Comments by AbbieNormal (page 9)

OK, I'll expand on my earlier post. First as Chandler said, why not both? I think the real question is are you willing to trade one for the other, and which way do you tilt on that trade. As I said, it depends. Sometimes I want one more than the other, but it isn't constant. A lot depends on my mood, the club, the local rules and how strictly they are enforced. If I had to answer I'd say looks, but I also have to click with a dancer.

Chandler, I don't see everything as an ideological battle, I only see arguments about ideology as ideological. Yes, I suppose I was silly to take your post as a serious argument. So rest assured that the next time you post about capitalism a a malign influence on society I won't see it as ideological in the least. Then again you could have replied to the other half of that post that dealt with strippers rather than the part that dealt with a marginally political topic that FONDL and I like to talk about at great length, but you didn't... Odd that a guy who repeatedly claims only to want to talk about strippers and often dismisses discussions about all else chose the marginally political part of my message for a reply. You chose to reply to the one part of my message that could be seen as ideological, to "refute" it by telling me I was wrong, it was Madison avenue execs pushing consumerism who were responsible, then tell me not to argue about it, but that wasn't ideological in the least. Silly me. So from now on, when you reply to any message of mine that is mildly political or philosophical I'll understand that no matter what your post actually says, you aren't interested in political discussion, you just want to make a statement (which no matter how closely it can be identified with a specific political philosophy IS NOT a political or partisan argument), it's just friendly banter, and the request not to make it a political argument just came out of nowhere, 'cause after all you didn't see it that way.

Well one or two comments. First I'm pretty much on the "Ew" bandwagon. Second, lactation can be induced in women who are not breast-feeding. Stimulating the nipples enough over a long enough period will induce lactation even in sterile women. Look up "wet nurse". Ok, three, I'm on the whole consensual bandwagon too. If it floats your boat, fine. Me personally, I quit buying Penthouse because they evidently identified urination as a major turn-on for guys. Incidentally Penthouse went bankrupt.

Depends, are you looking for looks, or mileage?

David9999, I have to admit I'm skimming your posts lately. You seem to be a one topic poster, which is cool if that is all you want to be, just be aware most people here get bored with that pretty quickly, and it may earn some hostility. Anyway, your one topic seems to be women are biologically/genetically engineered to desire "alpha male seed spreaders", i.e. assholes. I understand your point, and we've argued this before, but to be a valid point I'd need to see some valid cross cultural data, and still think that it would have to actually be more prevalent in more primitive societies as opposed to less primitive. My theory is that with a full belly and a roof over their heads women can afford to indulge in a badboy fantasy on occasion, but when survival of them and their offspring is at stake an absent or unreliable male is too big a risk to take. Now as for one other point I've made in the socialization meme I keep pushing I've always wanted to ask what happened to the Swedes? a scant 1,000 years ago, a blink in evolutionary terms, they were Vikings, the scourge of Europe. Now they are the very model of pacifism, neutrality, and the socialist nanny state. So did they evolve in 1,000 years?

Well Chandler I wasn't trying to offend you, I was risking it. I dare-say if I wanted to offend you I could probably do it without much effort, not that I find you over-sensitive, just that I think after years of posting I know a few hot buttons for most of the posters here, as I'm sure you do. But then to hit those hot buttons and then, say mock the poster for responding would be a low blow, wouldn't it?

Wow, that sucked. Sorry for belaboring the point.

At the risk of offending Chandler or going philosophical all of those things you guys quote are symptoms, not the disease. The disease is that we've come to view socialization as somehow misguided at best and evil and oppressive at worst. Seriously, socialization, the suppression of the worst and most destructive aspects of humanity, or the re-channeling of them into more beneficial expression is what society does. At some point the whole noble savage and Freudian memes got conflated with Marx and historical "progress" and the idea took hold that people are naturally good and a cooperative species who given the chance will create heaven on earth. All the bad stuff comes from a few unenlightened greedy folks who through some voodoo manage to convince everyone that DVDs and cell phones and iPods are neat and that they want one. Of course left alone, outside the oppressive imposition of capitalism we'd all live on cooperative self sustaining farms with low carbon footprints. Evidence for this theory of humanity is lacking in my opinion.

At the risk of offending Chandler or going philosophical all of those things you guys quote are symptoms, not the disease. The disease is that we've come to view socialization as somehow misguided at best and evil and oppressive at worst. Seriously, socialization, the suppression of the worst and most destructive aspects of humanity, or the re-channeling of them into more beneficial expression is what society does. At some point the whole noble savage and Freudian memes got conflated with Marx and historical "progress" and the idea took hold that people are naturally good and a cooperative species who given the chance will create heaven on earth. All the bad stuff comes from a few unenlightened greedy folks who through some voodoo manage to convince everyone that DVDs and cell phones and iPods are neat and that they want one. Of course left alone, outside the oppressive imposition of capitalism we'd all live on cooperative self sustaining farms with low carbon footprints. Evidence for this theory of humanity is lacking in my opinion.

