Good for her! Even if she feels pretty secure about the outcome, that's brave of her.
Nia is obsessed with weddings because friends of ours are having an extralegal one in a few months and so, prompted by yet another set of questions about when we'd get married, I proposed to Lee while the girls were in the bathtub and Lee was sitting on the closed toilet lid supervising, which I guess will make a good story if anything ever comes to pass in terms of having marriage equity where we live. I really only get concerned about not legally being Mara's mom, but the rest of the financial and social benefits would be nice.
Woohoo, marriage! You want we should throw you a shower in DC?
Well, it's not like we're getting any MORE married than we were otherwise. It's still not going to happen until it's legal where we live, because the only point to doing it would be to get the legal benefits. I think I've already said that Nia recommended I buy Lee the most hideous giant gold-colored plastic ring with fake jewels all over the enormous heart because Lee would love to have it when we get married. Mara doesn't care much about marriage yet, but thinks it's sort of gross/hilarious that we're girlfriends.
Our friends who are getting married (the other interracial lesbian couple with two black girls) did a big public proposal partly engineered by the two girls, who are so excited about their biological mom's new(ish) love, and while I've always hated the concept of public proposals, it was totally adorable and heart-warming to see all four of them hugging each other and the moms crying and so on.
You want we should throw you a shower in DC?
Seems like a bath would be more contextually appropriate.
See? Shoulda gone with the sex grottoes.
Congrats!
I'm always a little confused by the point-of-view that "the only point to doing it would be to get the legal benefits." Though I certainly understand that it's a common opinion (as is "the only point in getting married is if you're planning on having kids").
Certainly legal benefits are a huge deal, and certainly legal benefits played some role in the timing of my wedding, but it'd didn't play a role in the timing of my engagement or the decision to get married in the first place. I got married because I wanted to marry my wife, and I would have wanted to get married whether the government recognized it or not.
I'm pretty optimistic on this one, the ground under which the legal profession sits has just shifted too far. My guess is that we're going to get an opinion (a) establishing sexual orientation as subject to intermediate scrutiny and (b) a ruling that intermediate scrutiny is not met in the Prop 8 situation, where the state voted to take away a right found to be enshrined in the California constitution. The overall constitutionality of laws prohibiting same-sex marriage will be left open but will be extremely dubious after the opinion.
I'll probably be wrong, but at least I've placed a bet.
Anyhow, the rush of amicus briefs in the case has been pretty amazing. It's like every liberalish lawyer in America (including me, I guess) wants their own little piece of history.
See, now I feel bad for getting jokey-engaged and telling you guys about it when there are real people getting real married and dealing with real issues and stuff. Sorry!
It does really matter to Mara that we've given each other rings and made promises to work together and be a family. Luckily the one she's worried about losing is Lee, so we can truthfully talk about the promises Lee made to the judge to be Mara's mom forever. So far that seems to be enough. For Nia, I think the biggest issue is that she wants to dress up, which might mean that Easter will be as good as a wedding would be.
In particular, I feel like it's important to say that gay married couples who live in states and countries that don't recognize gay marriage *are still just as married as anyone else*, it's just that the government is refusing to recognize their (completely real and legitimate) marriage. Similarly, slaves really were fully people, even if the government didn't recognize them as such.
I'm surprised at the OP's certainty about overturning prop 8 and DOMA. I'm assuming they'll stand, just based on the court's conservative majority. I don't see how the court overturns them on equal protection grounds. Are there other grounds for overturning? I am very much not a lawyer, so this stuff is a bit mysterious to me, and I'm going based on the sense that three justices are raging assholes, one is a bit of a prick, one seems to be a split-the-difference centrist, and the rest are varying degrees of OK.
13 -- I would have agreed with your pessimism just a year or two ago, but times have changed. Or so I hope (but also think).
I mean, times have also changed to the point where elite lawyers take seriously batshit insane theories about a narrow commerce clause and the federal government's inability to provide a basic modern administrative state, so let's not all start blowing each other just yet.
8: Speaking only for myself and I guess Lee, I don't consider our commitment to each other to be different from the commitment we would have on an interpersonal level if we were legally married. It would be nice on a lot of fronts to have access to those legal benefits, but we don't have that access now and that hasn't changed the love that we have for each other. So from that perspective, marriage feels more like a formality.
We are somewhat unusual among our lesbian peer group in not wanting to have an extralegal wedding, and I think people in the church sort of look down on us for that, but we'd both independently decided we'd be more comfortable saving the ceremony for when it "counted" and making our commitment to each other personally and privately. I know there are a lot of people who think they're doing important advocacy or activism by being extralegally married and saying "my wife" or "my husband" and I support that, but we're taking the tack of saying "my partner" and letting it be a constant reminder that we're not able to get some of the privileges straight couples can.
Though there was a time several years ago, before we were parenting, when we were asked to be taste testers for the culinary students at Lee's school and Lee let the chef in charge know that one of the nights was our anniversary and so the students made a special romantic tasting menu of paired dishes for us and I was completely blown away that we were being treated just like any "normal" couple, so it's all complicated.
8, 12: I didn't think I was thinking about legalities and benefits when I got married either. But I do think the legalities issues drive a culture of marriage among stable people who are in relationships that feel like they're likely to be permanent; that if there weren't important benefits-related issues, there'd be a lot more permanently-shacked-up-but-unmarried couples, just because the culture would drift that way.
