It would be difficult to come up with another explanation at that point.
This, of course, is one of the many underlying problems of religion. Why should we have to come up with an explanation? Why can't we just observe the facts, admit we don't know why the facts have happened, and move on? Science is observation first, hypothesis second, test the hypothesis third, develop a theory fourth, now test the theory. Religion is develop a theory that can't be tested first, develop a hypothesis based on the theory second, find observations to support the hypothesis third, and assert that there is no other logical explanation fourth. Then challenge any observation by requiring an explanation for it. Why can't religionists just admit they don't know any more about this than the rest of us and fucking move on?
Then why'd he let those "dirty apes" onto the ark in the first place?
(I am still growing in Christ).
I grew before I entered Christ. That's the right way to do it. You don't even have to wear a rubber on that guy, he's frickin' perfect. No disease, not that it matters. I fear the day when he turns to me and says "You've got AIDS now, and I refuse to cure you. I found someone else."
Hmmm, no lightning yet. How blasphemous do I have to get before He Takes Notice of me?;)
Where are the predictions in Creation that can be tested? Oh, that's right - there are none.
Religion wouldn't work if it could be tested, because it requires faith. Religionists offering "proof, evidence, and successful tests" are only succumbing to the general trends towards scientific acceptance and religious rejection, and are fighting a losing battle.
Religion wouldn't work if you could test it. In the specific case of Christianity, the underlying leap of faith is that you are a sinner, that you must receive forgiveness for your sins, and that you can only do so through Jesus Christ Our Lord Amen Hallelujah. The logic offered generally goes like this: You do bad things. Correct? Can you think of any bad things you've ever done? (of course, we've all made mistakes) When you do something bad, you must get forgiveness for it, because you should apologize, correct? (of course, that's called responsibility) Now the assertion: you can only get true forgiveness from Jesus Christ (and here the guilt gets laid on). The assertion requires a leap of faith, but the sales pitch is pretty compelling, especially if you have hangups over all the mistakes you've made in the past.
Religion in general, and Christianity specifically, can be tested only by waiting. According to biblical prophecy, we'll hear three trumpet notes, a slew of other things, and Jesus will come and judge everybody (judge not, lest ye be judged yourself, of course, the fucking hypocrite), and those that are Worthy will go to Heaven, and the rest of us will go to Hell and Burn For All Eternity. Whoopee. So Christianity can only be proven, in its own terms, in the affirmative, by Judgement Day happening. In its own terms, it can't be negatively proven because of the Leap Of Faith doctrine. It can't exist outside its own terms, it's a closed system. If you question, you've not made the leap of faith, and therefore you're not qualified to question. But if you do make the leap of faith, you're not allowed to question, unless the answer to your question is that God Fuckin' Rules.
So, if you've ever wondered why all the wacko christians in your life won't see reason, there's your answer. There's very little point in trying to make them see reason, just as surely as there's very little point in them trying to make you make the leap of faith. I figure we can just out-evolve them. In any case, if I'm wrong and They Are Right, I figure that within the system of Christianity God is Pretty Fuckin' Evil and I've no qualms joining the Army of Darkness to fight His tyranny. So that's my afterlife insurance policy.;)
Okay then, how do you reconcile the claim that the earth is only 6,000 years old with the preponderance of scientific evidence to the contrary? The way I see it, religious zealots' faith that the earth absolutely must be only 6,000 years old is absolutely mutually exclusive with science, which has easily proven this wrong.
That claim is pure absurdity and I patently dismiss it.:)
However, I have heard claims that made a lot more sense. Consider that Man, at the level of development at which he wrote the first parts of the bible (the parts generally used for dating the earth) was very primitive, and likely wasn't yet capable of understanding a great many things, such as the entire concept of a millenia, let alone eons and so forth. So he wrote it in terms that he could understand. That doesn't mean it happened in those terms. So, what we wind up with is something along these lines: "At some point while the earth was heaving and hoeing, at great odds against it, three proteins combined into a self-replicating molecule called DNA, the successor of RNA (or whatever it is, I'm not a geneticist). When the Bible says that God created Man and animals and so forth, what God really said was 'I caused the three proteins to combine, because otherwise it wouldn't have happened'." I've also heard explanations that make God into Energy, all the energy of the universe, in fact, and that the big bang was God banging out in all His Glory, creating the heavens. Then he created the Earth. The bible does say "God is the light" or something, and primitive man wrote in terms the he could understand, because he couldn't understand what He was really saying.
As for dismissing believers, what's wrong with that? If someone believes something with absolutely no rational basis for this belief, and this belief flies in the face of a large amount of evidence to the contrary, then why shouldn't that person be dismissed as a crackpot? These days, if some guy starts telling people he's communicating with aliens, he usually gets locked up in the funny farm. Why are religious people given any more respect?
"Because it's my religion, and you have to respect it." Blah, stupid is stupid. I'm with you on this one, believe me. Take it on faith, if you have to.;)
There is a long and glorious tradition of liars and hacks searching for the Ark and other relics.
