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
Thank you to Dhorvath and others last night for talking to me about my kitten problems. He’s adorable, but stressing me out. I took the initiative and taped thin cords to some of the objects they’re near as well as put all my electronics with cords away. I called my counselor to talk, just a kind of “this is what’s up” sort of thing.
And now my face is on fire because of all the dust I riled up.
Apparently 1911 was quite the libertarian paradise in the US (I love how one small quote sets this guy off–in a good way).
@Therrin:
That was a lovely piece!
—
Set: 1 min, 21
My lab report is done and my graph is pretty. I just wanted to announce this to someone.
At least your goats are not.
@SQB:
The Three Goats would never be on fire, they have carried us over the bridge so the troll doesn’t eat us.
I have to take a picture of the cinnamon Orbit package – it’s got goats on fire on it.
Therrin, wow… thanks for that link! My great aunts and uncles were actually from that era, and my grandparents from just a few years after. I’ve never understood how it was romanticized so much. Even my grandmothers rather fortunate family suffered, which is how she lost her hearing. I don’t understand why people want to return to those times, as if they imagine that *they’ll* be fine so fuck absolutely everyone else.
I still have a lot of work to do there. I’ve never found adequate ways to compensate for my … quirks. I’m just unproductive and forgetful.
Awesome. See you in an hour.
Or wait. You’re probably not in my lab.
Getting my e-mail and blog reading confused.
Sorry. But seriously. Good work on that graph. Legible = Gradable. Daddy like.
Moments of Mormon Madness add up to statistics from hell for high school students in Utah. A theocracy does not do well when it comes to education, as we all know, but mormon-dominated school boards and state government also negatively affect the physical health of students. They’re feeding them junk food in order to make money, and they’re denying them sex education in order to …. in order to …. aw, fuck, there is no reason.
I have a solution for this. Can we make chocolate-flavored condoms, and sell them in high school vending machines?
The national average for high schools that sell junk food in vending machines is 62%, which is still way too high. But 92%? Really, Utah? No only are the schools making money off promoting unhealthy eating habits, but the vending machine companies are really raking in the dough.
Full story in Salt Lake Tribune.
To the question up-thread about BYU getting federal funds for student housing: You found a hole in my knowledge of how the mormons run their empire. I don’t know.
As a follow-up to my post about Utah high school kids not getting sex education (@510), here’s a typical post from the Readers Comments below that story:
And, here’s another comment from a Salt Lake Tribune reader, just to prove that there are intelligent people in Utah (a lot more intelligent people are needed in Utah, in order to dilute the anti-human influence of mormonism):
I am so excited! We’re at #197 now!
onion girl,
Voted :).
Did I understand it right that tomorrow I can vote for you again?
Was that a typo? I was just playing some JS Bach on the organ, myself. Well, my keyboard on the “Cathedral Organ” setting.
Oh, and you are #194 now!
WRT photography in the US:
If you’re in public, you have minimal rights to privacy. It’s generally polite to get permission, and for commercial photography I think you generally need a release unless the person is unrecognizeable (this has more to do with profiting from likeness/endorsement laws than from consent), but for personal non-commercial use (up to and including journalism, which is usually covered under non-commercial laws), there’s pretty much no restriction as long as it was done in public in a place where there is no reasonable expectation of privacy.
Now, this gets complicated because many of the places we frequent aren’t technically public: places like malls are actually private and can have their own restrictions or regulations on photography.
Interestingly, you also need (or should get) a commercial release if a building you’re featuring prominantly in a photographing is well-known and recognizeable. It’s called a property release. This doesn’t apply to things like skylines, obviously, because you’d need a few dozen releases for most cities; it’s more if you’re using a specific building in an endorsement or for commercial use.
@ Erulóra Maikalambe
I guess everyone is different, so I can only share my experience and not draw conclusions on other people. I hope something will be of use.
Quirks: Like walking around erratically when I speak on the phone. If it is a small space, I make small circuits. Alternatively turning upside down on the couch. I have no idea why I have this powerful urge to move about while on the phone. Generally I don’t like phones.
Unproductive: 90% of my working day is utterly wasted.
Memory: I don’t think it is as much a case of being bad as getting distracted and not paying attention to what I was supposed to remember. I need to write stuff down or risk forgetting things even in the very short term.
Physical Activity: Personally I was very physically active, especially at University (I guess it needed that most there.) Aside from all the activities described previously, I would do things like swim out to sea and then several kilometers along the coast. Obviously very dangerous, not that it ever bothered me. I would also run to the next city on a whim to pop in to friends for tea. The round trip was longer than a marathon. And the funny thing is I am not a sporty person.
Meditation: Yeah, I should do this more. I used to have an aquarium and wasted thousands of hours staring at fish. Very relaxing.
Work: I am lucky to have my own office space and results based criteria. Colleagues are used to my style.
You should not be hard on yourself. As someone mentioned upthread, a lot of the currently sedentary life/work environments are simply not what humans where designed for. Choose those that play into your strengths. I have found a very inspiring example to share:
(Citation: Sir Ken Robinson,Schools Must Validate Artistic Expression.)
Me too! All of it – moving around while talking on the phone and generally not liking talking on the phone.
I generally have trouble standing still unless I’m doing something that prevents me from walking around. Waiting in any kind of line is more of a torture because I can’t move out of it then because of the wait itself.
I don’t answer the phone.
I listen to the messages.
Therrin, thanks for that link. I’ll be passing that one on.
But now I feel old. My grandmother was fifteen and teaching school in 1911. My grandfather was a boy living in Alaska.
Because of this
http://xkcd.com/
I just wasted a half hour chatting with a ‘bot.
I…I thought/hoped they’d taken that stuff off the market. Darvocet: the drug of a thousand nightmares.
–
Yay! :)
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P-TI: :( :( :(
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Squirrel? The ones that intermittently pass through our attic (when they’re not trying to eat it) make a “fluttery” sound.
–
Tired and shagged out after a prolonged squawk. With added ragweed.
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I do the Quiddler every day. :)
–
I was diagnosed with ADD before I was diagnosed with aspergers. I dunno if the AS ‘nullifies’ the ADD or I was misdiagnosed or what, but I remember being on ritalin. It wasn’t really good for me. It worked, but I felt like hell constantly.
I used to have a fairly hardline stance about medicating kids with ritalin, based on how it made me feel, but apparently it really does help some people. Pot is the only thing I medicate myself with now.
Sometimes I wonder if my issues are deeper than Aspergers syndrome. I have yet to meet anyone else who has such a hard time ‘feeling human’ as me.
Therein@502
Thanks for the shoutout, but given the forum I would have thought you would have linked to the God Whisperer post instead. :)
Crap, looks like my comment from yesterday never showed up, due to 2 hyperlinks.
Ing, congratulations on the engagement. Sally, congrats on the job, sorry about the BF. Gileil, I am sorry to hear your grandmother is not doing well. PTI, I’m sorry to hear about your brother’s friend. Algernon, I hope things get better for you.
Walton: Google “Building 19” and “Ocean State Job Lot.” They’re regional discount chain stores that have sections of nonperishable food that is both cheap and high quality. If you’re in Cambridge, you likely do not have a car, but perhaps one of your mates will. I’d suggest the OSJL in Dedham, because it’s very close to the Boston city line and because it’s large and therefore has more variety. Building 19s all more or less have the same amount of floor space.
Urf. The last comment should have been addressed to @therrin vice “therein.” I’m typing on glass with a very persistent autocorrect.
Richard Austin:
There’s a distinction between “public property” and “public place”; the two are not synonymous. For instance: Malls are not public property, but they are (usually) public places, and a courthouse bathroom is not a public place, even though it’s on public property.
You have no reasonable expectation of privacy in a public place. Whether the owner of the property allows photography is another question entirely.
I took a few photos of a Christmas tree at a local outdoor mall last year. Security quickly came by and told me to stop shooting, as the mall’s owners required permits for “professional photography”. (One drawback of an SLR.) That’s the owners’ right. However, the people in the photos I took can’t complain, unless I sell those photos (without cloning them out).
