I really wouldn't give the Crisco the credit. Anything made from ingredients is likely to taste better than a box cake, but I'd bet the same recipe with butter subbed in for Crisco would be better still. Nothing wrong with Crisco, but it's flavorless, and butter actually tastes good.
(Crisco does have a real function in pie crust, where the fact that its melting point is higher than butter's makes it much easier to work, but that doesn't do anything for you in a cake.)
Credit could still be given to the "plenty of" part.
I think Crisco gived baked goods a slightly different consistency. For dry crispy cookies, all butter is best. For soft moist cookies, subbing half the butter for Crisco works well. Putting Crisco in buttercream frosting (to avoid the yellow color) is gross.
Saw the post title and thought for sure there was going to be some reference to Labs' colon.
Except the part where I conjugated the verb.
Except I never tried using half Crisco. But Crisco does give a certain something that you can't get without the partial hydrogenation.
Half leaves you with buttery flavor. All Crisco is less delicious.
Lard makes a very nice ginger snap; I've never tried it with a less strong-tasting cookie.
And WTF on Paula Deen. It's not that I'm surprised that people are racist, I'm just surprised that they say things like that out loud, rather than inside their heads.
I wasn't too shocked that Paula Deen turned out to be a disgusting and repugnant human being in many ways, instead of just a few ways.
Stalking Paula Deen would be an excellent way to fight racism.
Crisco also works well as a drill bit lubricant, if you're trying to drill concrete with an underpowered drill. Makes the place smell like a bakery, though.
I'm just surprised that they say things like that out loud
She's 65 and grew up in southern Georgia. I'm not surprised at all.
I'm just surprised that they say things like that out loud
She's 65 and grew up in southern Georgia. I'm not surprised at all.
65 just isn't that old. She was twenty in 1967, with most of the dramatic events of the Civil Rights movement having happened in her teens. And she's been a media personality for decades, not living under a rug someplace.
23: I know a restarauteur of that era who hired only middle-aged black male waiters because her restaurant had a plantation theme. Another who wouldn't hire blacks as waiters at all, since the white customers wouldn't like being served by a black. In my own restaurant days, I was asked to tell job applicants that the position was filled if that person "sounded black" on the phone. (I didn't do it.)
Racist dog-whistling is for TV appearances. Overt racism is what you get in private. I haven't really been following the Deen situation, but I'm pretty sure she's being called out on language and actions that took place in a relatively private space.
Oh hey, four out of the five "notable cases" in the wiki entry on segregated proms are counties in GA and all are from this century. Seriously, totally not surprising that an old white woman from an area like that drops the n word a lot in private.
Deen got fired for racism but Ina Garten kills a hobo and the Food Network sends Alton Brown to hide the body with his props.
Can I request a front-page post about Vlad Putin's theft of Bob Kraft's Super Bowl ring? It's my favorite news story in many, many years. And it keeps getting better.
Yes, it's so wonderful. It's kind of like Vladimir Putin IS Dave Chappelle's Rick James. "I can kill people with this ring, bitch!"
The latest is the best. "Yes, I have your ring, little Jew. No, you cannot have it back. Instead, to quiet your shameful mewling, I shall have my minions craft you a new ring of the finest metals and stones. Now leave me in peace. I have an empire to reconstruct and virgins to deflower."
Maybe you should write it as a guest post?
Maybe you should write it as a guest post?
Paula Deen admitted to describing some black guy who robbed the bank she was working in the N word in conversation with her husband and to using the word additional times "a long time ago"
http://www.scribd.com/fullscreen/148813272?access_key=key-1bwrp0z47fo5v3xlbcs7&allow_share=true
My guess is that her kids gave her shit about it so she stopped.
Perhaps Ms. Deen was simply an avid N.W.A. fan.
Has she pulled out the, "But black people say it all the time in their rap music!" defense yet?
God I fucking hate O'Hare.
So the problem is Chicago in general?
Why did my iPhone just try to correct that to chic ago?
I like Midway, possibly because if I am there, I am on Southwest instead of United's regional junior - plane.
