Honestly? Speaking as a Spaniard, I see the official and populist line in Spain is that the EU is A Great Thing. Why?
(1) After Franco, Spain was way behind the rest of Western Europe in terms of infrastructure and social justice. When it joined the EU (then EC) in 1986, it received huge sums for investment in large scale programmes. Before this time, the big money had often come from US private investment (Spaniards were cheap labour!), which certainly provided jobs but wasn't going to build roads and railways or take care of the very sick....queue a couple decades of investment and the rising middle classes...
(2) Then after Aznar's monumentally stupid blaming of the local terr'ist group, ETA, for bombings in Madrid the day before the election, the pendulum swung from pro-US back to anti-US sentiment. The prevailing impression in Spain still seems to be that the EU stands as some great body to counter US influence, even though it's by and large motivated by special interests which often lie in common with the special interests of the US elite.
(3) (perhaps slightly prejudiced) Spaniards like patriarchal government. The legacy of Franco is still there, obviously. They're obsessed with a veneer of political correctness, still compensating for their once genuinely macho culture, but ultimately they don't like the idea of a nation of independent individuals, preferring a very detailed, united conception of morality and society. This sentiment is easy to take advantage of.
Or is it only terrorism if the perpetrator is Muslim?
It is terrorism precisely when the word "terrorism" brings out the right sentiment in those listening to you.
The British were terrorising Catholics in Northern Ireland. The IRA were terrorising the English in London. The ANC was terrorising the white government in apartheid South Africa. The apartheid government was terrorising the black majority. Jews terrorised Arab villages and British hotels. Arabs terrorise Jewish women and children in marketplaces.
It takes a special kind of person such as yourself to fill an essential role in any religious or quasi-religious movement. This is the sort of man who, when confronted with an extraordinary claim, does not ask for extraordinary evidence, but manages to both absorb the claim without question and put down those who dare to question it.
Yes, the special effects are quite cool, if unpolished. Yes, not everyone with a random workstation would have the talent or experience to produce them. This doesn't mean that some guy in his basement with $300 managed to amass the hardware, software, (self-)training and on site budget to achieve this film. Nor is this man show a unique production talent which would make him stand out from the crowd of professional CGI artists who have already produced similar scenes.
On the other hand, $300 + [0]00,000 = $30[0],000,000! I want to believe!
But you know what? it makes for a great way to start buzz about a movie, and Hollywood's all about the dream of what could be.
1. Your "thinks she's doing the cashier a favor by paying for her $17.74 worth of groceries in exact change" is an implicit dismissal of the fact that she often is doing the cashier/business a favour.
2. Depends on the location, nature of business, volume of business, interval between deposits, etc - obviously. I've "worked the retail floor" in two places: helping out at a friend's cybercafe in central London, and manning a local charity shop. The former had a balance of card and cash transactions, apparent careful security procedures for cash handling, and seemed at home with either. The charity shop was in an area where robbery was unlikely, never had high amounts of cash on the premises, and was perhaps too lackadaisical; but it was reluctant to accept card purchases, because of the guaranteed hit to income.
(FWIW, most of my commerce experience comes from running an Interweb business a while back, and we even accepted cheques!)
3. Generalising a statement globally like that is inevitably going to fail;-). I guarantee that, where I live, a long line of customers does not preclude customer and cashier having two or three minutes' gossip. The more built-up the area, perhaps, the less likely this is.
4. You were creating a false dichotomy between the fast 20-something and the slow 70-something. I argue that the older generations tend to be more adept with mental arithmetic, i.e. competent to make fast cash transactions (the fastest type of transaction in a random store), but that there reaches a point at which one's body and mind slow regardless.
5. Why don't you act on your field intelligence officer observational skills and:
(i) Plan your life better, so you don't keep forgetting things - how about buying an extra bottle of milk and cycling it via the freezer? How about staying somewhere very rural for a month or two, to give you a lesson in stocking up on necessities? I've done it, it's worth it.
(ii) Realise that you have no more right to store time than older generations, and turn up 2 hours later yourself (where do you live that food stores all close at 1730?), or at lunch, or before work.
It's as easy to criticise you for your failings - which you can mitigate for - as it is to criticise an old lady who can only dream to be able to move her hands and mind as fast as she used to, and we (lucky us!) still can.
1. If you shop in small, independent stores, you may be doing a favour by giving exact change.
2. Either way, you are certainly doing a favour by paying in cash: no transaction fee.
3. Lines are usually slowed down where I shop by gossip, which involves extra minutes rather than seconds. This is dependent largely on whether shopkeep and customer know each other. Nattering teens are as guilty as pensioners. To some, this is a social perk of going to a physical store.
