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Fearful
Participant[quote=SK in CV]Furthermore, the most recent reports indicate that he was also correct in the reporting that the attacks were a spontaneous response to the video.
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/10/real-story-behind-benghazi-attacks%5B/quote%5D
Mother Jones? MOTHER JONES?!? You are citing THAT rag? Please, read it for entertainment, but for God’s sake, don’t quote it as anything resembling factual.Participant[quote=CA renter]Too many landlords want their tenants to pay for all of the maintenance and upkeep of their properties. That’s not the tenants’ responsibility.[/quote]Wonderful words. You, the landlord, have got to accept that there is such a thing as normal wear and tear, and that it is not the tenant’s responsibility to return the dwelling to you in pristine condition.
You also have to accept that the dwelling you are renting to them is not in pristine condition in the first place. Even brand new houses have wear and tear in them.
The fact that they are documenting preexisting wear and tear is excellent.
[quote=CA renter]Don’t many landlords go through the home and make detailed lists in order to keep the tenant’s money? How is that any different?[/quote]
The tenant documenting the condition is preserving their legal right to wear and tear. The landlord keeping the tenant’s money is stealing.I had exactly that experience with Lisa Zhang of Prudential Scripps Ranch. I ended up getting dinged for stuff that was absolutely normal wear and tear. I was too busy to fight it. Classic landlord nickel and diming.
Participant[quote=squat250]evidently it is also customary to go to a body of water and turn your pockets inside out.[/quote]
Shana Tova to you. I think my circumcision makes me honorary Jewish.I thought you were supposed to cast pebbles or bread in the water, to throw your sins away.
Participant[quote=bobby][quote=spdrun]Android. Unlike iOS, it doesn’t come crippled out of the box, and you don’t have some prudish f*cks in Palo Alto telling you what apps you’re allowed to install on your own damn device.
Steve Jobs = inventor of computing as a prison, glad he’s gone. (to quote Stallman)[/quote]
pretty sure Apple is in cupertino….[/quote]
Pretty sure there are plenty of Apple folks in Palo Alto, too, but we get your point.I was an early Apple adopter, and over time I came to hate how constrictive – restrictive – opaque the Apple mindset is.
I despise iTunes. I can’t stand how everything is closed off, locked up, sealed away. I buy my music from Amazon and I know I have an MP3 that I can do whatever I want with.
I inherited a super duper iMac. Because we don’t have the password, it has been crippled for over a year and a half. My kid took it to a Genius, who couldn’t figure out how to restore the OS. Technicians can’t figure it out. It’s insane.
But Apple is obviously onto something, and that’s that a very large percentage of the computer using public wants, needs for it to be deeply simplified, and I can’t argue with that.
By the way, our fellow accused of hatemongering didn’t say he is glad Steve Jobs is dead; he said he’s glad he’s gone. There’s a big difference. If you want to see the essence of all that is wrong with Steve Jobs, look in the wayback machine at NeXT computer. Only a loon like Jobs would hand you a chunk of obsidian and tell you to go do stuff with it.
Participant[quote=briansd1]A mild case of OCD. I’m a perfectionist and want everything clean. [/quote]
From a disease (as opposed to ickiness) perspective, as long as you don’t stick your fingers in your nose or eyes afterward, you should be fine. Your mouth is pretty well protected.The bigger disease risk is from inhaling sneeze and cough aerosols.
Carry a pocket size hand sanitizer; it’s better for your hands and more effective than hand washing anyway.
ParticipantWe put in a fiberglass pool.
If you are comfortable with a fixed range of shapes, and smaller sizes than what you can get with plaster (look carefully at the dimensions in the catalog; ours has a maximum depth of about 5′), the speed of installation is a huge benefit.
But think really carefully before doing it. The $40K installation cost is one thing; the maintenance cost is another. Think $250 a month for electricity, water, chemicals, labor.
And the time period in which the kids really get a lot out of it is narrow. Maybe five years, from 7 to 12.
Participant[quote=squat250]I like hugging or at least a shoulder pat.[/quote]
I give cashiers deep tongue kisses.Participant[quote=CA renter]We’re not in disagreement at all (see my previous post on this thread). Just wanted to note that some adult men do have to be circumcised, and that it’s (supposedly) an even more painful and traumatic surgery at a later age.[/quote]
Understood, no need to qualify the statements. At a later age most surgeries become more difficult, certainly much more so in late adulthood. I think the penis develops through puberty, so maybe there is an argument for doing it before puberty. But immediately after birth? That’s just weird!It’s as though we are trying to make the baby boy as God intended him, and it must be done as soon as possible. Jewish people believe this.
