why comparing Dred Scott to marriage equality is incredibly wrong:
This brings him back to Dred Scott. He writes, “Stripped of its shiny rhetorical gloss, the majority’s argument is that the Due Process Clause gives same-sex couples a fundamental right to marry because it will be good for them and for society. If I were a legislator, I would certainly consider that view as a matter of social policy. But as a judge, I find the majority’s position indefensible as a matter of constitutional law.”
This is, to borrow Noonan’s word, an appalling argument, and not only because the results—Dred Scott constrains liberty and Obergefell expands it—are so disparate. Nor is the problem just that Roberts so crudely misrepresents Kennedy’s argument. Rather, Roberts is most wrong when it comes to which side in the marriage debate has inherited the Dred Scott legacy. Kennedy’s opinion, far from being the poisoned product of the Taney majority, is the honorable heir of the Dred Scott dissents.
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I am Team Air Conditioning forever, and like to think that also keeping my house at about 63 degrees in the dead of winter makes it basically an environmental wash (DO NOT DISABUSE ME OF THIS, PLEASE):
The New York Times agrees: “It seems absurd, if not unconscionable.” But the case against AC has always been more a moral judgment than a scientific one. Summer cooling is no more damaging to the climate than the heating that we do in winter. In fact, it’s substantially less so, since the United States burns more fuel on radiators than it does on air conditioners. According to the most recent stats available from the federal government (which cover 2010), the average American household puts 40.4 million British thermal units into home heating, and just 9.3 million BTUs into home cooling. As I’ve pointed out before, this explains why the long-term shift in population from our coldest, Northern states into the hot and humid South has in sum reduced the amount of fossil fuel we burn to keep our houses at a comfortable temperature. Simply put: It’s more efficient to air-condition homes in Florida than it is to warm the ones in Minnesota.
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Nicole Cliffe, medical professional, on drinking while breastfeeding:
Now I go by that rule, too, but it took me a while to get there. The better judgment of new mothers, like that of teens, is often mistrusted. We’re given rules and guidelines and told what’s best because the stakes are high, and better safe than sorry, and you never know. But somewhere around my kid’s fourth or fifth month, I had a good three- or four-hour window between feedings, so if timed correctly (or if I hid out in the car and nursed while everyone else got us a table), I could easily have a midday beer. There was always strategy involved, always math. It’s all anecdotal, but this — from Toast editor Nicole Cliffe — is something you won’t read on BabyCenter: “The math on drinking while nursing makes it clear that you are best off rapidly shotgunning a drink WHILE nursing but they never SAY that.”
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awww (my daughter had a HORRIBLE transition to preschool, she wasn’t “bad,” ever, she was just sad and anxious and withdrawn, and my heart is with the wee children who need help):
The next step is to identify each student’s challenges—transitioning from recess to class, keeping his hands to himself, sitting with the group—and tackle them one at a time. For example, a child might act out because he felt that too many people were “looking at him in the circle.” The solution? “He might come up with the idea of sitting in the back of the room and listening,” D’Aran says. The teachers and the student would come up with a plan to slowly get him more involved.
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I am OBSESSED with Lew Smedes’ My God and I: A Spiritual Memoir, having discovered Smedes as a result of Mallory telling me to read him in Gabbin’ About God, and I CANNOT put it down, so if you know me IRL you have probably already had me call you to talk AT you about it, but I just want to share this really lovely passage about prayer, which is even lovelier when you know he was known for being GREAT at praying:
He is a warm and gentle delight! I also loved this:
“In the early seventies Henry Stob, one of my college heroes, wanted me to succeed him as the Professor of Christian Ethics at Calvin Theological Seminary. In those days, only the General Synod of the church could decide who was and who was not qualified to teach his future ministers. A vote had to be taken. I was one of three candidates. But certain delegates of the Synod had disturbing concerns about me. I had once admitted that I harbored a hope that everyone would go to heaven, a hope that made me suspect for having it.”
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This guy wants better safety measures at Peggy’s Cove but like the signs they have are already PRETTY TERRIFYING pic.twitter.com/D0PFV4JfwM
— Anne Thériault (@anne_theriault) July 8, 2015
Tags: feminism, link roundup, the internet
People who think they have a hot-line to god irritate me. Don’t know why. Maybe the sheer arrogance of their humility.
I was wondering if I was being a jerk by being turned off by that last part about him praying for God to take my troubles away. I wouldn’t want to be churlish to someone who was sincere in his desire to help, but dude, unless you know I’m a person of faith, praying doesn’t make me feel better, it makes YOU feel better. I don’t need you to bring in the metaphysical, I need you here on Earth where my problems and I are.
That irritated me as well. I don’t want people to pray for me – like you say, it’s just making them feel better, not me. It only pisses me off.
I guess my approach to praying for (or with) someone who is dying– which, as I have currently have a friend who is dying, I am practicing a lot– is to pray that my friend may feel as comfortable as possible, and may also recognize how loved and treasured she is. I also pray that I might not miss any opportunities to help in practical terms with either of those things. (Like, agitating at the nurse’s station if she needs her bed adjusted, or figuring out that when she’s having a bad pain day, singing hymns that she likes is better than conversation.)
But I *met* her at church, and I have her express permission to pray for / with her. It would be presumptuous, IMO, to just assume that someone wants a prayer buddy (or that, if they do, they’d be comfortable with me in that role).
I find myself drawn to the blessings and general well-wishing of Tibetan Buddhim; “may you be at peace” and “may you be free from suffering” seem like the nicest thoughts to send to other people.
I love how Hitchens phrased it in his memoir and debates: “I suppose that one reason I have always detested religion is its sly tendency to insinuate the idea that the universe is designed with ‘you’ in mind or, even worse, that there is a divine plan into which one fits whether one knows it or not. This kind of modesty is too arrogant for me.”
I wonder if the same anti-AC people have also cracked jokes about people dying in the UK/France “just because of a little heat.” HOW MUCH YOU WANNA BET THAT THEY HAVE.
They probably have. I’ve been through heat waves in the UK, including this last one (and I didn’t have much of a choice about where I could be, so I was stuck indoors away from windows and breeze), and they’re really not a joke at all. Why is it so difficult to understand that places set up for a particular climate could have so many problems when there are sudden radical temperature shifts?
c’mon, Atlanta, it’s just an inch of snow, do you see the traffic in Boston grinding to a halt with an inch of snow?
You still do. Boston is silly that way.
Or Pakistan! That heat wave from a couple weeks ago caused a heartbreaking amount of deaths.
How does one become known for being great at praying? (Not snarky – totally sincere question, just in case it wasn’t clear!)
well……from my experience being surrounded by people who prioritize prayer, it’s like Lew Scott says in that excerpt, “if I meet you in the parking lot, and you tell me your troubles, chances are that I will put my arm around you and pray that God will take your troubles away.”
It always amazes me how much I appreciate hearing, “do you mind if we pray about that?” when sharing a concern or a trouble with a friend, and how much friends, family, or that stranger in the parking lot who has decided to pour out their troubles to you, can appreciate it as well. It’s risky to ask, and it shows, both “you mean enough to me to risk looking like a complete idiot,” and “your worry matters, your issue matters, it’s not too small and inconsequential that it’s not worth praying about, and it’s not too big that we can’t approach it, and cut it down to size in some way.”
Obviously your mileage may vary, and people who use “I’ll pray for you,” as a judgey condemnation are HORRIBLE, and ahem. Yes. I’ve found that just being willing to bring prayer into everyday circumstances somehow attracts that reputation as “a person who prays,” even if you didn’t even mean for that to happen. 😛
I’m an atheist, but when there’s nothing tangible someone can do (or they’ve already done it), having someone offer to pray for me does feel good–it means they care about me.
(I haven’t always been an atheist, though, so that might affect my opinions.)
Yeah — I’m not an atheist, but neither am I convinced that someone else’s prayer is going to do a lot of good to change the situation (like mine aren’t sufficient, if I choose to pray). However, I would never refuse that offer, because I know it’s meaningful to them. I would, however, get uncomfortable if they decided to pray aloud right there and then (usually with an arm around my shoulders), because that brings up too many bad associations with zealous evangelicals from my youth. I have a strong aversion to every appearance of religious zeal.
I don’t how one becomes *known* for it, but I think the people who are great at praying are the ones who are great at deep listening, who pay attention to what others are saying and pray out of a genuine desire for the other’s good, and not just what the person praying thinks the other *ought* to want or need. I hate being prayed for when the person praying is asking for something I never mentioned, or completely misunderstands what my pain is about. But when someone’s prayer makes it clear that I’ve been heard, and that the person joins me in my own prayer, or even better, makes clearer to me what my prayer is, I remember that for a long time. It’s pretty rare.
(also some of it is just being good at putting words together, which Smedes was, too. But it can’t be just that)
Right now I’m reading a book called ‘When God Talks Back,’ written by a psychologist who spent a lot of time with members of a charismatic church to find out what exactly they were experiencing during prayer. She argues that this kind of prayer is a skill, a very particular type of meditation and listening. It’s making me feel a lot less snarky about holy rollers in general.
ADDING THAT TO MY LIST PRONTO. A book on understanding charismatic prayer, from a psychological perspective? Yes and please and thank you very much. 🙂 (been trying to unpack the ol’ childhood recently and that sounds helpful.)
