Isle of Skye blended whisky made on the Macleod estate is the best I've ever tasted, including single malts.
I've occasionally put in a bit of water, but never tried it with ice. It's perfect for camping, particularly at five o'clock after a long walk, and it works especially well as a splash in a mug of tea.
It's hard to find though.
dcb @ 461 - I do think the no-response strategy can work, but it probably depends on the people, both the bully and the target, and on the type of bullying. I experienced the subtle girl bullying that you talked about, and particularly the so-called-friends turning against me. Not responding - at all - worked for me then. I didn't allow myself to get teary-eyed, because it felt like a simple matter of me vs. them, and I just had to win - couldn't let them. I took myself into my imagination and kept myself there.
It makes me furious that the long-term stuff they got me with is still there, but at least they don't know that. On the other hand, I think I was lucky not to get the systematic, constant, vicious bullying that some people on this thread have had.
And I wouldn't necessarily give out 'ignore them and they'll give up' as advice, mainly because I think the response has to depend on the people and the situation, and everyone has to find the way that suits them.
(The advice I got from my mother was "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, hit back harder than they hit you!" - and I can't see that as at all sensible, not when you're one against many. Unless of course you can find a subtler way to hit back; I know my mother meant physically.)
What is so achingly sad for me about Megan's case is that she must have felt she had no chance, that everybody, including the one person she'd tried to confide in, was against her, and that she had nothing and no-one she could turn to. She didn't even have a chance to develop any resources to fight them with.
I don't know about karma, but I do think the worst of these people are likely to end up friendless, lonely and bitter, and it will be the consequences they've made for themselves, and that seems fair enough to me. I'm content to let that happen.
Heresiarch @ 439: Agreed about the learning to react normally to friends. Even now I find it hard to say good morning first to neighbours, just in case they don't respond. I make myself do it.
I'm not so sure about the being impassive not working, it did kind of work for me, in that some of the amusement factor was lost. Except that it worked so well that now my own mother thinks I'm an emotionless weirdo...oh well. It got me through school.
The original story is just so sad. I can't understand why or how people could do such a thing. But what strikes me as sadder is that nearly everyone on this thread has, to different degrees, experienced the same thing. Why do people do these things?
I was a library-dweller at school too; my own worst dreams are of school; I've experienced that utter desolation that is a consequence of a parent doing or saying something that is unspeakably and deliberately cruel. I've also been lucky enough that none of it has ever been so bad that I've wanted to halt my existence.
At the same time, it has toughened me. I had (have) two ways of coping - one is simply avoidance, the other is fitting myself into a hard shell. From the outside, it looks as if nothing affects me. It's a continuing problem for me that I now find it hard to get out from under my shell and relate easily to people. I am just lost in admiration for all the people here who are brave enough to do that.
There's a way of making salted almonds where you bake the nuts in a hot oven with a good lump of butter - you have to watch them or they burn - then shake them in a paper bag with salt and any ground spices you want to use. I think that should work with cashews and curry powder.
I hope you get a nice snack whatever method you use!
abi: absolutely. What always gets me about the war memorials is how many times you see the same surname on one cross, and you realise that some families gave all their sons to the war. It's the same in France, only that feels almost worse, because the villages tend to be smaller than those in Britain.
That memory goes so deep. It is unthinkable that a public figure or a celebrity doesn't wear a red poppy in the two weeks leading up to November 11th. Back in the 1980s Michael Foot, leader of the Labour Party, was vilified for appearing too scruffy (he wore a duffel coat) at the parade in London. A few years ago, some May Day anti-globalisation protesters in London forfeited much sympathy for their cause by placing a turf on Winston Churchill's statue head and defacing the Cenotaph. I've known people wear white or black poppies, symbolising, as they see it, the sadness of war without glorifying it - and some of those people have been spat on and shouted at in the street for being disrespectful.
Regarding the taking pictures of kids strand, there are lots of schools now in the U.K. who won't allow parents to take pictures on sports days but who do employ an official photographer to record the moments.
This is only tangentially related to photography, but a few weeks ago I was going from one job to another at about five o'clock on a Friday evening. This was a little rural journey from one village to another, in the U.K. I had an hour to kill so I decided to stop and read for a bit. I pulled over in a grassy lay-by on a country lane and was happily reading when a car pulled up behind me - a big 4 by 4 with heavily tinted windows. A man got out. I wound down my window. The man had no uniform or anything official about him. He told me I needed to move. I asked why. He said I was parked right by an airfield and that it wasn't safe, and that if I didn't move, well, I should just move on. Bear in mind I had absolutely no idea I was looking at an airfield - no signs, no wind sock, nothing except a stubble field. The man got back into his car and waited behind me until I drove away.
I think the people who've suggested a racism strand are probably right; I would have hated to have been a Muslim woman then who just wanted to park with a nice view across fields.
Also, does anyone remember that there was a big media fuss (it might have only been in Britain) when some British plane-spotters were arrested and jailed in Greece for taking pictures of planes?
"Why bother? I wonder about that too, except to say told you so, except that likely, the gracious hosts and commenters of this web site, who seem to think I'm a sociopath and suffering all sorts of psychological problems because I keep insisting that I am me, and not some vast figment of their imagination, are likely to treat it with as much grace as they do with someone who merely commented that posting dissenting opinions at a site seemingly devoted to freedom seems pretty distasteful."
I can't make any sense out of this paragraph at all.
Yeago -
On the assumption that you have a faulty understanding of politeness:
Making threats (Yes, lots to say... but it only gets more terrifying) is not polite.
Making accusations without evidence (And even using a polite tone around here is enough to get yer vowels removed) is not polite.
Being dismissive (around here, yer vowels removed) is not polite.
Name-calling (best friends gang of smarm and condescension) is not polite.
Assigning suspect motives to people (grandstanding) is not polite.
I don't understand how you can possibly think you're using a polite tone. If you do think you are being polite, then I'm afraid you're just wrong.
Also, did you notice that Flying Squid's polite and genuine sounding posts - apologising for causing offence - on Boing Boing were left alone?
Never-ending: I think that you are now deliberately trying to be offensive. How you've managed to drag this into a debate on how bad America is is utterly beyond me.
Generally, it doesn't seem to be what you're saying that annoys people, but how you're saying it. You sound accusing, defensive, rude and whining - and you have sounded this way, to me, in every comment you or your sockpuppets have made in this thread and on Boing Boing.
If you at least made some attempt at politeness and manners, I think you would find that your comments did not get deleted or disemvowelled and that you would not find commenting privileges suspended. You would also find that people wanted to engage with your opinions instead of your behaviour.
Try it and see.
Never-ending @ 185: I'm not sure I understand your point. Or maybe mine wasn't clear.
What I meant to say was, I've never seen Teresa (or any other moderator) try to stifle debate or dissent on Making Light, and that if she wanted to, she could. So accusing her of doing that seems to me to be plain wrong.
Also, I don't think Teresa meant to say that the person posting your comments didn't exist, only that your various online personas don't exist as real people. At least that's how I understood it.
Surely if Teresa (or other moderators) really wanted to suppress all dissent/debate/discussion, they would have to delete all subsequent comments that mentioned a deleted post, or stop comment threads, or I'm sure many other things that really would stifle debate. I certainly haven't seen anything like that happen here.
Making multiple posts under different names doesn't strike me as showcasing one's authenticity, either.
I think the new security measures are about public reassurance rather than anything else - to make it look as if the government are doing something about the threat.
I don't think they are reassuring. I spent a good hour last night working out ways around the new UK security measures - it wouldn't be difficult to do.
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| 2007 | 13 |
| 2006 | 1 |
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