Hope everyone is doing ok in this situation

[Mark Hammer]

I don't know how many Americans saw it, but those who are members of "the Commonwealth" may have seen HRH Queen Elizabeth's recent broadcast message.  In an allusion to all that our elders went through, and survived, in WWII, she ended her address mentioning, in passing, the words of the Vera Lynn tune that kept many people's spirits afloat: "We'll meet again".

As Sir Paul once said: "Her Majesty's a pretty nice girl".

[bluebunny]

As Sir Paul once said: "Her Majesty's a pretty nice girl".

Yep.  Look at the alternatives!   

[Mark Hammer]

And for yeast-seekers:  https://slate.com/business/2020/04/yeast-shortage-supermarkets-coronavirus.html?utm_source=pocket-newtab

[GibsonGM]

"To all those demanding their freedom back, I would like to say that freedom is not an unlimited absolute. In any type of society, one persons freedom necessarily infringes on another ones. I my freedom to go clubbing or get a haircut (not that I would do either of those things, ever, but you get the point) may endanger the safety of the vulnerable and thereby infringe on their freedom to even leave the house. Does my freedom to haircut trump your grandpas freedom to have a walk in the park? Does someones freedom to do business and make money trump someone else's freedom not to get infected with a potentially deadly disease as soon as they leave the house? Tough and uncomfortable questions, especially in democracies. We can't have all the freedoms due to external factors like the virus."


My Constitutional rights are absolute even if yours aren't, and there is no Queen here.  I can apply your logic to ANY situation, every flu season and beyond.  If you want to go down this road, ask some Japanese Americans who were put in concentration camps during WWII how they feel about the concept that 'rights are malleable', and decided 'from above'.  Yup, just like that living, breathing constitution we are living with right now - so you are ok with it?   Tho an online musician community is by nature going to side more with 'rights don't matter', I do believe the general population has more of an interest in remaining free, and it's going to become more prominent quite soon.   The right to provide for your family and not be destroyed arbitrarily DOES Trump a few things, they are fundamental to the existence of this nation (US), as well as the right to seek medical care such as mammograms and cancer tests - people ARE going to die due to this 'lockdown'.   Those who would give up their freedom for a little temporary security deserve neither and shall lose both.  Look how fast everyone allowed Trump to be their daddy, LOL - and I thought they didn't like him!  The idea that we have to destroy our economy and lives OR choose to kill vulnerable ppl is a FALSE one.  That is all.   

Interesting that the courts found Maine could not quarantine a nurse EXPOSED to Ebola (1,000x more deadly than SARS CoV 2 2019)....but just a few years later, quarantining an entire NATION is fine?  I predict MANY high profile court cases coming up.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/10/maine-ebola-kaci-hickox-paul-lepage/

Still glad this is a place to come to learn and help others even when there are many different viewpoints on issues outside the focus of this forum

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[Fancy Lime]

Mike,
I'm afraid I may have been unclear. "Rights are malleable" was not remotely the point I wanted to make, "rights don't matter" even less. Rights matter very much but unless you live on a farm in the middle of nowhere, different peoples rights inevitably come into conflict at certain points and it is one of the great challenges of humanity to navigate these conflicts with minimum damage to everybody's rights and freedoms. What restrictr some freedoms right now is not a nefarious government (OK in some places it is, but not everywhere) but a non-human factor, the virus. The challenge for democracies (assuming them to be governments of the people, by the people, for the people) is to navigate through this with as little damage as possible and we won't really know what that means until afterward. The goal is to loose as little freedom as possible. An economic crash may well reduce freedom. So what freedoms should we restrict now temporarily in order to not loose more tomorrow and possibly permanently. I think an important argument for the restrictions is that letting the virus run free would probably cause much more economic damage. Just a few months later. But we have no way of knowing if that is true or not until it happened.

