"While reading Lawrence v. Texas..." written by Heidi on estrip.org

12/04/08 12:49 - 43ºF - ID#46946

While reading Lawrence v. Texas...

In Lawrence v. Texas (2003) the supreme court overturned Bowers v. Hardwick (1986) and said states can't prohibit consenting adults from enjoying sodomy. It reminded me of this excellent little clip by Molly Ivins

Texas' anti-sex-toy law was overturned Feb. 14, 2008, but they're still illegal in Alabama!

Enjoy!

Permalink: While_reading_Lawrence_v_Texas_.html
Words: 60
Location: Buffalo, NY

Category: news

12/03/08 09:51 - 44ºF - ID#46942

Two good articles

About NYS delays on gay marriage legislation:

Stuff that Nader talked about during dinner regarding the impending government bailout of the automakers shows up in this really good article from Robert Weismann:

And bummer news: my tuition for spring semester, as an out-of-state law student, just increased by $2,130 :-(

Permalink: Two_good_articles.html
Words: 66
Location: Buffalo, NY

Category: concerts

11/28/08 09:33 - 34ºF - ID#46877

ani concert tomorrow?

somehow i've managed not to find anyone to go with me to the ani difranco concert at babeville tomorrow night... anyone interested?

doors open at 7pm and i think it's general admission so we might need to be there earlier than that (anyone know?)

use that little envelope icon below my avatar to send me an email.

:-)

(this is my 50th post!!)

Permalink: ani_concert_tomorrow_.html
Words: 63
Location: Buffalo, NY

Category: museum

11/24/08 08:58 - 36ºF - ID#46823

Your New Burchfield Penney!

In honor of avoiding my paper that's due tomorrow, and to get closer to my 50-post milestone, I'm posting pix from the Burchfield Penney opening. (Caution: noisy opening on website.)

A recreation of Charles Burchfield's studio:

"Unhinged" by Ani Hoover

"Executive Hopscotch"

"#13 Coming Wave" by Jozef Bajus (made out of tarpaper!!!)

"Underground Railroad"

neat yellow sculpture detail

Closed exhibit, Flower Blobs

Pretty flowers

Large gallery space. There are lots of neat spaces.

The sculpture to the right of the guitarist from A Hotel Nourishing is called "Planetary Array" by Marvin Bjurlin.

Another view of "Planetary Array"

There were performances in three spaces - the auditorium, the project space and the reception area. This is the project space.

Look up!

Admission prices & times (5 and under free, 6-18 & seniors $4, adults $7. Buff State faculty, staff, students free.)

Permalink: Your_New_Burchfield_Penney_.html
Words: 174
Location: Buffalo, NY

Category: museum

11/23/08 01:47 - 24ºF - ID#46803

burchfield-penny opening

I'm at the birchfield-penney opening watching A Hotel Nourishing (look 'em up on myspace). not bad at all... the drummer mentioned this gig to me when he was working the wegmans checkout line. I have video but can't figure out proper mobile posting so you'll have to wait till I get home and post pix and vid.

Permalink: burchfield_penny_opening.html
Words: 57
Location: Buffalo, NY

Category: work

11/19/08 04:43 - 29ºF - ID#46759

***bounce***

I just found out that a grant I've been working on for over TWO YEARS finally came through! Pa. Department of Conservation & Natural Resources has awarded $40,000 to Blossburg Borough for a skateboard park at Island Park. Yippeee!!!! (My grant total is now well over $135,000.)

Permalink: _bounce_.html
Words: 45
Location: Buffalo, NY

Category: movie

11/18/08 03:58 - 29ºF - ID#46746

Wed. night movie: The Forgotten City

Just a quick reminder...

Movie: The Forgotten City ***

Wednesday, Nov. 19, 6 p.m. - 8 p.m. Room 108 O'Brian Hall, UB North

The Forgotten City is a soul-stirring documentary taking place in Buffalo, New York, exploring race relations, segregation, crime, and politics. A discussion about race and poverty in the City of Buffalo to follow, lead by Carl Nightingale, Associate Professor of American Studies, and Jim Anderson, Chair of Citizen Action of WNY.

Pizza and pop will be served.

From Millersport Highway northbound, take the Flint entrance to UB North. Take the first left onto Flint Rd., then park in the parking lot right before the loop. Don't park in spots marked "clinic."

For more info:

(map point C:

)

All welcome. Hope to see you there!

