And this is why you need a soils scientist as your friend; they would know about the quicklime and also know where you can dig the biggest hole the fastest.
I can see how this would work for the "big guys" like Amazon, but what about the little indie merchant who, I don't know, sells antique buttons, but not under the aegis of Etsy or eBay? Does the little button seller have to keep track of every state he sells buttons in, and remit the appropriate tax to that state when the time comes?
Because if that's the case, I can see LOTS of little indie sellers just going out of business. I know if I were required to keep track of that extra thing, I'd just decide it wasn't worth it and either sign on with a "bigger boy" (Like Etsy) who might keep track of it, and raise my prices accordingly (to pay for the fees I had to pay to Etsy), or just shutter my shop and go out of the button business.
This seems to me another case inadvertently helping the behemoths while hurting the little guy.
(Also, my local sales tax, after this election, will probably be over 10%. Which will really, really suck if I have to pay that AND SHIPPING on stuff that I can't buy locally because we have virtually no stores)
I am assuming that article on not giving a fish is parody, and only parody. Because if every "Atlas" decided he was going to shrug, we'd wind up with paved roads turning into dirt roads, and no food on the grocery-store shelves.
The only way I have succeeded in life is in giving waaaaaay too many fish, all the time. I'm not cool enough or talented enough to say "Meh, don't care" and not do stuff.
Some days I feel that literally the ONLY thing I have going for me is the fact that I give a lot of fish. Like I said: not cool, not talented, so I gotta play to my strength, which is caring about junk other people don't seem to.
(And yet, I regularly get screwed over by people I expected to do something but who don't give enough of a fish to do it. So I wind up doing everything myself. I'll probably be dead by 60 from the stress, but hey, I'll save the government money on Medicare, right?)
Before my parents retired from the Illinois state university system, they were made to take online ethics tests. Which were put into place by then-governor Rod Blagojevich.
I don't have any resources to back the assertion up, but I know we've been told in the past five years or so to keep VERY tight attendance records (new Financial Aid rules; it started with having to report "last day attended" for F grades). We are required to submit monthly attendance and grade checks, though I'm not sure if that's federal or local to my campus.
It's possible these were on the books before and someone somewhere in an upper office was lax (I would not be surprised) about informing us, but it does seem since 2010 or so, there have been a lot of minor freakouts over things like attendance reporting and whether an F is a "not attending" F or a "failed' F or a "cheated their ass off" F.
We have also been required to go through:
NIMS training
Sexual-harrassment avoidance training
"Required reporter" training (HAVEN and similar - if a student comes and tells me their partner is abusing them, by law I must report it now)
Training on how to "correctly" do extended time exams for ADA students because someone somewhere donked it up and we all had to be punished...
CRASE training (which was mildly traumatic)
I also think ADA laws have gotten stricter. As have Title IX compliance. And this is in a system of shrinking state support....I don't know how much Federal support we get but I can tell you we took it in the teeth last spring with a big state shortfall, we had mandatory furlough days and for a while our budget was frozen for supplies, which meant if you taught a lab using "consumables" (e.g., chicken liver as a catalase source), you bought it out of your own pocket or cancelled that lab.
All I know is that if anyone complains to me about "idle, overpaid professors,' they get the stink-eye from me. Maybe at Harvard, maybe at some of the bigger state flagship schools. But not here. I have to budget pretty damn tightly not to have month left over at the end of the money these days.
Yup. Parents complain about the cost of college but I have also seen parents, in campus tours, do stuff like, "What? You don't have a climbing wall/state of the art fitness center/computing center with computers less than six months old/suite-based dormitory with kitchens and laundry rooms for each suite?" and it's like some of them don't realize that there's a link there.
Also, the flood of Federal regulations public unis have to comply with has led to a sharp increase in administrators and offices and all of that. And while I hate having eighteen "bosses," I also would hate to deal with all the paperwork in re: ADA and everything else all myself.
I will say the increases in tuition, by and large, are not faculty salaries, unless you're talking about certain private colleges or certain "superstars." (I make about $60K a year with nearly 20 years experience, and that's for a 4/3 load)
I wonder what the bar-chart making the rounds claiming that "only" 45% of Gen Xers are "stressed" about the election as compared to nearly 60% of older Boomers/Silent gen and 56% of Millennials means. (Possibly not statistically significant, but whatever).
