Wow. I'm genuinely amazed; that's unbelievable.
Why do you torture me, Apo? My yuppy sister down the road still looks like a McCain voter.
She lives in Michelle Bachmann's district. Coincidence? I think not.
Here's the Tinklenberg (anti-Bachman) contribution page
I've seen a couple of McCain/Palin window signs in Brooklyn, and they always look like somebody's terrible idea for offbeat Halloween decorations. "Ho, ho. Surely you aren't seriously going to vote for those whackjobs!"
I've heard more references to people being bothered by an overabundance of canvassers than any other sort of interaction with the election so far, so I feel nervous about volunteering at all. Possibly these stories were just grassroots propaganda designed to make us complacent.
Michelle Bachmann
I'm grateful to CNN for reminding us that there could actually be a worse person for the job of VP than Sarah Palin.
Are they in the 2nd District, Apo? I saw that Bobby Bright is putting up a hell of a fight down there.
Michelle's been grinding her teeth ever since Palin was chose. She should be me! Someone ought to write a country song.
For those not in on the joke, Machmann was the one who grabbed onto Pres. Bush's coat and wouldn't let go until he hugged her. A failed Monica. She's on the Top Ten Crazy Winger Congresspersons list.
Probably she doesn't crush on McCain quite the same way, come to think of it. When she's voted out maybe she can get a job in ex-Pres. Bush's staff. he probably needs a Lady of the Bedchamber.
Machmann was the one who grabbed onto Pres. Bush's coat and wouldn't let go until he hugged her
Holy shit, I forgot about that.
She's got one creepy smile on her - reminds me of DeLay's mugshot. "I'm going to flash this thing at you no matter what."
"Ho, ho. Surely you aren't seriously going to vote for those whackjobs!"
Someone I ordinarily respect told me last week that he was still undecided. Undecided?! I just barely managed to clean up my "Are you fucking stupid?" (into "Seriously? I can't imagine what McCain/Palin have to recommend them.") before it came out of my mouth.
He told me yesterday that he's voting for Obama, but I'm pretty sure he's just saying that so I won't think he's fucking stupid.
Are they in the 2nd District, Apo?
Yep. Prattville.
You're being elitist and counterproductive. Just say, "Look, I know you're stupid, you know you're stupid, but that's OK! But it doesn't mean that you have to vote for McCain."
It's a mistake to throw away the stupid and proud vote.
There's only 2 Ladies of the Bedchamber now? And they haven't changed in 20 years? How boring.
Somewhat OT but related:
Seen today in the grocery store. Obese 60ish white guy wearing a shirt with a picture of Sarah Palin and the words "I'm a bitter voter who clings to my guns and my god"
Also, a pink (for women?) McCain/Palin 2008 sticker on an SUV
Erm, high-ranking partner in my firm. I think my strategy was prudent.
I finally watched her Matthews segment this morning. I actually thought he did about as good a job as could be expected from a nominally non-partisan* talking head. He got right to the crux of her BS - equating liberalism with anti-Americanism - and wouldn't let go, forcing her back to the point over and over, until she had pretty well hoisted herself. There was no coup de grace, but I don't think she came off well with anyone but the already-crazy.
* And he is, I would argue, effectively non-partisan. He started from a decently liberal place, but he's absorbed most of the Beltway rightwing CW, and he decides which pols he likes based on non-partisan (and, frankly, non-important) considerations. He's a pretty good example of the conflicting media critiques of the Left and Right - his policy leanings are definitely left of center (not on everything, although I don't think he buys into the whole "SS is crashing, balance the budget, $250k is middle class" line), but his predilections and aesthetic preferences are right of center. Obviously the Bush disaster has pushed him leftward; I wonder how long that will last in an Obama admin.
I finally watched her Matthews segment this morning. I actually thought he did about as good a job as could be expected from a nominally non-partisan* talking head. He got right to the crux of her BS - equating liberalism with anti-Americanism - and wouldn't let go, forcing her back to the point over and over, until she had pretty well hoisted herself. There was no coup de grace, but I don't think she came off well with anyone but the already-crazy.
* And he is, I would argue, effectively non-partisan. He started from a decently liberal place, but he's absorbed most of the Beltway rightwing CW, and he decides which pols he likes based on non-partisan (and, frankly, non-important) considerations. He's a pretty good example of the conflicting media critiques of the Left and Right - his policy leanings are definitely left of center (not on everything, although I don't think he buys into the whole "SS is crashing, balance the budget, $250k is middle class" line), but his predilections and aesthetic preferences are right of center. Obviously the Bush disaster has pushed him leftward; I wonder how long that will last in an Obama admin.
14 -- My offer to give it back to Mexico stands.
Erm, high-ranking partner in my firm.
So he's weighing his tax benefits against the odds of utter national collapse in the next 4 years.
Question: if McCain wins (at this point, this is less a question than an extreme thought experiment), does Obama run again in 2012?
18: Fuck "give it back." We're bigger and stronger than them by a lot: force it on them.
20: I'd expect a Clinton-Obama rematch.
I was shocked to discover that one of the kids here at school -- big pothead, listens to indie bands -- is voting for McCain. "Well I'm sure not voting for the guy running for class president", she sneered.
Did I restrain myself from making any inappropriately harsh retort because she is young, naïve, and living in a safe state? I did not.
I was thinking that Gilda Radner would have been an even better Palin than Tina Fey. Somewhere between Litella and Roseannadanna.
The beneficial effects of pot were greatly overrated by my generation.
My offer to give it back to Mexico stands.
For their midterm, my kids had to select three journal assignments to polish and edit and submit as short papers. One kid selects the journal response to the Mexican-American scholar who came to speak to them about the Mexican roots of Texas.
This delightful kid begins, "Although I found him to know his history well, I felt he was biased and trying to push his views on all of us. I am an eighth generation Texas. I feel I'm American by birth and Texan by the grace of God...So when someone comes in and tells me that I should associate with Mexico because my family lived here while it was a part of Mexico, I tend to get aggravated. This is a decision I should make on my own, not because a Hispanic historian tells me to."
Three pages later, he concludes, "I did not write this discussion to bash the speaker. I agree with a lot of his statements, it's just the idea that I do things because Mexicans did them before me that I don't agree with. I do things because that's how I was raised."
DEFENSIVE MUCH?
25: hey let's not throw the bongwater out with the baby, here. Pot's great, even if it isn't the universal idiot balm.
The beneficial effects of pot were greatly overrated by my generation.
The constitution was written on hemp, doncha know?
I feel I'm American by birth and Texan by the grace of God
I feel I have been indoctrinated by narcissistic cliches.
I did not write this discussion to bash the speaker.
"After all, he can't help that he's Mexican."
Matthews is sort of a wishy-washy centrist who drifts with the tide. The criticisms about him are: silly and shallow, weird sexual obsessions, weird anti-Clinton obsessions (both Clintons), and above all, he does that fake blue-collar gut thinker schtick.
It was interesting to watch Olbermann overtake him as the #1 guy. Maddow's the #2 guy now, and hopefully Matthews is on thin ice. He really isn't very good at all.
During the Hillary-Obama phase of the race Olbermann and Matthews were pro-Obama and anti-Hillary, and Olbermann's reputation slipped a lot because of the way that played out. Somewhat wrongly, I think, because it's OK to be anti-Hillary, but unfortunately he was teamed with an idiot.
Go Apogran!
I do wonder how the Republicans are going to rig the election this time.
