Re: Guest Post - This is Texas: We do EVERYTHING big!

1

We've been working on that for ~6 years but it looks like we've hit a dead end, partly due to no further funding. Maybe this will result in more grants being available.


Posted by: SP | Link to this comment | 08-22-15 5:54 AM
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Which part? Just the whole problem? What struck me was how many factors there seem to be making Houston/Gulf Coast areas so prone to this. With the bugs, and the germs, and the metal teeth, d'hoy!


Posted by: Natilo Paennim | Link to this comment | 08-22-15 6:06 AM
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The baby has had this semi-persistent ringworm, and now the rash has several other eczema-like patches. My FB feed is full of how Texas is swamped with treatment-resistant lice. Texas will be taken over with rare tropical diseases and I'll have guinea worms. I feel like I live in a deteriorating medical environment and it will occupy more and more of my time and energy and anxiety.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 08-22-15 6:18 AM
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Never live anywhere without a hard freeze every winter.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 08-22-15 6:20 AM
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I've barely ever done so.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 08-22-15 6:22 AM
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Winter kills bugs.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 08-22-15 6:29 AM
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7

And once, two meth addicts who went out with no coat and got lost.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 08-22-15 6:31 AM
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Good thing I showed up to balance things out! I'll try to get some Yellow Fever going sometime this week.


Posted by: E. Messily | Link to this comment | 08-22-15 6:44 AM
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Never live anywhere without a hard freeze every winter.

Another good reason to move to Canada, to judge from this thread.


Posted by: chris y | Link to this comment | 08-22-15 6:48 AM
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10

Not to worry, in a relatively wealthy petro-economy like Texas's there is plenty of money to spend on broad public health measures.


Posted by: JP Stormcrow | Link to this comment | 08-22-15 7:43 AM
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The head lice are here in the Fort, too.

I hadn't heard about the roundworms and the rest yet.

Holy hell.


Posted by: delagar | Link to this comment | 08-22-15 8:03 AM
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We should build a wall to keep out the germs. I'd say build it at the border, but they probably have these problems in Louisiana too.


Posted by: Spike | Link to this comment | 08-22-15 8:11 AM
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Surely head lice are everywhere and always have been? Not in the same league as hookworm, let alone Chagas' disease.

(Some believe Charles Darwin contracted Chagas during the Beagle voyage and survived with it for fifty years.)


Posted by: chris y | Link to this comment | 08-22-15 8:12 AM
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"And fuck Houston! Houston is our largest unlivable city. It's a fly-ridden goo swamp populated by obese wannabe cowboys who are constantly digging into a tin of Skoal. It has everything bad about a tropic-zone city with none of the good: palm trees with no beaches, skimpy clothing without attractive people, etc. There are no zoning laws. You can build a titty bar inside an elementary school. Every rich person there is a despicable oil whore. Rodeo Cookoff History is a required high school course. It's a horrible place."

And yeah, head lice are everywhere. The last literature I read is that at any given time, 15-20% of American elementary school children have active head lice. The species has become resistant to the shampoos that used to kill them and can really only be defeated by manual removal with nit combs over the course of a few weeks. I suspect before long we'll find them transmitting diseases the way ticks do and the country is going to go into a full panic.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 08-22-15 8:26 AM
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4 and 6 are right. One of the biggest benefits of a Minnesota winter (right after: "the cold is fun") is that practically all the insects just die off, which makes it hard for the truly dangerous/horrible ones to keep a population working. Mosquitos manage it, obviously, but cockroaches and bedbugs are way less endemic than you'd expect from a reasonably large city.

Also I wonder how long it will take before this issue shows up in a Trump speech about immigrants smuggling horrific tropical parasites into the US.


Posted by: MHPH | Link to this comment | 08-22-15 8:27 AM
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16

7 is also true. I've posted the link before.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 08-22-15 8:29 AM
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17

The biggest weirdness is the allegation that lots of poor people in the South don't even have proper septic tanks, so sewage just sort of sits in cesspits in their backyards.

Yep, my next-door neighbours growing up in Alabama did this. Very gross. Also made mowing the lawn close to impossible, so it just became a jungle back there.


Posted by: real ffeJ annaH | Link to this comment | 08-22-15 8:34 AM
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14.2: That seems a little high. If not, I should appreciate Pittsburgh more.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 08-22-15 8:34 AM
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Just in terms of wrongly-accepted squalor, all the rural communities out in CA without safe drinking water, often because they're undocumented farmworkers no jurisdiction feels responsibility for.


