No worries, Lynn. I’ll just send it to digs as punishment for that totally evil suggestion.
SpazCat I think you might have it right. Bill’s spiced beer always seems to get more horrific than the last batch to me. Everyone else seems to like it and asks for more.
People don’t fall for my pussy jokes anymore. Has a sad face about that, because the looks on their faces can be pretty priceless.
Somehow, Lucky got stuck in the pantry last night. He choose to sleep on a bag of flour and was pretty white when we found him.
Lucky is in total agreement with BSC right now. Water baths suck, and people who torture their kitties like that deserve to find hairballs in slippers. At least he’s a DSH (which could mean Domestic Short Hair…or could be Damned Shit Head), so no shaving happened.
Have had Maggie 11 weeks today. That tiny little 2 pound kitten is now a nearly 10 pound adolescent. In that short a time period. She gets spayed two weeks from tomorrow.
Skipping my nephew’s 16th birthday today. Grumble grumble. Not happy with his mother for not inviting her siblings (myself and her older sister) to her 50th birthday celebration last month and lying to us about it. But also not happy with the kid because while I don’t try to contact him very often, before I very vocally gave up on him six months ago, he hadn’t returned a phone call or message from me in about a year and a half. Hell, even after that, he made no effort to contact me. So fuck him. If neither of them cares about me, I don’t need to be there. :mad:
I have two friends (married couple) bitching on Facebook about how no one wants their dozen über-mixed-breed puppies (the mother is at least 3 different breeds, the dad is unknown) at the flea market which they’re selling for $10 but everyone wants the purebred $200 puppy mill puppies.
Now I hate puppy mills too, but people want what they want, and I don’t blame people for being a bit suspicious of $10 whatever-breed puppies, as you might wonder what’s wrong with them that they’re so cheap. Plus unknown father might lead you to be suspicious of how well these random “backyard breeders” take care of their dogs.
Now they’re back from the flea market and their other dog is in labor! Better yet, when a mutual friend posts that there’s something that can be done to avoid this problem, the guy blames the owners of male dogs in their neighborhood for letting them run around! :smack: If you’re going to keep intact females for god knows what reason, goddamned guard them when they’re outside!
If I knew of a cheap spay place (because they’re poor) in their area, I’m at the point where I’d post a link in that thread.
No, no, NO! I was NOT serious. That was “what-some-might-call humor”… I’m always kidding about things, just trying to lighten up everyone’s PIT-able lives here… C’mon, PITizens, you’ll all back me up, right? Quick, before flatlined FedExes me a six-pack…
I’m only half-joking here. I had to choke down a Pumpkin Ale last fall, and practically gagged. It was home-brewed by a sweet old widower in our church, and he was so proud of it… so I did react in fear to the prospect of having to endure that again.
I’m spending a long weekend at a motel-- well, actually, mostly I’m spending the weekend at a festival, and I’m having fun.
But . . . in the evenings, I’m spending a few hours at a motel, and I find the fact that I can’t have my laptop plugged in, and the nearest lamp turned on at the same time irritating.
Especially since at least one of the other outlets doesn’t work properly.
Grins, snerts and then laughs. I do understand your pain. I’m going to pour some of it on my Mexican Bird of Paradiseplants. Usually plants like beer, but I’m not so hopeful about these. I’m sure that there are some very good reasons that I’m the only one around here who are trying to grow them.
We bought one of those behind the sofa 2 plug end extension cords and it lives in the luggage because it seems like outlets are either across the rom or behind furniture or there is only one outlet in the room ant it has the lamp and tv plugged into it.
The science pages on Wikipedia are fucking shit. They’re stuffed with impenetrable jargon and abstruse maths, and they’re so utterly beyond the comprehension of the layman they make the bloody Voynich manuscript look like ‘See Dick Run’.
It’s gotten so bad there’s even a new wikipedia called ‘Simple English Wiki’. Motherfuckers, the whole damn thing should be ‘Simple English Wiki!’.. I don’t care what anybody says, there is no subject on earth so incomprehensible that it can’t be clearly explained to the layman with a little effort. You want to know why cranks and quacks and Young Earth Creationists are winning the infowars? It’s because real scientists can’t write for shit. I mean, the cranks don’t care either way, of course, but when people lik me try to defend the rational, when we go up against, say, anti-vaxxers who deliberately misrpresent how the immune system works, we go to Wikipedia and we see shit like this:
From the introduction (the fucking introduction) to an article about the adaptive immune system.
Now, it’s common sense to me that if you can understand all this, you don’t NEED to be reading it, so I’ve no fucking idea who the intended audience is for this shit. Also, while every piece of jargon in that paragraph links to an explanatory article, these explanatory articles are also stuffed with jargon, so they’re about as helpful as a pack of fishnet condoms. Now, you could point out that, as difficult as that article is, it’s both free and better than nothing. You could also say that, maybe, on closer examination, the article may not be so hard and it might explain itself. You would, however, be talking to an empty chair because I would have realised that life is too short for this bullshit, and that if the experts (and the article clearly seems to have been written by an expert) can’t be fucking bothered to explain themselves to laymen - the same laymen, incidentally, they’re always sneering at for not taking enough interest in science - maybe they deserve to lose the war and should just fuck off back to their labs, spare us their condescension, and let the Luddites lead us back to the dark ages.
