I realize I'm coming to this conversation a little late, but I hope you can answer my comment.
You said: Likewise many submissions end with a call to action [...] As a general rule, I want the story to be short, sweet, and direct. Anything that distracts from that, I want to chop out.
The next paragraph, you say: It's often these phrases that comment posters get most up in arms about: irate readers commenting that I should not be allowed to post my views.
Isn't this a double-standard? Their opinion, witty remark, point of view, whatever, is of less value than yours?
If you want to interject your opinion on the issue, why don't you post the first comment instead? That way, people can either A) react and reply to it, or B) have their personal friends/enemies list set up to ignore it. This would cut down on some of the meta-conversation (likely to be useless whining about the state of Slashdot), and still allow you to contribute something.
I can't comprehend how dwelling on horrific memories (e.g. how you felt when your buddy got burned alive while you watched, pinned down by a sniper) could help at all to get on with one's life. Yet that is the sort of things that psychiatrists encourage.
Since you asked, that is a link to a website that does a fair job of learning about the process of Systematic Desensitization. In your sniper example, a person suffering from PTSD would feel anxious (and probably behave in a way that's not adaptive) in situations that reminded him of the traumatic event. So if he was walking through a park, and triggered some memory of the traumatic event (let's say the trees reminded him of the jungle where this all occurred, whether the memory was conscious or unconsciously recalled), he might suddenly get scared, angry, and nervous. Which is pretty understandable, given his experience. But if he lashes out at his partner, or the only way he can finish the walk in the park is to get drunk, then you've got problems.
So you talk about your feelings of anxiety, anger, frustration, helplessness, etc. surrounding that experience, to normalize them, and to make them less "charged." And then if they're less powerful, then you can deal with situations in a better manner.
If you look at treatments for PTSD, you'll see that psychotherapy hasn't been proven to be helpful.
On the contrary - a brief scholar.google.com search has a number of articles by researchers suggesting that psychotherapy helps a number of people with PTSD, whatever the cause may be.
The National Center for PTSD has information for Veterans Affairs staff on how to treat returning Iraq War Vets, and it includes mental health counseling, including individual counseling, group therapy, and family therapy. (Disclaimer: I am a former VA psych intern)
Just to throw in my two cents, the interesting portions to me was all about this:
A day after the exercise, children were asked to recall the story and the characters in it. The findings showed that 90 per cent of the group that used the first program had good or excellent recall of the story.
It doesn't seem like the researchers are testing reading ability, they're "just" testing memory. And of course you're going to have poor memory when you have multiple distracting events going on as well. It looks like either the headlines were sensationalized, misunderstood, or the researchers are comparing apples to pomegranates.
Here is an interesting sumamry of what regions of the brain are involved in reading and language. Slide #6 of this brain dissection is an illustration of the subdivisions that play significant roles in memory. Reading and memory may share some overlap, but to test one does not always involve testing the other.
I think I see where we differ in one respect - I'm talking about the law, and criminal responsibility. You're talking about common sense. And rarely does the law have anything to do with common sense.:P
Now, if that same woman wears provocative clothing, invites a guy to her place, blows in a guy's ear and handles his junk before the rape, then she would have to own some responsibility for the situation
Well, this hypothetical woman could be lying naked on top of her equally naked, bound by marriage, partner, and if she says those two magic letters ("NO"), then unwanted sexual contact is the responsibility of the other person. Go google for spousal rape. There are no "but she wanted it," or "but she was all provoking me," exceptions. Is it dumb? Maybe. Should she be held responsible for what another person did to her? No. Same situation with the kid.
(in most states, a 14-year-old can be treated as an adult in criminal proceedings, indicating that society has determined that a child of that age should know right from wrong)
It doesn't matter if he's legally an adult or not, if he said "no (more) sexual contact" then the adult is responsible for their behavior.
I don't know if the child is mentally retarded, but clearly you're pretty damned slow.
Now, if I punched you in the mouth for insulting me, and we went to court, would I be responsible for hitting you, or would you be responsible for provoking me? The judge would (hopefully) be awake enough to see that I'm the responsible one, and I'd pay your dentistry bills, etc. The judge would likely call you "stupid" (and they could be right:) ) but the fact is my behavior would have crossed the line, and the only person responsible for my behavior is me.