But they found the ark! Back in the 30s, I believe. I watched this documentary on the subject awhile back. It's a pretty good flick, I highly recommend it.
You totally missed the point. Education is the reason for poverty, lack of education. Ever see the inside of a school in a poverty-stricken neighborhood? THAT is the reason, and the reason education is so shitty in those neighborhoods is a result of the last 100 years of oppression in those neighborhoods. The schools didn't get integrated until fairly recent in history, and they're still not getting equal funding, because how much money a school has is based on property taxes in the district, and property taxes in poor neighborhoods don't generate nearly as much revenue as in richer neighborhoods.
And for all the people I've worked with over the years, I've never met a black person who was willing to take a job because they were black, they wanted a job because they earned it or were well-qualified for it. That's called 'work ethic' and generally being proud of who/what you are. Affirmative action is as degrading as the problem they're trying to fix with it. No solution there.
Yeah, you also totally missed the point, and a few other things. I said I went to High School in NM. I'm a Texan, though.;) Now I live in Seattle, which is supposed to be a very liberal, un-racist place, but I find it to contain more racism per capita than Texas. Texas (with the exception of a few small towns here and there) has beaten the racism problem. I extrapolated Texas's progress in that area to the rest of the south, based on what I've heard from people from other parts of the south.
The point that you missed, however, isn't that black people are poor because they're being kept down by 'the man' or whatever. They're poor because after sharecropping, Jim Crow laws, and a few other things, they've wound up without much education. WIthout education, they can't break out. At this time, every black person in the south that I've ever known who broke out of poverty to enjoy a better life put themselves through college to do so, at great risk/cost. The only reason blacks seem to be poor more often than not is because of past oppression, but no longer present oppression, just the pieces of the past.
Well, for the most part and only in my experience, Darwinism is synonymous with macro evolution and is thought to be antithetical to creationism.
The threats surrounding child abuse are probably much the same here. A teacher can't even give a kid a ride home anymore without being accused of trying to make a pass at the kid, raping him/her, or whatever. Parents have similar problems. A kid can just say "my dad hit me" and then the dad goes to jail for child abuse, whether it can be proven or not to a jury of his peers. Both of these problems, which appear to be extensions of the same problem, are themselves symptomatic of a much larger problem that infests society at all levels. Political Correctness seems to be a symptom of the problem as well, but I haven't yet managed to peg the problem itself.:(
Education is a big political issue, but it's also an issue where the only real power lies at the local level. A candidate for president is pretty much required to say "better education", but there's ain't jack shit he can do about it. Bush said a lot of that, but as a result of his work as governor in Texas we wound up with a bunch of illiterate graduates. Working in fast food I actually had to teach kids with diplomas how to read #1CB. Not just what it meant, but what the # symbol meant, and what a 1 was, and what a C was, and what a B was. Corporate interests appear to be staying out of education, except to sponsor events (a good thing) and to sponsor other stuff (mostly a good thing, I don't have any bad examples), but since the people ultimately in charge of education are elected officials, the numbers used to show successful policies frequently don't indicate success or failure, such as the HIgh School drop-out rate (frequently affected by factors an elected official has nothing to do with. In Texas, under Bush, this number was manipulated by either handing out diplomas when someone threatened to drop out, as is what happened with my wife, or by writing them out of the books entirely so they don't show as a drop-out). Sucks, don't it?;)
Math is about the only area that doesn't come under fire, so it's not surprising that math does well, overall. Literature is frequently censored in one form or other (my high school refused to carry some works of Shakespeare, they were lewd, and we actually had to fight to be allowed to watch the 1984 movie). History is selectively censored, with the biggest censorship happening with regards to the Indian Wars and early colonization. Spain is always the bad guy (and maybe they really were, historically, but it's hard to tell when England is also almost always the bad guy, until you get to WWII, and I *know* they weren't always bad guys, historically). Mexico is usually a bad guy, too, and Canada is always just a copy of the US (historically accurate, right?;) ). Australia actually gets presented pretty badly, too, come to think of it. But the Aussie government's dominance of the aboriginal tribes is usually glossed over, probably to be consistent with our own history in that regard.
American schools suck. They perpetuate a lot of myths, such as the myth that Thanksgiving as a holiday has been practiced ever since the pilgrims showed up on the Mayflower, or the myth that the West was conquered because the so-called Indians couldn't keep their word (this one actually got a lot of attention in High School, but in lower schools it was taught that the Indians were pure scalping evil), or the myth that the Civil War was fought with the altruistic purpose of freeing the slaves (yes, it was fought to free the slaves, but not over altruism, over money instead). The US internment of a whole bunch of Asian-descended people during WWII is generally left out of the material entirely because the material is deemed to resemble the concentration camps in Europe of the time a little too much. Not to mention, we can't have ever been racist in our history, the US does no evil, right? It wouldn't tak
I forgot to mention that people in advertising also show a stark lack of anything resembling a sense of humor and are prone to lashing out in anger whenever someone else shows one.
