Tracy: Well-- That call -- That call means you just murdered me. Mal: No, son. You murdered yourself. I just carried the bullet a while.

'The Message'


Natter 67: Overriding Vetoes  

Off-topic discussion. Wanna talk about corsets, nail polish, duct tape, or physics? This is the place. Detailed discussion of any current-season TV must be whitefonted.


sarameg - Nov 09, 2010 3:50:51 pm PST #4527 of 30001

Inside of the carrier, perhaps one of the edges of the ventilation holes. He was really going nuts. He settled in the car fine. Rattling the bars, but that was not so much frantic as idle attempts to get out. He just curled up and would whack at the door.

It's just easier to do one trip rather than 2 or 3. And I get a multiple pet discount (I haven't seen that before, so I guess they kinda like scheduling them all in one go.)


billytea - Nov 09, 2010 3:54:53 pm PST #4528 of 30001
You were a wrong baby who grew up wrong. The wrong kind of wrong. It's better you hear it from a friend.

The differences in our genetic material from individual to individual is statistically insignificant. As far as stats are concerned we're all the same person.

Because I'm in a pedantic mood, I will take issue with this. Statistical significance concerns the likelihood of a particular outcome being the result of random chance. It essentially is a comment about the deviation of a particular result, against the dispersion of possible results. However, you're talking about the degree of dispersion within the human population, rather than the deviation of a specific result.

You've actually made two somewhat different statements. The first is that the amount of genetic variation between humans is tiny compared to the total number of genes - which is true - and that the differences are immaterial (we're essentially the same person) - which is not entirely true, as - at the extreme - any number of genetically based diseases makes clear.


Cass - Nov 09, 2010 4:03:15 pm PST #4529 of 30001
Bob's learned to live with tragedy, but he knows that this tragedy is one that won't ever leave him or get better.

billytea, if you are now channeling some Dr Spencer Wells, I am going to have to insist that America needs you back for sheer awesomeness at some point.


flea - Nov 09, 2010 4:05:58 pm PST #4530 of 30001
information libertarian

I recently discovered I have an ancestor who was born in Montserrat after the death of his father (he's in the will as "the child my wife is big with now"), was apprenticed in London at age 14, and by 20 was being tried for murder at Old Bailey, having ditched his apprenticeship. He got off on the murder charge but was convicted of manslaughter and was presumably branded on the thumb with an M as the standard punishment. He returned to Montserrat on his majority and had one of the top-10 plantations on the island (owning dozens of slaves), then set up the first foundry north of Philadelphia in the area that became Bethlehem. He had two children, though it's not clear if he married either mother, and he seems to have had at least one acknowledged child by a slave (there were slaves in PA at this date, 1730s-1740s, which I hadn't realized).

As an interesting afterlife note, in 1961 he was disinterred as the cemetery he'd been buried in more than 200 years before was being developed, and his body and grave marker were moved a couple hundred miles across PA to Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in Pittsburgh where his son was buried.


DavidS - Nov 09, 2010 4:26:04 pm PST #4531 of 30001
"Look, son, if it's good enough for Shirley Bassey, it's good enough for you."

Because I'm in a pedantic mood, I will take issue with this.

I'd expect no less from you! In fact, it was practically a challenge.

You've actually made two somewhat different statements. The first is that the amount of genetic variation between humans is tiny compared to the total number of genes - which is true - and that the differences are immaterial (we're essentially the same person) - which is not entirely true, as - at the extreme - any number of genetically based diseases makes clear.

Yes, well, the joke lies somewhere in the elision between these two. But only a trained actuary could actually parse the mathematical fallacy. Nice buzzkill, math man!


Kat - Nov 09, 2010 4:32:00 pm PST #4532 of 30001
"I keep to a strict diet of ill-advised enthusiasm and heartfelt regret." Leigh Bardugo

I'm related to a lot of people who worked in coal mines. And a lot of people who worked as fishermen and even more who worked on pineapple plantations.

Not so interesting nor so sexy. In fact, it made me de-register my ancestry.com account.

In gustatory news, I am eating a green chile cheeseburger and it's delicious.


DavidS - Nov 09, 2010 4:35:13 pm PST #4533 of 30001
"Look, son, if it's good enough for Shirley Bassey, it's good enough for you."

Most of my family on both sides were farmers.

However, googling just my own name turns up a survivor at Andersonville, the notorious Civil War prison. Also a fighter pilot.


P.M. Marc - Nov 09, 2010 4:36:17 pm PST #4534 of 30001
So come, my friends, be not afraid/We are so lightly here/It is in love that we are made; In love we disappear

Plei- are you friends on LJ with mustangsally? Because she has posted her comparison of her cat to Benedict Cumberbatch!

No, but that was hilarious!

I got into tracing family history in an effort to find out my great-grandparents' names on my paternal grandfather's side. I still don't know that.

But I know a lot about everyone else!


Calli - Nov 09, 2010 4:43:46 pm PST #4535 of 30001
I must obey the inscrutable exhortations of my soul—Calvin and Hobbs

There's definitely a lot of German there.

The young princes have a fair bit of British blood from Princess Diana.

I did some research through ancestry.com, but never found anything particularly interesting. Lots of farmers in New England and the midwest.


Sue - Nov 09, 2010 4:46:15 pm PST #4536 of 30001
hip deep in pie

The CBC just interviewed a guy named Clovis Najm.