Or we feel it ought to be done for moral purity, and it’s much easier to talk dazed parents into it the first day after birth than if they get the kid home and get used to him intact.
The surgery could become utterly ridiculous if attempted in adulthood, and that still wouldn’t justify doing it to unconsenting babies. That might justify doing a careful analysis of the penis at, say, one year old to determine if he is a candidate for the issues that would necessitate later circumcision.
Most women would be happier wearing pointy shoes if their little toes were gone. Few would attempt the surgery as an adult, but none would suggest that little toes should be routinely amputated from baby girls.
Participant[quote=CA renter]
Pretty sure he wasn’t happy about the fact that he wasn’t circumcised as a baby. He’d probably suggest to everyone that they should have their boys circumcised as infants.Just had to offer another perspective.[/quote]
Understood. Some adult men wish they had been circumcised as babies. That is unfortunate but does not offset the ones who had been cut and wish they hadn’t. You would have to have all adult men wishing they had been cut as babies for that argument to hold. After all, in medicine, “first, do no harm”.There is really no good analogy. The appendix does no one any good; you find no one glad they still have theirs.
If we ritually cut some portion of female genitals, almost regardless of the health benefits of doing so, the feminists would have rightly put a stop to it long ago.
Here is a rough contra analogy: Women who suffer radical mastectomies can get insurance to pay for their reconstructive breast surgeries. They have a right to an intact body, even though at that point the breast is completely cosmetic, and the surgery is dangerous, relative to leaving the chest alone. Similarly, insurance will pay for certain vaginoplasties, even though such vaginas will be used entirely for psychological benefit. Why aren’t we similarly respecting male rights to having intact bodies?
Participant[quote=earlyretirement]And honestly, if a girl didn’t want to be with some guy because he was/wasn’t circumcised, I certainly wouldn’t want them with my kid. I doubt the vast majority of the guys out there will have ANY issues with girls.[/quote]
I’d like to point out that even this hypothetical argument ignores the fundamental ethical question. Should parents irreversibly alter their baby’s body because they think he will be more sexually attractive two decades later? If that is a valid argument, then there is absolutely a valid argument for female circumcision.When the boy reaches adulthood, he can have whatever he wants cut off. If an African woman wants her labia removed, fine. But neither should have it done to them when they are babies and cannot consent to the procedure.
Participant[quote=Navydoc]Your Data for 0.0 heterosexual transmission? Because here’s mine:
[/quote]
Those stats actually support my “0.0” number. Given that heterosexuals outnumber homosexuals by 10:1, you have to divide the heterosexual numbers by 10 to even get close to a transmission rate.Further, those stats do not isolate the F-M transmission rate, which you talked about separately in an earlier post.
Circumcised or not, the F-M transmission rate is low. But even so, if I had an HIV+ wife, I would be an idiot to trust my circumcision to protect me! And if my partner has an unknown health history, I again would be an idiot to trust my circumcision to protect me.
Furthermore, from a public health perspective, where are the dollars best spent? Cutting up babies, or disseminating condoms fifteen years later?
Want to protect against HPV? The vaccines are far more effective.
From an ethical perspective, doing an irreversible surgery on a baby that may never be even at risk … this needs to be a choice the person makes at or near adulthood.
There almost is, paradoxically, a misogynistic aspect to protecting the boys. Reducing the incidence of disease in boys ignores the more likely recipient. A boy could be bisexual, get HIV from receiving anal sex, then go around infecting girls. He might even argue to them that he isn’t likely to have HIV because he was circumcised!
The money would be far better spent training girls to demand their partners use condoms.
It really is patronizing to argue that Africans should be circumcised because they are too poor, dumb, or amoral to prevent HIV transmission any other way.
In the final analysis, the ethical issues can only be defeated by turning to tradition and religion. Case in point: The Wall Street Journal regularly publishes Jewish-written editorials on the topic. This really is a close cousin to female genital mutilation, and there are compelling tradition and religion arguments that support that lovely surgery.
