I'll be in town for the next few months, with the exception of long weekends and 2-3 weeks at the end of july/beginning of august.

I know many spots to gather and mingle - but none better than here

>> ^jwray:

I don't know why I bother to split hairs with you over scum like this caller, but you're lacking some appreciation for subtle details:
1. He didn't say that the blackness of the callers on the republican line was the only reason he suspected them of not being real republicans. However, if black people are 12.4% of the population, and 7% of them self-describe as republicans, and republicans are 45% of the population, then the republican party is less than 2% black (do the math). A huge proportion of black republican callers would not prove anything, but it would certainly play a reasonable part in arousing suspicions that people were not calling the right line, in combination with whatever those callers may have said.
2. It is indeed very easy to tell the geographic and socioeconomic origin of someone by their voice, unless they have practiced another accent. Most actors, TV news anchors, and other people whose voice is crucial to their livelihood have worked hard on their voice and may not resemble the accent in their place of origin. But for nearly everybody else, I can reliably distinguish between dozens of accents, including Scottish, Irish, several varieties of British, Australian, French, German, Russian, South African, Chinese, Indian, Southern American, Ghetto, Boston, New York, Midwest, etc. Black people from the south speak differently than black people in new york, but both accents are distinguishable from the accents of white people in the same respective areas. There are of course exceptions, but by and large people speak according to where they're from and who they are.
3. The third alternative, disconnecting him after the "black-span" jibe without shouting profanities at him, probably would have been the best use of C-Span's time, but I was merely expressing my view that the C-Span moderator's response was better than just telling him to go fuck himself. Further estrangement, alienation, and fracturing of society will not make extremists less extreme. On the contrary, mingling promotes peace and mutual understanding. Simply telling the caller to go fuck himself would not accomplish anything.


Just quoting it now in case it gets changed again.

I don't know why I bother to split hairs with you over scum like this caller, but you're lacking some appreciation for subtle details:
1. He didn't say that the blackness of the callers on the republican line was the only reason he suspected them of not being real republicans. However, if black people are 12.4% of the population, and 7% of them self-describe as republicans, and republicans are 45% of the population, then the republican party is less than 2% black (do the math). A huge proportion of black republican callers would not prove anything, but it would certainly play a reasonable part in arousing suspicions that people were not calling the right line, in combination with whatever those callers may have said.

2. It is indeed very easy to tell the geographic and socioeconomic origin of someone by their voice, unless they have practiced another accent. Most actors, TV news anchors, and other people whose voice is crucial to their livelihood have worked hard on their voice and may not resemble the accent in their place of origin. But for nearly everybody else, I can reliably distinguish between dozens of accents, including Scottish, Irish, several varieties of British, Australian, French, German, Russian, South African, Chinese, Indian, Southern American, Ghetto, Boston, New York, Midwest, etc. Black people from the south speak differently than black people in new york, but both accents are distinguishable from the accents of white people in the same respective areas. There are of course exceptions, but by and large people speak according to where they're from and who they are.

3. The third alternative, disconnecting him after the "black-span" jibe without shouting profanities at him, probably would have been the best use of C-Span's time, but I was merely expressing my view that the C-Span moderator's response was better than just telling him to go fuck himself. Further estrangement, alienation, and fracturing of society will not make extremists less extreme. On the contrary, mingling promotes peace and mutual understanding. Simply telling the caller to go fuck himself would not accomplish anything.

Ok, well in homage to the center of the universe, if I could swing a place to spend a night I could do Toronto.

What's everyone's schedule like? Anyone know a good spot to gather and mingle?

[formatting lost]

