Hixter

Yet, I'm not sure waving a confederate flag is the best way to clear up misconceptions.

True, but I'm also not sure that banning or removing every instance of an historical flag as a knee-jerk reaction to a single case of racism is the best way to further racial harmony in our nation.

The Confederate flag was not misappropriated.

It was by European white supremacists, and that's what I referred to.

I don't really feel like a southerner, but I've lived the majority of my life in the south. The impression that I've always gotten from people who display the Stars and Bars hasn't been one of racism, rather a little bit of heritage/history and a whole lot of "up yours, Yankees." I see the south and southerners maligned almost daily -- Florida Man, Texas sucks (except Austin), redneck bible-thumping hillbillies, etc. and I think most people just see it as an "I'm proud to be a southerner" statement rather than "I'm a racist."

the Confederate Flag is used by neo-Nazis in European countries where the Swastika is banned. Why? Is it part of the heritage? No. It symbolizes hate.

And that points out how symbols can be (mis)appropriated. What if a group of white supremacists decided that WILCO was an acronym for White Ideologues Lynching Colored Occupiers and started wearing the band's shirts? It would symbolize hate and racism, but would that mean that the band's name and imagery should be banned? No, and I'm sure the band would come up with a clever way to reclaim their "brand" while denouncing the racists. I'm sure the same thing could be done with the Stars and Bars. Perhaps rework it in traditional African colors with a "You Lost" banner underneath? African Americans have done a pretty good job of reclaiming the N-word...

btw Hixter, do you have attribution for this? not saying you're wrong but i've never heard of such a figure.

http://www.slavevoyages.org/tast/assessment/estimates.faces

if you don't believe the flag is racist then you are an idiot

I don't believe that a piece of cloth can be racist. 

the funny thing about Skynyrd, at least from how I see it, is that the Ronnie-led band was far less about god, guns and glory and the trappings of the stars and bars than what Johnny's got going on. 

And no, I don't think they were racists.

But when you display it, you are a racist.

Nope. And you're not a racist just because you watch a Lynyrd Skynyrd video or a Dukes of Hazzard episode. But I'll agree that the whole thing is yet another example of politicians needing to be seen as "doing something" after a tragedy.

From Facebook:

We regret to announce that due to US State Dept. Visa issues, King Sunny Ade must cancel his performance at the Solid Sound Festival this Sunday (as well as numerous other US dates).

Download the revised three-day schedule here:http://bit.ly/Schedule_SSF15

With the Taj Mahal cancelation, that's two of my must-sees down the drain.

Perhaps this should go in the craft beer thread, but it also pertains to SS, so what the heck...

United changed my flights after I'd already booked them, so I'm looking at a 5-hour layover at O'Hare Thursday morning from 8:45 until 1:45. I obviously need to be sober when I arrive in Albany that evening, but I figure I'll kill some time and a few beers at the airport. It looks like there's a small, unexceptional Goose Island bar near my gate in Concourse C, but I'm willing to trek across the airport (Is that even possible?) in search of a better location for decent beer and food. 

Any suggestions?

if i get some more, i'll bring a Trillium for you.

 

the dry hopped Congress St IPA is simply the best beer i've ever had.

That would be fantastic! I've been wanting to try their beers. As I've said before, my friends in Brookline are friends with the owners and I attempted to schedule a last minute meetup at Solid Sound for a beer transfer, but it seems my friends are in Iceland at the moment. Maybe next time.

The beer selection at Solid Sound is decent, but it would be so cool if they could wrangle up some of the legendary breweries in Vermont and Massachusetts and have a world class beer concession for the weekend. It'd save me several hundred miles of driving every other year.  

With Solid Sound right around the corner, I'd like to ask Vermont residents for any tips or tricks for locating some beer to bring back home. It was easy to pick up as many cases of Heady Topper as I wanted during SS 2013, but now that the brewery isn't open to the public it seems a lot trickier. I've looked at delivery schedules and locations for The Alchemist and Lawson's; I've also checked out the retail store hours for bottles and growlers at Hill Farmstead. Looks like I'll be making a major road trip from my hotel in Wilmington to Montpelier and the surrounding area Friday morning.

