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Ghost of LL

Burnt Ends
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Posts posted by Ghost of LL

  1. 7 minutes ago, David Dennison said:

    That's easy to say when you aren't the one who believes his civil rights are being violated. It's like saying black people who were refused service for most of this nation's history should have just gone elsewhere. 

    I'm sorry, but this isn't Heart of Atlanta Motel.  On the scale of civil-rights abuses, this is pretty minuscule.  You're just never going to convince me that making a gay couple go to one of a hundred other bakeries in Denver is in any way equivalent to forcing black people to travel with the Green Book in the car to avoid getting stranded.  

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  2. 5 minutes ago, Seasick Sailor said:

    This is my take too. Nothing in this opinion resolves the question of whether the baker's actions were okay. It simply states that when reviewing claims like this, civil rights commissions must not be openly hostile to person's religious beliefs. 

     

     

    I think it indicates that the state cannot require cake-baking that conflicts with a bona fide religious belief.  I mean, I certainly wouldn't want to have to argue that going forward.  But you're right that it's a very narrow opinion that leaves open some options for promulgating and enforcing a neutral statute.

    Is it evil that I never could work up much concern over this?

    We all should be able to expect tolerance and display towards all. I think the bakery is run by bigots and they triggered the lawsuit, but denial of a cake is a long way from being forced to the back of the bus or poll tests.

    From my very limited knowledge of the case, it appears the Supreme Court saw this individual case similarly. Okay, they're assholes that don't want to bake a cake due to their own intolerance of homosexuals; maybe there's room for tolerance of idiocy in specific cases.

     

    If it is evil, then I join you in your wickedness.  Frankly, this case has always struck me as unnecessary triumphalism on the part of gay-rights activists who now find themselves largely without any more rights for which to fight.

    • Like 1
  3. I would skip Amsterdam.  There's plenty to do in and around London for a week.  And do you really want to repack and then unpack your bags for two days in Amsterdam (remembering, as always, that traveling between cities takes a day out of your schedule)?

    And honestly--what is there in Amsterdam to see with a 12-year old boy?  I mean, do you need to have some father-son talks about sex and prostitution or something?  It's a marginally pretty town, but I'd rather do a couple day trips out of London than trek all the way over the Amsterdam.

  4. 16 hours ago, Spankytoes said:

    Paris is a no-go with kids that age. It will take you 2 days to see the main sites of Paris. Unless you’re going to Disneyland, you’re pretty much done. Normandy, Versailles, the Louvre, people watching,  etc. are all interesting to adults, not kids.

    I think I strongly disagree with this.  We are taking our 9- and 7-year olds to Paris in October, and we've found plenty for them to do.  It's vastly more than a two-day affair.

    A boy that age is going to be interested in the Arc de Triomphe and Napoleon's Tomb.  His inner ghoul is going to want to see where the guillotine was on the Place de la Concorde, and see where the royals were kept at the Conciergerie before their executions.  For the same reason, he may want to check out the Musee Grevin, which sets Marat in his actual bathtub with Charlotte Corday holding the actual murder weapon.  Go out to Le Bourget and see the Musee de l'air et de l'espace and see the prototype of the Concorde and a bunch of other cool stuff.

    And then there's stuff that everyone likes--a river boat on the Seine, the Eiffel Tower, sitting at a cafe with a glass of wine watching the hot French girls walk by (seriously--the boy will never want to leave).

  5. 29 minutes ago, DanRydell said:

     


    I wasn’t concerned about it until the response to the concern was a tweet that sounds like Trump wrote it rather than an appearance of some sort.

     

    That's where I am, too.  Before yesterday, I thought it was a silly little bullshit joke.  Now, I think something serious may be afoot.

  6. 14 hours ago, SuingToGetAMessageBoard? said:

    Motion for Brisket to stop starting paragraphs with “look” like all we need is some down home folksy insight. 

    Goddamn--that's funny.

     

    (I say that as a "Look" offender myself).

  7. 10 hours ago, wild_turkey said:

     


    What are you basing this on? Average highs are listed as 77F in the summer months. I was there last July and found it fairly enjoyable other than some rain showers.

    I’m sure they can get heat waves, but that’s true of most places. Parts of Colorado can be hot at times in the summer.

     

    I'm basing it on experience.

    My experience in Paris and London is that "average" temperatures are a poor indicator of what it's going to feel like in the Summer.  Obviously, 77* is an average in Paris--it can be cooler, but it can also be significantly warmer.  

