kimmy

If you look at American legislation like the Civil Rights Act or the Americans With Disabilities Act, it's clear that not all discrimination is viewed as equal under the law. The law is willing to consider discrimination as a matter of practical necessity, but has no time for discrimination based on bigotry, religiously-inspired or not. When the Civil Rights Act came into law, those who tried to argue that their religious beliefs forbade them from serving the descendants of the Ammonites and Moabites in their restaurant were told to get bent. -k

We've already been over women's-only (and men's-only) clubs. And good luck with your "class discrimination" lawsuit. -k

We've been over this already. If you're open for business, you don't get to turn away customers on a whim. -k

Funny, but no. -k

I'm getting pretty bored of the lack of progress in Dany's storyline. It seems like for the last 3 seasons she's been doing the same thing. "Woe is me, how to balance my conscience with the ruthlessness needed to rule?" I thought things would start to pick up now that Tyrion is on his way to meet her, but it seems like they're never going to get to Meereen. Pretty cool to see Jorah back, though. I was a little stoked when I saw Iain Glenn in the opening credits. Just as I was pretty stoked last episode to see Jerome Flynn's name pop up. I sometimes watch the opening credits twice, once to watch the names of the actors, and a second time to watch the locations. Poor Sansa. My anxiety meter immediately went to 11 when I found out that Littlefinger planned to take her to Ramsay Bolton. The girl just keeps going from bad to worse. But I am starting to wonder: she has been swimming with the sharks for so long, maybe she's starting to figure the game out. She's surrounded herself with ruthless, dangerous individuals. What if, instead of getting played, this time she's the one doing the playing? I don't think she's the helpless little lamb she used to be. I can only wonder what Cersei wants with Littlefinger. It was nice to see that scumbag Janos Slynt get what he had coming. One small measure of revenge for the Starks! I wonder when the wheel is going to come around and run over Walder Frey? That's going to be sweet. Remember at the end of Season 3, Bran told a story about the Rat Cook, who was cursed for all eternity for breaking the laws of hospitality by murdering his guests. And then immediately they cut to Walder Frey who had also just broken the laws of hospitality by murdering his guests. It seemed like foreshadowing... but we've not seen anything of Walder since. He might die of old age before that storyline gets picked up again. There's always so much going on that unfortunately we don't get to see everybody each episode. I'm interested in finding out what Jaime and Bronn are up to. Dr Bashir seems like the Dornish answer to Ned Stark, a principled ruler who's going to get stabbed in the back by the Red Viper's widow and those Serpent Sisters or Sand Sisters or whatever the hell their name was. I also notice we haven't heard anything about Bran and the Funky Bunch for quite some time. Will they be back, or is their journey at an end? -k

Unfortunately, Hilary is a fraud when it comes to standing up for the little-guy. She cares about fast-food workers to the extent that she thinks they'll vote for her. She's as pro-corporate, pro-bank, pro-Wall Street as any of the Republicans. Her latest gimmick is pretending to be concerned about the Trans Pacific Partnership, despite the fact that she's already traveled all over the world promoting it to foreign governments. They don't. Their company line is going to be that they are standing up for women by creating jobs, energy policies that will lead to lower gas prices, etc. They won't produce one single policy idea targeted specifically at helping women in any regard. The best they can hope for is that they don't make any "legitimate rape", "binders full of women" type cock-ups this time. -k

waaah. Oregon has had civil rights protection for gay people for a long time. Maybe the Kleins shouldn't break the law if they don't want to get fined. -k

I just think your obsession with Muslims borders on monomania. You seem to be a bit of a kook. What do Muslims have to do with this topic? -k

