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What's on your mind today?

Started by Steve Reason, August 25, 2007, 08:15:06 PM

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Dark Lightning

Yeah, I guy I know in my carving club who is one day less than a year older than I started spouting off about his views..."Welfare Queens", "we should be able to pay our own medical bills or die", etc., shit like that. The irony is that he has medical care for life from his old employer. Blind to the truth, sad to say. I'm looking for like-minded friends in my retirement, but it seems the ones I've run into so far buy into the R-party line, hard. Yuck.

Dave

Quote from: Dark Lightning on October 09, 2018, 01:52:04 AM
Yeah, I guy I know in my carving club who is one day less than a year older than I started spouting off about his views..."Welfare Queens", "we should be able to pay our own medical bills or die", etc., shit like that. The irony is that he has medical care for life from his old employer. Blind to the truth, sad to say. I'm looking for like-minded friends in my retirement, but it seems the ones I've run into so far buy into the R-party line, hard. Yuck.

We do not have quite the same divide here, more on claa/education/occupation lines than purely political. Finding Rodger as a convsation companion (three years older than I) was the best hospital boon since they last saved my life (even accepting it might of been medical error that put my life at risk in this instance. He is an evidently well educated and read man, far more than I, but less willing to synthesize or theorise - we fit.

Soon will come that awkward moment for us British chaps of a certain vintage - as delicate as we can be, like new lovers edging around seeking a possible second date. It will probably be, "I have really enjoyed our conversations, will really miss them . . . Hoping the other will off some communication link.

Not for us the, "Hey, that was great, let's do it again sometime!"
Tomorrow is precious, don't ruin it by fouling up today.
Passed Monday 10th Dec 2018 age 74

xSilverPhinx

Quote from: jumbojak on October 08, 2018, 11:46:56 PM
If you value their friendship continue to do so and avoid politics with them. As someone who holds rather... unorthodox political opinions if I didn't do that I'd have fewer friends than I do now. And I don't have many.

Quote from: Icarus on October 09, 2018, 01:31:18 AM
^ Sound advice!

Never discuss religion or politics with friends that you wish to keep.

PSST! You can vent all you like here at HAF  We are all on your team.

Yes, I've decided to not bring up the subject with the fascists them.
I am what survives if it's slain - Zack Hemsey


jumbojak

It's tough at first but worth it in the end, I think anyway. I used to get into political discussions with my oldest friend and it never ended well.

"Amazing what chimney sweeping can teach us, no? Keep your fire hot and
your flue clean."  - Ecurb Noselrub

"I'd be incensed by your impudence were I not so impressed by your memory." - Siz

xSilverPhinx

Quote from: jumbojak on October 10, 2018, 01:53:21 AM
It's tough at first but worth it in the end, I think anyway. I used to get into political discussions with my oldest friend and it never ended well.

It's what they say, religion, politics and soccer are topics that should probably be avoided.
I am what survives if it's slain - Zack Hemsey


Essie Mae

So the Asher couple, the Northern Ireland owners of a bakery, have finally won the case, this time at the Supreme Court, brought by a gay couple because the Ashers wouldn't bake a wedding cake for them because they wanted a gay comment on it. The judge said that it wasn't a case of discrimination; no-one should have to promote a message with which they disagreed. 

I'm a bit ambivalent about this; after all, to whom would it have been promoted when the wedding was a private function?  We all have beliefs about different things and there are messages about all sorts of different issues that we wouldn't want to put on a cake if we were bakers; it could all get rather out of hand.
Hell is empty and all the devils are here. Wm Shakespeare


Essie Mae

Thinking about it a bit more, the bakers are simply the agents of the customer. The message on the cake is nothing to do with them; they can't be thought of as the producers/promoters of the message; their views are irrelevant.
Hell is empty and all the devils are here. Wm Shakespeare


Icarus


Dave

Tomorrow is precious, don't ruin it by fouling up today.
Passed Monday 10th Dec 2018 age 74

Tank

Quote from: Essie Mae on October 10, 2018, 09:41:17 PM
Thinking about it a bit more, the bakers are simply the agents of the customer. The message on the cake is nothing to do with them; they can't be thought of as the producers/promoters of the message; their views are irrelevant.

So if you were a printer and a person asked you to print a publication supporting something you, for whatever reason, were vehemently opposed to would you not feel you should have the freedom to turn them away?

On reflection I agree with this ruling. I think the bakers are a disgusting pair of religiously fuelled theistic twats. But I think the judge in this case is right to allow person A to refuse what person B asks them to do if they do not agree with it.

I have changed my view on this situation.
If religions were TV channels atheism is turning the TV off.
"Religion is a culture of faith; science is a culture of doubt." ― Richard P. Feynman
'It is said that your life flashes before your eyes just before you die. That is true, it's called Life.' - Terry Pratchett
Remember, your inability to grasp science is not a valid argument against it.

