I spent some time yesterday discussing the Hilary email situation with my younger sister. It started because she posted a bit on FaceBook about how you couldn't complain about her emails if you hadn't gotten all upset over Bush and Cheney (actually the RNC) deleting millions of emails back in 2007.
Here's the thing. I didn't hear about that. Which seems weird since that was when I read a lot of political blogs and news since work was really slow and there wasn't anything else for me to do. And I find it even harder to believe that the MSM didn't find that and run with it, given that by that point both houses of Congress were controlled by Democrats.
But in a lot of respects that's neither here nor there. Say those allegations are completely true, and then stipulate that there was classified info in the stuff that was on the RNC server. Whether people got outraged about it then shouldn't dictate whether they can get upset about now. If you don't like something when it's done by the other side, if you think them doing it is criminal, you can't just say well they got away with it, so we should too, because then so should any one who ever does that in the future, and you are saying that you will have no right to be upset whenever it happens in the future. Likewise, you can't say it's OK for your political team to have some sort of power, or be allowed to act some way if you know you'd hate it if any other team was in the majority in the future and did the same things.
Sunday, August 23, 2015
Saturday, August 15, 2015
Baby Names - some un-PC thoughts
Over the years, I've semi-regularly stopped over to read a blog called "Baby's named a bad bad thing". If you find some of the names we as a society are burdening some of our children with ridiculous, here is the place to go to read comments and snark from other like-minded souls.
We all want our children to be unique and special, but there are limits. Naming the poor thing something that no one can spell or pronounce is not "unique" and definitely not "special". It more likely borders on child abuse.
We have the proliferation of "y"s inplace of every other vowel when said vowel has a generic ə sound. Madison becomes Madysyn, Katherine Kathyryn, etc., etc., etc. You have the strange syllabic emphasis as in the (hopefully apocraphyl) tale of the woman who named her daughter "Female", pronounced to rhyme with tamale. You have the "African" names, which probably have never been seen by any African tribe or nation. You have children saddled with names like "Moon Unit" and "Pilot Inspektor".
You get the idea.
Today's OMG WTF were they thinking moment comes from I don't know where, because the new's outlet doesn't specify a state. The tale itself is horrific - an illegal immigrant nephew kills his aunt, his cousin, and her husband in brutal fashion, so bad that the crime scene folks say it's about the worst they'd ever seen.
But the sister of the husband, who has the sensible, handsome name of Michael is called this: Derquiasha. The mind boggles. I don't know her. She is probably a lovely woman. But I have absolutely no idea what her mother was thinking when she put that name down on the birth certificate. I won't say I have no idea how to pronounce it, I do, but it's probably wrong.
Years ago when I worked for H&R Block, one of the other preparers had a regular customer who, every year, had his electronic filing rejected because his daughter's name wasn't spelled the way Social Security thought it was spelled. This happened even when they got a new card for her from SS and copied the name exactly. It took at least two tries to file his return every. single. year.
One year the preparer asked him about the name. He said that his wife, who had walked out on them years ago never to be heard from again, had been "going through her African history phase" when the daughter was born. The tax preparer asked if the daughter liked the name and he admitted that she didn't. The final decision was that he would take her to the court house after the return came in and let her choose a new, legal name. I don't know but I bet it didn't have a "q" or an apostrophe in it.
We all want our children to be unique and special, but there are limits. Naming the poor thing something that no one can spell or pronounce is not "unique" and definitely not "special". It more likely borders on child abuse.
We have the proliferation of "y"s inplace of every other vowel when said vowel has a generic ə sound. Madison becomes Madysyn, Katherine Kathyryn, etc., etc., etc. You have the strange syllabic emphasis as in the (hopefully apocraphyl) tale of the woman who named her daughter "Female", pronounced to rhyme with tamale. You have the "African" names, which probably have never been seen by any African tribe or nation. You have children saddled with names like "Moon Unit" and "Pilot Inspektor".
You get the idea.
Today's OMG WTF were they thinking moment comes from I don't know where, because the new's outlet doesn't specify a state. The tale itself is horrific - an illegal immigrant nephew kills his aunt, his cousin, and her husband in brutal fashion, so bad that the crime scene folks say it's about the worst they'd ever seen.
But the sister of the husband, who has the sensible, handsome name of Michael is called this: Derquiasha. The mind boggles. I don't know her. She is probably a lovely woman. But I have absolutely no idea what her mother was thinking when she put that name down on the birth certificate. I won't say I have no idea how to pronounce it, I do, but it's probably wrong.