I admit my cynical "Xer" take on it is "We've already given up; we've been expecting the band to strike up 'Nearer My God To Thee' for about fifteen years now." More likely it's that most of us are contending with teen or tween kids, jobs, aging parents, and all the other urgent stuff of day to day life. (I would say **I** am stressed: not a good choice in the bunch as far as I can see - but then I have no kids and my aging parents are 700 miles away, so I have fewer things to divert my attention. And also, I'm single and totally dependent on myself to fund my retirement and everything else)
Wow. I have known two people in my life who contracted horrible illnesses (one was Giardia, I forget what the other was) from drinking untreated surface water.
It's just another reason why I prefer not to camp, given the choice: needing a drink and having to wait either for the water to boil for five minutes (then cool down) or for the iodine to dissolve....
(I have also lived through days-long boil orders and through a broken intake line to my house. Neither was fun.)
I'm just weird anyway because my family is demographically weird. I had people of one grandmother's generation (a great-uncle I never met) who fought in WWI. My parents are "Silent Generation" (born just before WWII) and in some ways my attitudes are more like theirs than they are of my fellow Xers or even the Boomers.
Also, I'm older than most "Xers" so I remember a world without home computers, without phone answering machines, and my family didn't have cable until I was in college.
I tend to be far more "you kids get off my lawn" than many of my generation. In some ways, I think I was born old and cranky.
Okay, granted. Though in some less-developed nations people are making strides towards increasing it. And healthcare is better, provided people don't choose to reject it. (Don't get me started on anti-vaxxers).
I have a parent who grew up without running water and so indoor plumbing is on the top of my list of "things I'm grateful I have"
1961, which I thought was still Boomer. (I was born in '69 and am one of the older Gen-Xers, at least by the standard "Gen X started in 1965" accounting I've seen some give).
Just about every charge described in this article as being leveled at Millennials, I remember being leveled at Gen X (my generation) some 15-20 years ago. We're demographically weak (the smallest demographic cohort since the turn of the 20th century, I think), so no one pays attention to us any more, other than a few folks who apparently think we're gonna be willing to sacrifice more for the sake of saving the economy and Social Security....
I'll also note we'll probably NEVER get a Gen-X president; the "main" choices right now are both Boomers. Not that I think a Gen-X president would be any better of a choice given the way politics goes, it seems to select for a certain type of person....
And I will note: this MAY be the best time to be alive, but it's damned far from Prof. Pangloss' "Best of all possible worlds." I am happy vaccines and good water hygiene and antibiotics exist, but there is still a ton of stuff wrong with the world, a lot of it having to do with how people treat each other. Though I doubt that will EVER get better, looking at the history I've read.
I bet they decided on the basis of some focus-group thing.
I will say tattoos are really common among my students, not all of whom are in their 20s. More often though, it's small ones - women with a flower on an ankle or a Bible verse (!) running down the inside of a wrist. The fake-tribal armband things were popular a few years ago but you don't see as many of them any more. Guys may have quotes or small images, crosses are common here. (We are the buckle of the Bible belt).
Of course, I am just seeing the ones on ankles, lower arms, and occasionally shoulders. Who knows what else is there? (I don't want to, esp. not on my students)
I rarely see anyone with "sleeves" done.
Tattoo parlors were illegal in my state until just a few years ago. When they were legalized was when I started seeing more people with tattoos. (My feeling on the legality of it is that it's perfectly fine AS LONG AS there are some safeguards in place to avoid spreading disease - like licensing or something. Though I suspect there's also an element of "buyer needs to be informed" in body-mod stuff).
R1 probably explains why friends have come to me and said "This particular guy fancied you but was afraid to talk to you" (Very, very rarely have I consciously given off "leave me alone, creep" vibes, and that only to a guy I knew had a "history" of being inappropriate). But yeah. My body language stiffens up when I'm afraid of screwing up an interaction, and lots of people read that as "I'm not comfortable around you, go away."
I probably need to get a t-shirt made up or something that explains.
***
All the tattoo things: I wonder if it breaks down a bit on age lines. I'm an older Gen-xer (born 1969) and I have no tattoos and wouldn't dream of getting one now (Possible exception: if I had some kind of really serious medical condition first responders would need to know of. One of my students once had a tat on his arm declaring him a Type I Diabetic, and I thought, "Huh, that's a good idea").
