The NY Daily News had "House of Turds" yesterday, which seemed surprisingly profane even for a tabloid.
"LA CAPITAL SIN CAPITAL" is better if you don't read Spanish.
Also, don't make fun of the poor woman who lost her eye.
Huh. I thought your hair was curly.
It is, or at least much wavier than the hair on the girl in the picture. But I just figured it'd be the wavy version of that haircut.
I know a sixteen-year-old D&D nerd boy who rocks exactly that haircut.
Sally's cool musical friend (that is, a fourteen year old boy) who just left public nerd school for public art school has that haircut.
Hmm. I think I'll be able to tell us apart.
I don't see how you can wear that haircut without brushing it over your face, because isn't the point of it that it's roughly the same length all the way round (with a loophole to squint through)?
I have to say that I think the curly/wavy version of that haircut is a completely different animal than the straight version. Might look good, but it won't be recognizable as in any way the same thing (beyond the words 'chin length' being applicable to it).
More importantly: http://www.buzzfeed.com/erinlarosa/for-everyone-who-has-a-thing-for-redhead-men
I suppose I want a bob where the back is the longest part and the front is a little longer than nose length.
Does your nose hang low?
Does it wobble to and fro?
Can you tie it in a knot,
Can you tie it in a bow?
11: McManus, we need your measurements, please.
I know a sixteen-year-old D&D nerd boy who rocks exactly that haircut
It's an extremely common teenage boy haircut over here. Possibly popularised in part by these people.
10 lists some surprisingly persuasive arguments.
I hadn't considered the case carefully enough before, but will have to ponder it some more now that it has been brought to my attention.
I just feel like, since I am not young like the model in the picture, that the 16 year old boy comparison won't actually jump out at people...And since I would tuck it behind my ears, and keep the hair out of my face, like a sane person.
I want to see what the haircut Iain Banks invented looks like - the "Eye Cut", where every hair on the head almost reaches the closest eye.
I was also going to ask if you are planning on joining a boy band.
Heebie what about this kind of a style?
18: Oh, I don't think it'll look anything like the emo-teenager look on you, given the curliness and your non-emo-teenagerness. I was just making fun of the picture as not having any relationship at all to what a grownup with curly hair would look like with any haircut at all.
10, 16: I briefly dated a boy at MIT with hair the exact color of copper wire. Man, he was pretty.
I confess that I was not familiar with the term "DTF".
On the rest of the OP:
Fox: A GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN? Not really -- turns out it's more of a SLIMDOWN
That's really what they're after.
SP noted in the other thread that the point was to, er, slim down government by first shutting it all down, then restarting only select portions. I think that's about right. Someone from CATO on a Diane Rehm discussion panel the other day kept saying: Well, the national parks should be privatized or returned to the states anyway! This, that, and the other thing should just be privatized or localized.
Why? Well, he said, then those functions wouldn't suffer in the case of government shutdown.
That is an awesome case of circular reasoning! You almost have to admire it.
Sorry, maybe CATO shouldn't be in all caps. Cato. Institute.
The Kato Institute wants to privatize your pool house.
Although I pride myself on keeping up with the times, there is a major blind spot that has developed since moving away from Austin, which is basically that I never see anyone trendy in person. It is really weird how awful the fashion sense at Heebie U is. As in, there is no fashion-conscious subset. It's probably what I miss most about Austin: seeing people put a lot of effort into awesome outfits.
All this is to say that the "teenage boy!" comments are not actually getting under my skin, but I also didn't see it coming.
I also didn't see it coming.
Maybe it's the hair in your eyes.
From the time I was a teenage boy (1996-?) until recently, it was typical for teenage boys to have really short hair. But it seems to have changed, oddly correlated with longish/shaggy hair on the cultural figures most detested by teenage boys, Justin Bieber and One Direction.
My wife basically has that haircut. Her hair is wavy, and unless she straightens or styles it actively [even just a quick dry with a hair-dryer and 2 minutes with some tongs], it looks nothing like that when left fairly natural.
re: 10 and 16
The gene is common as shit where I'm from, obviously. Both my sister's kids are ginger, my beard comes in ginger if I grow it [and my hair goes gingery if I grow it long and it gets any sun, it only looks dark because it's short], my Dad's beard is also red, and Alex [our baby, not Ranter] has reddish blonde hair.
25: CATO in the amateur rocket community refers to the not entirely uncommon situation of the rocket blowing up instead of taking off. It stands for Catastrophe At Take Off. I would support such an institute.
I'm liking the hairstyle, heebie, though I think that probably just means I'm contemplating a cut again. Or else I'll just keep it long and pulled back and let the baby keep yanking out the hair at the back of my neck every time she's ready to have a nap. (Do white people with curly or wavy hair have anything unusual about the hair there at the nape of the neck? It's notoriously kinky and "unmanageable" in black circles, but I've wondered how much of that is due to how it gets rubbed by collars, etc. rather than inherent qualities.)
Isn't there a general rule of thumb that if you start with someone attractive, anything unusual about them makes the attractiveness more intense? I mean, the boy I dated would have been goodlooking regardless of hair color, the new-penny hair just made him pop out against a drabber background.
32: Buck has a transition from dead-straight, fine, silky hair as what remains of the hair on his head, to coarser curlyish hair at his hairline on the nape of the neck; it looks like the nape-of-the-neck hair matches his beard or body hair, rather than his head hair. Is that the sort of thing?
FWIW, I basically had that haircut, too. Aged about 5 to about 10. Slightly shorter fringe [bangs]. Reddish blonde, too.
Evidence:
http://oi40.tinypic.com/25zhw6s.jpg
http://oi41.tinypic.com/2m4p1yh.jpg
[Plus 'of their era' NHS specs]
If you want your hair to look anything like that, Heebie, you'll need to make sure that the haircutting person takes a careful look at how your bangs curl before he or she starts snipping. The front part of my hair is much, much curlier than the back part, so it needs to be left twice as long as the rest to appear half as short (it seems).
contemplating a cut again
Man, am I sick of my hair. It's about as long as it ever gets (bra strap) and I've got it coiled up in a half-ass french roll all the time. Maybe I'll get it hacked off to chin length again.
But it seems to have changed, oddly correlated with longish/shaggy hair on the cultural figures most detested by teenage boys, Justin Bieber and One Direction.
Teenage boys' haircuts are oddly correlated with teenage boys' haircuts?
OT: I know this is the hair thread, but just a brief tangent: when you apply for a health insurance plan through an exchange, and a possible subsidy is calculated, the subsidy is based on your anticipated income in 2014.
I'd thought that was anticipated 2014 gross income, but is it adjusted gross income? Someone on the radio just said so.
I just got an email from my sister, asking me to arbitrate. What do you guys think:
***
I'm sorry to say you've been recruited as arbiter of a family dilemma.
Everyone involved has agreed to follow your judgment.
Here's the sitch, characters have been renamed to remain nameless:
Children Triangle and Rectangle both love Pokémon. LOVE Pokémon.
Some Pokémon cards are more valuable than others. Pokémon cards must be in pristine condition to be tradable. Trading is desirable.
One night Child Triangle is showering. Child Rectangle enters bathroom with one of Triangle's favorite Pokémon cards in hand and proceeds to toss it around. Card ends up in shower where it gets wet and damaged. Child Triangle is distraught. Tears everywhere, retribution demanded.
Parents agree that Rectangle must purchase a replacement card for Triangle.
Fast forward a few weeks: A new exact replacement card has been procured off EBay. It cost $16 and is in mint condition and arrived in a cool protective case. Child Triangle is very happy with the new card, Child Rectangle is lighter 16 bucks.
NOW.
What happens with the original slightly water damaged card? I see two outcomes.
1. Does Triangle keep it? This would give him one (new) card to trade and one (damaged) card to keep in his own deck.
OR
2. Does Rectangle get it? His "debt" has been repaid, his brother is neither worse nor better off than before the shower incident (maybe a tiny bit better off because of the new fancy case). Triangle has a new card, and therefore has no claim on the old card. Rectangle gets to keep old card for his own deck.
What does the law say??
Please and thank you.
This is hard. Triangle has been made whole. What is it to him if Rectangle has the damaged card.
But, Rectangle can't go forcing the sale of cards to himself by taking them carelessly into showers.
Man, am I sick of my hair. It's about as long as it ever gets (bra strap) and I've got it coiled up in a half-ass french roll all the time. Maybe I'll get it hacked off to chin length again.
If it's like Laure Berthaud, you can just think of yourself as a dangerous, elite French cop.
Confiscate all the Pokemon cards as punishment for being suckers to a slick and cynical marketing ploy? (God I hate Pokemon. At least people actually played Magic: The Gathering.)
Rectangle can't go forcing the sale of cards to himself
He wouldn't force the sale of a card to himself. For the same amount of money, he would have an undamaged card *of his own* in a fancy case. Judge Wapner says damaged card to Rectangle.
Also, I'll be very happy when Noah graduates from Pokemon to fantasy football, like his older brother, so that the incessant babble will at least be comprehensible.
40: Rectangle keeps the damaged card. He could have had a perfect card by buying the replacement off ebay for himself even if he'd done nothing wrong, so there's nothing enabling wrongdoing by letting him have a copy of the bought. The punishment for the wrongdoing is that he gets the damaged card, not the perfect card. As a check on why this makes sense, giving the damaged card to Triangle would be a windfall. He started with a perfect card, and ends with a perfect card, but there's no reason he should make a profit on the deal.
43: Given that I look startlingly like the linked actress, the haircut in question would almost certainly look just as good on me. I enjoy self delusion.
There is an innocent third party that also enjoys Pokemon. We could award the damaged card to him.
44: People play Pokemon. Mine have outgrown it, but they did actually play the game with other kids. (Newt's actually become re-interested in a similar card game, Yu-Gi-Oh or something like that, and 'duels' his friends at school.)
33: Presumably on the same principle as:
In time of war, too, they relaxed the severity of the young men's discipline, and permitted them to beautify their hair and ornament their arms and clothing, rejoicing to see them, like horses, prance and neigh for the contest. Therefore they wore their hair long as soon as they ceased to be youths, and particularly in times of danger they took pains to have it glossy and well-combed, remembering a certain saying of Lycurgus, that a fine head of hair made the handsome more comely still, and the ugly more terrible.
But does Triangle even care to have the water-damaged card any more?
As far as the law goes, and I am not a lawyer, the damaged card is Triangle's if he/she even wants it. Rectangle damaged Triangle's property, and the damaged property remains Triangle's.
The replacement agreement really should have included something about the fate of the damaged card to begin with.
As a victorious tort plaintiff, triangle is entitled to full compensation of all damages, which may include emotional damage and time spent cardless, to the extent significant damage was suffered and can be calculated. It goes beyond the market value of the original card and may or may not exceed the value of the new card. You would have to figure that out.
Depending on house rules, you may also want to award punitive damages, which could include or even exceed the value of the old card.
This all assumes that you have found rectangle to be completely at fault, of course.
48: Is there some other fact that's driving a "Maybe Rectangle should get nothing" position? Because I'm not seeing it.
Imagine he'd bought the card before damaging his brother's -- at that point, switching them would be fair, right? Giving the innocent brother the good card and taking the wet card away from the guilty brother would be overkill. So why would you consider that just because the good card was bought after the offense?
Are we really talking about two children with Pokémon cards or is this all a metaphor for some greater family dilemma? Because my instinct is with 45 and 47, but if I learned that we were really talking about, say, your adult cousin who backed his car over his sister-in-law's dog, my answer might change.
39: Technically it's "modified adjusted gross income", which I'm guessing for your purposes will be functionally equivalent to AGI (relevant adjustments to AGI can be found here).
This could go either way, but I say Triangle keeps the damaged card. On the one hand, Rectangle has now clearly overpaid for Triangle's actual damages -- he hasn't just paid the difference in lost value as between damaged card and the card before it was damaged, but has shelled out for an entirely new card, thus putting Triangle into arguably a better place than he would have been without Rectangle's misconduct. Thus, in terms of actual damages, Rectangle has overpaid, and might be legitimately entitled to keep the card.