But don’t I have a reasonable expectation that my loss of privacy will be limited to that public location and for the time that I’m in that public place? Something like this project would mean that when I’m in a public place, I lose my right to privacy from thence on out in any medium whatsoever for anything that anyone could capture of me while in that public place. There’s a big difference between “people will see my face at the mall if I go to the mall” and “people will see my face all over the internet if I go to the mall”.
I’ve done my fair share of crazy climbing before, sketch stretched out aid on sandstone in Zion, Ice Couloirs in the Tetons, chausey conglomerate in Maple canyon, but this will make your butthole pucker.
I’ve done my fair share of crazy climbing before, sketch stretched out aid on sandstone in Zion, Ice Couloirs in the Tetons, chausey conglomerate in Maple canyon, but this will make your butthole pucker.
Whoops forgot link
Carlie:
No.
(Keep in mind that I’m not a lawyer.)
There are four privacy torts:
* Intrusion of solitude: physical or electronic intrusion into one’s private quarters.
* Public disclosure of private facts: the dissemination of truthful private information which a reasonable person would find objectionable
* False light: the publication of facts which place a person in a false light, even though the facts themselves may not be defamatory.
* Appropriation: the unauthorized use of a person’s name or likeness to obtain some benefits.
Unless the photographer commits one of those torts, they are allowed to use their photos anywhere. (The no-commercial-use rule falls under ‘Appropriation’.)
RevBDC:
I saw that a long while ago… and my thought then is the same as it is now:
“Knowing my luck, I’d get about 3/4 of the way to the top and have to take a dump.”
Also, I’m surprised those guys can even climb a tower without their gigantic gonads getting in the way.
On ADHD: I spent my entire graduate career studying ADHD and the effects of Ritalin on motor processing and error processing. I am partial to Ritalin because I’ve seen how it works on both kids and adults with and without ADHD. I’ve also had the chance to experience it myself (of course we run ourselves through the experiments!) and was amazed at how my accuracy and speed improved on the tasks under Ritalin.
Gotta pick up boy kidlet from school…
Good evening
Well, gran is home. She seems already more “awake” than she was all the time in hospital, I hope that if the weather turns fine again as promised, we can get her a bit out in the garden, to sit in the sunshine.
Fun Story:
You remember that my daughter went to kindergarten yesterday unkempt because she didn’t get dressed on time. Today she got dressed on record time, zipper up and everything.
Well, this afternoon I found out why that was: She never bothered to take off her PJ trousers :)
Lone Coyote:
Growing up, I’ve always felt like an outsider. Always. There isn’t a situation anywhere, online or in person, even with my best friends or romantic interactions, where I haven’t felt like there was a significant sociological barrier between me and the other person(s).
In small groups (myself and one to 3 other people), it’s less noticeable because I’m being actively included; it larger groups, it’s almost unbearable, which is a large part of the reason I avoid parties and large social gatherings.
Still, it’s always there: this feeling of being a foreigner who knows the language but is missing most of the idioms. That, combined with some of my biological quirks, led to the common joke that I’m an alien or an android (something that people I barely know come up with on their own, so there’s “something” they’re recognizing as well).
I’m definitely ADHD, dyslexic, and slightly OCD, and have been told I’m on the AS spectrum “somewhere” (I haven’t had a formal diagnosis of that; it didn’t seem to matter much). Like you, I don’t know that this disassociation is related or something else entirely.
But it does mean that the word “lonely” doesn’t have much meaning to me – in the sense I interpret from others, I’m never -not- lonely. Some days it’s worse that others; that’s what long drives along the shoreline are for, letting the wind dry the tears where no one can see them.
And, because it’s probably something neurological, I also know that saying this doesn’t help reduce that sensation, but it might help intellectually.
You have teenagers/young adults?
[Googles] They did. I didn’t actually read the bottle. [actually looks at bootle] Apparently, I’m taking vicoprofen, which is hydrocodone and ibuprofen. Anyway, it works. Pain reduced. Swelling reduced. Wallet reduced.
Brother Ogvorbis: I’m relieved. There used to be a problem with doctors wanting to prescribe Darvocet for me as pain relief, notwithstanding that my records clearly state that I react badly to that stuff, and that I would always explain that to them ahead of time. I was so pleased that as of the New Years MRSAcre, it was no longer apparently compulsory.
Hydrocodone did the job nicely for me. No nightmares, no sinking pit of hopelessness, no being unconscious for unreasonably long times.
–
Whoops.
I somehow managed to use the Vulcan LLAP hand when gesturing in class today. When did I become a Trekkie?
Antiochus, #415: Sounds like you need something to pull you out of your own ASS.
/ba-dump-tssh
Brother Ogvorbis, #428: I hear that the Republican cloakroom in Congress has a spunking couch in the back. You might want to put a towel down before you sit on it.
Lone Coyote, #464: Here’s the link to that post. At least the couple didn’t get to the point at which the guy was yelling “Release the Kraken!” in bed.
Richard Austin: when I still had religious belief I was able to tell myself that I felt different/isolated/other because the divine had special plans for me, and that all my difficulties and traumas were some sort of necessary test or annealing. It’s kind of more difficult now that I don’t have that security blanket. Makes me wish, sometimes, that I could still believe.
Brother Ogvorbis # 537
Bootle? Isn’t that the name of a boat? (Gerald Durrel’s childhood boat, the Bootle-Buntrinket, which he shared with numerous animals but mainly the dogs Roger, Widdle and Puke)
Ogvorbis: I’m 26. The young adult is me.
Richard Austin: I know about the isolation. I remember reading a book about AS when I was young and first diagnosed that mentioned sorta ‘not feeling human’ as being fairly common. “Robot” or “android” seems more common, in my case, I just feel like an animal. For the longest time I thought of myself as some sorta wolfman, but I’m really just a very bizarre primate.
For me, I just wish I met someone who ‘spoke my language’, so to speak. My ex is fairly close but in no way the same. At the very least she knows how to deal with me though, so there’s that. I have a few friends, and even if they don’t understand me at least they don’t hate and reject me, so there’s that too.
Where it really discourages me is dating. I know I’m a compassionate type, gentle and respectful (a noble savage?) and slow-tempered, all good traits, yeah, but I’m pretty sure most women want a guy who can actually fit into human society and feels comfortable there.
/end self pity.
I’m attempting to turn my figs into wine. I’ll probably screw up, but I don’t usually do anything with them and I hate seeing fruit go to waste.
Sorry, that was of course the Bootle-Bumtrinket.
IIRC, ADHD and AS are considered “comorbid” conditions. They’re often associated and their symptoms overlap but one does not necessitate the other.
Well, I have a horrible time with feeling human, but I get the impression you and I might not mean the same thing when we say “feeling human.” My experience of self was fragile and transient (getting better), I felt that I did not exist in any real sense and was only an empty shell that could sometimes manage to fool strangers, and I used to distinguish myself from others on the grounds they were “real people,” whereas I was something other than that. My brain still does this, though I’m pushing back against it pretty steadily now. I consciously created (and still create, albeit hopefully more wisely and healthily) personas that would allow me to “pretend” more easily to be human. This preceded my significant traumas, but was exacerbated by them to a kind of breaking point.
Why is Buddy Roemer running for the Republican nomination?
Republican?!
Anyone started getting spammail from Gadaffi yet?
Well, shit. Literally.
My cat seems to be on her last life (she’s definitely used several up in the last year, as I’ve written far too much about). She’s been acting “off” the last few days, even with pushing more subcutaneous fluids, and I finally took a good look at the litter today. Definite internal bleeding, possibly from both far up the intestine and closer to the end (without getting too gross, there are both types present). Just since Saturday, because the last time I cleaned the litter then it was fine. Although her bloodwork was really good in July, she’s lost weight again in the last month (I’m sure she’s under 4 pounds now) and she’s too frail to deal with any more interventions. We’re going to watch for a couple of days, but I’m guessing we’re going to have to make the appointment before the end of next week.
In much lighter news, the campus finally opened a pub for the first time EVAH tonight, in the building directly next to mine. It’s only open for special events, from 5:30-8 on Wednesdays. What do I do? Teach 6-9 on Wednesdays. Blech.
