The Mad Professah Lectures

Eye Candy: Gabriel "Carioca" from MundoMais

noreply@blogger.com (Ron Buckmire) — Mon, 28 May 2012 04:29:00 +0000

Gabriel is another model I found at the Brazilian website, MundoMais. Previous MundoMais finds are Filipe and Flavio. According to MundoMais his name is Gabriel Carioca, but I think that means "Gabriel from Rio" in Portuguese. The website says he is 25-years-old and that's about all the information I can find on him. I still think he's more than handsome enough to qualify as Eye Candy, since I have said many times, "hawt is hawt" and I have a thing for Brazilian guys anyway. :)

Doesn't everyone?

New Poll Shows Dramatic Shift Towards Marriage Equality

noreply@blogger.com (Ron Buckmire) — Mon, 28 May 2012 03:37:00 +0000

A new poll from the ABC/Washington Post poll shows a dramatic shift towards marriage equality following President Obama's declaration that he thinks same-sex couples should be allowed to get married. The top line number is that an astonishing 53% of respondents say they support legal same-sex marriage while only 39% say they think it should not be legal.

Overall, 53 percent of Americans say gay marriage should be legal, hitting a high mark in support while showing a dramatic turnaround from just six years ago, when just 36 percent thought it should be legal. Thirty-nine percent, a new low, say gay marriage should be illegal.

The poll also finds that 59 percent of African Americans say they support same-sex marriage, up from an average of 41 percent in polls leading up to Obama’s announcement of his new position on the matter. Though statistically significant, it is a tentative result because of the relatively small sample of black voters in the poll.

[...]

Americans divide about evenly — 49 to 46 percent — on whether gay-marriage laws should be made at the state or federal level. Most backers of same-sex marriage support a federal approach, while opponents prefer letting states decide. That is a stark shift from 2004, when a CBS News-New York Times poll found widespread support for federal authority over gay marriage among its opponents, not its supporters.

Amusingly, now that they are losing the war for public opinion heterosexual supremacists are arguing that polls on marriage equality are not important (and that the polls are wrong). The only polls that matter, they say, is the results at the ballot box. It will be interesting to see what they say once they start losing at the ballot box as well.

We shall see this November!

2012 FRENCH OPEN: Day 1

noreply@blogger.com (Ron Buckmire) — Mon, 28 May 2012 01:42:00 +0000

The second major tournament of the year, Roland Garros, began in Paris today. Two Americans in the twilight of their careers, Andy Roddick and Venus Williams, took the court and had contrasting results. Roddick, playing with a very pedestrian win-loss record of 7-9 for 2012 lost in the first round of a grand slam tournament for the first time since 2007 by falling to hometown favorite Nicolas Mahut 6-3 6-3 4-6 6-2.

Venus, playing in her first grand slam match since she withdrew from the 2011 US Open after revealing she suffers from Sjogren's Syndrome (an energy sapping auto-immune disorder), started off slowly but eventually won her first round match against Paula Ormaechea 4-6 6-1 6-3. Unfortunately, she will almost certainly play World #3 Agnieska Radwanska in the next round. I don't see her getting through that match, despite sporting a 5-2 career head-to-head against the red-hot Polish player who has the most wins on tour this year.

Other players to watch who survived Day 1 were 2010 French Open finalist Samantha Stosur, #5 seed Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, Angelique Kerber, Juan Martin del Potro, Fernando Verdasco and 2009 French Open champion Svetlana Kuznetsova.

Analysis Of Marriage Equality On Marriage Rates

noreply@blogger.com (Ron Buckmire) — Sun, 27 May 2012 15:03:00 +0000

This above graphic comes from an analysis by Slate magazine of marriage rates in jurisdictions which have legalized marriage equality (Massachusetts, Iowa, Vermont, Connecticut, New Hampshire and District of Columbia) versus the national marriage rate. Do you see a trend or correlation? Me neither!

Neither does Slate, according to "Does Gay Marriage Destroy Marriage?":

Start with Massachusetts, which endorsed gay marriage in May 2004. That year, the state saw a 16 percent increase in marriage. The reason is, obviously, that gay couples who had been waiting for years to get married were finally able to tie the knot. In the years that followed, the marriage rate normalized but remained higher than it was in the years preceding the legalization. So all in all, there’s no reason to worry that gay marriage is destroying marriage in Massachusetts.