There are a lot of conservative lawyers making conservative arguments for overturning DOMA, including Ted Olson. They're really trying to give the conservative justices cover for making a conservative minimalist federalist anti-DOMA decision if they want to. It seems pretty plausible that Kennedy and Roberts (maybe even Alito, not sure who hangs out with) don't want to make an anti-gay decision and might be happy to find an excuse to make a small step in the right direction rather than the wrong direction.
17: I think you see that in Europe. But even in Sweden you still have the majority of people getting married at some point. The effect is real, but I think it's pretty clearly not the overwhelming cause of people getting married.
if there weren't important benefits-related issues, there'd be a lot more permanently-shacked-up-but-unmarried couples
As there are in enlightened, topless.
I think 12 is totally right, but I'll also say that (again, from my experience) it's frustrating and saddening to live where the reality of your life is not recognized. It really hurts me (as I'm sure everyone knows, since I've whined about it many times before this thread) that I'm not legally Mara's mother even though I've done more mothering for her than anyone else in her life has. I think it would be emotionally hard for me to have to write in caveats on my tax returns. Other people are strong enough and brave enough to do it, but I would feel depressed.
Signing our wills and creating a trust for Mara felt really amazingly like marriage and recognition, Lee and I both felt. I'm sure being able to marry in a way we found satisfying would/will be wonderful. I'm just not ready to be that vulnerable until my options are better, I guess.
(And none of this is meant to parallel the example of slaves as people, for the record.)
Oh, that's right. Religious people would still get married, which is most of the population, and so would people with a traditionalist bent. But someone like me would be more likely to avoid the godawful party planning and just make things quietly permanent.
20: I've forgotten the details of the conversation, but I was just talking to someone who was waxing lyrical about the European welfare state, and I had to bite my tongue not to call it enlightened topless Europe.
I probably should've avoided any analogy. I was just trying to find other examples of notions that are fundamental enough that the governments opinion doesn't matter. (Like I wouldn't say someone "really" has a driver's license if they're good at driving but don't have a license from the state.)
25: No, I think you were absolutely right in the way you framed it. I just didn't want to extend it from there.
23: You might not have a wedding, but you'd still end up calling him your husband, right? We eloped, and I still don't think it's the benefits that were the main point of getting married. (Though this is slightly more complicated, if it weren't for the benefits we might have put off eloping longer while deciding whether to have a wedding or not. So it's not totally clear how that would have played out.)
one seems to be a split-the-difference centrist
But good on this issue.
*Godawful* party planning. I am getting through it, insofar as I am, by muttering to myself `It's not about me. This is for the family.' and wondering how soon we'll know if we need a larger venue.
Homemade cake in a VA hall, shouldabeen. That would have worked in the East Bay, which has an amazing surplus of dance floors in VA halls. Seattle, not so much.
*Oh* how selfcentered of me. Congratulations on every warm little milestone, Thorn. (And a foofy Easter dress and basket do sound like they're in order.)
Many conversations ago here, I suggested (and I think it was a fairly common suggestions) that the cut-the-Gordian-knot solution to gay marriage was to eliminate all legal consequences of marriage: create a 'civil partnership' status open to all with all the legal consequences you want, but make "marriage" purely religious and social. That way anyone who wants can be civil partners without pissing off the social conservatives too much, and if you want to get married you can find yourself a priest/rabbi/minister/guy-named-Starchild to do whatever ceremony they and you can agree on for your own private purposes.
This made people mad, though, for reasons that confused me.
My impression is that Kennedy is not really a "split-the-difference centrist" (that would be O'Connor) but is instead a "wildly swing back-and-forth centrist." (With the caveat that they're only centrist relative to recent courts.)
Gawdhelpme, clew, I bought them mini American Girl dolls for their baskets. Because this week is an anniversary for both of them of their entry into care and they're extra prickly, and Nia was asking why Mara has so many dolls with brown skin and she doesn't have as many. So now Mara will still have as many more, but they'll each have one more than they did previously. And they each have lovely dresses (Mara's same as last year's and Nia's big enough for next year) and matching sweaters in different colors. I guess I should get myself a colorful dress or something so I can sort of keep up. We've never gone to our church for Easter before, so I don't know how much of a production it will be.
31 is effectively the case in California; you can register for domestic partnership status that has all the legal entitlements of marriage but not the title. Still creates issues for federal law purposes, of course.
I'm surprised at the OP's certainty about overturning prop 8 and DOMA.
You're surprised that I made up some poorly-understood bs and spouted it?
31: In particular, say a mother and daughter jointly raising their daughter/granddaughter could be civil partners if they wanted to.
The main problem with this approach is that people rarely get legally married to someone they're not actually married to, but would have no qualms about being "civil partners" with anyone. This might not actually be a big problem, but it is a potential problem.
27: Well, I'm not sure. I really wasn't thinking about the legalities at all, just that getting married is what you do when you're serious. If not-getting-married was an equivalently sensible option, though, I might have felt differently and been calling him my partner or something.
36: I think the answer to that would be that it's all fine, no reason not to.
Haaaaaats, Thorn. Adorable flowery haaaats. Even -- bonnets.
39: If you think I am going to put however much time it's going to take to get all Nia's cornrows out and turn them into whatever they're going to be next and ditto un-bantu knot Mara's dreadlocks, wash, retwist, and re-bantu knot and THEN hide their heads under hats that I would have to go buy for one use, you are so, so wrong. But I think they wanted matching barrettes or something, and I can probably make that work.
