I would like to express my appreciation to the designers of the Marijuana Policy Project web site for not including a pot leaf in the logo design. Few things are more likely to make a legalization campaign look ridiculous (and less likely to encourage sharing the link with friends) than to plaster it with the old seven-pointed slacker star.
I'd say that if you believe their rights have been unjustly taken away, it's your civic duty to be vocal in supporting their return.
In addition, the non-toking public should be pushing to legalize marijuana because it is a money-saving measure whose benefits far outweigh any theoretical costs, and the US needs to find lots of ways to save money. The ripple effect it would have on the violent drug trade in Mexico is another of its many selling points.
Any belief that holds a currently-untestable thing to be certainly true is a faith-based belief. Atheism is the belief that there are certainly no deities--and in fact it is often broader than that, since it is often closely coupled with a strict (bordering on classical) materialism. The former is not currently testable, and the latter is on shaky ground.
Neuroscientist David Eagleman recently coined the slightly silly-sounding term Possibilianism, which rejects certainty altogether when dealing with necessarily uncertain topics like existence and spirituality. A quote from a New Yorker article (which I got from Wikipedia):
Science had taught him to be skeptical of cosmic certainties, [Eagleman] told me. From the unfathomed complexity of brain tissue—"essentially an alien computational material"—to the mystery of dark matter, we know too little about our own minds and the universe around us to insist on strict atheism, he said. "And we know far too much to commit to a particular religious story." Why not revel in the alternatives? Why not imagine ourselves, as he did in Sum, as bits of networked hardware in a cosmic program, or as particles of some celestial organism, or any of a thousand other possibilities, and then test those ideas against the available evidence? "Part of the scientific temperament is this tolerance for holding multiple hypotheses in mind at the same time," he said. "As Voltaire said, uncertainty is an uncomfortable position. But certainty is an absurd one."
That, in my opinion, comes much closer to not participating in faith-based categories than atheism ever could. It's also much more in the spirit of science (as opposed to the more-often-practiced scientism).
It should be marked flamebait and not troll. There is a degree of insight, in that the US Religious Right really does seek to codify its religious code into law, but that's kind of overwhelmed by the post's unnecessary, over-the-top hateful rhetoric.
The fact that the currency cannot be easily devalued by monetary expansion is one of the chief arguments against a return to the gold standard. It's one I happen to disagree with, but I don't see how Bitcoin will fare any better than any other commodity-backed currency in the eyes of most people.
Just to be clear, I agree with you that Paul's stances are libertarian, not evangelically conservative. He himself is the latter, but he understands perhaps better than any other congressman the meaning of personal freedom. He got my vote last time around and he'll get it again this time.
As dhasenan stated, though, there's really no good way to get rid of the law at this point in time. If anyone would try it it would be Ron Paul, and no matter how sound his argument he'd be crucified for it. Perhaps a better way would be to remove it piecemeal by amending it away over time, starting with quotas. Even then, because race is still such an emotionally-charged issue, it would be extremely difficult; though if nothing else our government has proved that the boiling-frog method of rights removal works, so by all accounts it ought to work in reverse as well.
Let's not forget to keep things in perspective, either. Paul made his statement to Congress because it was topical; it's not as if he is running on a platform to immediately drop the Civil Rights Act--there are much more important things he would start with, mainly to do with changing our abysmal foreign policy and fixing the money supply. I'd bet that repealing the Act ranks lower on his list than abolishing the Dept of Education, and that one's pretty far down there already.
A lot of the rhetoric against Paul consists of bringing up these hard-line issues that people aren't ready to consider in today's political climate, even though in reality he wouldn't have the political capital to touch them without first proving that his libertarian philosophy performs amazingly well in other areas. That is what I meant by "holding his principles to a fault;" perhaps I should instead have written "speaking about his principles to a fault." I disagree with the pundits that he is "unelectable," but I do think that his willingness to touch upon currently-taboo topics does not help him. I can't imagine him doing otherwise, though, and I think that while he is certainly out to win, his primary goal is to get people thinking critically again about our system of government--a goal that is making admirable headway.