The other four states that have legalized gay marriage—New York, Connecticut, Iowa, Vermont, and New Hampshire—have done it more recently, somewhere between 2008 and 2011. But from the little data we have, it looks as if the pattern will be more or less the same—a temporary jump in marriage followed by a return to virtually the same marriage rates as before gay marriage became legal. Washington, D.C., which started accepting same-sex marriages in March 2010, saw a huge 61.7 percent increase in marriage that year, though it’s too soon to see where it will settle. Again, no signs of the coming apocalypse.

The piece also goes on to look at divorce rates in the states where same-sex couples can get legally married (and divorced) right now to try to determine if such activity has any impact on the divorce rates of opposite-sex couples. The data just does not indicate that there is any impact of marriage equality on divorce or marriage rates in a state, unsurprisingly. What a shock, another talking point by religious extremists and heterosexual supremacists turns out to be obviously false.

Hat/tip to Americablog

Saturday Politics: Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics

noreply@blogger.com (Ron Buckmire) — Sat, 26 May 2012 11:51:00 +0000

Hat/tip to Joe.My.God

Celebrity Friday: Jim Parsons Comes Out

noreply@blogger.com (Ron Buckmire) — Fri, 25 May 2012 10:08:00 +0000

Jim Parsons is one of the stars of CBS's The Big Bang Theory, one of the highest-rated comedy shows on television. He has earned two consecutive Emmy awards (2010 and 2011) and a Golden Globe award (2011) for his portrayal of Dr. Sheldon Cooper, the central character of the show. Parsons, 39, came out recently in a piece in the New York Times:

By the winter of 2011 Mr. Parsons had won his first Emmy for “Big Bang” and was midway through Season 4 when he felt he was “spinning my wheels” as an actor, and began looking to do a play again. He landed the role of Tommy Boatwright, a young gay activist in “The Normal Heart” who bucks up the main characters in their fight against AIDS. The humanity and intensity of the play appealed to him, he said, just as Beckett and Büchner once did; in graduate school, too, his thesis project was a 15-minute performance piece about a mentally disabled death-row inmate, a psychiatrist and a murder victim’s father — all played by Mr. Parsons.

“If I ever wrote a script myself, it would be strongly emotional material,” he said. “Every time I think about writing, comedy doesn’t interest me in the slightest. I can play comedy, but I don’t think in terms of comic dialogue.”

“The Normal Heart” resonated with him on a few levels: Mr. Parsons is gay and in a 10-year relationship, and working with an ensemble again onstage was like nourishment, he said. As the production was ending last summer, he heard that the Roundabout Theater Company was considering a revival of “Harvey” — initially with John C. Reilly under consideration for Elwood — and last November the play’s director, Scott Ellis, asked him and Ms. Hecht to do a private reading of the work in Los Angeles.

Hat/tip to Wonder Man.

WATCH: Pres. Obama and the LGBT Community

noreply@blogger.com (Ron Buckmire) — Thu, 24 May 2012 16:18:00 +0000

I'm back in Los Angeles, CA!

noreply@blogger.com (Ron Buckmire) — Thu, 24 May 2012 16:10:00 +0000

Here is the schwag from my 15-day vacation in Madrid, Barcelona and Rome.

GODLESS WEDNESDAY: Atheist Pig On Opposition To Same-Sex Marriage

noreply@blogger.com (Ron Buckmire) — Wed, 23 May 2012 07:34:00 +0000

(via The Atheist Pig)

DOJ Affirms Right To Tape Public Police Activity

noreply@blogger.com (Ron Buckmire) — Tue, 22 May 2012 10:47:00 +0000

Finally! The U.S. Department of Justice has slapped down state and local jurisdictions who have been trying to criminalize what most people is obviously legal activity by citizens, recording the official activity of police officers in the execution of their duties.

Here's an excerpt from a letter DOJ sent to the Baltimore Police Department on this issue (pdf):

Because recording police officers in the public discharge of their duties is protected by
the First Amendment, policies should prohibit interference with recording of police activities except in narrowly circumscribed situations. More particularly, policies should instruct officers that, except under limited circumstances, officers must not search or seize a camera or recording device without a warrant. In addition, policies should prohibit more subtle actions that may nonetheless infringe upon individuals’ First Amendment rights. Officers should be advised not to threaten, intimidate, or otherwise discourage an individual from recording police officer enforcement activities or intentionally block or obstruct cameras or recording devices.