    But regardless, even average temperature in Paris is uncomfortable.  Humidity is high, and there is definitely an urban heat effect in Paris.  And if you're traveling by Metro, those stations gets sweltering in the heat and humidity.

    I'm not saying it's unbearable.  It's not Calcutta.  But if the wife is requesting an escape from the Texas heat, I think she's going to be dissatisfied with Paris.

  8. 13 hours ago, phdhorn said:

    On the other hand, there's something kind of concerning about the absolute loss of privacy, or more than that, the inability to "make a mistake" and never be able to atone for it.  That certainly is not what the zeitgeist of early America was.. it was a place where you COULD fail or make a mistake and climb back on the horse.  Not so much today... the sheer volume of the avalanche on social media pretty much wipes out any talk of "mistake."

    To a degree, this enormous ability to whip up reactive frenzys is exactly what Madison was cautioning against in his Federalist papers on factions, or the "tyranny of the majority".  Justice and punishment should be driven by the impartial judgment of the act, not by mob rule.  The social media stuff, for as good as it is on one side of the coin, has a more sinister, dangerous darker side.  While I'm absolutely delighted that the Weinsteins etc. can no longer overpower the status quo thanks to social media, I'm also wary of its ability to create monsters.  The warnings and cautious lessons of Face In The Crowd, although it was made way back in 1957, rings never more true than it does today.

    Of the examples I offered, which constituted "private behavior"?  I don't think privacy is implicated in the least.  Roseanne said something remarkably racist in a public forum.  Roy Moore ran for public office.  These are public figures whose behavior is the subject of discourse because of their publicity.

    And to the extent you're claiming that Harvey Weinstein or Roy Moore is due some "privacy" because his malfeasance was "private," I think that's precisely the point of the #metoo movement.  When it involves other people, the behavior is by definition not private.  Criminal and tortious conduct affects the whole of the body politic--that's why we litigate cases regarding such conduct in open court, and not in some secret Star Chamber.

    I think what you're really addressing is the evaporation of anonymity--not the loss of privacy.  But why should we take that as a bad thing?  As a kid born in the 70's and who grew up in the 80's in urban areas, I'm used to anonymity.  And there was something comforting about it.  And the fact that everybody has a camera phone now to record and publicize my dumbassery is concerning.  It makes me glad that I'm too old for much dumbassery anymore.

    But isn't the result of that to constrain dumbassery?  And isn't that a good thing?

    And beyond that, the anonymity for which you more the loss is a recent innovation.  A century ago, if you did some dumbass shit on the streets of Dallas or Austin or Houston, people would see it and you'd have been the topic of gossip for weeks.  If it were sufficiently serious, you'd have lost your job.  Your boss would know about it, because those towns were small enough that everyone knew everyone else.  Maybe New York was big enough to grant some anonymity, but not many places were.  And even New York wasn't that big 150 years ago.

    Roseanne went out into the 21st Century equivalent of the town square.  I don't care whether it's that or the physical town square of the 19th Century--when you do that, there are going to be consequences.  And that's probably, on the whole, a good thing.  We should consider the fact that the anonymity created in the late-20th Century is the historical outlier.  And consider further that such anonymity, while comforting to most, had some distinctly negative side effects.

  9. I think Cosby would have gone down irrespective of who was elected, because it began while Obama was still president.

    But otherwise--I don't think the #metoo thing would've ever happened if Hillary Clinton had been elected, and as evidence in favor of that proposition I cite 1998.  Any talk of workplace behavior would have been instantly derailed by the cry "But Bill."  And as we saw in 1998, the Democrats and the feminist movement will circle the wagons around the Clintons rather than address the actual issue of inappropriate sexual conduct.  Gloria fucking Steinem basically rejected the entire basis of sexual-harassment law to defend Bill Clinton--"the woman deserves to be believed," indeed.

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  10. 1 minute ago, Sbbruin said:

    Social media, and new media in general, allows the spotlight on these behaviors to blaze like wildfire.

    That's certainly part of it.  And it exposes the behavior to a wider audience (see, e.g., Roseanne).

    But at the same time, social media didn't have anything to do with Matt Lauer or Harvey Weinstein.  That was all about the moment.

  11. I'm fascinated by that result, because the Quinnipiac poll from about six weeks ago showed the race within four points.  So what changed within the last six weeks?  Can anybody think of anything?

