1. You get the cancer deferment. Make sure that scar doesn't fade.
2. Bluster incontinence is a serious medical condition, you racist.
Wouldn't be so bad if it was a sexy internment camp.
Silly offed; first they'll come for the Sunnis.
I went a whole week with clean sheets! Stop making fun of me!
Where's my Safe Space?
Dammit, phone. Anyway, of course that's not actually true. Those distinctions are way too subtle for the vast majority of Americans.
Just accept Jesus as your personal savior and you won't have anything to worry about in this world or the next.
Internment camps are just welfare for probable terrorists.
6: Yes. We can't even, as a group, distinguish Sikhs from Muslims! (Trying not to make an awful sick vs. sunny pun.)
Kind of delightfully surprised that for once Pennsylvania isn't on the shitty state list.
Has there ever been a more tough-talking, bed-wetting nation than America?
Egypt in 1967? Going from "We are an invincible monolith of sheer military awesomeness and we will smash the Jews with our little fingers!" to a state of complete gibbering incoherent terror took approximately half a day, and it would have been even quicker if the lines of communication hadn't been impaired by being operated by men who were in a state of complete gibbering incoherent terror.
I don't know why people still keep saying "Never again" about any atrocity or injustice. It is clear that all of these things are going to keep happening, no matter how often we swear them off.
Humanity: we're like alcoholics, but with genocide.
Perhaps, but we've been in a state of tough-talking bed-wetting since...I dunno, when China went communist?
The proto-Confederate States of America wet the bed so hard they pissed themselves out of the country.
9.last: It's always Sunni in Pennsylvania.
Iran is good on the tough talk too, and seems (judging by its behaviour) to be bed-wettingly terrified of the mortal threats to the body politic posed by
foreign backpackers
women's hair
naughty words
radio phone-in programmes
animated films
magical realist novels
comedies about railway trains
first-person shooters
divorced women
clapping
laughing out loud
historians
blogs
Twitter
eclectic web magazines
Facebook
Maureen Dowd
Krystof Kieslowski
women with boyfriends
lipstick
horoscopes
sociologists
and, of course, Kurdish Wikipedia.
These examples aren't really on point. Incompetent militaries and repressive regimes aren't the same as a population that itself demands more surveillance and thinks every middle-easterner on a plane is suspicious.
I don't know if you live in the States, but the utter lack of "just get on with it" and the jumpiness (and not just about terrorism, but also "sketchy" neighborhoods) is something else.
There's just piles and piles of free Starburst candy at Midway. We must have something right.
In a lot of ways he's right, of course. It probably would be dangerous for them in Texas, especially when any racist hysterical Fox News nutcase can go buy a personal arsenal without the slightest trouble. But somehow that doesn't seem to be his worry...
15: To be fair, Maureen Dowd's tenure at the NYT has been pretty scary.
The surface of the country, the froth as it were, represented today by online phenomena has often had this overwrought quality. You can find American writers complaining and despairing about it going all the way back.
And it's very misleading about the solidity of the country. I can remember having an exchange here with slol about Hitler's shrewdness in judging those American surface phenomena he had access to, such as movies and other media, but failure to realize the giant underneath them.
There's a wonderful Hazlitt essay, On Coffee House Politicians describing the phenomenon in Napoleonic-era London.
Ahhh. $10 beer. Now I'm afraid of America.
Plus, they carded me. Is that an airport thing or have my hair plugs finally filled in?
the jumpiness
The number of people I know who own guns "to protect their family" is absurd. You live in a gated community in fucking Cary, North Carolina. Your greatest threat is easily handled with rakes and leaf blowers.
21 is wise. The internet and the froth of political life are surely full of bedwetters. And, it's not like it never ever boils over into reality (inter alia we really did intern Iapanese-Americans for no good reason). But it's also I think fair to say that we're in the top tier of nations, historically, in terms of allowing immigrants from lots of different places to show up and get on with things. I mean so much better than say the Japanese or the Swiss or really most other places.
a population that itself demands more surveillance and thinks every middle-easterner on a plane is suspicious.
