[Originally posted at Ana Mardoll's Ramblings.]
Edward: You know how everyone enjoys different flavors? Some people love chocolate ice cream, others prefer strawberry?
Bella: No. I've lived for seventeen years on this planet... and a few elsewhere; don't ask. I won't tell you. Anyway, seventeen years on this planet and it has never come to my attention that there might be variations in preference when it comes to taste. Tell me, do similar variations exist in preference when it comes to sound? Could that explain the myriad musical styles? Anyway, you were talking taste. It certainly has never occurred to me that people could enjoy different things, I thought that the variety of different types of cuisine was merely an artifact of not having enough of the stuff that everyone universally wanted most to go around.
Edward: Sarcasm.
Bella: You noticed?
Edward: Moving on.
Bella: Yes?
Edward: Sorry about the food analogy — I couldn’t think of another way to explain.
Bella: Clearly a failure of imagination on your part.
Edward: Come on.
Bella: You know how some people like Star Trek, and some people like Star Wars, and others like things that aren't even in the genre of science fiction?
Edward: Ok, that's one example.
Bella: You know how some people like skiing and others like sailing and others like curling up with a good book?
Edward: Listen-
Bella: You know how some people like blondes, and others like brunettes, and still others like redheads?
Edward: The point is-
Bella: You know how some people prefer missionary while others prefer-
Edward: HEY! Not cool.
Bella: You know how some people prefer jazz while others like concert band sized wind ensemble?
Edward: You already did music.
Bella: That was before you said you couldn't think of anything but food.
Edward: Can we just-
Bella: You know how some people prefer plays, others movies, others books, others comics, others tales told 'round the campfire?
Edward: I think you've made your-
Bella: You know how some people prefer Macs and others prefer anything that isn't a Mac to the extent that Mac has been officially excised from the category of personal computer to the point that PC means, "Not a Mac"?
Edward: This is getting ridiculous.
Bella: You know how some people prefer hands on learning and others prefer more abstract stuff done out of books and on the chalkboard?
Edward: Please stop.
Bella: You know how some people love roses but others prefer geraniums?
Edward: Ok, scent, that's-
Bella: I was talking about the flower as a whole.
Edward: Damn.
Bella: You know how some people love orange while others prefer purple?
Edward: If I surrender now will you stop?
Bella: Unconditional surrender?
Edward: Hell no.
Bella: You know how some people love dogs while others prefer cats?
-
[Snarky Twilight Index]
Saturday, March 9, 2013
Tuesday, March 5, 2013
I was asked to share this (What the corporate jet tax loophole could pay for if closed)
I was asked to share this, and by share they apparently met on facebook because as everyone who knows me on facebook knows I am oh so active over there. For those who don't and didn't catch the dripping sarcasm (text can make that happen) I am the opposite of active on facebook. Facebook has taken to emailing me letters that say:
Anyway, I did share it on facebook, by accident, but here's the thing that it asked me to share:
The source is this article, written before the sequester kicked in which means that right now those cuts have already started to kick in, though as with almost anything it takes some time between when the funding is cut and when people start to suffer. (Think about it like food. If your food budget suddenly went up in smoke it wouldn't be a problem until the next time you would have otherwise bought food and it wouldn't be a serious problem until you ran out of the food you already had.)
Likewise the corporate jet loophole is still in effect.
Because that's what happens when congress does nothing. Everyone who isn't rich suffers, the rich prosper. They've spent a good solid 40 years now stacking the deck in their favor which means that the status quo itself is all that's needed to ensure that the rich get richer while everyone else gets poorer. (In this particular case it's even worse than that because it's tipping the status quo even more in favor of the rich and against everyone else.) Unfortunately one party, a party that controls one house of congress and can obstruct pretty much everything in the other, is in favor of everyone who is not rich getting poorer.
Hell, the Republican Governor of my state wanted to attract businesses by making us more like a third world country. Because the proper response to looking at underdeveloped countries mired in poverty and either screwed over or ignored during the conflict between the first and second world (second world lost, which is why we use the first world's numbering which, naturally, places itself at number one) is to say, "I want my people to be in conditions like that."* Yeah, that makes sense.
Thankfully turning America, or any state-sized subset of it, into a third world country equivalent is probably impossible at this point. It might not be in the future, but I have high hopes that Republican Governor will be Former Governor in the future, so the person who actually came out in favor of turning a state into a third world country equivalent (usually it's something no one is in favor of but people accuse their opponents of being in favor of) won't have the power to do so should the capability ever arise (hopefully it will not.)
And that, by the way, is the problem with three way elections in which a majority is not required to win. (It was more than three ways actually, but only three of them mattered.) The majority voted for whoever seemed to have enough support to beat idiot in charge, but who seemed to have the most support depended on which part of the state you were in Thus the result was 39% for, 61% against, but the 61% was divided between two candidates (actually more, but again, only two of them mattered) in such a way that 39% was the largest share of the vote.
But back to what I was asked to share. It's called an infographic. "info" being what happens to the word "information" via diminution to get a nicemonosyllabic disyllabic colloquial form. "Information" being a word that can be traced back through the French to the Latin, and in the Latin it actually has multiple steps but finally reaches back to in + formo (I form into, I form an idea, I educate). "Formo" goes back another step in Latin and then to the ancient Greek "morphe" which means "form" (thus metamorphosis = change form). "graphic" comes directly from the Latin but the Latin came from the Greek and three steps of that gets you to "grapho" (I scratch, carve, draw, sketch.)
Thus infographic means, "A visual representation of what the fuck is wrong with this country."
-
And in closing I see that it didn't even ask me to "share" it asked me to forward (for it was an email) and pass it along. Regardless trying to get the image to include in this post sent me to facebook, specifically to "Share this link" on facebook which did not itself let me see what the link I was supposed to share was, and then only after I accidentally told it share was I able to get to the source via going to my own page on facebook and clicking on the link I had just inadvertently shared.
I might not have anything against the people who sent me the image or asked me to pass it on, but they could do better when it comes to making their sources easily accessible.
-
* Jesus Fuck, man, why not look at it and say, "I want them to have access to better conditions like my people have"?
I get that you want to equalize things and whatnot, or at least that that's your excuse**, but why does making things the same always have to involve the shitty as the standard, why not try to raise those in the shitty up to the standard of those in the not shitty? Or better still, give them the capability of raising themselves so you're not engaging in fucking over your own people or colonialism of those who have it worse.
Do it with loans, low interest but above the rate of inflation or, conversely, short term but high interest micro loans to individuals, and you can help people and make money. So you can still be a greedy ass while not trying to make the living conditions of the entire world save the wealthy into the same as the lowest ones you can find.
And while it may seem strange to say, "The entire world," while he's just in charge on one state, my reasoning is thus: In theory he wants the state he's in charge of to be better off than anywhere else. So if he's trying to lower the standards of the state, thus making it worse off, it follows that if he had the power he'd do the same to everywhere else. Because what he wants for the state should, again in theory, be what he wants the best thing to be, and by definition for something to be the best thing everything else has to be equal or worse.
** With the caveat that I'm not telepathic, what he wants actually seems to be extremely low wages and the ability of companies to run roughshod over the rights, livelihoods, and lives of anyone who doesn't own a company (or owns a smaller company than the one running roughshod.)
This is, it should be noted, the person who took a mural of successes in labor history hostage because he thought that showing that once upon a time business did various horrible things to laborers until the laborers stood up for themselves (which is a historical fact; as just one example: it's hard to paint child labor in a good light, however Gingrich may try) was too one sided and to be fair it should show corrupt businessmen in a light just as positive as those who fought for and gained rights and protections for laborers in the country and the state.
Seriously, that was (one of) his (conflicting) stated reason(s). It was too one sided in its presentation of those who committed abuses vs those who fought against abuse and thus unfair and needed to be held hostage in an undisclosed location as a result with various, "Hope nothing happens to it," type threats being made at vaguely regular intervals.
One wonders what he would have liked instead. "And they fought to get rid of child labor, but on the other hand a case can be made that child labor builds character and is a good thing and thus those fighting to keep it weren't the bad guys. There's two sides to every story after all and we don't want the fracking labor department to seem like it might think labor did some good things once upon a time. Not if it paints the corrupt individuals of the past in a bad light."
Look at all the stuff you've been missing by not visiting... um... it doesn't look like you've been missing that much actually, but... uh... there's this, and this and this that people you know have said.
No, we're not going to tell you what they said. You have to log in to find out.
Pretty sneaky, huh?
-The Evil Overlords at facebookmore or less. Translating facebook into English isn't always the easiest thing. I wonder if it suffers from similar problems in other languages. Do people who have told facebook that German have similar difficulties translating German facebook into German?
Anyway, I did share it on facebook, by accident, but here's the thing that it asked me to share:
The source is this article, written before the sequester kicked in which means that right now those cuts have already started to kick in, though as with almost anything it takes some time between when the funding is cut and when people start to suffer. (Think about it like food. If your food budget suddenly went up in smoke it wouldn't be a problem until the next time you would have otherwise bought food and it wouldn't be a serious problem until you ran out of the food you already had.)
Likewise the corporate jet loophole is still in effect.
Because that's what happens when congress does nothing. Everyone who isn't rich suffers, the rich prosper. They've spent a good solid 40 years now stacking the deck in their favor which means that the status quo itself is all that's needed to ensure that the rich get richer while everyone else gets poorer. (In this particular case it's even worse than that because it's tipping the status quo even more in favor of the rich and against everyone else.) Unfortunately one party, a party that controls one house of congress and can obstruct pretty much everything in the other, is in favor of everyone who is not rich getting poorer.
Hell, the Republican Governor of my state wanted to attract businesses by making us more like a third world country. Because the proper response to looking at underdeveloped countries mired in poverty and either screwed over or ignored during the conflict between the first and second world (second world lost, which is why we use the first world's numbering which, naturally, places itself at number one) is to say, "I want my people to be in conditions like that."* Yeah, that makes sense.
Thankfully turning America, or any state-sized subset of it, into a third world country equivalent is probably impossible at this point. It might not be in the future, but I have high hopes that Republican Governor will be Former Governor in the future, so the person who actually came out in favor of turning a state into a third world country equivalent (usually it's something no one is in favor of but people accuse their opponents of being in favor of) won't have the power to do so should the capability ever arise (hopefully it will not.)
And that, by the way, is the problem with three way elections in which a majority is not required to win. (It was more than three ways actually, but only three of them mattered.) The majority voted for whoever seemed to have enough support to beat idiot in charge, but who seemed to have the most support depended on which part of the state you were in Thus the result was 39% for, 61% against, but the 61% was divided between two candidates (actually more, but again, only two of them mattered) in such a way that 39% was the largest share of the vote.
