Something Random

Mercutio said:
Here is science fiction author John Scalzi's rather witty statement on that little matter.
Click to expand...

Nice piece. The most interesting comment in the thread:

Mourdock was explaining why he was against an exception for rape in abortion laws. So perhaps this is the right place to point out that if abortion is made illegal, there will never be a real exception for rape.
If a woman is raped and wants to have an abortion, what will be the process for declaring this exception? There won’t be time for a criminal trial, so is her word good enough? Or her and a doctor? Her and a judge? Does she have to name her rapist? Is that news made public? Can he sue her for libel thereafter? For defamation? Can the state later decide she was lying and imprison her?
Who will have access to the legal advice necessary to get through this thicket? Poor women? Women who’ve just been through the worst experience of their lives? How will it work for women with a criminal record? What about women with a prior perjury conviction?
And who will be thinking their way through these gnarly questions? The Mississippi State Legislature. The good men of the Kansas State Legislature. The folks who have at every turn tried to make it impossible to have any access to abortion, even now when it is legal.
There will never be a workable exception for rape. (Well, maybe in New York, if you’re wealthy.) Once abortion is legal, the only right to choose is the right of the rapist to choose the mother of his child.
Click to expand...
 
Mercutio said:
I heard it before. There isn't much to say about it, except perhaps that I think there might be better frameworks for understanding our electoral system than economic and financial ones.
Click to expand...

From what I can tell, the electoral system is primarily about math, what would be the better framework?

Another interesting bit, about getting economists into politics is this from Planet Money, where they got all kinds of economists together and only posted the changes that they all agreed on.
 
ddrueding said:
From what I can tell, the electoral system is primarily about math, what would be the better framework?
Click to expand...

Economics, as a science, frequently models human behavior using the supposition that consumers/markets are rational and proceeds from that point. Which, of course, they aren't.
 
Mercutio said:
I don't get Reddit as a community. There are eleventy million sub-communities that seem to tend toward massive overspecialization or else they are so completely general that they'll immediately be lost among thousands of posts.
Click to expand...

Ok; don't ask Reddit.
 
Handruin said:
Ok; don't ask Reddit.
Click to expand...

Pop over to their dating advice section. That board has a long ass list of what's appropriate to post. Some thing should go in /relationships rather than /dating. Some things should go in *_advice. Some things should go in /sex or /loneliness or /okcupid or /depression or whatever. Many of those boards have tens of thousands of readers. Others have a few dozen. There's very little in between.
reddit has done an awesome job convincing me that there's no reason to try to post anything there.
 
LunarMist said:
Yeah. This is an example of why Merc does not have anyone to take to the show. :(
Click to expand...

I don't have anyone to take because I live in a shitty place that entirely devoid of appropriate social outlets. Were I 15 years older or had I interest in sports and beer rather than arts, I might be better off but neither of those thing are true.
 
Mercutio said:
Are you seriously suggesting that the option should be taken off the table just because you and Todd Aiken and Richard Mourdock are OK with the idea?
Click to expand...

Are you seriously suggesting that we don't already restrict people's rights to stop at the "tip of my nose?"

The fallacy for the writer is that he wants to discuss the power dynamics of a rape while glossing over the power dynamics of a pregnancy. He himself recognized the events are intertwined but doesn't recognize the power dynamics are intertwined.
 
Howell said:
Are you seriously suggesting that we don't already restrict people's rights to stop at the "tip of my nose?"

The fallacy for the writer is that he wants to discuss the power dynamics of a rape while glossing over the power dynamics of a pregnancy. He himself recognized the events are intertwined but doesn't recognize the power dynamics are intertwined.
Click to expand...

A clump of cells isn't a person. If you want to argue about where to draw that line, be my guest, but the fact is that this is something that's happening in a person's body that will impact the rest of her life, whether or not the pregnancy is terminated. Neither one of us should be the person to tell an expecting woman what options she should or should not have in that regard, though I suspect either of us is better qualified to have that discussion than certain Republican legislators presently on the House Science committee.

I understand that your religious values suggest a different perspective on this matter, but those who share that belief need to understand that religious views are not shared by everyone in this country and we do not live in a theocracy.
 
Mercutio said:
I don't have anyone to take because I live in a shitty place that entirely devoid of appropriate social outlets. Were I 15 years older or had I interest in sports and beer rather than arts, I might be better off but neither of those thing are true.
Click to expand...

You also don't discuss a plan to try and do something about this so-called shitty place you live in. I'm not saying it's simple, but I only hear how shitty it is and never how you want to try and do something about this problem. You said elsewhere that you love your job which is a deterrent from leaving but if this side of things is making you miserable, isn't it worth considering a different job to balance out these two things?
 
My job is awesome and I know full well that I'm never going to get anything like it if I leave. If I had a concrete reason to leave it, I might do so, but I'm too risk averse to consider leaving for the possibility that someplace else might suck less and/or have better social options.
 
Can you live within commuting distance of work and be closer to a more personally productive locale?
 
For some reason I ended up watching some Bill Maher for the first time, on YouTube. His position on Religion is hilarious.

My favorite: "Calling atheism a religion is like calling abstinence a sex position."
 
Thanks for sharing it. Watching it now while I eat lunch. There is a TED talk coming to my area in November that I want to try and attend just for the experience.
 
