Dumbfounded.
(I do wonder what "eating continuously" means. Obviously not "I have food in my mouth at all times". How much of a gap are they allowing between separate items? 15 minutes? An hour?)
This makes no sense. I have hour long meetings and no one eats in them. Yesterday I had so many meetings followed by a school event I didn't eat from 7am until 8pm (although that's unusual).
I pretty much don't snack at all. I concentrate my eating into a big-ish lunch and a big dinner. It's actually becoming a bit of an issue. I subscribe to one of those craft beer delivery things, and each shipment comes with a bag of some salty snack, a collection of which is now filling an entire cupboard.
Full text:http://www.cell.com/cell-metabolism/fulltext/S1550-4131%2815%2900462-3
It's not clear, but I think that for the purposes of the study "eating" means "ingestion of something" - which includes drinks, including water.
Well, I drink coffee all morning, like a normal person.
Yeah, the paper is a bit infuriating on that. And I can't be bothered to read it carefully enough to work out what it's really trying to say.
It does seem that young children are encouraged to eat continuously, which I find astonishing from a tidiness perspective if nothing else, crumbs everywhere, stickiness on all surfaces ... makes my skin crawl.
This kind of grazing is a herbivorous habit and thus directly contrary to the ethos of Halfordismo. We should be accustomed to hunger for days at a time while we stalk our prey, and then binge on its roasted flesh.
I'm not a huge snacker, either. I'm pretty fat, mind you, because I sit on my arse all day in front of a computer, only have a part of a thyroid, and probably drink far too many sweet caffeinated drinks.
Today, I ate something at 9:30am, a snack at 12 , lunch at 2pm. I've not eaten anything since then. That would be fairly typical.
xelA doesn't eat that many snacks, although he does get some, which function as bribes. Typically, breakfast at about 7:30, lunch at 12, dinner at 4:30, and probably a couple of pieces of fruit, or a yoghurt, or a biscuit, over the whole day. He's certainly not getting snacks all the time, or grazing all day, though.
I was, in fact, eating at the time. Ouch. A "protein" bar. I rarely eat in the afternoon at work or after my big meal in the evening, but I admittedly tend to snack in the morning at work and in the afternoon at home.
I blame my wife. Seriously. She has an annoying habit of baking or buying junk food and then squirreling it away. She wouldn't eat it for months, left to her own devices, or not at all - when we were dating but before we moved in together I ate a chocolate bunny with a "best by" date of six months earlier. I have no problem shopping responsibly, but once I'm home and junk food is convenient, I'll grab a handful every time I walk by.
For whatever it's worth, I often have a donut at the café at work with my morning coffee, but I haven't been able to bike to work for the past week and I've found it much easier to resist the donuts. Burning calories makes you hungry? I'm as baffled as you are! (But I had something similar this morning despite not biking, so I'm not immune. Rough commute, it's Friday, it's rainy, blah.)
4: Wow, that makes this seem pretty stupid.
Dogmatic adherence to mealtimes is anti-science, racist, and might actually be making you sick.
http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2015/03/against-meals-breakfast-lunch-dinner
I agree with 7 and 8. I don't even have lunch most days, just an omelette+steak breakfast, a huge dinner, and tons of coffee, just like our ancestors. I do have a huge thing of venison jerky in the office that was a "secret santa" gift.
Every time I give the one year old a snack to stop him crying, I die a little inside, but at least he's not crying. Still, it pains me.
11: well, I might be wrong; it's not a very clearly-written paper.
If I'm at home, I'll settle quite happily into a patten of quite a biggish breakfast mid-morning, and quite a big evening meal, around 8:30. Maybe one tiny snack in between, but not always. A solid breakfast at about 9:30 will take me through till 4pm or 5pm quite comfortably.
It's being in the office, or more specifically, commuting to and from the office, when the temptation to drink caffeinated drinks, or snack on sweet food [because tired/bored, etc.] looms.
Reminds me of the phrase that occurs in Gaddis' novels, "the self who can do more".
I lost 15 lbs last month by eating a very light breakfast, skipping lunch most days or at most eating a handful of almonds, and then eating a light to moderate dinner, which is almost always a felafel sandwich because consistency for me means eating the same damn thing every single day. Except Saturdays. Saturdays I go out with the other American in my section and eat a regular, even biggish lunch.
I just got free office cupcakes and cookies.
I was the only man in the room, so I just ate and then ducked out.
I have just started going to the local bouldering gym. I was an ok novice top rope climber at the other gym, but bouldering seems to be considerably harder. I have to figure out what diet will help me build muscle without weight loss... I guess? How tedious. Is there any way to make it not tedious? I immensely enjoyed the few, uh, "problems" I could do, so I'd like to stick with it, but not if it makes me overly boring and obsessive.
I snack and eat terribly and mostly stay thin (but also weak as shit, evidently), so a lot of these "key to obesity!" pieces are a little disorienting for me. There must be a pretty big genetic override for some/many/all people, as I think we have discussed.
