Funny, I never said that. I said it wasn't bad, which isn't the same thing as saying it was good.
"The "none of us would be here today" gave me a good laugh."
Did you bother to think about it? If primevial human children were emotionally and psychologically scarred by seeing adults having sex, they would be much less willing to participate in the process when they themselves reached sexual maturity. So either we would have had to develop modesty real fast or we'd be just another evolutionary dead end.
"Every post I've seen so far has been like the diffrence between a private shower and a prison shower. Keeping kids out of the sexual picture or throwing them to the dogs."
Something else you apparently missed in my post is where I said "in front of (as opposed to 'with' or 'to')." I didn't say hand your kids off to NAMBLA, just that going out of your way to hide any signs of sexuality between you and your spouse from your kids does little good and may actually do some harm down the road.
"What difference does it make that people were emotionally prepared to have children at a younger age in the past if that's no longer the case?"
As I mentioned, sex and pregnancy no longer have to go hand-in-hand.
"We have children later in life because that leads to a higher standard of living. Taking examples from the past doesn't make a very convincing argument."
The emotional stunting mentioned doesn't just affect sexuality and parenthood, though. The immaturity of teenagers today compared to teenagers two centuries ago shows up in just about everything they do. Modern teenagers are usually hardly capable of holding down a job and taking care of themselves, let alone hypothetical babies. Part of it has to do with the way society still treats them as children.
"Don't be so sure. Volating the "don't touch a hot stove" rule has immediately painful consequence, which makes it extremely easy to learn. "Use a condom"... well, look at how many adults have yet to learn it."
What about "stay away from large bodies of water?" There's no real bad side-effect there until you actually drown, and there isn't a stigma against teaching about swimming.
"Hmmm... what to think of a post scored as +3 Funny that simply summarizes a bit by the Dead Alewives without giving credit where credit is due?"
It wouldn't have gotten moderated up if nobody recognized what it was from
You must be a busy guy, making sure that each and ever reference to The Simpsons, Star Wars, et al are all properly documented
The Dead Alewives wouldn't have to worry about making sure their name was attached to this if they were able to do something else that was as funny as this particular bit
"You mean Dungeons and Dragons is a system administration tool also?!"
I can see the list of user rights now...
has Mountain Dew
has Cheetos
can cast a spell
can cast "Magic Missile"
has materials for "Morton Kiden's Magical Watchdog"
has so totally cast "Morton Kiden's Magical Watchdog"
is in the room
has ogre-slaying knife (+9)
is at the pub
is getting drunk
gets to do girls at pub
Re:Best examples of heresy I can think of
on
What You Can't Say
·
· Score: 1
"There were, in fact, only three Israelis who had been confirmed as dead:"
Is this the number of Israeli citizens that were killed, or the number of people that were only Israeli citizens? IIRC, it's pretty common to have a dual US/Israeli citizenship, and I doubt the Israeli consulate would be keeping tabs on the ones that are already US citizens.
"Not nudity - sexuality. And the reasons are part moral choice but mostly practical. Children are inquisitive and will copy much of what they see. However, they are children, not miniature adults. Morally, they do not yet possess emotional complexity of the kind required to handle sex."
If sexuality in front of children (as opposed to "with" or "to" children) were as harmful as you suggest, none of us would be here today to debate it. Humans were having sex millenia before it was considered unacceptable to do it in front of children, much like other mammals.
Besides, there are other, potentially more deadly things that we do in front of children that we don't want them to imitate too closely, like cooking. We survive as a species not by making sure there are no children around to see us cooking, but by making sure that the children learn things like "don't touch a hot stove."
"Practically, they are unable to handle the consequences of being pregnant by twelve."
Only after the Industrial Revolution. Or we would be the only species emotionally incapable of handling parenthood despite being capable biologically. Most psychologists seem to believe that the current gap we see between biological and emotional maturity is because survival now requires at least a high school education in order to hold down a job and such.
Besides, this is the Twenty-First Century; you can have sex without getting pregnant and vice versa (unless you pay too much attention to John Paul II). If three-year-olds are capable of understanding "don't touch a hot stove," a child old enough to have reached sexual maturity should be capable of understanding "use a condom."