I’m so sorry to hear about your cat, Carlie. It sounds like she’s been a really lucky cat to have humans who care about her so much.
Carlie
Sorry about your kitty.
*hugs*
——
What do you teach?
Any room for a field-trip?
Say to the building next door?
Thanks, kristinc. I can’t complain at all; she’s had more than a year past when we thought we would lose her, so it’s all been extra time. I just don’t see any way out of this one this time.
Carlie: Teach at the pub.
And, sorry about kitty :(
chigau- biology lab. :)
Ogvorbis,
Sorry to hear about your dental woes. Still, teeth are good for you, they make eating so much easier. Sorry it’s so expensive.
_
And the spunking coach has me concerned. It’s not sticky is it?
___
Squigit,
We had some people who pull that duty on a thread a while back. I don’t think this company is likely to be on the up and up.
___
Carlie,
What you have there is a classic space alien cat zombie. Watch out, they like to steal fuzzy things. (oh, I guess TLC may have a point as well.)
___
Ing,
Sounds like a real prize. Performance is just that, what you perform. Take notes at least, if it comes to escalation having detailed notes with dates can go a long way.
___
Kristinc,
I had issues with that site until I found the rebuttals. I can’t really believe some of the things that people write in without some serious doubt clouding my enjoyment.
___
PTI,
Oh, I was hoping for some people a little further from the household. I don’t know as husband will be much use, I know I would have trouble.
___
Mattir,
I have only the net to go on, but your children seem very well adjusted and schooled to me. (‘Course, I ain’t so take as you wish.)
___
Therrin,
Depends what you mean by service.
___
Josh,
You have come a long way from the initial aftermath. Maybe more time will continue that trend?
___
Beatrice,
I don’t want to click that link for fear I may see something I don’t want to.
___
Giliell,
Congratulations. Progress is gratifying.
___
Katherine,
You can do this. It’s just a bit much to deal with when you weren’t expecting it. Anytime you need advice, I will be glad to share my lifetime of cat obfuscation.
___
Lynna,
Chlamidia is up 70%, “but don’t teach our kids how a condom works”. If they were doing something to help we wouldn’t need to step in. Bloody child abuse, that’s what it is.
___
Theophontes,
I stand and walk while on the phone, I am an animated arm speaker though and not having my hand free to gesture always seemed to me the reason I move my feet instead.
___
Stonekettle,
That’s made some rounds as well.
___
Rev,
That climb is nutty.
___
Benjamin,
Gonads have nothing to do with bravery. Please don’t do that.
___
Carlie,
I am so sorry to hear that, but the extra year has sure been a treat, yes? Every cat deserves a people like you.
Carlie
The Effects of Beer on the Undergraduate – 101
WED 6-8
12 sessions
No dissections.
(must be 18 or older)
Just the faces of people heavily bundled for winter. No nekkid pictures, but still pretty personal with close-ups of people’s faces during a private moment when they thought they were glancing at themselves in a mirror. The photos are actually really good, it’s just the whole concept that’s bothersome – the photographer was hidden and not only people didn’t know they were being photographed, but they weren’t even told later (until they got invitations for the exhibition – sorry, I forgot where I read that part).
That really makes me uncomfortable. I may never see a public mirror the same again.
Well, this might make you even more paranoid, but the photographer was actually in a darkened store so technically, people were looking at a mirroring surface of the store window. So, much more common than a public mirror.
Also, thanks for the dancing advice yesterday (about the wedding), even thought it won’t work for me. I’m not very comfortable with strangers touching me, so I’ll probably avoid dancing as much as possible. I am going to sneak in a book though, so Therrin, thanks for that one.
Dhorvath, OM | 6 September 2011 at 1:58 pm:
It was intended to make people laugh. There’s always a tension between rules that are necessary for practical or safety reasons, and a child’s need to explore. Use of eating utensils as percussion instruments is an interesting one, becuase some parents are ok with it, while others forbid it. Among those who are mostly ok with it, restrictions vary (“Not my GOOD table!”, “Not when mommy has a headache”, etc).
Hey, dancing isn’t everyone’s bag of tea, it gets me through though. Hope you have fun however you sort the wedding out.
And I wasn’t eventaking the medication at the time.
Twenty-six? That’t not a young adult, that’s a little kid.
And gerrof me lawn, ye damn whippersnappers!
=======
Carlie:
Cyberhugs.
The good news is, I can pay for it over 18 months. And even better news, I am going back on the NIFC call out list as of Sunday and should, with any luck, be at a forest fire out in California (I hope) by Monday. Which means about 130 hours or more of overtime.
No. Merely a mental construct. Whether your mind is sticky, after imagining said mental construct, is up to you. And your mind.
Llewelly,
Ah well, that would just be me being an insecure parent then. I guess I was primed to be defensive, my apologies for ruining your joke.
Carlie, I’m really sorry to hear about the cat. It’s always hard to deal with, even when you know it’s coming :(
Definitely a fortunate cat in her choice of people, though – she picked one who would look after her and not let her suffer.
Carlie, so sorry to hear about your cat. *hugs* if you want them.
Oh Carlie, it’s always sad to lose a pet. But your cat has had a good long life, and I bet if she could talk, she’d say thanks for giving her a good home.
———————————–
I was supposed to see J tonight, but after telling him about C., he suggested we cancel. I think it’s finally sunk in that I really won’t be hearing about what C.’s next big adventure will be. I’m not numb, I’m not really crying, I’m sort of…bummed? I’m sure it’ll all come back at some point and I’ll need to crank up the music to drown out my sobs.
————————————
I hate earaches. I hate when they turn into ear infections just when you think you’ve got the problem licked. I think maybe being exposed to cold air while my co-worker gave me a ride home tonight did it, but I was in pain by the time got home. Two Aleve later, and I’m sitting here with a “stuffed” or “swollen” feeling in my left ear. Sounds are muffled, but I can still hear, so maybe it’s not too bad yet. The problem is…
I REALLY don’t want to take pills for this. They can make me really loopy, and I can’t be loopy while at work. I thought sleeping with my head elevated was doing the trick, as I heard that sometimes the fluid just needs a little help with draining out via the Eustachian tube. It seemed to be working…
*googles for the nearest GP or perhaps Ear, Nose and Throat Specialist*
Something new to be outraged about: http://www.npr.org/2011/09/07/140234451/under-suspicion-at-the-mall-of-america
NPR reporting that security guards at Mall of America are getting people investigated by the FBI. One guy probably got fired for (gasp) admitting to security guard that he was a Liberal.
yay America…yay.
PZ has written about religious-based academies for troubled teens before. (Here’s one example.) Basically, the religious aspect allows the schools to get away with murder. And that’s not hyperbole.
Utah has more schools for troubled teens than most states. In Utah, it’s mostly mormons who run these gulags. They have been sued before, but now the legal heat is going up.
Even the mormon newspaper, Deseret News, has reported on the latest lawsuit.
I have a normally very nice pleasant facebook feed (thanks to my family being a.) small b.) liberal c.) extremely non-confrontational.
So, my brother’s baby mama is rapidly becoming the most annoying person on it:
I wrote, “I agree with the sentiment, but do you really need to share it with everybody? That’s also drama.”
OH NNOOOEES, confrontation in the Strange family!??!! What will happen next??
I suppose if I block I can still see pictures of my niece via my brother’s feed.
Oh looky, she didn’t take it personally! My nervousness was all for naught!
I offered to let her vent to me via email if she needed to.
It’s funny, I’m sure you guys would be surprised to know exactly how non-confrontational my family is. I mean, it’s ridiculous. I guess my current personal style is a bit of an overreaction to that.
Lon Harvey Kennard served as a Bishop in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He also set up the Village of Hope orphanage in Ethiopia.
He adopted six Ethiopian children.
[sigh] You know where this is going.
Kennard sexually abused the children.
Story in the Salt Lake Tribune.
In case any ex-mormons are reading this and want more details, I think Kennard served as Bishop in Heber City, Utah.
So far, the 47 charges of felonies committed by Kennard have been reduced to 3 via plea bargaining.
