I.D. actually is fairly scientific and mathematical study. Granted some creationists abuse it to come to weird conclusions. I.D. is a statistical study of what are the characteristics derived from purely random processes. How do these characteristics compare to those of intelligent processes? If we found an pottery in the ground, was that evolved from clay and random processes or does it display sufficiently non-random characteristics to show that something intelligent made it?
Something is either scientific or it's not. There's no "fairly scientific". What falsifiable hypothesis does I.D. make that hasn't already been refuted?
Evolution is a very broad term and for the most parts does have lots of evidence. However given that creationism is the explanation of the origin of life, the amount of evidence towards the origin of life for evolution is probably not significant enough that reasonable scientists would completely disregard either.
Supernatural events are, by definition, not scientific, therefore no reasonable scientist will consider them for scientific purposes. For philosophical or religious purposes, sure. But that's not science.
Many feel that the original intent of this amendment was to maintain a national defense by way of individual gun ownership, and that the right to bear arms implies the right to take your personal gun and join the militia when the nation is threatened. Having a personal right to go buy a fully automatic assault rifle and fire it off in your backyard isn't part of this amendment. There have been several instances of "judicial activism" which has expanded the meaning of this amendment over the centuries.
Judicial activism being any decision that doesn't match your own interpretation, of course. I love how people rail against judicial activism, except when it goes their way. Then it's just the courts being sensible. There are many vague statements in the Constitution. It behooves us to look deeper into the origin of these parts to see why they were added and what they were intended to do. Unfortunately this is not always easy, as there was then, as now, much debate about a lot of it and much compromise as well. Anyone suggesting that the Constitution is unambiguous is deluding themselves.
The problem is that you are the exception to the rule, most people believe what ever they are told and that is how narrow-minded zealots propagate. I am arguing that people would be less likely to blindly accept things if our educational practices were to present neutral pros and cons on many view points and have people decide for themselves.
I.D. or creationism are not scientific viewpoints, and therefore don't belong in science class.
The problem with science is that for historical events, science is only theorizing a best guess based on the current evidence. It's not a fact, it didn't happen that way, it is a guess with some logical thinking behind it. This doesn't make other guesses incorrect, which is often assumed by science, just less likely based on a certain way of thinking.
It's a guess based on the observable evidence, and subject to revision or replacement if more evidence is found that contradicts it in part or in whole. It can also be used to predict other things that we should be able to find (and we often do find) if our guess is accurate enough. When creationists can come up with an actual scientific theory that has even a tenth of the evidence to support it that evolution has, then I'd be willing to consider adding it to science curriculum.
Obviously the numbers of theories would need to be limited, but teaching science shouldn't be the teaching of facts or theory, it should be teaching the scientific process of how those facts and theory came to be accepted science. Presenting multiple contrasting theories with discussion about both would seem to be beneficial.
Sure, if we were talking about multiple scientific theories.
Well, given that only 3 out of 10 of the commandments made it into law, and that those 3 are recognized pretty much everywhere, regardless of religion, I don't think there's much evidence that our system of government or our laws are based on the Bible.
It is amazing the damage that a few phuqtards with ignorant beliefs can have. I always shake may head in amazement at the evolutionary naysayers. I have found that asking them how antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria have come about so quickly usually shuts them up.
You must have encountered some remarkably reasonable creationists. That same argument would often get a response more along the lines of, "But they're still bacteria! They didn't evolve into a goldfish or anything, so evolution is wrong!" Try getting people like that to understand the first thing about science. I think it'd be rather less painful to just have my head slammed in a car door repeatedly.
Creationism is not science. It offers no testable theories. It adds nothing to the scope of known facts.
Neiter does evolution.
Evolution is simply the endeavour to explain all of the facts without any possibility of saying “God did it”.
By all means, teach science in science class. Teach facts. Fossils. Genetics. Mutation. Natural selection. These are things which are observable and testable.
The theory on where the fossils came from and how they were formed, the search for common ancestors in heredity, the theory that mutations can (or can’t) eventually cause one life form to evolve into a completely different life form, or that natural selection can or can’t do this... I don’t care whether you are an evolutionist or a creationist. You are not working with facts, you are working with theories, and they do not belong in a science class.