Permalink: Wed_night_movie_The_Forgotten_City.html
Words: 171
Location: Buffalo, NY

11/15/08 12:49 - 49ºF - ID#46695

what a neat day

After Drew and I tugged & lugged a 4'x2'x3' cabinet up to my 3rd floor apartment (thank you, Drew!!!), I went to his church, did a tiny bit of work (there's no one assigned to envelope 515!) and abused my printing privileges, then went to school and listened to Ralph Nader. His lecture was specifically for law students so I didn't invite y'all.(The room was way over its posted 89-person limit, so crowded I had to sit on the floor!)

His assistant, Matt Z., invited us all to an "after party" at the Ukrainian Cultural Center DNIPRO

and only three students took him up on it, so here's a picture of the "after party"

There was kielbasa, pirogi, the yummy cabbage & noodle stuff, pigs in a blanket (the proper cabbage kind), sauerkraut. (Sorry, no specific food pix.) In the middle of it, he got out a pen and a piece of paper and started scribbling. Then he handed to me and said I needed to read this book:

A view of the ballroom of the Ukrainian Cultural Center with my friend Alisha checking it out.

Like I hadn't already been wishing I had my camera, I went to the Mass Appeal fashion show (see (e:drew,46663)) and wanted it very badly... to take pictures of a very hot (e:janelle), then to take pix of some jaw-droppingly goregous dresses and cute butts and one guy with some fantastic abs. Oh my. It was fun. The two pix I took with the Centro-cam are just blurry.

And then (e:tinypliny) equated Rahm Emanuel with Chanakya

too funny! As if my little mind needed more expanding today :-)

Tomorrow I'm going to the Women's Gifts art/craft show at Babeville. (School? I'm in school? huh.)

Permalink: what_a_neat_day.html
Words: 320
Location: Buffalo, NY

Category: movie

11/12/08 07:54 - 45ºF - ID#46667

The Forgotten City - moving showing

The UB Lawyers Guild is proud to present a screening of

THE FORGOTTEN CITY

Wednesday, November 19th
6 p.m
O'Brian 108, UB North Campus (by Flint Loop)

A discussion about race and poverty in the City of Buffalo to follow, lead by Carl Nightingale, Associated Professor of American Studies, and Jim Anderson, Chair of Citizen Action of WNY.

Pizza and pop will be served.

The Forgotten City is a soul stirring documentary taking place in Buffalo, New York, exploring race relations, segregation, crime, and politics.

This film is a personal journey of two young filmmakers who forged an unlikely partnership following a 2001 murder; one a friend of the victim and the other a friend of the murderer. Instead of waging war, they embarked on a documentary film project that would take them into the heart of Buffalo's most dispossessed communities and crime ridden streets. The result of their exploration is a documentary film with a raw, hard-hitting, and unblinking first-hand look at the way some live in America. This film brings to light the racial turmoil and economic hardships that have become the lifestyle of so many living in Buffalo's inner city.

The Forgotten City, however, is not simply a film about the problems that plague Buffalo's inner city; it can easily be the story of any American city and is a film that everyone should see.

All are welcome! ***

Permalink: The_Forgotten_City_moving_showing.html
Words: 229
Location: Buffalo, NY

Category: school

11/11/08 06:19 - 41ºF - ID#46650

Hypotheticals

In my criminal law class, we read a case from England in 1884 where four guys get shipwrecked and are floating about in the sea. One of them is pretty sick and there's no land or other ships in sight, it's been 10 days or so, so two of the guys decide to kill the sick one and eat him. Four days later they're picked up by a passing ship and stand trial for murder. (The fourth seems to protest the killing but eats the body anyway - he's not charged with murder.)

In the notes that follow the case in my book, this hypothetical is posed:

If three cancer researchers were adrift on a lifeboat with a skid-row drunk, would the researchers be justified in killing the drunk to advance social utility?

I had mentioned the hypothetical in the chatter partly because so many of you are or work with cancer researchers. I talked with (e:janelle) about it later that day and she wanted to know what the class discussion was like. I went to class the next day and the discussion was bizarre... one person said that the utilitarian would say to kill the drunk, a retributivist would say that's infringing on drunk's rights. Someone else said that it depends on who is assigning the values of the various people's lives ... what if it's nazis? what if it's the common US jury? many have suggested that in a survival situation that laws no longer apply.