Is all this mormon stuff coming out fairly recently? It’s all pretty sick, but is it a sign that authorities are at least starting to crack down on the fuckery?
{{hugs}} for Carlie and very, very, gentle hugs for kitteh. I recall you and I sharing elder-kitteh nursing stories last winter when mine used up one of her lives. When I snuggle up with her tonight, I will be thinking of you two.
No, it means that it is getting harder and harder to sweep this stuff under the rug. There have always been, and always will be, extremely religious people who actually have a working conscience, a real sense of right and wrong. The difference today, and in the future, is that, thanks to modern communications, it is much easier to report (anonymously in many cases (or semi-anonymously (and no, I do not know, nor am I asserting, that the criminal was exposed through an anonymous tip))) instances of abuse — abuse of children, abuse of authority, and other forms of abuse. It doesn’t mean that it will stop the abuse, it just makes it more likely for the abuse to be reported and acted upon.
@ Giliell – the 9/11 anniversary is now descending into farce — the trio of out of town, fundamentalist evangelical advocacy groups who started a petition whining about how the bereaved families were ‘excluding God’ by not inviting clergy to say (JudeoChristian) prayers at their dedication ceremony have now been joined by nominally liberal, out of town evangelical clergy including Jim Wallis, also whining.
http://uspolitics.einnews.com/pr-news/525868-top-national-and-global-evangelicals-urge-unity-not-division-on-9-11
The insensitivity of traveling in from out of town to harass bereaved people into allowing changes in their traditional memorial that make you the center of attention even though the deceased wasn’t a member of your church and you never met him/her doesn’t seem to have occurred to anybody.
The fact that many of the deceased were Jewish or Muslim or Jain or Bahai or atheist or Catholic doesn’t seem to bother them.
Nor does the blatant unconstitutionality of demanding that Mayor Bloomberg, a government official, force private citizens to include in a semi-public ceremony religious figures whom they don’t want to include and listen to the spouting of prayers the families don’t want to hear.
Because, you know, the whole POINT of 9/11 was to give Jim Wallis a chance to get on TV so he could offer the salvation of Jesus to America.
This country is now officially nuts and makes me sick.
Carlie, I’m so sorry to hear about your kitty. *hug*
I wish there was something I could say that would help.
–
No.
It’s a sign that the authorities can no longer sweep the fuckery under the rug as easily as they did in the past. The authorities still don’t crack down until they are absolutely forced to do so by very determined victims.
In the most recent child molestation case by the mormon bishop, the children turned him in. From what I’ve read, the kids worked together to give evidence to the authorities, with one grown son gathering nude photos and other pedophile/child abuse documents from the father’s computer. The oldest (now adult) female victim called the police with the charges.
It’s a sign that at least some victims have not been persuaded by church leaders to just send the perpetrator to his or her local church leader for counseling.
It’s a sign that at least some victims realize that they can get help if they work hard enough at it, and if they go public with their stories.
The Church leaders themselves do not crack down. They talk a good line. They have a paid PR department that talks a good line. But they never do anything in the way of cracking down on their own initiative.
You seldom see other authorities in Utah cracking down either — at least not on their own initiative. They have to be pushed hard by victims.
It may be a sign that a slightly reduced percentage of police, judges, and lawyers are mormon than in the past. Though I wouldn’t bet on it. Positions of power in Utah are still largely in the hands of white, male, mormon true believers.
You’ll note that the mormon bishop has already plead his sentence down from 47 to 3 felonies.
Remember, it was a Utah court that let Warren Jeffs go on a technicality (a Texas court finally convicted Jeffs). Even polygamist mormons, who are supposed to be beyond the pale in mainstream mormon eyes, get a break in Utah. It’s the State of Utah that wants a lawsuit against polygamist Kody Brown dropped: http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/52527809-78/utah-state-law-wives.html.csp
@Dhorvath OM
Stonekettle,
That’s made some rounds as well.
Yeah, I know. The huge pile of hate mail tipped me off. Nobody can lay down the misspelled hate like people of God, eh?
___
And … here’s the mormon version of the farce:
As usual, the petty mormon god provides phone service to a worthy mormon male, while failing to prevent a major disaster that kills thousands.
Thanks everybody. I feel bad because I’ve “cried wolf” on her a few times already, but she just kept popping back up! We had to take her to the vet to board for a few days at the end of July, and the vet walked in and said “I’m looking at this bloodwork from February, and I don’t understand how this cat is still here.” Then they did a recheck, and all of the rotten toxic levels from Feb. had all gone down by half. So her kidneys are hanging in there, it just looks like other stuff is failing now all at once. The litter blood problem looked…significant, so I don’t think it’s a temporary thing she can get over (especially since she was borderline anemic last month as well). So that, plus the confusion that’s gotten more prominent recently (she’ll stand and stare and not be sure what to do, and pace like she doesn’t remember where she meant to go), plus the way she’s been mincing and half-sitting like her hips and knees hurt, and that she’s not perking back up in response to the fluids like she usually does, all add up to not good.
I keep watching this video that a friend posted today, because OMG humanity is so adorable. What’s interesting is that it really shows how close laughing and crying are; there were a couple clips that made me catch my breath in sadness for a split second before I processed that they were laughing.
I love Google Voice sometimes.
I got this voicemail today. Care to count how many Constitutional violations and instances of outright stupidity are contained within?
I had a GREAT time with Josh on Saturday night, and posted pix of me, Josh, and Francine (who is absofuckinglutely gorgeous) on the FB site. Got home safely and sanely, and am doing well today.
Josh, I do <3 you!
Josh OSG:
Wow, indeed! I wonder if she looks as good as she sounds (a shallow thought, I know, but….). I recall a female morning radio DJ from my HS days who had the sexiest voice on the planet… but when I finally saw a picture of her, she was a perfectly ordinary looking middle-aged woman.
Of course, now that I’m a perfectly ordinary looking (to be generous!) middle-aged man, I’m finding perfectly ordinary looking middle aged women increasingly sexy: One does grow out of testosterone-soaked youthiness.
****
Mattir:
This is a skosh belated, but speaking as someone who’s argued with you in the past about homeschooling, let me just say that I have no concerns whatsoever about the wellbeing of your spawn. Whatever doubts I have about homeschooling in general, I have none about the wellbeing of youths in your care; be of good cheer, my friend!
Bill D:
Numbitty 902, ‘THE STURGE’!
Two hours ago, the Susquehanna River was expected to crest at 38 feet (three feet below the top of the levee). A line of extremely heavy rain has set up and is going to train over Wilkes-Barre and the upper Susquehanna River basin. The county EMA will meet at 11 this evening and will most likely set a mandatory evactuation for the flood areas — most of the downtown area, including Girl’s college. Boy’s college, down in Bloomsburg, is already closed tomorrow.
Oh Carlie, poor kitty.
My sister may have to relocate, she lives about 30 feet away from the Susquehanna.
I hope everybody in the Susquehanna valley is ok. Ogvorb, good luck to Boy and Girl. I went downstairs to check the basement cat litter box (the secondary one) and stepped into a bit of a pile of water, but we don’t have it too bad in comparison.
Beatrice, anormalement indécente | 7 September 2011 at 2:28 am
For some reason this caused me to imagine cameras secretly placed behind the mirrors in public “rest”rooms.
(And I can’t recall the last time I saw a mirror in a public place that was not a public restroom.)
The internet and cheap digital photography have made our traditional assumptions about privacy obsolete. You can no longer expect photographs of you in public places to be few in number and not widely distributed. Large companies have been collecting tons of private and not so private information about people for over a decade, it gets sold and resold, leaked and releaked, and more and more it’s getting connected to photographs.
Far more of our behavior than we are accustomed to expect is now recorded, and, potentially, databased in searchable form, possibly becoming a long term record.
Many formerly difficult violations of privacy are now trivial, and thoroughly automated. To make matters worse – manufactured fears about drugs and terrorism have granted governments sweeping powers to use technology to violate privacy at will.
PTI,
Take care of your ears. I’m not saying rush out and get medicated, but just be careful. I have tinnitus and hearing damage from an ear infection I had when I was young. It sucks.
llewelly:
Mirrors are common in stores and hotel hallways, among other places.