I'm not American, so I haven't been through the American school system. But from what I've read, education systems throughout the world tend to push either darwinism or creationism.
I am an American, and I went to High School in a small town in southern New Mexico that made national news in the last couple of years for a big, old-fashioned book burning.
In my high school, we learned darwinism, taught as "theory, not proven". The "not proven" was added in order to avoid offending the parents (and many kids!). Creationism and any sort of religion wasn't allowed in the curriculum at all. I don't know why it was this way, however, because I always thought that presenting both sides of the discussion and discussing it would be far more beneficial to the kids than trying to avoid offending people. But religion wasn't allowed in the school, except for praying before football games, praying before school assemblies, praying before... (get my meaning?)
My wife and I were discussing the root of this issue tonight, actually. The root of the issue is "should schools be teaching morality?" I think the answer is "yes" (she had to answer yes, too, but I like my reasons better;) ). I think that much needed education is virtually useless without morality in the teaching. What good is learning history if you don't learn why some part of history is a 'dark time' and other parts were 'good times' and what-have-you? What's the point in teaching about WWII if you don't also teach that Hitler was pure evil, a mass-murderer, and so forth? How can you teach that about Hitler without morality being part of the education? After determining that a school should teach morality, the next and obvious question is, whose morality should it teach? In my honest fucking opinion, the school should try to present both/all sides of a given conflict and the social mores that make up each viewpoint. Saying "the school should teach morality" doesn't necessarily mean the school has to push a specific set of rules down someone's throat.
As far as the correlation between ethnicity and poverty go, I think schools avoid it because it's their own fault. In the US, anyway, that correlation has everything to do with historical racism and little to do with modern racism. Black people, specifically, have been kept poor in many parts of the country by the dominant whites in the area (think Deep South). Now, there's still a lot of racist problems down there, but to my view racism is more of a problem in non-Deep South states, these days. Anyway, black people are generally poor there because their ancestors were kept poor, and property taxes are what funds the schools, so the next generation of black kids grows up in the conditions of the previous generation, and the poor schools fail to provide them with education that would enable them to escape that fate. So it's historical conditions that have caused it, and it's very easy to make the conclusion that "black people are still living in the legacy of slavery in this country" after you've taught the Civil War, Women's Suffrage, the Civil Rights movement, and so forth. But then the schools would have to admit that they've failed in their mission, and there's nothing a school likes less than admitting failure. Hence we have schools graduating thousands of kids that can't read, write, or do math, and saying "look, all of our kids graduate! They all have high grades! We're a good school!"
Blah. The education system here in AMerica is fucked. What have the rest of you lot got? Got anything better? My kids are starting school soon.... (I sincerely hope the Kedutainment package grows nicely, it already teaches more than 12 years worth of schooling in the US)
The difference between advertisers and marketers is that advertisers have to constantly insist on who they are, it's not self-evident. If he was in marketing, not only would you have known, but you would've woken up, foregone coffee and breakfast and even skipped your first cigarette to hurry up and reply to his post to say "Thank you!".
Nope, advertisers are a completely different group that have to constantly insist and demand respect, because they don't otherwise earn it, and they're not very good at communicating.
Perhaps you should familiarize yourself with the market, and/or inspect some of the numerous product mascots for school stuff. This mascot looks like it could easily pass as a school mascot itself! Come on, man. Lighten up.
Schools aren't generally run by suits. They're run either by underpaid and overworked well-meaning people who've decided to give their careers to the next few generations of kids, or they're run by politicians who know damn well that almost any press is good press. This mascot will be a hit in schools, and it will appeal to school administrators from primary school all the way up through High School.
Didn't you know that there's a certain substance in meat that stimulates the production of a neurotransmitter known as "Sanitonin". Without sanitonin, you generally start to lose your mind. This is particularly a problem in eastern nations that don't eat a lot of meat and are therefore particularly open to exploit by crazy political systems.
I've heard that asparagus actually contains a neurotoxin that completely defeats the effect of sanitonin. It's called insanitonin.
But out here in bizarro world (San Francisco bay area) you can't fart without offending someone. So many people out here are hyper-sensitive and focused on being politically correct.
Man, oh man, do I hate that shit. Granted, most of those people have their hearts in the right place (defeating sexism, racism, etc), but their implementation of a solution is as bad as the problem! Creating tension in order to solve tense problems? Yeah, works well, doesn't it? See, now we hate those crazy special interest groups. Good solution!;)
I like Anthrax alot, and they said "I won't walk on eggshells as a dance for someone else". Fuck yeah!
The DVD is a shade of gray away. Linux users wanted to be able to view their DVDs on Linux. They created software that allowed them to do so. As in the book example, there is no license applied when the DVD is opened or purchased. However, a cheap dvd player/tv combo is under $100. DVD makers can easily make the argument that basic DVD playing requies a minimum investement in hardware, and therefore there is no compelling need to enable Linux DVD playing, nor is there a need to permit this kind of fair use. If they want to watch DVDs, then they should have no reason to break the encryption - it's cheap to do so using completely legal methods.
