Category: Uncategorized

Guest blogger Gayles bathroom experience

Gayle originally left this as a comment on this post, but I have to share it on the main page.

this guy intrigues me. first, he obviously has a hair dryer at work…but no towel? i would think most guys would have a towel before a hair dryer. of course, i’m a girl and i just blow dryed my hair for the first time in several years the other week (it’s long hair, too).

second, he was drying his body with the dryer? as opposed to his hair or shirt?? i think it’s safe to say that’s a little strange, even in the privacy of your own bathroom.

third, this post prompts me to share a related work bathroom etiquette complaint:

i work in a building with 2 women’s restrooms and maybe 6 women total. each bathroom is a single locking room (no multiple stalls, so one person at a time, technically). one of the women i work with is just coming off maternity leave and has to pump her breast milk every few hours. this takes up about half an hour of single bathroom time. i am completely on board and understanding of that.

the thing that bothers me is, another one of the women in my lab will come in, go into the only other bathroom (while the first is unavailable), and put on make up and do her hair…with a curling iron! this seems a little less pertinent to me than pumping breast milk, especially when i have to use the bathroom for more legitimate reasons. and to add insult to injury, this woman generally doesn’t look any different after all of her primping.

as a result of this whole scenario, i can say i’ve: a. been inconvenienced on more than one occasion, and b. been inside (and used) the men’s room at my work.

Does this cross the line?

I work in a nine-story building, made up of primarily government and military contractors.  As one would expect, there is a men’s room (And a women’s room, though I’ve never been inside) on my floor.  There is currently a man in the men’s room, shirtless, drying himself with a hair dryer.  Let me say again that he is completely shirt-free. I believe this is inappropriate in a semi-public restroom.  There are probably eight offices on my floor, so he probably won’t know most of the people who might come in to the men’s room.  Although knowing them might make it worse.

Anyway, am I being ridiculous?  Is this just an unlucky guy who got rained on while coming to work, and he’s trying to make the best of it?

Children are being exploited, lets punish them

Time.com – Time to Close the Book on Washington Pages?

Some are calling for an end to the page program after Mark Foley’s illegal-no-matter-what-the-FBI-says activities.  This is a truly wonderful idea.  Really great.  They haven’t been punished enough already.  We should also take away this wonderful opportunity for young people to learn about politics just because one jackass can’t control his sexual urges.  Surely Foley’s actions must mean that all pages are being molested by all senators and congressmen, right?

Voters in Maryland – Protest the voting machines

Techdirt: Diebold’s Solution To E-Voting Problems: Beg Poll Workers Not To Touch Touchscreens

The state ran a daylong test, and found plenty of problems still to overcome — including the same problems with the e-poll books that caused all sorts of delays during the election.

For any of you living in Maryland, do not use a Diebold machine to vote this November.  Demand something else.  I don’t know what legal rights you may have, but there must be some alternative voting method for people who can’t use the touchscreen (The blind, for example).  Call your congressperson, your senator, your mayor, governor, whatever you have to do.  Voting is way too important to be left to a company like Diebold that refuses to provide a working product.

OPEC cutting oil production

OPEC to cut 1M bpd oil supply, says OPEC delegate – Oct. 5, 2006

Wow, what a shock.  OPEC is acting to protect their interests.  I haven’t seen a backlash against this yet (And maybe I’m just not paying attention), but the first time I hear someone complain about gas prices because of this, I’m going to smack them.  Let’s see . . . many of these countries get a huge amount of their revenue from the sale of oil.  Oil prices are dropping.  Basic economics says to cut back on the supply to keep the prices up.

It’s nothing personal against the United States.  Well, maybe it is to some extent, but not really.  It’s just business.

Anyway, I want to see gas prices hit $10 a gallon.  Maybe $20.  How long before we’re all driving cars powered by hydrogen fuel cells, or biodiesel hybrids, when it costs $900 to fill up your Escalade?  For the record, I drive a Mazda 3.  I get between 23 and 32 miles per gallon, depending on traffic and amount of highway driving.