    I honestly think this is a margin-of-error thing that the more recent poll has teased out.  This race hasn't changed.  Cruz is up around 7-8 points.  That's where he was six weeks ago; that's where he is today.

  12. There's one thing I'm enjoying about the Trump era, and that is the degree to which bad behavior is recognized, exposed, and punished.  Obviously, the latest one is Roseanne.  But that's just the most recent in a long string of long-overdue comeuppances that have marked the Trump era.

    I mean, let's just start with the whole #metoo group--it's nice to see Harvey Weinstein get his.  We all knew he was a creep; we probably didn't know the degree.  But now he'll probably go to prison.

    Good.

    It's satisfying too when it's people who facilitated the rise of Trump who go down (ironically for the sins that can't bring down Trump).  Roger Ailes and Bill O'Reilly--that was some quality comeuppance.  And really, does anybody think that any of these guys--or Matt Lauer, for that matter--go down if Hillary Clinton is president?  Fuck no; she's the matriarch of the patriarchy.  

    And then there's Roy Moore.  If Jeff Sessions doesn't vacate that seat, Roy Moore lives out his days held in quiet high regard in Alabama.  I mean, maybe some olds in Gadsden would know about him.  But his reputation would have been fine.  Now--comeuppance.

    And it's so much fun when comeuppance comes to the Southern Baptist Convention.  "Don't leave your abusive husbands" actually sounds like reasonable-enough advise if Hillary Clinton is president.  At least a lot of people would have quickly jumped on "but Hillary."  But in the Trump era--buh-bye, Paige Patterson.

    Even corporations aren't immune.  Uber has taken a hit; Starbucks is in damage control; Facebook faces what may be an existential threat.  Cambridge Analytica is gone.  The New York Times is failing even at failing.  Corporate comeuppance!

    I don't know if there's a single theme that ties all these together.  Roseanne doesn't have anything to do with #metoo; Roy Moore doesn't have anything to do with Blake Farenthold.  But at the same time, it seems that we're in a new era in which bad behavior is going to be met with serious consequences.  And in a lot of cases, that means that the bad behavior has to be identified.  Roy Moore and Harvey Weinstein went decades without any repercussions for their conduct; why now?

    His judgment cometh, and that right soon.

     

    • Like 5
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  13. 2 hours ago, Beantown Express 2.0 said:

    Thanks for the responses.  I am leaning towards flying into Munich and spending a day or two there then taking the train to Saltzburg or exploring the Alps.  Is there enough to keep a family busy for a week exploring that area?  

    Definitely yes.  Depending on whether you want to do Dachau, I think Munich is a 2- or 3-day city.  

    In Salzburg, there's the city itself and then there's Berchtesgaden just over the border.  It's worth going there for the salt mine (the kid will love it) and the trip up to the Eagle's Nest.  

    I think you also want to set aside a day or two to spend in Garmish-Partenkirchen to see King Ludwig's castles and explore the Alps in that area.

  14. I think the end of July/spousal requirement to leave the Texas heat really eliminates some choices.  Italy is miserable in the summer, and as much as I love it, I would never subject someone to an Italian summer.  The same is true of Spain (although the Basque Country stays pretty manageable).  

    Paris gets uncomfortably hot in the summer, and at the end of July you're going to have a lot of the locals already leaving for vacation.  That means that the service industries are going to be performed by the people who are left behind--they're going to be pissed (on top of hot).  For me--Paris from July 1-September 15 is an absolute no-go.

    London is a little bit similar--it gets surprisingly hot in London in late July.  But the point about the 12-year old's familiarity with English history and culture over that of, say, Denmark, is well made.  For that reason, London might be the best choice.

    Other good choices are Munich or Berlin.  There is plenty to do in and around Berlin that will keep you happy for a week--just set up in an AirBNB and see the sights of the city.  Munich has a lot less--it's enough to keep you busy for a few days, but it can be a good base-of-operations for the rest of Bavaria.  Or, alternatively, you can spend four days in Munich and three days in Salzburg or Garmisch-Partenkirchen and explore the German/Austrian Alps.

    Somewhat alternatively, you can fly in to Munich and drive or train down to Innsbruck.  Innsbruck isn't my favorite town, but it makes a great base-of-operations for exploring the Alps.  You can go up to Garmish-Partenkirchen and go up to the Zugspitze, which is the highest point in Germany.  You can go up and check out King Ludwig's castles.  You can go down to South Tyrol in Italy.  And, if you want, you can spend a day or two over in Salzburg.

     

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