Somehow an alternate hypothetical comes up - what if you're in the boat with Albert Einstein? Someone responds, "I'm vegetarian, but on this boat, I might be the first one to eat Albert Einstein because I'm so hungry!"

blink*

tinypliny writes at 08:37:21 11/12/08 - Comment #42027: You know, for all the politically correct "nuggets of wisdom" we come up with (like randomizing etc), Nature is NEVER politically correct. Nature is also very systematic - but we think its random because we don't know a majority of interactions that go into determining an outcome (any outcome).

Thus, we assume things are all stochastically happening (by sheer chance) - when in fact, it may all be part of one masterplan. We cannot see the big picture because our minds are thinking tiny. We are tiny. Our minds are limited by our severely limited experiences -as an individual, as a race, as citizens of a country, as members of a culture, as a species.

We hardly accept anything beyond our tiny spheres of knowledge. We are reactionary to new influences and thoughts. We don't like change but sing praises about it. Deep down, we find it easy to accept the dogma rather than the paradox. We don't want to be shoved off our complacent ledges.

To add "insult" (if you think change is superior to complacency) to the "injury" (if you think stasis of thoughts is not desirable), we label people who think out of the box as lunatics and view them with suspicion or even lock them away, supress them with force, block our ears and minds when they speak, sneer and jeer at them and judge them by our own insular thoughts and viewpoints.

But since we are politically correct, we also deny any such insularity actively. We want to tell others in our little society how broad-minded and culturally "rich" we are, how superior we are to that morass of the population that does't have the "polish" enough to project an external image that might be diametrically opposite to what they really think. In short, we are all hypocrites and snobs.

If you think about the various viewpoints, that (e:metalpeter) so creatively has thought about, you see a common thread in all of them - the greater good and selflessness. Sacrifice for greater good is a concept that "conventional" evolution rejects. However, newer research is bringing forth evidence that shows that the "sacrifice for the greater good" exists in some form of the other in natural evolution.

Several questions arise if we propound the greater good hypothesis.
a) Was this sacrifice for the greater good self-initiated?
b) Does it count as self-initiation if you killed/sacrificed yourself but were mentally egged on to that suicide by speech and/or body language/ mental processes/ thoughts conveyed to you by the society as a whole (yeah, the very same society that benefits from you dying).
c) Is it really any different from the weak being eliminated? In this case "selflessness" is a weak characteristic.

Things to think about....

@(e:ajay): Sure. That is why vegetarians universally get less (any form of) disease than carnivores.

heidi writes at 06:54:51 11/12/08 - Comment #42023: I love everyone's comments! The "right" answer is to have some randomizing process, draw straws, roll dice, to pick who gets killed & eaten. Seriously.

metalpeter writes at 06:29:19 11/12/08 - Comment #42021: Very interesting. I didn't read the entire first case from the link but I got the general point. I don't know as I would want to eat someone who was sick and with out cooking the meat that could have been deadly itself. The third guy couldn't have stopped the other two even if he tried and he didn't do anything wrong so I see why he wasn't tried.

In terms of the second case who says that the drunk isn't better then the Cancer Researchers. We hear that and assume they are good, but what if they are not good. Maybe the drunk from skid row stays out of peoples way and doesn't cause any problems, besides why kill the drunk he most likely has a bottle or two with him to use as weapons and besides how much of a drunk can he be if he got onto the boat on his own. I would say kill one of the cancer researchers because you have 3 of them. Hey maybe since they are supposed to be about saving others then one of them selves should give them selves up to save the other 3. That is unless of course some knows how to catch fish then that person can save everyone and stays alive at all cost.

ajay writes at 01:11:08 11/12/08 - Comment #42018: Kill the vegetarian. It's not like he's going to survive....

tinypliny writes at 07:30:37 11/11/08 - Comment #42001: From an evolutionary perspective, the weaker one is always the one to go/or preyed upon. The living species cannot advance without this tenet.

@jbeatty: Remember the hypothetical case of being stranded on an islad with the toothpaste and dal? (FYI, (e:mike) would eat the toothpaste) Well, here you have no choice, either you eat the sick, or die. If you too weasly about the scenario, then techhnically, and mentally, you are the weak one and the others with a different mental make-up would eliminate you.

paul writes at 07:25:17 11/11/08 - Comment #42000: I think I would trick and kill the strongest one. They probably taste way better.

jbeatty writes at 06:27:48 11/11/08 - Comment #41999: Eating the sick one just sounds like a bad idea. When I go to Wegmans I certainly don't look for the piece of beef that looks grey.

Permalink: Hypotheticals.html
Words: 294
Location: Buffalo, NY