Open thread, vow of silence edition

Posted on May 6, 2009 by Ampersand

Post whatever you like, including links you like, to yourself or to someone else. If you love a link, set it free.

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Kip emailed this to me, warning me that it was worth suffering through the introduction in order to see the video, which features (alleged) monks who have taken vows of silence, performing the Hallelujah Chorus. If you want to just skip the intro, skip to 1:30.

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19 Responses to Open thread, vow of silence edition

  1. Terence says:
    May 6, 2009 at 4:28 am

    I guess that didn’t work
    If you like Fiona Apple and Acapella, Check this out!!
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDDv7BGsRI0

  3. vertigo29 says:
    May 6, 2009 at 4:56 am

    That is avery funny video… ah, the things one finds in YouTube.

  5. RonF says:
    May 6, 2009 at 7:45 am

    Every year during Advent I sing in the Do-It-Yourself Messiah at the Civic Opera Center in downtown Chicago. An 80-piece orchestra w/organ and harpsicord, 4 highly professional soloists, conductor and myself and 2999 other singers. Over the stage is suspended a large projection screen that shows seasonal pictures when we’re not singing and the conductor when we are (although it might be showing the soloists during their parts, I don’t know, I sit down in front so that I can hear and watch them directly). It’s my favorite part of the season.

    I’ve got to find a way to get this played on that screen before the performance. It would bring down the house.

    And yeah – I’ve met sopranos that sing like that guy 2nd from the right, jumping at the high notes.

  6. PG says:
    May 6, 2009 at 9:15 am

    I went to high school in East Texas, where being gay was not at all acceptable for either faculty or students. Any of my classmates who were coming to the realization that they were gay had to hide it. I reconnected with one of my high school friends a couple years ago and found out that he was now openly gay, although his current environment (a medical program in Kentucky) is only slightly more accepting than our high school was. He’s been slowly but surely gaining confidence in standing up for LGBT folks when other people discriminate against them, generally not knowing that Brian himself is gay.

    He’s a wonderful guy — I was joking that he’s exactly what my mom wanted for me, someone kind, family-oriented, good-looking and a doctor! (He’s in residency to become a child psychiatrist.) He’s also a bit of a comic book geek.

    Anyway, this is all a lead-up to plugging his entry as Mr. Kentucky in a gay dating website’s “America’s Next Gay Bachelor.” Even if I didn’t know Brian personally, I would think it great for that face to be a man of color when in the wake of Prop. 8 there has been division between the gay and black communities, despite these communities’ overlapping in people like Brian.

  7. ryan says:
    May 7, 2009 at 12:35 am

    Hey, I’m in this video! This is the Portland Gay Men’s Chorus from our Holiday show at Reed two years ago. I’m the second in on the first row, the guy with the “of” in “King of kings” and “Lord of lords.” I was so proud of the fancy flip I got to do with the cards.

    Kind of awesome to see it linked to on a blog I read. Woo!

  8. Charles S says:
    May 7, 2009 at 1:00 am

    The Center for Biological Diversity has a petition to have Ken Salazar reverse a Bush era ruling that the endangered species listing of the polar bear could not be used to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

  9. Ampersand says:
    May 7, 2009 at 1:09 am

    Hey, I’m in this video! This is the Portland Gay Men’s Chorus from our Holiday show at Reed two years ago.

    Oh, goodness, what a small world. I’ve seen PGMC perform any number of times — I work at The Old Church. If I happen to be working there the next time PGMC performs there, you should come by the office and say “hi.”

    I’m the second in on the first row, the guy with the “of” in “King of kings” and “Lord of lords.” I was so proud of the fancy flip I got to do with the cards.

    You should be proud — you were awesome! Seriously, I found the fancy flip extremely entertaining, even before you pointed it out.

  10. Radfem says:
    May 7, 2009 at 6:50 pm

    The day has come when former police Sgt. Drew Peterson finally faces murder charges in the killing of former wife, Kathleen Savio. He was arrested for a two-count indictment on $20 million bail.

    This day was long in coming. Not long ago, her death was viewed as an accidental drowning.

    Hopefully, similar news will be released regarding the case of the disappearance of his current wife, Stacey Peterson missing since Oct. 28, 2007.

  12. Jake Squid says:
    May 11, 2009 at 10:38 am

    I’ll also add a couple of links about electronic cigarettes. The deal is basically that the tobacco companies don’t want e-cigs to be available because they haven’t gotten in on the deal, yet. So they’re using they’re influence to keep those who wish for a healthier alternative to feed their nicotine addiction from having a carcinogen free option. So they’ll try to shut it down for a few years until they have their own versions ready to market.

    One of the many recent articles in the MSM:
    http://www.mercurynews.com/topstories/ci_11873938?nclick_check=1

    Its boosters say it’s the perfect way to quit smoking because the nicotine mist contains no tar or any of the host of cancer-causing agents of tobacco smoke — yet has the touch and feel of smoking. That, they say, makes the e-cigarette superior to other nicotine-delivery systems such as patches, chewing gum, aerosol sprays and inhalers.

    A petition to sign if you so wish:
    http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/keep-life-saving-electronic-cigarettes-available

    A good source of info on e-cigs:
    http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/forum/

  13. RonF says:
    May 11, 2009 at 11:37 am

    Radfem, as you might imagine this is front-page news here in Chicago. The newspapers are reporting that the case for prosecuting him for the murder of his 3rd wife is not rock-solid. It depends on a new Illinois law that permits the use of testimony that was previously defined as inadmissible hearsay. The prosecution will also have to overcome the fact that her death was originally ruled accidental. I’m not saying it’s fatally flawed, but it’s no sure thing by any stretch. I wouldn’t be surprised if he gets off.

