This week in The Slacktiverse, September 3/4 2011

The Blogaround

This week Ana Mardoll posted:
Twilight: Faster Than A Speeding Bullet
In this week’s attempt at being positive, we try to analyze the parking lot disaster at Bella’s school. How can the lot be simultaneously crowded with horrified faces and yet empty enough for a truck to careen straight for Bella? Is it all a dream? And who put the chains on Bella’s car: Charlie or Edward? Is this a genuinely sweet attempt to protect a loved one, or does it fit into the overall pattern of Bella being helpless and being taken care of by male authority figures? Come help us understand the physics of the situation!

This week Ana Mardoll posted:
Narnia: A Question Of Legitimacy
The White Which has supporters, but those supporters are for the most part conveniently classified as Always Chaotic Evil races. It’s clear that the queen is evil and bad for Narnia, but why is so much made of her being an illegitimate ruler? For that matter, what makes a ruler illegitimate? Does it matter if a large part of the population supports their bid for the throne? And why are only humans allowed to rule Narnia, despite there being multiple intelligent races living in the country? Come help us determine the concept of legitimacy as it applies to a fantastical land of talking animals!

Sarah reports: I wrote about PAPA (the link to the Washington Post article is in the In case you missed this section) and posted pictures.

This week MercuryBlue posted a discussion of the the Catholic Church's definition of sin, (Trigger Warning: mention of rape) musing on sin and in Affairs Magazine she asks What do we really know about Jessica Moore from Supernatural?. She describes a second article she published in the same magazine (The Benefits of Privilege, part ii), as "I review episodes nine and ten of Friends with Benefits. If you're watching the series and you're at all concerned about privilege, do yourself a favor and skip episode nine. The pretty girl saying the other pretty girl is pretty is basically the only good thing about the episode."

MercuryBlue reports: I also wrote The ninth and best so far Supernatural tie-in novel --in which I review for Affairs Magazine the latest Supernatural tie-in novel, Night Terror by John Passarella. Spoiler: I loved it.

Ruby reports: The plot thickens in Atheistopian!New York this week in Soon: Chapter 19: A Christian Grieves (TW: discussion of suicide and attempted suicide) and Soon: Chapter 19: The Really for Real Miracle.

Coleslaw reports: This week, I feel a kinship with people at the extreme end of a behavior scale while Watching Hoarders. A Pall Hangs Over the City of Baton Rouge due to a fire and a fight. In Stride talks about how buying a pair of black pants causes me to recall my mom's funeral.

This week Invisible Neutrino continued his review and commentary of Edge of Apocalypse in Political Maneuverings and added an entry on part of chapter 35 (Trigger Warning: Discussion of possible elements of dubious consent in relationships).

Michael Mock writes: It's been a busy week over at Mock Ramblings. For starters, I am now offering several home security products through the Mad Science Consortium - come and see how Mad Science can make *your* property safer! Meanwhile, the Deranged Cultist is trying to figure out how to deal with some outsiders who Know Too Much. His girlfriend Claire has also posted, to tell her side of how they met. I wrote a reaction to Ms. Bereznak's infamous post at Gizmodo (which may or may not have been intended as link-bait, but almost certainly did not get the reaction she intended). I also posted pictures of two of my childhood Transformers, a reminder about my yearly call to arms over the War On Christmas, and some thoughts on how my brain processes English. Finally, I went back and expanded on an earlier response I'd made on the topic of impermanence and how people deal with it.

This week mmy reports: This week I mused about class in American in Their target audience doesn't shop at Target, The poverty tax and The real disaster will not be televised. I wrote about visibility of war and soldiers in England between the two world wars in They walked among us and of one of the strange social expectations of "gentle" women in England in the 1950s in The past is indeed a foreign country. I posted a review of Barbara Pym's Excellent Women and asked the question: Notice anything interesting about this picture?

Literata described the funeral of Jack Layton, a Canadian MP, as an example of pluralism in action, including comments from mmy on why the religious elements did not feel othering to her as an atheist. In her monthly features on meditation and divination, Literata wrote about how meditation is both a practical and a magical skill and discussed the effect of representing the Wheel of the Year in a Tarot card. She also continued her exploration of contemporary deities by looking at Weasel Wicca's take on Eris and describing her own perspective on Asphaltia, Our Lady of Traffic.

Laiima writes: my subconscious talks to me in colors (part 1 - moods and part 2 - dreams.) I wrote about the tension between innovation and tradition . I was inspired to write two posts, after I read the Not Yet Atheism 101 thread and its comments, Wizards and Shamans shamanism is not my way.