http://www.bettinamay.com/poem/2008/10/the-waking-galway-kinnell.html

"The Waking", Galway Kinnell

What just just happened between the lovers,
who lie now in love-sleep under the owls' calls,
call, answer, back and forth, and so on,
until one, calling faster, overtakes the other
and the two whoo together in one
shimmering harmonic -- is called "lovemaking."
Lovers who come exalted to their trysts,
who approach from opposite directions
along a path by the sea, through the pines,
meet, embrace, go up from the sea,
lie crushed into each other under
the sky half golden, half deep-blueing
the moon and stars into shining, know
they don't "make" love, but are earth-creatures
who live and -- here maybe no other word will do --
fuck one another forever if possible across the stars.
An ancient word, formed perhaps before
the sacred and profane had split apart,
when the tongue was like the flame of the heart
in the mouth, and lighted each word
as it was spoken, to remind it
to remember, as when flamingos
change feeding places on a marsh,
and there is a moment, after the first to fly
puts its head into the water in the new place
and before in the old place the last to fly
lifts out its head to see the rest have flown,
when, scattered with pink bodies, the sky
is one vast remembering. They still hear,
in sleep, the steady crushing and uncrushing
of bedsprings; they imagine a sonata in which
violins' lines draw the writhing and shiftings.
They lie with heads touching, thinking
themselves back across the blackness.
When dawn touches the bed their bodies re-form,
heaps of golden matter sieved
out of the night. The bed, caressed threadbare,
worn almost away, is now more than ever
the place where such light as humans
shine with seeps up into us. The eyelids,
which love the eyes and lie on them to sleep,
open. This is a bed. That is a fireplace.
That is last morning's breakfast tray
which nobody has yet bothered to take away.
This face, too alive with feeling to survive past
the world in which it is said, "Ni vous
san moi, ni moi san vous," so unguarded
this day might be breaking in the Middle Ages,
in the illusion fateful randomness chooses
to beam into existence, now, on this pillow.
In a ray of sun the lovers see motes cross,
mingle, collide, lose their way, in this puff
of ecstatic dust. Tears overfill their eyes,
wet their faces, drain quickly away
into their smiles. One leg hangs off the bed.
He is still inside her. His big toe
sticks into the pot of strawberry jam. "Oh migod!"
They kiss while laughing and hit teeth
and remember they are bones and laugh
naturally again. The feeling, perhaps
it is only a feeling, perhaps mostly due
to living only in the overlapping lifetimes
of dying things, that time starts up,
comes over them. They get up, put on clothes,
go out. They are not in the street yet,
however, but for a few minutes longer,
still in their elsewhere, beside a river,
with their arms around each other, in the aura
earth has when it remembers its former beauty.
An ambulance sirens a bandage-stiffened
body towards St. Vincent's. A police car
running red lights parodies
in high pitch the owls of paradise. The lovers
enter the ordinary day the ordinary world
providentially provides. Their pockets ring.
Good. For now askers and beggarmen
come up to them needing change for breakfast.

>> ^blankfist:
Whoa. Real life and the internet life aren't supposed to become one! I fear some 'Time Cop' sort of thing may happen where I disappear from the world now that both have mingled.
Thanks for the kind words. It's been a wild ride. We won some awards.


If I'm out of line, I'm really sorry.

I just thought that coming out of the closet like that was a really brave and commendable thing to do.

Oh! And making the movie...yeah...that was good, too.

In reply to this comment by eric3579:
Wild ride and awards? Is that all you're going to say about this? More please

In reply to this comment by blankfist:
Whoa. Real life and the internet life aren't supposed to become one! I fear some 'Time Cop' sort of thing may happen where I disappear from the world now that both have mingled.

Thanks for the kind words. It's been a wild ride. We won some awards.

Wild ride and awards? Is that all you're going to say about this? More please

In reply to this comment by blankfist:
Whoa. Real life and the internet life aren't supposed to become one! I fear some 'Time Cop' sort of thing may happen where I disappear from the world now that both have mingled.

Thanks for the kind words. It's been a wild ride. We won some awards.

Whoa. Real life and the internet life aren't supposed to become one! I fear some 'Time Cop' sort of thing may happen where I disappear from the world now that both have mingled.

Thanks for the kind words. It's been a wild ride. We won some awards.

I understand the uproar over potentially making a mockery of the White House's security, but people need to get a grip.

Crashing a closed ceremony is an exciting sport to some people. To crash a White House party is the holy grail of party crashers.

Not to mention the fact that they were apparently screened for weapons anyway and were obviously mingling well with politicians.

So fix the security gap, make sure everyone realizes the significance of their robotic duties, and stop acting like these people should be sent to prison when they didn't pose a risk at all to anybody.

>> ^joe2:
one of the greatest american poems of all time, thanks


One of the greatest 'world' poems, right? The revolution cannot be allowed to mingle in one 'nation'. It must be a world movement of workers.

Permanent Revolution

Quantummushroom,
“The point is that there are thousands of religions in the world, contradicting each other, and solely on the basis of the mutual contradictions most of them have to be wrong.”
You’re conclusion is indeed correct!

If all the religions have their origin from the Creator, [proof for a Creator, see my blog: bloganders.blogspot.com (left menu)) it implies that the contradictions betweens the religions reflect a self-contradicting Creator.

No eminent scientist represents that our perfectly-orderly universe can be explained ex nihilo without a Prime Cause.

Being logically consistent (orderly), the universe must mirror its Prime Cause / Singularity-Creator—Who must be Perfectly Orderly; i.e. Perfect. Therefore, no intelligent person can ignore that our purpose and challenge in life is learning how we, as imperfect humans, may successfully relate to a Perfect Singularity-Creatorwithout our co-mingling, which transcends the timespace of this dimensional physical universe, becoming an imperfection to the Perfect Singularity-Creator
An orderly Creator necessarily had an Intelligent Purpose in creating this universe and us within it and, being Just and Orderly, necessarily placed an explanation, a "Life's Instruction Manual," within the reach of His subjects—humankind.

It defies the orderliness (logic / mathematics) of both the universe and Perfection of its Creator to assert that humanity was (contrary to His Tor•âh′ , see below) without any means of rapproachment until millennia after the first couple in recorded history as well as millennia after Abraham, Moses and the prophets. Therefore, theCreator's "Life's Instruction Manual" has been available to man at least since the beginning of recorded history. The only enduring document of this kind is the Tor•âh′ —which, interestingly, translates to "Instruction" (not "law" as popularly alleged). [Source and more extensive reasoning: www.netzarim.co.il]

Religions that contradict with Torah cannot therefore describe a religion from the Creator.

