09:18 – It was 66.1F (19C) when I took Colin out at about 0645 this morning, sunny and calm. It’s already up to 81F (27C).
The insurance adjuster emailed me their estimated settlement figure yesterday. It’s partial because it doesn’t include much of the costs we’d incur refinishing the entire upstairs hardwood floors, including incidental costs like having everything we own moved out and then moved back in when they finish work, putting us up in a hotel for 10 days, and so forth. And all because the floors are continuous, so if they refinish some they have to refinish all.
Barbara and I talked about it last night and agreed that we’re just not going to do that. From our point of view, it’d be a royal PITA to have everything redone, and we don’t want to deal with it. Also, we agreed that it was unfair to expect the insurance company to pay for all that. Yes, technically they’re supposed to make us whole, to restore things to exactly where they were, less our deductible. But neither of us sees any point to costing State Farm many thousands of dollars to do work that we really don’t want to be done anyway. So we decided that we’ll accept their initial payment as payment in full. Sometime in the next week or so, I’ll call our State Farm claims manager and tell her we don’t want any more money from them. I’ll bet that’s not something she hears every day.
The guy from the floor place just came out to measure downstairs. While he was here, we told him that Shaw Brothers had quoted us on replacing the hardwood floor in the master bath, but we didn’t want to do that. He suggested ceramic tile for that room, which Barbara and I agreed was the best choice. So he measured the bath to quote us on that.
I said the other day that we were having plastic composite flooring installed downstairs. That’s wrong. What we’re actually having installed is called LVT, Luxury Vinyl Tile. It’s solid vinyl, recycled not from soft drink bottles, but from PVC pipe. It looks like wood, but is pretty much bulletproof.
More work on science kit stuff today.
” It’s solid vinyl, ”
That sounds like the good stuff.
n
Seems there was a big storm thru the midWest last night.
“Severe Weather – S. Plains to Great Lakes
Situation
Widespread severe weather and approximately 26 tornadoes occurred overnight from the Southern Plains to the Great Lakes
Impacts
• Oklahoma
o Damage sustained in Elk City (pop 12,717), about 110 miles west of Oklahoma City
o Approx. 70 homes reported damaged/destroyed
o Elk City Police Department phones are down
o Responders going door-to-door checking for injured/trapped individuals
o One fatality (unconfirmed) / Multiple injuries
• Wisconsin
o Damage reported in multiple counties
o Approx. 50 homes reported damaged/destroyed
o Two fatalities (unconfirmed) / Multiple injuries
• Two shelters open with no occupants (1 each in OK and KS) (ARC Midnight Shelter Count)
• Minimal power outages (DOE Eagle-I as of 5:00 a.m. EDT)
State Response
• WI and OK EOCs Partially Activated for severe weather; all other states not activated
• Damage assessments ongoing
FEMA Response
• Regions V, VI, VII RWC/MOC remain at Watch / Steady State
• No requests for FEMA assistance”
Why we prep…
Last night, over 120 homes were damaged or destroyed by WEATHER.
Why you need an offsite storage facility….
Last night, over 120 homes were damaged or destroyed by WEATHER.
There is no “just don’t be there” to avoid this.
There is no “I’ll just hunker down” if your home is gone.
You need a plan for leaving, and for recovery.
n
I grew up in Oklahoma, still have property and family there so I am sensitive to weather issues there. At age 9 our home was hit by a tornado and destroyed with us inside. It was a two story concrete block house and one wall completely collapsed. Our family was hiding under a huge solid cork top dining room table that saved us. While the house was being torn apart, my father was wandering around inside, and miraculously was uninjured. Our cars were deposited ¼ mile away, one in a pond and the other in a pasture but it was still operable. As we evacuated to my grandparents house that evening I recall my primary worry was that I had forgotten my homework that I had worked so hard on that evening. In the 1990s an F5 blew through rural OK near our farm. It missed any population centers and only killed a few cattle and horses. I drove over to look at the path and the power of the event was astounding. In wooded areas the trees were literally smashed to kindling. In the pasture, the grass was literally vacuumed from the ground leaving a 10 meter wide path of exposed red dirt. If you live anywhere in “Tornado Alley” you should have an underground shelter nearby and preferably a well stocked one. Now Oklahoma have a new risk, earthquakes …
“…quoted us on replacing the hardwood floor in the master bath…”
Never seen a bathroom with a wooden floor. Concrete, tiles? Sure, but wood and water don’t mix in my experience. Looks nice if you can keep it 100% dry.
People put CARPET in bathrooms. That does NOT make sense.
n
When I moved into my house in Canberra in 1985 both the main bathroom and the ensuite had carpet that could be lifted and washed. I couldn’t be bothered after a while and just stored it elsewhere. I prefer tiles anyway.
Carpet in the kitchen is what I never understood – a nightmare to keep clean. Soft lino was my favourite – if you dropped a plate you had a chance that it wouldn’t break. I now have hard tiles so I’m very careful – if you drop a plate, cup or whatever it’s gone.
People put CARPET in bathrooms. That does NOT make sense.