JetBlue is being awesome, though- they went through the gate giving out drinks and chips.
And just made a hockey joke. "We welcome pre boarding for all true blue, extra space, and Blackhawks fans."
Jet Blue doesn't go anywhere useful.
Four of the last five places I've had to go- Chicago, Orlando, DC, San Diego. Not Berlin.
The FAA-mandated preflight safety video that Delta is doing is actually pretty good these days. It has nice subtle features, like the flight attendant wearing different earrings for no reason in different frames, etc. I mean it's no Vladimir Putin stealing a ring from a rich, weak man, but we have to take our pleasures where we find them.
I'm never on planes new enough to have those video screens.
26-28,44: And that's why Putin's easily the most interesting dictator or leader of an illiberal democracy alive today. The man has style. He's a walking James Bond villain. No one comes close.
The FAA-mandated preflight safety video that Delta is doing is actually pretty good these days. It has nice subtle features, like the flight attendant wearing different earrings for no reason in different frames, etc.
I noticed that too on the way down to ABQ last weekend. Lots of subtle visual jokes, etc. Way better than the boring ones United and American have.
Back when I occasionally saw the Food Network, one of Paula Deen's sons set off my gaydar.
Also how had I never seen the very adorable Derp Cow? I laughed and laughed.
48 was me. People always knows when it's me, though, no matter how obscure a president I choose.
That was a first- we were late so the terminal was closed so no one was manning the "don't even think of coming in this way" doors which were locked and alarmed. The flight crew had to call someone to let us out. Which then made me miss the bus by 30 seconds so I have to wait 20 min for the next one. I bet the fare will be five dollars.
A bus from O'Hare, this late at night? That doesn't sound like it could be pleasant.
Oh, I guess you were at O'Hare earlier in the day.
Once I decided that the right way to deal with a problem at O'Hare is, as soon as they tell you something's wrong with your flight, go book a room in the O'Hare Hilton, call the airline from there and reschedule onto a flight for the next day, and then get a good night's sleep. Any other option involves waiting in lines for hours and being exhausted for no good reason.
For the ride to O'Hare earlier I got a ride in a stretch limo. Except I discovered that sitting sideways makes me car sick. First world problems indeed. Now it's the silver line which is sadly lacking a minibar.
If it did have a minibar, someone would be spilling drinks on you.
Some college kids just got on who look like they might spill partially digested drinks on me.
Must have been at the brewery, one has a growler of Harpoon. I wonder if he'd pour me some. If I had a glass.
And the girl looks strikingly similar to my wife. I'd illustrate but it's probably rude to take her picture.
The girl's picture. I have many pictures of my wife.
Now I'm going to bike home at midnight because I thought yesterday it would be a good idea to leave my bike at work and pick it up after a trip to Chicago.
62:
I have a recurring dream where that happens to me, usually it's raining. I don't even have a bike.
Fat-soluble flavors!!!11!!!!
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I HAVE SEEN BISCUIT SCABLANDS!
Much closer to a major highway than I knew was possible! I have photos! But not timeseries, alas.
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It's not that I'm surprised that people are racist, I'm just surprised that they say things like that out loud, rather than inside their heads.
A sentiment I often share. But no. In this case I actually am shocked by the racism. The idea that racists exist who fantasize about a dozen southern plantation wedding served by an all black staff with tap-dancing "little n*****s"... Yeah, that goes far enough to shock me.
Huh? Something going on with commenting? Just tried to comment and got ba message that my comment is being held for questioning or something...
Following 18, I worked with a gay guy who one day proudly placed a large tub of Crisco on his desk. He had never displayed any fondness for baking previously, so naturally we enquired as to its use. He explained it was to lubricate his drill bit that very evening.
Half Crisco also makes pie crusts crisp and flakey. An all-butter crust tastes good, but often has a soggy or dense texture, and it's more delicate to work with.
What's the brand name for Crisco in the rest of the world? I've no idea what this thread is talking about.
77: Cookeen, I think, in the UK anyway.
77 - hydrogenated vegetable oil, shortening
Re: 77
Trex, I think would be similar.