Fascinators, like Princess whatserface with the alien strapped to her head. Some kind of ornament that doesn't hide the hairstyle.
They can be this summer's sun-hats with an extra band of flowers, the latter to go into the dressup box. But okay. Flowers on the barrettes. (Pompom chicks seem to be au courant, but I am dubious.)
(Cuuuuuuuuuuuute haaaaaaaaaats.)
Weave flowers throughout their hair. Paint red circles on each of their cheeks. Bells on their shoes. You don't want them to be the only little girls without flowers, circles, and bells, do you?
Fascinators, like Princess whatserface with the alien strapped to her head.
I have missed a meme. Unless this happened at Ascot? The pomo bow?
No, it was at the wedding a year or two ago. There were all sorts of pictures of some second-tier princess with a ridiculous thing on her head. Less coverage and more tentacles than anything you'd call a hat.
Lee says I'm not allowed to add more things to the dressup box because it's clutter and we should be getting rid of toys rather than adding more. Though obviously since the bulk of it was the dressup box of my childhood, it's vintage clutter!
Lee also doesn't want me using visible weave thread in any of the weaving-of-things-through hair I do, which is too bad since Mara's locs won't hold the beehive (spiral flat twist) style she likes without thread or maybe bobby pins, though I don't usually mess with those.
I think I'd remembered it slightly sillier than it actually is, although it is pretty silly.
Didn't someone wear a super silly hat to Obama's first inauguration? Arethra Franklin or something?
Nowhere near as silly as the goofball in 48.
I'd call it a hat, as Treacy & PB both have.
Aha! Wikipedia calls it a fascinator! That's a totally unnecessary word; hats that need to be pinned on have been formal headwear for yonks (Miss Manners: "appear to have perched on the head") and the largest hair ornaments were already larger than the smallest hats. And now a fascinator seems to be renamed a "smoke ring".
Howevs, Wiki & Etsy have spoken. Fascinator, descriptively. And that one did fascinate.
52: Would you like to join me in being slightly annoyed by knitters who call smoke rings "snoods" instead?
52: haven't formal hats that need to be pinned on been called "fascinators" for yonks?
UPETGI, You get that 8.last and 12 are a little patronizing in context, right? I'm not wild about the term "mansplain" but...
I've never heard 'smoke ring'. What do they look like? Googling, I'm getting lost in pages about tobacco smoke.
Fascinator as a term for headgear is attested back to the late 19th century, but the modern iteration dates to the sixties or seventies or so.
Congratulations! Long veils and taffeta trains for everybody!
LB, it's just a big tube that you can wear as a cowl or pull up over your hair, often lacy, sometimes mohair. I believe there's a pattern for one in this book and that's how I learned the term.
You look like Barrister Raggedy Ann, that's so fascinating.
54: It's a steampunk term, AFAICT, so only a very short yonk.
53: I would just be confused in practice. What do they call snoods, and where does my hair go?
56: restrict to Ravelry.
55: Yes, I was conscious of that, but perhaps not conscious enough.
59, 61: So it's a cowl. Although after googling patterns, I wonder if Sally would wear one. Not for me, but they're cute.
Eh, she won't wear anything warm, ever. Her rugby team makes fun of her wearing shorts and a t-shirt in the snow.
My theory of Justice Kennedy is that he's basiclaly a right winger, but he's also a former law professor. H eknows that the Supreme Court justices are those who established a bold new constitutional right to something. He didn't want to do anything useful for poor people or for criminal defendants, or ayhting that would cost large corortaions anything, so he chose gay rights. He'll probably write a fairly broad opinion favoring same sex marriage, as he did in the only two other major gay rights caes since he's been on the Court. Roberts will go along because he's the chief and that's what he does, so at least 6 votes for the good guys.
That is, I was going for trolling but trying to avoid asshole.
60: See, I would call that macaroni.
66: I don't see a feather or a hat.
Ah, so a "cowl" and a "smoke ring" are other words for a snood.
The article in 57 only claims that Treacy introduced the things now called fascinators at midcentury, it admits that it can't pin the word on him. (Also, terrible History Channel style article: why bring in hairstyles ancien regime?)
68: No, a snood is a loose hairnet. Topologically, a cowl/smoke ring has a hole in it, but a snood is a closed bag for your hair.
Oh LB, so sheltered: "[T]he joke Dr. Richard Schuckburgh was making in the lyrics being that the Yankees were naive enough to believe that a feather in the hat was a sufficient mark of a macaroni."
69: so you are claiming that until steampunk people called them "cocktail hats"? I call maximum shenanigans.
n-gram search does not so much help.
65: Fair enough. I guess it rubbed me wrong.
My apologies. I can certainly see how it could have done so.
72 cont'd: although, I admit, the idea of people who think steampunk is a good idea for some reason resuscitating a victorian term for pinning random crocheted things to your head is in some ways more plausible than a mod '60s design maven doing same.
I think back in the day "fascinator" meant something different than what it means now -- a shawl, rather than a little hat to perch on your hair. Remember in The Long Winter when Pa opens the (late-arrived) Christmas barrel and it's full of warm winter clothes, including a fluffy blue fascinator for Mary?
Although, if the modern usage were steampunk derived, you'd think a modern fascinator, which is in fact a cocktail had, would have more to do with a Victorian fascinator, which is sort of a veil/shawl hybrid.