Anders Branderud

Well, representational democracy also covers constitutional republic. You still have elected officials that represents the people in a democratic process. Constitutional republic is a sub-set of representational democracy. Incidentally, we have a Constitutional Monarchy in Denmark.

Right now I can't see a reasonable alternative to a republic/democracy the way it exists now; It's all just facets of the same thing. Sure I would love to see a lot of cleaning up within it, lord knows that the laws are in need of an overhaul and have been for 200 years.

In reply to this comment by blankfist:
Most Republicans tend to cite the Constitution more so than Libertarians - a lot of Libertarians argue against social contracts, etc. Though, I do like that document a great deal, which is largely because I have a tedious interest in U.S. History, the French Enlightenment that shaped the U.S. government, and the philosophies behind reason vs. passion in human government.

I don't who you're talking about when you say the solution "we've" used is a representational Democracy, unless you mean Denmark's Parliamentary Democracy. In the U.S. we have a Constitutional Republic. Democracy is 51% taking the rights away from 49%.

You're correct to praise the Framers of this country. I'd say they're a bit more than just smart people, as the ideas of reason based protective governance was quite brilliant. But, they certainly were flawed and human. My personal favorite, Thomas Jefferson, rallied for slavery to be abolished in his younger political years, but by the late 1790s he spoke very little of it, and his plantation life showed him as contradictory to any practical belief of freedom for slaves. This was more because he didn't think it was practical over him not believing in it.

His ideas of emancipation wasn't for the blacks to mingle with the whites. He believed in segregation and thought a lot of it had to do with the natural difference between the races and also because he was sure the black slaves, once freed, would rise up and fight the whites until one race wiped out the other.

I don't think we've ever had a great president. Ever. Washington signed into law the Fugitive Slave Act which made assisting the escape of slaves a Federal crime. John Adams signed into law the Alien and Sedition Act which infringed greatly on freedom of speech. Jefferson, as president, was responsible for the Louisiana Purchase which double the size of government overnight even though he ran on a smaller government ticket that opposed the Federalists. Jackson. Lincoln. Not a one.

Except Taft. He believed the president's powers should only be as much as given to him by the Constitution. Nothing more. He is remembered as lazy and fat, which is unfair.

Most Republicans tend to cite the Constitution more so than Libertarians - a lot of Libertarians argue against social contracts, etc. Though, I do like that document a great deal, which is largely because I have a tedious interest in U.S. History, the French Enlightenment that shaped the U.S. government, and the philosophies behind reason vs. passion in human government.

I don't who you're talking about when you say the solution "we've" used is a representational Democracy, unless you mean Denmark's Parliamentary Democracy. In the U.S. we have a Constitutional Republic. Democracy is 51% taking the rights away from 49%.

You're correct to praise the Framers of this country. I'd say they're a bit more than just smart people, as the ideas of reason based protective governance was quite brilliant. But, they certainly were flawed and human. My personal favorite, Thomas Jefferson, rallied for slavery to be abolished in his younger political years, but by the late 1790s he spoke very little of it, and his plantation life showed him as contradictory to any practical belief of freedom for slaves. This was more because he didn't think it was practical over him not believing in it.

His ideas of emancipation wasn't for the blacks to mingle with the whites. He believed in segregation and thought a lot of it had to do with the natural difference between the races and also because he was sure the black slaves, once freed, would rise up and fight the whites until one race wiped out the other.

I don't think we've ever had a great president. Ever. Washington signed into law the Fugitive Slave Act which made assisting the escape of slaves a Federal crime. John Adams signed into law the Alien and Sedition Act which infringed greatly on freedom of speech. Jefferson, as president, was responsible for the Louisiana Purchase which double the size of government overnight even though he ran on a smaller government ticket that opposed the Federalists. Jackson. Lincoln. Not a one.

Except Taft. He believed the president's powers should only be as much as given to him by the Constitution. Nothing more. He is remembered as lazy and fat, which is unfair.

In reply to this comment by gwiz665:
Oh that I can agree with. The bureaucracy of a government is immense and stupefying. And politicians see themselves as gods among men, who don't really have time for the "rabble" until election time, where babies are kissed and interns are hidden. I would like to see some other form of leadership, but anything over a certain size just can't be organized of individual autonomous parts and the solution we've used so far is representational democracy. I don't like it as such, as people should be able to "reason" any laws a regulations by themselves, but people are vastly different in what they see as "proper", so we make real written laws to be able to "live with our neighbors" and have a common codex to adhere to.

I think there is a distinction to be made between the law and government.

While we're speaking of government/religion, I find it hilarious that most conservative republicans and libertarians too, for that matter, adhere to the constitution as if its a holy text. The founding fathers were not Jesuses, they were only smart people. And we've evolved since then, which is why the constitution also must be able to change and not be the end-all solution.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

^We've definitely thought about it - we're hampered a little bit in this regard by our name. But in general, I like the idea of news, pictures- music and articles mingling together. We could use a break on the domain name- I would love "thesift.com" or even "sifter.com" but of course, you know the story ...