78-82. I think I'll stick to butter, then.
People, Canola Oil is really RAPE seed oil. That's a warning and an indication. Don't do it.
Or, worse, its RAPE seed oil that was then rebranded -- in the 80s!! -- As CANADIAN OIL or CANOLA. Just say no to this monstrous frankenfood.
Canola isn't Crisco. Crisco is re-branded, but it used to be known as "Mind-blowing Consensual Sex Oil."
Sorry: Mind-blowing consensual sex room-temperature solid fat.
As CANADIAN OIL or CANOLA. Just say no to this monstrous frankenfood.
Worse, its made from tar sands, which is terrible for the environment.
Apparently, Crisco was an acronym for "crystallized cottonseed oil." The pie crust recipe my wife uses (which she got her mother) calls for "Spry" a competing product sold by Lever Brothers and marketed by Aunt Jenny. "With Spry, we can afford to have cake oftener!" (Not sure what it was cheaper in comparison to what specifically--the cook book at the link claims Spry costs far less than expensive cake shortening, so probably not just cheaper than Crisco. According to Wikipedia Spry is apparently still available in Cyprus.
Crisco has changed composition over the years--it is not your grandmother's Crisco.
This talk of vegetable shortening reminds me, it's nearly time for Fourth of July Heritage Loaf.
45 - Saparmurat Niyazov is dead and Kirsan Ilyumzhinov has stepped down to follow his true love, becoming the chess world's god-emperor, so this is probably true, but isn't this something like saying that you're the world's best heavyweight boxer these days? It's a sadly depleted world for eccentric dictators and quasi-dictators.
I'm still a little surprised whenever some exponent of the New South gets caught slinging the words of hate. Have they seen a bunch of examples, that escaped the rest of us, where the "heritage" and "I'm set in my ways" excuses actually worked, and the exposed speakers' lives weren't utterly destroyed?
Also, racial slurs are not something the Big J would approve of. I don't know why the South's ecclesiasts don't mention that in the odd sermon.
93: I suspect somewhere in the last 300 years they've managed to reconcile Christianity and racism.
OT: Dear statistics people, is there a phrase that's technically equivalent to "sampling from the posterior" but won't look to the casual reader like it means "I pulled this answer out of my ass"? Or maybe that's just me.
93.1: presumably lots of them, just mostly contained within the south and interactions between people in the south.
94: a ways farther back than that if David Hackett Fischer is to be believed.
"Value derived from a careful application of Bayesian aspirational heuristics."
Does just adding "distribution" help? I feel like that's how I usually see it- "sampling from the posterior distribution".
But I don't usually see it in anything written with a casual reader in mind, I guess, so I don't know if there's another standard phrase.
If you say "posterior distribution", everyone will read it as "fat ass".
Poopling from the posterior asstribution.
101: Yeah, I guess that's slightly harder to misread. I really don't know what I mean by "casual reader", anyway, or really what kind of readers I have in mind. This is for my stupid crackpot dinosaur project.
Reading 93 more carefully, I think E. Messily is right.
Yes. Nice!! When does the dinosaur come back to life, and will it be just a little rampaging or a lot rampaging?
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My favorite part of this story:
"So I messaged [Russell Westbrook] on Facebook earlier in the week and just made in bold print the words "marriage proposal" because I'm sure he gets a lot of messages I wanted it to jump out.
My second favorite is the hashtags: #marryhim #Whynot
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Damn, now it is really raining. [I was just about to post this last night when the power went out and half the big maple fell down.]
Till an hour ago -- I walked to work to charge my phone, about 80% of the cross streets had a huge tree down. Allegedly some people here might not see power on again until Tuesday, but Xcel has a history of underpromising and overdelivering, so I am hopeful that it won't be that long for too many folx. Here is a photo gallery from the Strib. Basically this is what every street in town looks like:
http://www.startribune.com/local/212605371.html
110 would have been about 6 pm, Unfogged Standard Time.
I wish I had a crackpot dinosaur project...
The beauty of crackpotism is that anyone can try their hand at it.