The combo of carpet and wallpaper in bathrooms was a misguided 70s thing since the look turns any full bath into a biological hazard. You’ll still see it in homes from the era listed for sale in Florida since renovating ahead of a sale means opening the mold remediation can of worms. Dunno about other states.
Sometime in the next week or so, I’ll call our State Farm claims manager and tell her we don’t want any more money from them. I’ll bet that’s not something she hears every day.
Oh, yeah. The Florida insurance market is one serious hurricane away from a major meltdown since sinkhole remediation became a combination of middle class welfare and full employment act for foundation repair “experts”.
I don’t think State Farm even writes new policies in the market unless, like the other carriers, they have a Florida subsidiary that is technically insolvent when considering the balance sheet against potential claims.
@Harold said:
Harold: “Teacher, the tornado ate my homework”
Teacher: “I’ve heard that one before”
Better punch lines gladly solicited… 😉
Today’s quip in the Fort Bend Journal:
“If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you.”
“That is the principal difference between a dog and a man.”
Mark Twain
DadCooks: Pretty close to the truth.
The school refused to believe that our home was destroyed as we lived in the countryside and no news had reported on it. My father had to bring in photographs to prove it and get my grades adjusted. This happened in the late spring and we moved into a motel my family owned for the summer while things got sorted out. We ended up swapping property with my grandparents, they tore down our wrecked house and built an ultra modern home on a Frank Loyd wright design with indoor pool. (Note: Indoor pools sound good but are hell on the house because of humidity) We got the grandparents house with the elevator, but father disabled it because he thought we would hurt ourselves (and we probably would have).
Wallpaper.
My Canberra house had it (including in the bathroom and ensuite). When I bought it I didn’t give it a second thought. After 28 years I swore I would never buy another house with walpaper. I turned down a house in Adelaide I otherwise loved because it had wallpaper throughout.
“Don’t tell people to turn off Windows Update, just don’t”
http://www.osnews.com/story/29816/Don_t_tell_people_to_turn_off_Windows_Update_just_don_t
Points to:
https://www.troyhunt.com/dont-tell-people-to-turn-off-windows-update-just-dont/
“You know what really surprised me about this whole WannaCry ransomware problem? No, not how quickly it spread. Not the breadth of organisations it took offline either and no, not even that so many of them hadn’t applied a critical patch that landed a couple of months earlier. It was the reactions to this tweet that really surprised me:”
Me too.
When I bought my house here in Florida, in 1995, it had carpet in most of the place, include the bathrooms. The kitchen & laundry rooms had linoleum; the kitchen & bathrooms also had wallpaper. Over time I’ve replaced all the flooring with ceramic tile and removed all the wallpaper except the guest bath, which I simply painted over. As our Australian Bashar notes, soon after the tile went in the kitchen I got infected with a case of the clumsy and broke several items. I don’t think I’d ever dropped anything before. Sigh.
The kitchen & laundry room got a blue / white checkerboard pattern. Both sets of tiles came from the same manufacturer, from the same line, and were 12″ x 12″ nominal. They weren’t exactly the same size! The tile guy advised me that unless you really looked, they were close enough that no one would notice, and that going for replacements would almost certainly be fruitless. The living & dining rooms got ceramic tile that looks like wood flooring, 6″ x 24″ laid out in a parquet pattern. One advantage to tile here in Florida is that sand from the beach is extremely abrasive (I’m less than one mile from the Gulf of Mexico.)
The insurance market in Florida is a little more stable, because we haven’t had a serious storm in a few years. But as Mr. Norton notes, sinkholes are still a threat, and if another Andrew hit Dade, Broward, or Palm Beach Counties all bets are off. Most people don’t realize that Andrew actually missed most of Miami, going south of the city proper and the really high dollar value areas.
You know what really surprised me about this whole WannaCry ransomware problem? No, not how quickly it spread. Not the breadth of organisations it took offline either and no, not even that so many of them hadn’t applied a critical patch that landed a couple of months earlier. It was the reactions to this tweet that really surprised me.
I have an issue with the automatic upgrades from Windows 7/8 to 10, but, once I have a machine on Windows 10, I leave the default update settings in place. I mitigate the privacy invasion by running Firefox and Thunderbird for web and email, respectively.
For anyone interested, Arca Noae (the future of OS/2) started accepting orders for ArcaOS this week. I may get a personal license and try it out on my “No Windows None Of The Time” laptop.
https://www.arcanoae.com/arcaos-5-0-now-available/
“It was the reactions to this tweet that really surprised me:”
Of course one could either use decent security measures like Mr. Rick H. does with his Windows setups at home, or simply forgo the experience altogether and run something else instead for one’s computing uses.
Obviously, a whole buncha gummints and “health care” organizations never got the memo.
And yes, leaving aside man-made disasters and SHTF, a natural event can render your home null and void and leave you pantsed in the street with your spouse and kids looking to you for the next move. Or dead as a doornail.
