles or something like that as a back up.
Ah, yes. The eternal struggle of needing to get it done on time vs. needing your kid to do it hirself. Pick your battles, they (dr. Phil among them, probably) say.
My oldest still manages to get dressed instead of dressing himself. What’s your miracle solution? The pressures of a waiting taxi gets him
spoonforkfed every (too often) once in a whileLooks like I missed a period. I’m male, though, so I can’t be pregnant. Oh wait, here it is.
.
Brother Ogvorbis, Fully Defenestrated Emperor of Steam, Fire and Absurdity,
is how I started reading that.
Nah, she’s getting less and less picky as we go along. We were a tiny bit worried she’d be hard to feed, but we just kept trying different healthy little things until she found stuff she liked.
Ing, congratulations. I wish you the happiest of futures.
SQB
I totally agree that marbles are completely out of question, because they are damn fucking dangerous since they can block breathing rather efficiently, but I’ve taken an easy stance on “not suitable for children under 3 years”
-Some of them are simply there to absolve the company of any responsibility because the toy is clearly targeted at children under 3. 3 yo take little interest in puzzles where you have to put a dog into a dog-shaped hole. 1 yo do. So the label is bs.
-Some regulations are stupid. There are concerns that this doll doesn’t confirm to some European regulations about to saftey for toddlers because her hair is an amazing 18 cm long. I guess I’m not safe for my children to be with either because my hair is much longer than that.
-Well, I don’t have much of a chance anyway. I can’t force my older kid to exclusively play with baby toys (unless I want her to really, really hate her sister) and sperating their toys is unrealistic unless you have at least 2 adults who watch them non-stop
SQB
I decide whether the consequences would be too grave for them to take (I do brush my youngest’s teeth while she’s crying and screaming *sigh*) and then let them feel them.
So she went to kindergarten with unkempt hair und unwashed face. She hurried up real quick when she realized that going there in her pyjamas are a definete option, too.
I can tell you, our lives have become much better. Each day would start with a constant fight and struggle about getting dressed (Honey, here’s your clothes…could you please stop playing and get dressed, we need to leave…it really is time now for getting dressed..get dressed now, for heaven’s sake, you’re not a baby anymore) until I’d pick her up, dress her quickly and angrily, brush her hair and wash her face and take her to the kindergarten while mightily annoyed where she’d do the same trick until I’d change her shoes for her.
It would usually end with a fight at the dinner table (honey, please eat something, please, use your fork, where are you going? You need to eat a little more or you’ll be hungry tonight, if you don’t eat now, there’ll be no dessert, what are you doing with your cup, why is it we always have this trouble at the dinner table?) until me or somebody else would spoonfeed her, reprimand her a thousand times about not putting her finger into the ketchup/sour cream/whatever (she’d make sure to do it slowly and obviously so I had lots of time to get angry).
Now we sit down, if she plays with her cup, I remove it without chastising her, hand her her fork, and if either of them gets up (apart from going to the toilet), their dinner is over, I’ll take their plates into the kitchen (no fussing about it) and finish my dinner. They may have gone to bed hungry once or twice, but by now we can enjoy dinner.
And the best part is that I’m much more relaxed, not permanently angry or mightily annoyed.
We went to town on Saturday and it was actually fun (which I let them know. I didn’t praise them for behaving well but told them that I really liked our day out) and not a permanent struggle of herding cats on ecstasy.
Regarding small parts, here’s one model of the tester used. If it can fit entirely inside without squishing or deforming, it’s deemed a “small part” (16 CFR 1500.48, ASTM F963, EN-71 1998 8.11). Dimensions on the tube are 41 x 41 x 66 mm.
This is a more representative picture. I can’t find mine at the moment.
Ah yes, because it could wrap completely around a child’s neck and potentially strangle them is my bet.
Saw this at Friendly Atheist : Dear Mary,…
I’ve seen this a lot and felt like saying to the parent, Don’t you see what they’re doing? I don’t think they’d (the parents) have appreciated it, though (also harder to notice when it’s being done to you).
Beatrice,
Not only is that awesome, it looks like someone has a typewriter that still works!
Therrin,
Their source: linky. There is a lot more there.
Other than that, I have a typewriter that still works! At least it worked when we packed and stored it, and it was in perfect condition so it should still work. It was one of my favorite “toys” ever since my grandfather let me use it – I used to pretend I’m a real writer and write stories.
Ahh, my favorite elementary school joke:
Why was six afraid of seven?
Giliell, I agree with you on the “not suited for children under 3 years of age” label. I think it’s mainly a disclaimer since the manufatcurer (I noticed the typo, but I rather like it) doesn’t want to think about safe design or doesn’t want to do the paperwork. The difference though, is between unsupervised and supervised play. I’ll let him play with Lego (and I do mean Lego, not Duplo), as long as I’m sitting with him at the table. On his own? No chance.
As a consequence of this, our oldest can’t play with his Lego or Playmobil with his younger brother present. Though luck. There’s still enough opportunity to do so and there are still enough toys left to play with.
It’s a simple matter of risk analysis. Probability x impact = danger. I’d assess entanglement in the hair of that doll as very low probability (pretty hard to do, since the hair is not that long) and a medium impact (even if a kid does manage to do it, it doesn’t mean it’s going to choke immediately), so that amounts to a low danger. Marbles, on the other hand, have a medium to high probability associated with a high impact, so I rate them as a high danger.
Therrin, that’s bigger than I thought. I’m tempted to by one and deprive that preschool of half of its toys.
Giliell, I agree as well on letting your kids face the consequences of their actions. However, it’s not always feasible. Our oldest is hard of hearing and attends a specialised school. He goes there by taxi bus (“short bus”) most days. If I could bring him myself in his pyjamas (so I could explain and then reveal I brought his clothes after all), I would. But putting him in the taxi in his PJ’s is out of the question. And I know he will call my bluff.
BTW, speaking of Playmobil and Lego, did anyone else notice that the latter seems pretty much secular, while the former has a (admittedly small) line of christian toys, like an ark of Noah and a nativity scene? No Christ on the cross though — the arms don’t bend that way.
Track Happy Feet — or the orca that ate him.
Nice Google Doodle today.
Good morning, everyone!
Shit’s changing at work and now I have to start an hour early (7:30, blech). What I don’t know is whether or not I get out an hour early or if I’m expected to stay until 5. :(
Rev. BigDumbChimp, you work with the AS/400, right?
The father of a friend of mine is looking for an AS/400 related job in California and my friend asked me for advice. Other than pointing out that they’re often used by banks and other financial institutions because of their reliability, I had no advice to offer — I’m in Europe, and my current job is the second one where we’re migrating from AS/400 to Oracle.
Do you have any advice to share? Thanks in advance.
“Jesus is the answer, Cole.” *snrk*
Benjamin “WTF does that read” Geiger, I’m gonna go to a Christian university and ace all the tests. No matter what the question is, I’ll write down ‘Jesus’, since Jesus is the answer!
SQB
well, I think I did a different risk-analysis, so the playmobil are always open. I look at it like that: When have you last been outside? So when I take them to the playgound or the garden, there are things that resemble those small parts in size and shape. Mother Nature doesn’t come with labels, and I can’t be everywhere at the same time. So teaching them not to put things into their mouths has a preference.
They are both remarkably good at it, but it’s also one of those things the older one will test me with.
As for the PJ’s in the bus, maybe you could talk to his teacher beforehand and deposit some clothes at the school? He would probably be very glad if he can change before school starts.
Yeah, I noticed Noah’s Ark. I put it down as “cultural christianity”. On the other hand they have fairies and unicorns and dragons and zombies and all of that, too. What buggers me more is the clear distinction between “boy toys and girl toys” both brands are guilty of. On the other hand, playmobil’s stone-age sets don’t contain dinosaurs.
Therrin
Nah, i don’t think it would go down well. as a parent I hate nothing more than people interrupting me while I’m parenting in front of the kids
You can talk to me later, but not at that moment.
But it’s important to realize what the child is actually doing. Alyson Schafer describes it as an invitation to dance. She does the first move and then I’d react calling her off (while already building up steam inside. Why does she always have to put her finger in the ketchup?). It’s a dance we danced many times and where we know each others steps perfectly. Until I stopped “dancing”. Pfff, the world isn’t going to end if she puts her finger in the ketchup. Which initially led to more drastic meassures on her account like painting her face red with the ketchup. Well, it’s not my face that is getting all sticky and itchy.
So she mostly dropped it.
Mr. was pretty skeptical about this approach when I first told him about it, but he was willing to try and by now our mealtimes have improved drasically.
Bill Dauphin –
That is only an homage to Tpyos because you failed to put sufficient emphasis on “NO”.
My sympathies. It makes me crazy when Mr Beach does chores wrong and I can’t say anything because at least he is trying.
Congratulations to Ing.
I missed the whole “Benjamin Makes a Lunch” story because my kids and I were busy making lunches for their first day back to school. Seriously, it’s not rocket science. Lunchbox. Reusable containers. Something somewhat impermeable between the bread and the mushy stuff (lettuce, cheese, peanut butter). Heavy stuff on the bottom of the bag/box.
It’s been really quiet in the thread today. Where is everyone? Is it because of the US holiday?
Alethea, I have nothing to say.
Giliell, did you get that from that book you mentioned, Honey, I wrecked the kids? It’s already on my BOL.com wishlist, initiated by your recommendation.
We try to use this technique, but we sometimes find it hard to follow through. Even letting him sit in the taxi in his PJ’s would be a bit to harsh for my taste — it takes an hour for him to get there, since he’s the first on the route. What I would probably do, is march him out to the taxi in his pyjama as if he needs to go on board, tell the driver I’m taking him to school today, and then marching him back in.
And sometimes the negative consequences aren’t felt immediately. Brushing teeth, for instance. Our youngest has been very reluctant. Nowadays we manage be either “brushing the spiders out of his mouth” (he’s had a complete zoo in there by now and then some) or tickling him to get him to open his mouth. Still it’s a two-person job at times.
What bothers me most is that “NO!” is not always open to discussion. I don’t mind if it gets him dirty, but I do mind if it gets him killed. Learning that you can get hit by a car if you run into the street without looking, can be a once in a lifetime learning experience.