Policies should prohibit officers from destroying recording devices or cameras and
deleting recordings or photographs under any circumstances. In addition to violating the First Amendment, police officers violate the core requirements of the Fourteenth Amendment procedural due process clause when they irrevocably deprived individuals of their recordings without first providing notice and an opportunity to object.

There have been some ridiculous horror stories about people being arrested and charged with crimes for recording police officers while they conducted arrests. Hopefully the DOJ letter will put an end to this foolishness and help the police recognize that more information and openness about their activities will lead to more trust between the community they are sworn "to protect and serve," not less.

Hat/tip to Digby.

MD High Court: All Legal Marriages Valid Here, Too

noreply@blogger.com (Ron Buckmire) — Tue, 22 May 2012 07:52:00 +0000

Big news! The Maryland Court of Appeals, the highest court in the state, has issued a 7-0 ruling in a divorce of a lesbian couple (Jessica Port v. Virginia Anne Cowan) who were legally married in California in 2008 that all same-sex marriages legal in the jurisdiction when they were performed are valid and recognized in Maryland, as well!

Chris Geidner of Metro Weekly has the deets:

[N]o still viable decision by this Court has deemed a valid foreign marriage to be "repugnant," despite being void or punishable as a misdemeanor or more serious crime were it performed in Maryland. The present case will be treated no differently. A valid out-of-state same-sex marriage should be treated by Maryland courts as worthy of divorce, according to the applicable statutes, reported cases, and court rules of this State.

More importantly, even if a referendum is qualified this June (and passed this November) to invalidated Maryland's recently passed marriage equality law, Maryland residents can still go get married in any of the 6 states (and Washington, D.C.) that allow same-sex marriage and their marriage will be valid or legal in Maryland as well. It would take a state constitutional amendment to overturn this decision by Maryland's highest court.

This was already believed to be the law in the state of Maryland (like in Rhode Island) due to opinions issued by the relevant Attorneys-General of those states, but a ruling by the state supreme court settles the issue in Maryland and an executive order issued by the Governor of Rhode Island strengthens (but does not completely settle) the legal situation in that jurisdiction.

Rome 2012: Nadal Restores Order With Win

noreply@blogger.com (Ron Buckmire) — Mon, 21 May 2012 18:11:00 +0000

Defying my prediction, Rafael Nadal restored order to the top of men's tennis today with a 7-5 6-3 win over World #1 (and defending champion) Novak Djokovic to win his 6th Italian Open title and reclaim the World #2 position from his arch-nemesis Roger Federer a mere 6 days before the start of the 2nd major of the year in Paris.

It was the 32nd meeting between Djokovic and Nadal and with his win Nadal improved his career head-to-head record to 18-14 and vaulted to the top of the record books with 21 ATP Masters series titles (1 ahead of Federer's 20). The BNL Internazionale d'Italia title was Nadal's 49th ATP tour title (35th on clay).

NAACP Endorses Marriage Equality!

noreply@blogger.com (Ron Buckmire) — Mon, 21 May 2012 10:14:00 +0000

Major news on marriage equality occurred this weekend which confirms my belief in the inexorable victory of the good guys in the ongoing kulturkampf over LGBT equality. The NAACP, the nation's oldest and most respected civil rights organization, has officially endorsed marriage equality.

Here's the text of the resolution which the NAACP Board of Directors passed this weekend:

The NAACP Constitution affirmatively states our objective to ensure the “political, education, social and economic equality” of all people. Therefore, the NAACP has opposed and will continue to oppose any national, state, local policy or legislative initiative that seeks to codify discrimination or hatred into the law or to remove the Constitutional rights of LGBT citizens. We support marriage equality consistent with equal protection under the law provided under the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution. Further, we strongly affirm the religious freedoms of all people as protected by the First Amendment.

It's gonna be pretty hard for heterosexual supremacists and religious extremists to continue argue that the right of everyone to marry the adult partner of their choice regardless of gender is not a civil right anymore after this. Note the reference to religious freedom, discrimination and equal protection. The text of the resolution was written by my friend Maxim Thorne and publicized via Twitter this weekend.

