Similar to how a woman can masturbate with a vibrator by stimulating her clitoris (no insertion), a male can masturbate with a vibrator by stimulating the most sensitive areas of his penis.
"says the girl who hasn't shaved her legs in ten years and utilizes black nylons when she knows she's going to be self-conscious about such things"
You're like the perfect woman, aren't you? (Well, apparently my idea of one.)
My ex-wife didn't shave. It drove her mother nuts. She harrassed Shelley all the time about it. People are weird.
This reminds me of something that someone asked me a couple of years ago. They asked, sincerely and with deep puzzlement, "Why in the world would you want to protect rights that you don't intend to exercise or, indeed, could possibly ever exercise?"
I suspect that Souter decided the case on its merits, not whether it was in his personal interest or not in his personal interest.
It doesn't surprise me that a Randroid would think that using the law against Souter's personal interest would be a convincing rebuttal. It's not. It's juvenile.
"Two words: whiskey enema."
NannyFilter: be careful. it's easy to absorb a fatal amount of alcohol into bloodstream in a short period of time. do some web research before trying this.
Thanks, JJ. I'm still missing her and its been six months. But she was with me for 14 years, so I guess I'll miss her for awhile.
I don't know what is behind that ordinance. It was a surprise to go to the classifieds to look for a kitten/cat to adopt and find almost nothing there.
My cat died just after Christmas and I've looked at kitten listings a few times since then. Anyway, I was surprised to see that the newspaper here (Albuquerque) in its classifieds says:
NOTICE Animal Control Ordinance states "An owner shall not advertise, sell, barter, exchange or give away any dog or cat uless the litter fee or hobby breeder permit number is displayed legibly." Effective January 6, 2004, the Albuquerque Publishing Company will request the permit number to be published in all dog or cat advertisements. Please make a note of this and direct all questions to the Animal Control Centers in your community.
There's almost no pet ads--there's only two for "cats: crossbreed", and neither show a permit number. (Pop. of metro area is about 650K.) So I'm guessing that the advertisers proved they were out of the city limits or something. All the local shelters have many listings, but it looks to me like this ordinance has all but eliminated the p2p classified ad pet giveaway trade. Which seems unfortunate to me.
Any other communities doing this? Can anyone explain to me what's going on here?
It wasn't addressed to anyone specifically. A lot of people are militant about breastfeeding and, apparently, willing to make snide remarks to women they see using formula.
My mother's a pediatric nurse at a moderate sized pediatric practice (all the doctors are women, by the way). She's the nurse manager, too. They also have two full-time lactation nurses.
They're beginning to see a number of infants that are underfed because the mother has milk production problems but won't consider formula feeding as a supplement (or alternative).
Well, the pendulum has swung the other way. Lots of new mothers who don't breastfeed are harrassed by family and even strangers because of it. I'm sure it varies by region. Not every mother can breastfeed, and not every mother can breastfeed for, um, four years. Not every mother should breastfeed. I think people have gotten the message: breastfeeding is much better for the infant. Stop and consider that someone who isn't might have a good reason. And mother drive-bys are never right.
You have to have an assumption of bigotry. I wasn't offended because I thought that version of that old joke was offered ironically. Or maybe surrealistically. It wasn't overtly funny. Romanian nuns are neither known objects of bigotry on mofi, nor are they particularly sacred here, either. What you're left with is an absurd and repulsive image for its own sake. Which was sort of weird.
But, if there was some religious intolerance (or intolerance of religion) in that joke, I stand corrected.
I have a very strong suspicion that even with the relaxed anti-prostitution laws in Canada, a moneymaking enterprise such as yours would directly run counter to the law while also being an attractive (and obvious) target for law enforcement. You'd better make sure this isn't the case.
"Two diseases in domestic species with very high morbidity come to mind: myxomatosis in rabbits, which still has a pretty high mortality rate, in spite of the virus becoming more host-adapted over time..."
How well does this fit Ewald's evolutionary analysis of virulence? I'm going to follow your link and see; but before I do I'll predict that if Ewald's model is correct, myxomatosis must have a unusually high mortality rate because it has an independent vector for transmission.