I'm quite glad to hear essear is pursuing the dinosaur thing.
Have you seen the paper where they try to work out which asteroids are remnants of the collision that also resulted in the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs?
Have you seen the paper where they try to work out which asteroids are remnants of the collision that also resulted in the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs?
What's the crackpot dinosaur project? And can I help?
The thread where he initially discussed it seems to have vanished into the hoohole, or maybe I'm not using the right search terms to find it.
I don't think it requires a car, though.
At the risk of being overly paranoid, could the phrase on the right-hand side of 106 be googleproofed? Such googleproofing is presumably why teo didn't find the earlier thread.
Oops. I thought of doing that, slightly after it would have been useful for me to think of doing that.
BIRD POOP == GOD FARTS
117: I haven't. Do you have a link?
There's some interesting work trying to identify certain craters as forming from a single impact event when a meteor broke into pieces (like Shoemaker-Levy 9 did when it impacted Jupiter). The Boltysh crater formed around the same time as the Chicxulub crater that's thought to be associated with the dinosaur extinction, but there are claims that they were not simultaneous, because there's evidence of an intervening layer of plant growth between the geological layers associated with the two impacts. This is moderately weird, since the two events would be timed to have happened much closer together than the typical spacing between large impact craters, although it's not extremely statistically improbable either. I don't know if there's a scenario like one object breaking into pieces that hit the Earth thousands of years apart that might explain it. I haven't had much success so far with trying to Google up more detailed references on what people think about this.
To the OP, I've recently been reading "Baking In America", and it has a number of notes about shortening, and the "shortening wars of the early 20th century". One sidebar features the 1920 marketing claim of Snowdrift shortening, that it has the "highest possible food value", at 4050 calories per pound, higher than butter (3450), bacon (3030), or sugar (1860). Having checked my pantry, modern Crisco clocks in at 1760 calories per pound.
Tentatively it looks like the conclusion of my crackpot project is there's not much statistical evidence in favor of the hypothesis, although if later measurements confirmed that the Milky Way has a dar/k di/sk of a certain approximate thickness (unlikely, to be honest, but not impossible), that might change the prior distribution enough that the evidence could become moderately compelling.
114: You could run with the random matrix thing you proposed in the previous thread.
So I just read this post over at Unqualified Offerings and was thinking "whoa, when did Thoreau start writing like that?" but: it's by Jim Henley. 'Twould be nice if he would start blogging again.
122: don't be silly. Of course essear needs a car. How's he going to get to the party at Karen Blazer's house without a car?
130: it seems telling that the smartest libertarians eventually become something else.
Google isn't helping with my not getting 131.
If you don't know Karen Blazer, I have no interest in collaborating with you.
Or maybe you didn't grow up in Shaker Heights, Ohio in the 80s. One or the other.
"An Asteroid Breakup 160 My Ago as the Probable Source of the K-T Impactor" is the article. Though apparently there's been some later research disagreeing.
128: That's too bad. It was a fun hypothesis.
The SLC airport is kind of meh, but it has some pretty good beer.
(On topic because essear.)
Crisco is approved by FFA. I have even heard, from a semi-reliable source, that you used to be able to buy embroidered leather Crisco covers through FFA.
No self-respecting crackpot would give up for lack of compelling statistical evidence.
"Knitted crisco cover" doesn't turn up anything.
L'affaire Paula Deene caused me to be perhaps a bit dickish to a friend. I just...I guess I'm not incredibly surprised that the whole thing occasioned a round of coastal anthem "Racists Only Exist in the South!" but it bugs me when it happens anyway.
She's from Savannah, which is coastal.
I watched a bunch of Food Network when the baby was new. She married a tug boat captain/mall Santa.
So I just read this post over at Unqualified Offerings and was thinking "whoa, when did Thoreau start writing like that?" but: it's by Jim Henley. 'Twould be nice if he would start blogging again.
Yeah. "Calling shotgun on a right-wing road trip" is such a great line.
141: I feel like the racism-as-warm-nostalgia thing is particularly (a certain kind of) southern.
Does Henley's blog still take the "Center for Union Facts" ads?
