Well, Nudawn, you're a special case.
jgh:
You are the prettiest, prettiest princess of all Tumblr! Bagcoffee better remember to hold the doors open for you! Soupsoup better stand up when you walk in a room! I’ll remember to bring my smelling salts and parasol for your delicate lady skin! We will avoid four-letter words and titter nervously when the boys talk too much of non-delicate matters! I declare!
I’m not comfortable with you simply declaring that Nudawn is the prettiest, prettiest princess in all of Tumblr. I really think there ought to be a competition for that title. I would totally enter—but I don’t think I could beat out Mr. Karp’s unflinching blue eyes.
answers:
squashed:
This pipe is in my basement. From what I can tell, it’s primary purpose is to spew water into the basement when there is a record storm fall. Were basement flooding pipes were fashionable in the sixties?
Might that be for a sump pump?
As far as I can tell, it’s just a pipe that goes down a little ways, then curves off somewhere. You can see the waterlevel in the picture is close to the top. It had just overflowed before that. If I suck the water out of the top (with a turkey baster) it refills. My suspicion was that it connected to a storm sewer. The water is quite clean, so I assume it’s all ground water. After it rained, the waterlevel very gradually went down—though, again, nothing I did could make it go down faster. Maybe I could if I had some more efficient method of removing water.
My suspicion is that it connects either to a drywell or to some collapsed/sealed off bit of storm sewer. We’re high enough that we really shouldn’t be affected by an overflowing stormsewer, unless there’s something wrong with it.
I would say it could be a sump pump—but there doesn’t seem to be any sort of actual pump.
Firefox 3.5
azspot:
Firefox and more: browser memory usage
Firefox 3.5 dominates in memory efficiency. Average usage in this benchmark puts Firefox at more than 3x better than Chrome and about 2x more efficient than both Safari and Opera.
Yes. Firefox 3.5 is a monumental improvement over previous versions. Prior to v3.5, it was necessary for me to frequently restart Firefox (I even wrote a script to automate as a one-click process) as after awhile, I would be subjected to a liberal dosage of spinning beachballs. Now I can boost my Google Reader feed total to 1500+ without fear of breaking my browser!
AFAIC, Firefox still leads the browser pack. Safari 4 made some nice strides, but it lacks needed plugins (specifically for me, developer tools like Firebug) and while slightly snappier than Firefox (though Firefox 3.5 gained a speedup almost on par) and is buggy/incomplete in the one feature I must have now — full-page zoom on a per-domain basis and more essentially, one without mouse pointer bugs (i.e., on a Flash application, if you resize on Safari, the mouse point and click actions are erroneously offset).
Thanks for this. Firefox Memory Creep has been a persisting problem for me.
I am going to start reading poetry again.
(via sds)
Check out Lawrence Raab’s “Attack of the Crab Monsters”
Religious exemption and medical neglect
robot-heart-politics:
squashed:robot-heart-politics:
Religion has yet to be allowed as an excuse for parents abusing, neglecting or otherwise failing to promote the well-being of their child. I don’t think we should start doing so now.
Contrarily, it always been used as a justification for treating children differently for years. Wisconsin v. Yoder said the Amish do not have to send their children to school past eighth grade. I don’t know of any challenges to allowing children to stay home on religious holidays. Many states have religious exemptions to mandatory immunization programs. Many states have explicit religious exemptions to their medical abuse laws. The question is how comfortable we are having the majority trample a minority’s freedom of conscience because we think we know what’s best for their children.
But as I pointed out in the case of marriage, there are occasions where the best interests of the child are put above religious interests.
Regardless, of the examples you provide, immunizations are preventative medicine rather than a treatment for an existing ailment and an education is not an absolute necessity to survival. There is a big difference between getting a shot to prevent an illness you may or may not get, and not receiving treatment to cure an illness you already have and which will almost certainly kill you. Until the child is old enough to decide for themselves whether they want to die for their parents’ religious beliefs, I think we should assume that it is best to preserve their health until they reach their majority, at which point they can make that decision for themselves.
