Soni Pitts :#126
Re: unattended children - put up a sign at the door stating that unattended children will be allowed to imbibe as much sugar and caffeine as they request before being returned to their exhausted parents at day's end. That's enough to terrify any con-weary parental unit into hawk-like supervision.
My favourite bookstore has a sign in their children's section saying "Unattended children will be given an espresso and a free puppy."
I've never seen an unattended child there.
Bruce Baugh: #170
I want to add a slightly whiny note about vegetarian planning: some of us who eat vegetarian are either allergic to olives and/or mushrooms, or just don't like them... It was, for instance, disappointing to look at Teresa's pizza list and realize that only one would be safe for me and I couldn't count on it lasting.
Actually, I had a similar concern, since my husband can end up home sick for two days from eating a small piece of olive, and sometimes it's hard to tell under the cheese. (Although we're not vegeterian, I am inclined to eat "Anything but pepperoni!" before pepperoni.)
OTOH, she says it's only failed once, by which I presume she means the pizzas are all eaten proportionally by the end of the night.
Although I have a confession: I and my sibling both feel a *good* ham & pineapple pizza (Decent quality ham and pineapple that can be recognized as having been grown on a tree, not born in a can) is a yummy thing.
Sorry about the mangled sentence. I tried to correct it, but too late.
That should be:
...in which we encounter altogether too many actress/models...
Dan MacQueen said:
What's wrong with overlapping categories? Pluto is a planet that's also a Kuiper Belt object, Charon is a (provisional) planet that's also a Kuiper Belt object and a moon, Ceres is a planet/asteroid, etc.
And suddenly, this debate makes me think of Connie Willis's "At the Rialto", in which we encoutner altogether too many is full of actress/models and dancer/hairdressers?
Serge; maybe he wasn't on the original list of 140 authors, and thus couldn't show up.
Lizzy L.:
I have a question. The Catholic church ... has formally apologized for two thousand of years of anti-semitism ... and Catholics are now taught that the people of Israel are "our elder brothers." Have the mainstream Protestant churches ever formally addressed the issue?
The United Church of Canada has taken a similar view of both Judaism and Islam, as elder and younger siblings. I can't speak for others: I suspect the more hard-line Mennonite view is that they want Jews to convert along with everyone else, but no more nor less than any other group "on the wrong path", but I can't prove that, and the Mennonites I know aren't especially hard-line, or especially anti-anyone -- sometimes you get an impression they're quietly disappointed in the choices of others, which is rather different from calling anyone names or making them unwelcome.
I'm going to skip forward past the last handful of posts and ask a basic question.
The original supposition wasn't that science and religion were opposed. It was that religion and liberalism were opposed, and that science was the necessary tool for figuring out how to create the world the liberals wanted. It was loudly implied that the love of the current system, or at least its working parts, was blinding liberals (Particularly, for some reason, religious liberals) to finding the means to take down this world, revolt, and make a new, better world.
Leaving aside the success rate of real human beigns in revolution in the past, I have to ask. How does a religion whose tenets include "Feed the poor, tend to the sick and the imprisoned, succour those in loss", and "Whatever you have done to the least of these, you have done to me" and a loud message to treat all people, rich and poor, whore and tax collector, male and female, as companions and fellow travellers, not as enemies or lesser things (And, in some passages, outright advocates giving away every bit of income one doesn't actually need to survive to those who don't even have that) actually *oppose* the kind of social change we need? How does a religion that presses its members to live a better life and to fulfill all the above, not imply that it would like to push for a vast overturning of the current systems that keep the poor poor, the ill untreated, makes neighbours into enemies?
Waiting to be excoriated by Steven now...
I'd just like to note that there is a line between
"Why is it that when they insult us they get away with it, and when we do, we're tarred? I'm not going to play their game anymore."
and
"No really, whatever you think you're trying to do or what ideological stance you use to justify it, you're flaming your opposition."
Some people here have crossed it.
Some of the people doing so have been making very good points.
However, to me, calling someone a moron doesn't make them look bad, or look like a moron, even if they are a moron, and the ease with which their remarks are demolished proves it. It makes the person using the word look bad, and worse, it obscures the good points they're making along the way.
Demolish your opposition, yes. Call horseshit if they try to apply rules to you that they won't follow themselves. Expose their hypocrisies to the air.
But your points stand better unadorned with cruel words.
I've done it both ways -- and almost invariably, the non-insulting version works better.
(No, this is not directed at one person, though the example word may make it seem to. By now, it's applicable to several people on several sides of several debates.)
The biggest problem I keep seeing is that people keep interpreting David Manheim's belief-as-to-what-the-public-percieves with David Manheim's (different) personal-opinions-on-the-same-topic.