I'll gladly listen to any suggestions that would make my quest easier. And if any of you have ready access to the holy grail (or other worthy contenders) I'd be happy to swap any beer that I can find here in Texas.

Cheers!

The footage that rolled as the cover song played reminded me to make sure that I pick up my water bottles and beer cups before I leave the field next weekend.

I downloaded the 1080 file but I bet that doesn't sync up with iTunes. Do any of you know if any of the available formats will be able to sync up with your iTunes library?

I don't use iTunes for anything other than music, but I'm playing the downloaded file with Plex and it works fine.

Has anyone figured out how / if you can download it if you've purchased it? I've purchased it and I can see it in the VOD section but I can't figure out how / if I can download it. While 99.9% of the time I'll just stream it to my TV, I want a copy to archive in case Vimeo ever removes it. I've seen purchases disappear in other media and don't want to see this happen with this since I don't have a physical DVD / Blu-Ray.

It's a 1.5 GB .mp4 file.

Good points. I also really love a good pilsner with lots of flowery hops.

I'm also a big fan of British beers; they've done a great job of packing a lot of flavor into

Bitterness and hop flavor and aroma aren't necessarily linked, but they should be in a balanced beer. It's easy to brew a super-bitter beer with no hop aroma or flavor by just throwing all the hops in at the start of the boil. It's also easy to brew a beer with no bitterness but tons of flavor and aroma by adding the hops at the end of the boil, after the boil, or while dry hopping.

We seem to have developed a liking for big, bold, juicy, fruity, piney, citrusy hops, so there needs to be quite a bit of bitterness to balance out the flavors. To be honest, I seldom even notice a beer's bitterness and tend to focus on the flavor and smell.

I think we've reached Peak Hop and I've noticed a big increase in session IPAs and pale ales: lots of hop goodness, but with reduced ABV now that the beer doesn't have to balance out all the bitterness and body.

Some amazingly flavorful hops have been developed during the hop craze of the last 10 years, so even IPA haters should be thankful for the surge in highly hopped beers.

It doesn't make much sense, does it? Maybe they're reflecting to cost of having an employee filling a growler by hand (and often dumping a lot of foamy beer down the drain) as opposed to a canning line that is essentially automated and running at high speed?

I assume we'll be able to download it. From Vimeo's website:

What’s the difference between “Rent," “Buy,” and Subscription purchases on Vimeo On Demand?

With Vimeo On Demand, you can make three kinds of purchases:Rent: When you rent videos, you will be able to stream the videos anytime during the specified rental period.Buy: When you buy videos, you will be able to stream the videos for as long as they remain on Vimeo. If the seller allows, you will also be able to download the videos to your computer and devices, DRM-free.Subscription: When you subscribe to a series, you have unlimited streaming access to all current episodes of the series for a recurring monthly fee. You will also have immediate access to any new episodes added to the series page during your active subscription.

So any unmarried man should prepare to have his sexuality questioned?

No, but any 60-year-old, never-been-married man who has a record of voting against gay rights legislation and is entering the dog-eat-dog world of American presidential politics should be prepared for it. And I'll guarantee that his campaign strategists have spent a lot of time on the matter. Welcome to national politics.

By your logic we could say, there are several murders a year that are committed with guns.  Rand Paul is a gun owner.  Therefore Rand Paul's opponents are preparing dirt on him saying that he is a murderer.  I mean there is no proof that he is a murder, but it certainly is a clue that he shares a trait with with many murders. 

No, the appropriate logic would be: Rand Paul sports a gang tattoo that commonly symbolizes the commission of a murder, so even though there's no proof that he killed someone, his opponents are likely digging up dirt on his past.

It wasn't.