However, I think that the better theory is to view Rectangle's "overpayment" as a form of punitive damages. You don't just want to restore the parties to the status quo ante, you also want to create a strong disincentive and deterrent to future bad conduct by both Triangle and Rectangle. Rectangle's conduct was intentional and reckless, caused grave annoyance to all around, and you as a parent want to make sure it never happens again. Accordingly, Triangle should keep both cards.
I could imagine a position where the idea was that Rectangle had committed two offenses: (1) damaging his brother's card, for which the penalty was replacing it, and (2) deliberately trying to upset his brother or hurt his feelings, which requires an additional punishment. Is that it? Because I could see that as a source for an additional punishment, but I wouldn't tie it to the particular card. And if I hadn't announced it at the time of the incident, I'd think I'd missed my chance of having it make sense.
To make it concrete, I could see it making sense if, on the day of the fateful shower, the parents had said "Rectangle, you need to replace Triangle's card. And, because you were being mean, not just careless, your entire set of cards is confiscated for [appropriate time period]." But I think that should have been done at the time of the shower or not at all.
55: And in more summarized form, here.
Triangle is entitled to keep both cards as a matter of law, but Triangle should also be privately pressured to give the damaged card to Rectangle, because Rectangle is sorry, and has paid for his error, and to hoard both cards would be kind of dickish.
55: Thanks, Kermit. Indeed "modified adjusted gross income" was the term the gentleman on the radio used. I know I could have looked into this myself, but there are experts here. Appreciated.
56: I strongly dislike the 'windfall to Triangle' aspect of it. Having two kids myself, the injured party is never absolutely innocent, and providing an incentive to a kid to appear to have been the injured party is just asking for theatrics. I'd destroy or give away the damaged card before giving it to Triangle -- additional punishment for Rectangle might be reasonable, but not in the form of a profit to Triangle.
58: Thanks to Minivet as well. All informed input is highly appreciated.
Giving the innocent brother the good card and taking the wet card away from the guilty brother would be overkill.
I would frame the issues as: (1) what are the actual damages for losing the original card? (2) are paying those damages sufficient to deter future tortious behavior?
If the answer to (2) is no, then additional damages would need to be assessed. This may or may not exceed the value of the new card.
We have no way of making these determinations with the present level of information. They would be questions for a jury.
Clearly, if your sister can't handle a simple matter like this she's an unfit parent.
Megan, you are morally obligated to demand custody of all her children.
And, of course, you won't allow them to waste any more time and money on Pokemon cards.
She's a great parent! I also sent her the link to this discussion.
Hang on, hang on. I have never played the Pokemon card game, but according to Wikipedia, "Players begin by shuffling their decks and drawing seven cards." If the card is water damaged, it will be crinkly and obvious in the deck. The damaged card should be garbage, because no one can play with that in their deck. It's worthless both for trading and play.
65: Oh! In that case, I was just kidding!
providing an incentive to a kid to appear to have been the injured party is just asking for theatrics
I agree that this is an important point! I'd be inclined to give the card away. Not, of course, that I have two children myself, so what do I know?
IME, cards get beat up enough that a little water damage wouldn't make a card unusable.
The water-damaged card should be sold to pay the lawyers in this thread.
providing an incentive to a kid to appear to have been the injured party is just asking for theatrics
Certainly true, but here you have two legitimate claims to have been the injured party, whichever way the decision comes down. I think that realistically 59 is the best solution, because it combines both deterrence and reconciliation.
Reward the damaged Pokemon card to whichever child can demonstrate a mastery of point-count bidding. If neither can, destroy the card.
Certainly true, but here you have two legitimate claims to have been the injured party, whichever way the decision comes down
I'm not seeing it -- when I say 'injured party', I mean 'injured by the sibling'. As the story was told, Rectangle wrecked Triangle's stuff unprovoked, Triangle didn't do anything wrong. Rectangle doesn't have any claim to being the injured party, the only question is how punished should he be for the wrongdoing.
55 -- I had seen that it was adjusted, but my income is highly variable, so I've been wondering whether I'm supposed to go with 2012 (which I need to get done next week), 2013 which I can sort of guess at, or 2014, as to which I have no idea at all. I guess I should read the links.
Pokemon cards: collateral source rule, original owner keeps the card.
cards get beat up enough that a little water damage wouldn't make a card unusable.
I question whether this is true for a card game in which new cards are introduced to the deck by means of purchase and/or trade, and everyone scrupulously tries to maintain the condition of the cards to preserve their trade value. If the water damage is such a BFD, then it has to be noticeable.
Does Triangle keep it? This would give him one (new) card to trade and one (damaged) card to keep in his own deck.
If the card was damaged enough to be marked (that is, recognizable from the back), then he really doesn't have two cards. If it wasn't that damaged, then replacement with a M/NM card seems like it was excessive. Sure, respecting others' property may be an important lesson, but Triangle hadn't completely lost the use of the first card.
Then again, I was talked down about $10 in value due to the condition of my side of a Magic card trade two days ago, so I'm not the most cutthroat card trader out there.
My guess is that rectangle has already learned the appropriate lesson. The goal now is to minimize whining.
I question whether this is true for a card game in which new cards are introduced to the deck by means of purchase and/or trade, and everyone scrupulously tries to maintain the condition of the cards to preserve their trade value
These are children, who haul the cards around to school and such. My kids may have been unusually careless with their stuff, probably were, but the cards that they played with got pretty grubby.
The only possible way to deal fairly with a Pokemon issue is to time travel to 1945 and insert a clause in the peace treaty outlawing its export for all time.
I've actually spent enough time listening to Pokemon blather that I'm wondering what card, specifically, it was.
74 -- Oh, maybe I misunderstood you. I thought you were saying that you wanted Rectangle to keep the damaged card, because Triangle has been fully compensated and if Rectangle doesn't get to keep the damaged card he can make a claim to having been treated unfairly (MOM he already HAS a new card that I PAID FOR). But the problem is that if Rectangle keeps the damaged card, Triangle can also claim to still be an injured party. (MOM why does he get to keep MY CARD that he RUINED that was MY CARD BEFORE). So both sides have legitimate claims to ongoing injury, no matter how the decision comes down.
Which is why 59 is the best solution -- Rectangle's bad conduct works a forfeiture to punish him and establish that justice on malefactors will be done, but Triangle is encouraged to be a decent person and reconcile privately with his brother going forward.
I may have woken this morning to shouts of, "Dad, dad, dad" and wandered out of bed at 6:00 a.m. only to be greeted with the information that there was no emergency and a series of facts about Liepard and how Purrloin evolves into it.
I think my sister proposed the solution in 59. I don't think Triangle was receptive.
75.1: Yeah. I'll read the links too in a bit -- I'm giving it some time for kinks on my state's exchange to be worked out anyway. Sort of wondering what kind of consequences there might be if you underestimate your projected AGI for 2014. My income is quite variable, yep.
Eh. I kind of hate 59, both because of the windfall-to-Triangle-providing-an-incentive-to-appear-put-upon problem I've brought up before, and because I generally dislike emotional pressure of the form "Sure, this is yours, and you have a right to keep it, but I'll be sad and think you're a bad, mean person if you do." Guilt-tripping sucks.
Well, then Triangle should just get to keep both cards, full stop. Done and done.
Commenting on my phone, so I'm slow. Still, whether the card is too damaged or not seems relevant. Either it can be shuffled and is indistinguishable on the back, or it isn't.
Right now I'm leaning toward neither kid getting the card.
No windfall for Triangle.
No gain for Rectangle, who can't have had good intentions when he brought a treasured card into a shower.
OT: One or more of you reprobates has a lot to answer for: Erotic Vampire Bank Heist. Back in print!
ASSUMING NO TRANSACTION COSTS, FROM AN EFFICIENCY PERSPECTIVE, IT DOESN'T MATTER WHO YOU GIVE THE DAMAGED CARD TO. THE DECISION ONLY AFFECTS THE DISTRIBUTIONAL OUTCOME.
See, that would have been funnier if had been signed with a casual "Ronald".
Destroying the card is lame. Then both kids will feel resentful and Mom will look insane and overly harsh. And I think "windfall" isn't exactly the right way to look at it, realistically -- his brother did something bad, and now he's in a slightly better position, but that better position realistically and clearly results from a punishment from one kid being an ahole with his brother's stuff. They can work things out going forward, but in the knowledge that being an ahole with the other brother's stuff will produce bad results.
Rectangle gets the card, but is enrolled in experimental pediatric drug trials.
90: There's also this to explain.
If the card is ruined for trade but still desirable for play, then Rectangle had to pay an amount greater than the value that he destroyed. Rectangle should get the card.
95: What the hell is wrong with this fallen world?
Oh, right.
89: If it were me, I'd be drawing a firm, clear line in communications with Rectangle between damages and punishment: replacing the card happened because that's what you do when you wreck someone's stuff, and while the parents are enforcing it, that's basically a transaction between the two kids. Not giving the damaged card to Rectangle, otoh, is punishment for being mean, and that's between Rectangle and the parents. I think making it all one thing encourages seeing Triangle as a source of unfairness.
(This is still harsher on Rectangle than I'd naturally be inclined to be; that is, for an honestly accidental wrecking of a sibling's stuff, I'd largely chalk it up to 'these things happen, it'll happen the other way next week.' But if punishment beyond replacement seems appropriate to the parents on the basis of all the facts, they're there and I'm not.)
They all agreed to arbitration by me, so I'm the one who will look insane and overly harsh. (Which isn't a factor in my mind.)
In that case, cut both cards in half and give each one half of each card. Then walk away singing the Horst Wessel Lied.
My sister reports that the card is a Kyogre EX, full art.
How much of a hit the $16 for the kid is is also relevant. If, by itself, paying $16 is an enormous punishment given Rectangle's assets, the issue of what to do with the remaining card becomes much less important and maybe Rectangle even keeps it, having been punished severely already. If $16 doesn't mean that much to Rectangle, no way should he also keep the damaged card.
for an honestly accidental wrecking of a sibling's stuff
And that Rectangle went into the bathroom where his brother was showering with intent to cause mischief.
He didn't accidently set the card down on the table where tea had spilled earlier. There was no reason either Rectangle or the Kyogre EX needed to be in the bathroom during Triangle's shower.
85: I believe that if your income ends up more than you estimated, then when you file your taxes for 2014, the IRS will calculate the extra subsidies you got in error and bill you for them.
But Rectangle already coughed up 16 bucks for the replacement—and that's replacement, as in, it's replacing the original item, not augmenting it—so he got punished. Triangle's been made better than whole, and we've all learned a valuable lesson, and I swear to god if I hear another word about the goddamn Pokemon I'm taking all the cards until you two can show me that you can handle having them without giving me a goddamn rash.
So, is $16 one of the most expensive cards or are some worth considerably more? Unrelatedly, what does a good scanner and a color printer that can handle card stock cost?
Since it seems like we're talking about actual kids and actual Pokémon cards, and not, say, your adult cousin who backed his car over his sister-in-law's dog, then I think it's important to w: how old are Triangle and Rectangle?
104: That's what I meant -- if it were honestly accidental, I might not even require replacement, just leave it as 'these things happen'. Requiring replacement seems like enough of a punishment that it already responds to a certain amount of the wrongdoing.
OK, I don't know about Pokémon but Magic cards with full art are generally more valued for trading than for play, so I and all my experience are apparently just completely useless here.
107.last: I like the way you think.
At the rate this is going, soon they'll have to sell both cards to pay the legal fees.
Screw card games- at least with Beyblades you get to smash shit together.
I doubt $16 means that much to Rectangle. He probably care if he had actual ones in his hand, but he's not that aware of abstract stuff. A change in an account balance won't register with him.