4. Most people taught before the calculator generation can estimate the cost of their purchases and, when quoted the exact figure, sum up a few coins in seconds. This tends to exclude those in their teens and 20s, unless they have made a willing effort of their own to master mental arithmetic. This disparty becomes painfully obvious whenever some electronic system fails, or in the event I do not pay by exact change and receive incorrect change.
5. But it turns out that when you get old, your mental and manual dexterity is reduced. You have two choices: stay at home and wither away lest you have to confront an arrogant version of yourself from 50 years ago with all the advantages of health that youth enjoys, or rage against the dying of the light and try your best. Meanwhile, while I am young, I shall appreciate those who have endured more than twice as many years and hardships as me yet carry on. I'm quite sure there is no emergency requiring me to get my purchases home within five minutes rather than ten, and I can use the time to think, to listen (to those around me or to a recorded book), or to chat.
If you still abhor the environment of a physical store, they have the Internet for shopping now.
FuckingNickName would try to be more considerate than to cause that situation in the first place, if ever it considered having kids. Which is quite unlikely.
But FuckingNickName thanks you for illustrating that context and learnings (were you born aware that everyone uses their ears to hear?) are so important. And don't forget the great Western cultural privilege which kids have to use grunts and hand-waving to modify the behaviour of their parents. In an environment where the father wouldn't consider such an undermining of his authority, the kid's behaviour might be registered as, "My son is turning down the volume for himself by covering his ears," rather than, "My son is asking me to turn this down." There's a difference!
dude, 2 people are having a discussion and you link to the guy you agree with and tell mods to mod down the other guy. you havent even contributed more than a line of text. that is weak.
If you're going to stay there a while, perhaps, absolutely. Even for a short break, you'd do well to practice a few phrases.
If you're passing through, e.g. stopping off for a night in Dubai on the way to the Far East, it can be a very inefficient. Yes, you'd do well to learn a few customs of the culture before going to Dubai - not least because you probably wouldn't welcome arrest there:-) - but expecting you to learn Arabic would be excessive.
In the latter case, find out what language you are likely to have in common and speak clearly in that language. Don't flail with your face and arms and assume your body language will be common.
Cowering: this is an action, like walking from A to B. You cower from a threat to protect yourself. Looking at a few dictionaries, some interpret "cower" as synonymous with "cower with fear", in which case this isn't a body language universal, just a term to describe doing act A for precisely reason B.
Fidgeting: Oh, there couldn't be a less universal reason for fidgeting. Some do it because they're bored, some because they're concentrating hard, some because they're nervous, some because they're annoyed, some because they're brimming with glee. Some fidget intentionally to intimidate, others intend no effect on others. Some groups almost expect fidgeting - geeks might do it as a way of saying "I want to get on with getting my hands on X" - while other groups consider it very rude. Some cultures wave their hands around so much when they communicate that what you might call fidgeting might just be part of the course of motion of their hands as part of a long description: for example, little random movements could mirror a description of some build-up in the speech.
Humping: Act.
(N.B. I know that it conveys information to perform an act if anyone is observing you perform that act. But language is a system for communication, not the incidental transfer of information from observing some action or state of affairs.)
Hm, sorry... for some reason the response I made never appeared even though I'd hit Submit and no response. What I said, summarising:
Fingers in ears: you're not listening? I'm not listening? Encouraging a smile? TV volume too loud? Migraine? Meditation? Hear No Evil?
Raised fist: Victory? Threat? Friendship solidarity? Socialist Solidarity? Evasion? Concept grasped? Holy Spirit grasped? Grab you by the balls? Shaking the dice? About to bring the other hand up for a European insult? About to ESL the letter G? Z (if I remember the alternative correctly)?
Blowjob movement: Very obviously cultural: miming requires you to know the act! Saw this on TV several times as a young kid before I learnt what it meant.
Wikipedia makes the uncited statement that "body language" refers to the subset of body language which is unconscious. This, perhaps, allowed the post you linked to to make the No True Scotsman fallacy in finding a re-definition of "body language" to fit the argument.
Body language refers to any communication of information using the body, Thus:
1. Gestures are learnt through imitation or conscious effort in culture are part of body language;
2. Gestures which may be innate, but which are refined and controlled in context and according to culture and personal circumstances, are part of body language.
Cultural differences don't disrupt the fact that your body reacts in certain way depending of the emotion you are expressing.