What? You don't think a 14-year-old bears some responsibility when they go to meet a stranger from the Internet in a park?
Look at it another way - If a woman goes on a date with a guy she "knows," puts on provocative clothing, says "no" to any physical contact, and then gets sexually assaulted by her date, does that mean she's responsible for getting herself raped? Of course not. The guy in this fictional scenario took advantage of a woman who made some poor choices, but ultimately, he took action against a victim.
Same situation here. An adult, who should know it's illegal to A) have sexual contact with a minor, and B) have sexual contact with someone non-consenting, took action against a victim.
there is something deeply wrong with the way a kid was raised when he acts this way.
Well, let's say that there is something wrong with this kid. Perhaps he meets the diagnostic qualifications for mental retardation. Does that make the behavior of the adult any better? Hell no. The adult who assaulted the kid is still responsible for their own behavior.
Then again this kid doesn't sound like he is a major loss to the gene pool. Meeting a total stranger in a park after exchanging porn. Oh yeah. That is something nobody has ever warned kids about.
Way to blame the victim. The only way your post could get more ludicrous and insulting is if you said "Hey, now the molester can be anally raped in prison!"
Having sex with ANYBODY AGAINST THEIR WILL is illegal. Having sex with ANYBODY UNDER THE AGE OF CONSENT is illegal.
just as alcohol kills braincells, TV has a direct affect on the brain, by atrophying those parts that involve creativity.
I know this really isn't the point of your post, and although I haven't read the book myself, I find the ideas proposed by Steven Johnson in his book "Everything Bad is Good For You" an interesting counter-argument to the idea that "TV makes you stupid." Television is steadily growing more complex, and requires more thought and concentration to follow it. For example, TV-shows were initially developed for an audience of people at their intelligence levels. So there were shows with 2-4 main characters, who had very simple, understandable relationships (husbands and wives, parents and children, coworkers - think "I Love Lucy" or something similar). Now television programs have more main characters who have more complex relationships and their connections can be unclear or ambiguous. ("ER" might be an example of such a show - a dozen or so main characters, some romantically involved, some not, and some you suspect). So while you're not learning math or another language by watching something like that, you learn a little bit about complex social networks (or a Hollywood-ized version of them) and use more brainpower than you think.
I just got to say, that was the funniest response I've read in this thread. I hope you get modded up. (Too bad there isn't a positive modifier for "Flamebait") Good job.:)
I don't mean to troll the "Ask Slashdot" deal here, but this bugs me. It's the holiday season, where you're buying gifts for loved ones - it seems to me that you're gifting them with stuff that YOU want, not giving them stuff that THEY want. I know that getting them a Barnes & Noble gift card (or $localbookstore gift card, whatever) is a bit impersonal, but they're teenagers - let them choose stuff that they'll like. And if you want to recommend sci-fi books to them, then by all means, do so, but don't try and make them like what you like. Everyone ends up happier this way, and that's the point of the holidays anyway - sharing joy.
For introverts, there was also lot of activity in the area of the brain that relates to the visual processing and the desire of red staplers... but that's probably just a coincidence.;)
I didn't read the article (a great Slashdotter mantra), but I imagine that their definition of "drug dealing" is a pretty open-ended as well. Sure, there is cultivating, manufacturing, and distributing - Do they account for drug-related paraphanelia? (Those glass-blown tobacco-pipes/Bongs gotta cost something) Do they account for drug-related crimes and profits? (prostitution, theft, and gambling are tied into drug dealing as well)
Of course such data might pop the balloon of FUD as delicious as this.
fyngyrz! That is perhaps one of the best ideas I have read on slashdot (minus the acronyms). This idea would work even better than the proposed porn-port, just based on sheer volume - there is waaaaaaaaaay more porn on the Internet, it's just easier to block off the religious nuts to their own separate neighborhoods.
That's what you get for living in the desert. You countered the parent post, who said that freshwater is plentiful in most of the US by saying that in a couple places in California, there is need for conservation.