Btw, your rights are not absolute either. You are not allowed to murder other people because the freedom to murder is seen as less important than the right to live. Same thing only more extreme and immediate. I would argue that the freedom to get a haircut now is also less important than preventing a complete breakdown of the medical system because the latter would cause quite a lot of suffering and the former is a mild inconvenience*. Putting people in internment camps to sooth nationalistic paranoia on the other hand is not. Completely different values on both sides of the scales in these cases. But both are cases of weighing rights, freedoms, and fears against one another. Human societies do not have the best track record of getting these decisions right but we don't always have the choice to simply pass the decisions up. I would assume that most governments of democracies are currently trying to protect the economy as well as the vulnerable people, not choosing to sacrifice the former for the latter. But sacrificing the vulnerable and elderly for the economy is a hard sell, at least in Europe. Says someone whose great-grandfather was murdered in a concentration camp on account of suffering from dementia and therefore not being "useful to society" anymore.

TL;DR: No, we should not sacrifice any freedoms or rights or the economy. But I don't envy the people who are tasked with deciding how to best protect all those things. When you say "The idea that we have to destroy our economy and lives OR choose to kill vulnerable ppl is a FALSE one." I agree. But I do think we may need to dial back some of the, frankly, frivolous activities we have become used to in our very comfortable first world societies for a while in order to protect the rights, freedoms and economies we really care about. Agreed?

Sorry, I don't normally partake in controversial non-pedal related topics here or anywhere except face-to-face but I felt that there was a major misunderstanding that needed addressing. We're all in this together, though apart, and divisions through miscommunication are the most tragic ones. I think we see the same thing here, just as you say, from a slightly different viewpoint.

Cheers and stay save,
Andy



*Except for the hairdresser whose job it is and who looses healthcare and does not get the needed support from the very government that tells her/him that she/he cannot open her/his business, but that's a whole other can of worms, which, if history is any judge will be wide open pretty soon.

[EBK]

Can we please end the trench warfare here? 

[Ben N]

Can we please end the trench warfare here?

Depends; does that entail going over the top?

[italianguy63]

Can we please end the trench warfare here?

Depends; does that entail going over the top?

Speaking of... did anyone else see the movie "1918"?  I liked it a lot and really thought it was cool how it was shot.  Great sets.

[EBK]

I guess I picked a terrible metaphor.   


How about this instead:

[Fancy Lime]

Can we please end the trench warfare here?

Depends; does that entail going over the top?

I'll get my treble booster!

Aaand we're back on topic in three moves.

Andy

EDIT: Damn it, you moved on too fast!

[aron]

Was that 1917 any good? Was thinking of watching it.

[vigilante397]

Was that 1917 any good? Was thinking of watching it.

I read some reviews saying it was dumb, but watched it anyway, and I'm with Mark, I liked it. The "constant shot" filming/editing was very well done, and it gave an interesting, though different, connection with the characters. There are no flashbacks to a character's backstory, no cuts to another character somewhere else, it's one constant story of one or two main characters. It was neat

[blackieNYC]

Worth watching, definitely.

[bluebunny]

I think Mark was watching the sequel.

did anyone else see the movie "1918"?  I liked it a lot

[EBK]

I think Mark was watching the sequel.

did anyone else see the movie "1918"?  I liked it a lot

My mind interpreted it as a joke about the Spanish Flu pandemic. 

[Mark Hammer]

What was the name of that film about the Hermitage museum that actually was one continuous 96-minute shot?  Oh yes, that was the one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Ark

[deadastronaut]

+1 o n 1917....cool film.

I like the bit where the giant chicken took over the whole universe......oh hang on........wrong film...

[Fancy Lime]

+1 o n 1917....cool film.

I like the bit where the giant chicken took over the whole universe......oh hang on........wrong film...

1917+1? So back to the pandemic movie?

What's the name of the chicken flick? That sounds like my sort of movie.

[deadastronaut]

 

Godzilla...if you squint ha ha...

[willienillie]

the Hermitage museum

They used to buy guitar parts from us occasionally.  Gretsch.  Maybe whole guitars too, I don't recall.