Good morning! I spent the entire weekend playing Minecraft and suddenly realizing the giant dome I was trying to build is actually turning out to be more of a giant pyramid…
Making circles out of squares is really hard :\ But I’ll figure it out, I haven’t gotten too far into the project to need to scrap it entirely (which would suck) but it’ll be a pain trying to figure out the geometry.
Been like that for weeks though, hasn’t it ? Is anyone still commenting on the SB Pharyngula ?
Because seven eight nine.
==
This is from middle school: Why is 77 better than 69?
Maybe 20-30 posts a day over there. It was more active when the liberturds were spewing their idiocy.
@Walton #206 Thank you! (tips hat)
.
.
.
I like the crocoduck – but I’m starting to miss some of the other banners … will they ever come rolling back?
@opposablethumbs:
Eventually, according to PZ.
As I recall, this was GC Williams’s prefered hypothesis for the whole point–or the adaptive benefit, anyway–of these giant brains. Fast learning of danger without the necessity of direct experience.
SQB
Yep, I did. I love the book.
The line is drawn where consequences would be too far removed from the action, like with teeth, too dangerous, like with cars, or would “punish” innocent bystanders or siblings.
But you shy away from letting him sit in his PJs in the bus for an hour.
Seriously, what’s going to happen? At least as long as it’s not too cold for this. It’s not a punishment. It’s his choice.
It was my daughter’s choice to look like a run-over squirrel all day in a kindergarten where a lot of the Russian girls will turn up with fancy hairstyles.
Next time she’ll most likely chose differently.
If anyone is terribly bored, they can advise me on how to amuse myself at a wedding where I don’t know anyone (besides the bride and the groom, there will be two or three people with whom I’ve spoken about a sentence at the uni – that might actually be one sentence per all three together) and am going alone.
Bro Og:
Probably not this, but it’s funny anyway.
Ben:
You’re on the right track. (and yes, that is funny as all gitout.)
Seventy seven is better because you get eight more.
This one looks like a Scrabble game at my house.
Great. Now I’m hooked on XKCD comics. Which, I suppose, is a good thing. I have to wait until 2:30 to see a dentist about the broken tooth with the exposed nerve. And I can’t even do my bills until I know how much that is going to cost me. So, I guess I’ll be XKCDing and playing Scrabble with Wife.
“Let’s sixty-eight.”
“Sixty-eight?”
“Yeah. You do me and I’ll owe you one.”
Benjamin – why are you flipping tables?
Brother Ogvorbis –
So you’re off to see the dentist at “2:30”? Oldest joke in the book.
@ Benogg
L7 (toe fetish)
……………….
The dawn of computer art. Link: Lillian Schwartz – Mutations.
(I don’t suggest watching too much of this unstoned.)
My Precioussssssssss appears at 2:59.
The US holiday, Labor Day was yesterday. Now everyone is back at work.
BTW, my son was trying to tell me that Labor Day was named after the great unsung hero, Manuel Labor. I wasn’t buying it, since if he was unsung, how did he get a holiday named after him?
Yeah, seems to me SB Pharyngula is still more active than any of the other SB blogs I regularly check.
As for me, I’m mostly still there because Shiloh and txpiper have been trolling it and, er, SIWOTI syndrome compels me to stay.
ADD exists as a spectrum, right? I mean, it just makes sense that it would. Probably a constellation of symptoms with varying severity. I have a chronic inability to stay on-task with things, or to get things done that I want to. I tend to create a pile of things I want done, then not finish most of them. I get about halfway into something, then lose focus or lose interest. Or at least, dip below the critical mass of interest required for me to take action.
This is mostly about my personal to-do list. My job requirements are another matter. Currently, I have a program I’m slowly making progress with and a blog post I’m trying to write. Of course, both occasionally take backseat to some very important gaming. I’ve spent almost a week writing this blog post, and I’m maybe half done with it. Pretty pathetic. And then there’s the fact that I haven’t really read TET in, like, months I guess.
Well, speaking of being distracted, I gotta get back to what they actually pay me for around here.
Well I work on one in the sense that i deal with a company that manages our system. I’m mainly Windows / Linux / Network / jack of all trades.
Unfortunately I don’t have much to offer other than I know that the flooring industry, at lease those who are members of certain distributors, use it as a platform because a many of them have to use a certain software package that only runs on that architecture. So he could start looking there. Frankly I try and stay as far removed from it as I can. That doesn’t always work out for me.
Well…
nevermind.
But this is my day off. And I really do have a dentist appointment. And the pain piss are not working.
Hmm… hadn’t actually considered that comment threads over there were still live and divergent from threads here. Seems like it would be difficult to maintain in terms of keeping up with / moderating the comment threads the way PZ does now (“moderating” isn’t the best word there… more “reviewing”, really, but you know what I mean).
Not sure closing comments on SB is a good idea either, as long as you continue to have a presence there. But I’m not going to try to make any effort to keep up with comments on both sites… I have barely enough time for keeping up with what’s here on FTP as it is…
@ Josh
You have mail.
I work with AS/400s… have for the last 10 years. But if you father’s friend is looking for a job that is specifically AS/400 related, I’m guessing that person’s already either a programmer, analyst or administrator… so I’m not sure what functional advice I would give. They probably know as much if not more than I do already.
From a job availability standpoint, I don’t know much about the market in California other than it’s very tight and jobs… even tech jobs… are hard to come by. Where I live in Central NY State there do seem to be several AS/400 programmer / analyst jobs available, especially recently for whatever reason.
mythusmage the high myope is above asking about glasses: Try Googling VOSH (Volunteer Optometric Services to Humanity) and see if there is an optometry school nearby. Salvation Army and Goodwill might also be able to help out.
Your Rx sounds sufficiently complex that they might have just what you need. They are donated glasses and in a reverse bell curve type of way these organizations can actually be over stocked in the high + and – lenses. Warning: They will probably be ugly and you might have to ‘split the difference’ on your astig cyl.
If you run out of options, e mail your Rx to thesailor2376 yahoo. No guarantees, I’ll check what I can do.
+++++++++++++++++++++
Katherine Lorraine, making circles/domes out of hexagons is much easier, is that an option?
+++++++++++++++++++++
Rev, the Google Doodle is awesome!
Any PADI qualified divers here? (There must be).
I’m planning on getting the Open Water Diver certificate in Jan/Feb 2012 and would like to know how many training hours/dives it usually takes, and the resulting restrictions on air travel.
It must all be on the net somewhere but the PADI website doen’t tell me (and seems more interested in selling me eLearning packs).
Cheers.
Brother Ogvorbis –
I said oldest joke, not oldest excuse.
Ring Tailed Lemurian, my instructors advocated at least 12 hours from bottle to throttle.
Yes, this campaign was used last year. Here is this year’s press release: Living Without Religion Ad Campaign Continues—But Hits a Snag http://www.centerforinquiry.net/newsroom/living_without_religion_ad_campaign_continuesbut_hits_a_snag/
Here is the Living Without Religion Campaign website: http://livingwithoutreligion.org/
Sailor – (Thanks for answering).
Really? I thought it was usually more than that (up to a week). (And, presumably, it depends on how deep one went too).
How long/many dives did your course take?
@ Kitty
To make a dome … squares won’t work with conventional geometry. Do you have the option of triangles? Other irregular shapes?
Google Buckminster Fuller. Also “Bucky balls”. Here is a linky.
@theophontes / The Sailor:
Nope!
Only cubes. Minecraft is a voxel-based building game. I don’t need a perfect sphere or a perfect dome, but a good enough representation of one would suffice.
Katherine,
This might help:
http://www.minecraftwb.com/index.php/addons/tools–utilities/misc-tools/item/minecraft-structure-planner
12 hours is about right unless decompression stops were required on the last dive, or multiple dives each day have been made for several days, regardless of depth.
Ring Tailed Lemurian, it just takes minutes from one dive stage to another, why would it take days for a flight? Commercial aircraft keep their cabins at about 8k feet ASL max.
I don’t have an Open Water License, but no one in the places I’ve dived cared as long as I had a license to get my tanks filled. (I’ve never dived below 30 feet.)
It took a weekend for me to be certified. It was years ago.
Erulóra Maikalambe @ 330:
Yep. And ADD and ADHD in adults manifests differently, since we tend to have more self-control that children and often find “workarounds” that mitigate some of the negative effects.
I don’t know if anecdata helps any. I’m also ADHD, and you haven’t described any hyperactivity symptoms.
That being said, I have to allow myself active distractions – odd, I know, but it seems to eat up enough of the non-focused attention that I can work. So, for example, I have facebook chat open pretty much all day on a second monitor (or TET, or both): I can focus on my main task, doing what I need to do, and take a mini-distraction every few minutes. Yeah, it takes a bit of self-discipline to get back on target, but I tend to work better because of it.
Playing nondistracting music or having audible-but-inconsequential conversations going on in the background helps as well. My personal theory, for my own condition, is that, rather than not being able to pay attention, I have too much attention to “pay” on one task: the extra distractions help bleed off enough excess to keep me going. Of course, I also get the hyperfocus mode sometimes, which is a totally different thing entirely (for good and for bad).
My “H” qualification manifests nowadays as constant fidgetting and shifting around, as well as seeminly heightened senses. I also have to get up and move at least once an hour, which I usually excuse by going to the restroom, checking on someone in a different office, or even just walking once around the hospital; if I don’t, I start getting an odd headache sensation (which isn’t really a headache, but still comes across as a kind of pressure or stuffiness – like the air is completely stale).
But even when I’m doing things I actively enjoy – playing computer games, for example – I have to have something else going on to keep me on track. Otherwise, I start getting restless and will find something to distract myself, usually catastrophically (at least for whatever I was doing).
@Erulora:
Yea, I saw that this morning, haven’t implemented it yet.
@Richard Austin
I can relate to so much of your #348. I don’t know how much difference it really makes, but it does seem to help me to think of it as a brain-wiring thing I have to work around, than a personality defect that I should be ashamed of and somehow will out of existence. She’s never come right out and said it, but the vibe I get from my wife sometimes is that she thinks it’s more of the latter.
@ Sailor, Matt
I will be doing multiple dives, over multiple days, with decompression stops. I think we will be going down to at least 30m.
