Mississippi's Personhood Ballot Initiative: Defeated! Whoot!!
http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/story/2011-11-08/Mississippi-Abortion-Amendment/51129886/1
And Ohio repealed Senate bill 5, from the looks of it:
http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/08/us/ohio-collective-bargaining-vote/index.html?hpt=hp_t1
The anti-corporate personhood referendum is winning by a large margin.
I voted at a school where the PTA was selling cupcakes for fifty cents. The sweet taste of democracy.
Maine restored same-day voter registration.
Looks like people in Maine were fairly sensible. Except, no doubt, for my idiotic rightwing cousin, but I hid her on FB, so whatevs.
Didn't see any point in voting for the state senate race in my own rotten borough, when the primary is the election, and the DFL insider (who seems like a decent guy) won that by a 3 to 1 margin.
Instead, I went to visit my invalid aunt.
7: Conifer came to mind as another possible Unconventional Progeny Name.
Sure, I mean, there's already a ton of names based on individual trees, so why not Conifer? I believe Conifer is the name of a post-metal band, too.
"And this must be little Beech!"
New Jersey is down to 565 municipalities.
The Socialist candidate I voted for lost, but the City Council seats all went to Dems. This was an unsurprising result.
Laurel, Willow, Hazel, uh ... Rose?, Holly. Myrtle? Are people named Myrtle? (Yes.) Ivy, hm, not a tree. Olive! But are they named after the tree?
The municipal election here is not until November 19th. It's like they won't even honour American traditions. Elections on a Saturday? How will they disenfranchise people who can't take time off of work?
It's pretty simple when you think about it.
Fake accent, objectively not ready to be the 1%.
I was thinking of naming my forthcoming hypothetical child Bonsai, but it seems a little twee.
There's some indication that the local occupy movement might be turning some people towards voting against the current administration, which appears to be sympathetic on many issues, and voting for a more conservative government. A woman died on Saturday, apparently from a drug overdose and I think there have been some other drug issues. The city seems to be making a good faith effort to not use force: they're fine with an ongoing protest, just not the tents.
Wake County kicked out the carpetbagging Tea Party yahoos that took over the school board and tried to resegregate the schools (earlier Colbert coverage).
11: Huh. I move away and the whole place goes to hell.
Russell Pearce has lost a recall election in Arizona. That's good.
New York Times to Gov. Christie: We still ♥ you! It's so hilariously transparent.
Wow, that article is really something.
Hazel
"Sure there's a saint for every day in the year, and you want to name her for a bloody nut!"
In general, congratulations to the great American public for reminding their lords and masters about this inconvenient thing called democracy.
Yes, the general results do seem to be pretty encouraging for the cause of sanity.
In Virginia, the state Senate is now evenly divided so that will probably result in lots of conservative legislation getting passed.
13: Laurel, Willow, Hazel, uh ... Rose?, Holly. Myrtle? Are people named Myrtle? (Yes.) Ivy, hm, not a tree. Olive! But are they named after the tree?
Ash, I suppose. Thorn (though that's probably not her real name). Rowan. Willow. Cherry (probably not after the tree).
fake accent, can non-citizens vote in local in elections in Canada? I feel like there were places (maybe the UK?) that were floating that idea.
My BF can't vote for anything. He can't vote in Canada without a specific intended date to return to the country. Unlike a USian abroad, he's not subject to Canadian income taxes. (If I lived there, I would be subject to US taxes but wouldn't have to pay any, because I could use the money paid to Canada as a credit against my tax bill, but I'd still get to vote in US elections.)
30: There are 19 people with the first name Hawthorn in the United States. "Chestnuts" would make a good girl's name.
re: 31
The UK hasn't just floated it.
In the UK, non-citizens can vote in local elections, and Euro elections (if they are EU citizens). My wife, who isn't a British citizen, can vote in both. In addition, Commonwealth and Irish citizens can vote in UK national elections. So, say, an Indian, or a Nigerian, or whatever, can vote in UK parliamentary elections if resident here, regardless of whether they also have British citizenship.
The one new, non-incumbent candidate elected to the Cambridge City Council has the awesomest name ever. The dude who wanted to put hydroponic gardens all over Cambridge didn't get in, nor did the guy who doesn't like affordable housing and wants free street parking. (Current price of a parking sticker for the year is a whopping $20.)