Wait. When people say “I’ll pray for you”, something that has literally never ever happened to me or anyone I know, do they actually start doing so right there? Out loud? I assumed that they’d go home and add your name to their usual prayers, unless they were really praying AT you (showing off their piety or being like “please Jesus help this lost lamb stop being gay”).
It honestly depends on the person and their denomination and what they’re used to. Some people will pray for you right there (the charismatic Christians in my background would be more prone to this,) but it’s definitely more rare.
Usually it’s the “adding to some list or shooting up a prayer when they think of you” type dealio. When the in-person one is done well though, it’s about 500x more meaningful, in my opinion.
Growing up, I assumed that all Christians, like the ones I knew, would indeed just add you to their usual prayers to be done in private or at church. Then I learned from my agnostic boyfriend, who grew up in a much more rural part of the state, that he had in fact had Christians ask, “Can I pray for you to find God,” and *right then and there* start praying aloud that he would be saved from his heathen ways.
Also, as ginkgotree says, when I tell people online or via text “I’ll pray for you,” I usually do it then and there so I don’t forget.
I have some questions, but I want to make it clear first that I really mean no disrespect at all; I just don’t know what prayer is like and have always wondered these things. What do you do when you pray? Like, I picture clasping your hands together, probably closing your eyes, but do you *have* to do something physical to start praying? Do you always say it out loud? Is the idea that you only have a direct conduit to God when you are praying, or is He always listening?
Protestant evangelical here–you can bow your head/close your eyes, which sometimes helps you focus, but no–it’s more like thinking good thoughts for someone, except those thoughts are directed to God.
I appreciate this response a lot. I’m agnostic, but when someone I know is going through a tough time and there is nothing tangible I can do to help, I often say that I will “think good thoughts” for them. I somehow feel like putting those good thoughts out into the universe can’t hurt.
You definitely do not always say it out loud! Except for communal prayers (at church or around the dinner table), all of my prayers are silent. But I know the ratio of silent to spoken prayers varies. As far as always doing something physical, I’m pretty sure there are different theological schools on this. I thiiiiink some people say you should *always* do something physical. I try to do that as well (clasp hands and close eyes), mostly because I feel like it’s respectful–it’s sort of a way of saying “Okay, I’m setting everything else aside, this is time for God.” Oh, and we Catholics end prayers by making the sign of the cross, so you can always tell who the Catholics are at mixed dinners by seeing who touches their forehead, heart/sternum area, left shoulder, right shoulder after the communal prayer.
When I pray in the morning/at night I kneel beside my bed with my hands in my lap and my head bowed and sometimes pray out loud, sometimes silently. During the day (over lunch at work, for example) I just hold still and close my eyes and pray silently. I start and finish in the same way always, beginning by addressing God, and ending by asking for those blessings in Jesus’s name. I also try to take time to be silent after a prayer, to receive insight/be respectful (I’m not going to ask for something and suddenly go do something, I would feel ungrateful)
I prefer not to pray out loud in front of people because I tend to stumble over the words, but I will say the blessing over the meal at a family dinner, but generally don’t volunteer to offer prayers in church.
Also (intensedebate cuts off my comments after a certain length), there are definitely moments of less formal prayer–for example, I picked up the habit from my Mom of saying a quick “God, please help those people” after seeing an accident when driving. Obviously I can’t do any of the physical prayer things while driving a car, but I don’t think God disqualifies your prayer because you’re not in a certain position. And finally, to answer your last question, I believe God is always listening, and “prayer” is at its broadest a word for any time when you’re talking directly to Him. Of course, I am just one person, so I’m sure there are a lot of different answers to your questions! I definitely don’t speak for all Christians.
Thanks for your answers, everyone! Religion is such a sensitive and deeply personal topic, I’m usually afraid to ask questions in case I sound impertinent. It sounds like prayer is a good way to step outside of yourself and take time to reflect.
The Toast is one of my favorite places to talk about religion. It’s so cool to hear all the different perspectives.
Unless someone has asked me to pray with them, I pray silently.
I pray on the bus a lot. I do close my eyes, because distractions. I visualize the person I’m praying for, surrounded by a cloud of light, feeling strengthened and supported, or gaining the clarity and sense of direction they crave, or getting insight into what might help them navigate the difficulty they’re having. And I pray, too, that if there is a way I can be useful to this person who is struggling, that God will bring it to my attention. I pray a lot to become a better and more alert friend and neighbor.
When I pray over food, I give thanks for the food and for the people who grew / prepared it, and ask to be more mindful of people who are hungry.
My mom is really forgetful so she made this cork board decorated with saint and funeral cards and a picture of the Blessed Mother (Catholic, obv) and writes people’s names on tiny pieces of paper and pins them to the board. Anyone who asks her to pray for them (or who she wants to pray for) gets a little tag on the board. There’s a lot of ways to do it.
Haha, I grew up in a family of preachers, so every gathering ended with prayer. I don’t do that much in my life outside of church, but I pray for people in their presence all the time in my chaplaincy work. I don’t offer to do it (for the reasons you cite, and because people feel obligated to say yes when you offer to pray for them), but when requested I do, and people request it a lot.
Plus there’s prayer out loud in church all the time, of course, which is more often how someone gets to be known as “good” at praying.
Yeah, I think a lot of it comes down to actually doing it. There are people who I know when they say “I’m praying for you,” I know, without a doubt, they are.
My husband is especially good about this–he never tells people he’ll pray for them, he just DOES IT, right then and there. If they’re talking in person or on the phone he’ll say a prayer for them immediately; if someone texts him or emails him a prayer request he’ll write them back with a prayer. He’s even written prayers out in Facebook comments.
Part of it can be straight-up performative, i.e. your eloquence and assuredness as you go about it. (And there’s a lot of humor and jokes around this side: the biggest pet peeve a lot of people have around prayer is the overuse of the word “just.” Not even kidding.) But at a deeper level, it’s very much about listening and personal connection. Praying for another person should, ideally, show that you have listened and paid attention to them when they shared some piece of themselves with you, and it’s also a kind of quiet promise that you’re going to pick up a bit of the worry and care that they’ve been laboring under: that you will keep thinking about them and appealing to God on their behalf. It makes people feel cared for and less alone. It also makes the vulnerability more mutual. Somebody might’ve just shared something deeply personal with you, and you are now going to bare a bit of your soul to them as you pray.
On a sneaky level, it is also a way of giving advice or words of wisdom that might sound annoying in normal conversation. This can be good (you can get away with saying some really sappy things when praying and it’s so much less awkward) or suuuuuper manipulative.
If you want to learn to pray out loud effectively, listen to people who people who do it well and let the Spirit lead you. Also, don’t listen to people who use the word ‘just’ a lot in their prayers, because ugh.
As for private prayer, I don’t know, I am crap at it. I have all of Phyllis Tickle’s the Divine Hours and you think I can have a darn private prayer life? Nah. I fall asleep trying to pray at night. It’s terrible.
Thank you, everyone! This is really interesting and helpful. I appreciate it.
I wouldn’t call myself great at praying, but I have had people whom I don’t know very well (at conferences) ask me to pray with them, and I have had people who don’t usually pray ask me to pray with them. What I think people are seeing is that I have a pretty robust empathy reflex when someone is in trouble or struggling, whether I know them or not, combined with a tendency to hyper-focus on the immediate (usually emotional) need of the person in front of me. It’s as if everything else in my conscious brain fades into the background.
Also factors: I have slightly better than average verbal facility, but recognize that there are some things words can’t accomplish as well as sighs / tears / presence.
My mom is a chaplain who gets called when someone has died via accident or violence. Some of what I do seems more clearly learned (e.g., how to be comfortable with, and supportive in, silence). But if there’s such a thing as being genetically predisposed to empathy, I’d guess I am? I remember thinking, when I was young, that what she did seemed impossibly hard, and it turns out it’s not– my In Case of Emergency brain can actually handle some things that my regular brain can’t.
To me, being good at praying is remembering to do it every morning and night, especially at night, before I fall asleep.
The Literary map book is awesome!
i spend untold hours in my teens drawing maps for the fantasy novels i read. a Literary Atlas is 100% relevant to my interests.
“Why comparing Dred Scott to marriage equality is incredibly wrong” = Just see previous sentence, JESUS CHRIST.
World, look at your life look at your choices, look at your UNFATHOMABLY BAD METAPHORS.
These are probably the same people who think that abortion is slavery and birth control is the REAL war on women, so I’m not sure there’s any amount of logic in the world that can make them reconsider.
I think comparing a decision to Dred Scott is the actual legal equivalent of Godwin’s Law.
I’m so confused by Calvinists. Isn’t the total point of having an awesome wonderful afterlife to make everyone want to be good enough to get there, and the point of repentance to help you do so?
No, the whole point of having an awesomely wonderful afterlife is that some people won’t get to go there, and that makes it easier to put up with their bullshit when you’re alive.
If the point of religion is rewarding good behavior, then sure, that’s the total point. For me, though, the total point of Christianity is that forgiveness and the assurance that God will “catch” us after we die enables a life here and now that is more completely engaged with creation, with other human beings, and with justice. Repentance is recognizing where we’re missing the mark, so to speak, and attempting to bring the self and community back in line with what God asks of us. At least that’s my (slightly heretical, since I’m of the opinion nobody’s predestined for hell) Calvinist opinion.