But back to what I was asked to share. It's called an infographic. "info" being what happens to the word "information" via diminution to get a nice
Thus infographic means, "A visual representation of what the fuck is wrong with this country."
-
And in closing I see that it didn't even ask me to "share" it asked me to forward (for it was an email) and pass it along. Regardless trying to get the image to include in this post sent me to facebook, specifically to "Share this link" on facebook which did not itself let me see what the link I was supposed to share was, and then only after I accidentally told it share was I able to get to the source via going to my own page on facebook and clicking on the link I had just inadvertently shared.
I might not have anything against the people who sent me the image or asked me to pass it on, but they could do better when it comes to making their sources easily accessible.
-
* Jesus Fuck, man, why not look at it and say, "I want them to have access to better conditions like my people have"?
I get that you want to equalize things and whatnot, or at least that that's your excuse**, but why does making things the same always have to involve the shitty as the standard, why not try to raise those in the shitty up to the standard of those in the not shitty? Or better still, give them the capability of raising themselves so you're not engaging in fucking over your own people or colonialism of those who have it worse.
Do it with loans, low interest but above the rate of inflation or, conversely, short term but high interest micro loans to individuals, and you can help people and make money. So you can still be a greedy ass while not trying to make the living conditions of the entire world save the wealthy into the same as the lowest ones you can find.
And while it may seem strange to say, "The entire world," while he's just in charge on one state, my reasoning is thus: In theory he wants the state he's in charge of to be better off than anywhere else. So if he's trying to lower the standards of the state, thus making it worse off, it follows that if he had the power he'd do the same to everywhere else. Because what he wants for the state should, again in theory, be what he wants the best thing to be, and by definition for something to be the best thing everything else has to be equal or worse.
** With the caveat that I'm not telepathic, what he wants actually seems to be extremely low wages and the ability of companies to run roughshod over the rights, livelihoods, and lives of anyone who doesn't own a company (or owns a smaller company than the one running roughshod.)
This is, it should be noted, the person who took a mural of successes in labor history hostage because he thought that showing that once upon a time business did various horrible things to laborers until the laborers stood up for themselves (which is a historical fact; as just one example: it's hard to paint child labor in a good light, however Gingrich may try) was too one sided and to be fair it should show corrupt businessmen in a light just as positive as those who fought for and gained rights and protections for laborers in the country and the state.
Seriously, that was (one of) his (conflicting) stated reason(s). It was too one sided in its presentation of those who committed abuses vs those who fought against abuse and thus unfair and needed to be held hostage in an undisclosed location as a result with various, "Hope nothing happens to it," type threats being made at vaguely regular intervals.
One wonders what he would have liked instead. "And they fought to get rid of child labor, but on the other hand a case can be made that child labor builds character and is a good thing and thus those fighting to keep it weren't the bad guys. There's two sides to every story after all and we don't want the fracking labor department to seem like it might think labor did some good things once upon a time. Not if it paints the corrupt individuals of the past in a bad light."
Monday, March 4, 2013
I'm not well at the moment
Since vacation, which I may have mentioned didn't exactly go well for me, with about a day and a half of exception (thank you Lonespark for the day, thanks to my mother for the half.) I've been off.
This week I'm going to have to go to see my psychiatrist and say, "I don't know if the medication has been working, I've been forgetting it more often than I remembered it." Though maybe if I can stay on it between today and the day I see him I'll have some idea if it's working. I haven't been having much of anything in the way of luck when it comes to getting enough sleep. Hell, last night I had a dream with angels and demons and birds the size of cities and probably the most vivid part was when someone was, via magic, able to give me a good night's sleep. It was such a wonderful thing waking up in the dream fully rested, and a disappointment waking up in real life to a feeling of, "One good night's sleep doesn't cancel out weeks of not getting enough."
I've not managed to stay hydrated well.
I'm not sure how well I've been keeping myself fed. Last night I was sick. (Sickness tends to make me more able to remember my dreams, for whatever that is worth.) And I'm not sure whether I was sick because there was something wrong in an ordinary sickness sense, or if I was sick because yesterday I ate well for the the first time in however long and my body wasn't sure what to do with all the food.
First I thought I was going to vomit, then didn't. Then laid on the bathroom floor as I heard-felt* bubbling in parts of my body that should never bubble. I understand that the phrase, "It's just gas," is meant to be in comparison to "Something that could kill you," thus justifying the "just". Even so, I seriously wonder if whoever coined the phrase had to deal with gas because it sure as hell hurts like you're dying. At least I assume so, I've never been dying. Difficult to imagine that dying could hurt more. Hurt less, yes. Hurt more, I have my doubts.
I've had broken bones, I've had grains of sand picked out of a deep gash in my foot with tweezers repeatedly. (Couldn't get it all in one go, I think it took weeks to get it all out.) How deep a gash? The only reason that I didn't have stitches was because that would have closed the sand inside of my foot. They needed to leave it open to get the sand out.** I've had a piece of wood (too big to call a splinter too small to call a stake) driven so deep into one of my toes that I was only able to remove it with pliers. Fucking gas leaves all these things in the dust.
"Just gas," my ass.
No, no one said that to me. But the phrase came to mind.
Later on I did indeed vomit. This is something that happens to me extremely rarely. "Feel like I might throw up," happens so much more often that I've reached the point where I don't even think of that as a reason to consider that I might actually throw up. Instead I don't really consider the possibility until it's more like, "Feel like I'm in the first stage of throwing up." At which point sprint to the nearest toilet.
And now here I am today. Definitely feeling better than last night, but still tired, still somewhat nauseous. First day back on my medications since I don't even know because I lost complete track of when I remembered and when I forgot.
Though, actually, it can be worked out that it can't have been more than two days without them, and I think it was two days. The day I wrote my most recent post, I decided that I'd been missing my medication enough it was probably better to take it quite late than miss another day. So I did. Practical result: I didn't sleep at all. Actually, I don't know if my meds are to blame for that because I never reached the point of trying. I never even made it in the general direction of going to bed. My hope that I could do something to counterbalance it by going to sleep extremely early the next day was dashed when it turned out a member of my family would be staying with me that night.
Anyway, been all out of sorts. Missing my meds, missing sleep, missing hydration, possibly missing food, and possibly sick.
How long will this last, I know not. Hopefully it ends today, but hopefully it ended before and yet it did not.
No idea what effect this will have upon the blog. But it surely must have one. The extreme drop in my output of late is what's been happening so far. One might guess that that will continue unless I get out of this rut of everything going wrong.
Anyway, that's why this is tagged as meta. What affects me affects the blog. When I'm doing crappily so too does the blog.
And on a largely unrelated note, an ASL class just moved through here.
-
* I'm not sure that everyone really understands the connection between feeling and hearing, I know I didn't always. I think a break through moment for me was when someone talking about an old injury in their shoulder had me put my hand on it so I could "hear" the noise it made when the shoulder was moved. The sensation was just like hearing, and processed as noise, but it wasn't coming through my ears.
That's part of why deaf people can enjoy music. Hearing isn't limited to one's ears, it's just concentrated and specialized there.
My father once had a job adjusting music for something. I think the biggest thing was monitoring the baseline because the sound of that is physical enough that without someone to adjust it the difference between a standing audience and a sitting audience will change the sound. Or something like that. (I tend not to get details from my father because if I start him talking there's no telling when he'll stop, so it's generally better not to ask for repetition, reminders, clarification, or elaboration.)
So when he was working at a birthday party for a deaf person, all of whose friends were deaf, he asked someone why the music had to be so damn loud. It was explained to him that the music had to be loud so the deaf people could hear it. The natural question of, "How can they hear it if they're deaf?" was responded to by pointing out that they don't hear it with their ears, the hear it here *gesture to chest*.
Those who are completely deaf, and were from birth, have a much more detailed sense of that kind of hearing than hearing people such as myself do because the part of their brain that would be used to interpret sensory input from their ears is taken over for the purposes of interpreting sounds picked up via the rest of the body.
It's all vibrations, and your eardrum isn't the only part of you that can feel vibrations. Even amoung the hearing, if you pay attention (or there is a powerful enough baseline to make itself known in the absence of you paying attention) you can hear-feel music in parts of you other than your ears.
Hear-feel, heard-felt and variations on that are my own invention, I have no idea what the technical term for this non-ear-based sense of sound is. If there even is one.
Vaguely related, I once saw and heard B.B. King live in concert. (I recommend it if you have the chance and the money.) I realized as I listened that different parts of the auditorium responded to different parts of the music. My chair would vibrate with one sound, the floor with another, so on, so forth. Resonant frequencies at work.
** What happened is this: a warped piece of wood on a dock had loosened a nail with the result that the head (that is the flat part, remember. It doesn't cut; it rips) was exposed. I ripped open my foot on it. In my extreme pain I was less than rational. I knew there was a med-kit in a building on shore and I ran across the beach to get to it, thus driving the sand into the gash. If I'd been rational I would have called out for help, the help would have gotten the medkit, and I would have not gotten any sand in the wound. Help wasn't far away, probably would have taken only a few seconds longer than me running for the medkit myself and it would have saved me lots of pain in the long run.
This week I'm going to have to go to see my psychiatrist and say, "I don't know if the medication has been working, I've been forgetting it more often than I remembered it." Though maybe if I can stay on it between today and the day I see him I'll have some idea if it's working. I haven't been having much of anything in the way of luck when it comes to getting enough sleep. Hell, last night I had a dream with angels and demons and birds the size of cities and probably the most vivid part was when someone was, via magic, able to give me a good night's sleep. It was such a wonderful thing waking up in the dream fully rested, and a disappointment waking up in real life to a feeling of, "One good night's sleep doesn't cancel out weeks of not getting enough."
I've not managed to stay hydrated well.
I'm not sure how well I've been keeping myself fed. Last night I was sick. (Sickness tends to make me more able to remember my dreams, for whatever that is worth.) And I'm not sure whether I was sick because there was something wrong in an ordinary sickness sense, or if I was sick because yesterday I ate well for the the first time in however long and my body wasn't sure what to do with all the food.
First I thought I was going to vomit, then didn't. Then laid on the bathroom floor as I heard-felt* bubbling in parts of my body that should never bubble. I understand that the phrase, "It's just gas," is meant to be in comparison to "Something that could kill you," thus justifying the "just". Even so, I seriously wonder if whoever coined the phrase had to deal with gas because it sure as hell hurts like you're dying. At least I assume so, I've never been dying. Difficult to imagine that dying could hurt more. Hurt less, yes. Hurt more, I have my doubts.
