Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda

At least he didn’t say Lynda Barry.
I still have my “Poodle with a Mohawk” poster.

moviefreakedmind said:

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/police-arrest-man-suspected-swatting-preceded-deadly-police-shooting-n833576

Police murder an innocent man based on a fraudulent phone call. The police brutality angle is what people are ignoring here.

Looks like at least half of the feedback on Yahoo News to this article is about the inappropriate police response. Even some police responding saying that the lack of verification before sending in a SWAT team, let alone drawing weapons, was very strange. Nobody seems to be ignoring it.

Mrebo said:
it’s funny that California would negate the popular choice of the 49 other states. Consider further that even if we also exclude Texas’s votes, Trump still wins the popular vote in the remaining 48 states. That is how big a difference the people of California can make in a popular vote system.

(a) might that be true in reverse for large red states?
(b) does it therefore follow that California shouldn’t factor in at all (as is the case now)?

The popular vote would mean that smaller states don’t have a voice? Well, the electoral college means that several larger states don’t have a voice. The EC, combined with jerrymandering, has skewed election results more and more with each passing year.

John Koza, a leading researcher in one of my research fields (genetic programming), is no longer doing computer science, but instead focusing his efforts on leading the national popular vote movement. His talks are very persuasive.

Latest version is in Silverwook’s hands for final testing.

Just watched the Xmas special. Again, it fell back way too much into the maudlin, overly-dramatic waxing poetic for my taste. There was some decent sci-fi along the way, and the Hartnell recreation was pretty amazing. The dialog was quite choppy, not sure if it was the script or the direction.

I wish the show would spend more time HAVING amazing adventures, rather than spending so much time TALKING about amazing adventures.

I also found the BBCA video player quite annoying – it refused to make the lower control bar disappear. So throughout the entire episode there was this giant bright white bar on the bottom 1/8th of the screen. Did that on every browser.

I was sick and missed the big family get together.

It’s a relief that Moore lost (I’m shocked, actually). That said, the fact that it was so close, and that someone that awful still can garner 49% of the vote, shows that southern bible belt is as strong as ever.

yhwx said:
Nah; we should get a 12 parsec long.

A parsec is a measure of time.

I was 8 years old at the time of the first moon landing. I remember it so clearly, it was one of the highlights of my life. For several nights we were glued to the TV - the reporting was incredible and nonstop. And I remember shortly after they landed, walking out on the driveway with my parents and looking up at the moon, realizing there were people up there walking on it at that moment.

Warbler said:

moviefreakedmind said:

Not to mention that a man defending himself against a woman would likely get him arrested.

Why would he be arrested if it were truly self defense?

Really? Based on your earlier post (the one I quoted before), who do you think people would believe, the man or the woman?

Warbler said:

I will agree that there is one big difference between a male being harassed and a female being harassed. Most men are bigger and stronger than women, that is just the biology works. So when a man gets harassed, he can defend himself because he is stronger, most of the time. But when a woman gets harassed, most of the time she can not.

Yikes, this is exactly why there is a stigma around it. Because for a man to admit it, he will believe that others will see him as weak, as your post proves.

Re: Time. It’s their magazine, they can do whatever they want. It’s not like it’s anything official or legal.

9ers win!!! They’re on a roll – one in a row!!!

Two thoughts on this tax reform…

First, I fear that it is designed to transfer success from small businesses to big businesses. Unless I am misunderstanding something, I don’t see how a small business can survive startup year(s) if it isn’t able to deduct its business expenses… those represent its investment in the future. Couple this with the end of net neutrality, and it’s pretty clear who our government cares about.

Second, I hope that Congress/Senate resolve away the provision in the Congress version that makes grad students count tuition waiver as income. That would cause a huge increase in student loan debt, as well as drive a number of students out of grad school and do further damage to scientific research. A student living on $1000/month having to claim 40-60K a year income? How is that fair?

It’s true that my point is inapplicable if the BLM member fired was white. And I never said that BLM and Nazi were equivalent; in fact, I was arguing that they aren’t equivalent. However, if a black person were to get fired for being in BLM, a good lawyer isn’t going to get bogged down into arguing that it’s morally wrong, he’s is going to use the BLM status as evidence that the employee was actually fired for being black, which is a protected class. No such legal device would exist for a Nazi that was fired, so I was arguing that Warbler’s point (that firing a Nazi is as illegal as firing a BLM member) isn’t true.