Also could break down on urban/small town lines, maybe. I grew up in a small town and the only people I knew growing up who had tattoos were men who were Navy veterans. (I guess also some ex-cons had them, but my family didn't know any). So I associate it with "Older guy who served in WWII or Korea" and still have a little bit of trouble braining their current popularity.
(And I confess: I don't particularly like 'em. I almost never express that opinion because I know it's unpopular and people tell me I'm bigoted for holding it. And it's not a strong thing, it's just a preference issue. I wouldn't necessarily turn down a date with a guy who had them, for example, but my preference would be not to see them. And around here, face and neck tattoos are common and are frequently a mark of, shall we say, less-than-ideal lifestyle choices when younger. Neck tattoos, also, just look like they're really painful to get.
Actually, my anti-tattoo feelings may be because the main person I knew as a kid who had them was loud and kind of crude....)
Perhaps agree, but I've sad on several occasions, if recreational marijuana becomes legal nationwide, I am investing in Jack-in-the-Box stock. Heck, for a while the ads even seemed aimed at the stoner demographic.
I....don't think I've ever eaten Taco Bell. And I'm not about to start now.
I know, but it takes being willing to give up my one day off a week AND having sufficient energy to cook and freeze a crapton of food.
I eat a lot of peanut butter. Which I will probably become allergic to, eventually. And a lot of canned fruit. (I also have tooth issues so stuff like trail bars are kind of out. I figure someday I will just wind up on parenteral nutrition because I will develop too many limitations to be able to eat like a normal human)
I call mine "intolerances" or "sensitivities" because while I have (in some cases) a mild immune reaction (I get hives if I eat cashews) but generally if you say "allergies" people freak out - and I've been taken to task by people with anaphylactic food allergies that I'm not allowed to say "I'm allergic" to some food if it doesn't kill me.
And I don't know. I genuinely think the carrot and celery thing is some kind of weird missing enzyme in me; I cannot digest them and my body reacts like someone with lactose intolerance reacts to milk.
I used to get the allergy immunotherapy and it helped with my grass and tree pollen allergies. I can't, now, because I'm on a beta blocker and it's contra-indicated - something about they might not be able to "bring me back" if I went anaphylactic, which is not reassuring at all, given all my other allergies.
Confession: I've more than once wished there was "human chow" - some kind of nutritionally-complete, bland, easy-to-eat food. There are times when I am literally too busy to shop or cook (And frozen dinners, I can't really do - I have a sodium restriction in my diet). I once idly looked into Nutriloaf, the stuff that is used for unruly prisoners, but as I remember, it had one or two of my "can't eat" things in it.
(And those nutritional shake things - most of them have artificial sweetener, none of which I can tolerate).
Being able to cut grocery shopping and cooking out of my week would make my life easier some weeks. It's sad but true. (I probably need a stay at home husband, but I don't see any men volunteering for that job)
I'm not surprised by the Soylent bar story - both my mother and I have a sensitivity to soy (one of the reasons I quit trying to be a vegetarian: tofu and its kin give me a badly upset stomach). And also to the artificial sweetener - my dad developed a sensitivity to Splenda after trying to sub it for sugar after a pre-diabetes diagnosis.
I suspect this sort of thing will be a problem if people try to eat just a few foods....wasn't Soylent promoted as essentially "human chow" where you don't need to eat much else?
(I suppose the problem could also be mold that sneaked in with the soy....lots of people are sensitive to different molds)
I've developed a few new food sensitivities and hope I don't outlive my ability to eat....it seems like every five years or so there's some new little thing I have to cut out. (So far: carrots, celery, soy, mango, cashews, pistachios, mushrooms....and I have to be careful about how many raw strawberries I eat.)
I don't MIND them, but I do mind the increasing creep of them, where some shows will show five minutes of commercials, two minutes of show, and then back to five minutes of commercials.
I suspect that those folks who DON'T "cut the cable" have more of that to look forward to. Already a half-hour program is something like 22 minutes of actual program and eight of ads; I wouldn't be surprised to see a future with equal amounts of ads and actual programming.
Not that I know of, but Monday is Columbus Day, which is a holiday for banks and Federal workers and some public K-12 schools (most of the rest of us have to work). So maybe people are taking Friday off early to make a four-day weekend? I guess some people live in that world?
