#39 ::: Sean Craven
So get cracking, finish a book, and get it published. You'll be a lot less offended when we can buy it and GIVE YOU MONEY :D
I'm waiting impatiently.
I'm doing my best. She says I'm doing well.
I am deathly, desperately afraid.
You sound like my mom. And my dad really. I'm almost 32, and they're still worrying that they may have damaged me forever. On the whole it's probably healthy for abuse survivors to think that way.
They aren't really ever sure what's enough affection for kids. So they overcompensate and are very huggy parents. If I yelled and screamed and threw a tantrum, the moment I calmed down enough that it was possible, I'd get hugged and reassured that they loved me. I'd also get told that tantrums were scary and hurtful for them, and they didn't like it.
It worked pretty well.
What worked even better was being able to tell *them* that it scared me if they yell at each other, and have them listen. Mutual respect is lethal for a lot of abuse behaviors.
I'm still pretty damaged, considering how little abuse I experienced. Being prone to mental illness probably makes your brain and body less resilient in the face of stress. And my parents were able to teach some coping skills that were healthy, but a lot of their defaults are unhealthy. And it doesn't help that I was born with a strong startle reflex, and have very poor vision... a lot of my physical traits play into being introverted. Natural introverts don't pick up social skills very well, and that is a handicap in breaking the abuse cycle. The family extroverts are obviously better socialized.
Doesn't make me a bad person, just makes me me.
Steady lights vs blinking lights: as a driver, I don't care--as long as you've got lights in the front as well as the rear. The lights are not there for the bicyclist to be able to see stuff in front of him; they are there so that the drivers in front of him can see him.
You may not care, but epileptics and those of us who are made nauseous by flashing lights certainly do. Flashing lights work quite well on most people of normal brain chemistry, but the side effects are not acceptable to me. So having just a flasher, particularly a fast flasher, is a hazard. In all the states I've lived in, the vehicle code agrees with me.
And in practical terms, my bike light is not intended for me to be seen. It's intended for me to ride safely over the frost heaves and potholes and railroad tracks on my usual bike routes. Nice bright halogen bulb, aimed well ahead, and with a car-like scatter pattern. Because it is bright enough for actual use, it is also bright enough to work as a "be seen" light. (it is emphatically not suitable for off road night riding, but I don't do that) Madison has a lot of bike paths, and at night they are not lit. It is very unsafe to use them without good lighting. Bright by itself isn't good, as mentioned up-thread... a lot of LED lights have a scatter pattern that makes it hard to see the road. I went to a lot of trouble to get a Busch and Mueller light set, because theirs does work so well.
If I did more night riding, I'd add an LED headlamp and LED tail-light to my helmet. Having two lights in front and two in the rear gives other people very useful anchoring in figuring out how close an object is and how fast it is moving at night. I don't like it when other people are confused on the road, because confusion leads to mistakes.
My lights go on any time I'd think about doing the same in a car. Generator systems are *lovely* for that.
Hell, if you want to piss of drivers, even following the rules in a car will do it.
So true. So very very true. These days when I drive, I tend to piss other drivers off quite a lot. Riding a bike so much has made me more aware of my speed, and more aware of the actual limits of what I can respond to. So I leave a lot more space, am fussier about stop signs, and am slow. The responses are very much like the ones I get on my bike.
re: helmets...
I do wear one, largely because I have been clumsy all my life. I've got a real knack for tripping myself or having arthritis pain that causes me to collapse in a heap. Since I like my brain and want to keep it, using a helmet is prudent. So far, I haven't had a single bike accident where a car was involved... just me being clumsy. So far, I've never hit my head either, but I've had many more full body falls than I do when walking. I'd probably be better off coming up with a way to get myself leg armor. (this makes me very typical for a cyclist... leg injuries have a slight lead over head and arm injuries, with extremities being the lion's share of all biking injuries) Changing my bike around so it was a style well suited to my abilities has dramatically reduced my fall rate... but not enough that I'm comfortable going helmetless yet.
I don't think laws mandating helmets are helpful. Some people are clumsy or reckless (I can be pretty prone to that one too...) and ought to seriously consider a helmet. Others are prone to thinking of helmets as magical protective hats. If you think a helmet is a magic hat, it's a pretty harmful thing and it ought not be encouraged.
I do think the Netherlands' law about the car driver automatically being held at fault in a collision with a pedestrian or cyclist is sensible. It's not *fair*, but it is in line with how good and responsible drivers think. So fair isn't always a good measure of a law... sometimes it's a good idea to look at how people will think about their behavior.
Posting as myself in the hopes that those of you who still feel broken won't feel as despairing.
Children who grow up alternately ignored and terrorized need remedial work in this kind of thing!
No, children just plain need work on social skills. It's really enlightening watching how some parents deliberately and carefully teach the details of social interaction, and others don't.
****
Both my grandfathers were alcoholics. Dad claims his father wasn't abusive. I don't believe him... Dad isn't especially bad as children of alcoholics go, but he's not on the super-stable side either. Neither is his little sister. His older brother is on the super-stable side. It's also really telling how their mom appears in family stories, but never their dad.
