"The point here is that anyone can make it to the presidency still."
I actually agree with your main points, but try telling THIS point to 51% of the popultiaon of the ocuntry - all females. Or to black people, jewish poeple, or homosexuals. Pretty much any relatively well connected ambitious WHITE MALE can become president, yes...
ooky
We're all in it together.
Re:Apples and oranges. Drugs do cause real physica
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I agree with many things you're saying here too. Suicide is illeagal, and it's a tougher argument to say that it shouldn't be, but I still don't quite get the logic there, especially for chronically and terminally ill people that have no wish to die slowly and without dignity. It seems that certain things should really be your own decision. But my idea on pot as a gateway drug is that it is, but in one sense no more than alcohol if you consider the gateway to experimenting with intoxication. The way it becomes much more of a gateway to "harder" (actually doctors I know say alcoholism does the worst things to all your organs) drugs than alcohol is, tho, is that it IS illeagal, so if you smoke pot it may be nothing like cocaine but you have found and consumed soemthing illeagal, if not purchased and possessed this illeagal thing. Then you've broke the ice, so to speak, for engaging in unlawful criminal, risky (if nothing else cause you could go to jail) behavior.
offtopic I know, but a non-flamey and intelligent reply is sometimes rare and happy thing here.;-D
ooky MY namesake medallion sez 'Never trust a Hal 9000'! - bboys
Re:Apples and oranges. Drugs do cause real physica
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Killing Video Games
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Drugs have been proven to cause real physical harm
So has alcohol, cigarettes, processed foods rich in preservatives and saturated fat, excessive sunbathing, excessively loud rock music, sedentary lifestyles, soldering with lead solder, and excessive vibrator use.
Does that mean all of these things should be legislated against as well? Surely it (as in LIFE!!) will be a utopia then. What about gambling, cell phone use in cars, daredevil and extreme sports, or just having children (I don't know, but I hear they shave YEARS off your life and make you old before your time, just like what I've heard drugs do.) No offense, but I think that your position is the silly one here if doing physical harm to ONESELF is your criteria of what should be illegal.
ooky
"As flimsy as it is, it's open mike...punk rock. Red, white and blue, you turn the screws. It's what you choose to do. And you think that I will choose that too." - cake
Regurgitating facts doesn't mean you can do analytical thinking well, doesn't mean you have the skills to form your own opinions about confusing issues, doesn't mean you can write to impress people, and doesn't mean that you can engage in creative thinking and/or problem solving. Furthermore, "facts" are only as good as the source. Are we teaching kids to just believe anything that is presented as "fact"?
My friend is becoming a high school teacher. She says it's hard to get them to do ANYTHING but worksheets where they regurgitate answers anyway, not because they are lazy (which they certainly can be) but because they've been beaten down all these years to expect that's what you do in school, not actually LEARN things!
ooky
What's the FIRST and most immediate thing you do in your family when you're running out of money? Get an additional job or try to reduce your spending? Now why is it that Cheney and his henchmonkey Dubya would have us work on SUPPLY before DEMAND, and then call it an American way of life? - my own political rant
This is the best argument I've seen for why this whole thing stinks.
I agree with others that the administration is not responsible for his suicide. As a 13 yo, even tho he's not an adult, HE still was the only one who made that decision to irreversably end it all. I'm not saying I'm above ever having considered suicide, especially as a "troubled teen", but obviously I realized that all that FUD they spout about it being a "permanent solution to a temporary problem" is actually true. It's not even that bad that they might have threatened him with jail, perhaps he should have really found out whether he was GOING before killing himself - the fact that he didn't to me makes him seem like he already had big problems or else is an easy quitter who would have gotten scared about something else later in life. That's the thing man, administrators suck a lot of the times, grown-ups tell lies, and it's been so since the beginning of time. So I don't blame the administrators, even if they shouldn't have said what they did.
What I DO find disturbing about the whole thing is that a 10 day suspension is VERY serious. It would in fact be pretty hard to commit some sort of violent crime on school grounds (like assault, sexual assault, or harrassment) and recieve even close to this type of punishment. For one, 10 days is PRETTY damn hard to catch up on, since you usually don't get to make up missed work or tests that happened over those 10 days. For a hacker with a bright future, this in itself is a big punishment - to have his GPA possibly ruined. In my school, 10 day out-of-school suspension was the LAST punishment before expulsion. Where was his first-offense 3 day in-school?!?
One of my friends in high school was being regularly beaten by her boyfriend, and on a school trip he put her head through a school bus window. When Me and 2 other friends took it upon ourselves to report the incident, writing our separate versions down , missing class, bringing our acusations to his face (scary!!) and everything else, he was only given 2 days suspension. I think that if you were to look at that school's disciplinary records, most scuffles (beatings), sexual misunderstandings (full-on non-intercourse sexual ASSAULTS) and weapons offenses (having a knife on school grounds) would only earn you a 3-5 day in-school susp. What is the logic in this?
My father was a public high school teahcer the entire time I was growing up, and the flavor of both of your posts reminds me of all the kids in school who could never believe that teacher are REAL people, with REAL lives and families of their own. Yes, they DO go home and eat dinner and have hoobies at night, a fact which surprisingly few students EVER think about. To your comments I would say that 1) it is not public school teacher's place to "raise and discipline" YOUR children effectively, just teach them. Sometimes it is impossible to teach tho, with half the parents screaming there is not enough discipline and the other half crying that's there's too much, their poor child has been traumatized. Not ALL public teachers are that great, or even know to teach the right things, but in my experience MOST of them are people trying to do something good for the community and world they live in. They get paid abysmally, so they're certainly not in it for the money. However, going to PUBLIC schools I was able to get for myself an outstanding education (as good as my friends who went to boarding schools and private schools) and my parents didn't have to go into horrible debt to provide it. Public schooling is a cornerstone, and I beilieve one of the great priveleges, of living in the US, and altho the system needs help, she ain't dead yet, and neither should she be.
