You're welcome to your feelings, but they are by no means a standard.
For every group you can define that would find offense to the word fuck used in public - I can find a larger one who is not offended created using the criteria used to define yours. And by the time you create a definition that disallows a comparison group worthy of notice, you will have so over defined your social standard that it will be nothing more than a minority.
Common civility is defined by common action. If the action is becoming so common that it cannot be enforced against, your whole argument is meaningless. Civility is perfunctory or formal politeness, by its definition. Politeness is a culturally defined thing, by its definition, not an absolutely defined thing. It's not the speed of light in a vacuum, or Pi.
Acting as if the definition of civility you want to be the standard is the standard, and then dismissing everyone else who opposes as "enflamed" is passive aggressive and not conducive to free thought or discussion.
It's using word choices that don't devolve to a least common denominator of junk words, ones that inevitably provoke. That is counter to the definition of common, mathematically and semantically. The lowest common denominator is always going to be the most represented. Therefore, it is probably accepted by most people. Most people deciding an action is OK is how civility is determined in a society. If you want to argue otherwise please be ready to explain what the "advancement" of culture means, and how geographic locals create differing social norms that transcend ubiquitous assumptions of "polite".
Your assumption that certain words are only used for provocation instead of the most efficient method of communicating a concept within context is plain ignorant. You want to remove context and intent from the equation altogether in order to make your socially programmed response to certain aural stimuli easier to socially disonate into your narrow world view.
Soon we'll be issuing reports on advertiser quality. (Ads on Bloomberg: mostly legit. Ads on LinkedIn: quality varies, mostly OK. Ads on MySpace: mostly bottom-feeders.) More on this in coming weeks. I'd be interested in seeing the criteria, and sample data, for determining the quality of advertisers before I view your report as having any legitimacy.
They already sell data based on usage from areas, times of peak usage, and number of users (monitors) in a given area. They can give your exact usage for a day, week, month, year. Damn, they friggin trade it. Hell, I can go look at it if I want by looking at your meter myself.
It's not they TYPE of data that you get, its whether or not it can be gathered through passive observation. In the case of the internet, it can.
The above post isn't intended to defend, it's intended to lay out how it is. Know your enemy and all that.
BTW, the consumers really don't seem to care that the financial industry has been doing this with their ATM, Debit, Credit, and gift cards for a while now.
Sorry, you're not paying for the data from your ISP. You're paying for the ability to access it using the ISP services. Second, the data you submit to me is part of the technology used to request data from me. You can't get it without telling me where you want to send it. Third, I can enter into any contract I want with whomever I want in relation to what data I choose to serve. You wanna touch my content, on my host, you play by my rules.
Or you just don't come to my server and request my things. Oh, and don't go to any other server and request their data if they have negotiated the same group policy as I have in regards to collecting your observable data. See, we don't have to forward all the data of where you have been to each other, we already know the content on each others sites. We just know in what order and when you requested it. We can figure out the rest on our own.
See, fishing on your computer looking at your files to determine what you have been up to is intrusive. Analyzing server logs across multiple servers to determine behavior is not.
Ineffectual middle management acts this way all day, Strategy minded Senior management probably doesn't. If they do, get the hell out of dodge.
The problem comes with lack of communication. Senior management lays down a decree to fix a problem, and they task middle management with handling it. Middle management then makes some bullshit decisions based on inexperience. The problem isn't that they don't listen to IT, the problem is that they can't separate the wheat from the chaff concerning IT. IT also has no skin in the game concerning the business results of the solution other than "it works according to scope."
In order to fix this issue you should take the situation at face value and fix it yourself. Is it more realistic to ask business people who have had technology injected into their career halfway through to reestablish their mindset, or is it more practical for the new element to learn the old school rules and "sell" themselves to the internal business elements?
Sorry, I gotta call semi bullshit on this one. IT isn't the only one who does this.
Because IT can show you which sales people (who are treated like gods) are creating territories full of non-profitable customers. So can a good sales/marketing manager with excel. Oh, it's in a database you say? SQL isn't that hard for general, non optimized queries. Good people can do this, not only IT. And IT definitely isn't the ubiquitous facilitator.
Because IT can not only allow- but make the customers eager to- enter their own orders- saving you customer service costs and allow you to do the same work with a lot less people. No, they believe they can do that. This is the engineering approach to people that dooms IT workers. People don't work like that. People might put in their own orders. People won't do it accurately. SO who is going to fix that mess? You really want to tell the customer that the reason you cannot accept an online order is because they put their information in wrong. Fine, but it doesn't work once the ticket price goes over $300, and it definitely doesn't work in non commodity B2B transactions.