We don’t live in Tornado Alley (though MA and CT saw twisters touch down and kill people) or a direct-hit hurricane zone or an earthquake area (though Boston got hammered in the 18th-C and Quebec has had some minor not-so-good vibrations that we felt down here) or a flood zone.
However, we DO live where there have been monster blizzards and ice storms and power outages, so we take the necessary precautions and we’ve survived them OK so fah. Fire is always a hazard, of course, and sure, we could find ourselves in the street, too. Or dead. Life is full of dangers and you try to minimize them or avoid them, if possible. If our house goes, we’d manage somehow, living with other family members until any insurance and other resources allowed us to build anew or move someplace else.
And now back out to the yard and garden and porch tasks while the sun shines and temp hits the high 70s, apparently, maybe even 80.
Andrew should NOT have been as bad as it was. The problem with Hurricane Insurance in Florida was entirely self-inflicted. The inspectors just plain did not do their job and many builders skimped on the code. Most of the homes destroyed did not have the mandated straps that hold the roof on and other protections were missing. Hell, there were mobile homes that didn’t have any anchors at all. Crazy stupid, and the bankruptcy laws let them get away with it. The builders should have been personally criminally liable. Grrr. Sorry, pet peeve.
Obviously, a whole buncha gummints and “health care” organizations never got the memo.
During our Northwest misadventure, I swore that the IT director at my wife’s group practice managed to keep his job only through his knowledge of which doctors were fond of browsing porn on company time.
Just finished lunch. Spent a couple hours this am breaking down stuff and taking it to scrap.
176 pounds of steel, circuit boards and old vcrs
67 pounds of aluminum
151 pounds of stainless steel
Only $86 but that’s not peanuts for a couple hours work. Plus, I needed the space for incoming auction stuff, so it had to go anyway.
Hot with patchy clouds and some overcast developing….
Sprayed the grape vines with second treatment of BT caterpillar killer.
Picked 4 more tomatoes.
Need to go thru and pickup the house. Looks like gypsies live here.
nick
“Obviously, a whole buncha gummints and “health care” organizations never got the memo.”
It’s more than this. My experience doing support for very specialized systems for large corps is that you DO NOT allow MS to fuck your production machines with automatic updates. DO NOT.
Update lab machines, make sure your line of business software still runs, THEN push the new image out to users. That vetting takes some time. Given the horrible kludge that most medical software seems to be, it probably takes a LOT of effort to be sure that some random update or driver change doesn’t hose you. NOW many orgs will think it’s worth doing quickly. Until now, the risks were less than the risk of hosing your system and not being able to work.
n
(I once got a support call that video was no longer displaying properly on our large screen. Some t-shooting over the phone didn’t work, so I jumped in the truck and headed to site. Got there and the OS had been REPLACED. IT pushed a new image out to all the corp machines, with all default settings. NOT gonna work on a multi-headed display computer with overlap and stereo. Spent a few hours trying to find an nvidia driver that supported both overlap and stereo AND worked with their GIS systems. Broke a system that was working perfectly.)
“which doctors were fond of browsing porn on company time.”
Uh, to a first approximation, all of them?
Well, here comes the rain…
The FEMA brief, national weather, said T storms today and tomorrow for Houston…
Starting now.
n
Or maybe not. Temp dropped, wind picked up, some water drops fell on me, but no storm. TX WX, situation normal.
n
Or maybe not. Temp dropped, wind picked up, some water drops fell on me, but no storm. TX WX, situation normal.
Austin received a lot of rain last night but not much else. Fast-forwarding through commercial breaks of our TiVo-ed CBS programming for the evening, I noticed the meteorologist kept teasing the 10 PM forecast with a “Severe Weather” graphic.
[snip] The problem with Hurricane Insurance in Florida was entirely self-inflicted. The inspectors just plain did not do their job and many builders skimped on the code. [snip]
Absolutely agree. The biggest offender was a company called Arvida; the builder with the best record, believe it or not, was Habitat For Humanity. One other giant problems is that the insurers allowed the marketing people, rather than the actuaries, to set their pricing.
WRT to Windows Update, and the Troy Hunt article….
Troy Hunt is a smart guy. Not just because he agrees with me about Windows Update.
I set up a Windows Update Server on my 23-year job with a local government in CA. First just my department, then City-wide (as I was able to). We did the updates, usually within 2-3 days of release. We had standardized software, although not well-enforced. If something non-standard broke during an update, well, too bad. Protection was more important than one-off software.
That was really brought home during a worm attack, which hit the rest of the City – but not my group, since we had updates (and anti-virus) going. And web-browsing monitoring software which kept people away from the dark places. Plus good rules to keep out executable attachments from emails.
As for home, as Dave Hardy sez, ‘safe computing’ around here. All systems updated to Windows 10, good anti-virus (Windows Defender on pre-Win-10 systems, now baked into W10), along with Sophos Home (free AV).
My laptop just got the big Windows 10 update (ferget it’s name). Took a bit of time (about 45 minutes), and have not noticed much difference in things. All previous software works.
So, yes. Updates. Just Do It.