I think worrying about diet for strength building is probably not a huge issue. People trying to become huge need to shovel down vast quantities of protein, sure. But if you're sort of eating a normal amount of normally assorted food, and not trying to change your bodyweight significantly, just getting stronger at roughly the same size, I think you'll probably do just fine focusing on the exercising end of it rather than the diet end of it.
20: One running book I read suggest rating your diet according to a diet quality score, and then make small adjustments to make your diet a little more healthy. Good if you're not trying to lose weight but need to improve nutrition.
20: I think people of Inuit ancestry often have a gene that helps them to metabolize high fat diets more efficiently. It stands to reason that similar genes may be rather common. I'm not an expert or anything, though.
Anyhow, I think if you factor in quick snacks, caloric drinks, and so forth, the study sounds true to me. It seems to be more true of kids, too -- kids need small snacks, but I think most kids can handle a shopping trip without being fed crackers and juice continually.
Constant healthy snacking, rather than a few large meals, is better for maintaining an even blood sugar.
I knew one guy who was a competitive body builder. He ate little meals all day. Most of them looked closed to inedible to me.
26: Perhaps, but eating three times a day vs. six or eight gives you fewer opportunities to overeat by just a little.
I think that's where the "close to inedible" comes in. If I hadn't typed "closed".
This thread just reminded me that I forgot to eat lunch today. That's probably why I am hungry.
Just in case Eggplant is right, I'm going to see if there are any cupcakes left.
I missed lunch again today but fortunately there's an Oktoberfest part upstairs in an hour. Beer and brats and plenty of other stuff I'm sure.
The protein heavy diet to build muscle thing sounds like bunk to me, for the same reason oral ingestion of probiotics seems highly unlikely to me to populate your post-hydrochloric acid bath intestines. Without some specific genetic mutation e.g. inuits the rest of us eat a range of things and our bodies break those foods down and put the constituent nutrients to all kinds of diverse uses.
re: 27
A guy I know is a vegan (Froggy) kick boxer. He's currently champ du monde, so he's bloody good. His diet is just horrible. He is one of those 'food as fuel' guys who gets very little sensual pleasure out of eating, so he'll open his lunch box and it'll just be rank looking stuff.
Jars of nuts floating in grey looking liquid, or beans and coarsely chopped veg, with no flavouring. It's all rich in protein, and good fats, and he's in great shape. But it's the sort of diet you imaging a Stylite would eat.
I still eat 6 times a day, but I think of them as meals rather than snacking - I try to keep a lid on eating anything outside those opportunities, and mostly succeed.
re: 35
The protein heavy diet to build muscle thing sounds like bunk to me
I think that's quite well established, actually. I'm sure the guys eating 10 chicken breasts and 20 egg whites a day are overdoing/fetishising it, but there's some basis in sports science/nutrition for it.
I really like egg whites, as long as they are cooked with egg yokes and butter. And topped with cheese.
Anyway, when I was in France, I had an exotic dish called "omelette au fromage" which is sort of similar to egg whites but much better.
Are egg yokes how you harness spherical oxen?
I don't know. I'll ask the wise man in India that I'm about to see.
Yeah, protein really is a necessary nutrient that can't be substituted for with other macronutrients. I was pooh-poohing the idea that someone who was trying to get stronger on a scale that didn't involve putting on significant muscle weight needed more protein than they were probably getting already. But you certainly need some.
The idea that the averagely healthy diet of someone living in a wealthy industrial nation provides an inadequate amount of protein to support increased muscle mass via for ex weight training or rock climbing, such that adding *even more* protein is going to lead to a material increase in muscle mass seems ... highly unlikely to me.
This reminds me that I should try the 100 push ups thing again.
re: 43
I think it depends on your protein intake. I know* what mine is, for example, and it's certainly lower than non-cranky non-extreme sports scientists recommend for people in strength or explosive sports, which is in the region of 1g - 2g of protein per kg of bodyweight per day. Someone eating a meat heavy diet [stereotypical American male?] probably eats that anyway, but someone eating a less meat heavy diet, may well not.
* I know because I monitor what I eat for 'trying to be less fat' reasons, not because I'm an athlete.
44: I've been stalled between week 3 and 4 for over a year now. On the other hand, as a place to be stalled, I'm as strong as I've ever been.
Clearly 43 requires a combination flexoff/daily steak tally on the Ekranoplan hunting trip. Possibly also measuring crossfit monads per session.
I think I'm going to spread it out by inserting a extra day of rest between every day of up pushing.
43: It depends on what you're trying to do. A number of my friends are serious amateur Olympic lifters. They need more protein than I do, because they're trying to add as much muscle as they can. Me? Eh, if I lift with them, I'm trying to get stronger for health or so I can run faster, but I'm not interested in maxing out, so I don't need to work at protein consumption as much.
It depends on what you're trying to do.
Maximize the number of years during which my heart functions without medical intervention.
Mostly, I'm trying to show off at work by putting the fresh five gallon bottle on the water cooler in a gracefully effortless looking manner. I'm not clear on who I think I'm impressing, but work has limited other satisfactions these days.