This is moderately weird, since the two events would be timed to have happened much closer together than the typical spacing between large impact craters, although it's not extremely statistically improbable either.
MY CONSCIENCE IS CLEAR. GIVEN THE SAME SET OF INFORMATION, WHICH UNFORTUNATELY DID NOT INCLUDE THE MASS-DRIVER CAPABIILITY OF WOLF 359, I WOULD MAKE THE FIRST-STRIKE DECISION AGAIN IN AN INSTANT.
Henley's blog is now a blog devoted to someone other than Henley complaining about his colleagues and students in a university science department. It was a very gradual transition, oddly.
142: I 'm pretty sure her childhood stories had it as Albany, Georgia which is where Shirley Sherrod was from. If only there were some way to check.
127
Crisco is 100% fat, so it has the standard 9 calories per gram or 4100 calories per pound, which is the maximum for foods. Butter is slightly lower thanks to a small amount of water and protein.
I feel like the racism-as-warm-nostalgia thing is particularly (a certain kind of) southern.
If you watch this totally awesome video, Paula will tell you the South was less prejudiced because black people were like family. This is after we learn that after the war and all his slaves left, her grandfather went out into the barn and shot himself. The other great moment is
"I have a young man in my life, and his name is Hollis Johnson, and he's black as that board,"..."Come out here, Hollis -- we can't see you standing against that dark board,"
I am assuming that essear's question about finding where a specific place on the earth was at some point in the past is somehow related to his dinosaur theory. (Or maybe just in illustrating it.)
152: I was trying to figure out the relative location of a set of impact craters dated to about the same age (wondering if they might have all arisen from a single impact of an object that broke into pieces).
And speaking of them there dinosaurs, the following is something that crystallized for me sometime after the urple/dinosaur/birds thread. Besides the entertaining but low sport of "correcting" urple, I found it to be an interesting if frustrating discussion of the ins and outs of the statement "birds are dinosaurs." My position was best represented by the Mike Taylor discussion that urple found and linked in comment 497 as well as x.trapnel's 261 and essear in 551, I kind of think the broader, more cladistically correct definition of "dinosaur" should be cause to coin a new word.
Anyway, so I think the term would be best kept for the evolutionary grade excluding birds and that if folks want to follow strict phylogenetic nomenclature* they should go for a new term. All of that is basically in the thread, but if you down the cladistic path, I think there is a legitimate question on why the focus on the one clade rather than "birds are archosaurs" or "bird are theropods", or what have you among the vast number of nested possible taxa (traditional formal "ranks" are not so useful the current spirit of things). Dinosauria, which was described in the decade before Darwin's Origin from a handful of fossils, does not correspond to that interesting of a place to draw the line paleontologically (to me anyway, other than historically). I'd actually vote for the Archosauromorphs as being more interesting to kids and lay people as it brings in the Pteranodons and Plesiosaurs.
*Which has various non-obvious wrinkles arising from things like species not necessarily being clades (need to also include any and all descendant species--which for a few "lucky" species can be a whole lot of other species). Also see "Paraphyletic Taxa Should be Accepted" for other concerns.
Shorter 154: The "birds are dinosaurs" fanboyism in that thread is all well and good, but rather quaint and touching in a '90s kind of way.
I also like that phylogenetically-speaking, "My Mother is a Fish" is strictly correct*.
*Other than being dead**.
**And a fictional character.
There's a Creation Museum "We're taking dinosaurs back!" bumper sticker that that always springs to mind when the urple dinosaur discussion comes up.
157: As I noted in that thread, if you go full in on the "birds are dinosaurs" construction then humans and dinosaurs have co-existed.
158: Basically I'm just looking for an excuse to send essear a Creation Museum bumper sticker, but I don't want to actually have to buy one and so it's all very meta or something.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGYAAsHT4QE
I'm sure I linked this is the other thread. It's called for again. (The wife is stuck in Denver, doing battle United . . .)
160: Scrape one off a car somewhere.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYA16z2-xFg
More dinosaur music.
