Carrie S., is that Monster Island?
They printed those up in deadtree format, a friend of mine bought them.
The first one has some great scenes & setup (gun-toting Somali schoolgirls invading Manhattan) but the series fell apart pretty quickly, I thought.
They made an interesting political counterpoint to World War Z, though - in Z, the best-organized governments with the best security apparatus function best. In Monster the places with the least government and most guns do best.
albatross @ 299 - I still think that among the positives of vaccinating are the benefit of not killing an immuno-suppressed person if you get sick. That's a moral good more than a medical one, but the parents I know who don't vaccinate are in other ways very concerned with their kids' moral development. And I've never seen them include that in their discussions of vaccines, and me bringing it up makes them *really* uncomfortable.
It doesn't invalidate what you're saying about corrupt authorities (and, ouch, the church!) but I think the equation is off on the FOR side as well as the AGAINST side.
combined time off/PTO (#303 & later) - I get 80 hours of paid time off, but if I have more than 6 unscheduled absences in a year, it's a fireable offense. That's one sick time every two months (it can be more than one day, as long as it's not broken up by work - so forget, say, juggling work time with your partner if your kid is sick).
Except, I just got a part-time flex-time job in the same company, so I expect to never waste my PTO on actually being sick ever again. I don't think mangaers use PTO for sick days either, they just work from home or use flex time. It's only the peons on the clock who get hit with the effects of stupid policies like that.
That's what the mute button on your phone is for, right? So you can hack up a lung without disturbing your customer. (Friday was my last day in the call center.)
Albatross and Patrick have a kinder explanation of culture that allows people to think it's OK for their kid to avoid a very small risk of personal harm in trade for a less-small risk of harming others - I always figured it was the kind of immoral math that people use when they think "I should get a bigger SUV so if I get in an accident it's the other guy who dies."
But I don't think it's new, it just hit upper-middle-class people and the media recently. When I went to college in the early '90s I met a bunch of kids who hadn't been immunized, because their parents were hippies, chiropractors, or religious. At least one, her mom had a pet doctor from the same religious sect who faked immunization papers so the kids could go to school.
Lots of groups that don't include celebrities don't immunize. The Amish don't, some conservative Mennonites, Christ Scientists, some Seventh Day Adventists I've met, Jehovah's Witnesses - that's a significant number of people, once you bundle all those minorities together.
I think promising to raise taxes can be seen as a part of "if it's good for you, it's good."
For instance, I like parks, buses, good schools for my kids, fire protection, police protection, emergency rooms with open spots if I get hurt.
Some really rich people can pay for these things themselves. Me, I only get them if everyone pays enough taxes. If my tax rate were 50% on everything I make, it would *still* be cheaper than buying enough land for a park, paying for a car and my own road to drive on it, private school tuition, and private health, security & fire service.
So I figure, selfishly, screw that .1 percent who would be better off paying for those services privately.
re Ajay #117 - in the US, we *need* the Senate confirmation hearings, because of the how hard it is to get rid of these people once they're in place.
If we could call for a vote of no-confidence mid-term, we'd have been rid of Bush (and his crooks in Justice, and completely useless SEC, and all of the political censors in sciency departments) by at least 2006.
Some of that concert was just dumb (who let Tom Hanks do the Copeland piece? Ick) but parts of it made me cry. I didn't even mind missing the live inauguration coverage - being home on Sunday listening to that concert, and all the MLK stuff on Monday was plenty good. (our local community station played the speech King gave the night before he died, for the garbage collector's union, and his explanation of why he was against the war in Vietnam - I'm not sure if that's both the same speech or not).
And I understand that lots of people are guarding their feelings because we've been let down before, but I don't think most of us have terribly high expectations - I have heard a bunch of people say "He raised my estimation of this country just by getting elected, no matter what else happens", and I think "at least better than Bush" should be achievable by, well, anyone who's not a member of the Bush family. And possibly some people who share some of his genes.
One thing about the "random violence is like rain" thing, though, is that it puts the focus back on those insiders who are the real danger to most of us.
I live in one of those "inner city neighborhoods". It's a really nice neighborhood, actually, but we have crime the way exurban people have car accidents. That means we take basic precautions - paying attention, locking doors, not flashing cash, etc. Just like we close our windows against rain and wear snow boots in the winter.
Other than those precautions, though, more worry won't make me safer. And excessive fear of the outside keeps a lot of women in harm's way, when harm is at home. Women don't need more knowledge on how to be safe from strangers, we get that our whole lives - we need to have resources to get away from domestic violence, and to feel that we have the right to our own autonomy and sexuality, in every circumstance.
Of course, what everyone is saying about cultural change is the real answer - I feel like every time I say "No, that's my body, you can't put your hand there if I say no," I'm doing good for the future.
j h woodyatt @ 80 - if the gulf stream gets messed up, or this cold snap hits DC, then the vague feeling Obama gives me, that we have the dream president from 60 Days & Counting, will be matched by the dreadful feeling that we've hit the rest of that trilogy's horrible tipping point.
(of course, in the books, heroic concerted worldwide private and government action averts tragedy at the last moment. But I don't trust that narrative.)