I think you're overestimating the bedwettingness of your fellow citizens a bit.
Americans Disapprove of Government Surveillance Programs
http://www.gallup.com/poll/163043/americans-disapprove-government-surveillance-programs.aspx
Major opinion shifts, in the US and Congress, on NSA surveillance and privacy
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jul/29/poll-nsa-surveillance-privacy-pew
Polls Continue to Show Majority of Americans Against NSA Spying
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/10/polls-continue-show-majority-americans-against-nsa-spying
the utter lack of "just get on with it"
Dunno about this either. I don't live in the US but I've visited a fair number of times in the last 15 years and even in lower Manhattan, three days after 9/11, I was impressed by the degree to which it was being just got on with.
The gun thing does seem somewhat different, in that a significant chunk of the country has decided to wrap their identity around some completely bogus notion of fear in order to justify closely linking their personality to their gun fetish. But that does feel new, and is I think fairly limited to that particular subculture (which doesn't even include all gun owners).
23
She was probably hitting on you. Did she look like an unfogged reader?
Those polls are from the low point of support for surveillance. Today we had more middle-easterners being thrown off a plane because a passenger complained, and half our governors have said they don't want refugees. There's also a familiar divide here, with folks in the northern, urban spaces (like Manhattan) being way more sane than people in places like Cary, NC (been there!).
Damn you Internet! Everything's always your fault, like state governments run by craven politicians.
Wait, no, I'm thinking of Candler, NC, which is much more trailer-y and less gated.
It's not even noon. How can these people be drinking wine?
Cary has to be gated to defend itself from all the kids who are switching to R.
Cary is full of people who left northern, urban spaces in search of lower property taxes and mostly segregated schools.
28: She's reading a printed newspaper, so probably not.
Those polls are from the low point of support for surveillance.
They're all from the last three years.
Here's some more, all from earlier this year:
"More than half of Americans, 52%, described themselves as "very concerned" or "somewhat concerned" about government surveillance, according to the poll"
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2015/03/16/government-surveillance-privacy-pew-poll/70277338/
"NSA surveillance opposed by American voters from all parties, poll finds"
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/may/18/us-voters-broadly-opposed-nsa-surveillance
"65% of American adults believe there are not adequate limits on the telephone and internet data that the government collects"
http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/05/20/americans-attitudes-about-privacy-security-and-surveillance/
Central Area for the Relocation of Yankees.
Ajay, up until the Paris attacks, it was Snowden ascendant, and people wanted to roll back surveillance. In the past few days, the CIA has seen an opportunity, and is talking about loosening restrictions and undermining encryption. Whether people will go along, I don't know, but I have a guess!
Oh, and here's an interesting one from last year: percentage of people in different countries who say that Islamic extremist groups are a "major threat" to their country.
Who's top of the list? Not the bedwetting US: it's Italy. The US doesn't even make the top ten most worried nations (which to be fair includes several with real reasons to be worried like India, Israel, Nigeria and the Philippines); it's way down the list behind (among others) Germany (!), Japan (!!) and South Korea (!?!).
Everybody has been lying to you. Starburst go very well after beer.
I know of a guy whose go-to bar order is a Corona with a Jolly Rancher dropped in. He supplies the candy.
You're friends with Bill Cosby?
I'd like historians to answer an important question (for once). Has there ever been a more tough-talking, bed-wetting nation than America?
Historically speaking, unlikely. The United States America created itself by a press release that grafted a bed-wetting list of exaggerated grievances onto some tough talk it had no ability to execute. RTFA:
http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration_transcript.html
26/36: I think that either those polls were badly designed, or polls are bad as measuring this.
As for those polls, note the huge partisan split, which was reversed from a 2006 poll. They're a proxy for "what do you think of the President?" I'm not sure how but there's probably some better way to design a poll about surveillance programs.
But then again, it's probably hard to measure by polls. See the previous thread about people lying about church attendance. Acceptance of "un-American" stuff might be another thing people are inclined to lie about.