Ever heard of the "British stiff upper lip"? Cultural elements sometimes exist precisely to repress any ways you might feel like expressing an emotion, and to teach you to present your body in a certain way.
I assume this is because you really just wanted to go on a "I hate Americans" rant, and this topic was as good as any.
I don't hate Americans. I've lived in Virginia for a short while. But I do criticise the worst excesses of American self-centredness. Any superpower is going to develop such excesses, exhibited by some proportion of its natives. The Romans did it, the Spanish did it, the Brits did it, and now the Yanks do it.
I can't begin to conceive what thought process would lead to the belief that linking to the Wikipedia article "Body language" would contribute toward an argument. Are you teaching me that Wikipedia exists? Are you saving me the trouble of typing "body language" into Google, which is almost guaranteed to return that page as a first link? Are you highlighting some specific cited on the Wikipedia page which contradicts the post you are responding to, but forgot to mention it?
I like to refine my understanding and correct any mistakes I have made - especially in the rare event that I've wrongly not generalsed globally - but you haven't given me anything to work with.
I follow the rules of Jon Postel and my (UK) amateur radio license:
1. "Be conservative in what you send, liberal in what you accept";
2. "The Licensee may use codes and abbreviations for communications as long as they do not obscure or confuse the meaning of the Message."
In other words, I use jargon only among those who will understand the jargon and only when that jargon aids in communication (*). Otherwise, I try strenuously to avoid it.
(*) Consider 2 surgeons using laymans' terms for parts of the body lest the patient is offended that he does not understand every word. Are you prepared to take responsibility for the ensuing ambiguity?
Absolutely. I went to a private school and am familiar with the privileges of an Old Boys' network. Yes, competence is a must, but what makes you an insider is a particular way you must act: a social protocol that is on its surface, the mark of someone well-spoken, polite and reasonable, but underneath is a way to make sure that the undesirables are snubbed. Body language, accent, jargon, dress, mannerisms: all these things are involved.
It is all the more useful that people believe such things as body language are innate and immutable. It means we can pretend you're equal while we're more equal than you; it means that, if you're especially unobservant, we can act in a way that you interpret as naturally suave, sophisticated and respectable, when in fact we're just carefully controlling what you think is uncontrollable.
In short, the elite get a lesson in marketing, whatever their field. The middle classes think they're too smart to need that lesson, then wonder why then seem to reach a ceiling.
You are completely incorrect. What an old Chinese proverb says does not make it true. The identical smile of two twin brothers can mean something totally different; the identical smile of the same person can mean two different things depending on context.
When you move across cultures, different body language can have specific interpretations, or in one country be a habit where in another country it is considered a rudeness.
The majority of responses to this thread reflect the worst excesses of American self-centredness: in Spain over the years, I have so often seen a US tourist shouting at the native, making contorted facial expressions to try to get some message across. He then gets offended when the Spaniard moves his hands in a gesture which is perfectly normal for this country, but unusual and much more confrontational in the US. In fact he should have just taken the time to speak careful English and realise that we can probably do the same thing back.
Arrival at the extermination camps almost always meant extermination within a few hours. A few were selected for camp maintenance duties, but they were treated fairly poorly and would starve to weakness after a few months at most. In some camps, whole batches of Sonderkommando would be eliminated at once at the first job of the new batch was to bury the previous. The Nazis didn't want witnesses hanging around for too long!
In the work/internment camps, it'd depend a lot on who you were. A British POW would have a far greater chance of staying alive than one in a Jap camp. A Jew would be given worse rations and accommodation and be worked to death, typically over a few weeks/months. IOW, when they got too weak mentally and/or physically that work becomes impossible or unbearable, they'd be killed anyway, whether they'd choose euthanasia or not. To suicide all you'd have to do is willingly stop work or otherwise give attitude to your captors.
So, yes, who was brave here? The guys who chose not to cooperate and would face more immediate death, or the guys who chose to support the Nazi war effort to spare them at least a few weeks/months - especially those in the Sonderkommando who directly worked the machinery of the death camps?
Isn't it absurd, then, to call me a murderer if I push you onto a sword? Aren't you mentally and physically quick enough to dart out of the way, or position yourself to minimise your injury? Didn't you decide not to be mentally strong enough to find an alternative life-saving response to my pushing?
No one disputes the mind is a biological mechanism. The flaw is in believing that negates concepts of freedom, choice, and responsibility.