Hmm: "Myxoma virus, a member of the poxvirus group, is transmitted by mosquitoes, fleas, biting flies, and direct contact." I'd bet you that the high mortality rate strains are in environments where transmission is far more often by an independent vector than direct contact. You'd know this by correlating, say, mosquito population with incidence and mortality.
I didn't say this explicitly, but the traditional theory of virulence is that pathogens inevitably evolve towards benignity and high virulence occurs primarily from species-jumping or the introduction of the pathogen into a pristine environment (which is another way of saying the other). How true this is, and how true Ewald's theory is, is very important in a practical sense because right now, for example, because of the traditionalist view, epidemiologists concentrate their attention on potential species-jumping pathogens. They also always make the assumption of species jumping, which has central importance in terms of how to pratically respond.
I really can't resist putting forth the neoliberal economics answer to jb's objection. Which is, I think, that even if we could all agree on a moral framework in which the sort of thing he describes is "wrong", it's well-nigh inevitable that attempts to directly economically correct for this are ineffectual and sometimes make the problem worse. Also, of course, neoliberal economics would encourage you to put aside your intuitive biases and try and establish a rational framework within which you can more fully and more correctly evaluate the moral character of the situation.
I personally find it to be the case that many, perhaps most, people's quick and easy intuitive moral evaluation of economic matters is misleading or even false. Being on the left side of the spectrum, where my concern is concentrated on the plight of the least powerful, I find it maddening to the point of despair that it's often the case that many people's unquestioned and easy intuitions about such matters lead to conclusions and policies that worsen the lives of the most unfortunate, rather than the opposite.
There's lots of people in the entertainment industry who are scientologists. That's always been where they've had the most success (by some arbitrary measurement...you know what I mean). It might say something about entertainers, or it might just be an accident of history relating to the subculture in which LRH was personally influential. It's sort of a guilty pleasure to imagine that it's the first case...but it's more likely the second.
I got the impression that the nuns who called the ambulance were not sympathetic to the Priest or the nun(s) who were principally involved in the "excorcism".
Maybe. It depends upon whether that fungus is more widespread, and usually benign, than they thought. The Ewald book is in storage, so I can't refer to it. I'm sure that one very bad case was in a hospital nursery in either Australia or New Zealand (apologies to both Aussies and Kiwis that I conflate the two in this recollection). Another that I recall he described was in the midwest US somewhere, I can't recall where.
But the link you found isn't an example of what I was describing. What has happened in several hospital nurseries is that a common, usually mostly benign pathogen becomes very virulent and concentrated in the nursery, and almost impossible to eradicate. I now that the antipodean nursery shut down for a several weeks, and that eliminated it.
It's hard to imagine an environment that could be more hospitable to an increasingly virulent pathogen than a hospital nursery. Babies have poor immune systems to begin with. Hospitals in general (for the same evolutionary reasons I'm describing here; but also because of antibiotic use) are hotbeds of unusually virulent normally benign pathogens. Babies in hospital nurseries are kept in relatively close proximity with a handful of caregivers handling all of them, often and in quick succession. Infants are prolific producers of bodily fluids.
The pathogen has a near-perfect incubator in the infants, and a near-perfect transmission vector in the caregivers and their equipment. Since the two things are seperate, and both optimal, the pathogen can become extremely virulent to the babies without it limiting its contagion. Once the virulent strain has evolved, it always has a large evolutionary advantage in that environment and so even if you eradicate 99.99999% of the pathogens, it will spring back up very rapidly. It may be surviving benignly in the caregivers, their homes, their families. It has to be completely eliminated before the epidemic will stop. In these cases, closing the whole thing down for a considerable length of time was necessary (and sufficient).
An obvious solution to the problem in general is to not have these sorts of nurseries. Keep the infants with their mothers as soon and as much as possible, and let the mothers (or someone similar) do most of the caregiving. If the nursing staff still has to do most of the caregiving, then very strident antiseptic procedures should be followed between every interaction with an infant.