So, it is then acceptable for someone to create a product and then require that you purchase at your cost another completely irrelevant technology in order to use the product you paid for? The issue here is that there are plenty of us who don't have TVs, who don't want/need a DVD player just to watch a frickin' movie. I've got a monitor. It may or may not plug into a DVD player. I'm not willing to put a dvd player in here at any price.
Furthermore, I've got tons of hard drive space. It's awfully convenient for me to just wade through a directory or two looking for the movie I want and then click it and watch it than it is for me to go to a bookshelf of some sort, read through all the titles that are smacked together, luckily in alphabetical order, put the dvd in the dvd player (and deal with the dvd that's already there that my frickin' wife left in there), and then watch. What's better living? Why does someone owning a copyright give them the power to dictate to me that I can't use my legally-purchased content in a fashion that's in accordance with copyright law? (yeah yeah, I know, DeCSS violates DMCA, but DMCA is antithetical to the purpose of copyright and the fair use protections built into it, making DMCA itself illegal, far as I can tell)
In any case, someone owning a copyright isn't a good enough reason to hold back the tide on this one. People made money off music before there was copyright, and people have always made music that they didn't intend/expect to get paid for. We'll survive the RIAA, but the RIAA won't survive the RIAA.
Now, if you're a true music lover, option 3 is just out of the question.
That's funny, I'd tend to think that if you were a true music lover, you wouldn't support the record labels that enslave the musicians that make the music you love so much. Seeing as how sharecropping is legal, when it's applied to musicians anyway, I suppose my view is just a tad off.
Fact is, if you are downloading RIAA-protected music, and especially if you're sharing it, you're part of the problem, not part of the solution. Love music? Buy a fucking guitar or something, but don't start getting preachy about what 'true music lovers' do. That judgemental attitude is as much a part of the problem as the behavior you're trying to deplore.
Normally I'm not a spelling nazi unless you're a spelling nazi correcting someone's post and you yourself have spelling issues, however i before e except after c
I read 'theiving' as 'the iving', thinking your typo was not putting a space in there. Had to read the sentence three times before I figured it out.
I use OS X because, compared with the pen knife of Windows and the chainsaw of Linux, it's a samurai sword.:)
I use linux because it doesn't require years of careful study under a Master in order to work. Just pull the chord and the body parts start falling around me. YYYYYYEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE HHHHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWWWWWWW WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW
NOt that I totally disagree with you, but for many of us there is no dollar figure we can put on our time to justify demanding money in exchange for that time. Sometimes, the fact that the time was spent is more important than how much money we can make off of it.
In any case, if you really expect to be paid for your creative work, don't go into music.
Boycotting the record industry right now is more important than ever, not solely because of their attack on P2P, but because the musicians upon which they built their empire have always been under siege from the labels themselves. Find other ways to support the musicians you like, but if it were me, I'd let the poor fuckers starve if they continue to support the record labels. You know, capitalism being what it is and all.;)
are you saying that marty (after they saved clara) should have instantly known it was not clayton ravine? and when the delorean comes rolling across the bridge on the tracks in movie 3, it's called eastwood ravine...
The plot is pretty convoluted, and there's something never quite explained. Ok, so Marty grows up calling it Clayton Ravine, named after some schoolteacher or whatever that fell in. Then he messes with the past in the first movie, but naturally didn't affect the name of the ravine. At the end of the second movie, Doc gets thrown back in time and falls in love with Clara, because her name is on his tombstone, and he's killed just a few days after writing the letter to Marty. So Marty goes back in time. Then we learn that the only reason Clara did not fall in the ravine is because Marty and Doc saved her. Trick is, they saved her precisely because they were looking for a way to get the DeLorean up to 88 to escape Doc's fate. So, when Marty gets the letter and Doc is already dead and buried, he was not there to cause Doc to be anywhere near that ravine when she was going to fall in. Therefore, Doc didn't meet her, they didn't dance, they didn't have their first kiss, and they didn't fall in love.
So, the plothole is simple.;) Doc saved Clara and fell in love with her while he and Marty were looking for a way to get up to 88. If marty had not been there (or rather, before he was there, in the history they were trying to prevent), he had no business at the ravine, so how did her name get on his tombstone?
(clue... the parent actually knew that Neil Young wasn't actually the first guy on the moon.)
I already knew that Neil Young wasn't the first guy on the moon. He was the guy that sat around for years waiting for Zaphod to show up with his ship and take him to the headquarters of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Duh!
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It would be difficult to come up with another explanation at that point.