I’m not particularily concerned about the flying bit though (I have six weeks to fit in the diving between flights), more wondering how long the course takes and how many dives one would expect to have to do to qualify. I’m intending to do this in Sumatra (Palau Weh)* and want to make sure I know what to expect, and to make sure I don’t get cheated/rushed.
*I will, however, NOT be going to this diving centre.
@ Richard Austin
Snap! Thanks for posting that. It sounds a bit like me. I need constant distraction or get stuffy and irritable. At work I play french music all day (don’t understand much and it is always the same songs day in and day out). It kind of tunes out when I focus on something. .
I don’t experience it as a liability (I wouldn’t know how else things should be). Where it would affect me, is if I had to go and work in a big office that does not acknowledge these little distractions that I need to function happily.
Erulóra Maikalambe #350:
It is not a personality defect, or any other kind of defect. Your brain (and mine, and, what it is, 5% of the population?) simply reacts differently to different stimuli. I’ve read a lot about how the traits identified as “ADD” or “ADHD” in “western” societies are extremely suited to hunter-type environments. If anything, it’s society that is defective for requiring most/all humans to do repetitive, non-stimulating tasks for many hours a day.
(That last statement is partly joking, but partly not.)
That’s also not uncommon: it’s very hard for “normative” folks to understand the differences, but this is true for most variants from the norm (physical, psychological, gender, sexual, etc.). There are certainly books you can give her that can help her realize some of the challenges you have in a non-confrontational way, as well as some of the things she can do that will help her get the kinds of responses she wants out of you (I assume you’re doing your best at the moment, but if you’re feeling discouraged it doesn’t help). Yes, some things will always be hard, but there are ways of dealing with most of them.
Like, chores tend to be a major point of contention. As an example, I do my dishes as I use them; if I leave them in the sink, they’ll just sit there for days. So, I’ve gotten in the habit of washing up instead of putting it in the sink. It annoys the crap out of my roommate, who is used to putting things in the dishwasher or just leaving them be and doing the dishes once a day or so, but it means I can avoid the boring 30-minute task with a bunch of little 3-minute tasks. I do laundry the same way (a load here and there, usually while I’m doing other things, and always setting an alarm to remind me of when it’s done).
It also helps to remind ourselves – often, if the environment isn’t supportive – of the things we do much, much better than “normal” people. I’m a tech – programmer and DBA – and I’ve proven countless times that, even with fellow programmers, I can build and maintain whole systems architectures in my head, with all the relevant interactions, when they barely understand some lower-level functions. I’m also really good at organizing space for efficiency (you should see my bedroom) and extrapolating out possible outcomes in order to do predictive/preventative planning.
Anyway, keep your head up.
I just got back from leaving my kid at middle school for the first time. He’s fine, but I was nearly a wreck for a while there — omg, I left him at a new school, across town, to make his own way home on the city bus, how did I ever think this would be okay, I am the worst mom ever!!eleventy!
He’s probably going to be fine, but holy Lard they look so tiny to be starting 6th grade and an entire new structure of school.
Re the hot water down the drain, this is how Mr Kristin almost always washes dishes, and it freaks me the fuck out because our energy bills are so high, but he won’t stop. It’s just the thing he does and ARRRGHHHHHHHHHH. Spouses. Can’t live with them, can’t knock them out with the skillet and lock them in the garage until they promise to wash the dishes like reasonable people.
#330 Erulóra Maikalambe
I don’t think it’s usually described with that word, but it’s certainly more or less strong in different people. For me, it serves to highlight the wonders that are amphetamines (Adderall specifically at the moment).
Perfectly understandable, games won’t play themselves after all.
—
#333 Brother Ogvorbis
Tell me that was on porpoise.
—
#334 Celtic_Evolution
Ooooh, is that a secret area?
RTL:
Ah. Like the Irish Bean Soup joke. Got it.
Ing,
Yay! Keep it yours.
___
Kristinc,
I guess that uses more soap too?
___
Beatrice,
Will there be dancing? Always gets me through.
___
Re: Children pushing boundaries. We make a hard distinction between tools and toys. Toys are largely free to use however, tools have a purpose and if used otherwise they are taken away. Forks that get used a drumsticks, nope, sorry, can’t have that anymore today. We are lucky in that our youth won’t touch condiments and hates dirty hands or face, so dinner is mostly a chore with respect to getting him to eat anything at all.
Mornings it takes me about three minutes from opening his bedroom door to buckling the seat belt in the car. If he wants to do more, he can get himself up earlier.
#311 SQB
Here’s where it’s important to deal with other situations well, so that they are more likely to listen the first time when the time comes. For background, I was working in a children’s retail store, where my office was next to the playroom in the back. I would hear parents dealing with kids that didn’t want to leave every day. Two more minutes, they’d say, then after two minutes they’d beg and plead with the kid to go, and of course the kid ignores them because they don’t have consistent consequences. Then goes the whole I’m leaving without you routine, which works until about 2.5 when the kid learns they won’t actually do it. I feel like saying to them, You said two minutes, now mean it. What’s the consequence when two minutes becomes ten? Eight more minutes of playtime.
Now I know all kids are different, and I’m generalizing a bit here. In my geographic area, the whole Be Their Friend routine has gone a little overboard. Way too much pandering, trying to avoid hurting feelings, instead of helping them to actually learn to live.
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#319 Giliell
Peer pressure already that strong?
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#320 Beatrice
If you don’t have a phone to play with or small book to sneak in, try the kids table. Often better food there, too (weddings always serve yucky fish).
This too. I read once that Richard Feynmann would solve problems a follows: “Read question… Think… Write down answer.”
My method is more like: ” Feed cats. Read problem half way. Make tea. Start reading again. Notice with concern lack of noise. Turn on radio. Look for biscuits. Read more. Check TET. Walk around office. Lurk. Read problem. Suddenly realise there is obscure word I meant to check online. Go bug others. Follow teh interwebz dragon. (I am now focussed.) Notice that time has passed. No work done. More tea. Tease cats.Doodle. Lurk. Decide to clean office. ….. etc etc etc. This can go on for long time. … Suddenly draw out entire design/solution in one go. (Though it may not sound like it, this method is efficient.)
I went through eight classroom/pool sessions before getting to the two open water dives that were required for PADI Open Water, Lemurian. We had to prove ourselves capable of treading water for a set time and capable of setting up, checking, and correctly storing our equipment. We did drills of breathing without the dive mask, taking off, replacing, and clearing our masks. We breathed from a free-flowing regulator (simulated by holding the purge button) like sipping from a water fountain. We figured out the weights we needed for neutral buoyancy with and without wetsuits in fresh water. Then, of course, there was attention to the dive tables (or computers) for depth, length of dive, surface time between dives, etc. If I went somewhere exotic for diving without having had all that beforehand, I would feel that I’d cheated myself. I’d want to go with proof of everything done up to the checkout dives.
My first dive happened in February: fresh water at Vortex Springs in Florida, and the combination of fresh water and cold made it harder to equalize. But it was cool–we did the mask removal/clearing skill, got some good practice in moderating ascent/descent with air in the BCD (as well as breathing), and “look up, reach up, come up” made more sense when it didn’t take 3 seconds from the bottom of a pool. I couldn’t equalize enough to get to the 60′ to view the cave entrance, and it worried me for the next day’s dive.
The salt water off Destin was a different matter entirely. I had no problems equalizing; it was easier to maintain neutral buoyancy. Visibility was superb at the bridge rubble site, and my dive buddy caused a school of spadefish to dart away from him to reform around me. I was in a sphere of silver with eyes. We made two dives to 60′ that day with an hour surface time between them, and I was hooked. (The first was our last required dive; the second was our first non-student dive.) I went on to get PADI Advanced Open Water and Divemaster certification.
According to the guidelines (http://www.scuba-fish.com/contact-us/flying-after-diving, I would have been fine to fly commercially after those three dives twelve hours after the last one. On a later 7-day Blackbeard Cruise to the Bahamas with 3-4 daily dives, we were fine to fly out of Miami since the trip back took us beyond 24 hours from our last dive.
Belated congratulations to Ing!
Therrin,
I get that all the time at my store, we have a train table for the kids to play with while parents shop and inevitably the kids don’t want to leave and parents play that game. We short circuit with our own, give him advance warning, count down several times and then leave together. The complaining that gets saved by being consistent is worth some initial effort.
___
Theophontes,
Nay, I could not work like that. Not and be productive anyways. I don’t make intuitive leaps very well and need to actually focus on what I am working on.
Therrin –
Yep… there’s a hidden link near the bottom of the page that links to the “I can’t be bothered to review my posts before I hit send and am a shit-poor typist” page.
Hell, there are probably at least 3 typos in this post alone…
athyco ~ Excellent stuff, thank you.
Ing ~ More belated congratulations!
Brother Ogvorbis ~ That joke is even worse than the Chinese dentist one. At least neither of them will have made you smile painfully. As someone who has suffered more than my fair share of tooth pain (once got smashed in the mouth by a brick, lots of treatment, lots of lost teeth) I feel for you.
EH? Why do I see the first bit of this already posted? WTF? How did that happen? I had written everything up to “EH?” already when I hit Preview and it showed me my abreviated post instead. And I haven’t filled in the Name and Mail bit yet either. Very strange.
Cheeky.
Ing – CONGRATS!!!!!!
Therrin – I am very much a “rip the bandaid off” kind of person. If I tell my kids it is time to go, it is time to go. I always give them a 10 minute, then 5 minute warning. If they don’t leave willingly, then they get picked up and carted off. Same thing when I drop them off at school: A big hug, a big kiss, and “I love you, have a good day… goodbye” and that is it.
Richard Austin, my son is ADD, and a programmer/computer security guy, and he considers the ADD to be a considerable advantage, one which he wouldn’t want to be without. He’s also told me that it helps when driving; some bonehead’s stupid maneuver is immediately noticed and responded to. It helps that he also has awesomely fast reflexes.
And he kills at videogames.
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Well, you can, but it does tend to get you talked about, sometimes on the Evening News.
:P
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FSM, life is amazing. It’s the first Tuesday in September and both Spawns are sitting at desks and doing stuff on their lists of things to get done by next Sunday. Now if only I can get all of SonSpawn’s books downloaded from the adaptive technology library thingy and his plextalk daisy reader set up.
