The horrible horrible world of sports

[Emily Lake]

Meh. I don't think it's that so much as a pretty substantial Christian influence overall. I also think the government as a whole doesn't want to grant the tax benefits of marriage to larger groupings, purely for financial reasons. It would also really complicate divorce and inheritance law. If a wealthy women has five husbands, and she dies... who is the closest relative by default? Would a polygamandrous marriage be required to keep explicit wills defining every detail? What happens when a quadruple has four earners of varying levels of income, and one of them divorces the other - who pays p/alimony?

I don't have any problems at all about polyamory. To be quite honest, it would be lovely to have a housespouse who is a good cook and likes to clean! It's the legal and legislative repercussions that get complicated when I start thinking about it.

This argument boils down to "It cannot change, because that would require changes". It's not particularly complicated, except in the sense that all legislative change is complicated. Literally the ONLY reason why it can't be done is that legislators don't want to do it. If and when that changes, not only can it happen, it will happen.

You're reading malice into this for no good reason. Me noting that it would need to change and might be complicated is not in any way me saying that it cannot or should not be done.

 

[Politesse]

Nothing? Nothing at all?

Really? It's painfully easy to read up on polygamy around the world. You're not eight years' old, you know how to Google something.

Got it. You don't know of any, but you're certain that they exist, and I'm a dummy for not knowing them. Better to just be condescending, that way you "win".

No, it's just a question with a very easy answer, and easily researched. Polygamy is actually de facto legal in most of the world, though there is a difference between "legal" and "recognized", and I think recognized is what you actually mean since you mention inheritance. However, a fair number of nations recognize such marriages as well. The entirety of the Dar-al-Islam, most African nations, and many nations of the South Pacific fully recognize polygamous marriage. A larger number of nations may recognize some polygamous marriages but not others, either in the case that a marriage occurred originally outside of their territory, or because they have made a special exception for religious minorities.

It really annoys me when people make a point of asking a fellow forumer a question that would be easily answered with a few seconds of research, especially in a case like this one where the relevance of the proposed research project to the OP is slim. Most of the above is discussed in considerably more detail in the Wikipedia article "Legality of Polygamy".

 

[bilby]

That's simply untrue in my jurisdiction.

So you don't have married filing joint? Or does it have a penalty? The benefit of married filing jointly is because it's unlikely both earn exactly the same amount.

We simply don't have it.

That you seem shocked at this is hilarious to me.

Our tax structures and rules are very different from those of the US in a large number of ways. They are also very different from UK tax rules; My accountant earns good money from me working out my tax offsets due to ATO allowing me to earn money in the US and UK, and only be taxed on it once. The IRS takes a cut of the dividends paid on my NYSE holdings, and the ATO discounts my taxes by the equivalent in Australian Dollars - but this fluctuates with exchange rates, and has to be calculated based on US reporting on their tax year starting January 1st and deducted April 15th, for an Australian tax year that starts on July 1st.

It gets complicated. And when (if) my UK aged pension becomes payable, there will be yet another set of rules for him to manage.

Almost nothing that Americans consider routine about the details of taxation is true at all in Australia.

 

[bilby]

You would here.

Which is my point.

You are conflating local rules and regulations with fundamental and immutable universal laws. The laws on marriage could literally say anything at all about marriages.

It's your assumption that your local rules are universally important that I am trying to challenge here. There's literally nothing to prevent polyandry, polygamy, or any polyamorous family arrangements from being recognised in law, nor to prevent such laws from including any protections or benefits whatsoever. The only requirement in order for the law to make such changes is a will amongst legislators to do so.

Your laws regarding sharing benefits, inheritance, spousal privilege, etc. are equally arbitrary by your definition of arbitrary.

Yes. Exactly.

It seems as though what you really are asking is why isn’t your country like my country?

Quite the reverse. I am asking "Why do you expect my country to be like your country?"

Answer: Because we don’t wanna.

Which is exactly my point.

As far as I can tell, none of the Americans are asserting that our laws and customs are superior to yours.

Nobody was suggesting that they had.

And yet the Americans in this discussion persist in assuming US rules to be universal; the standard of 'normality' from which others knowingly deviate.

We’re merely stating what our laws are because that’s what we are familiar with. You, otoh, frequently tell us Yanks how backwards we are. Your privilege, I guess. I assume that Australia does what it thinks right for Australia.

