CritterKeeper

Camille West

Can you delete a poll without deleting the thread? If so, can you then create a new poll? A different forum I was on had a thread called "The Notorious TMI Thread" which had a series of anonymous polls, on various topics. The results of a poll would be posted within a reply on the thread, so the accumulated answers were saved, before a new poll was put up in its place. The thread title should give you an idea of the sorts of polls, but it was a fun thread in a forum as well-moderated as this one. :-)

That's the way the law/regulation is written. You can round the numbers, so 0.5g would round up to 1g, except since you're not *required* to round it, they usually list it as "0.5g" instead. Anything under 0.5 can be rounded down to zero. As long as you say (in very small lettering compared to the rest) that the "0g Trans Fat!" is "per serving" then there's nothing to sue over.

I wasn't mixing anything up, but apparently you posted while I was composing it, so what I thought was directly following Avistew wound up with your post in between. If I'd realized, I'd have started the post with "Avistew," to make it clear who I was addressing. Sorry!

Right, and non-poly people can stay single all their lives and never get into a marriage/SO/that's-my-partner relationship. That doesn't mean such relationships don't exist, as something *different* from just dating each other. You keep insisting that every relatinship is one-on-one, and I'm saying that there *are* one-on-one relationships, of all sorts, but there are *also* relationships which are a distinct from one-to-one. If you've never met B's partners, then no, you don't have a relationship with them, but if you, B, K, and D have not only met each other, not only spend time together, but work together to make sure that all of your schedules coordinate, all of your needs are being met as much as possible, all of you try to get along for the sake of each other -- if you care about their happiness, even if it's because you know your partner won't be happy unless they are, and you want your partner to be happy -- then you have a relationship that is more than just "that person is dating my partner but I have nothing to do with them." Plural marriages use the term "sister-wives" -- they're not romantically interested in each other, but they have a close relationship nonetheless, and they recognize that fact. They are all a part of whole in a way that they wouldn't be if their spouse was married to one and having an affair with another. I've acknowledged that a whole string of one-to-one relationships can exist. Can you acknowledge that a group can feel that they are more than that, even the ones that aren't romantically involved with each other? That's all I'm trying to get across here, and you seem to keep shoving that whole idea aside.

Every time they redo the food labels, one of the improvements they promise is "more realistic portion sizes." Usually, there's a small increase in a few foods, like cereal going from 1/2 cup to 3/4 cup. Often, the food companies want to keep the portion sizes small so they can claim fewer calories, and often so that they can make the amount of Trans Fats 0.49g or smaller so they can label it with "0g Trans Fats!" (often, people eat two or three times that much, but admitting people are eating 1.47g Trans Fats every time they eat it might hurt sales among people trying to avoid this hazardous substance).

Lamarck Was Right (hint: No, he wasn't)

Well, we had just covered in another thread that Ellen thinks Tedd is sexy....

You seem to have both a broader and a narrower definition than I do. Please correct me if I'm misunderstanding, but it seems like you are only counting people as having some sort of "relationship" if they are having sex, or at least dating with the ultimate goal of having sex. As I said above, I see there as being a difference between dating two other people as individuals, and having a committed relationship with two other people who are also in a committed relationship with each other. The dynamic is such that the other two people can't help but have a different sort of relationship between them than if you weren't all three committed to each other, even if they aren't at all interested in having sex with each other. Then you seem to make a jump from one-on-one straight to including everyone who is sleeping with anyone who is sleeping with anyone who is sleeping with the pair in question. In my experience, a web that broad isn't very stable, rather there are some families that are stable, committed families, but beyond that who's sleeping with who changes around. Within those stable, committed families, of whatever size, everyone involved has a very different relationship, whether they are sleeping with each other or not. Again, it might just be a difference in terminology between social circles. Mine makes a distinction between swinging, ie having casual sex with no real commitment, and establishing a longer-term, more meaningful poly relationship. They see their families as inherently different from, most commonly, a married couple who decide to have a bunch of casual sex that goes no further while remaining committed to each other, and from there I think the distinction spread out to include larger committed poly families who may also happen to have casual sex with people outside the poly family. It just seems weird to me that you seem to be saying that the middle type of relationship is invalid and you can *only* consider the individual pairings and the big wide web as a whole, while ignoring the (often overlapping) small family units within that web. It's like saying that a living mammal is made up of cells, but that those cells don't form organs within the body, that they can only be considered at the level of individual cells or as a whole critter but nothing in between.