I think the term would be best kept for the evolutionary grade excluding birds and that if folks want to follow strict phylogenetic nomenclature* they should go for a new term.
That sounds reasonable enough, and in line with the other examples of evolutionary grades cited in the article you link (reptiles, amphibians, etc.), although it's not very clear to me how useful these grades are for actual biological research. As a way of semi-formalizing the folk understanding of taxonomy, though, having "dinosaurs" refer to the grade seems good enough, and the formal clade can be called "dinosaurians" or whatever.
I think there is a legitimate question on why the focus on the one clade rather than "birds are archosaurs" or "bird are theropods", or what have you among the vast number of nested possible taxa
Well, because we already knew that. It's the fact that they belong within the dinosaur(ian) clade that is new and exciting information.
165.last. Fair enough. Although the theropod thing I think is as new as the dinosaur one (to the extent that most theropods were accepted as dinosaurs from way back when).
Although the theropod thing I think is as new as the dinosaur one (to the extent that most theropods were accepted as dinosaurs from way back when).
Oh yeah, right.
165: although it's not very clear to me how useful these grades are for actual biological research.
Well, is it useful to study the totality of bony fish without including humans? But yes, the stricter definitions are often of more interest to researchers who are usually looking at some small specific part of any evolutionary tree--but excluding sub-clades that go off to pursue a whole new "way of life" will sometimes be the ticket for broader surveys.
I enjoy that the baking fat thread turned into evolutionary biology.
Dinos aside, the Rules portion of the PhyloCode might be a potentially interesting read for some in its attempt to come up with a logically-coherent scheme for slicing and dicing the tree of life. I particularly like Note 2.1.2. It is not necessary that all clades be named. Well, no fucking shit, since, In this code, a clade is an ancestor (an organism, population, or species) and all of its descendants. (The Nine Billion Names of God comes to mind.)
Everything turns into evolutionary biology, historical linguistics (and/or the movements of Polynesians), or bicycles, in the end.
Everything used to turn into food or bicycles, I think.
historical linguistics (and/or the movements of Polynesians)
I actually only remember one thread that ended up this way. It was a good one, though.
That was one of my all-time favorite threads.
It can be interesting to look at Punctuated Equilibrium (a theory where Gould and Dawkins/Dennett faced off) in light of the stuff on classifications, cladistics and all that. It's all basically about sorting out this one monstrous directed graph for which you have genetic and behavioral/ecological evidence from today's surviving species and extremely spotty and uneven traces from the past. The last part of the Burgess Shale Wikipedia article gets into some of the "interactions" between the two subjects.
Well, the "original" thread actually migrated from one post to another. I misremembered the discussion here as picking up on it again.
Huh, weird. That was me. Original thread one, two.
At least I made a shit joke and a math error in that thread.
I continue to find this exchange pleasing.
177: Thanks. I only found "two", and it was clear it was a continuation.
Huh, I had forgotten that there were multiple threads involved.
I did eventually read that Dene-Yeniseian book. I found the evidence it presents for the hypothesis pretty convincing.
182: Relatively extensive discussion on Wikipedia of the proposed grouping. Liked this:
As alluded to by Fortescue's comment, scientific investigations of long-range language family relationships have been complicated by an ideological dispute between the so-called "lumpers" and "splitters", with "lumpers" caricatured as bumbling amateurs willing to group together disparate, unrelated families based on chance resemblances and the "splitters" caricatured as rigid enforcers of orthodoxy willing to "shout down" researchers who disagree with their belief that long-range connections are impossible to establish.
183: That's a good summary of the situation, yeah. Both caricatures are pretty accurate, IMO. Vajda tries to explicitly chart a sort of middle option; I'm still unsure how convincing I find it.
166, 167: Further to the therapod thing, I think I'm more sympathetic to constructions like "birds are therapods", "birds are coelurosaurs", or even more restrictive classifications but ones which do still reflect very early history when the most relevant differentiating characteristics were evolving.
I think in the end my mild plaint comes down to "Why are dinosaurs even still a thing other than for pop culture and historical reasons?"
We never did solve the sweet potato thing.