In my personal (anecdotal) experience, it seems that the children from whom sexuality is hidden from the longest are the ones most likely to be a parent at an early age. I'm sure everybody here has heard stories of children growing up in strictly asexual households only to get (somebody) pregnant in their freshman year at an out-of-state college.
Is it harmful to children, or is it simply embarassing to the adults?
Hell, let's just get rid of all of New England. We could donate it to Canada, giving the maratimes somebody else to talk to without having to learn French.
"# Masturbatory habits ("Hey Chuck, what'd you do last night?" "Oh, I stayed home and surfed for porn - had two great orgasms!") # Fetishes ("So Julie, what did you get for Christmas?" "Oh! A batman cape? I can't reach orgasm unless my lover is wearing one!")"
Those three are more of a privacy angle IMO. I don't think it's "wrong" to say those things, but those are things I would get uncomfortable hearing because I can't help but think how I would feel if aspects of my private life (sexual or otherwise) got out.
Admitting your sexual preferences is potentially embarassing, to the listener if not the speaker. If you want real taboos, talk about any polarizing political issue of the day, something that would cause a flame war.
So, what are all your stances on abortion?
" "Sure I hit my wife - when she deserves it!" (this is probably less of a taboo than it should be)"
That's not taboo, that's just stupid to admit in public. Unless this falls under the category of "sexual fetish," that's like saying "Yeah, I robbed that 7-Eleven yesterday."
" In most of middle america, announcing that you're an atheist is pretty eyebrow-raising."
Just as announcing on/. that you're not atheist. I'm personally rather disturbed the way an ostensibly pro-free speech site as/. is can at the same time be very against free expression of religion, where I've seen people equate wearing a crucifix, skullcap or veil (three of the things France is currently trying to ban in school) with "religious indoctrination," apparently equating every religion with Scientology.
" You can't say 'nigger', unless you're black."
More amazing to me, you can't say "niggling" unless you're black.
Sheesh! Three words: Get a lawyer! Exactly how hard on the head did she hit you?
Even if you've wasted away the statute of limitation on assult ("with a deadly weapon," perhaps?), at the very least you should get a lawyer to lobby your state's governor to get a pardon and clear your record.
Seriously, this sounds like the kind high-profile case ambulance chasers dream of. Think of all the headlines they could grab outspokenly defending you from a double standard.
Re:Best examples of heresy I can think of
on
What You Can't Say
·
· Score: 1
"A week or so later, The New York Times reports"
If you could get through last year and still believe everything the New York Times publishes is true, you need to start thinking about living under a smaller rock.
Re:Best examples of heresy I can think of
on
What You Can't Say
·
· Score: 1
"I challenge any of you to back that up factually."
Importance is subjective and depends entirely on the chosen frame of reference. It is a statement of opinion more than anything else. After all, where are all the facts supporting your supposition that it doesn't matter?
You'd have an easier time proving or disproving the existence of God.
Re:Some of the early plans are a bit out there
on
Dreams of the Moon
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
"So, hands up. Who would accept this mission if it was offered?"
I would in a heartbeat. Seriously.
One of the unspoken truths about NASA (and probably about manned spaceflight in general) is that they'll run out of hardware long before they run out of volunteers.
We already do--domesticly. It's the NIMBY states like Florida that are the reason why we buy so much foreign oil to begin with.
If we instead try to tax only foreign oil, then there's trouble with the WTO as was with the steel tariffs recently repealed. Most people seem to agree that the steel tariffs did more harm than good to the US economy as a whole and was repealed before it did even more damage by way of trade wars.
"Stop spending $87 billion on the Iraqi war."
Then where should the money come from? We can't expect the rest of the world to treat the expenditure as a loan to Iraq without coming off as hypocrites when asking the Paris Club to forgive Iraqi debts. The main argument for forgiving Iraqi debts is that the Iraqi people had absolutely no say in whether or not to incur said debts. Whatever the truth of the situation is, most people don't think that the transitional council currently in Baghdad has any more public legitimacy than the Baath Party did, and this will continue to be the case until democratic elections are held.
"Stop spending money pandering to corporate interests and participating in corporate welfare"
The numbers show that the vast majority of federal tax dollars are spent on welfare of the social variety. Medicare and Social Security separately each get more money than national defense.
"Stop spending money on ineffectual airport security designed to give people a warm fuzzy feeling."
