The designated turn lanes are pretty hilarious, communicating a sense of overly optimistic overkill in traffic flow and accessibility accomodation design.
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Chained out, like a sitting duck just waiting for the fall _Cage the Elephant
The designated turn lanes are pretty hilarious, communicating a sense of overly optimistic overkill in traffic flow and accessibility accomodation design.
They're another thing that makes me think "bus depot". That mass of huge vehicles departing in every direction would actually need it. And every business thereafter has been saddled with that nigh inaccessible bus lot.
We have lots of car parks like that in the UK. I think the idea is to confuse drivers so that they slow down and are then less likely to mow down pedestrians.
Somebody has been monitoring my experience playing Skyrim, it seems ...
(I'm still trying to get a good-enough look at a dragon's skull to figure out if it's an archosaur or not. There are some ... inconsistencies ... in the skeletal anatomy. The patagium is definitely supported by more than a single elongate digit, however; that argues against dragons being stem pterosaurs.)
No point analyzing the anatomy of a cartoon character, beyond that I suspect there's still untold new legions of unrealized wrong in this thing:
No, there was nothing there before the Office Depot. The parking lot was always like that. The Service Merchandise was the first building there, then "some time" later, Office Depot planted their building there like that.
So I figure everyone loves them some cake wrecks, and loves loves loves the tasty blog's Sunday Sweets feature. I swear this one was made for Miisa. so cute!
Again with penguins and polar bears in the same environment. Will people never learn?
__________________ Old Pain In The Ass says: I am on a mission from God to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable; to bring faith to the doubtful and doubt to the faithful.
Whenever you get a pedant telling you that penguins only live in the southern hemisphere you can go super-pedant on their asses and tell them about the Galapagos penguin.
The Galapagos islands straddle the equator and a few penguins live on the northern tip of Isabela which is in the northern hemisphere.
... who is utterly smug about his hemispherical uniqueness.
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"Her eyes in certain light were violet, and all her teeth were even. That's a rare, fair feature: even teeth. She smiled to excess, but she chewed with real distinction." - Eleanor of Aquitaine
Isabela is, of course, very close to the Arctic, but close is not the same as there.
__________________ Old Pain In The Ass says: I am on a mission from God to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable; to bring faith to the doubtful and doubt to the faithful.
Today as the Spring Convocation. As they do at every convocation, they invited some religious person [that is, an Evangelical Christian -- because, as just about anyone here will happily tell you, Evangelical Christians are the only truly* religious people] to give the keynote address.
His talk was about how we should set goals and never settle for mediocrity. Okay, not a bad talk.
Except, to illustrate, he talked about the "truly inspiring" story of how the Israelites conquered the Promised Land -- slaughtering the people who were already living there when the Israelites arrived. People who'd done nothing to the Israelites and simply happened to be living in land that God had supposedly promised to the Israelites.
So, the speaker happily told us about how "inspiring" it was that the Israelites set themselves a goal and then went about achieving it. [He left out a lot of juicy details about the raping the pillaging, the ruthless slaughter, etc., etc. But he didn't shy away from mentioning that the land was already inhabited when the Israelites arrived, and how the first order of business for the Israelites was to drive those inhabitants out -- or to kill them if they refused to leave.] He told us how we should do the same sort of thing: set ourselves goals and then do whatever's necessary to achieve them -- and to never settle for mediocrity.
I spent most of the talk feeling sick and wondering if the speaker had any idea of how utterly repulsive it sounded to a non-Jewish, non-Christian person that he was glorifying invasion and butchery. That and wondering if he and most members of the audience would regard as "inspiring" tales of people whom they didn't regard as their ancestors invading foreign lands and ruthlessly butchering the inhabitants.
I wonder if, during the next Faculty Meeting, I should suggest we get a Muslim speaker to come in and talk about the "glorious" Muslim conquest of Spain?
My prediction is that there would be immediate cries of outrage, followed by a 99.999999% chance of me getting fired.
Maybe we should invite a Cherokee speaker to come in and talk about the Trail of Tears? Maybe not; suggesting that would almost certainly get me fired, too.
*In both senses of the word. That is, only Evangelical Christians are "truly" religious -- all other belief systems are mere superstition. And Evangelical Christianity has the virtue of actually being true -- unlike all that other nonsense people preach, like Catholicism, Islam, and Evilution.
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“The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.”