I can already do that, but I no longer work in an office with one of those.
But that's right below "staving off death" on the hierarchy of needs.
Once I get that down, I'm going to try to stop limping every time I start walking.
55: I'm sure I speak for everyone at Unfogged in saying that your inner beauty shines through in every comment you post.
Where are daily sunscreen and impeccable manners on your list, Moby? Very troubling.
56: I know. That's why I worry about it.
57: I worry more about the chemicals in sunscreen than the sun in Pittsburgh this time of the year. My manners are passable.
Among the traits my manners share with PBR is passability.
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NMM to the ability to claim Facilitated Communication told you it was ok to rape people.
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61: I understand that this type of abuse is all-too-common, but I'm still kind of flabbergasted by this case.
The female chair of a philosophy department?! In the lengthy, depressing, and often quite repetitive (the powerful prey upon the powerless; rinse repeat) annals of sexual exploitation, this is surely something new? What was she thinking? What did she think she was doing?
It's only something new if you think she was telling the truth. The jury didn't.
It's a desperately sad story but I am completely horrified by the sentence. Even in the annals of American legal barbarity, a minimum of ten years for a woman who has already had her life destroyed, who will never offend in this way again, and who leaves a fifteen-year-old daughter ...
I can well imagine she is every kind of monster but even so.
Wow, they're not kidding about disabled people being invisible.
I'm not sure the jury didn't think she was being sincere. But sincerity means little to nothing in these cases, unless it's genuinely hard to see how a reasonable person could have thought otherwise. And she was very clearly not being a reasonable person.
I'm pretty sure the bit that destroys her life isn't the bit where people found out that she was raping a disabled person out of some kind of weird deluded fantasy she was having, but the bit where she broke the law and had to go to jail.
I guess it reveals my prejudices, but as far as 62 goes I'm less shocked by this than I could be, or would be if it was someone in a different area. She was a disability-rights-theory type scholar which, in my probably unfair opinion, is a group of people who have managed to take everything bad you see in feminist philosophy and carefully separate it out from the (larger amount of) good things that are there and then double down on it. It's mainly a group of people who have managed to replace actual thought or activism* with loud self-impressed declarations and policing of language, and who have somehow managed to convince themselves that actually taking things seriously, as if statements could or ought to be true, is a kind of oppressive vice, and so on.
Stubblefield, e.g., didn't just argue that Facilitated Communication worked (in the face of, well, all the available evidence), she claimed that saying it didn't was hate speech. The idea that she could have deluded herself into thinking she was having a love affair with an imaginary person (and abusing an actual person in the process) who happened to be just perfect for her (and her career), and not taken seriously the possibility that she wasn't being a noble crusader or looked more carefully about the actual scientific evidence out there isn't overly shocking to me when it comes from a context where a lot of people are going around claiming that saying that being disabled could leave someone worse off is a kind of horrific prejudice that they are boldly standing against.
*There are disability rights activists, and they do very important work. Policing 'ableist' language and striking poses isn't that work. Proclaiming that the only thing about a disability that could leave someone worse off in general is the social context in which it occurs not only isn't that work but makes it harder to address the problems that disabled people face, many of which are not based on that.
67
I stopped reading a fairly famous feminist blog when they had a post on how a drug which cured heart defects in utero that as a side effect would also prevent ambiguous genitalia was anti-disablist and anti-hermaphrodite. When some commenters pointed out that treating an often fatal and usually debilitating heart condition was actually a good thing, they were shouted down as believing in "genocide" against disabled people.*
*One would think a lifesaving treatment is kind of the opposite of genocide, but what made it genocide is that it erased these people's chances to live short painful lives as permanently disabled people, which was apparently their true identity, or something.
Oops, I got my scalar implicatures a bit off. I meant to write "often fatal and always debilitating."
I dunno, I can't see coming to that reductionist a position, myself. First off, a ten-year minimum sentence seems pretty harsh -- isn't the average rape sentence like 6 years or something?
Also, I'm not convinced that she wasn't convinced that there was effective consent there. Is there a smoking gun where she was like "Oh, of course everyone knows he's profoundly intellectually disabled, I'm just pretending otherwise"? Without that, it hardly seems reasonable to say that she was absolutely acting in a predatory manner, regardless of what the specific legal issues would be.
And I'm also not clear that there is (or should be) a bright line where cognitively average people should never be able to have sexual contact with those who are not. Sexual relations are usually unequal, at least in some degree -- perhaps this case is an outlier where we can say unequivocally that it was an immoral act on her part, but in many such instances, it seems like there's a huge amount of room for doubt and interpretation.
replace actual thought or activism* with loud self-impressed declarations and policing of language, and who have somehow managed to convince themselves that actually taking things seriously, as if statements could or ought to be true, is a kind of oppressive vice
In my experience in the radical scene, of course, this tendency is often most clearly expressed by the people who are going after someone for an alleged sexual assault. Too, putting everyone involved through many more years of trauma seems like a pretty lousy way to handle this, from a harm reduction perspective.