I'm so excited that the playoffs are starting! It means that I won't have to watch the fricking Oilers for 6 months! I will be bandwagoning with the Senators, Islanders, Jets, and Wild this year. In regard to the Bettman discussion: why does anybody actually care if the game "grows"? If hockey becomes more popular in the US, it might put more money in the pockets of people who own NHL franchises, and for NHL players, but I doubt there's a lot of NHL players or owners here on the MLW. So really, who cares how many Americans watch the playoffs on network TV? I'd think that if you're a fan in a Canadian city aside from the big 3, you might be happier hoping the game doesn't grow. If hockey takes off in the US in a big way, it could start pricing hockey out of smaller Canadian markets. -k

Don't let the door hit you in the tin-foil hat on your way out. -k

Men have gone to court against women's only health clubs, and sometimes they win. There are situations where discrimination butts up against other rights, and against practical concerns. There's a limit to how far we can go in protecting people from discrimination, and the debate is trying to figure out what that limit is. In the case of abortion, that seems to be how it works. A lot of state and federal laws are crafted specifically to deal with abortion. -k

The health-club manager has different legal means to make the case that discrimination is necessary, as discussed above. It's not ALWAYS about religion. I strongly suspect that doctors with conscientious objection to providing abortion are also well-protected in most states, with or without an RFRA. -k

Something you see a lot nowadays is politicians giving speeches from a podium that's been decorated with their talking points, in front of a wall full of posters with the same talking points. They know that on the news, people are only going to see 10 seconds of the speech, so they put up a Cole's Notes of the speech so that people can see from their 10 seconds what he was actually talking about. -k

I think that most of us feel some sympathy for the position of the Christian photographer who was sued for denying services to a same-sex wedding. And I don't think any of us would feel much sympathy for a restauranteur or hotelier who wanted to bar people from his establishment. Through the examples that are chosen in this discussion, I think the key issue for most people in this debate is actually expression. I think that perhaps if these laws were crafted specifically around the issue of expression, it would address the sincere concerns that the supporters feel, while avoiding the potentially negative consequences that opponents fear. Something along the lines of "an individual in a creative capacity may not be compelled to express views that are contrary to their conscience". I think that would provide the photographer with an exemption. A baker could refuse to provide a cake with two dudes on top, and they could say "ok, just bake a cake and we'll decorate it ourselves." The hypothetical restauranteur who would not seat unaccompanied women, or the hotelier who would not allow an inter-racial couple to stay... those guys would still be out of luck. -k

It looks like Shady and Bryan have no further interest in advancing the false claims they've made in support of the original law. So moving on to a couple of other things: First off, the crushing defeat of Pence and his team in their attempt to defend the original bill has been a serious wake-up call for others. First there was Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson, who pre-emptively halted the controversy in his own state by warning that he would not sign the bill unless it was changed. And then there was Jeb Bush, who on Monday came out in defense of Mike Pence and the Indiana law, but by Wednesday had changed his tune, saying that Indiana should have had a "consensus-oriented" approach from the outset, and that he believed that the new revisions to the law would strike the right balance between freedom of religion and preventing discrimination. Not lost on anyone is that Jeb made this clarification speaking to a small audience of businessmen in San Francisco, not a Republican town hall in the bible belt. And obviously this raises the question of whether Jeb will find himself in a Mitt Romney type situation, where he must say one thing to appeal to the Tea Party and evangelical segment in the party, then say other things when he's talking to moderates and independents. -k

Does anybody think Carly Fiorina has a chance? Does Carly Fiorina even think Carly Fiorina has a chance? I can't help wondering if she's only talking about running because somebody in the RNC feels they need at least one female candidate to seek the nomination and Fiorina is the only woman they could find. -k

I haven't seen CSI:Cyber yet. I gather that it does for computing forensics what CSI did for crime scene forensics, which is roughly the same as what the Creation Museum does for anthropology. @/boring_as_heck/status/573186341187428352/photo/1 -k

Ok, so what's the point of what you're saying? Oil companies should pay royalties to the Pope instead of the gov't of Alberta? Oil companies shouldn't pay royalties at all, provided they pray before putting their drills in the ground? I guess what I'm getting at, is who gives a crap if you think God should be acknowledged as the original owner of mineral wealth? What if we acknowledge the Mighty Raven Spirit as the original owner instead? -k