Time again for the flu shot controversy

I was listening to NPR this morning, and they were talking about the difficulty we’ve had in distributing flu shots.  The CDC says that 75% of the country should have a flu shot.  Surveys say that 50% are planning to.  But how about the vaccines?  The NPR story didn’t give all the details, but they did say that doctors give out 70% of the vaccines.  But often big companies like WalMart get more of the vaccines.  NPR didn’t come out and say it, but I suspect this is because the drug companies make more money when they sell to big pharmacies.  I doubt that WalMart pays more than the doctors do, but Walmart is also in the position to buy millions of dollars worth, and pledge to buy millions more of other drugs on the condition that they get the flu vaccines.

Anyway, my point here is that these drug companies are, in effect, deciding who gets a flu vaccine.  Never mind that we should have enough for every human being in the country, if not the planet, just because it’s the right thing to do.  Let’s pretend for a minute that there’s a legitimate reason we can’t produce enough that doesn’t involve profitability.  Who, then, should decide where those vaccines should go?  And now we’re back into the argument over health care.  Can we assign responsibility to the government to ensure that the country is as healthy as possible?  Does every American deserve health care?  The answers are “I hope so” and “yes”.

When it comes to health, no one should ever be denied because it’s not profitable.  I don’t know how to overcome the problems with “free” health care.  I don’t know how to minimize abuse of the system.  But we have to figure it out.

I think I need to re-read Fahrenheit 451

Boing Boing: Man demands that book about book-burning be banned — during Banned Books Week

“It’s just all kinds of filth,” said Alton Verm, adding that he had not read Fahrenheit 451.

This, kids, it’s what’s called “lazy-ass blogging”, where you not only get a story from another (better known) blog, but you even steal the quote they highlight.  I’m not even quoting BoingBoing, I’m quoting the quote they quoted.  Awesome.

I read the book years ago, and I don’t remember liking it all that much.  I think I might have been too young.  It was certainly in high school, and maybe early high school.  So I think I should try it again.  I’m prettys sure my mom, seeing that I was reading just about anything you put in front of me, bought me copies of 1984, Animal Farm, Brave New World, and Fahrenheit 451 at the same time.  If you have not read these books, I want you to go RIGHT NOW to the library, the bookstore, Amazon, or wherever you get your literature, and get these books.  Read them.  If you have children over 14, they should be reading them, too.

In fact, you should read them together.  You don’t have to read aloud, you can both have your own copy, but read and talk about them with your kids. Or you read them first, if you’re afraid some parts are inappropriate for your kids.  That way you can be prepared when your kids ask you about those parts.

Think this cant happen to us?

Treehugger

Still, with an estimated nine years of landfill space left, councils throughout the UK are faced with a tough decision about what to do with the UK’s waste

Okay, I know England has much less space than we do. But I’ll bet that fifty years ago they didn’t think they’d be running out of landfill space. It’ll happen here, eventually. I know I’ve been making a conscious effort to throw less away. I’ve been trying to recycle more, and half the food I eat is fresh vegetables, so anything that I don’t eat goes down the disposal. But we Americans throw tons and tons of stuff away all the time, and it’s going to come back to haunt us eventually. You know you saw the Simpsons episode where they had to move Springfield because there was too much trash. Sure, it was funny. But it won’t be nearly as funny when it happens somewhere near you.

FBI cant find evidence of broken laws

Foley case, a legal ‘gray area’ – Today – MSNBC.com

One federal law enforcement official said the FBI reviewed some Foley-related e-mail in July but concluded that no federal law had been violated.

Are you kidding me? With all the ridiculous crap that we aren’t allowed to do, like photograph a building in DC or bring a bottle of water on a plane, you expect me to believe that telling a sixteen-year-old boy that you’d like to take his clothes off doesn’t violate any federal law?

When they write laws to protect children from MySpace or maybe seeing a naked person on TV, did they just forget to write the laws to protect children from actually being molested? I don’t have kids yet, but I’m pretty sure I can speak for most parents when I say that I’d rather a child watch an hour long TV show of naked people screaming profanity than get one single instant message from a congressman asking for sex. Am I being ridiculous?

We need to prosecute this guy, and then we need to get him some help.