Except for one thing: Redwood City, CA isn't in the middle of the desert, it's in the middle of the BAY AREA, and has a natural body of water within walking distance.
I wouldn't want to drink that water for all the tea in China, though. Water might be available, in most places in the US (which I think the grandparent poster was saying), but it certainly isn't all potable.
Now comes the cultural aspect of Spirit's research on Mars: Do the Martians bake it a birthday cake? Or do they now call it an adult and let it drive the family UFO?
Where I come from (non-management, grunt-level techie), appearing in any of these analysts' journals *costs* an author more credibility than it gains him or her. For example, if $RAG says that $CORP has the best customer support, I immediately assume that $CORP has such horrid customer support that they had to pay someone to make up some research that proves otherwise.
So who do you go to when you have question then? Eventually you have to trust somebody when it comes to a topic that you've reached the limits of your knowledge of.
More importantly, when you make a decision, and something goes wrong, how do you explain your decisions? You could say "I used the recommendations from $RAG about $CORP." Or you could say "I didn't trust the people at $RAG, but I asked my colleagues Jimbo and Cleatus," and have a difficult time explaining problems to the non-techie management.
The meta-credibility question is this: Given the amount of shoddy pay-for-play research out there, does being published in an analyst journal tend to cost (a researcher, his consulting company, his financial backers) more credibility than it can gains him/her/them? If not, why not -- and more importantly, if so, is there any way to reverse the trend?
I think once you figure out who to ask, and that multiple people can agree that the source is reliable, then it's just a matter of getting people to use that.
Slashdot Mirror
What, no Hobbits discovered? Well, perhaps they were eaten by those spiders. ;)
I realize I'm coming to this conversation a little late, but I hope you can answer my comment.
You said: Likewise many submissions end with a call to action [...] As a general rule, I want the story to be short, sweet, and direct. Anything that distracts from that, I want to chop out.
The next paragraph, you say: It's often these phrases that comment posters get most up in arms about: irate readers commenting that I should not be allowed to post my views.
Isn't this a double-standard? Their opinion, witty remark, point of view, whatever, is of less value than yours?
If you want to interject your opinion on the issue, why don't you post the first comment instead? That way, people can either A) react and reply to it, or B) have their personal friends/enemies list set up to ignore it. This would cut down on some of the meta-conversation (likely to be useless whining about the state of Slashdot), and still allow you to contribute something.
I can't comprehend how dwelling on horrific memories (e.g. how you felt when your buddy got burned alive while you watched, pinned down by a sniper) could help at all to get on with one's life. Yet that is the sort of things that psychiatrists encourage.
Since you asked, that is a link to a website that does a fair job of learning about the process of Systematic Desensitization. In your sniper example, a person suffering from PTSD would feel anxious (and probably behave in a way that's not adaptive) in situations that reminded him of the traumatic event. So if he was walking through a park, and triggered some memory of the traumatic event (let's say the trees reminded him of the jungle where this all occurred, whether the memory was conscious or unconsciously recalled), he might suddenly get scared, angry, and nervous. Which is pretty understandable, given his experience. But if he lashes out at his partner, or the only way he can finish the walk in the park is to get drunk, then you've got problems.
So you talk about your feelings of anxiety, anger, frustration, helplessness, etc. surrounding that experience, to normalize them, and to make them less "charged." And then if they're less powerful, then you can deal with situations in a better manner.
I don't see why not - I probably stole it from someone else. ;)
If you look at treatments for PTSD, you'll see that psychotherapy hasn't been proven to be helpful.
On the contrary - a brief scholar.google.com search has a number of articles by researchers suggesting that psychotherapy helps a number of people with PTSD, whatever the cause may be.
The National Center for PTSD has information for Veterans Affairs staff on how to treat returning Iraq War Vets, and it includes mental health counseling, including individual counseling, group therapy, and family therapy. (Disclaimer: I am a former VA psych intern)
Plus I learned never to go into a dark room lest I be eaten by a grue.
More insightful words have never been spoken?
Just to throw in my two cents, the interesting portions to me was all about this:
A day after the exercise, children were asked to recall the story and the characters in it. The findings showed that 90 per cent of the group that used the first program had good or excellent recall of the story.