The Bible has a TON more to say about how we are to live in the here and now than it does about the afterlife.
The best church service I’ve ever been to was Easter at a Catholic (Jesuit) church where the homily was pretty much that idea. The priest said that the whole point of salvation through Jesus is that we don’t have to worry about the afterlife – God’s got that covered. So that leaves us free to devote our lives to others while we’re here. I almost converted on the spot.
I remember someone saying something like this in a mandatory high school religion class, they were asked why they were Christian or something and they said, “because I want to go to heaven” and I remember thinking, that’s kind of sad, like saying to God I will love you for this candy bar (unless they meant that they wanted to go to heaven because of God but I don’t think that was the case). God is supposed to be worth loving and knowing in himself, and heaven is about chilling with him forever and that’s what is good about it. The great part of heaven is supposed to be just God and him being and you being separately but also together forevs. Which is possibly why the Paradiso is so damn boring *dodges tomatoes* It’s really hard to explain something when it’s essence is being with God in a way which we haven’t experienced.
To be fair, they may just want to avoid the whole eternal torment and damnation thing that is Option B.
The whole “believe in/worship me or you’ll be punished for all eternity after you die” thing honestly always struck me as needlessly heavy on the stick end of the carrot-stick continuum, which is actually why I’m not a Christian anymore (I was raised Catholic, for clarity). Their image of god has some serious vanity and anger management issues, imo, and not even in the fun Greek “the gods are all dicks just like us” way. I just don’t feel like I’d even be comfortable in heaven’s 24/7/365 god-time if he’s gonna act like that.
The problem that it appears that Calvin TS actually had with Scott is that his hope for heaven is somewhat in conflict with their belief in predestination. I can hope that everyone goes to heaven, but as a professor at a Calvinist school, I can’t really let that hope bleed into my academic coursework.
This is one thing I really like about mahayana Buddhism: the belief that eventually everyone will become enlightened, and the fact that practitioners are supposed to be motivated by the wish to save all beings and help them all become enlightened. It’d be like if Christians said, well, I could go to heaven, but instead I’m going to keep coming back to earth until everyone is able to go to heaven. All about the compassion.
I mean, if religion is invented for the purposes of social control, sure! But assuming there is a spiritual world, why would it be any less prone to arbitrary cruelty than the more immediately-perceptible material world?
:-/
For a long time, a key belief of many (not all) Calvinists was that God had predestined some people to go to heaven and lots of people to go to hell. I guess it’s way of keeping God in control of everything in the face of evil in the world, but it comes at the cost of Jesus’ atonement being for all humanity and rather turns God into a toxic monster.
Being a Methodist and believing in freewill myself, I agree with John Wesley in saying I think that belief makes God worse than the devil. I know that makes theodicy a lot more complicated. I personally hope that all people will be changed when the die and that the evil will be taken out of them because I believe in a loving God. I also wish we would recognize that hell is often a place create for ourselves and each other in this life rather than just a threat in the next.
For a non-cranky version of Calvinist belief about the afterlife, see the end of Marilynne Robinson’s Lila (and thanks to the Toastie who recommended I read it, because I needed it!).
While I’m certainly not anti-AC, I think a direct comparison between winter heating and AC is a little disingenuous. Not cooling your house during 30* degree heat is uncomfortable, but not heating your house when it’s -30* can KILL you. Of course more people heat their homes, they literally have to, so of course more energy gets spent on heating. A/C is optional and expensive, if it was as necessary as heating I bet the environmentmental impact would be similar.
Whether humans have any business living in places where the weather is actively lethal for months at a time is another debate entirely.
People die of heat, too. In fact, the weather is actively lethal for months at a time almost everywhere. Sometimes it makes me wonder why we even exist.
I had literally never thought about how impractical permanent settlements are. Maybe we should return to a migratory lifestyle?
Yes! My informal plan is to semi-retire early and become a state parks snowbird. I’d follow the weather and migrate from park to park with my tiny, well-insulated house.
I don’t think all the humans are going to fit in Hawaii, though.
We sure can dream the impossible dream though.
We have just enough space here for all the Toast commenters, but that’s about it so SHH don’t tell the others
yes! I also wish we built more in ways that minimize heat. Thick walls and cross-breezes always make me feel way more comfortable than a/c and that abrupt shift between inside/outside. It makes me a little sick whenever I visit places like Houston where they up the temperature transition to an extreme (although now they have tunnels, so maybe you never have to go outside).
I live in Houston and keep a sweater with me at all times, even when it’s 98 degrees out. Grocery stores and restaurants are the coldest places in July.
I spent a year in China, sort of central on the north-south axis, in buildings with thick concrete walls. It was completely, hopelessly miserable in the winter, which was mostly in the 30s and 40s Fahrenheit. In the summertime it got really really really hot, so hot I stopped checking the temperature out of despair, and I understood the reasoning behind that construction design. That was still the worst winter I’ve had. I don’t know what design you could use that would be actually *good* in both those seasons.
It sounds like the concrete was the problem. Concrete is cheap but depending on how it was mixed it can be very bad for insulation purposes.
In hot climates, thick plaster walls, stone, or something light like thatch or bamboo are great. In cold climates, brick or wood + insulation (or sod, but hardly anyone does that) are great. Materials make a big difference. For both climates — ugh, I don’t know, maybe well mixed and insulated quality concrete, but probably wood or bricks with well designed cross-breeze paths is best.
I think all the families of the people who die during the 40 (100+ Fahrenheit) degree heatwaves we have here in Texas are going to vehemently disagree with your “heat is uncomfortable, but won’t kill you” stance.
Yeah, I hear about deaths during heat waves every summer, but I’m not sure I’ve ever read about someone freezing to death inside their house. I think people tend to panic more during winter because cold is actually painful, whereas heat seems to creep up on you?
That might be because no one lives in a winter climate without heating, but plenty of people live in summer climates with no AC. If electricity or fireplaces didn’t exist, people WOULD freeze to death inside their houses when it gets cold enough that blankets and body heat isn’t enough.
That makes sense. And for the record, I am mostly team Tropical Heat In My Apartment in January, although since moving to DC I’ve become an AC convert.
and there tend to be laws around not shutting off heat, and subsidies for heating bills, but not so much for AC. A landlord has to maintain a minimum winter temperature but there’s no point where they’re obligated to pay for an AC unit (maybe that’s different in some hot places?).
though last winter when there was a propane shortage, I remember some pretty awful stories about people dying from trying to heat their houses with some other means. freezing to death might be pretty extreme but being so cold & broke you decide an indoor fire is your best option…
I believe in Texas landlords are required to provide AC – and if it breaks, there’s a timeframe in which they have to have it fixed or risk some sort of legal trouble. I’m no lawyer, so could be wrong on that, but I think it’s the case.
Usually, state and local laws require that landlords keep their apartments in habitable condition– what’s “habitable” of course depends on the typical weather in your part of the country, and whether the heat is potentially life-threatening.
I once had to take up a complaint with my landlord for refusing to fix the heat in my apartment during a truly terrifying winter storm– and even though I knew that he was legally obligated to fix it, it was like pulling teeth trying to get it done. We did not have air conditioning; I assume if I had asked him to provide or maintain AC he would have told me to go fuck myself.
the worst, ugh, I have to assume “died from heat/cold” means “died from shitty landlord” at least half the time :/
But people die from heat all the time, unfortunately. I’m sitting here in my nicely a/c’d home in Phoenix and we have heat deaths every summer, mostly people who don’t have homes, but also seniors and others who can’t afford their a/c bills or can’t get to cooling centers like libraries (which are unfortunately and unfairly closed certain days of the week). And this summer marks 20 years since Chicago’s heat wave which killed over 700 people: http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/July-2…
Holy cow, I don’t think I ever realised that heat wave was only three days. That’s horrifying.
Also, I can remember a heat inversion kind of like the one they’re talking about when I lived in Chicago, in the late seventies or early eighties, and even though I’m pretty sure the temperature didn’t get into three digits, it was still pretty brutal. It was so humid that when we went downtown the tops of the tallest skyscrapers were hidden by the water vapor trapped in the air. Of course, our neighborhood was nice enough that we could open windows and put box fans in them to move the air through the house. It would have been pretty bad if we had to keep the windows shut for fear of crime.
Yep, was just about to post a link to the Wikipedia article on that. It mentions that some of the death toll was due to bureaucratic inertia; the city had cooling centers set up, but didn’t announce an emergency until the last day of the heat wave. (That may be in the Chicago magazine article as well, but it’s a longer read, and I was distracted by the dots representing deaths popping up on the map as you scroll down.)
Something that people who ask “well, what did they do back in the day when there was a heat wave?” fail to take into account is that more people took care of their elderly parents at home, rather than those parents living by themselves; that accounts for a lot of the deaths, as well.
serious question: couldn’t they go to the lobby area of a hospital (big hospitals have lobbies where family and friends can wait), or to a catholic church which should be open at all times, or the mall, and just sit there?
(Not asking to blame; asking in a “I like to figure out survival scenarios for myself in all sorts of hypothetical conditions” way)
From one person who ponders disasters to another: it would definitely depend. For example, lots of austensibly public places will ticket you for loitering, so you have to be pretty clear about if you’d be welcome in that space beforehand. So one could concievably go to a public library all day, and in fact in my city many people do, however a hospital lobby might be a bad place to select, because they are probably pretty invested in keep the lobby space clear of people who do not have business there. Also, many catholic churches are open at particular times, but not around the clock; it would certainly depend on the church. The one nearest my house is open for services and on Wednesdays, from what I have observed, but not other times.
