That's Just Stupid!

[Shapley]

To paraphrase Monty Python's Life of Brian:

"It's symbolic of our struggle against gender stereotyping!"

"No, it's symbolic of your struggle against reality."

[piqaboo]

Its interesting, and I doubt harmful.
We have near total control of them til they go to daycare or turn ~ 2: food, clothing, etc.
Then it... not so much!
My two year-old Altoid often self-described with the wrong gender. Given that the preschool had side by side toilets for the tots, it wasnt confusion about who has what. I think it was probably just confusion in the words themselves.
It all gets figured out eventually.

Altoid had a non-specific nickname, and I avoided telling strangers her real name a) for security
and b) because people DO talk differently to boy and girl babies.
Case in point: little old couple from across the street "what a sharp little guy you are! Look how you look around and notice everything! You are really a bright one!" Then someone came by and spilled the gender beans. The same couple, same encounter "You are so cute. What a cute pretty litle girl you are!".

Do you notice a significant difference? Boys are 'sharp', 'bright'. Girls - its all about looks. This stuff does have an influence.
I have NO problem w Storm's parent's hiding Storm's gender. (I dont like Storm's name, tho).

[Shapley]

I was in the delivery room when my son was born, by Caesarian section. As he was lifted out through the incision, the anesthetist, who is a friend, told me I could look over the curtain if I promised not to pass out. As he came out (screaming), she said "Well, if he's a boy, he's really cute."

That left me wondering, what if he isn't a boy? I figured he was cute either way.
_______________________

In Haggis' link, however, I think the parents struggle a bit with reality with this part: "Stocker and Witterick say the decision gives Storm the freedom to choose who he or she wants to be. “What we noticed is that parents make so many choices for their children. "

Methinks nature kind of made the gender choice, and their efforts to delay that reality will only confuse things.

[dai bread]

Sounds as though the kid's not going to get any guidance. I thought we'd got rid of the notion years ago that children don't need or want guidance. I feel rather sorry for poor little Storm. Saddled with that name, too. She'll probably grow up to join Greenpeace.

And why "she? Storm is a girl's name. Boys with that sort of name are more likely to be called "Thunder" or something specific like that.

[jamiebk]

Sounds as though the kid's not going to get any guidance. I thought we'd got rid of the notion years ago that children don't need or want guidance. I feel rather sorry for poor little Storm. Saddled with that name, too. She'll probably grow up to join Greenpeace.

And why "she? Storm is a girl's name. Boys with that sort of name are more likely to be called "Thunder" or something specific like that.

Or is that "Thor"...lol

[Haggis@wk]

I recall there was a horrible case a few decades back in which a pair of twin baby boys (from Canada, IIRC) were circumcised and something went wrong with one of the twins’ procedure and he ended up with a non-functioning penis. The parents were advised by several doctors (who believed in the “gender is just a social construct” theory) to surgically remove the boy’s genitals and raise him as a girl (without telling him or his twin brother that he had been born a boy).

The parents did as the experts advised, and the results were disastrous for the entire family. The “girl” never felt normal, never fit in at school or with other peers and attempted suicide several times before her teen years, when “she” was finally told the truth. “She” immediately stopped the hormone treatments, and endured multiple painful surgeries to restore “her” real gender. The doctor who oversaw “her” and the other twin’s therapy was at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. The mutilated twin actually took a gun and went to this doctor’s office to kill him when he learned his identity. (He didn’t do it).

The poor kid had a miserable life. He tried to salvage his identity, even eventually marrying a woman and adopting her children. But all the years of lies and betrayals (as he saw it) by the doctors and even by his family took their toll, and he eventually committed suicide (as did his twin brother, who had survivor’s guilt). The parents were also crippled by guilt. Basically the entire family was destroyed, all because some so-called medical “experts” refused to admit the simple fact that gender is more than a social construct that can be wished away at will.

[BigJon]

Storm Davis was a pitcher for Baltimore and Oakland a few years back.

[jamiebk]

You can't fool mother nature....boys will be boys and girls will be girls, with some but few/rare exceptions.

[piqaboo]

I'm pretty confident that once Storm starts noticing that mom and dad look different in the bath/shower, Storm will figure out what nature decided. This happens young. They dont need "gender guidance" that young.

[Haggis@wk]

The government war on kid run concession stands

I notice that the police in McAllen, TX can't handle illegal immigrants but, by God, the good citizens of the town no longer have to fear the threat of illegal lemonade stands!!!!! Sheesh!

[Haggis@wk]

JEFF CARTER ON FARMAGEDDON.

“This documentary illustrates the plight of the organic farmer, specifically the organic dairy farmer. If a dairy farmer wants to sell raw milk, they will be run out of business and many times imprisoned by the federal bureaucracy. The USDA actively tries to run Raw Milk Producers out of the business. They work closely with agents from state agricultural agencies. The documentary shows film of agents descending on various organic farms and outlets, guns drawn, SWAT teams present. It’s straight out of science fiction and something that you can’t believe happens in America. I can understand a huge police presence when going after a drug lord, but a family farmer? Sure, farmers keep guns but in my experience they aren’t violent people.”

Slash their budgets.