I’ve been running the updates on Mint here when I get the notifications, and I have control over whether to run them or not, select which ones to run, and know just WTF they are, which I like.
10-15 degrees hotter just half a mile up the road and over in the “city” just now. And we have a nice breeze rolling in off the bay. I wonder what the poor people are doing this afternoon…
…oh wait…that’s us. Well we’re not really poor. We just live pay check to pay check with zero retirements or savings, but we have three hots and a cot and a roof over us and decent neighbors. And we’re highly educated/literate mofos, too, who do not need to be entertained or drown in pixels 7×24. If the power went out with Grid down, we’d be back to living like our grandparents and great-grandparents; it would kinda suck because we’re not used to it, and it was labor-intensive, from cain’t see to cain’t see; you rise and go to bed with the sun.
We’d be back to a barter system after the first few weeks of cash running out and then not working anywhere anymore, and we’d have to figure what to trade for better garden space, cut firewood, meat and eggs, etc. Wife would be doing jewelry, which even during bad times people seem to want. And guess who’d be doing the guns and whatever humanities tutoring. And trying to work up some kind of commo net on the same roughly primitive basis that Third World regions are doing now. Plus restoring electricity somehow, maybe via river/falls steam power again.
OK back out to it…
“DO NOT allow MS to fuck your production machines with automatic updates”
I have several pieces of equipment in my lab with software that will only run on 1 specific version of Windows with only a specific update set. For example my freeze dryer will only work with WinXP service pack 2. What a pain. The IT guys will not allow them to be connected to the network anymore for (justifiable) security reasons. If we need to print and backup we use USB drives and a sneakernet. For the freeze dryer I was able to get it to work by running WinXP SP2 in VirtualBox on an IT approved secure computer.
Hey, equipment makers, don’t let your hardware engineers do the programming. All you will get is an easily broken “hardware interface”. Hire real programmers to work with the engineers and write a real program that humans can use.
I wasn’t using the pc’s yesterday but noticed the hd lights flickering as I walked by. Literally over two dozen of the ms telemetry threads running on each, when I checked on them. I assume they’ll get the new win10 pushed today.
Currently running Defender and Malwarebytes Premium, no worm issues.
My Mint LTS has expired. Thinking of finding a non-systemd distro for the old hardware.
I guess Apple is releasing a slew of iOS and OSX updates.
I can see why people prefer a computer monoculture- it’s a huge time sink to deal with it all.
So far I’ve encountered 4 ransomware infections over the last year and a half. All have been a result of opening an email attachment. Once that happens it can spread throughout a LAN by mapped drives and SMB flaws. Only one dentist I dealt with decided to pay the ransom and he did infact get his files back. Others have just restored from backup and moved on.
Rule number one is don’t open email attachments unless you absolutely know who and what it is. (that dentist opened one labeled ‘Credit Invoice’.)
Why do folks go to your website, use the contact form to comment, and give a fake e-mail address?
This is for a comment that is a compliment.
No one believes that email addresses won’t end up being used for spam??
n
From my sucky little site?
Wouldn’t bother me if people used fake email addresses for comments on my site. I don’t plan on using them.
And I don’t worry about leaving my email on other sites. Gmail traps the spam quite nicely.
And I ignore any ads I see whilst checking my email. Not worried about tracking either. I’m not that interesting. Or that paranoid.
What. The. Fuck.
In the United States. What the fuck?
@SteveF, what do you think the minimum marriage age should be ?
Or am I misunderstanding your issue here ?
Higher than 12, I’ll tell you that.
To be clear, my WTF was for the joyful bride in the photo at the top, not for Christie’s vetoing the mandatory-18 bill.
I think 12 is a bit young, but not outrageously so.
Rather sensational pictures from a ‘social experiment’ to cause reactions. Tabloid reporting.
And this is what the ‘education experts’ have brought us.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/447714/social-justice-math-dehumanizing-tool?utm_source=social&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=timpf&utm_content=math
pure bovine manure.
that would be pisslamics and the gypsies.
n
Math- oppressing people. Might as well say “Life oppresses people.”
‘Course there is a light for their dark that they never see. Math frees people. Math enables people. Not stupid people, like SJWs, but other people. SJWs are oppressed by the ideology they embrace like a warm blanket on a cold night. LIFE oppresses them.
n
Right. Because a 12-year-old girl marrying someone her great-grandfather’s age would be totally unremarkable without sensational pictures.
here’s some math oppressing us
http://raconteurreport.blogspot.com/
n
The Slow-Motion Assassination of President Trump
Excerpt:
“I also think we are seeing with the recent leaks the first phase of Mutually Assured Destruction of our government. The leaks will destroy Trump if they continue. But if that happens, no Democrat and no anti-Trump Republican will ever be able to govern in the future. Payback is guaranteed. The next President to sit in the White House will be leaked to the point of ineffectiveness. And that’s how the Republic dies.”
Just boarded a plane from Nashville to LA. Gets in at 12:05am.