This is our first year of a more textbook based school style. I figured 10th grade was a good time to use textbooks as opposed to, say, Richard Dawkins and Barbara Tuchman for biology and history, respectively. The Spawns are actually sort of excited by the whole thing, which is neat.
Dhorvath, OM | 6 September 2011 at 12:06 pm :
er … you punish creativity?
Good evening
Therrin
Well, not so much peer pressure, but the kids will ask. Why is your hair all wild and not braided as usually?
And she’ll see the other kids, she wants to imitate the big girls, and it’s generally inconvenient to have the long hair falling into your face.
Brother Ogvorbis
My sympathies. Painache is like hell.
Good News
Gran is coming home tomorrow.
theophontes:
Well, I often have to do my thing in meetings where someone will throw a concept at me and expect some kind of response in real time, but part of the process is the same.
Generally, I either close my eyes or stare at something inconsequential (I’ve got a spinning dolphins thing on my desk that works wonders), and go off into my head. There, it’s a bit like someone places a puzzle piece (or a couple pieces) on a table, and I can expand out to see the whole puzzle. Only, it’s in three (or sometimes four) dimensions, and some of the pieces are fuzzy and some of them are crystal clear. I prefer the “go for a walk” method – i.e., do something else while the brain does what it does – but I don’t always get the chance.
And just for balance, the downside of this is that I can’t always stop myself from doing it. On “bad days”, I can get launched into “conceptualizing” by the slightest thing: a flock of birds, the waves at the beach, even just a pattern mowed into the grass. It’s a wonderful thing to be able to extrapolate out the three-dimensional movement of people through a crowd (or cars down a highway) over time; it’s a terrible thing to not be able to stop yourself from doing it, especially when you’re trying to walk through said crowd (or drive down said highway) and thus can’t focus enough on here-and-now not to trip over your own feet (or stay between the lines).
…
There are moments, though, when it perfectly synchronizes, and I can live in a continuously evolving extrapolation of events, always just at that edge of what I can see will happen versus what has happened; it’s like flying in a dream. That’s where my motto “riding the crest of a collapsing wave function” comes from. I imagine that’s what it’s like for a virtuosso performing a passionate solo, or an artist getting into the moment or painting.
And I wouldn’t give up those moments for all the money in the world or any amount of “normal” days.
Mattir – What textbooks are you using? I am just curious. Do your kids have to take final exams or anything?
Got an e-mail from girl kidlet’s teacher… she won a math challenge for 2nd grade! I couldn’t be prouder:-) She gets to have ice cream with the principal and vice principal and the top 3 students from each grade.
ADD/ADHD definitely manifests differently for everybody. For example:
Not everyone (even those with a decently frustrating case of the disorder) experiences hyperactivity symptoms. I never did, and have always wondered if that was a major part of the delay in diagnosis (didn’t get attention or treatment until I was in 8th grade).
But the difficulty in finishing tasks, forgetfulness, losing things, etc. all have driven me up the wall over the years. I have a spouse who is wonderfully understanding, but not everyone is so lucky. I’m usually pretty skeptical of the medical stuff spewed at the Well blog at NY Times after too many dubious science articles, but this one from a few years ago describing the strain ADD can place on a relationship was quite insightful.
This is the main reason I get very frustrated and defensive when I hear people complaining that we “overmedicate” children and that treating those with ADD chemically as well as teaching them coping strategies is out of the question. Because I was a late diagnosis I went through years and years of struggling with the easy shit in school only to see my problems nearly vanish overnight once I was on a time-release stimulant. It was truly a night/day transformation that made it simple to get boring make-work assignments out of the way instead of agonizing ages to finish. I can’t stress enough how important modern pharmacology can be in making your life bearable.
I always found it also helps in making connections between ideas and subjects that are not normally discussed together. I always enjoy writing projects and the like where I have free rein because it allows me use creative approaches to bring together new things. I also found when I was in high school that being able to switch gears quickly was actually beneficial during activities like mock trial.
I tend to jump rapidly from idea to idea, and while that seems intuitive to me, it sometimes makes spouse look at me like I’m an alien. We have frequently played out the following scenario:
Together: Discuss one idea until there’s a lull because we’re cooking or driving or whatever
Me: Make 10 new connections from one idea to the next (but they’re all connected in a thread)
Me: Say something about the most recent idea where I know where I arrived there.
Spouse: “That came out of nowhere. Seriously, what does that have to do with what we were talking about?”
Me: Explains how I arrived at point Y from idea at A.
Spouse: “That only makes sense to you; you realize no one else knows what was going on in your head and you need to provide context, right?”
Oh, and congratulations to Ing! (Sorry, I meant to slip that in at the end of the last post.)
My brain seems to always be working on something, whether productive or not. That’s why I got into cycling a long time ago (and I really need to get back into it) – it was the one way I could get my inner voice to just shut up for a while and enjoy the ride. For that hour I’d stop trying to fix something, or figure out whatever, or solve some formula (often, I end up turning some mundane thing into a math equation that must be solved before I can move on (such as, “okay, that girl is about 50 yards ahead of me. How fast do I have to walk to catch up to her before she reaches that building so I can see what the heck that t-shirt says?”… cut to mental math which may or may not get solved, but is the only thing I think about for the duration of the walk.)). Yep. Really need to get that bike down and take it for a ride. No way I’ll last an hour, though, like I used to.
@Erulóra Maikalambe
I know what you mean. The first psychiatrist to help me/diagnose me talked about finding the thing that I could do to get into a “flow state” if I needed to shut my brain down for a while to relax (and for me, sleep, since I’ve always had issues with insomnia). Mine was always reading; I can pore myself into text for ages and not notice time, chapters, pages, etc.
Llewelly,
Yup, gotta keep him under thumb and quash any independent thought.
I think your reading is pretty uncharitable, but perhaps I should have been more clear. Toys, (this class is not limited to items which are specificaly marketed as such) are for playing with, he can go to town with the odd rule, such as not hitting people or only throwing in designated areas to prevent damage. Aside from that, I generally don’t much care if he breaks an item trying to find a new use for it. What I don’t want is him gouging the dining table with a fork to play with rhythms, or clawing his nose with an actual hammer because it’s heavy, popping the parking brake on the car and rolling away, etc. Kids do things, that’s great, they experiment, that’s great too, but having a class of items that he knows not to experiment with is something which has resonated with him.
Every parent makes similar distinctions, whether they do so by way of physical boundaries, top shelves and locked cabinets, or by way of instruction, likely varies, but I don’t imagine there are many parents who won’t gasp when their child goes to put their fingers in a socket, touch a hot stove top, or starts running around the garden with a hoe. We don’t really want to have him scared of half the world, nor prevented from participating in anything that we do, just respectful of the boundaries of play.
Slignot:
Sorry, I was specifically qualifying my anecdote – that I was ADHD and not ADD, and Erulóra Maikalambe hadn’t mentioned any hyperactivity symptoms, so the anecdote might be less applicable. I know they’re two different things; that probably wasn’t clear. (I think the technical diagnosis is “inattentive type”, “hyperactive type”, or “combination inattentive and hyperactive”, but conventionally people seem to just use ADD and ADHD.)
One specific point:
Undoubtedly. Some people benefit tremendously. There are at least a few Horde here that literally can’t function in typical society without medication, primarily for ADD/ADHD symptoms.
I do think it gets misdiagnosed, and that some children who get medicated don’t need it or would be better off with just behavioral/social counselling; from my experience, that was generally driven by crappy teachers and counselors rather than parents. This isn’t a black-and-white situation, though: it’s possible to be medicating the wrong kids and not medicating the right ones.
Psych-Oh
Oooooh, ice-cream.
Congratulations for your girl-spawn
Rules
I’d say there is a broad range of possible rules. What is important is that they are consistent. So, if Dhorvath’s rule is “cuttlery is for eating, not for playing”, that’s not a problem, as long as this is always the case.
What I see a lot (and have been guilty of myself) is tolerating something 20 times and then snapping and going berserk the 21st time.
How unfair is that? Mummy told me 20 times to stop A and threatened to do B if I didn’t but nothing happened, so how am I supposed to have guessed that it would be happening now?
Erulóra,
It’s kind of funny, I can get flow off road on my bike (techincal obstacles don’t leave me any real processing power as near as I can tell,) but most of my best thinking away from a computer takes place cycling on smooth surfaces.
Mine tend to wash things in cold water. Where the soap and grease tend to congeal on things. It’s horrid. I’d rather see the hot water go down the drain.
I tend to load the cloth with soap, rinse everything and scrub it with the soapy cloth, then rinse in the hottest water I can stand. No standing water and the faucet is running only as long as it takes to rinse everything.
He asks me how I get the glasses so sparkly clean. ::sigh::
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Congratulatons Ing!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
RE: Choking Hazards.
When I had to worry about that with my kids I used a 35mm film canister. Any object that would fit in the canister was designated a “potential choking hazard”. Perhaps the preschool should have one for reference.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
RE: “Two More Minutes” at the play table.
I would give my kids a 5-minute warning, meaning I would be ready to leave in 5 minutes. Then, when it was Time to Go, we went – ready or not. The only times we ever struggled were when I forgot to give them a heads-up.
I tend to agree.
I’ve found that people insisting that you not diagnose or treat kids suspected of having ADHD are a bigger problem than the opposite, because like you say, misdiagnosis driven by bad/lazy teachers and counselors rather than indicative of a greater philosophical problem.
The number of times I’ve had to defend myself as actually having a real condition that has necessitated treatment at times makes me bonkers. You have the base disparity between mental health treatment and “real” physical disease, coupled with this anecdata driven approach that there is a “epidemic” of overdiagnosis/medication of children rather than acknowledging that when you finally pinpoint and can fix a problem, diagnosis numbers go up. (Much like the “autism epidemic.”)
Katrina:
Film? What’s that?
Woo Hoo Ing!! *twirls*
Today is the first day back to school for my children. BoyChild has ADHD and GirlChild has ADD. I’m very happy to be reading all of the positive things that are being said about living and succeeding with attention deficit.
@slignot
That could be my son she’s talking about. Did you have anything unusual about your communication and/or language development as a young child, by any chance?