The one new, non-incumbent candidate elected to the Cambridge City Council has the awesomest name ever.
Well fuck that, what are they called?
Feel free to tell me now that this isn't the awesomest name ever. Perhaps the awesomest name for a Cambridge City Councillor, though.
NYT headline about the defeat of the Mississippi personhood ballot amendment rankles:
Mississippi Voters Reject Anti-Abortion Measure
'Anti-abortion and contraception measure' is more like it.
It is not my real name, though both my name and Mara's translate to words already on the list.
Thanks to union-busting obnoxiousness, Cincy's Republicans got thrown off city council and were replaced by progressives. I'm really excited about this. Children's services got funding too, but that's unsurprising since a toddler's death after returning to his family from foster care is being blamed in part on an underfunded system.
And we're so thrilled about Ohio union rights, which means that Lee's employer will have to work harder to screw over the faculty now, so ha ha, board of trustees!
It's a pretty good name. Is she in favour of good and opposed to evil? Her election page didn't actually commit her to any beliefs, as such.
She did submit a position page to the election commission, which made her sound pretty good. I think she has been involved in a lot of local initiatives, and is known from that. And at least in my area of town she definitely had the most yard sign coverage. Minka! Minka! Minka!
||From recent SCOTUS arguments: "Sotomayor adds: "There are now satellites that look down and can hone in on your home on a block and in a neighborhood."|>
Feel free to tell me now that this isn't the awesomest name ever.
Old school Loveline listeners will always remember it as the name of Adam's favorite porn star.
The Democrats won control over the county commissioners' office (a 3-person group with one seat reserved for the minority party) in Montgomery County PA for the first time in the history of the county.
Some people regard this as a bellweather for Obama in '12, as Montco has historically (until the last few years) been markedly Republican.
I wish that porn existed featuring this Minka, but alas.
It's not just her first name, guys. Mina van Beuze/kom! Just try saying it out loud.
43: "hone" is the preferred formation of the successful and powerful. (I've been keeping track.)
46: Those Aerosmith dudes are uggo, but they make pretty daughters. (Is she still engaged to Jeter?)
Old school Loveline listeners will always remember it as the name of Adam's favorite porn star.
This is exactly right.
The most annoying opposing lawyer in my life just got elected to judge, and won't be annoying me any more! I love democrary!
Looks like SF is still counting ballots. It'll be interesting to see how ranked-choice voting works there.
Somerville, MA's local election was boring in a slightly disappointing way. All incumbents re-elected (7 out of 13 candidates were running unopposed). The race in our ward was very close, with the more-progressive challenger within 40 votes of the incumbent. Not that I think the Somerville Board of Aldermen is really a key legislative body for important causes. The #1 thing the candidates were running on was their support for a larger transportation project that they don't really have any control over.
53: Are there any races where people think it will be close? As you may remember, the Mpls. RCV experiment has proved somewhat lackluster so far -- a couple of races in 2009 where the 2nd place finisher was different than in a traditional election, but of course that didn't change the results. If we'd had it here at the beginning of the last decade, it very likely would have given the Greens a strong plurality on the City Council though.
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How does it make sense to design/market a folding knife for use with food? Even if you're very careful, you're still going to wind up closing it with bits of food still on it, and that just means a haven for bacteria. Yuck.
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45.2: Some people regard this as a bellweather for Obama in '12, as Montco has historically (until the last few years) been markedly Republican.
Good, because he's going to get slaughtered among the bigots, Steelers fans and gun nuts at this end of the state* **.
*Excluding those who live in Pittsburgh itself.
**Where he at least got modest support in '08.
57: bigots, Steelers fans and gun nuts
This could be a big hit for one of those carpetbagging right-wing country stars. Let's get writing!
I used to know a Juniper
Me too!
Also a Linden, which name I love.
A friend's new baby is called Juniper.
There's plenty of little Ivys and Olives around. Also, the new devel. dir. at a local theater goes by his middle and last names: "Koh/ M/ner". If ya got it: Flaunt it!
Confidential to Stanley: I greatly appreciated 18. Strong work.
18 made me groan out loud. Is GOL an accepted internet initialism?
63: Yes 18 was untoppable; I logged off, shutdown and went to bed after seeing it.