Sandra Craft

Quote from: Tank on October 11, 2018, 12:30:20 PM
Quote from: Essie Mae on October 10, 2018, 09:41:17 PM
Thinking about it a bit more, the bakers are simply the agents of the customer. The message on the cake is nothing to do with them; they can't be thought of as the producers/promoters of the message; their views are irrelevant.

So if you were a printer and a person asked you to print a publication supporting something you, for whatever reason, were vehemently opposed to would you not feel you should have the freedom to turn them away?

On reflection I agree with this ruling. I think the bakers are a disgusting pair of religiously fuelled theistic twats. But I think the judge in this case is right to allow person A to refuse what person B asks them to do if they do not agree with it.

I have changed my view on this situation.

In the States, the tipping point seems to be if the baker would have done it for other customers -- customers whose statement he agreed with.  If he wouldn't have put anything but Happy Birthday or Congratulations on a cake for any customer, then he's safe not putting Heil Hitler on a cake a Nazi orders, etc. 

I'm still of two minds about this.  I understand being discriminating about who and how you bake a cake for someone is a slippery slope to other forms of discrimination, and it really chaffs that religion can be used to get some people out of obeying the anti-discrimination laws, but on the other hand it still annoys me that every baker or wedding photographer or whoever isn't free to choose their clients.
Sandy

  

"Life is short, and it is up to you to make it sweet."  Sarah Louise Delany

Essie Mae

#13241
Quote from: Tank on October 11, 2018, 12:30:20 PM
Quote from: Essie Mae on October 10, 2018, 09:41:17 PM
Thinking about it a bit more, the bakers are simply the agents of the customer. The message on the cake is nothing to do with them; they can't be thought of as the producers/promoters of the message; their views are irrelevant.

So if you were a printer and a person asked you to print a publication supporting something you, for whatever reason, were vehemently opposed to would you not feel you should have the freedom to turn them away?

On reflection I agree with this ruling. I think the bakers are a disgusting pair of religiously fuelled theistic twats. But I think the judge in this case is right to allow person A to refuse what person B asks them to do if they do not agree with it.

I have changed my view on this situation.


Yes I read that as well by Peter Tatchell  and I also have changed my mind. After all, the gay man was a regular customer before the wedding cake order.
Hell is empty and all the devils are here. Wm Shakespeare


jumbojak

I spent the entire day being a lazy ass. I hung out, on the couch mostly, with my dog. He's happy - especially after eating about three pounds of roast beef. I really wish I could've done something today though. Today was the start of some "hemp oil" pain relieving cream hocus-pocus for my neck and arm. I'm not sure it's having any effect but I'm willing to try anything at this point.

"Amazing what chimney sweeping can teach us, no? Keep your fire hot and
your flue clean."  - Ecurb Noselrub

"I'd be incensed by your impudence were I not so impressed by your memory." - Siz

Dark Lightning

Quote from: jumbojak on October 15, 2018, 02:35:51 AM
I spent the entire day being a lazy ass. I hung out, on the couch mostly, with my dog. He's happy - especially after eating about three pounds of roast beef. I really wish I could've done something today though. Today was the start of some "hemp oil" pain relieving cream hocus-pocus for my neck and arm. I'm not sure it's having any effect but I'm willing to try anything at this point.

One has to have a day where "nothing" gets accomplished. At the very least you maybe got some decompression time. The last few years of my working life, before I retired (almost 4 years ago, yay!), I was so busy and sleep-deprived that I was literally bouncing off the cupboards in my garage, walking through. I got up at 4:25 AM, showered and hit the road, and returned at 5:30 PM on a good day. I regularly worked Saturdays and Sundays. My personal best was 500 hours of overtime in one year. For accounting purposes, 160 hours equal one month. By that measure, I worked 15 months that year.  Now add in the requirement that I take my allotted vacation of 4 weeks in that same year. I used to be able to sell it back before the new Slave Masters bought that company. That packs the 500 hours overtime into 11 months. When we requested vacation time during the week, we also had to specify which days of the weekend we wouldn't be there! It took about a year and a half to get wound most of the way down from that regime. I can now sleep in, without bolting upright in bed with a concern about things at my job at 2 AM, which has happened more times than I care to admit.

Essie Mae

Mr M's brother died recently and our garage is now full of the contents of his brother's flat. Mr M has now brought around 400 vinyl LPs into our little house because he says they'll get ruined in the garage. I am not a houseproud person but I can't cope with a lot of clutter; it makes me feel ill so there is a atmosphere of froideur. I don't want to say too much because he is still raw from his loss. I am cataloguing as quickly as possible for selling and we are trying to find the best way of doing so. From looking at specialist websites it looks as if one or two of them could go for a couple of hundred pounds, but most would be just a pound or two. There are also hundreds of first-day covers, hundreds of football programs and hundreds of railway magazines. It seems such a huge undertaking to shift all this stuff.
Hell is empty and all the devils are here. Wm Shakespeare