If only the proud Texans stayed in their proud state and didn't come out and bother people.
Heebie, chewing snoose is cool and makes you one of the guys down there, but it's bad for the teeth and has long-term health effects.
I do wonder how the Republicans are going to rig the election this time.
I think the emphasis has shifted to preparing for defeat by sponsoring an all-out media blitz to convince their supporters that the election was rigged by corrupt inner-city ballot stuffing, and convince the media that because one party claims that this happened, there was a 50% chance that it happened.
34 may also be the tactic for trying to actually win the election, by riling up desperate people at the grass roots to believe their only chance to prevail is to intimidate Democrat-looking people from the polls.
* And he [Chris Matthews] is, I would argue, effectively non-partisan.
Since Reality is Democratic, "non-partisan" equates to pro-Republican and insane. Or complicit in deception.
Greenwald was on this, yesterday I think.
Go Grandpostropher! I am amazed. I'm afraid all my family's votes will cancel hers out, though.
I just got off the phone with my 24-yr-old brother, who says he's voting for Palin cuz she's hot and McCain cuz he's white. Period. He can't believe I'm volunteering for Obama, much less voting for him. And my date last night said he didn't have a problem with waterboarding, because he's not a terrorist. He's from Fayetteville, though, so I guess it's to be expected. Sigh.
Matthews is a shit, but he played Bachmann about right.
Palin cuz she's hot and McCain cuz he's white
You should have said you were voting for Obama cuz he's hot and Biden cuz he's white.
my date last night said [etc...]
Wow. That's all kinds of fail. Living in the south must be . . . interesting.
What I am learning from this election is that there are a lot of different types of racism. And that, for some reason, racism that is not tainted with xenophobia (i.e., people who recognize that Obama is black, and they're not generally fond of black people, but who don't think he's an "Arab terrorist") is a lot less intransigent than the racism founded in xenophobia. A regular anti-black racist can be convinced that this is a good and decent and intelligent man who wants good things for their family ("We're votin' for the n****r"), but people who associate their patriotism with their racism, who think that it's somehow more American to be white, are pretty fucked up.
Living in the south must be . . . interesting.
That's one word for it...
Living in the south must be . . . interesting.
I don't know that's so much south as it is Fayetteville, which is very much dominated by the honking enormous Army base.
Fayetteville blows. I left it off my list of places I would never under any circumstances want to live only because it's near where some of my relatives live.
I'm afraid all my family's votes will cancel hers out, though.
I think this ought to operate on the Gomorrah principle: find X righteous older people in the South willing to vote for Obama, etc. So Apo's grandmother counts as a complete win.
And so soon after this incredibly depressing article about Chong and Cheech?
A friend of mine lives in AK and likes it fine. College town.
so much south as it is Fayetteville
Not sure about this, but I'm willing to defer to experience. My own connection to "southernness" is kind of weird; I've never been there, but my dad was born in Montgomery and my mom was the daughter of an immigrant and a Florida cracker, so inasmuch as she was raised American at all she was raised southern. So it was hot grits on cold mornings growing up and black-eyed peas at new years. Which was kind of strange, living in the BA, but I shared that generational disconnect from the South with many of my fellow citizens of Oakland, just in a completely different way.
AR.
Laura Flanders is Alexander Cockburn's half-niece. Her father was in Flanders and Swann, a pre-python, pre-Beyond the Fringe comedy troupe.
Oh and re: grandmothers, the immigrant one asked me to help fix her tv last time I was out there. "Why are there so many... why are so many... Blacks! on my television?"
"That's just UPN, grandma. I'll help you change it."
If BHO is relying on my grandmother's vote to take CA, he may be in trouble.
I can't bring myself to ask any of my relatives outright who they're voting for.
When I talked to my grandma in August, she was undecided. She generally votes Republican, but I'll bet that my father's long-seated utter loathing of John McCain will get to her by Election Day.
also flanders and swann are funny, which emerson's description doesn't make them sound (also: is a duo a troupe?)
I just meant that they were the mother lode of funniness, like The Goon Show. But the intertubes tell me that they were contemporary with Beyond the Fringe, not earlier.
My dad made some noises about boycotting the election due to his hatred of McCain. His heart was set on Romney -- one of the few points of agreement between us politically, albeit motivated by different considerations for each of us.
also flanders and swann are funny
Who couldn't love "A Song of Patriotic Prejudice" even fits the post.
I watched Flanders briefly just now with the sound off. She's quite nice looking and does the TV face thing really well, enough movement not to be boring but not o much that it seems demented. Are there people who teach that? Is there a way of scoring it, with the little nods and head tosses and eyebrow lifts and frowny faces and hand gestures all written out? Are there people that students study end emulate, the way they emulate Nureyev or Baryshnikov or Richter or Glenn Gould?
Who would want to emulate Glenn Gould? I mean, the main was genius, but definitely one-of-a-kind.
A LOT of pianists go through a Gould phase. My honey still likes his piano benches on the shorter side.
And speaking of emulating Nureyev, apparently the new fashion trend for casual-wear for men is inspired by the 1970s photos of Nureyev traipsing around in those scoop-necked t-shirts, fringed scarfs, and motocycle caps. Given my well-known crush on the man, you would think I'd be in favor of this trend, but NO! Seeing loathesome little starlets running around in Rudolf's clothes! It is too painful!
My mother had a crush on Baryshnikov. Also Pavoratti, who was replaced by Placido Domingo.
All of my relatives, without exception, are voting for Obama. One of my relatives has, as her Facebook photo, a photoshopped picture of Obama kissing her.
I think it's pretty questionable that a Texan can be a patriotic American. As it says in the Bible, he who serves two masters serves none. Someone who says he's a Texan by the grace of God has declared his allegiance, and its not to the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.
My mother had a crush on Baryshnikov. Also Pavoratti
One of these things is not as sexy as the other.
You're young and foolish, JM. If only my mother were alive to explain things to you.
One of these things is not as sexy as the other
Is it John's mother?
Was your mom one of those Minnesotans Garrison Keillor talks about who only experience the world through radio?
Pavarotti had a beautiful voice, sure, but the man looked like a squash.
His eyes in that photo look empty and zombie-like. Run from Zombie Pavarotti! Here's another photo.
On that general topic, I advise against looking up photos of voice actors you like.
No, I believe that she saw Pavarotti live at least once.
As I remember, JM (an otherwise fine person) had the near-psychotic slenderness for which dancers and Californians are well known.
My sister is a Meat Loaf fan. People think differently in Wobegon.
My tiny sister and my tiny mother (both under 5 feet) were Meat Loaf and Pavarotti fans. In Wobegon, men are supposed to be men, and girls are supposed to be girls.
I recently discovered that my honey and I weigh exactly the same. My weight fluctuates a bit with the seasons and exercise; his does not, ever.
Sexual dimorphism is the term I was looking for.
||
Crazy Lady Bachman's opponent Elwyn Tinkleberg (sic) got half a million dollars in 24 hours, .02% of it from me. Thank you Chris Matthews!
|>
But if Bachman goes down now, we might never get the ultimate showdown for Senate/Governorship between her and Keith Ellison.
PS: Bachman
I can only think of a couple of relatives (older, male, rural, military background) who might be voting McCain/Palin, and I try very hard not to get into political discussions with them at the best of times. (Pretty much everybody in the family knows about my extreme political views and activities, so I don't wind up having too many uncomfortable discussions.) If my grandparents were still alive, I think 3/4 of them (at least) would be voting for Obama.