Reflecting on the natural disasters of the past two weeks, storiteller wrote about the effective use of bicycles in emergency situations - A Bike with a Go Bag. She also wrote about leading a community bike ride with a focus on both safety and eating delicious desserts - Sweet Wheels in Motion.

The former conservative bloger reports: This week, I addressed a Catholic blogger's homophobia in 2 separate posts: OH NO! NOT GAY PEOPLE!!! and Stacy just keeps on digging that hole deeper!. I discussed the Rapture Ready thread on zombies, Rapture Ready's thread about whether men and women can be platonic friends and discussed a Quiverful blogger's misogyny.

Trigger Warning: Transhumanism, violence, language

J. Enigma writes: First up, the continuation of Human Black Box: I managed to get part five of "What Happens in Vegas..." up this week. Chloe and her friends now find themselves faced with an unusual Enemy Mine situation with the Exhumans, while at the same time, moving that much closer to their goal of getting to Area 51 and, eventually, off planet Earth. The other parts can be found here, in the Human Black Box Archive.

J. Enigma continues: I also did some blogging inspired by the conversations inside of the (Not Yet) Atheism 101 thread and other conversations that I've had in the past with people. The first post is an answer towards accusations/proclamations that science and the Enlightenment are strictly "Dead White Men;" i.e., Western-created. The short answer is no, they aren't. The long answer is no, they really aren't. The second post is scattered thoughts created by the first, about the inherent racism and offensive nature of antirationalism.

Last week Ana Mardoll posted:
Twilight: Sound Effects Added To Lessen Tragedy
According to the text of Twilight, Bella has a chronic pain condition: she falls down almost daily. This should make her a rare Weak Character, right? But her “weakness” is never presented as such – she is rarely seriously hurt from her falls, doesn’t deal with residual pain over time, and the trait seems less a characterization or a point of motivation and more a convenient excuse to be carried around by strong men. Is Bella’s fluffy falling insulting to people with chronic conditions or offensively proscriptive for heterosexual relationship or both or neither? Come help us decide!

In case you missed this

Crooks and Liars posted There's Nothing Independent Or Nonpartisan About Americans Elect a detailed analysis of Americans Elect

Sarah writes: This Washington Post article PAPA Festival highlights Christianity, anarchism and community spirit is about the festival I helped to organize (I was interviewed, but not quoted). I think it's a valiant effort in trying to capture a rather diverse and disparate group of people. Perhaps not totally spot-on, but good 'nough.↩

MercuryBlue writes: Inspired, I think, by the It Gets Better project, We Are Atheism is collecting videos and essays from atheists to show that it's all right to come out as an atheist. Better than all right—the more of us there are perceived to be, the less hostility there is against us, which means fewer of these billboards and these Trigger Warning: (exceedingly violent) death threats.

Timothy (TRiG) writes: Stack Exchange is a network of Q&A websites. They started with Stack Overflow, devoted to programming, but then diversified into a wide area. My favourite is English Language and Usage, but what I'm writing to mention is the new Christianity site, the second religious site on the network, after Jewish Life and Learning. The Christianity site is still in beta mode, which means it may be closed down if it doesn't get enough activity. Please flood the board with good questions. It's supposed to be open to anyone who identifies as Christian or is interested in Christianity, but currently has a preponderance of conservative viewpoints. Still, most people are pretty polite.
Existing SE sites: http://stackexchange.com/sites/
Proposed SE sites: http://area51.stackexchange.com/

Things you can do

You can go to World Food Programme website to learn how you can help to fight hunger in the Horn of Africa.

You can go to the American Red Cross website to learn how you can help people who hit by Hurricane/Tropical Storm Irene.

--Co-authored by the Slacktiverse Community

---

The Board Administration Team
(hapax, Kit Whitfield and mmy)

Comments

[mercredigirl]

I have been rereading the piece on Jess for a while, and was just reading through again when this post came up! Thanks, MercuryBlue! :)

[Invisible Neutrino]

Hi, just a heads-up that I also added an entry on part of chapter 35 - http://apocalypsereview.wordpress.com/2011/09/03/eoa-meet-the-pastor/

TW: Discussion of possible elements of dubious consent in relationships.

[MercuryBlue]

Boldbegone!

[mercredigirl]

I'm going two for two in tag breaking, apparently ;_; Thanks again!

[kisekileia]

Have there really been no new comments since last night, or is there some reason I haven't been able to see any new comments on either my computer or my phone?

[Mmy]

@kisekileia: Apparently we all got ourselves argued out. Then the USAians went off to celebrate Labor [sic] day.

[kisekileia]

Oh, okay. I was in the process of writing an email to TBAT asking what was going on. It seemed really strange to have no new comments in twelve hours.