Jesus fuck it's like talking to a brick wall.

Whatever I say you are too busy being defensive to even attempt to understand, rather than retaliating against an imaginary slight.

 

[bilby]

Meh. I don't think it's that so much as a pretty substantial Christian influence overall. I also think the government as a whole doesn't want to grant the tax benefits of marriage to larger groupings, purely for financial reasons. It would also really complicate divorce and inheritance law. If a wealthy women has five husbands, and she dies... who is the closest relative by default? Would a polygamandrous marriage be required to keep explicit wills defining every detail? What happens when a quadruple has four earners of varying levels of income, and one of them divorces the other - who pays p/alimony?

I don't have any problems at all about polyamory. To be quite honest, it would be lovely to have a housespouse who is a good cook and likes to clean! It's the legal and legislative repercussions that get complicated when I start thinking about it.

This argument boils down to "It cannot change, because that would require changes". It's not particularly complicated, except in the sense that all legislative change is complicated. Literally the ONLY reason why it can't be done is that legislators don't want to do it. If and when that changes, not only can it happen, it will happen.

You're reading malice into this for no good reason. Me noting that it would need to change and might be complicated is not in any way me saying that it cannot or should not be done.

What on Earth have I said to give the impression I am reading malice into anything???

 

[Emily Lake]

It really annoys me when people make a point of asking a fellow forumer a question that would be easily answered with a few seconds of research, especially in a case like this one where the relevance of the proposed research project to the OP is slim. Most of the above is discussed in considerably more detail in the Wikipedia article "Legality of Polygamy".

Meh. It really annoys me when someone pops in with a condescending and insulting post asserting that I'm dumb for not knowing something, but without actually providing any information. It's nothing more than petty arrogance.

No, it's just a question with a very easy answer, and easily researched. Polygamy is actually de facto legal in most of the world, though there is a difference between "legal" and "recognized", and I think recognized is what you actually mean since you mention inheritance. However, a fair number of nations recognize such marriages as well. The entirety of the Dar-al-Islam, most African nations, and many nations of the South Pacific fully recognize polygamous marriage. A larger number of nations may recognize some polygamous marriages but not others, either in the case that a marriage occurred originally outside of their territory, or because they have made a special exception for religious minorities.

So give this some thought. PolyGAMY is legal in some place. In places where it's fully legal, PolyANDRY is strictly illegal, and women are either legally or effectively denied equal rights and recognition. Some places allow practiced PolyGAMY, but secondary wives don't get legal benefits.

So... to recap, a man is allowed to have multiple wives by law in areas where those wives are essentially considered his property. Women are not allowed to have multiple husbands.

 

[Politesse]

It really annoys me when people make a point of asking a fellow forumer a question that would be easily answered with a few seconds of research, especially in a case like this one where the relevance of the proposed research project to the OP is slim. Most of the above is discussed in considerably more detail in the Wikipedia article "Legality of Polygamy".

Meh. It really annoys me when someone pops in with a condescending and insulting post asserting that I'm dumb for not knowing something, but without actually providing any information. It's nothing more than petty arrogance.

No, it's just a question with a very easy answer, and easily researched. Polygamy is actually de facto legal in most of the world, though there is a difference between "legal" and "recognized", and I think recognized is what you actually mean since you mention inheritance. However, a fair number of nations recognize such marriages as well. The entirety of the Dar-al-Islam, most African nations, and many nations of the South Pacific fully recognize polygamous marriage. A larger number of nations may recognize some polygamous marriages but not others, either in the case that a marriage occurred originally outside of their territory, or because they have made a special exception for religious minorities.

So give this some thought. PolyGAMY is legal in some place. In places where it's fully legal, PolyANDRY is strictly illegal, and women are either legally or effectively denied equal rights and recognition. Some places allow practiced PolyGAMY, but secondary wives don't get legal benefits.

So... to recap, a man is allowed to have multiple wives by law in areas where those wives are essentially considered his property. Women are not allowed to have multiple husbands.

