Misc. comments 13

[redbird]

I seem to have gotten into an annoying argument over copyright, on statements:

In my mind if you don't have a piece of paper saying you own something and you claim to own it then your argument is dead in the water.

So, in your mind, anyone who wants can walk up and take anything of yours that you don't have written title to? Do you keep all the receipts for everything, indefinitely? What did you get for your last birthday, and is there anything particularly appealing in your refrigerator right now?

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athenais wrote "I am not uncaring because I decline to involve myself in others' dramas." I stated agreement, and then added

As an expansion on [your fourth point], I know who I love, I know who I care about, I know who gets my energy to help with their emotional or other personal problems. New people may be added to that group--but anyone who demands it as of right has guaranteed they won't get it.

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In a comment thread on rivka's journal, when she posted about a gym attendant who made an intrusive fuss about her, as a visibly disabled person, going to the gym. This comment is responding to fairoriana:

What the professor should have done--which I think you realize, but I want to reiterate--is treat your friend the same way he treated everyone else in the class.

And the towel attendant should have greeted Rivka the same way he greets other gym members. If he wanted to ask her for advice about disability, well, he probably should have found someone he actually knows, not intruded on a stranger during her probably-limited workout time. Failing that, "Excuse me, but if you have a few minutes on your way out, I'd like to ask your advice" would have been a better opening than to make a big deal about how Rivka actually made it to the gym.

Because the only valid predictor of who will or won't stick to an exercise program is travel time: people who live within (I think this is the number) 12 minutes' travel of their gym are much more likely to keep going than those who live further away. Nothing else--age, gender, disability, good intentions, class, nothing--correlated meaningfully.

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To elynne, who posted about the kittens she's fostering:

We never met the people who fostered Julian. But we did discover today that, unlike your pretty girl, he has worms. He is flea-less, uses his litterbox, and seems well-socialized, albeit in a fierce way, but considering that they said he hadn't been put up for adoption sooner because he was getting over being sick, the worms were an unpleasant surprise. Doubly so because they'd told us we could wait a year to take him to the vet for a check-up; cattitude took him in to Dr. Luckow today because we wanted our boy seen by a doctor we know and trust, and because we wanted him in Dr. Luckow's records/system.

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In response to "I just found out today that one of the telephone exchanges in Haiku, Hawaii is 575":

In fair Hawai'i
Even the phone company
Has a sense of humor

And of course, I got the syllable count in the last line wrong. Hence, a rewrite:

In fair Hawai'i
The telephone company
Likes subtle jokes.