Yes, he opposes the Civil Rights Act on principle and offers a harsh judgment on its effects. Here is part of his statement in Congress on the Act's 40th Anniversary:
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 not only violated the Constitution and reduced individual liberty; it also failed to achieve its stated goals of promoting racial harmony and a color-blind society. Federal bureaucrats and judges cannot read minds to see if actions are motivated by racism. Therefore, the only way the federal government could ensure an employer was not violating the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was to ensure that the racial composition of a business's workforce matched the racial composition of a bureaucrat or judge's defined body of potential employees. Thus, bureaucrats began forcing employers to hire by racial quota. Racial quotas have not contributed to racial harmony or advanced the goal of a color-blind society. Instead, these quotas encouraged racial balkanization, and fostered racial strife.
Of course, America has made great strides in race relations over the past forty years. However, this progress is due to changes in public attitudes and private efforts. Relations between the races have improved despite, not because of, the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
This is yet another example of him holding his principles to a fault. In my opinion and experience his critique of the act is about half accurate. Certainly the Federal Government overstepped its bounds by forcing integration, and race quotas have historically been a hindrance to racial harmony. But at the same time, forced integration did a lot to familiarize different people-groups with each other and I suspect that the quotas were a big help to minorities in the beginning. There is of course no way of knowing how race relations would be today if the Act hadn't been put in place. My suspicion is that relations would be much better in some areas and much worse in others. I think the idea of trying to compare a hypothetical 50-year stretch of history to our own and calling one "better" is a folly, so stating that relations have improved "despite, not because of" the Civil Rights Act is weak sauce.
Could not the questions you are asking apply equally to anyone writing in support of the article's conclusions? Is not the only truly reasonable response to every post in the discussion then, "RTFA, plus get some degrees?"
Your criticism would certainly apply if Nikkos were writing his comments in a scholarly journal, and though Slashdot has been accused of being many things, that was ne'er one of them.
Yeah...just like the comments sections of the (especially political) news articles often linked from here: an occasionally nested though usually flat mess of replies with all of the pointless tiny feuds and tiresome obvious or erroneous observations obscuring the far fewer worthwhile posts.
Slashdot has the best moderation system on the web, period. The interface varies from decent to poor depending on what the overlords are mucking about with this week,* but the system generally does a very fine job of putting the best comments in front of my eyeballs. It's the only way to have any kind of meaningful discussion with a userbase this big. Of course the system can be abused, and of course it is far from perfect. The same old quote about democracy being the worst form of government save for all those previously tried can be applied to Slashdot's moderation system with respect to promoting good discussion online.
At this point in my life I tend to care about only one or two of the posted stories per day--keeping up with the tech news is much less interesting to me now--but it is the discussion attached to those few stories I am interested in that keeps me coming back. I have found nowhere else quite like it.
* I was quite happy that I could paste links into comments again from within Chrome, only to later discover a new problem opening them with cmd-click--this now only expands the next-highest comment in the thread until the whole thread is expanded, and only then does it work as intended. At least this bug has a bearable workaround.
Pity it won't always be that way, survival of the fittest applies to viruses too.
True. Also worth noting is that some environments are more hospitable to them than others. If OS X continues to grow in market share it becomes a more alluring target for virus creators, but if the system itself is very secure then you still won't see more than a trickle. Look at the difference between Apache on Linux and IIS on Windows for example. Relative security levels play a huge role.
Here's an interview of that article's author on Fresh Air that is free to listen to. It probably isn't as in-depth as the article, but it's easier to get access to =)
This reminds me of Mike Rowe talking about Dirty Jobs at TED. Seen here. Turns out the "humane" method of castrating lambs (using rubber bands) is a lot worse for the lambs than the "barbaric" method (using a knife). The whole talk is pretty interesting.