I don't think you're dumb for not knowing the answer. I think you're playing dumb by demanding that other people look things up for you when it isn't that much trouble to do it yourself. There's a difference between not being able to do something, and pretending for the sake of rhetoric that the conversation can't possibly continue until someone else does it for you. I have absolute, unshakeable confidence in my belief that you are able to look thinigs up on Wikipedia. And your point, whatever it is, would actually have seemed much stronger if you had presented the facts yourself and then made your point concerning those facts, as opposed to the whole calling-out nonsense. It is a childish rhetorical game and below your merits.

For the record, though it seems even more off-topic than the point you were already pursuing, I think polyandry should also be legal and recognized by the state, especially as there are some cultures that practice it, and presumably the 14th amendment would in fact require the US to recognize all three forms of plural marriage if it recognized any of them.

By the way, "polygamy" is technically inclusive of all three forms of plural marriage. Systems in which only a man may have multiple wives but not the reverse are called polgynous, polyandrous you know, and systems that place no restrictions at all on the number of potential spouses are called group marriage or cluster marriage societies.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

That's simply untrue in my jurisdiction.

So you don't have married filing joint? Or does it have a penalty? The benefit of married filing jointly is because it's unlikely both earn exactly the same amount.

We simply don't have it.

That you seem shocked at this is hilarious to me.

Our tax structures and rules are very different from those of the US in a large number of ways. They are also very different from UK tax rules; My accountant earns good money from me working out my tax offsets due to ATO allowing me to earn money in the US and UK, and only be taxed on it once. The IRS takes a cut of the dividends paid on my NYSE holdings, and the ATO discounts my taxes by the equivalent in Australian Dollars - but this fluctuates with exchange rates, and has to be calculated based on US reporting on their tax year starting January 1st and deducted April 15th, for an Australian tax year that starts on July 1st.

It gets complicated. And when (if) my UK aged pension becomes payable, there will be yet another set of rules for him to manage.

Almost nothing that Americans consider routine about the details of taxation is true at all in Australia.

So everyone simply files their own return? When lives are financially intertwined it gets hard to accurately assign income and costs to a particular individual.

 

[Keith&Co.]

The thing i used to like about foreign ports was finding things done so differently to my experiences.
But i was fucking endlessly gobsmacked at how many Americans would not be able to get their minds around something that was literally (watch what i do here) foreign to them.

Then I was thinking food, clothes, spelling, and what in absolute fuck is a shilling? But government differences? Why is this hard?

Though THE funniest was the drunk who kept asking people on the street if they had a 4th of July.
Of course we do, ye wanker.
Then where are the fireworks?
Ye nae asked fer fireworks, ye asked fer a calendar! PISS OFF!!

 

[Toni]

The thing i used to like about foreign ports was finding things done so differently to my experiences.
But i was fucking endlessly gobsmacked at how many Americans would not be able to get their minds around something that was literally (watch what i do here) foreign to them.

Then I was thinking food, clothes, spelling, and what in absolute fuck is a shilling? But government differences? Why is this hard?

Though THE funniest was the drunk who kept asking people on the street if they had a 4th of July.
Of course we do, ye wanker.
Then where are the fireworks?
Ye nae asked fer fireworks, ye asked fer a calendar! PISS OFF!!

I haven’t had much opportunity to travel outside the US, aside from a couple of brief day trips into Canada, but I did spend some years working with primarily non-resident foreign nationals and much later, hosted a number of foreign exchange students from Europe, South America and Asia. Of course along the way I’ve had a number of friends and coworkers from various places around the world, including Australia. Amazingly enough, most people visiting from other places expressed varying degrees of surprise and interests at how customs in the US differed from their home countries. This included people who paid no income tax in their country, to those who didn’t understand why we paid gratuities at all, much less why at some places and not others (McDonalds), dating, High school sports and indeed any non-academic course work in high school ( art, music, physical education) and more. Child rearing practices were particularly interesting and depending on where people originated, so were attitudes about….household help, paid and unpaid. Some Egyptian women had a kind of small group saving pool: everyone put in a set amount of money each week, and everyone had their turn to take home the pot. I’ve heard of similar arrangements among close friend groups or families in other cultures. There are also fascinating differences towards gift giving, work or and work/life balance, religion, the importance of family, respect for authority —and elders and much much more.

 

[bilby]

We simply don't have it.

That you seem shocked at this is hilarious to me.

