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Ghost of LL

Burnt Ends
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Posts posted by Ghost of LL

  1. Good catch on the Delacroix Museum.  And that brings up a few things in that neighborhood around the Sorbonne.

    Right around the corner is the Church of St. Germain des Pres, which was originally built in the 6th Century and was rebuilt in the 11th Century after the Vikings burned the original.  The tomb of Rene Descartes is in a side chapel.

    Then, if you take the Boulevard St. Germain about a half-mile east, you get to the Musee de Cluny, which is the national museum of the middle ages.  The museum itself is housed in the medieval Hotel Cluny, which with its gardens is worth a visit.  Inside are a bunch of originals taken from places like Notre Dame and Sainte Chappelle, as well as the Lady and the Unicorn tapestries.

    • Like 1
  2. On 5/21/2018 at 8:40 AM, slorch said:

    I’ve zero issue with that and my feelings on the subject are not why I objected to the subject of the thread.  I just feel the gov’t shouldn’t have a say.  Within existing laws, execute the will.  IDGAF about anyone’s butt getting hurt.

    I honestly don't know why you can't get this through your head.

    If you won't want the government to have a say, then fine.  Do whatever you want in your trust or will.

    But if you try to enforce that provision in court, you're expressly asking for the government's say in the matter.  And once you do that, the government is going to have it's say.

    Seriously--why is this so fucking hard for you to understand?

  3. Just now, slorch said:

    The right to do so in a will or trust?  Yes. 

    Do I agree with their reasoning?  Absolutely not. 

     

    Liberty is weird that way. Eh?  We don't have to have a consensus for the individual to exercise their rights. 

    You're advocating something more than that--you're asking for state sanction of such a provision in a trust through court enforcement.  And sorry, but no--the state has a say in what agreements it will and will not enforce, and has going back to The Highwayman's Case in 1725.

  4. 33 minutes ago, BlueGreySky said:

    Thanks, GoLL. You think that lobby is big enough for 30 people or there's a place our bus could park and then people could wait on the bus?

    It's been years since I was there, but I recall the lobby being pretty good sized.  What I don't know about is the bus--perhaps you should call your bus company and see what they say?

  5. 32 minutes ago, BlueGreySky said:

    A little airport help for those of you very familiar with CDG airport. 

    I am heading up a rather large group of people meeting from all over on Sunday. Different arrivals and times, but we plan to leave the airport together around noon.

    What/where would a good meeting place be after baggage claim but still at the airport.  We have a charter bus picking the group up as well. 

    Is there somewhere in terminal 2 that is outside of security like a cluster of restaurants and shops where the group could easily find me and gather their bearings?  

    Blind leading the blind, lol.

    The problem is that "Terminal 2" is really six different terminals, and it's a pain in the ass to transit between them.  And the signage inside the terminals is absolutely terrible.  For that reason, the best place to meet up may be in the lobby at the Sheraton.  It'll necessitate a train/bus ride for everybody, but it's something that everyone will be able to locate.

    As to Paris in August--there's no way I would do that again.  It's legitimately hot, but more importantly, the entire city is on vacation.  So the people who are working are the ones who are left behind.  And they're understandably surly because of it.  The worst service I've ever had at restaurants was Paris in August (at places I've been other times of the year, and the service was fine).  Just don't do it.

  6. Vic Cunningham, who is in the GOP runoff for a seat on the Dallas County Commissioners Court, set up a trust fund for his kids.  As with most trust funds, there are distributions at certain points.  One of those points is marriage, but only if the marriage is to a white, straight Christian.

    When I was in criminal clinic back in law school, I practiced before Judge Cunningham.  I can't say that I'm surprised by this.

  7. 3 minutes ago, Johnny Sack said:

    Hasn’t the cost of tech dropped?  A lot of shit that was expensive in 85 can be bought cheap now. 

    I guarantee you UT's IT budget is 100x what it was in 1985.

  8. Just now, Johnny Sack said:

    Sounds like we need to increase state funding and take a chainsaw to administrative costs. Like Gordon Gekko to Teldar Paper. We’ve got 47 Vice Presidents 

    Ok.  Maybe.  I don't know.  I can't tell from just the title what a "vice president" does.  Plenty of companies now give everybody above the janitor the title "vice president."  Without being very knowledgeable about the corporate structure and job functions, I can't really tell.

  9. Just now, Johnny Sack said:

    Agreed. But costs have gone from $500 million to $3 billion.  And enrollment hasn’t changed much.  