I've had broken bones, I've had grains of sand picked out of a deep gash in my foot with tweezers repeatedly. (Couldn't get it all in one go, I think it took weeks to get it all out.) How deep a gash? The only reason that I didn't have stitches was because that would have closed the sand inside of my foot. They needed to leave it open to get the sand out.** I've had a piece of wood (too big to call a splinter too small to call a stake) driven so deep into one of my toes that I was only able to remove it with pliers. Fucking gas leaves all these things in the dust.
"Just gas," my ass.
No, no one said that to me. But the phrase came to mind.
Later on I did indeed vomit. This is something that happens to me extremely rarely. "Feel like I might throw up," happens so much more often that I've reached the point where I don't even think of that as a reason to consider that I might actually throw up. Instead I don't really consider the possibility until it's more like, "Feel like I'm in the first stage of throwing up." At which point sprint to the nearest toilet.
And now here I am today. Definitely feeling better than last night, but still tired, still somewhat nauseous. First day back on my medications since I don't even know because I lost complete track of when I remembered and when I forgot.
Though, actually, it can be worked out that it can't have been more than two days without them, and I think it was two days. The day I wrote my most recent post, I decided that I'd been missing my medication enough it was probably better to take it quite late than miss another day. So I did. Practical result: I didn't sleep at all. Actually, I don't know if my meds are to blame for that because I never reached the point of trying. I never even made it in the general direction of going to bed. My hope that I could do something to counterbalance it by going to sleep extremely early the next day was dashed when it turned out a member of my family would be staying with me that night.
Anyway, been all out of sorts. Missing my meds, missing sleep, missing hydration, possibly missing food, and possibly sick.
How long will this last, I know not. Hopefully it ends today, but hopefully it ended before and yet it did not.
No idea what effect this will have upon the blog. But it surely must have one. The extreme drop in my output of late is what's been happening so far. One might guess that that will continue unless I get out of this rut of everything going wrong.
Anyway, that's why this is tagged as meta. What affects me affects the blog. When I'm doing crappily so too does the blog.
And on a largely unrelated note, an ASL class just moved through here.
-
* I'm not sure that everyone really understands the connection between feeling and hearing, I know I didn't always. I think a break through moment for me was when someone talking about an old injury in their shoulder had me put my hand on it so I could "hear" the noise it made when the shoulder was moved. The sensation was just like hearing, and processed as noise, but it wasn't coming through my ears.
That's part of why deaf people can enjoy music. Hearing isn't limited to one's ears, it's just concentrated and specialized there.
My father once had a job adjusting music for something. I think the biggest thing was monitoring the baseline because the sound of that is physical enough that without someone to adjust it the difference between a standing audience and a sitting audience will change the sound. Or something like that. (I tend not to get details from my father because if I start him talking there's no telling when he'll stop, so it's generally better not to ask for repetition, reminders, clarification, or elaboration.)
So when he was working at a birthday party for a deaf person, all of whose friends were deaf, he asked someone why the music had to be so damn loud. It was explained to him that the music had to be loud so the deaf people could hear it. The natural question of, "How can they hear it if they're deaf?" was responded to by pointing out that they don't hear it with their ears, the hear it here *gesture to chest*.
Those who are completely deaf, and were from birth, have a much more detailed sense of that kind of hearing than hearing people such as myself do because the part of their brain that would be used to interpret sensory input from their ears is taken over for the purposes of interpreting sounds picked up via the rest of the body.
It's all vibrations, and your eardrum isn't the only part of you that can feel vibrations. Even amoung the hearing, if you pay attention (or there is a powerful enough baseline to make itself known in the absence of you paying attention) you can hear-feel music in parts of you other than your ears.
Hear-feel, heard-felt and variations on that are my own invention, I have no idea what the technical term for this non-ear-based sense of sound is. If there even is one.
Vaguely related, I once saw and heard B.B. King live in concert. (I recommend it if you have the chance and the money.) I realized as I listened that different parts of the auditorium responded to different parts of the music. My chair would vibrate with one sound, the floor with another, so on, so forth. Resonant frequencies at work.
** What happened is this: a warped piece of wood on a dock had loosened a nail with the result that the head (that is the flat part, remember. It doesn't cut; it rips) was exposed. I ripped open my foot on it. In my extreme pain I was less than rational. I knew there was a med-kit in a building on shore and I ran across the beach to get to it, thus driving the sand into the gash. If I'd been rational I would have called out for help, the help would have gotten the medkit, and I would have not gotten any sand in the wound. Help wasn't far away, probably would have taken only a few seconds longer than me running for the medkit myself and it would have saved me lots of pain in the long run.
Friday, March 1, 2013
Random things
There are actual Satanists. I did not know that. Now I do. I'm interested in learning more about their beliefs but I don't have time at the moment. In fact for almost everything it seems to be a running theme that I don't have time at the moment.
I completely forgot to talk to my psychologist about getting registered in the school as being disabled. University was the first place where you had to get that... distinction? Label? Not sure. That thing for yourself. Every school before that just knew. Presumably at some point before my memory kicked in in full force someone somewhere had to make a determination, but after that they just passed it on up the line. So for as far back as I can remember in elementary school they knew, the elementary school passed on the information to the middle school, the middle school passed it on to the high school when the time came.
This hasn't been a problem because I, being one of the most boring people in existence, have had a truly small number of teachers given how long I've been in university. Thus I have tended to work with people who know me and thus knew the problems I face. It was pointed out that teachers new to me have no idea what the fuck is going on in my head, and if I made it official they would and that could possibly lead to good things. Sort of. More that it could lead to the possibility that good things deferred might be able to count as good things not-late, or whatever. Learning disabilities, mental disabilities, whatever disabilities, or no: you still have to get the work done at some point.
So another two weeks before we try with that thing. I could look into it on my own, but I could do a lot of things. Provided that "could" here refers to physical capability rather than mental, which seldom line up.
I have at long last sent Social Security the thing to send Albany to get a copy of my birth certificate because the original wasn't good enough for reasons that no one other than the one person, who happens to be an asshole, handling my case knows. Everyone else just responds with shock, "You brought the original into the building and showed it to the person and that wasn't enough?" National, local, doesn't matter, everyone else in the Social Security Administration is as bewildered by this as I am.
All that was required was that I walk across the street to my credit union when it was open and get one thing photocopied and another notarized. That, to me, is something that takes near herculean amounts of effort. And I am far from Hercules. Or Herakles, depending on whether you take it from the Latin or straight from the Greek.
My two major problems are these:
1) Initiating an activity on my own.
2) Doing work while unsupervised.
I have lots of other problems, but those are the two big ones. I could only flip burgers, as just one example, if the company hired someone to watch me do it (even then it would take me a while to get started). Which they wouldn't do because they could just have that person flip burgers and cut the burger flipping staff in half.
Once the Social Security office discovered this they set me on various tasks all of which required initiating activity on my own and doing it to the end while unsupervised. And they wonder why it took me months to get done. If I could do these things I wouldn't be applying for fucking disability, thank you very much.
Elsewhere, but on this blog, I compared it to saying to someone in a wheelchair, "Getting aid is easy, all you have to do is go up those stairs and ask for it. No. There isn't an elevator. Why do you ask?" I leave it to people in wheelchairs to determine if the comparison is fair. I think it is if you're considering a standard "Legs don't work but arms do so an unpowered wheelchair can be used for locomotion," wheelchair and wheelchair occupant. Arm power alone can get you up stairs, but it'll take a lot longer than someone walking and it'll be a serious accomplishment when you reach the top.
Given my mental problems the tasks given me seem like that kind of thing. Hopefully, hopefully hopefully hopefully, this was the last one. Hopefully it's in their hands now. Hopefully I don't need to do any more of these, "It would be easy if you weren't disabled but this seems like it was specifically designed to be really damn hard for people with your disability." Hopefully.
And no, I'm actually not filled with hope. But there is a sense of relief that at least I got that part done.
Before that, seemingly out of nowhere came things for the Social Security of Maine. So not the local Portland office, but the main office of the state in Augusta. I couldn't figure out why they mysteriously appeared, but I did my best to fill out the forms and send them in and follow the instructions and whatnot. These things asked me about my disability (though, strangely, never asked what the disability was.) I knew it couldn't have anything to do with the SSI I was applying for because the application with them was being held up until they could determine my birth date for absolutely positively sure. Every other government agency in the country (local, state, and federal) knows my birth date. Social Security fucked it up. Hell, I think the nation of Italy knows my birth date.
Having had time to reflect and reread and think and whatnot I think I know what happened. When I applied for food aid I also applied for medical aid. Now this is through HHS so I don't know why Social Security is involved and honestly I don't give a damn, but it would appear that this time (no idea why not last time) when they sent me a thing to renew my food aid they also assumed that I'd be reapplying to get the medical aid I was denied (very short version: I was denied on the basis of not having enough information, they didn't have enough information because they didn't contact any of the people I told them to contact. When the opportunity came to appeal I simply didn't have the spoons.)
So that's all sent out and maybe I can get my medications paid for instead of a combination of having family members go broke buying them out of the kindness of their hearts and using student loan money. (It's a living expense; it counts. I checked before I got the loan.)
But, food aid and medical aid both apparently require me to talk to someone on the phone. I got a very nice letter saying call this person on Monday through Friday between these hours. After realizing today was a Friday (for some reason I thought it was Saturday) I did call. Only to find out that the person I was to call would be busy for all but one of those hours. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
The very nice letter said "Please call me with the following information" by deadline. Otherwise benefits may be denied or cancelled or apocalypse or very bad things.
Now, if you're like me you're probably very interested in what the "following information" was. There was none. Nothing. Blank page. White space. No ink. Nothing. Nicolas Cage in National Treasure couldn't figure out what the following information was because there was nothing there.
So I called the person, with the following lack of information, during the one hour he'd be available today. Wasn't there. Left a voicemail.
Now the deadline gives me all of next week so hopefully I'll get in contact to this person, give them the lack of information that they want, and thereby prevent the apocalypse, but that still leaves a lingering question.
Who the fuck says, "Please call me with the following information," and then doesn't have any information follow? I mean, seriously? Who?
Other than The Department of Heath and Human Services, I mean. (That one was HHS not SSA. So says the letterhead.)
My thing on aid, seems to be rather controversial, but not in the post I just linked to, instead in the thread that eventually inspired me to write the post.
I think part of it is that I'm not entirely against a nanny state and I believe that compartmentalization has benefits* and I have a fairly positive view of human nature. If people get more aid than they need in one area, I trust that most of them will not sell it on the black market (there is currently a black market for government aid, no reason to assume that there wouldn't be under my proposed system) or spend it on things they neither want nor need just to be able to spend it all.