Our tax structures and rules are very different from those of the US in a large number of ways. They are also very different from UK tax rules; My accountant earns good money from me working out my tax offsets due to ATO allowing me to earn money in the US and UK, and only be taxed on it once. The IRS takes a cut of the dividends paid on my NYSE holdings, and the ATO discounts my taxes by the equivalent in Australian Dollars - but this fluctuates with exchange rates, and has to be calculated based on US reporting on their tax year starting January 1st and deducted April 15th, for an Australian tax year that starts on July 1st.

It gets complicated. And when (if) my UK aged pension becomes payable, there will be yet another set of rules for him to manage.

Almost nothing that Americans consider routine about the details of taxation is true at all in Australia.

So everyone simply files their own return? When lives are financially intertwined it gets hard to accurately assign income and costs to a particular individual.

Not really. The ATO has rules about how it is to be done. Follow the rules. Easy.

 

[DrZoidberg]

The thing i used to like about foreign ports was finding things done so differently to my experiences.
But i was fucking endlessly gobsmacked at how many Americans would not be able to get their minds around something that was literally (watch what i do here) foreign to them.

Then I was thinking food, clothes, spelling, and what in absolute fuck is a shilling? But government differences? Why is this hard?

Though THE funniest was the drunk who kept asking people on the street if they had a 4th of July.
Of course we do, ye wanker.
Then where are the fireworks?
Ye nae asked fer fireworks, ye asked fer a calendar! PISS OFF!!

I like to imagine how Mr Universe is like on Betelguese

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

The thing i used to like about foreign ports was finding things done so differently to my experiences.
But i was fucking endlessly gobsmacked at how many Americans would not be able to get their minds around something that was literally (watch what i do here) foreign to them.

Then I was thinking food, clothes, spelling, and what in absolute fuck is a shilling? But government differences? Why is this hard?

Though THE funniest was the drunk who kept asking people on the street if they had a 4th of July.
Of course we do, ye wanker.
Then where are the fireworks?
Ye nae asked fer fireworks, ye asked fer a calendar! PISS OFF!!

I like to imagine how Mr Universe is like on Betelguese

I presume on fire.

 

[bilby]

The thing i used to like about foreign ports was finding things done so differently to my experiences.
But i was fucking endlessly gobsmacked at how many Americans would not be able to get their minds around something that was literally (watch what i do here) foreign to them.

Then I was thinking food, clothes, spelling, and what in absolute fuck is a shilling? But government differences? Why is this hard?

Though THE funniest was the drunk who kept asking people on the street if they had a 4th of July.
Of course we do, ye wanker.
Then where are the fireworks?
Ye nae asked fer fireworks, ye asked fer a calendar! PISS OFF!!

The sun doesn't set until after 10pm on July 4 at Holy Loch, and it's not noticeably dark until well after 11pm (due to daylight savings and proximity to the Arctic Circle). It gets light again at about 2:45am, and sunrise is before 3:40am. It's a terrible time and place for a fireworks display.

The Scots have their fireworks night on November 5 (to commemorate the foiling of an assassination attempt against King James VI in 1605) when the sun sets at 4:30pm, and it gets fully dark by 5pm.

There is a (probably apocryphal) story of a new US base commander arranging a July 4 fireworks display for 8:30pm, and being horrified to discover that the sun was still shining brightly in the sky...

 

[Keith&Co.]

The sun doesn't set until after 10pm on July 4 at Holy Loch, and it's not noticeably dark until well after 11pm (due to daylight savings and proximity to the Arctic Circle). It gets light again at about 2:45am, and sunrise is before 3:40am. It's a terrible time and place for a fireworks display.

Well, he was drunk, it was closing, obviously the next step is to go pass out during the fireworks show.
The only people he could find were other drunks and people running the fish and chips shops...

There is a (probably apocryphal) story of a new US base commander arranging a July 4 fireworks display for 8:30pm, and being horrified to discover that the sun was still shining brightly in the sky...

Depends on when he got there, how horrified he'd be. Navy Morning Colors go down at 0800. In the Winter, when the sun doesn't come up by 0800, we delay it to 0900. When sunrise comes after 0900, we don't shift it again, we just have colors in the dark. And evening colors again at sunset, usually by the same duty section that just put them up.
If he got there in Winter, he noticed the time's were different right the fuck away.
If he spent any time there in the summer, he noticed the 'lights' were still on well after bedtime.
For the story, make it the base commander's boss, an admiral from Stateside celebrating July 4th by flying in to a base he'd never really spent time at.