I’m finding it hard to keep up with the “fuck tRump” news. I agree with Mr. Medium Wave’s post. We should just have a “shoot a Prog Day” and clear things up. President tRump needs to get his EO’s to the SCOTUS ASAP. If SCOTUS dumps on him, the can gets kicked real far down the road. I wonder if Coffin Cankles is salivating over 2020.
Lol!!! “Coffin Cankles 2020!”
WRT marriages: 1.) the State needs to be out of that business entirely. And if this sort of thing becomes prevalent and socially accepted in places like NYC, MA, Kalifornia, etc., then dissenters who believe otherwise should probably move to a state or region more in line with their beliefs, which is to say, most of North Murka. 2.) We are not a wandering tribe of Bronze Age nomads anymore; and from what I’ve seen of most pubescent and adolescent human beans, very, very few of them are mature enough on several levels to be able to manage and sustain a marriage yet. Hell, few enough in their twenties and thirties, looks like. Obviously I’m dead against this shit but rather than use the State’s loaded guns, I’d apply social pressure.
WRT math oppressing people, or the wood paneling in some college’s 19th-C hallways, tough shit and fuck them. Let’s quit weaseling around with these assholes.
And WRT the ongoing tRump nooz cycle of one supposed disaster after another, IDGAF anymore. It doesn’t matter much which sock puppet is in the WH taking orders from the criminal junta. Whoever it is can be replaced by whatever method/s whenever they want a more willing and capable tool. We note that Larry Klinton and Barack Hussein Soetero, both certifiable treasonous clowns and worse, suited them for eight years apiece. That should tell us something.
And the person quoted above warning us of how the Republic dies has apparently not gotten the memo. That death occurred a very, very long time ago, and I would put it to you that it happened in Philadelphia in 1787, and the corpse was desecrated again and again in 1861, 1898, 1913, 1917, 1940-47, and 2001. It was dragged by chains down the road a few times, too, like when Coffin Cankles was fully exonerated not so long ago and then other chit happened on the nooz cycles and it was forgotten.
Now we’re all bent outta shape on one side because Agent Orange allegedly spilled “highly classified” shit to the Russians. And the other side is outraged at this blatant and outrageous lie. And so it goes. Next week will be some other chit.
Until we either get a Perfect Storm of Black Swan events to hurry things along, or we just muddle along and slowly wind down to complete irrelevance and Turd World status in most areas outside the gated Clinton Archipelago estates.
Hey, sportsfans: Pax vobicsum et tempus fugit irreparabile…
Re: minimum legal marriage age
I married a 15 yr old. We had to go to Mississippi to do so. That was in 1971 and we are celebrating our 46th anniversary this year. She was young, but knew how to cook, keep a house, hold a job, and raise farm animals. She spoke German, English, and Spanish and had lived in 5 countries by the time we met. We held our honeymoon on the back of a Harley camping all over the Sierra Nevada mountains. It’s been quite an adventure.
I think people should be able to get married at 16. Younger (say 14) if a court gives its approval. 12 seems a bit on the young side.
Two words: slippery slope.
As I’ve been saying for 40 years or more, the government at any level has no business being involved in marriage. Not even knowing whether people are married or single. That’s purely personal, and no one’s business. Gay marriage, group marriage, whatever is the business only of the individuals involved, as long as they are consenting adults, and for this purpose I define an adult as someone who has reached puberty.
That’s why bar and bat mitzvahs are done at age 13 and 12 respectively. “Today I am a man.”
Except we ain’t a tribe of wandering Bronze Age nomads anymore, and haven’t been for a very long time; in fact, most of our Euro ancestors never were. Just because Semitic peoples thought those ages were maturity thresholds (when life expectancies were in the 30s and 40s) doesn’t mean that it translates well to northwest European cultures. A 13-year-old may be able to engage in procreative sex and tote a rifle, but that does not mean that he should. Chimpanzees can do that, too.
But I am in total agreement that the State has zero business messing with us on this stuff, and requiring licenses as if we were livestock or pets.
Biology rules. To the extent that social customs are in conflict with biology, those customs lose. And it’s not just Bronze Age. Many US and European couples were marrying at age 14 for the man and 12 for the woman well into the 20th century. The shift toward later marriages is a very recent one, and is just another example of trying to keep children children for far too long. Being covered until age 26 on your parents’ medical insurance? Geez.
Formerly, everyone recognized that people in their early teens were ready to begin breeding, again just because of biology. So they married them off, with their parents having a great deal of say in choosing the partner. After the marriage, the young people got to work on making babies, and the parents help give them a good start in life. Gave them farmland and helped them build a house, put them through school, whatever. That’s how things should still be done today.
Incidentally, I just read that for the first time more women age 30 to 34 are having first babies than women 25 to 29. That’s catastrophic.
Women’s fertility peaks between about ages 18 and 28. It then starts to go downhill fast. Many women who wait until they’re 30 or older to have their first children find that it’s no as easy as they thought it would be. That’s why we have ridiculous interventions like fertility clinics. Again, biology rules. These women should have had their babies when biology intended them to. The problem is that society is trying to force biology to change. That’s not gonna happen.