Science is ALL theories, so of course they belong in a science class! Where the hell did you learn about science?
Science is not the search for truth, just facts. If you want truth you should seek out philosophy.
But without written and verified documentation on history, Science can not find out the facts of what did happen, it can only guess based on evidence. That really the only problem I have with Science people is they assume it is fact when it isn't. It is the best guess based on the recently collected evidence. However guessing on recently collected evidence can have its own flaws based on assumptions. How can we say that 1000 years of evidence can accurately predict billions of years before?
You don't predict the past. You can infer certain things by analyzing evidence such as fossils and artifacts. These can support theories such as evolution that explain certain phenomena, and allow us to make predictions about how the world works and then attempt to verify these predictions. That's science. Saying that since we weren't around to see it, we can't know for sure and therefore one guess is as good as the next is NOT science.
Evolution is a religion. It is the naturalistic explanation to origins when you don't want to believe in a God who creates.
Evolution doesn't explain the beginning of time, doesn't explain order or complexity, nothing cannot come nothing, chaos does not create order, etc.
Evolution doesn't attempt to explain the beginning of time or the origin of life on earth, and I'm not exactly sure what the rest of that stuff you're talking about is referring to.
Agreed, it's one person's word against another's. The teacher's responsibility at that point though, is to be a little more attentive to what's going on around them. They can't be aware of everything, but when they are given a heads up they should be able to figure out the truth of the situation and do something about it.
As for most bullies being groups, I agree except that there is usually one bully with people who only stand beside that person because they're worried about becoming a target if they don't. In my experience if you stand up to the "head bully" you don't have to worry about the others, except in the extreme cases mentioned before.
I wish the teacher's had had any sort of concern about these kinds of things. They basically ignored it as long as it wasn't erupting in the classroom or hallways. I didn't really see the kind of "head bully" thing though. Maybe that's how it was at one time or in some places, but for me that was always just the TV portrayal of a bully, and was quite different than the real-world types I encountered. The ones I encountered were mostly guys that played sports together and/or were friends outside of school as well. They all seemed pretty into it. They didn't just hang back and watch.
Been jumped outside of school, been beat up, tossed in the dumpster. That one incident was where all that rage was channeled. I was not stronger, nor was I a better fighter. I was angrier and he thought he could pick on me like everyone else.
-nb
Not everyone would be so lucky. If I tried to get a hold on most of the guys that came after me, they could break it and toss me away without even trying. At the time I probably weighed maybe 120 lbs and most of these guys were upwards of 180 and much stronger. That kind of size/weight difference would be decisive unless I got very lucky.
Sure, you can always site extreme cases, but for the most part, bullying is very minor at worst. Most bullies also don't respond well to people who do fight back, even just verbally because most of them (even the ones who do use physical abuse) are scared of actually losing.
Most bullies travel in packs in my experience, and they choose targets that are physically smaller/weaker and who have been socially rejected specifically because they have nobody to help them. So they can always do whatever they want to you because they have power and numbers on their side, and if you go to a teacher or administrator for help, it's your word against the bullies and their friends.
after coming home with 'yet another bruise' my dad said fsck it, defend yourself. (our school was one where any fight led to both parties being suspended, etc.)
So this one kid who had called me a goat fscker every day for nearly an entire year ultimately had his larynx broken by my thumbs.
never got picked on one single time after that day.
Bullies "sense" meekness and thrive on pounding away at those people. If the people getting bullied turned on their aggressors violently and unilaterally you would find much less bullying going on.
Cute story and all, but it's ridiculous to think that everyone just gets bullied by one person rather than a pack of them, or that those bullies aren't bigger, stronger, and better fighters than their targets. There's always exceptions, but in my experience, especially at the high school level, it was always a group of guys against one of the outcasts who had nobody to back them up, let alone anyone able to actually fight. Being threatened with weapons and assaults off campus was not uncommon either. Fighting back would get you pummeled even worse and give the others an excuse to jump in and get their licks in as well. Sometimes you'd get jumped outside of school too.