31: [Cleaving civil unions (gov't) and marriage (religios and social)]This made people mad, though, for reasons that confused me.
I was mentioning that very comment tthread to my wife while we were discussing the court cases over the weekend. I guess I should try to find it in the archives.
Between 1969 and late-Goth/early steampunk, almost no USians wore cocktail hats or referred to them at all. And really good ones were dead cheap in junk shops & I should have bought more.
I can't unpick the meaning "coquette" out of the ngrams. The 1955 peak is far too early for Treacy, too.
Wilder might explain the 1955 tiny peak... No, that's between the novel & the show. Well, fashion is weird.
The anachronisms of steampunk are illimitable.
I now have "Fascinated" by Company B stuck in my head. Somebody should really sync the drunk Ron Swanson gif to that.
All the annoying posh commenters during Prince William's wedding were talking about this and that person's fascinator. I really don't think they took it from steampunk.
The british royal family is totally steampunk, though. You know some of them are actually direct descendents of Queen Victoria? Sick!
IMO, the object in 48 is not actually the silliest thing Princess Beatrice has ever put on her head.
I have this theory that she's a secret Daniel Pinkwater fan.
84: No, much more likely the reverse, probably through some steampunks who watch a lot of BBC frockporn. And posh ingroups rework vocabulary all the time, so one needn't seek a rational path from cowl to barrette.
Don't know where the `punk' went.
While I'm on my obs. hat redoubt, hey, what's up with mocking Franklin's hat? Women's formal hats are supposed to be showy, and hers filmed well and was suitable for the inclement weather.
You're surprised that a 12 inch bow got reported in the media as silly? When I actually looked it up, I said it was nowhere near as silly as the goon in 48.
I think snood for smoke ring (which, really, I had never ever heard of before, though cowl I had heard) is also a British bleed-over, as they're quite popular among my friends that knit here and they only ever seem to have called them snoods. (Ladies in their 50s.)
As long as we can agree that gluing a decorative toilet seat to your forehead is definitely silly, formality of the occasion notwithstanding.
Also, congrats to Thorn and Lee, on the for-the-girls and incredibly sweet engagement!
Y'all remember those things that were hoodies but without the -die, just arms and a hood? What were those about, '90s?
93: No, no I don't. I can sort of picture a freefloating hood on kind of a dickie thing, but arms?
Are you talking about shrugs? Those don't generally have a hood, though.
31/80: I'm pretty sure this is the post* (by Stanley) and comment thread. Also a lot of prior Prop 8 discussion in this thread following this comment.
* My zany and not-fully-sussed-out position on the issue is: no governmental recognition of marriage for anyone. Government at all levels* should view marriage as it does, for example, Catholic baptism: it's a private matter, not subject to public purview.
I LOVE Beatrice's butterfly fascinator in 86.
I guess the term is now "smokering," but they used to be called "cowls"--I have two of these, which retail for $insane.
90: I always thought of "snood" as pretty "Wife of Bath's Tale," but it is also very much in use in the uber orthodox lady community, since they're an easy way for them to cover their hair without putting a whole wig on.
Is Sifu thinking of snoods? I guess that's what 100 suggests.
I LOVE Beatrice's butterfly fascinator in 86.
I like it, too.
100: I didn't mean to suggest that a Canterbury Tales snood was anything but a snood, but that the thing being called here a 'smoke ring' is also called a snood. But I could be confused. I still don't know what the Brits call proper turtlenecks, other than what they do call turtlenecks definitely aren't turtlenecks. I hate having to call tank tops vests, while I'm moaning.
101: What? No. Snoods do not have arms. As LB says above, snoods are basically tubes closed on one end. You stick your hair in the closed part and then pull them up over your head.
Y'all remember those things that were hoodies but without the -die, just arms and a hood?
What would connect the arm and hood?
I always thought of "snood" as pretty "Wife of Bath's Tale,"
Whereas this is what I think of whenever I hear the word "snood".
Jackmormon's 99 leaves me ever more confused. What my coworkers are calling snoods are really just a closed loop, like a scarf that's been knit together. You could pull them up over your hair but it's not done often. Also, it's a smokering, not smoke ring? eh?
107: Maybe it's a Britishism? That would explain the article in 106.
I don't know what these arm-hood contraptions might be, but the description makes me think of the wtfical Cleaves pattern. My aunt, who's extremely petite and fashionable, made one for some reason and even she definitely couldn't pull it off.
What would connect the arm and hood?
I think Tweety's thinking of a shoulder holster.
108: That was my original supposition in 90, and I think it does explain 106. I'm not sure if the term is new or not, though.
111: Yeah, that sounds right. If you pull a cowl up over your head, it looks a lot like a US/oldfashioned snood, so expanding the term makes sense. And then once you've done that for cowl-pulled-over-your-head, having it mean just cowl also makes sense.
I haven't been paying that much attention, but will be pleasantly surprised in the Prop8/DOMA decision is the route predicted above.
I'm still feeling pretty uncharitable towards that bunch: Kennedy for ATP and all of them for declining Latif.
The things I'm thinking about were essentially what you would get if you took a (long sleeved) hoodie and cut it off just below the armpit. They were popular in ravey circles in SF for a little window there in maybe '99-2000.
Well, fashion hasn't changed, so we should see them all over the place.
115: You have finally described something I totally remember. I think Buffy or someone like that wore one once.
