Usually called the doctor. Or the caretaker.

Stroke jokes aren't funny.

There are a certain subset of people with very poor social skills and not so much of a sense of humour as a sort of third-grade mindset who think that jokes about stroke and stroke survivors are funny, and who love to do what I'm sure they think of as a kind of physical humour with a clawed hand, a dragging foot, and a contorted face, or to ask anyone or of anyone who does something they consider out of character or stupid "Is their face drooping? Maybe they've had a stroke."

This isn't funny. It's not clever. And if you think it is, ask yourself if you've ever heard anyone who has actually had a stroke or had a loved one or romantic partner have a stroke make one of those jokes. Nobody who has had their life affected by a stroke, either their own or someone else's, makes that kind of joke.

Having a stroke doesn't turn people into monsters or idiots. It doesn't make someone unsuited to be a romantic partner. It can change the way their brain works, it probably has changed the way their body works, and they may be more prone to emotional lability post-stroke for reasons of both changed brain function and the cumulative effects of chronic pain or disability, but I think we can all agree that this isn't the kind of thing that it's particularly nice to joke about.

Stroke is the third leading cause of death in the US and the fourth in Canada. When you drag your foot and slur to be funny, you are almost certainly doing so in front of someone who has lost a loved one to stroke, and you might be doing so in front of someone who is a survivor of stroke. That's not funny. It's just mean.

Please think about what you're saying.

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There are many things in this world I do not understand. This is, I feel, right and proper. Life is full of things no one could understand.

For example, I saw a young woman clearly bent on clubbing wearing a jersey-knit strapless drop-crotch jumpsuit. The pattern was tiny blue and purple flowers on a white ground, and the fabric had a vaguely fuzzy flannelette appearance. I don't understand that. I defy anyone to understand it. It was a fashion don't.

However, one of the things I don't understand is dishrags. Now, before you hit "reply" and start telling me about the wonders of dishrags, let me tell you that I have heard it all before. In fact, I grew up in a dishrag household, so I have used them. This is why I'm a sponge person. I have never gotten good results from washing dishes with a rag or cloth, and I find them foul to handle and have around. Over time, no matter what colour they began, they subside into a sort of mildew-grey that I find decidedly unappealing, and as they get old, they texture they become when wet is almost more than my hands can bear to touch.

I know that there are six million arguments in favour of dishrags and how they're so much better than sponges, etc etc. However, I don't want to use them, and that should be the end of it. Except, for so many dishrag users, it isn't. H_D and naturalliving occasionally subside into rag vs. sponge wars, and generally speaking what it ends up being is a lot of people declaring that the thing they don't use is gross (this is normal and expected, because if you didn't think it was gross, you'd be either indifferent or using whatever it is), but then the rag users all start predicting dire outcomes for the sponge users if they refuse to switch.

Sponge users, by and large, are pretty inoffensive types. We like what we like, we use what we use, and while we will discuss at length our reasons for using a sponge, we don't insist that everyone switch to sponges. We recognize that sponges are not for everyone.

Rag users, however, are proselytizers. Everyone has to use a rag! Rags are so much better that there is no comparison! Sponges will kill you. They are killing you, right now. Turn around, the sponge has a dirty knife and it's coming for you! THE SPONGE IS CALLING FROM INSIDE THE SINK.

This is the thing I don't understand. It's sort of like those people who clean their houses using nothing but hot water and baking soda. It can't just be a personal choice--it's a fucking crusade. Everyone must touch the filthy dishrag. Well, I say, NO. PUT THE RAGS ON JULIA.

And I'll go on using my sponges. I buy them in packs of three.

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THIS IS JUST PAINFUL.

WHO WROTE THIS INCREDIBLY STUPID QUESTION???

Original article here.

Several products are available to remind a parent if a child remains in a car seat after the car is turned off. One of the more popular is Cars-N-Kids Car Seat Monitor, which turns on upon sensing a child's weight and sounds a lullaby when the car has stopped; it retails for about $40 and is available online.

KidsAndCars.org, an advocacy group for child vehicle safety, urges some basic measures to prevent the tragedy of children being inadvertently left in vehicles:

Always put something you'll need for work -- cellphone, handbag, employee badge, etc. -- on the floor of the back seat, near the child.

Keep a large teddy bear in the child's car seat when it's not occupied. When the child is placed in the seat, put the teddy bear up front in the passenger seat. It's a visual reminder that anytime the teddy bear is in the passenger seat, the child is in the back.

Make arrangements with your child's day-care provider or babysitter that you will always call them if your child will not be there on a particular day as scheduled. Ask them to always phone you if your child does not show up when expected.

(Full text)

For me, it's a tie between "Don't ever mouth-pipette samples suspected of being positive for syphilis" and "Don't let privates on KP mop the floor while there's raw meat on the counters."

Not the most useful, but definitely memorable.

That said, however, my feelings on forced prostitution, i.e. human trafficking and sex slavery, as well as labor trafficking and the kind of debt-bondage that happens around manual and industrial slavery, are not mixed, and this article helps to explain why.

You should read this VF article on domestic sex trafficking.

A quote, one of many, that exemplifies the problem, from the defense attorney for the accused pimp and trafficker, who seduced young girls into agreeing to enter his "protection" and then raped, abused, and forced them into prostitution:

This particular case is nothing more than standard pimping and prostitution—not human trafficking, bringing some girl in from Thailand. It’s the federalization of local crimes.

And a rebuttal from a senior fellow on the foreign relations council, on the reason why the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, a piece of legislation enacted under Clinton that provided protection for foreign victims of trafficking but also helped to provide similar protections for victims of domestic trafficking:

if you get weepy-eyed about a young girl in Cambodia, why not feel the same way about the girl trafficked from Iowa?

I find particularly compelling the fact that men in this case, working this case, rather than asserting that the girls being trafficked, raped, killed, did "something wrong" to deserve the things that happened, were victims of traffickers. You can see the victim-blaming mentality in the culture around us, all the time--if these young ladies hadn't done something wrong (trusted the wrong person; run away from a home situation, even if it was abusive; gotten hooked on drugs; etc) they wouldn't have wound up in prostitution at all, forced or otherwise. (For example, see the quote on page six about how if these young teenagers had had "real skills" they would have been working at McDonald's.)

Like victims of rape, victims of domestic abuse, victims of child abuse, to be a victim of human trafficking requires only one thing: that you be around a person who is inclined to treat humans as chattel. If you are human, as far as they're concerned, the label applies. You don't have to do anything but be human.

Unfortunately, this article also betrays the profoundly racist underpinnings of our legal system. Note that of the "sympathetic" young women who testified against this particular trafficking enterprise, and were key in securing a conviction, they were all white.