Because IT can take a 4 week manual process which sometimes completely failed and turn it into a 2-3 day process which is fully accountable. Maybe, but can you do it without changing the end user's general process? Probably not. And the costs of retraining end users is inconsequential to you because it is an externality to your IT department. IT departments often dismiss it with "the end user should...."
Anytime I hear that I know I am dealing with someone with their head up their ass. Here is the reality, the end user will, can, and does. That's it. If your approach doesn't encompass that mantra, your solutions cost's more than it's worth.
What IT needs to realize is that upper management views all aspects of operations with 4 criteria in mind, the 4 things that allow a company to make more money.
Does it allow me to raise my price? Not really applicable to most decisions, but one way of a company making more money.
Does it allow me to cut costs? Attacking the bottom line.
Does it allow me to increase productivity? Can I sell more, do more, create more?
Does it mitigate risk? Will it prevent, or compartmentalize, a problem that would cause us to bleed cash?
If the answer to the above four questions is no, then your management won't give a shit about what you have to offer. It's just a nice idea that you can take and shove up your ass. That is the harsh reality of it.We can pontificate all day on whether or not this is the right way to do things, or why it should be different, or how it really sucks.
IT doesn't control the money. IT needs the money. IT needs to play by the rules set through the previous two millennium that business has existed to get it. Once IT has been around long enough to affect multiple generations of business workers and have that influence felt across all departments, then MAYBE you will get the credit you feel you deserve.
You just don't have the length of service record necessary to demand the things you're demanding and be taken seriously. I'm not saying it's right, I'm just saying it is.
There is, however, a short chapter near the end of the book where he warns that the elements FPS games are functionally equivalent to the training methods the Army used,teaching players to go across that barrier, too. FPS games only address one aspect of combat, multi target awareness. To confuse or obsfucate the issue by conjoining it with PTSD and its relationship with veterans after WW2 does nothing to move understanding forward.
The psychology of war has little to do with the physionomics of war. FPS games nurture the mental aspect attached to the physionomics of warfare - that's it. And while being an aspect of combat, it is far from the core basis of combat.
Psychology deals with the understanding of actions taken during war by the entities who participate. It addresses the mental state of participants pre, and post, participation in wartime activities.
Physionomics investigates how FPS games influence the mental awareness, and possibly the acuity, of recognizing multiple threat targets - and driving engagement until all threats have been negotiated.
The concept of how someone feels about killing another is distinctly removed from how someone recognizes an element they need to kill. Look at the psychology of serial killers.
Clearly, we need a mechanism that allows IP to get funded, but, allows for unlimited copying, so as to get the best of both worlds. Well, when I figure that one out I'm gonna patent it.
"Flo" (I may be the only human that remembers this pile) You wanna compare archaic shitty spin off references? How about that pile of crap "Fish" spin off from "Barney Miller." There's some completely useless knowledge taking up brain space for you.
When your Pediatrician friends become Developmental Psychologists, let me know.
As for me saying our children aren't becoming sexual earlier, I never said such a thing. All of my statements point to the text on the magazine and the inability for children to put it into context. Graphic imagery is something else entirely and I cannot believe that you, and the rest of the AC's posting after, cannot tell the difference.
As for saying I might be forgetting how smart kids are, please go back and reread my posts. Tell me at which point I refer to the intelligence of children. I don't.
The ignorance of those who wish to disprove my position by rewording it into something I never said is pathetic.
I even stated what the culprits are, forced or irregular context being introduced to early. I'm sorry if I don't take you and your compadres seriously as it seems you don't even comprehend what I wrote.
I have go to say that your post has impressively gone straight to some true issues, and way off the deep end, at the same time.
What bothers me more than titillating (pun intended) headlines is when we, as a society, think it's okay, even cute, to let our daughters dress up like the little slut girl bands they admire.
We, as a society, do not believe this is OK. We as a society tolerate individual units of responsibility allowing their children to dress up like this. The two are not synonymous. It is completely rational to have this be bothersome to you. It will not be completely rational to society to force your opinion of it onto them (not saying you are.) It is the act of the parents that allow this, hell facilitate it. Little kids do not have $65 dollars to spend on a costume for Halloween, parents do. !Not withstanding those children who babysit or perform some other lucrative function. These kids are in a different class considering they understand base economics!
And I'm not sure why any parent would think it's okay to let their pre-teen (or teen) wear a shirt or pants that say things like "juicy" on them.
Taken out of context. Juicy is not a term that kids know as sexual, it generally refers to fruit or gum. You have the ability to perceive the word as sexual because you have experience. If you ask any kid why they wear "juicy" clothing, I promise you they won't say "because its sexy." Once again, your context is not their context.
Or sending babies out in beauty pageants made up like little adults.
Children don't choose this behavior, parents do. The context is forced an unhealthy. Blame individuals, not society.
What message are we sending to both our children and to those who prey on children?