Slignot,
Both my wife and I do that chain of thought thing. Sometimes we can even follow one another’s thoughts well enough to know the intervening unvoiced steps. I just assumed that everyone did similar things.
Dhorvath,
I like the easy crushed gravel nature trails, myself. No good ones around here though. But I’ve never gotten around to even trying the one trail this town does have to offer. I really need to get out and do that, because stationary bikes are boring and I don’t like riding in the street.
What I find on my coffee mug when I don’t wash it.
So I’m reading the comments to the Guardian piece about poverty in Texas under Rick Perry, and I am so looking forward to seeing the acerbic commentariat there skewer the living fuck out of this Child Left Behind. He’s not the only one there (“LookingUp” is also embarrassing his fellow Yanks), but he’s just stunning in his vacuity, ignorance, gawdbottery, and haplessness at writing.
Yay! :)
–
THIS!
I once had a woman go off on me, in public, at high volume, because I mentioned that my son was taking Ritalin. You’d have thought I was pimping him out on the street! I shoulda been arrested for Child Abuse, and Social Services shoulda taken him away from me!
Never mind that a minimal dose suddenly made it possible for him to read (quickly and accurately) and do arithmatic (and do it well), neither of which had been the case before; in fact, he went on it during the last month of his first grade year, which he was flunking, and the improvement was so marked that his teacher passed him entirely on the strength of his dramatic improvement in that one month, since it demonstrated that he knew the material, and could do the work, if only he could focus on it. And all without in any perceptible way changing his personality or making him “stuporous”; as far as I can see, there was no down side. None of which, apparently, was sufficient for this gal.
I came to the conclusion that people like that woman are possessed of a quasi-religious conviction that Drugs Are Bad (probably with the whole Slaves of Big Pharma thing), and no evidence will ever change their minds. I have no doubt that Ritalin, and Adderall, are/were sometimes abused, and that they were in some cases inappropriately prescribed….but that doesn’t translate to “always”.
–
In my own case, it seems as if my mind spends a lot of time quietly amusing itself in the background, not interfering with whatever I may be doing, and then POW!, it barfs up the finished concept all at once, often with a full set of working instructions and numbered parts. Which is why I tend to leave a trail of sticky notes covered with very small writing and sketches, wherever I go. :)
–
I agree.
Anecdata: My nephew, almost exactly the same age as my son, very obviously needed medicating; but he was under his paternal grandmother’s management, and she didn’t believe in ADD/ADHD; he was “just all boy”….and in 4th grade, he couldn’t read a lick, or do even simple addition, but was so disruptive in class that his teachers all “passed” him to get rid of him; let him be somebody else’s problem next year! No medication, no attempts to teach him coping strategies, nothing.
I think he’s held a job for 6 months, once….
–
This is certainly familiar.
I don’t know how it seems to others, but my brother (who was ADHD before it was recognised, in our neck of the woods) described his communication problems for me, once. He said that the world inside his head was moving so much faster than the world outside, that he couldn’t slow down to the “outside” speed, couldn’t “synch up” with it; while they were still talking about Topic A, he’d already finished with that subject, and gone though Topics B and C.
–
Aaaaagh.
I just got tone-trolled at a freethinker meeting. We were discussing libertarianism. I read the definition of libertarianism (“An extreme laissez-faire political philosophy advocating only minimal state intervention in the lives of citizens.”) and this jackass’ exact words are “Your tone isn’t exactly conducive to discussion.” My response? “Who gives a fuck about my tone?”
At that point I was threatened with expulsion.
There I was, mentioning weddings , and didn’t even congratulate Ing.
So, congratulations Ing!
I have a similar problem with writing. Only for me it manifests as an inability to get the thoughts I have onto paper in the correct order. Back when I was taking classes that required writing papers, my wife reluctantly agreed to be my proofreader. I had to have her help to organize the stuff I’d written so it made sense to a typical person. It’s as if I’d written “A B F C E D” (but replace each of those letters with complete paragraphs). It was all there, but not in the correct order.
A lot of the times that I end up editing a comment before I post, it involves highlighting sentences and moving them around into a different order. In fact, I just did. And I’m still not happy with it.
Congrats, Ing!
Erulóra,
Sounds like every paper I ever wrote and just about every comment I make too. The first draft is more a brain dump to get some ideas and good wording together. Subsequent revisions produce something akin to what I am thinking, but in a testing situation there was never enough time to do that. Writing for long term assignments: no problem; for tests: danger, danger, do not attempt.
This also sounds familiar! :)
My solution was to write paragraphs, or sometimes stray sentences, on index cards; then shuffle, edit, assemble and smooth. I burned through a lot of index cards! :)
–
I think PZ crashed the new site.
I love you guys. It feels nice to have somewhere that I’m “normal”.
Did we kill FTB with the name suggestions thread? Everything is taking forever to load.
Someone in another thread mentioned accommodationism in politics. Then I happened to see this post, which is a good example of why I don’t read Balloon Juice very often.
Ogvorbis (@323):
DaughterSpawn got me a Bananagrams game for my last birthday, and when her college-aged friends come over to play with us, there seem to be unofficial bonus points available for making as many “transgressive” words as possible. We’re the original unshockable ‘rents, so it’s amusing (rather than horrifying) to us to see vulva crossed with vagina crossed with penis (or even better, quim: gotta use those Qs somehow, eh?).
My diagnosis was halfway through junior year of high school (Grade 11 equiv). I’ve never been good at writing papers, but that might be a separate issue (I answered your question in three sentences and you want three pages?). I do tend to be a bit more “free” in my free association thinking as commented on above (definitely a feature).
And there we go, three sentences. -.-
Oh, thought of more. Out of order stuff never bothered me. I still occasionally mix up left and right (no dyslexia diagnosis to date). I blame it on learning to read Hebrew, words look fine going either direction.
Make sure that’s on a bonus square.
@opposablethumbs
I suppose it depends on what you mean exactly. I developed reading and speech skills very young. I had pigeon toes and had braces for much of my youngest days, so things that were verbal/written were easier than running & playing most kids do. My parents lavished reading on my (I’m an only child) and started reading to me every night at infancy. I started reading to them ~3 and kept that up for a long time. Even into middle school we’d work our way through big books on occasion. I was more comfortable talking to people my parents’ or grandparents’ age for much of my childhood because I felt more able to communicate with them.
I actually ran into more trouble being miles ahead of the curriculum and classmates because showing my work and doing what felt like lazy make-work assignments seemed impossibly hard. (And if I managed to finish the assignment, the odds that my desk or backpack would eat it were large.) I still remember my dad explaining negative numbers using an analogy of digging holes in the kitchen table when I was very young. Ditto with algebra.
@Dhorvath, spouse is usually not that offput by apparent non-sequiturs, but when he’s especially tired, it can make him grumpy. Once, out of nowhere I started asking him his opinions about figs. At like 4 a.m. My logic and his don’t overlap a whole lot, simply because my brain and his don’t work the same at ALL.
Rey Fox: “things that are millions of times bigger than any laboratory and being actively destroyed.”
Owlmirror beat me to it. I was going to say, um, black holes?
*Real* physicists, of course, study things that are gazillions of times smaller than any laboratory, etc. ;)
Slignot,
I don’t think our brains operate the same so much as we have good models of one another’s thinking.
Congratulations Ing!
.
*blink*
That’s a new one on me. I wonder if you might be prone to fugue states. Music can induce them in some people (IIRC). Though the fact that the presence/absence of a stage makes a difference is mystifying.
The sense of feeling overwhelmed and powerless (or the fear of so being) reminds me of some things I read in Listening To Prozac – descriptions by people with low serotonin levels, which the author hypothesises gives folk with higher levels more of a buffer against the outside world in general.
I’d also recommend Oliver Sachs’ Musicophilia – not that there’s anything I specifically recall from that that reminds me of what you’re describing, it’s just damn fascinating.
Related: earlier, I watched a documentary called Songs Of War: Music As A Weapon. Imagine being an award-winning songwriter & composer for freaking Sesame Street, and discovering that your work was being used to torture prisoners at Guantanamo. That was some incredible, chilling viewing. I don’t think my jaw undropped for the entire viewing. It’s streamable from the linked page.
I think I heard JS Bach groan.
There’s a bit in a documentary about Brian Wilson (of the Beach Boys) where one interviewee describes the band getting stuck on a tricky bit in one of their compositions. Brian goes to the piano, amuses himself playing something wholly unrelated – different tempo, different style, nothing to do with the piece they’re working on – then jumps up with the solution to their problem completed in his head.
There is a great anger-is-bad tone troll on Greta Christina’s blog “Angry Atheism and Community” entry – name of TickTock. Really could be a type specimen for the species…
I’m working on my fangs and coat…
Yet another familiar point!
When Son was in first grade, we went to the scheduled Parent/Teacher conference (apparently very under-attended; the teacher was surprised when we came in, because in a long, dull afternoon, we were the first parents to bother), and were told that he was failing to turn in homework. This came as a surprise, because we knew he was doing it, at the office after school. So we emptied his backpack and there they were, fossilizing at the bottom of the pack. Every single assignment was right there. Luckily she was willing to give him reduced credit, rather than 0s. After that, we turned out the backpack on a weekly basis.
–
http://jesustoasters.com/
No, that was Beethoven decomposing.
Anyone else have ASS*? My problem is that I can think about exactly one thing at a time. I find it difficult– nay, jarring— to turn my attention away from what I am thinking about. In one regard this is good in that I tend to complete the one thing that I am working on. On the other hand, I am a terrible multitasker, and continual interruptions jangle my nerves awful.
*Attention Surplus Syndrome
@cicely, your experience is precisely what I went through. Teachers were just mystified that I aced tests and that big or difficult projects I excelled at, but I couldn’t seem to manage to turn in homework. And thankfully they were willing to accept late work that was lost in limbo as well. Once I finally was treated, medication did work wonders for me (they put me on a time-release version of dexedrine).
Thankfully the problem got better over time even aside from medication, but it certainly helped to have an answer to why I kept “wandering off behind the little animals” as my parents phrased it.
That’s called a patina. :) I had a labmate who got quite cross once when his coffee mug got washed – he had just gotten it aged properly.