Years ago when I worked for H&R Block, one of the other preparers had a regular customer who, every year, had his electronic filing rejected because his daughter's name wasn't spelled the way Social Security thought it was spelled. This happened even when they got a new card for her from SS and copied the name exactly. It took at least two tries to file his return every. single. year.
One year the preparer asked him about the name. He said that his wife, who had walked out on them years ago never to be heard from again, had been "going through her African history phase" when the daughter was born. The tax preparer asked if the daughter liked the name and he admitted that she didn't. The final decision was that he would take her to the court house after the return came in and let her choose a new, legal name. I don't know but I bet it didn't have a "q" or an apostrophe in it.
It's amazing what you can learn from an X-ray
I had a visit to ortho last weekend because my knees still hurt from the five point landing I had when I tripped back two months ago. They took x-rays to make sure that I hadn't chipped anything (I hadn't) and while looking at the pictures, the PA commented that they showed that I'd had Osgood-Schlatter disease.
Since no one has ever mentioned that to me, I asked what it was. Apparently if your bones don't grow in sync with the soft tissue, the pull on the bones causes some very minor remodelling which shows on the films even much later in life.
As soon as he started describing it, I said, yes, indeed, I had had something like that. Starting when I was about 11 or 12, I had awful knee pain, especially after activity. Not that I was very good at it anyway, but I'd had to give up ballet lessons, because after one one hour class I wouldn't be able to straighten my leg for about three weeks. I saw the ortho at St. Joe's (who also looked at the UofM football team's knees) and he poked and prodded, maybe there was an X-ray, and told us not to worry, it was just growing pains, and he described it exactly that way, as the bones growing first and the connective tissue having to catch up. From then on, I always knew when I was having a growth spurt, even in my 20s, and during my last 1/4 inch just before my 31st birthday.
My knees have enough problems now, thankfully that's no longer one I have to worry about.
Since no one has ever mentioned that to me, I asked what it was. Apparently if your bones don't grow in sync with the soft tissue, the pull on the bones causes some very minor remodelling which shows on the films even much later in life.
As soon as he started describing it, I said, yes, indeed, I had had something like that. Starting when I was about 11 or 12, I had awful knee pain, especially after activity. Not that I was very good at it anyway, but I'd had to give up ballet lessons, because after one one hour class I wouldn't be able to straighten my leg for about three weeks. I saw the ortho at St. Joe's (who also looked at the UofM football team's knees) and he poked and prodded, maybe there was an X-ray, and told us not to worry, it was just growing pains, and he described it exactly that way, as the bones growing first and the connective tissue having to catch up. From then on, I always knew when I was having a growth spurt, even in my 20s, and during my last 1/4 inch just before my 31st birthday.
My knees have enough problems now, thankfully that's no longer one I have to worry about.
Saturday, August 08, 2015
The political silly season
is starting earlier and earlier each election cycle. I guess the hope is that we'll all be so sick of it by the time the actual election rolls around that no one will turn out except for those bought and/or dead votes.
Since we don't have the cable hooked up to the TV and I didn't remember anyway, I missed the GOP debate on Thursday, but I've read a lot about it since. It would seem that The Donald did what he does best, which is be supremely politically incorrect as well as extremely boorish. I'll have to find it and watch the debate to be sure, but from what I've read and seen about him so far, this is by no means hard to believe.
So boorish? It won't get my vote. But the un-PC is a good thing. Hopefully the rest of the candidates will realize that that's what fires up Trump's base (heck, I'd say most of the conservative base at this point) and start refusing to bow to the leftist media and the noisemakers on Twitter and other social media platforms. The noisemakers are just that, noise; their actual numbers are small and the more they attack dearly held positions on the right, the more folks get fired up to do something, anything about it. And that would include getting out and voting, if they are only given a candidate they can believe won't turn around the day after the election and throw his/her hat in with the business-as-usual crowd in DC.
Since we don't have the cable hooked up to the TV and I didn't remember anyway, I missed the GOP debate on Thursday, but I've read a lot about it since. It would seem that The Donald did what he does best, which is be supremely politically incorrect as well as extremely boorish. I'll have to find it and watch the debate to be sure, but from what I've read and seen about him so far, this is by no means hard to believe.
So boorish? It won't get my vote. But the un-PC is a good thing. Hopefully the rest of the candidates will realize that that's what fires up Trump's base (heck, I'd say most of the conservative base at this point) and start refusing to bow to the leftist media and the noisemakers on Twitter and other social media platforms. The noisemakers are just that, noise; their actual numbers are small and the more they attack dearly held positions on the right, the more folks get fired up to do something, anything about it. And that would include getting out and voting, if they are only given a candidate they can believe won't turn around the day after the election and throw his/her hat in with the business-as-usual crowd in DC.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)