It negates the concepts to the extent that they're interpreted as ideals manifested in reality. If you think you're a free, rational being, able to make decisions independently of your genetics, upbringing, irrational fears and drives, inter al., then you're announcing yourself to be supernatural. Such simplistic nonsense has a place on a religious forum or among dilettante philosophers who conflate ideas and their pragmatic application, but not in scientific discourse.
All the rhetoric about individual responsibility of the perfect rational man, buried underneath Britain's sound pragmatic legal foundations so the US Founding Businessmen could differentiate themselves from Britain, has no basis beyond deist faith. The nascent US was perhaps great merely because it swung the pendulum with such aplomb, and there's nothing like overthrowing a tyrant from time to time.
Still, I believe that if someone has a malfunctioning mind and is a danger to himself or others he should be put in an asylum.
Others, fair enough. Himself in short term, perhaps. Himself in long term - sure?
If the level of stupidity is not enough to warrant an asylum or medication with supervision then "stupidity is no excuse".
This is groundless. Man's mind is not binary free/broken, just as man's legs are not runner/cripple. There is a multi-dimensional field of mental ability, and no two people are in exactly the same place. The binary hypothesis is an incredibly seductive premise upon which to justify the principles of US society, but it is unscientific.
You're saying that an entire country is wrong in how it thinks of the mind?
Don't be obtuse: I'm talking in terms of the founding principles of the US (which the government sometimes still tries to base its actions on), not the opinion of every last citizen/resident.
Specifically, you have one quasi-religious belief, and a lot of other people don't, so everyone else is wrong.
The view that man is a free rational being is quasi-religious, because it assumes that the mind is supernatural. Religion, or something else requiring leaps of pure faith, is required to justify this argument.
In fact, your mind is just part of your body, and just as subject to disability, limitation and programming. Biology and psychology - the former being hard science and the latter trying its best to follow the scientific method, despite being in relative infancy - provide much evidence in favour of this. Meanwhile, there is no scientific evidence whatever that man is in general a free rational being, in full control of his own faculties.
Thus, my opinion is scientific; your opinion is quasi-religious. I admit that all scientific explanations for the working of man's mind are incomplete, but at least they're rational. You're waving your hands in the ether and pulling out idealised nonsense from the start. You're doing nothing more advanced than Plato did when he used the regular solids to model the solar system because it's so beautifully and seductively convenient. It's perhaps troubling to accept, but the Universe is not that simple.
I'm not a shrink; I'm a mathematician, if you care to know. But you seem to have issues with shrinks, looking at all your posts in this thread. Why?
Where did I justify anyone abusing anyone else?
"I have near zero sympathy for kids who are such losers that they can't face life's challenges [abuse?]. Not quite zero, but near it. This girl who committed suicide because some boy she had never met apparently turned on her isn't very far up the food chain from [murderers] the idiots who choose to "go out in a blaze of glory" while shooting up their school. She was weak and unstable, and she chose to suicide. Her lack of a support group contributed, yes, but the fact remains, she failed."
Your rhetoric is an exemplar for how to de-humanise someone as a precursor to justification for maltreatment. They're only retards, they're only Catholics, they're only gypsies, they're only Jews, they're only weak. Each post you make here lifts more of the mask over the anger you're feeling in relation to your abuse.
This doesn't change the fact that the weak succumb, and the strong fight.
But those consequences aren't mutually exclusive, are they? The strong fight, yet sometimes they succumb too. You'd succumb to a sufficiently mentally and/or physically stronger oppressor. So would I. So would anyone. Fortunately, neither you nor I have encountered such a person yet. But if you did, I wouldn't dismiss you after your death as a sub-human weakling. Would you do the same to me?
Having lived through an abused childhood, I have near zero sympathy for kids who are such losers that they can't face life's challenges.
I say that people are born with and develop (mostly in very early life) different physical and mental abilities for handling tough circumstances. If you believe that everyone has the potential to act as you did in response to your abuse, you have a fundamental misunderstanding of biology and psychology, and are taking refuge in a non-scientific philosophy. What is more, no two difficult situations are the same, with details being the difference between a seemingly insurmountable and a "merely" challenging situation.
I'm sorry you were abused. Because you chose to reveal this, I ask you please not to turn your unresolved anger into thinly veiled justification for the abuse of others.
Slashdot Mirror
Honestly? Speaking as a Spaniard, I see the official and populist line in Spain is that the EU is A Great Thing. Why?
