Trump should get one and call it swamp drain, it won't need cleaning because it'll never get used.
Texas residents start naming adopted drains
The good folk of Houston, Texas have started naming their adopted drains, as part of a community project seeking sponsorship of the city's water discharge system. Monickers so far have included "Masshole", "It's Draining Men" and "Sir Drains a Lot", according to the Houston Chronicle. The city's Adopt-A-Drain Program was …
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Thursday 3rd May 2018 23:32 GMT Anonymous Coward
Tut tut
WolfFan, I do understand you have visceral feelings against the man, but if you're going to criticize him, you would better maintain your credibility (among intelligent people) by using his right name and title:
United States President Donald J. Trump
Sorry if that puts you off your feed...
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Friday 4th May 2018 16:14 GMT Michael Wojcik
Re: Tut tut
Am I allowed to find it ironic that so many people that profess to hate Trump both blame his alleged racism then refer disparagingly to his skin colour?
Sure. You're allowed to find anything ironic. For that matter, anything with non-zero information content is ironic, by definition.1
In their defense, though, I'll point out that Trump's complexion is apparently a matter of choice, and many would argue it could fairly be ridiculed as such.
More importantly, racism is not a matter of skin color - that's simply one of the registers in which it's enacted. People are very capable of being racist without resorting to differences in skin color, and racist practices that are popularly imagined to be associated with skin color often prove to have only the most tenuous association with it - for example "one drop" or other blood-quantum rules.
1Irony is the trope of a violation of expectation. (That's what makes it the "master trope"; all other tropes, and indeed all other meaningful use of language, are just specific variants of irony.) You'll note that "violation of expectation" == "surprise" == Shannon's informal definition of information entropy, which follows from his formal definition: the amount of information in a message is equal to its improbability, which is equal to its discrepancy from the recipient's expectation, which is equivalent to surprise. Information is irony; irony is information.
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Friday 4th May 2018 18:38 GMT WolfFan
Re: Tut tut
I hereby apologise to all orangutans who might have felt insulted by being unfairly compared to the Mango Maniac. No disrespect was intended to you lot. DumpsterFire, now, it's not possible to show the level of disrespect due to him. Except, perhaps, that he has ensured that G. W. Bush can no longer be considered the worst president, or even the worst Republican president, of the US in the 21st century. I really wish that we had Shrub Jr. back. Hell, Golden Shower Lad makes Slick Willy Clinton look good, and that takes talent. At least Slick Willy kept his adventures with interns inside the White House, instead of doing watersports with whores in deepest Russia the way that Friend of Kiddie Fiddlers did. And Slick doesn't have small hands, though the presidential todger is kinda bent. I suspect that Hill may have had something to do with that, she's got more iron in her handbag than Maggie Thatcher and probably Galtieried poor Slick. The Trumpanzee (no insult meant to chimps) had better watch out, Hill might have a word or two with Melania.
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Thursday 3rd May 2018 12:02 GMT Voland's right hand
Participants are asked to keep their drain clear of leaves and rubbish by cleaning it at least four times a year (especially before it rains), clean 10 feet on both sides of the drain, and compost or dispose of leaves and rubbish.
And they used to laugh at the communist countries and their "neighbourhood obligations".
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Thursday 3rd May 2018 20:07 GMT Anonymous Coward
Well someone has to do it. Either they raise your taxes so the city can send someone round to check them all regularly, or they depend on the people living close to the drain who will be negatively affected if it backs up.
Giving them naming rights is presumably to confer a sense of 'ownership' making them more likely to actually do it, instead of ignoring it until the drain backs up and then calling the city in a panic because the street and half their front yard is flooded during a downpour.
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Friday 4th May 2018 04:49 GMT W.S.Gosset
re "communist"
Purest AngloSaxon culture, continued, actually. Wherein community membership connotates community responsibilities. Goes back to the "dark" ages at least.
To "cry havoc", for example, is now just a semi-poetic cliche but used to be a formal term, and also a formal legal requirement for English yeomen and fourmen (my joke -- now spelled foreman but villages were required to appoint one foreman per 4-5 men, who then had various legal duties to the community and authority over those men to action them).
Current North American example: I've been told by several yanks that most yanks are required by law to clear the snow from the footpaths outside the houses. Communism! Or community contribution.