Yup, sis has relocated. Boo. Nobody needs this sort of aggravation.
Wow, just heard that New York is going to probably close the thruway overnight from Verona to Albany. That’s almost half the width of the state.
I’ll do my best.
A question re the Mormon Madness: if they’re so sure that abuse makes people gay, especially women, then what’s with all the abuse? Is this some sort of twisted pro-gay-agenda with which I’m unfamiliar?
And thanks for the good thoughts re the Education of the Pests. Today was much better, since I got the new SD card, got a reader program set up on SonSpawn’s computer, and decided that attempting to do a 1000 calorie per day mostly protein shake diet was freaking stupid, even if appropriately medically supervised. As the psychologist at clinic pointed out, I’ve maintained a 40 pound weight loss for 5 months while eating (on average) around 1500 calories per day. I have hit a plateau, and it would probably be more productive to use the energy I have to exercise more rather than eating less. Why exactly was this total obviousness so freaking difficult to figure out? (Besides, of course, hoping to have a three digit weight number beginning with 1 rather than 2 before the PhybreHorde descends on Rhinebeck?)
Mattir,
Yes.
(Have at it!)
Mattir, have you run across work by Dr Amanda Sainsbury-Salis? Yeah, she’s Yet Another Weight-loss Guru, with Yet Another Book (on amazon/kindle) – but she’s a real scientist, focussing on neurochemistry. She has a popular book out, the gist of which is that your body self-regulates very strongly. There’s no minimising the difficulties and she doesn’t go in for fat-shaming. Anyway, her approach is that you need to eat MORE, not less, when you hit a plateau. Trust your hunger, give your body what it wants, then go back to slow loss once you’ve convinced it that you’re not starving to death.
I’m no poster child, but she seems very sensible and I don’t know how well known she is outside the US.
Wha – augh! Just… what!
No, no, that won’t work. What my body wants is stuff that’s really bad for it like chocolate. When my body whines at me I have to force myself to forego the 1,920 calories in the McDonald’s Big Box of 12 chocolate chip cookies and give it lots and lots of vegetables.
The spunking couch may be sticky, wherever, whatever it may be.
The Spanking Couch is upholstered in the finest Moroccan leather, 30 stitches to the inch, and it is never sticky.
This is Pharyngula!
*SNORT*
CC: not enough w’s in the universe for that ewwwww.
Patricia, OM
I think it was the spunking coach who was sticky.
I don’t know about the couch.
Hi threadizens! In no particular order:
Ing,
Hearty congratulations! =^_^= May your lives together be long, happy and healthy!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Alethea H. Claw,
I love your new ‘nym! =^_^=
LOL
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Mattir-ritated,
I have only ‘met’ you online, but from what I have read from you and about you your spawn could not have a better education anywhere on the planet than the one you are giving them.
As to your weight: a seriously obese friend was told to eat more when her bloodwork came back with a note that they suspected anorexia. Her doctor explained that the semi-starvation diet she had been subjecting herself to had prompted her body to go into survival mode and store every spare calorie it could in case the food ran out altogether. He told her that the answer was to increase her food intake to normal maintenance levels and gradually increase her exercise activity. Even then, the weight would not necessarily change very fast (in fact, it went up) as she increased her muscle mass, but he emphasised that it is her fitness levels that are more important than her weight. Three cheers for non-fat-shaming doctors.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
To everyone else with the unusual neurotypes,
Yay! I suspected there had to be a reason I love this place! =^_^=
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
PTI,
I echo what Erulóra Maikalambe said, and for much the same reason (repeated, untreated, ear infections in childhood led to premature high-end hearing loss and tinnitus). Meantime, be kind to yourself. Earache sucks.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Brother Ogvorbis,
I’m glad your teeth are getting sorted out. Toothache is nearly as bad as earache (and sometimes seems to lead to it). And I usually make dental appointments for 2:30 (for the lulz).
Good luck to your offspring and I hope they keep safe.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Beatrice,
I find the idea of constant surveillance really creepy, so I try not to think about it. I have come across pictures of myself in weird places on the net, linked from my Photobucket. Easy solution was to re-name the pictures and set my albums to private.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Classical Cipher,
Indeed…
Was that really the groom’s speech (or a circular distributed to wedding guests)?! Good grief…
Well I never…
Crowepps, two points:
1. If you really gave your body what it wanted ALL the time, eventually that sort of thing would go away. Those cravings come from deprivation.(Probably. There’s some argument for some kinds of fast foods being literally addictive.)
2. Dr Amanda’s “eat more” thing isn’t for all the time anyway. It’s about booting away the “starvation reflex” – which is a metabolic shift in dieters that has clear symptoms. Hunger for something substantial; weight loss plateauing; feelings of lethargy; and feeling cold.
@ CC
{theophontes takes on green pallor}
Between the comments on the mormons and the baptists I am now completely godded out.
That bit about justifying pre-marital sex was really the last straw. They make me feel nausi…naus… Bleeeaugh!
Chigau – Thank you for clearing that up.
I take high umbrage at any assertion that the Pharyngula Saloon and Spanking Parlor would provide anything less than the most stupifying, blinding, embalming quality grog.
Our swill is generously served in 20 gallon troughs, and single serving five gallon buckets.
I know there are some that complain that the OM’s get all the best part of the orgies, spankings and the oral sex, it’s true, but we don’t allow priests.
I might keep this in my name. Y’never know. I dunno.
I might be a little sleepy. Goodnight all.
Thank you, Tigger!
Classical Cipher, I wish I hadn’t looked at that. Ophelia Benson has been doing a series on the quiverfull and related movements. Raising little girls to be slaves – it’s heartbreaking.
Classical, the mooing mouse??
Or instead I might use Murmur Muris. I think it’s prettier even though it doesn’t mean quite the same thing.
I’d be using mugiens as in “roaring,” rather than mooing, but yeah, pretty much.
Oh, the mouse that roared! Of course. Any particular reason?
I was disappointed that my ancient laptop can’t download kindle so I couldn’t get the free book others have mentioned. So, for those in the same position, here’s a consolation prize (courtesy of Dymocks).
Free short story (PDF):
Rain, by Alexander McCall Smith
Good morning
I just bought an English wax-jacket, so now I can play an arrogant, English countryside noblewoman on the next Inspector Barnaby, prefferably dead ;)
crowepps
Wait, what? They’re bullying the families for having their memorial ceremonies the way they want them to have? How much of an asshole can one be?
Every religious person who has a shred of human decency left msut be equally abhorred by this.
Carlie
Sorry to hear about your cat.
Mattir
In my old flat, my budget gym was my stairway and a pair of small weights. I’d take them into my hands, put on some music and climb the stairs for half an hour. It wasn’t only good exercise, it was also cheap and didn’t require any kind of planning.
losing weight in general
Well, the problem is that millenia of evolution programmed us to get every calorie we could and not to let go of any weight we ever gained easily.
For the craving I found it best to have some of my most favouritest treats around in the most expensive version I could afford. Belgian choclates where a single piece costs about 50ct are something you eat in the evening, slowly, celebrating. Choclate where the whole bar costs 50ct is something you can eat in between.
I like the Weight watchers approach (which is generally also recommended by medical associations), because they never forbid any food and really try to change your eating habits. Because usually it’s not so much the problem of losing weight, but staying at that weight.
Login to this site: why isn’t it httpS? In fact, why not make the entire site httpS by default?
LOL, good luck with that approach. Trust your hunger, seriously, WTF ?
@ SQB
A lot of the social media is requiring httpS now (eg Facebook). My concern is that, being secure, it will get banned in China. :”(
@ Rorschach
Er, … if you don’t trust the signals coming from your own body, WTF then?
Science!
Now seriously, my body tells me that I’m really going to need this fat in case the hunt goes bad by the time the next kid comes around.
Combined with a tendency to empty our plates (this might be cultural, might be part of our evolutionary heritage). There have been experiments where people were given soup and should eat until they were full. One half had a “magical” plate that kept refilling. Those participants ate considerably more than the other ones.