baby-faced undercover cops

I didn't get that it was limited to groups of three. They even specified "three or more people all in one relationship together." Some of the poly people I know would say that you are in a four-person relationship -- they don't think being intimate is a necessary part of being in a relationship. Others would say that you aren't in a four-person relationship now, but that if you do end up "all dating each other," then you de facto would be. (Note that I'm not saying that, only pointing out that the other perspectives exist and can be valid.) Joe can date both Bob and Michael without having a relationship with Bob's wife Judy or Michael's husband Charlie. But, if Joe is a long-term committed partner to Bob, then it's pretty hard for him not to have some sort of relationship with Judy unless there's some pretty heavy deception going on somewhere. Again, not necessarily a sexual or romantic relationship, but an emotional bond, even if it's just a shared commitment to and love of Bob, and the cooperation needed to keep Bob happy by all getting along and not tugging him in opposite directions all the time. Gemma is in a long-term, committed relationship with Ben and Stuart, and the three of them live together. That doesn't mean that everyone Ben dates is a part of their family. Bringing another person into a family is a big commitment, and a decision all three would have to be a part of and agree to. Any or all of the family can date casually without their dates being part of the family. Again, I didn't see any such assumption in the comic, or in my earlier post. The fact that we end up discussing Grace, Tedd, and Sarah means that families of three naturally come to mind, and I think the people who ship them as the OTT most often see them as all three being involved with each other. We seem to be saying the same thing in different ways. Someone who is in a triad is in a relationship they call a triad. I've known people who are in groups of five or six who refer to the whole group as a family, the same way a husband and wife and their kids are a family. That doesn't mean there aren't relationships within that family, it just means that they occur within that relationship, the same way there are atoms of hydrogen and oxygen within water (or hydrogen peroxide, or a number of other compounds). If you are dating a married man, you are dating one person, and his spouse may or may not know about it. If you are in a triad with a married couple, it is a relationship involving all three of you. Any one of you might also be in other relationships, and they are their own thing, however large or small they are. Note that a relationship does not equate to having sex. A triad might involve one woman and two men, all three of them straight. If the two men don't have a relationship at all, then it's just one woman dating two different guys. If all three of them live together, go on dates together, raise children together, plan who marries who legally and who goes on whose health insurance and such, discuss who gets to sleep with who when, then they are in a relationship together. That seems like a pretty unusual outlier, and a bit of a straw man. People in a relationship are still individual people. So you are part of one relationship you call a marriage, and another relationship that you call a triad. To me, that means you have some sort of relationship with the whole triad, not just your boyfriend within it, otherwise it wouldn't be a triad, only you having a relationship with him and he having a relationship with both you and someone else. Perhaps there's some regional difference in the use of the word triad; maybe you have a different word for what I'm talking about. Like soda vs pop vs coke vs cola. These days, online communities can be just as different as geographic regions, and develop different lingos.

Uno!

If it was several days ago, it's probably not the flea medicine. Other than looking for string looped under his tongue or for any plants, medicines, supplements, etc. he could have gotten into, or any chewed-apart toys or missing foam or stuffing from furniture, I'm not sure what else you can do at home. Looking in the mouth is, of course, only to be tried if he's a nice, tolerant cat -- Rule Number One is, "Don't get bit!" Note whether the vomit looks like undigested food, partially digested food, green liquid, white foam, etc. and whether there's anything unusual inside it or, ah, the other end. And if you can, make sure he doesn't hide himself somewhere you won't be able to get him out of when Mrs. Prof does come home.... Best of luck! Hope you get him to the vet and the problem is easily and cheaply fixed!

Then what's "all y'all"? That might could be plural.