Likewise I assume that if the government did take care of the necessities (food, housing, clothing, medical care, education, fire, police, so forth) people would still get jobs. Part of this is that I believe that people want more than just what is necessary. Long ago there was a meeting of manufacturers and marketers where they realized that improvements had made it so they could no longer survive just selling what people needed, they instead needed to start selling things that people didn't need but did want, and in the absence of want they needed to create that want. They're all still around. And as John Oliver says, we cannot be beaten when it comes to consumption**.
If the idea is for everybody to be able to live with necessities, and have enough of a margin of error that they're not on the razor's edge of not living, then that still doesn't mean that the government is giving people everything they want, which means people still have an incentive to get a job, and capitalism can deal with wants rather than needs which is an area it seems much better suited for.
And I also believe that for a lot of people there is a desire to contribute, which means that even if they didn't need to they'd still want some kind of job.
But my idea of compartmentalized, "Here's your card, every month you get this much that can be used for food, this much for housing, this much for clothing, this much for..." which everyone gets got some serious pushback. Not because it would cost so damn much (which it would, that's the reason that I always mention the fact that I'm in favor of serious tax reform alongside it, new revenue would definitely be needed) but because people, or at least one person, it's kind of fuzzy at the moment, don't like the idea of funds that can only be used for designated thing.
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Ok, that was long. There are various other things. I tried to go to the credit union to get thing notarized earlier, but they had closed for two days on account of the blizzard. Before the blizzard I opened the gate that I use to keep the dog in the backyard and the (back half of the) driveway when he goes out. My hope was that friendly neighbor with plow would plow the snow into the back half of the driveway if he plowed the snow. First off, he didn't plow the snow (though since then he has helped in plowing out the snowbanks that city plows leave in the front of the driveway) but second and more importantly, the result was that the gate couldn't be closed again.
Since the blizzard every time I think that the snow has gotten low enough that with shoveling (and ice breaking, what stopped me last time was reaching the ice core of the snowbank) I might be able to close the gate... it snows again. Which means I can't close the gate, which means that there's nothing to keep the dog in the yard and back half of the driveway. The solution has been to watch him when he goes out and verbally stop him if he starts heading toward the road.
That has worked, though inefficiently and annoyingly, with two exceptions. Last night and today during the day. Last night he saw a car and ran out to chase it. Thankfully the car was parking on the street otherwise god knows if I'd have caught up with him. I got him back into the house while shouting apologies.
Today was worse. I think I've noted that my dog's breed is unknown for sure because he's a rescue and they don't come with pedigrees. If you look up Mountain Cur on Wikipedia you'll see a photo of a dog that looks just like mine and that's what we think he is.
You'll also see that they're bred to bark. Like almost any dog (or is it "any dog" without the "almost"?) they will fight to protect those they care about, but that's not what they're bred to do. They're bred to do two things. One is scare off dangers, which is done by barking at them, the other is participate in bear hunts.
Dogs do not participate in bear hunts by fighting the bear. That would be a good way to lose a dog in a hurry. Dogs participate in bear hunts by scaring the bear, and in so doing herding the bear. (There was an episode with Dragon being called on to do a similar thing to a boar in Jane and the Dragon.† I mostly bring this up because I happen to like Jane and the Dragon. The TV show, never read the books.) And how do you scare and thus herd a bear? By barking at it. Very loudly.
Attempts to use nurture to overcome nature and get him to bark less have thus far failed. He barks at strange noises, and considers opening and closing car doors strange, he barks at anyone too far away to smell (For fear they might be Cylons I said to Lonespark, to which she replied, "But aren't we all Cylons now?" Yes. Yes, we are.)
The good news is that that's all he does, bark. The bad news is that that's not much of a comfort when a strange dog runs after you barking his ass off. I imagine it's rather terrifying. And as I rushed out of the house after him today, thankfully not barefoot but in flip-flops totally ill suited to the cold and one of them broken enough that a certain amount of concentration should be devoted to making sure it doesn't fall apart (the right one, if it matters) I shouted to the young woman between attempts to call the dog back, "The good news is he doesn't bite. The bad news is I don't know if he'll ever stop following you." And I told her that if she stopped moving for a bit I could grab the dog and get him away from her.
She thanked me, which she honestly shouldn't have because it was my fuck up that let a loudly barking dog chase her down and harass her, and said that she's totally not a dog person. I don't remember the exact words she used, probably not "totally", but something that indicated that this was worse than if it had happened to an average person. This happened to someone who doesn't necessarily have a dog phobia (though she could for all I know) but at the very least a dog discomfort.
I have no idea how old she was. She was a student, not a college student. High school would be my guess based on when she was walking home. But that's all I have to base my guess on because I really, really suck at telling age. Someone asked me the other day how old Lonespark's children were (either my mother, my psychologist, or both) and I honestly have no idea. After spending a day with them. And previously I've shared a house with them for the night. I suck at telling age.
I'm like Mike from Stranger in a Strange Land when it comes to telling age.
So, young woman hopefully not traumatized. And the same goes for Lonespark's children. He was able to sniff one, but never the other, and so he never stopped barking and had to be put in his room, which is unfortunately also the bathroom which made things somewhat difficult when the children had to go before leaving. Also he tends to be afraid of people who are afraid of him, which really doesn't help at all.
(Because he barks as things he's afraid of.)
It would be much better if he were afraid of people who were not afraid of him because, mentally, they'd be much better equipped to weather the nonstop barking. (On the other hand, it does make sense. Someone who is afraid is much more likely to do something rash like attack the dog than someone who isn't afraid.)
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The die is cast.
I've applied for Greece. First hurdle: Do they accept me? Second hurdle: if they accept me I have to make a down payment of $500. Third hurdle: Then I have to pay the remaining $3,500. Fourth hurdle: Then I have to pay airfare there and back.
If I can't make the money in time I'm pretty sure I lose that down payment. Can I make the money in time? I think so.
I've compared it to a bottle drive. You can make a lot in one push with a bottle drive, but you can't go out and do the same thing the next day. I think I can make a $4,000 push even though I don't think I could make enough to support myself. Because I think that after the push I will have dried up the market so much that there's not another $4,000 left in it.
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Speaking of stuff, there was a last little bit of each part of the resin in my old containers. I decided to use it. Huge mistake. The stuff in the unopened new containers appears to be fine. (Though testing will tell.) But the stuff in the old containers was visibly off to begin with. Think of curds separating from whey and you'll have some idea, but worse. I tried to mix it back together, I thought I had success. It took a long damn time but I thought I had success.
Either I was wrong or it was so far gone that even remixed it wouldn't work. Some of it never solidified, some of it partially solidified. I'm still trying to figure out how I'm going to clean out my molds, which I definitely need to do.
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The person who was picking on me, appears to have stopped. I don't know if the intervention of a teacher played a role. Teacher made it clear that she'd rather not intervene as we're all adults and should be able to sort things out ourselves but also that things had gotten to toxic to the point that she was considering changing the rules for how we do things, which would definitely be an intervention.
She never did change the rules.
I don't know what happened (or didn't happen) behind the scenes, but from my angle it looks like person has largely stopped being an ass, and the things that remain are so low key that I'm not sure if they're really her being an ass or they're just things that I'm inclined to interpret that way based on past experience of her being an ass.
My hope is that she hasn't just picked a new target to direct her assholicness at but has really stopped being an ass.
It was brought up to me after the whole thing calmed down that the teacher was the wrong person to speak to about it. (I only spoke to her because someone else brought up the possibility that maybe the student in question was doing it to someone else and since I wouldn't be there for that but maybe the teacher would, I should let the teacher know that this was something to watch out for.) There are other people and other means and a zero tolerance policy for bullying and whatnot that I apparently could have invoked like fire from the sky.
My ultimate decision on learning this was one of wait and see. If she keeps behaving herself then I see no benefit to make an official mess of things. If she reverts to past behavior then I'll go to the proper authorities and see what can be seen.
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I'm probably going to make a whole post on it at some point, but the idea I bring up here is one that I think would be awesome and I think would never happen. The audience would be the overlap between people who like actual classics enough to catch reference to the style of good and bad translations alike and people who like Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and Xena: Warrior Princess. Not exactly the biggest audience ever.
Also, not yet developed idea, MST3K like silhouettes for each episode of both but instead of a hapless human and two robots, of a panel of classicists who actually know by heart the history/myth/both being butchered in the episode in question. Or maybe not.
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I've noticed that often when I try to type "think" I type "thing" and that the reverse is true as well. I have no objections to typos (of which there are usually many) being pointed out in the comments, but until/unless that happens and I make a correction, if a sentence with think or thing in it is making no sense, try swapping it out for the other word.
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I'm behind in all my classes and I think I just got the lowest grade on a test in years. Though it was a respectable passing grade I feel like someone I once knew who said, "I got a B," and then had to explain, after receiving congratulations, that that was a bad thing. Of course the grade I got was probably pretty good considering that I was trying so hard not to forget the signs (I mostly succeeded) that I completely overlooked the fact that deaf culture and history were going to be a not-negligible portion of the test too.
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Did I mention that the Greece thing is with Harvard and they asked for a copy of my transcript which shows that last semester ended with three incompletes and a failure? Yeah, suddenly wondering if getting accepted in the first place might be a bigger question than whether or not I can raise the money.
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I like Roman Holiday even though it's the kind of film I normally wouldn't. Even though I haven't seen all of it. (Missed the beginning and haven't been able to catch it since.) No one gets a happy ending, that's generally not the film for me. But it's also referenced in .hack//Sign so now I get the reference (not that not getting it was a big deal because it's pointed out to be a reference to Roman Holiday and you really have everything you need in the scene) and more than that it's the perfect illustration of why I want to go to Greece. It's the idea that having that one good day is worth it even if you have to return to your crappy life afterward. Because you have the one good day, and you have the memories, and you've got stuff and stuff and stuff.
There were probably other things to throw in here.
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* For example it is known that if there is a rent subsidy in an area the minimum rent usually rises to meet that subsidy, so it would seem like a very good idea to have any subsidy for rent cordoned off from other forms of aid otherwise the minimum rent might rise to a level that prevents people from getting enough of everything not-housing. Thus I see it as valuable to have housing aid be only able to be spent on housing, and non-housing aid only able to be spent on non-housing.
** John Oliver, from Terrifying Times, which I recommend you buy***:
68 cents [correction] $1.64 (I should check more frequently because I'm rolling in the money now) [/correction] I have to my Amazon affiliate account.
On the other hand, the fact that my most dedicated readers are not Americans might play a role too. I have a deal with Amazon, not Amazon Canada or Amazon UK.
† And I am somewhat pissed off that I can't post a link to it. How the hell is the series not out on DVD? With a total run-time of a little under ten hours it's a series that someone might actually be able to afford to buy unlike Hercules and Xena.