We have Labour Day in Ontario. It's not celebrated heavily, but it's a good excuse to go away for a weekend and it's also generally the day before school starts. Do you not have it in BC?

[Mmy]

@kisekileia: Oh, I am in ON -- I was just laughing about the difference in spelling.

Around here (in ON) absolutely nothing serious gets done on Labour Day -- but I can always tell where the paper/tv is coming from by the spelling.

I am a serious tennis fan so Labour Day to me is a certain network that shall remained unnamed butchering tennis coverage by showing us endless minutes of talking heads instead of actual, you know, live tennis.

The ironic thing is because I taught this stuff I know/understand exactly what drives production decisions but that doesn't make me feel any better when I am sitting at home frustrated at listening to the same superannuated announcer bloviating to the camera rather than showing actual tennis balls being hit.

[Invisible Neutrino]

yes, we have it in BC.

[MercuryBlue]

Hey, there are people here!

[Mmy]

@MercuryBlue: It is funny how people on the internet are like people in a room -- sometimes no one wants to be the one to speak first.

[interleaper]

Are other people not seeing the bold still on? I am (Firefox 3.6.21 on Ubuntu).

--Applying the fix to see if that stops it for me.

[interleaper]

...No, it didn't.

[The Board Administration Team]

Interleaper: I couldn't see it, but took a guess on what the problem was. Is it still bolding for you?

[Brin]

Are you using an older release of Ubuntu?

I know on Lynx you have to fiddle around with the upgrade manager for it to notice Firefox updates past 3.6.

[interleaper]

TBAT: it's fixed now; thanks.

I'm running 10.04 LTS (that's Lynx, I guess?) so I don't have to mess with upgrades so much. But if there's a memory leak problem, that's probably something I should look into.

[kisekileia]

Sorry, Mmy, I thought you were in BC for some reason.

[Ross]

I was so disappointed by Natty that I've decided to limit myself the LTS releases on my primary computers for a while.

[kisekileia]

Pthalo...I hope you're not offended by this, but I just have no words to describe the craziness of your mother's thinking. I have no idea how you put up with her. I would want to slap her upside the head after about one sentence out of her mouth, given what you have described of the things she believes.

[Brin]

Pthalo: Never ever make a website for a parent.

I find this generalisation amusing, since my dad is a professional website-maker. (Also the reason I speak any Linux-geek at all, though not anywhere near as well as he does.)

[Brin]

but captions still would've been nice

Captions are always nice. They help with everything from hearing problems to being better at reading English* than listening to it (I have a bit of this) to being too lazy to get out the earphones (I have a lot of this, and often don't get around to listening to stuff for days or even weeks if I bother at all).

*Or other insert-language-here, but I'm sufficiently monolingual not to have experienced that myself.

I just wish I could protect her from herself.

Must be tough. Most I've ever had to do is talk my mom out of buying me a $12 bottle of homeopathic ear drops when I had an ear infection. ("If we're going to try dripping water into my ear, we can get it much cheaper out of a tap.")

A very large image. The image had all of the text that she wanted to put on that page.

Sounds a bit like a restaurant website.
I read an article a few weeks back about why restaurant websites tend to be terrible, and apparently the thought process goes something like this:
Restauranteur: I should put on a show to entice people into my restaurant! It works offline, why would things be different here?
Website designer: ...well, okay, you're the customer.
Potential restaurant customer: Shockwave? What do I need Shockwave for? All I want to know is if you sell chicken fingers!

[Lunch Meat]

Doesn't look like anyone has mentioned this yet--just a quick request for prayers/good thoughts for everyone affected by the fires in Texas. Earlier they were calling for all the volunteer firefighters they could get (though they've got the numbers they need now). Thousands of people are evacuating/have evacuated, and I have at least one friend of a friend whose house is burned to the ground.

[kisekileia]

Looks like TypePad ate my comment: Taking this quiz results in one child in the Horn of Africa being given a free meal. It's from the World Food Programme website, so I think we can safely assume no viruses or malware.

It would be awesome if people could donate as well. I'm unemployed and living off my parents' money right now, but I sent $50 anyway. I'm planning on ordering some knitting stuff soon, and I couldn't justify spending money on that but not on feeding starving people.

[Mary Kaye]

Feeding a hungry child is an awesome thing, but I really, really dislike this quiz.

(a) You can get every answer right by simply asking "considered as advertising, what would be the most impressive answer?" That is, if they ask how many are starving, or how much good their organization is doing, the biggest answer is right every single time.

(b) They let you go all the way to the end before demanding your name and email address.