I'm certain marshmallows are involved in that solution.
|| Does anyone feel like joining me in hating United Airlines? Wife's flight out of Denver cancelled -- after postponing it an hour at a time (4 times), getting everyone on the plane, taxiing around for 20 minutes, and deciding the crew was timed out. Thus taking it past midnight, making hotel room getting very difficult (because not only are online sites designed for arrival before midnight, so are the centralized booking operations. You have to call each individual hotel to find out if they have a room. You and hundreds of your new friends, because United apparently never cancels just one flight.) Just the thing after a transatlantic flight, which itself only began after a 3 hour drive to the airport. Oh, and none of the four flights from Denver today have any open seats: which ought to be something a decent airline would think about when cancelling flights on account of crews . . . |>
Hating on United is massively overdetermined.
Can't wait to see what antics those wacky kids at the Supreme Court will get up to today. If any of the biggies comes down might warrant a post.
There's always the shower/grower thing, but I'd say there are 5 cases left that are not biggies (Sekhar, Kebodeaux, Bartlett, Koontz, Descamps) so maybe it's a few days early to be putting on team colors (as a few in my FB feed have already done this morning.
Actually 7 -- I don't think most folks would consider either of the Title VII cases -- Vance (sexual harassment) or Nasser (retaliation) -- to be a big deal at this point.
So 4 that are big: ShelbyCo (Voting Rights); Fisher (AA); Baby Girl (IWCA); Hollingsworth/Windsor (SSM).
I think we'll most likely get a biggie, especially if you include Baby Girl as a biggie. Cert was just granted in the recess appointments case but that's no surprise.
193.Cert was just granted in the recess appointments case but that's no surprise.
Is this though? In addition to the questions presented by the petition, the parties are directed to brief and argue the following question: Whether the President's recess-appointment power may be exercised when the Senate is convening every three days in pro forma sessions.
Hating United is always the right thing to do. And as long as I'm near a computer, I'm happy to throw up a thread when the court does anything major.
I had a theory that the more nationalistic/grandiose the name of the airline, the worse the service. Then somebody tried to explain about Delta to me, but that's their problem.
Obviously, Koontz and Kebodeaux are biggies, to plenty of (different!) people, in ways that Baby Girl is not. We'll know in a few minutes.
194: Yeah, I think that is a little surprising, and potentially troubling, but I can't remember exactly how the petition queued things up so I'm not sure what to make of it.
Vance is first. IANYL, but I guess you can feel free to sexually harass your coworkers.
177: Ooh, now I can actually access the banana paper.
Subordinate cow-orkers, that is.
Is that a banana paper in my pocket or are you just a subordinate cow-orker that I'm now free to sexually harass?
And Bartlett, which is tort liability (non-liability) for generic drugs.
Oh, this is great. So, again, "The banana as a key to early American and Polynesian history," by Robert Langdon.
Far-ranging European travellers reported seeing bananas in various parts of Asia from about the early 14th century. John de Marignolli, a Franciscan from Bohemia, gave an accurate account of them in Sri Lanka at this time---in a manuscript that remained unpublished until 1768. According to him, they were known in Sri Lanka as 'figs'. Anyone slicing one would find the figure of a man crucified on either side of the cut.
Um, yeah, "accurate". Right.
Kebodeaux. Upholding sex offender registration.
Looks like NMM to UT's affirmative action plan.
Or maybe not that bad actually, but still bad. Too lenient a standard applied by the lower courts, so they're sending it back.
7-1. That's not very encouraging.
Apparently the Tahitians had 28 words for "banana".
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I may have to stop listening to The Now Show on the subway. Normally it's mildly amusing while I knit, but listening to Friday's show this morning had me making embarrassing snorting noises with tears running down my face. Political satire I can retain my dignity through just fine, but marine mammals are a real problem.
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Nassar is the last one for today. Another win for Corporate America, bringing the score for today to 3-0 over Ordinary Folks.
209-10: Much less bad than it could have been. At least on a first read, the focus on the court of appeals' "error" in presuming the university's good faith looks really narrow. Not moving in the right direction, but only a small incremental move in the wrong direction.