Did I mention here that I met one of Tinklenberg's stepkids last year? He seemed like a right-on guy (the stepson), hopefully ET's history as a MNDOT commissioner under Ventura shouldn't be too much of a handicap.
Now if we can only conceal the fact that the half million came from Afghanistan through George Soros and ACORN. Soros has cornered the world's opium production, which is why he supports the Taliban, and ACORN is his new front for heroin sales. MoveOn was not pushing aggressively enough for him.
only experience the world through radio
Ah, how I long for 1920. Apparently, my telephone voice is very sexy indeed, in marked contrast to my personal appearance. I might have had a career in music were I able to carry a tune. As it is, I'm limited to ill-advised trans-Pacific relationships that end in tears.
Just the other night, my wife found out that my sister votes Republican, and will likely do so again. Totally went off. A red vote in the BA isn't going to mean anything, but in principle alarming.
I heard today that Colin Powell is endorsing Obama tomorrow. Hope it's true.
If Powell does endorse Obama, I suppose we on the left should refrain from spitting.
91: For a couple of weeks, anyway. It will be so fun to hear Sarah Palin explain why a general would endorse a fellow who pals around with terrorists. Maybe she'll call him a racist.
Check out the photo of Obama's St. Louis rally on the NYT homepage. 100,000 people is a big crowd.
If Powell does endorse Obama, I'll be taking a closer look at those silos, just make sure they actually do contain pure awesome.
94: No shit. Maybe our nation isn't as fucked up as my cynicism has led me to believe.
I am really torn about this. I see on TPM that Obama Insiders Concerned About Complacency, and I think "Why have I not been doing anything other than buying a sticker". Then I see on Facebook that my friends are saying "Please, no need to knock on my door anymore, I'm already voting for him!" and I think that surely they have not not enough, but actually too many people volunteering, because surely if they have too many people canvassing they also have too many people stuffing envelopes.
97: Weren't they part of the Native Tongues Posse?
CN: the key question is whether they're going to actually change their vote due to being canvassed too much, or just complain about it on Facebook. I'd bet on the second, although I'm not 100% sure and it's definitely something I think about a lot.
Now I feel foolish. I can just show up at the center and say I want to do stuff that doesn't involve direct interaction with voters (until Election Day and Election Monday, then the GOTV will actually be GOTV). If they have enough people, they'll tell me.
This is a pretty fascinating chart. Palin's definition of "pro-America" discovered!
Just got back from canvassing northwest Indiana steel & oil town of Whiting. Interesting times. Some really great, enthusiastic Obama supporters, mostly Mexican or Puerto Rican. Also a really nice McCain voter who congratulated us on the hard work by Obama volunteers. He sort of apologized for being on the other side then earnestly said "But you guys sure are working hard! I haven't seen a single McCain canvasser out here, but you're always around."
There were also some less encouraging things. Being called a niggerlover, for one, but that was only one very cranky old man (who picked up a rock as if to throw it at me, but then just walked away after I kept my eyes on him). And some downright surreal moments. Really, really surreal moments where I used arguments I never thought I would make, and they kind of seemed to work.
And some downright surreal moments. Really, really surreal moments where I used arguments I never thought I would make, and they kind of seemed to work.
"Actually, the Bible says the Antichrist will come to you as a Christian, so if Obama is a Muslim, then he can't be the Antichrist."
This thread is now required reading for campaign volunteers.
104: I didn't actually get to use the argument of "Well, I can see why Barack Obama might be the Antichrist, you make a compelling argument. That would also explain why he's pro-Israel. Why, voting him into office should usher us on toward The Rapture and Judgment Day in no time! Plus, as a middle-class American, you'll get a tax cut while you wait!". Though I did suggest it to a fellow canvasser.
Instead I had interesting discussions such as "I can see why you're concerned with the 50 million illegal immigrants who are using up our healthcare money and taking our jobs. But as you said, no party will fix that. Most of the emergency room care is already being paid for by the government, so at least under an Obama administration all Americans will get help with their healthcare expenses. Plus he'll move some of all that money that's going to the richest 1% back toward the middle class, while that money still exists. So... I can see why, with the NAFTA superhighway and free trade and all, why either party might seem like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. But if you want to arrange them so the middle class get a more comfortable seat on the way down, we'd be happy to have you on November 4th. Here's your polling station information and a number to call for info on early voting."
105: Wow, I hadn't checked in there in a while. A couple of people seem on the verge of losing their minds. Can an internet thread drive people insane?
Also, a very nice lady who was really well informed about local politics and who spoke with me for a while about the losses of the towns tax base due to industry movement and the problems it has caused, plus how she could never vote for a Republican again after what Bush and Cheney have done for the last 8 years... But there were just so many questions about Obama and his Chicago connections like Rezko (incidentally, she actually agreed with a fair number of things Rev. Wright had said, but was mostly concerned about him being a member of such a segregated church). I was really surprised that I managed to handle the Jesus stuff alright.
Her: "But it really makes you wonder. Why can't they ever find a leader who's actually clean, where there are no questions and no problems?"
Me: "Well... It's hard, there aren't many people like that, period. Last time there was one, he became quite popular. There's a best selling book about him."
Her: *raises eyebrow* "And who's that?"
Me: *raises eyebrow* "Depends who you ask"
... Then she got into the problems with the New World Order and the 9 people who are trying to running the world. Although I explained some of why I felt he really was the best candidate for the middle class, and someone who's honestly trying to do right by the country, I think what finally convinced her to vote for Obama was when I mentioned that the Bilderbergers are virtually all Republican (in all fairness, she brought up Kissinger first).
I especially like this comment:
You're the one who's a damn moron, not me, asshole! So, you can go fuck yourself if you think I'm stupid because I don't give a shit about what you think. SHUT THE FUCK UP, RIGHT GODDAMN NOW! I'm not putting up with you. Never have, and never will because you're nothing but a pain in the neck ever since you got here. You're very annoying! You are really annoying! I CAN'T STAND YOU! Screw Off!
Mouseover?
Why have we heard so little about the simple fact that "McCain" means "Son of Cain"? Looks to me like Satan has been hiding in plain sight this whole time.
All in all, though, quite a lot of fun. And super interesting. Plus, it really did feel like a helpful thing to do. You're out there helping convince people, one-on-one, and for many others, you're helping them get the absentee ballots or the early voting information that they need.
If you're near a battleground state, I highly recommend it.
109: That guy's wound a little tightly.
He could use a little one-on-one time with Baby Laugh-a-Lot.
You know, I hadn't looked at the anti-christ thread at Apo's until now. Just scrolled through to find "moron" per AWB's 109 -- figuring that there couldn't be so very many comments using the term. Heh.
One of these days I'll post the best goddamned internet rant I've ever seen.
Can an internet thread drive people insane?
Of course not.
I'm not sure I've seen this linked here yet - the Chicago Tribune has for the first time in its 100+ -year history endorsed a Democrat for president:
Many Americans say they're uneasy about Obama. He's pretty new to them.
We can provide some assurance. We have known Obama since he entered politics a dozen years ago. We have watched him, worked with him, argued with him as he rose from an effective state senator to an inspiring U.S. senator to the Democratic Party's nominee for president.
We have tremendous confidence in his intellectual rigor, his moral compass and his ability to make sound, thoughtful, careful decisions. He is ready.
116: Of course not.