It's like someone perceiving and trying to describe what they believe to be a fashion trend ("I don't wear one myself, but from what I've seen, it seems hats are in!") being constantly told "But you don't wear a hat."
Of course, what seems to be tripping things up is the question of *why* he feels there is this public perception of science, with only anecdotal evidence on his side, and only anecdotal evidence refuting his view (Or did I miss something? I confess to occasional skimming). Also, the question of whether this percveption is more or less important than myriad other facets in the debate between and among Christians, Christianists, people of myriad other faiths, atheists and people-who-may-be-any-of-the-above-but-are-also-scientists. (Sorry about the laboured last category, but any other phrasing I could come up with in fifteen seconds lumped scientists in with the religious views -- which under the circumstances seemed to imply something problematic.)
Personally, David, I disagree that this perception of science as "threat to religion" is all that pervasive -- although I do not live in Kansas or other places where creationism and ID have had strong footholds. I do think that outside some particular locales, it's mostly a loud minority trying to claim it's so. Graydon and others have described the particular mindest of that particular group and why they feel they have a huge stake in making themselves heard and crushing this challenge to their belief.
___________
But all this seems to have obscured a question I am curious about. Has anyone here asked Barack Obama to make a statement about the situation with the Dobrich family, or seen a public statement?
Nir: You're assuming anyone who says they wouldn't stay home even if they could afford to, because they'd find that boring is,
A) A parent.
B) suggesting this is a universal rule, not their personal choice.
This is, in turn, deeply insulting to the choices of almost every retuired person who's picked up a new job "to get out of the house", not for lack of income or comfort. It's deriding anyone who actually enjoys their job and would like to keep on for reasons other than money.
Not to mention a great many volunteers.
You're assuming an insult to housewives and househusbands that isn't present in the remark, and instead putting forth your own insult to others.
I'm not a parent -- if I were, there'd be a lot on my plate at home and I wouldn't go far, at least not without the child(ren).
But again, I'm not a parent. And while I read as an introvert, and enjoy my time alone in the house (oh, yes I do!), I'm not so much of one that i don't crave human contact, and not just contact with friends, but with new and different people.
Out in the world of things I have neither the time nor money for, but would seek out if I won the lottery; there are university courses, leisure classes, volunteer opportunities with local arts groups and charities. There are friends I don't see enough, friedns out of town. Travel opportunities. (And if I have enough money to feel secure staying at home, I have enough money for univesrity or travel, at least the way we do travel. My honeymoon involved taking only a carry-on and staying at a succession of guesthouses and bed-and-breakfasts, and that made it way more fun than being pampered would.) There are low end jobs that suit my skills but not my current monetary circumstances (Or vice versa) I'd deeply like to try (working in, but not owning, a used bookstore jumps to mind -- Never mind the whole reason I'm going back to school to get an education degree...)
No, I wouldn't want to stay at home even if I could afford to. And that's got nothigng to do with how you live your life or how stimulating you find it. It doesn't deride your hard work or your satisfaction. It's just and only my choice..
the opposition to morning-after pills is on weak ground; IIRC, the idea that a fertilized egg is a human being contradicts well-established arguments concerning how long it takes for the embryo/fetus to be ensouled.
Just because no-one else caught this: The morning-after pill prevents the fertilization of the egg the same as the regular pill, it doesn't get rid of a fertilized egg. Those trying to claim it's an abortifacient and therefore as evil as an abortion are either misinformed or deliberately clouding the issue.
I've played my share of RPGs, though I'm a fan of the more nebulous and/or numinous styles of fantasy. So I can see just what he means. The most interesting parts of the characters never lived in the statistics, the whole sensawunda of standing in a real honest-to-god different plane rarely survives reading the description from the book. Thankfully I always played with DMs willing to break the rules if common sense intervened (If the rules prevent a character from doing something that an ordinary person could do in real life -- get a license and buy a gun, for instance -- some GMs will hold that the rules count more than the realism.)
I've also dealt with GMs who include extras -- letters from family (if/where the characters can read), folk stories that don't actually have plot relevance, visions for events we may never actually get to -- in an earnest attempt to bring back that feeling of the world beyond numbers. It's not always sensawunda -- it stretches in both that direction and in the merely grounded. I still tend to find RPGs limited in what can and can't happen, ("Don't split the party!") but I am glad when I find someone aware that the limits can be pushed; it makes it fun enough to be worth joining in the first place.
Xopher: I need to give you a copy of the button I saw the other day:
"I'm an incorrigible Punster. Please don't incorrige me."