Nice birthday present for me! I've been a NAACP member ever since the California NAACP endorsed marriage equality way back in 2005!

Djokovic-Nadal XXXII: Rome 2012 Final on Monday

noreply@blogger.com (Ron Buckmire) — Mon, 21 May 2012 09:55:00 +0000

Due to the rain which postponed and dramatically impacted the gripping women's final between Maria Sharapova and Li Na at the BNL Internazionale d'Italia, the men's final between World #1 Novak Djokovic and World #3 Rafael Nadal will be held at noon local time (3am PDT / 6am EDT). I'm not sure I'll watch the final live, since my time in the Eternal City is coming to a close, and today is my birthday!

This is the 32nd career match between the two players who have won the last 8 Grand Slam titles between them (5 for Djokovic and 3 for Nadal with the Spaniard losing to the Serbian in 3 of those finals and beating him in one).

The two are playing in their 8th consecutive final since March 2011, with Djokovic winning 6 of those matches in a row but Nadal won their last meeting, on clay, in the Monte Carlo final earlier a month ago. This will be their 4th clay court final, Nadal's best surface and Djokovic's worst.

In the semifinals, Djokovic played an excellent match against Roger Federer, winning 6-2 7-6(4) to beat the person who had stopped his astonishing winning streak from last year in the semifinals of the French Open. It was only Federer's 4th match loss since the 2011 US Open semifinal loss to Djokovic. Nadal outlasted his countryman World #5 David Ferrer in his semifinal 7-6(6) 6-0 despite being down a break 1-3 in the first set. Both players are playing well and should be rested after not playing at all on Sunday. I didn't see any of them play during my visit to the tournament on Friday for the quarterfinals.

The 2012 French Open starts in under a week (Sunday May 27th) and is looming large over this 32nd meeting between the two leading contenders for the title. For Djokovic, if he wins it he will become the first male player in several decades to win 4 consecutive major titles (the Nole slam). If Nadal wins it, it will be his record 7th French Open title and 11th major title overall.

The Rome final should be an excellent proxy fight. I believe Nadal really wants it, but I think, over 3 sets Djokovic can impose his will and blunt Nadal's mastery of the surface over a finitely defined time (3 tie-break sets).

PREDICTION: Djokovic.

Eye Candy: Daniel Louisy (3rd time!)

noreply@blogger.com (Ron Buckmire) — Mon, 21 May 2012 04:46:00 +0000

Daniel Louisy is a 6'4" 210 pound model born in London, England in January 1982. He has his own website at DanielLouisy.com. He has been featured as Eye Candy on MadProfessah.com twice before (December 19, 2011 and February 27, 2012), usually showing his eye-catching physique. I wish i could hear his British accent, is there anything sexier than a Black Brit?

What is really interesting about Daniel is his ability to portray all sorts of different types, as depicted in these four images above. Regardless of what he is wearing (or not wearing), he always looks yummy!

Happy Birthday to me!

ROME 2012: Sharapova Guts Out Title Win Over Li

noreply@blogger.com (Ron Buckmire) — Sun, 20 May 2012 22:05:00 +0000

Julian Finney/Getty

Maria Sharapova continued her string of surprisingly successful clay court performances by retaining her Italian Open title with a gut-wrenching, rain-drenched 4-6 6-4 7-6(5) win over reigning French Open champion Li Na in Rome. The match took nearly 3 hours in playing time (2 hours, 52 minutes) but more than twice that in actual duration due to the inclement weather. It drizzled most of the day starting around 3pm and eventually the rain lead to a 2 hour break, astonishingly right before the decisive 3rd set tie-breaker.