What color is the hair on the pokemon that is on the damaged card?
I went looking for the TX representative whose puffy lips best matched the model, noticed that all young TX reps are D and all old ones are R.
Begludship's pardon--victim of rash action--shower.
The most fair solution is to allow Rectangle to keep the damaged card, and then allow Triangle to choose a card of Rectangle's, deliberately damage it, buy a new replacement for Rectangle, and then let Triangle keep that damaged card.
107, 112: The parents in this thread are easy to spot.
This is all a trick question. Kyogre Ex is a Water Pokemon -- water couldn't damage it.
Parents of siblings, particularly.
What color is the hair on the pokemon that is on the damaged card?
"To you and me, it would look like a killer whale. No hair."
Whales must have hair, somewhere.
how old are Triangle and Rectangle?
Triangle is 9.
Rectangle is 7.
I feel like I'm watching an episode of Everybody Loves Raymond.
Kyogre (Japanese: カイオーガ Kaiorga) is a Water-type legendary Pokémon.
It is not known to evolve into or from any other Pokémon. [Here's your problem right here.]
Kyogre possesses the ability to expand the oceans. In ancient times, it came into conflict with Groudon, a Pokémon with the ability to expand continents. In Pokémon Sapphire and Emerald, Kyogre is sought after by Team Aqua as part of their plot to create more habitats for aquatic Pokémon by raising the sea level.
Kyogre is the version mascot of Pokémon Sapphire, appearing on the boxart.
Along with Groudon and Rayquaza, Kyogre is a part of the weather trio.
If there isn't a sibling who is 5.657 years old, that family isn't right.
It's a blue and white whale, with red-traced wings.
I know 118 sounds complicated, but it solves all of the problems posed by the question.
(Don't apply Weakness and Resistance for Benched Pokémon.)
From now on, when you buy them presents, you should always buy two and damage one, and then put the damaged one in storage, to head this sort of thing off in the future.
"Here's a puppy for you."
"Her er en wallaby for dig."
I asked the two children nearest me, who both immediately said Triangle gets it. Rectangle shouldn't automatically get something for having been obnoxious. If Triangle doesn't want it, he can give it to Rectangle or to a friend or throw it away.
I might pass this query on to one of my email groups: it contains two high-level* Pokémon player-collectors, one of whom is also a parent of two (three and five, I think).
*As in: has been playing-collecting for 15 years or more.
124 - hang on, I thought the situation had been anonymised for you!
Background reaction? As the arbitrator, you may not be in possession of this information. But I would be strongly inclined to decide in a way most damaging to the interests of the party who made enough of a fuss that an outside arbitrator other than the parent was called for. (That is, presumably there was a preliminary decision either that the damaged card should stay with Triangle or go to Rectangle, and the aggrieved child whined until an appeal to Aunt Megan was granted.) In the parents' shoes, I'd want to set a precedent that appeals are dangerous and usually turn out badly for the appellant. (What I would actually do is laugh at the child who suggested that there was any authority higher than I am, and tell them to be out of sight in their room before I stopped laughing and got seriously annoyed.)
137 - there was a sketch on R4 about something like that last night.
Hold on a second... These aren't kids, they're GEOMETRICAL SHAPES!
136 - it was! But there is absolutely no doubt in my mind who the shit disturber that broke into the bathroom would be.
presumably there was a preliminary decision
My sister reports that this has been going on for weeks with the damaged card sitting in the fruit bowl. No one can touch it or forget it. She'd have made a choice, but her boyfriend feels strongly about the other choice. (He plays Pokemon with the boys, so I'd give it to him, but my sister thinks he probably doesn't want it.)
This is funny. C has now turned up and is arguing strongly for Rectangle, that Triangle should not end up in credit. He has persuaded one of the children. I would be so pissed off by now that I would quite honestly burn it.
(What I would actually do is laugh at the child who suggested that there was any authority higher than I am,
Hawaiian Punch has gotten the impression that Jammies is a higher authority than I am. Yet she mostly pulls this out when I'm grumpy and exhausted and am quite happy for her to go pester Jammies instead of me. I really need to reign that in.
Rectangle would be of a more dignified caste than Triangle, except for his irregularity, which is a serious problem. Keep the card in escrow so that it can be given to him if and when he grows into a proper Square.
Why is "forever sat in the fruit bowl" not the solution -- like a head on a pole over Traitor's Gate?
But there is absolutely no doubt in my mind who the shit disturber that broke into the bathroom would be.
Aha! I think you should be disqualified as an impartial arbitrator in this matter. Rectangle should lawyer up.
(Confidential to Rectangle: CALL ME.)
Boyfriend is not the father of the children. But his preferences matter!
Hmmm. 115 is a strong fact that favors Triangle keeping the card -- the $16 hasn't actually been much of a punishment for Rectangle.
On the other hand, 124 (the fact that Triangle is two years older than Rectangle, and that Rectangle is 7), combined with the fact that Triangle has strongly rejected any possibility of voluntarily relinquishing the card, cuts the other way. It may be that Triangle is kind of a dick. But 141 (this was supposed to be anonymized, but Rectangle is enough of a shit-starter so that we know that he was the one who started the shit) cuts the other way again -- it may be that Rectangle is sufficiently a dick to excuse Triangle's dickishness.
At the end of the day, I come back to "Triangle keeps the card." Rectangle now has been punished and is less likely to cause problems in the future, and hopefully Triangle will be mature enough to reconcile with Rectangle going forward.
150: At this point, I'm with Asilon. The only solution is for all of both Triangle and Rectangle's cards to be used as kindling, and Pokemon never to be mentioned in the household again. See if they make a fuss about the next squabble.
148 - nail it to the wall, with "sort out your own fucking arguments, munchkins" scrawled next to it.
This is already long past the point where I usually erupt in a profanity-laced tirade at my kids about behaving like whiny-assed babies over a stupid game that neither one of you can play worth a damn anyhow and go right ahead and cry, you're only proving my point. Oh yeah? Well I hate you too sometimes and right now is one of those times, but you're just stuck with a fascist bastard of a daddy because nobody's going give a job to a couple of spoiled shits that would have a weeks-long fit over a goddamned piece of Japanese paperboard anyhow.
Because I'm a feminist.
142 is amazing. I'd assumed this question had just come up, and Megan was being consulted basically out of boredom/because it might make for interesting conversation, sort of the same way that Megan pitched it to us. The fact that actual adults have spent real time (when they were not procrastinating on the internet) trying to decide this question is madness.
I had that haircut for a while in my early twenties. The problem with it was either you tucked your hair behind your ears and looked like an idiot or you couldn't see.
Destroy the damaged card, restoring the status quo ante. Rectangle is punished by having to spend money, Triangle is made whole, everything is fine.
||
To the pessimists who were predicting the American public wouldn't notice the shutdown: my freaking Cal II students actually knew there was a shutdown, and the general sentiment was "they need to stop acting like babies and start governing".
In contrast, I have a vivid memory of my first semester at University of Michigan, and a professor asked "How many of you know there's a government shutdown going on?" and maybe three of us raised our hands. This was a week into the shutdown or so.
So boy were we idiots. In conclusion.
|>
To the pessimists who were predicting the American public wouldn't notice the shutdown: my freaking Cal II students actually knew there was a shutdown, and the general sentiment was "they need to stop acting like babies and start governing".
"They" meaning "congress" or "they" meaning "Republicans"? Because I think the pessimists' fear was that too many people would think the former, not that they literally would be unaware of the shutdown.
Or an Upworthy video. Nobody's going to see that ending coming.
159: I was at Ohio State at the time and we all knew everything about the shutdown in great detail.
160: Probably the former, I admit. But! Still surprisingly more awake than my cohort was.
Let me hide in your basement for a couple of days and I'll put the fear back in them for you.
Side question, since it's possible that the Pokemon discussion is starting to run out of steam (my initial response: Rectangle should get the damaged card, but this thread has convinced me that it isn't as obvious as I would have originally thought).
As an adult, how does one evaluate the correctness of one's opinions about politeness/ appropriate social behavior?
Somehow the discussion about kids reminded me of a moment a couple of months back. I was with a friend, downtown, I had gotten an ice cream cone, and then the friend wanted to stop in the drugstore down the block to pick up something. I offered to wait outside and hold the cone, and my friend looked surprised and said I should just come in.
My default assumption was, "this isn't a public space, it's a place of business, and bringing an ice cream cone into the store is disrespectful to their space." I believe my friend's position was, essentially, "If I had just gotten an ice cream cone, and remembered that I needed something at the drug store and didn't go get it, because I was holding the ice cream that would hurt them, because they wouldn't get my business. If it's okay for me to walk in holding an ice cream cone, why wouldn't it be okay for you to do so?"
My question isn't, "who's right?" but, rather, the epistemological question, how would I decide what was right? Normally one learns social norms by watching how other people behave, and seeing how they respond to your behavior. But in this case neither seems likely to provide guidance -- people with ice cream cones are rare enough that if I saw one in a store I would just think that person was rude, rather than thinking that my standards were wrong. What's more, if I walk into the store with a cone as an adult, and don't look like I'm going to drip on anything, I doubt anybody will say anything to me.
I can ask unfogged, of course, but short of that, I feel like I just have to decide on my personal standards, and I have no real way to know how well they match up with other people's beliefs.
Sometimes Nick, you make my head spin.
I feel like I just have to decide on my personal standards, and I have no real way to know how well they match up with other people's beliefs.
This is the tragedy of modern life.
Except that of course you can bring the ice cream cone into the drug store. Jeeez!
how would I decide what was right?
Stating the obvious here, but Ask The Mineshaft. You have a smartphone that allows you to outsource all minor life decisions to a gang of procrastinating lunatics you've largely never met, right?
Sometimes I do a bad job of explaining things (though I thought that was okay -- I suppose, the question isn't very specific; just something that's been bouncing around my head. I think it's an interesting idea to ponder, but I'm not completely clear myself on what I'm asking of the mineshaft. But I decided it was worth sharing anyway).
Even if I'm not eating an ice-cream cone* I prefer to stay outside when a pal is buying something and I'm not, unless I'm needed to look for something or carry it. Moving or standing I will be in the way somewhere, for someone. Near the till I will create gravitational interference in the queue, relative to its sensible formation. Away from the till I will worry the shop-owner -- am I about to seize something and do a runner? So unless it's raining or the store has vast areas of space where you can stand away from stuff and folks, or read a notice-board or such, I'm outside, with Nick. Even if it's raining, a little rain never hurt anyone. Umbrellas are evil.
*I never eat ice-cream cones.
Most drug stores here sell ice cream cones (pre-made ones in the freezer). If you take one in, you'll get stopped for shoplifting and murdered in prison.
173: Who was the crazy conservative that thought it was obscene for people to eat ice cream cones in public?
171: I thought you were perfectly clear. It seemed to me you might be overthinking things a bit. Of course, no one does that here ever.
167:Ain't no eating in food-buying places that aren't also obvious eating places, because stealing and mess. I would also not take my half-consumed watermelon slice or cheese burger through a private front door.
How to decide?
1st rule:Don't embarrass.
2nd rule:Don't eat what you don't share, if there is going to be interaction.
175: Leon Kass, head bioethicist for G. W. Bush.
Of course you can't bring your ice cream into a drug store!
It is a kind of playing God with genetics.
My default assumption was, "this isn't a public space, it's a place of business, and bringing an ice cream cone into the store is disrespectful to their space."
You were correct, and your friend was rationalizing.
A general meta-rule is that you shouldn't contradict someone else's stated rules of mannerly behavior in the moment; once you said you'd stand outside with the cone, your friend shouldn't have tried to talk you out of it barring some reasonably genuine practical concern. There's no benefit to it and it only makes people doubtful.
I wouldn't take food into a shop. In fact, just this afternoon I saw two girls eating ice cream (out of tubs) in a shoe shop, and I was disapproving.