There are a lot of good places to send money. As a protest, I would not send money to someplace that used tactics like these. I do not think they show good faith.

[Ross]

Must be tough. Most I've ever had to do is talk my mom out of buying me a $12 bottle of homeopathic ear drops when I had an ear infection. ("If we're going to try dripping water into my ear, we can get it much cheaper out of a tap.")

Last year, right around the time we were moving into the new house, I got an ear infection over a holiday weekend. Because I wasn't going to be able to get a doctor's appointment until the next working day, we ran out to the drug store and bought some ear drops. You can imagine my anger when Igot home and discovered that the drops I'd bought were homeopathic.

SO I went back and looked more. It turns out that there is no such thing as an over-the-counter ear analgesic. There were three different homeopathic eardrops. Not a single product with an active ingredient.

Frankly, I think selling homeopathic "medications" on store shelves mixed in with real medicine, distinguished only by the word "homeopathic" in small print woven into one of the borders on the label should be considered fraud.

[Brin]

Ross: I got an ear infection over a holiday weekend. Because I wasn't going to be able to get a doctor's appointment until the next working day

You were waiting to see a doctor as soon as you could? I waited a full week before going to the clinic. Then again, I have a history of earwax clogs* and no history of ear infections, so at first we assumed it was a wax lump pressing on a nerve or something**. I tried a bottle of Debrox we'd bought during a "previous" clog for a few days (didn't really help), and used ibuprofen for an analgesic.
I thought maybe the flu that started the next day was just a coincidence. At least, it acted like a flu: trembling, lethargy, fruit cravings, trying to sleep and getting only delirium. A week later, after I'd started taking amoxicillin***, Brother came down with flu first, then ear infection. I'm guessing they were related.

Frankly, I think selling homeopathic "medications" on store shelves mixed in with real medicine, distinguished only by the word "homeopathic" in small print woven into one of the borders on the label should be considered fraud.

I think it was in the "organic" section with all the other homeopathic stuff. Helped to make me extra suspicious; as I recall, when she found it I was attempting to convince her to leave the section entirely, as I doubted there would be anything useful there.

*Apparently my ear canals are very small for my size. The clogs stopped when I grew out my pinky nails and started using them to clean my ears with. (Mom thinks this is a bit gross and shouldn't be talked about in Polite Conversation, but I think it's just useful information that should be shared in case it helps anyone else.)

**Looking at my diary, it would be more accurate to say that Mom actually did think it was an ear infection at first and we were intending to go to a clinic the next day, but later thought she saw a lump and changed to the clog explanation.

***Bubblegum-flavoured medicine that actually tastes like it's supposed to! I don't think I've ever had medicine that matched the flavour it supposedly had before or since.

[MercuryBlue]

Brin: Q-tips.

[Brin]

Q-tips are too blunt, and are just as likely (if not more so) to push the wax further in as bring it out.

[Ross]

@Brin: I usually have a strong aversion to going to the doctor, but I have a history of ear infections and know full well that (a) it won't clear up on its own, and (2) Antibiotics make the pain subside almost instantly, so once the pain sets in, I don't screw around.

And also, obligatory warning:

Do not stick Q-Tips in your ear. Yes, I know they look like they are the right shape and size to go into your ear canal and clean it out, but <ADMIRAL_AKBAR>It's a TRAP!</ADMIRAL_AKBAR>. You're not supposed to do that, you were never supposed to do that, there's a danger of pushing it in too far and damaging stuff, it will push the wax further in, and even if none of that were true, the tissue inside your ear is so delicate that the cut ends of the cotton fibers will scratch the tissue.

If there is one thing that works like clockwork for giving me an ear infection, it's using a q-tip to try to get a wax clot out.

The easiest way for me to get the wax out is to pour hydrogen peroxide into my ear, followed by large volumes of warm water via an earbulb syringe.

I've found that some rubbing alcohol in the ear helps with the pain, though it has its own disadvantages, like (short-lived) stinging, and the fact that after a few days, your ear canal sheds all its skin in one large single piece, snake-like.

[MercuryBlue]

Ah. Sorry.

[MaryKaye]

Asian groceries sell bamboo devices for cleaning out your ear, and my Japanese family members swear by them. All Western doctors seem to agree this is a bad idea, but (at least for the common earwax type in Asians) it seems to fend off a lot of problems.

I still remember, over thirty years later, the ear infection so severe that the doctor packed my ear with medication-soaked cotton batting. Or more accurately, I remember the *amazing* experience of sitting in a dark auditorium at school and pulling the cotton out, and feeling cool air blowing into my ear. Wow. There's sex, there's really good food, there's having air in your ear. Who knew?