This, of course, is one of the many underlying problems of religion. Why should we have to come up with an explanation? Why can't we just observe the facts, admit we don't know why the facts have happened, and move on? Science is observation first, hypothesis second, test the hypothesis third, develop a theory fourth, now test the theory. Religion is develop a theory that can't be tested first, develop a hypothesis based on the theory second, find observations to support the hypothesis third, and assert that there is no other logical explanation fourth. Then challenge any observation by requiring an explanation for it. Why can't religionists just admit they don't know any more about this than the rest of us and fucking move on?
Then why'd he let those "dirty apes" onto the ark in the first place?
(I am still growing in Christ).
I grew before I entered Christ. That's the right way to do it. You don't even have to wear a rubber on that guy, he's frickin' perfect. No disease, not that it matters. I fear the day when he turns to me and says "You've got AIDS now, and I refuse to cure you. I found someone else."
Hmmm, no lightning yet. How blasphemous do I have to get before He Takes Notice of me? ;)
Where are the predictions in Creation that can be tested? Oh, that's right - there are none.
Religion wouldn't work if it could be tested, because it requires faith. Religionists offering "proof, evidence, and successful tests" are only succumbing to the general trends towards scientific acceptance and religious rejection, and are fighting a losing battle.
Religion wouldn't work if you could test it. In the specific case of Christianity, the underlying leap of faith is that you are a sinner, that you must receive forgiveness for your sins, and that you can only do so through Jesus Christ Our Lord Amen Hallelujah. The logic offered generally goes like this: You do bad things. Correct? Can you think of any bad things you've ever done? (of course, we've all made mistakes) When you do something bad, you must get forgiveness for it, because you should apologize, correct? (of course, that's called responsibility) Now the assertion: you can only get true forgiveness from Jesus Christ (and here the guilt gets laid on). The assertion requires a leap of faith, but the sales pitch is pretty compelling, especially if you have hangups over all the mistakes you've made in the past.
Religion in general, and Christianity specifically, can be tested only by waiting. According to biblical prophecy, we'll hear three trumpet notes, a slew of other things, and Jesus will come and judge everybody (judge not, lest ye be judged yourself, of course, the fucking hypocrite), and those that are Worthy will go to Heaven, and the rest of us will go to Hell and Burn For All Eternity. Whoopee. So Christianity can only be proven, in its own terms, in the affirmative, by Judgement Day happening. In its own terms, it can't be negatively proven because of the Leap Of Faith doctrine. It can't exist outside its own terms, it's a closed system. If you question, you've not made the leap of faith, and therefore you're not qualified to question. But if you do make the leap of faith, you're not allowed to question, unless the answer to your question is that God Fuckin' Rules.
So, if you've ever wondered why all the wacko christians in your life won't see reason, there's your answer. There's very little point in trying to make them see reason, just as surely as there's very little point in them trying to make you make the leap of faith. I figure we can just out-evolve them. In any case, if I'm wrong and They Are Right, I figure that within the system of Christianity God is Pretty Fuckin' Evil and I've no qualms joining the Army of Darkness to fight His tyranny. So that's my afterlife insurance policy. ;)
Okay then, how do you reconcile the claim that the earth is only 6,000 years old with the preponderance of scientific evidence to the contrary? The way I see it, religious zealots' faith that the earth absolutely must be only 6,000 years old is absolutely mutually exclusive with science, which has easily proven this wrong.
That claim is pure absurdity and I patently dismiss it. :)
However, I have heard claims that made a lot more sense. Consider that Man, at the level of development at which he wrote the first parts of the bible (the parts generally used for dating the earth) was very primitive, and likely wasn't yet capable of understanding a great many things, such as the entire concept of a millenia, let alone eons and so forth. So he wrote it in terms that he could understand. That doesn't mean it happened in those terms. So, what we wind up with is something along these lines: "At some point while the earth was heaving and hoeing, at great odds against it, three proteins combined into a self-replicating molecule called DNA, the successor of RNA (or whatever it is, I'm not a geneticist). When the Bible says that God created Man and animals and so forth, what God really said was 'I caused the three proteins to combine, because otherwise it wouldn't have happened'." I've also heard explanations that make God into Energy, all the energy of the universe, in fact, and that the big bang was God banging out in all His Glory, creating the heavens. Then he created the Earth. The bible does say "God is the light" or something, and primitive man wrote in terms the he could understand, because he couldn't understand what He was really saying.
As for dismissing believers, what's wrong with that? If someone believes something with absolutely no rational basis for this belief, and this belief flies in the face of a large amount of evidence to the contrary, then why shouldn't that person be dismissed as a crackpot? These days, if some guy starts telling people he's communicating with aliens, he usually gets locked up in the funny farm. Why are religious people given any more respect?
"Because it's my religion, and you have to respect it." Blah, stupid is stupid. I'm with you on this one, believe me. Take it on faith, if you have to. ;)
There is a long and glorious tradition of liars and hacks searching for the Ark and other relics.
But they found the ark! Back in the 30s, I believe. I watched this documentary on the subject awhile back. It's a pretty good flick, I highly recommend it.