There's no benefit to it and it only makes people doubtful.
Because it's a sin to cast doubt about rules of mannerly behavior? Because once you start doubting manners there's no end to it? You may start with thinking maybe it's ok to eat an ice cream cone in a drug store, and then next you'll wonder whether you have to say thank you or please? And then you'll wonder why you can't just shoot people that annoy you?
Yeah, I guess that makes sense.
I guess the discussion has moved on, but if these kids had simply read the archives, they would have known better than to take a pokemon in the bathroom in the first place.
It seemed to me you might be overthinking things a bit.
Yes, clearly.
once you said you'd stand outside with the cone, your friend shouldn't have tried to talk you out of it barring some reasonably genuine practical concern.
The friend in question considers me generally conflict-averse (true) and is occasionally impatient with that fact. I think they tried to argue with me out of a sense of, "shouldn't the fact that we are hanging out together take precedence over your very vague sense that you might be behaving improperly in an trivial way."
Because it's actively rude to correct someone else's manners. And particularly pressuring someone to do something they think of as rude seems likely to make them feel bad unnecessarily.
185 displays truly impressive knowledge of the archives.
Going into a shop argues a temporary suspension of "hanging out together" -- unless you also need to shop or are needed to help them shop. You can't be hanging out when you're operating at different levels, everyone knows this.
I, too, am less interested in the specific question "who's right?" about the ice cream cone (answer: you--of course you shouldn't take it into the shop) and more interested in the epistemological question, how would one decide what was right?
Normally one learns social norms by watching how other people behave, and seeing how they respond to your behavior.
I grew up basically completely unsocialized, and I have found other people's reactions to behaviors to be a very poor guide to what is appropriate behavior. Far too many people try to be "polite" and not say anything to you, all while thinking you're a boor (and probably saying as much to everyone else, as soon as you've left the room). This can go on for years. Sure, eventually someone will probably offer you some guidance, but you may have done years worth of reputational damage in the interim. (This is the story of my adult life.)
A third child came home and found in favour of Triangle. Or giving it to charity (???). But Rectangle must not get it.
I have found other people's reactions to behaviors to be a very poor guide to what is appropriate behavior.
So what have you found to be a better alternative?
No ice cream in the store. It's not complicated. Also, you should immediately read this Neb-recommended book.
The Triangle/Rectangle dispute also reveals something important about the worship of private property in the common law and, by extension, in capitalism. Parsimon the non-lawyer was the only one to get the actual law right, in her original comment. Triangle originally had title to the card that Rectangle damaged. Rectangle's intentionally harmful act can't possibly work to transfer title to Rectangle. Triangle both retains title to the damaged card and is entitled to compensation (the compensation paid by Rectangle exceeded strict compensation, but that may be viewed as a form of punitive damages designed to deter bad conduct, and in any case the amount of damages paid are irrelevant to the transfer of title). That's how capitalism works. We are generally so solicitous of protecting people's property rights that we allow total rights of exclusion over what we hold title to and would never even consider transferring title from a holder to a non-holder in order to promote reconciliation or make the overall balance of the harms come out more "fairly."
The only reason why anyone here would even contemplate allowing Rectangle to take possession of a card that wasn't his to begin with is that we're dealing with children, upon whom we impose (by force) more communal rules about sharing because we assume that children are morally obligated to share. If we were talking about property as between adults there would be no question whatsoever that Triangle retains the damaged card, and that Rectangle would still have to pay full compensation and possibly some form of punitive damages as well.
I'm with team 'Don't take food into a shop'.*
189 is also right.
* not food packed in a shopping bag, or similar, obviously. I mean food one is consuming, or about to consume.
192: oh, nothing I'm aware of. I'm just saying that's not very good, not that anything else is better. (Actually, observation is much better, if you do it well. But from a position of ignorance it can be hard to disentangle permissible variations in individual mores from boorishness in others.) If anyone has a good answer to this question, I'd like to know.
Similarly, using one's phone will interacting with someone serving you (in a shop or café or whatever): not OK.
Similarly, using one's phone will interacting with someone serving you (in a shop or café or whatever): not OK.
I have occasionally answered my phone when it rang in the interval between handing cash to a teller and getting change back, but I HATED IT. Why is it that I'll get one phone call during a day, but it will be at an inconvenient moment (I think that scenario has happened twice and, seriously, I don't get many phone calls).
That's how capitalism works.
But I do not run my family according to capitalist principles. It's a Communist dictatorship and I'm the Stalin of the house.
Taking food into a shop is rude. Also, urple, what ever happened with the insanely racist committee to enforce racial boundaries and prop up the lily-white status quo? Did you ever tell us the end of that story?
re: 199.last
Was almost exactly my Dad's line, word for word.
196: I think the strategy I'd advise to someone in the situation you describe is to pick a friend/acquaintance and consciously imitate their manners -- someone you know well enough that you have a feel for the sort of thing they'd be likely to do, even if you're not sure why that's the rule. And then refine from there.
194: I think focusing on title can lead one astray here. True, as a legal matter, Triangle would retain title to the original card. But then the damages award would be reduced by the value of that card. In other words, the damages would be the diminution of value of the original card, not the full value of a new card, which may in fact have a superior casing or something.
Here we are trying to approximate something like a monetary award which encompasses loss of value, loss of use, and other emotional damages, plus whatever punitive damages would be necessary to ensure that Rectangle is properly deterred from future malfeasance. And we're trying to approximate it with only two cards, which can't simply be divided into subparts.
I would probably take an ice-cream cone into a store without thinking about it, unless I had been known to buy ice-cream from that store. That would make me feel weird, like I had something to prove.
But I also wouldn't tell my friend he had to come inside the store if he preferred not to, and I think that's the glaring rudeness here.
Here we are trying to approximate something like a monetary award which encompasses loss of value, loss of use, and other emotional damages,
This seems right to me, although my instinct is to treat loss of use and emotional damages as de minimus, and punitives as inappropriate. (Punishment by the parent as a separate matter, sure.) There's really no real-world legal situation where the remedy to damage to a chattel would be to supply a precisely similar chattel, whatever would happen to the damaged property in the end, or if there is I can't think of it.
I agree that in most situations, emotional damages would be de minimus and that loss of use would be de minimus if the card were actually replaced shortly after it was damaged via showering. But the issue of punitives really depends on the characteristics of the child, which I don't know. If the child is a constant tortfeasor in the home -- which he might be, I don't know -- then punitive damages might really be necessary to deter future torts.
Assuming that we can only award two cards, one card, or no card, and we want damages which most approximate a real world outcome of retention of the soiled card, plus compensatory damages, then I don't see how you get to more than the new card in a damages award. Transfer of the old card can only be justified as a punitive remedy.
I'm not trying to say that Megan should solve the situation by applying the common law. I'm saying the fact that the common law doesn't seem like the right thing to apply here indicates how deeply it enshrines property rights and foregoes more communal alternatives. What 205 is proposing is basically a kind of communism designed to be nice to the youngest kid, which is fine.
(To 205 last, not-really-related-to-the-above, the damages here were actually $16 (the only out-of-pocket cost to Rectangle) and we don't really know the difference between $16 and the dimunition in fair market value caused by the damage. Given that damaged cards are not tradeable but that undamaged cards are, the $16 could have been pretty close to the dimunitinon in FMV, with just a little bit added on for emotional/punitive/whatever else damages. So we don't really know how much in excess of just making T financially whole the $16 payment was).
202: right, that's what I meant by "observation", basically. But it's not always as easy as it sounds. E.g., I know I've told this story before: I went through all of my interviews in law school wearing a shiny green suit and a tie with a prominent stain. A classmate at one point mentioned to me "do you know you have a stain on your tie?" and I said "yes", without it clicking that they were trying to tell me that I shouldn't wear a stained tie to interviews. (I get it now; there's no need to explain.) And no one ever said anything about the suit, other than "that's a great suit!", which they meant as, roughly, either "what a lunatic" or "wow, I'd never be bold enough to wear a shiny green suit to very conversative interviews--best of luck." But again, that wasn't obvious to me. I could have mentally ticked through "what color suits do I see other people wearing? Are any shiny green? Does anyone else have stains on their ties?", and the answers would have been obvious once the questions were posed, but it wasn't even on my radar.
(And I realize after typing this whole comment that none of this "politeness", per se, although it does fall under the more general rubric of "appropriate social behavior".)
What 205 is proposing is basically a kind of communism designed to be nice to the youngest kid
I refute you thus: Is not.
I'm not sure the issue of tradability need be addressed. If the soiled card is untradeable, and the value of the card consists in it being tradeable, then it is of no or little value in its present condition and cannot serve as an adequate supplement to compensation or as a windfall. And neither child will want it. If the soiled card is tradable, then including it with the new card would exceed the monetary compensation damages which we are trying to approximate. Either way it stays with the tortfeasor unless we are awarding punitives.
Tradeability would only be relevant to a determination of the adequacy of the punitive award, if a punitive award is appropriate (and here we appear to be stipulating that it is not).
Without endorsing the prose style, what 211 said.
The issue of determining what the rules of acceptable behavior are reminds me a little bit of the frame problem in artificial intelligence (very roughly, how do you get an artificial intelligence that is considering a real-world problem to determine what is and is not a relevant consideration in solving the problem, without *actually* considering all of the borderline-relevant cases in exhaustive detail)
In other words, how can you single out the stained tie as a factor in your failure at job interviews without it already having occured to you that it must be a relevant consideration, and unless you're primed to see it as a relevant consideration, what is there (other than a bit of easily ignored banter) to make a stained tie stand out as a probable cause of failure?
I don't know how to solve these problems either.
Interrupting the complicated argument about torts to say a simple thing: I'm completely bewildered by the parents' intuitions on this! (As a non-parent, I guess I side with the squabbling siblings?) But it seems very clear to me that insofar as someone is going to end up with an additional damaged-but-potentially-still-usable-card, that someone should be the wronged party, not the wrongdoer. To call it a "windfall" for the wronged sibling ignores the fact that it would equally be a windfall for the wrongdoer, and, mom, that's not fa-a-i-ir.
Sure it is communism. What you're saying is that some outside governmental authority (i.e., Megan, the parents) should swoop in and take title from Triangle (without additional compensation for the loss of the damaged card) in order to force Triangle to share, based on a rough justice notion that Triangle has been compensated enough once the new card has been bought and should do something nice for his brother. That's just a total disregard of Triangle's property rights, or, put differently, a claim that Triangle's property rights aren't really his, but a part of the general communal property of the family, which the parent, as family dictator, retains ultimate ownership of and the ultimate right to allocate at will. Enforced sharing and allocation of resources through centralized control.
(Also, 211 is wrong, or at least weird. If the cards have no value unless they're tradeable, and the card was formerly tradeable but now is not, and a replacement card on Ebay costs $16, then $16 should be pretty close to the dimunition in FMV casused by Rectangle's actions -- in short, Triangle isn't getting much of a windfall at all. If the cards do retain some value despite being non-tradeable (it sounds like that's the case) the $16 may be more of a windfall. In any event, we don't really have enough information to know the extent to which the $16 exceeded what it would have cost to make Triangle whole in a strictly financial sense. And that leaves aside non-financial damage. Indeed, I'm just guessing, but if you include emotional damages then it may well be that the $16 payment was almost entirely compensatory, with no punitive component at all.)
It's funny to say something is wrong and then repeat it clumsily as proof.
RH, are you arguing that Triangle's damages are not reduced by return of the damaged card (if Triangle accepts tender of the damaged card)? The Restatement (Second) of Torts appears to be to the contrary. See § 922(1) ("The amount of damages for the conversion of a chattel is diminished by its recovery or acceptance by a person entitled to its possession.").
(On preview and noting 218, I guess it works if you assume that the damaged card now has zero value, but that seems like a strong assumption to make.)