And to tie the threads together even more closely, an hour ago I got a call from security. Apparently attaching the camera to my computer was indeed noticed. First offense, retake the course on cyber security. Second offense, 5-day suspension. Third, dah dun DUNNNN...
And posting from my phone really sucks. It will forever remember me by that name.
Fame. I'm gonna live forever. Phones will remember my name.
44: I think they're probably also at least partially another example of the standard "Americans always vote for people noticeably to the right of the policies they claim to support." phenomenon.
I think that either those polls were badly designed, or polls are bad as measuring this.
Maybe there's some way they could be unskewed?
I think that guy is still on the internets.
The way these state governors have been behaving about the refugee situation certainly seems remarkably bed-wetting to me.
The preferred phrase is "laboratory of bedwetting."
19: I thought Texas would be the ideal place to channel all the terrorists, since Texans are so rootin' tootin' gun totin' etc etc that they would have no trouble shooting down anyone who tried anything. If Texas is so tough, why aren't they volunteering?
Also the person on my bad-weather-bus who is known to me as Racist Lady due to earlier incidents was holding forth about how everything would have been fine in Paris had they only had lots of guns because they could - I shit you not - have shot the guys who burst into the theater and....gone on with the concert.
And of course she was cheerleading for war, too. Only the fact that we work at the same place -broadly speaking - keeps me from saying cutting things to her. Also she's not the sharpest marble so part of it is just low-information issues.
The We Don't Have Indoor Voices guys were holding forth on foreign policy from the back, too, with sort of sub-NPR levels of smuggery and keyboard-commando-ism. I keep hoping one of them will get a plum job somewhere else but they've both been there for years. They're younger than me and spout a lot of managerific cliches all the time - you'd think they would have climbed the ladder to somewhere else by now.
People are terrible and I hate them.
54 They're worried that Texas gun laws are so permissive that jihadis will easily be able to carry out attacks.
I think maybe there was some sarcasm missed.
According to my fb feed, Barry isn't taking the piss there.
According to my fb feed, Barry isn't taking the piss there.
America would feel more confident about the future if there were a plane at the gate.
Cary is full of people who left northern, urban spaces in search of lower property taxes and mostly segregated schools.
...and jobs, which were in short supply in upstate NY, when we left.
It's not even noon. How can these people be drinking wine?
I had a similar question about the people eating ice cream cones at 11:30 this morning.
63 - what, the thriving typewriter, camera film and transport along the Erie Canal industries weren't good enough for you?
OK, I just read Drum's piece, and it's advocating sheer cowardice. H'e saying, "There are lots of bedwetters, so liberals should pipe down to placate them."
Fuck that. If you say, "America, fuck yeah, but I don't like the look of those teenagers over there," then you're a coward, and I'm going to call you a coward (unless this is real life, in which case the coward is probably armed and rage-prone), and I'm going to point out that there's no coward more pathetic than one who blusters until the moment danger is perceived.
I don't actually care if it's a winning electoral strategy. I'm fucking sick of the biggest cowards in America puffing out their chests and bragging about their toughness while urine trickles down their pantlegs. Fuck them, and fuck whoever sides with them.
Chris Christie has joined the bed-wetting set. What's especially galling about Christie is that you know that he knows better. A couple of months ago, he was arguing that the US should do its bit in taking in some Syrian refugees. In fact, there are already some Syrian refugees living in NJ!
This is all about his delusional presidential aspirations.
Furthermore, electorally speaking, all Drum is doing is advocating the good old Democratic crouch. Vote for Three Strikes or they'll call you weak on crime. Vote to dismantle welfare of they'll call you a bleeding heart. Vote for war in Iraq or they'll call you weak on terror, or a traitor.
How's that electoral strategy gone for us? Did we win all the elections yet?
Oh yeah, and throw ACORN under the bus! A lot of people seemed alarmed by those Planned Parenthood scam videos; maybe Dems should have voted to defund PP? You know, just to keep from riling people up and making them think that liberals love abortion?
There are times when I think Drum has his head up his ass.