I completely forgot to talk to my psychologist about getting registered in the school as being disabled. University was the first place where you had to get that... distinction? Label? Not sure. That thing for yourself. Every school before that just knew. Presumably at some point before my memory kicked in in full force someone somewhere had to make a determination, but after that they just passed it on up the line. So for as far back as I can remember in elementary school they knew, the elementary school passed on the information to the middle school, the middle school passed it on to the high school when the time came.
This hasn't been a problem because I, being one of the most boring people in existence, have had a truly small number of teachers given how long I've been in university. Thus I have tended to work with people who know me and thus knew the problems I face. It was pointed out that teachers new to me have no idea what the fuck is going on in my head, and if I made it official they would and that could possibly lead to good things. Sort of. More that it could lead to the possibility that good things deferred might be able to count as good things not-late, or whatever. Learning disabilities, mental disabilities, whatever disabilities, or no: you still have to get the work done at some point.
So another two weeks before we try with that thing. I could look into it on my own, but I could do a lot of things. Provided that "could" here refers to physical capability rather than mental, which seldom line up.
I have at long last sent Social Security the thing to send Albany to get a copy of my birth certificate because the original wasn't good enough for reasons that no one other than the one person, who happens to be an asshole, handling my case knows. Everyone else just responds with shock, "You brought the original into the building and showed it to the person and that wasn't enough?" National, local, doesn't matter, everyone else in the Social Security Administration is as bewildered by this as I am.
All that was required was that I walk across the street to my credit union when it was open and get one thing photocopied and another notarized. That, to me, is something that takes near herculean amounts of effort. And I am far from Hercules. Or Herakles, depending on whether you take it from the Latin or straight from the Greek.
My two major problems are these:
1) Initiating an activity on my own.
2) Doing work while unsupervised.
I have lots of other problems, but those are the two big ones. I could only flip burgers, as just one example, if the company hired someone to watch me do it (even then it would take me a while to get started). Which they wouldn't do because they could just have that person flip burgers and cut the burger flipping staff in half.
Once the Social Security office discovered this they set me on various tasks all of which required initiating activity on my own and doing it to the end while unsupervised. And they wonder why it took me months to get done. If I could do these things I wouldn't be applying for fucking disability, thank you very much.
Elsewhere, but on this blog, I compared it to saying to someone in a wheelchair, "Getting aid is easy, all you have to do is go up those stairs and ask for it. No. There isn't an elevator. Why do you ask?" I leave it to people in wheelchairs to determine if the comparison is fair. I think it is if you're considering a standard "Legs don't work but arms do so an unpowered wheelchair can be used for locomotion," wheelchair and wheelchair occupant. Arm power alone can get you up stairs, but it'll take a lot longer than someone walking and it'll be a serious accomplishment when you reach the top.
Given my mental problems the tasks given me seem like that kind of thing. Hopefully, hopefully hopefully hopefully, this was the last one. Hopefully it's in their hands now. Hopefully I don't need to do any more of these, "It would be easy if you weren't disabled but this seems like it was specifically designed to be really damn hard for people with your disability." Hopefully.
And no, I'm actually not filled with hope. But there is a sense of relief that at least I got that part done.
Before that, seemingly out of nowhere came things for the Social Security of Maine. So not the local Portland office, but the main office of the state in Augusta. I couldn't figure out why they mysteriously appeared, but I did my best to fill out the forms and send them in and follow the instructions and whatnot. These things asked me about my disability (though, strangely, never asked what the disability was.) I knew it couldn't have anything to do with the SSI I was applying for because the application with them was being held up until they could determine my birth date for absolutely positively sure. Every other government agency in the country (local, state, and federal) knows my birth date. Social Security fucked it up. Hell, I think the nation of Italy knows my birth date.
Having had time to reflect and reread and think and whatnot I think I know what happened. When I applied for food aid I also applied for medical aid. Now this is through HHS so I don't know why Social Security is involved and honestly I don't give a damn, but it would appear that this time (no idea why not last time) when they sent me a thing to renew my food aid they also assumed that I'd be reapplying to get the medical aid I was denied (very short version: I was denied on the basis of not having enough information, they didn't have enough information because they didn't contact any of the people I told them to contact. When the opportunity came to appeal I simply didn't have the spoons.)
So that's all sent out and maybe I can get my medications paid for instead of a combination of having family members go broke buying them out of the kindness of their hearts and using student loan money. (It's a living expense; it counts. I checked before I got the loan.)
But, food aid and medical aid both apparently require me to talk to someone on the phone. I got a very nice letter saying call this person on Monday through Friday between these hours. After realizing today was a Friday (for some reason I thought it was Saturday) I did call. Only to find out that the person I was to call would be busy for all but one of those hours. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
The very nice letter said "Please call me with the following information" by deadline. Otherwise benefits may be denied or cancelled or apocalypse or very bad things.
Now, if you're like me you're probably very interested in what the "following information" was. There was none. Nothing. Blank page. White space. No ink. Nothing. Nicolas Cage in National Treasure couldn't figure out what the following information was because there was nothing there.
So I called the person, with the following lack of information, during the one hour he'd be available today. Wasn't there. Left a voicemail.
Now the deadline gives me all of next week so hopefully I'll get in contact to this person, give them the lack of information that they want, and thereby prevent the apocalypse, but that still leaves a lingering question.
Who the fuck says, "Please call me with the following information," and then doesn't have any information follow? I mean, seriously? Who?
Other than The Department of Heath and Human Services, I mean. (That one was HHS not SSA. So says the letterhead.)
My thing on aid, seems to be rather controversial, but not in the post I just linked to, instead in the thread that eventually inspired me to write the post.
I think part of it is that I'm not entirely against a nanny state and I believe that compartmentalization has benefits* and I have a fairly positive view of human nature. If people get more aid than they need in one area, I trust that most of them will not sell it on the black market (there is currently a black market for government aid, no reason to assume that there wouldn't be under my proposed system) or spend it on things they neither want nor need just to be able to spend it all.
Likewise I assume that if the government did take care of the necessities (food, housing, clothing, medical care, education, fire, police, so forth) people would still get jobs. Part of this is that I believe that people want more than just what is necessary. Long ago there was a meeting of manufacturers and marketers where they realized that improvements had made it so they could no longer survive just selling what people needed, they instead needed to start selling things that people didn't need but did want, and in the absence of want they needed to create that want. They're all still around. And as John Oliver says, we cannot be beaten when it comes to consumption**.
If the idea is for everybody to be able to live with necessities, and have enough of a margin of error that they're not on the razor's edge of not living, then that still doesn't mean that the government is giving people everything they want, which means people still have an incentive to get a job, and capitalism can deal with wants rather than needs which is an area it seems much better suited for.
And I also believe that for a lot of people there is a desire to contribute, which means that even if they didn't need to they'd still want some kind of job.
But my idea of compartmentalized, "Here's your card, every month you get this much that can be used for food, this much for housing, this much for clothing, this much for..." which everyone gets got some serious pushback. Not because it would cost so damn much (which it would, that's the reason that I always mention the fact that I'm in favor of serious tax reform alongside it, new revenue would definitely be needed) but because people, or at least one person, it's kind of fuzzy at the moment, don't like the idea of funds that can only be used for designated thing.
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Ok, that was long. There are various other things. I tried to go to the credit union to get thing notarized earlier, but they had closed for two days on account of the blizzard. Before the blizzard I opened the gate that I use to keep the dog in the backyard and the (back half of the) driveway when he goes out. My hope was that friendly neighbor with plow would plow the snow into the back half of the driveway if he plowed the snow. First off, he didn't plow the snow (though since then he has helped in plowing out the snowbanks that city plows leave in the front of the driveway) but second and more importantly, the result was that the gate couldn't be closed again.
Since the blizzard every time I think that the snow has gotten low enough that with shoveling (and ice breaking, what stopped me last time was reaching the ice core of the snowbank) I might be able to close the gate... it snows again. Which means I can't close the gate, which means that there's nothing to keep the dog in the yard and back half of the driveway. The solution has been to watch him when he goes out and verbally stop him if he starts heading toward the road.
That has worked, though inefficiently and annoyingly, with two exceptions. Last night and today during the day. Last night he saw a car and ran out to chase it. Thankfully the car was parking on the street otherwise god knows if I'd have caught up with him. I got him back into the house while shouting apologies.
Today was worse. I think I've noted that my dog's breed is unknown for sure because he's a rescue and they don't come with pedigrees. If you look up Mountain Cur on Wikipedia you'll see a photo of a dog that looks just like mine and that's what we think he is.
You'll also see that they're bred to bark. Like almost any dog (or is it "any dog" without the "almost"?) they will fight to protect those they care about, but that's not what they're bred to do. They're bred to do two things. One is scare off dangers, which is done by barking at them, the other is participate in bear hunts.
Dogs do not participate in bear hunts by fighting the bear. That would be a good way to lose a dog in a hurry. Dogs participate in bear hunts by scaring the bear, and in so doing herding the bear. (There was an episode with Dragon being called on to do a similar thing to a boar in Jane and the Dragon.† I mostly bring this up because I happen to like Jane and the Dragon. The TV show, never read the books.) And how do you scare and thus herd a bear? By barking at it. Very loudly.
Attempts to use nurture to overcome nature and get him to bark less have thus far failed. He barks at strange noises, and considers opening and closing car doors strange, he barks at anyone too far away to smell (For fear they might be Cylons I said to Lonespark, to which she replied, "But aren't we all Cylons now?" Yes. Yes, we are.)
The good news is that that's all he does, bark. The bad news is that that's not much of a comfort when a strange dog runs after you barking his ass off. I imagine it's rather terrifying. And as I rushed out of the house after him today, thankfully not barefoot but in flip-flops totally ill suited to the cold and one of them broken enough that a certain amount of concentration should be devoted to making sure it doesn't fall apart (the right one, if it matters) I shouted to the young woman between attempts to call the dog back, "The good news is he doesn't bite. The bad news is I don't know if he'll ever stop following you." And I told her that if she stopped moving for a bit I could grab the dog and get him away from her.
She thanked me, which she honestly shouldn't have because it was my fuck up that let a loudly barking dog chase her down and harass her, and said that she's totally not a dog person. I don't remember the exact words she used, probably not "totally", but something that indicated that this was worse than if it had happened to an average person. This happened to someone who doesn't necessarily have a dog phobia (though she could for all I know) but at the very least a dog discomfort.
I have no idea how old she was. She was a student, not a college student. High school would be my guess based on when she was walking home. But that's all I have to base my guess on because I really, really suck at telling age. Someone asked me the other day how old Lonespark's children were (either my mother, my psychologist, or both) and I honestly have no idea. After spending a day with them. And previously I've shared a house with them for the night. I suck at telling age.