It doesn't seem like the researchers are testing reading ability, they're "just" testing memory. And of course you're going to have poor memory when you have multiple distracting events going on as well. It looks like either the headlines were sensationalized, misunderstood, or the researchers are comparing apples to pomegranates.
Here is an interesting sumamry of what regions of the brain are involved in reading and language. Slide #6 of this brain dissection is an illustration of the subdivisions that play significant roles in memory. Reading and memory may share some overlap, but to test one does not always involve testing the other.
I think I see where we differ in one respect - I'm talking about the law, and criminal responsibility. You're talking about common sense. And rarely does the law have anything to do with common sense. :P
:) ) but the fact is my behavior would have crossed the line, and the only person responsible for my behavior is me.
Now, if that same woman wears provocative clothing, invites a guy to her place, blows in a guy's ear and handles his junk before the rape, then she would have to own some responsibility for the situation
Well, this hypothetical woman could be lying naked on top of her equally naked, bound by marriage, partner, and if she says those two magic letters ("NO"), then unwanted sexual contact is the responsibility of the other person. Go google for spousal rape. There are no "but she wanted it," or "but she was all provoking me," exceptions. Is it dumb? Maybe. Should she be held responsible for what another person did to her? No. Same situation with the kid.
(in most states, a 14-year-old can be treated as an adult in criminal proceedings, indicating that society has determined that a child of that age should know right from wrong)
It doesn't matter if he's legally an adult or not, if he said "no (more) sexual contact" then the adult is responsible for their behavior.
I don't know if the child is mentally retarded, but clearly you're pretty damned slow.
Now, if I punched you in the mouth for insulting me, and we went to court, would I be responsible for hitting you, or would you be responsible for provoking me? The judge would (hopefully) be awake enough to see that I'm the responsible one, and I'd pay your dentistry bills, etc. The judge would likely call you "stupid" (and they could be right
What? You don't think a 14-year-old bears some responsibility when they go to meet a stranger from the Internet in a park?
Look at it another way - If a woman goes on a date with a guy she "knows," puts on provocative clothing, says "no" to any physical contact, and then gets sexually assaulted by her date, does that mean she's responsible for getting herself raped? Of course not. The guy in this fictional scenario took advantage of a woman who made some poor choices, but ultimately, he took action against a victim.
Same situation here. An adult, who should know it's illegal to A) have sexual contact with a minor, and B) have sexual contact with someone non-consenting, took action against a victim.
there is something deeply wrong with the way a kid was raised when he acts this way.
Well, let's say that there is something wrong with this kid. Perhaps he meets the diagnostic qualifications for mental retardation. Does that make the behavior of the adult any better? Hell no. The adult who assaulted the kid is still responsible for their own behavior.
Then again this kid doesn't sound like he is a major loss to the gene pool. Meeting a total stranger in a park after exchanging porn. Oh yeah. That is something nobody has ever warned kids about.
Way to blame the victim. The only way your post could get more ludicrous and insulting is if you said "Hey, now the molester can be anally raped in prison!"
Having sex with ANYBODY AGAINST THEIR WILL is illegal.
Having sex with ANYBODY UNDER THE AGE OF CONSENT is illegal.
I'm not sure if that post should be modded down for content, or up because it makes fun of the point. :)
Heh. I'm going to be sending copies of the Little Red Book to all my friends and family for the holidays.
;)
That's what all you bastards get for putting me on your "naughty" list!
Well LAAA-DEEE-DAAAAA. Excuse the rest of us who couldn't get past the 3rd round of interviews!
Where is that "Mod -1, Bitter" option?
(joking!)
I wonder how many slashdotters got that joke?
If that ain't art, I don't know what is.
... Which is true of a lot of art as well. ;)
All I know is that it makes me go "what the fuck was that guy smoking? I want some!"
just as alcohol kills braincells, TV has a direct affect on the brain, by atrophying those parts that involve creativity.