Drum's sense of the politics also seems way off. Sure, screen people as best you can to see if nutball jihadis are sneaking in with the Syrian refugees (something that didn't apparently actually happen with the Paris attacks but whatevs). But just saying BROWN PEOPLE, PANIC! is going to piss off a bunch of core Democratic constituencies and eventually make the Republicans look like idiots; that Republicans are associated with the message of BROWN PEOPLE, PANIC is their main short and long-term political liability, at least nationally.
68 -- You might have missed the presidential election of 1992.
That said, this isn't 1992.
For one thing, when I get carded, I'm surprised.
70 is right about that last bit. If anything the Democrats should be quietly encouraging the Republican party to let their freak flag fly when it comes to BROWN PEOPLE OH NO! stuff. The longer it goes on the clearer and more aggressively it gets imprinted on the minds of every non-white person in the country that these people cannot be safely elected, and it has a better chance of catching the attention of the few remaining "oh they're not that bad besides my daddy voted Republican his entire life so I have to" voters.
The message I'm getting from Drum is that electoral politics is more important than basic human dignity. Sure half the people on the boat we sent back to Europe wound up being killed in concentration camps, but FDR won elections. Where are your priorities?
Also, Drum seems to have confused moral outrage and simple internet mocking.
I mean, Bush's suggestion that we only take in Christian refugees was not laughable, it was offensive.
74 - Well, IF turning away the St. Louis was the decisive event in the Presidential election of 1940, and IF we'd as a result had President Wendell Willkie, THEN arguably the entire world would have been in much, much worse shape than it was with President FDR. The problem is that the first part of that thought is totally wrong -- we could have admitted 100x the number of European refugees we did in the 30s and it would have had nothing but a beneficial effect on our politics.
And that probably undersells Wendell Willkie, who truly was not that bad (for a Republican).
My general rule of thumb for Drum is any post where he uses the phrase "knock it off" is his grumpy old man conservatism coming out.
ajay: ogged is responding to the total freak-out by Americans after Paris. The only polls that would matter would be post-Paris.
This cowardice pisses me off so much that I've been blowing up at total strangers on Facebook. I don't even care if Drum is right about the politics. This isn't just a political issue like guns or tax policy or the gold standard. This is as basic a test of character that people will ever face, and Americans are failing it. Christ, they're talking about only 10,000 refugees. That's like the turnout at a minor league baseball game.
79, 80: Me too. I left work yesterday feeling utterly depressed. I really should just deactivate my Facebook account for the next few weeks.
Yeah, 79.
Thing is, Drum is probably right about the politics. The Paris attacks are a big boost to any super xenophobic candidate. This could be the thing that gives us President Trump.
What is it about terrorist incidents like these, that they cause people who are otherwise rational (for the most part) to lose all ability to see things in proportion? 129 people were killed in those attacks, with many more injured, and every one of those casualties is a tragedy. But those numbers are objectively far fewer than the 11,600 gun-related deaths and 23,596 gun-related injuries so far in the US just this year. Is it really any worse to be killed by a terrorist than by your spouse, or by the idiot next door? You end up just as dead.
If past events are any indication you could have a Columbine/Sandy Hook school rampage shooting with 130 deaths and no effective gun control legislation would happen as a result of it. Maybe even have a couple a year. But this happens and Paris and you get this freak-out in the US, let's bar the door to people trying to flee this type of shit.
And yeah, 79.
This could be the thing that gives us President Trump.]
The general election is still a year away. I guarantee there will be a whole run of different shiny objects that dominate the news between now and then.
I'm sure he is right about the politics. People are completely unable to assess risks where foreigners are concerned. Once pure unreasoning panic takes over, they become completely crazy. Unless there is some sort of resolution to the Syria refugee crisis in the near future, I could see the EU blowing apart.
No, I don't buy it. There's going to be a bit of posturing and that will be it. There have been major overseas attacks before and they made a bit of a splash and no lasting difference.
You don't buy that we'll always and Paris? Controversial position.
Yeah, if it were October 2016, then whoever reacted with more xenophobia would get a big leg up. But happening right now? It's going to be as salient as ebola is today.