But (the big but) to get to any of these places you have to have access to transportation and general mobility. That’s probably the big limiting factor, since getting anywhere in the heat without a car if you are already compromised is very dangerous.
There might be other parts of the scenario that I am not thinking of, but that’s my understanding of why those might not be adoptable strategies in the event of a heat wave.
Also, hyperthermia is one of those tricky things that can sneak up on you, so it’s conceivable that people would begin to overheat without even realizing it, which has certainly happened to me, and then already be in danger by the time they would begin to take steps to get to a cool area. It’s very difficult to cool someone down who has overheated and it can also be something that happens without too much warning. http://www.nih.gov/news/health/jun2012/nia-27.htm
Part of the problem is that we no longer design new homes to fit the weather of the places we live. People didn’t have AC in their homes until within the last 100 years or so and managed to survive! Remember when all the houses used to look remarkably different when you visited a different weather region? Yeah, we’re not doing that so much anymore.
I read a great piece on this the other day: http://www.mnn.com/your-home/remodeling-design/st…
This is big in Edmonton right now, where I live. It gets VERY cold (like -40C and F with wind chill) and all the condos downtown and stamped out windows rather than full walls of windows (curtain windows. I’ve been reading some development blogs and I’ve learned some terms. I think. Correct me if I’m using it wrong). But then everybody complains that Edmonton condos are horrible looking and we want full glass ones like Vancouver. It doesn’t make sense! Its environmentally irresponsible to build condos out of poorly insulating materials when you live in the most Northern Canadian capital city!
it bugs the CRAP out of me that recent homes in Florida tend to be concrete brick rectangles with poorly placed windows (or not intelligently sized), no verandas or overhangs, and odd layouts that discourage cross-breezes or blocking off certain rooms.
1) the houses are boring
2) what the hell are you doing not incorporating shade into the design, because you’re just making the a/c work even harder as the sun comes through your giant windows?
(also, while typing, I clicked the link and HA HA they brought up Florida houses first thing)
yes, this is the thing, maybe cooling is more efficient than heating, but when we’re building houses in Florida using an architectural template from New England, we’re going to need to put a lot more cooling into them. not to mention the ever-larger average square footage, tree removal, lots of heat-trapping pavement, aaagh.
Hopefully that’s coming back, I live in northern Canada and one of the houses going up in a new subdivision is supposed to be an ultra cold weather house that doesn’t require heating, as body heat/electronics should generate enough heat to keep it warm for most of the winter. It’s pretty amazing! Of course, we’re in the middle of a summer heat wave right now and I can’t imagine how uncomfortable that house would be at the moment.
The problem now being climate change… you can design your house for one climate but in 10 or 20 years maybe it doesn’t work so well anymore. So perhaps more modular housing is the way to go?
We can all agree that retail stores that pump the AC and also keep their doors open are THE WORST
I used to work for a commercial real estate company owning multiple retail malls. It’s not the retail stores. It’s the landlord. The stores have no control over the AC. They have to call the landlord to complain about temperatures. The landlord tells them whatever they want to hear, then does nothing. Because the landlord sets the temps to balance the movement of the sun for the season. That store with east-facing windows will be too hot in the morning, but will be too cold by afternoon. The retail workers open doors to get some relief. It’s their only option.
The Starbucks I used to work at has the thermostat right by the front door, next to an alcove with huge windows. There are also ovens and industrial espresso machines nearby. If it’s comfortable downstairs during the summer, people are upstairs with sweaters and blankets.
This is a weird thing to be saying when over 2,000 people died in heat waves in India in the last month or so:
http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/01/asia/india-heat-wav…
Not cooling your house in 40C heat can kill you too. It happens here in the states.
Okay! Everyone jump out of my ass now! I get it, heat fucking kills people. I live in place with both -50C winters and +40C summers and have only heard relentless stories about people freezing to death because of shitty landlords! I figured I would have heard about heat stroke deaths if they were a thing because I hear about hypothermia deaths all the time! There are also heating laws but not cooling laws! Sorry I was wrong, I’m not trying to be a smug shit, I just didn’t know! I am also on a greyhound bus and only heard about this now! Ok? 49 castigating notifications is a lot, you guys!
internet malfunction! the strange temporality of the internet (whereby you may get a few more of those as people react before having read all the way down). Hope the rest of your greyhound ride goes well and there is a nice cold glass of something good waiting for you at the other end.
cheers cheers.
The literary maps book has A Wrinkle in Time AND it has Watership Down?!?!?!
I DIE, TOASTS. I DIE.
Edit: this was supposed to nest nicely. Now it just looks like I’m ladysplaining into the void.
Not cooling your house can also lead to heatstroke, which is lethal as well. That’s why in the southern united states there are fan drives, specifically to help people who might not have AC in their home or might not be able to afford to run it. Granted it won’t be a huge problem until the temperature hits about 40, but it does that for about a month straight where I am most years.
Agreed! And I’ve recently developed asthma which seems to be made worse by heat/humidity (I can’t tell if it’s just one or the other–yey East Coast summers).
I have heard that back before the days of A/C, companies based in Houston paid expats (mostly British) who came there to work hardship rates. It was just that horrible during the summer.
Our A/C went out one evening in the middle of August and we barely made it through the night in the house.
Yeah, heat is much more dangerous than people give it credit for. I think people die a little slower in the heat, but it’s just as awful, and people with any kind of medical situation that makes them more sensitive (common things, like diabetes!) are really in harm’s way. And that’s not even getting to the issue of pets, who often lack the ability to adapt as well to heat as humans.
When we had the derecho in the DC area a few years back, it was right in the middle of some dangerous heat. My husband and I were really, REALLY lucky – as soon as we realized the power wasn’t coming back on in our airless apartment, we decamped to a hotel the next county over until electricity returned. Lots of people were just stuck, and they were evacuating senior housing left and right to keep people from dying.
especially dangerous in humid areas and places with urban heat island effect – if your living space can’t cool off at night, it can fuck with your sleep cycle and daily body temperature flux to the point of a bringing on a medical crisis. Apparently there was a strong correlation in the Chicago heat wave 20 years ago between deaths and black vs. light-colored roofs (and of course the poorer neighborhoods get those cheap tar roofs and fewer shade trees, etc). basically a lot of factors that tend to go together – old age, chronic illness, poverty all tend to leave people with crummier housing, less access to AC’d places, etc., and correlate to those medical conditions that can kill you in a heat wave. bad news all around.
I live in the Canadian Prairies, and I will take six straight weeks of 40 below any time over six days of +30C. After the third day without AC my place doesn’t cool down at night and it’s impossible to get a decent night’s sleep until it does. People who already have problems thermoregulating like the elderly are even more miserable and at active risk.
Yeah, my feeling is that I can always put on more clothes, get a fire going (since I am blessed with a fireplace insert), and huddle under blankets. There’s sweet fuck all I can do about the heat and humidity in the summer, and there’s nothing that makes it go away.
As a person who grew up in the southern US and went to an elementary school that had no A/C in the 80s, I can attest to medical necessity of it. We started school in August and kids were always throwing up or passing out and having to go home.
I went to year-round schools in the south, and whenever the AC went out during summer sessions we were immediately sent home so the school system wouldn’t be responsible for heatstroke.
There was a derecho that left a significant part of VA without power several summers ago, in the middle of a nasty (for us) heat wave. Several elderly folks did, in fact, die, and emergency cooling stations were set up with generators and fans and whatnot to keep people from getting sick.
My dad has been staunchly anti-air conditioning my entire life – we once drove through Death Valley in August without using it, while he spouted polemics about the moral superiority of driving in a car in 122 degree heat – but my mother has started to faint and wilt in extreme heat, and she is the light of his life, so he put in air conditioning.
He is pretty gobsmacked about how awesome it is to have a house that is always the same temperature. Gobsmacked and delighted. They can be converted, the AC haters. It is possible.
For me, it’s my mom. She’s very anti-AC, mostly on “we’re too poor to have AC so suck it up because it ain’t happening” grounds, but she also doesn’t really put it on in the car except in the most dire of circumstances because it gives her headaches. And I don’t know if it is genetic or the result of pretty AC-Less life, but I definitely get headaches from AC in cars too.
Also, I’ve never lived in a place with AC, and I’m about to move into an apartment with central air and I literally have no idea what to do with myself.
Congratulations! I was amazed when I moved out of my parents’ sweltering house into my first AC’d apartment. So much mid-day productivity! No more soaking my hair in cold water several times a day just to survive! I also get fewer headaches, since I can keep the place at a more constant temp.
I’m excited and also scared that I won’t know what to do if I am not constantly dying/miserable. But mostly just grateful because I’m moving to DC and I do not handle heat and humidity well.
I am so glad that the one way my dad deviates from Dad Think is that he has always been a staunch defender of the house being at a comfortable temperature, both during summer and during winter. He also HATES hot weather with a passion (yet moved to FL, go figure).
Mine as well. A major reason for moving up to Seattle from LA was to get away from the heat (not that that is working out currently).