I know what you mean about this middle school philosophy tho - the one that says we shouldn't worry about actually teaching them anything between the ages of 12-14, because they are too hormonally fragile and need emotional growth capabilities instead. Come on, the kids just laugh at all that touchy-feely crap behind the counselor's backs anyway and are happy they have less homework.
ooky
wake up to find out that you are the eyes of the world - gd
Sigh, this is off-topic, but as someone who grew up at times in the north, the southern bible belt, and the west, I will say that WE DO celebrate our christian culture all the time - why does everyone say "Merry Christmas" when you leave for winter break as a default, unless they are jewish or other religion? Sadly, because of the KKK and similar organizations, "white pride" just does not mean the same thing as "black pride", "gay pride" or any other. But that's just semantic. It is easy to be innately proud of your race/religion (which I'm assuming is Caucasian/christian) when the president has always been caucasian/christian, pictures of 'beautiful' people thrown at us by the media are (or at least were until v. recently) 90% caucasian, and even the pledge of allegience firmly states "One nation, under GOD." It is not so easy to be innately proud when there is a sneaky undercurrent of opinion in the culture that (for example) african americans are more prone to be drug addicts and rapists, mexican american women are 'ugly' because they are generally hairier/more voluptuous than the caucasian models we see, jewish families are at best misguided to not believe in Jesus and at worst some sort of shylock-stereotype, and muslims are seen as completley scary, probably terrorists. All I'm saying is that these groups on few times in school or they got to "show off" their culture/religion, you were already living in a media culture that has let you be proud, let you feel capable, promoted your group as the moral and law abiding one, let you feel normal, let you feel in company with the 'majority' that is in reality no majority at all.
That being said, I've found that with open discussions and appropriate teacher guidance, children today are MUCH better at discussing these issues than we are without excluding anyone for their views/race/background. Watching a class of 13-yo discuss easily and intelligently the tribe song "Sucka Nigga" and its message of why the artist feels it is ok for black people to use this word, and the class adding their OWN interpretations on the unsaid context, or why it is NOT ok for any other group to use this word, was truly inspiring.
Creationism has no scientific evidence to back it up, so it should not be taught in science classes. That's not to say that you shouldn't believe it instead of what you're taught, shouldn't be taught it at YOUR home and YOUR church. But teaching it at school instaed of scientifically-based knowledge, facts, data, and theories will just harm these children's scientific background, and violates the separation of church and state. And they aren't necessarily mutually exclusive, you know, so it's not going to drive christain children batty or anything to learn about evolution. As my very religious mother says, "WE don't know how god DID anything, or even how long a day to him is. All we have is an interpretation of the deed, written by a HUMAN in a very poetic and metaphorical style."
Any chemicals Dow is putting in the water table, I'm thinking are not chemicals in the H2O sense. You know what I meant, what "good chemicals" would you assume they USUALLY dump instead? Did you want a list of every possible specific chemical I might be worried about, making sure to indicate whether it is d-rotated or l-rotated version that I am REALLY upset about?! Whatever...as I said you know what I mean...yes! the scary carcinogenic and or teratogenic "generic chemical" - and so you know, I may be a ditz (idiot) but I am also a chemist. As far as I know even biologists still say "germs" when they are talking about sickness-causing generic agents. Of course, YOU have made a big generalizing assumption in your response as well - that I am a sir. Should I discount the rest of what you're saying because you obviously weren't smart enough to know I am not a sir?
As for your assertion that I WOULD have recourse if they poisoned me or "my loved ones" 1) what real good is that going to do me when I already HAVE a down-syndrome leukamic child, and 2) the only recourse I have is really through GOVERNMENT courts and/or regulatory agencies.
"Between the corporate world and the governement, that [the lesser evil] would be corporations. Disney and Microsoft can't force me to use their products."
No but Dow chemical can force me to drink poisoned water by dumping chemicals in the table (secretly, obviously) since it's more profit-wise to do that then use safe alternatives or actually clean effluent up before it leaves the plant. Hmmmm... I'm glad I can call the EPA on them there - IF I even find out about it before I develop leukemia or my child is born with serious defects.
SDG&E can FORCE me to pay exorbitant prices for electricity (well actually, Sempra) because I have to have it and they've kept cheap alternative power out of the market so long with their brute market force that there are no feasible (as in less expensive) alternatives availiable. They can FORCE my bill to go up 200% or more in one year by creating power shortages by taking plants offline, FORCING my GRANDMA to not be able to afford her perscription medication. I know you've got a weak heart, Grammy, but this summer you have to decide between air conditioning (and it's 100 degrees here in the summer) or you digitalin!
GenericPharmacueticals can FORCE me to pay so much for my patented AIDS cocktail that I cannot afford to buy it. Thank god for government "help"!
There are many more examples. At least a lot of government actions and divisions are set up to be altruistic to society. Corporations RARELY so, and regularly demonstrate themselves to be incapable of self-regulation (even when faced with your "well then we'll just boycott 'em to make them listen" stance, like NIKE) when profit beckons. When they fuck up the environment, the inner cities, pricing, labor laws, and a million other things, I care that the CEO didn't care what I think.
I think you libertarians are just mad that you can't figure out how to fill out grant applications and the like to get FREE MONEY back from the government. That is MY revenge on taxes!
ooky
One day, I am going to grow wings. A chemical reaction....-radiohead
Exactly... this is why there are many more species that reproduce asexually (or primarily asexually) than sexually - all that recombination gives you a lot of crap with all the "good" mutations. Asexual reproduction is even more common in harsh environments like deserts. So variety good...to a point.