This selective pressure toward or away from virulence is why, for example, pesticides against mosquitoes in malaria endemic areas is so successful. It's not just reducing the availability of the transmission vector; but in doing so the pathogen is encouraged to evolve toward being more benign (because it necessarily needs to be to have enough time to be transmitted). Fewer people will get malaria...nevertheless some will. But fewer of those people will die from it because it will be a less virluent strain.
"quonsar - wow, I would have never suspected that font size and whatever would scare you."
I think he meant that he was suprised that you would be so idiotic as to not know how to change them if they bothered you. And if he didn't mean that, I do. Maybe you didn't read the RFC?
"One sociological aspect of the public's attitude toward the subject of pandemic that I find fascinating is the implicit faith in science and medicine to prevent such things from occurring (in our times)."
Not to harp on Ewald, but the practical point he made was to invent and promote "evolutionary medicine". We simply cannot win against pathogens the way we fight them. They will always evolve faster than we will find ways of controlling them. (Maybe not in specific cases, but in general--and therefore we will always be at the mercy of some virulent pathogens. Some which will be capable of pandemics.) So the idea of evolutionary medicine is to account for how pathogens rapidly evolve and use that information in our favor. How we use it in our favor is to create environments where the selective pressure is to lower virulence, and to eliminate or avoid environments where the selective pressure is to increase virulence.
And the thing is, there's a variety of things that are common practices today that encourage virulence. Ewald examines something in depth that few people are aware of: the various outbreaks of extremely virulent pathogens in hospital nurseries that kill most of the infants. This has happened a good number of times and each time it's only been controlled by closing the whole ward down for a number of weeks. That's just one example.
Similar to how a woman can masturbate with a vibrator by stimulating her clitoris (no insertion), a male can masturbate with a vibrator by stimulating the most sensitive areas of his penis.
posted by kmellis 19 years ago
In "Curious Ugly Legs George:"
"says the girl who hasn't shaved her legs in ten years and utilizes black nylons when she knows she's going to be self-conscious about such things" You're like the perfect woman, aren't you? (Well, apparently my idea of one.) My ex-wife didn't shave. It drove her mother nuts. She harrassed Shelley all the time about it. People are weird.
posted by kmellis 19 years ago
In "Could a hotel be built on the land owned by Supreme Court Justice David H. Souter?"
This reminds me of something that someone asked me a couple of years ago. They asked, sincerely and with deep puzzlement, "Why in the world would you want to protect rights that you don't intend to exercise or, indeed, could possibly ever exercise?" I suspect that Souter decided the case on its merits, not whether it was in his personal interest or not in his personal interest. It doesn't surprise me that a Randroid would think that using the law against Souter's personal interest would be a convincing rebuttal. It's not. It's juvenile.
posted by kmellis 19 years ago
In "Best of the Web"
"Two words: whiskey enema." NannyFilter: be careful. it's easy to absorb a fatal amount of alcohol into bloodstream in a short period of time. do some web research before trying this.
posted by kmellis 19 years ago
In "Kitten rearing."
Thanks, JJ. I'm still missing her and its been six months. But she was with me for 14 years, so I guess I'll miss her for awhile. I don't know what is behind that ordinance. It was a surprise to go to the classifieds to look for a kitten/cat to adopt and find almost nothing there.
posted by kmellis 19 years ago
My cat died just after Christmas and I've looked at kitten listings a few times since then. Anyway, I was surprised to see that the newspaper here (Albuquerque) in its classifieds says:
There's almost no pet ads--there's only two for "cats: crossbreed", and neither show a permit number. (Pop. of metro area is about 650K.) So I'm guessing that the advertisers proved they were out of the city limits or something. All the local shelters have many listings, but it looks to me like this ordinance has all but eliminated the p2p classified ad pet giveaway trade. Which seems unfortunate to me. Any other communities doing this? Can anyone explain to me what's going on here?posted by kmellis 19 years ago
In "Tits!"