The question was put to Republicans, not to Congressmen. There is some overlap, but less than there ought to be, and it isn't the public that should conform.
Okay, but when I click "Advanced Search" and search for everything with a "metascore" of 80 or above, guess what doesn't appear? And that's a pretty naive filter that doesn't take into account my preference for certain kinds of game over others--something which did (again, like Netflix) would show me games I'm actually interested in more quickly.
Read the last sentence in my previous post again. Even if it's still being produced, I will not be exposed to it, so what do I care?
I like to think that reduction of shovelware is one of the upsides to the (inevitable, IMO) trend towards a download-only model for games. If you have an integrated, online shop for games, you'd be stupid not to incorporate a rich rating system--something that takes taste into account like the Netflix system. Shovelware will naturally sink to the bottom, and even if it means no less is produced, it will take less effort to seek out the good games.
This is very true, and is one reason I think a lot more interesting stuff is coming out in places like XBLA than anywhere else. People seem to forget that 2D is still a viable medium for good gameplay and interesting new ideas. I don't even own an XBox, but the amount of cool stuff on Live Arcade is steadily pulling me towards buying one. I'm sure there will be the occasional disc-based game worth playing, but most of them look like "Just Another FPS IV: Multiplayer Rehashed" to me.
It makes a sad sort of sense though: when you're spending millions of dollars to create a game with high-end graphics and lots of realism, you want to be pretty sure it will make money so it ends up being very formulaic with maybe one or two things that differentiate it from the other "AAA" titles. There is no room for a spectacularly odd game that thousands will rave about but tens of thousands will ridicule when your break-even point is $30 million. When it's only $30,000 (and many XBLA games cost much less than that) you can take those chances. They don't always pan out, but when they do the gaming universe is more greatly enriched than by the $30 million title.
Fuck that. My rights are my rights. If the government that my ancestors put into place is no longer protecting but instead infringing them, then it is my choice to consider that government illegitimate and act accordingly. If that means flouting the law, what do i care? If that means being attacked, slandered or killed and my name sullied as a lunatic or a terrorist, so be it.
I will not take up arms against any human except in self-defense, but I cannot stop another human from taking up arms against me. I cannot stop an overwhelming force from overwhelming me, and I cannot stop anyone from saying what they will about me. I can however live my life as I know is just, and right, and no man can take that away from me.
Tell them to make it (if possible). Or, alternatively, ask them beforehand. If they change their mind for some reason and refuse to eat the food, I certainly wouldn't force them to eat it. Meaning, they probably wouldn't eat anything at all (and that's really their own fault).
That also makes sense to me. Part of caring for children is understanding their individual personalities, likes, and dislikes. While it is impossible (and unhealthy) to cater to their every whim, their preferences ought to be taken into account.
there is no lesson to be learned or discipline to be had.
That's not necessarily true. What if they told them the lesson they were supposed to learn like a (supposedly good) parent would do after they hit them? They could even inform them beforehand to make it absolutely clear. In the situation you describe, you don't know who it is or what their intentions are (not to mention that it's a random attack for seemingly no reason).
Well, without an existing relationship, they have no reason to trust your judgment or your statements. I can only point again to the penetration testing example as an analogy. There's a huge difference between a total stranger telling you you did something wrong and he's going to punish you for it and an authority figure doing the same thing.
If what you say is true (that a relationship with someone is needed before you can hit them and have them learn from it), then what about hitting your spouse as a form of discipline? [...] It's not really legal to do so, as far as I know (if they wanted to take action, that is). Should it be?
No, because a spouse is an adult who is presumably capable of understanding the complexities of social interaction. They have outgrown the need for physical discipline in the same way that we outgrow the puzzles that involve putting simple shapes into corresponding holes. Barring something like an addiction, I'm having a hard time thinking of anything between spouses that would qualify as something needing discipline rather than something that is a difference of opinion. Using force to enforce your opinion is wrong in my book--and I realize this opens up a whole new can of worms in defining the difference between the two when it comes to children. That is a boundary which, while I can provide examples of things that clearly lie on either side, I cannot universally define.