However, even in asexually reproducing populations of vertebrates you'd probably find more genetic diversity than in some areas of the current monoculture livestock practices, so the above guy is right - we have too little diversity, which is why this non-fatal disease is so scary - if it really does get totally "loose", then you'd see almost every livestock animal get it quickly, instead of just some getting it and some fighting it off. As the argument goes, anyway.
ooky
"My namesake medallion
Sez never trust a HAL 9000...." -bboys
Ooh, then you must have caught my error when I said "prism" instead of lens - I'm always mixing those words (not the objects, thank god) in my head. I admit I didn't read the article!
I love lasers, it must have been really fun to get a degree in laser tech - I just use 'em for biological studies with flow cytometry and microscopy, but I still have to tune and align(and clean, and maintain) two big class IV argon ion lasers.
ooky
"been through many times in which I thought I might lose it,/the only thing that's saved me has always been music/'cause life ain't nothing but a good groove/a good mix tape to put ya in the right mood..." - bboys
Laser light doesn't spread out the way normal broadband wavelength light does. Or at least not nearly to the same degree, which is why a laser of appropriate power pointed strait upwards will hit the moon, if you aim it that way. The way to spread out laser light is with a prism, which the air can act as, but w/in 750 meters it's not going to spread it out over the whole body. AND, when you do spread laser light out with a prism, it becomes much less harmful - if its going through a prism I can pass 100mW of uv over my skin with no apparent damage, but at the same power, unprismed (therefore normal laser), I get a nasty, localized blister. I work with lasers for a living, btw.
ooky
DANG! Do not look into laser with REMAINING eye. So beautiful, you only see it once.
No, he IS right. Sadly I don't have the origen of spp. sitting right here, but in it there is nothing that says that humans eveolved from chimps, per se. That implies that chimps evolved up to their current point and then just stopped. They've been eveolving as long as we have, we just share a common ancestor. The primate that gave rise to both of us no longer exists. I hate the use of the word "primitive" when talking about these things, tho - the correct way to think of it is ancestral vs. derived. And the taxanomic group that contains primates, insectivores, and rodents have more ancestral and less derived traits than the group that makes up ungulates, or carnivores, or sea mammals, for example. Ancestral primates and today's prosimians share more traits with the ancestral, arboreal, first placental mammal. But any current spp. is not "the ancestor" directly of any other current spp. (spp. = species)
what's served by criticizing them for providing jobs for poor people?
Well, I might ask what's served by defending them for it. I'm very glad factories were "criticized" heavily here in the US by the likes of Upton Sinclair, among others, so that I now can have a childhood, an education, a nice job, and good pay, and not have such sooty skies to boot. And the children wouldn't be on the verge of starvation if their parents got a wage you could actually raise a family on. I find them more than distasteful - I find them completely unethical. Your point about the extra costs of operating overseas is a very good one, tho, and helps me to understand why it is not so easy for Nike and others to take the high road.
ooky
One day. I am going to grow wings. A chemical reaction. - Radiohead
You describe lots of problems third world workers face, but what you don't mention is that Nike didn't cause those problems. Those
countries were poor long before Nike arrived on the scene, and would even poorer if Nike were to close it's "sweatshops" and produce shoes elsewhere.
Hmmmm...what about the simple solution of leaving the factories there, NOT hiring children, NOT beating or intimidating people, paying them a fair wage for their efforts, and letting them work a NORMAL workday instead of 14-16 hr shifts. Your argument of "when in rome" is frankly disgusting to me. NO, nike didn't cause the labor problems of the third world, they just perpetuate them, all in the name of profit margin. And Nike's not hurting, so don't tell me they'll go under or somthing if they actually adhere to ethical business practices. Nike has it in their power to actually help the ocuntry/society/people they get all their profits from, and the fact that they refuse to do so just shows how really evil they are. Imagine your child dies in some shoe press after a backbreaking 10 hr shift - would you really understand some chubby well paid American saying, "It hardly makes sense to demonize Nike for providing jobs for poor people just
because they didn't improve conditions enough. Those people would be worse off without Nike, not better."
ooky
So you sit down in your rocking chair
Transistor pressed against an ear
Are you waiting for the reaper to arrive
Or just to die by the hands of Love?...So Die Young, Stay Pretty - Blondie
It's not only Christians that believe in God, you know. That's only ONE of the glaring logical fallacies I see in your argument.
Altho I never said a THING about evolution, yes I do believe in it (gotta love a theory that has as much documented evidence in it's favor than the theory of gravity) but yet I still, strangely, would never consider going out and raping, molesting killing, assaulting, robbing anybody, whether they are women or not. This is because I consider those things to be immoral, unethical, and rather unsavory to boot. If you need a God to judge you someday or you will do these things, then for pete's sake PLEASE believe in Him in all His wrathful glory - I'll feel a lot safer. Oh, and we ARE animals, at least the last time I checked - no photosynthesis going on at my end.
And you think schools should teach this because....?
A big news bulletin for you - you don't have to be Christian to be a moral person.
And if you want them teaching our kids morals, they'd better be teaching my morals right alongside - and I'm Buddhist left winging tree hugging feminist - unless you can prove that your morals are more correct than mine.
By the way, I believe in the intent being the deciding factor as well, even tho I'm a heathen who was morally descimated by the US public school system.
ooky
"....Wov, twuuu wov, is what bwings us towgether, towday...-princess bride
Its easy to filter out. It only takes time if you let it.
I'm drowning in it - no seriously! I HATE junk mail and since I recycle all of it that I can, the giant pile that grows to critical mass with alarming regularity is lately threatening to eat me. Maybe it's easy to "filter it out" when you just throw 3-10 unopened envelopes and flyers in the trash can every day as you come in the door, but when you see the absolute POUNDAGE that accumulates in a month for ONE person who does not even own their own home and NEVER orders from catalogs you would be absolutely amazed - and I hope sickened. Why are we building more logging roads and cutting down our remaining old-growth forests and freaking out about deforestation - so I can see the same incredible NEW deal on carpet cleaning approximately 5 x a month ALL YEAR LONG!!!!