Right and wrong is great, but in court you have to have some legal statute to refer to.

moviefreakedmind said:

Puggo - Jar Jar’s Yoda said:

moviefreakedmind said:

Puggo - Jar Jar’s Yoda said:

The legal ramifications of firing someone for being a member of the Nazi party, versus being a member of BLM, are very different. The reason is that (to my knowledge) Nazi is not a protected class. Now, being a member of a protected class does not mean you can’t be fired. It means you can’t be fired for being in that class. An employer who fires someone for being in BLM would find themselves in court arguing that they fired the person because he was in BLM, and not because he was black, versus a skilled lawyer who would be working very hard to convince the jury otherwise. A good lawyer would have a field day, and the employer would be quite vulnerable. By contrast, there is no protected class status for being a Nazi, so there is no comparable legal issue.

There’s also the obvious fact that BLM, aside from a minority (arguable in size) of its supporters, is not inherently violent, racist, and supremacist in nature.

That could be debated. Protected class cannot.

BLM isn’t a protected class.

I know that. You must not have read my prior post.

Warbler said:

If that is true, it is a poor way to try to get rid of unwanted businesses. Also some of these places do comply with the law that says they have to serve food and have a certain amount of seating.

The article seemed to indicate that they had been accused of flaunting this law by hurriedly setting up chairs to make it appear they were serving food.

This kind of thing crosses party lines. Conservatives often laud tough local officials who “clean up the neighborhood”. But they often do this by finding creative mechanisms for driving out certain businesses and/or people, a charge often applied to liberals. Just about anything can be spun either way.

Warbler said:

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/crime/beer-delis-plexiglass-windows-council-bill-20171130.html

This is why Conservatives can’t stand liberals. Some law makers are trying to pass a law to ban plexiglass windows that protect small business owners and their employees, due to feelings. Stupid just stupid.

I read the whole story, and came away with the feeling that there is a lot more going on than just the plexiglass. While the business is complaining that their safety is at stake because it is a bad neighborhood, it seems that the lawmakers feel that this same business has been contributing to it being a bad neighborhood – not because of the plexiglass, but because they are selling booze at essentially a drive-through, without it being a restaurant. It seems they haven’t been able to find a way to clear the neighborhood of this sort of business, and the plexiglass ban is an attempt to drive them out. Of course in the process they have supplied conservatives with more fodder to scream about liberals.

moviefreakedmind said:

Puggo - Jar Jar’s Yoda said:

The legal ramifications of firing someone for being a member of the Nazi party, versus being a member of BLM, are very different. The reason is that (to my knowledge) Nazi is not a protected class. Now, being a member of a protected class does not mean you can’t be fired. It means you can’t be fired for being in that class. An employer who fires someone for being in BLM would find themselves in court arguing that they fired the person because he was in BLM, and not because he was black, versus a skilled lawyer who would be working very hard to convince the jury otherwise. A good lawyer would have a field day, and the employer would be quite vulnerable. By contrast, there is no protected class status for being a Nazi, so there is no comparable legal issue.

There’s also the obvious fact that BLM, aside from a minority (arguable in size) of its supporters, is not inherently violent, racist, and supremacist in nature.

That could be debated. Protected class cannot.

The legal ramifications of firing someone for being a member of the Nazi party, versus being a member of BLM, are very different. The reason is that (to my knowledge) Nazi is not a protected class. Now, being a member of a protected class does not mean you can’t be fired. It means you can’t be fired for being in that class. An employer who fires someone for being in BLM would find themselves in court arguing that they fired the person because he was in BLM, and not because he was black, versus a skilled lawyer who would be working very hard to convince the jury otherwise. A good lawyer would have a field day, and the employer would be quite vulnerable. By contrast, there is no protected class status for being a Nazi, so there is no comparable legal issue.

The only way I can bear to watch the prequels is with all the gaggy stuff still in. At least then there’s something to cringe at. Remove that and they’re just boring. And I couldn’t conceive of TPM without my favorite character in all of prequeldom, the legendary CPY.

For these reasons I prefer the original DVDs.

The behavior is terrible, and potentially-to-rightly career ending, regardless of whether it is a republican or democrat.

Having said that, there is some pretty big contrast between the responses. Franken’s side is a mixture of self-reflection/apology and occasional support (SNL, for example) while admitting wrongdoing. Republicans on the other hand have dug in their heels in support for Moore by denying the accusations, supporting him anyways because he’s not a democrat, and even supporting his actions as being Biblically acceptable. These latter two are particularly disgusting.

Our family has a giant potluck every year. There is so much great food I get ridiculously full without even eating any meat. I always cook a somewhat obscure old world Italian dish called fried cardoni.

I finally got around to finishing the most recent season. Several of the episodes in the middle of the season were fantastic (as I mentioned earlier). However, the final couple of episodes dropped back into the overly-dramatic mode that had been causing me to lose interest. Hopefully that was just due to the regeneration.