Posted by: Minivet | Link to this comment | 08-22-15 8:46 AM
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17: Man, I was hoping that was a huge exaggeration


Posted by: Natilo Paennim | Link to this comment | 08-22-15 8:46 AM
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15% of school children have active lice seems high -- we've had them twice, but certainly not for 15% of the kids' time in school. Unless there are kids who have them all the time bringing up the average? Ick.

I'd believe that they're drug-resistant, though; we used the drugstore shampoo, but what got rid of them was daily combing for a week or so with conditioner, and I was definitely combing out live lice.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08-22-15 8:53 AM
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14: I love "Why Your Team Sucks" more than anything else on the Internet now. I was a bit disappointed that he didn't muster more bile for the Eagles, though.


Posted by: Walt Someguy | Link to this comment | 08-22-15 9:13 AM
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At a quick scan, CDC estimates 6 to 12 million US children (ages 3-11) infected each year. I may be misremembering the percentage range that equals.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 08-22-15 9:14 AM
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22.1: Me too.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 08-22-15 9:14 AM
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Unless there are kids who have them all the time bringing up the average?

Based on this summer, this is the case. We had friends whose kids got sent home 1-2x/week all summer long. The mother was very, very defensive and not willing to hear what she was doing wrong. It was insanely expensive for her in terms of emergency babysitters all summer long.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 08-22-15 9:17 AM
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2- Chagas treatments specifically. Existing treatments are super toxic.


Posted by: SP | Link to this comment | 08-22-15 9:48 AM
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The species has become resistant to the shampoos that used to kill them and can really only be defeated by manual removal with nit combs mandatory head shaving.


Posted by: Josh | Link to this comment | 08-22-15 10:03 AM
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When my nephews got lice (three or four times in their grammar school years) shaving their heads was indeed how my SIL dealt with the issue.

I have to say I would go there.


Posted by: delagar | Link to this comment | 08-22-15 10:15 AM
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For some reason Chagas is one of the diseases that really scares me.


Posted by: Unfoggetarian: "Pause endlessly, then go in." (9) | Link to this comment | 08-22-15 10:17 AM
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Chagas is terrible because you're infected, it probably goes away, then 10 years later you have heart problems and you're a decade too late to do anything about it.


Posted by: SP | Link to this comment | 08-22-15 10:20 AM
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I feel like I live in a deteriorating medical environment and it will occupy more and more of my time and energy and anxiety.

Yes, the parts of the US where yellow fever was a constant worry a hundred years ago are going to have a lot to worry about in the future as well.

The general disregard for things like this in Texas makes it always surprising to see the frequent articles in science-related publications about how Houston is the best place outside Boston and San Diego to find a job either as a biomedical scientist or a health care worker.


Posted by: Cryptic ned | Link to this comment | 08-22-15 10:24 AM
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32

28.2 Why wouldn't you go there if the shampoos and combing don't work?


Posted by: Barry Freed | Link to this comment | 08-22-15 10:27 AM
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33

So, not to get political about it, but to get political about it: to what extent might or should we expect government to take measures to address this? Would it be state government? I would think so, at least in the first instance, but perhaps backed up by federal support.

This sort of thing infuriates me: states which throw low income people under the bus and suppose that everything will be hunky-dory. Looking at you, Texas and Alabama and so on.


Posted by: parsimon | Link to this comment | 08-22-15 10:31 AM
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34

I don't mean the head lice. I mean the open sewage, chiefly.


Posted by: parsimon | Link to this comment | 08-22-15 10:33 AM
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Chagas is scary, sure, but is it toothmaggots scary?

Apparently this is an actual thing that can happen if you live in a jungle-y environment, sleep with your mouth open, and don't clean your teeth often enough. Parents: feel free to show this to children reluctant to brush their teeth!


Posted by: MHPH | Link to this comment | 08-22-15 11:55 AM
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32: The combing works. It's just labor intensive.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 08-22-15 11:57 AM
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37

If the person combing out the lice really super knows what they are doing, it only takes a couple of times. I speak as a person with ridiculous amounts of hair, pretty much a louse's ideal environment.

There was a surprisingly sensible article re lice in Slate posted like yesterday.


Posted by: dairy queen | Link to this comment | 08-22-15 11:58 AM
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38

Super, like, super. Ridiculous hair.

Heh.


Posted by: parsimon | Link to this comment | 08-22-15 12:06 PM
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39

Sorry, 37 just made me laugh.


Posted by: parsimon | Link to this comment | 08-22-15 12:07 PM
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40

I realize this may be thunderingly obvious to others, but why on earth are people depending on private septic systems in the first place? Is there no public sewage system in Texas?!


Posted by: Witt | Link to this comment | 08-22-15 12:20 PM
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I am confident the lice had a collective raucous belly laugh when they first moved in! But they were eventually defeated by a pro wielding a comb and good riddance to the miniscule fuckers.