In other words, if the price of the card is $16, we can simply call it "the price of the card" with the understanding that it is in fact $16. And since we are not awarding the $16, but the new card, it's no longer pertinent. And, as Halford notes, since a new card (worth $16) is being awarded, an additional valuable card would be appropriate only as an approximation of punitive damages. And if the card has been rendered completely worthless in the soiling, Triangle is being compensated fully in its replacement. If it still has value, then the loss of value is being compensated, and the additional valuable (though less valuable) soiled card is being retained with the understanding that Triangle has not suffered the entire loss of a card.
Assuming that the damaged card has zero value to the parties is clearly a wrong assumption, because they wouldn't be arguing about it otherwise. Obviously, in the courts you're generally going to be dealing with market values only, but in an informal adjudication of a dispute among children, recognizing the actual value of the contested item to the parties seems like a reasonable thing to do.
How did you end up with a shiny green suit, out of curiosity?
Without endorsing the prose style
LB, I've tried so many ways to please you. Pick a style and that will be my style until I am otherwise directed.
No, the tort remedy (setting aside punitives, emotional damages, etc.) is the dimunition in value of the damaged chattel. So if the card was formerly worth $14, and the damaged card is worth $7, the (purely financial) compensation due is $7.
In this case, based on what we know, it seems like the dimunition in value could have been pretty close to $16, which would make the actual damages paid almost entirely (but not entirely) compensatory. If you allowed emotional damages (which are ordinarily thought of as compensatory damages) the entire $16 payment could be considered purely compensatory, since the dimunition in value+value of remaining card+harm caused by emotional damage might equal $16.
But what would not happen would be a forced stripping of title from one party to the other, just because the damages paid arguably exceeded purely financial compensation. Rather, the party would be able to retain both the damaged property and the compensatory (and, for an intentional tort like this one in the United States, punitive) damages.
How did you end up with a shiny green suit, out of curiosity?
I didn't get it out of dullness, but I suppose the answer is both profligacy and curiosity.
I think rectangle gets the card on the "you break it you bought it" principle.
222 -- more communism! Now, the central property-allocation authority is basing things on its own assessment of the subjective value of the good to the property, not the market-set price.
It's not a forced stripping of title. On the facts, Rectangle has converted the card by exercising dominion over it and causing it substantial damages. When bringing suit, Triangle has the option of seeking either (a) just damages (full FMV) or (b) replevin (meaning, for non-lawyers, Triangle gets the card back) plus damages for diminution in value. Rectangle can tender the card to reduce Triangle's damages but I don't think Triangle is obligated to accept.
If Triangle has already sought and received full FMV for the card, that's an election of remedies. (That is, If Triangle wanted to keep the damaged card then he or she shouldn't have asked for a whole new one.)
226: Can we stipulate out the possible emotional damages? Because given that we have no way of quantifying them, throwing them in is a fudge factor that reduces the whole argument to 'seems fair to me'.
Talking only about compensatory damages for the damage to the card, because those can be discussed with precision, providing a new card to Triangle is overcompensation by precisely the amount of the residual value of the damaged card. This is true no matter what that residual value is. Due to the illiquid nature of a damaged Pokemon card, its fair market value is difficult to determine, but its actual value to the parties is clearly significant.
Therefore, after Rectangle delivers a new card to Triangle, Rectangle has overpaid by the (significant to the parties) value of the damaged card, and Triangle has a damaged card in his possession. The overpayment can't be quantified in money, but it can be precisely remedied by transferring the damaged card from Triangle to Rectangle.
But what would not happen would be a forced stripping of title from one party to the other, just because the damages paid arguably exceeded purely financial compensation.
Actually, I'd wager that if we were dealing with two real world items for which there was no working market, of approximately the same value, and one had been damaged in a manner which could not easily be determined, then that is exactly what would happen in the United States of America. If you gave me a westlaw password, I could probably find you a case.
I should just step out of this and let LB and RH have at it.
231 is also very nice, and looks perfectly accurate to me.
I don't think I've ever used 'replevin' in a professional context. I had a trespass to chattel case (a tort most easily described as "Mom! Billy touched my stuff!") once, but never anything where replevin was an issue.
235 crossed with 234, but really, I think 231 is the best lawyering in the thread so far. Anyway, I'm right, you're right, text is right, and Halford is consistent.
I think 231 is the best lawyering in the thread so far.
231 matches my naive intuition (which is, essentially, 229).
231 -- Replevin requires that the other person actually seized the thing and possess it (for non-lawyers, "replevin" means an action in which you send the sheriff over to take the property that is yours to obtain it again). It's basically a kind of remedy one has for property that's been transfered. Here, there's no question that the title was never transfered from Triangle to Rectangle, and that Rectangle doesn't actually possess the card, unless Megan now makes a determination that this is so. Instead, it's in a kind of escrow-like situation. What Rectangle is asking for is that he be awarded the card by virtue of having (possibly) overpaid for the damages that he caused.
I can't believe this is still going on. It's tempting to think: "If this is their tenacity when they're working for free, just imagine their tenacity when they're working on behalf of a paying client!" But, likely, no, when they're working on behalf of a paying client they're probably spending half their time commenting on blogs for free.
237: all law matches someone's naive intuition. That's how it became the law.
And the reasons why replevin don't apply here point to exactly why this is a situation where family communism, not the common law, applies. Replevin is often a difficult remedy to acheive because courts are reluctant to actually physically move around physical property after the fact -- even if its been improperly taken. Here, Rectangle doesn't have either de facto or de jure possession of the card, because it doesn't really belong to either party in the first place, it's ultimately property of the family to be disposed of at will.
236 is very kind and has shaken the resolve I expressed in 234.
To 238, on the facts, Rectangle clearly took possession of the card on the evening in question. After the act of conversion, Rectangle had possession of the card and Triangle had the option of damages or replevin as of that time. If Triangle sought replevin (or accepted tender), then the damage award should have been reduced below full FMV (unless the value of the damaged card is zero, which as set forth above I consider implausible).
It is possible given the way in which the facts are stated that on the night in question Triangle was awarded full FMV despite having also been awarded replevin (or accepted tender) of the card. In that case Triangle was overcompensated at that time and the court should reconsider the award and reduce it by the value of the damaged card. I concede that valuing the damaged card will be burdensome for the court, but the law is clear.
What Rectangle is asking for is that he be awarded the card by virtue of having (possibly) overpaid for the damages that he caused.
Under what valuation of the card could replacing it, and keeping the replaced card, not compensate Triangle for the full price? (this excludes emotional damages and loss of use damages, by stipulation).
In other words (and being only as pedantic as the situation warrants) if the card has been damaged 25% and it was originally worth $16, it is now worth $12. The new card is worth $16 (plus casing). In being given the new card and stripped, via communism, of the old card, Triangle is being compensated $4.
The same holds true for any value of damage, through the magic of algebra. This is why the valuation is not actually relevant, so long as we stipulate that the soiled card, in its pre-soiled condition, and the new card are worth the same price.
241: Oh, if you're going to stop pretending these are adults with actual property rights, then, yeah, whatever Mommy and Daddy say goes. But that's no fun.
ARE WE ALL SO SURE THAT RECTANGLE HAS NO RELEVANT COUNTERCLAIMS??
I wonder if Robert Halford believes it is communism to repay him a different $5 bill from the $5 bill he loaned me.
And 232.1 is basically saying "let's take the parties' subjective assessment of financial value of the card, but not the fair market value of the card, but not ascribe any value to emotional damages." In other words, you're just doing "it seems fair to me" in a different way.
There's no real way around that, and figuring out what is effectively "compensatory" damage and what is a "windfall" is basically a faux-quantitative illusion in this kind of context.
The lawyering is now well over my head, but 245 made me laugh out loud.
How sad is everyone about the White Nose Syndrome that is destroying colonies of bats? I'm terribly sad about it. Poor little fellows. I wish this awful civilization cared more about problems like that. How many more species will have gone extinct by the time my new niece is an old lady? It's all very depressing.
The main problem here is that the initial decision should have included a decision about the old card. The new card shouldn't have been bought until the kids were agreed that there was a fair arrangement on the table.
In the absence of that, either it stays with triangle or you do the Solomon solution and cut it in half.
Buying a new card fixed the original injury. The fact that the damaged card is still A Big Huge Deal means that both kids need to learn some perspective, and the only solution that will avoid a long-term grudge and discourage future child lawyering (which is annoying) is to destroy or give away or sell* the damaged card.
*proceeds go to the next Unfogged'con fund.
The point I've been (apparently clumsily) trying to make since 194 is not to apply tort law to this situation and to lawyer it out. I think that is kind of boring and stupid. Instead, I've been trying to point out how the differences between tort law and the intuitions we apply to this situation demonstrate just how insanely and intensely proprietarian and feudal the common law is and how much it forecloses more communal remedies. The main point of the common law is to ensure that people who possess things continue to possess them, and that is its overriding purpose.
Here, we can see this by noting, in the world of kids, how willing we might be to move around possession and ownership, not just monetary damages, in this situation in a way in which a court applying the law to adults would not be. Generally, assuming that Triangle retained possession of the card that Rectangle damaged (think me going into your house and spilling paint all over your table) even if a court awarded excessive damages to Triangle, Rectangle wouldn't suddenly get to possess Triangle's property. Courts can move around money for compensation, but what they are very reluctant to do is to move around the facts of the property rights on the ground.
And the point widget makes about replevin is really just another example of the insanely proprietarian nature of the common law. Before someone takes your property, you're clearly entitled to an injunction and a total and absolute right of exclusion. After it has happened, you're left with a common-law right of replevin to take it back. Why? Again, it's because the common law is so solicitous of protecting the fact of possession that it requires a special form of action, asking the sheriff to return something to you, which is difficult and in practice often becomes transformed into a damages remedy. (here, for replevin to apply, Rectangle, not Triangle, would actually have to de facto possess the card at the time the remedy was sought). What courts are extremely reluctant to do is to just step in and rearrange actual ownership rights -- the main purpose of the law is to protect rights of possession in people who posssess things. We shouldn't, and don't, apply those values to families, but that just points out IMO how proprietarian the law is and how (appropriately) communistic the family is.
Shorter 252: Possession is 9/10 of the law?
252: it really is!!
. . . and because I can't stop getting sucked in from the pure, stupid fake lawyering:
then the damage award should have been reduced below full FMV (unless the value of the damaged card is zero, which as set forth above I consider implausible).
No one (or at least not me) is arguing that the basic law of torts is that Triangle would get (in purely financial damages) the difference in the dimunition in value between whatever value the card had pre-damage and whatever value the card in his possession had post-damage. If you include emotional damages and assume that the dimunition in value was severe, then the $16 payment might reflect a small windfall over that remedy; if the dimunition in value was not severe, the windfall would be greater. In any case, though, the windfall might or might not include punitive damages, designed to punish the intentional tort and deter future behavior. So that's the law. In this case, we don't really know how much or how little the windfall was, and we also have to make a second decision about whether or not emotional distress damages and/or punitive damages are appropriate.
After the act of conversion, Rectangle had possession of the card and Triangle had the option of damages or replevin as of that time.
Well, but, just being pedantic, replevin requires that the other person have the card at the time you bring the action for replevin, not at the time of the conversion. Here, there's no dispute that Rectangle no longer had the parents did. True, as I noted above, since he did have the card, the value of the purely financial compensation should have been reduced by the value of the card he kept (whatever that was) but I think it's wrong in this context to say that he somehow "elected a remedy" of giving up the right to possession of the card, since the card wasn't in Rectangle's possession when Triangle got his compensation. By analogy, if I took your Iphone, damaged it, the police picked it up and kept it in a storage locker, and I sued you for conversion and got an excessive award, the police wouldn't give you my Iphone.