We also eat more when we have more choice. Again, tests with jelly-beans: the more varieties, the more people ate.
I think that culture does play a big part in this and early training: Formula fed kids get X ml of formula y times a day and parents have the tendency to make sure they drink it all.
Little kids get praised when they empty their plates and punished when they don’t.
It’s probably the worst combination of nature and nurture one can imagine in respect of “the signals from your body”.
Be sure to check the book title.
From here.
@ Gilliel
kekekekeke…
Is there an app for that?
On exercise: I always heard it was best to exercise before breakfast, since you apparently start burning fat quicker on an empty stomach.
We don’t punish our kids for not emptying their plates, as long as they took more than just a token bite.
I’m sure Chas can explain it to you much better than I could, seeing that you don’t seem to realise what’s wrong with that sentence in the first place.
I therefore have to resign myself to posting a humorous account of the plight of Fat People
;)
Which he gets as wrong as a lot of other people taking the “It’s just because you eat too much, it’s your choice, just stop eating”.
Which goes along the same lines as saying “your lung problems are because you’re smoking, just stop smoking”.
It also makes the false equivalence of fat=sloppy, without discipline that is a common trope withing society.
Whatever slim people do to be slim, they get complimented at least on their discipline.
He says that joking about fat people isn’t like joking about gay people because being fat is something you chose, as opposed to your sexual orientation.
As somebody with an eating disorder, I can assure Rick Gervais and everybody else that it’s not that simple.
SQB
Neither do I, but it is still terribly common and was during the time when those adults who are now struggeling grew up, incluging me.
I’m increasingly inclined to think that you’re really a bit dumb. There is a gazillion causes for “lung problems”, and a bazillion kinds of completely different “lung problems” with different causes for each and every one of them, so your comment on this, and the analogy you attempt, is entirely worthless.
And this is wrong why ? Why not stop eating if it’s making you fat ? You know, he also points out that you don’t wake up one day to realise “OMFG I’m fat !”. It’s kind of a process…You seem to be carrying some emotional baggage ralating to an eating disorder, as you say, so I won’t hold my breath for a rational answer. You don’t seem very bright at the best of times anyway. I’ll add humour-impaired to the mix.
This just in: American Cancer Society would rather turn down half a million dollars than have to publicly admit it came from atheists: story here
Rorshach, you should read the science she’s got. It’s a specific situation-limited claim about metabolism and neuropeptides.
You know, because it’s a disorder? Just like “why not stop smoking if it gives you cancer” is a fucking stupid thing to say.
Hell, I thought you were a MD, where did you hide out when they taught about those things?
I’ll leave that for the audience to decide.
Obviously there was the implicit assumption that the lung problems was specifically because of smoking. Just like your assumption that the person is fat from eating too much and not from some medical condition.
Eating too much is a disorder now ? Eating cake instead of jogging is an illness ? Fine, you go with that, by all means. There are of course real issues here, for example that fatty and unhealthy foods are often cheaper and more readily available to people or families than healthy alternatives, and that is a problem we have to urgently address, and a tax on fast foods is very much needed to curb childhood obesity and cardiovascular disease in ever younger populations. But except from certain psychiatric disorders, taking in more calories than what you consume is not an illness. It’s a habit. If I go past 80kg, I go on the treadmill and forgo the carbs. It’s my decision. If you’re ok with being 125kg, I don’t mind, but it’s not an illness, it’s your decision.
Also, of course, you can’t just “stop eating” or you will, eventually, die. And if you do take the fasting approach, you lose muscle, and on the rebound you will almost certainly get fatter than you were before. It’s very, very hard to make people change their weight permanently – whether a gain or a loss. The easiest way to get people to *gain* weight, though? No, not force-feeding – a severe crash diet, then wait 6 months.
It’s interesting that most people think NOT trusting your body is the way to go with food. You don’t need a clock or a calculator to tell you if you need to breathe. Hunger and thirst and sleepiness are pretty basic bodily functions. But we train ourselves, or are trained, to ignore them. To eat – or not eat – for comfort, or for guilt, or to please others, or out of habit. Retraining yourself to eat only when you are hungry, and to eat only enough to feel satisfied, not stuffed, is surprisingly hard work.
Ow fuck, blockquote fail. Do we have a god or goddess for that?
For many poor people this is difficult. Not all of them have access to treadmills. Cheap food is all salt and fat. Studies have shown a correlation between obesity and income.
Not to mention that companies start marketing their high-calorie crap food to kids at a young age. Get them hooked early.
And apart from the social problems, there’s a whole world of obesity research that very clearly indicates that dieting doesn’t work, and that the biology of weight gain/loss is one hell of a lot more complicated than calories in/calories out. Here’s just one little paper, from all the way back in 1995 – http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199503093321001 – demonstrating metabolic changes in response to weight gain or loss.
Of course. As I said, this is something we have to address urgently, it is terrible that access to healthy food should be a matter of wealth. As for treadmills, walking an hour every day will do the trick nicely. I do it.
Set: 1 min, 48 – so confusing, way too many red cards
Also, I should mention there has been on work on the addictiveness of food high in fat and/or sugar. The analogy with just telling smokers to quit because its bad for them isn’t at all silly.
Yes, there’s an big issue with obesity, but just telling people to stopping eat isn’t very helpful.
Oh that was funny. I was walking by one of the news TVs and saw a commercial for “clean, natural American energy” and it’s about natural gas – the process to obtain said gas destroys the environment.
Gee, that sounds clean.
Sure it is! They stop eating, they die of starvation, no more obesity problem.
Because goodness knows most full-time working mothers have nothing but free time and no problem finding a whole hour every day to do nothing but walk.
2 mins 8 secs
Well, they could cut down on the carbs instead I guess, if all fails. I know, it’s a horror scenario.
Blech… all this talk about fat is making me want to go puke my breakfast up.
Luckily I’m too late for work and bulimia never worked for me anyway :)…
If I trust the signals from my body, I don’t work out very much, I eat until I’m satsified, and I gain wait and keep gaining weight.
If I weigh myself every day, work out three times a week whether I feel like it or not, and restrict my food intake to the point that I feel hungry about 1/3 of the time that I’m awake, I can maintain or slowly lose weight, until I get down to about 160 lb, which I can then maintain until we go on another vacation.
In addition to what Danaleigh wrote, this is difficult for living in northern latitudes during winter. Also, for some reason, jackasses frequently feel the need to comment on obese people exercising in public. This isn’t to suggest it’s impossible to exercise, just that it isn’t as easy as you’re making it for many people.
Our bodies weren’t made for a sedentary lifestyle and a diet of calorie-dense food. While ‘eat food that tastes good’ is a good rule of thumb for hunter-gathers, it’s very unhealthy for those living in modern industrialized nations. Adjusting to this reality is going to take a lot more than just telling people to ‘stop eating’.
theophontes:
Read. Especially the “Food and Feedback” section.
Rorschach:
Fuck you.
Rorschach, you know I respect your knowledge as a doctor, but you’re indicating a bit of a lack of information about metabolism and weight research. The kinds of things that you’re talking about are normally good for preventing weight gain, but the problem is that people are so well-adapted to keeping weight on that once someone has gotten fat, there are all kinds of factors working against losing weight. There are a whole host of social issues that you seem to know about, but then discount (such as first saying “There are of course real issues here, for example that fatty and unhealthy foods are often cheaper and more readily available to people or families than healthy alternatives, and that is a problem we have to urgently address,” and then following that right up with “Well, they could cut down on the carbs instead I guess, if all fails. I know, it’s a horror scenario.”). There are also a lot of metabolic issues that come into play. There are some studies showing that fat people literally have different gut flora that extract nutrients differently than thin people do for example, studies showing that they have to do more physical work to get any weight loss, studies showing that their fullness indicators are screwed up all to hell, etc.