(Breyer and Sotomayor both joined Kennedy's opinion, and I assume he went out of his way to get their votes -- especially Sotomayor's.)
Now I really want to know why it took so long, though. This could have been done in two months. We'll have to wait until someone's papers are released before we know what the first draft looked like.
So if I followed that, Langdon's claim is that Polynesians arriving on bamboo rafts introduced bamboo to Ecuador, and that there's linguistic evidence from common words for "bamboo". Then the Ecuadorians went in the other direction on rafts to Eastern Polynesia and introduced sweet potatoes and bananas. Seems complicated.
I don't know about complicated, but that way involves a lot of extra travel. The bamboo guys could have just grabbed the potatoes and bananas.
215: I've only skimmed the opinion, and certainly not as bad as it could have been but pretty bad I think. No deference at all on implementation of AA plans and whether they're sufficiently narrow. At the very least an invitation to put every affirmative action plan out there into endless litigation.
Wikipedia says bananas were introduced to South America by Portuguese sailors, without noting any controversy. Perhaps this Robert Langdon is just a crank.
220: like the fictional one.
Bananas: The original fictional crank.
I agree with 219.
On a first quick read, the Title VII decisions, especially taken as a whole, look to be far more significant as a real-world matter than Fisher.
For example, I'm not an employment lawyer, but it looks like Title VII retaliation claims just got to be somewhere between tough and ridiculously tough.
Oh, great, opinions tomorrow, and that may not be the end. Limited time to stand the suspense of wondering whether lawyers employed by the state of New York have a property interest in their advice.
219: I thought a straight reversal (not vacatur and remand) was a likely outcome so maybe my expectations were just lower.
I haven't read the Title VII decisions yet. Probably not a coincidence that they were released on the same day that Fisher will consume all the media commentary with discussions about how the Justices were able to find "narrow grounds for consensus" on a controversial issue.
Renowned crank Robert Langdon awoke from his afternoon nap in his lushly-appointed office and peeled a banana. "'Paratana' to the natives of Ecuador," the forty-seven-year-old balding man mused aloud, "whereas the trunk of the banana tree is 'polata' in Tongan." The renowned man smiled in satisfaction before biting into the curved yellow fruit.
215: Right, this doesn't look necessarily all that terrible to me. Honestly, it looks like the circuits could take it and run in different directions with it -- I wouldn't be surprised, ten years down the road, with a severe circuit split, with Fisher standing for 'strict in theory, fatal in practice' some circuits, and not changing anything much at all in others.
Haven't read the title VII cases yet, but anything changing the standard on retaliation is the rare SC case that's actually professionally important for me. Something that tightens up the standard to make retaliation claims hard to bring is something I probably disapprove of, but it'll make my life easier.
224: Got a link? I'm having trouble finding Nassar.
217: I'm not buying this banana business. I still think sweet potatoes coud be key. Wake up, teo!
Sweet potato seeds could have been carried by swallow. They're probably smaller than a coconut.
234: That already came up three years ago, Moby. Keep up!
I may have to stop listening to The Now Show on the subway. Normally it's mildly amusing while I knit, but listening to Friday's show this morning had me making embarrassing snorting noises with tears running down my face.
Huh. I normally find something intangible about the Now Show deeply annoying and often smug, which makes me reluctant to sit through it for the few gems that are usually in there.
Yes, we have no banana thread? Oh well.
236: Being kind of vague on UK politics probably makes it sound cleverer to me -- that is, half the jokes it's a strain to figure out what they're talking about, which probably wouldn't apply if I were better informed. But the bit that had me making helpless snuffling noises wasn't political at all, but, as I said, more marine-mammal based.
A carnivorous marine mammal might be willing and able carry a sweet potato from South American to a Pacific Island. Obviously, a herbivorous one would just eat it.
I haven't read the banana article, but based on essear's comments I'm not convinced.
Perhaps this "Now Show" can fill the void in my life that was left by the disappearance of the Best Of The Chris Moyles Show Podcast.
241: You'll never become a successful crackpot with that attitude.