At the risk of offending Chandler or going philosophical all of those things you guys quote are symptoms, not the disease. The disease is that we've come to view socialization as somehow misguided at best and evil and oppressive at worst. Seriously, socialization, the suppression of the worst and most destructive aspects of humanity, or the re-channeling of them into more beneficial expression is what society does. At some point the whole noble savage and Freudian memes got conflated with Marx and historical "progress" and the idea took hold that people are naturally good and a cooperative species who given the chance will create heaven on earth. All the bad stuff comes from a few unenlightened greedy folks who through some voodoo manage to convince everyone that DVDs and cell phones and iPods are neat and that they want one. Of course left alone, outside the oppressive imposition of capitalism we'd all live on cooperative self sustaining farms with low carbon footprints. Evidence for this theory of humanity is lacking in my opinion.

(And, please, AN, this is not a request for another round of partisan political crossfire.) Considering the rest of your post, that is about the most hilarious thing you've posted on this board. To paraphrase, you want to push your ideology of blaming all ills on capitalism and corporate entities as somehow nonpartisan, pre-empt me from contesting it, and then blame me for being unreasonable if I choose not to accept your statements as fact. I call bullshit. If you want to post statements like that, fine, but you are then obliged to defend them, or admit you aren't willing to, in which case you have no business telling me not to go partisan. You want a debate, I'm ready. My guess is you don't. So then don't post opinions and then tell me I'm not allowed to dispute them. P.S. the "I blame Freud" line was a joke.

This is kind of interesting for a number of reasons. First of all I totally buy the 3-6 month shelf life of a regular. That's my experience. At my best I can maybe sustain interest in regular clubbing for 4 or 5 months at a time before needing a break. There are however exceptions. Sometimes a regular pops back up after a hiatus. On a very few occasions, say half a dozen, I've met a stripper I actually did care about as as person and wanted to keep in touch with, and whenever my clubbing breaks ended was glad to reacquaint myself with. A few of those relationships spanned years, if not continuously. As for constancy, we've tried to convince ourselves, as a society, for the last 40 or so years that the greatest sin is to inhibit in any way the unbridled expression of "self". Hence the worst thing one can do is to consider the opinions of others in determining ones behavior. I blame Freud. Since self regard has been elevated to an admirable trait, regardless of any cause to regard oneself highly, I'm not much surprised by the rudeness or ignorance of young people anymore.

Sorry to be late to the party, but I wanted to post something about the whole tuition thing. I'm a Yale alumni. I went on the government's dime thank God, but something has always bothered me about colleges like Yale and Harvard. Yale's alumni association should give lessons to the CIA and FBI, because when I graduated they only had my last address in New Haven and my parents address. My parents never gave them my address, and I moved back to DC in a completely new area. They were sending me fundraising pitches by August, and I haven't been able to shake them for 15+ years. Now the part that pisses me off. Yale university has an endowment of 22.5 million dollars. My understanding of charitable trusts and endowments, which could be wrong, was that they were required to spend 10% to remain tax free. Typically such huge endowments have no problem getting long term interest over that amount. So, here is the thing. Yale reports their operating costs as 1.96 billion, that comes to 8.7% of their endowment. So why do people have to pay $45,000 per year to go there? OK, scholarships... Let's assume only 10% of the 5,200 undergraduates (this ignores grad students) pay tuition and everyone else goes free. Those 520 students add another 23 million rather than depleting the resources. Graduate students? there are about 2,500, and from personal experience I can attest most don't pay tuition, but assuming that it becomes a drain of 112 million, if you buy that the tuition they don't pay is an actual loss. That isn't however the case. Most low level classes are taught by graduate students (free labor) and in the sciences most graduate students are supported by professors grants. When I was there Yale charged 70% to administer a grant, so if a professor got $200,000 from some organization (usually the government) Yale took $140,000 off the top, leaving the professor with enough to support one grad student and a few trips or new instruments. In addition, even though most grad students took no more than 2 years of classes Yale required 4 years of full tuition payments from all grad students. So now not only does a professor have to support a student, he has to cover two years of tuition for a student not even taking classes. No DOD contractor charging $500 for a craftsman hammer ever came up with a scam as good as universities.