Okay biology rules, agreed. But 12 yo girls to old men? That’s just slavery. Old men with money buying girls. It’s brutal to the girls and IMHO wrong. It’s wrong and amounts to medieval thinking. Wait until they are 18 and if they want to marry an old guy fine, there are plenty of gold diggers out there.
Two different trends are happening here, and they are moving in opposite directions.
“Adolescent girls reach puberty today at earlier ages than were ever recorded previously. Nutritional and other environmental influences may be responsible for this change. For example, the average age of the onset of menstrual periods in girls was 15 in 1900. By the 1990s, this average had dropped to 12 and a half years of age.”
The age of onset of puberty is dropping, while ‘social childhood’ in western societies is being extended. If you define adulthood by having undergone puberty, the age of adulthood is dropping. If you define adulthood as a person being able to assume the responsibilities and freedoms of an independent member of their society, then the age of adulthood is rising. Biology and society are diverging quite rapidly.
You say ‘biology rules’ but it does not. Social conventions exist to control the effects of biology. Rape, murder, cannibalism, incest, and yes, reproduction are influenced by and subject to societal and social controls. We are not animals, subject to nothing but our biological drives. We are social creature who exist within a social framework. It is completely appropriate for there to be social and societal limitations and requirements on biologically driven behaviors.
The ‘clan’ structure that would support a childhood couple, or a child bride of an older man, doesn’t exist in western society any more. The reasons for this to be a successful strategy for the clan (create as many fit young males as possible to physically struggle with other clans, or to physically take control of resources) don’t exist either. The best strategy for long term success and survival of a family unit now, is to delay and limit childbearing, maximize education and earning potential, and in general invest heavily in fewer children.
I’ll acknowledge that there are areas and societies within the context of western civilization that have moved BACK toward the more primitive aspects of the clan structure, or never moved away from it. These sub-cultures may even be expanding. But they are a minority, and are acting counter to proven success strategies in the current western civilization.
nick
(I’ll also acknowledge that there are clan based cultures who ARE attempting to win gains from western civilization using exactly these strategies- breed early and often, and physically occupy area and resources. The ultimate success of that strategy is not a foregone conclusion.)
Also, some of us have had, or are having, the experience of raising daughters, and I can state categorically that a certain daughter was no more capable of becoming a wife and mother at age 17, let alone 12, than I was capable of being a nukular engineer at any age. Yes, I know, personal anecdotes and all that. But neither was a certain son capable and mature enough to be a father and husband at that age.
As Mr. Nick points out, there are social conventions and rules in place for pretty good damn reasons.
I’ll also add that my friend’s wife did her residency at our local level one trauma center as a pediatric OB/GYN. You want to see the very definition of ugly, ugly, ugly behavior, walk her daily rounds.
n
And in those cultures when the old man dies his young wife doesn’t get his money. His sons from an earlier marriage probably do, and maybe get her too.
@OFD said:
I disagree Dave, if you were able to experience the Naval Nuclear Power Program before the 1980s you would not only be able to spell nuclear, you could be one. And from what you have demonstrated here, a damn good one too.
WRT to marriage and… ramblings…:
People need to know how the family unit used to be. It was multi-generational and the girls were brought into the boys family. The purpose was at least two-fold: able bodies to do the farm work and to account for the short lifespans. Yes, oversimplification.
In Jolly Ol’ England a couple did not marry until after the girl had produced a child, preferably a male.
As Dave correctly said, the demise of the USofA began back in 1787 and I blame it on straying from the intent of the founding fathers. Put as an oversimplification our founding fathers wanted the government to stay out of our personal business. But “man” having free will and ignoring The 10 Commandments sought to take control of those they thought less “perfect” than them; everybody who tilled the earth or “worked” for a living, the beginning of the oligarchy and the rest of us.
Weather:
We live in west central Wisconsin – in the same house for ~20 years. Got home around 5 last night and the neighbor’s driveway was blocked with downed trees. No downers in our yard but the front hedge looked like the Jolly Green Giant had danced on it. My wife said a big storm had hit around noon. There was more to come – I checked the NWS radar and the next storm front was just across the Mississippi river – probably 5 miles away – looked very red/purple. Within minutes, it looked like a hurricane at our house. A wall of white blowing water. Knocked down at least 5 large trees in our yard. Two of them were broken off about 30 feet above ground. These are hardwood trees, trunks a good foot in diameter where they failed. There must have been some really severe micro bursts. Never seen anything like it around here. Can only compare it to some real hurricanes I lived though back in the 60s on the Gulf coast. I exaggerate – a hurricane is much worse but this was very nasty.
Any odds on how long the Progs keep “Chelsea” Manning on the front lines. I’m guessing several months before they kick him to the curb. We’ll probably see several attempts at lackluster keynotes then he gets thrown under the closest bus.
Wow, glad you missed getting hurt.