But i really think we'd have to have been having horrible relations with our host nation to celebrate Independence from Britain by blowing shit up in Britain....

 

[bilby]

The sun doesn't set until after 10pm on July 4 at Holy Loch, and it's not noticeably dark until well after 11pm (due to daylight savings and proximity to the Arctic Circle). It gets light again at about 2:45am, and sunrise is before 3:40am. It's a terrible time and place for a fireworks display.

Well, he was drunk, it was closing, obviously the next step is to go pass out during the fireworks show.
The only people he could find were other drunks and people running the fish and chips shops...

There is a (probably apocryphal) story of a new US base commander arranging a July 4 fireworks display for 8:30pm, and being horrified to discover that the sun was still shining brightly in the sky...

Depends on when he got there, how horrified he'd be. Navy Morning Colors go down at 0800. In the Winter, when the sun doesn't come up by 0800, we delay it to 0900. When sunrise comes after 0900, we don't shift it again, we just have colors in the dark. And evening colors again at sunset, usually by the same duty section that just put them up.
If he got there in Winter, he noticed the time's were different right the fuck away.
If he spent any time there in the summer, he noticed the 'lights' were still on well after bedtime.
For the story, make it the base commander's boss, an admiral from Stateside celebrating July 4th by flying in to a base he'd never really spent time at.

But i really think we'd have to have been having horrible relations with our host nation to celebrate Independence from Britain by blowing shit up in Britain....

It's Scotland. They want independence from Britain too. Trust me, the locals would enjoy it more than the Americans.

 

[steve_bank]

It's funny how many sports officials keep getting deposed over racist and sexist remarks. It's not slowing down. People with well paying jobs, they worked all their lives to get, talk like this all the time as if it's completely normal. Which it obviously is. Then get fired.

It's so obvious how there's parallel worlds now. There's the media world of pretend speech where nobody says what they really are thinking. And the real world.

With the advent of the Internet normal people are training themselves to express themselves freely (like we're doing here). When normal people get catapulted into the world of fame and power they aren't always aware that now they need to stop talking like they normally talk.

I think it's absurd that we're demanding sports professionals to have gender and racial sensibilities that require a university degree to master. These are working class people who worked their way up in life. They're not academics. I think it's cruel and stupid to wreck their careers just because they make the mistake of just talking like normal people talk.

Whether or not the people who make these remarks are sexist or racist is anyone's guess. But I highly doubt working class people who use colorful language are literal at all times. Perhaps it's attempt at humour that fails. Or any other non-nefarious explanation. Or they really are racists and sexists? Is that so bad? It's just sports. If you are good at sports you do well. The racism of the organisers of competitions doesn't really matter. Does it? The Nazis failed to stop Jesse Owens from scoring big in 1936.

I think our insistence of ideologically perfect and pure speech is intellectual snobbery and contempt for the working class.

I don't like it. I don't think it's a good thing. I also don't think it will do much to stop racism or sexism. Can't sports be the one place in the world where we let people just be themselves in all their horrible glory? Just so we have one little zone where we get to hear what normal people really think.

This is where the political correctness zealots are taking us.

I knew a Libyan in the 80s. As he put it under Kadafi you could not confis=de in a brother for fer of being denounced to police.

In China you can be jailed for any speech deemed counter to the political and social 'correctness'.

A generation of young reporters are consumed with exposing anything that cam remotely be not PC.

The thing is I hear speech from blacks and Latinos that taken out of context would be deemed racist.

 

[DrZoidberg]

It's funny how many sports officials keep getting deposed over racist and sexist remarks. It's not slowing down. People with well paying jobs, they worked all their lives to get, talk like this all the time as if it's completely normal. Which it obviously is. Then get fired.

It's so obvious how there's parallel worlds now. There's the media world of pretend speech where nobody says what they really are thinking. And the real world.

With the advent of the Internet normal people are training themselves to express themselves freely (like we're doing here). When normal people get catapulted into the world of fame and power they aren't always aware that now they need to stop talking like they normally talk.