Uhhh, this is just base line retarded. You are forcing something on your children at this point. And people who prey on children know damn well that it isn't appropriate, thats why they do it covertly instead of opening a damn business. Those who do open a business do so knowing full well it is illegal. There is no "it is appropriate" message being sent.
Children are much more aware of things than they used to be. No wonder, we're throwing it in their face in every area of society
Welcome to the Internet reality. Get used to it. It will never change. It is a reality. Opine for the good old days all you want, it won't fix a damn thing. They are growing up in an environment where the internet has always existed. That may be difficult for you to understand because you probably remember a time before it, and how the world worked then (with age and experience related filters involved.)
and then saying, "Ignore this until you get older."
Not everyone takes that tact. Some explain it the instant it comes up to the degree necessary to garner appropriate understanding. Even more people use a technique I refer to as "firebombing."
This is very regular amongst the tech crowd. Sometimes people know good and well that a person asking a question doesn't posses the facilities necessary to accurately comprehend the answer, so instead of spending the ridiculous amount of time it would take to bring them up to speed, they flood them with information. Highly detailed explanations covering all relevant, yet inconsequential to the answer in regards to the inquirer, details are unloaded on the subject until they give up. It is highly effective from both a time perspective and nuisance factor - yet the person asking the question gets no results.
Yes the fifth-grader might not be interested in the "housewife" magazines. But he will be sure to notice the anime girl on the latest gaming magazine that looks like she walked out of Penthouse.
You assume video games are made for kids, that is statistically inaccurate. The largest gaming demographic is males between the ages of 22 and 35. We have disposable cash, we play a lot of games, and sex is part of our contextual reality. The magazine isn't for children, they are in all reality, a fringe demographic.
The gray area aspect of the whole "where is the border between acceptable displays of sexuality and porn" is precisely why I say I am against government intervention in this space, and would rather have a conversation with the owners of the newsstands/websites/etc. directly, as a consumer. This allows them to make an informed choice themselves about what their consumers want. I'm not going to sue them if they refuse to take the magazines down, but I will go to another store if I can find one that does agree with me.
This, I must say, is the most mature solution. It also demonstrates your desire to co-exist. You have every right to protect your children by first voicing your opinion and then altering your behavior to conform with your beliefs. The constant being the reference to you. I greatly respect this perspective and tact as it truly demonstrates the desire for free speech while being able to negotiate yourself in the existing environment in order to live within your definition of acceptable. Kudos.
That having been said, I have to disagree with this statement:
Even if the child doesn't really understand what sex is, those headlines will make him or her think it's something they should be doing a lot of, because those magazines straight-up glamorize it on the front page. I don't think I can say with a straight face that won't have an effect on how they view sex, and particularly how much they should be having, when they do come to understand more about it. "The formative years" isn't a cliche, it's true.
It is almost impossible to glamorize something without context. The process of glamorizing something works on the fulcrum of an existing, context based perspective. This perspective is then worked against for the purpose of altering or amplifying your perspective. Without a base contextually anchored perspective, the technique is for naught.
To put it in really geeky terms, in D&D there are many spells that allow you to see invisible things. If one of these spells is placed on a person, they will see everything, invisible and not invisible. They do not notice something is invisible.
The same thing happens here. The child sees it. They may read it. They may even register what the text refers to, but they do not know in what way. They never even see that part. There is a definitive lack of context that ultimately protects them. I will concede that they may remember said text and store it away in their heads.
Once the moment arrives where they can put it into context, they might remember said words. It ultimately has zero effect, as their contextual understanding of the words comes in retrospect and in frame of their current contextual understanding. By its very nature, in order to gain a contextual understanding of the words, they will have to have had some sort of experience. The "damage" will have already been done. They didn't have sex because the magazine influenced them to, they understood what the magazine said to them because they had sex.
The real danger is forced, or irregularly occurring, context introduced early. People who lose their virginity to two girls at once, virgin rape victims, molested children - these are the real culprits of the dangers you worry about. It takes an inordinate amount of time and effort to correct the contextual perspective resulting from these scenarios, and it may never be fully fixed.
You're right that "the formative years" isn't a cliche. But I don't believe the formative forces are what you think they are. Ultimately we are picking nits, as your solution to the perceived problem is not overly sheltering, nor is it an actual solution. It is merely a fairly benign attempt at governing the speed of maturation. Based on your other posts, you are not naive about the realities of the world, you are just attempting to create the most productive environment for your children to grow and evolve in. Using your method the net affect will not be negative, but just increases the odds of their upbringing being positive.
Your standard is not the standard.