Some people are fat because they inherited alleles that let them store fat easily. Some people are fat because they went through crash diet fads and permanently fucked up their metabolism. Some people are fat because they eat generally normally, but have other health problems or lifestyle constraints that keep them from being able to exercise at all. Some people are fat because they gained weight in small increments over a few dozen years and can’t be bothered to do anything about it because they have other priorities. Some people are fat because they chose to self-soothe under stress with food rather than with alcohol or heroin. Some people are fat because they simply like to eat lots of calorie-dense foods. Some people are fat because they can’t afford to eat anything but cheap white bread and 20% fat beef. There are even some oddly intriguing preliminary data that a few people might be fat due to epigenetic markers gotten from their mothers or grandmothers who went through periods of starvation. It’s a bit like Anna Karenina: every fat person is fat in their own way. One answer won’t fit all.
And don’t forget HAdV-36
Carlie, also, it’s a bit self-centred. “I have no problem staying slim and fit, so you shouldn’t, either”.
Roads in my county are closed… which would not be odd at all, if this were mid-February!
And I swear the next person that makes another stupid “I think I just saw animals walking two-by-two” joke is gonna get… well… probably just a sneer and a shaken fist… but by FSM it will be one doozy of a sneer!
Addiction to food (or anything else) is an illness. Also, what Carlie said.
The idea that it’s all about “choice” and “willpower” is judgmental bullshit. It isn’t.
Oh, ffs. Don’t be such a dick. Seriously.
Well, you can usually simply try and exchange “fat” or “obese” in all the claims and joles with “anorectic”. See what happens.
Obviously fat people exist because they haven’t been ridiculed or told to lose weight enough.
Apropos of absolutely nothing, I just watched a coverd hopper (a railroad freight car built to haul grain (or other granular substances which shouldn’t get wet)) with some great graffiti. The graffiti was a well done Hello Kitty, 12-feet-high, but with a white skull in place of the kitty’s face, a la Skull Candy. And the artist was smart enough to paint around all the reporting marks, so it should stay on there for a while.
@ Benjamin
Thanks for link. I shall read it in more detail later.
Obviously it is not so simple after getting into the habit of eating/drinking badly. (Yes I’ve also been there.) Essentially, if you are eating healthily and getting exercise you will adjust accordingly. If things are out of kilter less so.
My argument is more that one must (eventually) be aware of one’s body and not rely on external regimes. Only then would one make the solution sustainable. There are just so many dimensions to the problems (eg health/psychological problems) of being over/under weight, there is no point in making simplistic “solutions” like exercise or diet regimes when the bigger problem is for example depression or insecurities or poverty expressing themselves through poor eating habits.
I would second you here, but Walton beat me to it.
HAdV-36… my first taste of germ phobia. WTF?
How do people get exposed to that?
The BBC aired a programme looking at the obesity problem from the opposite direction,
Why Are Thin People Not Fat?
As someone who was seriously underweight until my mid-thirties, when I was diagnosed with gluten enteropathy and went on a gluten-free diet; and still isn’t overweight despite still eating plenty and being largely under-mobile, I found it fascinating.
Hmmm… my family is “naturally thin” and I’ve found that after going to a ridiculously and unhealthily sedentary lifestyle with too much stress, I’ve upped my weight to what is considered average. I’m not happy with it, and I hate hate hate the way I feel… but even though I *feel* fat no one in their right minds would actually describe me as fat.
However, I am doing all of the things that should cause a person to get overwhelmingly fat. I eat too much high calorie food. I have to fight just to get ten minutes away from a desk, and on the weekends usually end up spending just as much time sitting because I’m catching up with people/work through the computer.
I injured my hip flexor and couldn’t walk for a while, and I drink too much.
I should be huge. I’m not. My dad is the same way. Ate very badly (I mean cartons of ice cream after dinner badly) and never gained that much.
I’ll probably die of a heart attack, but I won’t be fat. I’m definitely a poster child for the skinny != healthy.
Getting back onto a workout schedule and trying to get some exercise that I can actually stick with, enjoy enough to do at all, and that isn’t making some problem worse for me… is really freaking hard. Add to that, it comes out of the two or three hours I have to myself on any day (at most) which other people are constantly vying for… and which I’d frankly rather use to try and pathetically squeeze a moment of contact with something I love (like my music) into.
Life sucks…
I guess that’s where I’m going with that. Life sucks, and is it really so hard to look around at other people and figure it probably sucks for them too?
You are a First Law of Thermodynamics denialist?
*shrug* It’s a (small) change in ‘calories out’, that’s all. Changes nothing about the basic relationship. It really, really is just in minus out. Take in more energy than you expend and the remainder is stored as fat. Period.
The point is that there are a lot of internal and external variables contributing to both ‘in’ and ‘out’, and these differ among individuals.
@ Brother Ogg
Wait. They are going to leave the graffiti on the train? That is way impressive.
So often there is an impulse to “sanitise” the built environment. I wonder where the impulse comes from. Berlin went to town on “cleaning” up their act to conform to a more puritan sensibility. I really think that was the wrong approach, it always had such a beautifully expressive vibe. We should be doing things the other way round. The USA is fairly good in this regard in places like San Fran. Stunning graffiti.
There are even people who still believe that the cities of ancient Greece were these clean white tabula rasas for pondering Platonic perfection. The truth was that they painted all those statues in bright colours and readily expressed themselves in graffiti.
Oooh that was interesting. I’m twitchy, like tweaker-twitchy. I always wrote that off as ADD characteristics though. I don’t even know I’m doing it. Usually some one grabs my leg or something because it’s bothering them. Some one once asked me if I had a tic!
Stupid. The street art is what makes that city attractive.
To tell the truth, I have no idea if I will ever be able to get back to that state.
I became overweight and finally obese during childhood/early teenage years. Telling a kid who’s a bit on the chubby side constantly that I were fat and needed to lose weight actually didn’t work. I lost connection with my body. If I was fat anyway, I could eat that other piece of cake as well. Looking back at the pictures of 10 year old me and thinking back to how I felt and what I thought about my body simply don’t add up. In my memory that child was morbidly obese while I actually was mildly overweight.
I managed to lose weight at 20, but even though I kept it for 8 years, it was never just “normal eating and exercise”, going for the signals from my body. If I went by this, it would usually end in trousers getting tight and a more strict eating regime for a while.
It was about then when the binge-eating-vomiting started. And it went out of control when I became pregnant for the second time, when my usual tricks couldn’t be applied for the sake of the child and when I would seek comfort in food for the freaking fucking anxiety over another miscarriage or a stillbirth. Since that I’m back to keeping my weight with the occasional binge-eating again, only at about 30 kg more than what I had before the kids.
I’m currently trying to get out of this again. It’s not that I didn’t know all the stuff about healthy eating, or couldn’t afford to buy good food (though no time for the gym), but it’s fucking damn hard.
Eating disorders are hard to tackle because you simply cannot get around eating. You can avoid touching alcohol, or cigartes, but not food
It takes about 20 gallons of rather expensive paint, or more, to put a new paint job on a covered hopper. And the paint ain’t cheap. Many railroads and private owners (the ones with an ‘X’ in the reporting marks) figure that if someone wants to paint the car for them, more power to the painter. I still disagree with artists who use private property for their graffiti (unless, of course, they have permission), but freight car graffiti has been around since the invention of freight cars and, in the grand scheme of the well-ordered universe, is just like the planet earth: mostly harmless.
@ ChasCPeterson
Would you agree that:
Is the trivial part of the problem.
Is the non-trivial part.
?
Mattir:
That would be Satan, a.k.a. The Adversary, prompting all that abuse.
The Adversary is especially active in mormon communities because he knows mormons are the greatest threat to his plans to dominate mankind.
You would be surprised by how many mormon missionaries are tempted into masturbation, or even SSA (Same Sex Attraction) by the ever-busy Adversary.
Some people in the “outer world” (i.e., any part of society that is not mormon) mistake proper subservience and obedience to the priesthood as abuse. So there’s that when comes to the issue of abusing women and girls. The rest is Satan.
The whacked-out, anti-intellectual, godaddled, mindfuck that is mormonism is in no way to blame for the alarming number of pedophiles “called” as Boy Scout troop leaders or seminary teachers by LDS leaders. That’s Satan’s doing as well.
And since the outer world will tend to blame the church when it’s not the church’s fault, it makes perfect sense to hide as much of this deviance from the outer world as possible. And it makes more sense to call on god and on church leaders to combat The Adversary.