(1) After Franco, Spain was way behind the rest of Western Europe in terms of infrastructure and social justice. When it joined the EU (then EC) in 1986, it received huge sums for investment in large scale programmes. Before this time, the big money had often come from US private investment (Spaniards were cheap labour!), which certainly provided jobs but wasn't going to build roads and railways or take care of the very sick. ...queue a couple decades of investment and the rising middle classes...
(2) Then after Aznar's monumentally stupid blaming of the local terr'ist group, ETA, for bombings in Madrid the day before the election, the pendulum swung from pro-US back to anti-US sentiment. The prevailing impression in Spain still seems to be that the EU stands as some great body to counter US influence, even though it's by and large motivated by special interests which often lie in common with the special interests of the US elite.
(3) (perhaps slightly prejudiced) Spaniards like patriarchal government. The legacy of Franco is still there, obviously. They're obsessed with a veneer of political correctness, still compensating for their once genuinely macho culture, but ultimately they don't like the idea of a nation of independent individuals, preferring a very detailed, united conception of morality and society. This sentiment is easy to take advantage of.
Or is it only terrorism if the perpetrator is Muslim?
It is terrorism precisely when the word "terrorism" brings out the right sentiment in those listening to you.
The British were terrorising Catholics in Northern Ireland. The IRA were terrorising the English in London. The ANC was terrorising the white government in apartheid South Africa. The apartheid government was terrorising the black majority. Jews terrorised Arab villages and British hotels. Arabs terrorise Jewish women and children in marketplaces.
It takes a special kind of person such as yourself to fill an essential role in any religious or quasi-religious movement. This is the sort of man who, when confronted with an extraordinary claim, does not ask for extraordinary evidence, but manages to both absorb the claim without question and put down those who dare to question it.
Yes, the special effects are quite cool, if unpolished. Yes, not everyone with a random workstation would have the talent or experience to produce them. This doesn't mean that some guy in his basement with $300 managed to amass the hardware, software, (self-)training and on site budget to achieve this film. Nor is this man show a unique production talent which would make him stand out from the crowd of professional CGI artists who have already produced similar scenes.
On the other hand, $300 + [0]00,000 = $30[0],000,000! I want to believe!
But you know what? it makes for a great way to start buzz about a movie, and Hollywood's all about the dream of what could be.
Three choices, actually: get your money ready before you reach the end of the queue.
Yes, if you're young and don't suffer, say, from arthritis or severe RSI, juggling a basket and purse is an easy option.
1. Your "thinks she's doing the cashier a favor by paying for her $17.74 worth of groceries in exact change" is an implicit dismissal of the fact that she often is doing the cashier/business a favour.
2. Depends on the location, nature of business, volume of business, interval between deposits, etc - obviously. I've "worked the retail floor" in two places: helping out at a friend's cybercafe in central London, and manning a local charity shop. The former had a balance of card and cash transactions, apparent careful security procedures for cash handling, and seemed at home with either. The charity shop was in an area where robbery was unlikely, never had high amounts of cash on the premises, and was perhaps too lackadaisical; but it was reluctant to accept card purchases, because of the guaranteed hit to income.
(FWIW, most of my commerce experience comes from running an Interweb business a while back, and we even accepted cheques!)
3. Generalising a statement globally like that is inevitably going to fail ;-). I guarantee that, where I live, a long line of customers does not preclude customer and cashier having two or three minutes' gossip. The more built-up the area, perhaps, the less likely this is.
4. You were creating a false dichotomy between the fast 20-something and the slow 70-something. I argue that the older generations tend to be more adept with mental arithmetic, i.e. competent to make fast cash transactions (the fastest type of transaction in a random store), but that there reaches a point at which one's body and mind slow regardless.
5. Why don't you act on your field intelligence officer observational skills and:
(i) Plan your life better, so you don't keep forgetting things - how about buying an extra bottle of milk and cycling it via the freezer? How about staying somewhere very rural for a month or two, to give you a lesson in stocking up on necessities? I've done it, it's worth it.
(ii) Realise that you have no more right to store time than older generations, and turn up 2 hours later yourself (where do you live that food stores all close at 1730?), or at lunch, or before work.
It's as easy to criticise you for your failings - which you can mitigate for - as it is to criticise an old lady who can only dream to be able to move her hands and mind as fast as she used to, and we (lucky us!) still can.
Tomorrow belongs to you, eh comrade?
1. If you shop in small, independent stores, you may be doing a favour by giving exact change.
2. Either way, you are certainly doing a favour by paying in cash: no transaction fee.
3. Lines are usually slowed down where I shop by gossip, which involves extra minutes rather than seconds. This is dependent largely on whether shopkeep and customer know each other. Nattering teens are as guilty as pensioners. To some, this is a social perk of going to a physical store.