(My world, these days, is more often the world of the one-day weekend, and that's only because I refuse to give up having a Sabbath day)
Yeah, it's another "workend" with grading and research work and I also have to file the monthly grade reports on our athletes and scholarship students. And I really need to get to the next biggest town to me to grocery shop for better-quality food than what the local wal-mart sells, except it's an hour-and-a-half round trip now with road construction. And no, there isn't anything good closer: I spent about an hour on Google Maps searching one night, figuring there HAD to be some kind of secret grocery store somewhere I didn't know about.
We have a bunch of "State Questions," usually written in the "best" (i.e., most confusing) legalese and some of which have been highly obfuscated by some groups.
I confess the one I care about most is the one about whether or not it should be legal to sell wine (Proper wine, not the Boone's Farm stuff which is already sold) in grocery stores. I am not a drinker but I am a cook and I will confess it creeps me out a little to have to go to the seamier side of town and go to a liquor store if I want a Cab Sauv for a beef stew. I also hold out a vain hope that modernizing the liquor laws (well, a LITTLE bit) might entice a decent grocery here. (We have a wal-mart and a tiny locally run place which is nice enough but has NO selection)
oh, there's also an allegedly-for-the-teachers 1 cent extra sales tax. (We pay sales tax on groceries - the full rate - as well as on everything else). My SUSPICION is that the PTB, if this passes, will just fiddle appropriations so it will be no net gain for education - just a shifting of how it's paid for to more of a consumption tax than a property tax.
and it also means my local sales tax would be over 10 percent. Even on groceries.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Morning Ed: Society {2016.10.25.T}”
And this is why you need a soils scientist as your friend; they would know about the quicklime and also know where you can dig the biggest hole the fastest.
"
I've never heard of any, but then, I haven't seriously looked into pursuing a career selling "Penny Blossoms" or the like online.
On “Have Millennials Really Been Screwed Over by Baby Boomers?”
Not illegal, but hasn't the WHO or somewhere called for heavy taxation on it as a goad to make people behave a certain way?
I think also San Francisco has taxes on it, and I know Bloomberg in NY wanted to tinker with availability of "Big Gulps" and the like.
I'm not a soda-drinker but as a fattish woman who has been judged in the past, I look on these kinds of efforts with a jaded eye.
On “Morning Ed: Society {2016.10.25.T}”
I can see how this would work for the "big guys" like Amazon, but what about the little indie merchant who, I don't know, sells antique buttons, but not under the aegis of Etsy or eBay? Does the little button seller have to keep track of every state he sells buttons in, and remit the appropriate tax to that state when the time comes?
Because if that's the case, I can see LOTS of little indie sellers just going out of business. I know if I were required to keep track of that extra thing, I'd just decide it wasn't worth it and either sign on with a "bigger boy" (Like Etsy) who might keep track of it, and raise my prices accordingly (to pay for the fees I had to pay to Etsy), or just shutter my shop and go out of the button business.
This seems to me another case inadvertently helping the behemoths while hurting the little guy.
(Also, my local sales tax, after this election, will probably be over 10%. Which will really, really suck if I have to pay that AND SHIPPING on stuff that I can't buy locally because we have virtually no stores)
"
I am assuming that article on not giving a fish is parody, and only parody. Because if every "Atlas" decided he was going to shrug, we'd wind up with paved roads turning into dirt roads, and no food on the grocery-store shelves.
The only way I have succeeded in life is in giving waaaaaay too many fish, all the time. I'm not cool enough or talented enough to say "Meh, don't care" and not do stuff.
Some days I feel that literally the ONLY thing I have going for me is the fact that I give a lot of fish. Like I said: not cool, not talented, so I gotta play to my strength, which is caring about junk other people don't seem to.
(And yet, I regularly get screwed over by people I expected to do something but who don't give enough of a fish to do it. So I wind up doing everything myself. I'll probably be dead by 60 from the stress, but hey, I'll save the government money on Medicare, right?)
On “Have Millennials Really Been Screwed Over by Baby Boomers?”
Before my parents retired from the Illinois state university system, they were made to take online ethics tests. Which were put into place by then-governor Rod Blagojevich.
I teased my father a good bit about that.
("Shut up, Erica.")