Define "effectual." Assure that said definition does not violate civil rights and liberties more than the current system does.
"Stop the massive subsidisation of farmers and miners, second only to the EU."
Detente. "We'll stop as soon as everybody else does."
Slave labor didn't work. If it did, the slave-dominated South would have beaten the industrialized North at their own game of attrition. And any and all profits from slave labor literally went up in smoke (see William Tecumseh Sherman). There's a reason why Reconstruction lasted so long.
"4. Employing child labour to cheaply replace slaves."
What slaves? Child labor was in factories in the industralized North, while slave labor was essentially restricted to the plantations of the South. And in the South slave labor was replaced by ostensibly free black workers (see "Jim Crow").
"Now we want to bitch about other countries doing the same thing?"
Yeah, look at all the land the Chinese are stealing from the native Asians! Oh, wait...
"If you LIVE in the US, you are partaking of the fruit made sweet by the sins of our fathers"
Save it for the Mayflower folks. Nobody I was related to was a US citizen before the Twentieth Century. My ancesters were the cheap labor you seem to be complaining about, both in their native countries and here.
"If there were a serious imbalance, speculators would be draining billions out of the Chinese government by buying yuan,"
Why? Being pegged to the dollar means that the purchase and sale price are fixed and will not change. There is no profit to be made unless/until Beijing removes the peg.
"while Beijing frantically had to tighten their money supply to keep the yuan up."
Huh? It's pegged, which means that the government does nothing to keep the yuan "up" or "down." Pegging the yuan to the dollar means our government works to keep it where it is.
"Bush's deficits have far more to do with it. The dollar has declined about 30% against the Euro in the last two years."
Um... declining value of the dollar compared to the euro is a Good Thing for exporters.
"What I don't understand yet is WHY don't the NASA, the ESA and the Japanese (and why not the Chinese) joint their efforts and do something BIG for ONCE."
Yeah! And they can call it the International Space Station!
Slashdot Mirror
"4 gigabytes, announced today. NASA could've spent $50 extra and gotten the 15 gigabyte one,"
Great. 4 Gbit connecton on Mars, and I can't even get a decent V.92 connection here. Hey NASA, when're you gonna launch a mission to suburban America?
"But to say kids & nudity = good, is outrageous."
Funny, I never said that. I said it wasn't bad, which isn't the same thing as saying it was good.
"The "none of us would be here today" gave me a good laugh."
Did you bother to think about it? If primevial human children were emotionally and psychologically scarred by seeing adults having sex, they would be much less willing to participate in the process when they themselves reached sexual maturity. So either we would have had to develop modesty real fast or we'd be just another evolutionary dead end.
"Every post I've seen so far has been like the diffrence between a private shower and a prison shower. Keeping kids out of the sexual picture or throwing them to the dogs."
Something else you apparently missed in my post is where I said "in front of (as opposed to 'with' or 'to')." I didn't say hand your kids off to NAMBLA, just that going out of your way to hide any signs of sexuality between you and your spouse from your kids does little good and may actually do some harm down the road.
"What difference does it make that people were emotionally prepared to have children at a younger age in the past if that's no longer the case?"
As I mentioned, sex and pregnancy no longer have to go hand-in-hand.
"We have children later in life because that leads to a higher standard of living. Taking examples from the past doesn't make a very convincing argument."
The emotional stunting mentioned doesn't just affect sexuality and parenthood, though. The immaturity of teenagers today compared to teenagers two centuries ago shows up in just about everything they do. Modern teenagers are usually hardly capable of holding down a job and taking care of themselves, let alone hypothetical babies. Part of it has to do with the way society still treats them as children.
"Don't be so sure. Volating the "don't touch a hot stove" rule has immediately painful consequence, which makes it extremely easy to learn. "Use a condom"... well, look at how many adults have yet to learn it."
What about "stay away from large bodies of water?" There's no real bad side-effect there until you actually drown, and there isn't a stigma against teaching about swimming.
I can see the list of user rights now...
is in the room
is at the pub
"There were, in fact, only three Israelis who had been confirmed as dead:"
Is this the number of Israeli citizens that were killed, or the number of people that were only Israeli citizens? IIRC, it's pretty common to have a dual US/Israeli citizenship, and I doubt the Israeli consulate would be keeping tabs on the ones that are already US citizens.