I think it's absurd that we're demanding sports professionals to have gender and racial sensibilities that require a university degree to master. These are working class people who worked their way up in life. They're not academics. I think it's cruel and stupid to wreck their careers just because they make the mistake of just talking like normal people talk.

Whether or not the people who make these remarks are sexist or racist is anyone's guess. But I highly doubt working class people who use colorful language are literal at all times. Perhaps it's attempt at humour that fails. Or any other non-nefarious explanation. Or they really are racists and sexists? Is that so bad? It's just sports. If you are good at sports you do well. The racism of the organisers of competitions doesn't really matter. Does it? The Nazis failed to stop Jesse Owens from scoring big in 1936.

I think our insistence of ideologically perfect and pure speech is intellectual snobbery and contempt for the working class.

I don't like it. I don't think it's a good thing. I also don't think it will do much to stop racism or sexism. Can't sports be the one place in the world where we let people just be themselves in all their horrible glory? Just so we have one little zone where we get to hear what normal people really think.

This is where the political correctness zealots are taking us.

I knew a Libyan in the 80s. As he put it under Kadafi you could not confis=de in a brother for fer of being denounced to police.

In China you can be jailed for any speech deemed counter to the political and social 'correctness'.

A generation of young reporters are consumed with exposing anything that cam remotely be not PC.

The thing is I hear speech from blacks and Latinos that taken out of context would be deemed racist.

But it is interesting to see how this social mechanic works. People keep saying that they don't understand how the Nazis or the communist could get into power in China or Germany. This is how. It doesn't matter how well meaning your intolerance is. Any intolerance pushed to it's logical conclusion turns evil at some point.

 

[none]

this thread needs gordon hayward.
listen....

 

[bigfield]

It's funny how many sports officials keep getting deposed over racist and sexist remarks. It's not slowing down. People with well paying jobs, they worked all their lives to get, talk like this all the time as if it's completely normal. Which it obviously is. Then get fired.

It's so obvious how there's parallel worlds now. There's the media world of pretend speech where nobody says what they really are thinking. And the real world.

With the advent of the Internet normal people are training themselves to express themselves freely (like we're doing here). When normal people get catapulted into the world of fame and power they aren't always aware that now they need to stop talking like they normally talk.

I think it's absurd that we're demanding sports professionals to have gender and racial sensibilities that require a university degree to master. These are working class people who worked their way up in life. They're not academics. I think it's cruel and stupid to wreck their careers just because they make the mistake of just talking like normal people talk.

Whether or not the people who make these remarks are sexist or racist is anyone's guess. But I highly doubt working class people who use colorful language are literal at all times. Perhaps it's attempt at humour that fails. Or any other non-nefarious explanation. Or they really are racists and sexists? Is that so bad? It's just sports. If you are good at sports you do well. The racism of the organisers of competitions doesn't really matter. Does it? The Nazis failed to stop Jesse Owens from scoring big in 1936.

I think our insistence of ideologically perfect and pure speech is intellectual snobbery and contempt for the working class.

I don't like it. I don't think it's a good thing. I also don't think it will do much to stop racism or sexism. Can't sports be the one place in the world where we let people just be themselves in all their horrible glory? Just so we have one little zone where we get to hear what normal people really think.

This is where the political correctness zealots are taking us.

I knew a Libyan in the 80s. As he put it under Kadafi you could not confis=de in a brother for fer of being denounced to police.

In China you can be jailed for any speech deemed counter to the political and social 'correctness'.

A generation of young reporters are consumed with exposing anything that cam remotely be not PC.

The thing is I hear speech from blacks and Latinos that taken out of context would be deemed racist.

But it is interesting to see how this social mechanic works. People keep saying that they don't understand how the Nazis or the communist could get into power in China or Germany. This is how. It doesn't matter how well meaning your intolerance is. Any intolerance pushed to it's logical conclusion turns evil at some point.

WTF?

The Nazi Party got into power because they had a powerful brand of populism that appealed to people in a devastated country with a government that barely functioned. The rule of law was so weak that the SA fought street battles with Communists. If anything, what the Weimar Republic needed was a stronger government able to crack down on domestic terrorists.

The Chinese Communist Party came to power after fighting a Civil War over several decades, which was preceded by over a decade of weak government that didn't even have control of the country. Mao was basically just the victorious warlord in China's most recent cycle of civil war.