Insane people are driven to internet threads.
Can an internet thread drive people insane?
Not if they know the nam-shub of Enki.
I was shocked to discover that one of the kids here at school -- big pothead, listens to indie bands -- is voting for McCain.
I'm not shocked. Half (I exaggerate, I'm sure, but it seemed that many) of our local pot-head hippies/hipster kids voted for Bush in '04. I'm still holding a grudge.
My south Georgia aunts, both of them hardcore Clinton PUMAs in the spring, have already voted for Obama. I'm very curious about Georgia. Of the deep south states (excluding NC), I think Obama's most likely to take Georgia, but it'll depend on how the white/other vote breaks.
Anyway, the suspense is killing me.
I'll do a little jig if Missouri goes for Obama. 100,000 people at the Arch? Wow.
I'll do a little jig when Papelbon gets this last out.
And there you go. I'm doing a little jig...in my mind.
You can do a little jig right now, Mr. H. That's some fine pitching, there at the end.
Ain't nothing little about the jig I'm doing right now. Tek!
I vaguely remember a time when the Red Sox were not the most dominant and luckiest team in baseball.
127 -- You mean when the Angels beat them 8 out of 9 games in the regular season? Or when the Rays won the division? If that's vague, you might want to stop smoking that stuff.
Seriously, the last two games have been pretty fantastic. Feels like it's building to something, doesn't it? Papi and 'Tek starting to heat up (or at least not suck)...
Let us all jig.
Let us jig indeed! For I have now advanced to level two at Project Euler, having answered 50 problems correctly, thereby earning, as an icon, a cube. (Previously: a tetrahedron.)
121: 75,000 at Kansas City, too, but it's possible that some significant percentage of those (including our own tonkelu and her husband, who were there) are Kansans.
Let us jig, because maybe in jigging we will divine the correct way of implementing this fucking algorithm! Also because of the red sox.
132: You're not working at a time like this? For shame. Even I put down my chinese when Tek! put us ahead.
Maybe the algorithm Sifu's working on is for project euler.
The link in 130 is the anti-jig.
But what did you think about the game, W-lfs-n?
133: I rested, as godly sox fans should, during the game, but I really would like to make heads or tails of this before I go to bed.
134: I suppose it's possible. Question 53 is vaguely applicable to (some of) the other homework I have this weekend.
So what algorithm are you trying to implement then?
I need to estimate conditional probability in a belief network using likelihood weighting.
I don't think it's that complicated; it's just that my strategy of repeatedly smashing my forehead into my notes doesn't seem to be reaping dividends.
I rested, as godly sox fans should,
"And on the Seventh Game, Paps rested."
There's a good joke to be had here, I can smell it, but can't be bothered to write it, as I am busy jigging.
140: Have you tried using emergent properties?
Question 53 is super easy, too. 51!
140,1: Just have a genetic algorithm evolve the solution for you.
143, 145: very funny. I'll be sure to program my robot overlords to laugh at your very funny jokes.
A genetic algorithm was used to develop the first program that printed something approximating "hello world" in Malbolge.
The St. Louis rally Jesus mentioned in 94 has cycled off the NYT front page to here. It's breathtaking.
147: I am utterly unsurprised this is something you would know about.
The "hello world" program:
(=<`:9876Z4321UT.-Q+*)M'&%$H"!~}|Bzy?=|{z]KwZY44Eq0/{mlk**
hKs_dG5[m_BA{?-Y;;Vb'rR5431M}/.zHGwEDCAA@98\6543W10/.R,+O>
Living in the south must be . . . difficult to stereotype with accuracy.
RMMP, what's going on in NC? Has the pace of early voters slacked off?
And if so, why aren't you out there, driving them to polls right now? They can wait there until they open.
It's breathtaking.
No shit. For the first time in recent memory, I'm proud of my country. Double-edged sword though; if this goes the wrong way, I might actually have to burn shit down, and my brother hasn't graduated law school yet, so that could get expensive.
Early voting in NC follows the same pattern every time: huge rush on Day One, then trickle over the first weekend that builds to a stream on the second weekend to down-the-street lines on the last Saturday because a procrastinator procrastinates and we are a state full of procrastinators. We're pretty much already in "stream" territory. If the numbers at my precinct from today were any indication then our county will have voted ~18,000 people as of when I got out tonight and that's roughly 10% of our county's voters. At no point today did we not have someone voting but rarely did we have a line. Lots and lots and lots of first-time voters (when we realize we're checking in a first-timer we call it out and all the poll workers cheer and clap and the people blush and it's pretty awesome).
Tomorrow my precinct is likely to be hopping as we're on the campus of one of Gov. Patrick's stops on his NC tour this weekend.
I checked in one (1) Republican today.
And if so, why aren't you out there, driving them to polls right now? They can wait there until they open.
We actually had a GOTV person basically running a shuttle today. He'd pop in every now and then and say, 'See that woman over there? When she finishes voting could you tell her I'm back?'
Uh, sure... or you could wait outside and tell her yourself?
Amusingly, I left Unfogged open in the background on the computer I was using for check-in while I was at lunch and another election judge looked it over while using my station. Something, I know not what, gave her the impression that my reading of this site might make me a McCain supporter and apparently there was a flurry of debate amongst my colleagues before they got our chief judge to come over and ask me. My response was, "How crazy do I look?"
154 is just great. 155 is kind of great, too, but really 154 is just awesome.
Also last night I had kind of a run-in with the staff of the Miami University football team that lasted only seconds but was weirdly tense so I hope they lost today but not enough to find out whether they did. I was back in the same place tonight and kind of hoped I'd see them again because within 24 hours I'd come up with the perfect smart-ass remark to being asked snotty questions by them and I wanted to get to use it.
Durham really is, and I say this sincerely, a fun place to live.
I also saw a couple of much older first-time voters having their pictures taken with their "I Voted Today" stickers and that's pretty remarkably rad.
And now, to sleep.
157: they won, those shitheads.
I like to imagine that your run-in was a brief but hectic bar fight, which ended with you striding away from the smoldering ruins of the bar, and the perfect smart-ass remark was the line you would say silhouetted against the flames, something like "Miami Vice, more like Miami diced." except, you know, clever.
Is this †a dagger which I see before me?
(These are known as 'brackets of parenthesis'.)
These—(gas)—are gas brackets.
†it is.
And then he jumps to get out of the way of the explosion.
What the hell is that? That's not ascii; that looks like the chinese character for "man".
There's a lower case lambda in ASCII.
FM'S CLAIM THAT LAMBDAS LOOK LIKE MEN HAS SOMETHING TO DO WITH GAY RIGHTS
170: I do, yes. It's ACiDDraw's world; I just live in it.
Yeah, well, no one was using that extra bit anyways.
Looks like a noose, or maybe Pokey's snowman friend.
Wow. There's an HTML entity for a shriner snowman? That, I did not know.
He didn't use an named entity, he used a numeric entity. And now I can't figure out what it is.
Weird, the snowman looks like a house in this font, and then when I increase the font size it looks more like a sweaty Ignignot than a snowman. But then in Arial it is a nice round snowman with no beads of sweat leaping off of it.
It's a snowman, as it turns out. I was right!
Remember, pdf, google!
I googled ☃. It didn't find anything.
And yet it doesn't come up when you google for "☃", at least, not at the top.
Quit using characters my font doesn't have, you fascist.
And I see the latest version of Firefox is smart enough not to show the snowman in the address bar.
