The kid is 13 years old.
He's a hacker, and (I am guessing) has something of a romanticized view of hackers and the "freedom" connected with them.
He's being threatened with jail, i.e. loss of personal freedom.
He's also probably been the target of harassment at school. (Again guessing, but it seems logical.)
He's a bright kid. Into information. Probably reads/watches lots of news.
Probably has heard about prison rape.
May well have been the victim of bullies who have threatened him with something similar (a fate many of my computer-geek male friends suffered at approximately that age - fortuantely, it stayed a threat).
Probably has a general idea that prison is a scary place to add to that.
Jail, in his eyes, would NOT be a straw. It would be a one-ton load of bricks, if I'm looking at this at all accurately.
Yes, school counselors tend to do more harm than good.
I was forcibly sent to one after pulling an admittedly silly stunt that indirectly led to two other girls (people I barely even knew!) getting into a fistfight.
She did severe damage to my mechanisms for coping with the insane environment that was my high school, and she also broke confidentiality on me twice (once it led to weeks of death threats from someone 5 years older and much larger than I was; the other time, it nearly destroyed a friendship).
She also liked to convince people they didn't have the brains for honors courses, even when they did....
If you get rid of the teacher's unions, there's a very easy way to force out political dissidents (especially those who speak out against this sort of garbage) for alleged "incompetence" -- stick them with all the low-achieving kids, and penalize them because their classroom's ranking on percentile-based tests is so low.
The real problem with the quality of teachers today is the women's movement. (And yes, I am a woman and consider myself a feminist - hold your flames, please!) Teaching used to be a career for the handful of women that wanted a career, and for the handful of men that really wanted to be involved in education. Teaching, now, attracts a lot of "traditional" females who have no other idea of what they might want to do with their life. The non-traditional women who were in classrooms in the past are now going into the fields that are now nice enough to be open to them.
Teaching also attracts a lot of control freaks who want to prove that they're smarter than the kids they teach, unfortunately.:(
Given some of the stuff that went on at my high school and when I first went to college, I think that at the time, things were too far in the other direction.
Second year at college (in an allegedly supervised early-admission program). A whole series of obscene and threatening phone calls late at night. Several of 'em taped on my machine. A voice I was pretty sure I recognized, especially as it screamed "You should be dead, you fucking dyke!" I knew one of my floormates was making the calls. I had no proof that the resident director would accept. I didn't think the brat was actually going to kill me, but it made life pretty uncomfortable for me for quite a while.
And then there was the high school senior football player with a taste for very young girls at my high school that I've posted about elsewhere on this thread...I wish someone would have done something about HIM when he was throwing my twelve-year-old at the time best friend against a wall and threatening her with rape.
They never manage to target the right people, somehow....
When I was in high school, and my best friend and I tried to report someone who had made a series of threats of rape (to us, and to at least five other girls we knew about), we were not believed. We were told he was just flirting. (Yeah, sure, being thrown up against the wall with the words "I'm going to fuck you before I graduate if it kills us both!" is just flirting...NOT!) In fact, the perpetrator of the aforementioned threats was informed that I had "told" on him, and followed me around for several weeks threatening my life. Needless to say, I did NOT turn THAT in to the school administration!
Then again, when one student stole two lollipops out of another student's locker (mostly because the stealing student was pissed that the hoarding student had bought all the blue raspberry lollipops from the local convenience stores and was selling them for ten times their original cost), the hoarding student's mom pressed criminal charges against the stealing student. For 20 cents worth of lollipops that her son was selling in violation of school rules!
I guess it depends on who you are. The would-be rapist was a senior football and basketball player, member of several extra-curricular activities, and one of the tiny handful of non-white students (I could literally count on two hands the number of non-white students in grades 7-12 when I was there), so if all else failed he could always play the race discrimination card. And that would work because there were some horrible instances of racial intolerance too, at least one of which involved the siblings of the would-be rapist.
The thief (talk about petty larceny, yes I know it's really "petit" larceny) was a seventh-grade nobody stealing from another seventh-grade nobody.
The justification may have been different, but what about all those medieval teenage girls who became nuns and starved themselves, and sometimes ended up saints for it?
Same thing, different context: fear of sensual pleasure, as signified by food and sex, and pride in the ability to deny oneself these things. Taking control of one's body when the rest of life seems to be out of control. Et cetera.
Just because we didn't have the same term for something doesn't mean the thing didn't exist.
If you are fortunate enough to be a legitimate United States citizen, the chances are very good that you aren't working a regular job at a younger age than 14 or so. With a very small handful of exceptions, that is the youngest a minor can be and hold a job in the state I live in, and I've lived in states that had 16 as the age.
Contrast this with the child factory workers of 100-150 years ago. 'nuff said, I hope, and if you don't know what I'm talking about, look it up.
Now, a bowl of Reality Chex:
First of all, not all kids use illegal drugs.
Not all kids that try drugs become habitual users (stupid-ass DARE propoganda to the contrary!)
Not all users of drugs are dealers of drugs.
Not all users/dealers of drugs are utterly devoid of other interests or even morals.
Kids on sports teams use drugs, sometimes. When I was in high school, they certainly drank like a school of fish, which is illegal for high school students.:P
And it's the kids who ARE doing things other than typical high school b.s. (Big Deal Sports *or* drugs and such) that are getting kicked around by the Thought Police. A close friend of mine had the misfortune to be student teaching when Columbine hit. The world lost an excellent teacher because he refused to make a career out of turning in his own kind. He has long hair, a black trenchcoat, and used to play Riff Raff in our local RHPS. *sigh*
I'm also talking about the vandal that punched out my car window while under the influence of something (my neighbor says he suspects it was PCP), and a speed freak I knew in college who was making my life unpleasant (and creating dangerous situations for anyone foolish enough to fall for his charm and date him, like breaking plates over his SO's head) even while sober.
Then again, I was also talking about the belligerent drunk that screamed obscenities and swung at me while I was on first-aid duty at Pennsic and responding to a call of "unconscious person in a ditch." By the time I got there he was conscious and MEAN. Fortunately for me he was sufficiently drunk that his aim wasn't too good.:P
As for hallucinogens -- never done any, but been around plenty of people under the influence of acid and shrooms, and they never seemed inclined to do anything more antisocial than paint graffiti on their own furniture.
My comment stands. Chemicals (legal or otherwise) might stand to remove inhibitions, but chances are excellent that someone who is an asshole under the influence is also an asshole (maybe a more repressed one, but an asshole nonetheless) while not under the influence. Someone who has a violent temper might be more inclined to show it (especially under the influence of alcohol, in my experience), but that doesn't mean the temper's not there to begin with.