Granted, there weren't pictures of the mentioned techniques on the front covers of these magazines, in fact the front cover pictures were your typical fully clothed, respectable looking, successful women, as you'd expect in a modern woman's magazine. But doesn't it seem like having those kinds of headlines at eye-level to a fifth grader might make our children get some wrong ideas about sexuality, as in, it should always be on their mind, because it's always on the front cover of those magazines? Your kid cannot perceive the information the same way as you. They have no running history or experience that might even give them the faintest insight into what "Make Him Wild With Desire!!!" might mean. The closest they can get is to relate it to sex, and in 5th grade, sex is just a barely recognizable concept to them.
With no trigger time those statements lack context, without context those statements have no meaning other than whatever the kid makes up - which I guarantee will be totally wrong due to said inexperience. The same is true for any subject that child has never experienced. There is no damage being done to children becuase there is nothing to damage, the child's worldview will not allow them to consume the information that way.
Now, it may bug the shit out of you, because you have real live personal experience to put it into context. And since you're posting on/. I'm going to assume you have an IQ over 60, can see in color, and know how to breathe out of your nose. These assumptions being true, you have the ability to imagine a scenario where the headline has a negative effect on a child and their perception of sex and turns into a real problem for them down the road.
This is inaccurate. Let's remove from the situation all likelyhood that a fifth grader has no interest in "housewife" magazines, but yet an interest in the more age appropriate materials that the marketers have placed there especially for them to trigger the "nag marketing" effect. So now those "harmful" words can attack a child's fragile psyche unabated. That child STILL has no clue what they mean. So they very well can't extrapolate that the message is telling them to pay attention to sex more often. The only knowledge most kids have of sex at this age is clinically how it works. And even if they have experience first hand, I can promise you it wasn't positive.
The effect you are describing has no way to manifest anywhere except in your head.
No one in with a clue uses full auto to hit anything. It's used to fill an area with lead at high volumes to prevent movement or entry. Pin and flank, pin and flank. It's the most basic of military tactics.
Having the capability and using the capability incorrectly are two very different things.
Your response makes much sense, and fits into a theory I've had for many years about the creation of an "information class" that sits in between upper and lower class, but is lightly higher than middle class.
Joe sixpack doesn't care about wines the same way a food conneseuer (sp?) does. Joe cares about getting drunk, or having it "taste good." A foodie, OTOH, cares about pairings and body and the appropriate time to open it. They will often "treat" the wine properly by decanting a well aged red before drinking it. Joe doesn't need a sommelier, the foodie respects their input.
I see technology going this way quickly. As geeks, we have to realize that we actually exist on the very beginning of the technological bell curve's meteoric rise. The stuff is getting very intertwined, very quickly, and increasingly complex to boot. At the same time related scholastic disciplines, social castes, and non contradictory moral and ethical structures are beginning to track their influence on each other using these increasingly complex tools and services.
As geeks, it is easy for us to keep abreast of much of the consumer level technologies that we find, or would find, appealing and useful. We can do this because in the scope of things our existing choices are very limited. Very soon this will not be the case. The sheer number of options out there will be too much for us to determine which options create the "best" pairing, or for us to even create comparisons on points of equal value. Let's not even get into technologies that will have to morph between productivity and entertainment devices.
I've read many people who equate this idea to another "salesman" or some other such nonsense. That is not the case at all. I think your example of vocabulary can be extended to social functions. For high income citizens, or for people with very very specific tastes, personal shoppers are the norm. Now, personal style is a very one dimensional trait. Your adornments either fit or don't fit with your personal motifs, complex consumer technology OTOH has multiple facets that can be viewed much in the same manner as a wine pairing.
Why recreate the wheel when a functional social entity already exists?
What is free, how costs money. If you don't know the difference you aren't leveraging it very well and you don't have the advantage you think you have.
You assume a stupid person knows they're stupid or ignorant. By their very nature, the stupid and ignorant don't have the skills to self evaluate accurately.
I'm all for personal accountability, but I have a hard time coming behind someone who made poor choices and ripping them a new one for doing something they never could have known they shouldn't do. They are kind like a special classification of victim, lets call it Aggravated assault vs. Plain old Assault. INAL, so don't kill me if my example isn't as exact as it should be.
It really isn't very fun to get continually pwned by your opponent while you're still trying to figure out how to even hold the controller, much less which buttons do what. And the parent's aggravation will just aggravate the kid. "No, daddy, hit the X button! X BUTTON!" "Uh..." *looks down at the controller* "Which is the X button again?" *splat* You know, while the XBOX and PS2 & 3 have tried to fix this issue with colors and symbols, I have found the best way to get a parent up to speed using a difficult controller is with two sports metaphors.
For the face buttons, baseball. First base, second base, ect.. It is highly effective. Almost everyone instinctively knows which base is which.
For the triggers and top buttons, it gets a little more complicated. With my Mom I found four square notation worked. A, B, C, D box. She instinctively knew where these elements were in relation to each other.