Your insightful question has however made me reconsider what I wrote earlier about corporal punishment between adults, and I have to say that upon further inspection I think corporal punishment is for children only. Two friends (assumed to be dudes) brawling over something works because it reinforces that one dude has overstepped his bounds with the other, not because it enforces discipline but because men tend to understand the "language" of violence. That is, if you are doing something egregious enough for a friend to haul off and hit you, it's worth re-examining both your friendship and your reasons. This too is something that I don't think I can pin down. To be clear, I wholeheartedly recommend resolving differences without violence. Any time friends come to blows it can be the end of the friendship--but that's not the only way friendships end. I suppose I see a qualitative difference between children and adults that allows for the use of (in my opinion) benign violence that you do not.
do you view all corporal punishment as abuse?
I don't think people should use physical violence (minor or otherwise) to try to get others to listen to them (unless the other person attacked first). So, in my opinion, yes. It typically isn't the 'horrible' kind of abuse, but I still think it is something that shouldn't be done.
I understand. You've made it pretty clear that you understand the need for some kind of discipline for children, something which (and I w
I think the water-based mammals might have prior art on this one.
Maybe that's actually what Disney is after. They can tell the heartwarming tale of how the intrepid seals sought out and foiled "Anemone Ben" Ladin, head of the Al Stingya troublemakers, in his coral compound. (Hell, the real thing was called "Operation Neptune Spear!")
Slashdot Mirror
One person did. Not terribly far above your comment, surprisingly. I only know because confirming my own thought was the sole reason I came in here.
Seriously, how was this not obvious to everyone? I read the summary twice to see what I was missing. It's just....duh.
In other news, nutritionist Jared Walters says Fix Your Hunger by Eating Some Food.
I would like to express my appreciation to the designers of the Marijuana Policy Project web site for not including a pot leaf in the logo design. Few things are more likely to make a legalization campaign look ridiculous (and less likely to encourage sharing the link with friends) than to plaster it with the old seven-pointed slacker star.
I'd say that if you believe their rights have been unjustly taken away, it's your civic duty to be vocal in supporting their return.
In addition, the non-toking public should be pushing to legalize marijuana because it is a money-saving measure whose benefits far outweigh any theoretical costs, and the US needs to find lots of ways to save money. The ripple effect it would have on the violent drug trade in Mexico is another of its many selling points.
I have to disagree.
Any belief that holds a currently-untestable thing to be certainly true is a faith-based belief. Atheism is the belief that there are certainly no deities--and in fact it is often broader than that, since it is often closely coupled with a strict (bordering on classical) materialism. The former is not currently testable, and the latter is on shaky ground.
Neuroscientist David Eagleman recently coined the slightly silly-sounding term Possibilianism, which rejects certainty altogether when dealing with necessarily uncertain topics like existence and spirituality. A quote from a New Yorker article (which I got from Wikipedia):
Science had taught him to be skeptical of cosmic certainties, [Eagleman] told me. From the unfathomed complexity of brain tissue—"essentially an alien computational material"—to the mystery of dark matter, we know too little about our own minds and the universe around us to insist on strict atheism, he said. "And we know far too much to commit to a particular religious story." Why not revel in the alternatives? Why not imagine ourselves, as he did in Sum, as bits of networked hardware in a cosmic program, or as particles of some celestial organism, or any of a thousand other possibilities, and then test those ideas against the available evidence? "Part of the scientific temperament is this tolerance for holding multiple hypotheses in mind at the same time," he said. "As Voltaire said, uncertainty is an uncomfortable position. But certainty is an absurd one."
That, in my opinion, comes much closer to not participating in faith-based categories than atheism ever could. It's also much more in the spirit of science (as opposed to the more-often-practiced scientism).