I wish I thought that any Dems other than Grayson would have the guts to spend the next 11 months mocking Republicans for their abject cowardice. I guess Obama kind of did it on a lower level with his joke about how they couldn't handle the CNBC moderators, but he mostly has to keep it presidential, especially about something this serious.
I'm guessing this won't help the Republicans unless we see a lot more closer to the actual election. I am guessing that it will help Trump a lot, though. I suspect that by the time the primary contests really get going a lot of the conservative (base) panic will have dropped down to more normal WE'REALLGOINGTODIEHOARDYOURGUNS levels. But in between now and then a lot of people are going to put themselves behind Trump or commit to him or otherwise decide that he's Presidential in a way they hadn't before and that's going to stick after people start to forget about Paris.
That all depends on ISIS not being able to pull something else major off, though. Sometimes I think the only reason they don't control the middle east is that they don't have enough clever people who have a clear eyed (cynical) view of American politics (EU politics I'm less certain of - this does seem well targeted for that). If they timed their attacks better in electoral terms they could get the mass freakout they want very, very easily. Imagine what a similar mid-September 2016 attack in the US could do to the US government. I mean, 2001 was really impressive in a logistical way, but seriously all the they would really need to do is sneak like five guys across the border(unnecessary, but a good grace note) and getting them some guns (Texas!!). Then pick two or three targets in cities across America, and launch them all at roughly the same time. The freakout would probably be massive enough that the least sane parts of Republican party would control all three houses of government for at least the next four years.
Anyway, the cool people have moved on already, and are now worrying about whether they got HIV from Charlie Sheen.
Here's an AP story about refugees and how they're treated by the government:
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_REFUGEE_ASSISTANCE?SITE=MYPSP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2015-11-17-16-09-55
So governors have as reported no say in the placement. The only state-specific impact I can see in this report is Medicaid eligibility, already pretty politicized and unlikely to be changed just for this, I think.
Another article I read today said that states have no formal role, but without their cooperation, it can be very difficult to settle people.
Has anyone ever come up with a pithy political adaptation of Keynes' beauty contest thingy and then wound up something like "I guess Republicans think Americans are all below average"? That seems like something that would get beaten into the dust every primary season.
95 Our local weekly had a pretty good article a short while back that highlights inter alia the state role in refugee resettlement.
The gov yesterday said we're not going to let terrorists make us turn our backs on your values. Out junior senator said, oh yes we are.
I don't think this is likely to have any impat on the general election, but neither actual foreign events, nor his adivors telling people he doesn't understand them, seems to be helping Dr. Carson.
97: At first I thought Carson was an example about how compartmentalized intelligence can be---you can be smart enough to be a neurosurgeon but still be a complete loon in other respects.
But Carson is so completely out of it in every respect I'm starting to suspect that being a neurosurgeon must be a lot easier than I thought.
97.last: The final line of that NYT article is just so precious:
"The jump from Erbil and Soviets" to the Chinese "in Damascus is a long leap," Mr. Clarridge said, using an ethnic slur for the Chinese.
I was actually at a party a couple of months ago where there was a neurosurgeon who complained that people thing rocket scientists are equally smart, even though neurosurgury is much harder. It was before Carson revealed himself to be such a moron. I regret the missed opportunity.
Never forget the potential for degenerative brain problems, either organic or self induced (by sealing yourself off in the evangelical lecture circuit.)
I was actually at a party a couple of months ago where there was a neurosurgeon who complained that people thing rocket scientists are equally smart, even though neurosurgury is much harder.
Sounds like good times.
I do enjoy the idea that neurosurgeons are going to spend at least the next year or two hearing delighted people* say "Oh! You mean like Ben Carson!?"
*probably their friends
Is rocket science actually very difficult? I have no idea. I'm sure neurosurgery is very, very difficult: you have to have good hands, of course, but also very highly developed spatial sense, and an ability to figure out where you are in the brain. But those things don't map well (or maybe at all) onto traditional definitions of intelligence.
