We sprang forward a day so it's Monday.
USPS is occasionally awesome with Express Mail - was that it? Most of the time, a little shaky, although Media Rate is relatively cheap and reliable.
Maybe it's a last-ditch effort to stop Amazon from replacing them with drones.
The postal service, like any other business, is willing to sell services. And so when Amazon showed up at their door they were happy to make a deal:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2013/11/11/amazon-sunday-delivery-usps/3479055/
Huh. Thanks for that link in 4. On the one hand, I'm creeped out that the USPS is morphing to accommodate a single corporate entity -- presumably Amazon is the only outfit able to access Sunday delivery, except maybe for Express Mail available to private citizens -- but on the other hand, given Amazon's market power at this point, I'd rather they patronize the USPS over UPS. Even though I assume they're getting quite a deal on rates, which is to say that Amazon's negotiating power makes it not unlike Walmart in the ability to dictate rates/costs to its service providers.
But the USPS has been negotiating deals like this for some time.
Actually, USPS may well make the same sort of deal available to other major corporations (Best Buy, etc.) ... and that makes it a viable competitor to UPS or FedEx. The latter are ridiculously more expensive than USPS to begin with, and trade on the notion that you get what you pay for, even though they actually rely on USPS for last-mile service. So I can't blame USPS for getting sick of it.
is pretty beautiful and complex and looonnnggg.I will confess that I could not get through when I saw it linked on Twitter last night.
It is long, plus it requires extensive Disney knowledge to keep up, but it's interesting. I kind of love that Suskind and his wife ignored a lot of experts (in a field that pretty much has no clue what really works) and doggedly kept pushing for what seemed to work for their son and ended up with an unexpectedly happy result. I can't help wishing it were like that for everyone who advocates for their kid like that.
My half-assed theory about autism is that medical science will eventually start to figure out that there are multiple unrelated organic causes that lead to apparently related/similar symptoms that we now just call the spectrum of disease, which will lead to better care all around. And rainbows and unicorns.
9: that's a pretty full-assed take on half-assed, given that lots of experts in the field thnk exactly that thing, isn't it?
||
A bear walks into a bar and orders a beer.
The bartender looks at him for a half second and says "Sorry, we don't serve bears here,"
The bear replies "Give me a beer or I'll bite off your head!
The bartender says "OK, but just one."
The bear sits there for a while nursing hs beer saying nothing.
He finishes it and orders another. "Bartender, give me another beer!"
The bartender looks at the bear for a long second and says "I told you. We don't serve bears"
The bear squints at the bartender and slowly and deliberately says "Give me a beer RIGHT NOW or I WILL feed on your face and THEN bite your head off!"
So the bartender serves the bear again.
While the bear is drinking his beer quietly a woman comes over to the bear and puts her hand on the bear's leg and asks "How would you like to buy me a drink, good looking?"
The bear promptly sets his drink down, eats the woman right there at the bar and slowly finishes the drink.
He then glares at the bartender and says "Give me another beer, NOW, and if you make any jokes about 'barbituates,' I'll eat you too!"
The bartender looks back at the bear and says "That's quite alright sir, you see, it was an unreliable narrator."
||>
10: Sure, but I've come across too many autism grand unified theory proposals to think there's a true consensus among actual experts. Also half-assed because it's not my field at all. I mean, there's the mosaic disorder theory (chimera theory, whatever), a thing about microbiome imbalance (of course), the epigenetic theory, and that's just off the top of my head. There's a mouse model people work on, but that seems kind of crazy, since it's not clear what they're really modeling. I haven't run across anything that defines particular subgroups in autistic populations, although it's certainly not something I follow closely.
Don't forget the salt and oxytocin at birth.
The idea of regressive autism happening to your almost three year old is just devastating.
Seriously. I'd never heard of regressive autism, and I have to say it's the most fucked up thing I've heard of in a long time.
The idea of regressive autism happening to your almost three year old is just devastating.
Exceedingly.
That article in the op was really something else--holy hell.
Very interesting article for sure.
I have to admit that as a young adult I despised Disney products, for what they did to material already classic for children and that many have benefited from getting straight. There was also a whole host of CarlHiassony objections to the corporate empire.
But having kids clued me into real virtues. The article mentions Disney's dictum that characters should be recognizable and easy to follow sound off; they are remarkably coherent, and have always employed top talent. The songs are particularly good, and easy to learn and sing along with. Sure, my kids got Treasure Island, Hans Brinker, Jungle Book etc. straight and in the original, but there was and is room in their hearts for Disney.
The idea of regressive autism happening to your almost three year old is just devastating.