It should be marked flamebait and not troll. There is a degree of insight, in that the US Religious Right really does seek to codify its religious code into law, but that's kind of overwhelmed by the post's unnecessary, over-the-top hateful rhetoric.
The fact that the currency cannot be easily devalued by monetary expansion is one of the chief arguments against a return to the gold standard. It's one I happen to disagree with, but I don't see how Bitcoin will fare any better than any other commodity-backed currency in the eyes of most people.
Just to be clear, I agree with you that Paul's stances are libertarian, not evangelically conservative. He himself is the latter, but he understands perhaps better than any other congressman the meaning of personal freedom. He got my vote last time around and he'll get it again this time.
As dhasenan stated, though, there's really no good way to get rid of the law at this point in time. If anyone would try it it would be Ron Paul, and no matter how sound his argument he'd be crucified for it. Perhaps a better way would be to remove it piecemeal by amending it away over time, starting with quotas. Even then, because race is still such an emotionally-charged issue, it would be extremely difficult; though if nothing else our government has proved that the boiling-frog method of rights removal works, so by all accounts it ought to work in reverse as well.
Let's not forget to keep things in perspective, either. Paul made his statement to Congress because it was topical; it's not as if he is running on a platform to immediately drop the Civil Rights Act--there are much more important things he would start with, mainly to do with changing our abysmal foreign policy and fixing the money supply. I'd bet that repealing the Act ranks lower on his list than abolishing the Dept of Education, and that one's pretty far down there already.
A lot of the rhetoric against Paul consists of bringing up these hard-line issues that people aren't ready to consider in today's political climate, even though in reality he wouldn't have the political capital to touch them without first proving that his libertarian philosophy performs amazingly well in other areas. That is what I meant by "holding his principles to a fault;" perhaps I should instead have written "speaking about his principles to a fault." I disagree with the pundits that he is "unelectable," but I do think that his willingness to touch upon currently-taboo topics does not help him. I can't imagine him doing otherwise, though, and I think that while he is certainly out to win, his primary goal is to get people thinking critically again about our system of government--a goal that is making admirable headway.
Yes, he opposes the Civil Rights Act on principle and offers a harsh judgment on its effects. Here is part of his statement in Congress on the Act's 40th Anniversary:
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 not only violated the Constitution and reduced individual liberty; it also failed to achieve its stated goals of promoting racial harmony and a color-blind society. Federal bureaucrats and judges cannot read minds to see if actions are motivated by racism. Therefore, the only way the federal government could ensure an employer was not violating the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was to ensure that the racial composition of a business's workforce matched the racial composition of a bureaucrat or judge's defined body of potential employees. Thus, bureaucrats began forcing employers to hire by racial quota. Racial quotas have not contributed to racial harmony or advanced the goal of a color-blind society. Instead, these quotas encouraged racial balkanization, and fostered racial strife.
Of course, America has made great strides in race relations over the past forty years. However, this progress is due to changes in public attitudes and private efforts. Relations between the races have improved despite, not because of, the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
The full statement can be read here.
This is yet another example of him holding his principles to a fault. In my opinion and experience his critique of the act is about half accurate. Certainly the Federal Government overstepped its bounds by forcing integration, and race quotas have historically been a hindrance to racial harmony. But at the same time, forced integration did a lot to familiarize different people-groups with each other and I suspect that the quotas were a big help to minorities in the beginning. There is of course no way of knowing how race relations would be today if the Act hadn't been put in place. My suspicion is that relations would be much better in some areas and much worse in others. I think the idea of trying to compare a hypothetical 50-year stretch of history to our own and calling one "better" is a folly, so stating that relations have improved "despite, not because of" the Civil Rights Act is weak sauce.
Could not the questions you are asking apply equally to anyone writing in support of the article's conclusions? Is not the only truly reasonable response to every post in the discussion then, "RTFA, plus get some degrees?"
Your criticism would certainly apply if Nikkos were writing his comments in a scholarly journal, and though Slashdot has been accused of being many things, that was ne'er one of them.