Posted by: dairy queen | Link to this comment | 08-22-15 12:24 PM
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Private septic systems (i.e. cesspools) are still common on LI which depends on an aquifer for its water.


Posted by: Barry Freed | Link to this comment | 08-22-15 12:25 PM
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40: Lots of rural/exurban areas across the country use individual septic systems rather than centralized sewers. There are lots of factors involved, including population density and soil composition as well as capital and operating costs, in deciding whether to put in a centralized system.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 08-22-15 12:28 PM
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44

Chili fried chicken and dosa waffles successfully eaten with Josh, and my sister and brother-in-law who are here moving o
their 22-year-old to San Carlos...


Posted by: Gnoler Darb | Link to this comment | 08-22-15 12:28 PM
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45

Isn't that a feature of the suburb/rural transition all over? At less than a certain level of density, it doesn't pay to put in sewage pipes, and each house has a septic tank instead? I don't know what the transition point is, but my mother has a septic tank on Long Island.

(I don't know why building codes don't mandate a properly functioning septic tank in order for a house to be legally habitable, admittedly. But not having a sewer system doesn't seem weird to me.)


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08-22-15 12:29 PM
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46

I find septic tanks pretty normal. Then again, I once lived in and grew up near a town that made the fight over septic tanks versus sewage into an epic law battle.....


Posted by: Parenthetical | Link to this comment | 08-22-15 12:37 PM
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47

Thanks. I guess I was thrown off by the "near Houston" part. I assume major metros have functioning sewer systems, although per this thread apparently that's not always accurate either.


Posted by: Witt | Link to this comment | 08-22-15 1:02 PM
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47: To VSOOBC, there are houses in Ventura County (in SoCal) that have septic tanks.


Posted by: Josh | Link to this comment | 08-22-15 1:14 PM
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49

Sorry to miss a visit! Stupidly difficult to get ourselves across the bridge.


Posted by: dairy queen | Link to this comment | 08-22-15 1:46 PM
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25

What was she doing wrong?

I had lice at least once as a kid, and I think my grandmother got them out in 1-2 combings. She used her magnified reading lamp to and I remember it taking several hours. It may have been very fine straight hair, or it may have been force of personality.

On the general issue, in the next 10 years I think we're going to have to seriously deal with the issue we're not across the board really a first world country. Also, not providing decent national healthcare is going to be increasingly stupid, expensive, and deadly, in addition to being run of the mill evil.


Posted by: Buttercup | Link to this comment | 08-22-15 2:03 PM
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47: To VSOOBC, there are houses in Ventura County (in SoCal) that have septic tanks.

My parents have one, a hundred miles or so north of there, but I think they're kinda sorta considered rural. The intricacies of what you can and cannot flush are .... well, it's a different world.


Posted by: Parenthetical | Link to this comment | 08-22-15 2:16 PM
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If you flush an alligator into a septic system, it can't survive.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 08-22-15 2:21 PM
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The bad nitpickers are the ones who are so slow their rate of removal doesn't keep up with the reproduction rate of the lice.


Posted by: SP | Link to this comment | 08-22-15 2:54 PM
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When I was a kid the OTC lice shampoo killed the lice but not the nits, so if you didn't comb every last one out, you were in trouble. You needed the prescription stuff to kill the nits.

Why do kids get them and not adults? Are they sharing hairbrushes all the time?


Posted by: Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 08-22-15 3:03 PM
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55

The parents I talked to were blaming shared batting helmets.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 08-22-15 3:16 PM
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56

That was one of our bouts. Definitely baseball.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08-22-15 3:19 PM
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57

When I was in high school, the wrestling team was a vector.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 08-22-15 3:20 PM
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Septic tanks, I understand. But just running the sewage out into the deep backyard, albeit underground, and hoping that will do the job? No.


Posted by: md 20/400 | Link to this comment | 08-22-15 3:21 PM
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Properly engineered and installed septic systems cost $$$. Minivet has I appallingly right up thread, there are communities particularly in the southern San Joaquin valley that are outside municipal boundaries and the service areas of all established community service districts, where county building and environmental health departments just don't do inspections. Essentially local governments collude to allow these communities to exist outside the usual legal structures because that is where the very impoverished people who grow pick and pack your food live. Many of these communities rely on wells subject to contamination by sewage and nitrates (blue baby syndrome is a problem), plus they're in a naturally occurring arsenic belt.


Posted by: dairy queen | Link to this comment | 08-22-15 3:28 PM
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I shld be it, obvs.

California Rural Legal Assistance does good work.


Posted by: dairy queen | Link to this comment | 08-22-15 3:29 PM
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61

I understand wrestlers also get herpes from sweaty mats.