I went to private and Catholic schools for a time when I was young, and the kids there were MUCH better behaved than in the public schools I went to afterwards when we moved to a new city.
Also, when behavior problems do show up with kids at private schools, those schools are much more likely to handle them better than public schools, where administrators are incompetent and stupid policies like suspending kids who get beat up in fights are the norm.
I can second this. I went to public school for all but one year. That one year in a private school was easily the best school year of my life. Too bad my parents couldn't afford to keep sending my brother and I there. Small classes, smart kids, much less hostile environment, it was as close to paradise as I could have hoped for. Sadly I had to go back to public school the next year. It seemed even worse after having something to compare it to.
He went through congress to declare a war on terrorism, as required by the constitution.
What does that even mean? What specific act of congress declares "war on terrorism" and how is it Constitutional to "declare war" on a tactic? Seems you have a pretty amazingly broad interpretation of the Constitution. I wonder how anything couldn't be justified by it.
But you do get basic training, very intensive training in fact. Every kid does, every moment you interact with people.
Not really, you get to hear everything that's wrong with you. You have crappy clothes, your hair looks stupid, you're a glasses-wearing nerd, you're ugly, you're scrawny, no girls like you, you suck at sports, etc, etc. What do adults say when you ask them what you can do about these things? They're not important, that's not who you are, they just can't see the real you, yadda yadda. The problem is that kids are generally pretty shallow. Appearances matter, and power and popularity matter more than anything.
If you get off on the right foot early enough and if you're able to make enough friends early enough to learn all the lessons you need to learn in order to be able to make friends going forward, then you'll probably be ok. If not, then your lack of friends tends to turn into a downward spiral. You have nobody to learn from, so you end up an outcast who can't make friends to learn from. And that's just the really simple explanation. There are a lot of other factors that can be involved as well. Poverty, physical or mental abuse at home, mental health issues, physical flaws or abnormal development, etc., can all have serious impacts on your ability to learn and practice social skills.
That's what solves bullying, beating the fuck out of bullies
That's what solves one type of bullying. There's a bunch of stuff about how people use force, and how to identify a someone who can be backed down with posturing or even a single hit and one who will just as soon kill you. Frank Boltz is a good author to start with.
Sounds interesting, but are you sure about the name? Is it Boltz or Bolz? Found several books from the latter. Any particular recommendations?
I don't know about where you live, but where I live, you are permitted to use reasonable force to protect yourself. No judge in my part of the world is going to convict a guy of socking some asshole who tried to push him down the stairs.
The problem is that the witnesses tend to be bullies or at least friends of the bullies as well, so they lie and you lose.
Yeah, I've heard this before, but my experiences and what I've seen happen to others have said otherwise.
There was a kid named Joe that lived up the street from me who even I found to be really annoying. He was kind of like the Flanders kids on the Simpsons crossed with Pee Wee Herman. Now I got more than my share of bullying when I was in school, but this guy got bullied a lot more than even I did. I remember vividly one incident in middle school where this guy ran into Joe intentionally to knock him over. I guess something in the kid kind of snapped and he took a swing at the bully. The punch kind of glanced off the side of his head. The guy just looked at Joe for a second and then started to wail on him. He ended up sitting on his chest and pounding him while Joe just tried to cover his face. Luckily one of the teachers came out of the building then and broke it up.
This was not the only experience I had like this. Most of the bullying done to me and others was by groups of kids. Attempting to fight back against one of them was not something they could back down from. Nor would it foster any respect on their part for you. They were always bigger and stronger, so they had little to fear, and fighting back just made them more determined to break you. Middle school and high school were not pretty for myself or a lot of others I knew.
Since this study doesn't really show anything conclusive, but only a correlation, it's not really any big deal. On the other hand, there's a lot of information on the Internet, and a lot of it is pretty depressing.
Slashdot Mirror
I.D. actually is fairly scientific and mathematical study. Granted some creationists abuse it to come to weird conclusions. I.D. is a statistical study of what are the characteristics derived from purely random processes. How do these characteristics compare to those of intelligent processes? If we found an pottery in the ground, was that evolved from clay and random processes or does it display sufficiently non-random characteristics to show that something intelligent made it?