I'm like Mike from Stranger in a Strange Land when it comes to telling age.
"Patty," Jill put in, "he really does mean that he can't guess. He hasn't had much chance toExcept, you know, without the excuse of having spent most of my life on Mars.
learn to judge ages-you know how short a time he's been on Earth. And besides that, Mike
thinks of things in Martian years and Martian arithmetic. If it's time or figures, I keep track
of it for him."
So, young woman hopefully not traumatized. And the same goes for Lonespark's children. He was able to sniff one, but never the other, and so he never stopped barking and had to be put in his room, which is unfortunately also the bathroom which made things somewhat difficult when the children had to go before leaving. Also he tends to be afraid of people who are afraid of him, which really doesn't help at all.
(Because he barks as things he's afraid of.)
It would be much better if he were afraid of people who were not afraid of him because, mentally, they'd be much better equipped to weather the nonstop barking. (On the other hand, it does make sense. Someone who is afraid is much more likely to do something rash like attack the dog than someone who isn't afraid.)
-
The die is cast.
I've applied for Greece. First hurdle: Do they accept me? Second hurdle: if they accept me I have to make a down payment of $500. Third hurdle: Then I have to pay the remaining $3,500. Fourth hurdle: Then I have to pay airfare there and back.
If I can't make the money in time I'm pretty sure I lose that down payment. Can I make the money in time? I think so.
I've compared it to a bottle drive. You can make a lot in one push with a bottle drive, but you can't go out and do the same thing the next day. I think I can make a $4,000 push even though I don't think I could make enough to support myself. Because I think that after the push I will have dried up the market so much that there's not another $4,000 left in it.
-
Speaking of stuff, there was a last little bit of each part of the resin in my old containers. I decided to use it. Huge mistake. The stuff in the unopened new containers appears to be fine. (Though testing will tell.) But the stuff in the old containers was visibly off to begin with. Think of curds separating from whey and you'll have some idea, but worse. I tried to mix it back together, I thought I had success. It took a long damn time but I thought I had success.
Either I was wrong or it was so far gone that even remixed it wouldn't work. Some of it never solidified, some of it partially solidified. I'm still trying to figure out how I'm going to clean out my molds, which I definitely need to do.
-
The person who was picking on me, appears to have stopped. I don't know if the intervention of a teacher played a role. Teacher made it clear that she'd rather not intervene as we're all adults and should be able to sort things out ourselves but also that things had gotten to toxic to the point that she was considering changing the rules for how we do things, which would definitely be an intervention.
She never did change the rules.
I don't know what happened (or didn't happen) behind the scenes, but from my angle it looks like person has largely stopped being an ass, and the things that remain are so low key that I'm not sure if they're really her being an ass or they're just things that I'm inclined to interpret that way based on past experience of her being an ass.
My hope is that she hasn't just picked a new target to direct her assholicness at but has really stopped being an ass.
It was brought up to me after the whole thing calmed down that the teacher was the wrong person to speak to about it. (I only spoke to her because someone else brought up the possibility that maybe the student in question was doing it to someone else and since I wouldn't be there for that but maybe the teacher would, I should let the teacher know that this was something to watch out for.) There are other people and other means and a zero tolerance policy for bullying and whatnot that I apparently could have invoked like fire from the sky.
My ultimate decision on learning this was one of wait and see. If she keeps behaving herself then I see no benefit to make an official mess of things. If she reverts to past behavior then I'll go to the proper authorities and see what can be seen.
-
I'm probably going to make a whole post on it at some point, but the idea I bring up here is one that I think would be awesome and I think would never happen. The audience would be the overlap between people who like actual classics enough to catch reference to the style of good and bad translations alike and people who like Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and Xena: Warrior Princess. Not exactly the biggest audience ever.
Also, not yet developed idea, MST3K like silhouettes for each episode of both but instead of a hapless human and two robots, of a panel of classicists who actually know by heart the history/myth/both being butchered in the episode in question. Or maybe not.
-
I've noticed that often when I try to type "think" I type "thing" and that the reverse is true as well. I have no objections to typos (of which there are usually many) being pointed out in the comments, but until/unless that happens and I make a correction, if a sentence with think or thing in it is making no sense, try swapping it out for the other word.
-
I'm behind in all my classes and I think I just got the lowest grade on a test in years. Though it was a respectable passing grade I feel like someone I once knew who said, "I got a B," and then had to explain, after receiving congratulations, that that was a bad thing. Of course the grade I got was probably pretty good considering that I was trying so hard not to forget the signs (I mostly succeeded) that I completely overlooked the fact that deaf culture and history were going to be a not-negligible portion of the test too.
-
Did I mention that the Greece thing is with Harvard and they asked for a copy of my transcript which shows that last semester ended with three incompletes and a failure? Yeah, suddenly wondering if getting accepted in the first place might be a bigger question than whether or not I can raise the money.
-
I like Roman Holiday even though it's the kind of film I normally wouldn't. Even though I haven't seen all of it. (Missed the beginning and haven't been able to catch it since.) No one gets a happy ending, that's generally not the film for me. But it's also referenced in .hack//Sign so now I get the reference (not that not getting it was a big deal because it's pointed out to be a reference to Roman Holiday and you really have everything you need in the scene) and more than that it's the perfect illustration of why I want to go to Greece. It's the idea that having that one good day is worth it even if you have to return to your crappy life afterward. Because you have the one good day, and you have the memories, and you've got stuff and stuff and stuff.
Were I not completely aware of my duty to my family and my country, I would not have come tonight. *pause* Or indeed ever again.-
There were probably other things to throw in here.
-
* For example it is known that if there is a rent subsidy in an area the minimum rent usually rises to meet that subsidy, so it would seem like a very good idea to have any subsidy for rent cordoned off from other forms of aid otherwise the minimum rent might rise to a level that prevents people from getting enough of everything not-housing. Thus I see it as valuable to have housing aid be only able to be spent on housing, and non-housing aid only able to be spent on non-housing.
** John Oliver, from Terrifying Times, which I recommend you buy***:
Now, I don't understand economics. I don't fundamentally get how it works. I've lived for 30 years on this planet... two elsewhere, and I still don't understand how the system works. To me, economics is like the Dutch language-- I'm told it makes sense, but I seriously have my doubts.
But I want to understand economics. I feel like I have to.
So I bought this book recently which is designed to explain economics to someone who does not have the capacity to understand it. And I learnt a key lesson in it, and that is that any nation's economic strength is solely in the hands of its citizens. In your ability to consume.
Or if you want to be really great, in your ability to buy shit.
That is why America is the greatest economy on earth-- because you people cannot be beaten.
As a citizen of the world, let me tell you, it is intimidating. I have been to your malls. They are cathedrals to bullshit.
I was at a mall in Connecticut and I saw an item in a shop window which stopped me dead in my tracks.
And I mean that. I was moving, I saw this item and all of a sudden I wasn't moving anymore.
It was, and I promise you this is true, an inflatable barbecue.
*Audience laughs a lot*
You're right. *beat* We should take a moment together to let the gravity of that sink in-- an inflatable barbecue.
It was a full functioning barbecue with inflatable material around the outside of it so that you, like the man on the front of the box, could cook while swimming.
Is there any greater example of what it is to live in the freest nation on earth than that?*** As if ever anyone has bought something on my recommendation. I can see whether anyone bought something by clicking through my links. A few people have, or one person has a few times, and there's one universal truth. What is bought is never, ever, what I actually recommended. It would seem that someone, or someones, click my links, look at the thing I linked to, say, "I'm not going to buy that," and then found something they were going to buy while still in the same session thus earning me the
On the other hand, the fact that my most dedicated readers are not Americans might play a role too. I have a deal with Amazon, not Amazon Canada or Amazon UK.
† And I am somewhat pissed off that I can't post a link to it. How the hell is the series not out on DVD? With a total run-time of a little under ten hours it's a series that someone might actually be able to afford to buy unlike Hercules and Xena.
Wednesday, February 27, 2013
Mental Illness can be downright disturbing
It should come as no surprise to anyone reading that I am mentally ill. Depression, and ADHD I've been diagnosed with. Asperger's I'd argue isn't actually a mental illness but simply me occupying a different spot on a spectrum, a spectrum on which all human beings can be classed, than most people. Others occupying a similar position argue that it is a mental illness and long for a cure. There are some other things that might exist as well but in small enough amounts not to merit a diagnosis (then again that was the case with ADHD until the depression got out of its way.)
So I'm sort of "Mentally Ill Person Ahoy!"
And yet, at the same time, I can be just as freaked out by other mentally ill people as anyone else.
For example, today in one of my classes, while we were discussing sophists and rhetoric and a speech by a sophist in defense of Helen of Troy made just because he felt like making such a speech, the person next to me stood up and said that she had had enough and was leaving, she believed that it was clear that the teacher was making less than complementary references to her as a sort of undertow to her discussion A hidden meaning just below the surface, at first she was adamant on this point and began to pack up her stuff, the teacher repeated several times that she (the teacher) had been doing no such thing.
The student asked for reassurance multiple times, something like, "You're really not?" repeatedly. To which the teacher repeatedly said, "I'm not."
Then the student, having been calmed, sat down. Let me remind you, right next to me.
And I was disturbed for the rest of the class. After she left at the end of the class, still disturbed. A feeling somewhere in my gut of deep unease in a place that I used to call my stomach until I learned that that's not actually where one's stomach is. I don't think it went away until I was out of the building.
Was there any reason to believe that she was dangerous? No. In fact by demonstrating that she was (probably) mentally ill she placed herself in a category that I've always been told is less likely to do violence than the population at large.
I was none the less very disturbed.
As were other members of the class.
In fact I worry that if she thought she was being singled out beforehand people's reactions to her afterward might have confirmed that in her mind, because (however irrational such feelings may be) she was suddenly the scary person in the room.
I would have been more comfortable if she hadn't been talked down and had stormed off believing that the teacher was sending secret, and insulting, messages her way. I wasn't the only one. Is this uncharitable on my part? Absolutely. Were I a Christian there are any number of Bible verses you could slam me with to prove that I'm a horrible person for feeling that way. I'd hazard a guess that other religions have similar prohibitions against putting your comfort over another person's well being in your manner of viewing the world.
It was clear that she was in a world the rest of us didn't occupy hearing things, or at least interpreting things, the rest of us couldn't, and that break from what I'm going to hope was reality was downright disturbing.