"
I don't have any resources to back the assertion up, but I know we've been told in the past five years or so to keep VERY tight attendance records (new Financial Aid rules; it started with having to report "last day attended" for F grades). We are required to submit monthly attendance and grade checks, though I'm not sure if that's federal or local to my campus.
It's possible these were on the books before and someone somewhere in an upper office was lax (I would not be surprised) about informing us, but it does seem since 2010 or so, there have been a lot of minor freakouts over things like attendance reporting and whether an F is a "not attending" F or a "failed' F or a "cheated their ass off" F.
We have also been required to go through:
NIMS training
Sexual-harrassment avoidance training
"Required reporter" training (HAVEN and similar - if a student comes and tells me their partner is abusing them, by law I must report it now)
Training on how to "correctly" do extended time exams for ADA students because someone somewhere donked it up and we all had to be punished...
CRASE training (which was mildly traumatic)
I also think ADA laws have gotten stricter. As have Title IX compliance. And this is in a system of shrinking state support....I don't know how much Federal support we get but I can tell you we took it in the teeth last spring with a big state shortfall, we had mandatory furlough days and for a while our budget was frozen for supplies, which meant if you taught a lab using "consumables" (e.g., chicken liver as a catalase source), you bought it out of your own pocket or cancelled that lab.
All I know is that if anyone complains to me about "idle, overpaid professors,' they get the stink-eye from me. Maybe at Harvard, maybe at some of the bigger state flagship schools. But not here. I have to budget pretty damn tightly not to have month left over at the end of the money these days.
"
Yup. Parents complain about the cost of college but I have also seen parents, in campus tours, do stuff like, "What? You don't have a climbing wall/state of the art fitness center/computing center with computers less than six months old/suite-based dormitory with kitchens and laundry rooms for each suite?" and it's like some of them don't realize that there's a link there.
Also, the flood of Federal regulations public unis have to comply with has led to a sharp increase in administrators and offices and all of that. And while I hate having eighteen "bosses," I also would hate to deal with all the paperwork in re: ADA and everything else all myself.
I will say the increases in tuition, by and large, are not faculty salaries, unless you're talking about certain private colleges or certain "superstars." (I make about $60K a year with nearly 20 years experience, and that's for a 4/3 load)
"
I wonder what the bar-chart making the rounds claiming that "only" 45% of Gen Xers are "stressed" about the election as compared to nearly 60% of older Boomers/Silent gen and 56% of Millennials means. (Possibly not statistically significant, but whatever).
I admit my cynical "Xer" take on it is "We've already given up; we've been expecting the band to strike up 'Nearer My God To Thee' for about fifteen years now." More likely it's that most of us are contending with teen or tween kids, jobs, aging parents, and all the other urgent stuff of day to day life. (I would say **I** am stressed: not a good choice in the bunch as far as I can see - but then I have no kids and my aging parents are 700 miles away, so I have fewer things to divert my attention. And also, I'm single and totally dependent on myself to fund my retirement and everything else)
"
Wow. I have known two people in my life who contracted horrible illnesses (one was Giardia, I forget what the other was) from drinking untreated surface water.
It's just another reason why I prefer not to camp, given the choice: needing a drink and having to wait either for the water to boil for five minutes (then cool down) or for the iodine to dissolve....
(I have also lived through days-long boil orders and through a broken intake line to my house. Neither was fun.)
"
I'm just weird anyway because my family is demographically weird. I had people of one grandmother's generation (a great-uncle I never met) who fought in WWI. My parents are "Silent Generation" (born just before WWII) and in some ways my attitudes are more like theirs than they are of my fellow Xers or even the Boomers.
Also, I'm older than most "Xers" so I remember a world without home computers, without phone answering machines, and my family didn't have cable until I was in college.
I tend to be far more "you kids get off my lawn" than many of my generation. In some ways, I think I was born old and cranky.
"
Okay, granted. Though in some less-developed nations people are making strides towards increasing it. And healthcare is better, provided people don't choose to reject it. (Don't get me started on anti-vaxxers).
I have a parent who grew up without running water and so indoor plumbing is on the top of my list of "things I'm grateful I have"
"
1961, which I thought was still Boomer. (I was born in '69 and am one of the older Gen-Xers, at least by the standard "Gen X started in 1965" accounting I've seen some give).