The drama was not only in the sky but also on the court. When I started watching the match (after a long day walking around the centuries-old Foro Romano) the score was 6-4 4-0 for Li Na, who was then a mere two games away from claiming the BNL Internazionale d'Italia title after winning six games in a row. At that point, the Chinese player inexplicably started spraying the ball around the court with unforced errors and an inability to hit first serves and ended up losing the next eight games in a row; this resulted in her losing the second set 4-6 and being down a break before she was able to win another game, on serve. Sharapova was able to break serve again and eventually served at 4-1 in the 3rd set when the momentum suddenly shifted again when Li Na managed to break the Russian's serve and rattled off 4 consecutive games to grab the lead 4-5, on serve. The next 3 games were played in pouring rain, but all went with serve (although Sharapova also had to save a championship point in the 12th game after mangling an easy put away on the deuce point to give her opponent a chance to break and win the match). Finally at 6-all the umpire stopped play due to rain and the two combatants had to wait for nearly 2 hours to play a tension-filled tiebreak which Sharapova won when a Li backhand down the line missed the sideline by millimeters.

Sharapova ended up with twice as many double faults (10 to 5), more unforced errors (59 to 56) and less total points (101 to 102) but with a win.

The Russian has to be considered a front-runner for the Roland Garros title which starts next week, since Serena Williams withdrew with a back injury on Saturday instead of playing her semifinal with Li Na and World #1 Victoria Azarenka withdrew after playing a pro forma match so that she would not be fined by the WTA for skipping the mandatory Rome tournament.

Madrid and Rome: A (Tennis) Tale of Two Cities

noreply@blogger.com (Ron Buckmire) — Sat, 19 May 2012 07:11:00 +0000


Rome, Italy	Madrid, Spain

Thanks to some clever scheduling and an accommodating spouse, I was able to arrange my family's annual vacation to coincide with two of the most important clay court tournaments of the year: the Mutua Madrid Open in Madrid, Spain and the Internazionali BNL d'Italia in Rome, Italy. That the tennis tournaments happen to be in two of the European cities that we have not visited yet but were relatively high on our joint bucket list was an extra bonus.

Before arriving, we were told that Rome is a much more exciting city than Madrid so we budgeted twice as much time for the Eternal City. However, Madrid is the larger city (3.3 million residents to 2.8 million residents) while Italy is the more populous country (60.6 million to 46 million). Tennis-wise, both the Madrid and Rome tournaments share the feature of the four Grand Slams (Australia, French, Wimbledon and U.S.) that women and men compete at the same event, which is excellent for someone like me who is a fan of both the ATP (men's tennis) and the WTA (women's tennis). Both tournaments are very important stops on the two tennis tours, labeled a Masters 1000 event for the Men and a Premiere event for the Women (i.e. the largest tournaments just below the Majors). The Madrid tournament is technically larger (it has a draw of 64 and a purse of $5 million for the women and € 3 million for the men) compared to the Italian tournament (which has a slightly smaller draw of 56 but a significantly smaller purse of $2 million for the women and € 2.4 million for the men). The Madrid final is played in a state-of-the-art stadium called La Caja Magica (The Magic Box) while the Rome final is played in a Centre Court at the Italico Foro (Italian Forum) on the site of the 1960 Olympics.

Here are my impressions of the two tournaments, having attended the exact same session on the same day 1 week apart in the same year (the day session of Day 5: Quarterfinals Day).

In Madrid, the matches we were able to see with a ticket to the largest arena were: World #1 Victoria Azarenka v Li Na, Serena Williams v. World #2 Maria Sharapova and Tomas Berdych v. Fernando Verdasco (who had eliminated World #2 Rafael Nadal the round before). We also potentially had access to every other match being played during the day, which included Juan Martin del Potro v Aleksandr Dologpolov, World #4 Agnieska Radwanska v. a Qualifier and World #5 Samantha Stosur v. a Qualifier. The latter matches were played on Court #3, since for some reason Court #2 was not used on this day but I believe was in service during the earlier part of the tournament. The Night session featured World #1 Novak Djokovic v Janko Tipsarevic and World #3 Roger Federer v World #5 David Ferrer.

In Rome, the quarterfinal matches were split between the Centre Court and the Super Tennis Arena. Thanks to the fact that all tickets to the Italian Open can only be purchased online through TicketOne.it (which appears to be the Italian version of Ticketmaster) I was unable to get what I considered an acceptable Centre Court ticket online and opted for tickets in the 4th row of the 2nd largest court instead. My decision was made easier when it also became clear that buying a ticket to the largest court did not provide optional access to the 2nd largest and all other courts on the grounds, which is typically the practice in every tournament I have been to, including all four slams. In the day session at Centre Court was Serena Willliams v Flavia Pennetta, World #1 Novak Djokovic v. Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and World #3 Rafael Nadal v. Tomas Berdych. In the Super Tennis Day session was World #5 David Ferrer v Richard Gasquet (who had eliminated World #4 Andy Murray), Li Na v Dominika Cibulkova, and Venus Williams v World #2 Maria Sharapova. The night session featured World #3 Petra Kvitova v Angelique Kerber and World #2 Roger Federer v Andreas Seppi.