A shrug with a hood may be it? Or at least is super close? related to this very closely, definitely.
So not a chopped off pullover hoodie. I was picturing something far stranger. Right, that's just a shrug with a 90s twist.
119: Oh, it does have a bit that goes across the chest. And it does look stranger.
How is 119 not a chopped off pullover hoodie? I mean, with a little fiddling here and there, but same premise.
There's a 10,000 character limit for this recommendation, and mine is at 1300, and I have nothing more to say about this student. I think she'll do great in the program, but I've said what I know/remember about her. I feel like I'm stuck in English class again.
124: Use the extra space to share your views on the rate of change of fashion for the hiring committee.
Repeat the substance of your rec six more times, using, in each iteration, the next listed synonym in the thesaurus for each word of your original letter.
Use the rest of the space to express yourself with emoticons.
EJ Graff is optimistic about the Court's decision.
I would also like to rule in favor of Easter bonnets, referring to small veils & feather doohickeys attached to hats as fascinaters, and referring to long, knitted/crocheted yarn tubes as cowls or hooded cowls. And congrats, Thorn, even if it was kinda jokey.
A friend of mine knitted something like a hooded scarf. It was a very distinctive-looking garment, and not one I'd happily wear in public.
Fill the rest of the rec with spaces, until you get to the very very end, where you finally tell the school what you really think of the student. (Like a hidden track. Kids these days don't even know what is anymore, do they.)
Oh also I thought Sifu was talking about these things.
132: I wasn't but boy those stupid things seem to be all the rage.
At a posh shop in Oxford a few years ago, I bought an net-based feathery object that attaches to my hair via a comb. I was informed by the proprietor that this object, being larger than your typical fascinator, was properly designated a hatinator. Never seen the word anywhere else, but I love the object dearly and am sad that I bought it after nearly all our friends had already married, and consequently I will likely have no occasion to wear it again. (Hint, hint, Thorn.)
At work, can't read the rest of the thread, but Wooooo marriage!! to 1.
134: The most obvious place for us to get married is around the corner at the desanctified church our friends own, where we held Mara's blessing ceremony and where the garden club meets and the epic neighborhood Halloween party is held. The woman in that couple has the biggest fascinator collection I've ever seen (including one to which she hot-glue-gunned naked Barbies) and so I suppose I should make plans to outdo the hostess if we end up there.... At this point, they charge less for gay weddings than they do for straight ones to counterbalance the legal mismatch, which is nice.
118, 119 and 132 are what I think of when I hear the word "pillock"
All the young dudes, carry their snoods, all the young dudes
128 is extra good for being 128.
Hatinator. Huh. Well, may you find occasion to wear it, Gabardine.
132: TWYRCL has something like that and loves it ridiculously.
136: Does no one ever cold-glue-gun anything? I don't even know this country anymore.
139: Out here in real America, Flip, we take our Second Amendment rights to hot glue guns seriously. If it was good enough for Great-Great-Grandma, it's good enough for me!
Spirit hoods, really? *Furries* are mainstream?
The sporran terminations are fine.
Our two and three year olds wear something like in 132.
Also, I would like to celebrate the fact that, while I'm still at Heebie U at the moment, this is my last late night on campus of the school year. SAYONARA, SUCKERS. Two more weeks for me!
I'm not sure what you guys are talking about (other than that it's not marriage), but it brought to my mind something like these (is there a name for them other than "medieval peasant hood"?) which also bring to mind executioner's hoods which sometimes drape about the shoulder.
Bonus Unfogged-related search program activities learning: I now know what a "liripipe" is. And a "liripoop." And that Wikipedia has an entry titled "Inherently funny word."
144: so useless that it's not a list of inherently funny words.
There's also a TV Tropes page.
"Wankel engine" gets my vote.
Somewhat less funny if pronounced in the German way.
Wankel engines are awesome, though. The Napster guys all had RX-7s and used to go on about the radness of those engines.
I just got an email from Google Plus telling me I was friended by one Swimmy Fish. I feel like this should be a relative of yours.
I disavow all other Fishes. All other Tweetys, too, for that matter. And I am sick of other Sifus following me on twitter because they think I'm going to talk about martial arts or something.
The Napster guys all had RX-7s
I'm going to pretend you didn't say that because cannot process.
I fucking loved the Rx-7 and Rx-8. One of my biggest bonehead moves ever was not getting one. Now I don't think there's a Wankel Engine in any major production car. Tears.
I think you'd like 'em, Halford. Fanning's fiancee is all into crossfit.
COME WITH ME IF YOU WANT TO HAVE A STYLISH HEAD.
124: 1) repeat the recommendation, translated into French. If asked why, pretend to be Canadian.
2) intersperse asterisks freely, as if you were H*Y*M*A*N K*A*P*L*A*N. That's doubled the character count right there. While you're at it, rewrite in the style of a recently arrived comic Jewish immigrant from eastern Europe. ("This student is BIG POTENTIAL! Her learning is MUCH PROMISE!")
3) in order to make the recommendation look longer, triple-space it, like Bunny in The Secret History. ("Looks kinda like free verse, doesn't it?" he said proudly. Henry snorted. "Looks kinda like a menu.") Mention her outstanding contribution to the study of metahemeralism.
Also who the hell asks for* 10,000 characters in a recommendation? I'd be tempted to warn the student against going to the place. If I had to provide 10,000 characters about myself, beyond 8k I'd be down to describing particularly notable bowel movements or satisfying nights' sleep.