There was nothing wrong with your tone. It was a definition. I don’t even understand – bad tone would have been if you had said “an extreme lassiez-faire political philosophy adhered to by people with their heads up their asses that advocates only minimal state intervention.” What word was he objecting to?
Actually, there is some sort of film that forms in the moving parts of the lid of my mug. I have to pry it apart with pliers occasionally and scrub the gunk off. I have no idea what it is, just that it’s brown (probably from the coffee). I figure it’s probably some sort of bacterial thing and that it’s probably going to make me sick one day.
Anybody out there drinking coffee as they read this, you’re welcome!
AE,
That sounds familiar as well. I am starting to feel like I am reading the horoscope.
I got a diagnosis of AD/HD a couple of years ago. <- That is how it is spelled over here, meaning that the H-part is optional for the diagnosis. Myself, I've never had hyperactivity symptoms (so call me ADD). The opposite, rather. I'm sluggish and hypoactive.
The path to getting the diagnosis was such that I finally persuaded my shrink to send me to a neuropsychological evaluation. I had a lifetime history with depression and in recent years was starting to have difficulties with booze too. I had suspected for at least twenty years that there was some unconventional wiring going on in me brain. My own hypothesis was Asperger's syndrome.
So, the nice neuropsychologists studied, tested and interviewed me for many hours over nearly a year. They found there's something there but couldn't fit it under any autism spectrum diagnosis. They gave me this AD/HD label instead. Feels mostly a bit ad hoc, but let's say I believe I'm AD/HD on Mondays and Wednesdays.
The thing is, my problems are not so much in attention as in the executive functioning. Planning, organizing, prioritizing, initiating, completing, changing gears, suppressing impulses and distractions…Those are the things I'm shitty at. I believe I managed to get an academic degree only because I had no other competing interests. Nada. No life. Just one thing to focus on. I remember marvelling other people who had work, studies, private life, hobbies and what not. How the hell did they manage?
Today I eat an expensive AD/HD medicine which does fuck-all to me thus strengthening my scepticism about my diagnosis. But Erulóra's post @330 does sound amusingly familiar. Fucking piling, how does it work?
So after today’s Prop 8 standing hearing, I’m vaguely concerned that the court is going to rule to give standing to the proponents of Prop 8, and the precedent be damned. I worry about the ramifications of granting private proponents the right to assert the State’s interest.
I obviously disagree with doing so. The proponents don’t have a particularized interest once the initiative is placed on the ballot.
Did anyone else follow the hearing?
SQB, re. biblical Playmobil vs. secular Lego. How can no-one have mentioned The Brick Testament?!
Antiochus, that’s “hyperfocusing” and it happens to me too. Sometimes to an extreme degree as when I was laying some bricks in a garden border, it started to drizzle and I told myself “just a few more since it’s only drizzling”. Before I knew it I had been out for 20 minutes in the pouring rain and was covered with mud.
Oh, the number of times that I needed a parent to haul me up short on just two more minutes. I mean as an adult when I should presumably do it myself.
I love that the day’s been nothing but rainy. Perfect backdrop for this:
A few phone calls and some chatting with the principal later, there’s more. C. hung himself. In a closet. In the home he had here in CT. For three weeks no one knew where he was.
His mother was the one who found him. Now, she’s not the best when it comes to dealing with stuff that’s not part of whatever plan she’s got in mind – she and denial seem to know each other very well. This? If she wasn’t already getting bad when she realized her son hadn’t been heard from for too long, this was the final straw. Finding a random corpse hanging from the ceiling = bad. Someone you know = worse. A mother finding her son, her only son, dead, via suicide = something just breaks, or warps, inside. That kind of trauma . . . oof.
I don’t think anyone would have learned any of this if the principal weren’t friendly with one of the cops who heard about it, or maybe had been called to the scene. He also wondered how C. financed his meth addiction. No one seems to know. My guess, and I kind of hate to admit I came up with it: Meth isn’t that hard to make, though it’s highly risky to do so. C. was brilliant, top of his class, probably was a chemistry wiz. You do the math.
I don’t know how likely that is to be true. But for him to continue after losing his job, money had to be coming from someplace.
———————————–
I’m torn between wanting to strangle the person who came up with that idea, and wanting to just drink myself into a stupor.
PTI,
That’s pretty horrific. She has family to keep an eye on her while she adjusts?
Who has two thumbs, is done with two more classes and is enjoying a Carolus Tripel?
Bill D:
Sometimes we play Dirty Word Scrabble. If you can use the word in a suggestive, double entendric, or flat out sexy way, you get a ten point bonus. (Oddly, ‘quim’ is not in the Scrabble Dictionary we use.)
Bad, drbunsen. Bad. Go to the spunking couch now!
=============
All:
Visited dentist. X-rays and exam were free. Tooth will be extracted on Friday (cost, $145). Pulling out the root of another partial tooth, plus dealing with eleven other cavities (some of which are under older fillings) will add another $1900. And of course, I have no dental insurance (why the fuck do we not consider detnal care to be a part of health care and thus covered by health insurance?). But I can spread the payments out over 18 months. And I’ll end up with 3 false tooths. Teeth. Whatever. Darvocet works nicely to kill pain.
All hail Tpyos. That should, of course, be the ‘spanking cuoch.’
Damn. ‘cuoch’ is, of couser, ‘couch.’ Course. Damn. I give up. My spelling is coing downhill and if I dkeep typing I’ll dexcend into toa agoha; ahaldfka lka.
It’s a miracle! Brother Ogvorbis is typing in tongues!
All hail Teh Mitey Tpyos!
Thread bankrupt. Please forgive this post and run!
Reposting a request for votes:
My agency is trying for a Pepsi grant for our bullying program that works with 211*. In addition to providing support for the victims, our program also works to help the bully with counseling and supportive programs aimed to teach better social skills and address any underlying causes of the bullying behavior.
The best way to prevent bullying is to STOP bullies–and that’s what we do, stop the bullies and protect the victims.
The program is based on multi-agency cooperation–schools, counseling programs, substance abuse centers, juvenile and social services, court system, etc. If we get this grant, we’ll be able to expand the program to other counties, and hopefully provide a model for other states.
*211: If you’re not familiar with 211, your state isn’t nearly as hip as Maryland. ;) No, seriously–211 is pretty awesome. It provides support for mental health emergencies and offers information and referral for people looking for help. It connects you to everything from homeless shelters, job training programs, individual counseling or support groups and mobile crisis services.
/Thank you for listening. This public service announcement is supported by viewers like you. ;)
ps: We’re at #201–we might actually make it! :)
I have missed you, my fellow Threadizens.
I have been out and about, exploring new territory. And when not doing that, I’ve been in Butt-In-The-CHair mode in order to make piles of cash. (Okay, that last bit is tiny lie. Better to say “an adequate, but small stack of cash.”)
I do think we should salt the present chapter of the Endless Thread with Moments of Morment Madness.
Here’s a nice one. It combines the mormon propensity to make really ugly actions, like extortion, sound nice, like an “incentive” — combines that, um, skill, with über Big Brotherdom and Obey-or-Fudging-Else tactics.
Are you hyperventilating in empathy yet?
Full story here: http://newsnet.byu.edu/story.cfm/36477/
Ahem. This means that the high church attendance BYU proudly reports is the result of extortion, and is nothing to be proud of.
Ditto for the “Devotionals” held at BYU-I, and which are broadcast (broadcast fer keerists sake) over my local NPR station (NPR fer keerists sake). We hear about the administrators opening up other buildings to house the overflow for Devotionals, but we do not hear that they take attendance, and that students must dance attendance before the Powers That Be or be kicked out of college.
Then there are the mormon parents who refuse to help with expenses for any college other than BYU in Utah, Idaho or Hawaii.
Quote from an ex-mormon:
Decomposing Composers.
Well, hello thread! :) I have been without internet for four days…I though I’d die (not really, but whatever).
I’ll get caught up on everything in a bit, but first I have a question:
A while back, I applied for a tutoring job for an online tutoring company that came highly recommended from a friend who has been tutoring for years. Today, I was offered the job, but they wanted to make sure I was ok with writing papers and doing homework for “lazy/inept students” (I’m not, just so you know, but I desperately need the job). They said I didn’t have to and could just do tutoring, but I”m skeptical now (but like I said: I desperately need the job).
Is this normal for online tutoring companies?
Look at this picture.
In other news, the Swiss National Bank is scared shitless about the rise of the Franc making it more and more difficult for Switzerland to export anything. In chilling words, they’ve now announced they’re going to press the Franc below 1.20 Fr/€ at any cost. First of all, they’re going to buy foreign currencies, presumably including €, in unlimited amounts. If that doesn’t work fast enough, they’ll print billions of new Francs. TV-news economists say they’ll be able to keep that strategy up for a year or two before inflation will become a serious problem.
Funny, huh? Switzerland hasn’t joined the EU, let alone the €, because it didn’t need to – it was already rich. And now, exactly that fact makes it suffer.
QFT!!!
I should have mentioned that, last time I looked (a few weeks ago), the Swiss Franc had almost reached the ratio of 1.05 Fr/€, and parity was on the horizon. TV news sez it has gained 60 % in value within the last… months, I think.
Oh gee. What a horrible little cult of Mormonofascists. I’d last about 30 seconds.
So Hi Lynna,
I saw your green opal pictures a while back. Looked nice to me. Just how hard was it to reach that mountaintop. It looked like the middle of nowhere.
I also went to a rock and gem show. One guy had a lot of faceted opals that looked amazing. Some were bright orange and deep reds.
Looking through my collection of odds and ends, I found a small piece of opal that was a nice yellow orange.
Hey, raven, fellow lover of opal.
For some reason, fire opal is just not my thing. I prefer subtlety to flash. The green opal I have is fairly rare. It would normally lose its color, possibly crack, etc. when exposed to the weather for long periods of time. But this opal was partially exposed (for how long? thousands of years?), and seems highly resistant to losing its luster or color.
A 4-wheel drive vehicle is required to approach the crest of the Lost River Range. From there, it’s not that far to hike. The roads are not signed. Some of the approach roads require not just 4-wheel drive, but also high clearance and driving skill. Map reading, geological formation reading, and an eye for creek drainage patterns all help. You don’t want to hike in really steep terrain, nor through thickly forested or shrubby areas if you can avoid it.