My mom's father was... evil. Physically abusive. Sexually abusive. Her mother and mother's mother were better, but not by much. Her dad's parents were her safe haven, and her example of sane, which is vaguely crazy. But the whole situation was insane and harmful, and I am very lucky that she has overcome so much damage.
So they were both relatively socially clueless. They did their damnedest to teach us whatever bits of social clue they'd learned. They did their damnedest to not be abusive, and largely succeeded. When they figured out I was dissociating due to school and an abusive teacher, they got me *out* of that school and into a safer one. When my brother tried to be sexually abusive, I felt safe in going to them to be rescued... and I got rescued. I was spanked, but that never left me feeling unsafe. Having a salt shaker thrown at me for being unspeakable to my mother was disturbing... but I was also being exceptionally awful. And I ducked. I am quite happy to eat what I like, have the knives stay in the kitchen, and be a relatively normal introvert.
There are still effects from the alcoholism. The impulse to secrecy is natural to me. Truth is hard. Both grandfathers were probably self-medicating, probably for depression. The rest of us have all had at least some bouts with depression, but mostly we're sane enough to not self medicate. Only one person has succeeded in suicide.
It is not easy to overcome the poison of alcoholism or abuse. I don't know how my parents, aunts and uncles did it, at all. I don't know where they found the strength. But they did, and we did. The great-nieces and nephews are visibly saner than my cohort was as kids.
Don't take this as "go forth and have kids"... just as a loving reminder that if you were abused it doesn't *have* to doom your children to the same fate. No need to forgive your abusers either... my parents are both decidedly glad the abusive relatives are dead. Not quite dancing on the graves, but I've seen their reaction to the deaths of relatives they loved, and the reaction to their abusers' deaths was very different.
The demented fcskwits who are protesting against improved access to health care have been so thoroughly programmed with RNC and insurance industry astoturf that they're utterly unreachable.
Not necessarily. I find applying basic facts about health insurance works fairly well on right-to-life types.
Less than half of all states mandate *any* kind of coverage of pregnancy. That means if you're a woman of child-bearing age, the insurance companies in those states treat you as having a pre-existing condition, just for being female. Adding pregnancy coverage to an individual plan will roughly double your premium so for a healthy female, it'd go from around $500/mo to about $1000/mo. You might manage less than $1000/mo, but you're not going to get it below $500/mo. That's assuming your only pre-existing condition is having the misfortune to be born with two X chromosomes.
It seems to work especially well on right-to-life types with daughters. And when you start comparing it to how much it costs to rent an apartment in the same area... it gets through to an awful lot more. When you go into the fact that being turned down *once* means that you're pretty well un-insurable in that state... mostly, they shut up.
I haven't found an argument that works well on a lot of other folks. But I'm happy enough to have one that works at all. Most people who believe in right-to-life really aren't stupid, and they understand that if a young woman gets pregnant, it's very expensive to go through with it and have the baby. They often don't understand just *how* expensive tho.
I think that, to be terrorism, the target(s) must be civilians/non-combatants and the perpetrators cannot be uniformed members of anyone's armed forces acting through their chain of command.
And if the perps are armed forces against civilian targets, I'd generally call it genocide or a war crime.
There aren't super-hard lines here, because if you're on the receiving end, it's going to be terrifying. In a war zone, things are confusing so you don't necessarily know that the strange men who came 'round your house and threatened you, or the ones who bombed your kid's school are your country's troops, the other country's troops or "just" local gang members grabbing a chance. And even after the "war is over", things can remain unsettled for a long time... after the US Civil War it probably took a good 5-10 years for some white folks to feel "safe" again. If you were black... very different pattern of "safe".
I don't like any definition of terrorism that leaves out the wanton destruction of Dresden.
I don't *like* it either. But I would generally class the Dresden fire-bombings as a war crime. Trying to use one word to cover all the violent evil that people do to each other ends up leaving the word very non-specific, which does not promote communication.
That does not make Dresden less terrifying. War crimes in a lot of ways are just as bad as terrorist acts, because humans need for their governments to be as neutral as possible and as consistent as possible... it is an ideal that government rarely lives up to. A government that can commit a war crime is not being neutral, consistent, proportionate or anything at all that has to do with reasoned and measured thought based upon reality. It is very sensible to be scared by this.
It seems logical to me that many of the personality traits and human behavior problems that lead to terrorism also can lead to war crimes. But working within a system that is viewed as legitimate is very different from working outside the system in a way that is publicly treated as illegitimate or extralegal. The things a legitimate member of a government can do (such as Obama's decision to continue certain Bush policies that I believe are war crimes) have power and authority in a way that a Klan rally downtown does not. President Obama has minions on a scale beyond anything a Klan Wizard does, and his minions have tools and equipment that is beyond the means of almost every country on the planet. A Klan Wizard cannot viably plan and execute an invasion of Nigeria to engage in "ethnic cleansing" and incidentally capture a major source of oil production.
The pink, the pink, it is coming to attack us!