4. Most people taught before the calculator generation can estimate the cost of their purchases and, when quoted the exact figure, sum up a few coins in seconds. This tends to exclude those in their teens and 20s, unless they have made a willing effort of their own to master mental arithmetic. This disparty becomes painfully obvious whenever some electronic system fails, or in the event I do not pay by exact change and receive incorrect change.
5. But it turns out that when you get old, your mental and manual dexterity is reduced. You have two choices: stay at home and wither away lest you have to confront an arrogant version of yourself from 50 years ago with all the advantages of health that youth enjoys, or rage against the dying of the light and try your best. Meanwhile, while I am young, I shall appreciate those who have endured more than twice as many years and hardships as me yet carry on. I'm quite sure there is no emergency requiring me to get my purchases home within five minutes rather than ten, and I can use the time to think, to listen (to those around me or to a recorded book), or to chat.
If you still abhor the environment of a physical store, they have the Internet for shopping now.
FuckingNickName would try to be more considerate than to cause that situation in the first place, if ever it considered having kids. Which is quite unlikely.
But FuckingNickName thanks you for illustrating that context and learnings (were you born aware that everyone uses their ears to hear?) are so important. And don't forget the great Western cultural privilege which kids have to use grunts and hand-waving to modify the behaviour of their parents. In an environment where the father wouldn't consider such an undermining of his authority, the kid's behaviour might be registered as, "My son is turning down the volume for himself by covering his ears," rather than, "My son is asking me to turn this down." There's a difference!
Without a doubt. Fry said it better than I would.
dude, 2 people are having a discussion and you link to the guy you agree with and tell mods to mod down the other guy. you havent even contributed more than a line of text. that is weak.
If you're going to stay there a while, perhaps, absolutely. Even for a short break, you'd do well to practice a few phrases.
If you're passing through, e.g. stopping off for a night in Dubai on the way to the Far East, it can be a very inefficient. Yes, you'd do well to learn a few customs of the culture before going to Dubai - not least because you probably wouldn't welcome arrest there :-) - but expecting you to learn Arabic would be excessive.
In the latter case, find out what language you are likely to have in common and speak clearly in that language. Don't flail with your face and arms and assume your body language will be common.
Cowering: this is an action, like walking from A to B. You cower from a threat to protect yourself. Looking at a few dictionaries, some interpret "cower" as synonymous with "cower with fear", in which case this isn't a body language universal, just a term to describe doing act A for precisely reason B.
Fidgeting: Oh, there couldn't be a less universal reason for fidgeting. Some do it because they're bored, some because they're concentrating hard, some because they're nervous, some because they're annoyed, some because they're brimming with glee. Some fidget intentionally to intimidate, others intend no effect on others. Some groups almost expect fidgeting - geeks might do it as a way of saying "I want to get on with getting my hands on X" - while other groups consider it very rude. Some cultures wave their hands around so much when they communicate that what you might call fidgeting might just be part of the course of motion of their hands as part of a long description: for example, little random movements could mirror a description of some build-up in the speech.
Humping: Act.
(N.B. I know that it conveys information to perform an act if anyone is observing you perform that act. But language is a system for communication, not the incidental transfer of information from observing some action or state of affairs.)
Hm, sorry... for some reason the response I made never appeared even though I'd hit Submit and no response. What I said, summarising:
Fingers in ears: you're not listening? I'm not listening? Encouraging a smile? TV volume too loud? Migraine? Meditation? Hear No Evil?
Raised fist: Victory? Threat? Friendship solidarity? Socialist Solidarity? Evasion? Concept grasped? Holy Spirit grasped? Grab you by the balls? Shaking the dice? About to bring the other hand up for a European insult? About to ESL the letter G? Z (if I remember the alternative correctly)?
Blowjob movement: Very obviously cultural: miming requires you to know the act! Saw this on TV several times as a young kid before I learnt what it meant.
Wikipedia makes the uncited statement that "body language" refers to the subset of body language which is unconscious. This, perhaps, allowed the post you linked to to make the No True Scotsman fallacy in finding a re-definition of "body language" to fit the argument.
Body language refers to any communication of information using the body, Thus:
1. Gestures are learnt through imitation or conscious effort in culture are part of body language;
2. Gestures which may be innate, but which are refined and controlled in context and according to culture and personal circumstances, are part of body language.
You sir, are a fucking idiot.