Finally, the costs of junk mail is used by the USPS to subsidize acutual postage.
What do you mean by this? I'm really curious - with all the tonnage of junk mail the USPS has to move around, doesn't it just make the job that many times more difficult on a grand scale? Do junk mailers have to pay more postage per pound than we do?
ooky
"One day. I am going to grow wings..." - Radiohead
Yes, and it certainly makes sense for them to take down the most effecient generating plants and leave them down for several months. I don't dispute a need for maintainence, but in such a crisis as this one the timing, to put it bluntly, stinks. And it would not be the first time that they've engaged in what I consider to be completely unethical business practices. Face it, they want to force us to build more power plants, and they wnat the state to end up subsidizing it in a panic! From the environmental working group:
"Simple efforts like replacing ordinary incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescents can save customers $50 over the life of each bulb, while saving one-fourth of the energy used by the old model. Home weatherization programs often produce energy savings in excess of 25 percent. Under consumer-efficiency programs like these, smart utilities offered ratepayers rebates for installing energy-saving technology.
That was before deregulation, when utilities had incentives to promote energy efficiency. Utilities were not allowed to purchase power on the open market on an as-needed basis, so saving energy to meet peak demand was cheaper than building new power plants. But under deregulation, utility companies who once rewarded customers for saving energy now sell all the power they can as fast as they can and buy more at that day's market price, which they pass on to their ratepayers immediately."
"I have a baby and my wife stays home to raise her."
"I am just sick of all these damn people who think its ok to let someone else raise their children. Its not. You are escaping the hard part of parenting. You are not a good parent."
Hmmmm. So "someone else" raising your kids is alright IF and only if it's the little wifey? Or are you one of those "liberated", feminist males who proudly spouts that HE would stay home just as quickly - but will never be doing so in this lifetime. Put your money where you mouth is: ALTERNATE years of staying home with your wife.
Believe me, I know about this from both sides: I remember two daycares, one very good, and one very bad. My parents still had plenty of "hard parts" of parenting left to do (which they did well!) after picking me up from daycare and after I no longer needed to go. I was also a full time nanny, so I know how hard it is from that side as well. And I LOVED my nanny kids, so don't go saying they weren't taken care of properly, educated, fed well, entertained, disciplined, rewarded, praised, and hugged appropriately while in my care just because I wasn't their birth parent. I find yours (and right-wing society's in general) absolute reliance on a traditional nuclear family to be ludicrous, if not dangerous. Whatever happened to "It takes a village to raise a child."?
Yeah, I saw that part too. I just think it's a little rich to expect every professor that might want to look at something "sexual" in nature (be it a treatment for penile dysfunction, a study on primate sexual behavior, a literary essay on sexual arousal themes in 1940's American literature, a treatment of womens' sexual issues, or whatever, could be 1000 other legitiimate things) to fill out a bunch of bloody paperwork and wait for official authorization to come through. Seems a bit too regulatory for my tastes, when it's clear that employees could ALREADY be fired for looking at porn inappropriately.
What really concerned me about this were the statements that were given in defense of the law:
Virginia Attorney General Mark Earley defended the law. He said state employees did not have a First Amendment right to disregard the law and decide for themselves whether sexually explicit material was required for their professional, employment-related research and writing needs.
I know that's not a direct quote, and I know for a fact, looking at some of the biotech "facts" reuters prints that their journalists are apt to just say whatever THEY understoofd about a concept (which can be very little or v. incorrect) BUT: doesn't that sound a little fascist to anyone else? A LOT of legitimate research in many areas may have dealings with " depiction or description of ``sexual excitement,''" not to mention a ton of canonized literary works! Book burning next, anyone?
The poor may not freeze (altho what about those at higher elevations?) but in the summer you can bet that they will bake, esp. if they are down south, more than 5 miles off the water. Many older people here in east San Diego County DID have to choose this summer between perscription drugs and air conditioning.
I don't know if this makes me a supa-speed real-time dreamer or what, but this article looked like a fascinating, v. cool tactic as I also dreamed about tetris A LOT when I was playing it incessantly at different times in my life. A friend of mine had the same phenomenon. It's sort of like you're playing the game but the game also usually means something in your dream, like, I dunno - the long straight foursie pieces will represent an airplane that you must find and dislodge the wheel locks on so that your cat can be flown back to his homeland, represented by the next peice, the square.
Or in really awful tetris dreams (which would usually prod me to give up the game when they happened) are when you find out that something really great is going to happen to you, like having sex with johnny depp or something, but first you have to play tetris for what seems like 5 hundred billion hours before you are allowed to commence fucking and then johnny depp leaves because he is bored and you're still stuck playing tetris and then your alarm goes off and arrrrrrrggggggggggghhhhhhhhh. You get the idea.
ooky Wake up to find out that you are the eyes of the world.
Yeah, like times were really LESS violent a hundred years ago. I guess that's easy to say, since you didn't live in it, but i'm betting that domestic violence, street brawls, shootings per capita, etc. were a lot more prevalent then. A hundred years ago no one would even blink at you popping your wife a good one if she mouthed off. To me that's violent, and a degraded form of society compared to what we have now.
you also may want to consider the fact that 100 years ago horse theft was a hanging crime, no matter what, while murder was often only taken seriously if you killed someone "important" like a grown man with money and power.
Slashdot Mirror
"The point here is that anyone can make it to the presidency still."