This is also why I think there need to be better studies on the REAL effects of various drugs, and even then -- well, you choose to take the drug, you still get to be responsible for your actions under the influence. Don't hurt people, don't damage property, and don't do things that require your judgment and coordination to be unimpaired (ie driving).
Otherwise, it's your body and I don't care what kind of junk you feed it.
For small-scale applications, the one sugarcube in 15 minutes thing doesn't sound that bad, but if this finds wider use someday, I hope they will check into other forms of plant matter.
Then again, driving up the price of sugar might not be a bad thing...keep the kidlets from buying so much candy and the megacorps from putting so much sugar in everything.:)
Sorry, this DOES need a reaction...
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But it'll be a fairly calm one. Promise.
[Note to moderators: I am voluntarily relinquishing my +1 for this post. I KNOW it is offtopic.:)]
Very few things bother me more (and I admit I'm making assumptions here; feel free to correct me if I'm wrong) than people in comfortable jobs at high salaries saying "poor people are lazy."
First, we need to define "poor." The poverty level for a family of four is something along the lines of $16K/year, IIRC, and for a single person it's around $9K. I am single, make considerably more than that, and still don't have all that much spare cash, though I by no means consider myself "poor.":)
I don't make lots of money, but I do have a comfy desk job. And people who do work that is more physically demanding than mine (moving heavy things or just plain old standing around all day like most cashier-type jobs require) generally get paid LESS than I do. I know what the usual next statement is here: "Well, they should get some skills and move up in the world!"
Perhaps so. But someone's got to work the checkouts and the assembly lines. Someone's got to move the heavy shit and clean the buildings. And while these people might not be the most intellectually-oriented or career-minded in the world, it is unfair IMHO to call them lazy when they are spending their days in much more physically active ways than I do. (And if you live in certain areas -- Ithaca, NY comes to mind -- you almost literally have the stereotypical "PhDs pumping gas" problem.)
And how much money are they making? Around here, probably $7ish an hour for most retail-type jobs, maybe $8 for factory work if they're lucky (and much of that is temp) -- unless they've been there for years and years, which most people my age (23) have not for obvious reasons.:P
Now, let's look at living expenses. Say there are two people with such jobs trying to support a family -- after taxes, maybe they've got $2000 a month. A two-bedroom apartment is going to run probably $500/month or higher around here, utility bills will be at least another $100 a month unless they have real good insulation or are very good about energy conservation, child care can run $100 per WEEK, cars eat lots of money and so does health insurance. And these people still have to eat!
There are subsidized programs out there to cut these expenses (I work for one), but a lot of people either don't know about them or don't want to use them because of the stigma. And if those that do make use of these programs are included in your "don't spend money to help the lazy", then you've got the wrong people.:P
Re:I can't believe these posts.
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People kill for money. Let's outlaw money!
Seriously, a family friend was killed by a drunk driver (repeat offender, no less) a few years back. I don't think we should outlaw alcohol. I just think that the DWI laws should be stricter.
I also don't think anyone NEEDS drugs to have a good time -- those who believe otherwise are delusional idiots that I choose to avoid spending time with. But if someone wants to use chemistry to alter their brain, in the privacy of their own home, and isn't hurting anyone (and the reason you don't usually hear about those who don't hurt anyone is BECAUSE the stuff's illegal so they don't want to talk about it -- think about that for a bit), who the hell cares?
There are states that still have consensual sodomy laws and that consider cohabitation without marriage a felony (though I doubt these laws are enforced very often). Does this stop people? No. Should it? No.
Sure, I have better things to do than drugs. But keeping them illegal just makes them more enticing for some people. The War on Drugs is ruining far more lives than drugs themselves will ever do. And those lives INCLUDE people who don't do drugs themselves (like the woman who was shot two blocks away by someone who was trying to kill her son over a drug deal).
1. People DO get busted for smoking up. It has happened to people I know within the past year or two.
2. Many of the dangers of heroin and cocaine are a direct result of them being illegal. For example, overdoses happen because of impurities in the drug or because someone gets a more pure batch than usual. Crack was created as a result of cocaine being illegal, much as moonshine became quite popular during Prohibition. There used to be cocaine in Coca-Cola (and lithium in 7-up for that matter), but somehow that didn't seem to be associated with massive social problems. Perhaps full legalization isn't a good answer here, but decriminalization and expansion of treatment centers seems like a damn good idea to me.
Responsible people are perfectly capable of using alcohol (or other drugs, at least those that aren't extremely addictive) responsibly.
If irresponsible people are not, that is the fault of their own irresponsibility (or perhaps, their own genetic predisposition to addiction). It is not the fault of the substance. And while people are dying from "alcohol related" incidents, those incidents are not the fault of the substance itself, they are the fault of the person who chose to misuse the substance.
As has been said multiple times on this thread, should we outlaw cars because people get killed in accidents, or outlaw the Internet because bomb-making advice and kiddie porn shows up in some places?
Trust me, I've dealt with my share of the results of irresponsible alcohol use. I've also seen many people use alcohol and other drugs responsibly: daily pot smokers graduating from college with honors, a fraternity (mine) organizing buses to and from a music festival so that people wouldn't drink and drive, and people who get obnoxious when drunk (who in my experience are usually only slightly less so when sober) thrown out of parties when they wouldn't stop propositioning someone who was clearly not interested.
If you think you can't or shouldn't drink, that's your decision. But don't force it on the rest of us. I drink -- on weekends and not every weekend. I have NEVER driven after more than two drinks in five hours, I have taken keys away from people, and I don't make a drunken nuisance of myself by overindulging and puking all over the place. I don't use any other drugs because it's not worth the potential consequences for me at this time, and because being in places where people are smoking large quantities of anything makes me phyiscally ill.
Yes, I know some people who have fucked their lives up, badly, with assistance from alcohol or other drugs, or who seem to be in the process of doing so. However, I can honestly say that every single one of them had problems as it was, and decided to drown or smoke away their problems rather than meeting them head-on. If it wasn't drugs it would be something else. There are always going to be fucked-up people in the world.
Put another way, would you outlaw milk because some people are lactose-intolerant?
There's a very simple solution to that:
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Drugs should be legal (or at least decriminalized), but being under the influence should not be considered a justification for the committing of any crime.
I've been around people who've done some pretty stupid and violent things while drunk or stoned or otherwise under the influence. And I can't think of a single case where the potential wasn't there. The drugs may have lowered inhibitions, but most of these people clearly had violent tendencies even while sober. *shrug* I don't think keeping drugs illegal because a small minority is going to be irresponsible is that wonderful of an idea. That's like outlawing the Internet beccause some people post kiddie porn.
