The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Michael I:

Show all comments by Michael I.

Posted on entry Open thread 132 ::: November 20, 2009, 04:49 PM:
Serge@236

I'm assuming this does NOT mean that your boss works for Adam Savage...
Posted on entry Open thread 132 ::: November 18, 2009, 07:48 AM:
Serge@144

Now if it was a Rachael Ray, then we'd really be cooking...


Serge@146

Beginning?
Posted on entry Technically American ::: November 17, 2009, 08:00 AM:
Mark@123

How about simply an alternate reality scenario where the boroughs became two cities instead of one?
Posted on entry "Radical Presentism" ::: November 15, 2009, 04:13 PM:
Linkmeister@179

Your assumption does appear to be correct in Gina Kolata's case, however. At least nearly as I can gather by a bit of googling.
Posted on entry Open thread 131 ::: November 11, 2009, 09:04 AM:
Jenny Islander@751

There are also some subsidies that are intended to make health insurance more affordable for those in the "want but can't afford" category and other provisions intended to make health insurance more available for the "can't get" category.

The mandate is aimed at lowering the average insurance costs by bringing the "I'm healthy so I don't really NEED health insurance" and the "haven't ever gotten around to signing up" categories into the system.
Posted on entry Prophetable colors ::: October 31, 2009, 08:25 AM:
This latest pun-cascade has me at a loss.

But that happens when you stop being prophetable...
Posted on entry Open thread 131 ::: October 30, 2009, 05:47 PM:
fidelio@286

Actually, federal employees in FERS do qualify for Social Security benefits. Nearly as I can gather, workers in the older CSRS do not.

(FERS is the retirement system for federal workers who began work in January 1987 or later, as well as workers who began earlier but switched to FERS from CSRS.)

Posted on entry Open thread 130 ::: October 26, 2009, 06:50 PM:
Bruce Cohen@929

*Dollhouse*

V qb jbaqre jurgure QrJvgg rkcrpgrq (naq creuncf rira gevrq gb znavchyngr) Gbcure gb qvfborl.


Posted on entry Why I won't be doing steampunk this Saturday ::: October 23, 2009, 06:55 PM:
Stefan Jones@238

For what it's worth, my dad (retired teacher who follows educational research much more closely than I do) says that phonics is actually useful as PART of a well-designed reading program, but was never intended to be used by itself.
Posted on entry Open thread 130 ::: October 18, 2009, 07:57 AM:
I was at a CapClave panel yesterday titled "Why are Americans so Distrusting/Ignorant about Science?"

One of the panelists remarked on the coverage of the recent "balloon boy" incident, saying that a simple calculation (specifically comparing the amount of lift that a balloon in that size range would provide compared to the weight of the boy.) would have shown that the boy could not possibly have been in the balloon. And that this calculation could and should have been made by one of the many reporters covering the story long before the balloon actually landed.

So questions for the group.

Has anyone here done (or seen) such a calculation? And was the panelist correct about the results of such a calculation?
Posted on entry The Nomination Thing ::: October 16, 2009, 07:04 PM:
Lee@87

I would say that nativism IS a type of racism, but it can be distinguished from anti-black racism (even though many people hold both views) because it has a different set of standard tropes and calls on a different set of stereotypes.

Posted on entry $9,695 New Age sweat lodge session kills 2, injures 19 ::: October 16, 2009, 09:27 AM:
B. Durbin@19

My impression is that both the Moslem fasting during Ramadan and the Jewish fasting for Yom Kippur do not include water during the period of actual fasting.

Of course, neither of them include fasting periods of anywhere close to 36 hours.

(From what I gather, the Ramadan fasting is dawn to dusk, and the Yom Kippur fasting is just over 24 hours.)
Posted on entry The Nomination Thing ::: October 11, 2009, 08:16 AM:
On closer rereading of James Vega's commentary that I linked to in 54, I noticed that he does specifically mention that "birtherism" is a more dramatic expression of one of the two main anti-Obama attitudes held by the marchers.

Posted on entry The Nomination Thing ::: October 11, 2009, 08:11 AM:
Bruce Cohen@47

James Vega argued on October 2 at the Democratic Strategist
here that the teabaggers aren't (mostly) tapping into the usual anti-black sterotypes. What they are tapping into are the tropes of xenophobic nativism.

(The paragraphs preceding the first two paragraphs quoted below note that the stereotypes of Obama that predominated among the 9/12 marchers aren't the usual anti-black sterotypes but are actually closer to the old "Yellow Peril" sterotypes.)

(begin quotes)

The “yellow peril†comparison suggests a much more robust conceptualization of the protesters attitudes – not as an antagonism against African-Americans in particular, but as a broader antagonism to the growing racial and social diversity of America in general – to the replacement of a white-dominated, traditional, conservative small-town American culture with a “Tiger Woods†racial mélange of white, black, brown red and yellow Americans and an eclectic urbanized culture of diverse tastes, values, music, clothing, slang and even sexual preference and expression. It is a reaction against a new world of Spanish signs on stores, Asians and Indian families moving in next door, gays calmly accepted as part of ordinary daily life and the necessity of having to be retrained in new jobs and fields in response to the economic demands of a complex globalized world. The “real America†the protesters want to restore is the America of Tom Sawyer and Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town†– a culture rooted in the rural and small town values that are still a very real and significant part of America.

Democrats need to call this perspective by its correct name. It is not simply anti-Black racism, but rather a modern version of the “nativism†or cultural xenophobia that has been a recurring feature of American culture and politics throughout the country’s history – a fear not simply of alien and foreign ideas but of wrenching social and cultural change in general.

...

It is easy to view the demand to “give me back my country†as nothing more than a racist resistance to a Black chief executive. But it is not. The protesters real enemy is the complex and uncertain multiracial and globalized future that Obama represents and which they desperately wish to hold at bay.

(end quotes)

It occurs to me that this might partly account for the persistance of "birtherism". "Foreign influences" are, after all, the particular obsession of nativists.
Posted on entry Open thread 130 ::: October 10, 2009, 05:49 PM:
Fragano@530

Just what we need. More cutting remarks.
Posted on entry Open thread 130 ::: October 05, 2009, 10:36 AM:
Caroline@400

Unfortunately, moviegoers keep buying tickets for the Saw movies. Until that changes, they'll keep making more of them.
Posted on entry Open thread 130 ::: October 04, 2009, 05:27 PM:
Serge@373

They do say it's good for what ale's you. As long as you don't get too winey.
Posted on entry Open thread 130 ::: September 29, 2009, 06:17 PM:
Pendrift@137

Right now getting just about ANY bill out of the Finance committee is progress. The details of the bill are less important, although of course it would be preferable that the bill that passes out of Finance is as good as possible.

Something similar applies to later parts of the process. As long as the House and Senate pass bills that can be combined into a good bill, passing SOMETHING through both of them is more important than the details of either bill.

Ultimately what's important is what lands on Obama's desk, not the intermediate steps.
Posted on entry Pierogi Pizza ::: September 23, 2009, 07:06 PM:
All this may be a sin that the thread is spinning out of control.
Posted on entry Open thread 129 ::: September 21, 2009, 08:25 AM:
CHip@760

I have no idea whether the CT law applies generally, or just to the Senate and President/VP.

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