Kip W. @5 -- Okay, that's scary. And that song came up on my randomizer last week, I think.
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As a coder, I scold my QCers when they apologize or call themselves pains. "I'd rather you find it than it get to the customer," I tell them. Sometimes I grouse, but I like to think they know that it's a backhanded kind of praise. I'll even phrase it that way: "That Jane, always doing her job right and making more work for me, feh."
My group recently started an actual peer review program, and I try to approach it the same way: I'm gonna break it. I inflate my own ego, at least for the content I specialize in, and approach each review with the mindset that the programmer can't possibly have considered all these quirks I know about.
I hear that Abe Lincoln built a Cabinet of people who would disagree with him; I think Bill Clinton may have a had a few himself. These days, only military experts dare disagree, and those that do always seem to find the door soon after (or earlier) ... shame.
A friend says Kucinich is good to have in the race because he defines "crazy far left", which allows the other candidates to skew more left than they otherwise might without themselves being labelled "crazy far left". I dunno if that applies to Gravel; I'd forgotten about him myself.
Maybe we could solve the selection dilemma this way: a two-tier primary system. The top 10 states (in terms of electoral votes) go second; the rest all go at the same time first. That prevents California/New York from becoming the new Iowa/New Hampshire, and it forces candidates to decide where best to concentrate their efforts. The breadth of that first round means that a larger variety could, in theory, still compete at "big state" time, while the ones who can't carry even one or two states get weeded out. Not that it's ever gonna happen.
novalis @53 -- Doesn't have to be an alternate universe: There are some this-universe folks who consider brtn to be a far-left issue of this type. At least this far-left vegetarian does. The trouble is acting on that, since the other "far-left issues" tend to align against it; compromise becomes essential. And many who oppose brtn also oppose contraception/sex ed, making common cause kind of difficult.
We now return this thread to its random silliness (already in progress).
albatross @ 34: Similar to Connie Willis's theory of near-death experiences in Passage? Perhaps people are experiencing a mini-stroke in a very specific part of the brain, or passing through a particular kind of marsh gas, or falling into a form of highway hypnosis particular to rural nighttime backroads environments -- something like that causes an experience that people try to fit to the nearest narrative their society has?
Do non-technological societies have similar abduction/fairy realm stories that haven't been updated to incorporate European airships or UFOs?
Delurk-for-embarrassing story time!
Several years ago, my parents and I rented a lakeside house in Maine. As I was getting ready for bed, we heard a camp somewhere nearby singing. My mother wanted to figure out the song, so she went out onto the pitch-black deck ... forgetting there were about three steps down. When the house shook and she screamed, I ran out to find her on her side on the deck. (It later turned out she knocked a few slats out of the railing as she fell forward, but that kept her from plummeting down the drop to the lake.)
In emergencies, I have no brain; I go into "tell me what to do and I'll do it!" mode. My father thinks he knows everything (despite having no training), so he was trying to manipulate her swollen lower arm -- to see if it was broken! -- as she begged him to stop.
I put my hand firmly on her shoulder to try to comfort and steady her and asked whether to call an ambulance or put her in the car and drive to the hospital. Stupid -- always call the ambulance, but see above about the no brain thing. She's an RN, so when she insisted on the car, I went with it, not thinking that the pain would have her confused and wanting to do something rather than lie there waiting.
We sped through the dark to the interstate, and I asked the toll booth attendant where the nearest hospital was (!) -- should we just drive towards Portland? (We were 20 or 25 miles away from Portland.) She didn't know (!), so I went with that plan. About halfway there we saw a police car's lights flashing at the roadside. I don't know if I made the suggestion, but my mother asked please to stop and ask the officer for help.
I naively figured he was assisting a stranded motorist; it was something more like a drug bust, so I'm impressed he didn't pull his weapon when a car stopped behind his cruiser and a woman in pajamas rushed towards him. He called for an ambulance but warned it would be a bit because they were coming from ... the town we had left. Dammit!
I then irked the chief EMT or paramedic (I'm not sure which she was) by following her rig at Boston-area commuting distance. It wasn't intentional -- no brain.
My mother turned out to have a comminuted fracture of the proximal humerus, I think it was. So I was pressing right on the shattered break, but even knowing that, she says my father's fiddling hurt more.