Overall, I'd say the Madrid tournament is the tournament that I would more be likely to attend again.
This decision is made on the following reasons:

Accessibility (Madrid): The site of the Madrid Open is very accessible by public transport from the center of the city by Metro, followed by a short (10 minute walk) from the nearest subway stop (San Fermin-Ocasur on the Yellow Line). The Italian Open is a 40-minute bone-jarring bus ride from the Central Train Station and then a short 5-minute walk to the Olympic complex which contains the tennis stadiums.

Fan Friendliness (Tie): The Madrid Open allows absolutely no food or drink to be brought in from outside (these rules are not posted on the tournament website). I had brought two packs of Trader Joe's cranberries, a banana and some locally purchased tangerines and security would not let me enter with even a single piece of fruit after a thorough search of every bag. At the Italian Open you could probably walk in with a pizza (or a gun!) the security was almost negligible with no searching of bags whatsoever.
However, the Madrid site has numerous other aspects which make it more oriented toward the casual tennis fan (give-aways of posters with players names, lots of booths with tennis gear and tournament schwag and a gigantic television screen outside of the main court showing all the scores and the action on the main court).

Tournament Site (Madrid): Madrid's Caja Magica is one of the best tennis venues I have ever been in bar none (and that includes Centre Court at Wimbledon!). It is clearly better (in the sense of being more modern and comfortable to be in with better sight lines) than all of the stadiums at Roland Garros and Flushing Meadows (except perhaps Louis Armstrong Stadium in New York). I haven't been to every court at Flinders Park in Melbourne or Wimbledon but of the British courts since only Centre Court has a roof that is the only court I would say approaches the Caja Magica. I've heard that Hi-Sense Arena and Margaret Court Arena (both of which will have roofs by next year) are excellent stadiums buut I've only been to Rod Laver Arena, which I think is slightly too big. The Magic Box contains three courts in one carpeted arena, which for all intents and purposes are indoor courts because they have retractable roofs. Of course, the blue clay is controversial but the seats are well-marked and the traffic flow of getting fans to their ticketed seat is professionally maintained. Rome's Super Tennis Arena has no marked areas to distinguish the different seating areas and then uses the same numbers to describe two different seats in two different areas! There are no ushers once when gets into the stadium so basically even if you have an assigned seat, it is very unlikely that is where you will be sitting.

Ticketing and Pricing (Madrid): The Italian Open website is a disorganized disaster (though bizarrely, the one thing they do better than Madrid is live-streaming of the matches online) with the ticketing problems already mentioned. Their seating charts of the two main stadium are very misleading (this is a common problem with the seating charts of every tennis stadium I have ever been to!) What is needed is the actual measurements of the stadium and always the location of the umpire's chair to be indicated. If this information was provided I see no reason why any tennis fan would ever buy a ticket to Arthur Ashe Stadium again--it is the absolutely worst tennis stadium in the world to watch a tennis match for the average fan. The Italian Open tickets were slightly cheaper but the availability was significantly reduced. As a fan coming from another country, a site that allows printing of one's ticket from the website is necessary, and ticketone.it only has that option for certain tickets and the Italian Open re-sellers rarely had that option at all. The Madrid Open website allows one to print out tickets directly from it's own website.