Lyla Garrity dated Derek fucking Jeter for like three years without Tim Riggins beating him up? It's like it really is a show or something.
55: It was very close in Oakland last year, and prevented Perata, the plurality-winner and the most good-old-boy-ish of them all, from winning. This time the plurality-winner seems to have only gotten about 31%, so anything could happen, in theory.
Usually RCV doesn't change the outcome: it did in Oakland because the two first-choice runners-up each pushed their supporters to rank the other as second-choice, and to rank anyone but Perata as third, very like a coalition. I have no idea if anything similar happened in SF - I know two people working on different campaigns and just asked for their thoughts on FB.
56: Ya run it under hot water later, perhaps adding some soap and poking at small crevices with a brush. Works for folding and non-folding utensils and the principle can be extended to dishes, pots, pans, one's navel, between toes, and like that.
68: Eh, I've tried to keep folding knives clean after using them with food, and it seems like way more trouble than it's worth.
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Does anybody know if the "stability upgrade" to FF8 actually makes the damn thing any less unstable? It's on it's final written warning as far as I'm concerned.
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I've actually been migrating back toward Firefox after increasing annoyance with Chrome's unwillingness to let me customize anything. Specifically, I want to be able to see the http:// portion of a URL, because I cut and paste URLs a lot, and Chrome consistently screws that up for me. Firefox went down the rabbit hole of chopping off that portion of the URL as well, but at least with Firefox its something I can actually fix in the configurations.
Now, if Firefox would just stop insisting on sucking up 20% of the CPU, even when its sitting in the background doing nothing, I would be a happy camper indeed.
Firefox has been creeping toward unusability on my OSX machines at home. I pretty much only use Chrome there. FF does okay (not great, but adequate) on Windows at work.
The arc of the software is long but it bends toward suckage.
Specifically, I want to be able to see the http:// portion of a URL, because I cut and paste URLs a lot, and Chrome consistently screws that up for me.
That's odd - whenever I cut or copy a URL out of the Chrome search bar, and paste it into a text or document editor, it reinserts the http.
Oh, I bet you mean that that silent reinsertion is a problem.
Now, if Firefox would just stop insisting on sucking up 20% of the CPU
If only. And up to now, when it isn't doing that it's taking time out for reasons of its own. I wish I liked chrome more.
74: When I do it, it is maddeningly inconsistent. It pastes the http:// about 60% of the time, but just when I get used to expecting it to work, it fails me.
Isn't FF unstable because of Flash?
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So, a friend of mine (well, probably a former friend at this point) owes me a bunch of money for babysitting from last August. I took care of the kids all day every day all summer, and suddenly out of nowhere her husband fired me. By email, late at night, he said "don't come back, we'll send you a check". They owed me for a little over 2 weeks. Two times the husband claimed the check would be mailed that day, and one time I ran into the friend who claimed to have already mailed both the check and a letter. Obviously I didn't get anything, any of these times.
Former friend has declined to respond to any of my numerous texts or emails so I really have no fucking clue what is going on, other than that we don't seem to be friends anymore and I am out $1,000.
I'd really like the money, and to find out what happened, but I'd also like not to make myself crazy about it. Pestering her via all known means of contact has yielded nothing and I sort of feel like continuing to think about it is making my life worse. I'm now in Montana and they're in DC. Do I just give up on this? Can anyone think of anything else to do that might have an effect? Also, will it look like I'm a huge crybaby if I unfriend them on Facebook?
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I use Camino on a mac, and like it. I might only like it cause I'm used to it and hate change, though. I have no idea if it is objectively any better (or worse) than anything else.
Check to be sure you didn't accidentally murder their dog. If not, I'd send a certified letter asking for payment. I don't know why, but that scares people. And unfriend them on Facebook.
Some theories:
W/r/t getting the money, you could try finding a third party who is still friends with both of you to apply pressure.
W/r/t/ what happened, my first thought is that the husband confessed a desire to have sex with you, and the wife immediately made him cut off all contact.
Check to be sure you didn't accidentally murder their dog.
Well, I mean, I might have. But it definitely wasn't worth a thousand dollars.
re: 79
Phone? If they aren't responding to texts and emails it's harder to fob you off on the phone. Or is that not practical for you?*
If it was me I'd have gone well past the stage of being polite, but that probably wouldn't be helpful either from a getting money or getting information point of view. Threaten them with a lawyer?