*I know, it's a max limit. And probably aimed at the kind of CT commenter that never misses the point pithily if they can miss it with pompous, erudite excess.
157.2: Commenter, or front-page poster?
|| Speaking of the USSC, today's opinion has 4 dissenters, and 3 concurrers. You'd think Kagan (author of the concurrence) would get the opinion, with Scalia (author of the court opinion) would have concurred (Thomas joining), but I guess not. The senior judge on the winning side gets to assign the opinion, I think, and that was Scalia. He'll point to this decision as evidence that he's not result oriented. |>
159: It was a much grosser porno from the 70s.
There's an opinion published today? I'm confused by 160. Aren't we waiting for the hearing to start?
162: They announce and release opinions and orders on argument days, if any, at 10:00 am, before arguments start. Just takes a minute or two usually. The argument will have started right after that.
160: I don't follow. If Scalia and Thomas didn't agree with what Kagan wrote (which they clearly didn't*), how could she get the opinion rather than a concurrence?
*S&T didn't want to go beyond a physical intrusion approach, whereas Kagan et al. also thought the search violated expectations of privacy.
What's usually in these opinions? What's the function of releasing opinions before you've heard the arguments?
164: Oh, sorry, no: the opinion released this morning was in a case that was argued months ago. Nothing to do with gay marriage. Drug-sniffing dogs on your front porch case.
161: I just associate it with this. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4856148.stm
159: I suspect Sifu was mimicking the penchant for American commercial radio stations to lablel something a "deep cut" if it is not a single or a track that gets much airplay. H*Y*M*A*N K*A*P*L*A*N not only not being a staple of popular culture, but probably not very familiar to folks here.
170: But very familiar to some of us! I'm sure ajay would big department for any confusion.
That'll learn me to pause and do some work in the middle if writing a comment. I mean. like fuck my boss, who does he think he is that he can come over and talk to me.
I might "big department" if I could even figure out what that could even possibly have been supposed to be.
171: But very familiar to some of us!
Sure, but you have the advantage of being from Kentucky.
173: It's a particularly unfunny but relatively well-known H*Y*M*A*N K*A*P*L*A*N reference, essentially a mishearing of "beg your pardon."
Perry argument over. Scotusblog says Kennedy isn't going for a flat-out equal protection right to ssm. But will leave Prop 8 invalidated. Not sure what they mean when they say Kennedy suggested dismissing--I guess as improvidently granted? Anyway, if their take is right it's very disappointing but not as bad as it might have been. Transcript and audio should be out later today.
Back to the OP, SCOTUSblog just freaked everybody out - unnecessarily, I think, since if they're right about Kennedy then Prop 8 still dies and the Court doesn't hem itself in with a decision.
Confound it, while I was finding some definitive snood pictures, SCOTUSblog had to go and get everyone in a panic.
The whole "getting too far ahead of public opinion" thing drives me nuts, but I genuinely don't understand how you can use it to rule again same sex marriage. Support has gone from 27% to 49% in something like 15 years.
Could it be possible to be a worst justice than Alito? Harriet Miers would most likely been a bad justice, but she would have been a zillion times better than yet another old white guy bigot with "elite" credentials.
181 - Associate Justice Janice Rogers Brown? Associate Justice An/n Alt/house? Associate Justice KILLBOT 9000?
That first snood picture is particularly great, though, Kraab.
Same sex marriage isn't new. Not passing is new. Grrrr.
How do you figure out which supreme court justice is talking? Any good rules of thumb for recognizing their voices?
182, 184: Yeah but those types are so over the top that they end up on an island (my argument does make assumptions about the others on the Court--a court full of Janice Rogers Browns wouldbe a disaster). I'm also assuming that competent and evil is worst than incompetent and evil.
So it's easy enough to tell Kagan and RBG from everyone else, and also not difficult to tell them apart (Kagan sounds way younger). Thomas is also easy to tell (in that he's not going to talk). But that still leaves 6 people I have trouble with.
Scalia's the one who sounds kind of like Rush Limbaugh.
After reading 129.link, I wanted to read the Lawrence v. Texas oral arguments, but what was on supremecourt.gov didn't identify which justices were speaking. Is that available somewhere?
170: ah, I see. That's the trouble with making references to other people's culture: I never know which bits of it are common knowledge and just assume that, if I know about it even in my frozen outpost, it must be famous in the metropolis.
I came across Hyman Kaplan through seeing the minister of my local Presbyterian church acting the part in a slightly unexpected outburst of amateur drama after service one day. He was so into it that it was vaguely scary. VE VILL VORK! VE VILL STRIVE! UND ALL - ALL! - FOR MR POCKHEEL!
186: He could be a slightly more verbose Clarence Thomas, but limiting his utterances to his catchphrase rather than total silence.
Oh, forgot Sotomayor for a minute. So I can tell RBG and Scalia, but not anyone else.
Breyer sounds like an elementary school teacher.
190: I don't think so. IIRC until a few years ago they consistently omitted names of which Justice was questioning, I think as a matter of policy (what policy, I have no idea--presumably some version of the policy that keeps TV cameras out of the court).
Breyer's accent is bizarre, this kind of weird patrician boston via San Francisco via whatever it is.
There are SO MANY worse potential justices than Alito, and that's not intended to praise Alito.