I've been looking for more stuff to put on my phone since I finished listening to This American Life in sequential order. Not every TED talk is available in audio-only. I could probably strip the audio from Youtube copies but I don't know if I'm that motivated.

I have been enjoying Marc Maron's WTF podcast, which is a long-format interview with some comedian or other. The interviews themselves aren't super-funny, but they can be quite interesting. The Jimmy Walker interview was really fascinating, for example.

For the same reason, I also just downloaded all of NPR's Fresh Air podcasts. I'm not sure how far back they went, but I used Juice and got all the ones that were available.

TEDtalks and WTF and Fresh Air and for that matter This American Life are all in the same sort of category where I might not necessarily be super-excited to hear one particular topic, but there's enough interesting content that I'm almost always glad that I listened.

Ironically, I have a hard time exercising and listening to music. I do a lot better with people just talking.
 
I'm the opposite. I can't focus enough to listen to what people are saying when I'm exercising so music is my preferred option. The beat/rhythm keep me focused. I also don't do very well with multitasking/listening when I'm trying to focus on something brain intensive. If I'm reading or doing so code work on the PC, I drown out everything around me.
 
Some things I listen to exercising

Freakonomics radio
Planet money
Car Talk
Roderick on the line
Wait Wait don't tell me
TAL
Lets Make mistakes
Hypercritical
WNYC radiolab
Decode DC - just started
Incomparable
You look nice today
running from the law

I only listen to the episodes that seem like they might be interesting from the description. Some of them only the parts I'm interested in.
 
TAL in particular has taught me that sometimes, even if I'm not terribly interested in a subject, the producers offer enough of a hook that I usually can't stop listening once I start.

The Moth, Radiolab and the Third Coast Audio Festival are all very good examples of the sort of long-format spoken-word productions of similar caliber.

In other news, Deviantart.com has free shipping right now, so if anybody is interested in some cheap art, now is the time to get it.
 
I was seven or eight years old the last time I did anything for Halloween. I stopped going when my brother got too old for it.

A couple weeks ago, I had a short conversation with one of my friend Brittany's co-workers (while I was waiting for my friend to put her civilian clothes back on) that included the phrase: "Oh man, you don't LOOK older than my dad..."
Anyway, today after work, I stopped by that place wearing this, carrying the stuffed version and with a Pumpkin Pail with "Free Candy" scrawled on it with red sharpie.

Halloween%202012.jpg


No one got it. They all thought I was dressed up as a teddy bear. Which is probably for the best.

Since Lunar won't get the reference anyway, here's the relevant Know Your Meme.

I left the strippers with a pumpkin pail full of Cadbury Creme Eggs (that have been in my fridge since Easter) and other full-size candy bars.

Incidentally, stripper Halloween costumes: Cat ears, Naughty Schoolgirl, Disco Dancing Queen (I kind of wanted to stick around to see how she stripped out of a pantsuit with the rollerskates and all), Fairy wings, Sexy Matt Smith-era Doctor Who-ette.

Then I went home and changed in to a blue hoodie and my Rainbow Dash hat and handed out another pail of full-size candy bars at my local McDonalds since my apartment complex doesn't allow trick or treating. I didn't think the Pedobear costume would go over so well there.
 
Anyone who can recognize pedobear knows better than to be offended. Props to you for making an effort; I'm still at work and will be for the rest of the night. My neighbor's kids will need to be disappointed for another year running.
 
ddrueding said:
Anyone who can recognize pedobear knows better than to be offended. Props to you for making an effort; I'm still at work and will be for the rest of the night. My neighbor's kids will need to be disappointed for another year running.
Click to expand...

Something break? All-nighters are not typically fun.
 
Not fun, but mandatory. I'm down to about one a month, and all kinda scheduled. Major upgrades to a software stack tomorrow, simultaneous with a switch from 100+ Nextel phones to 100+ Verizon phones. Currently installing a dozen "Network Extenders" made by Samsung to insure complete cell coverage to the offices while waiting for a complete backup of the VMs for the software that will be updated.

With some employees not leaving until 10PM and regular work resuming at 4:30AM, the service window is a little tight. Halloween allowed me to kick everyone out at 6PM.
 
That Smoothwall firewall I installed on the mountaintop the other day? In the secure and very hard to access location that I need to schedule an escort to reach? It decided to enable the onboard DHCP server and disable the web interface. Now half my machines are listening to the wrong server and collisions are everywhere.

Not sure how to fix this yet.
 
ddrueding said:
That Smoothwall firewall I installed on the mountaintop the other day? In the secure and very hard to access location that I need to schedule an escort to reach? It decided to enable the onboard DHCP server and disable the web interface. Now half my machines are listening to the wrong server and collisions are everywhere.

Not sure how to fix this yet.
Click to expand...
C4?
 
I just research the price a but and throw it up on about five forums I know that have a FS section.
 
I stopped selling on Ebay years ago. It's not worth the hassle. Craigslist isn't worth it either, to be honest. I have a bunch of electronics I know have real value, but I'm not giving them away to strangers, particularly not if they want me to drive to the north side of Chicago to deliver them.
 
I've just realized that tomorrow will be November 4th. Is it the election day in the U.S.?

Oh and tonight is my favorite night of the year : the one I get one more hour to sleep.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top