Er, when you google for "∓#9731".
Round up the usual characters!
თ�ვდ�პირველ�დ დ�მწერლ�ბ� პიკტ�გრ�ფიული იყ�. პიკტ�გრ�მები გ�მ�ხ�ტ�ვდნენ მთელ თხრ�ბით კ�მპ�ზიცი�ს, �ნ წ�რმ��დგენდნენ ერთმ�ნეთთ�ნ დ�კ�ვშირებულ ნ�ხ�ტთ� სერი�ს. პიკტ�გრ�ფიული დ�მწერლ�ბ� მეზ�ლითის� �ნ ნე�ლითის ეპ�ქ�ში შეიქმნ� დ� თ�ვისი წ�რმ�შ�ბით უკ�ვშირდებ� ს�ხვით ხელ�ვნებ�ს.
I have all those characters. 189 is fine.
მინისტრ�დ, pdf23ds.
Georgian is OK, but I think Tamil script is even prettier.
⠃⠑â ? ⠺⠕⠇⠋⠎⠕â ? â Šâ Ž â ? â ™â •â —â …
Ok, I think it's clear that I don't know anything about physics. And that I don't know as much about ascii as I thought I did. But that should not distract us from the issue at hand; for the second time in like three days I have witnessed a deployment of an opinionated elder for frivolous purposes. Please bear in mind that with great text comes great responsibility.
தமிழ� தமிழர�களின� தாய�மொழி. தமிழ� திராவிட மொழிக� க�ட�ம�பத�தின� ம�க�கிய மொழிகளில� ஒன�ற�ம� செம�மொழிய�ம� ஆக�ம�. தென�னிந�தியாவில� தமிழ� நாட�டில�ம� இலங�கையில�ம�, சிங�கப�பூரில�ம� அதிக அளவில� பேசப�பட�ம� இம�மொழி, த�பாய�, மலேசியா, தென�னாபிரிக�கா, மொரீசியஸ�, பிஜி, ரீய�னியன�, டிரினிடாட� போன�ற பல நாட�களில�ம� சிறிய அளவில� பேசப�பட�கிறத�.
I see the snowman, but none of the characters in 189.
Firefox claims to be displaying UTF-8 character encoding. I guess this means I'm missing a font? And this even after I installed a bunch of crap to be able to see a couple of MathML-intensive blogs displayed properly....
తమిళ నట�డ� సూర�య నటించిన "సూర�య సన�నాఫ� కృష�ణన�" చిత�రం దీపావళి కాన�కగా తెల�గ� ప�రేక�షక�లన� పలకరించన�ంది. సమీరా రెడ�డి హీరోయిన�. ఇటీవలే ఈ సినిమా ఆడియో సోనీ మ�యూజిక� ద�వారా మార�కెట�‌లోకి వచ�చింది. ఈ సినిమాలో సూర�య 17 �ళ�ల య�వక�డి న�ంచి.
I am tremendously sad that I can't embed Linear B.
Tamil has nice swoops and tangles, but just doesn't have enough sinuous curves.
Kannada is the best.
ಜಗತà³?ತಿನ ಜನಸಂಖà³?ಯೆ ಹೆಚà³?ಚಿದಂತೆ ಜನರಿಗೆ ಸಿಗà³?ತà³?ತಿರà³?ವ ಸà³?ಥಳಾವಕಾಶ ಹಾಗೂ ನೀರಿನ ಆà²à²¾à²µ ಇರà³?ವ ಸಂಗà³?ರಹವನà³?ನà³? ಸಮರà³?ಥವಾಗಿ ಬಳಸಿಕೊಳà³?ಳà³?ವ ಬಗೆಗೆ ಹೆಚà³?ಚಿನ ಒತà³?ತà³? ನೀಡಿವೆ. ದೊಡà³?ಡ ಕಾರà³?ಗಳ ಬದಲಿಗೆ ಚಿಕà³?ಕ ಕಾರà³?ಗಳà³?, ದೊಡà³?ಡ ದೊಡà³?ಡ ಮನೆಗಳ ಬದಲಿಗೆ ಒನà³? ಬೆಡà³? ರೂಂ ಫà³?ಲಾಟà³?, ಆರಾಮವಾಗಿ ಕà³?ಳಿತà³? ಉಣà³?ಣಬಹà³?ದಾದ ಪà³?ಲೇಟà³? ಮೀಲà³?ಸà³? ಬದಲಿಗೆ ಇನà³?ಸà³?ಟೆಂಟà³? ಮೀಲà³?ಸà³?.
The "Georgia" font? I think that's standard on Windows.
I'm tremendously sad that I can't embed Linear A. Poser.
I don't see 193. Unless you were intending to have a bunch of 4-digit boxes.
202, 203: yeah. Same here. Very sad.
193 is morse code. Well, it's unicode, but also morse code. 193 is a comment of many facets.
Actually I'm missing 199, too. â ‹â ¥â ‰â …â Šâ žâ ½ â ‹â ¥â ‰â ….
201: What do you know how to say in Linear A, other than "Those bastards at Knossos still owe us 5 sheep"?
Hell, why can I see pretty much everything? I don't even have word installed. I'm running XP SP2.
Only Sifu is posting comments I can't read.
206, you see 195 and 197 but not 199? Odd.
☠
☭
Unicode seems like one of those omnibus appropriations bills that get a bunch of riders attached on their way through Congress. There's so much space and so much going on that just about anyone can sneak their pet character on board.
Oh cool. Extended unicode. Buncha boxes.
209: no, no 197. I do see 195. Dunno, ❄.
You see Tamil but not Telugu or Kannada. Discrimination!
207: It's a Crete thing. You couldn't possibly understand.
⚡ ⚢
No way is it an accident those are sequential.
I am tremendously sad that I can't embed Linear B.
Bedding linear B is the easiest thing in the world, Josh.
I'm trying to determine whether it's sadder that you dudes are up this late on a Saturday night comparing wingdings, or that I'm actually still refreshing this thread up late on a Saturday night.
These are webdings, AWB. Not wingdings, webdings.
220: are they carefully designed to eliminate all ambiguity in bad handwriting?
Something wrong with wingdings of a Saturday night?
No, but they will get your wife a present when your forget your anniversary.
It needs to be recursive, my algorithm does. This is the problem!
Any recursive algorithm can be implemented iteratively with an explicit stack, so just leave the algorithm's recursive formulation as an exercise for the grader.
I keep telling you, you need to make it emergent.
Unless you mean, you just now realized that and until the realization you couldn't make progress.
The .NET framework has a XSLT implementation but no classes for command line option parsing. Does the W3C now rule the world?
Building an explicit stack in Matlab seeks like rather more trouble than it's worth. Mostly I just realized where I'm getting this one parameter. (From the previous call, that's where.)
BTW, I have settled on bzr. I tried Mercurial but didn't like its branching as much, and though bzr seems a bit immature, I can live with that. (Git seems to have a better model than either, but a poorer interface and still-aweful Windows support.)
What is saddest is that I am up this late on a Saturday night having just realized, again, that my exciting new idea about how to make progress on a project I've been banging my head against for a year is nonsense for exactly the same reason every other exciting new idea I've ever had about this project is nonsense.
It needs to be recursive, my algorithm does. This is the problem!
I'm trying to find a way to describe your approach to the problem that is neither homophobic nor sexist, but I'm coming up short. I go out of my way to write recursive code just because it's so fucking elegant. I'm sure that your problem is orders of magnitude worse than your everyday business-type problem, but still: write things like the quoted text above and you will be mocked, by others if not me.
