July 15, 2007 - [chat]
you know the deal. Chat away. some guster talk would be keen. rides, meeting time, meeting place, etc
Also, if you want to just link a news story you can toss it in here, unless you have something really funny to say about it.
65 comments:
There's a Guster thread for talking about Guster.
BLAST IT! I realized a moment too late, and had hit publish..... edit being disallowed, I present you the following redacted version.
-J-, who's name has been stolen by time travelers, does NOT APPROVE of sloppy categorization.
Cross him at your peril.
"who's"?
"WHO'S"?
Speaking of time travel, I'm still reading Bearing an Hourglass by Piers Anthony in which the personification of Time does his thing. Call me the Anti-Jay, but I dig me some time travel or manipulation or whatever. If time travel is a question, then the answer is "yes".
Anthony, however, wields time travel like a huge club, yet tries to make it perform some kind of heart surgery. As you may expect, instead of getting an unobstructed ventricle, you get a chest full of smashed ribs. For that, I'm starting to suspect that I hate this book and him for writing it. I'm tempted to go through and mark all the places where he either doesn't understand how this shit fucking works, or he writes characters who just refuse to get it for some reason. He puts up a shield of "I'm writing about Chronos, master of time, and only he can operate in time without paradox", which I think he hopes will deflect my rage, but he obviously comprehends the extent of my rage as fully as he understands traveling through fucking time.
That said, I really ought to finish it and see if it gets better, but for now I'm pretty happy just complaining about it.
Someone should write a book about the personification of complaint. It could be called like "Bearing a Poison Pen" or "With Letters to the Editor" and be about a guy who acts as a muse for those who are angry about things and too lazy to fix them. BUT IN SPACE.
Ah, yes. The inevitable Piers frustration. Enjoy that. Foster that. It will serve you well.
and Yes, Who's. and in Who's Who?
You do understand that you have no name,correct? that you're no longer definitive, and thus must be questioned?
Time Travel is not a good thing. It inherently leads to confusion frustration, and girls breaking up with me.
I just had to put a blurb on our Online Store about shipping because some guy in Scottland thought he could get free ground shipping.
Think about that for a moment.
You mean Nessie doesn't swim the Atlantic for UPS anymore?
Even if she did that wouldn't be "Ground" shipping.
Maybe Nessie is a Water/Ground Pokey-man?
If she's water / ground then she's weak against...electric...because she's water...but she's strong against electric...because she's ground.
I never understood how those worked.
Still, though, I think only exclusively ground type pokeymans can do ground type shipments.
*Chortle*
what about ground/rock pokemons? Geodude should definitely be considered for Ground delivery, if not the spokesmodel, but he is also Rock type, which would break your exclusively ground type delivery model.
If he's Rock Type that obviously does not adhere to the Ground Type exclusivity used in Ground Deliveries.
As soon as we open it up to Ground/X deliveries suddenly we have Ground / Water deliveries and Ground / Air deliveries and, worst of all, Ground / Bug deliveries.
And hell if I'm listing all of those on our shipping options.
I'm using a lab computer, and I'm fairly certain that I'm sitting in a chair nearly saturated with sweat from the previous user. His rich, full-bodied funk still hangs in the air, almost visibly.
I learned today that the cafeteria in the library closes at 2pm during the summer, and so if I want to get something to eat, I need to take my break somewhere between way before 2pm and a little before 2pm.
And Jay, you'd list the different shipping options if you cared about the company! Think of the the company! Or the customer! Think about how much you hate them! Then give them so many options that they can't possibly pick the right one, so they decide to just not buy a rake!
It might work!
No One can stop these people from buying rakes. These are rake people. It's all they do.
Someone called in earlier today because the replacement handle they wanted to buy was not on the Online Store.
These people are relentless!
Thats why you need to find one the good labs (i.e. not in HPER, Balantine, or the Union) Try the ones in the basement of Lindley, they always tend to be nice.
For a moment I thought you were talking about shipping rakes.
Oh, I was...
A bunch of Catholics are getting around 1.3 Million dollars each for being fucked in the ass.
Hell. I'd let a bishop fuck me in the ass for $1.3 million.
I'm certain that I too would offer my sweet succulent ass up for fucking for $1 million or more.
The bonus with the bishop is that they're right they're going to hell. So you get his money and the damnation of his eternal soul.
I enjoy reading these interviews.
"As a man who was sexually molested by his bishop..."
hehe, lawl.
The FDA may soon have the job of making your smokes safer.
This can only end well.
Some of you may have heard this from me before, but it seems to me that when people talk about "smokers", they should be a bit more specific. On one end there's the guy who smokes a few when he's out on the town, and on the other end there's the guy who sits in his easy chair and burns through a carton every couple of days. They're both "smokers" according to these types of people, through whose logic Michael Jordan and I are both "basketball players".