Question your assumptions!
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If you're traveling some place cold, you don't rely on one jacket; you wear several layers to keep you warm. The problem here is we have a single heavy jacket that isn't doing its job and that now has lots of holes worn in it.
First of all, "drugs" as a whole are not necessarily bad. And I do find it ironic that the same society that thinks marijuana should be illegal has no problems pushing Ritalin on little kids and various anti-depressants on women. "Drugs" are bad; "medicine" is good. And don't get me started on unnecessary prescrptions of Viagra....
Second, all drugs are not created equal, and they don't have all the same effects. They also don't have the same effects on different people.
Third, the urban legends surrounding drugs have gotten insane (there is NO STRYCHNINE in acid! NONE! There is no sane reason to add it, and the amounts that could make it onto your average blotter wouldn't affect you anyhow!) and are being quoted as fact to people who should know better. It's difficult to get truly accurate information about the REAL risks of drugs because of these bullshit scare stories.
Fourth, the violence and many of the other deaths associated with "drugs" are really a result of the drug trade. Dealers getting into turf wars. Police shooting someone (who may well have been innocent) in a drug bust, which just happened where I live. A heroin addict ODing because of variations in the purity of what's available. Crack cocaine, which exists for the same reason moonshine became popular during Prohibition. Et cetera. Also, people who commit crimes with victims often use their incapacitation by drugs as an excuse for something they wanted to do anyway.
So what should we do? Like I said, several layers:
1. Immediate decriminalization of small quantities of any substance for personal use. A vast reduction in sentencing for all other possession/sale charges.
2. Market research, if you want to call it that, followed by a sensible plan for selling recreational drugs legally (tax the hell out of 'em and you get rid of the debt, and they'll probably still be cheaper than they were illegally), and a plan for rehabilitation centers that cater to actual need -- not this "you've smoked pot four times, you must be an addict!" garbage.
3. The replacement, when possible, of drug testing with impairment testing. I don't give a damn whether someone is impaired by alcohol, legal medication, currently illegal drugs, or lack of sleep. That person is still a hazard behind the wheel!
4. Long-term studies of the real risks (and benefits) of use of various drugs. A sensible education program about same. No scare stories, but an honest assessment of the risks involved.
5. NO opportunities to use impairment by or addiction to drugs as an excuse for any other form of illegal behavior. You chose to take the drug, you abide the consequences of your actions under the influence of that drug. Also, selling to minors should still have consequences similar to selling tobacco or alcohol to minors, IMO. I know kids will get it anyway to some extent, though. But it's not like they don't now.
All very simple. Personal use of recreational substances should be legal; hurting other people or damaging property while under the influence, or stealing to get more, should NOT. Personal responsibility, folks.
^^^^^Moderate this up!!!
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Another point along the same lines: since there isn't an anti-Communist Cold War raging against Russia, and since the users at least of "psychedelic" drugs tend to be more politically liberal than average, it's a nifty way to keep the Cold War going, and/or to have an excuse to throw "radicals" in jail. (Case in point: Timothy Leary getting ten years for pot possession, for a tiny amount that actually belonged to his daughter. Even most of the prison guards were saying "Wow, sorry you're here!" Of course, he managed to convice people he was nice and non-threatening because they were stupid enough to give him psychological tests that he designed. *laughs*)
"Benefits" of the War On (some) Drugs:
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1. As has been posted elsewhere on this thread, it makes a dandy excuse for the government to play with surveillance equipment and to otherwise generally ignore our rights. Since drugs are supposedly such a terrible thing, the end (getting drugs off the street) justifies the means (basically turning the Bill of Rights into toilet paper).
2. It's good for all the (over 21) alcoholics and tobacco addicts who don't do any other drugs -- they can point and say "hey, at least our habit's legal!"
3. It serves as a justification for some truly horrible racism. In fact, that's how many drugs became illegal in the first place -- they were associated with a minority group that might be evil enough to try to seduce your innocent white daughters...
4. In the case of marijuana in particular, hemp's many industrial uses scare a lot of big businesses who would rather not have to deal with the competition that widely-available industrial-grade hemp would offer.
5. Biggest of all, the Wo(s)D is welfare for the middle class. The drug-prevention industry is huge, the prison industry is huge, new police are asked for and hired in the name of getting drugs off the street, etc. This is particularly true in the case of the prison problem. Not only is a ridiculously large portion of prison space taken up by non-violent drug offenders, but if you've read Flashbacks (Timothy Leary's autobiography), you know about the Harvard prison experiments. If you haven't read about this, here's what Leary and the other researchers found: the prisoners that had the experience of a controlled mescaline trip while in prison stayed OUT of prison once they were out 90% of the time. 90%! That is absolutely amazing. It irritates me no end that these experiments had to be shut down, and that they are seen as an excuse for careless use of drugs by the ill-informed.
I'm sure there are other reasons, but those are the big ones I can think of right now.
My mother used to work for the state Department of Labor. Apparently, a certain computer company that employed a lot of people in upstate NY had a policy of "no layoffs", so they basically manufactured reasons to fire people, then tried to get their unemployment benefits denied due to the alleged "misconduct".
If this isn't illegal it should be. I know, I know, I live in an at-will employment state, but it still sucks. And I was almost offered a job at said company. I'm so glad it didn't pan out.:)
I was once fired in a similar fashion (had a message waiting on my answering machine from my temp agency and a box of my stuff sent after me), and three days later I had a better job making more money.
That doesn't excuse what happened at the previous job. And no, I didn't see it coming. The alleged reason I was let go concerned coming in late and leaving early, which I certainly hadn't made a *habit* of, though someone really anal could have made it seem that way. Here's what happened:
About a week prior, there was a loud altercation outside my window shortly after midnight. About when I had decided I might want to call 911, someone rang my bell to ask if my car was one of the ones vandalized by this strung-out teenager who was punching people's car windows out. It was. Between dealing with the police and dealing with the broken glass, I was up until about 3:30. The following morning, I overslept (not normal for me) and had to drive very slowly because I didn't have a left front window. I came in about two hours late, and no one in management noticed. I was careful to make up the time, even though a co-worker told me "don't bother, they won't care.":P
The following Friday, I had to get to school (about 40 minutes away from work) to pick up a parking permit before the office closed at 5. I usually worked 7:30-4:30 with a one hour lunch, and in the past there had been no problem with my taking a half-hour lunch and leaving a half-hour early. I couldn't FIND anyone in management to ask, so I just decided to do so, and recorded it on my timecard.