Heh, nothing standing in my way. ;)
You totally missed the point. Education is the reason for poverty, lack of education. Ever see the inside of a school in a poverty-stricken neighborhood? THAT is the reason, and the reason education is so shitty in those neighborhoods is a result of the last 100 years of oppression in those neighborhoods. The schools didn't get integrated until fairly recent in history, and they're still not getting equal funding, because how much money a school has is based on property taxes in the district, and property taxes in poor neighborhoods don't generate nearly as much revenue as in richer neighborhoods.
And for all the people I've worked with over the years, I've never met a black person who was willing to take a job because they were black, they wanted a job because they earned it or were well-qualified for it. That's called 'work ethic' and generally being proud of who/what you are. Affirmative action is as degrading as the problem they're trying to fix with it. No solution there.
Yeah, you also totally missed the point, and a few other things. I said I went to High School in NM. I'm a Texan, though. ;) Now I live in Seattle, which is supposed to be a very liberal, un-racist place, but I find it to contain more racism per capita than Texas. Texas (with the exception of a few small towns here and there) has beaten the racism problem. I extrapolated Texas's progress in that area to the rest of the south, based on what I've heard from people from other parts of the south.
The point that you missed, however, isn't that black people are poor because they're being kept down by 'the man' or whatever. They're poor because after sharecropping, Jim Crow laws, and a few other things, they've wound up without much education. WIthout education, they can't break out. At this time, every black person in the south that I've ever known who broke out of poverty to enjoy a better life put themselves through college to do so, at great risk/cost. The only reason blacks seem to be poor more often than not is because of past oppression, but no longer present oppression, just the pieces of the past.
Well, for the most part and only in my experience, Darwinism is synonymous with macro evolution and is thought to be antithetical to creationism.
The threats surrounding child abuse are probably much the same here. A teacher can't even give a kid a ride home anymore without being accused of trying to make a pass at the kid, raping him/her, or whatever. Parents have similar problems. A kid can just say "my dad hit me" and then the dad goes to jail for child abuse, whether it can be proven or not to a jury of his peers. Both of these problems, which appear to be extensions of the same problem, are themselves symptomatic of a much larger problem that infests society at all levels. Political Correctness seems to be a symptom of the problem as well, but I haven't yet managed to peg the problem itself. :(
Education is a big political issue, but it's also an issue where the only real power lies at the local level. A candidate for president is pretty much required to say "better education", but there's ain't jack shit he can do about it. Bush said a lot of that, but as a result of his work as governor in Texas we wound up with a bunch of illiterate graduates. Working in fast food I actually had to teach kids with diplomas how to read #1CB. Not just what it meant, but what the # symbol meant, and what a 1 was, and what a C was, and what a B was. Corporate interests appear to be staying out of education, except to sponsor events (a good thing) and to sponsor other stuff (mostly a good thing, I don't have any bad examples), but since the people ultimately in charge of education are elected officials, the numbers used to show successful policies frequently don't indicate success or failure, such as the HIgh School drop-out rate (frequently affected by factors an elected official has nothing to do with. In Texas, under Bush, this number was manipulated by either handing out diplomas when someone threatened to drop out, as is what happened with my wife, or by writing them out of the books entirely so they don't show as a drop-out). Sucks, don't it? ;)
Math is about the only area that doesn't come under fire, so it's not surprising that math does well, overall. Literature is frequently censored in one form or other (my high school refused to carry some works of Shakespeare, they were lewd, and we actually had to fight to be allowed to watch the 1984 movie). History is selectively censored, with the biggest censorship happening with regards to the Indian Wars and early colonization. Spain is always the bad guy (and maybe they really were, historically, but it's hard to tell when England is also almost always the bad guy, until you get to WWII, and I *know* they weren't always bad guys, historically). Mexico is usually a bad guy, too, and Canada is always just a copy of the US (historically accurate, right? ;) ). Australia actually gets presented pretty badly, too, come to think of it. But the Aussie government's dominance of the aboriginal tribes is usually glossed over, probably to be consistent with our own history in that regard.
American schools suck. They perpetuate a lot of myths, such as the myth that Thanksgiving as a holiday has been practiced ever since the pilgrims showed up on the Mayflower, or the myth that the West was conquered because the so-called Indians couldn't keep their word (this one actually got a lot of attention in High School, but in lower schools it was taught that the Indians were pure scalping evil), or the myth that the Civil War was fought with the altruistic purpose of freeing the slaves (yes, it was fought to free the slaves, but not over altruism, over money instead). The US internment of a whole bunch of Asian-descended people during WWII is generally left out of the material entirely because the material is deemed to resemble the concentration camps in Europe of the time a little too much. Not to mention, we can't have ever been racist in our history, the US does no evil, right? It wouldn't tak
I forgot to mention that people in advertising also show a stark lack of anything resembling a sense of humor and are prone to lashing out in anger whenever someone else shows one.
I'm not American, so I haven't been through the American school system. But from what I've read, education systems throughout the world tend to push either darwinism or creationism.
