Performed a good deed today but I got the shitty end of the stick. Out on the lake fishing and go around this small island while driving my boat and notice a guy ,waving frantically with a wooden oar. He's standing on the bow of a boat twice as big as mine. Waving an oar is kind of like an international signal for distress so I went over to see what was up. Saw a marker on the water indicating a rock and I went past what I thought was the good side only to have my outboard propellor ground upon some loose boulders, rocks the size of baseballs. Wasn't going fast but my blades were all damaged, but not enough to stop me helping out. I ended up towing an older gentleman's boat to his dock. His battery had died and he couldn't start his inboard engine. New prop about $160. Everybody tells me to expect good karma to follow.
(Aug 15, 2017 01:22 AM)scheherazade Wrote: No wasp spray in town according to the gentleman I deployed for that mission so hopefully he has something left in his shed at home. Definitely the worst year for wasps and hornets that I can recall.
Why don't you just order some from Amazon?
(Aug 15, 2017 02:31 AM)Zinjanthropos Wrote: Performed a good deed today but I got the shitty end of the stick. Out on the lake fishing and go around this small island while driving my boat and notice a guy ,waving frantically with a wooden oar. He's standing on the bow of a boat twice as big as mine. Waving an oar is kind of like an international signal for distress so I went over to see what was up. Saw a marker on the water indicating a rock and I went past what I thought was the good side only to have my outboard propellor ground upon some loose boulders, rocks the size of baseballs. Wasn't going fast but my blades were all damaged, but not enough to stop me helping out. I ended up towing an older gentleman's boat to his dock. His battery had died and he couldn't start his inboard engine. New prop about $160. Everybody tells me to expect good karma to follow.
No good deed goes unpunished. That's the price you pay for being a problem solver, but would you have left him stranded even if you knew it was going to cost you $160.
C CAug 15, 2017 04:24 AM (This post was last modified: Aug 15, 2017 04:52 AM by C C.)
(Aug 15, 2017 01:22 AM)scheherazade Wrote: Definitely the worst year for wasps and hornets that I can recall.
Bad here, too, yet probably less than last year (purely going by the fact that I haven't been stung once for a change -- so far).
(Aug 15, 2017 02:31 AM)Zinjanthropos Wrote: He's standing on the bow of a boat twice as big as mine.
Sounds like fishermen who can afford big boats really can't, if they're too short on cash to offer to even partly reimburse a rescuer who fell on the bad side of risk-taking.
EDIT: Ah, "elderly gentleman". Missed that. Fixed income, the ominous dead battery, boat left over from the glory days.
(Aug 15, 2017 01:22 AM)scheherazade Wrote: No wasp spray in town according to the gentleman I deployed for that mission so hopefully he has something left in his shed at home. Definitely the worst year for wasps and hornets that I can recall.
Why don't you just order some from Amazon?
That would be an option except it was my plan to deal with the problem today, not a week from now. In all my years of living here (since 1976), I have only ever needed to evict wasps and hornets on two occasions. Only ever bought one can of the insect killer in my life.
Fortunately my gent has connections and showed up with a can of product and dealt with the critters just before dark, leaving me with the remainder of the product in case there are any other surprises.
(Aug 15, 2017 01:22 AM)scheherazade Wrote: No wasp spray in town according to the gentleman I deployed for that mission so hopefully he has something left in his shed at home. Definitely the worst year for wasps and hornets that I can recall.
Why don't you just order some from Amazon?
That would be an option except it was my plan to deal with the problem today, not a week from now. In all my years of living here (since 1976), I have only ever needed to evict wasps and hornets on two occasions. Only ever bought one can of the insect killer in my life.
Fortunately my gent has connections and showed up with a can of product and dealt with the critters just before dark, leaving me with the remainder of the product in case there are any other surprises.
This is what I use. It's deadly and practically instantaneous. I think I had to order it by the case but that was nearly 5 years ago. Not cheap if I remember correctly.
(Aug 14, 2017 03:13 AM)Syne Wrote: All relationships are a two-way street, deary. If you can't take it, don't dish it out.
Are they now, Syne? Really, even the relationships between atheists and religious people? I think not. The only way it works is if we realize how important their fantasies are to them.
(I had to give him a little break. When he gets too tired, he's gets overly emotional.)
Ho ho ho!
"There's really no one right time to tell kids that there's no Santa Claus," says Glen Elliott, Ph.D. Elliott is an associate professor and the Director of the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychology at the University of California, San Francisco. "The important thing is to take your cues from the child, and not try to prolong the fantasy for your own enjoyment when they may be ready to give it up."
Like Elliott, many experts agree that parents should wait for their children to give them signs that they're ready to give up believing in St. Nick. "When children start putting together in their minds that Santa Claus may not be real, they'll ask questions -- and that's an opening for parents to get them talking about what's logical or not to them," says Helen Egger, Ph.D., a Child Psychologist at the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychology at Duke University.