I have written about this before as well. My belief is that the internet has given stupid people more avenues to share stupid ideas with each other. It used to be that means of mass communication were mostly controlled by people with some minimal level of sanity. A publisher might have received lots of submissions, but most of them-- especially the kookiest-- would never see print. This sort of thing. There was sort of a gatekeeper function, for good and bad. But now that anybody with a computer, some free software, and an internet connection can reach a mass audience if they're savvy enough about marketing their ideas. That gatekeeper function is gone. It's a free-for-all, and it's not the best ideas that spread the fastest, it's the most popular. And as we've seen in movies, books, music, television, and any other medium, popularity and quality don't always correlate. People are now faced with an onslaught of ideas as never before in human history, and many people do not have the basic literacy in science, logic, and critical thinking skills to deal with it. -k

Seriously? You want the Crown to relinquish title to mineral rights in Alberta and give it to ... Jesus?? I honestly can't tell whether you're trolling, or if you're really think this is a lucid idea. -k

... As with the shortage of women in STEM careers, or the ratio of male:female students at university ...isn't this really just a result of people choosing their own way? To me, this statistic is the flip side of the pay gap statistic. Women are more likely to choose safer careers that also happen to pay less. On a semi-related note... Aren't a majority of crimes that are classified as murders actually what we might call "occupationally related"? Being in BC, I often hear on the news about the latest homicides from the Lower Mainland, and most of them have a connection to drug trafficking. I would think that men could greatly reduce their chances of becoming a homicide statistic by choosing a different line of work. I think there are two main factors in this. One is that men are simply better at committing suicide. A woman is likely to swallow a bunch of pills, puke her guts out and pass out, and get medical and psychiatric help. A man is more likely to do something that's actually fatal. I learned during my firearms course that the large majority of gun deaths in Canada aren't homicide, and they aren't accidents, they are suicides. Almost exclusively by men. The other issue, which you and Michael have touched on, is that men are expected to "tough it out"... which tends to mean they're less likely to seek psychological help than women. Men are less likely to talk to a friend or a doctor if they're depressed, because admitting they're depressed feels like an admission that they're weak. Is there anything that could be done to change that? -k

Are you sure there's an "issue"? Do you think that men are being denied the opportunity to attend university, or is it more likely that the lower percentage of men at university is because a larger percentage of men pursue lucrative non-university career paths like skilled trades? Surely that's a result of women making their own choices, not anyone denying them an opportunity in those fields. An effort has been made to attract women into these fields, and the biggest obstacle seems to be women themselves. I've written about this before... Intrinsic differences are the "only" plausible explanation? What about social factors? My dad's an engineer, and I also dated an engineer for over 6 years. They have both told me that they'd worked with capable female engineers, and that most of the female engineers they worked with were immigrants, from Asia and eastern Europe. They met more foreign-born women than Canadian-born women in their line of work. It seems a stretch to me to think that Canadian women are intrinsically less capable of dealing with math and science than their foreign-raised counterparts. -k

No, I'm trying to assess the merits of this deal, and certainly I don't know enough about operating either a military or non-military nuclear program to assess what the terms actually mean. It's easy to parrot stuff off the fact-sheet, like "the deal still leaves Iran with 6000 centrifuges" or "they still have 300kg of enriched uranium". But what does that actually mean in practical terms? What does dropping from 19,000 centrifuges to 6000 centrifuges mean, in practical terms, for Iran's nuclear capability? Is 300kg of enriched uranium enough to build a single bomb, or is it enough to wipe out the entire earth? I don't know the answer to those questions, and I doubt that more than a small fraction of the people discussing the deal know the answers to those questions either. Based on Bob's comments above, my hunch at the moment is that the parameters of the deal were to allow Iran to continue to operate a civilian nuclear program, while limiting their ability to produce weapons-grade uranium. -k

Why isn't this forum "the appropriate folks"? This could be a safe space for sharing! -k