My Dad understood the trigger notation right off the bat.
Compared to a lot of other things you could do for a living, music is *not* an expensive industry to be a part of, if you don't buy into the rock 'n' roll life style, often lived by artists who are *fearsomely* in hock to their major label for some ungodly advance money that it will take royalties years to pay off, if ever. Preach the truth brother.
I'll lay all my cards on the table, I'm a turnaround marketing consultant. I make A LOT of money showing business entities how to reformulate their images, re-purpose their delivery mechanisms, and polish their overall revenue generating vectors (god that sounds like awful marketees).
You know how I do it?
By showing them how consumers actually want to consume.
PEOPLE DON'T WANT TO LIVE THE WAY BUSINESSES WANT TO TELL THEM HOW TO LIVE!
That shit is dead. You can make more money doing it all yourself and by NOT pushing it to everyone on the planet. You don't have to lie. You don't have to falsely claim you're something your not. You don't have to INTRUDE. You don't need to buy into the A&R guys pitch.
DO NOT LET THE INDUSTRY TELL YOU YOU HAVE TO DO IT THEIR WAY! It is a lie. There are more than enough people out there who want to hear the music you make who will pay you for it. Enough who will pay for it and enable you to live comfortably.
YOU HAVE TO MAKE A CHOICE. Do I want to be a "rock star" or do I want to live by creating music. The two are not the same.
XTC was doing this shit IN THE FUCKING 80's.
I have worked with "capitalistic" businesses. I have taken their money and they have failed. I have worked with "idealistic" businesses. I have taken their money and watched them flourish utilizing the knowledge I have passed to them.
It isn't rocket science. I'll even give it away for free right here.
Don't tell people they want you, make yourself available to people who want what you have.
Funny, I comprehended the topic as general government disregard for our rights. But hey, if you feel better by pointing out snide useless semantic observations to matters that require more thought, then be my guest.
Slashdot Mirror
For every group you can define that would find offense to the word fuck used in public - I can find a larger one who is not offended created using the criteria used to define yours. And by the time you create a definition that disallows a comparison group worthy of notice, you will have so over defined your social standard that it will be nothing more than a minority.
Common civility is defined by common action. If the action is becoming so common that it cannot be enforced against, your whole argument is meaningless. Civility is perfunctory or formal politeness, by its definition. Politeness is a culturally defined thing, by its definition, not an absolutely defined thing. It's not the speed of light in a vacuum, or Pi.
Acting as if the definition of civility you want to be the standard is the standard, and then dismissing everyone else who opposes as "enflamed" is passive aggressive and not conducive to free thought or discussion. It's using word choices that don't devolve to a least common denominator of junk words, ones that inevitably provoke. That is counter to the definition of common, mathematically and semantically. The lowest common denominator is always going to be the most represented. Therefore, it is probably accepted by most people. Most people deciding an action is OK is how civility is determined in a society. If you want to argue otherwise please be ready to explain what the "advancement" of culture means, and how geographic locals create differing social norms that transcend ubiquitous assumptions of "polite".
Your assumption that certain words are only used for provocation instead of the most efficient method of communicating a concept within context is plain ignorant. You want to remove context and intent from the equation altogether in order to make your socially programmed response to certain aural stimuli easier to socially disonate into your narrow world view.
What a joke.
They already sell data based on usage from areas, times of peak usage, and number of users (monitors) in a given area. They can give your exact usage for a day, week, month, year. Damn, they friggin trade it. Hell, I can go look at it if I want by looking at your meter myself.
It's not they TYPE of data that you get, its whether or not it can be gathered through passive observation. In the case of the internet, it can.
Agreed.
The above post isn't intended to defend, it's intended to lay out how it is. Know your enemy and all that.
BTW, the consumers really don't seem to care that the financial industry has been doing this with their ATM, Debit, Credit, and gift cards for a while now.
Sorry, you're not paying for the data from your ISP. You're paying for the ability to access it using the ISP services. Second, the data you submit to me is part of the technology used to request data from me. You can't get it without telling me where you want to send it. Third, I can enter into any contract I want with whomever I want in relation to what data I choose to serve. You wanna touch my content, on my host, you play by my rules.
Or you just don't come to my server and request my things. Oh, and don't go to any other server and request their data if they have negotiated the same group policy as I have in regards to collecting your observable data. See, we don't have to forward all the data of where you have been to each other, we already know the content on each others sites. We just know in what order and when you requested it. We can figure out the rest on our own.
See, fishing on your computer looking at your files to determine what you have been up to is intrusive. Analyzing server logs across multiple servers to determine behavior is not.
Ineffectual middle management acts this way all day, Strategy minded Senior management probably doesn't. If they do, get the hell out of dodge.