Participant[quote=Navydoc]Believe it or not, I suspect the pendulum on this is about to swing back in favor of circumcision. Why? I think it has a lot to do with the STD prevention benefits, which are not inconsequential. You do not have to be gay to contract HIV by “sticking it” in an HIV+ person. Ask most of Africa. There is a strong movement from WHO to encourage circumcision in countries with very high heterosexual HIV transmission. In circumcised males the female-to-male transmission is extremely low, even if the female has a relatively high viral load. I took care of a sero-discordant couple last year who conceived the old fashioned way, and he remains negative even after several years of unprotected intercourse. Marital life with condoms is not too appealing to a lot of people.
If you think this isn’t a factor consider this: that Hep B series your kid needed before they went to school is done in anticipation of adolescent sexual activity.[/quote]
Heterosexual HIV transmission in USA = 0.0
Circumcising baby boys in the USA to protect them against HIV is ridiculous.
As far as vaccinating is concerned, I got my kids every possible vaccination. Yes, including HPV and Hep B.
And no, I didn’t cut the tip of my boy’s dick off.
I was circumcised and (1) it didn’t protect me from HPV (sorry, ladies, had warts) (2) never had sex with an HIV+ woman (or man) so being cut didn’t do me one bit of good.Translating epidemiology from Africa to here is silly. Want to prevent AIDS, get people to use condoms and not share needles.
Don’t circumcise all baby boys without their consent to enable the few marriages between a HIV+ woman and HIV- man. In that case, he can get snipped on his own time.
All these arguments beg the question: Do parents have the right to cut a baby’s body long before the baby grows up and decides what choices to make? That baby that doctors are mutilating will not be sexually active for fifteen years.
If you cut the guy’s entire dick off, STD transmission is reduced to zero.
ParticipantThe medical benefits are modest at best, and are no justification for violating the baby’s right to an intact body.
Reduced STDs? The increased safety is negligible in comparison to the safety provided by condoms. HPV? You can and should get your boys HPV vaccinated. HIV? Do you seriously want to tell your kid that you cut the tip of his dick off to help protect him should he decide to stick it in HIV+ people? Why yes, son, just in case you turned out to be gay.
The real motivations for circumcising boys boil down to conformism and religion. Both of those arguments are equally well made for female genital mutilation, which we happily abhor.
This is male genital mutilation, and it is sickening.
ParticipantA slightly radical solution follows. This assumes your furnace, or your ducts to your bedrooms, are in the attic.
parts:
Fantech 12″ duct fan
12-12-12 wye
12″ motorized (zone) damper
12″ insulated flexible duct
Wall thermostat
Fan control relay
25′ extension cord; cut off female end.
thermostat wire as needed
Duct tapeSplice the wye into the 12″ air duct coming from the furnace and before the rooms.
Connect the duct fan to the wye using flexible duct.
Suspend the duct fan so it is not resting on ceiling joists.
Connect the damper to the fan using flexible duct.
Mount the damper so the outlet is free and not pointing at any blown-in insulation.
Wire the fan control relay to the fan and the 24v from the thermostat to the motorized damper.
Wire the extension cord to the fan control relay.
Plug the extension cord in the attic outlet.
Run thermostat wire down to wall location in primary bedroom.
Install thermostat on wall location in primary bedroom.The result is a “whole house” fan that automatically switches on to exhaust room air up and out through the existing air ducts. It is quiet, not because the fan is quiet, but because it is insulated by the fiberglass surrounding the ducts. It uses the existing ceiling penetrations, so no new holes have to be cut.
It is powerful enough to generate a healthy breeze through an open window.
You can scale down the project to a 10″ or 8″ fan. Evaluate the CFM ratings of the fans to judge whether these smaller solutions will work for you.
The Fantech duct fans are robust, and can be speed controlled using an ordinary wall dimmer. So if the 12″ duct fan is more powerful than necessary, and is noisier than desired, you can reduce the speed (and noise) to suit.
The one downside to this approach is the fan sucks dusty room air inside the ventilation ducts, and some of the room air dust collects inside the ducts. However, I haven’t found this to be much of an issue. Perhaps the reason is the registers are located up high in the room so the dust settles out before being sucked up the duct.
Like any “whole house” fan, it requires that your attic be sufficiently ventilated to let the house air out. I haven’t yet encountered an attic that wasn’t.
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