City and Country of Event Location (Tie): Both the Italians and the Spaniards have the shocking habit of answering their cellphones (and engaging in a full conversation!) when they ring during a match. As a city and country, Madrid and Spain seem more technologically advanced than Rome and Italy. The Spanish metro is one of the best in the world, with modern, clean trains coming every 2-4 minutes. It's not cheap, but it's fast and efficient. Rome's metro system is like a throwback to New York's subways from the 70s or 80s. They are covered in graffiti and there are only two(!) lines. The bus and tram (light rail) lines are the more efficient way to get around the city, but the city transport service (called ATAC) does not make it easy to find the location of the routes. However, a weekly pass (which allows travel on all bus, tram or subway) is half the price it is in Madrid (or Barcelona) and is an excellent bargain. Yes, there's probably more to see (and eat) in Rome than Madrid as a tourist but the Spanish city is a more livable city (i.e. more grocery stores, easier to get around, cheaper accommodations) and when the tennis is over one has to enjoy the rest of one's stay. The Spaniards really do start eating dinner at 9, 10, 11pm at night but they also have a nap (businesses close) in the middle of the day. It's all very civilized. It's true that while in Italy there are many, many more cities you could visit (Milan, Florence, Venice, etc) while in Spain there are fewer alternate destinations (Barcelona, Seville, Bilbao).

Interestingly, the next tournaments I want to attend are in North America: Sony Ericsson Open in Miami and the Roger Cup in Toronto (or Montreal).

ROME 2012: Men and Women Semifinals Set

noreply@blogger.com (Ron Buckmire) — Fri, 18 May 2012 23:26:00 +0000

Julian Finney/Getty

MadProfessah and Sentient Meat attended the Italian Open today on quarterfinals day. It was interesting to attend the joint WTA/ATP stop in Rome one week after attending a similar tennis tournament in Madrid.

The semifinals are now set: Novak Djokovic beat Jo-Wilfried Tsonga 7-5 6-1 and will face Roger Federer (who beat Andreas Seppi 6-1 6-2). Rafael Nadal (who beat Tomas Berdych 6-4 7-5) will face David Ferrer (who beat Richard Gasquet 7-6(4) 6-3).

I didn't see any of these matches, since I was only able to get (very good) seats in the Super Tennis Arena, where I saw Li Na beat Dominika Cibulkova 6-1 7-6(4) and Maria Sharapova beat Venus Williams 6-4 6-3. Sharapova will play lefty phenom Angelique Kerber (who beat Petra Kvitova 7-6(2) 1-6 6-1) in the first semifinal while Serena Williams will face Li Na in the other. In Rome, if you buy tickets to one arena you are not automatically given access to the other (smaller) arenas on the site, which is different from any other tournament I have ever attended. I would have got tickets for the larger site, the Foro Italico, but it is a much larger arena and i was not able to get seats as close to the action in it using the tournament's recalcitrant ticketone.it website to buy tickets.

I predict a Djokovic-Nadal final and a Serena-Maria final on Sunday. It's possible I'll be able to get tickets to the final on Sunday, but more likely I'll be watching it on TV like most of you (the weather report has a 70% chance of rain).

Celebrity Friday: Evan Wolfson Recognized

noreply@blogger.com (Ron Buckmire) — Fri, 18 May 2012 10:18:00 +0000

Evan Wolfson is widely regarded as the primary strategist behind the movement to legalize marriage equality in the United States. He is currently the founder and executive director of Freedom to Marry, the national organization devoted to the project of ending discrimination against same-sex couples at all levels of recognition by the State.

This week he was awarded the Barnard College Medal of Distinction along with President Barack Obama, just a few days after the President announced that he supported marriage equality.

In an even bigger twist, former Chief Judge of New York's highest court, Judith Kaye, presented Evan with his award.

Congratulations, Evan!

ROME 2012: Men's and Women's Quarterfinals Set

noreply@blogger.com (Ron Buckmire) — Fri, 18 May 2012 10:07:00 +0000

I'm in Rome this week along with all the top players in the ATP and WTA. I'm on vacation, while the players are competing in the Italian Open, the Internazionali BNL d'Italia.

The quarterfnals are now set:

Men's Draw
Djokovic v. Tsonga
Nadal v. Berdych
Federer v. Seppi
Ferrer v. Gasquet

Women's Draw
D. Cibulkova v. Li. N
F. Pennetta v. S. Williams
A. Kerber v. P. Kvitova
M. Sharapova v. V. Williams

I'll be attending the day session today and will see Ferrer v. Gasquet, Cibulkova v. Li and M. Sharapova v. V. Williams.

Today is the International Day Against Homophobia

noreply@blogger.com (Ron Buckmire) — Thu, 17 May 2012 19:41:00 +0000

Today is the 10th edition of the International Day Against Homophobia, which is celebrated May 17. Here are the posters for the 2011, 2010 and 2009 editions.