Lawyers: Is Tom Goldstein particularly well known as a good Supreme Court prognosticator, as opposed to just an attentive court watcher? He certainly is an awesome entrepreneur who created a great gig for himself. Anyhow, ducking an issue on narrow grounds when there's an opportunity to make big, ill-formed constitutional pronouncements just doesn't sound like Justice Kennedy to me, but what do I know.
Kennedy sounds older than everyone else.
Man Olson has a fantastic voice. No wonder justices find him convincing.
198.last: Although he should have been disbarred for his role in the Whitewater stuff.
197: Before he made a name for himself as a court-watcher, he made a name for himself running a pretty successful Supreme Court-focused appellate practice. My good friend from college, who clerked for Roberts, seemed to think he knew what he was talking about.
193: Yes, 186 made me "heh", indeed.
Breyer sounds like an elementary school teacher.
My first thought was "he has a Kentucky accent?"
Vaguely related, does Ygglz really not understand that Republicans hate San Francisco because it's totally gay?
Maybe, but it's one of those posts of his where it's hard to tell if he's being disingenuous or actually doesn't know what he's talking about. He has plenty of posts where one or the other is obviously the case, so it can be hard to tell.
And it's in California. Republicans just hate California, period.
The Feinstein penumbra would be sufficient in itself. Really, it's overdetermined.
(Haters gonna hate.)
163.2 -- Two justices think A. Three think A and B. Four think not A and not B. Certainly the more natural result would be a plurality opinion that says A and B, and a concurrence that says only A.
114 -- I'm still not following this closely -- I'm all about a Butte roofing subcontractor dispute this week -- but it wouldn't be shocking to have a 2-3-4 result here as well, the two being Kennedy and Roberts for some sort of narrow formulation that lets states experiment but doesn't force red states to join in just yet.
I'm afraid disingenuousness (is that the same thing as faux-naiveté?) is becoming ever more common as the internet discussions become ever more self-referential and rife with references to past internet discussions.
I can't even read these things Corey Robin posts on Crooked Timber. It's like the transcript of a cross-examination.
209.1: I think the better way to think of it (and certainly the way the Court typically does) is that 5 Justices think A (impermissible physical intrusion), three think A & B (impermissible physical intrusion & violation of reasonable expectation of privacy), and 4 think not A and not B. So A is the opinion of the Court, A+B a concurrence with some non-binding additional reasons to reach the outcome.
[I just noticed that my junior senator has changed his fb profile pic to that pink on red equals sign.]
211 -- Net result would be the same, because the narrower opinion controls, but I don't think it's fair to say that there were 5 votes for 'A but not B.' Which is what you get when you let the smallest minority write the Court opinion.
Historians of the future will look at all the instances of opinions joined by only the 3 female justices, and derive something meaningful. I liked Kagan's stand of the front porch peering inside the windows with high powered binoculars analogy. (Which, for those of you not reading opinions, she says would be an intrusion on privacy, even where it would be ok for a stranger to be on your porch).
204-206: It's funny, I could imagine Yglesias not wanting to say that San Francisco is the Republican boogeyman because of the gay, just like NYC is the boogeyman because of the gay and the Jew; it's fight-picking in a way that he doesn't do all that much. But I can't see his not actually getting it, and if he does get it, I can't see what being disingenuous about it gets him, rhetorically.
213.1: Well not really insofar as there's a distinction between opinion and holding. In your scenario there would be no opinion of the Court, even though there would be a holding. And I think the Court tries to have an opinion when it can, for sound reasons. And I'm not suggesting there were 5 votes for "A but not B"; there were 5 votes for "A, which is sufficient to decide this case."
It's also unclear why he would think the NRCC would give a shit about SF having "the third-highest pay for low-wage workers."
Maybe Yggles just ran out of unused hooks to hang a paragraph about how much he hates zoning laws on, so he's just reaching for random things now.
Before it was totally gay, there were hippies. And before them beatniks. And there was a whole libertine Babylon by the Bay thing going on before that.
I'm curious to know how much cheaper housing would be if we followed Yglesias's recommendations, but not curious enough to go out and research.
His posts have been better lately, mostly because he's spending more time disposing Republican and centrist positions.
"Yeah, of course gay men and women can get married. Who gives a shit?" said Chief Justice John Roberts, who interrupted attorney Charles Cooper's opening statement defending Proposition 8, which rescinded same-sex couples' right to marry in California. "Why are we even seriously discussing this?"...
Moreover, when Attorney Cooper said that gay marriage could harm the moral fabric of the country and hurt the institution of marriage, Associate Justice Sotomayor asked, "What are you even talking about?" while Justice Anthony Kennedy reportedly muttered, "You got to be fucking kidding me," under his breath.The piece as a whole drags a bit (as things in The Onion sometimes do), but it is pretty pitch perfect.
220: More cities would be priced like Chicago.
223: That seems like a good way to think about it. Skyscrapers ≠ low cost of housing.
OT: All Things Considered is billing one of the segments of the SSI story as "The Disability-Industrial Complex". Are you guys sure it's intended to get people thinking about the plight of blue collar workers?
That's one of the section headings from the article. Doesn't that just mean they're on the given segment?
I missed that. My point is that is not a heading intended to inspire thoughtful compassion.
This pseud change sucks, because even though I know it's Eggplant I keep reading it as "Cyrus, qua Eggplant" and get confused as to whether or not it's Cyrus.