What does rocket science even mean. Haven't they kind of figured out the rocket at this point.
My rocket scientist cousin is impressively smart. On the other hand, their rocket blew up.
Welp.
Four people were removed from a Chicago-bound flight in Baltimore Tuesday morning, and the plane delayed for three hours, after a woman became suspicious of a man who appeared to be of Middle Eastern descent and who was watching the news on his phone, according to authorities and several passengers.
Well it's heartwarming to see how everyone thought it was totally appropriate to have those guys escorted off the plane because they were middle eastern looking and how that lady's 'see nothing say something' approach was an upstanding thing to do..
In a 1988 Bunte magazine story, Carson predicted that one of the twins would be crawling soon, while the other would need to overcome the effects of an event that occurred after the surgery when he nearly suffocated. "Both are more advanced now than we were hoping they would be," Carson said.
But according to news media accounts two years after the surgery, one boy was discharged from the hospital with signs of severe neurological damage and remained in a vegetative state; the other was developmentally delayed.
Carson at the time acknowledged the surgery's shortcomings. "In a technological 'Star Wars' sort of way, the operation was a fantastic success," he told the Associated Press in 1989. "But as far as having normal children, I don't think it was all that successful."
Carson's campaign did not respond to repeated requests for an interview.
The twins' mother, Theresia Vosseler, described in a subsequent interview with a German magazine being racked with guilt for seeking the separation surgery that left her sons so impaired she had to send them to live in an institution.
In 1993, Vosseler told Freizeit Revue that she flew to Baltimore with "a healthy, happily babbling baby bundle and came back to Ravensburg with two lifeless, soundless, mentally and physically most severely damaged human bundles."
"I will never get over this," said a bitter Vosseler. "Why did I have them separated? I will always feel guilty. . . I don't believe in a good God anymore."
I'm only doing this because I'm super-Becks-style, having been drinking for the last 6 hours, but fuck it, I'll repost here the most sanctimonious FB-status-post I've ever and hopefully will-ever make:
___
A few weeks ago, [Iberian Fury] and I invited a Syrian refugee, [Very Clichéed First Name], to stay with us. He'll be staying for 6 months, assuming everything goes well with the bureaucracy. He's, well, a normal twenty-something guy: he sleeps late, he's trying to learn German, he loves football, he's a good cook, he's always at a local church trying to translate for other refugees who're hoping to move on to Germany, he's struggling to find stuff to do outside of his German lessons in a strange country where he knows no-one and his flatmates are never home. He's a person in a really tough situation, trying to make the best of things, trying to live a decent life.
I'm not a particularly virtuous person--we only committed to 6 months, after all--but we had an extra room, and we want to be able to look at ourselves in the mirror.
Most people don't have extra rooms--it's certainly not reasonable to expect everyone to host a refugee. But what everyone can do, and what everyone reading this should do, is write to their political representatives--in the USA, your governor, representative, and senators; outside the USA, whatever you've got: in Austria, write Faymann, Mitterlehner, Häupl, Mikl-Leitner, Kurz; in Germany, Merkel & Gabriel and *especially* your local Minister-Presidents--and demand that they support more humane treatment of refugees.
If you live in one of the US states that's contemptibly refusing to take in any Syrian refugees, you can tell your governor that that's the wrong move, and demand they do better. If you live in one of the states that is taking in refugees, or hasn't taken a stand, you can support them, or encourage them to do the right thing. You can tell your representative/senators to support a more humane federal refugee policy. Demand that the USA not only fulfil its current commitments, but do better. Austria, with about 8 million people, is expecting 80k asylum claims this year; the US, home to over 300m, has only taken in 2k Syrian refugee in the last four years: [broken link - that vox thing] -- that should make every American deeply ashamed. I know it shames me.