The third one is Aramis, right? All for one, and one for all! ;)
Yeah...just like the comments sections of the (especially political) news articles often linked from here: an occasionally nested though usually flat mess of replies with all of the pointless tiny feuds and tiresome obvious or erroneous observations obscuring the far fewer worthwhile posts.
Slashdot has the best moderation system on the web, period. The interface varies from decent to poor depending on what the overlords are mucking about with this week,* but the system generally does a very fine job of putting the best comments in front of my eyeballs. It's the only way to have any kind of meaningful discussion with a userbase this big. Of course the system can be abused, and of course it is far from perfect. The same old quote about democracy being the worst form of government save for all those previously tried can be applied to Slashdot's moderation system with respect to promoting good discussion online.
At this point in my life I tend to care about only one or two of the posted stories per day--keeping up with the tech news is much less interesting to me now--but it is the discussion attached to those few stories I am interested in that keeps me coming back. I have found nowhere else quite like it.
* I was quite happy that I could paste links into comments again from within Chrome, only to later discover a new problem opening them with cmd-click--this now only expands the next-highest comment in the thread until the whole thread is expanded, and only then does it work as intended. At least this bug has a bearable workaround.
with the adrenaline flowing, some of the colors got rearranged and were hung upside down.
Nah, they just didn't want to get a nastygram from both Apple AND Microsoft.
Pity it won't always be that way, survival of the fittest applies to viruses too.
True. Also worth noting is that some environments are more hospitable to them than others. If OS X continues to grow in market share it becomes a more alluring target for virus creators, but if the system itself is very secure then you still won't see more than a trickle. Look at the difference between Apache on Linux and IIS on Windows for example. Relative security levels play a huge role.
I've been looking for that statute for years, but every time I thought I had it the only message was "Not Found"!
Here's an interview of that article's author on Fresh Air that is free to listen to. It probably isn't as in-depth as the article, but it's easier to get access to =)
This reminds me of Mike Rowe talking about Dirty Jobs at TED. Seen here. Turns out the "humane" method of castrating lambs (using rubber bands) is a lot worse for the lambs than the "barbaric" method (using a knife). The whole talk is pretty interesting.
The question was put to Republicans, not to Congressmen. There is some overlap, but less than there ought to be, and it isn't the public that should conform.
Oh, come on! We all know what a Netcraft confirmation is worth...
Okay, but when I click "Advanced Search" and search for everything with a "metascore" of 80 or above, guess what doesn't appear? And that's a pretty naive filter that doesn't take into account my preference for certain kinds of game over others--something which did (again, like Netflix) would show me games I'm actually interested in more quickly.
Read the last sentence in my previous post again. Even if it's still being produced, I will not be exposed to it, so what do I care?
I like to think that reduction of shovelware is one of the upsides to the (inevitable, IMO) trend towards a download-only model for games. If you have an integrated, online shop for games, you'd be stupid not to incorporate a rich rating system--something that takes taste into account like the Netflix system. Shovelware will naturally sink to the bottom, and even if it means no less is produced, it will take less effort to seek out the good games.
This is very true, and is one reason I think a lot more interesting stuff is coming out in places like XBLA than anywhere else. People seem to forget that 2D is still a viable medium for good gameplay and interesting new ideas. I don't even own an XBox, but the amount of cool stuff on Live Arcade is steadily pulling me towards buying one. I'm sure there will be the occasional disc-based game worth playing, but most of them look like "Just Another FPS IV: Multiplayer Rehashed" to me.
It makes a sad sort of sense though: when you're spending millions of dollars to create a game with high-end graphics and lots of realism, you want to be pretty sure it will make money so it ends up being very formulaic with maybe one or two things that differentiate it from the other "AAA" titles. There is no room for a spectacularly odd game that thousands will rave about but tens of thousands will ridicule when your break-even point is $30 million. When it's only $30,000 (and many XBLA games cost much less than that) you can take those chances. They don't always pan out, but when they do the gaming universe is more greatly enriched than by the $30 million title.