236: Do you program in Scheme or ML?
I would use more recursion in C# if you could easily recurse with anonymous functions. Unfortunately, though you can do it, it's not elegant. I want LABELS.
236: I don't get it. It's not like I'm opposed to recursion, it just hadn't occured to me that it was (nominally, ben) required in this case. And actually it often isn't the most elegant solution in matlab, because the matrix operations are so robust.
237: No, I don't know shit about ML, and thus dial down my shit talking about a million notches. But how different can it really be? Honest question.
In Standard ML, there is no iteration. Every loop has to be done with recursion. IIRC, Scheme is the same way, though I imagine there is more variation there.
It's pretty darn different. It really isn't trying to achieve the same thing as (say) C.
Ugh. Looks like I'm going to have to rewrite some existing library to get decent command line parsing. Woe is me.
I turn out to be talking about something wholly different than pdfconfuseyds. Matlab is different from both ML and C.
In SML, you have to explicitly mark variables as being assignable, and use extra syntax to access them. All other variables are immutable. That's the other huge difference.
SML was created as a metalanguage for a theorem prover (assistant ... thingy). Matlab was created as a "metalanguage" (for lack of a better term) for a computer algebra system (as I understand). C was created as a metalanguage for assemblers.
Oh, and ML stands for "Metalanguage".
O'Caml is based on ML, and was actually split off from ML and developed for use in a different theorem prover.
245: I think matlab was created as a metalanguage for matrix operations in fortran, actually. It's not really algebraic; it's much more numerical processing-oriented.
If I understand what you're saying.
MLA stands for MetaLAnguage. So why are so few of you attending‽‽
Last comment. Recursion-heavy languages like ML support it more efficiently by supporting tail-recursion, in which recursive functions following certain constraints are compiled to loops internally. Rewriting a recursive function for tail recursion can occasionally be a pain.
248: Is Matlab similar to Mathematica?
Yeah, CN, this is the thread about how Apo's grandmother implements recursion.
Huh. It looks basically the same in the screenshots.
Oh, no symbolic manipulations of equations? That sounds like a defining difference.
I think there's some overlap lately, but MATLAB is primarily designed for really fast implementation of algorithms with a lot of linear algebra. It doesn't much deal with ODEs or continuous functions or any of that whatever, and it doesn't do the pretty stuff like Mathematica does.
The language of MATLAB is actually called "M-code", or just "M".
261: surprisingly useful to work with.
Amusingly, I was just looking up how to do something in Mathematica, and stumbled upon the Google Books page for the Mathematica manual which tells me that Wolfram is "frequently likened to Newton, Darwin and Einstein". So that's one advantage over Matlab.
261: what, you have something against Fortran?
Looks messy. I'd probably write a Lisp layer on top of it. Right after I finish my console replacement and GUI toolkit for Lisp.
263: frequently likened to them by Wolfram, anyhow.
265: that's deeply goofy. Similarly, I'll write a front end for Logo in VB.
I wouldn't say deeply goofy. Subtly goofy, maybe. (And I probably wouldn't actually do it, in case you missed the sarcasm.)
Is Logo that turtle language? Tuuuurrrrrtle. Tuuuurrrtle.
267.1: I've met the man, and his ego is titanic, but I can't imagine that he really thinks he's in that league. Maybe it sells books.
270: I dunno, have you read A New Kind Of Science?
Yeah, the classic difference between MATLAB and Mathematica is numerical vs. symbolic. MATLAB is all about numerical methods. (It has had a Symbolic Math Toolbox for awhile, but it's really kind of peripheral.)
Basically, it's (IMO) a language that's great for data analysis because everything is designed with matrices in mind, and data is so often best thought of matrix form. Almost all the built-in functions are written so that the operation is performed on the whole matrix. You can do Z = X*Y'; to compute the product of a matrix X and the transpose of a matrix Y.
Other advantages include the sheer amount of stuff that's implemented. Want to do an FFT on a vector x? fft(x). PCA on a matrix? princomp(x). Generate a 10x12 matrix of random numbers from a Poisson distribution with lambda of 2.2? R = poissrnd(1.5,10,12); They even have a clever bootstrp() function that simplifies bootstrapping the outputs of a function.
Basically, most every statistics or signal processing thing that I ever want to do is already implemented and right at my fingertips, and this allows me to sometimes get away with writing shockingly little code to string it all together.
271: not much of it, just enough to be sure that it didn't say anything interesting about physics. (Worse than that, it said a lot of loony crackpot bullshit about physics.) Definitely ANKOS displayed monumental arrogance, but "Newton, Darwin, and Einstein" seems to show that either he's even more deluded than I realized, or he's going over-the-top because self-promotion is working well for him financially. I dunno which is the case.
My grandmother has no iddea what any of you freaks are talking about. However:
Thursday's first day of early voting drew record numbers across North Carolina, election officials said, as more than 100,000 people turned out. That exceeded the 2004 figure by about 40 percent, said Gary Bartlett, executive director of the State Board of Elections.[....]
Across the state, Democrats showed the most first-day enthusiasm. Of the nearly 114,000 first-day voters, 64 percent were Democrats, 21 percent Republicans and 15 percent unaffiliateds. African American turnout was up significantly. Black voters, who make up about 22 percent of registered voters, were 36 percent of Thursday's early voters.
Digging up what I wrote to a friend at the time about my impression of SW: "...he was quite reasonable and really helped give some focus to a discussion about how to better streamline [stuff]. My guess is he's just been so insulated from the academic community that he's started to take all his wacky little ideas too seriously, but he's still a really intelligent guy and he can be reasonable if you're talking about something unrelated to his pet projects."
On preview: oh, right, this thread had a topic. Who knew? I'm even beginning to have some hope for Georgia, if black voters turn out in comparable numbers.
NOW NOW SONNY, YOU KNOW I DID MUCH OF MY DISSERTATION WORK IN MATHEMATICA.
From "A new kind of review":
My review allows, for the first time, a complete and total understanding not only of this but *every single* book ever written. I call this "the principle of book equivalence." Future generations will decide the relative merits of this review compared with, for example, the works of Shakespeare. This effort will open new realms of scholarship.
I am the author of all things
It is staggering to contemplate that all the great works of literature can be derived from the letters I use in writing this review. I am pleased to have shared them with you, and hereby grant you the liberty to use up to twenty (20) of them consecutively without attribution. Any use of additional characters in print must acknowledge this review as source material since it contains, implicitly or explicitly, all future written documents.
233, 238, 241, 243, 248, 255, 258, 260, 262, 267: Blume, it's not too late. Run!!
I had a very pleasant experience last night along the lines of this post. My disillusioned Republican brother, who voted third-party last time and was planning to do so this time, said he is going to vote Obama instead, and will also vote a straight Democratic ticket. He has become very disillusioned. It's hard to escape the feeling that something pretty strange is happening in this country.
I don't think people say "Sir Kraab is right' anywhere near often enough.
278: Seriously. We have a safehouse ready for you.
278, 283: I always figure it's payback for those times he's gone out with me and my friends and we've spoken Denglish the entire time.
And hey, it's great to have different languages in a relationship! He can use his to make money for us, and I can use mine to order food for us at restaurants in Germany.