Junk science is popular because there is no jargon barrier. Of course, you might well say, “Well Duh! Of course there isn’t, it’s Junk science”. But as far as I’m concerned, there never needs to be a jargon barrier. Certainly not for Wikipedia. And this needn’t involve dumbing anything down, either. We’re not talking about reams and reams of introductory notes on every article. We’re talking about a few sentences. The right words in the right place. I’m not a scientist, but one thing I know with absolute confidence is that there is no person on earth so stupid, and no subject on earth so complex, that the former cannot grasp the latter if both the student and the teacher are invested in his doing so. If they care, in other words. I once saw an article which explained the theory of relativity entirely in one syllable words. So there’s no excuse for all this shit, incomprehensible science writing, especially from an encyclopaedia which is supposed to act as a gateway for the layman into such subjects.
Whenever you’re dealing with technical topics, there are always going to be any number of layers of complexity for possible explanations. And at each layer, until you get to the most technically precise, you’re always going to have someone who will come along and say that your explanation is an over simplification or otherwise inaccurate.
But even if you don’t draw that criticism, you can still never be sure what level of simplification is going to be appropriate unless its customized to your particular audience and your audience happens to be fairly homogenous. Otherwise some people will think you’re talking down to them and the rest will still end up being confused. Plus if you oversimplify too much, it can in fact be misleading without intending to be, so often you feel it’s almost pointless to even make the attempt.
If you can tell me what town they’re in, I might be able to find a clinic. There may be nothing, there may be something, depends on where they are if you’re able to say. If there’s nothing I know of off hand, I might still be able to find something Monday when I can connect with some people during business hours.
Wasn’t that on an episode of Are You Being Served?
This is true, but can the introductions of the science articles be in simple English at least? Most of the time I go on Wikipedia, skim the intro, and then I either go on if that answers my question or keep reading if I’m interested. I don’t have the advanced degrees needed to comprehend the science articles.
So… um… What are you guys planning to do with the rest of the Cialis? Because my doctor suggested it for me, but holy cow that stuff is expensive if you don’t have insurance. PM me and I’ll send you my address.
(just kidding unless you say yes.)
Oh, and PM me anyway and I’ll share something non-pharmaceutical that helps me sometimes.
If I traveled more often, I would absolutely do that.
Or I could just unplug the power strip I use at home and take that with me.
The way this particular room was set up, there was an unused outlet halfway down the hall between the bathroom and the tv-- which didn’t charge my phone properly, despite the phone being plugged in most of the night.
There was an outlet with the TV and one lamp next to the desk.
There was an outlet with another lamp that was inaccessible.
And there was an outlet with two adjacent lamps, a comfy chair, and the clock radio.
So mostly, neither of those lamps were plugged in, so I could plug in the laptop, and leave the clock radio alone, because it’s nice to have a clock other than my phone available.
Update-- I was tired, but not cranky during most of my travels. Aunt Flo showed up Saturday, and I only really ended up with urgent need of a toilet once.
apparently I am NOT a person who should be trusted with small bottles of shower gel-- I have left the cap ajar twice in recent memory, making a serious mess of my toiletries bag.
oh, and while I’m at it, why do free breakfasts suck?
Not all of them do. I was pretty happy with the ‘Continental’ breakfast they fed us at the Bavarian Inn in Custer, SD last month.
Orange Juice
Apple Juice
Coffee
Milk
Cereal (Fruit Loops, Cheerios, Corn Flakes)
Apples one day, Bananas the other
White and Wheat Bread (w/toaster)
Hard Rolls
Salami
Sliced white and cheddar cheese
butter, strawberry jam, honey
What a terrible story - irresponsible people taking out their irresponsibility on poor little puppies (who are probably about as cute as puppies get). I hope not too many more unwanted puppies are brought into the world by these idiots before they get a clue.
You make some really good points. The junk science spreaders put their message forth in a couple of easily-digested talking points; the real deal talks in long, convoluted, hard-to-understand sentences. There are concepts that I don’t think can be broken down into talking points, but real science needs to make a concerted effort to make what they’re saying palatable to the masses who are getting their science from Jenny McCarthy and Dr. Oz.
They vary wildly. We’ve had some excellent ones, and we’ve had some ones where they consisted of Fruit Loops and toast (not a scrap of protein to be found). Our problem is that while we appreciate that hotels are making an effort to put some protein in in the form of eggs, my husband and I aren’t big egg eaters.
I turned up my nose at the eggs-- folded scrambled eggs-- which I assume are reconstituted scrambled eggs-- just aren’t my thing.
The sausage was ok, but not worth eating three mornings in a row.
I almost never like orange juice, and the apple juice was way, way too sweet.
Don’t drink coffee or tea, and don’t need the calories of hot chocolate.
The “bagel” I had yesterday was decidedly meh, the cinnamon bun things I ate the day before that were better-- but still had me suspecting they weren’t great for me.
(We will studiously ignore the possibility that hotcakes ala McDonald’s are also not great for me. And for that matter, cream cheese stuffed french toast ala IHOP is more like dessert than breakfast-- although I ate that for dinner in practice).
I think I had some more tolerable free breakfasts in May, although that may be as much because I didn’t have them 3 days in a row as because they were at better motels.