"
Just about every charge described in this article as being leveled at Millennials, I remember being leveled at Gen X (my generation) some 15-20 years ago. We're demographically weak (the smallest demographic cohort since the turn of the 20th century, I think), so no one pays attention to us any more, other than a few folks who apparently think we're gonna be willing to sacrifice more for the sake of saving the economy and Social Security....
I'll also note we'll probably NEVER get a Gen-X president; the "main" choices right now are both Boomers. Not that I think a Gen-X president would be any better of a choice given the way politics goes, it seems to select for a certain type of person....
And I will note: this MAY be the best time to be alive, but it's damned far from Prof. Pangloss' "Best of all possible worlds." I am happy vaccines and good water hygiene and antibiotics exist, but there is still a ton of stuff wrong with the world, a lot of it having to do with how people treat each other. Though I doubt that will EVER get better, looking at the history I've read.
On “Linky Friday #189: Tattooed Introversion”
I bet they decided on the basis of some focus-group thing.
I will say tattoos are really common among my students, not all of whom are in their 20s. More often though, it's small ones - women with a flower on an ankle or a Bible verse (!) running down the inside of a wrist. The fake-tribal armband things were popular a few years ago but you don't see as many of them any more. Guys may have quotes or small images, crosses are common here. (We are the buckle of the Bible belt).
Of course, I am just seeing the ones on ankles, lower arms, and occasionally shoulders. Who knows what else is there? (I don't want to, esp. not on my students)
I rarely see anyone with "sleeves" done.
Tattoo parlors were illegal in my state until just a few years ago. When they were legalized was when I started seeing more people with tattoos. (My feeling on the legality of it is that it's perfectly fine AS LONG AS there are some safeguards in place to avoid spreading disease - like licensing or something. Though I suspect there's also an element of "buyer needs to be informed" in body-mod stuff).
"
R1 probably explains why friends have come to me and said "This particular guy fancied you but was afraid to talk to you" (Very, very rarely have I consciously given off "leave me alone, creep" vibes, and that only to a guy I knew had a "history" of being inappropriate). But yeah. My body language stiffens up when I'm afraid of screwing up an interaction, and lots of people read that as "I'm not comfortable around you, go away."
I probably need to get a t-shirt made up or something that explains.
***
All the tattoo things: I wonder if it breaks down a bit on age lines. I'm an older Gen-xer (born 1969) and I have no tattoos and wouldn't dream of getting one now (Possible exception: if I had some kind of really serious medical condition first responders would need to know of. One of my students once had a tat on his arm declaring him a Type I Diabetic, and I thought, "Huh, that's a good idea").
Also could break down on urban/small town lines, maybe. I grew up in a small town and the only people I knew growing up who had tattoos were men who were Navy veterans. (I guess also some ex-cons had them, but my family didn't know any). So I associate it with "Older guy who served in WWII or Korea" and still have a little bit of trouble braining their current popularity.
(And I confess: I don't particularly like 'em. I almost never express that opinion because I know it's unpopular and people tell me I'm bigoted for holding it. And it's not a strong thing, it's just a preference issue. I wouldn't necessarily turn down a date with a guy who had them, for example, but my preference would be not to see them. And around here, face and neck tattoos are common and are frequently a mark of, shall we say, less-than-ideal lifestyle choices when younger. Neck tattoos, also, just look like they're really painful to get.
Actually, my anti-tattoo feelings may be because the main person I knew as a kid who had them was loud and kind of crude....)
On “Morning Ed: Food {2016.10.19.W}”
Perhaps agree, but I've sad on several occasions, if recreational marijuana becomes legal nationwide, I am investing in Jack-in-the-Box stock. Heck, for a while the ads even seemed aimed at the stoner demographic.
I....don't think I've ever eaten Taco Bell. And I'm not about to start now.
On “Morning Ed: Health {2016.10.13.Th}”
I know, but it takes being willing to give up my one day off a week AND having sufficient energy to cook and freeze a crapton of food.
I eat a lot of peanut butter. Which I will probably become allergic to, eventually. And a lot of canned fruit. (I also have tooth issues so stuff like trail bars are kind of out. I figure someday I will just wind up on parenteral nutrition because I will develop too many limitations to be able to eat like a normal human)
"
I call mine "intolerances" or "sensitivities" because while I have (in some cases) a mild immune reaction (I get hives if I eat cashews) but generally if you say "allergies" people freak out - and I've been taken to task by people with anaphylactic food allergies that I'm not allowed to say "I'm allergic" to some food if it doesn't kill me.