Contacting your politicians really does matter. Every email, or better, every phone call--it matters. Their staffs track this, weigh the constituent feedback. Some politicians want to do the right thing, but are afraid of the backlash. Some of them want to do the wrong thing, but could be pressured into acting rightly. Either way, your voice adds up. (And hey, if you're the sort of person who can credibly commit to tie campaign donations to that, your voice matters even more, so please do that--but even if not, it still gets counted.) It's easy to get cynical about representation--believe me, I'm probably more cynical still--but don't let that cynicism stop you from sending the email or making the phone call that some bored staffer tallies up and presents in the weekly briefing, because you'd better believe that there are a lot of scared and misguided people writing and calling on the wrong side of the issue, and you need to outweigh them.
Not sure how to contact your congresspeople? Here: https://www.opencongress.org/people/zipcodelookup
I don't want to get into the politics here, about what created the situation or why the USA and Europe are particularly responsible. I think it's enough to just focus on the people: real, individual people, each of whom was once a baby, then a child, had dreams and hopes and a family, and now is fleeing a place of violence and terrors and nightmares. Right now, we're mostly saying, "No. We're too afraid. We--the richest, most secure, most prosperous people in the history of mankind--are too afraid of you, of the people who look like you. Go back, and die, because we are too afraid."
We can do better. We really can. Please try to help.
____
I'm not even going to read the comments before I post this, that's how [whatever] I feel.
I have heard it claimed that when rocket scientists want to say something is tough and complicated, they say "It's neurosurgery."
Referencing the surgeon thread, neurosurgeons don't say anything, and sneer.
Is rocket science actually very difficult?
I taught myself enough rocket science to build a halfway decent bipropellant engine, and that took all of about a month, maybe two. I have a knack for building things, but otherwise I'm about as dumb as you can get and still go to grad school in physics.
Neurosurgery is probably harder because it's overall less understood than aerodynamics Newtonian physics etc but the kind of failure that would get you kicked out of the profession in rocket science is all in a day's work for a neurosurgeon. Patient died, oh well, tried our best vs oops, my probe missed Mars.
I can't help but wonder how your guest is viewing your Becks-style. Or maybe he's not one of those Muslims. But I'll still amuse myself by imagining his diary entries.
112 makes me want to catch up with trapnel.
Have we ruled out him being really stoned all the time? Because he seems really stoned all the time.
Carson or trapnel? Trapnel definitely doesn't seem stoned all the time.
I think 118 gets it right. Harder, but graded on a curve.
On a related note, as of 24 hours ago I was seriously worried that I might need my liability insurance for the first time ever, but by the time I got to the job site this morning, everyone had agreed that the lumber company had fucked up (which they had, 6 ways from Sunday).
121 is the Occam-compliant explanation for Carson we have been seeking. Motherfucker is high as a kite. Slow talking, rambling, weird-ass beliefs. Somebody see if that man wants some Doritos, just to confirm.
Not to sidetrack, but because I don't have anyone else to tell:
Last week I had to tell a client that I couldn't ethically draw the design they wanted because, although it's possible it would slip through plan review, it would be creating a literally life-threatening situation, and, just no.
Believe it or not, that's pretty much never happened before, and it was striking to come up against. Generally I'm willing to shade things to deal with reality--Code says 6'-8" headroom, we're probably fine at 6'-7.5"--and obviously I've had to tell people that the inspector would never allow what they want, but this was the first case where we might have gotten away with it*, but I just had to say, not with my stamp.
*that is, I didn't even realize the first time I did the layout. You're not allowed to have a bedroom without a window that (essentially) a firefighter could bust open and drag you out of, but here there are windows in an old fashioned lightwell, and it didn't immediately occur to me that this was not OK (because it's the 21st century, and who thinks about lightwells?).
I dunno, lots of these seem pretty modern.
The obvious solution is to agree to the plan but build it all with asbestos so there's never the risk of a fire.
You could just insist that the windows all have cool slides sticking out of them, all spiraling down to the ground and then out of the building for, uh, emergency purposes.
126: None* of those are what I'm talking about, though.
Basically lightshafts or glorified skylights.
*at first glance. Scrolling down farther, you have to get pretty deep to reach even one.
Oh like an airshaft between buildings?
NMM to Bobby Jindal's presidential campaign.
112: wow, that is in fact grim.