Don’t forget to do a lessons learned after you’ve got some breathing room.
n
Re: minimum legal marriage age
I married a 15 yr old. We had to go to Mississippi to do so. That was in 1971 and we are celebrating our 46th anniversary this year. She was young, but knew how to cook, keep a house, hold a job, and raise farm animals. She spoke German, English, and Spanish and had lived in 5 countries by the time we met. We held our honeymoon on the back of a Harley camping all over the Sierra Nevada mountains. It’s been quite an adventure.
Mr. H. Combs, congratulations for choosing well ! Or, maybe she chose well. Most men marry up though.
My parents married when my mother was 17 and dad was 20. I was born 11 months later. They tried to get married when she was 16 but my grandfather just sucked an entire cigarette down when dad asked and walked away. My grandmother said “no” even though my father promised that mom would finish high school in College Station where he was a student at TAMU (junior).
OFD wrote:
“…I can state categorically that a certain daughter was no more capable of becoming a wife and mother at age 17…”
No one is saying someone has to get married at 17, just that it should be available.
17 I can see. My own mom got married at 18 and had me at 21. But not a 12-year-old to a guy my age, fuck no! We’re not trying to emulate the original Mohammed here, are we?
Again I say, slippery slope.
We’ve seen this stuff go from “civil unions,” to homosexual “marriages,” to talk now of incest being OK, pedophilia likewise, maybe bestiality, and from there to necrophilia. Think it can’t possibly happen this way? Think again. This empire is very, very sick in many sectors.
Glad to hear Mr. Bill F. and family are OK even after a nasty weather blow like that.
And WRT Chelsea Manning? I’d put her/him out there with a machine gun on extended patrols for a while, and get her/him rehabbed as a combat infantry NCO. By hook or by crook, gonna do the fucking job from now on.
What do you have against incest, assuming consenting adults using birth control?
Or bestiality, again assuming consenting adults?
And necrophilia is a victimless activity.
“What do you have against incest, assuming consenting adults using birth control?”
Why should they have to use birth control? Most people in eastern TN and western NC wouldn’t be here.
OFD, I would agree 12 is too low. But 16 isn’t.
“Or bestiality, again assuming consenting adults?”
Colin sometimes contacts me telepathically. His latest was “Bob, is that a Mars Bar in your pocket or are you just glad to see me?” 🙂
And necrophilia is a victimless activity.
I love the Dead, before they’re cold…
And I’ll be seeing Alice next month thanks to my daughter buying her mother tickets for Mother’s Day.
http://www.rabobankarena.com/events/detail/alice-cooper
wheelchair and walker accessible
Alice Cooper is kinda right-wing and a huge golf nut. Runs a pretty decent radio show, too.
WRT “consenting adults.” The phrase alone dates from 1960s “Sexual Revolution” newspeak and calls for apparently any activity to be countenanced if not celebrated, between them. Hey, if they’re behind closed doors and STFU about it, then I don’t know about it, amirite? But I think it’s perversion, writ simple, and contra natura.
What about a consenting adult and a presumed-consenting adult rattlesnake if it had ears to hold onto? Are corpses presumed to be consenting?
Again I say we have anthropological and social taboos for very good reasons. And not because we’re just repressed and nasty old freedom-hating Puritans, either.
All this talk about marriage has left out the newest form, Sologamy, where one marries oneself. Gives new meaning to self gratification. And with the latest advances in growing babies anywhere and having to use only one person’s DNA (no matter the sex) these self gratifiers can have it all.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sologamy
I forgot about that deal about “marrying” oneself, but now I recall the insane creatures “marrying” bridges and buildings, and the other totally wack individuals modifying their faces and bodies with surgery, etc., etc.
The inmates are running the asylums and the people in charge and the media think it’s just fine and dandy and the rest of us should get on board and be enthusiastic about it.
All this talk about marriage has left out the newest form, Sologamy, where one marries oneself. Gives new meaning to self gratification. And with the latest advances in growing babies anywhere and having to use only one person’s DNA (no matter the sex) these self gratifiers can have it all.
What in the world ? It is getting weirder and weirder out there.
All this talk about marriage has left out the newest form, Sologamy,
Don’t forget Robotomy. I’m waiting for the Gal Gadot model.
Don’t forget Robotomy. I’m waiting for the Gal Gadot model.
That has been done many times. The best was perhaps Mr. Universe’s robot wife in “Serenity”.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0379786/
@MrAtoz sez:
Better be well stocked with batteries and lube. Lightning port anyone?
😉
The sad, sad, sad scene when Mr. Universe’s death is explained by his Lovebot wife in “Serenity”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-LaAIXgv-8
Lightning port anyone?
I’m going full Thunderbolt!
The sexbots apparently stir up all sorts of hackles from the feminists. I’m genuinely not sure why – does it make them insecure? It seems like a sexbot is less dehumanizing than, say, a fleshlight or a vibrator, both of which reduce the opposite sex down to a single, um, attribute.
Which brings to mind: I watched Rogue One (the Star Wars flick, for those unfamiliar) last night. There were two characters (one was Princess Leia), who were done using CGI. Wow, just wow. While you could tell, it was a truly near thing. Very, extremely, extraordinarily realistic. Actually, for a while, I thought a third character was also CGI (but he wasn’t) – that’s how good it was.