Something is either scientific or it's not. There's no "fairly scientific". What falsifiable hypothesis does I.D. make that hasn't already been refuted?
Evolution is a very broad term and for the most parts does have lots of evidence. However given that creationism is the explanation of the origin of life, the amount of evidence towards the origin of life for evolution is probably not significant enough that reasonable scientists would completely disregard either.
Supernatural events are, by definition, not scientific, therefore no reasonable scientist will consider them for scientific purposes. For philosophical or religious purposes, sure. But that's not science.
Science is forming a hypothesis, testing the hypothesis and weighing it against evidence, and either discarding it or promoting it to a theory.
Jumping straight to a theory that can’t be tested isn’t scientific.
So we can't make potentially falsifiable predictions, right?
Many feel that the original intent of this amendment was to maintain a national defense by way of individual gun ownership, and that the right to bear arms implies the right to take your personal gun and join the militia when the nation is threatened. Having a personal right to go buy a fully automatic assault rifle and fire it off in your backyard isn't part of this amendment. There have been several instances of "judicial activism" which has expanded the meaning of this amendment over the centuries.
Judicial activism being any decision that doesn't match your own interpretation, of course. I love how people rail against judicial activism, except when it goes their way. Then it's just the courts being sensible. There are many vague statements in the Constitution. It behooves us to look deeper into the origin of these parts to see why they were added and what they were intended to do. Unfortunately this is not always easy, as there was then, as now, much debate about a lot of it and much compromise as well. Anyone suggesting that the Constitution is unambiguous is deluding themselves.
The problem is that you are the exception to the rule, most people believe what ever they are told and that is how narrow-minded zealots propagate. I am arguing that people would be less likely to blindly accept things if our educational practices were to present neutral pros and cons on many view points and have people decide for themselves.
I.D. or creationism are not scientific viewpoints, and therefore don't belong in science class.
The problem with science is that for historical events, science is only theorizing a best guess based on the current evidence. It's not a fact, it didn't happen that way, it is a guess with some logical thinking behind it. This doesn't make other guesses incorrect, which is often assumed by science, just less likely based on a certain way of thinking.
It's a guess based on the observable evidence, and subject to revision or replacement if more evidence is found that contradicts it in part or in whole. It can also be used to predict other things that we should be able to find (and we often do find) if our guess is accurate enough. When creationists can come up with an actual scientific theory that has even a tenth of the evidence to support it that evolution has, then I'd be willing to consider adding it to science curriculum.
Obviously the numbers of theories would need to be limited, but teaching science shouldn't be the teaching of facts or theory, it should be teaching the scientific process of how those facts and theory came to be accepted science. Presenting multiple contrasting theories with discussion about both would seem to be beneficial.
Sure, if we were talking about multiple scientific theories.
Well, given that only 3 out of 10 of the commandments made it into law, and that those 3 are recognized pretty much everywhere, regardless of religion, I don't think there's much evidence that our system of government or our laws are based on the Bible.
It is amazing the damage that a few phuqtards with ignorant beliefs can have. I always shake may head in amazement at the evolutionary naysayers. I have found that asking them how antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria have come about so quickly usually shuts them up.
You must have encountered some remarkably reasonable creationists. That same argument would often get a response more along the lines of, "But they're still bacteria! They didn't evolve into a goldfish or anything, so evolution is wrong!" Try getting people like that to understand the first thing about science. I think it'd be rather less painful to just have my head slammed in a car door repeatedly.
Creationism is not science. It offers no testable theories. It adds nothing to the scope of known facts.
Neiter does evolution.
Evolution is simply the endeavour to explain all of the facts without any possibility of saying “God did it”.
By all means, teach science in science class. Teach facts. Fossils. Genetics. Mutation. Natural selection. These are things which are observable and testable.
The theory on where the fossils came from and how they were formed, the search for common ancestors in heredity, the theory that mutations can (or can’t) eventually cause one life form to evolve into a completely different life form, or that natural selection can or can’t do this... I don’t care whether you are an evolutionist or a creationist. You are not working with facts, you are working with theories, and they do not belong in a science class.