It was the next Monday that I came home to that message. I told the temp placement person the whole story, and a few other things about how bad that place was (like being unable to find people to sign my timecards), and like I said, had a better job with nicer people and more money in a better location three days later. And when that one ended (I was working for accountants and tax season was over), it took about a month to get another one, but I did some freelance work for an old boss and ended up in a pretty decent assignment that I can probably keep till I get sick of it.:)
I'm still pissed that the place I used to work let me go in that fashion, even though it was very much for the best. Money was a complete nonissue, there. But I'd never been fired before, their reasoning was a bunch of bullshit, and the way they handled it was horrible.
They did me a favor, though. Who wants to work for a place like that?:P
I used to work for a major bank, and was part of the Y2K test team (a small part, but a part nonetheless).
Because of the fears of noncompliance, some anti-trust laws were lifted and banks were actually *ordered* to accept mergers with other banks that were farther ahead in compliance. I saw this coming, and that was part of why I quit the bank job. I knew I wasn't going to want to be around for it.:)
I don't know if this happened in other industries or not (at least for this reason), but the banking oligopoly is NOT a good thing for the end consumer (at least not unless the end consumer has lots of money). I've noticed an increase in stupid service fees and a decrease in meaningful customer service as banks got larger and automated. (I'm currently having an argument with mine because I accidentally pressed the key for the stop-payment menu when I used a touchtone phone to check my balance, and the idiots hit me with a $15 stop-payment fee even though it's not related to ANY check I wrote! And I seem to be having problems getting a human being to discuss this with me.)
Y2K and its (non-)aftermath have also done yet more to polarize people on the issue of technology. Those of us who knew both that the problem needed to be fixed and that it *could* be fixed by a reasonable, concerted effort were (and probably still are) in a SMALL minority. Most everyone else is playing conspiracy theorist one way or another (either they think there were problems that we just weren't told about, or they think that there never was an issue).
On a more positive note, the potential of a Y2K disaster got people thinking about disaster prep, which is just a damn good idea in any case. I live in an area that has frequent and severe snowstorms in the winter and occasional power-killing thunderstorms in the summer; other regions have their own weather-related problems to cope with. Having basic survival-related gear is ALWAYS a good idea, and if it took the possibility of a nationwide power failure followed by rioting in the streets to bring this to people's attention, so be it.
Typical artical, typical responses. So here's my typical response, colored by my participation in the SCA and having read way too much Darkover recently... *grin*
The apparent speed of "technological innovation", its impact on our lives, and whether or not this new technology is a positive thing...this is all purely in the eye of the beholder.
Society's still got the same basic problems it's always had. People still need food, shelter, some degree of climate control, and currency to pay for these things. Parents still want their children to be educated (one way or another), and kids still want to rebel. People for the most part still want to look attractive by the standards of the society at the time, to find an appropriate partner or partners and reproduce, to defend themselves against actual or perceived attacks (by other people or by "natural" forces), to have someone cure them when they're sick, to feel like a part of something larger than themselves, all that good stuff.
There are always society-threatening problems out there -- the crazy king/dictator/rebel leader in power over there who might be coming over *here* if we're not careful, the religious extremists telling us to "convert or die" (yes, this still exists pretty overtly in some places, and it exists in the US in a *slightly* more subtle form), the scary celebrity who is a "bad influence" on the young (Beethoven, anyone?), the "modern woman" who just won't behave, the "deplorable" state of education, the scientific discoveries that create ethical dilemmas for society...none of these complaints are new. The specifics change, the general pattern does not.
The WAY in which we do our work might change, and the specific hazards that are likely to kill us might be different, but most of us still spend a great deal of time working inside or outside the home, spending time with our (biological or chosen) families when we can if we aren't fighting with them, figuring out how to feed and clothe ourselves and maintain the roof over our head, traveling from one place to another, and fighting off death as long as we can.
I've read articles from the 1500s complaining that the "true meaning of Christmas" has been lost. I've read about Plato's attempts to censor certain types of music. In the grand scheme of things, people will always be people. Today's technology, whatever it is, will always be a solution only to yesterday's challenges -- today's challenges will always demand tomorrow's technology, which in some cases might be a return to something "forgotten" (herbal medicines anyone?) and in other cases might well be something we couldn't even conceive of today. We may have eliminated smallpox, but now there's AIDS to worry about. Food might seem to be "safer" now, but what of the constant scares regarding salmonella and exposure to pesticides? Wrist damage from carpal-tunnel syndrome might not be as life-threatening as injuries sustained by farmers or miners, but it is still threatening to the livelihood of someone who types or works on an assembly line for a living. And of course, there still ARE farmers and miners, who still face hazards that most of us with our desk jobs don't think about much.:)
A biology professor I know said that this exact problem is why he chose to teach rather than following his original dream of becoming a park ranger. He knew that in a few years he would be promoted right past doing the work he loved.
I once worked under someone who was "promoted" into management mostly on the strength of her excellent technical abilities. But she wasn't a good herder of cats, and she suffered in this position until she was instead given an "expert analyst" position with a similar pay scale but no managerial duties.
I also once worked under someone who supervised engineers, and did it reasonably well, without being an engineer herself.
Management skills and advanced skills for one's actual job are not the same thing. They aren't even related, most of the time. Assuming that they are is a VERY bad move. Now, this is not to say that the department expert shouldn't be lending a hand to the newbies; s/he certainly should be! However, expecting the expert to be an expert manager as well as an expert programmer (or park ranger, or financial analyst, or whatever) makes no sense. The skills aren't the same.
Generally speaking, the companies that pull stupid shit of this nature aren't places that you actually want to work. The company that wrote me up for "intimidating my co-workers" (probably because I'd rather work than gossip) and the one that let me go for some fairly spurious reasons (long story) paid horribly and had relatively nasty working conditions. Three days after I was fired by one of those places, I had a much better job with more money and a saner environment.:)
If they are stupid enough to fire you with this kind of reasoning, they deserve what they get.
Not everyone likes it, huh?
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I am quite tired of that particular take on the matter.
Do you honestly think that your job, once out in the real world, is going to consist 100% of things you LIKE?
Ninth grade. Forty-minute class periods. Multiple-choice and short answer tests given by a teacher who really didn't care if we learned the subject properly beyond the minimum needed to pass the Regents exam at the end of our third year. Assigned seats by alphabetical order. Kids getting OUT of their seats to copy me. I asked if I could sit somewhere else and was told no.
This was the same classroom where one of the boys hit another one over the head with a chair, which resulted in a visible lump on the head of the one who got hit. Incidentally, the kid who swung the chair was one of the ones who was copying my tests. I was a lot smaller than him.
"You should get creative?" No, I shouldn't have had to deal with this sort of hostile environment to begin with. I have better things to be creative about.
Slashdot Mirror
Let's think about this.