Donna Summer (1948-2012)

noreply@blogger.com (Ron Buckmire) — Thu, 17 May 2012 17:26:00 +0000

Donna Summer, the longtime Queen of Disco and gay icon, has died at the age of 63 after a long fight with cancer. Summer was well-known for her string of chart-topping hits in the 1970s and 1980s like "Hot Stuff," "Bad Girls," "Last Dance," "She Works Hard For The Money," "MacArthur Park"and her duet with Barbra Streisand "No More Tears (Enough Is Enough)."

I'm in Rome, Italy now

noreply@blogger.com (Ron Buckmire) — Wed, 16 May 2012 21:02:00 +0000

I've got tickets to the quarterfinals of the Italian Open on Friday!

GODLESS WEDNESDAY: A Primer on Religious Privilege

noreply@blogger.com (Ron Buckmire) — Wed, 16 May 2012 10:27:00 +0000

As I have become more energetic about expressing my skepticism about religion, one of the key ideas I have come across is the notion of religious privilege, i.e. the concept that religious belief is given preferential treatment, deference or favoritism over religious non-belief.

About.com has a pretty good primer on the concept of religious privilege:

Religious Privilege as a Nonconscious Ideology:

In significant ways, religious privilege is what is known in the social sciences as a “nonconscious ideology.” This means it is perpetuated in ways that people aren’t conscious of. The very environment which structures their lives and assumptions about life also reinforces the assumption that religion is and should be treated with greater deference, respect, and favoritism than other beliefs. Unpacking these assumptions and revealing them is critical to ending religious privilege.

Modern Liberalism vs. Social Privilege:

Social, cultural, and political privileges of any sort — gender, race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, etc. — are anathema to modern liberal conception of society. Under modern liberalism, all citizens of society should be treated as fully equal with the same rights, privileges, and responsibilities as everyone else. If one group is privileged over others on the basis of something like race or religion, this institutionalizes discrimination and bigotry.

[...]

Religious Organizations & Believers Should be Bound by Neutral Laws & Regulation:

The main premise employed by those who advocate religious privilege in modern society is that religion, religious groups, religious beliefs, and religious believers should not have to be bound by the same laws as everyone else. The primary argument against religious privilege should therefore be that neutral laws should be binding on everyone.

[...]

Defenders of religious privilege tend to frame it as a matter of religious liberty: when laws infringe upon religiously motivated actions, then that infringes upon religious liberty. In the abstract, that sounds reasonable, but when we come to actual cases we can find many instances where one person’s interests may trump another’s free exercise rights. This is an important principle to recognize because too often, people fail to understand or even simply deny the possibility that religion and religiously motivated behavior can cause harm.

The right of a person to practice their religion cannot entail a right to harm others or to undermine the public good. The rule of law becomes meaningless if religiously motivated behavior stands outside legal regulation.

Thoughts?

Rhode Island Recognizes Same-Sex Marriages

noreply@blogger.com (Ron Buckmire) — Tue, 15 May 2012 22:48:00 +0000

Good news from Rhode Island! Independent Governor Lincoln Chaffee today issued an executive order which declares that all state agencies will recognize legal same-sex marriages from other jurisdictions.

The order signed by Gov. Lincoln Chafee in a Statehouse ceremony directs state agencies to recognize marriages performed out of state as legal and treat same-sex married couples the same as heterosexual ones.

Some gay couples married outside Rhode Island — where civil unions are allowed, but gay marriage is illegal — have not been afforded certain rights because state law is not clear on the subject.

In 2007, then-Attorney General Patrick Lynch issued an opinion in favor of recognizing out-of-state same-sex marriages, but it was nonbinding. Chafee said his signing of the executive order is “following through” on that opinion.

The executive order is expected to have many real-world implications. Same-sex spouses of state employees and anyone covered by an insurance company regulated in Rhode Island will be entitled to health and life insurance benefits, gay rights advocates say.

Both partners in a same-sex couple will be able to list their names as parents on a child’s birth certificate, and same-sex couples will be entitled to sales tax exemptions on the transfer of property including vehicles.

Hat/tip to LGBT Think Progress.

Here is the Executive Order (12-02):
RI Executive Order on Marriage Equality