Oof. It really is.
xoxo 113/the FB post/x. trapnel in general. I had been thinking that tomorrow I had better figure out how to call my governor's office so I can tell them that this refugee refusing nonsense is shameful and repellant, but somehow it hadn't occurred to me that I should also urge my senators/representatives to support better actual meaningful federal refugee policies.
We have a pretty decent governor here. He sure knows how to piss off the far right.
79, 80: Me too. I left work yesterday feeling utterly depressed. I really should just deactivate my Facebook account for the next few weeks.
You people are not learning.
Today we had more middle-easterners being thrown off a plane
Ordinarily I wouldn't say "At least it wasn't in the Argentinian nun sense," but I've been having some negative interactions with brown people lately.
I've been having some negative interactions with brown people lately.
ooooookay.
have shot the guys who burst into the theater and....gone on with the concert.At my former local bar the claim to fame was about how an armed robbery. An off duty cop shot the guy, they dragged him outside and...kept on drinking.
110: A flight I took a couple of days ago - after the Paris attacks - was delayed in JFK for about an hour after two people, apparently traveling together, went into the restrooms during boarding (separately, not the same restroom) and repeatedly ignored flight attendants' requests for them to get out. They finally came out - I'm not sure if it was entirely on their own accord or if the flight attendants were about to pry the doors open - after the safety demo started and we were just about to pull back from the gate. Once the rest of the crew were alerted that two people were not in their seats, they stopped the safety demo and delayed leaving the gate.
At some point, I think while the couple were still in the restrooms, the flight crew also decided to call security, which led to 1) the couple being escorted off the plane, 2) what was described as a "sweep" of the plane, which may have been a check of the cargo hold and anything connected to the restrooms, but didn't involve a search of the main cabin, 3) one of the couple coming back on to the plane to retrieve their carry-ons, after which we left without them.
The couple may have been racially profiled, but it seemed clear from where I was sitting a few rows ahead that nothing would have happened had they not locked themselves in the restrooms for so long.
141: ooookay what? I encountered some Mexicans who I would be happy to see take a one-way flight over the ocean. Like you never post anything just for your own entertainment.
I'm not racist, I just want to drive all Mexicans into the sea.
I encountered some Mexicans who I would be happy to see take a one-way flight over the ocean.
Like so?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_flights
Were they Zetas?
I'm at Midway airport, and there are piles of free skittles. I guess they update the candy every day.
I also forgot to check in 24 hours in advance, so I'm in the C boarding group for SW.
Is rocket science actually very difficult?
No. Rocket engineering is extremely tricky. It's basically "build something as light as possible that can withstand the stresses of flying through the air at high Mach numbers while simultaneously having a continuous explosion going off underneath it and being filled with incredibly cold liquid, that has to carry people and/or incredibly expensive equipment and/or a payload of high explosive as safely as possible to an extremely precisely specified destination". But the science, I should think, is comparatively easy. 19th century chemistry, 17th century physics.
Re 39: A friend who lives in deeply rural Japan and offers AirBNB just posted on FB that she went to the bus station to meet a guest arriving from France, to be told by some taxi drivers that a foreigner had just been taken away by the police. Her visitor is a young man of Algerian descent who has a beard, so the local police, who have almost nothing to do in a small local community, had got all excited at his arrival and hauled him in for questioning as a suspected terrorist. My friend, who is red-headed public-school-educated British and as such a local celebrity, marched straight into the police station and demanded his immediate release, which was sheepishly granted. But the poor guy: I don't think he'll be visiting Japan again for a while.
I'm at Midway airport, and there are piles of free skittles.
So you can practice your bowling during the layover? Thoughtful. that.
Nebraska has problems but it's hard to argue with $27 for a handle of Jim Beam at the grocery store.
148: Nice to know that they're spending Citi's abandoned $127 million deposit wisely.
When they hear of attacks like those in Paris, do Republicans imagine themselves opening their doors to those in need of shelter, or do they picture themselves turning out their lights and pretending they aren't home?
It's obvious which group Republican politicians believe their voters reside.