Yeah but like I said earlier sincerity isn't the standard: the standard is ability to consent.
Even if someone really does think that someone else is totally capable of (and is) consenting and that they're just playing at being too drunk to respond it's still rape - especially in cases where the rapist has very, very good reason to think otherwise that they're neglecting, and especially especially when it's clear that their neglect of those reasons is part of an obviously self serving story they're telling themselves. Even without the rape she was clearly using him to promote her career - including taking him with her to conferences, letting him "deliver" talks (she "helped" him deliver them) and so on. So there's a strong pattern of exploitation there even beforehand which definitely affects the extent to which sincerity on her part counts for much.
I mean, yes issues of consent are really really hard when it comes to the mentally disabled - but this was a case of someone with the mental age (as assessed by multiple experts) of something around 18 months. If there's anything to requiring consent at all he's way, way past even the vaguest line.
68: I gave up on the whole thing after seeing (1) a genuine(!!) conversation about whether it was morally permissible to use the word 'crazy' or if it was equivalent to using the n-word, and (2) a case where someone wrote, basically, "look people policing 'ableist' language should be cautious about it because automatically accusing anyone who says that a disability might leave someone worse off of being a moral monster causes real trouble, especially when you're excluding disabled people from the conversation in the process", only to have the comment threads almost immediately turn into "What kind of moral monster would say something like this!?.
Yeah, definitely the promoting her career part stands out as especially squick, though again, if one were convinced that the person with a disability was gaining some benefit as well, it would be easier to see how the justifications would roll out pretty easily.
I'm also leery of the reliance on paid expert witnesses in the criminal justice system here. Even unpaid, they're cherry-picked by each side to present that side's case. It could very well be that the prosecution's witnesses in this case were totally unimpeachable and not interested in compensation, but even so, at the end of the day they're just stating a belief, same as the defendant. Did the defense present expert witnesses who said the opposite? If so, were they just rape-apologist liars?
Yeah but the validity of Facilitated Communication isn't really a matter of scientific debate.* If she'd, sincerely, said that she knew he consented and wasn't mentally (only physically) disabled** because she read his aura and it said so would that really be a question? It's not like the guy was discovered to be severely mentally disabled at the trial - he was already in his thirties when she met him, and had been professionally evaluated well before that.
*Yes, she thought it was. That doesn't mean anything, though.
**She really did say this. Her evidence was that when she performed Facilitated Communication 'he' said intelligent things to her.
68.1 I'm thinking of a blog. Is that the one?
The judge apparently allowed some testimony about how she and others believe in FC but didn't let it be treated as expert testimony. (This newspaper published a lot of articles about the trial.)
I dislike the argument about "already had [their] life destroyed". It seems to implicitly weigh the freedom of people with desirable jobs/status more highly.
Maybe her 15 year old daughter came home from sex ed talking about practicing condom use and sex acts on a vegetable and mom just really, really misinterpreted the state of social norms.
Even in the annals of American legal barbarity, a minimum of ten years for a woman who has already had her life destroyed, who will never offend in this way again, and who leaves a fifteen-year-old daughter ...
Having sex with someone who is unable to consent and who is under your care is kind of a big problem. I don't see how the this doesn't trigger both of those hammers. I think there would be lots of negative consequences if you wrote a law saying that somebody guilty of statutory rape can get a lesser sentence if they have children at home.
It's like FC was made for sexual abuse. That's quite the list.
I agree that American prison sentence run toward the overly long.
I appreciate your showing solidarity by eliminating unnecessary letter.
"FC" was also the abbreviation the Unabomber used -- just a coincidence???
She was convicted of two separate counts, though, so it's 5-20 per conviction. Twenty seems like it might be unnecessarily severe, but five years doesn't sound insane to me as a punishment for rape, especially given the strong tradition in the American legal system of letting people out on parole relatively early in their sentences.
What did it stand for when Unabomber use?
86: Even if she gets parole, she's probably still be legally required to live in New Jersey.
"Freedom Club" -- to throw the bloodhounds off the scent.
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There's like, a LOT to unpack in these slightly-NSFW pictures of a guy in pregnancy pix drag.
http://imgur.com/a/km7N0#0
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82. I can imagine a rapist under these circumstances getting 10 years in Britain. It's too long if you don't believe that prison sentences should take retribution into account, but it isn't surprising.
In Massachusetts statutory rape of a 15 year-old step-child could easily get you 18-24.
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And the humiliation of JEB! continues...
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In a general election between Trump and Sanders, who wins?
People who hate the press corps and DC political pundits.
93 He is the candidate of the 1% after all. He'll get there.
I think Trump is probably the president America deserves.
Plus, don't you all miss those Bush administration style "HOLY GOD WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE PRESS" feelings?
In a general election between Trump and Sanders, who wins?
AMERICA!
I've heard some fascinating talks on gut biomes as complex systems that found a big difference between snacky and non-snacky eating. They were looking at the effect on the biome of the microbes regularly experiencing nutrient stress (effect for human: good, I forget how). Apparently five hours between meals is enough time for microbe empires to rise and fall.