    As far as being tried for the murder of his last wife, Stacy, they’re going to have to find her body first. They’ve been investigating this guy ever since Stacy disappeared and haven’t found a thing. My guess is that she’s buried somewhere out by me in the Palos Hills Forest Preserve complex – and that if they start digging for her they’ll find more bodies than hers. Hell, Al Capone is suspected of stashing bodies out here.

    My gut feeling on Stacy is a) he killed her and b) he’s going to get away with it. In this life, that is. It’s not hopeless. The Brown’s Chicken murders were solved recently after years and years of no leads. The suspect’s girlfriend finally decided to talk. But I’m thinking that somewhere in the Palos Hills FP there’s buried a blue plastic 55 gallon drum with Stacy’s body in it, and that Drew Peterson, who loves attention and shoots his mouth off constantly, knows how to keep his mouth shut about the important facts.

    You do realize he was a cop when the deaths occurred, right?

  14. chingona says:
    May 11, 2009 at 4:33 pm

    This in response to PG’s comment here:

    Re: comments threads in the MSM

    Part of the problem is that the lawyers have told the newspapers (and, I would presume, the television stations, but really, I can only speak personally for the newspapers) that if we moderate comments at all, we become liable for what’s said there in terms of libel, incitement, etc., whereas if we don’t moderate, we aren’t. So the default policy has been no moderation at all, purely as a CYA measure.

    The publication that I work for served, for years, as a forum for the most vile anti-Mexican racism – and other kinds of racism, sexism, religious bigotry, etc. – but more than anything else anti-Mexican sentiment (Southwest, near the border). The upper management continuously resisted all requests not just from the community but from staff that we moderate comments. Finally, a group of Latin@ employees printed out more than 300 pages of the worst stuff and sent it to corporate with a letter asking how they were supposed to feel about working for an organization that allowed these things to be said on its Web site. (I believe there may have been vague hints at hostile work environment, but I’m not sure how that would work.) We are ever so slightly better now. Some of the worst commenters were banned, and we installed a “report this comment” function, and after enough racist stuff got yanked, people know where our line is. But our line is still a long way from simple human decency.

    We’ve also stopped allowing comments on any and all crime stories, because the stuff people say is just repulsive.

    You’re seeing more sites go to moderation now. I don’t know if there have been any cases that have shifted the legal consensus on the newspapers’ responsibility or if we’ve reached a point where people’s stomachs got so churned up by what they read that they decided to disregard the legal advice.

    Sites like CNN, which are mostly about sensationalism and clicks, probably will be the last to do any kind of moderation. And the last time I saw CNN, they were running random Internet comments in the ticker underneath the newscast! Aaargh!

  15. PG says:
    May 12, 2009 at 7:33 am

    chingona,

    This isn’t legal advice, but it sounds like the lawyers are being extra-cautious. Sec. 230 has been interpreted to provide very broad protections for online service providers, even ones who engage in moderation.

  16. m Andrea says:
    May 12, 2009 at 8:47 am

    Hi all. A long while back someone wrote a really excellent article explaining why white people who complain about “angry black women” are just racist. Does anybody know what I’m talking about?

    This is the second time I’ve searched for it, and no luck.

  17. PG says:
    May 12, 2009 at 9:10 am

    m Andrea,

    white people who complain about “angry black women” are just racist.

    That sounds like a much broader brush than the bloggers here would use. Are you sure there wasn’t a reference to specific white people and a specific incident? That probably would help narrow the search, too.

  18. chingona says:
    May 12, 2009 at 9:24 am

    PG @15

    That’s always been my impression – that they were being overly cautious. I felt like they were taking the old rules that applied to the print edition (like, we are responsible for potential libel in letters to the editor and advertisements) and sort of reverse engineering a rule that says since we are responsible when we screen, we aren’t responsible when we don’t, instead of looking at cases that came out of other types of Internet uses. I know this isn’t the only area where applying pre-Internet rules to Internet applications results in some weird decisions. But it also seems to me there is a growing understanding that the Internet is different, and the rules can take into account the differences.

  19. Ampersand says:
    May 12, 2009 at 9:26 am

    m Andrea, might this post by Mandolin be the one you’re looking for? Here’s a short bit of the post:

    People don’t just say “don’t attack me” as a way of getting feminists to back down. They also say it because they have a sense of being attacked. Criticism is not fists, but people really seem to perceive it that way.

    And the less privilege the person who’s making the criticism has, the more it feels like an attack. In this post, Ginmar quotes Amanda Marcotte: “The less right you have to talk in the eyes of the hierarchy, the louder you seem. Which is probably why black women are seen as the loudest people ever.”*

    We see this in a lot of places, right? The common sense conviction that women talk more than men cannot be supported, and in fact, people find data that suggests that — in ordinary conversation — men talk more than women. If researchers externally impose a requirement that both men and women speak the same amount, then they both report that it feels like the men hardly got a chance to talk at all.

    Women aren’t supposed to talk, so when they talk, they’re seen as talking A LOT. Black women really aren’t supposed to talk, so when they talk, they’re seen as talking REALLY LOUDLY.

    Even if it’s not the post you’re looking for, it’s a really good post. :-)

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