And it is interactions such as these that perhaps color people's beliefs about mental illness. Not the statistics, not the reality of the situation, not the fact that she is presumably a normal person most of the time and this break from reality could likely have been prevented with appropriate care just as a hairline fracture can be prevented from becoming a much worse break in the bone if it's recognized and treated while still a hairline fracture. Not the reality, but the feeling in ones gut. The discomfort, the unease, the deep-felt belief that something very, very wrong just happened.
And that's assuming that people have any encounters with mental illness that they recognize as mental illness in the first place. Otherwise they're just bombarded with the news people saying that every heinous act or belief is "crazy" or "insane".
But as human beings I think we need to be able to rise above gut reactions or abuses of language. The girl sitting next to me in class disturbed me greatly, but that is no reason that I shouldn't wish her well and speak out in favor of her and all like her getting help. That is no reason I shouldn't vote in her best interest whenever it is in my power to do so.
Even though I hear terms for mental illness used in the news to describe everything from the ill advised to the downright evil that doesn't mean that I should ever take my eyes off the fact that the news stories in which these terms are used are almost (but not quite) always about this misdeeds of sane people. And, it must be added, doesn't mean that I shouldn't flat out reject any proposed solution that ignores the actual problem (sane people do bad things) and instead tries to shift the focus onto mental illness.
When someone has a break from reality, as the person next to me did today, it is downright disturbing and can result in an unpleasant visceral reaction. But that doesn't change the fact that the only real problem is that she's not getting the medical care she needs to not misinterpret ordinary classroom talk as coded attacks. It also doesn't change the fact that, if left untreated, she would almost certainly be able to make a better contribution to society than I would if left untreated.
My mental illnesses generally don't draw attention to themselves or me. Without treatment I become the invisible person, the one you're vaguely aware is there but don't remember much about. And that's assuming I'm able to show up in the first place. I don't really know the girl I was sitting next to, I pay attention to class in class and don't tend to make much small talk before or after so my classmates remain largely unknown to me, but my best guess is that even with the occasional bout of paranoia she's still able to accomplish more than me when not treated. I assume she's not treated now, but even if this semester has been her on good treatment, I still think that she'd do better than me in the absence of treatment for the both of us.
Similarly for the person who doesn't know anyone with a mental illness... well first off they're almost certainly wrong. They probably know multiple people with mental illnesses, they're just unaware that those people have them. But second, it's important for them to not let themselves be confused about where the problem lies when the sensationalist non-fact-checking thing that the news has become reports anything as crazy or insane or any other synonym for mental illness. It's important to remember that the vast majority of the time the problem is sane people misbehaving and react accordingly whenever someone suggests that the solution to the problem of sane people misbehaving is to restrict the freedoms or invade the privacy of the mentally ill.
So I'm sort of "Mentally Ill Person Ahoy!"
And yet, at the same time, I can be just as freaked out by other mentally ill people as anyone else.
For example, today in one of my classes, while we were discussing sophists and rhetoric and a speech by a sophist in defense of Helen of Troy made just because he felt like making such a speech, the person next to me stood up and said that she had had enough and was leaving, she believed that it was clear that the teacher was making less than complementary references to her as a sort of undertow to her discussion A hidden meaning just below the surface, at first she was adamant on this point and began to pack up her stuff, the teacher repeated several times that she (the teacher) had been doing no such thing.
The student asked for reassurance multiple times, something like, "You're really not?" repeatedly. To which the teacher repeatedly said, "I'm not."
Then the student, having been calmed, sat down. Let me remind you, right next to me.
And I was disturbed for the rest of the class. After she left at the end of the class, still disturbed. A feeling somewhere in my gut of deep unease in a place that I used to call my stomach until I learned that that's not actually where one's stomach is. I don't think it went away until I was out of the building.
Was there any reason to believe that she was dangerous? No. In fact by demonstrating that she was (probably) mentally ill she placed herself in a category that I've always been told is less likely to do violence than the population at large.
I was none the less very disturbed.
As were other members of the class.
In fact I worry that if she thought she was being singled out beforehand people's reactions to her afterward might have confirmed that in her mind, because (however irrational such feelings may be) she was suddenly the scary person in the room.
I would have been more comfortable if she hadn't been talked down and had stormed off believing that the teacher was sending secret, and insulting, messages her way. I wasn't the only one. Is this uncharitable on my part? Absolutely. Were I a Christian there are any number of Bible verses you could slam me with to prove that I'm a horrible person for feeling that way. I'd hazard a guess that other religions have similar prohibitions against putting your comfort over another person's well being in your manner of viewing the world.
It was clear that she was in a world the rest of us didn't occupy hearing things, or at least interpreting things, the rest of us couldn't, and that break from what I'm going to hope was reality was downright disturbing.
And it is interactions such as these that perhaps color people's beliefs about mental illness. Not the statistics, not the reality of the situation, not the fact that she is presumably a normal person most of the time and this break from reality could likely have been prevented with appropriate care just as a hairline fracture can be prevented from becoming a much worse break in the bone if it's recognized and treated while still a hairline fracture. Not the reality, but the feeling in ones gut. The discomfort, the unease, the deep-felt belief that something very, very wrong just happened.
And that's assuming that people have any encounters with mental illness that they recognize as mental illness in the first place. Otherwise they're just bombarded with the news people saying that every heinous act or belief is "crazy" or "insane".
But as human beings I think we need to be able to rise above gut reactions or abuses of language. The girl sitting next to me in class disturbed me greatly, but that is no reason that I shouldn't wish her well and speak out in favor of her and all like her getting help. That is no reason I shouldn't vote in her best interest whenever it is in my power to do so.
Even though I hear terms for mental illness used in the news to describe everything from the ill advised to the downright evil that doesn't mean that I should ever take my eyes off the fact that the news stories in which these terms are used are almost (but not quite) always about this misdeeds of sane people. And, it must be added, doesn't mean that I shouldn't flat out reject any proposed solution that ignores the actual problem (sane people do bad things) and instead tries to shift the focus onto mental illness.
When someone has a break from reality, as the person next to me did today, it is downright disturbing and can result in an unpleasant visceral reaction. But that doesn't change the fact that the only real problem is that she's not getting the medical care she needs to not misinterpret ordinary classroom talk as coded attacks. It also doesn't change the fact that, if left untreated, she would almost certainly be able to make a better contribution to society than I would if left untreated.
My mental illnesses generally don't draw attention to themselves or me. Without treatment I become the invisible person, the one you're vaguely aware is there but don't remember much about. And that's assuming I'm able to show up in the first place. I don't really know the girl I was sitting next to, I pay attention to class in class and don't tend to make much small talk before or after so my classmates remain largely unknown to me, but my best guess is that even with the occasional bout of paranoia she's still able to accomplish more than me when not treated. I assume she's not treated now, but even if this semester has been her on good treatment, I still think that she'd do better than me in the absence of treatment for the both of us.
Similarly for the person who doesn't know anyone with a mental illness... well first off they're almost certainly wrong. They probably know multiple people with mental illnesses, they're just unaware that those people have them. But second, it's important for them to not let themselves be confused about where the problem lies when the sensationalist non-fact-checking thing that the news has become reports anything as crazy or insane or any other synonym for mental illness. It's important to remember that the vast majority of the time the problem is sane people misbehaving and react accordingly whenever someone suggests that the solution to the problem of sane people misbehaving is to restrict the freedoms or invade the privacy of the mentally ill.
Monday, February 25, 2013
How I would do aid for necessities
Before we get to that, taxes (in the United States of America, I rarely comment on the politics of countries not my own.) If you take away exemptions and loopholes and tax havens and credits and the downright screwy way we treat capital gains one fact becomes apparent about income tax: Everybody pays the same.
When all of the exploits and such are taken away and you're just left with, "This is the income tax upon which all of that other stuff is based," the fact of the matter is that everyone, from someone who earns no money to whoever earned the most (excluding capital gains because it's taxed a different way) everyone pays the same rate.
The differences come in because X% of 0 is 0. Doesn't really matter how big X is so long as it's finite. (if X is infinity then break out the calculus.) If someone earns zero dollars in the top bracket then that zero dollars is taxed at the same rate as someone who did earn money. It's just regardless of the rate the person who earns zero dollars in that range won't have to pay anything at that rate X% of zero is always zero.
Thus, at it's most basic, before we get into all the junk thrown on top, how you're taxed never changes regardless of how much or little you make. This kind of thing has a lot going for it. For one thing it means you don't ever run into a situation where earning more money results in you keeping less. For another thing it means that you can instantly shut down any argument on, "How come they only pay [whatever] in income taxes," by pointing out that the person asking the question payed the exact same amount on that level of their income. The envy that the rich have for the poor with respect to taxes becomes absurd once one realizes that they actually pay the same rate. (Except for capital gains, and loopholes, and tax havens, and various other ways the rich are able to pay less than the poor in taxes.)
I bring this up because were it up to me basic aid (as in on necessities, not disaster relief and such) would be treated the exact same way. Everyone gets the same.
Everyone gets food-stamps (now they come on cards) enough to afford to keep fed. Everyone gets housing aid enough to give them adequate shelter (this includes heating), everyone gets access to medical care (probably via everyone getting on something like Medicare or Medicade.) Everyone gets access to education, so, so forth.
One thing that this does is it eliminates layers upon layers of bureaucracy that are currently used to determine who is bad of enough to get help. Everyone gets the same so there's no need to check to see if you're worthy. You just have the food aid added to your food card every month, the other aid added to the other cards, and get a, "I've got health insurance through the government" card and so forth.
It also eliminates all of the work (paperwork, hoops to jump through, so on) that people need to do to get aid.
But another thing that it does is it puts a serious dent in the argument from envy. Yes, the "undeserving poor" (a category that doesn't exist except in the minds of certain people) might be getting this stuff for free without having to work for it, but so too are you.
And it eliminates a problem that people who are on the edges face, which is that there are places where making a little bit more money will mean you no longer qualify for aid, which will end up leaving you worse off. So it's in your best interest to not make more money. Now I've never met someone who decided not to make more money on those grounds, but I have met someone who was seriously screwed over because he made two dollars too much (two fracking dollars) to be considered poor enough to get aid, which ended up leaving him poorer than if he just hadn't worked that year and thus qualified for aid. If the aid never goes away then you never have that problem.
If we give everyone enough to be able to live with the basic necessities then we simplify the process of figuring out who to give to (everyone gets it), we eliminate the thresholds where incentives become perverse (if you make more you'll be off aid and thus worse off), we at the very least dent the argument from envy, we make it easier for people who need help to get it (because it comes to them automatically rather than depending on them doing thing after thing after thing to fight for it), and we loose very little.