Science is ALL theories, so of course they belong in a science class! Where the hell did you learn about science?
One is science the other is religion. Guess which one does not belong in a schoolbook?
Both belong in a school book or at least need to be respected as widely help beliefs in one.
You don't teach religion on taxpayer dollars. Teach your kids whatever religion you want on your own time.
Science is not the search for truth, just facts. If you want truth you should seek out philosophy.
But without written and verified documentation on history, Science can not find out the facts of what did happen, it can only guess based on evidence. That really the only problem I have with Science people is they assume it is fact when it isn't. It is the best guess based on the recently collected evidence. However guessing on recently collected evidence can have its own flaws based on assumptions. How can we say that 1000 years of evidence can accurately predict billions of years before?
You don't predict the past. You can infer certain things by analyzing evidence such as fossils and artifacts. These can support theories such as evolution that explain certain phenomena, and allow us to make predictions about how the world works and then attempt to verify these predictions. That's science. Saying that since we weren't around to see it, we can't know for sure and therefore one guess is as good as the next is NOT science.
Evolution is a religion. It is the naturalistic explanation to origins when you don't want to believe in a God who creates.
Evolution doesn't explain the beginning of time, doesn't explain order or complexity, nothing cannot come nothing, chaos does not create order, etc.
Evolution doesn't attempt to explain the beginning of time or the origin of life on earth, and I'm not exactly sure what the rest of that stuff you're talking about is referring to.
Agreed, it's one person's word against another's. The teacher's responsibility at that point though, is to be a little more attentive to what's going on around them. They can't be aware of everything, but when they are given a heads up they should be able to figure out the truth of the situation and do something about it.
As for most bullies being groups, I agree except that there is usually one bully with people who only stand beside that person because they're worried about becoming a target if they don't. In my experience if you stand up to the "head bully" you don't have to worry about the others, except in the extreme cases mentioned before.
I wish the teacher's had had any sort of concern about these kinds of things. They basically ignored it as long as it wasn't erupting in the classroom or hallways. I didn't really see the kind of "head bully" thing though. Maybe that's how it was at one time or in some places, but for me that was always just the TV portrayal of a bully, and was quite different than the real-world types I encountered. The ones I encountered were mostly guys that played sports together and/or were friends outside of school as well. They all seemed pretty into it. They didn't just hang back and watch.
Been jumped outside of school, been beat up, tossed in the dumpster. That one incident was where all that rage was channeled. I was not stronger, nor was I a better fighter. I was angrier and he thought he could pick on me like everyone else. -nb
Not everyone would be so lucky. If I tried to get a hold on most of the guys that came after me, they could break it and toss me away without even trying. At the time I probably weighed maybe 120 lbs and most of these guys were upwards of 180 and much stronger. That kind of size/weight difference would be decisive unless I got very lucky.
Poverty, physical or mental abuse at home, mental health issues, physical flaws or abnormal development
Sounds like several, if not most, of the bullies I was forced to know as a kid.
I don't doubt it. Same issues, different consequence.
Sure, you can always site extreme cases, but for the most part, bullying is very minor at worst. Most bullies also don't respond well to people who do fight back, even just verbally because most of them (even the ones who do use physical abuse) are scared of actually losing.
Most bullies travel in packs in my experience, and they choose targets that are physically smaller/weaker and who have been socially rejected specifically because they have nobody to help them. So they can always do whatever they want to you because they have power and numbers on their side, and if you go to a teacher or administrator for help, it's your word against the bullies and their friends.
after coming home with 'yet another bruise' my dad said fsck it, defend yourself. (our school was one where any fight led to both parties being suspended, etc.) So this one kid who had called me a goat fscker every day for nearly an entire year ultimately had his larynx broken by my thumbs.
never got picked on one single time after that day.
Bullies "sense" meekness and thrive on pounding away at those people. If the people getting bullied turned on their aggressors violently and unilaterally you would find much less bullying going on.