It may be bad for the human's pancreas. You can only optimize for one thing at a time.
Thinking about Peeple and various selves and The Mill on the Floss - who is the Ostrom of virtue within villagers? Of what norms of gossip lead to what kind of outcomes?
clew! You are in Seattle??? I will be too later today through Tuesday! If you're free for coffee or a drink or whatnot let me know. And other Seattle ites!
dairy queen! I am! This weekend is booked, how about Monday?
I think the next nearest unfoggeder is NickS, and he's hours to the north (I am not managing to make it to a Pomona fair he recommended this weekend, alas).
Monday works! We are staying downtown, is there anything/anywhere/anytime that works particularly well for you?
Correction: we are at 4th & Virginia, in "Belltown" or so I am told. C'est quoi, ce cochon dont to parlesparked moby?
We could meet at the pig, it's in the Pike Place Sanitary Market and is a traditional meeting spot. Any time from late lunch through dinner works for me; Belltown is easy for me to get to (downtown, Central, Cap Hill, Eastlake likewise).
I know almost nothing about current restaurants because my family and friends have a spanning set of allergies and we don't eat out much. I personally am not allergic to anything, so any restaurant that sounds good to you I will turn up with a bib on. The Market has various small places that I've loved since I was twelve and can't be objective about; good place to graze.
"Sanitary Market"?
That's like seeing the word "food" on something at the grocery store. I mean, if they feel the need to reassure you about that...
Has anybody ever eaten "Potted Meat"? It seems like the kind of product tailor-made for taking a last grimy spoonful of into your gullet before coughing your last bloody breath out into the filthy slush in the gutter where you just drank two Lysol cans worth of Non-Beverage Alcohol.
My father, back when generic products with black and white labels were available, was fond of POTTED MEAT FOOD PRODUCT eaten on SALTED CRACKERS.
Hey! Potted meat is a real classic in food preservation! It kept your ancestors alive for centuries so show some respect!
I mean, if they'd had freezers they probably wouldn't have bothered. But it's a real thing, and not much different than Duck Confit or something.
I imagine the Market is sanitary in the same way Chicago's Sanitary Canal is.
If anybody wants to launch a line of potted duck, let me be the first to suggest "Duck Discomfit."
Good evening, sir, welcome to the only nice hotel in town. You'll find it's very clean here. Front!
Where a duck hovers just at the edge of the frame and watches the whole time.
"Goose Discomfit" is just a guy fucking a goose.
We are eating chez le petit cochon tonight.
Does lunch Monday at Mamnoon tempt?
Potted meat, in small cans, was something I had as a boy in Canada. My mother made sandwiches for my lunch with it. It's a lot like liver sausage.
Lunch at Mamnoon at one? That would be delightful.
We* wanted to give little cans of "potted meat food product" as wedding favors but chickened out.
*Wife #1 and I.
What is home without Plumtree's Potted Meat?
Incomplete.
With it an abode of bliss.
Manufactured by George Plumtree, 23 Merchants' quay, Dublin, put up in 4 oz. pots, and inserted by Councillor Joseph P. Nannetti, M. P., Rotunda Ward, 19 Hardwicke street, under the obituary notices and anniversaries of deceases. The name on the label is Plumtree. A plumtree is a meatpot, registered trade mark. Beware of imitations. Peatmot. Trumplee. Montpat. Plamtroo.
I have to say, a little bag of candy-coated almonds is maybe a trite but there's a reason so many people go with that.
|| Man, you guys used to get into some weird shit, didn't you? |>
Ha! I remember that. Good times. (I didn't participate in the bot shenanigans myself, but it looks like I did have one comment in the thread linked from the article.)
Catching up, and for clarity, I don't dispute she should have gone to jail. But I can't see what purpose is served after the first three years, maybe five. But the stuff about disablist language had been chilling and educational
128: well, remember a ten year sentence doesn't mean ten years in prison.
But, really, though: multiple rape of a person in her care who was unable to consent because they had the mental capacity of an 18 month old infant? That's pretty severe. And not a sign of remorse. How likely would she be to do it again? Given that she's still utterly convinced that her victim "really wanted it"?
Even the Catholic church would probably be cutting her loose by this point.
Doesn't ten years mean pretty much ten years in the US? If it only means five, then no argument. If by the end of that time she has not come to understand what she did, she never will. And I think the deterrent effect has also been effected in this case.
That's another of those state-by-state questions, but mostly I wouldn't expect anyone to serve ten years on a ten-year sentence.
This looks like a "propose a meetup" thread- I'll be in NYC on Friday night.
126: That was just a little bit before me. The closed I ever came to rigging an on-line poll was voting at work and at home. For M/lls, I think.