Good start.
Cultural differences don't disrupt the fact that your body reacts in certain way depending of the emotion you are expressing.
Ever heard of the "British stiff upper lip"? Cultural elements sometimes exist precisely to repress any ways you might feel like expressing an emotion, and to teach you to present your body in a certain way.
I assume this is because you really just wanted to go on a "I hate Americans" rant, and this topic was as good as any.
I don't hate Americans. I've lived in Virginia for a short while. But I do criticise the worst excesses of American self-centredness. Any superpower is going to develop such excesses, exhibited by some proportion of its natives. The Romans did it, the Spanish did it, the Brits did it, and now the Yanks do it.
Maybe you should go read what body language really is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_language [wikipedia.org]
I can't begin to conceive what thought process would lead to the belief that linking to the Wikipedia article "Body language" would contribute toward an argument. Are you teaching me that Wikipedia exists? Are you saving me the trouble of typing "body language" into Google, which is almost guaranteed to return that page as a first link? Are you highlighting some specific cited on the Wikipedia page which contradicts the post you are responding to, but forgot to mention it?
I like to refine my understanding and correct any mistakes I have made - especially in the rare event that I've wrongly not generalsed globally - but you haven't given me anything to work with.
That there are differences does not mean there are not universals.
Name me three "body language universals".
I follow the rules of Jon Postel and my (UK) amateur radio license:
1. "Be conservative in what you send, liberal in what you accept";
2. "The Licensee may use codes and abbreviations for communications as long as they do not obscure or confuse the meaning of the Message."
In other words, I use jargon only among those who will understand the jargon and only when that jargon aids in communication (*). Otherwise, I try strenuously to avoid it.
(*) Consider 2 surgeons using laymans' terms for parts of the body lest the patient is offended that he does not understand every word. Are you prepared to take responsibility for the ensuing ambiguity?
Absolutely. I went to a private school and am familiar with the privileges of an Old Boys' network. Yes, competence is a must, but what makes you an insider is a particular way you must act: a social protocol that is on its surface, the mark of someone well-spoken, polite and reasonable, but underneath is a way to make sure that the undesirables are snubbed. Body language, accent, jargon, dress, mannerisms: all these things are involved.
It is all the more useful that people believe such things as body language are innate and immutable. It means we can pretend you're equal while we're more equal than you; it means that, if you're especially unobservant, we can act in a way that you interpret as naturally suave, sophisticated and respectable, when in fact we're just carefully controlling what you think is uncontrollable.
In short, the elite get a lesson in marketing, whatever their field. The middle classes think they're too smart to need that lesson, then wonder why then seem to reach a ceiling.
You are completely incorrect. What an old Chinese proverb says does not make it true. The identical smile of two twin brothers can mean something totally different; the identical smile of the same person can mean two different things depending on context.
When you move across cultures, different body language can have specific interpretations, or in one country be a habit where in another country it is considered a rudeness.
The majority of responses to this thread reflect the worst excesses of American self-centredness: in Spain over the years, I have so often seen a US tourist shouting at the native, making contorted facial expressions to try to get some message across. He then gets offended when the Spaniard moves his hands in a gesture which is perfectly normal for this country, but unusual and much more confrontational in the US. In fact he should have just taken the time to speak careful English and realise that we can probably do the same thing back.
Myth.
Arrival at the extermination camps almost always meant extermination within a few hours. A few were selected for camp maintenance duties, but they were treated fairly poorly and would starve to weakness after a few months at most. In some camps, whole batches of Sonderkommando would be eliminated at once at the first job of the new batch was to bury the previous. The Nazis didn't want witnesses hanging around for too long!
In the work/internment camps, it'd depend a lot on who you were. A British POW would have a far greater chance of staying alive than one in a Jap camp. A Jew would be given worse rations and accommodation and be worked to death, typically over a few weeks/months. IOW, when they got too weak mentally and/or physically that work becomes impossible or unbearable, they'd be killed anyway, whether they'd choose euthanasia or not. To suicide all you'd have to do is willingly stop work or otherwise give attitude to your captors.
So, yes, who was brave here? The guys who chose not to cooperate and would face more immediate death, or the guys who chose to support the Nazi war effort to spare them at least a few weeks/months - especially those in the Sonderkommando who directly worked the machinery of the death camps?
(Or, perhaps the question is loaded.)
Isn't it absurd, then, to call me a murderer if I push you onto a sword? Aren't you mentally and physically quick enough to dart out of the way, or position yourself to minimise your injury? Didn't you decide not to be mentally strong enough to find an alternative life-saving response to my pushing?