I actually agree with your main points, but try telling THIS point to 51% of the popultiaon of the ocuntry - all females. Or to black people, jewish poeple, or homosexuals. Pretty much any relatively well connected ambitious WHITE MALE can become president, yes...
ooky
We're all in it together.
I agree with many things you're saying here too. Suicide is illeagal, and it's a tougher argument to say that it shouldn't be, but I still don't quite get the logic there, especially for chronically and terminally ill people that have no wish to die slowly and without dignity. It seems that certain things should really be your own decision. But my idea on pot as a gateway drug is that it is, but in one sense no more than alcohol if you consider the gateway to experimenting with intoxication. The way it becomes much more of a gateway to "harder" (actually doctors I know say alcoholism does the worst things to all your organs) drugs than alcohol is, tho, is that it IS illeagal, so if you smoke pot it may be nothing like cocaine but you have found and consumed soemthing illeagal, if not purchased and possessed this illeagal thing. Then you've broke the ice, so to speak, for engaging in unlawful criminal, risky (if nothing else cause you could go to jail) behavior.
;-D
offtopic I know, but a non-flamey and intelligent reply is sometimes rare and happy thing here.
ooky
MY namesake medallion sez 'Never trust a Hal 9000'! - bboys
Drugs have been proven to cause real physical harm
So has alcohol, cigarettes, processed foods rich in preservatives and saturated fat, excessive sunbathing, excessively loud rock music, sedentary lifestyles, soldering with lead solder, and excessive vibrator use.
Does that mean all of these things should be legislated against as well? Surely it (as in LIFE!!) will be a utopia then. What about gambling, cell phone use in cars, daredevil and extreme sports, or just having children (I don't know, but I hear they shave YEARS off your life and make you old before your time, just like what I've heard drugs do.) No offense, but I think that your position is the silly one here if doing physical harm to ONESELF is your criteria of what should be illegal.
ooky
"As flimsy as it is, it's open mike...punk rock. Red, white and blue, you turn the screws. It's what you choose to do. And you think that I will choose that too." - cake
Regurgitating facts doesn't mean you can do analytical thinking well, doesn't mean you have the skills to form your own opinions about confusing issues, doesn't mean you can write to impress people, and doesn't mean that you can engage in creative thinking and/or problem solving. Furthermore, "facts" are only as good as the source. Are we teaching kids to just believe anything that is presented as "fact"?
My friend is becoming a high school teacher. She says it's hard to get them to do ANYTHING but worksheets where they regurgitate answers anyway, not because they are lazy (which they certainly can be) but because they've been beaten down all these years to expect that's what you do in school, not actually LEARN things!
ooky
What's the FIRST and most immediate thing you do in your family when you're running out of money? Get an additional job or try to reduce your spending? Now why is it that Cheney and his henchmonkey Dubya would have us work on SUPPLY before DEMAND, and then call it an American way of life? - my own political rant
This is the best argument I've seen for why this whole thing stinks.
I agree with others that the administration is not responsible for his suicide. As a 13 yo, even tho he's not an adult, HE still was the only one who made that decision to irreversably end it all. I'm not saying I'm above ever having considered suicide, especially as a "troubled teen", but obviously I realized that all that FUD they spout about it being a "permanent solution to a temporary problem" is actually true. It's not even that bad that they might have threatened him with jail, perhaps he should have really found out whether he was GOING before killing himself - the fact that he didn't to me makes him seem like he already had big problems or else is an easy quitter who would have gotten scared about something else later in life. That's the thing man, administrators suck a lot of the times, grown-ups tell lies, and it's been so since the beginning of time. So I don't blame the administrators, even if they shouldn't have said what they did.
What I DO find disturbing about the whole thing is that a 10 day suspension is VERY serious. It would in fact be pretty hard to commit some sort of violent crime on school grounds (like assault, sexual assault, or harrassment) and recieve even close to this type of punishment. For one, 10 days is PRETTY damn hard to catch up on, since you usually don't get to make up missed work or tests that happened over those 10 days. For a hacker with a bright future, this in itself is a big punishment - to have his GPA possibly ruined. In my school, 10 day out-of-school suspension was the LAST punishment before expulsion. Where was his first-offense 3 day in-school?!?
One of my friends in high school was being regularly beaten by her boyfriend, and on a school trip he put her head through a school bus window. When Me and 2 other friends took it upon ourselves to report the incident, writing our separate versions down , missing class, bringing our acusations to his face (scary!!) and everything else, he was only given 2 days suspension. I think that if you were to look at that school's disciplinary records, most scuffles (beatings), sexual misunderstandings (full-on non-intercourse sexual ASSAULTS) and weapons offenses (having a knife on school grounds) would only earn you a 3-5 day in-school susp. What is the logic in this?
ooky
Say your prayers, you heathen baboons!
My father was a public high school teahcer the entire time I was growing up, and the flavor of both of your posts reminds me of all the kids in school who could never believe that teacher are REAL people, with REAL lives and families of their own. Yes, they DO go home and eat dinner and have hoobies at night, a fact which surprisingly few students EVER think about. To your comments I would say that 1) it is not public school teacher's place to "raise and discipline" YOUR children effectively, just teach them. Sometimes it is impossible to teach tho, with half the parents screaming there is not enough discipline and the other half crying that's there's too much, their poor child has been traumatized. Not ALL public teachers are that great, or even know to teach the right things, but in my experience MOST of them are people trying to do something good for the community and world they live in. They get paid abysmally, so they're certainly not in it for the money. However, going to PUBLIC schools I was able to get for myself an outstanding education (as good as my friends who went to boarding schools and private schools) and my parents didn't have to go into horrible debt to provide it. Public schooling is a cornerstone, and I beilieve one of the great priveleges, of living in the US, and altho the system needs help, she ain't dead yet, and neither should she be.