BG, a few points. What makes evolution a scientific theory is that it proposes a specific mecanism and makes specific verifiable predictions. The problem is that the most critical of those predictions have not been verified. We can see evolution on the small scale, it's called genetics. Nobody however has ever turned a rabbit into a fox, a lizard into a bird, or a monkey into a human, that is the missing part. But since broccolli and cauliflower are both cabbages, and since eggplant were originally about the size of small tomatoes and white you can start to see the point that it isn't a great leap to go from genetics to evolution. Those were both examples of selective breeding, however the principle remains. The main problem I see is when the social sciences started trying to be hard sciences and when the humanities tried to apply scientific principles and be sciences. The social sciences are a lesser culprit. For the most part they can use statistics and demographics as tools to study society, but too often they see those statistics or pools or demographics as something other than a snapshot of an ever changing ever evolving, and completely uncontrollable entity that is driven by 300 million people making thousands of decisions every day. The idea that you can control such a thing is ludicrous. We first saw the failings of that conceit in Vietnam, where the best and brightest decided they could control the behavior of an entire nation and it's leaders by positive and negative reinforcement. The humanities and arts are an argument for another day. As for the Christianity parallel, FONDL will have to clarify, but my understanding was that just because a majority believe it does not give them the right to impose it as a norm. Although there are probably other aspects to the argument. My point was that a scientific theory is a very different creature, and while consensus and majority rule does not (Al Gore's opinion to the contrary) equate with science, evolution goes well beyond that as far as scientific theory goes. As to your contentions, I agree, the government should protect you from harm. Much of your post however talks of irritation, annoyance, inconvenience. It is not the governments job to protect you from being annoyed by others, although as I have lamented that is quickly becoming the new norm. The other point you ignore is that you make your preferences the definition of the norm. You find smoking annoying, or even stretch it to dangerous, therefore it is a public nuisance. So your contention is that you have no obligation to avoid places where people who do not find smoking either annoying or dangerous congregate, rather they are obligated to conform to your desire to be able to go anywhere and not be offended or annoyed. So what about their right not to be annoyed by you? Smoking isn't illegal (yet). The drinking argument is interesting, but ultimately fails because it isn't drinking, but public intoxication that is illegal. And the threshold for public intoxication is pretty high. You pretty much have to be causing a public disturbance. Driving is another matter, mostly due to the fact that operating a vehicle comes with a lot of public safety concessions for the privilege.

"DEA just goes after the guilty, right?" That is just plain stupid. If they knew wether they were guilty or not they wouldn't have to investigate, now would they? Each case you cited was one where there was a criminal allegation. "A good doctor wouldn't any problem using his best judgment to prescribe painkillers, right?" I never said that, now did I? As far as the nurse and the doctor, the hospital is the one place they wouldn't have to wory about the DEA because the doctor's perscription would be on the patient chart and in hospital records and would be administered by a third party, and each dose recorded. More likely he was worried that if the patient OD'd (even though as you said he was on his way out) he could be sued for malpractice by some relative who figured he'd hit the lottery. My guess is the DEA was a convenient way to blame sombody else so you wouldn't keep pushinng for more pain killers.

FONDL, as for the fatal flaw of democracy, if you really mean democracy then the fatal flaw is that 50.0001% of the people can vote to take all the posessions or the other 49.9999% and it is totally democratic. If you mean the flaw of a constitutional republic like ours I would agree to an extent, but the elected officials aren't the real problem. The real problem is a permanent professional political class that comes to Washington and stays, implementing their policies, directing regulation, and reporting problems and statistics as they see them regardless of who gets elected. And as you point out, they are almost always the people who see a bigger department and more workers and money for them to direct as the solution.

What does any of this have to do with a doctor perscribing pain killers in a hospital? All of these are cases where there is some sort of allegation of doctors illegally diverting drugs for illegal resale. That IS a crime, and I did say that those are the cases where the DEA IS interested in doctors.

Well FONDL, Christianity is not a scientific theory, it is a religion and calls itself faith based very proudly. The global warming part is pretty accurate, but global warming is not much of a theory since nobody has ever sought to explain how it works in any detail. I agree that there is a tilt in the educational establishment toward the latest PC fashion, but that still doesn't excuse people who want creationism or intelligent design taught as scientific. They aren't. For all it's problems evolution is science.

Yes, as I said, unless drugs were being sold illegally the DEA wouldn't be interested. I also wouldn't consider CATO to be a neutral party in this since they are for the legalization of drugs and pretty much hostile to any government agency. You can post links to your heart's content. I am getting my facts directly from field agents who do the investigations and make the arrests.

Whatever it says as official policy, the fact is that they don't go after pot dealers unless they are dealing large quantities of other harder drugs. They may eradicate it, but agents do not go undercover to buy pot and bust a pot dealer. As far as pain killers in hospitals that is the provence of the FDA, the DEA does not get involved, which was my original point.

Jablake, Sorry to e dismissive, but the DEA doesn't even care about pot, which is illegal, let alone legal pain killers, your politically partisan link does not change that simple fact.

No offense taken, I was just pointing out that there is wtf, and then there is WTF!? Also blocking is worth considering, at least IMO.

Chandler, I post WTF selectively for posts that deserve special note for their extreme WTF-ness. Besides if you are seriously refering to posts with no point blocking two or three posters takes care of most of them.

Is not getting any sex a sexual problem? Heah, probably, nevermind.

By the way "the DEA is a little bit fanatical when in comes to keeping their thumb on doctors." is absolute bullshit. The DEA does not deal with doctors and hospitals unless there is some evidence of criminal conduct, such as illegal sales or production of drugs. I know this for a fact. A relative of mine works for the DEA, they do not monitor how doctors choose to prescribe in hospitals. If your friend died in pain, blame the doctor.