The problem comes with lack of communication. Senior management lays down a decree to fix a problem, and they task middle management with handling it. Middle management then makes some bullshit decisions based on inexperience. The problem isn't that they don't listen to IT, the problem is that they can't separate the wheat from the chaff concerning IT. IT also has no skin in the game concerning the business results of the solution other than "it works according to scope."
In order to fix this issue you should take the situation at face value and fix it yourself. Is it more realistic to ask business people who have had technology injected into their career halfway through to reestablish their mindset, or is it more practical for the new element to learn the old school rules and "sell" themselves to the internal business elements?
Anytime I hear that I know I am dealing with someone with their head up their ass. Here is the reality, the end user will, can, and does. That's it. If your approach doesn't encompass that mantra, your solutions cost's more than it's worth.
What IT needs to realize is that upper management views all aspects of operations with 4 criteria in mind, the 4 things that allow a company to make more money.
If the answer to the above four questions is no, then your management won't give a shit about what you have to offer. It's just a nice idea that you can take and shove up your ass. That is the harsh reality of it.We can pontificate all day on whether or not this is the right way to do things, or why it should be different, or how it really sucks.
IT doesn't control the money. IT needs the money. IT needs to play by the rules set through the previous two millennium that business has existed to get it. Once IT has been around long enough to affect multiple generations of business workers and have that influence felt across all departments, then MAYBE you will get the credit you feel you deserve.
You just don't have the length of service record necessary to demand the things you're demanding and be taken seriously. I'm not saying it's right, I'm just saying it is.
The psychology of war has little to do with the physionomics of war. FPS games nurture the mental aspect attached to the physionomics of warfare - that's it. And while being an aspect of combat, it is far from the core basis of combat.
Psychology deals with the understanding of actions taken during war by the entities who participate. It addresses the mental state of participants pre, and post, participation in wartime activities.
Physionomics investigates how FPS games influence the mental awareness, and possibly the acuity, of recognizing multiple threat targets - and driving engagement until all threats have been negotiated.
The concept of how someone feels about killing another is distinctly removed from how someone recognizes an element they need to kill. Look at the psychology of serial killers.
I thought Richard Garfield created magic.
When your Pediatrician friends become Developmental Psychologists, let me know.
As for me saying our children aren't becoming sexual earlier, I never said such a thing. All of my statements point to the text on the magazine and the inability for children to put it into context. Graphic imagery is something else entirely and I cannot believe that you, and the rest of the AC's posting after, cannot tell the difference.
As for saying I might be forgetting how smart kids are, please go back and reread my posts. Tell me at which point I refer to the intelligence of children. I don't.
The ignorance of those who wish to disprove my position by rewording it into something I never said is pathetic.
I even stated what the culprits are, forced or irregular context being introduced to early. I'm sorry if I don't take you and your compadres seriously as it seems you don't even comprehend what I wrote.
I have go to say that your post has impressively gone straight to some true issues, and way off the deep end, at the same time.
What bothers me more than titillating (pun intended) headlines is when we, as a society, think it's okay, even cute, to let our daughters dress up like the little slut girl bands they admire.
We, as a society, do not believe this is OK. We as a society tolerate individual units of responsibility allowing their children to dress up like this. The two are not synonymous. It is completely rational to have this be bothersome to you. It will not be completely rational to society to force your opinion of it onto them (not saying you are.) It is the act of the parents that allow this, hell facilitate it. Little kids do not have $65 dollars to spend on a costume for Halloween, parents do. !Not withstanding those children who babysit or perform some other lucrative function. These kids are in a different class considering they understand base economics!
And I'm not sure why any parent would think it's okay to let their pre-teen (or teen) wear a shirt or pants that say things like "juicy" on them.
Taken out of context. Juicy is not a term that kids know as sexual, it generally refers to fruit or gum. You have the ability to perceive the word as sexual because you have experience. If you ask any kid why they wear "juicy" clothing, I promise you they won't say "because its sexy." Once again, your context is not their context.
Or sending babies out in beauty pageants made up like little adults.
Children don't choose this behavior, parents do. The context is forced an unhealthy. Blame individuals, not society.
What message are we sending to both our children and to those who prey on children?
Uhhh, this is just base line retarded. You are forcing something on your children at this point. And people who prey on children know damn well that it isn't appropriate, thats why they do it covertly instead of opening a damn business. Those who do open a business do so knowing full well it is illegal. There is no "it is appropriate" message being sent.
Children are much more aware of things than they used to be. No wonder, we're throwing it in their face in every area of society
Welcome to the Internet reality. Get used to it. It will never change. It is a reality. Opine for the good old days all you want, it won't fix a damn thing. They are growing up in an environment where the internet has always existed. That may be difficult for you to understand because you probably remember a time before it, and how the world worked then (with age and experience related filters involved.)
and then saying, "Ignore this until you get older."