As I mentioned in my initial post, I’m ambivalent on this issue. I do think some weight should be given to the religious views of parents. I don’t see it as an absolute bar. If CPS decides a child is suffering medical neglect, they should absolutely intervene. But significant deference should be given to the wishes of the parents, even if those wishes are religiously grounded.
And no, I don’t think it’s wrong to require parents to provide health insurance for children.
sds:
complicatedshoes:
I’d be more sympathetic to the argument that a latina or any member of a minority race will bring a new and better approach to the law if the people making that argument weren’t also the same people that also think a sitting member of the Supreme Court is not “black enough” for the same to be said of him.
That’s what hypocrisy smells like.
Agreed. I thought of that as well. Clarence Thomas is a “race traitor” because he doesn’t vote a certain way? It’s ridiculous.
Good news! I’ve argued that having a more diverse Supreme Court will lead to better law and better decisions—and have never accused Clarence Thomas being insufficently black. And the primary references I can find to Thomas as a “race traitor” are all either parody or straw men. You can now be sympathetic to the goal of a more diverse court.
same-sex and prop 8
rabsteen:
I’ve read the latest legal decision that has caused some controversy (from here). As far as I’m concerned this should be considered a win for the LGBT community; but I have a limited understanding of the American legal system, so I may need some help from American friends.
The principal issue before the courts was whether a plebiscite like Proposition 8 was a constitutionally valid way of amending Californian law. Interestingly, it had almost nothing to do with same-sex marriage. Indeed, throughout the decision the judges continually stress that
“our task in the present proceeding is not to determine whether the provision at issue is wise or sound as a matter of policy or whether we, as individuals, believe it should be a part of the California Constitution. Regardless of our views as individuals on this question of policy, we recognize as judges and as a court our responsibility to confine our consideration to a determination of the constitutional validity and legal effect of the measure in question.”
Far from being about same-sex,
“the principal issue before us concerns the scope of the right of the people, under the provisions of the California Constitution, to change or alter the state Constitution itself through the initiative process”
So a hundred pages of legal decision later, they decided that yes, if Californians vote to amend law like they did with Prop 8, it should have legal force, and the law should be so changed.
Now we may take issue with this; maybe its not so great that we encourage a public vote on every issue. But whatever we feel about plebiscites, we shouldn’t read this latest news as an endorsement of discrimination against same-sex couples (even though it is, and I don’t mean to belittle the incredible struggle that those facing this sort discimination must face). If anything, I think that courts have allowed the issue to be revisited in exactly the same manner. This keeps the door open for a future referendum on definition of marriage.
There are two important parts of a legal opinion. One is the result and one is the reasoning. In this case, the result is bad for the LGBT community but the reasoning is okay. The desired result was that the court would hold that removing a right to gay marriage would require a revision rather than an ammendment.
I
So I guess "geek" is the new "indie" 'round these parts
jgh:
maura:
shorterexcerpts:
There are plenty of good reasons to make fun of/dislike Kelso from That 70s Show. But to assume an actor, however attractive or popular, can’t be a geek? You wind up sounding just as close-minded as those asshole scenester kids who claimed they only liked Pearl Jam when they were known as Mighty Joe Young.
On the one hand, I agree with not making assumptions about people based on their public personas, because pseudo-personas go hand-in-hand with pseudo-events, etc etc. On the other hand, I am sick of conventionally pretty women who coo over their iPhones and have their Tumblr passwords locked into their Firefox preferences claiming that the “geek” mantle is theirs and being rewarded for it while, well, not really showing any chops at all. But I think that problem is more rooted in sexism, and these sorta-attractive ladies realizing how those tendencies run rampant within this subculture, and pandering to them. That doesn’t make it any less frustrating to people with actual bona fides, though!
DING DING DING DING DING DING DING
DING
I think it’s time for a good, old-fashioned geek off. Who has the bona fides? Who’s suffered for it? And who’s just posing, trying to reap the geek-cred they never sowed.