Anyway, the valuable lesson: Always know where the nearest hospital is -- but always call the ambulance. I'm sure the smart folks here know that, but it bears repeating.
And if anyone here was somehow involved ... I'm so very sorry I was an idiot.
Last night on MSNBC, Olbermann talked to some kind of expert (I didn't note exactly who he was). The guy mentioned that he's in the Northeast, where bridges were recently evaluated and found to be in very poor condition. Olbermann was stunned. I just thought, "Old news." In Massachusetts, anyway, they rechecked all the bridges (as I recall) a few years ago and found a ludicrous number of problems due to lack of maintenance or regular inspection. There hasn't been money ... and there still isn't. The story just got old and forgotten.
I want states to add a huge gas tax for bridge remediation.
But several years ago, on a three-day weekend, a policeman noticed that one of the bridges on the north side of Boston had a large drop at one of the seams. They shut down the bridge, causing backups for tens of miles, I think. A lot of people were cranky that the bridge was shut down as a precaution when officials weren't sure it would fail. I thought it was a pretty smart decision, and right now I'm loving the policeman who reported the condition.
In response to almost literally identical parallel scenario: "Red herring."
"But it's not my definition. It's the definition."
"The fact that it's right makes it right."
After an analogy with an offensive subtext: "No subtext was implied." Then: "I also don't pick analogies for subtext, by the way." Oh, that makes it all better!
"Now, tell me: what kind of person is so terrified of dissenting viewpoints that they will silence them at any opportunity? Answer: the fascist liberal."
After starting the name-calling with the previous statement: "This is how your type always work: you lack the ability to sustain any logical debate on the topic, so you attempt to quash any dissent through intimidation, name-calling ('bigot', 'Nazi', etc), and any other forceful means you deem necessary." NB: The closest anyone came to the term 'Nazi' was the troll himself in calling me a fascist liberal.
"Your type like to throw around these pejorative labels for anybody who doesn't agree with you."
"I can guarantee you if a [social cause political action] group [that I wrongly assume your position about] were to swing some similar backroom deal [when no such 'backroom deal' occurred] you'd be screaming from a mountain top."
After being thoroughly refuted: "Generally, one is required to refute a point before claiming it is incorrect. You have yet to do so - as you cannot - so it still stands."
After being warned and then banned/screened: "One wonders at the mentality of a person who takes every precaution possible to silence dissenting opinion - but that was the point of this whole discussion anyway, wasn't it?"
After dozens of statements illustrating the reverse: "I don't think I should have to point out that I'm not homophobic, nor am I a bigot."
"At the time I wrote the first (anonymous) reply I simply thought not telling you "hey it's [identity/relationship]" would stir a more lively debate."
Excuses for trolling: "Sometimes it's boring being smart and you have to find a way to exercise it."; "Nobody debates anything anymore. How does anybody know when they're right?"
Every single one of these was offered by a troll who found my personal journal and decided to pick a fight (claiming the eye-rollers in comments #3 and #4 here) -- first anonymously (in a response to a friend's comment), then through a faked account, then through a sockpuppet after the anonymous access and fake account were blocked, and finally through direct email.
There were articles a year or two ago about seat belts on school buses; if I remember correctly, the conclusion was that seat belts might actually introduce a new risk, while the high seats are meant to provide some of the protection as belts. There's one write-up here. Google provides other related results.
Clearing snow from vehicles is supposedly required in Massachusetts, I think as an "obvious" component of another regulation. Most people appear stunned at the suggestion if it is called to their attention. When I raised the topic, one coworker of mine snickered to another that I just didn't understand how hard it was to reach the top of vehicles like her ginormous pickup (which she drove because she might one day ever haul a horse trailer) or the other coworker's Subaru Outback w/ rack. My response is that if you can can't make your vehicle road-safe, you have no business operating it. Yes, that includes tractor-trailer rigs; I will always yield to a big truck, but I won't forgive one for shattering my windshield or blinding me with loose snow blown down from his roof.
I would love the ability to force a citation upon any driver who failed to clear all snow from his or her vehicle before starting to drive (as well as any vehicle with an obscured or otherwise difficult to discern license plate, for that matter).
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| 2007 | 6 |
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