Cute story and all, but it's ridiculous to think that everyone just gets bullied by one person rather than a pack of them, or that those bullies aren't bigger, stronger, and better fighters than their targets. There's always exceptions, but in my experience, especially at the high school level, it was always a group of guys against one of the outcasts who had nobody to back them up, let alone anyone able to actually fight. Being threatened with weapons and assaults off campus was not uncommon either. Fighting back would get you pummeled even worse and give the others an excuse to jump in and get their licks in as well. Sometimes you'd get jumped outside of school too.
I went to private and Catholic schools for a time when I was young, and the kids there were MUCH better behaved than in the public schools I went to afterwards when we moved to a new city.
Also, when behavior problems do show up with kids at private schools, those schools are much more likely to handle them better than public schools, where administrators are incompetent and stupid policies like suspending kids who get beat up in fights are the norm.
I can second this. I went to public school for all but one year. That one year in a private school was easily the best school year of my life. Too bad my parents couldn't afford to keep sending my brother and I there. Small classes, smart kids, much less hostile environment, it was as close to paradise as I could have hoped for. Sadly I had to go back to public school the next year. It seemed even worse after having something to compare it to.
He went through congress to declare a war on terrorism, as required by the constitution.
What does that even mean? What specific act of congress declares "war on terrorism" and how is it Constitutional to "declare war" on a tactic? Seems you have a pretty amazingly broad interpretation of the Constitution. I wonder how anything couldn't be justified by it.
But you do get basic training, very intensive training in fact. Every kid does, every moment you interact with people.
Not really, you get to hear everything that's wrong with you. You have crappy clothes, your hair looks stupid, you're a glasses-wearing nerd, you're ugly, you're scrawny, no girls like you, you suck at sports, etc, etc. What do adults say when you ask them what you can do about these things? They're not important, that's not who you are, they just can't see the real you, yadda yadda. The problem is that kids are generally pretty shallow. Appearances matter, and power and popularity matter more than anything.
If you get off on the right foot early enough and if you're able to make enough friends early enough to learn all the lessons you need to learn in order to be able to make friends going forward, then you'll probably be ok. If not, then your lack of friends tends to turn into a downward spiral. You have nobody to learn from, so you end up an outcast who can't make friends to learn from. And that's just the really simple explanation. There are a lot of other factors that can be involved as well. Poverty, physical or mental abuse at home, mental health issues, physical flaws or abnormal development, etc., can all have serious impacts on your ability to learn and practice social skills.
That's what solves one type of bullying. There's a bunch of stuff about how people use force, and how to identify a someone who can be backed down with posturing or even a single hit and one who will just as soon kill you. Frank Boltz is a good author to start with.
Sounds interesting, but are you sure about the name? Is it Boltz or Bolz? Found several books from the latter. Any particular recommendations?
I don't know about where you live, but where I live, you are permitted to use reasonable force to protect yourself. No judge in my part of the world is going to convict a guy of socking some asshole who tried to push him down the stairs.
The problem is that the witnesses tend to be bullies or at least friends of the bullies as well, so they lie and you lose.
Yeah, I've heard this before, but my experiences and what I've seen happen to others have said otherwise.
There was a kid named Joe that lived up the street from me who even I found to be really annoying. He was kind of like the Flanders kids on the Simpsons crossed with Pee Wee Herman. Now I got more than my share of bullying when I was in school, but this guy got bullied a lot more than even I did. I remember vividly one incident in middle school where this guy ran into Joe intentionally to knock him over. I guess something in the kid kind of snapped and he took a swing at the bully. The punch kind of glanced off the side of his head. The guy just looked at Joe for a second and then started to wail on him. He ended up sitting on his chest and pounding him while Joe just tried to cover his face. Luckily one of the teachers came out of the building then and broke it up.
This was not the only experience I had like this. Most of the bullying done to me and others was by groups of kids. Attempting to fight back against one of them was not something they could back down from. Nor would it foster any respect on their part for you. They were always bigger and stronger, so they had little to fear, and fighting back just made them more determined to break you. Middle school and high school were not pretty for myself or a lot of others I knew.
Since this study doesn't really show anything conclusive, but only a correlation, it's not really any big deal. On the other hand, there's a lot of information on the Internet, and a lot of it is pretty depressing.