"Not nudity - sexuality. And the reasons are part moral choice but mostly practical. Children are inquisitive and will copy much of what they see. However, they are children, not miniature adults. Morally, they do not yet possess emotional complexity of the kind required to handle sex."
If sexuality in front of children (as opposed to "with" or "to" children) were as harmful as you suggest, none of us would be here today to debate it. Humans were having sex millenia before it was considered unacceptable to do it in front of children, much like other mammals.
Besides, there are other, potentially more deadly things that we do in front of children that we don't want them to imitate too closely, like cooking. We survive as a species not by making sure there are no children around to see us cooking, but by making sure that the children learn things like "don't touch a hot stove."
"Practically, they are unable to handle the consequences of being pregnant by twelve."
Only after the Industrial Revolution. Or we would be the only species emotionally incapable of handling parenthood despite being capable biologically. Most psychologists seem to believe that the current gap we see between biological and emotional maturity is because survival now requires at least a high school education in order to hold down a job and such.
Besides, this is the Twenty-First Century; you can have sex without getting pregnant and vice versa (unless you pay too much attention to John Paul II). If three-year-olds are capable of understanding "don't touch a hot stove," a child old enough to have reached sexual maturity should be capable of understanding "use a condom."
In my personal (anecdotal) experience, it seems that the children from whom sexuality is hidden from the longest are the ones most likely to be a parent at an early age. I'm sure everybody here has heard stories of children growing up in strictly asexual households only to get (somebody) pregnant in their freshman year at an out-of-state college.
Is it harmful to children, or is it simply embarassing to the adults?
"Universities haven't become less tolerant of free speech in my experience."
Try speaking out against a tenured professor sometime.
Hell, let's just get rid of all of New England. We could donate it to Canada, giving the maratimes somebody else to talk to without having to learn French.
"# Masturbatory habits ("Hey Chuck, what'd you do last night?" "Oh, I stayed home and surfed for porn - had two great orgasms!")
/. that you're not atheist. I'm personally rather disturbed the way an ostensibly pro-free speech site as /. is can at the same time be very against free expression of religion, where I've seen people equate wearing a crucifix, skullcap or veil (three of the things France is currently trying to ban in school) with "religious indoctrination," apparently equating every religion with Scientology.
# Fetishes ("So Julie, what did you get for Christmas?" "Oh! A batman cape? I can't reach orgasm unless my lover is wearing one!")"
Those three are more of a privacy angle IMO. I don't think it's "wrong" to say those things, but those are things I would get uncomfortable hearing because I can't help but think how I would feel if aspects of my private life (sexual or otherwise) got out.
Admitting your sexual preferences is potentially embarassing, to the listener if not the speaker. If you want real taboos, talk about any polarizing political issue of the day, something that would cause a flame war.
So, what are all your stances on abortion?
" "Sure I hit my wife - when she deserves it!" (this is probably less of a taboo than it should be)"
That's not taboo, that's just stupid to admit in public. Unless this falls under the category of "sexual fetish," that's like saying "Yeah, I robbed that 7-Eleven yesterday."
" In most of middle america, announcing that you're an atheist is pretty eyebrow-raising."
Just as announcing on
" You can't say 'nigger', unless you're black."
More amazing to me, you can't say "niggling" unless you're black.
Sheesh! Three words: Get a lawyer! Exactly how hard on the head did she hit you?
Even if you've wasted away the statute of limitation on assult ("with a deadly weapon," perhaps?), at the very least you should get a lawyer to lobby your state's governor to get a pardon and clear your record.
Seriously, this sounds like the kind high-profile case ambulance chasers dream of. Think of all the headlines they could grab outspokenly defending you from a double standard.
"A week or so later, The New York Times reports"
If you could get through last year and still believe everything the New York Times publishes is true, you need to start thinking about living under a smaller rock.
"I challenge any of you to back that up factually."
Importance is subjective and depends entirely on the chosen frame of reference. It is a statement of opinion more than anything else. After all, where are all the facts supporting your supposition that it doesn't matter?
You'd have an easier time proving or disproving the existence of God.
"So, hands up. Who would accept this mission if it was offered?"
I would in a heartbeat. Seriously.