The kid is 13 years old.
He's a hacker, and (I am guessing) has something of a romanticized view of hackers and the "freedom" connected with them.
He's being threatened with jail, i.e. loss of personal freedom.
He's also probably been the target of harassment at school. (Again guessing, but it seems logical.)
He's a bright kid. Into information. Probably reads/watches lots of news.
Probably has heard about prison rape.
May well have been the victim of bullies who have threatened him with something similar (a fate many of my computer-geek male friends suffered at approximately that age - fortuantely, it stayed a threat).
Probably has a general idea that prison is a scary place to add to that.
Jail, in his eyes, would NOT be a straw. It would be a one-ton load of bricks, if I'm looking at this at all accurately.
Yes, school counselors tend to do more harm than good.
I was forcibly sent to one after pulling an admittedly silly stunt that indirectly led to two other girls (people I barely even knew!) getting into a fistfight.
She did severe damage to my mechanisms for coping with the insane environment that was my high school, and she also broke confidentiality on me twice (once it led to weeks of death threats from someone 5 years older and much larger than I was; the other time, it nearly destroyed a friendship).
She also liked to convince people they didn't have the brains for honors courses, even when they did....
Fortunately, she never made THAT mistake with me!
If you get rid of the teacher's unions, there's a very easy way to force out political dissidents (especially those who speak out against this sort of garbage) for alleged "incompetence" -- stick them with all the low-achieving kids, and penalize them because their classroom's ranking on percentile-based tests is so low.
The real problem with the quality of teachers today is the women's movement. (And yes, I am a woman and consider myself a feminist - hold your flames, please!) Teaching used to be a career for the handful of women that wanted a career, and for the handful of men that really wanted to be involved in education. Teaching, now, attracts a lot of "traditional" females who have no other idea of what they might want to do with their life. The non-traditional women who were in classrooms in the past are now going into the fields that are now nice enough to be open to them.
Teaching also attracts a lot of control freaks who want to prove that they're smarter than the kids they teach, unfortunately.
That's a very good point.
Given some of the stuff that went on at my high school and when I first went to college, I think that at the time, things were too far in the other direction.
Second year at college (in an allegedly supervised early-admission program). A whole series of obscene and threatening phone calls late at night. Several of 'em taped on my machine. A voice I was pretty sure I recognized, especially as it screamed "You should be dead, you fucking dyke!" I knew one of my floormates was making the calls. I had no proof that the resident director would accept. I didn't think the brat was actually going to kill me, but it made life pretty uncomfortable for me for quite a while.
And then there was the high school senior football player with a taste for very young girls at my high school that I've posted about elsewhere on this thread...I wish someone would have done something about HIM when he was throwing my twelve-year-old at the time best friend against a wall and threatening her with rape.
They never manage to target the right people, somehow....
When I was in high school, and my best friend and I tried to report someone who had made a series of threats of rape (to us, and to at least five other girls we knew about), we were not believed. We were told he was just flirting. (Yeah, sure, being thrown up against the wall with the words "I'm going to fuck you before I graduate if it kills us both!" is just flirting...NOT!) In fact, the perpetrator of the aforementioned threats was informed that I had "told" on him, and followed me around for several weeks threatening my life. Needless to say, I did NOT turn THAT in to the school administration!
Then again, when one student stole two lollipops out of another student's locker (mostly because the stealing student was pissed that the hoarding student had bought all the blue raspberry lollipops from the local convenience stores and was selling them for ten times their original cost), the hoarding student's mom pressed criminal charges against the stealing student. For 20 cents worth of lollipops that her son was selling in violation of school rules!
I guess it depends on who you are. The would-be rapist was a senior football and basketball player, member of several extra-curricular activities, and one of the tiny handful of non-white students (I could literally count on two hands the number of non-white students in grades 7-12 when I was there), so if all else failed he could always play the race discrimination card. And that would work because there were some horrible instances of racial intolerance too, at least one of which involved the siblings of the would-be rapist.
The thief (talk about petty larceny, yes I know it's really "petit" larceny) was a seventh-grade nobody stealing from another seventh-grade nobody.
Go figure.
The justification may have been different, but what about all those medieval teenage girls who became nuns and starved themselves, and sometimes ended up saints for it?
Same thing, different context: fear of sensual pleasure, as signified by food and sex, and pride in the ability to deny oneself these things. Taking control of one's body when the rest of life seems to be out of control. Et cetera.
Just because we didn't have the same term for something doesn't mean the thing didn't exist.
First, a history lesson:
If you are fortunate enough to be a legitimate United States citizen, the chances are very good that you aren't working a regular job at a younger age than 14 or so. With a very small handful of exceptions, that is the youngest a minor can be and hold a job in the state I live in, and I've lived in states that had 16 as the age.
Contrast this with the child factory workers of 100-150 years ago. 'nuff said, I hope, and if you don't know what I'm talking about, look it up.
Now, a bowl of Reality Chex:
First of all, not all kids use illegal drugs.
Not all kids that try drugs become habitual users (stupid-ass DARE propoganda to the contrary!)
Not all users of drugs are dealers of drugs.
Not all users/dealers of drugs are utterly devoid of other interests or even morals.
Kids on sports teams use drugs, sometimes. When I was in high school, they certainly drank like a school of fish, which is illegal for high school students.
And it's the kids who ARE doing things other than typical high school b.s. (Big Deal Sports *or* drugs and such) that are getting kicked around by the Thought Police. A close friend of mine had the misfortune to be student teaching when Columbine hit. The world lost an excellent teacher because he refused to make a career out of turning in his own kind. He has long hair, a black trenchcoat, and used to play Riff Raff in our local RHPS. *sigh*
I'm not just talking about pot. Unfortunately.
:P
I'm also talking about the vandal that punched out my car window while under the influence of something (my neighbor says he suspects it was PCP), and a speed freak I knew in college who was making my life unpleasant (and creating dangerous situations for anyone foolish enough to fall for his charm and date him, like breaking plates over his SO's head) even while sober.
Then again, I was also talking about the belligerent drunk that screamed obscenities and swung at me while I was on first-aid duty at Pennsic and responding to a call of "unconscious person in a ditch." By the time I got there he was conscious and MEAN. Fortunately for me he was sufficiently drunk that his aim wasn't too good.
As for hallucinogens -- never done any, but been around plenty of people under the influence of acid and shrooms, and they never seemed inclined to do anything more antisocial than paint graffiti on their own furniture.
My comment stands. Chemicals (legal or otherwise) might stand to remove inhibitions, but chances are excellent that someone who is an asshole under the influence is also an asshole (maybe a more repressed one, but an asshole nonetheless) while not under the influence. Someone who has a violent temper might be more inclined to show it (especially under the influence of alcohol, in my experience), but that doesn't mean the temper's not there to begin with.