No one disputes the mind is a biological mechanism. The flaw is in believing that negates concepts of freedom, choice, and responsibility.
It negates the concepts to the extent that they're interpreted as ideals manifested in reality. If you think you're a free, rational being, able to make decisions independently of your genetics, upbringing, irrational fears and drives, inter al., then you're announcing yourself to be supernatural. Such simplistic nonsense has a place on a religious forum or among dilettante philosophers who conflate ideas and their pragmatic application, but not in scientific discourse.
All the rhetoric about individual responsibility of the perfect rational man, buried underneath Britain's sound pragmatic legal foundations so the US Founding Businessmen could differentiate themselves from Britain, has no basis beyond deist faith. The nascent US was perhaps great merely because it swung the pendulum with such aplomb, and there's nothing like overthrowing a tyrant from time to time.
Still, I believe that if someone has a malfunctioning mind and is a danger to himself or others he should be put in an asylum.
Others, fair enough. Himself in short term, perhaps. Himself in long term - sure?
If the level of stupidity is not enough to warrant an asylum or medication with supervision then "stupidity is no excuse".
This is groundless. Man's mind is not binary free/broken, just as man's legs are not runner/cripple. There is a multi-dimensional field of mental ability, and no two people are in exactly the same place. The binary hypothesis is an incredibly seductive premise upon which to justify the principles of US society, but it is unscientific.
You're saying that an entire country is wrong in how it thinks of the mind?
Don't be obtuse: I'm talking in terms of the founding principles of the US (which the government sometimes still tries to base its actions on), not the opinion of every last citizen/resident.
Specifically, you have one quasi-religious belief, and a lot of other people don't, so everyone else is wrong.
The view that man is a free rational being is quasi-religious, because it assumes that the mind is supernatural. Religion, or something else requiring leaps of pure faith, is required to justify this argument.
In fact, your mind is just part of your body, and just as subject to disability, limitation and programming. Biology and psychology - the former being hard science and the latter trying its best to follow the scientific method, despite being in relative infancy - provide much evidence in favour of this. Meanwhile, there is no scientific evidence whatever that man is in general a free rational being, in full control of his own faculties.
Thus, my opinion is scientific; your opinion is quasi-religious. I admit that all scientific explanations for the working of man's mind are incomplete, but at least they're rational. You're waving your hands in the ether and pulling out idealised nonsense from the start. You're doing nothing more advanced than Plato did when he used the regular solids to model the solar system because it's so beautifully and seductively convenient. It's perhaps troubling to accept, but the Universe is not that simple.
A shrink speaks.
I'm not a shrink; I'm a mathematician, if you care to know. But you seem to have issues with shrinks, looking at all your posts in this thread. Why?
Where did I justify anyone abusing anyone else?
"I have near zero sympathy for kids who are such losers that they can't face life's challenges [abuse?]. Not quite zero, but near it. This girl who committed suicide because some boy she had never met apparently turned on her isn't very far up the food chain from [murderers] the idiots who choose to "go out in a blaze of glory" while shooting up their school. She was weak and unstable, and she chose to suicide. Her lack of a support group contributed, yes, but the fact remains, she failed."
Your rhetoric is an exemplar for how to de-humanise someone as a precursor to justification for maltreatment. They're only retards, they're only Catholics, they're only gypsies, they're only Jews, they're only weak. Each post you make here lifts more of the mask over the anger you're feeling in relation to your abuse.
This doesn't change the fact that the weak succumb, and the strong fight.
But those consequences aren't mutually exclusive, are they? The strong fight, yet sometimes they succumb too. You'd succumb to a sufficiently mentally and/or physically stronger oppressor. So would I. So would anyone. Fortunately, neither you nor I have encountered such a person yet. But if you did, I wouldn't dismiss you after your death as a sub-human weakling. Would you do the same to me?
Having lived through an abused childhood, I have near zero sympathy for kids who are such losers that they can't face life's challenges.
I say that people are born with and develop (mostly in very early life) different physical and mental abilities for handling tough circumstances. If you believe that everyone has the potential to act as you did in response to your abuse, you have a fundamental misunderstanding of biology and psychology, and are taking refuge in a non-scientific philosophy. What is more, no two difficult situations are the same, with details being the difference between a seemingly insurmountable and a "merely" challenging situation.
I'm sorry you were abused. Because you chose to reveal this, I ask you please not to turn your unresolved anger into thinly veiled justification for the abuse of others.