One of Satan’s most successful tactics is to turn potentially worthy mormons gay.
That some of these mormons are unwilling to fight SSA and choose to leave TSCC (The So-Called Church) instead is a tragedy that makes Jesus weep boon to civilization.
Okay, I hope you have the story straight now.
Whoops, I forgot to close by strikeout tag in my comment. I meant to indicate that gay people leaving the mormon church is a boon to civilization.
I should also add, though, that if the graffitist covers the reporting marks, dimmensional data, inspection markings, or any of the other stuff that must be on the freight car, then, at the very least, the owner will gray out the proper areas and reletter them. Or repaint the whole thing.
There is one particular graffiti artist I really admire. He works in chalk or white paint pen, and puts a stylized face (and xe manages to evoke age, weatherbeatenness, and fatigue with only ten or so lines) with long hair, and underneath xe writes, “Colossus of Roads.” Xe is an excellent minimalist artist.
Well, I don’t think Alethea H. Claw is. I’m not, but the problem could be in how the calories come out.
If you eat a lot, but shit most of it out without extracting much of the calories from it, you probably won’t gain much weight.
So the equation turns into (calories in) = (calories used) + (calories unused) Then, the calories used can be further specified into calories burned and calories stored. Finally, calories burned is comprised of those burned by just being alive (some people are always cold, some people are almost hot to the touch and seem to radiate; I’d like to bet that the latter are burning more calories than the former) and those burned by exercising — either in the gym or just by walking and cycling more and taking the stairs instead of the elevator.
But you know this, right?
Chas, how is “The point is that there are a lot of internal and external variables contributing to both ‘in’ and ‘out’, and these differ among individuals.” different than “the biology of weight gain/loss is one hell of a lot more complicated than calories in/calories out.”?
“Take in” and “use” are the complicated parts – we are machines, but not that fine-tuned. How much of that energy you extract from food is highly dependent on many factors (see all posts and links above), and how much energy it takes for your body to perform tasks is also dependent on how efficiently your body uses it.
Algernon- I am a leg-shaker! I swear it works off calories. But it drives people nuts. Plus, when I get stressed, I just stop eating altogether and I go into hyper mode where I can barely sit down.
I come from a family that is mostly muscular. I have very few overweight relatives, and almost everyone who is overweight didn’t get that way until after 50. It is weird, but I can bulk up muscle really fast if I am working out or playing sports. I definitely got the luck of the genes. Compare that to the hubby, who has to watch everything he eats or he gains weight quickly. And almost everyone in his family is overweight.
ChasCPetersen: “You are a First Law of Thermodynamics denialist?”
It would appear that in your haste to acknowledge the first law of thermao, you have forgotten the second. Efficiency matters–efficiency of absorption, efficiency of conversion, efficiency of action… There is even a large variation in human body temperature as well as metabolism.
Yes, if you consume more energy than you need, you will gain weight. However, there are vast differences in how much energy individuals need, and in some cases, energy may not be the limiting factor that dictates how much food a person needs. Life–it’s less simple than you think.
Yeah, that is exactly how I became overweight. It had absolutely nothing to do with having my legs pinned between two cars, thus pretty much ending most of my outdoor hobbies. Asshole.
If I don’t want to walk the rest of the day, and don’t mind sitting around in excruciating pain, then sure, I can make it a whole 1/4 mile on the treadmill. Gee, why don’t I do that more often?
My wife and I eat the same food in about the same portions. We are the same height. I go to the gym 5 days a week and she sometimes makes it once. I weigh double what she does (hell, she actually weighs less than before she got pregnant two years ago). I think maybe there’s something a little more complicated going on here. But what do I know? I’m just a person too dumb to eat right and exercise. Dumb enough to choose to be fat.
Regarding weight:
I was “normal” weight until I hit my growth spurt/puberty about 13; for perspective, I grew 4 inches over one summer, from 5’7 to 5’11, going from slightly short in my class to one of the taller kids. It’s pretty easy to assume that my weight didn’t keep up with my height, and by the time I graduated, I was 6’1″ and 117 lbs.
A high-stress job and a dozen years later and I was at 200 lbs, which was way too heavy (even for 6’2″; I have a very small frame and long limbs, and my “target” weight seems to be between 155 and 165). After a few bad starts (including one which involved a congenital hernia surgery and ended with me at 142 lbs, much too low) over 4+ years, I’ve finally found a workout routine I can maintain and eating habits/foods that seem to be right.
My big problem is that I can’t just “go for a walk” or “simply eat less”: my metabolism is very resistant to building muscle but very good at extracting calories, and any aerobic or cardio exercise I do drops my lean mass quickly instead of fat. So, I have to do the extremely difficult task of eating sufficiently but doing weight training to get the “holy trinity” of building muscle mass, losing fat, and maintaining weight; otherwise, I end up really skinny (which has one set of problems) or overweight (which has another), neither of which is what I want.
I’m hoping that, if I can keep this up for 6-9 months, my body will get used to having the muscle and stop trying to burn it at the drop of a hat. But we’ll have to see.
TL;DR version: metabolic health is a very complex thing, and each person has different issues to deal with.
@ Lynna
Who is Satan though? The jeebus bit is understandable. The pre-christian gnostics already had a “Saviour” long before jeebus came along. Much like the jewish “Messiah”. To them the god of the jews was ebil. They speak of “the accursed God of the Jews’ and identify him with Saturn and the Devil”. They identify Satan as yahwe.
From the link @Classical Cipher’s 597:
So, he sees himself as God’s direct representative. Isn’t this how crazy religious sub-sects get started?
Far from the only thing wrong in that little screed, of course, starting with what seems to be the core premise, that women are only some man’s transferable chattels.
–
@ Lynna
And further to your comments (& vs gnosticism):
Romans 1:27 [Paul rants on in this vein]:
Hippolytus identifies this with the Naassene (link) sect. Sex of every stripe played an important role in their belief system. The snake in genesis is associated with sex on an animal level. If applied “spiritually” (perhaps what teh mormons are on about) it makes of man a god.
fucking
magnetsxtians, how do they work?Carlie: I’m so sorry about your kitty. I’m glad she lived a long life with a good human, however.
Crowepps: Jim Wallis is also anti-choice and homophobic; doesn’t really surprise me that he doesn’t give a shit about respecting the wishes of non-xtian 9/11 mourners. The fact that he gets fawning praise for supporting economic justice indicates the justifiably low expectations people have for American clergy.
Rorschach: Fuck off. I’m glad you’re not my physician. Try reading some of the anecdotes on this blog and maybe figure out why your glib, fat-shaming bullshit causes more health problems than it solves. Try not to mansplain to the dumb fat chicks there that if they only stopped shoveling chips into their gobs they’d lose weight.
Ugandan Dommie and homophobe (I know, redundant) with ties to Rick Perry says that prayer cures AIDS.
Ms. Daisy Cutter:
I don’t know about there, but here, there is at least one dumb fat dude. Is it still mansplaining if it’s dude-on-dude?
I had an oddly positive and constructive nightmare experience last night.
It was about my bad ex – he was threatening me and was going to hurt me, which was the terrifying nightmare part, but I yelled at him to stay back and called 9-1-1 and the police came and took him away. And then they took me to a safe place.
I think my brain’s working this whole thing out.
Carlie – So sorry about your cat.
Damned if I know. But the Xtian organization that works out of the office above me seems to be moving out. I’m wondering if they went under, or if they are just moving to another office space.
NEW THREAD!
The obesity epidemic also has roots in bad city planning. Back in the 50s, when urban planning was becoming a widespread and well-respected profession, it was dominated by middle/upper class white men, like all other professions at the time.
Being men who drove to work and didn’t have to concern themselves with the mundane details of women’s lives, such as how to get the kids to school and back, how to get groceries, etc., they considered everything from the vantage point of the automobile. The concerns of pedestrians were simply not on their radar. As a result, we have thousands of communities designed in ways that make walking next to impossible. I’m sure you are all familiar with the environmentalist critique of the Levittown-style cul-de-sac suburb.
Sexism has far-reaching effects.