I think I understand what they mean by the risks of smoking, that exposure to the things in cigarette smoke can increase your chances of getting cancer, and it's best to avoid them, but I can go outside for a bit and not get skin cancer from the sun, so why can't I smoke a bit and not get lung cancer from that?
Granted, going outside is generally a necessity, and having a smoke is typically non-essential, but to fully understand the risks of smoking, it seems reasonable to have an idea of how much is too much, rather than just boiler-plating "any is lethal", because I suspect that claim may well be false.
TL,DR: I would like information that helps me better weigh the risk of smoking against the enjoyment I get from doing it instead of the typical "don't do it at all" advice.
Correlation. Not Causality.
I would like to know what the legal definition of "smoker" is. (Besides pole smokin' M I RITE?!)
Because when a doctor asks, "do you smoke" or on an insurance form? It would be good to know what they mean by "smoke". I smoke maybe a cigar every other month. Does that mean I am a smoker? Where is the line?
Wait. What? the ATF is not going to be happy about that, are they?
The line is basically do you smoke at all. Mostly becuase that question is either insurance based, in which case they want their bases and money covered, or diagnostic based, where they can't afford to overlook anything.
as for the Smoking Health as a binary choice.. yeah.. can't really argue that, though. In part because the Tobacco companies were so underhanded in protecting their cut that any and everything short of "Bad, Naughty, Filthy, Terrible Habit" smacks of apologism and hedging. gets under my skin, too.
I think the "everything is bad for you" argument far too undervalues the actual dangers of the product being discussed. It seems dismissive. Yeah, it's correlation and not causality. Yeah, there are people who smoke for 80 years and die of "natural causes". But I think that if you just reflect on what is happening, "I'm inhaling smoke a lot" it's pretty easy to tell that it's not the best thing to do.
agreed. That's what I meant by smacks of apologism. But the Teev's getting at the other side of the scale.. virtually everything said on the topic is in the form of Abstinence vs. Use. Nothing ever looks at scales of use.
There's a growing class of people, smokers and non-alike, who are sick of hearing about the risks in these terms is all. They're not saying smoking isn't bad for you, so much as saying that smoking is being mis- or over-represented.
"Nothing ever looks at scales of use."
Different people seem to have different levels of susceptibility to cancer. Some people can smoke and are fine. Others smoke and get cancer or other illnesses.
So if they release a report that says, "You can smoke one cigar every two weeks and be fine." that's an outright lie, because not everyone will be fine. So then they release some studies that find that 83% of participants did not get cancer after smoking one cigar every two weeks. Except how would one study the long-term effects of these things? Will teeth yellowing be included in the study? Does it just look at cancer or does it look at other diseases? What about the effects of second hand smoke? Do we study those as well?
It's like the argument against drinking. "Are there any benefits? No? Then let's stop." But we don't and won't stop. So then we enter into this stupid ass realm of kinda-rules where we're arbitrarily defining how stupid we can be and still justify it.
Trying to justify self-destructive behavior never ends well. And trying to quantify how self-destructive different self-destructive behaviors are really seems to expose a fundamental problem with the way people think about these things.
"I know it's not good for me...but...how often can I do it and not get that badly hurt?"
Come on.
This made my day.
"The number of armored vehicle rampages in the past three years is now rapidly approaching the number of Al Qaeda attacks on Western countries."
No one's been talking about justifying the behavior. It's talking about frustrations at the nature and tone of the message attempting to tell us to stop.
J- "I know it's not good for me...but...how often can I do it and not get that badly hurt?"
That bit there? with the last part quantified at that badly? That's where you're losing me.. Are you railing at The Teev? or I? or a hypothetical other person who is discounting the dangers entirely?
becuase.. if it's the latter.. then.. you're off on a tangent that no one else started on..
My "I know it's not good for me...but...how often can I do it and not get that badly hurt?" is addressing your "virtually everything said on the topic is in the form of Abstinence vs. Use. Nothing ever looks at scales of use."
The complaint, as I understood it, was that , "Abstinence vs. Use" isn't good enough and that they need to release information of the, "how often can I do it and not get that badly hurt" variety.
J- "I know it's not good for me...but...how often can I do it and not get that badly hurt?"
It may seem stupid, but I do think that's a question worth answering. I'm not asking anyone to promise me that I won't get hurt, but I am interested in understanding the risk/reward involved. It's like if someone gets a kick out of playing Russian Roulette, he might be a little daft, but he'd be justified in wanting to know how many bullets are in the gun before he gets started.
If the smoking thing is an impossible question to anwser satisfactorily, then that's ok, but when the trend seems to be to say "smoking = cancer + you die", there sounds like an overstatement in there that might bear some investigation.
