The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Raphael:

Show all comments by Raphael.

Posted on entry Open thread 132 ::: November 20, 2009, 01:58 AM:
Since I started using Twitter to follow various news feeds with a lot of tweets that link to interesting-sounding stories, it has turned into something like Tvtropes for me. This is annoying. But I don't want to miss out on those news, either.
Posted on entry Scraps. Bad. [Update: Doing better. See below.] ::: November 15, 2009, 06:18 AM:
Oh dear. Best wishes. Best of luck.
Posted on entry Open thread 131 ::: November 10, 2009, 03:41 PM:
Conmiserations and good luck, Xopher.
Posted on entry On the Making of a Cardboard Box Oven ::: November 10, 2009, 03:39 PM:
Which makes me wonder: Are there any particular reasons why some threads seem to attract them so much more than others?
Posted on entry Technically American ::: November 10, 2009, 03:33 PM:
abi @92, I had the impression that most BNP types these days are a lot more into Union Jacks than English flags, but that's just based on some bigoted videos I ran across on youtube, so it's not exactly scientifically rigouros.
Posted on entry It was twenty years ago today ::: November 10, 2009, 02:25 AM:
Lee @39, the interesting thing is, there are some people whose personal history of political beliefs is just right so that for them, it's now happening for the second time- they switched their allegiance at the right time so that they could be horrified by the fall of the Warsaw Pact and the failure of the Cheney crowd.


(Oddly enough, I don't really remember much about the fall itself. About the days and weeks and months before and after, yes, but not much directly about the fall.)
Posted on entry Technically American ::: November 04, 2009, 12:51 PM:
Bruce Cohen @34, The old joke just never gets stale: "All the problems of the United States can be traced back to really bad immigration policies on the part of the Native Americans."

Be careful with that joke. Unfortunately, some parts of the European extreme right are not joking when they bring that up.
Posted on entry Open thread 131 ::: October 29, 2009, 04:38 PM:
General oben-thready question, mainly to people who know something about health care in the US.

From what I've heard during the reform debate, my impression is that you've got a big problem with lack of coverage for poor people, but at the same time, the "rescissions" of coverage can be disastrous for middle class people, too.

Now, what kind of confuses me is that it looks to me as if this last point might sometimes even be a problem for people who are pretty close to being upper class. The stories I've heard make it sound as if you could make, say, 800,000 dollars a year, and then you get some serious illness where the treatment is relatively expensive, you can't continue to work in your job because of the illness, your insurance company rescinds your policy, and a quick calculation shows you that your savings and dividends will be enough to pay for your treatment + basic costs of living for a few years, but after that- you don't have any clue what comes after that.

The reason why this confuses me is that my general impression about the way the world works was that people who make 800,000 dollars a years usually have ways and means to protect themselves from this kind of thing. So, is there something I'm missing? Some kind of more expensive parallel insurance system that will pay for things regular insurance companies won't pay for? Or do you really have a situation where people with incomes in the high six digits can, at any time, get into trouble because of medical costs?
Posted on entry Open thread 131 ::: October 28, 2009, 02:57 PM:
Behold: The latest socialist menace!

If they keep targeting them, I wonder what kind of hidden camera videos they'll eventually come up with.
Posted on entry Open thread 131 ::: October 26, 2009, 07:10 AM:
General open-threadness: I know that the phrase is a bit cliched and overused by now, but-

The Stupid. It hurts.
Posted on entry $9,695 New Age sweat lodge session kills 2, injures 19 ::: October 25, 2009, 10:04 AM:
Lee @692, I wasn't so much wondering about the paws themselves or the fur, more that when the cat falls from the counter after it has been tripped, its paws are entangled in such a way that it can't move its legs freely enough for its normal safe landing trick. But if didn't hurt your cats, then I guess it's ok.
Posted on entry $9,695 New Age sweat lodge session kills 2, injures 19 ::: October 24, 2009, 09:44 AM:
Lee @679, and it really doesn't hurt (as in "causing serious injury") the cats? Odd.
Posted on entry Open thread 130 ::: October 24, 2009, 09:32 AM:
Happy Birthday, Ginger! (assuming that Serge is right and it is your birthday)
Posted on entry Porn turns you gay: the implications ::: October 21, 2009, 07:55 AM:
What, just red hot? Not white hot, or x-ray hot?
Posted on entry Moderation isn't rocket science ::: October 21, 2009, 07:53 AM:
Do they think that the start "Nice article you got here. It would be(...)" will make people too scared to delete it?
Posted on entry $9,695 New Age sweat lodge session kills 2, injures 19 ::: October 21, 2009, 03:34 AM:
Lee @570, Another claim that the most dedicated Obama-hatred is not race-based, and this one is fairly strongly supported; I may have been skeptical too soon.

My impression is that it's not aways race-based in origin, but still often race-related in form. In other words, people on the right are more or less strongely anti-Obama for all kinds of reasons, but with many of them, once they've become anti-Obama for whatever reason, their anti-Obama attitudes all too often take racist forms.
Posted on entry First Frost ::: October 15, 2009, 08:03 AM:
What? Ok, it's chilly here, but that's (I think) all so far. Mix of sunny, dry chill and occassional rainstorms. Oh well, I guess if you've got frost, we can't be far behind.
Posted on entry Obama wins the Nobel Peace Prize ::: October 12, 2009, 08:45 AM:
Paul Duncanson @113, Could even Limbaugh the Hutt call donating to them a bad idea and get away with it?

Yes. Yes, of course he could. And he would. It's how they work (although they aren't the only group/crowd that works that way): Once you've fallen into disgrace, the only thing that matters is that you've fallen into disgrace- nothing else matters anymore. And any connection with the enemy, or even anything that gives the impression of connections with the enemy, can make you fall into disgrace- yes, even if you're a charity dedicated to handing out bacon sandwiches to veterans.

Throughout the Bush years, whenever I read on the Internet whom the online right-wingers were targeting now, I kept thinking "Ok, that has to be it- they can't put that (person/group/institution) on their List of Enemies and still be taken seriously"- but they just went on and on.


Fragano Ledgister, ajay, then again, neither Martin Luther King nor the Dalai Lama nor Aung San Suu Kyi were escalating wars in Afghanistan. And at least with the letter two, I guess the "no achievements" argument was made by some people, somewhere, although not too prominently.
Posted on entry The Nomination Thing ::: October 12, 2009, 08:09 AM:
Andy Wilton @34, fun, but I thought that if the committee sends out letters to everyone who's technically qualified to nominate people, then, with Making Light having the collections of people from different fields that it has, we should have some people here who get these letters or at least know someone who gets these letters, and might be able to say something about them.

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2008269
200715

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