I wish they would close more things down, here (Minneapolis). It was -18 windchill yesterday (the news said -9 absolute, this morning, when I was gearing up to leave the house.)
lots of people here don't have decent snow gear, because they go from house to attached garage to car to right outside their office door (or parking garage attached to the skyways.) -9 is enough to kill you if you land in the ditch and have to wait long for rescue, if you don't have decent gear. One of my coworkers wore a short skirt and decorative boots and bare legs, last week. BRRR.
So, let's say it was assault, for argument. Is the punishment for assault in that degree a beating & detention for an undeterminate amount of time?
I had a boyfriend who got an assault charge for spitting on someone in a bar fight. 5th degree assault, 10 days in lockup because he couldn't pay the fine. No beatings. Sometimes suspects get roughed up here, but not in hearing of the Mayor, because we have the rule of law, and due process.
Hauling this guy off and beating him is pretty much the behavior we didn't like about Hussein, right? I mean, since the weapons charges were made up and he wasn't going to invade Kuwait again?
Sarah @92
A quick Google search shows me that sentences for entartage of important personages in the US & Canada, back in the glory days of pie-throwing politics, were 5 days to 6 months. My memory of the late '90s is that in Europe pie throwers got significantly less legal flack, though I could be wrong.
I tried to find what happened to the pretzel-throwers at a Bush rally here in Minnesota a few years back, and the internet didn't help me. My memory is the polite but firm escort was all they got, but again, I could be wrong. Of course, they were nowhere near him, much less aiming at him.
At the very least, by way of admission and atonement, we should be pressuring our elected officials to stop this where it is happening and prevent it where it may happen in the future.
We should all be involved in or supporting groups that educate young men and women who are (or may be) entering the military about their rights to resist illegal orders, and support those who have done so (IVAW can help you find a dissenting soldier to support).
This is a baseline of citizen responsibility, here. I know I've failed - I was out there at the beginning, and that didn't work and I got discouraged and quit. But I'm gearing up again now. And thankfully, other people were out there doing the work while I was loafing.
Siun @141, G. Jules @147 - thank you.
I was just thinking "I bet that journalist has been detained, I wonder if there's anything we can do?". So of course I checked this thread, and there is, and I can do it.
Chris @94 and later - I believe the original impulse towards fruitarianism is not ethical so much as magical - the idea being that in the Garden of Eden Adam and Eve ate only the fruit they could pick without tools or cooking, and living that way is depending on the love of God in the same way His first creations did.
I've heard that same argument from several disparate sources, not all of them actual fruitarians, but I don't know where *they* got it from - it may be a Rasta idea, or one from somewhere in the Black Nationalist subculture, because those are the people I've gotten that explanation from (I met a fruitarian in the UK but he was doing it for health reasons.)
And isn't the definition of fruit that it has seeds? I'm pretty sure all fruits are a plants tactic to spread seeds through being eaten.
They don't have any room to move, so it doesn't matter, does it?
Abi @84 - there are real fruitarians. I've known a few - one a homeless guy who was always so hungry, he'd eat a juice mix of every bruised fruit donated to Food Not Bombs that week. And there was a famous US comic who was fruitarian and wrote a book about it. Dick Gregory, maybe?
The fruitarian rule is "only the ripe fruit that comes off the plant and leaves it living." So it includes things like berries, nuts, tomatos, garlic scapes (but not bulbs), tree fruits, kiwis, etc.
They don't have any room to move, so it doesn't matter, does it?
Abi @84 - there are real fruitarians. I've known a few - one a homeless guy who was always so hungry, he'd eat a juice mix of every bruised fruit donated to Food Not Bombs that week. And there was a famous US comic who was fruitarian and wrote a book about it. Dick Gregory, maybe?
The fruitarian rule is "only the ripe fruit that comes off the plant and leaves it living." So it includes things like berries, nuts, tomatos, garlic scapes (but not bulbs), tree fruits, kiwis, etc.
A few years ago my New Years resolution was not to pay any service or interest charges I could avoid (that is, nothing except the mortgage).
It was kind of a pain, but it made me *really* good about keeping cash on hand and paying *everything* on time. I made a whole 12 months of no ATM or service charges, and the good habits carried me through another year or two before I let my schedule get too tight for trips to the bank during daylight hours.
j h woodyatt - I don't know if this works for male-gendered people but just saying "Wow, that's interesting, but I promised to help the hostess with [something]" is less drastic and almost as foolproof.
The trick is learning not to respond. Which is the hardest part, anyway.
Fragano Ledgister @134 - Nowhere! Isn't that handy! You can never refute a pure ideology because it can never exist anywhere!
Raphael @ 136 - I have to admit that I avoid talking to libertarians. I have actually developed a technique of spilling a drink on my breasts to simultaneously draw their attention awya from discussion and give me an excuse to leave in a hurry, for when I get trapped in a political discussion with libertarians, sectarian socialists, or marxists.
But I am astonished to hear anyone praising Somalia's warlord system. The only mention I have ever heard of immigration to present-day Somalia is when an immigrant to the US resists being deported back on the grounds that it's not safe there for *anyone*.
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