It's the obvious and total denial of what she was doing, and complete lack of remorse that makes me think that a longer sentence wouldn't necessarily be a bad idea. I also suspect that it's one of the reasons the judge had her put in jail immediately after the verdict was handed down rather than letting her loose to wrap up her affairs first*. I mean, this is a woman so confident in the reasonableness of what she had done that she didn't make arrangements for the care of her mentally ill fifteen year old daughter ahead of time in case things went wrong. I have no doubt in my mind that, to her, this is just a confirmation of the oppression that disabled people suffer as a result of being denied any way to communicate with the world etc. etc.
I don't really think that means she'd be likely re-offend if she were set free relatively quickly**, but someone who genuinely refuses to believe they did something wrong (and that there would be consequences for it when she was already on trial) seems like someone that should spend some time in confinement reassessing that belief (if she will, I don't know).
*I don't know if this is a regular thing though - she didn't make it sound that way in her response.
**I mean, who knows. But it sounds like the kind of thing where she might not have the opportunity afterwards.
70: "...And I'm also not clear that there is (or should be) a bright line where cognitively average people should never be able to have sexual contact with those who are not. Sexual relations are usually unequal, at least in some degree..."
Curious how this, in your view, affects the situation with people who are only temporarily cognitively impaired... for example by being very drunk, or drugged?
70. We return to the question of what constitutes ability to consent. And to some extent that's always going to be subjective, so the right thing to do is to err on the side of caution. This woman claims she believed the kid was capable of consent, but she must have realised that she was entering a grey area and she evidently did not err on the side of caution.
I don't know if that last bit is right: she believed (falsely, unjustifiably, etc.) that he was a fully mentally capable adult with only a physical disability. But he wasn't even remotely close to anything like someone with the ability to consent. I mean, yes, grey areas do exist. But if there are grey areas that means there are ones where people just straight up can't consent, and if a mental age of 18 months isn't one of them then I don't know what could be.
I agree that someone with a mental age of 18 months can't consent, any more than somebody who's falling down drunk. My point is that even if this woman had convinced herself that he could consent, and it wasn't just a story for the court, it must have been blindingly obvious to her that other people might, and probably would think otherwise.
I have to add that I'm not hugely engaged by this story because the woman was clearly an unprincipled sexual predator and she's where she belongs. End of. As far as ajay's point in 135 goes, if you must analogise, this is like claiming you were having consensual sex with somebody who was not only passed out drunk but audibly snoring.
138 -- They might, if they were part of the conspiracy of oppression. And even then only until she explained what's what.
Monday lunch, one o'clock at Mamnoon it is! Will update with outfit the day if for reconnoitering purposes, but have dark shoulder length hair, wear glasses, and currently sporting this nail polish: http://www.butterlondon.com/Lacquers/Artful-Dodger.html
The discussion in this thread about the defendant's firmly held subjective but objectively unreasonable belief re the victim's consent would be *so* useful in explaining these concepts to the mock trial students but alas ...
140 sounds exactly like my read on her from earlier stories/etc.
I'm not convinced she was a genuine sexual predator though, or at least not in the normal sense. I mean, she's a rapist, obviously, but I feel like she'd have to have been less sincere (or done it to more than one person) for that to be true. My suspicion though is that she was more of a fantasist, and she'd found the perfect story to tell herself about how she was nobly standing up for disability rights, and the people around her were reinforcing that belief and she had a successful career on the basis of some of this stuff and also that the guy she was dragging around and speaking for was the perfect man for her and loved in the way she always had needed to be loved* and so on. If you add that to an addiction to making loud public moral stands for things** and a tendency to react to any doubts or skepticism from other people with nasty accusations rather than careful engagement, then you've got the perfect set up for something awful to happen.
It reminds me of a lot of really loud alternative-medical-practices people who are just certain that cancer is a fungus (or whatever) and all science is evil people attacking their virtue and so on. They're not generally con artists, but honestly people would be a lot safer around them if they were.
*The fact that some of this happened while she was in the middle of a divorce is probably relevant to some of it. I mean, not that she wasn't a dangerous person beforehand but it can't have made things better.
**Especially, and often exclusively, ones that don't require making any actual sacrifices and which get you a lot of praise/career benefits and so on.
My suspicion though is that she was more of a fantasist, and she'd found the perfect story to tell herself about how she was nobly standing up for disability rights, and the people around her were reinforcing that belief and she had a successful career on the basis of some of this stuff and also that the guy she was dragging around and speaking for was the perfect man for her and loved in the way she always had needed to be loved* and so on.
Like she was hoping for an opportunity to be personally involved in the liberation narrative, and leaped at this opportunity. It reminds me of Norman Mailer getting that murderer out of prison because he was such a great writer and also agreed with Mailer's opinions on stuff. Good idea for charity, wrong recipients.
Current favorite! Fantastic in fall light.
144.2: And here I thought that was just a Law & Order episode, but wikipedia informs me that it really happened.
135.2: In this case, I intended that to refer to people who had some kind of permanent, or at least relatively long-term disability. But I don't think there's necessarily that sharp a division with people who have consumed mood-altering chemicals, either. Indeed, what of someone who's suffering from a concussion or some other temporary injury that might impair their cognition? Suddenly we're getting into redefining-lots-and-lots-of-sexual-behavior-as-rape territory, which is problematic.