Very old cars, like my first car, overheat if you use the AC. Not today’s cars. Mine was from the 70s and I drove it in Phoenix. I had to watch the temp gauge and turn off the AC when it started climbing. Otherwise, I’d be stranded in the heat with a dead car. That might explain some dads. But more likely dads have some other bug in their software responsible for this quirk.
Oh my god I just had the worst flashback to sitting in a horrific summer traffic jam on the BQE with our car overheating and the heat on to draw excess heat off the engine with my brother and I and a 75 lb golden retriever in the back seat.
Also that car was a 2 door with back windows that did NOT roll down.
And that wasn’t even the shittiest car my family ever owned.
My family once drove from San Francisco to Las Vegas (and on to Utah) and got stuck in a 4 hour traffic jam in the Mojave with a busted transmission (the first of 3 that had to be replaced in 7 years) It was a three row suburban with 6 kids and 3 adults taking up all 9 seats, suitcases etc for a 2 week vacation and my dad wouldn’t run the AC. We didn’t run the heat, but it was 110ish outside and we hardly moved for several hours. The rest of the trip was fine, apart from us kids all getting heat sick and throwing up at a tourist attraction in St. George, UT that we walked a couple of miles to (the transmission was getting replaced) in 110F weather in the middle of the afternoon.
That was his excuse. It lost a lot of weight when we got to the visitor center and three of us voted to remain there until the sun went down and he insisted that we press on and explore.
My parents have been married for 45 years, and that was one of the three times my mother has seriously contemplated divorce.
I dunno, in the late 1980s, when I was breastfeeding, the midwives said that if I had a problem “letting down”, I could drink a beer and that would help. Relaxation being the key, I guess, to getting the milk to come out.
The Le Leche League had a different opinion on breast milk. They said that if your baby was crying a lot, it could be something that you ate and passed on to her in breast milk. At one point I was down to eating just cottage cheese and nothing else, when I realized how idiotic that was: my kid crying probably had nothing to do with my diet.
So at this point in my life, I’m like: whatever makes being a mother easier, go that route. Ignore people who stare and want to tell you how to run your life, or if you want to, tell them to mind their own f***ing business.
No one tells you what hot messes newborns can be. I was all sure my first had reflux because she cried and spit up a ton – I even got her a prescription for it. But nah. She just cried and spit up a ton until she didn’t anymore. My second has been far more mellow, but for weeks you’d have thought the world was ending every time she had to poop. 1000x yes to the “do what makes your life easier” sentiment.
Our midwife told us that the best time to drink was while breastfeeding and that if she (my girlfriend who bore our child) was sober enough to hold the baby she was sober enough to breastfeed. Midwives are awesome.
Yep. Mine said, “If you can drive, you can breastfeed, just make *very* sure you don’t get dehydrated. Drink like a classy European, not like a frat boy.” Which was perfect advice.
(ETA: I did have to cut dairy out of my diet thanks to kiddo getting a rash/weird gas when I ate it–trial and error on that front made a big difference, but once she hit about 6m, that went away. She didn’t seem to mind beer or the occasional margarita whatsoever.).
My daughter’s problem was really really really sensitive skin, which made her cry. Poor thing. I had to figure out how much benadryl to give her because she had rashes … I thought the benadryl wasn’t for kids under a certain age, but the doctor said to go ahead and give it to her. I started at about 1/8th of a teaspoon and held my breath. Scared me half to death, but she stopped crying and the rashes went away.
Friend of mine bears witness that a glass of wine was fine but two glasses led to a grouchy baby who couldn’t settle. She was fine with that!
Peggy Noonan is such a disingenuous dick, I’m not surprised she would say something like that. (all those Republicans are, but you know.)
And I am also Team A/C forever – the two things I refuse to budge on, environmentalism-wise, are air conditioning and soft toilet paper.
I feel like the only person in my life who cannot bring themselves to be scandalized by the phone-charger at Hand to God thing. Some doofus did a stupid thing (on a dare, I’ve heard?) and was an asshole about it. This (people being stupid jerks) happens literally everywhere literally every day. I see no evidence that it’s indicative of any larger downward trend among theater-goers.
I think it’s super-weird how scandalized all my friends in the theater are about it. Like, yeah, it’s a terrible thing, but are you guys joking? These kind of asinine bullshit stories are what you motherfuckers live for. If you didn’t want some story about a terrible audience member trying to charge his phone on your set, you’d have all gone and gotten jobs in film.
Theater person here, my partner is an assistant to the set designer on Hand to God. Their general reaction has just been amusement at the dumbass who thought it was a real outlet, fwiw.
The PR firm (which was doing great stuff for this show before this happened) has capitalized on the incident so the attention is really out of proportion to what the people actually involved in the show actually feel.
It sucks that they didn’t throw that phone charger guy out of the theater face-first but at least he now has to suffer the public humiliation of people watching him crawl around like a dope trying to plug something into a fake outlet.
Folks, I decided to see Magic Mike XXL last night (by myself, couldn’t find anyone to go with me), and I am only exaggerating a little when I say I think it changed me. I didn’t see the first one, but it didn’t seem to matter at all for this movie; it was just a glorious, sexual, intensely feminist experience. I have never, ever seen a movie like it. Joe Mangianello is a literal god sent from heaven, and I finally “get” Matt Bomer.
Seriously, I dreamed about the movie ALL NIGHT, that’s how much it affected me. If the theater had started another showing of it immediately after I would have stayed, no doubt. I also think I legit entered some sort of fugue state about halfway through Channing’s dance at Rome’s mansion because JESUS CHRIST. It was so good and goofy and unabashedly worshipped women, and I just uuggghhhhh don’t even have words!
Testify.
So, I’ve been feeling depressed lately. Unsure why, really, but I want this to change. Here’s my question, would seeing this movie be like a non-physical electric shock session? Follow-up question, if I really only truly love imagining pasty English/Scottish dudes with their shirts off (especially the non-muscular variety) while wearing 18th or 19th century style trousers, will it have the same effect on me as it has had on others? Further, if shirt off is even too explicit for me, really what I love is Jonathan Strange in his fantastic (so fantastic) coat, then same question. I’ve spent all day thinking about these things.
I don’t mean to make light of depression, at all, I wanted to add. I know I need to get to a doctor and therapist ASAP and all that. This has been going on for a while now and I’ve battled it off and on all my life. I’m coming off of an “off” period and am depressed about being “on” again. Ha-depressed about being depressed! Plus there are other neurological things going on. Anyway, I just get the sense of this euphoria being experienced and wondered if it might apply to me. I honestly can’t decide! (Also, indecision is a huge symptom right now.)
Worth a try?
Thanks thanks! I have been wondering if I should see the first one before this one, but that one had so many problems everyone said, so I’ve been heaitating. Great to know I can go ahead and jump right in to MMXXL!
So excited about what everyone’s said about it. Communal empowerment and celebration of feminine sexuality, in a popular phenomenon (!), out of Hollywood no less (!!)… I’m there.
Since my area is always ridiculously humid, I turn the AC in my apartment on as quickly as possible. I don’t care if the temperature of my AC matches the outdoor temperature, if it’s humid, there is NO WAY my AC will be off.
My father has opposite Dad reactions to AC and turns off the central air if it’s “nice” out, and this is why I do not live at home anymore.
Humidity is really the only reason we ever run our central air. It only gets hot enough to be really uncomfortable for a couple of weeks a year here, and those few weeks are invariably also the muggiest, wettest, grossest ones.
Also once the cats start melting, that’s a good indicator.
I stayed with my parents a couple of weeks ago because my apartment was too hot/humid to sleep in and I don’t have AC. Right before I went to bed, my mom decided that it was “nice” out and turned off the air conditioning. I almost cried.
I’d have to say I’m on Team Air Conditioning Is Great But So Is Having Feeling in My Hands and Feet in the Office in the Middle of July So Maybe We Could Bump the Temperature Up a Few Degrees And the Dudes in Suits Can Take Off Their Jackets Because Hi, It’s Summer. I’m also on Team Shut Upppppppppp Slate Did You Even Read the Article Your Screed Is Responding To.
Team “Shut Upppppppp Slate” forever tbh
I hate over-air conditioned and over-heated spaces equally, and yet am glad for both heating and air conditioning when used in moderation. I have the feeling that position does not make for a particularly clickable article.
I’m on this team, too.
Yeah I feel like they can let it get a little warmer in the air conditioned buildings, particularly since I am almost always cold in winter in the same buildings…
Yes, this. I’m sitting here in a sweater, actively considering putting on one of the two blankets I keep in the office, because…what the actual fuck it should not be fifty degrees in July.
I am eternally and forever envious of people who can wear blankets in the office. My job as receptionist has me moving around too much for a blanket to stay in place, so I resorted to a space heater at my desk. It’s great and keeps me from freezing and also from laying up in winter clothes in July (which is bad because once the sun gets low in the sky, I start to bake on account of huge west-facing windows), but I have to deal with people joking every. single. day. about “ha ha, got the heater on in summer, eh??”
Dude, libraries, museums, government buildings are freezing year round, you know this, it’s why you brought a thick sweater with you. Think of us poor folks who can’t move around to generate body heat!