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Thursday 3rd May 2018 21:57 GMT Doctor Syntax
And they used to laugh at the communist countries and their "neighbourhood obligations"
Communist countries? This is straight out of the middle ages. E.g. Wakefield manorial court Oct 3rd 1433: " James Norres <8d> and John Thomson did not scour defective ditches at Norreskerr so were pained 12d"
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Thursday 3rd May 2018 12:19 GMT Rich 11
No, it's just Texas. Private citizens are supposed to do everything for themselves rather than contribute a couple of bucks a month each to some goddam socialist city drain-clearing squad. Next time the city floods, it'll be the fault of the people who get flooded for not cleaning their drains or not being able to afford to buy a geographically-advantageous house.
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Thursday 3rd May 2018 13:26 GMT James 51
Re: Of course that ignores the activity's value as a virtue signal.
@AC The UK learned a lot of lessons from Victorian era philanthropy. Namely that piecemeal, unorganised efforts no matter how well meant or rich the backers cannot meet the needs of a society without a safety net. Cleaning the drains is a symptom of a system that is struggling to cope. This kind of effort will help but it's a symptom of a larger problem.
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Thursday 3rd May 2018 13:41 GMT anothercynic
About the size of drains...
... There was a recent discussion amongst my friends about this. One lives in Colorado, and people commented on the drains and the design of the gutters. Lo and behold, it rained the other day and said friend posted a picture with the comment "this is why they are designed the way they are" which clarified things significantly.
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Friday 4th May 2018 16:36 GMT Michael Wojcik
Re: About the size of drains...
One lives in Colorado, and people commented on the drains and the design of the gutters. Lo and behold, it rained the other day and said friend posted a picture with the comment "this is why they are designed the way they are" which clarified things significantly.
Yes. That's also why they tell people who are hiking in the Southwest to stay out of the arroyos during the rainy season. According to some estimates there are close to a hundred deaths due to flash-flooding each year in the US. Certainly there are always a few reported every year in the area where the Mountain Fastness is located.
Apropos the article, around there we also have a community drains program. Of course they're called acequias and the program has been in place since the 17th century,1 which isn't long compared to similar in Europe and Asia but pretty good for the US. Nice that Houston's catching on.
1The deed for the land the Mountain Fastness sits on goes back to a letter of patent from the king of Spain, granting a certain tract in "the Ultramarine Colony of New Mexico". I always find it more brownish, myself.
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Thursday 3rd May 2018 19:26 GMT Anonymous Coward
well it is on the day it rains
Well, that's more the Metroplex (Dallas-Fort Worth area) and north Texas.
In Houston, it seems to be every summer afternoon after 5PM [Like New Orleans].
In central Texas it rains in "spring" and "autumn" [we use those words, though the reality is more like "summer" and "not summer"]
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Thursday 3rd May 2018 15:30 GMT Steve Knox
Re: Scary...
"Some"? Based on the numbering scheme, at least 260! This company, whatever it is, seems to have a predilection for big, wet holes!
As for names, how about
"a hole in the road where the rain goes out"
or
"Spout! Spout! Let it all out!"
It remains to be seen how many of these adopters will actually do the work to merit the name. In other words I wonder -- still I wonder -- who'll swab their drains?
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Thursday 3rd May 2018 17:35 GMT Suricou Raven
Re: Scary...
Quite a lot of them are named for bad-dragon.com. That is some impressive trolling work. Someone is messing with Texas. I'd have liked a little more creativity though - why not name some after fchan, or e621?
Realistically, though, I'd expect half these drains to end up named after either websites or local businesses looking for cheap promotion. And about one in ten of those will actually clear their drain up.
Because the scheme is stupid. It's a very transparent by the effort to 1. Reduce essential maintenance budgets, because taxation is for communists. 2. Foist the responsibility off onto volunteers who can then be blamed for any roads that become impassible due to blocked trains.
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Thursday 3rd May 2018 14:52 GMT Dodgy Geezer
Purple Drain,
Drainy night in Dallas
It might as well Drain until September
I can see clearly now the Drain has gone
Walking in the Drain
Famous Blue Draincoat
I have seen the Drain
It's Draining Men
It never Drains in Southern Texas
One Drainy wish
Only happy when it Drains
Over the Drainbow
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Friday 4th May 2018 12:27 GMT Carl Pearson
Mom, it followed me home ... can I keep it?
Houston lies a little over 100 kilometers inland from from the Gulf of Mexico, via a series of connected waterways.
When I was living there In the mid-90's, a Manatee managed to swim all the way to Braes Bayou, just west of downtown.
It stayed there for about a week, resulting in many local television new reports.
Though I don't recall if anyone determined its gender, by consensus, we naturally named it "Hugh".