Seriously. What a nightmare scenario. I found the article difficult to read (because it's such a distressing issue), but worth the effort.
19 sounds like a good way to play it. After seeing one friend's daughter smile her head off in the Princess Garden at Disneyland, and another sing through "Part of Your World" perfectly at 3 1/2, I feel like I can accommodate the onslaught.
Man, that is a hell of a story. I wonder what Barthes would make of it?
A friend's young child was diagnosed with autism a couple of months before her first birthday. My visits since have been cruelly, and increasingly, painful, because (and I am not ignorant of the moral problems implicit in the following) her behavior and responses are vastly different from those of "ordinary" children -- more distinct than the behavior and responses of "ordinary" children are from those of "ordinary" adults -- and my friend's wife is neither emotionally nor intellectually up to any aspect of caring for her now or in the future in a manner comparable to that of the OP link.
I'd never ask for more Ayelet Waldman-style "Bad Mother"-ification of the "my special needs child" genre, but sometimes it's hard to recall that not all parents of children with serious mental or emotional issues are Herculean saints.
The Disney article was hard for me to read. I'm struggling a lot with how to deal with H's speech delays, which aren't severe enough to merit in-school therapy but are starting to hold her back. It breaks my heart how many more words Selah has at not-yet-19 months than Mara did at age 3 and it was hard to see that her ESL classmates have better grammar than she does.
I remember that her first multi-word phrase was "Step right up!" which she was mimicking from some show and it took me forever to figure out what those three sounds meant but something about how she put out her arm while saying it let me make the connection and I remember how she smiled.... So it's not the same as what this family has gone through, but it was too close for me to feel anything but very sad reading it. And I wonder how his wife, as the more active parent, would have written the piece. Would it have been just about Disney or about all the rest of the many things she did too? (I know there's a book, and I'll probably read it.)
but sometimes it's hard to recall that not all parents of children with serious mental or emotional issues are Herculean saints.
I don't have the luxury of forgetting that.
Maybe it's just self-protection, but I tend to assume that in articles like this one, the parent, while not exactly lying, is also not telling the whole truth.
but sometimes it's hard to recall that not all parents of children with serious mental or emotional issues are Herculean saints.
Yeah, I don't know if this is really true either. I know a lot of parents who are giving an amazing amount, but most are pretty open about their flaws and regrets too.
sometimes it's hard to recall that not all parents of children with serious mental or emotional issues are Herculean saints.
I strongly dislike the implication that any parent is a Herculean saint. In part, it robs them of their ability to be human and make mistakes.
I'm not sure "Herculean" is the right word for a saintly, mistake-avoiding parent.
Although if I had to pick someone to rely on vague generalizations about what parents do and it wasn't going to be Smearcase, it might well be Flippanter, so I didn't figure we had to take it too literally.
Sorry if that sounded really rude and dismissive. It was supposed to be a little bit dismissive, I guess, but not just rude.
Too late, Thorn. We'll be expecting the girdle of Hippolyta by this evening.
Classical myths are full of bad parents but my impression is that adoptive parents are pretty much always awesome. King Polybus, who raised Oedipus. The wolf that raised Romulus and Remus.
Hey, I'm attending a foster parent support group AT A MEGACHURCH tonight. If that's not going to require Herculean endurance, I'm not sure what will.
33: Is it one of those with a name like "The Harvest"? Or a more traditionally-denominated megachurch?
35: I was actually wrong; it's not at the megachurch this week (which used to be an Old Tyme Pottery Barn store) but at a smaller church that's a Church of God, which is a denomination I've always mentally mocked because of its name. (And not to be confused with Church of God in Christ, which is black.)
When I took the girls to our friends' farm to give Lee a break, Lee agreed to go with a different friend of hers to the monster megachurch, where the sermon was a "boxing match" trying to knock out the lies the media is promoting about how homosexuality is acceptable. Lee was not only canny enough to be skeptical that "homosexual" is a good translation for any bible verse, but was pretty sure she'd seen one of their ex-gay witnesses at a gay bar in the weeks prior. The friend was appalled that Lee took it so personally and wouldn't want to go back, while Lee said it was the only time she's been to a church service and gotten absolutely nothing out of it. (My Catholic relatives will be so glad to know they're now only second-worst!)
The Olive Garden of Gethsemane
Chi-rho-potle
37: I think I've also seen "The Vineyard."
Calvaroaster's Rotisserie Relig-o-que.
Some can come over directly:
Target
Cracker Barrel
Vineyards have been around a long time. Here, the big one is Cross/roads. We'll be at Corner/stone. Solid Rock is the one with the giant Jesus that burned down and there's now a replacement but I haven't seen it myself.