Aggh, that second paragraph was hopelessly confusing. Try again:
Well, but, just being pedantic, replevin requires that the other person have the chattel at the time one brings the action for replevin, not at the time of the conversion. Here, there's no dispute that Rectangle no longer had the card at the time Triangle sought and/or obtained the remredy of the new card -- either the parents had the card, or it was in a kind of escrow situation in the bowl. True, as I noted above, since Triangle did have the card at the time he received compensation, under ordinary tort law the value of the purely financial compensation should have been reduced by the value of the card (whatever that was). But, in this context, it's wrong to say that Triangle somehow "elected a remedy" of giving up the right to possession of the card, since the card wasn't in Rectangle's possession when Triangle got his compensation. By analogy, if I took your Iphone, damaged it, the police picked it up and kept it in a storage locker, and I sued you for conversion and got an excessive award, the police wouldn't give you my Iphone.
God damn it I've forgotten how to write and am really about to give up, as I'm sure you all want. Last try:
By analogy, if I took your Iphone, damaged it, the police picked it up and kept it in a storage locker, and you sued me for conversion and got an excessive award, the police wouldn't give me your Iphone.
Here's a hypothetical.
Let's say Rectangle took the card and hid it. When he was ordered by the court (parents) to return it he was unable to locate it, so he was obligated to purchase a replacement.
Then, sometime later, he found the original (undamaged). What would you do in that case?
a) Have rectangle return the original, and get to keep the replacement (restoring things as they would have been if nothing had happened)?
b) Let rectangle keep the original, and let Triangle keep the replacement?
c) Let Triangle chose between (a) or (b)?
d) Give the original to Triangle who would then have both the original and the replacement?
My intuition is (c), personally.
I once filed a complaint asserting claims for both trover and detinue (with respect to different items). I'm sure my opponent found it very annoying to have to look them up, and then read through the few reported cases in the relevant jurisdiction concerning these causes of action.
I was excusing overcompensation above, by analogy only, with the collateral source rule. It's not clear that the one in wrongful possession actually tendered the property, but seems more like the item was taken over by the authorities. I don't think their return of the item to its rightful owner, after the conversion damages have already been paid, amounts to any unfairness at all.
205, 207: de minimus
People, people: I may not care about trifles, but I sure as hell care about spelling.
Actually, now that I think about it, I am defending a case right now that includes a claim for replevin. My position is that the items are not property of the plaintiff, are not in the possession of the defendant, and, if they were, would be beyond the territorial reach of the forum.
256: But that doesn't make any sense. Part of the reason the police wouldn't do anything for you is that they wouldn't know the award was excessive, and they'd have no reason to listen to you saying it was in the face of the decision of a court.
I think (a) what you're talking about as a proprietarian bias in the law is actually (in the aspects you're talking about) more about avoiding the conflict and possible violence inherent in self-help. Replevin is a big weird deal not out of respect for possession as a theoretical matter, but because people get violent when you come take their stuff. And (b) your argument that tort law would do something wildly different from family communism here is very dependent in the assumptions you make turning a childish squabble resolved by parents into a court case. You seem to be saying, roughly "If we treat this as a tort, Triangle obviously keeps both cards. The loving family solution is that they share so that Rectangle is given the damaged card. The loving family solution is better than the property-obsessed law." And while your ultimate conclusion is sweet, I think you've got to really force your assumptions to get the mean outcome you want out of tort law.
"Trover and Retinue" would be a great band name -- first album would be "Some Theban Officials of the Lower Middle Kingdom"
Can't people just agree with Halford that the legal approach to property of all kinds is dangerous and excessive and should be done away with?
I think the questions to ask about the iPhone in storage are (a) whether the court would award reduced damages if the defendant showed that the cops had the iPhone and the plaintiff could have it for the asking (but had chosen not to ask), on a sort of failure-to-mitigate theory (my intuition says yes, but I'm not sure); and (b) whether, if nobody knew about the iPhone in the cops' possession at the time of the case but it was discovered within a reasonable time afterwards, the defendant could get the damages award reduced on a motion to reopen the judgment (or similar procedural vehicle) on the basis of newly discovered evidence (maybe not, but if not, more because of the finality of judgments than because the substantive result is reasonable).
I do think any court result that can be fairly analogized to the situation in which Triangle gets both cards is going to be an exception rather than the rule.
Also, 258.1 is great.
This is the kind of case that Rock, Paper, Scissors was invented for. If you want to be especially judicious, you could make it two out of three.
263: If the plaintiff were the owner of the Pokemon intellectual property, I'm sure we'd all have different intuitions.
Part of the reason the police wouldn't do anything for you is that they wouldn't know the award was excessive
"Go hash this out in court" is pretty much the go to response from us on any property dispute that isn't clearly a criminal theft.
OT:
You learn some gruesome/interesting things at a training about suicide bombers. Apparently the Israelis say they can tell pretty quick if a personally carried bomb rig was a belt or a chest rig based off of the scattered body parts. Belt rigs blow out a lot of the midsection but the head will be attached to the shoulders and often arms as well whereas the higher chest rigs will often blow the head clean off and send it tumbling away. (one of the instructors said an Israeli accompanied this explanation with a rendition of "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes") We watched a video of a Tamil Tiger bombing where the lady concealed the explosives up around her bra and her head totally went flying off and bounced off the back wall.
Part of the reason the police wouldn't do anything for you is that they wouldn't know the award was excessive, and they'd have no reason to listen to you saying it was in the face of the decision of a court.
Sure, but the broader point is that the court wouldn't act to change possession of the card that you originally possessed, absent some very unusual circumstances, unless it was clearly in someone else's possession and you'd clearly waived the right to get it back. If its in your possession, or held by some kind of third party escrow and you have title to it, its yours, regardless of whether or not you got overcompensated by a court for its loss.
You seem to be saying, roughly "If we treat this as a tort, Triangle obviously keeps both cards. The loving family solution is that they share so that Rectangle is given the damaged card. The loving family solution is better than the property-obsessed law."
First, I don't see any way in which tort law applied to a reasonably analagous situation wouldn't allow Triangle to keep the original damaged card. It most likely wouldn't have given him the full $16 necessary to get a new card, and almost certainly wouldn't have ordered actual purchase of a new card, but including punitives and emotional distress damages, it might well have gotten very close to that amount (how close, we don't really know). But in any event the probable result would have been that Triangle keeps the damaged card, and Rectangle pays him some amount, perhaps almost enough to purchase a new replacement card.
Second, I'm not sure what the right family solution is. What I'm saying is that it wouldn't fundamentally depend on the concept that either T or R have a right of sole possession to the card that the law needs to super-solicitously protect. Rather, as a family, you can move the property rights around to create some broader sense of justice, which includes some sense that neither party should be unfairly treated. That's what's different from the common law.
what you're talking about as a proprietarian bias in the law is actually (in the aspects you're talking about) more about avoiding the conflict and possible violence inherent in self-help. Replevin is a big weird deal not out of respect for possession as a theoretical matter, but because people get violent when you come take their stuff.
I disagree strongly. I don't think that the common law is fundamentally some wonderful peace-making institution that incidentally preserves property rights in order to protect against violence, including self-help. In fact, both law and practice in this specific area are directly to the contrary. Replevin and related actions do not foreclose self help -- you can elect to go ahead and take back your property (assuming you don't violate any other laws). Most states have policies encouraging self-help among creditors and title holders: think of the repo man. This tends to strongly favor property owners, particularly creditors, and is primarily designed for purposes of preserving property, not preventing against self-help and certainly not (primarily) for preserving social peace. Of course, you can also ask the sheriff to get your property back through an action for replevin, or seek damages, but these are additional remedies available when self-help is not useful and designed to further protect property rights, not to create social peace.
In general, I think it's a huge mistake to view the common law as something that only incidentally protects property rights as part of some broader goal of promoting social peace and order. The opposite is almost certainly true -- the law obsessively protects property rights more or less regardless of the consequences for distributional justice or social peace.
I don't really disagree with 264.1, but it's not really relevant to any point I'm trying to make, I think. I agree that if the a chattel is in the plaintiff's possession and we're talking about a common law remedy, then an award of damages gets reduced by the value of that chattel. I've been trying to say that over and over. What wouldn't happen is an award of the chattel to the person who did the conversion.
268: Well, that's one way to get ahead in law enforcement.
Can't people just agree with Halford that the legal approach to property of all kinds is dangerous and excessive and should be done away with?
Actually my main point in the various intellectual property debates, which no one ever seems to get, is that many of the strong objections to intellectual property should apply equally strongly to property in land or chattels and that we shouldn't be talking about abolishing one without abolishing the other.
If your position is "we should abolish or severely modify common-law property rights, and the current intellectual property laws, in favor of some kind of new socialist property" I'm broadly speaking with you. If your position is "we should abolish property rights that happen to benefit artists/cultural creators in this one area, but keep the entire rest of the capitalist property structure intact and going strong" that's where I start fighting. My main beef is with Silicon Valley libertarian-proprietarians.
272.2: it's not really either of those, but it's closer to the former. Rougly, a pretty useful and progressive regime of anarcho-socialist "property" sharing obtained online before the big content owners got their mitts on things, and while it might be too much to ask that common law property rights in the real world that have been shitty for however many centuries get reformed meaningfully it seems much more plausible to keep them from getting (increasingly) shittified online and worth fighting for even if everything else still sucks.
And, of course, if you really want to reform property rights more generally the thin edge of the wedge is likely going to be a realm where they don't have X centuries of precedent gumming things up.
So what would the Napoleonic Code say?
The Napoleonic Code says that Triangle and Rectangle need to go attack Russia in the middle of the winter. Do not listen to the Napoleonic Code!
273/74 -- I think both those points are superficially very appealing, and I'm really not dismissive of them. But the main problem I have is that I think that, without reforming the system generally, what you get is not some well-preserved sphere of online communitarianism that's the thin edge of a wedge for general societal reform, but instead a kind of takeover of the economy by a particular set of property owners (primarily, ad-driven and data-mining-based online distributors of content) at the expense of another set (creators of cultural content), while all the while capitalism just continues to churn on.
Broadly speaking, I value the content-creators over the content-distributors. I also am very extremely skeptical of claims of reform that depend on important decisions for everyone being made by supposedly anarchic, supposedly collectivist online communities that in fact are often (a) extremely inegalitarian to begin with and not democratically controlled (this is my big problem with hackers) and (b) easily coopted by capital (think e.g., Facebook). I just don't think online anti-proprietarianism works without reforming the system generally, instead it makes things worse.
I know everyone is totally sick of this argument, and I don't really want it to degenerate again.
(n.b., I'm only talking about copyright here, patents are a very different story).
easily coopted by capital (think e.g., Facebook)
For what it's worth I am happy to claim Facebook as an enemy of the things I like about the internet. Google, sorta, too. And, of course, my friends and I made our bones fucking with Microsoft.
But right, yeah, everybody's tired of all this.
GO RED SOX UEHARA IS THE GREATEST
Particle man, Particle man
No reason to keep the earworm to myself.
The point I've been [ . . . ] trying to make since 194 is not to apply tort law to this situation and to lawyer it out.
And it was the right point to make, but leave it to a bunch of lawyers to really want to lawyer it out anyway. But yes, tort law should not be applied within families whenever it can be escaped. I think some of us like pushing to the absurdist limit as much as possible, which has led us to say regrettable things at times. And that is why each family should devise its own criminal code and mandatory sentencing guidelines.
Koji is awesome. I'm so pissed off he's a Red Sock these days.
This is why Pokémon sucks. Magic: the Gathering solved this problem 20 years ago when Chaos Orb was used creatively in a tournament.
I for one am not sick of the copyright argument. I honestly don't know where I stand! And it remains interesting.
4th child also went for Triangle. Children are vengeful little fuckers.
I like Nick's lost and found scenario - seems obvious that Triangle should not end up with two cards in that case. Likewise, C this morning asked, what if Rectangle had destroyed the card? He would have bought Triangle a new one, and I don't think anyone (except maybe that bloke who shot his daughter's laptop) would then also make Rectangle give Triangle something extra.