You people are killing me. My sister, a very nice person who probably voted for Kerry (but not Gore) still looks like a McCain voter. I'm making no effort at all to find out though I am willing to be pleasantly surprised.
In Standard ML, there is no iteration. Every loop has to be done with recursion.
And people like it that way, dammit!
I had to use SML for a compilers class once and I don't remember having to specifically mark variables as mutable, but it was a while ago.
||
Back to 28, how the hell do you grade something like this? I feel like I'm subjecting him to more rigorous grading than I'm giving anyone else if I actually take the time to explain why his opinions are problematic. Most of the other kids describe the topic and loosely connect it to something from their own life, and state an opinion, and if the grammar is basically okay, it gets an 85-90.
Also, I don't really feel like taking on his racism at this moment. Later on we're reading Unpacking the White Knapsack of Privilige and an excerpt from Malcolm X. I think that if I bring up the problems in his essay now, I don't really have the time and resources to do it effectively, and he'll just be more defensive going into the readings later on, which really might broaden his perspective.
So what grade does he get?
|>
Sir Kraab is a monster, people. When will you listen to me!
You have to mark variables as mutable in SML.
I guess you have to mark variables as mutable.
287: Is -100,000,000 an option?
As in, "you just wrote the negative Million Man March?"
How about muttering "asshole" under your breath when you hand it back to him?
I recommend everyone take a look at the video of Colin Powell's articulate* fancy talkin' endorsement of Barack Obama (Steve Benen has the video here). I certainly have mixed feelings about Powell and the opportunism and timing of this, but find it interesting that Powell is at the nexus of so many aspects of this campaign. And the endorsement really represents an interesting challenge for the McCain campaign (which Powell bashed in a very satisfying manner); will they just pull out all stops and go all "What would you expect a nigger to do?" I'm thinking McCain is officially high-minded about it, but will redouble the shadow campaign that implies just that.
On original topic, I at least hope this seals the deal for my Ohioan father who voted for Bush despite "not liking" Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld or Rice. (I think Powell was the slender reed he used to justify it, about which see my mixed feelings above.)
*Which included "...because of his [Obama's] rhetorical abilities".
On the grade. I'd suggest giving him your standard for use of grammar etc. I would maybe add a comment to, it's just the idea that I do things because Mexicans did them before me that I don't agree with. I do things because that's how I was raised. gently suggesting that he might look for connections (positive or negative) between "how I was raised" and the fact that there were Mexicans there before him (as well as now).
||
Now this next girl states, talking about the memoir that all first-years read together, "I do not really appreciate the fact that he uses the word s**t frequently; maybe that is because I graduated from a very sheltered Christian school where there was hardly profanity. But either way, I do not like it and I do not really like being forced to read a book that infringes upon what I feel to be wrong."
I hate grading essays. Grading math is a million times cleaner and easier and does not force me to confront the weird underbelly of my student's inner lives.
|>
It's possible that the kid fears he is part Mexican four or five generations back. Do what you can to stoke those fears.
294: I am quoting you nearly word for word on his paper. Much appreciated.
returning to OTness briefly
245 is correct, but note that over time matlab has added a bunch of good numerical solvers, ODE/PDE's, linear programming etc. Plus a bunch of toolkits for particular problems.
You have computer algebra systems like Mathematica, Maple, Macsyma/Maxima all being somewhat similar
Mathematica is more like PsiLab (INRIA project) or Octave (matlab clone)
It gets a little muddy because matlab cross licensed symbolic stuff with Maple in exchange for lin alg. But that's limited, and not used so much I think.
Matlab for a long time had the view that everything was a matrix of double-precision floating point numbers. That's where it's strength is for data analysis. It kind of sucks as a programming language, and has quirks outside it's core strenghts. Damn handy for that stuff though.
It has some pretty good stats stuff too, but as I understand it the heavy lifting there is mostly done by SAS/R, etc.
re 273: He's a strange one. Some of the cellular automata stuff is interesting but his contributions (while real) aren't as big as he seems to think -- and his ideas about physics are wacky.
297: Be sure to Googleproof it. Plagiarized remarks to students can be a career-ending mistake, and you might end up having to leave proud Texas entirely.
I hate grading essays. Grading math is a million times cleaner and easier and does not force me to confront the weird underbelly of my student's inner lives.
Hear, hear. Heebie, have I told you how much your anectdotes about this class have made me glad I don't have to teach one like it?
My freshman students are being really annoying right now. I've never seen this much childishness in the class about drugs, sex, and cursing. Seriously, if anything we read comes even close to involving even a curse word, they titter like crazy all day and make hilarious gestures at each other, apparently intended to signify that I didn't realize I just said pot, or blowjob, or shit.
I've taken to making fun of them. They're not being hostile to me, but it's really distracting what babies they are compared to every other group of college students I've ever taught. Even at the very conservative religious school where I teach, they're not this babyish.
300: A colleague told me that one of the biggest things that tips her off that someone is plagiarizing is that they've used a semi-colon correctly.
303: I briefly wondered about essay marking as a pattern recognition problem once. I suspect a pretty good first pass could be done that way.
I recognize plagiarism because I ask for really specific rhetorical tasks. When the paper at all seems to be responding to a different rhetorical task, it's on the internet, nine times out of ten. Even their worst effort will serve as a response to the assignment.
305: Interesting.
I occasionally get `plagarism' from upper division math courses in the sense that it can become obvious that some students were working together on something they were instructed not to. Typically this means that several proofs come in with the same unusual and incorrect approach.
Sometimes you also get a proof that is completely surprising for a particular student. Most times I suspect this comes from a book, but that's a bit harder to google for.
I suspect reading this stuff is somewhat similar in effect to marking and essay or whatever, and suddenly realizing the bit you are reading wasn't written by the student.
the strongest words i use if i ever use is pig and fool, not exactly fool but like disoriented (in my language)
the other day i thought may be those are more like insulting words than usual profanity, coz that is just noise and do not mean that much, so maybe should switch to the lesser evil
does, the need to match the verbs with the noun numbers
my cows
||
Two winners submit entries written about the Isolation Exercise, where we had them sit by themselves in the woods for two hours.
"Over the course of my life, I have spent a lot of time out in the "country" away from towns. The experience out here only strengthens my need for deer season to come. Then I can go sit in my stand and ponder life and its mysteries."
and
"But the most important thing is when I was isolated, I had some good time to talk to God. It brings tears of joy to my eyes knowing we honor the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords."
|>
I hope you return the second one all covered in vomit, with the sorrowful explanation that the miracle of incipient life brings many changes.
I've been teaching in Texas for eight years, counting grad school, but it wasn't until this class that I've been like, "Holy fuck, my students are from a different planet."
I was talking about this with a colleague from A&M and a friend of theirs who taught humanities there. Math has a way of isolating you from this stuff....
It's funny, but the deerhunting one seemed OK to me. Fishing and hunting are the most quiet time a lot of people around here get.
I can relate to the deer-hunting one insofar as I enjoy camping, but it seems jarring to me to be all communney with nature and then *BLAM* I KILLED A DEER! WOOT!1! let's gut it and return to our serenity.
I love getting accused of plagiarism. It's always the stupid professors, too. It's like getting a signed confession that says "You, foolishmortal, are smarter than me."
315: Maybe he doesn't often get a deer. Then it's just being out in nature having a beer with friends.
315: Perhaps the deer are also armed and are firing back.
I think he's probably a deerhunter, Josh.