I am also a receptionist (and general admin support), but cannot use a space heater because the thermostat is in my office space. I do have an electric throw that I keep plugged in under my desk, and can roll around in my chair to reach almost everything. I also keep a long sleeved cardigan in a cupboard for days that I’m too cold (when my boss has a meeting in his office I have to turn the AC way down to make it comfortable in there and freeze at my desk)
This.
My toes should not be cold in July.
I should not need a sweater to ride the train when the heat index is 95.
I should not need to take OFF my sweater when I got on the train when it is 30 outside.
Heating and AC save lives and also are just nice things to have, and there is nothing wrong with them.
My glasses should not fog up when I get off the bus.
Yep. I know we talked about this on Twitter, but seriously, just keep things at 68 in the winter and 76 in the summer, and we will all be FINE.
I don’t know you but I’m feeling smug over here because you just validated my seasonal thermostat sweet spots.
my understanding is that “Office too hot” and “Office too cold” are the most constant and recurring problems white-collar workers identify about their jobs, forever and ever amen. Add “HVAC too loud” and “feel air blowing on me” and I don’t know if we as a species will ever fix this…
This is super accurate to my life right now because I forgot to grab a sweater this morning when I left the house and I am deeply, deeply regretting it. My office is an icebox.
10 years ago Japan asked men to stop wearing suits in the summer to government jobs so they didn’t have to cool the buildings so much and saved them a ton of money and greenhouse gas emissions. We could do that too. Think how much we pay to cool just US courthouses in the summer. If all business did this too, we could save a ton. My office is cooled to 75, which is cool enough to wear clothes (good idea at a law firm) but warm enough to function. No suits in this office! (just at hearings)
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?stor…
I say we all adapt the salwar kameez as “formal” wear. Pajamas for work! Could anything be better? (Many lovely illustrations in the Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shalwar_kameez)
I support this plan, as long as they have pockets!
I am also on both of these teams!
Go Ahead and Pray
Thank you God, for favoring me
above the starving masses
And thank you lord, for placing me
in the middle of the classes
and thanks for all the help you gave
my high school football team
and thanks for all the Asian slaves
you have making my jeans
I make these prayers to you each day
because I have it good
and if you keep it just that way
I think it’s understood
that I won’t ask for anything
that isn’t going to change
no matter how many hymns I sing
or masses I arrange.
That poem is wonderfully fanged and well done, but I do want to say that praying for small and trivial things and praying for large changes to the world are not mutually exclusive. I personally think praying for a sports team to win is kind of questionable, but I don’t think that people who pray for their team to win are automatically not praying for justice, food for the hungry, water for the thirsty, and so on.
I am always waiting for the losing team to throw their crosses on the ground, stomp on them, and then give the finger to the heavens.
That thought had never occurred to me, but now I’m always going to be looking for that too.
I took your comment to heart and posted a variant of the original poem lower down (where no one will see it, probably)
Some comic used to do a bit about how you never see interviews with athletes where they say things like, “Well, I *would’ve* made that touchdown, if *Jesus* hadn’t tripped me!”
That’s a beautiful thought.
Maybe if Tim Tebow loses a game he can throw the goat IDK
I’ve always felt it would be more appropriate to pray to perform to the best of your ability, rather than to win, putting it into a “help me do my best” attitude rather than the “help them do poorly” as it seems to come across
I was on the cheerleading team at a Christian high school, and we used to pray before games – but we would generally pray that everyone would play their best, show good sportsmanship, not get hurt, glorify God by their actions, etc. We didn’t pray to God to make our team win just because we asked him to.
“In the middle of the classes”. Beautiful.
You remind me of John Betjeman (NB Cadogan Square is in the posher part of London for those unfamiliar; dates from WWII)
In Westminster Abbey
by John Betjeman
Let me take this other glove off
As the vox humana swells,
And the beauteous fields of Eden
Bask beneath the Abbey bells.
Here, where England’s statesmen lie,
Listen to a lady’s cry.
Gracious Lord, oh bomb the Germans,
Spare their women for Thy Sake,
And if that is not too easy
We will pardon Thy Mistake.
But, gracious Lord, whate’er shall be,
Don’t let anyone bomb me.
Keep our Empire undismembered
Guide our Forces by Thy Hand,
Gallant blacks from far Jamaica,
Honduras and Togoland;
Protect them Lord in all their fights,
And, even more, protect the whites.
Think of what our Nation stands for,
Books from Boots’ and country lanes,
Free speech, free passes, class distinction,
Democracy and proper drains.
Lord, put beneath Thy special care
One-eighty-nine Cadogan Square.
Although dear Lord I am a sinner,
I have done no major crime;
Now I’ll come to Evening Service
Whensoever I have the time.
So, Lord, reserve for me a crown,
And do not let my shares go down.
I will labour for Thy Kingdom,
Help our lads to win the war,
Send white feathers to the cowards
Join the Women’s Army Corps,
Then wash the steps around Thy Throne
In the Eternal Safety Zone.
Now I feel a little better,
What a treat to hear Thy Word,
Where the bones of leading statesmen
Have so often been interr’d.
And now, dear Lord, I cannot wait
Because I have a luncheon date.
That piece on CPS made me realize that the near-to-peer tutoring I did in college took the same approach– we did after-school tutoring, as close to one-on-one as we could get, and were encouraged to talk to the students about their feelings on the tasks at hand as well as school in general. We provided snacks. It was meant to be a very low-pressure environment.
It’s cool to know that there’s some science behind the method, but it also makes me very sad, because it sounds like, for the students to get any benefit from it, they needed that method from someone more reliable than a 2-hour-a-week after school tutor. Even though the student body at the school was really engaged, the district had no money and was constantly firing all its teachers and rehiring or swapping in and out block schedules. The method may work, but it does sound like it takes a lot of up-front resourcing that the districts with the biggest problems don’t have.
(Also, faded flashbacks to how “problem” children were handled in my elementary school, and the number of my classmates who were in jail by senior year. School-to-prison pipeline is so real and so terrible.)
The Dred Scott comparison is certainly stupid, but the majority decision in Obergefell is indefensibly weak. All they had to do was a global word change from the majority opinion in Loving v. Virginia, after all, and instead they carefully avoided any sort of due process analysis, without designating sexuality as a suspect class or in tying into the quasi-suspect class of gender. What this means for people in the real world is that Sue and Michelle can finally get married in Texas, but then Sue shows up at the company barbecue with Michelle and is fired and there’s nothing they can do because Texas is one of those states that doesn’t protect sexuality from discrimination and the stupid Supreme Court just failed to recognize it as a federal right. Since none of the majority is actually stupid I can only assume this was Kennedy’s price for a majority decision – to make it toothless on discrimination so they have to go through it all over again. He has a lot to answer for.
Even if they had gone equal protection or made the due process analysis clearer, the Constitution has nothing to say about how Sue’s company treats her. We needed a federal ENDA before Obergefell, we need one after Obergefell, and the Supreme Court can’t deliver employment (or housing, or public accommodations) discrimination protection because it’s beyond the Justices’ purview.
I agree that the opinion is a poor piece of legal writing, but I’m inclined to attribute good motives and weak execution to Kennedy when it comes to gay rights. He’s never been on the wrong side of gay rights since he got to the Court.
If it’d tied it into gender under equal protection, the Civil Rights Act would have covered it already and given litigants lots of room. I find bad motives (well, wussy motives) more plausible or at least less scary than that he honestly thought that was a well-written opinion that spelled out all the relevant legal analysis.
That’s a possibility, although I don’t think it’s obvious that interpreting the Equal Protection Clause in a certain way would cause them to also reinterpret Title VII; the sources for statutory interpretation are different, and a majority could very easily say that if you look at anti-discrimination laws and policies that are meant to protect LGBT people, they refer specifically to sexual orientation and gender identity/expression, not just sex.
In any event, I think that most of the big LGBT civil rights groups have rejected/aren’t really pursuing the sex discrimination rationale, both because its application to gender nonconforming people is uncertain and because its logic really ignores what is unique about prejudice against LGBT people and reduces it all to sexism. I’m fairly sure the Obergefell petitioners did not make the sex discrimination argument, and I find it hard to fault Kennedy for not adopting an argument most notably being pushed by law professors with no connection to the LGBT rights movement.
I can only imagine that Kagan and the rest of the majority were just grinning and bearing it, realizing they would have to let Kennedy write a mushy opinion in order to get an opinion with any practical result.
I am definitely in the AC camp. But not too cold…I keep the house at 76 in the summer.
Yep. I want to wear a tank top in the summer; I do not need it to be 65 degrees. Or even 72.
Here’s a great story about The Runaways. http://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/th…
Steve Tetsch, a guitarist who worked with him on numerous projects and considered him a close friend, says they used to drive to high schools looking for teenage girls to hit on. “Westlake was a gold mine because these girls came from wealthy families,” he recalls. “We’d all be arrested today.”
YES. YES YOU WOULD. AND YOU’D DESERVE IT. Ughhhhhhh, men.
Oof, this was so upsetting to read.
Great in the sense of evocative and well-written, terrible in the sense of makes you want to scream, cry, and go back in time to murder 98% of the people in that room.
My dad recently reminded me of the time our entire family, including my like 75 year old grandma, climbed part way down the rocks at Peggy’s Cove and after an initial chuckle I was like “Wait, why did you let your ONLY and PRECIOUS tiny baby child do that?” Savour the sea from a distance, DAD.