Shame about the movie itself, though. While the story was basically good, the movie itself came across as incredibly disjointed and chaotic. In the end, I didn’t care about the characters nearly as much as they wanted me to. On the positive side, it did portray a bit of reality about the “rebels”: internal factions, and that some of them inevitably aren’t very nice people.
” In the end, I didn’t care about the characters nearly as much as they wanted me to”
I’m a fan of the original trilogy, warts and all. I couldn’t be bothered to follow the story in the next trilogy. NO idea if the clones were bad or good, who started it, why, etc.
evil villian, pretty girl in danger, fighting, yoda as a badass…
That’s all I needed.
n
I pay no attention to fembats anymore. They’ve cut themselves out of the rational discourse market a long time ago. And after SHTF, we won’t be hearing from them again.
Only way they’d be OK with sexbots is if the latter were produced as morbidly obese, with bad hair, and thick glasses and permanently sour facial expressions.
I’m surprised you EVER paid any attention to their blathering.
25 years ago I was stuck temporarily in their graduate English departments at two large northeastern universities. Sort of a captive audience. And that is where I first encountered the vehemence, vitriol and bitter hatred so many of them have for men and boys. It was a real eye-opener and I didn’t stay long; 1993 was my last year. Good riddance.
Anyone out there lurking who loves English literature? Forget taking college courses in it; read it for yourself. Yours truly is standing by to take your calls….
Bingo. What exactly does a college literature course give you that you can’t get by yourself by reading the book and checking the internet?
Only two things that I can think of, one contemptible and the other a temporary near-necessity. A lot of superannuated infants want to avoid adulthood for a few more years, preferably at someone else’s expense. Getting the government entirely out of the education business — grants, guaranteed loans, and interference with bankruptcy — should put a stop to most of that.
And most jobs with companies big enough to have an HR department have a credentialing requirement, usually a college degree. Yes, I know the stock response is “go into business for yourself”, but most people just don’t have what it takes to do that. This arguably can be attributed to the public school system, but the fact remains that few have the gumption, appetite for risk, energy, and skills to succeed as freelancers or other self-employed. Almost everyone who needs to earn a living is at the mercy of HR departments and their nonsensical rules, which means college is a near-necessity.
Tangentially, for years I thought that once the US economy turned down enough that we couldn’t afford to have endless “diversity compliance officers”, “vice presidents for sucking up to grievance groups”, and so on, we’d unload all that nonsense and focus on productivity. I now suspect that won’t happen, or if it does it won’t be because of economic need. The US would seem to have been in an economic depression for a decade, but we’re so stinking rich that we didn’t notice. (I’m not sure about that. The numbers on the economy are so thoroughly cooked that they’re about worthless, leaving us with anecdotes.)
Don’t worry, Steve. You read history, like most of us, so you know there’ll be a reset coming along any time now.
History.
Literature.
Historical literature.
Literary history.
And that about covers it for OFD’s true loves since I was a toddler myself. I learned fah, fah more on my own than I ever did in any damn classrooms with the following handful of exceptions:
English grammar in 9th grade, taught by a mean-ass drunk and taskmaster, who humiliated us and ragged on us until we got it, sorta like a boot camp DI. Now it’s in my bones and DNA w/o even thinking about it, ever.
Grad Skool 1: 18th-C British lit, from a young prof with a Hah-vud PhD who’d learned there himself from the late Walter Jackson Bate and at Rutgers from the late Paul Fussell. He knew his stuff and it was a three-student seminar. I got more outta that in a week than in anything else for many years. He got drummed outta that place and sent down to a lesser position in his home state of NJ. Outstanding scholar, particularly WRT to Dr. Samuel Johnson.
Grad Skool 2: Medieval philosophy, all male class, rigorous as all hell, and covering Christian, Arab and Jewish philosophers and theologians from that period. Some of it mind-blowing stuff that peeps were thinking about 800 years ago. We had to write papers and then defend them. Kicked my ass but I got through it, against hardcore philosophy majors.
Much earlier, in undergrad skool; did a lengthy paper on Hobbes and Locke and got an A+ “much more than was asked for.” Made my day.
Otherwise, hanging on the reset, like most of us here, and hoping it doesn’t put it us back in the Stone Age, like most musloid shit-holes and Afrika.
Star Wars jumped the shark with Jar Jar Binks. The current generation of Star Wars Nerds/Geeks have no broad foundation in good Sci-Fi, which actually actually requires a good foundation in the classics. Today’s Sci-Fi writers are an embarrassment, IMHO, no depth, just in it for the money from the shallow public.
My interests in uni were kinda broad: maths, computer systems, operating systems (CDC NOS/BE and some DEC PDP o/s), assembly language (PP and CPU Compass). At ANU I did several medieval history courses (The Medieval Church – my all time favourite course and The Decline of the Middle Ages: England 1300-1485) and started learning Latin and traditional grammar. Wish I’d started Latin in high school.