I am an American, and I went to High School in a small town in southern New Mexico that made national news in the last couple of years for a big, old-fashioned book burning.
In my high school, we learned darwinism, taught as "theory, not proven". The "not proven" was added in order to avoid offending the parents (and many kids!). Creationism and any sort of religion wasn't allowed in the curriculum at all. I don't know why it was this way, however, because I always thought that presenting both sides of the discussion and discussing it would be far more beneficial to the kids than trying to avoid offending people. But religion wasn't allowed in the school, except for praying before football games, praying before school assemblies, praying before ... (get my meaning?)
My wife and I were discussing the root of this issue tonight, actually. The root of the issue is "should schools be teaching morality?" I think the answer is "yes" (she had to answer yes, too, but I like my reasons better ;) ). I think that much needed education is virtually useless without morality in the teaching. What good is learning history if you don't learn why some part of history is a 'dark time' and other parts were 'good times' and what-have-you? What's the point in teaching about WWII if you don't also teach that Hitler was pure evil, a mass-murderer, and so forth? How can you teach that about Hitler without morality being part of the education? After determining that a school should teach morality, the next and obvious question is, whose morality should it teach? In my honest fucking opinion, the school should try to present both/all sides of a given conflict and the social mores that make up each viewpoint. Saying "the school should teach morality" doesn't necessarily mean the school has to push a specific set of rules down someone's throat.
As far as the correlation between ethnicity and poverty go, I think schools avoid it because it's their own fault. In the US, anyway, that correlation has everything to do with historical racism and little to do with modern racism. Black people, specifically, have been kept poor in many parts of the country by the dominant whites in the area (think Deep South). Now, there's still a lot of racist problems down there, but to my view racism is more of a problem in non-Deep South states, these days. Anyway, black people are generally poor there because their ancestors were kept poor, and property taxes are what funds the schools, so the next generation of black kids grows up in the conditions of the previous generation, and the poor schools fail to provide them with education that would enable them to escape that fate. So it's historical conditions that have caused it, and it's very easy to make the conclusion that "black people are still living in the legacy of slavery in this country" after you've taught the Civil War, Women's Suffrage, the Civil Rights movement, and so forth. But then the schools would have to admit that they've failed in their mission, and there's nothing a school likes less than admitting failure. Hence we have schools graduating thousands of kids that can't read, write, or do math, and saying "look, all of our kids graduate! They all have high grades! We're a good school!"
Blah. The education system here in AMerica is fucked. What have the rest of you lot got? Got anything better? My kids are starting school soon.... (I sincerely hope the Kedutainment package grows nicely, it already teaches more than 12 years worth of schooling in the US)
Well, I don't know that you really want to invade the US considering our current state of war and all...
Isn't that one of the guys from this band?
In Brazil the mascot will look like a perverted psychopath with a thing for fish.
Looks like it'll fit in in Brazil. ;)
The difference between advertisers and marketers is that advertisers have to constantly insist on who they are, it's not self-evident. If he was in marketing, not only would you have known, but you would've woken up, foregone coffee and breakfast and even skipped your first cigarette to hurry up and reply to his post to say "Thank you!".
Nope, advertisers are a completely different group that have to constantly insist and demand respect, because they don't otherwise earn it, and they're not very good at communicating.
Perhaps you should familiarize yourself with the market, and/or inspect some of the numerous product mascots for school stuff. This mascot looks like it could easily pass as a school mascot itself! Come on, man. Lighten up.
Schools aren't generally run by suits. They're run either by underpaid and overworked well-meaning people who've decided to give their careers to the next few generations of kids, or they're run by politicians who know damn well that almost any press is good press. This mascot will be a hit in schools, and it will appeal to school administrators from primary school all the way up through High School.
Didn't you know that there's a certain substance in meat that stimulates the production of a neurotransmitter known as "Sanitonin". Without sanitonin, you generally start to lose your mind. This is particularly a problem in eastern nations that don't eat a lot of meat and are therefore particularly open to exploit by crazy political systems.
I've heard that asparagus actually contains a neurotoxin that completely defeats the effect of sanitonin. It's called insanitonin.
I don't eat asparagus.
But out here in bizarro world (San Francisco bay area) you can't fart without offending someone. So many people out here are hyper-sensitive and focused on being politically correct.
Man, oh man, do I hate that shit. Granted, most of those people have their hearts in the right place (defeating sexism, racism, etc), but their implementation of a solution is as bad as the problem! Creating tension in order to solve tense problems? Yeah, works well, doesn't it? See, now we hate those crazy special interest groups. Good solution! ;)
I like Anthrax alot, and they said "I won't walk on eggshells as a dance for someone else". Fuck yeah!