(and yes, you're right, the first one is closest to the right feel. it's a pity there isn't an option for a proper amount of gold leaf. Our Lady of Guadalupe is my favorite... probably partly because of how joyously gaudy she is when you're a small Catholic girl.)
Debcha, my view of the INS is that of a (youngish) citizen with a lot of immigrant adopted aunties and uncles, who have come in over about a 30 year period. So I know some of them have had green cards that are just plain permanent, with no strange paperwork or need to visit the embassies or INS, and others tear their hair out over the INS every so often. The idea of my family getting stuck overseas or deported is just horrifying... and due to the rules and rule changes, it's a real possibility. And facing that as a 10 year old is not much fun. (now that I'm an adult, I have friends of my own who are immigrants... and the rules are just as confusing and evil)
If *I* have this much trouble, I can't imagine how someone from another country manages.
And yes, I'm passing the story along.
There are no more permanent green cards. That's why. 10 year visa, max. There's still more fun in store even if you have a green card... imagine what happens if you got your green card at age six and try to apply for citizenship. They want to know every single time you have left the United States. Ever. If you "lie" because you don't remember a school trip to Canada, or a quick trip to visit your grandmother, you can be deported.
I hate our immigration system. It is evil, both in design and in execution.
My kindest regards to all the citizens of Maine who spoke to their Representatives, Senators and Governor on this. I'm so happy for you!
(5 down, 45 to go...)
I'll also note that even today, the bike community keeps a *close* watch out on people doing transcontinental American and Canadian trips. The Appalachians will make the biker wish they could die. The Rockies can kill you, and many of the publicized routes have stern warnings about which passes to take and when... and local residents will post warnings if there are late snowstorms, or if their pass is staying closed even a day later than usual.
And this is for people who mostly can go 40 miles in a day when lazing about. The Donner party was mostly doing 10-15.
So if you do what the average biker does and consider what can go wrong, think about possible solutions, and have a backup plan... I'd say you're not ignoring a warning. And reevaluate things often. If you'd planned on 40 miles a day, and are going 80, it can be just as bad as planning on 20 and doing 10.
#10 - Not brief, but beautiful :).
I seem to recall that the primary source evidence strongly suggests that the mothers *did* in fact lie through their teeth if that was what it took to keep their children alive. Makes sense, and is deeply practical.
What information is that estimate based on?
Since it's a quote from a post elsewhere... you'd probably get better results by asking the author :) Best the rest of us can do is "beats me, we're not the author".
This is beginning to look nasty, and the flu season is just starting in the southern hemisphere.
It does seem to respond to spot quarantine. It may take shutting down *all* the schools in Queens and Manhattan (and won't that be fun...), but the NYC outbreak does not look too dire at this point. Quarantine, hand washing and IV fluids are really wonderful technology. They're not much fun, but they do save lives.
My main worry is that internal quarantine will break down in the hospitals. But we'll have clear warning of that, and hospital closures can be very effective. SARS in Toronto would have been *much* worse without the hospital closures. It helps that most doctors and nurses know that the last thing anyone needs is for *them* to get sick.
Should so make you salivate. Savory breakfasts are *good*.
*takes notes for later this week*
Once you hit the cold sweat/salivation stage, you're done for.
Depends. On this particular make and model of human body, all that means is that I am *quite* sick... but I'm unlikely to vomit just then. Cold sweats, salivation, appetite suppression and dizziness all go together to tell me "stay in bed you fool!"
I'll happily *drink* my meals in that state, but my body refuses to be hungry. Makes keeping electrolytes in me quite interesting.
Amazon uses these sorts of algorithms to tell you "you might also like this". They are almost always trying to improve this process as I understand it.
Very understandably. Their current system takes great joy in attempting to sell me 6 different kinds of vacuum cleaners, another round dozen each of various kitchen tools, baby things, first person shooters, and a wide range of other stuff that I don't want.
I wanted *one* vacuum cleaner. Which I bought. From them. I neither need nor want two, and I don't need suggestions on new ones. The one I bought is less than a year old, and is still under warranty. If I bought a given kitchen tool, I really don't need a dozen each from a different manufacturer... and if I needed a dozen, I would have already bought a dozen. From the same manufacturer. I don't *have* a baby. Nor do I want one. Nor do I know any. And no, buying X-box points and a copy of Morrowind does not mean I want to buy every first person shooter ever released.
Their suggestions feature is appallingly bad. It's got a lot of deepseated and very gendered assumptions about what a customer must want. I feel sorry for any single guy who makes the mistake of buying a cookbook and a cast iron frying pan from them... He'll be stuck with baby items and romance novels for months. (I get a new flood every time I am faced with biking 15 miles to Target and back in the *hopes* that they have the item I need in stock... or buy from Amazon and get the right thing delivered.)
I kind of dread what will happen if I ever buy bike stuff from them. No amount of explaining to them why this "feature" is a problem seems to have an effect.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2009 | 33 |
| 2008 | 41 |
| 2007 | 18 |
| 2006 | 18 |
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