The problem is, of course, that it costs more. Consider food stamps alone, you'd have more than six times as many people on them. Now some of the cost of that increase can be taken away by removing all of the work to determine who needs them, but I very much doubt it would be enough to take away all of that extra cost. For fully funding it I think new revenue would be needed, which works fine for me because I think our tax code could use some serious reworking. We need more tax brackets and the top marginal tax rate needs to be a lot higher. Also taxing capital gains at a lower rate than the money people actually had to work for is absurd.
So the plan would involve higher taxes for some, but it would also mean that no one would ever have to fear being without the basic necessities because everyone, even the ones paying the higher taxes, would be given enough to take care of those by the government. Whether or not someone like Bill Gates would use his foodstamps, were he given them, is an interesting question. But the point is that by giving them to everyone you make sure that everyone who needs them gets them (something our current system doesn't accomplish) and you make sure that there's never a perverse incentive to make less money in order to stay on aid.
The same with giving everyone medical insurance, or everyone money to be spent on housing. The same with all necessities.
When all of the exploits and such are taken away and you're just left with, "This is the income tax upon which all of that other stuff is based," the fact of the matter is that everyone, from someone who earns no money to whoever earned the most (excluding capital gains because it's taxed a different way) everyone pays the same rate.
The differences come in because X% of 0 is 0. Doesn't really matter how big X is so long as it's finite. (if X is infinity then break out the calculus.) If someone earns zero dollars in the top bracket then that zero dollars is taxed at the same rate as someone who did earn money. It's just regardless of the rate the person who earns zero dollars in that range won't have to pay anything at that rate X% of zero is always zero.
Thus, at it's most basic, before we get into all the junk thrown on top, how you're taxed never changes regardless of how much or little you make. This kind of thing has a lot going for it. For one thing it means you don't ever run into a situation where earning more money results in you keeping less. For another thing it means that you can instantly shut down any argument on, "How come they only pay [whatever] in income taxes," by pointing out that the person asking the question payed the exact same amount on that level of their income. The envy that the rich have for the poor with respect to taxes becomes absurd once one realizes that they actually pay the same rate. (Except for capital gains, and loopholes, and tax havens, and various other ways the rich are able to pay less than the poor in taxes.)
I bring this up because were it up to me basic aid (as in on necessities, not disaster relief and such) would be treated the exact same way. Everyone gets the same.
Everyone gets food-stamps (now they come on cards) enough to afford to keep fed. Everyone gets housing aid enough to give them adequate shelter (this includes heating), everyone gets access to medical care (probably via everyone getting on something like Medicare or Medicade.) Everyone gets access to education, so, so forth.
One thing that this does is it eliminates layers upon layers of bureaucracy that are currently used to determine who is bad of enough to get help. Everyone gets the same so there's no need to check to see if you're worthy. You just have the food aid added to your food card every month, the other aid added to the other cards, and get a, "I've got health insurance through the government" card and so forth.
It also eliminates all of the work (paperwork, hoops to jump through, so on) that people need to do to get aid.
But another thing that it does is it puts a serious dent in the argument from envy. Yes, the "undeserving poor" (a category that doesn't exist except in the minds of certain people) might be getting this stuff for free without having to work for it, but so too are you.
And it eliminates a problem that people who are on the edges face, which is that there are places where making a little bit more money will mean you no longer qualify for aid, which will end up leaving you worse off. So it's in your best interest to not make more money. Now I've never met someone who decided not to make more money on those grounds, but I have met someone who was seriously screwed over because he made two dollars too much (two fracking dollars) to be considered poor enough to get aid, which ended up leaving him poorer than if he just hadn't worked that year and thus qualified for aid. If the aid never goes away then you never have that problem.
If we give everyone enough to be able to live with the basic necessities then we simplify the process of figuring out who to give to (everyone gets it), we eliminate the thresholds where incentives become perverse (if you make more you'll be off aid and thus worse off), we at the very least dent the argument from envy, we make it easier for people who need help to get it (because it comes to them automatically rather than depending on them doing thing after thing after thing to fight for it), and we loose very little.
The problem is, of course, that it costs more. Consider food stamps alone, you'd have more than six times as many people on them. Now some of the cost of that increase can be taken away by removing all of the work to determine who needs them, but I very much doubt it would be enough to take away all of that extra cost. For fully funding it I think new revenue would be needed, which works fine for me because I think our tax code could use some serious reworking. We need more tax brackets and the top marginal tax rate needs to be a lot higher. Also taxing capital gains at a lower rate than the money people actually had to work for is absurd.
So the plan would involve higher taxes for some, but it would also mean that no one would ever have to fear being without the basic necessities because everyone, even the ones paying the higher taxes, would be given enough to take care of those by the government. Whether or not someone like Bill Gates would use his foodstamps, were he given them, is an interesting question. But the point is that by giving them to everyone you make sure that everyone who needs them gets them (something our current system doesn't accomplish) and you make sure that there's never a perverse incentive to make less money in order to stay on aid.
The same with giving everyone medical insurance, or everyone money to be spent on housing. The same with all necessities.
Saturday, February 23, 2013
I do, in fact, still exist.
So all of the recent comments have been spam. Don't go looking for them, what the spamfilter didn't catch I manually threw in the spamtrap.
The reason is kind of obvious, I have not been posting lately. This is my vacation week, supposed to be spent catching up on classes where I was behind, preparing for a test in ASL on Monday, populating the blog with posts that I've been meaning to do, working on some other projects, and stuff.
Did any of that get done? No.
Unless "And stuff" includes "Hang out with Lonespark and family," in which case that went great. But it was one day out of ten so far (will be 11 in total, not all of them are technically vacation days, but it matters little to me if I don't have school because I don't have classes on that day of the week or if I don't have school because of vacation.)
But more notable, blogwise at least, than Lonespark and family is the total lack of progress in all conceivable areas on the days that I wasn't with Lonespark. If I don't post I don't get comments and the spam takes over. Which is why Dennis Markuze (an old fashioned spammer who does his work manually instead of with spambots) is the most recent human being to post a comment, and the only human being to say anything on the blog since we stopped talking about The Core (link to the movie, not discussion) on the first Vanishing on 7th Street thread (link to beginning of discussion of The Core in that thread).
Clearly I need some content, but I also need to catch up in school, and I also need to get out of school offline projects done, or at least started. I need to study. I need to do so many things.
Also I need to make money if I want to try to get to Greece which I really want to try and I don't think it's out of reach because it's a one time thing.
Think of it like a bottle drive, you can make a lot of money in one day, but if you think, "I could do this every day and make a living of it," then you're overlooking a critical factor: You already took the people's bottles. There aren't any left to take the next day.
So there are things that could no way support me in making a living that none the less might be able to get me enough money to go to Greece because it doesn't matter if in the process of making the money I destroy any chance of making money the same way in the near or distant future since I only need the money once.
Time spent attempting such things is time spent not making content for the blog. (Though as a reminder, if anyone reading this should be rich -unlikely in the extreme, I know- there is a donate button.)
So the question I'm left with is what to do. Next week things probably go back to normal except I'm further behind in school and ... um ... poetry:
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
-
No, my school problems will probably not lead to the rise of the Antichrist, but "things fall apart" is probably a good description of any given period in my life.
But, yeah, still here. Even if it's been a week since I posted anything.
Talk amoungst yourselves. I'd give you a topic but I don't have one. ("Rhode Island is neither a road nor an island," perhaps?)
Actually, on the subject or Rhode Island, this is Sarah Vowell talking about one of its founders:
I like this clip and tend to play it whenever the opportunity arises.
I don't like her voice, extended exposure can actually be painful for me, and yet I believe I could listen to her speak all day with no complaints. What she has to say is enough worth listening to that any discomfort her voice causes me is negligible in comparison.
She's on the Daily Show there to advertise for her book, "The Wordy Shipmates," which is available in hardcover, paperback, kindle, audio book on CD, and audible audiobook. If I knew what I were talking about I'd probably know what an audible audiobook is. Apparently I can't link directly to it but if you follow any of the other links it should be a click away.
The reason is kind of obvious, I have not been posting lately. This is my vacation week, supposed to be spent catching up on classes where I was behind, preparing for a test in ASL on Monday, populating the blog with posts that I've been meaning to do, working on some other projects, and stuff.
Did any of that get done? No.
Unless "And stuff" includes "Hang out with Lonespark and family," in which case that went great. But it was one day out of ten so far (will be 11 in total, not all of them are technically vacation days, but it matters little to me if I don't have school because I don't have classes on that day of the week or if I don't have school because of vacation.)
But more notable, blogwise at least, than Lonespark and family is the total lack of progress in all conceivable areas on the days that I wasn't with Lonespark. If I don't post I don't get comments and the spam takes over. Which is why Dennis Markuze (an old fashioned spammer who does his work manually instead of with spambots) is the most recent human being to post a comment, and the only human being to say anything on the blog since we stopped talking about The Core (link to the movie, not discussion) on the first Vanishing on 7th Street thread (link to beginning of discussion of The Core in that thread).
Clearly I need some content, but I also need to catch up in school, and I also need to get out of school offline projects done, or at least started. I need to study. I need to do so many things.
Also I need to make money if I want to try to get to Greece which I really want to try and I don't think it's out of reach because it's a one time thing.
Think of it like a bottle drive, you can make a lot of money in one day, but if you think, "I could do this every day and make a living of it," then you're overlooking a critical factor: You already took the people's bottles. There aren't any left to take the next day.
So there are things that could no way support me in making a living that none the less might be able to get me enough money to go to Greece because it doesn't matter if in the process of making the money I destroy any chance of making money the same way in the near or distant future since I only need the money once.
Time spent attempting such things is time spent not making content for the blog. (Though as a reminder, if anyone reading this should be rich -unlikely in the extreme, I know- there is a donate button.)
So the question I'm left with is what to do. Next week things probably go back to normal except I'm further behind in school and ... um ... poetry:
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
-
No, my school problems will probably not lead to the rise of the Antichrist, but "things fall apart" is probably a good description of any given period in my life.
But, yeah, still here. Even if it's been a week since I posted anything.
Talk amoungst yourselves. I'd give you a topic but I don't have one. ("Rhode Island is neither a road nor an island," perhaps?)
Actually, on the subject or Rhode Island, this is Sarah Vowell talking about one of its founders:
I like this clip and tend to play it whenever the opportunity arises.
I don't like her voice, extended exposure can actually be painful for me, and yet I believe I could listen to her speak all day with no complaints. What she has to say is enough worth listening to that any discomfort her voice causes me is negligible in comparison.
She's on the Daily Show there to advertise for her book, "The Wordy Shipmates," which is available in hardcover, paperback, kindle, audio book on CD, and audible audiobook. If I knew what I were talking about I'd probably know what an audible audiobook is. Apparently I can't link directly to it but if you follow any of the other links it should be a click away.
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