I mean, it's within living memory that people who obviously had only physical disabilities, from our vantage point, were generally assumed -- or even, in some cases, proven -- to be at least somewhat impaired mentally as well.
or even, in some cases, proven
I.e. proof was offered and accepted, but we can now see that it was spurious.
I dunno, I've never found "only with someone who is awake, adult, uncoerced, unconcussed (!) and unambiguously mentally competent" to be a prohibitively high bar to clear. I always thought of it more as the baseline. (As well as, obviously, "no Tevas". )
I would endorse 150. Obviously mental impairment due to drink or drugs is on a spectrum; I have often had sex with people were cognitively impaired to the extent that it would be illegal for them to drive a car, but there was no question that they were able to give or withhold consent to sex, or indeed argue cogently about questions of ethics. Another couple of drinks and they might not have been, which is why you err on the side of caution.
I honestly have no idea what to do about the very real sexual needs of someone who is physically adult but not capable of understanding how stuff works. It's a nightmare, though I imagine trained people have protocols for helping. But again, unless you're one of those people, you have to err on the side of caution.
"Unambiguously" does a lot of work there, doesn't it? In this particular case, it seems as though the ambiguity, if any, was minimal, at least to an imaginary objective observer.
There're people I would never consider having sex with because, even if they meet the no-Tevas bar, I mistrust the degree to which they are able to make good decisions, just because of their personality.
That metric also adroitly elides the question of how inebriated someone might be after two or three glasses of wine with dinner, or a few tokes on the bong.
though I imagine trained people have protocols for helping
Titicut Follies is also within living memory, of course. No shortage of sexualizing (and degrading) the bodies of people lacking legal mental competence in this society!
One of the reviews of the Krakauer book suggested that the one additional question it might have been useful to explore is the source and extent of interest in having sexual relations with the unconscious. Total dominion is the appeal, I suppose; it's own species of fucked up. And how can you fight that at the source?
I'm sure clew can pull it off, but if I was walking around Seattle trying to match painted fingernails as a way of finding someone people might get the wrong idea.
Set of people she has to suss out will be limited to the resto, at 1 pm on Monday. And I'll update with outfit!
After reading 150 and 152, I'm tempted to google "Teva fetish" just to see what comes up. Unfortunately (or fortunately) I'm at my office computer.
144 I was going to say Jack Henry Abbott in that thread on killer writers but figured that would be cheating since he was a killer before he became a writer (as well as after) but that's dumb because the same goes for most of those mentioned.
154 Which Krakauer book is this then?
158: Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town
That metric also adroitly elides the question of how inebriated someone might be after two or three glasses of wine with dinner, or a few tokes on the bong.
One of the advantages of being human is that one generally has to engage in perfunctory conversation prior to having sex. If your prospective partner is incapable of this, keep your clothes on; if anything about their end of the conversation sounds disconnected, incoherent or plain out of it, keep your clothes on; if you're still not sure, keep your damn clothes on.
That metric also adroitly elides the question of how inebriated someone might be after two or three glasses of wine with dinner, or a few tokes on the bong.
Good lord, who is the dating pool here, seventh graders? What normal sized adult without a medical condition is incapable of giving consent in those circumstances?
160: even if the conversation is limited to "who wants to sex Mutombo? ", check that the respondent can reply clearly with their correct full name and postnominal initials first time. (Example;:"It is I, Dervla Mayaguez de Montsalut-Hormel O'Flaherty, MA (York ), DPhil (Cantab), FRGS! "
Hey, look it depends on how big those glasses are and how quickly someone took them down. I mean, some of those balloon ones hold practically half a bottle.
Also, what if the bong was made from a vacuum cleaner? I have absolutely never seen one of those or seen it cash a bowl large enough to hold an eighth in like thirty seconds.
141, 155 Ajay's 162 reminds me, why are you resorting to scoping out shades of nail polish when you should be shouting out the customary Unfogged meet-up greeting "who wants to sex Mutombo?"?
And googling around on the Stubblefield case, holy shit. I was thinking the victim was just someone she was working with on the communication thing. Not someone she was touring with and claiming he was writing papers.
162. If they can't pronounce Mutombo, they're too drunk.
162: What if when I try to pronounce my actual, very common name it comes out sounding like the one in the example? That's still fine, right?
165: Geez. You'd think she could have at least "facilitated" better arguments or something.
168: And this is who gets to chair a dept in a major university? Do philosophy majors who don't get offers in their field just drink themselves senseless at the sight of these articles? I would.
I think there's a point where almost all graduate students in philosophy* look at one of the marginal kind-of-philosophy subfields and thinks "Oh My God. I could be KING." Then they realize that a group where those kind of arguments are taken seriously is one of those ones where the people wouldn't recognize what actual skill looked like anyway so it probably wouldn't work.
I had the experience when I read an article by a professional(!), well respected(!!) bioethicist who was praising Aristotle for his important (and now often neglected) insight that virtue was related to excellence. Then he quoted some passage from Nicomachean Ethics which used both words.