* not being a dick, I don't know.
78. Sounds plausible. Is there a workround?
Were any of the children severely injured while in your care?
I like the certified letter idea.
Funnily enough, 82.2 was my first thought, too.
GROSS.
Ew. That is an explanation that I had not thought of.
Check to be sure you didn't accidentally masturbate their dog. #IAmThe40%
85: well, you can turn the firefox plugin off, I think. On OS X there's a system-wide flash plugin, possibly? Instructions for disabling that are here, but they're oriented around using safari as your main browser. Still, should probably work with FF as your main browser, too.
I think the certified letter works because it implies that I'm gathering proof that I contacted you either on the advice of a lawyer or in preparation for contacting a lawyer. I've only done it twice, both with the same person, and they paid both times.
89 to 82.2
86: no. The ostensible reasons were twofold (although the email claimed "many reasons"): 1. the husband was extremely upset about a broken plate that he had found. He was "flabbergasted" that I had not picked it up, and could not think of any possible reason why I would just leave a broken plate on the floor. This is a safety hazard and he has to think of his children first, although he is worried about me. (I have no idea what he was talking about- I didn't see a broken plate and would have picked it up if I had).
and
2: "the girls seem rarely to go outside when they're with you", which is sort of true, but it was August in DC, so I don't really think of it as a basis for firing me without any discussion.
84: I can try calling via relay interpreter. I haven't. But I doubt I'll get through- they both screen calls and are unlikely to answer if the number is either me or unknown. I've thought about trying to call her at work, but am not sure if this is going over the line into crazy person.
My stepdad's a lawyer and has offered to draft a threatening letter. I guess I'll do that next.
I don't really see phone calls or invoking mutual friends as doing much good. They've got elaborate narratives of bullshit going on, and those would just provide more fodder.
This is all different state by state, but small claims court? Tell them you're going to do it unless you get paid, and then file a small claims action. They're set up to be pro se friendly, and if you have emails and such with the dates you worked, and the email firing you, that should be enough to show that you're owed the money. Although if you're not all in the same jurisdiction anymore, come to think, that's probably too much of a hassle.
And a threatening letter is good.
Certified letter! Certified letter! Way more satisfying than the threatening legal letter because you can be super passive aggressive. You get to write a drippy saccharine sweet request and be super gracious, but they infer that you're doing so on the advice of a lawyer.
Small claims court is a possibility, although it is the most irritating one I can think of.
My current plan is to send one more email, in a day or two (I texted and facebook messaged today) and then do a lawyer letter, certified.
My other current plan is that I have to go back to DC soonish (December?) to defend my dissertation, and at that point just going to their house and asking for the check in person. On the theory that it is harder to say no to people face to face than to ignore messages in your inbox.
Okay, now you guys should start writing paragraphs of my letter for me.
On the theory that it is harder to say no to people face to face than to ignore messages in your inbox.
Yeah, if their prior responses have been "the check's in the mail", then just showing up in person would seem to be pretty hard for them to duck.
99: I don't have a clear sense of Facebook etiquette -- how crazy would it look to write on their walls, where your mutual friends could see it? Probably too crazy, but it seems like something to consider.
I'd think that would be a bridge too far. Too much like a bill collector calling your mom.
102- I have been thinking about that too. It's tempting, but it is important to me that I come out of this looking like an innocent victim, and I'm worried that if I start doing that sort of thing public opinion will swing away from me.
On the other hand, they totally deserve it.
On another hand, as I said above, I'm a little worried that devoting a lot of thought and anger to the whole thing is detrimental to my own well-being. It might be smarter to just let it all go.
I'm not a law-person, but I do think you want to avoid taking any action that would get B of A denounced in the press if they took it. There's laws about harassment and such.
Okay, now you guys should start writing paragraphs of my letter for me.
Begin "I am advised..." The fact that you were advised by a random bunch of imaginary people on the internet is not something you're obliged to disclose.
fake accent, can non-citizens vote in local in elections in Canada?
Not here, at least. I don't know about other municipalities. Given the number of immigrants who are still permanent residents - you have to be a citizen for this election - it could make a difference.