The thing I want to know is, why isn’t the phone charger guy’s name in any of these articles? He deserves to be shunned for life.
Roberts Translated: Stripped of its wordy bits and their “meanings,” the majority’s argument is that the Due Process Clause gives same-sex couples a fundamental right to marry because they are not too ikky for rights. If I were a legislator, I would certainly still think they were too ikky for rights and stand in the way of them ever exercising any. But as a judge, I find my intentional misreading of the majority’s position indefensible as a matter of constitutional law, and also no homos.
The idea of somebody praying for me and it actually helping is horrifying in that it requires a god who would not save me for my own sake but might save me just because somebody else, whom he liked better, asked it as a personal favor.
edit: mind you I do not find that scenario implausible. just upsetting.
edit edit: I would never worship a god who did not play favorites, I like that about him, I just don’t want to get involved in that kind of relationship if the favorite isn’t me
TEAM AC -I keep it cold because 1. I like it that way, and 2. I have MS and can’t walk when I get too warm
My husband whines about ‘being cold’ but I tell him to put on a sweatshirt.
That article about child discipline is wonderful. This is is similar to what I was taught at UC Irvine and it works so well. We used this method when we taught the kids in HS who had reading problems and it was like magic.
You can pry my AC from my dead, cool, non-sweaty hands.
Hallelujah and amen. I just bought a car with seat coolers (!!!) and they are the greatest thing since ever. It feels like sitting on an ice chest, which is perfect when it’s 98 degrees with 98% humidity.
!!!!!!
That sounds amazing.
I’m Team AC for sure, but one of my biggest environmental pet peeves is stores that turn the AC full blast and let it run out open doors/windows all day a.k.a every single store in Southern California. Why??? Have we not learned our lesson about wasting precious resources from the drought?
Peggy’s Cooooove, I want to go back there so badly. We definitely climbed all over the rocks and it was definitely the highlight of every Nova Scotia trip. Sigh.
I distinctly remember (mostly) staying off of the black rocks. those were scary. And yes, we should go back.
I’m pretty happy with my new house. It cools off at night so much better then my old 2nd floor apartment. So,if at night it’s cool enough to sleep (I am part walrus in my demands there) I will forgo spending more money on buying a window unit. Then again,I live in Maine. Where 80 is considered to be near torture.
(The only thing that could make me happier with the new house is if I could FINALLY 3 weeks in get internet set up)
when these ‘new’ ‘revolutionary’ theories come out about child behaviour,I pretty much always think ‘well duh’. I can’t be the only one?
Of course treating children like intelligent, developing PEOPLE works better than just imposing your will on them.
“What if we asked them WHY they’re throwing chairs? It’s so crazy, it just might work!”
And even for littles, telling them “OK, I know you’re out of control, I’m going to help you fix that.” (whether in words or by, like, holding them until they can get ahold of themselves) makes tantrums end so. much. faster.
Mr. Rogers has been doing this since the late 60s! It’s not that new a concept, people.
Yes, he did. He even came out of retirement to film a PSA about how to help children right after 9/11. He was a treasure. Right up to when cancer stole him from us and broke my heart in 2003. ::sniffle::
Mr. Rogers was the best person. And I can tell I’m having a particularly good mental health day when I can watch his speech to Congress without crying. Because Mr. Rogers likes me, just the way I am.
It kinda bothers me that this is being framed as something new and revolutionary, and the characterization of teachers as petty authoritarians who just need to put in more one-on-one time with students and who want to send students into jail – I dunno, maybe I’m just reading too much into the article’s title. I have a M.Ed and taught for a little while, and this isn’t new. Every teacher training program is teaching this stuff. The problem comes, as always, in the execution, because the solution is throwing money at schools by the truckload, and no one is willing to do that. The authoritarian thing is what you get when you ask one person to ride herd on 30 little people, with little or no help and support, for peanuts in salary, in a crumbling, undersized infrastructure.
Agreed, and I don’t think the problem really lies with (most) individual teachers – it lies in things like zero-tolerance policies, the economic issues you cited, and what I think is still a pretty strong opinion in society that children are supposed to obey, and the misperception that making younger and younger grades more and more “academic” (sitting still for long periods of time) is a good thing. I think another facet of not having enough resources is not being able to effectively deal with kids that are on either end of the bell curve – either those that are struggling, or those that are bored. (I have no data on that last suspicion, though).
Not to worry. While “academics” emphasis is increased for younger and younger kids, more and more parents are delaying when their kids start school. The result is Kindergarteners starting closer to 6 years old and First Grade being mostly 7-year-olds. It’ll work out when more of us see this complementary age shift, which is only becoming more obvious every year.
I don’t for one second believe that its the fault of individual teachers (although I met my fair share of bad apples in my jaunt through the education system)
Its the system, the system is built in a way that children must be made to fit the system or they are rejected from society, instead of the system and society being made to suit children as a whole, and children as individuals.
Seriously, stop making young children sit still in a room for long periods. It is not good for them in anyway, and it would not be tolerated for animals, so why do we allow it for our children?
Completely off topic.
I’m in a Starbucks drinking their wi-fi. The music mix for today is apparently 90’s female singers. So far we’ve had Torn, Don’t Speak,and now 32 Flavors. I may never leave.
I lived for a few summers without air conditioning in a city on a lake with nice coastal breezes and it was fine, and then I moved to a different city slightly farther south and with no water nearby, less wind and more humidity, and the summer I spent there was TERRIBLE. I used to have to wash my dishes at midnight because that was the only time it was cool enough for me to put my hands in water warm enough to make the dishes actually clean. And I would still be super gross and sweaty after anyway. I pretty much spent every evening lying in the crossbreeze of three different fans eating freezies and trying to move as little as possible. Also my asthma was horrible.
I have AC now but use it sparingly, mostly to cut the humidity.
TEAM AC but also team “in the winter I like to sleep in a room that’s about 16 degrees Celsius” so.
I just moved from a place where AC was a necessity (Houston) to sleep and often for life, to Oregon, where it’s typically not, but we’re having unusual heat waves. I’m lucky that my apartment (which costs more than my last one and does NOT have AC) is on the ground floor and half-underground on the western side, so I get minimal impact from the setting sun, when it’s hottest.
It’ll be interesting to see if it ever gets really unbearable, like I have to flee to the library during the day. There’s been some evenings where I’ve used a manual fan while at the computer, and fortunately it’s helped to leave a window open at night. That wouldn’t have helped in Houston.
The great thing about the PNW is that it nearly always cools way down at night. So you can plunk a fan in the window at dusk and usually it will be reasonable enough for sleeping by the time you go to bed (and if not you leave the fan running all night.)
I have an issue that can’t wait for the open thread tomorrow! I made 110 crab cakes for an acquaintance’s wedding last night (using a recipe NOT my own) and now my hands smell like miracle whip and canned crab. I have washed with every soap in our house, I have scrubbed, I have lemon’d, I have white vinegar’d, I have tomato’d. How can I get this smell off my hands!? I am currently unable to eat because of it.
This is going to sound REALLY weird, but do you have any peanut butter on hand? It helps to get rid of smells that are greasy (the oil in it must somehow cut the other oil?). In any case, worth a shot, maybe?
Oh man, my jar of work peanut butter is looking pretty tempting, but that would be sooooo gross! I’ll let you know 😐
Maybe if the fat to fat is the reason peanut butter works, coconut oil would work instead? Or coconut oil + vanilla? I’m sorry, miracle whip and canned crab hands sounds like no fun 🙁
Try toothpaste. That’s my go-to for removing stink from skin.
Or, mouthwash.
It didn’t work!
Miracle Whip is unholy
*whispers eerily* the peanut butter is waaaaaiting for youuuuuuuu
i have no tested methods but that sounds terrible so: to the google machine! results that are things you might already have in the house:
antiseptic mouthwash
toothpaste
hand sanitizer
undiluted dish soap + salt
baking powder & water paste
I tried toothpaste! It was so weird. The baking powder paste is a good idea though! Thanks
I don’t have a solution but I’m here to congratulate/life-affirm you on making one hundred freakin’ ten crab cakes for someone you aren’t even super close to. You are a good person and clearly a beast in the kitchen.
Awww thanks! My own wedding was an “it takes a village” sort of affair, and I’m happy to put that back into the world. My hands tho…
Have you stainless steeled? or tried washing your hair a few times? My hands are never as clean as when I wash my hair since the hair cleans around all the crevices of my hands and under the nails.
Or do an exfoliating hand treatment to remove the top layer of skin?
Stainless steel? That’s one I don’t know. Tell me more…
It works for onions and garlic. You can buy stainless steel “soap” bars, but I usually just rub my hands on the faucet. I don’t know how it works, but it cuts down on the smell considerably. I’ve never made loads of crabcakes, so I don’t know if it will work for that, but it’s worth a shot?
The back of a spoon also works.
Vanilla extract? That’s what we used to use in my biology to get the formalin smell off our hands after spending hours dissecting preserved things (the smell seeps through gloves, it seems through everything). I could never tell if the alcohol actually removed the smell or if the vanilla just overpowered everything else, but vanilla hands sounds more appealing than crab hands.
Also from the movie Crossing Delancey, which I absolutely love. The male love interest made pickles for a living and he used vanilla to remove the smell of the vinegar (I’m guessing? Maybe dill smell too?). Man, I need to watch that movie again. Also, I get so much life advice from movies. So much.