It wasn't addressed to anyone specifically. A lot of people are militant about breastfeeding and, apparently, willing to make snide remarks to women they see using formula.
posted by kmellis 19 years ago
My mother's a pediatric nurse at a moderate sized pediatric practice (all the doctors are women, by the way). She's the nurse manager, too. They also have two full-time lactation nurses. They're beginning to see a number of infants that are underfed because the mother has milk production problems but won't consider formula feeding as a supplement (or alternative).
posted by kmellis 19 years ago
Well, the pendulum has swung the other way. Lots of new mothers who don't breastfeed are harrassed by family and even strangers because of it. I'm sure it varies by region. Not every mother can breastfeed, and not every mother can breastfeed for, um, four years. Not every mother should breastfeed. I think people have gotten the message: breastfeeding is much better for the infant. Stop and consider that someone who isn't might have a good reason. And mother drive-bys are never right.
posted by kmellis 19 years ago
In "Romanian nun crucified."
You have to have an assumption of bigotry. I wasn't offended because I thought that version of that old joke was offered ironically. Or maybe surrealistically. It wasn't overtly funny. Romanian nuns are neither known objects of bigotry on mofi, nor are they particularly sacred here, either. What you're left with is an absurd and repulsive image for its own sake. Which was sort of weird. But, if there was some religious intolerance (or intolerance of religion) in that joke, I stand corrected.
posted by kmellis 19 years ago
I loved my dead, possessed nun.
posted by kmellis 19 years ago
In "Curious Empire-building George"
I have a very strong suspicion that even with the relaxed anti-prostitution laws in Canada, a moneymaking enterprise such as yours would directly run counter to the law while also being an attractive (and obvious) target for law enforcement. You'd better make sure this isn't the case.
posted by kmellis 19 years ago
In "China ruins best chance of beating bird flu epidemic."
"Two diseases in domestic species with very high morbidity come to mind: myxomatosis in rabbits, which still has a pretty high mortality rate, in spite of the virus becoming more host-adapted over time..." How well does this fit Ewald's evolutionary analysis of virulence? I'm going to follow your link and see; but before I do I'll predict that if Ewald's model is correct, myxomatosis must have a unusually high mortality rate because it has an independent vector for transmission. Hmm: "Myxoma virus, a member of the poxvirus group, is transmitted by mosquitoes, fleas, biting flies, and direct contact." I'd bet you that the high mortality rate strains are in environments where transmission is far more often by an independent vector than direct contact. You'd know this by correlating, say, mosquito population with incidence and mortality. I didn't say this explicitly, but the traditional theory of virulence is that pathogens inevitably evolve towards benignity and high virulence occurs primarily from species-jumping or the introduction of the pathogen into a pristine environment (which is another way of saying the other). How true this is, and how true Ewald's theory is, is very important in a practical sense because right now, for example, because of the traditionalist view, epidemiologists concentrate their attention on potential species-jumping pathogens. They also always make the assumption of species jumping, which has central importance in terms of how to pratically respond.
posted by kmellis 19 years ago
In "The biggest financial bubble in history is about to burst ."
I really can't resist putting forth the neoliberal economics answer to jb's objection. Which is, I think, that even if we could all agree on a moral framework in which the sort of thing he describes is "wrong", it's well-nigh inevitable that attempts to directly economically correct for this are ineffectual and sometimes make the problem worse. Also, of course, neoliberal economics would encourage you to put aside your intuitive biases and try and establish a rational framework within which you can more fully and more correctly evaluate the moral character of the situation. I personally find it to be the case that many, perhaps most, people's quick and easy intuitive moral evaluation of economic matters is misleading or even false. Being on the left side of the spectrum, where my concern is concentrated on the plight of the least powerful, I find it maddening to the point of despair that it's often the case that many people's unquestioned and easy intuitions about such matters lead to conclusions and policies that worsen the lives of the most unfortunate, rather than the opposite.
posted by kmellis 19 years ago
In "Beck is a scientologist!"
There's lots of people in the entertainment industry who are scientologists. That's always been where they've had the most success (by some arbitrary measurement...you know what I mean). It might say something about entertainers, or it might just be an accident of history relating to the subculture in which LRH was personally influential. It's sort of a guilty pleasure to imagine that it's the first case...but it's more likely the second.
posted by kmellis 19 years ago
In "Turns out.. you don't know everything"
Yeah, it was great. I haven't rewatched it, but I did watch the ending twice.
posted by kmellis 19 years ago
In "Romanian nun crucified."