Yeah.. I'm not sure where your complaint comes from either... it seems a valid question.. you ask it when you buy a car, checking saftey standards and what not..
You ask it, implicitly, when you buy food, what with nutrition labels and so forth.
What's so wrong about asking it w/regards to tobacco?
Oddly enough, I went to find a book in the government archive at the library here, and what I was looking for was one shelf below a bunch of Surgeon General's reports on smoking. I thumbed through a couple that deal with such things as health issues and benefits of cessation, and although most of the data compares smokers and non-smokers, there are some studies that looked at smokers by the frequency of their habit.
I'll take a better look at these things when I get the chance, but there actually is information on smoking that acknowledges that smoking 1 cigarette a day != smoking 60 a day!
Well, I don't know what there is to ask.
Here is the wikipedia page listing the effects of tobacco smoking
Here is the wikipedia page listing the additives in cigarettes
Here is the wikipedia page listing the chemicals in cigarettes
I mean...this isn't the 50s. The information isn't difficult to find. And it's not as if the information we have is, "If you smoke you will die." I mean, this stuff is on wikipedia.
And, for example, you can look at the list of chemicals in cigarettes and find vinyl chloride, and then look at the wikipedia page for vinyl chloride and find the health effects.
Again, not that difficult.
Also, was the star wars tournament in bloomington gone to?
Newsweek article on commas
Finally, something worth covering!
So.... your problem is not that the question was asked, but that the question wasn't Just-Fucking-Googled ahead of time?
admittedly, the links appear to be a bit straw-man.. if the issue is frequency of smoking-based information, links to what's in them is tangential.. but.. then again.. I suppose they reinforce my point about asking about saftey in relative terms earlier..
In other words, "Your points are ill-conceived and are more of a straw-man argument...although they address the point I raised earlier."
If you want to know how harmful cigarettes are on a case by case basis the only way to do that is to analyse the harm of one cigarette and then apply that information to the individual's use. So if a (1) cigarette contains 1.7 micrograms of cadmium and it takes a consumption rate of 10 micrograms of cadmium per day over a span of 60 days to give you cancer then, huzzah, you've found out how harmful that aspect of smoking is.
Yes, that's sooo strawman. Damn me for addressing the points raised in the conversation.
If I had to make a lol version of myself for this morning it would be:
I'm skippin' your 401k meetin'
...but am eatin' your doughnuts.
except that's not the point raise in the conversation, as I've read it. Rather, the point is one, adressing the weighted nature of available materials on the subject, and two, the links you find aren't smoking habits... which gets at my point that they don't address the conversation. I'm not saying they aren't a part of it.. but they ARE tangential. Words and meanings and all.
Here's the conversation to which I am a part:
"it seems reasonable to have an idea of how much is too much, rather than just boiler-plating "any is lethal", because I suspect that claim may well be false."
The means by which we attain an idea of how much is too much is to assess the health value of an individual unit of smoking and then apply that to each individual's habit.
The problem, I think, is attempting to quantify how much cadmium one can inhale without suffering too much. Quantifying carcinogens within some context of non-necessary behavior forms an interesting sort of testing mindset and advisory mindset.
That's the conversation to which I am a part.
same one we've all been a part of, up until the clarification of testing non-necessary behavior, then. Up until that point, it still seemed like you were "FNAR, FNAR, FNAR, own up to the fact you're smoking deathstiks." yeah.. that's rude.. but this work day has sucked and I have a headache.
So.. then.. non-essential habits that result in damage.. I come back to vehicular transportation, then. I mean.. we're piloting shrapnel and petrol bombs at 60+ mph every day. And we use their saftey data : (This car is 6x less likely to kill you in a collision) as a selling point and award worthy... We make distinction between types and brands of cars.
Something that we don't seem to do w/ regards to smoking. And it seems like it would be a valuable set of data, if it didn't look so much like trying to shrug off all blame and danger. Which it does.. Thank you Big Tobacco and the 80's for that role.
blear.
In other news, I'm tired of arguing things with -J- where we stand on neighboring positions with a fun house mirror between us.
I think I'm going to try a new tact in sorting my Magic cards...
Binders. for everything. Reasonable? or Absurd?
absurd if you plan on keeping more than 4 of any given card, outside of lands of course
When did we jump to discussing, "non-essential habits" as a broad category? I thought we were talking about inhaling things that cause cancer.
For sorting Magic Cards? Binders are a needless pain. Buy a big box and sort them that way.
Benefits of binders:
You can easily see everything you have.
Benefits of boxes:
Easier to sort.
Easier to add new cards
Easier to expand
Easier to browse through (I think)
Easier to store
Costs less
Also, someone here has a wife who stores her tupperware based on "The order I use them in when I bake."