It's not "crippling", it's revenue enhancement.
I first read that as "reverse enhancement," which strikes me as a great term for such theorized future features!
Fuck that. My rights are my rights. If the government that my ancestors put into place is no longer protecting but instead infringing them, then it is my choice to consider that government illegitimate and act accordingly. If that means flouting the law, what do i care? If that means being attacked, slandered or killed and my name sullied as a lunatic or a terrorist, so be it.
I will not take up arms against any human except in self-defense, but I cannot stop another human from taking up arms against me. I cannot stop an overwhelming force from overwhelming me, and I cannot stop anyone from saying what they will about me. I can however live my life as I know is just, and right, and no man can take that away from me.
Tell them to make it (if possible). Or, alternatively, ask them beforehand. If they change their mind for some reason and refuse to eat the food, I certainly wouldn't force them to eat it. Meaning, they probably wouldn't eat anything at all (and that's really their own fault).
That also makes sense to me. Part of caring for children is understanding their individual personalities, likes, and dislikes. While it is impossible (and unhealthy) to cater to their every whim, their preferences ought to be taken into account.
there is no lesson to be learned or discipline to be had.
That's not necessarily true. What if they told them the lesson they were supposed to learn like a (supposedly good) parent would do after they hit them? They could even inform them beforehand to make it absolutely clear. In the situation you describe, you don't know who it is or what their intentions are (not to mention that it's a random attack for seemingly no reason).
Well, without an existing relationship, they have no reason to trust your judgment or your statements. I can only point again to the penetration testing example as an analogy. There's a huge difference between a total stranger telling you you did something wrong and he's going to punish you for it and an authority figure doing the same thing.
If what you say is true (that a relationship with someone is needed before you can hit them and have them learn from it), then what about hitting your spouse as a form of discipline? [...] It's not really legal to do so, as far as I know (if they wanted to take action, that is). Should it be?
No, because a spouse is an adult who is presumably capable of understanding the complexities of social interaction. They have outgrown the need for physical discipline in the same way that we outgrow the puzzles that involve putting simple shapes into corresponding holes. Barring something like an addiction, I'm having a hard time thinking of anything between spouses that would qualify as something needing discipline rather than something that is a difference of opinion. Using force to enforce your opinion is wrong in my book--and I realize this opens up a whole new can of worms in defining the difference between the two when it comes to children. That is a boundary which, while I can provide examples of things that clearly lie on either side, I cannot universally define.
Your insightful question has however made me reconsider what I wrote earlier about corporal punishment between adults, and I have to say that upon further inspection I think corporal punishment is for children only. Two friends (assumed to be dudes) brawling over something works because it reinforces that one dude has overstepped his bounds with the other, not because it enforces discipline but because men tend to understand the "language" of violence. That is, if you are doing something egregious enough for a friend to haul off and hit you, it's worth re-examining both your friendship and your reasons. This too is something that I don't think I can pin down. To be clear, I wholeheartedly recommend resolving differences without violence. Any time friends come to blows it can be the end of the friendship--but that's not the only way friendships end. I suppose I see a qualitative difference between children and adults that allows for the use of (in my opinion) benign violence that you do not.
do you view all corporal punishment as abuse?
I don't think people should use physical violence (minor or otherwise) to try to get others to listen to them (unless the other person attacked first). So, in my opinion, yes. It typically isn't the 'horrible' kind of abuse, but I still think it is something that shouldn't be done.
I understand. You've made it pretty clear that you understand the need for some kind of discipline for children, something which (and I w
I think the water-based mammals might have prior art on this one.
Maybe that's actually what Disney is after. They can tell the heartwarming tale of how the intrepid seals sought out and foiled "Anemone Ben" Ladin, head of the Al Stingya troublemakers, in his coral compound. (Hell, the real thing was called "Operation Neptune Spear!")