The degree to which it would reduce housing prices would be related to how aggressive the existing zoning is and how high the existing density is. There would be almost no affect on Manhattan, SF would see a massive housing construction boom in UMC priced housing. None of the new housing would be affordable for the poor, little would be affordable for the average person, but gentrification would decrease sharply since given the choice between upper middle class priced housing in an already upper middle class area or in a 'transitional' one, most yuppies would choose the former.
It would be a really great thing if New York, San Francisco, Seattle, and the Silicon Valley had housing prices like Chicago. That said, I think the goal should be to get housing prices down even further to the Houston or Dallas level.
Wait, isn't there another Cyrus who comments on occasion?
There'd be at least some affect on Manhattan between more rapid development of currently slowly developing areas (Hell's Kitchen, Lower East Side, parts of Harlem, etc.) and indirect affects via rapid development of Brooklyn and Queens. It wouldn't lower housing prices on CPW, but there'd still be a noticable affect on Manhattan as a whole.
204
Vaguely related, does Ygglz really not understand that Republicans hate San Francisco because it's totally gay?
Republicans don't like San Francisco because Romney got 13% of the vote there. Not a lot of love among you all for places where Obama got 13%.
Affect the change you want to be.
On the OP, I've been struck by the opposition to gay marriage in France. Not so much the size of the demos - this is France after all and they do love their manifs, but the almost complete unanimity of the French right in opposing gay marriage, including young activists from upscale urban and suburban areas. Contrast that to the UK or even Germany where there's plenty of rumbling among younger, more social liberal CDU members in favor of gay marriage.
Something to do with France's history of more explicit natalism, I wonder? (I understand that was how some of their social welfare programs got started in the 30's.)
Isn't part of it that the stakes are lower, so it's cheaper symbolism to be anti-gay? Healthcare benefits are probably the single largest non-symbolic part of marriage, and that's just not an issue in France, right? So you don't get nearly the same number of stories about the cruelties and injustices faced by gay couples w.r.t. that sort of thing. Hence it's easier for conservatives to be "principled" in their bigotry and still engage in civil interaction with gay friends, relatives, etc.
I mean, I'm totally pulling this out of my ass, but it sounds plausible.
My understanding us that legal gay (coupled) parenting is much easier in the US on the whole than it is in Europe, for whatever it's worth.
212: I don't even own a senator.
The Onion piece linked in 222 is quite enjoyable.
I haven't been able to read much of the thread, and I may be wrong-headed in this, but it would be fine with me if the Court decides either that the plaintiffs don't have standing, or that the case shouldn't have been heard in the first place. Don't know if I'm off-base in thinking so.
Drum was complaining about a lack of standing ruling:
Someone should have standing to defend Prop 8, and the case should be decided on its merits. The law may be an ass, but it should at least try not to be a coward.
But I'm untroubled.
229: I am not sure a Houston/Dallas style arrangement is optimal from an environmental POV, but yes, Chicago is an actually existing case where things are non-terrible, not the platonic ideal of Yglesian growth-oriented housing policy.
241: Speaking as someone who is actually literally not represented in the Senate, fuck you.
People moving to San Francisco instead of Dallas or Houston is a huge environmental win due to heating/cooling costs.
Yeah but all those microdistilleries have a big carbon footprint.
On the OP, I've been struck by the opposition to gay marriage in France. Not so much the size of the demos - this is France after all and they do love their manifs, but the almost complete unanimity of the French right in opposing gay marriage, including young activists from upscale urban and suburban areas. Contrast that to the UK or even Germany where there's plenty of rumbling among younger, more social liberal CDU members in favor of gay marriage.
Three things:
1) The French conservative party is at war with itself after their disputed leadership election. Everyone's trying to gain positions of advantage, especially nominations for the local elections, before the re-run. So if you're a Fillonist district leader, you're under the gun to get the base mobilised, and if you're the Copeist challenger, you've got to do the same to compete. Further, if you're a Copéist you're trying to get the rightist base worked up, and if you're a Fillonist you've got to prove that you're not only a boring technocratic atlanticist neoliberal IT manager.
2) The French conservatives are in a knife fight with the extreme-right, and in some ways the internal fight is a reflection of this - a lot of people in the Copé faction are keen on an alliance with the extreme right, and the others in that faction are determined to out-extreme them.
3) I think there's a more or less conscious imitation of the Republicans post-2008 going on. They took a hell of a beating last year, losing the presidency for only the second time ever, by a thumping margin, losing the Senate and the National Assembly, losing a ton of mayors and regional councils, losing badly in basically every region of France, losing votes across the centre to the Socialists and also over the right flank to the extremists. And they then failed to elect a leader and ended up looking like chumps and crooks. What to do?
Basically, declare jihad about something emotional that fires up the troops. While they're hyperventilating about God, they can't be plotting against each other. And at least it gives the press something else to write about.
I fucking loved the Rx-7 and Rx-8. One of my biggest bonehead moves ever was not getting one. Now I don't think there's a Wankel Engine in any major production car. Tears.
Norton started building a Wankel-powered motorcycle in the late 70s, just before they were killed stone dead by the first Thatcher recession.
It's such a beautiful engine. I always thought it would be perfect for a motorcycle, being so smooth and light, but I guess smoothness may not be a big draw for riders.
Actually it was later than that, and the Major recession: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norton_Classic
It looks like DOMA is going down. DOMA is going down!
Of course this is a bit premature, but if it happens, much praise goes to Edith Windsor for persevering.