I know what you mean about this middle school philosophy tho - the one that says we shouldn't worry about actually teaching them anything between the ages of 12-14, because they are too hormonally fragile and need emotional growth capabilities instead. Come on, the kids just laugh at all that touchy-feely crap behind the counselor's backs anyway and are happy they have less homework.
ooky
wake up to find out that you are the eyes of the world - gd
Sigh, this is off-topic, but as someone who grew up at times in the north, the southern bible belt, and the west, I will say that WE DO celebrate our christian culture all the time - why does everyone say "Merry Christmas" when you leave for winter break as a default, unless they are jewish or other religion? Sadly, because of the KKK and similar organizations, "white pride" just does not mean the same thing as "black pride", "gay pride" or any other. But that's just semantic. It is easy to be innately proud of your race/religion (which I'm assuming is Caucasian/christian) when the president has always been caucasian/christian, pictures of 'beautiful' people thrown at us by the media are (or at least were until v. recently) 90% caucasian, and even the pledge of allegience firmly states "One nation, under GOD." It is not so easy to be innately proud when there is a sneaky undercurrent of opinion in the culture that (for example) african americans are more prone to be drug addicts and rapists, mexican american women are 'ugly' because they are generally hairier/more voluptuous than the caucasian models we see, jewish families are at best misguided to not believe in Jesus and at worst some sort of shylock-stereotype, and muslims are seen as completley scary, probably terrorists. All I'm saying is that these groups on few times in school or they got to "show off" their culture/religion, you were already living in a media culture that has let you be proud, let you feel capable, promoted your group as the moral and law abiding one, let you feel normal, let you feel in company with the 'majority' that is in reality no majority at all.
That being said, I've found that with open discussions and appropriate teacher guidance, children today are MUCH better at discussing these issues than we are without excluding anyone for their views/race/background. Watching a class of 13-yo discuss easily and intelligently the tribe song "Sucka Nigga" and its message of why the artist feels it is ok for black people to use this word, and the class adding their OWN interpretations on the unsaid context, or why it is NOT ok for any other group to use this word, was truly inspiring.
Creationism has no scientific evidence to back it up, so it should not be taught in science classes. That's not to say that you shouldn't believe it instead of what you're taught, shouldn't be taught it at YOUR home and YOUR church. But teaching it at school instaed of scientifically-based knowledge, facts, data, and theories will just harm these children's scientific background, and violates the separation of church and state. And they aren't necessarily mutually exclusive, you know, so it's not going to drive christain children batty or anything to learn about evolution. As my very religious mother says, "WE don't know how god DID anything, or even how long a day to him is. All we have is an interpretation of the deed, written by a HUMAN in a very poetic and metaphorical style."
ooky
Never trust a Hal 9000. - bboys
Any chemicals Dow is putting in the water table, I'm thinking are not chemicals in the H2O sense. You know what I meant, what "good chemicals" would you assume they USUALLY dump instead? Did you want a list of every possible specific chemical I might be worried about, making sure to indicate whether it is d-rotated or l-rotated version that I am REALLY upset about?! Whatever...as I said you know what I mean...yes! the scary carcinogenic and or teratogenic "generic chemical" - and so you know, I may be a ditz (idiot) but I am also a chemist. As far as I know even biologists still say "germs" when they are talking about sickness-causing generic agents. Of course, YOU have made a big generalizing assumption in your response as well - that I am a sir. Should I discount the rest of what you're saying because you obviously weren't smart enough to know I am not a sir?
As for your assertion that I WOULD have recourse if they poisoned me or "my loved ones" 1) what real good is that going to do me when I already HAVE a down-syndrome leukamic child, and 2) the only recourse I have is really through GOVERNMENT courts and/or regulatory agencies.
ooky
They moostly come at night. Moostly.
"Between the corporate world and the governement, that [the lesser evil] would be corporations. Disney and Microsoft can't force me to use their products."
No but Dow chemical can force me to drink poisoned water by dumping chemicals in the table (secretly, obviously) since it's more profit-wise to do that then use safe alternatives or actually clean effluent up before it leaves the plant. Hmmmm... I'm glad I can call the EPA on them there - IF I even find out about it before I develop leukemia or my child is born with serious defects.
SDG&E can FORCE me to pay exorbitant prices for electricity (well actually, Sempra) because I have to have it and they've kept cheap alternative power out of the market so long with their brute market force that there are no feasible (as in less expensive) alternatives availiable. They can FORCE my bill to go up 200% or more in one year by creating power shortages by taking plants offline, FORCING my GRANDMA to not be able to afford her perscription medication. I know you've got a weak heart, Grammy, but this summer you have to decide between air conditioning (and it's 100 degrees here in the summer) or you digitalin!
GenericPharmacueticals can FORCE me to pay so much for my patented AIDS cocktail that I cannot afford to buy it. Thank god for government "help"!
There are many more examples. At least a lot of government actions and divisions are set up to be altruistic to society. Corporations RARELY so, and regularly demonstrate themselves to be incapable of self-regulation (even when faced with your "well then we'll just boycott 'em to make them listen" stance, like NIKE) when profit beckons. When they fuck up the environment, the inner cities, pricing, labor laws, and a million other things, I care that the CEO didn't care what I think.
I think you libertarians are just mad that you can't figure out how to fill out grant applications and the like to get FREE MONEY back from the government. That is MY revenge on taxes!
ooky
One day, I am going to grow wings. A chemical reaction....-radiohead
Exactly... this is why there are many more species that reproduce asexually (or primarily asexually) than sexually - all that recombination gives you a lot of crap with all the "good" mutations. Asexual reproduction is even more common in harsh environments like deserts. So variety good...to a point.