The DVD is a shade of gray away. Linux users wanted to be able to view their DVDs on Linux. They created software that allowed them to do so. As in the book example, there is no license applied when the DVD is opened or purchased. However, a cheap dvd player/tv combo is under $100. DVD makers can easily make the argument that basic DVD playing requies a minimum investement in hardware, and therefore there is no compelling need to enable Linux DVD playing, nor is there a need to permit this kind of fair use. If they want to watch DVDs, then they should have no reason to break the encryption - it's cheap to do so using completely legal methods.
So, it is then acceptable for someone to create a product and then require that you purchase at your cost another completely irrelevant technology in order to use the product you paid for? The issue here is that there are plenty of us who don't have TVs, who don't want/need a DVD player just to watch a frickin' movie. I've got a monitor. It may or may not plug into a DVD player. I'm not willing to put a dvd player in here at any price.
Furthermore, I've got tons of hard drive space. It's awfully convenient for me to just wade through a directory or two looking for the movie I want and then click it and watch it than it is for me to go to a bookshelf of some sort, read through all the titles that are smacked together, luckily in alphabetical order, put the dvd in the dvd player (and deal with the dvd that's already there that my frickin' wife left in there), and then watch. What's better living? Why does someone owning a copyright give them the power to dictate to me that I can't use my legally-purchased content in a fashion that's in accordance with copyright law? (yeah yeah, I know, DeCSS violates DMCA, but DMCA is antithetical to the purpose of copyright and the fair use protections built into it, making DMCA itself illegal, far as I can tell)
In any case, someone owning a copyright isn't a good enough reason to hold back the tide on this one. People made money off music before there was copyright, and people have always made music that they didn't intend/expect to get paid for. We'll survive the RIAA, but the RIAA won't survive the RIAA.
Now, if you're a true music lover, option 3 is just out of the question.
That's funny, I'd tend to think that if you were a true music lover, you wouldn't support the record labels that enslave the musicians that make the music you love so much. Seeing as how sharecropping is legal, when it's applied to musicians anyway, I suppose my view is just a tad off.
Fact is, if you are downloading RIAA-protected music, and especially if you're sharing it, you're part of the problem, not part of the solution. Love music? Buy a fucking guitar or something, but don't start getting preachy about what 'true music lovers' do. That judgemental attitude is as much a part of the problem as the behavior you're trying to deplore.
Normally I'm not a spelling nazi unless you're a spelling nazi correcting someone's post and you yourself have spelling issues, however i before e except after c
I read 'theiving' as 'the iving', thinking your typo was not putting a space in there. Had to read the sentence three times before I figured it out.
I use OS X because, compared with the pen knife of Windows and the chainsaw of Linux, it's a samurai sword. :)
I use linux because it doesn't require years of careful study under a Master in order to work. Just pull the chord and the body parts start falling around me. YYYYYYEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE HHHHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWWWWWWW WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW
Um, you did notice the curly braces, right? You know, those { } things that you never see in python?
You're obviously a witch, and should be burned. Tell me, have you ever tried to teeter-totter with a duck?
NOt that I totally disagree with you, but for many of us there is no dollar figure we can put on our time to justify demanding money in exchange for that time. Sometimes, the fact that the time was spent is more important than how much money we can make off of it.
In any case, if you really expect to be paid for your creative work, don't go into music.
Boycotting the record industry right now is more important than ever, not solely because of their attack on P2P, but because the musicians upon which they built their empire have always been under siege from the labels themselves. Find other ways to support the musicians you like, but if it were me, I'd let the poor fuckers starve if they continue to support the record labels. You know, capitalism being what it is and all. ;)
are you saying that marty (after they saved clara) should have instantly known it was not clayton ravine? and when the delorean comes rolling across the bridge on the tracks in movie 3, it's called eastwood ravine...
The plot is pretty convoluted, and there's something never quite explained. Ok, so Marty grows up calling it Clayton Ravine, named after some schoolteacher or whatever that fell in. Then he messes with the past in the first movie, but naturally didn't affect the name of the ravine. At the end of the second movie, Doc gets thrown back in time and falls in love with Clara, because her name is on his tombstone, and he's killed just a few days after writing the letter to Marty. So Marty goes back in time. Then we learn that the only reason Clara did not fall in the ravine is because Marty and Doc saved her. Trick is, they saved her precisely because they were looking for a way to get the DeLorean up to 88 to escape Doc's fate. So, when Marty gets the letter and Doc is already dead and buried, he was not there to cause Doc to be anywhere near that ravine when she was going to fall in. Therefore, Doc didn't meet her, they didn't dance, they didn't have their first kiss, and they didn't fall in love.
So, the plothole is simple. ;) Doc saved Clara and fell in love with her while he and Marty were looking for a way to get up to 88. If marty had not been there (or rather, before he was there, in the history they were trying to prevent), he had no business at the ravine, so how did her name get on his tombstone?
(clue... the parent actually knew that Neil Young wasn't actually the first guy on the moon.)
I already knew that Neil Young wasn't the first guy on the moon. He was the guy that sat around for years waiting for Zaphod to show up with his ship and take him to the headquarters of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Duh!