And I don't know. I genuinely think the carrot and celery thing is some kind of weird missing enzyme in me; I cannot digest them and my body reacts like someone with lactose intolerance reacts to milk.
I used to get the allergy immunotherapy and it helped with my grass and tree pollen allergies. I can't, now, because I'm on a beta blocker and it's contra-indicated - something about they might not be able to "bring me back" if I went anaphylactic, which is not reassuring at all, given all my other allergies.
"
Confession: I've more than once wished there was "human chow" - some kind of nutritionally-complete, bland, easy-to-eat food. There are times when I am literally too busy to shop or cook (And frozen dinners, I can't really do - I have a sodium restriction in my diet). I once idly looked into Nutriloaf, the stuff that is used for unruly prisoners, but as I remember, it had one or two of my "can't eat" things in it.
(And those nutritional shake things - most of them have artificial sweetener, none of which I can tolerate).
Being able to cut grocery shopping and cooking out of my week would make my life easier some weeks. It's sad but true. (I probably need a stay at home husband, but I don't see any men volunteering for that job)
"
I'm not surprised by the Soylent bar story - both my mother and I have a sensitivity to soy (one of the reasons I quit trying to be a vegetarian: tofu and its kin give me a badly upset stomach). And also to the artificial sweetener - my dad developed a sensitivity to Splenda after trying to sub it for sugar after a pre-diabetes diagnosis.
I suspect this sort of thing will be a problem if people try to eat just a few foods....wasn't Soylent promoted as essentially "human chow" where you don't need to eat much else?
(I suppose the problem could also be mold that sneaked in with the soy....lots of people are sensitive to different molds)
I've developed a few new food sensitivities and hope I don't outlive my ability to eat....it seems like every five years or so there's some new little thing I have to cut out. (So far: carrots, celery, soy, mango, cashews, pistachios, mushrooms....and I have to be careful about how many raw strawberries I eat.)
On “Sunday!”
I don't MIND them, but I do mind the increasing creep of them, where some shows will show five minutes of commercials, two minutes of show, and then back to five minutes of commercials.
I suspect that those folks who DON'T "cut the cable" have more of that to look forward to. Already a half-hour program is something like 22 minutes of actual program and eight of ads; I wouldn't be surprised to see a future with equal amounts of ads and actual programming.
On “Weekend!”
Not that I know of, but Monday is Columbus Day, which is a holiday for banks and Federal workers and some public K-12 schools (most of the rest of us have to work). So maybe people are taking Friday off early to make a four-day weekend? I guess some people live in that world?
(My world, these days, is more often the world of the one-day weekend, and that's only because I refuse to give up having a Sabbath day)
Yeah, it's another "workend" with grading and research work and I also have to file the monthly grade reports on our athletes and scholarship students. And I really need to get to the next biggest town to me to grocery shop for better-quality food than what the local wal-mart sells, except it's an hour-and-a-half round trip now with road construction. And no, there isn't anything good closer: I spent about an hour on Google Maps searching one night, figuring there HAD to be some kind of secret grocery store somewhere I didn't know about.
On “Morning Ed: Listicles {2016.10.05.W}”
*shrugs* People have really strong feelings about mayonnaise. It's one of those polarizing foods.
On “What’s On Your Ballot?”
We have a bunch of "State Questions," usually written in the "best" (i.e., most confusing) legalese and some of which have been highly obfuscated by some groups.
I confess the one I care about most is the one about whether or not it should be legal to sell wine (Proper wine, not the Boone's Farm stuff which is already sold) in grocery stores. I am not a drinker but I am a cook and I will confess it creeps me out a little to have to go to the seamier side of town and go to a liquor store if I want a Cab Sauv for a beef stew. I also hold out a vain hope that modernizing the liquor laws (well, a LITTLE bit) might entice a decent grocery here. (We have a wal-mart and a tiny locally run place which is nice enough but has NO selection)
oh, there's also an allegedly-for-the-teachers 1 cent extra sales tax. (We pay sales tax on groceries - the full rate - as well as on everything else). My SUSPICION is that the PTB, if this passes, will just fiddle appropriations so it will be no net gain for education - just a shifting of how it's paid for to more of a consumption tax than a property tax.
and it also means my local sales tax would be over 10 percent. Even on groceries.
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