And they spend hours spitting into buckets to lose that last pound before weigh in.

Conclusion? Wrestling is the grossest sport.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 08-22-15 4:07 PM
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Seconding everything in 59. Also we have foot tracks between the agricultural labor camps because we won't even drive the poor laborers where we need them, or maybe we do it so cruelly that walking hundreds of miles is better.

In slightly less damning sewer news, its a regular problem in "cottage" counties esp ones now inhabited year-round. Like, the lake everyone summers on being unsafe to swim in because all the leaky septic fields are literally grandfathered in. Lake Washington was going that way until a couple decades of hippie science activism persuaded all the surrounding counties to shape up and monitor. Puget Sound probably needs the same, which will be internationally interesting.


Posted by: clew | Link to this comment | 08-22-15 4:15 PM
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Matt has given lots of people herpes, even after he has showered.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 08-22-15 4:16 PM
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55 and 56: I remember them a lot at summer day camp. We weren't wearing helmets.


Posted by: Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 08-22-15 6:23 PM
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64 to 63, obviously.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 08-22-15 7:15 PM
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65: HA!


Posted by: Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 08-22-15 7:23 PM
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67

Pretty sure I've only heard of chagas before because it's one of the things that blood donation questionnaires ask about.


Posted by: Nathan Williams | Link to this comment | 08-22-15 8:12 PM
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Pretty sure I've only heard of chagas before because it's one of the things that blood donation questionnaires ask about.


Posted by: Nathan Williams | Link to this comment | 08-22-15 8:12 PM
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I've never donated blood, but I have heard of Chagas. Not so much as to really know what it is, though.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 08-22-15 9:26 PM
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I'm not allowed to donate blood because of the time I spent in that notorious disease source, England.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 08-22-15 9:34 PM
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It's my own fault for eating the sausage at the chipper.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 08-22-15 9:57 PM
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69: Isn't that the name of the place you used to work?


Posted by: R. rubrum | Link to this comment | 08-22-15 9:59 PM
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Lice! The bane of my existence. My super social long haired daughter had gotten them three times, and adults can get them--she gave them to me! I live in Ohio and the over the counter stuff won't work anymore. You need the real prescription stuff, malathion, which is over $100 a bottle for 4 oz. it kills some of the nits too, but you still have to comb. I think they are working on an oral medicine that you take and that makes your blood toxic to lice, but it's not ready yet. Come on, science!


Posted by: Miranda | Link to this comment | 08-22-15 10:29 PM
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Enough louse-shaming. Using pejorative terms like "lousy" and "nitwit" is offensive - we should be aiming towards louse-acceptance and a generally louse-positive culture.


Posted by: ajay | Link to this comment | 08-22-15 11:25 PM
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Wrestlers also often suffer from ringworm (from the mats), and they're not allowed to compete if they show signs of it. Male wrestlers, thus, tend to be more intimately acquainted with foundation than most teenage boys not in drama.


Posted by: Parenthetical | Link to this comment | 08-23-15 2:40 AM
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70. That's because of vCJD, which you get from eating cheap burgers, not living in the tropics.


Posted by: chris y | Link to this comment | 08-23-15 2:53 AM
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74. AIMHMHB, if you read the original Grimm brothers' folk tale collection, you discover that in early modern Germany, de-lousing one another was regarded as foreplay.


Posted by: chris y | Link to this comment | 08-23-15 2:55 AM
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And in England, if John Donne is anyone to go by.


Posted by: Parenthetical | Link to this comment | 08-23-15 3:04 AM
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72: Heh.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 08-23-15 4:43 AM
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Yeah, to clarify, I wasn't shocked that people in the Houston metro have septic systems, I was shocked that they don't have septic systems. All other things being equal, I'm an advocate of composting toilets precisely because it's so easy for septic systems to malfunction. (My great uncle was driving his tractor around on his own property once and had an old, forgotten septic tank collapse under him, so there's that danger too.)

The issue with lake pollution is one that's unsurprisingly significant around here too -- I'm not sure just how the codes work for new construction, but at least up into the 1980s it was very common for people with a summer cabin to just run a sewage pipe as far out into the lake as they felt like and hope the e. coli didn't swim back as far as the beach the people used.


Posted by: Natilo Paennim | Link to this comment | 08-23-15 7:45 AM
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81

de-lousing one another was regarded as foreplay

Why settle for lousy sex when there's an alternative.


Posted by: Barry Freed | Link to this comment | 08-23-15 7:53 AM
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82

Sort of on topic.


Posted by: chris y | Link to this comment | 08-23-15 8:05 AM
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83

82 is one of the links I was alluding to in 3.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 08-23-15 8:22 AM
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