Ha.
She used to read/comment here occasionally. I thought a lot about whether I should be (more) pseudonymous etc before posting 79, but I decided that actually I'd prefer it if she happened upon it. EMAIL ME BACK, YOU JERK.
(I really don't think she still reads here)
How much of a hassle is it for you to travel to DC -- do you go there fairly often on a predicable schedule? Because I'm serious about small claims court -- this is what it's for. I can't tell you how exactly it works in DC, but in NY it's very user friendly, you go in, fill out a couple of forms, serve defendants, and then show up with a file of papers and explain your beef to a judge who's used to listening to non-lawyers.
I'll be back to defend, hopefully in December, but other than that don't have any plans to be there. And also plane tickets between there and Montana are really expensive. Expensive enough that if I had to go more than once it would cost more than I'd get out of it.
Yeah, that kills it. It'd only work if you had reason to be in DC regularly.
69: Yeah, it's a pain. On the other hand, less pain later on than present hunger for me.
99: Letter from lawyer, certified mail and all, is the way to go. If he's good he will be pointing out, very politely, how nasty things will get if they don't pay up now, and if he works in the fact that he's a relative, that will imply you have an unlimited supply of free ammo in your arsenal. That's worked very nicely for me twice.
Seems custom made for The People's Court. "They have chosen go resolve their disputes here, in our forum."
Or I could take one of the kids and hold it for collateral.
I'm leaving to run some errands. FYI.
115 is a bit alarming when read right after 114.
I really want to take rhymeswithmaria's work to small claims court (they've been underpaying her by mistake since she started working there), but she doesn't want to because she'll need references when applying for jobs in the future.
Is it possible they are actually unable to pay right now and are avoiding admitting this? Because that's very common, IME.
When I've had these problems in the past, I got responses when I started by saying something like, "I'm not sure if the problem is that you don't have the money available right now, but, if it is, let's just talk and come up with a realistic payment schedule."
The nationwide emergency alert test was such a let down. Beep beep beep. No panic at all, that I could see.
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Statswatch!
The instructor has moved on to teaching us R. This is a programming language. Many if not most students in the class have no (or minimal) prior programming experience, and are asking questions like "what is a variable?" and "what is a library?" and "what are arguments?"
Their level of confusion is not helped that the instructor -- unlike with the earlier material, where she really knew her shit -- is quite obviously self-taught as far as programming goes (well, it's obvious partly because she told me, when asking me for help with how to fix the example code she gave the class), and doesn't really understand that she's throwing relatively advanced concepts like function prototyping and object-oriented programming and so on into the mix.
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I still kinda boggles my mind that intro programming courses aren't required for everyone early on. It seems like it should be the standard 10th grade math class.
They may well have all taken some kind of intro to programming. They also may well have not touched a programming language since then.
125: I'm sure that will work out just fine.
I forgot a "by the fact" in 125.3
I still kinda boggles my mind that intro programming courses aren't required for everyone early on. It seems like it should be the standard 10th grade math class.
When am I going to use this in real life?
And if it doesn't work out fine, it will in no way negatively impact me personally. Operationally, that's exactly the same as working out fine.
I don't think there's any way it'll negatively impact me personally. I just feel bad for the people without years of prior programming experience.
It seems like it should be the standard 10th grade math class.
I had a programing class in 10th grade. Apple Basic is a skill that I've used every day of my life when I have tried to program a IIe.
When am I going to use this in real life?
He's talking about replacing 10th grade math. What do you use Pre-Calculus for in real life?
If you are taking a graduate level stats class, you are probably using a fair bit of Pre-Calc.
What do you use Pre-Calculus for in real life?
I use it all the time!
Every time I have to measure a tree's height with its shadow, a yardstick, and a celestial almanac.
I took a class using Pascal in 9th grade. I'd wager that I had no use for it for about a decade.
Just today, somebody kept mentioning the first and second derivative of some function.
Actually, just today I had to ask a really stupid question because I forgot the notation in matrix algebra.
Schools already teach basic computer literacy courses at the middle-school and early-high-school level, don't they? (Or is that no longer needed, given the general technological literacy of kids these days?) Anyway, it seems like basic programming courses could and should be a natural extension of that. You don't have to get rid of pre-calculus.