This is also why I think there need to be better studies on the REAL effects of various drugs, and even then -- well, you choose to take the drug, you still get to be responsible for your actions under the influence. Don't hurt people, don't damage property, and don't do things that require your judgment and coordination to be unimpaired (ie driving).
Otherwise, it's your body and I don't care what kind of junk you feed it.
...that can be locally grown?
:)
For small-scale applications, the one sugarcube in 15 minutes thing doesn't sound that bad, but if this finds wider use someday, I hope they will check into other forms of plant matter.
Then again, driving up the price of sugar might not be a bad thing...keep the kidlets from buying so much candy and the megacorps from putting so much sugar in everything.
But it'll be a fairly calm one. Promise.
[Note to moderators: I am voluntarily relinquishing my +1 for this post. I KNOW it is offtopic.
Very few things bother me more (and I admit I'm making assumptions here; feel free to correct me if I'm wrong) than people in comfortable jobs at high salaries saying "poor people are lazy."
First, we need to define "poor." The poverty level for a family of four is something along the lines of $16K/year, IIRC, and for a single person it's around $9K. I am single, make considerably more than that, and still don't have all that much spare cash, though I by no means consider myself "poor."
I don't make lots of money, but I do have a comfy desk job. And people who do work that is more physically demanding than mine (moving heavy things or just plain old standing around all day like most cashier-type jobs require) generally get paid LESS than I do. I know what the usual next statement is here: "Well, they should get some skills and move up in the world!"
Perhaps so. But someone's got to work the checkouts and the assembly lines. Someone's got to move the heavy shit and clean the buildings. And while these people might not be the most intellectually-oriented or career-minded in the world, it is unfair IMHO to call them lazy when they are spending their days in much more physically active ways than I do. (And if you live in certain areas -- Ithaca, NY comes to mind -- you almost literally have the stereotypical "PhDs pumping gas" problem.)
And how much money are they making? Around here, probably $7ish an hour for most retail-type jobs, maybe $8 for factory work if they're lucky (and much of that is temp) -- unless they've been there for years and years, which most people my age (23) have not for obvious reasons.
Now, let's look at living expenses. Say there are two people with such jobs trying to support a family -- after taxes, maybe they've got $2000 a month. A two-bedroom apartment is going to run probably $500/month or higher around here, utility bills will be at least another $100 a month unless they have real good insulation or are very good about energy conservation, child care can run $100 per WEEK, cars eat lots of money and so does health insurance. And these people still have to eat!
There are subsidized programs out there to cut these expenses (I work for one), but a lot of people either don't know about them or don't want to use them because of the stigma. And if those that do make use of these programs are included in your "don't spend money to help the lazy", then you've got the wrong people.
People kill for money. Let's outlaw money!
Seriously, a family friend was killed by a drunk driver (repeat offender, no less) a few years back. I don't think we should outlaw alcohol. I just think that the DWI laws should be stricter.
I also don't think anyone NEEDS drugs to have a good time -- those who believe otherwise are delusional idiots that I choose to avoid spending time with. But if someone wants to use chemistry to alter their brain, in the privacy of their own home, and isn't hurting anyone (and the reason you don't usually hear about those who don't hurt anyone is BECAUSE the stuff's illegal so they don't want to talk about it -- think about that for a bit), who the hell cares?
There are states that still have consensual sodomy laws and that consider cohabitation without marriage a felony (though I doubt these laws are enforced very often). Does this stop people? No. Should it? No.
Sure, I have better things to do than drugs. But keeping them illegal just makes them more enticing for some people. The War on Drugs is ruining far more lives than drugs themselves will ever do. And those lives INCLUDE people who don't do drugs themselves (like the woman who was shot two blocks away by someone who was trying to kill her son over a drug deal).
1. People DO get busted for smoking up. It has happened to people I know within the past year or two.
2. Many of the dangers of heroin and cocaine are a direct result of them being illegal. For example, overdoses happen because of impurities in the drug or because someone gets a more pure batch than usual. Crack was created as a result of cocaine being illegal, much as moonshine became quite popular during Prohibition. There used to be cocaine in Coca-Cola (and lithium in 7-up for that matter), but somehow that didn't seem to be associated with massive social problems. Perhaps full legalization isn't a good answer here, but decriminalization and expansion of treatment centers seems like a damn good idea to me.
Responsible people are perfectly capable of using alcohol (or other drugs, at least those that aren't extremely addictive) responsibly.
If irresponsible people are not, that is the fault of their own irresponsibility (or perhaps, their own genetic predisposition to addiction). It is not the fault of the substance. And while people are dying from "alcohol related" incidents, those incidents are not the fault of the substance itself, they are the fault of the person who chose to misuse the substance.
As has been said multiple times on this thread, should we outlaw cars because people get killed in accidents, or outlaw the Internet because bomb-making advice and kiddie porn shows up in some places?
Trust me, I've dealt with my share of the results of irresponsible alcohol use. I've also seen many people use alcohol and other drugs responsibly: daily pot smokers graduating from college with honors, a fraternity (mine) organizing buses to and from a music festival so that people wouldn't drink and drive, and people who get obnoxious when drunk (who in my experience are usually only slightly less so when sober) thrown out of parties when they wouldn't stop propositioning someone who was clearly not interested.
If you think you can't or shouldn't drink, that's your decision. But don't force it on the rest of us. I drink -- on weekends and not every weekend. I have NEVER driven after more than two drinks in five hours, I have taken keys away from people, and I don't make a drunken nuisance of myself by overindulging and puking all over the place. I don't use any other drugs because it's not worth the potential consequences for me at this time, and because being in places where people are smoking large quantities of anything makes me phyiscally ill.
Yes, I know some people who have fucked their lives up, badly, with assistance from alcohol or other drugs, or who seem to be in the process of doing so. However, I can honestly say that every single one of them had problems as it was, and decided to drown or smoke away their problems rather than meeting them head-on. If it wasn't drugs it would be something else. There are always going to be fucked-up people in the world.
Put another way, would you outlaw milk because some people are lactose-intolerant?
Drugs should be legal (or at least decriminalized), but being under the influence should not be considered a justification for the committing of any crime.
I've been around people who've done some pretty stupid and violent things while drunk or stoned or otherwise under the influence. And I can't think of a single case where the potential wasn't there. The drugs may have lowered inhibitions, but most of these people clearly had violent tendencies even while sober. *shrug* I don't think keeping drugs illegal because a small minority is going to be irresponsible is that wonderful of an idea. That's like outlawing the Internet beccause some people post kiddie porn.