[dai bread]

Sales of raw milk have been banned here for decades, for health reasons. All manner of things can live in milk unless it's very carefully handled. The big one for us was TB. It's still a problem, requiring regular testing of dairy herds, slaughter of possums, which are carriers, and on-going vigilance.

Though the ban has never been enforced by SWAT teams as far as I know.

[Haggis@wk]

Sales of raw milk have been banned here for decades, for health reasons. All manner of things can live in milk unless it's very carefully handled. The big one for us was TB. It's still a problem, requiring regular testing of dairy herds, slaughter of possums, which are carriers, and on-going vigilance.

Though the ban has never been enforced by SWAT teams as far as I know.

That's the difference between European (or New Zealand) Socialism. Here, if you are stupid enough to want it, you can buy raw milk.

Remember that the ban on raw milk almost killed the British cheese industry and even NZ cheese makers still use it. Almost the entire European cheese industry, especially the French and the Italian, rely on raw milk.

[dai bread]

Use of raw milk in NZ cheese-making dates from 2009. Dairy cows' health is reasonably well managed now, and TB isn't the worry it was, thanks to the eternal vigilance I mentioned earlier. Watch out, France!

[Haggis@wk]

I hate all types of nannyism. I want to be able to eat or drink whatever I want. I drank raw milk once, at me cousins farm, in the 50's, I wasn't impressed. Years ago after fat free buttermilk became the only kind you could buy my mother, who'd drank buttermilk all her life, never drank a glass of buttermilk again. I remember how much that hurt my heart. Buttermilk was comfort food to her and she'd reminisce about her childhood when she drank it.

You can probably find buttermilk that isn't fatfree, but I haven't seen it.

[Selma in Sandy Eggo]

I have never quite figured out the whole "fat free buttermilk" thing. There's a clear progression from milk-right-out-of-the-cow to butter, and buttermilk is one of the leftovers. The new milk (whole milk) is left in a cool room in jars or crocks to settle: the cream rises to the top and is removed by skimming. You now have two products: skim milk (aka nonfat milk) and cream. If the cream is then returned to the buttery in clabbering pans and allowed to clabber (thicken) and then churned (mechanically agitated) the milk fats will form a solid mass and can be removed from the surrounding liquid. We call the solid mass "butter" and the surrounding liquid is "buttermilk".

My paternal grandmother preferred her own butter to store boughten butter, and as a child I was unhappily familiar with the "churn" part of this process. Once the butter is out of the churn, there are teeny tiny flecks of butter left floating in the buttermilk, but it's not much. I suppose it's not "Non" fat but it's certainly very low fat. It's lower protein than whole milk or skim milk, because the casein protein is largely restricted to the "skim" fraction of the whole milk.

This whole thing is very low tech. You need (1) a dairy animal, (2) a cool room, (3) clean jars, pans, churn (4) some time and labor. A grandchild will do.

[Haggis@wk]

If you visited my grandmother in rural Kentucky in the 50's you'd be offered a glass of buttermilk as a cooling drink. Grandma Raney had a crock in the cellar and would dip a glass full. She kept it in the cellar even after my parents bought her her first ever refrigerator sometimes in the mid-50's. I don't remember being very fond of it, as a kid milk you had to chew wasn't my idea of a drink but my mother loved it and Grandma stocked up extra whenever we visited. I guess she bought it from a neighbor, she certainly never bought it from a store.

When Mom made beans and hamhocks, greens and cornbread her "dessert" was a glass of buttermilk with cornbread crumbled into it and then she'd eat it with a spoon. Other than the buttermilk with the cornbread that remains my favorite meal and my MRHYN makes cornbread better than Mom's, life is good.

I remembered being fascinated as a young child with the tube well. Wow! cold, cold water from a hole in the ground, whodda thunk it?? I was very impressionable as a young boy.

[jamiebk]

Growing up in McKeesport PA (near Pittsburgh), we used to go to the Shriner's picnic...(yeah, my Dad was one of THOSE). Anyway, every year, Menzie Dairy used to supply a tanker truck...yep, a whole tanker truck, full of buttermilk. People brought their bottles and jars to fill. Needless to say, a lot of it was consumed on site. Most people said it was the best they ever had. Dad slurpped the stuff by the quart. I could never get past the floating bits of stuff and the implanted idea that it was "sour" milk...though that is not the case.

[Haggis@wk]

Nearly $1M in federal funds for ‘Diary of a Single Mom’

[Haggis@wk]

From the Wash Post (who notes, "You can't make this stuff up"):

[General Services Administration head] Martha Johnson submitted her resignation to the White House on Monday. Public Buildings Service chief Robert A. Peck and Johnson’s top adviser, Stephen Leeds, were forced out Monday, White House officials said. Four GSA employees who organized the four-day conference have been placed on adminstrative leave pending further action.

The resignations come as the agency’s inspector general prepares to release a scathing report on the training conference, held at a luxury hotel outside Las Vegas in October 2010.

Organizers spent $835,000 on the event, which was attended by 300 employees. The expenses included $147,000 in airfare and lodging at the hotel for six planning trips by a team of organizers. Among the other expenses were $3,200 for a mind reader; $6,300 on commemorative coin set displayed in velvet boxes and $75,000 on a training exercise to build a bicycle.

Your tax dollars at work. Along with the mindreader, we shelled out for a comedian and a clown.

More here.