Just today, somebody kept mentioning the first and second derivative of some function.
I don't recall learning that until Calc.
My recollection of Pre-Calc was that it was just a whole bunch of math things that they wanted to get out of the way before teaching Calc, but that weren't really necessary to actually do Calculus. This is according to my own bias, having damn near flunked Pre-Calc, and subsequently gotten A's in Calc.
I remember trigonometry but not so much pre-calculus. Except that the teacher had cut sheets of paper into long strips just narrow enough to for him to be able to hold in his palm so he could read his notes while writing on the chalkboard.
142: ours was really just trig + matrix stuff + some light probability stuff.
The only precalculus thing I remember as being particularly important was trigonometry. But I don't see why that isn't taught as part of geometry.
Hey, thanks to Messily for asking that question, as the answers also work for my current chasing-down-delinquent-debtor problem: my old landlord has fallen silent (after being initially solicitous) on the issue of the $800+ security deposit I'd like to get back, kthx.
I've been weighing whether it's totally weaksauce to appeal to his sense of capital-H Honor, as our shared alma mater has no truck with lying, cheating, and stealing.
My recollection of Pre-Calc was that it was just a whole bunch of math things that they wanted to get out of the way before teaching Calc, but that weren't really necessary to actually do Calculus.
Generally a precalculus course should be an introduction to all the functions that they're going to be assuming you're familiar with in calculus. So polynomials, rational functions, trig functions, logs, and exponentials should be the bulk of the course.
When I took multivariable calculus in college, I remember the first "unit" (first few weeks) being mostly a review of stuff that had been done in precalculus, but now aimed at building towards multivariable stuff, which I actually thought was a hell of a lot better than calculus.* The result of this may have been to erase my memory of precalulus. Then, I forgot all calculus.
*No more of that shell/washer bullshit. I could never get the +/- signs straight.
The idea of a series representation of a function is extremely subtle, should be introduced much more slowly than on the day you meet Taylor series.
Is there univariable calculus?
Cal 1 and 2.
I took Calc 1, 2, and 3 together in a two course accelerated program, but forgot them.
Trick question: univariable calculus is just called calculus.
Multivariable Calc is usually called Stacy.
Multivariable Calc's mom has got it goin' on.
Come to think of it, I actually skipped a semester of precalculus. I therefor infer that whatever it was they were teaching that semester wasn't very important, and ought to be replaced by a class in introductory Python.
Stanley: You probably have bigger guns you can aim at your landlord. Landlord-tenant law on security deposits is often very specific on how the stuff has to work. I don't know the VA details, but here in MA it's something like "return within 30 days, provide written estimates for any repairs being deducted, or pay triple the security deposit in damages."
Generally a precalculus course should be an introduction to all the functions that they're going to be assuming you're familiar with in calculus. So polynomials, rational functions, trig functions, logs, and exponentials should be the bulk of the course.
It seems like think this has become the standard over the last 10 years, but wasn't so clear before. In general, the curriculum leading up to Calculus from algebra (especially when it's taught in colleges), now gets organized around the concept of functions and modeling, especially modeling rates of change for various phenomena. While you might have covered the same material when I was in high school ('92-'96), it wasn't organized conceptually in the same way and had different emphases: for example, you might have done more solving-triangles trig, rather than modeling-cyclical phenomena trig. At the time, it made Calculus seem like it came out of nowhere and was just a bunch of recipes to use in physics class.
"It seems / I think" >> take your pick.
148: I don't know how standard this is, but in DC there's a separate landlord/tenant court system that is pretty easy to use. We had to take a former landlord to court for failing to pay back a deposit a few years ago. My memory of it is that it was relatively painless, but that might be because my roommate was a lawyer so she knew how to do it all and I just sat around and waited.
(and to 119, several of my messages have included this type of suggestion, phrased in decreasingly friendly ways as time has elapsed. Still no response at all.)
159, 162: Interesting. [Ominous finger-tent gesture] Thanks!
The nationwide emergency alert test was such a let down. Beep beep beep. No panic at all, that I could see.
They canceled it in Alaska on account of the hurricane.
DC small claims court really requires that you be around. Schedules change, and all.
I think your step-dad should deliver the letter in person. And after he hands it over, say he'll wait for the money.