If you're traveling some place cold, you don't rely on one jacket; you wear several layers to keep you warm. The problem here is we have a single heavy jacket that isn't doing its job and that now has lots of holes worn in it.
First of all, "drugs" as a whole are not necessarily bad. And I do find it ironic that the same society that thinks marijuana should be illegal has no problems pushing Ritalin on little kids and various anti-depressants on women. "Drugs" are bad; "medicine" is good. And don't get me started on unnecessary prescrptions of Viagra....
Second, all drugs are not created equal, and they don't have all the same effects. They also don't have the same effects on different people.
Third, the urban legends surrounding drugs have gotten insane (there is NO STRYCHNINE in acid! NONE! There is no sane reason to add it, and the amounts that could make it onto your average blotter wouldn't affect you anyhow!) and are being quoted as fact to people who should know better. It's difficult to get truly accurate information about the REAL risks of drugs because of these bullshit scare stories.
Fourth, the violence and many of the other deaths associated with "drugs" are really a result of the drug trade. Dealers getting into turf wars. Police shooting someone (who may well have been innocent) in a drug bust, which just happened where I live. A heroin addict ODing because of variations in the purity of what's available. Crack cocaine, which exists for the same reason moonshine became popular during Prohibition. Et cetera. Also, people who commit crimes with victims often use their incapacitation by drugs as an excuse for something they wanted to do anyway.
So what should we do? Like I said, several layers:
1. Immediate decriminalization of small quantities of any substance for personal use. A vast reduction in sentencing for all other possession/sale charges.
2. Market research, if you want to call it that, followed by a sensible plan for selling recreational drugs legally (tax the hell out of 'em and you get rid of the debt, and they'll probably still be cheaper than they were illegally), and a plan for rehabilitation centers that cater to actual need -- not this "you've smoked pot four times, you must be an addict!" garbage.
3. The replacement, when possible, of drug testing with impairment testing. I don't give a damn whether someone is impaired by alcohol, legal medication, currently illegal drugs, or lack of sleep. That person is still a hazard behind the wheel!
4. Long-term studies of the real risks (and benefits) of use of various drugs. A sensible education program about same. No scare stories, but an honest assessment of the risks involved.
5. NO opportunities to use impairment by or addiction to drugs as an excuse for any other form of illegal behavior. You chose to take the drug, you abide the consequences of your actions under the influence of that drug. Also, selling to minors should still have consequences similar to selling tobacco or alcohol to minors, IMO. I know kids will get it anyway to some extent, though. But it's not like they don't now.
All very simple. Personal use of recreational substances should be legal; hurting other people or damaging property while under the influence, or stealing to get more, should NOT. Personal responsibility, folks.
Another point along the same lines: since there isn't an anti-Communist Cold War raging against Russia, and since the users at least of "psychedelic" drugs tend to be more politically liberal than average, it's a nifty way to keep the Cold War going, and/or to have an excuse to throw "radicals" in jail. (Case in point: Timothy Leary getting ten years for pot possession, for a tiny amount that actually belonged to his daughter. Even most of the prison guards were saying "Wow, sorry you're here!" Of course, he managed to convice people he was nice and non-threatening because they were stupid enough to give him psychological tests that he designed. *laughs*)
1. As has been posted elsewhere on this thread, it makes a dandy excuse for the government to play with surveillance equipment and to otherwise generally ignore our rights. Since drugs are supposedly such a terrible thing, the end (getting drugs off the street) justifies the means (basically turning the Bill of Rights into toilet paper).
2. It's good for all the (over 21) alcoholics and tobacco addicts who don't do any other drugs -- they can point and say "hey, at least our habit's legal!"
3. It serves as a justification for some truly horrible racism. In fact, that's how many drugs became illegal in the first place -- they were associated with a minority group that might be evil enough to try to seduce your innocent white daughters...
4. In the case of marijuana in particular, hemp's many industrial uses scare a lot of big businesses who would rather not have to deal with the competition that widely-available industrial-grade hemp would offer.
5. Biggest of all, the Wo(s)D is welfare for the middle class. The drug-prevention industry is huge, the prison industry is huge, new police are asked for and hired in the name of getting drugs off the street, etc. This is particularly true in the case of the prison problem. Not only is a ridiculously large portion of prison space taken up by non-violent drug offenders, but if you've read Flashbacks (Timothy Leary's autobiography), you know about the Harvard prison experiments. If you haven't read about this, here's what Leary and the other researchers found: the prisoners that had the experience of a controlled mescaline trip while in prison stayed OUT of prison once they were out 90% of the time. 90%! That is absolutely amazing. It irritates me no end that these experiments had to be shut down, and that they are seen as an excuse for careless use of drugs by the ill-informed.
I'm sure there are other reasons, but those are the big ones I can think of right now.
My mother used to work for the state Department of Labor. Apparently, a certain computer company that employed a lot of people in upstate NY had a policy of "no layoffs", so they basically manufactured reasons to fire people, then tried to get their unemployment benefits denied due to the alleged "misconduct".
:)
If this isn't illegal it should be. I know, I know, I live in an at-will employment state, but it still sucks. And I was almost offered a job at said company. I'm so glad it didn't pan out.
Exactly.
:P
:)
:P
I was once fired in a similar fashion (had a message waiting on my answering machine from my temp agency and a box of my stuff sent after me), and three days later I had a better job making more money.
That doesn't excuse what happened at the previous job. And no, I didn't see it coming. The alleged reason I was let go concerned coming in late and leaving early, which I certainly hadn't made a *habit* of, though someone really anal could have made it seem that way. Here's what happened:
About a week prior, there was a loud altercation outside my window shortly after midnight. About when I had decided I might want to call 911, someone rang my bell to ask if my car was one of the ones vandalized by this strung-out teenager who was punching people's car windows out. It was. Between dealing with the police and dealing with the broken glass, I was up until about 3:30. The following morning, I overslept (not normal for me) and had to drive very slowly because I didn't have a left front window. I came in about two hours late, and no one in management noticed. I was careful to make up the time, even though a co-worker told me "don't bother, they won't care."
The following Friday, I had to get to school (about 40 minutes away from work) to pick up a parking permit before the office closed at 5. I usually worked 7:30-4:30 with a one hour lunch, and in the past there had been no problem with my taking a half-hour lunch and leaving a half-hour early. I couldn't FIND anyone in management to ask, so I just decided to do so, and recorded it on my timecard.