Yes, she has a precise baking order.
in general it'd be 4 of, with a second play set for the Hella Useful/Every Set Tools
Lightning Bolts, Disenchant/Naturalizes, Mana Leaks, Blue Draw, Edicts..
the other benefits of binders? Easier to database/find what you're looking for. Easier to move. Theoretically equally easy to add to, though that may lag in practice. (when you hit that full row in a box, and then need to add into the middle? Badness ensues. Vs. Adding a page.)
I dunno. still thinking it'd be better.
It depends on how you are organizing them.
When I started I put all of mine into a binder, and it was a complete pain. Because you can either set it out by expansion, and order them by number, and have a bunch of empty spaces for cards you don't have, or have to move cards later, etc.
"Easier to database/find what you're looking for."
I don't think so. If I'm looking for my 8th edition Holy Day? I go to 8th edition in the box, and then go by number.
"Easier to move."
Are you talking about transport? When do you need to move your entire collection of cards with you to a friend's house? Boxes, I think, are even easier in this situation, though. I have a 4 row box full of cards and it's much easier to move than my two or three full binders were when I used binders.
"Theoretically equally easy to add to, though that may lag in practice."
It's much easier to add to a box because you aren't confined to individual slots for cards.
"(when you hit that full row in a box, and then need to add into the middle? Badness ensues. Vs. Adding a page.)"
The times you will hit a full page are greater than the times you will fill a row in a box. And I've experienced no "badness" with boxes. You just add cards. And when slot 1 is full? It spills over into slot 2.
It really depends on how you want to sort your cards. I have a box full of Unlimited - I think Guildpact. If you want to look at it feel free. I think it's the best way to sort a mass of cards.
Now, with my star wars cars? I'm putting those in a binder. Because there are only 120 cards per set and I can easily leave holes for the cards I don't have but will obtain later. Plus I want to be able to look at them and peruse them as I do with my Invasion set, my Mirrodin set, my darksteel set, etc.
I think that if you want to organize cards and sort them at the same time you ought to use a binder. If you need to organize your mass of 1,000+ cards? Use a box.
Additionally there is the cost issue. 12 cards per page, $.10 per sheet. Do the math.
And take into account that you can only fit so many cards into each slot on a page, whereas you can dump as many Goreshovels in a box.
Boxes are the best way to do it, I think.
I like to do a mixture of the two. Keeping my rares and super awesome uncommons in a binder, such that they are easily accessible and portable, while keeping commons and baseline uncommons in boxes.
I agree. There's no reason to have Leery Fogbeast in a binder.
And I don't want to hear any cute little quips to the contrary. There just isn't. Buy a box.
Another customer tried to use our online store, and they tried to add things to their cart by just entering numbers into the little text fields and not click the "Add to Cart" button.
I saw License to Wed last night on what can only be called a whim. I was secretly harboring hope of this being one of those romantic comedies that had some sort of awesome and unexpected treat in it. As it turns out, there was no Bill Nighy in sight, just a bunch of crap that sucked. I can't imagine I'm providing sufficient shock to cause anyone's monocle to pop free of anyone's eye and into anyone's tea here, but I feel better now that I've told someone that there is a movie out there that is not very good, even though it has people from The Office in it.
it's not even unoffensive but bland Robin Williams pap?
You mock.. but when my Leery FogBinder prevents all theft...
My monocle remains secure, sir.
Perhaps another cinematic feature will afford Mandronica Moore the breakout opportunity she desires.
I could go to Wal-Mart over my lunch break and buy more SW Pocketmodels...but if I do that I can't go home and eat. So I would have to go to Wal-Mart and then stop somewhere to get food...
Hey, if I go to Wal-Mart that means I can stop at Arbys and eat....so I can drive to Arbys, eat, and then go on my way to Wal-Mart and buy more....
Yes.
So, I went to Steak and Shake for lunch after purchasing more packs of the Star Wars game.
I'm going there always. Across the aisle from my booth there were two people. One of who was, I assume, a psychologist in training and the other was, I assume, a crazy person given that he was explaining how he sees the ghosts of his dead children and various demons who tell him to kill his ex wife and various other people.
Mind you, this coversation occured in a Steak and Shake.
bwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
hrrrmn.
One of my favorite parts of my job is when I will take a picture of something and a person will look at the picture and say, "That's not what that looks like." Then I will get the product and show it to them while they look at the picture. When this happens they will say, "Oh, I guess it does look like that."
I wuv it.
Keith gave a Special Comment on Thursday's broadcast...but he did it at the beginning...
Twas weird.
dammnit.
I really need to start watching tv agian.
and I approve of moving the comments around.. used to be they weren't tied to that last story... he moved to those to punch home some serious rage.. and then the marketing kinda pushed that. They kinda belong there.. but only becuase they're naturally semi-editorial pieces.. and you don't go from an editorial into a seperate story... you end with your rhetorical punches.
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