I used to own ferrets, and had to bathe them regularly. Wet ferrets are fun, but smell terrible! I always ate an orange after that chore was done. It was the only thing that would kill the stink of damp weasel. But if you’ve already tried lemon, maybe that wouldn’t work?
Speaking of theatre and phones: apparently someone with a DEATH WISH decided to text at a Patti Lupone show, and it went exactly how you’d expect: http://www.theatermania.com/off-broadway/news/pat…
Oh man, you do NOT do that in front of Patti Lupone, of all people. (At least not after she paused one of her Gypsy performances to publicly shame someone who had their camera out.)
I saw that and I just had to wonder: did none of these people hear about how Madonna got shamed by the cast of Hamilton for texting during a performance? Madonna isn’t allowed to text, why the hell does anyone else think they can get away with it? http://deadline.com/2015/04/hamilton-star-madonna…
That Ross Greene article! Hey, maybe kids have reasons for doing things, just like people?? I love that this insight is getting more widespread, he’s doing great work.
Mis-applied behaviourism is really, truly provoking. Not only is it dehumanising, it’s also WRONG! As in, factually wrong! Skinner never ever punished a single living being (unless he was studying the effects of punishment, I guess). He taught by shaping, i.e. by rewarding every tiny sign that the animal was on the right track. No true behaviourist would advocate for punishment. And the reason that Skinner was studying animals and not humans was that he was trying to find the basics of behaviour, the stuff that isn’t inside the “black box” of the mind. How do you communicate with a pigeon? You can’t, so you can’t ask it to participate in your experiment. You have to train it. But with people, you can ask them. There is a way to get information inside people’s heads – it’s called language. People can choose. If the choice doesn’t work out, you can ask them what went wrong. With a pigeon, you can’t, so that’s why behavioural shaping is such a great communication tool.
And yet you wouldn’t behave like this with an animal, the way people behave with kids. If animals freak out, you don’t yell and try to scare them into submission – because they’ll just freak out more. Animals acting out from anger and panic will act out MORE if you add more fear and anger to the situation. You know that if you know anything about animals. So if yelling and attacking (grabbing kids is attacking them, just think about how a dog would interpret those actions) doesn’t even work on a pigeon, why would it work on an intelligent human?
Also, no one who has paid any attention to the study of will and motivation (cognitive psychology, the science that actually DOES try to find out what’s happening inside that black box) would rely mainly on external reinforcements to teach anyone anything. That’s how you sap internal motivation. If you pay someone for doing something, they start to think of it as “work” and stop doing it voluntarily. Even little kids. Even if they really enjoyed the activity. Oh, and cog sci was invented IN THE FREAKING 60’S so you’d think it would have hit the mainstream by now! But nooo, the entire cognitive revolution (that’s what it’s called, that’s how important cognition is) has bypassed most of society, we’re stuck in the 30’s.
And it’s also really gross how people misuse the word “consequence”. If it’s not a natural consequence but something that you decide to do to them, it’s a punishment. Just admit it.
I wish more people would make the connection between suitable ways to interact with animals and suitable ways to interact with people. Like, you don’t just run up to a strange dog and start touching it, you introduce yourself, note its clearly stated boundaries, and then start interacting with it. Human interaction is on a different scale, of course, but concepts of consent and boundaries and safety are fairly similar.
You’d be surprised at how many people (including adults!) will just run up to a strange dog and start touching it. And then are shocked when the dog doesn’t respond well.
When I walk my itty bitty 4 lb dog in the park adults will come up to us and bend down to pet her and get nipped even though I warn them that she doesn’t like strangers as they bend down. Kids ALWAYS ask if they can pet her and I tell them to squat down and if she wants to be pet she’ll go to them, if she’s scared she’ll hide behind me. She’s never bitten a child but snaps at people’s fingers when they put them in her face. I would bite fingers if someone put them in my face
Honestly I think it’s at least partially because animals are dangerous (and also because consent culture and language – we know that we can’t get inside the animal’s mind, so we give animals a little agency, but we assume that kids should believe everything we say). Cats scratch, dogs bite, horses kick. If a dog bares its teeth when you approach it, you back off.
But when kids kick or scratch or bite adults who tower over them, yell at them or grab them, people think the kid is being crazy. We assume that it’s unnatural for kids to defend themselves physically when we attack them physically by invading their space. We think that if we yell “STOP” or “CALM DOWN”, our words should enter the kid’s head and become the truth. And we assume that if the kid doesn’t immediately act like our words were a magic spell that immediately transformed them, it’s not a sign that something’s wrong with our strategy but with the kid.
Do adults feel better when their partner yells at them to calm down during fights? No we do not. Do adults enjoy it when other people interrupt them when they’re really stressed out and frustrated? Nope, we don’t, that’s why “backseat driving” is considered to be a bad thing! Kids with short attention spans or working memories get to feel like that all the time, because they don’t have enough space in their brain to keep all the info in. Different frustrations add up to an intolerable whole, and then some other kid or a parent or a teacher shows up to interrupt their train of thought, and they explode, and the other person gets back at them or tells them to calm down, and they literally can’t keep up with what’s going on and just freak out at their surroundings to get everything to stop happening.
The most helpful thing to do is usually to, well, stop happening at them. Just like you wouldn’t back an angry dog into a corner.
You’re so right I want to cry. So often I feel like saying to some parents (including my own) ‘you would never speak to another adult like that, why do you think that your child deserves to be spoken to like that?’
Children are people too!! Just because they’re smaller than you and you have some (unearned) power over them, does not give you the right to be disrespectful and cruel.
And seriously towering over a child and threatening them is attacking them. What do you expect to happen? People even do itto teenagers and then wonder why they lash out or disengage completely, YOU HAVE TO RESPECT THEM.
this affirms my decision to like animals the best and to treat people like animals and if the people don’t like it, fine, i don’t wanna play with them anyways.
*goes to find a puppy to play with*
…If you pay someone for doing something, they start to think of it as “work” and stop doing it voluntarily. Even little kids. Even if they really enjoyed the activity. …
Yes. Good book on this subject: Punished by Rewards . Wish all the adults in my early life had been hip to this… It can be disabling, at its worst. I have read that people who had the highest grades in school as young people generally have less success in the adult working world than “average” students, and I believe it.
Since I’m from the literal tropics (paralel 30 is 3h from here), I can attest heat kills. Specially children, the eldery and homeless people (I’m gonna be generous and think people that say heat can’t kill are just forgetting homeless people exist, instead of being heartless).
Houses around here are brick and mortar, because that keeps the heat out better, but since we have all possible humidity you can get without actually being underwater (have you ever seen your walls drip moisture? I see that all summer and most of winter), that only helps a bit. So we use AC and a hell of a lot of fans, because fans also stop bugs. Bugs and criminality are the main reasons not to just sleep with a window open.
Exactly. Look at the heat waves in May and June in Pakistan and India where many may not have reliable electricity for AC–1400 dead in Pakistan and 2500 dead in India. And these are countries used to extreme temperatures. It may have been possible to survive in the past without AC, but it’s also warmer on average now than it used to be, so….
Variation:
The Satisfied Prayer
Thank you God, for favoring me
above the starving masses
And thank you lord, for placing me
in the middle of the classes
and thanks for all the help you gave
my high school football team
and thanks for all the Asian slaves
you have making my jeans
Yahweh, thanks for making me
less lazy than the poor
More moral than the sick and weak
victorious in war
above all thanks for making me
so special in your eyes
I’m so much better, thanks to thee
than all those other guys
The most depressing part of the New Yorker article: “Every Court has its Antonin Scalia.”
Did you ever stop and think how many judges there are in the US? How many of them are total dicks?! It’s terrifying!
As a lawyerperson, I can confirm this.
Team A/C Forever: Phoenix Division.
i didn’t even know that being anit-AC was a thing. that’s inhumane!
Now I’m just being silly:
The cavemen lived in caves
and they had no A/C
that’s why they are dead,
not alive like you and me!
My very favorite warning sign of all time is at a state park in Maryland near a waterfall and simply reads:
DEATHS HAVE OCCURRED
I like how it doesn’t even say, like, caution or don’t go near the edge of the waterfall, just statement of fact strongly implying that you could be next.
“There’s nothing in this cave worth dying for…”
http://johndarnielle.tumblr.com/post/122883448626…
Maybe if Tim Tebow loses a game he can throw the goat IDK
Worth a try?
Thanks thanks! I have been wondering if I should see the first one before this one, but that one had so many problems everyone said, so I've been heaitating. Great to know I can go ahead and jump right in to MMXXL!
So excited about what everyone's said about it. Communal empowerment and celebration of feminine sexuality, in a popular phenomenon (!), out of Hollywood no less (!!)… I'm there.
…If you pay someone for doing something, they start to think of it as "work" and stop doing it voluntarily. Even little kids. Even if they really enjoyed the activity. …
Yes. Good book on this subject: Punished by Rewards . Wish all the adults in my early life had been hip to this… It can be disabling, at its worst. I have read that people who had the highest grades in school as young people generally have less success in the adult working world than "average" students, and I believe it.
Here in Ohio, they like to keep it a freezing cold grey all year.
It’s the middle of summer and it’s so cold in the office I cannot even think about anything except walking out into the desert to die.