However, even in asexually reproducing populations of vertebrates you'd probably find more genetic diversity than in some areas of the current monoculture livestock practices, so the above guy is right - we have too little diversity, which is why this non-fatal disease is so scary - if it really does get totally "loose", then you'd see almost every livestock animal get it quickly, instead of just some getting it and some fighting it off. As the argument goes, anyway.
ooky
"My namesake medallion
Sez never trust a HAL 9000...." -bboys
Ooh, then you must have caught my error when I said "prism" instead of lens - I'm always mixing those words (not the objects, thank god) in my head. I admit I didn't read the article!
I love lasers, it must have been really fun to get a degree in laser tech - I just use 'em for biological studies with flow cytometry and microscopy, but I still have to tune and align(and clean, and maintain) two big class IV argon ion lasers.
ooky
"been through many times in which I thought I might lose it,/the only thing that's saved me has always been music/'cause life ain't nothing but a good groove/a good mix tape to put ya in the right mood..." - bboys
Laser light doesn't spread out the way normal broadband wavelength light does. Or at least not nearly to the same degree, which is why a laser of appropriate power pointed strait upwards will hit the moon, if you aim it that way. The way to spread out laser light is with a prism, which the air can act as, but w/in 750 meters it's not going to spread it out over the whole body. AND, when you do spread laser light out with a prism, it becomes much less harmful - if its going through a prism I can pass 100mW of uv over my skin with no apparent damage, but at the same power, unprismed (therefore normal laser), I get a nasty, localized blister. I work with lasers for a living, btw.
ooky
DANG! Do not look into laser with REMAINING eye. So beautiful, you only see it once.
No, he IS right. Sadly I don't have the origen of spp. sitting right here, but in it there is nothing that says that humans eveolved from chimps, per se. That implies that chimps evolved up to their current point and then just stopped. They've been eveolving as long as we have, we just share a common ancestor. The primate that gave rise to both of us no longer exists. I hate the use of the word "primitive" when talking about these things, tho - the correct way to think of it is ancestral vs. derived. And the taxanomic group that contains primates, insectivores, and rodents have more ancestral and less derived traits than the group that makes up ungulates, or carnivores, or sea mammals, for example. Ancestral primates and today's prosimians share more traits with the ancestral, arboreal, first placental mammal. But any current spp. is not "the ancestor" directly of any other current spp. (spp. = species)
ooky
I hate those pants. Please take them off.
what's served by criticizing them for providing jobs for poor people?
Well, I might ask what's served by defending them for it. I'm very glad factories were "criticized" heavily here in the US by the likes of Upton Sinclair, among others, so that I now can have a childhood, an education, a nice job, and good pay, and not have such sooty skies to boot. And the children wouldn't be on the verge of starvation if their parents got a wage you could actually raise a family on. I find them more than distasteful - I find them completely unethical. Your point about the extra costs of operating overseas is a very good one, tho, and helps me to understand why it is not so easy for Nike and others to take the high road.
ooky
One day. I am going to grow wings. A chemical reaction. - Radiohead
You describe lots of problems third world workers face, but what you don't mention is that Nike didn't cause those problems. Those countries were poor long before Nike arrived on the scene, and would even poorer if Nike were to close it's "sweatshops" and produce shoes elsewhere. Hmmmm...what about the simple solution of leaving the factories there, NOT hiring children, NOT beating or intimidating people, paying them a fair wage for their efforts, and letting them work a NORMAL workday instead of 14-16 hr shifts. Your argument of "when in rome" is frankly disgusting to me. NO, nike didn't cause the labor problems of the third world, they just perpetuate them, all in the name of profit margin. And Nike's not hurting, so don't tell me they'll go under or somthing if they actually adhere to ethical business practices. Nike has it in their power to actually help the ocuntry/society/people they get all their profits from, and the fact that they refuse to do so just shows how really evil they are. Imagine your child dies in some shoe press after a backbreaking 10 hr shift - would you really understand some chubby well paid American saying, "It hardly makes sense to demonize Nike for providing jobs for poor people just because they didn't improve conditions enough. Those people would be worse off without Nike, not better."
...So Die Young, Stay Pretty - Blondie
ooky
So you sit down in your rocking chair
Transistor pressed against an ear
Are you waiting for the reaper to arrive
Or just to die by the hands of Love?
It's not only Christians that believe in God, you know. That's only ONE of the glaring logical fallacies I see in your argument.
Altho I never said a THING about evolution, yes I do believe in it (gotta love a theory that has as much documented evidence in it's favor than the theory of gravity) but yet I still, strangely, would never consider going out and raping, molesting killing, assaulting, robbing anybody, whether they are women or not. This is because I consider those things to be immoral, unethical, and rather unsavory to boot. If you need a God to judge you someday or you will do these things, then for pete's sake PLEASE believe in Him in all His wrathful glory - I'll feel a lot safer. Oh, and we ARE animals, at least the last time I checked - no photosynthesis going on at my end.
ooky
"You got REAL ugly, baby." - Ash
And you think schools should teach this because....?
A big news bulletin for you - you don't have to be Christian to be a moral person.
And if you want them teaching our kids morals, they'd better be teaching my morals right alongside - and I'm Buddhist left winging tree hugging feminist - unless you can prove that your morals are more correct than mine.
By the way, I believe in the intent being the deciding factor as well, even tho I'm a heathen who was morally descimated by the US public school system.
ooky
"....Wov, twuuu wov, is what bwings us towgether, towday...-princess bride
Its easy to filter out. It only takes time if you let it.
I'm drowning in it - no seriously! I HATE junk mail and since I recycle all of it that I can, the giant pile that grows to critical mass with alarming regularity is lately threatening to eat me. Maybe it's easy to "filter it out" when you just throw 3-10 unopened envelopes and flyers in the trash can every day as you come in the door, but when you see the absolute POUNDAGE that accumulates in a month for ONE person who does not even own their own home and NEVER orders from catalogs you would be absolutely amazed - and I hope sickened. Why are we building more logging roads and cutting down our remaining old-growth forests and freaking out about deforestation - so I can see the same incredible NEW deal on carpet cleaning approximately 5 x a month ALL YEAR LONG!!!!