Today as the Spring Convocation. As they do at every convocation, they invited some religious person [that is, an Evangelical Christian -- because, as just about anyone here will happily tell you, Evangelical Christians are the only truly* religious people] to give the keynote address.
His talk was about how we should set goals and never settle for mediocrity. Okay, not a bad talk.
Except, to illustrate, he talked about the "truly inspiring" story of how the Israelites conquered the Promised Land -- slaughtering the people who were already living there when the Israelites arrived. People who'd done nothing to the Israelites and simply happened to be living in land that God had supposedly promised to the Israelites.
So, the speaker happily told us about how "inspiring" it was that the Israelites set themselves a goal and then went about achieving it. [He left out a lot of juicy details about the raping the pillaging, the ruthless slaughter, etc., etc. But he didn't shy away from mentioning that the land was already inhabited when the Israelites arrived, and how the first order of business for the Israelites was to drive those inhabitants out -- or to kill them if they refused to leave.] He told us how we should do the same sort of thing: set ourselves goals and then do whatever's necessary to achieve them -- and to never settle for mediocrity.
I spent most of the talk feeling sick and wondering if the speaker had any idea of how utterly repulsive it sounded to a non-Jewish, non-Christian person that he was glorifying invasion and butchery. That and wondering if he and most members of the audience would regard as "inspiring" tales of people whom they didn't regard as their ancestors invading foreign lands and ruthlessly butchering the inhabitants.
I wonder if, during the next Faculty Meeting, I should suggest we get a Muslim speaker to come in and talk about the "glorious" Muslim conquest of Spain?
My prediction is that there would be immediate cries of outrage, followed by a 99.999999% chance of me getting fired.
Maybe we should invite a Cherokee speaker to come in and talk about the Trail of Tears? Maybe not; suggesting that would almost certainly get me fired, too.
*In both senses of the word. That is, only Evangelical Christians are "truly" religious -- all other belief systems are mere superstition. And Evangelical Christianity has the virtue of actually being true -- unlike all that other nonsense people preach, like Catholicism, Islam, and Evilution.
I spoke with a colleague about this today (she's an observant Jew). Her response was that "Your problem is that you're looking at this from a historical context, not a religious context."
Now, I'm well aware that attitudes change. Heck, it wasn't long ago at all that our ancestors were describing the Native Americans as "savages" and talking about how we had not just the right but the duty to "civilize" the continent -- by getting rid of those "savages" who had the temerity to be occupying the land that we wanted to put to our own use.
And as much as it saddens me to say, it's entirely possible that, had I been living at the time, having grown up in that culture -- that I would have been fully in agreement that it was "good" and "proper" to get rid of the "savages" and put the land under the control of "civilized" people. I'd like to think that I'd never agree to such a thing, but who's to say?
Still, according to my colleague, my problem was that I couldn't see how the story was inspiring and how the Israelites' actions were not just justified but admirable. And the reason that I couldn't see this was because I lack a religious perspective.
Maybe she has a point, but I'm having difficulty comprehending the idea. After all, both she and the speaker happily admitted that the conquest of the "Promised Land" involved the wholesale displacement and slaughter of the people who happened to have been there first.
So, from a "religious perspective," I can't quite bring myself to see how this isn't glorification of reprehensible behavior and justification of barbarity.
Again, I get that standards were different then, and I'm not disputing that.
What I don't get is how, by today's standards, these actions can be regarded as anything other than abominable. I suppose the argument could be phrased as "our ancestors accomplished incredible things against great odds, and that's something to be proud of." That, at least, I can understand.
But that's not how it was presented. At all. It was presented as: "God said go out and do this, and our ancestors did it without question -- isn't that wonderful? And isn't it inspiring that they had such faith and such willingness to follow the Word of God?".
Well then, your God is a monster, and I can't bring myself to think of it as either "good" or "inspirational" that people were willing to follow his commands.
I dunno. According to my colleague, if I were a religious person, I would understand that these actions were good, fully justified, and indeed inspiring. I seem to be lacking the ability to see it from that perspective, I must say.
It seems to me that invading a land, driving out the inhabitants, and raping and murdering those who refuse to leave is wrong. And saying that I'd understand that it was not wrong if only I could see it from a "religious perspective" seems, well -- kind of insulting, actually.
But maybe I'm missing something ...
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“The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.”
Gee, I thought you liberals were all about the moral relativism.
You fall all over yourselves to justify why it's ok for Muslims to make women wear scarves because that's their culture, yet you go all queasy when Israelites want to engage in a bit of light genocide.
Re: Miscellany
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