My main beef is with Silicon Valley libertarian-proprietarians.
Huh, so most of Halford's seemingly random targets of intense hatred actually fit together into a single entity. This explains so much.
How many more species will have gone extinct by the time my new niece is an old lady? It's all very depressing.
These days I'd settle for your niece becoming an old lady.
Thinking about Megan's sister's kids, I eventually come to the conclusion that the old, damaged card should be removed from the equation. M said something about a third child who was an innocent bystander. That would be one solution if she wants it, otherwise put it in the trash.
262: the best bandname in the thread is surely Tortfeasor. They are of course black metal, burning down a church near you on their upcoming winter tour.
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"Another thing coming" has been endorsed by the New Yorker
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286 -- it's true. Many are also Giants fans.
Further to 293, it's been endorsed by the magazine's worst cartoonist, which can only reïnforce its wrongness.
It's sort of incredible how unfunny those cartoons are. I mean the cartoons have always sucked, the New Yorker has sucked for a long time (tell me, profile: Where did he or she go to college?), but Jesus.
289, 290: fully awesome.
291: ?! I was a thing adherent from the start, and I believe it was a public dispute over this at our blog that sparked the very first discussion here, but my husband has successfully convinced me in the meantime and I am now a "think" woman. he is very persuasive you know. except to the many people whom he drives crazy, but that's on purpose, because he's being passive-agressively polite yet impenetrable and unemotional even when everyone else gets mad. it's infuriating IRL too, but excellent gameslifesmanship. I, on the other hand, just yell at everyone. I keep thinking, "hey al, you should really dial it back a little," but then someone pisses me off really bad.
295: profile-subject A went to yale, actually, halford, thanks for asking.
I keep thinking, "hey al, you should really dial it back a little," but then someone pisses me off really bad.
You're thinking about CT, this last week or so, aren't you . . .
wait, this is confusing now. not me, merely hypothetical subject A.
I totally forgot that people think "another thing coming" is the wrong form. You people, so weird!
Thing, I'm sure, is always and forever, the standard British form. 'Think coming' seems both odd, and American. As per, I'm sure, the last discussion we all had.
Think is of course (always and forever) the standard English English form: thing is surely a strange American shift. Of course what this actually means is that think is what my mum and dad said. Why do you besmirch their memory?
I quite like thing if it's capitalised: "has another Thing coming" would then mean that I plan to convene an emergency Anglo-Saxon folkmoot, and legislate your arse.
Better still is if we all start saying "another thong coming": then it means you will soon be needing a change of fancy underwear.
At the point, content distributors are more creative than content creators. Megaupload was a much greater achievement of the human mind than the latest by-the-numbers Chuck Lorre CBS sitcom.
I have never heard anyone say "You have another think coming." As a noun, a "think" sounds like what a constipated person does while sitting on a toilet.
Think as a noun is perfectly respectable English English colloquial though: Fowler says early 19th century at least; his example is "Have another think," and teachers were certainly often saying this to me in the 60s and early 70s.
Basically what we're hearing is no guide, since the distinction really isn't generally there to the ear (though it may be in some regional variants of English). I only discovered there was disagreement at all when I first arrived on the internet: you need to see it written before you realise.
(It was about the fourth big chatroom argument I ever waded into, outraged, not quite as heated as the tipping debate)
I prefer think in this particular phrase because of the jingle-style balance of the sentence -- think as verb at start, think as noun at end -- and I like when English does that, and would be sad if it wasn't doing that. I also prefer the blunt poetic concreteness: thing just seems hopelessly vague as a threat. But this is all personal taste and habit and regional variation and whatever: I've not yet read a convincing defence of one or the other as having priority.
In which Judas Priest are cited!
303 is right. "I have a think!" makes it sound like you don't at all.
Thing, I'm sure, is always and forever, the standard British form.
Never heard it in my life before I started reading Americans on the internet. "You've got another think coming" translates easily as, "OK, you've got yourself into an untenable position, go away and re-examine it if you want things to work out for you." (Tierce is right that "think" is a perfectly good English noun.) "Another thing coming" means what? What sort of thing? Some relative of the Addams family?
re: 311
There's a [Halford alert] Judas Priest song, 'You've Got Another Thing Coming'. [Which, I see on preview, 308 has already mentioned]
But, I've _always_ heard it in the 'thing' form. Never ever in the 'think' form. The distinction would be clearly audible in my accent. Of course it's quite possible that the use where I'm from is atypical. But the first time I ever came across 'think' was on Unfogged, and it seemed bizarre then and continues to seem bizarre now.
re: 'thing' it seems perfectly sensible to me. 'Something is going to occur, which is going to make obvious the inadequacy of the position you currently find yourself in.'
306.last has a point, though.
No one would ever say "I have a think" though -- it's not really a synonym for the noun "thought"; it's closer to a synonym for the gerund form, "thinking", but even this isn't quite right. "I had a think" is possible: it means something like "I went away and thought about it a little." The implication is that where the thinking is somehow continuous and open ended -- and can somewhat happen even as the thinker is also speaking ("thinking out loud") -- a "think" is boxed-off and undistracted and not to be interrupted. You wouldn't say "I had a think out loud" -- because it obviously wouldn't be a proper hard think. [interrupted by meeting]
A think isn't a synonym for a thought, it's a period of cogitation. I often say, "I'll have a think about it", which is sort of half way between "I'll think about it", and "Why don't you stop bugging me."
'Think' in the context of that phrase seems ungrammatical to me, although I'd struggled to explicitly explain why that should be the case.
313 is interesting. 'A think' seems to imply that it's a count noun, not a mass noun, unlike 'thought'. So you could have 'a think' or give it 'some thought'. Which, come to think of it, undermines the felt [by me] ungrammatically of having 'a think coming'.
I'm with ttaM in that it had never occurred to me that some people might be saying (or hearing) "think" until I first read the LL post.
I find it really entertaining that because "think coming" and "thing coming" are indistinguishable as spoken, everyone thinks their position was confirmed by everyone they've were spoken to and only people on the internet are wrong.
What convinces me of "think" is the "another". The phrase is "if you think X, you have another ? coming." The statement has an initial think, and then "another think". With "thing", it can't sensibly be "another thing" because you haven't mentioned a first thing. (I mean, that's not really what convinces me -- I've just always known it was "think". But it seems like the strongest evidence that should convince someone else.)
It's so obviously supposed to be "another thing coming" and I've never heard "another think coming in my life" until here.
315: that definitely seems grammatical in a UK context, which would make sense for the origin of that form as a UK thing. It still feels ungrammatical (or, at least, awkwardly uncommon) in an American context.
With "thing", it can't sensibly be "another thing" because you haven't mentioned a first thing.
If the speaker addressed with "you have another thing coming" mentions some reward or expected good outcome, that is the first thing. Otherwise the status quo is the first thing. The other thing is something bad that's going to happen.
I still can't imagine what "another thing coming" means, in context. I mean we've all got a bunch of other things coming, it's because of our perception of time, but...
In the UK context it many be partly a generational thing. I don't know how old Tierce's parents are, butI suspect mine were a lot older than ttaM's (I suspect my dad was older than his grandfather), so it's possible that the usage changed at some point post war.
In the UK context it many be partly a generational thing.
Seriously, I believe that because the two usages are indistinguishable, the first time anyone hears it, they come up with their own interpretation based on how the logic works for them, and never realize anyone's saying anything different until they argue about it in text. I would guess that think and thing aren't regional or generational variants, but that they're randomly scattered wherever the phrase is used.
(I mean, "think" is right, because it's historically prior and makes more sense. But I bet there have been people hearing 'thing' all along.)
320: But you have to find implicit, unmentioned 'things' to be the first thing. Normally, you wouldn't refer to 'another thing' without having explicitly mentioned the first thing.
It's not always explicit. Just a way of continuing the conversation.
324: What if Columbo was actually saying: "Just one more think" all that time? Mind blown.
I still don't see how you can "hone in on" something. You can "hone" something or "home in on" something. And that's all your options.
"Honed up"? "Up"!?! That's not even a thing. No one says "honed up." Jesus Christ you people are trying to drive me insane.
Moby, you're in the same city as Stormcrow, right? Go smack him sharply across the back of the head for me, would you?
I'd have to take a bus then transfer to the T. It would take at least an hour and a quarter to get there and back.
Look, two and a half hours from now, just tell me you did. I'll never know the difference and I'll feel better.
Hour and a quarter from now. I misread and thought the hour and a quarter was one way.
It's not that far. The hour and a quarter was for both ways.
"Think" was correct until Judas Priest changed everything. Halfordismo!
My parents were born in 1931 and 1935.
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Help! What do you feed vegetarians who don't like vegetables? No salad, no aubergines/eggplant, no grain or pulse based dishes, nothing eastern mediterranean... We've already schedules a curry and a tomato pasted pasta for other days they're staying.
[I think they mainly live on faux meat ready meals, but I'm not subjecting our other guests to that.]
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And I just spent a lunchtime explaining to someone how to get a job in magazines who was born in 1994. Which is literally impossible.
Omelettes, or something else egg-based?
339: Frowner will have some good ideas.
340: Not just impossible, but from what I hear about magazines these days, somewhat ill-advised. Not that I have a better idea about what a young person should be doing.
340: Would it be easier if you put the subordinate clause in the right place.
This is probably off the list, considering what else they've ruled out, but stir-fry? With tofu or not (peanuts or cashews maybe)?
There are whole bunches of young vegetarians who mostly eat french fries and cheese pizza. That may be too much of a college thing for your situation.
The correct answer to any question of the form in 347 is "No, she went of her own accord".
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NMM to General Vo Nguyen Giap
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I'm still amazed that anyone could ever think the phrase is "another thing coming". It doesn't make much sense, and it robs the original of its humorous undertone.
348, obligatory: http://imgur.com/qNcC1
Sometimes you barely need to even bait the hook.
See if you're still smarting off forty minutes from now.
Potato gratin or potato soup? Is the no grains rule a strict one? Because pizza would be out. Will your guests eat seafood? Following 341, quiche? If the grains/legumes thing is flexible, I make these veggie burgers as a faux-meatloaf. Are you getting quinoa or no-gluten pasta?
Here's a completely not cherry-picked google books ngram showing that "another thing coming" is more common.
351: Oh man! There can't be many other early C20 communists left. Not prominent ones, anyhow. Well, he accomplished a lot. A bas le colonialisme!
Bisques might work, although it depends whether seafood/mushroom/pumpkin are off limits.
357: That's an interesting time frame you chose there.
I think it was the default, maybe.
Damned lies and cherry-picked statistics. Full timeline.
Priest's Screaming For Vengeance came out in 1982, as you can clearly see on that timeline.
What's amazing is that "thing" still loses for many decades. Yet I had never heard of "think" until this thread.
This thread? Or any of the several previous threads we've had on this topic?
I'm starting to thing that 365 explains my use of the idiomatic think under discussion here. I'm probably the right age for that to have had maximum impact.
367: This is the first time it's registered with me.
We need an NGrams timeline of the rising incidence of this discussion in all Unfogged threads.
(And apologies for restarting it, I guess, I only wanted to make the thong joke really.)
re: the above
My parents were born in the 1950s. They had me when they were mere striplings.
My grandfather was born in 1914, though.
It doesn't make much sense
Idioms rarely do. That's more or less what makes them idioms.
Oh man! There can't be many other early C20 communists left. Not prominent ones, anyhow.
Clearly you haven't been reading the Daily Mail recently.
re: 322
I'm pretty sure in the accents of English I grew up around, they are distinguishable. I may be over-estimating by ability to distinguish them in ordinary conversation, but certainly in my own speech, I think most people would clearly hear the difference.
Thanks for the ideas. The problem is that we'll be feeding a table full of omnivores a respectable dinner, and we'd like to do them something of the same order. Cheese has just gone off the menu, hence the panic. Pulse and grains are OK as side dishes but not the main event. Seafood is right out.