I know this really isn't the point of your post, and although I haven't read the book myself, I find the ideas proposed by Steven Johnson in his book "Everything Bad is Good For You" an interesting counter-argument to the idea that "TV makes you stupid." Television is steadily growing more complex, and requires more thought and concentration to follow it. For example, TV-shows were initially developed for an audience of people at their intelligence levels. So there were shows with 2-4 main characters, who had very simple, understandable relationships (husbands and wives, parents and children, coworkers - think "I Love Lucy" or something similar). Now television programs have more main characters who have more complex relationships and their connections can be unclear or ambiguous. ("ER" might be an example of such a show - a dozen or so main characters, some romantically involved, some not, and some you suspect). So while you're not learning math or another language by watching something like that, you learn a little bit about complex social networks (or a Hollywood-ized version of them) and use more brainpower than you think.
I just got to say, that was the funniest response I've read in this thread. I hope you get modded up. (Too bad there isn't a positive modifier for "Flamebait") Good job. :)
I don't mean to troll the "Ask Slashdot" deal here, but this bugs me. It's the holiday season, where you're buying gifts for loved ones - it seems to me that you're gifting them with stuff that YOU want, not giving them stuff that THEY want. I know that getting them a Barnes & Noble gift card (or $localbookstore gift card, whatever) is a bit impersonal, but they're teenagers - let them choose stuff that they'll like. And if you want to recommend sci-fi books to them, then by all means, do so, but don't try and make them like what you like. Everyone ends up happier this way, and that's the point of the holidays anyway - sharing joy.
For introverts, there was also lot of activity in the area of the brain that relates to the visual processing and the desire of red staplers... but that's probably just a coincidence. ;)
That's a pretty open-ended definition.
I didn't read the article (a great Slashdotter mantra), but I imagine that their definition of "drug dealing" is a pretty open-ended as well. Sure, there is cultivating, manufacturing, and distributing - Do they account for drug-related paraphanelia? (Those glass-blown tobacco-pipes/Bongs gotta cost something) Do they account for drug-related crimes and profits? (prostitution, theft, and gambling are tied into drug dealing as well)
Of course such data might pop the balloon of FUD as delicious as this.
You sure are right on that account.
fyngyrz! That is perhaps one of the best ideas I have read on slashdot (minus the acronyms). This idea would work even better than the proposed porn-port, just based on sheer volume - there is waaaaaaaaaay more porn on the Internet, it's just easier to block off the religious nuts to their own separate neighborhoods.
That's what you get for living in the desert. You countered the parent post, who said that freshwater is plentiful in most of the US by saying that in a couple places in California, there is need for conservation.
Except for one thing: Redwood City, CA isn't in the middle of the desert, it's in the middle of the BAY AREA, and has a natural body of water within walking distance.
I wouldn't want to drink that water for all the tea in China, though. Water might be available, in most places in the US (which I think the grandparent poster was saying), but it certainly isn't all potable.
4 words: A wizard did it.
bloodninja: Oh yeah, aight. Aight, I put on my robe and wizard hat.
Now comes the cultural aspect of Spirit's research on Mars: Do the Martians bake it a birthday cake? Or do they now call it an adult and let it drive the family UFO?
Where I come from (non-management, grunt-level techie), appearing in any of these analysts' journals *costs* an author more credibility than it gains him or her. For example, if $RAG says that $CORP has the best customer support, I immediately assume that $CORP has such horrid customer support that they had to pay someone to make up some research that proves otherwise.
So who do you go to when you have question then? Eventually you have to trust somebody when it comes to a topic that you've reached the limits of your knowledge of.
More importantly, when you make a decision, and something goes wrong, how do you explain your decisions? You could say "I used the recommendations from $RAG about $CORP." Or you could say "I didn't trust the people at $RAG, but I asked my colleagues Jimbo and Cleatus," and have a difficult time explaining problems to the non-techie management.
The meta-credibility question is this: Given the amount of shoddy pay-for-play research out there, does being published in an analyst journal tend to cost (a researcher, his consulting company, his financial backers) more credibility than it can gains him/her/them? If not, why not -- and more importantly, if so, is there any way to reverse the trend?
I think once you figure out who to ask, and that multiple people can agree that the source is reliable, then it's just a matter of getting people to use that.