    There is the matter of inflation.  And the fact that technology (which costs money) has changed a bit since 1985).

  10. 4 minutes ago, Johnny Sack said:

    I find it hard to believe the state of Texas has actually decreased funding in terms of dollars.  Is that really true?

    I don't know year-to-year.  I can tell you that funding for UT has gone from about $250M in 1985 to about $320M in 2018.  That's a pretty miniscule growth rate over 33 years.

    • Like 1
  11. 7 minutes ago, Jiggy-Z said:

    The university has always had waste.  I just find it hard to believe that they have become orders of magnitude more wasteful than they used to be.

    Most of the costs of college (from the outside) is not from waste but from deregulation of tuition.

    Case in point. When I went to school 85-90. Tuition for undergrad was on average about $400 per semester of which the hours  themselves were very little~$4/semester hour.

    By the time my oldest went '07-11' tuition was $5,000/semester.

    So I guess what I am saying is the costs savings to us would be more on the revenue side.  Reduce that and the low hanging fruit waste goes away.  The entrenched stuff is harder.

     

    It is a really big deal.  In fact I rank it right up there with ACA and the last tax bill as huge middle fingers to the middle class.

    How much of that tuition increase is the direct result of reduced funding from the Legislature?

  12. 6 minutes ago, TahoeHorn said:

    The legal department handles it.

    I'm not opposed to defense.  I'm opposed to being a plaintiff in suits like the one in the article.

    Boy--you really know nothing about litigation, do you?

    For one thing, why shouldn't a party file suit if it has been legally wronged?  And for another thing, probably half the suits I file are "defensive" in nature (because it's preferable to be a plaintiff for a variety of reasons).

    And beyond that, do you think your legal department is free?  You think if you have them handling litigation, that you're not going to need to hire more in-house lawyers?

  13. 1 minute ago, TahoeHorn said:

    My new department would have one of those $42,185 outreach center counselors.  Maybe two.  That's it.  Not 94 people.  No budget for litigation.

    What happens if you get sued?

  14. 1 hour ago, TahoeHorn said:

    There is a problem in politics with a certain type of simple-minded thinking.  It is that people interpret, or at least characterize, constructive criticism as total opposition.  For example if somebody thinks we spend too much on a defense procurement they are said to oppose national security.  Or if they argue that spending a gazillion dollars on bullshit university bureaucracy, then they oppose the stated mission of the bureaucracy.  This is one reason why costs spin out of control.

     

    The things that make UT great are not spending tens of millions on bullshit bureaucracies.

     

    On this thread the quality of the arguments in favor of the big bureaucracy are appalling.  They consist of personal attacks and the type of simple-minded argument described above.  There is no argument explaining why we need the big bureaucracy.

    I don't know why I should give a serious response to a Tahoe thread.  But here goes--

    Texas schoolchildren are overwhelmingly minority--52% Hispanic and 13% Black (with only 29% being White).  Moreover, according to our state's former demographer, 62% of those kids come from economically disadvantaged households.

    Now--we can teach that diverse student body with a lily-white faculty.  That is, after all, what we've always done.  But doing that would ignore the manifold studies reflecting the educational benefits of having teachers of the same race/ethnicity/background.  Moreover, it would ignore the obvious mentoring benefits of having professors who have encountered similar obstacles in reaching their current position.

    As a public institution, the purpose of The University of Texas is to benefit the entire state.  Among the ways it does so is by educating the populace and by providing an educated and skilled workforce necessary for economic development.  Were The University not to employ faculty qualified to instruct the state's increasingly diverse population, it would fail in its founding mission.

     

     

     

    In other words--take your donut-bearing white-nationalist horseshit and shove it up your ass, you fucking racist troglodyte.  

    • Like 3
  15. 51 minutes ago, phdhorn said:

    My son and 99.99% of his compatriots are focusing on how to get by the fucking killer statics test, that lousy writing assignment, or getting lined up for co-ops/jobs/schollies/etc.  They go to school to go to school.  As for the "diverse" teachers, most of the controversial stuff is tucked away in a corner where no one gives a flying fuck, cheesy colleges/programs that make University liberalia feel good about themselves, but again, which impacts so very few students, nor even enters the consciousness, even for a fleeting second, in their entirety of 4-5 years, that it's completely irrelevant.

    I think that you, as a father, are underestimating the level of focusness dedicated to getting laid, getting drunk, and generalized fucking around.

    • Like 1
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