Not everyone takes that tact. Some explain it the instant it comes up to the degree necessary to garner appropriate understanding. Even more people use a technique I refer to as "firebombing."
This is very regular amongst the tech crowd. Sometimes people know good and well that a person asking a question doesn't posses the facilities necessary to accurately comprehend the answer, so instead of spending the ridiculous amount of time it would take to bring them up to speed, they flood them with information. Highly detailed explanations covering all relevant, yet inconsequential to the answer in regards to the inquirer, details are unloaded on the subject until they give up. It is highly effective from both a time perspective and nuisance factor - yet the person asking the question gets no results.
Yes the fifth-grader might not be interested in the "housewife" magazines. But he will be sure to notice the anime girl on the latest gaming magazine that looks like she walked out of Penthouse.
You assume video games are made for kids, that is statistically inaccurate. The largest gaming demographic is males between the ages of 22 and 35. We have disposable cash, we play a lot of games, and sex is part of our contextual reality. The magazine isn't for children, they are in all reality, a fringe demographic.
The gray area aspect of the whole "where is the border between acceptable displays of sexuality and porn" is precisely why I say I am against government intervention in this space, and would rather have a conversation with the owners of the newsstands/websites/etc. directly, as a consumer. This allows them to make an informed choice themselves about what their consumers want. I'm not going to sue them if they refuse to take the magazines down, but I will go to another store if I can find one that does agree with me.
This, I must say, is the most mature solution. It also demonstrates your desire to co-exist. You have every right to protect your children by first voicing your opinion and then altering your behavior to conform with your beliefs. The constant being the reference to you. I greatly respect this perspective and tact as it truly demonstrates the desire for free speech while being able to negotiate yourself in the existing environment in order to live within your definition of acceptable. Kudos.
That having been said, I have to disagree with this statement:
Even if the child doesn't really understand what sex is, those headlines will make him or her think it's something they should be doing a lot of, because those magazines straight-up glamorize it on the front page. I don't think I can say with a straight face that won't have an effect on how they view sex, and particularly how much they should be having, when they do come to understand more about it. "The formative years" isn't a cliche, it's true.
It is almost impossible to glamorize something without context. The process of glamorizing something works on the fulcrum of an existing, context based perspective. This perspective is then worked against for the purpose of altering or amplifying your perspective. Without a base contextually anchored perspective, the technique is for naught.
To put it in really geeky terms, in D&D there are many spells that allow you to see invisible things. If one of these spells is placed on a person, they will see everything, invisible and not invisible. They do not notice something is invisible.
The same thing happens here. The child sees it. They may read it. They may even register what the text refers to, but they do not know in what way. They never even see that part. There is a definitive lack of context that ultimately protects them. I will concede that they may remember said text and store it away in their heads.
Once the moment arrives where they can put it into context, they might remember said words. It ultimately has zero effect, as their contextual understanding of the words comes in retrospect and in frame of their current contextual understanding. By its very nature, in order to gain a contextual understanding of the words, they will have to have had some sort of experience. The "damage" will have already been done. They didn't have sex because the magazine influenced them to, they understood what the magazine said to them because they had sex.
The real danger is forced, or irregularly occurring, context introduced early. People who lose their virginity to two girls at once, virgin rape victims, molested children - these are the real culprits of the dangers you worry about. It takes an inordinate amount of time and effort to correct the contextual perspective resulting from these scenarios, and it may never be fully fixed.
You're right that "the formative years" isn't a cliche. But I don't believe the formative forces are what you think they are. Ultimately we are picking nits, as your solution to the perceived problem is not overly sheltering, nor is it an actual solution. It is merely a fairly benign attempt at governing the speed of maturation. Based on your other posts, you are not naive about the realities of the world, you are just attempting to create the most productive environment for your children to grow and evolve in. Using your method the net affect will not be negative, but just increases the odds of their upbringing being positive.
With no trigger time those statements lack context, without context those statements have no meaning other than whatever the kid makes up - which I guarantee will be totally wrong due to said inexperience. The same is true for any subject that child has never experienced. There is no damage being done to children becuase there is nothing to damage, the child's worldview will not allow them to consume the information that way.
Now, it may bug the shit out of you, because you have real live personal experience to put it into context. And since you're posting on
This is inaccurate. Let's remove from the situation all likelyhood that a fifth grader has no interest in "housewife" magazines, but yet an interest in the more age appropriate materials that the marketers have placed there especially for them to trigger the "nag marketing" effect. So now those "harmful" words can attack a child's fragile psyche unabated. That child STILL has no clue what they mean. So they very well can't extrapolate that the message is telling them to pay attention to sex more often. The only knowledge most kids have of sex at this age is clinically how it works. And even if they have experience first hand, I can promise you it wasn't positive.