They still won't give you a playable game right out of the box, so to speak. I playtested a few CCG at GenCon, and my feedback was usually the same -- Give me a package that has two or three playable decks to start with, and then make all the extras and additions collectible. For example, the Highlander CCG. If they had given me a "Connor" deck, an "Amanda" deck, and a "Duncan" deck, with a few basic weapons and moves and such for each one that suited their character. Give me enough to actually start playing a proper game. Once I've had a chance to see it's fun, then tell me my character can get cool new weapons and moves and home bases and such. Well, I mostly remember MtG being the "gamer crack" taking over GenCon, I wasn't aware of Pokemon so much until later. But it definitely gets lumped in with MtG nowadays as one of those darn addictive CCGs that ruined things for "real" gamers who played RPGs. (My first awareness of Pokemon cards was during the costume contest at GenCon, when a girl did a complex belly-dance where instead of balancing a water glass on her hand, she balanced a Pikachu, and instead of beads her skirt was made of Pokemon cards. And she danced to the Ewoks' "Yub Yub" song from the end of Return of the Jedi. )

Many polyamorous people see their whole family, of whatever size, as one relationship. While you can break it down into elements, such as (Alice and Bob) (Alice and Charlie) (Bob and Charlie), those are not the whole relationship, any more than hydrogen and oxygen taken separately are all there is to water.

Legit explanation why some RPG players don't like Collectible Card Games? I used to go to GenCon every year, a huge gaming convention devoted almost exclusively to role-playing games. There were a few, mostly older, miniatures wargamers, and a few LARPers, but otherwise it was one huge glorious mass of gamers. It was one of the biggest non-business conventions in the country. The entire city of Milwaukee was *filled* with gamers, and when we said "gamers" everyone knew that meant tabletop RPGs -- D&D, GURPS, Toon, all sorts of role-playing. Then Magic: the Gathering and Pokemon appeared, and literally between one year and the next, there were twice as many booths devoted to CCGs as to the RPGs everyone had been coming for year after year. The thing people had been traveling from across the country to share was suddenly not just sharing the spotlight, but in danger of being shoved off the stage completely. And because you had to keep buying cards, not very many people could afford to play both. With RPGs, you could buy a set of rule books, and keep playing for as far as your imagination took you. You couldn't just buy a CCG deck and play, because one little pack probably wouldn't have a good balance of cards. You had to commit to buying an unknown number of packs or why bother? RPG supplements, new editions, modules, it was all optional. If a game worked, it kept working. But these card games were designed to make you have to keep buying new cards, with central rule-making bodies issuing decrees for that purpose. What was seen as the worst insult....within a few years, D&D, the honored forefather of the whole Role-Playing world, had been bought -- by Wizards of the Coast, the ones who had brought the plague of "gamer crack" upon the community in the first place. So, that's why there are still a lot of traditional role-playing gamers who resent the heck out of the whole CCG phenomena, but especially MtG and Pokemon.

Hope you and yours are doing fine and the storm didn't send anything nasty your way!

This is the premise of one of my favorite podcasts, Nerdette, "Because we're all a little nerdy about something!" Their definition is that it's not what you're interested in, but how passionate you are about it.

My general opinion of the election has been that, on the Democratic side, it's a nice change to be able to vote for the Greater of two Goods instead of the lesser of two evils. I'm saddened that so few other people seem to be able to look at it that way. I had my preference, but would be happy to vote for either of thm ithe general election.

Chess

I know sexual attraction isn't necessary for conception, but it still seems rather icky to have to engage in things you physically don't enjoy. That's why I generally picture Ellen being the one to carry a pregnancy -- she's bisexual, and while she calls herself homoromantic, I suspect that she'd find Manase emotionally fulfilling, too, just becau she'd know it's her true love in there. Instead of Nanase having to close her eyes and think of England, Ellen and Manase could have some actual *fun* while creating offspring!

The Leather Rose, Gallaria Domaine, Tina's Place....

Helloooo, Nurse!

If you turn the table upside-down it might, but if the hourglass is glued to the table so that it can't be turned over again, then putting the table on its side would just lead to an hourglass sticking out perpendicular to it, presumably with the sand falling to the "side" of the hourglass and coming to rest, no longer pouring from top compartment to bottom.