It was the next Monday that I came home to that message. I told the temp placement person the whole story, and a few other things about how bad that place was (like being unable to find people to sign my timecards), and like I said, had a better job with nicer people and more money in a better location three days later. And when that one ended (I was working for accountants and tax season was over), it took about a month to get another one, but I did some freelance work for an old boss and ended up in a pretty decent assignment that I can probably keep till I get sick of it.
I'm still pissed that the place I used to work let me go in that fashion, even though it was very much for the best. Money was a complete nonissue, there. But I'd never been fired before, their reasoning was a bunch of bullshit, and the way they handled it was horrible.
They did me a favor, though. Who wants to work for a place like that?
I used to work for a major bank, and was part of the Y2K test team (a small part, but a part nonetheless).
Because of the fears of noncompliance, some anti-trust laws were lifted and banks were actually *ordered* to accept mergers with other banks that were farther ahead in compliance. I saw this coming, and that was part of why I quit the bank job. I knew I wasn't going to want to be around for it.
I don't know if this happened in other industries or not (at least for this reason), but the banking oligopoly is NOT a good thing for the end consumer (at least not unless the end consumer has lots of money). I've noticed an increase in stupid service fees and a decrease in meaningful customer service as banks got larger and automated. (I'm currently having an argument with mine because I accidentally pressed the key for the stop-payment menu when I used a touchtone phone to check my balance, and the idiots hit me with a $15 stop-payment fee even though it's not related to ANY check I wrote! And I seem to be having problems getting a human being to discuss this with me.)
Y2K and its (non-)aftermath have also done yet more to polarize people on the issue of technology. Those of us who knew both that the problem needed to be fixed and that it *could* be fixed by a reasonable, concerted effort were (and probably still are) in a SMALL minority. Most everyone else is playing conspiracy theorist one way or another (either they think there were problems that we just weren't told about, or they think that there never was an issue).
On a more positive note, the potential of a Y2K disaster got people thinking about disaster prep, which is just a damn good idea in any case. I live in an area that has frequent and severe snowstorms in the winter and occasional power-killing thunderstorms in the summer; other regions have their own weather-related problems to cope with. Having basic survival-related gear is ALWAYS a good idea, and if it took the possibility of a nationwide power failure followed by rioting in the streets to bring this to people's attention, so be it.
Typical artical, typical responses. So here's my typical response, colored by my participation in the SCA and having read way too much Darkover recently... *grin*
:)
The apparent speed of "technological innovation", its impact on our lives, and whether or not this new technology is a positive thing...this is all purely in the eye of the beholder.
Society's still got the same basic problems it's always had. People still need food, shelter, some degree of climate control, and currency to pay for these things. Parents still want their children to be educated (one way or another), and kids still want to rebel. People for the most part still want to look attractive by the standards of the society at the time, to find an appropriate partner or partners and reproduce, to defend themselves against actual or perceived attacks (by other people or by "natural" forces), to have someone cure them when they're sick, to feel like a part of something larger than themselves, all that good stuff.
There are always society-threatening problems out there -- the crazy king/dictator/rebel leader in power over there who might be coming over *here* if we're not careful, the religious extremists telling us to "convert or die" (yes, this still exists pretty overtly in some places, and it exists in the US in a *slightly* more subtle form), the scary celebrity who is a "bad influence" on the young (Beethoven, anyone?), the "modern woman" who just won't behave, the "deplorable" state of education, the scientific discoveries that create ethical dilemmas for society...none of these complaints are new. The specifics change, the general pattern does not.
The WAY in which we do our work might change, and the specific hazards that are likely to kill us might be different, but most of us still spend a great deal of time working inside or outside the home, spending time with our (biological or chosen) families when we can if we aren't fighting with them, figuring out how to feed and clothe ourselves and maintain the roof over our head, traveling from one place to another, and fighting off death as long as we can.
I've read articles from the 1500s complaining that the "true meaning of Christmas" has been lost. I've read about Plato's attempts to censor certain types of music. In the grand scheme of things, people will always be people. Today's technology, whatever it is, will always be a solution only to yesterday's challenges -- today's challenges will always demand tomorrow's technology, which in some cases might be a return to something "forgotten" (herbal medicines anyone?) and in other cases might well be something we couldn't even conceive of today. We may have eliminated smallpox, but now there's AIDS to worry about. Food might seem to be "safer" now, but what of the constant scares regarding salmonella and exposure to pesticides? Wrist damage from carpal-tunnel syndrome might not be as life-threatening as injuries sustained by farmers or miners, but it is still threatening to the livelihood of someone who types or works on an assembly line for a living. And of course, there still ARE farmers and miners, who still face hazards that most of us with our desk jobs don't think about much.
Excellent post.
This applies to most fields, not just CS.
A biology professor I know said that this exact problem is why he chose to teach rather than following his original dream of becoming a park ranger. He knew that in a few years he would be promoted right past doing the work he loved.
I once worked under someone who was "promoted" into management mostly on the strength of her excellent technical abilities. But she wasn't a good herder of cats, and she suffered in this position until she was instead given an "expert analyst" position with a similar pay scale but no managerial duties.
I also once worked under someone who supervised engineers, and did it reasonably well, without being an engineer herself.
Management skills and advanced skills for one's actual job are not the same thing. They aren't even related, most of the time. Assuming that they are is a VERY bad move. Now, this is not to say that the department expert shouldn't be lending a hand to the newbies; s/he certainly should be! However, expecting the expert to be an expert manager as well as an expert programmer (or park ranger, or financial analyst, or whatever) makes no sense. The skills aren't the same.
Generally speaking, the companies that pull stupid shit of this nature aren't places that you actually want to work. The company that wrote me up for "intimidating my co-workers" (probably because I'd rather work than gossip) and the one that let me go for some fairly spurious reasons (long story) paid horribly and had relatively nasty working conditions. Three days after I was fired by one of those places, I had a much better job with more money and a saner environment.
If they are stupid enough to fire you with this kind of reasoning, they deserve what they get.
I am quite tired of that particular take on the matter.
Do you honestly think that your job, once out in the real world, is going to consist 100% of things you LIKE?
Get used to it.
Um, this was ten years ago, first thing.
Ninth grade. Forty-minute class periods. Multiple-choice and short answer tests given by a teacher who really didn't care if we learned the subject properly beyond the minimum needed to pass the Regents exam at the end of our third year. Assigned seats by alphabetical order. Kids getting OUT of their seats to copy me. I asked if I could sit somewhere else and was told no.
This was the same classroom where one of the boys hit another one over the head with a chair, which resulted in a visible lump on the head of the one who got hit. Incidentally, the kid who swung the chair was one of the ones who was copying my tests. I was a lot smaller than him.
"You should get creative?" No, I shouldn't have had to deal with this sort of hostile environment to begin with. I have better things to be creative about.