Gem shows are fun, but I don’t usually have time. I’ve been to a couple of local ones where I find rock sellers selling jewelry or little sculptures they’ve made from rocks from my mine. I feel proud, like my babies have been appreciated. Of course, my babies are also being sold.
I see your point, but there is a practical difficulty which arises if the Perry v Brown decision isn’t appealed to the Ninth Circuit. The problem is that the district court decision, unlike a Circuit or Supreme Court decision, doesn’t set a precedent binding on other federal courts; the decision is enforceable in California, but it doesn’t apply in other judicial districts. It therefore still leaves the question open as to whether the prohibitions on same-sex marriage in other states besides California are constitutional – which is, rather obviously, a question of national importance.
If the Ninth Circuit decides to hear the appeal, then, whatever the outcome, their decision will be binding precedent only within the Ninth Circuit. So it seems likely in that circumstance that the Supreme Court would grant certiorari. I’m guessing (tentatively) that the Supreme Court would be likely to split 5-4 on the issue, but which way they would split is anybody’s guess (and of course some of the justices might conceivably die or retire between now and then).
I have a washer and dryer now! I’ve never been so happy to do laundry in my life.
Oh, look. A Moment of Mormon Madness from the past may be reversed.
From the Readers Comments section:
Weel, I ma fof ot deb, prechance ot reamd.
G’night, folks.
*confetti* for starstuff
Brother Ogvorbis:
I bet quaint is, and it means the same thing… if you’re Chaucer.
Bah! I refuse to believe that was inadvertent, you scamp!
JOSH! I had no idea you were that other Josh! I was all over there, going, “Damn, who is this eloquent badass motherfucker named Josh?” And it was you!
(Not because you’re not eloquent and badass here, it’s just that in my brain, Josh, Official SpokesGay is your One True Name™.)
Frightening.
The Secret War.
Did my part for the planovers for the week. Grilled four steaks, a dozen onion/beer boiled brats, and a couple of eggplants. Had steak with an oatmeal stout. Yummie! *burp*
I bet St. Hansoff disapproves of spunking couches, at least for Catholic Boy Scouts.
I’ve spent the day being appallingly, feel-it-in-my-arms anxious about the Spawn and their schooling, and why my house is such a freaking mess (let’s just say that searching for a lost SD card containing recording-for-the-blind-and-dyslexic files is highly annoying, especially when I know that it was me who removed it from the PlexTalk gizmo and thus lost it), and what to do about the cat having peed on the wood floor in my bedroom, and blah blah blah. Better now, having gone to Panera’s for the Radical Lesbian Sock Collective atheist knitters group, eaten some actual food, flirted with the guy there who flirts with all the women who’ll flirt back (he’s actually quite sweet, and although I recognize that some people would not enjoy his attention, I’ve seen him back off in such situations), and received some assurances from Pharynguloids that my children are not illiterate, ignorant, or unsocialized. Also surrendered on the SD card thing and acquired a new 16G card.
Tomorrow I can Nice Mormon Boy’s mom to try to arrange for him to visit us for 2-3 days later this week. (Bwahahaha…) I will not say any bad words during the phone call. I will write this reminder in sharpie on my arm before I make the call, even.
Random critter drive-by:
So there’s something in our basement. It’s been scurrying around for the last few nights freaking out the child who sleeps down there. I’ve heard it; it sounds a bit larger than a mouse (we only get tiny deer mice), and makes not only a clicking scurrying sound but a larger almost “fluttery” sound (child swears he can hear its mouth making mouthy sounds). Not a bat, because it moves too fast across the floor. We set up a squirrel trap, and the thing has been in there at least twice eating the bait but not heavy enough to trip the trap. Tonight I reset it with a weight already on the platform to see if that plus the weight of whatever it is will set the trap off.
Any ideas on what it could be? We don’t really have rats around, I’m wondering if it might be a mole. But would moles come inside? Might be a chipmunk, but I think that would be louder and more active during the day. I’m flummoxed.
Work has been hell. I think my boss may qualify as abusive.
Criticisms about job performance seem to dive bomb straight into the personal. They in closed door talks with me criticized my personal life and the condition of my car (of all things) in addition to calling me an idiot.
Just occurred to me:
1. PZ writes like six posts a day.
2. He has an actual paying professor gig on top of that.
3. He is in an airplane on average 30 hours each week.
4. He has a trophy wife and his children seem well-adjusted enough.
5. He still somehow has time to watch the fucking Daily Show.
Let’s connect the dots. PZ cannot be just one man. He’s like a small and very elite task-force. The guy with the beard is their front…a stoolie, if you will. He shows up, says some shit, wears a crocoduck tie, what-have-you. BUT… someone in the shadows is pulling all the strings.
I will not stop until I know who.
And I will give that person bacon to manage my life, which is a much simpler task.
Carlie – I’m betting chipmunk or mouse. They can make a surprising amount of noise, and there are different kinds, so maybe you have a field mouse or something larger than the tiny deer mice.
Or it could be a zombie vampire.
Oh, yeah. Lest you forget.
6. Allegedly, he wrote a book.
Hi Thread! Y’all make me feel better. Thanks.
With regards to conversations, I am told that I go really fast and by the time my conversational partner is ready to reply, I am already wandering at high speed on another topic. My family seems used to this as far as I can tell, because they’ve never said anything. And most seem to ignore it. Not sure what that means.
AE (453):
Heh… just as I was reading your ruminations about finding time in our days, this came up on my iTunes.
Of course, there’s always the option of radically simplifying your life.
****
Ing (@452):
Yeesh! That sounds like lawsuit territory to me… except that if it’s all behind closed doors, under the cover of “performance reviews,” it might devolve to xe said; xe said. I’m mindful of what a rotten time it is to be looking for work, but I’d be alert for any opportunity to DTMFA (if ever that Savage-ism were applicable to a non-sexual/romantic relationship, this sounds like the time) if I were you.
At least you have someone nice to go home to, eh?
AD/HD, hyperfocus, multitasking, etc:
[obscure nerdly analogy follows] My friend and I used to joke that he ran Linux and I ran MacOs 7. He was capable (to some extent) of running eight or so tasks in parallel without any of them falling over. Whereas I multitasked round-robin – I had to wait for the front task to give up the CPU, set the “open for new business” flag, and go to idle. Which mostly worked, except when the front task refused to cede control. Or was badly specified and got stuck in an endless loop. Or expanded to consume all the available memory. Or just fell over and crashed the
[REBOOTING]
Ready >_
Where was I?
Anyway. There’s this book, which I may have mentioned before. I’ve heard it’s good. I have a copy, honest, it’s in that box over there. Owait, maybe that one. Um, well, the first chapter was fascinating.
spunking cooch? o_O
This right here might just be the funniest shit I have seen in a year.
Her husband, if he’s not equally broken up. I’m not sure if their two daughters still live in-state, or of any relatives who do.
I don’t deal well with frustration when I’m hungry.
Doubly so for food-related frustration. Like, going to Burger King (56th and Fowler) and having to leave because the morons behind the counter are moving at a pace that a frozen snail would find ridiculously slow. And I didn’t have time to go to another restaurant before my Toastmasters meeting, because it took me eight minutes (seriously!) to get back onto Fowler.
But they had pizza at the meeting so it all worked out, but not before I found myself walking across the street on my way to the meeting and growling at drivers: “Hit me, motherfucker. I dare you. I’ll own your ass.”
Is it bad that the first thing I thought when I read this was, “We have a spanking coach?”
Carlie: No doubt about it, what you got there is the dreaded El Chupacabras. Don’t worry, unless your child is a goat, s/he should be safe.
Or it could be a rat?
Kristinc: I’ve been reading that site for two days. No way I can look up the actual post, but my favorite story from there is the one about the guy who kept shouting ‘Release the Kraken!’ and farting loudly after seeing ‘Clash of the Titans’.
Honestly I should stop. I want to get back into dating, and those stories are making me more and more terrified. But I just can’t stop reading them.
Well… perhaps it’s a skill that requires training? After all, I hear that there’s quite a range of… er… implements and techniques out there.
(…Not that I’d know anything about that, of course. *blushes*)
Apropos of nothing, Josh OSG, wasn’t it you who recommended the audiobook of Charles Stross’ Saturn’s Children to me? If so, thank you! I’ve just started listening to it for the second time, and am enjoying it as much as the first time.
Mm-hmm, says the guy who once minced around a thread in a maid’s costume and heels. :P
Oh that ain’t even the half of it. They’d strap some guy to a chair, alone, blindfolded, in a room with a club-sized PA, and play Metallica and Nine Inch Nails at him
.
… at the same time.
.
… for. twelve. hours. plus.
.
You know, in between your regular beatings, screaming, dog terrorizing, religious abuse, humiliation, waterboarding and sleep deprivation.
Let’s not even talk about the uses of music/ amplified sound on the battlefield, or on civilian protestors.
For serious, watch the doco. Have strong liquor handy though; it really bummed me out after Happy Music X Factor Tiemz.
(OTOH, the soundtrack of the doco was freaking awesome. Do want. /audiogeek)
(OK, is it weird that I was sitting in intensive care, with my dying mother plugged into the Machines That Go Ping, and thinking {inter fuckloads alia}, “damn, I wish I’d brought my DAT”?)
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onion girl:
I’m at the voting page – just checking, yours is the one that says, “Use 2-1-1 to help keep kids safe and healthy in Maryland schools”?
Has “211” become a slur yet? :-/
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Lynna:
Obvious question is obvious: does BYU housing receive any government
cheesemoney?… ditto BYU?
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Mattir:
Oh frack no, far from it. You and Spawnlings are going to be fine. :)
I hear ya on the anxiety though, what with not having any durn ay-thee-iss-tick soshulist teachers to blame things on*. Having educator-angst piled on top of parent-angst must be a doozy.
*Hugs*
(* owait…)
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Ing:
Definitely crossing the line marked “None of your damn business.”
None of their damn business.
None of their damn business, and weird.
… may????
What’s the law on audio recording & 2nd party consent in your state?
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File under “small things amuse my tiny brainmeats”:
How are you citizens of the thread?
‘Course, now that reads
*rubs eyeballs*
–
Has the sign-up sheet been posted yet?