Yes, it was. When I said "Every campaign team and tabloid probably has some dirt on him that they're holding onto until the appropriate time" I meant that someone would pass an incriminating photo or firsthand account to a tabloid or campaign.

Politics is an ugly business, we all know that.  But it doesn't mean we have to like it or accept it. 

I don't like it, but I accept that it's how politics have been since the day they were invented.

You've never heard Lindsey Graham speak?

Nope. He's not from my state and I gave up on TV news years ago. I don't watch television except for a handful of downloaded shows (many of them from the UK) so that gives me the added bonus of being able to shake my head when friends ask if I've seen the latest commercial that's making headlines.

EDIT: To be honest, when I read the headline that said "Graham Announces White House Bid" I thought they were talking about former Florida senator Bob Graham. Then when I realized it was Lindsey Graham I got him confused with a Florida politician with a similarly ambiguous first name, Connie Mack. So I headed to Wikipedia to learn more about Lindsey Graham and learned about the "confirmed bachelor" thing.

The only reason you brought it up is because of his marital status and more than likely his accent.

I've never heard the man speak, but your comment leads me to believe that he doesn't speak in a booming baritone.

You didn't mention any "dirt" about any other candidates. We have as much proof of Lindsey Graham 's sexuality as we do Rand Paul and others.

He's never been married and he has no children. It's certainly not proof of his sexual status, but it may be a clue. I assume Rand Paul and the rest of the candidates from both parties have been married, but if any of them haven't then I'd expect the same questions to be raised if they haven't already come out publicly.

I know politics is a ugly game, but it doesn't make it right or any less shameful if rumors about a candidate's sexuality are used by the opposition.

Rumors can't be stopped, but my original post was about opponents unveiling hard evidence: photos, videos, firsthand accounts, etc.

But more to the point, you are wrong. There is very little chance that stories or dirt will be used against Graham. He is not a credible candidate and has a slim chance of winning. Plus he has been in office for 3 decades and there has been nothing remotely credible about his sexuality. Now all of a sudden someone is going bring out the smoking gun?

He's been in office for 2 decades. As I've said all along, if there is dirt on him, someone will use it at the time they deem appropriate. Hopefully it won't be a foreign intelligence service, because that could get ugly.

There's never any proof of a coverup until it's unveiled. That was my entire point: any proof that may be out there is sitting in the hands of an opponent, a political party, a foreign intelligence service or a blackmailer and it will be unveiled at their discretion.

Maybe he's straight, maybe he's gay, maybe he's celibate or maybe he's asexual. Who knows. But what I do know is that any evidence that he isn't straight will be used against him by someone at sometime. Politics is an ugly thing.

Just as a reminder, there was no evidence that Denny Hastert was being blackmailed until he was charged. Politicians are very good at burying their skeletons.

What a politician does in the bedroom with consenting adults is nobody's business. But what lengths they might go to in order to cover up their acts *is* a big deal. We've seen career after career destroyed by sex scandals, so a rich and powerful politician might find himself susceptible to blackmail or tempted to use his clout to destroy an accuser. Voters are understandedly turned off by politicians who lie about or attempt to cover up their affairs.

Just last week we saw Denny Hastert charged with paying millions to a blackmailer in order to cover up some sort of sexual act. What if the blackmailer had been a hostile foreign intelligent service instead of a greedy individual? And who knows how far a closeted presidential candidate - especially a Republican - might go if confronted by someone with evidence showing that they've been lying about their orientation?

You give politicians and their teams too much credit if you think that they wouldn't out a presidential candidate with a track record of voting against gay issues. Like it or not, we live in an era where slinging mud at an opponent is more effective than campaigning on your own strengths and accomplishments.

I've seen shows that were only a few miles from former and future residences, but I guess the closest show from a current residence would be about 40 miles to Los Angeles. According to Google, the as-the-crow-flies distance to Berlin would be the longest at 5560 miles.

Graham is a "confirmed bachelor." Every campaign team and tabloid probably has some dirt on him that they're holding onto until the appropriate time.