"the CIA’s worldwide gulag is entirely exempt from today’s ukase"
Yes, that's even in the main article -- in the very bottom paragraph. Are they hoping people will stop reading before they catch on?
Clark E. Myers: Yes, Canada has some problems keeping up with its health care program. We have bloat and inefficiency and doctors wanting to be paid more or leaving to go into private practice in the US because they want more pay.
All of which are better than Michelle K's described scenario of the person untreated for diabetes ending up in an emergency room in a coma and costing the whole system more.
We don't have a perfect system. We may not even have as good a system as we could have, even accounting for its whole history and subsequent baggage. What we have is a more equitable system.
Something you'd think the US could get behind in its idealism. Except that the bills are never voted on by those who'd benefit most from being able to afford health care. {/cynicism}
It's been said before that if the US is going to fix their health care system (which is just about the worst first-world system), they shouldn't look to Canada -- and I agree there -- but to the Gasp, socialist countries in Europe. Because no system has no problems, but they seem to be doing the best with the least of the crud.
Nonetheless, pointing to articles about people complaining about the difficulty of maintaining our system doesn't automatically make Canada's system worse than the US, which you seem to be implying. Just flawed.
Paul:
Word on Windows 98. Not because I especially like either but because my computers tend to be hand-me-downs from more up to date (But still Microsoft) users, and I got used to the combo. I used to use Wordperfect for Windows 5.1 and loved everything about it except the inability to Undo mistakes past a certain point. That one thing is enough to get me to use Word, as its other non-intuitive stupid placements of things aren't generally needed in basic text.
Besides, unlike for others, for me Word only crashes if I try to use the Drawing tools inside it, which I pretty much only ever did at work, where I don't care as much.
Xopher: I was feeling sort of like you did: a bit guilty about my post appearing right after Teresa's excellent summation (Even though hers hadn't shown up before I hit post), and particularly bad that so many others added to the fray.
Until he posted again.
Ken: how can you justify condemning anyone and everyone who ever accidentally takes the wrong drug to a horrible death?
If you can brush off every other protest made against your point, answer this. Why do you want to condemn to possible heart failure an 80-some year old lady who's still sharp in the mind, still stubborn, still very much active and alive, still happy, delighted at her children, grandchildren and great grandchildren, surrounded by loving family, and tough enough she ended up taking a bus to the hospital when she broke her hip? This woman has buried two husbands, survived breast cancer, and now a second broken hip, and still knows how to laugh, and still does everything she can to take care of herself. Her own mother lived to 99, and we know she's got some years in her still.
Do you know how many pills my grandmother takes? Fewer tham most people her age. She's still managed to get in serious trouble because of them at least once that I know of, and that's with all the protections and monitors possible.
And don't you dare to brush *her* off with a facile "Well, just because she doesn't have to get a doctor's prescription doesn't mean she won't consult one -"
Because one thing smart-but-stubborn people do is look into OTC solutions for as long as they can before they have to admit it's a problem the doctor has to see. Sometimes for years. It seems like half the people I know with major medical issues have admitted to a certain amount of doctor or hospital phobia. If all drugs are OTC, how much more often would that delay happen?
I think you're imagining all people who'd misdiagnose or mis-prescribe themselves as brash, heavy jawed fools with no family or friends. It isn't so. Sometimes a mis-prescription, too, isn't even the wrong drug. It's 30mg too much, or 30 mg too little, of the right one.
You don't have the right to decide whether my grandmother lives or dies because to you, a pharmaceutical system is a limit of your freedom.
Ken: Ignorance, poor assumptions, or poor research skills are not stupidity, and do not deserve to be treated as such. For that matter, stupid does not equal thoughtless, indecent, wrong, unkind, incompetent, unproductive, unloved, without family or friends, useless, criminal or undesirable. A person pretty much has to be every single one of the above before I would even consider saying "too bad, you're on your own, no safety regulations, ake whatever drugs and antibiotics you want for your condition." And even with all the above, I'd probably still err on the side of advising them to check with an expert.
There are some ways in which our society is overprotective against our many methods of idiocy. While some aspects of the war on drugs do fit under this, the entirety of the pharmaceutical system does NOT.
The pharmaceutical system is more like those annoying people who insist on certain building codes. It's inconvenient for a skilled, safe, but idiosyncratic electrician, or people who don't want to pay for a permit just to put up a garage, but you don't want the building codes to go away.
the exile:
It's been speculated on multiple times here.
I think the reasoning was to avoid clogging this thread with the discussion from that thread.
Xopher, your pun almost made me choke on a cherry pit. You owe me an acute apology.
I don't mind beign earwormed by Chelsea Morning - but I always hear Judy Dyble singing it.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2006 | 24 |
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