(Hail Tpyos’s as yet un-named sister goddess, She of the Creative Misreadings)
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Long as it’s not hippies.
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Having reached the Zeno’s Paradox stage of TET-catcheruppery, and getting increasingly OCD about tags, and spelling, and grammar, and such, and having a friend over for dinner and X Factor tonight … I must declare Thread Bankrupzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
Aww. Hi and bye, Pikachu :)
So soon drbunsen?
If I can discipline myself (oo-er matron!) enough to switch this thing off and roll over. My eyes are melting. Mmmeeellllttttiiiiinnggggggg!!!!
Okay, here goes.
Part-time (I’m sorry, but I cannot but think of you as Feynmaniac)-
Sweet jeezis. The horror. That poor woman. I’m so sorry about all this.
Ing– Unforgivably belated congratulations on your engagement! I meant to say so earlier, then got all Spokes-confused.
Le Dauphin –
Yes! I’m so glad you’re enjoying it as much as I did. . .I found it unbelievably compelling. And isn’t the actress who reads it just. . . wow?
Classical Cipher –
Awww shucks, thanks:) Email me, please – spokesgay at gmail.
I really wanted Carlie’s Critter to be a Land Shark
like from SNL
but I can’t find a quality video.
Hippies are the worst, Dr Bunsen. We smell bad, we’ll eat all your food, and worst of all, we SHED.
Rothis Bogvorber
See, that read just fine to me. =)
—
Carlie
Once I had an opossum living under my house. We used a live trap, and caught mommy with five little baby ‘possums hanging onto her belly. Cute little rats.
I’m going to take the long odds and say termites.
—
kristinc
So I got to “and you will service me”, and noticed a slight flaw in his argument; namely, “I want to see you on my bedroom wall, facing the wall, held by chains of love.”
Unless the “you” in this case is very limber.
I will be on the lookout for a Mister Bill Smith.
Antiochus Epiphanes,
The craziest part is, his posting rate went UP after school started.
Daily Show is easy to watch in the background, lots of pauses for laughter while Stewart makes faces at the camera.
… you let one in, pretty soon you gotta whole NEST on your hands. Gotta nip it in the bud.
Theophontes, you may find this of particular interest. . .
So, I’ve got two sourdough starters set to work now. One with the old-fashioned whole wheat/rye-n-water method, and one with the whole-grain-n-pineapple-juice-for-proper-ph way. I’m bound and determined to grow my own yeasty goodness from scratch!
I rehabilitated an ancient cast-iron dutch oven today that I’d picked up from a yard sale years ago. The lid was covered with rust, and rust was pitting the upper portion of the inside wall. After discarding many dubious techniques I found online (really, rub an onion on the rust and “the chemical reaction” will flake it off?), I compromised.
Scrubbed as much rust off as I could with a copper scouring pad, then went to work on it with vegetable oil and salt to scour. Couldn’t get all the orange off, but oh well.
Coated the whole thing in gobs of vegetable shortening and baked it in the oven to season. Twice. Now the orange rust is still slightly visible, but it’s trapped under a glassy layer of baked-on seasoning fat. . perfect. I’ll do it several more times until it’s covered completely.
Luckily, this pot is so old the bottom surface is like volcanic glass with so much built-up, hardened fat/seasoning glaze it’s impenetrable.
This is going to bake a nice, nice loaf of bread. Not to mention the stews this fall and winter.
Ack. Almost forgot to take my nightly So You Won’t Die in Your Bed heart medicine pills. Sigh. . .a SpokesGay’s work is never done.
Is your corazon doing better Josh?
Oh, dios mio, Pikachu, but aren’t you kind to inquire about mi corazon? If you weren’t so young, I’d call you Papi. . .lol.
Who the fuck knows. I guess. It’s still beating and hasn’t seized up again. Cardio doc says I’m in good shape and lowered my risk of another heart attack to that of the general population by losing weight, changing eating, stopping smoking, and boatloads of meds. That’s great and all, of course. But I’ll never trust my health or my body again. If I can have a massive coronary at 36. . .fuck it. It ain’t much good for the anxiety.
But yeah, aside from all that, I do feel good:)
@ Erulóra Maikalambe #399
Yeah, I second this completely.
Thank you everyone else too for contributing to this discussion. It has been a bit of an epiphany. It really never occurred to me before that this is the cause of why everyone else in the world is so odd. (I would never, of my own accord, have considered that my brain is unusually wired.)
Reading through the posts on this matter wrt using drugs in treatment, I am actually very happy that this was never diagnosed for me. It has caused trouble – and I do sometimes get seen as “eccentric”, even by my own family. But I have all the mechanisms I need to cope and … well, I’m just quite happy to be me.
Part of the solution as a child was that I had an inordinate opportunity to keep physically active. What was said about cycling rings very true. Also swimming, running and karate. Another saving grace was reading precociously from a very early age, so that I never had a backlog of understanding at school. YMMV.
Ay papi! ;)
I dislike having to be up on the meds but I guess it helps. Heart problems is getting increasingly common nowadays.
@ Josh
Caliente Abrasos!
(from Shenzhen, China… Linky to postcardy pic.)
Wow, do you live in Shenzhen, Theo?
Good morning
*gna*
It’s windy and raining, I’m afraid autumn has started
Ing
Is there the possibility to take somebody with you to any further meeting? In Germany you can request somebody from the Union or the workers’ council to come with you.
There have been cases where they threatened and intimidated people into leaving work, so that’s often highly recommended.
Josh
To my knowledge your experience can lead to a certain form of trauma. I have a friend whose heart started to make trouble at age 30 and he can’t trust his heart anymore either. But this leads to anxiety and panic attacks that make matters worse.
Gileill:
Don’t I know it. I’ve been treated for anxiety/OCD disorders for 20 years. Having a heart attack at a young age has certainly made that worse. I’m sure it’s awful for anyone—indeed I’ve heard many stories about how such an event can throw the most stable person into unpredictable panic—but it’s definitely not something a person like me with anxiety problems needs:)
Nevertheless, I refuse to give in to it. Some days are harder than they used to be, and some days require a bit of pharmaceutical help (tranquilizers) when they didn’t before. I’m awfully grateful such drugs are available, as they help people like me function and have normal lives and careers (well, for certain values of normal, lol).
I’m very happy to be alive, all in all, and very glad to have a rewarding work and social life. I do wish (as everyone with anxiety problems does) that I were consistently calmer, but I’m not. So there it is.
Also, it’s started to rain softly here in New England, US, as autumn comes on, and it’s very nice indeed. It reminds us to get out our stew-making/bread-baking/casserole-roasting pans.:)
Dr Bunsen, surely Tpyos’s sister goddess, She of the Creative Misreadings, is named…. Lady Mondegreen.
Now, ‘scuse me while I kiss this guy.
Don’t forget, Alethea, that olives are seals.
@ Josh
I work in Shenzhen. I usually go home to Hong Kong, but spend a lot of time on the road (in the sky rather) all over China and nearby countries. I spend my time desecrating the built environment with my designs.
But I thought Olive was the other reindeer!
I bring something I found on Feministe again, but this time it’s not so much a comment on their article, but on the thing they linked.
The project Watching You Watch Me by Moa Karlberg.
In her own words:
For me, the answer to that debate is easy, at least when it comes to the photos she has taken. It’s marginally ok* if she took them without the subjects’ permission, but she should have asked for their permission to publish them afterwards.
*With this, I mean that I wouldn’t like that someone takes a photo of me while I’m not aware, but if they are in a public place I couldn’t really do anything about it. Even if they promise not to use it, I wouldn’t be comfortable unless I knew it was destroyed. I just don’t like the idea of my photos appearing who knows where on the internet. But that’s just paranoid little me.
From what I’ve gathered from various photography blogs, people are falling all over themselves in awe. I agree that the photographs are amazing and the whole series makes an interesting art work. But I can’t get over the fact that those people didn’t give their permission for those photos to be plastered all over the web. They didn’t even know. That kind of breach of privacy scares me. It’s not malicious in this case, but it still gives me chills.
Rev. BigDumbChimp, Celtic_Evolution, thanks. I’ll pass the information on to my friend.
I figured as well that his father would probably know best, but he wrote that his dad isn’t good at finding a job, especially since he’s moving to California from a different state. So all help is appreciated.
Ahh, there and back again…
Josh
Well, I could try to say something very clever now, which would inevitably be something very stupid, so I’ll just shut up. Take care.
beatrice
In Germany, that would be illegal. You have a right to your own picture. This means that if you personally are the subject of the picture, instead of, say a picture of the Cologne Dome while you’re passing in front of it, or with you being identifiable and appearing to support something, like a political party or candidate, nobody is allowed to use that picture publicly without your consent.
So, for certain events there often is a disclaimer that “pictures are going to be taken and published on your website, if you don’t like it, you’re free to leave.”
I find such a project highly questionable. It’s a bit like “taking pictures of natives because they look picturesque without asking”.
Good News
Today my waistline was under 1m for the first time in 4.5 years. So I’m slowly moving from obese to overweight.
Annoyed
The whole 9/11 retrospective is getting on my nerves. I would assume that this is different for the USAsians, but here in Germany it feels like those people stopping at a traffic accident to see if they can spot some blood or severed limbs.
Oh, Set: 50sec
Today was easy. The last days I#d usually get the first 5 within a minute and then stare at the screen for 5 more minutes to find the last one…
Giliell,
Here, we have regulations similar to those that the Swedish author is questioning in her own country (at least from what I found about it):
Photographing people in public places is allowed as long as it’s not hidden or somewhere with a sign that says that taking photos is not allowed. In a private place, you have to have a permission from the owner. Also, of course, photographing children for pornographic purposes is illegal. The subject of the photo needs to give permission for the photo to be published only if it’s going to be used for commercial purposes (that is, advertising) or sold stock photographs or something like that.
Kalsberg’s photographing would count as illegal because it was hidden. Although, I suppose she had a permission from the owner of the store she was in – but the photo subjects were outside and she was hidden from them. Not sure how that would be treated.
Set: 1 min 6 secs.
Does anyone ever try any of the other games? Quiddler, which seems suited for the Scrabblers out there (yes, I’m looking at you, Brother Ogvorbis) and Xactika.