Finally, the costs of junk mail is used by the USPS to subsidize acutual postage.
What do you mean by this? I'm really curious - with all the tonnage of junk mail the USPS has to move around, doesn't it just make the job that many times more difficult on a grand scale? Do junk mailers have to pay more postage per pound than we do?
ooky
"One day. I am going to grow wings..." - Radiohead
Yes, and it certainly makes sense for them to take down the most effecient generating plants and leave them down for several months. I don't dispute a need for maintainence, but in such a crisis as this one the timing, to put it bluntly, stinks. And it would not be the first time that they've engaged in what I consider to be completely unethical business practices. Face it, they want to force us to build more power plants, and they wnat the state to end up subsidizing it in a panic! From the environmental working group:
"Simple efforts like replacing ordinary incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescents can save customers $50 over the life of each bulb, while saving one-fourth of the energy used by the old model. Home weatherization programs often produce energy savings in excess of 25 percent. Under consumer-efficiency programs like these, smart utilities offered ratepayers rebates for installing energy-saving technology.
That was before deregulation, when utilities had incentives to promote energy efficiency. Utilities were not allowed to purchase power on the open market on an as-needed basis, so saving energy to meet peak demand was cheaper than building new power plants. But under deregulation, utility companies who once rewarded customers for saving energy now sell all the power they can as fast as they can and buy more at that day's market price, which they pass on to their ratepayers immediately."
ooky
"I have a baby and my wife stays home to raise her."
"I am just sick of all these damn people who think its ok to let someone else raise their children. Its not. You are escaping the hard part of parenting. You are not a good parent."
Hmmmm. So "someone else" raising your kids is alright IF and only if it's the little wifey? Or are you one of those "liberated", feminist males who proudly spouts that HE would stay home just as quickly - but will never be doing so in this lifetime. Put your money where you mouth is: ALTERNATE years of staying home with your wife.
Believe me, I know about this from both sides: I remember two daycares, one very good, and one very bad. My parents still had plenty of "hard parts" of parenting left to do (which they did well!) after picking me up from daycare and after I no longer needed to go. I was also a full time nanny, so I know how hard it is from that side as well. And I LOVED my nanny kids, so don't go saying they weren't taken care of properly, educated, fed well, entertained, disciplined, rewarded, praised, and hugged appropriately while in my care just because I wasn't their birth parent. I find yours (and right-wing society's in general) absolute reliance on a traditional nuclear family to be ludicrous, if not dangerous. Whatever happened to "It takes a village to raise a child."?
Focus on your own damn family, not mine.
ooky
Yeah, I saw that part too. I just think it's a little rich to expect every professor that might want to look at something "sexual" in nature (be it a treatment for penile dysfunction, a study on primate sexual behavior, a literary essay on sexual arousal themes in 1940's American literature, a treatment of womens' sexual issues, or whatever, could be 1000 other legitiimate things) to fill out a bunch of bloody paperwork and wait for official authorization to come through. Seems a bit too regulatory for my tastes, when it's clear that employees could ALREADY be fired for looking at porn inappropriately.
ooky
He hates those cans!!!
What really concerned me about this were the statements that were given in defense of the law:
Virginia Attorney General Mark Earley defended the law. He said state employees did not have a First Amendment right to disregard the law and decide for themselves whether sexually explicit material was required for their professional, employment-related research and writing needs.
I know that's not a direct quote, and I know for a fact, looking at some of the biotech "facts" reuters prints that their journalists are apt to just say whatever THEY understoofd about a concept (which can be very little or v. incorrect) BUT: doesn't that sound a little fascist to anyone else? A LOT of legitimate research in many areas may have dealings with " depiction or description of ``sexual excitement,''" not to mention a ton of canonized literary works! Book burning next, anyone?
ooky
Mmmmm, hug.
The poor may not freeze (altho what about those at higher elevations?) but in the summer you can bet that they will bake, esp. if they are down south, more than 5 miles off the water. Many older people here in east San Diego County DID have to choose this summer between perscription drugs and air conditioning.
ooky
I don't know if this makes me a supa-speed real-time dreamer or what, but this article looked like a fascinating, v. cool tactic as I also dreamed about tetris A LOT when I was playing it incessantly at different times in my life. A friend of mine had the same phenomenon. It's sort of like you're playing the game but the game also usually means something in your dream, like, I dunno - the long straight foursie pieces will represent an airplane that you must find and dislodge the wheel locks on so that your cat can be flown back to his homeland, represented by the next peice, the square.
Or in really awful tetris dreams (which would usually prod me to give up the game when they happened) are when you find out that something really great is going to happen to you, like having sex with johnny depp or something, but first you have to play tetris for what seems like 5 hundred billion hours before you are allowed to commence fucking and then johnny depp leaves because he is bored and you're still stuck playing tetris and then your alarm goes off and arrrrrrrggggggggggghhhhhhhhh. You get the idea.
ooky
Wake up to find out that you are the eyes of the world.
Yeah, like times were really LESS violent a hundred years ago. I guess that's easy to say, since you didn't live in it, but i'm betting that domestic violence, street brawls, shootings per capita, etc. were a lot more prevalent then. A hundred years ago no one would even blink at you popping your wife a good one if she mouthed off. To me that's violent, and a degraded form of society compared to what we have now.
you also may want to consider the fact that 100 years ago horse theft was a hanging crime, no matter what, while murder was often only taken seriously if you killed someone "important" like a grown man with money and power.
ooky