One of the unspoken truths about NASA (and probably about manned spaceflight in general) is that they'll run out of hardware long before they run out of volunteers.
"Get the government to tax oil accordingly"
We already do--domesticly. It's the NIMBY states like Florida that are the reason why we buy so much foreign oil to begin with.
If we instead try to tax only foreign oil, then there's trouble with the WTO as was with the steel tariffs recently repealed. Most people seem to agree that the steel tariffs did more harm than good to the US economy as a whole and was repealed before it did even more damage by way of trade wars.
"Stop spending $87 billion on the Iraqi war."
Then where should the money come from? We can't expect the rest of the world to treat the expenditure as a loan to Iraq without coming off as hypocrites when asking the Paris Club to forgive Iraqi debts. The main argument for forgiving Iraqi debts is that the Iraqi people had absolutely no say in whether or not to incur said debts. Whatever the truth of the situation is, most people don't think that the transitional council currently in Baghdad has any more public legitimacy than the Baath Party did, and this will continue to be the case until democratic elections are held.
"Stop spending money pandering to corporate interests and participating in corporate welfare"
The numbers show that the vast majority of federal tax dollars are spent on welfare of the social variety. Medicare and Social Security separately each get more money than national defense.
"Stop spending money on ineffectual airport security designed to give people a warm fuzzy feeling."
Define "effectual." Assure that said definition does not violate civil rights and liberties more than the current system does.
"Stop the massive subsidisation of farmers and miners, second only to the EU."
Detente. "We'll stop as soon as everybody else does."
"2. Using slave labour on that land."
Slave labor didn't work. If it did, the slave-dominated South would have beaten the industrialized North at their own game of attrition. And any and all profits from slave labor literally went up in smoke (see William Tecumseh Sherman). There's a reason why Reconstruction lasted so long.
"4. Employing child labour to cheaply replace slaves."
What slaves? Child labor was in factories in the industralized North, while slave labor was essentially restricted to the plantations of the South. And in the South slave labor was replaced by ostensibly free black workers (see "Jim Crow").
"Now we want to bitch about other countries doing the same thing?"
Yeah, look at all the land the Chinese are stealing from the native Asians! Oh, wait...
"If you LIVE in the US, you are partaking of the fruit made sweet by the sins of our fathers"
Save it for the Mayflower folks. Nobody I was related to was a US citizen before the Twentieth Century. My ancesters were the cheap labor you seem to be complaining about, both in their native countries and here.
"If there were a serious imbalance, speculators would be draining billions out of the Chinese government by buying yuan,"
Why? Being pegged to the dollar means that the purchase and sale price are fixed and will not change. There is no profit to be made unless/until Beijing removes the peg.
"while Beijing frantically had to tighten their money supply to keep the yuan up."
Huh? It's pegged, which means that the government does nothing to keep the yuan "up" or "down." Pegging the yuan to the dollar means our government works to keep it where it is.
"Bush's deficits have far more to do with it. The dollar has declined about 30% against the Euro in the last two years."
Um... declining value of the dollar compared to the euro is a Good Thing for exporters.
"I've seen a telemetry system for horses about 15 years ago, that measured speed, heart rate, blood pressure and some other things."
Was it a device carried by the horse? If so, then the key question is "How much did it weigh?"
"In further defense of NASA TV, their operating budget for the whole year probably doesn't equal the budget of 1 episode of Survivor"
Perhaps they should open themselves up to more underwriting, ala PBS. Or perhaps hand it over to PBS (or even C-SPAN) outright.
"Imagine a Beowolf Cluster of THESE!!!"
Alright. I'm seeing... scores of bouncing tetrahedrons in slow motion on the Martian horizon with Flight of the Valkyries playing in the background.
"The Martian Information Minister"
There are no robotic infidels on Mars! Never! The probes have started to commit suicide under the walls of our craters!
Now that we finally have a working rover on Mars again, will we once again see Cartoon Netowrk bully NASA around in the naming of rocks?
Man, I wish I had the foresight to record those commercials...
"What I don't understand yet is WHY don't the NASA, the ESA and the Japanese (and why not the Chinese) joint their efforts and do something BIG for ONCE."
Yeah! And they can call it the International Space Station!
They forgot to add wheels.