371. My father was born in January 1912.
Cheese has just gone off the menu, hence the panic.
They're vegan or just don't eat cheese?
What do you feed vegetarians who don't like vegetables?
We're still trying to understand the answer to that question. Up to now they've been ovo-lacto, now one of them has abandoned cheese. We haven't yet plumbed the wider implications.
I've never heard it as 'think' either.
378 > 376. 377 may well be the answer.
Jerusalem artichoke soup?
It's a bit of a hassle to prepare, as soups go, but it's bloody delicious.
Also, have you considered asking them what they normally eat (or would like to)?
Because no meat, not dairy, no vegetables, no seafood, and respectable is basically them asking you for baked unicorn.
"The consensus of the scientific community is that is potentially lethal pseudoscience, and indeed several adherents of these practices have died from starvation."
They normally eat cheap Linda MacCartney knockoffs. Not in my house. Some sort of soup may be the answer, though we'll probably do that for everyone anyway as a first course. A different soup with more bits in it might have to follow.
HTML there malformed but still works. More apologies.
They normally eat cheap Linda MacCartney knockoffs.
Can you even buy Heather Mills in stores there?
374: That sounds impossible. My other suggestions are that you could do tacos/burritos that everyone assembles themselves. The fake ground beef is not terrible tasting with lots of seasoning, you could use regular meat or chicken for the folks who will eat it, and the restricted eaters can avoid anything they don't want. If you're really feeling generous, you can do fake cheese, too. Just be sure to have lots of options set out. One more suggestion is a big spread of breakfast as dinner, which lets you use fruit rather than vegetables and you could find paleo muffin recipes or mixes (eyeroll) that use almond flour. Side of hash browns or oven-roasted potatoes, sausage or bacon for the non-veg, and so on.
Of you could just let them eat out and try to find a nice pub that serves nectar and ambrosia, unless those are also forbidden.
386: I'll have a drumstick, please.
374 Cheese has just gone off the menu, hence the panic. Pulse and grains are OK as side dishes but not the main event. Seafood is right out.
Let me guess: your guest is nosflow, and he's trying to understand the food equivalent of a lipogram.
I'm a vegetarian, and I feel ashamed of these people. It's one thing to stick by a long-running dietary restriction, but you just can't say "and we don't like vegetables" to a host who's already clearly going out of their way to accommodate you. You eat the eggplant (or whatever), and you smile.
390 is right, except that eggplant is inedible.
Something Indian, like chana masala with palak paratha on the side? Stuffed peppers (or cabbage)? Mushroom stroganoff? Classics of terrifying English vegetarian cuisine like nutloaf?
Make-your-own-tacos is a good solution, too, if tortillas are widely available at Waitrose or whatever. (I know Mexican/Tex-Mex food in London used to be something of a punchline, but we live in a culinarily exciting world now, right?) I myself wouldn't go for fake meat, but rice and beans could be provided alongside chicken or beef, and then your friends could shut up about the horrors of eggplant.
Moby, in the spirit of comity, you may change "eggplant" in 395 to "squash".
395: But no grains or legumes as main feature! Chana masala = chickpeas and rice and beans is pretty much exactly grains and legumes.
I don't mind the squash that looks like an acorn on the outside and a pumpkin on the inside.
Nutloaf is a good idea, but an awful faff when you have 6 other people to feed. They're getting Indian the night before, or the night after. The hard bit is already in the freezer.
I don't mind the squash that looks like an acorn on the outside and a pumpkin on the inside.
The little known Tardis squash.
399, see recipe linked in 356, unless it's too much legume/grain. Tastes not bad, honestly. (I mean, it's not amazing, but it's certainly not bad.)
You could make them a California roll without the rice, fake crab, cucumber, or avocado.
395 - No grain or pulse based dishes. Whoops, separated by a common language here; I had a moment of pulse/"vegetable marrow" confusion translating from Knifecrime. I still think stuffed peppers are a plausible solution. Or you could ask rfts for her recipe for Manchurian cauliflower, which is delicious (although also Indian food).
402. I have a nutloaf that I know they like or used to, because they asked for the recipe. I was hoping not to resort to it since they can do it themselves, but still...
In the past week, I've become allergic to nuts.
Really, you know what I think the maximally graceful thing is to do? Make something that fits their actual dietary restrictions (vegetarian or vegan, whatever) that reasonable people would want to eat and you're not embarrassed to serve to your other guests, without worrying about the weirdos' idiotic vegetable-hating preferences, and put a plate of breaded frozen Quorn cutlets (or whatever vegetarian kibble they'll eat) on the table as well. It's not much extra trouble, it gives them what they want without actually excluding them from the real dinner, and the only injury is to your pride in not wanting to serve a guest horrifying crap like that (in your shoes, of course, I'd feel the same way.)
As a longtime vegetarian, I second LB. Maybe some root vegetable shepard's pie type thing, mashed potato topping. It is veggie, could be vegan, and roasted means it tastes like heaven.
410: Don't worry, she'll be right back to her normal shtick in... right, already there.
Actually, I rather like Quorn. (But this is of course a question about manners, not taste in the narrow gustatory sense, and 408 makes perfect sense as advice about manners.)
Quorn *is* pretty good (and not just in the good for soil mold grown in underground tanks sense), and the Gardein fake meat made from grains is very good.
Fair enough. I'm closed-minded about fake meat for no good reason other than cane-shaking "If you're going to be a vegetarian, eat vegetables, goddamnit," which has no particular validity, particularly given that I'm not a vegetarian.
413: I'm glad to hear non-vegetarians say that. I like it, but not having eaten real meat in 20+ years, my opinion doesn't mean much.
These assholes get one dish for themselves that they don't have to share that meets their bullshit restrictions. One dish, that's all. That's the absolute max they can reasonably ask for, and I say that as someone who also has self-imposed insane dietary restrictions.
"Here's your fucking quinoa wafer, dickwad"
I read in Modern Maturity that Bill Clinton loves him some quinoa.
We have a fair amount of meat substitute products in the freezer because my younger kids decided they weren't going to eat animals, though Noah seems to have mostly given up on it except when it works to his advantage and Cass has a lot of weird asterisks: fish sticks are okay because fish don't have feelings and chicken nuggets are usually okay because Happy Meals. Oh, and they both like sausage pizza but prefer soysage links to actual sausage links. It's hard to keep up with all the exemptions, to be honest. Anyhow, the Gardein stuff surprised me at just how good it was.
I wouldn't figure that quinoa would set-off Halford as much as fake meat made from grain.
It doesn't, but these picky guests apparently don't want grain-based dishes either, which does make me wonder what the hell they eat.
419: When my son was three or four, it somehow came up that bacon was parts of pigs. He yelled at us something fierce without even bothering the finish chewing the bite of pork tenderloin he was eating. When we told him about that, he actually put more of the pork in his mouth and then continued yelling.
Also, I enjoyed this keeping-meat-normative commercial.
351: I guess his wife, Nguyễn Thị Quang Thái, died at 29 in a French prison, from typhus (and repeated torture probably didn't do her any good either.)
They're getting Indian the night before, or the night after.
Not a problem for about 1.2 billion people, so I think they could handle it.
When you say "no pulses" does that include soybeans? (I hate to break it to them, if so, as all that fake meat has a lot of soy.)
'Cause I'd be breaking out the tofu and the mock duck.
Here are some suggestions:
1. Get some of those fancy Tofurky sausages, which are not actually bad and don't, to me, count as "fake meat" because they taste like wheat gluten sausages which are a perfectly genuine asian food. Slice them up and saute them in olive oil and garlic, then add some white wine. Serve with a salad and a starch.
2. Also, if you are using these sausages, you can cook some onion (don't carmelize it too deeply) and add the wine and tomato paste and seasonings as you like to build a sauce.
3. Sides: I have been making millet and quinoa (separately) a lot lately. I like to season them with lemon juice, sweet paprika, olive oil and a little bit of cumin and chili.
4. Chickpea flour "tofu" (which originates in the Shan parts of SE Asia). I really, really like this recipe: http://www.girlcooksworld.com/2013/03/burmese-chickpea-tofu-salad-with-sesame-and-cilantro.html
It is very fibrous though, so don't eat a HUGE helping because it tastes delicious, as you will feel really loggy later.
4. With chickpea flour, I make socca a lot. You should soak the chickpea flour for an hour beforehand, as this makes it taste much better. I often mix in cumin, salt, pepper and chili plus a grated zucchini. Unlike this recipe, I bake it thus: preheat the oven to 500 with two cake lightly oiled cake pans inside; mix up your batter and get a ladle. When oven is hot, open the oven and drizzle more oil into the pans (about 1 tsp per pan) and ladle roughly equal amounts of batter into each pan. Bake until it starts to brown. It should not fill each pan, so you should be able to peer at the edges and judge when they are done. Everyone likes socca, in my experience.
5. Tofu "spanakopita" scramble, which is really good if anyone likes tofu at all: Basically, I use extra firm tofu, press it for 20 minutes and cook the spanakopita filling part of this recipe, making sure to use lots of dill. It tastes surprisingly like spanakopita.
6. Mock duck - get some from an Asian grocery. Chop it roughly, saute some onions until carmelized, add the mock duck, cook until there is the vegetarian version of fond, deglaze the pan with white wine and make a pan sauce.
7. White bean gravy with thyme over biscuits. If this person can't eat dairy, you can still get a pretty good result with this recipe: http://jewishvegan.blogspot.com/2007/01/fluffy-buttermilk-biscuits.html
They won't brown much, but they're perfectly acceptable. Sub in 1/4 whole wheat flour and add some chopped fresh herbs.
(Oops, the spanakopita recipe is here: http://www.highinfatuation.com/vegan-spanakopita-spinach-triangles/)
I'm figuring the 'no pulses' thing, in context, isn't an objection to any botanically defined ingredient, so much as a statement that "A bowl of dressed beans/grains/whatever is punitive foreign food that we don't like."
It's weird that the friends don't seem to have acknowledged that their request list is nearly impossible. I have a friend whose wife is extremely, extremely picky, but when I ask about what I can make for meals with them, he just says, "Make whatever. It's impossible to get something she'll eat. We'll have stuff she'll eat, and she can eat later if she's hungry." I guess for a multi-day visit, this is harder, but you'd think they'd have a few tried and true things to suggest.
Mock duck
"Warm water sure feels good on skin, not that you'd know."
"Is that a penis or a very dirty corkscrew?"
"Nice shoes. Oh, right."
I guess his wife, Nguyễn Thị Quang Thái, died at 29 in a French prison, from typhus (and repeated torture probably didn't do her any good either
I thought she'd been executed by the French, along with some other of Giap's family members.
426: you say "unlike this recipe", but which recipe?
433: Ah, yes, I did leave it out - this fellow uses the broiler rather than baking the socca:
http://www.davidlebovitz.com/2009/06/socca-enfin/
I was not aware until recently that the broiler on our oven actually worked, so I've never tried this.
And "soak the chickpea flour" just means let the batter rest?
In a sense - I actually mix the chickpea flour with the water only and let that soak. I add the other things at the end. I don't know if it would make a difference to add the oil and spices at the beginning - I just make a lot of things with chickpea flour and the only commonality is adding the water first.
I forgot that I also wrap the grated zucchini in cheesecloth and squeeze out excess liquid before adding it.
I was tempted to make a crack about that haircut getting heebie on this list of the hottest math professors, but it was too dumb even for me. I really just came to post the link.
http://www.businessinsider.com/hottest-math-professors-in-america-2013-10
Nor surprisingly, I suppose, acceptable looks and a willingness to explain things to floundering students seems to get you a lot of the way to hotness. Honestly compels me to admit that both I and my field are stuck down in the miserable quadrant of neither smart nor hot in this chart.
http://www.businessinsider.com/sexy-professors-tend-to-be-dumber-chart-2013-9