The effect you are describing has no way to manifest anywhere except in your head.
"Bullet Hoses" have a tactical use.
No one in with a clue uses full auto to hit anything. It's used to fill an area with lead at high volumes to prevent movement or entry. Pin and flank, pin and flank. It's the most basic of military tactics.
Having the capability and using the capability incorrectly are two very different things.
Your response makes much sense, and fits into a theory I've had for many years about the creation of an "information class" that sits in between upper and lower class, but is lightly higher than middle class.
Joe sixpack doesn't care about wines the same way a food conneseuer (sp?) does. Joe cares about getting drunk, or having it "taste good." A foodie, OTOH, cares about pairings and body and the appropriate time to open it. They will often "treat" the wine properly by decanting a well aged red before drinking it. Joe doesn't need a sommelier, the foodie respects their input.
I see technology going this way quickly. As geeks, we have to realize that we actually exist on the very beginning of the technological bell curve's meteoric rise. The stuff is getting very intertwined, very quickly, and increasingly complex to boot. At the same time related scholastic disciplines, social castes, and non contradictory moral and ethical structures are beginning to track their influence on each other using these increasingly complex tools and services.
As geeks, it is easy for us to keep abreast of much of the consumer level technologies that we find, or would find, appealing and useful. We can do this because in the scope of things our existing choices are very limited. Very soon this will not be the case. The sheer number of options out there will be too much for us to determine which options create the "best" pairing, or for us to even create comparisons on points of equal value. Let's not even get into technologies that will have to morph between productivity and entertainment devices.
I've read many people who equate this idea to another "salesman" or some other such nonsense. That is not the case at all. I think your example of vocabulary can be extended to social functions. For high income citizens, or for people with very very specific tastes, personal shoppers are the norm. Now, personal style is a very one dimensional trait. Your adornments either fit or don't fit with your personal motifs, complex consumer technology OTOH has multiple facets that can be viewed much in the same manner as a wine pairing.
Why recreate the wheel when a functional social entity already exists?
If you think Google is free, you don't get it.
Search isn't Google's product, you are. They sell your eyes to advertisers. Search is just the honey pot to get you there.
Why are people so blatantly naive?
What is free, how costs money. If you don't know the difference you aren't leveraging it very well and you don't have the advantage you think you have.
You assume a stupid person knows they're stupid or ignorant. By their very nature, the stupid and ignorant don't have the skills to self evaluate accurately.
I'm all for personal accountability, but I have a hard time coming behind someone who made poor choices and ripping them a new one for doing something they never could have known they shouldn't do. They are kind like a special classification of victim, lets call it Aggravated assault vs. Plain old Assault. INAL, so don't kill me if my example isn't as exact as it should be.
For the face buttons, baseball. First base, second base, ect.. It is highly effective. Almost everyone instinctively knows which base is which.
For the triggers and top buttons, it gets a little more complicated. With my Mom I found four square notation worked. A, B, C, D box. She instinctively knew where these elements were in relation to each other.
My Dad understood the trigger notation right off the bat.
I'll lay all my cards on the table, I'm a turnaround marketing consultant. I make A LOT of money showing business entities how to reformulate their images, re-purpose their delivery mechanisms, and polish their overall revenue generating vectors (god that sounds like awful marketees).
You know how I do it?
By showing them how consumers actually want to consume.
PEOPLE DON'T WANT TO LIVE THE WAY BUSINESSES WANT TO TELL THEM HOW TO LIVE!
That shit is dead. You can make more money doing it all yourself and by NOT pushing it to everyone on the planet. You don't have to lie. You don't have to falsely claim you're something your not. You don't have to INTRUDE. You don't need to buy into the A&R guys pitch.
DO NOT LET THE INDUSTRY TELL YOU YOU HAVE TO DO IT THEIR WAY! It is a lie. There are more than enough people out there who want to hear the music you make who will pay you for it. Enough who will pay for it and enable you to live comfortably.
YOU HAVE TO MAKE A CHOICE. Do I want to be a "rock star" or do I want to live by creating music. The two are not the same.
XTC was doing this shit IN THE FUCKING 80's.
I have worked with "capitalistic" businesses. I have taken their money and they have failed. I have worked with "idealistic" businesses. I have taken their money and watched them flourish utilizing the knowledge I have passed to them.
It isn't rocket science. I'll even give it away for free right here.
Don't tell people they want you, make yourself available to people who want what you have.
Funny, I comprehended the topic as general government disregard for our rights. But hey, if you feel better by pointing out snide useless semantic observations to matters that require more thought, then be my guest.
I'm a little curious how you think unlawful surveillance is the root problem here.
Keep looking for a savior, you'll get what you deserve.