For instance, your daughter might start getting suspicious about the three different Santas she sees during the course of a day of shopping. Or your son might ask questions about how Santa can get to every house in the world in one night, or how he gets into houses with no chimneys.
"A friend of my son's spilled the beans about Santa last year," recalls Caroline Jennings of Bellevue, Wash., mother of a seven-year-old. "Ian came home asking if we are really the ones who buy his Christmas presents. We made a joke of it and said, 'You know we're too cheap to buy you presents!' But we also asked him about what he thinks. What it came down to is that Ian knows there's no Santa, but he really doesn't want us to come out and say it and ruin his holiday fantasy."
Just as kids give you signals when they're ready to give up Santa, they also let you know when they're not. "If your child isn't ready to hear the truth, they simply won't accept it -- or if they're very young, they may truly not even comprehend what you are saying," says Egger.
That’s how we treat them, like children.
Is this friggin ironic or what? I laughed my ass off.
I know where your problem lies, dearie. The backfire effect. Yep, that’s right. You’ve been critiquing atheists for some time now.
Although, they do think they’re superior, it’s their perceived entitlement that their beliefs should be accepted uncritically that really gets under my skin.
That’s why my phone rang off the hook. That’s why I received tons of text messages. Everyone wanted to know how could I even say such things. How could I say that their beliefs were shallow? How could I say that their prayers were worthless? How could I compare holy water to toilet water?
How could I? Well, they were giving me signals that they were ready. They were asking me questions. Bwahaha!!!
confused2Aug 20, 2017 12:52 AM (This post was last modified: Aug 20, 2017 01:15 AM by confused2.)
We have a new little friend in the office. A cross cut paper shredder.
Give it paper and it goes:-
Grobble grobble grobble grobble grobble.
Paper with a staple in:-
Grobble snickle grobble grobble grobble.
Paper with a paperclip in:-
Grobble snakka grobble grobble grobble.
In the silence that follows the grobbling an empath like myself can here it calling
"FEED ME".
I think we need a rule that it can only be turned on when two or more people of sound mind are present.
(Aug 14, 2017 03:13 AM)Syne Wrote: All relationships are a two-way street, deary. If you can't take it, don't dish it out.
Are they now, Syne? Really, even the relationships between atheists and religious people? I think not. The only way it works is if we realize how important their fantasies are to them.
Although, they do think they’re superior, it’s their perceived entitlement that their beliefs should be accepted uncritically that really gets under my skin.
That’s why my phone rang off the hook. That’s why I received tons of text messages. Everyone wanted to know how could I even say such things. How could I say that their beliefs were shallow? How could I say that their prayers were worthless? How could I compare holy water to toilet water?
How could I? Well, they were giving me signals that they were ready. They were asking me questions. Bwahaha!!!
Did I qualify that statement? No. ALL relationships are a two-way street.
You don't seem to realize that, so you demean people for their beliefs and then whine about them demeaning you for yours. If you want your atheism respected, you have to respect their theism. It's really not a difficult concept.
Everyone thinks their beliefs are just as obvious as you believe yours to be. What you may perceive as "accepted uncritically" may just demonstrate how obvious they perceive them to be. Likewise, you presuming to tell them how devout they are may seem obvious to you...but you're just being a petulant child, playing tit for tat, and undermining any credibility you may have had in presuming you had the high ground.
(Aug 20, 2017 01:41 AM)Syne Wrote: ...but you're just being a petulant child, playing tit for tat, and undermining any credibility you may have had in presuming you had the high ground.
Quote:• Don’t get greedy. Tit-for-Tat can never beat another strategy. But it never allows itself to take a beating, ensuring it skips the brutal losses of two “evil” strategies fighting against each other. It actively seeks out win-win situations instead of gambling for the higher payoff.
• Be nice. The single best predictor of whether a strategy would do well was if they were never the first to defect. Some tried to emulate Tit-for-Tat but with a twist – throwing in the occasional defection to up the score. It didn’t work.
• Reciprocate, and forgive. Other programs tended to cooperate with Tit-for-Tat since it consistently rewarded cooperation and punished defection. And Tit-for-Tat easily forgives – no matter how many defections it has seen, if a program decides to cooperate, it will join them and reap the rewards.
• Don’t get too clever. Tit-for-Tat is perfectly transparent, and it becomes obvious that it is very, very difficult to beat. There are no secrets, and no hypocrisy – Tit-for-Tat gets along very well with itself, unlike strategies biased toward deception.
There is no "best" strategy. A person must figure out his opponent's strategy and then pick a strategy that is best suited for the situation.
Aug 15, 2017 02:31 AM
(This post was last modified: Aug 15, 2017 02:32 AM by Zinjanthropos.)