I got the impression that the nuns who called the ambulance were not sympathetic to the Priest or the nun(s) who were principally involved in the "excorcism".
posted by kmellis 19 years ago
In "China ruins best chance of beating bird flu epidemic."
Maybe. It depends upon whether that fungus is more widespread, and usually benign, than they thought. The Ewald book is in storage, so I can't refer to it. I'm sure that one very bad case was in a hospital nursery in either Australia or New Zealand (apologies to both Aussies and Kiwis that I conflate the two in this recollection). Another that I recall he described was in the midwest US somewhere, I can't recall where. But the link you found isn't an example of what I was describing. What has happened in several hospital nurseries is that a common, usually mostly benign pathogen becomes very virulent and concentrated in the nursery, and almost impossible to eradicate. I now that the antipodean nursery shut down for a several weeks, and that eliminated it. It's hard to imagine an environment that could be more hospitable to an increasingly virulent pathogen than a hospital nursery. Babies have poor immune systems to begin with. Hospitals in general (for the same evolutionary reasons I'm describing here; but also because of antibiotic use) are hotbeds of unusually virulent normally benign pathogens. Babies in hospital nurseries are kept in relatively close proximity with a handful of caregivers handling all of them, often and in quick succession. Infants are prolific producers of bodily fluids. The pathogen has a near-perfect incubator in the infants, and a near-perfect transmission vector in the caregivers and their equipment. Since the two things are seperate, and both optimal, the pathogen can become extremely virulent to the babies without it limiting its contagion. Once the virulent strain has evolved, it always has a large evolutionary advantage in that environment and so even if you eradicate 99.99999% of the pathogens, it will spring back up very rapidly. It may be surviving benignly in the caregivers, their homes, their families. It has to be completely eliminated before the epidemic will stop. In these cases, closing the whole thing down for a considerable length of time was necessary (and sufficient). An obvious solution to the problem in general is to not have these sorts of nurseries. Keep the infants with their mothers as soon and as much as possible, and let the mothers (or someone similar) do most of the caregiving. If the nursing staff still has to do most of the caregiving, then very strident antiseptic procedures should be followed between every interaction with an infant. This selective pressure toward or away from virulence is why, for example, pesticides against mosquitoes in malaria endemic areas is so successful. It's not just reducing the availability of the transmission vector; but in doing so the pathogen is encouraged to evolve toward being more benign (because it necessarily needs to be to have enough time to be transmitted). Fewer people will get malaria...nevertheless some will. But fewer of those people will die from it because it will be a less virluent strain.
posted by kmellis 19 years ago
In "Best of the Web"
"quonsar - wow, I would have never suspected that font size and whatever would scare you." I think he meant that he was suprised that you would be so idiotic as to not know how to change them if they bothered you. And if he didn't mean that, I do. Maybe you didn't read the RFC?
posted by kmellis 19 years ago
In "China ruins best chance of beating bird flu epidemic."
"One sociological aspect of the public's attitude toward the subject of pandemic that I find fascinating is the implicit faith in science and medicine to prevent such things from occurring (in our times)." Not to harp on Ewald, but the practical point he made was to invent and promote "evolutionary medicine". We simply cannot win against pathogens the way we fight them. They will always evolve faster than we will find ways of controlling them. (Maybe not in specific cases, but in general--and therefore we will always be at the mercy of some virulent pathogens. Some which will be capable of pandemics.) So the idea of evolutionary medicine is to account for how pathogens rapidly evolve and use that information in our favor. How we use it in our favor is to create environments where the selective pressure is to lower virulence, and to eliminate or avoid environments where the selective pressure is to increase virulence. And the thing is, there's a variety of things that are common practices today that encourage virulence. Ewald examines something in depth that few people are aware of: the various outbreaks of extremely virulent pathogens in hospital nurseries that kill most of the infants. This has happened a good number of times and each time it's only been controlled by closing the whole ward down for a number of weeks. That's just one example.
posted by kmellis 19 years ago
(limited to the most recent 20 comments)