315 - Butchering an animal is pretty fucking primal stuff. Completely consistent with communing with nature. There's probably no closer contact with nature you can get than pulling something's guts out. Except being eaten by a bear, I suppose.
I don't know if I can generalize from one guy I know, but if he's typical, the killing the deer is part of the communing with nature, not a distraction from it. Think new agey life force kind of stuff, but in a killing-stuff kind of way,
Maybe being in the country just makes him hungry. Fewer restaurants, etc.
Hrmm. One sits in a blind for hours on end listening to various rustlings, and then, one BLAM. Followed by the previously mentioned gutting.
max
['Not quite like Bastogne.']
Maybe he doesn't often get a deer.
I believe in most cases you're only allowed one deer/season, so this would probably be true. I've never deer hunted, but I did do some duck and grouse hunting with my father back ca. 8th grade. Probably my prime motivations for being so eager to go hunting during this time were a desire to shoot guns (because destruction was cool) and a desire to be a part of what I perceived to be a distinctively "grown up" male ritual.
After a year or two of this, I never hunted again, as these desires were replaced by a desire to not get up at 5 a.m. to go set up decoys and sit in the cold, and the thought that being a hunter clashed was incompatible with my newfound ambition to be something of a sophisticate.
a desire to not get up at 5 a.m. to go set up decoys and sit in the cold
This is what keeps me from trying to even track someone down who might take me hunting.
316: I got those accusations a lot in elementary school, but not in college. Most profs know the difference between a smart undergrad and a dumb plagiarist. And yet plagiarists love clinging to this fantasy that they actually could have written the document they handed in, and that in looking for evidence that they plagiarized, we're assuming they're stupid. Most plagiarists aren't too stupid to do the work. A lot of them are pathological perfectionists.
I assume the plagiarists are stupid (or at least selectively so), because when they pull a quote from an encyclopedia entry, leave in not just the formatting but the birth and death dates in parentheses, there ain't no other word but stupid.
It's certainly never been because I was so impressed by the quality of the work I assumed the student couldn't have written it.
I believe in most cases you're only allowed one deer/season, so this would probably be true.
Right, and it's not all that uncommon not to get any deer at all. My grandfather used to love hunting. Crisp fall day, friends, smoking a pipe. Don't think he ever got a deer. Not sure he really cared.
But I think killing an animal is compatible with communing with nature, red in tooth and claw, in any case.
Maybe he doesn't often get a deer.
Maybe he hunts deerhunters. [I raise my eyebrows meaningfully.]
328: It's only happened to me twice in college, and one of them was probably more inspired by malice than honest doubt about the provenance of my work. The other was a deeply stupid prof, who once spent the better part of an hour of class time explaining to a student that her growing up poor in NC was, in fact, comparable in all respects to growing up with an Obama-like background (His argument: "You can get rich"). He eventually left the class in disgust, and I got the proudest B- of my life.
Yeah, growing up poor in North Carolina is just like growing up in Hawaii and Indonesia.
331: maybe they just go out there and play a little russian roulette.
About hunting the deer, yeah, I do basically get how he can find it peaceful and serene and a good way to bond with nature, etc.
But simultaneously I find it funny to read the sentence about how being outside strengthens his need for deer hunting season to come. He needs it, like the deserts miss the rain.
I like to imagine that your run-in was a brief but hectic bar fight
So, in all honesty, here's what happened: I was at a film festival for that showing of They Live and I needed cash to get something from the concession stand because it just seems wrong to make an organization I like pay a processing fee on $2 worth of Sour Patch Kids. The nearest cash machine is in the lobby of a hotel & convention center that is, somewhat strangely, attached to the theatre; they share a wall and in the lobby of the theatre there is a door that opens into the back of the convention center, in the enormous (probably fifteen or twenty feet wide) hallway that goes past all the ballrooms to the hotel lobby.
I walked down the hallway past a bunch of guys in Miami U. track suits, walked into the hotel lobby and used the cash machine. Then I turned around and walked back up the hall. As I was passing the Miami U. folks, one of them - older, balding, white dude - abruptly stepped in front of me, at the last possible second, and asked, "Where are you going?" There was nothing beyond him that I could possibly disturb but he was physically blocking me and his tone was clearly intended to communicate that I was trespassing by being in the same hallway.
I gave him a glare I hoped communicated my gut reaction (roughly, get the motherfuck out of my way, asshole, as "Sukiyaki Western Django" awaits) and said, "The movie theatre, right there, with the sign." He acted like I'd just kicked him in the shins, he got out of my way so fast: hands up in the universal sign of whoah, partner. I wasn't really satisfied, though, and as I walked past asked him, directly, "Why?"
He acted mildly surprised to see me there and chirped, "Just curious!"
Now, truth told, I am not an imposing man. You have met me. I'm a chunky dude who's losing his hair. I was wearing a fetching peacoat, yes, but I doubt that impressed him. He was just acting very strange. First he got all kinds of in my beverage and then he acted like I'd bared fangs at him. As I walked on I heard one of the younger guys in the little group of a half-dozen people in Miami U. track suits say, sullenly, "There's no fucking movie theatre down there," at which point I opened the door into a movie theatre lobby and walked through.
The smart-ass remark it only took me a day to think of would have been, "Did catering change its uniforms or did you just buy the place?" A whole 24 hours of unknown, subconscious effort and that's all I get? Sheesh.
Also, early voting was slammed today. We voted a ton of people in three hours. Lots more first-time voters, lots of new registrants. I saw three generations of the same family come in together, all of them first-timers. I saw a woman have her grandkids take her picture as she put her ballot in the machine. I saw people having their kids fill in the bubble on the ballot and making their kids have one hand on the ballot when it went into the tabulator so they could say their child had helped cast the ballot. It was amazing.
At the NC State Fair tonight, stickers seemed to be running roughly 1:1 for each candidate. We had more than one person working at the fair - once at a food venue and once in a big commercial expo kind of thing - go out of their way to tell us how much they liked seeing Obama stickers. Interestingly, no Republican stickers included Palin's name.
All of which is to say, in short, that no model based on previous elections can possibly be used to predict NC right now. The number of voters changes daily. We'll undoubtedly have voted 20,000 people in my county as of today but is that 10% of registered voters? What percentage will that be by the time early voting is over? Who knows? Nobody knows, that's who. It's crazy. Turn-out is insane. We had two people working curbside and they were both running, nonstop, all day. We were only open for three hours today and we voted hundreds of people.
First he got all kinds of in my beverage
Heh.
At the NC State Fair tonight, stickers seemed to be running roughly 1:1 for each candidate.
Wow. The 2004 State Fair and its unbroken sea of Bush stickers was my strongest clue that Kerry was going to get pasted here.
I haven't read the thread, but I'll nonetheless offer a small but promising omen of my own: yesterday I talked to a man who is currently driving around with a John McCain bumper sticker on the back his car. He's voting Obama.
(The sticker is from 2000. But I found it humorous.)
224: What about the wingding an sich?
275: "I'm even beginning to have some hope for Georgia, if black voters turn out in comparable numbers the Russians really do pull out of the buffer zones."
There, fixed.
303 (et al. in the plagiarism sub-thread): I had an econ prof who didn't know the difference between an epigram and an epigraph, and took off points thinking I had written something wrong. Grr.
Obama is just an empty suit. I don't care what color he is.
Obama really hasn't done much of anything. What a waste of time this has been.
Best Toaster Oven and Feminine Tattoos were made for each other. Good luck, guys!