As far as Chair goes my impression is that it's mostly assigned to whoever is willing (and has whatever required seniority - some schools have rules about it) to take it on. It's less "really impressive honor" and more "has to be in charge of a lot of committees" in most places.
*I assume with the exception of the ones that went into it in order to study precisely those fields.
164.2: Who *wouldn't* want to sex Mutombo? I'm trying to narrow down the crowd. I did say it approaching the pig to meet Moby and the next guy in a blazer turned his head and his eyes lit up.
Do philosophy majors who don't get offers in their field just drink themselves senseless at the sight of these articles? I would.
Would you really do that if you knew what your colleagues did when they found somebody unable to respond?
I thought it was pretty great, even by Moby's standards.
||Hey guys, the house I'm renting was profiled in the LA Times!
I asked Fitzgerald if it was true that he attended the housewarming party for his newest tenants. He confirmed that he had, and said it was fabulous, with hundreds of guests on hand.
"They had sushi on top of women," Fitzgerald said. "You could eat sushi off of the women."
"They had models walking around the house, and natural food, and it was very healthy and a very good party," Fitzgerald said, adding that nearby neighbors were invited and had a good time, but the vigilantes saw the movie star lion and called the police.
"So the guy had a lion," Fitzgerald said. "Big deal."....
Not that every day feels like a million dollars. But if he's down in the dumps, he said, he takes hold of a sword, stands in front of the mirror and shouts: "I have the power!"
....
... the complainers are a bunch of horrible people who aren't cool enough to live in Hollywood. They should "go to Palmdale where they belong," he said.
"Get out of Hollywood," he repeated. "They don't belong there.... [Blank] those people. I don't care about them."
....
|>
You missed the best one:
"Maria wore high heels and a white dress so tight it may have cut off circulation in the entire 90068 ZIP Code. If a neighbor kid has lost two basketballs, I think I may know where they are."
The Instagram page is pretty great. "Life is a picnic if you believe it."
132: JM and I should be able to do something.
Should I know what "yotta" means?
Also, is Instagram made so that you can only see pretty small images?
They are big. The pictures have gotten small.
Isn't Yotta just a Dan Bilzerian knock-off? He is ripped, though. Gotta give him that.
Huh, I hadn't heard of Dan Bilzerian. I'd heard of his Dad, though.
|| Completely off topic, but it has just dawned on me that the reason Dr House (as in the Hugh Laurie character, "House M.D.") is able to get away with so much eccentricity is that he is a doctor at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore - as was Hannibal Lecter. So, off camera, all House's colleagues are probably going "Yes, he's a bit weird, I grant you, but remember what the other guy was like."
|>
190: I thought it was a fictional hospital set in New Jersey?
Thanks to Obamacare, there are no real hospitals in New Jersey and Hopkins does nothing but remove moles from celebrities.
Wikipedia confirms 191: "Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital". I thought it was House that had long ago prompted a very stupid argument with my father (who lives near where it was set) about whether or not Princeton University has a medical school, but couldn't remember for sure.
Rutgers-Newark has a facilitated communication school. Or it did.
177. "the house I'm renting."
RT is SY? That would explain a lot, and raise a few questions. (One of them being, "Huh?")
191. A "fictional" hospital that's "really" Hopkins. (I always liked Stephen Fry's comment: "Hugh went off to America and was never seen again.")
That's also what happened to Aguirre.
132, 183: I'll put up a meetup thread -- I can probably do Friday. Fresh Salt, or anyplace else: SP -- have you got a neighborhood preference?
clew, I'm wearing the dress on the left here: https://instagram.com/p/6apYUzB8Iy/
It's got a french blur background with brown, yellow, green, and white circles. And sort of white spots all over. May have hair up. See you soon!
And I thought "white guy wearing a navy blazer" was unhelpful.
I wearing my grandmother's red riding cloak but am otherwise Seattle standard dowdy: heavy backpack, hiking boots. French braid pinned up. On my way.
I just bought some hiking boots. My ankle feels better but now my feet are all sweaty.
Things are either waterproof or breathable, but not both except for low values of "breathable."
Maybe toe stink can't escape if sweat can't?
||
A friend accidentally left me signed in to his Amazon account last night. I've already adjusted his wish list and shopping cart a little, and posted a series of glowing reviews for Mary Kate and Ashley Olson movies (and CDs?), and old copies of The Penetrator. Can anyone else think of something to do, preferably with a Mary Kate and Ashley Olson or (OR) The Penetrator theme?
I only have access (obviously) to the stuff where you don't need to regularly sign in, and only whatever basic cookies the site sets are necessary, which is an oddly random group of things.
|>
I think 197 may be the very first Aguirre joke I've heard.
Can anyone else think of something to do, preferably with a Mary Kate and Ashley Olson or (OR) The Penetrator theme?
I'm calling Chris Hansen.
I will also be in NYC on friday night.
Woohoo! Under the assumption that you mean to imply that you're coming out with us, rather than stating a fact.
There was a missing 'merely' in there someplace.