Prostitution isn't a victimless crime. It could be, and sometimes is, but the general case is that it's gross exploitation and if you're looking for a victim, the prostitute is it. Sometimes a student or someone will make a money by selling themselves for sex. That's their choice. But for most prostitutes, the circumstances are so bad that you can't really apply the word "choice" any more. The reality of prostitution is a grim one and more complicated than someone making a decision to trade sex for money - it's surrounded by and part of a whole mesh of other crimes and abuses. I don't know about the USA, but the plight of immigrant girls from Eastern Europe forced into prostitution not just in countries like Turkey (where the slang term for prostitute is "a Russian") but even here in the UK, is widespread and as nasty as it gets.
We can debate the nature of the laws on prostitution, as well as how and when they are applied, but to consider prostitution to be a victimless crime and that the objection to it is founded in Christian puritanism, is except in a few cases, wrong. It may be that the puritanical attitudes that accompany Christianity and Islam make the situation worse for prostitutes in defining it as a shameful activity, but, although I think trading your body for money is usually damaging for reasons far more fundamental than any religion our species has evolved, it's a separate debate. If you want to see the victim in prostitution she (or he) is right there in front of you.
That's very interesting. Because I don't like to state (or repeat) things that I haven't verified, are you able to actually provide some compiled statistics that show this, as you say? I'd like to see such data and if it looks valid, this is a new angle I can consider.
It's possible. But I worked my way through all the shops I could find when I lived there and was always buying whatever was most expensive and never found anything that tasted nice. I did find a cheese that had jalopeno mixed into it which was at least inventive, though.:D I wasn't in Wisconsin, I will readily admit, but I think given how low the general standard of cheese in the USA was, that anything else would seem special in comparison. No offence - great movies, cool music, microchips and all that. But cheese... I'm sorry. I'd suggest importing some European cheeses but according to a poster further up, European cheeses are actually illegal in the US due to unpasteurised milk. If you come to the UK, I will happily provide you with some of the best of the UK's stuff to try, though.:)
Speaking as a European, I have, and really no offence, found US cheese to range from bland for the better stuff, to disgusting for the most mass-market ranges. And the thing you call processed cheese is beyond description all together. I'm sorry, I really am - the people of the USA have contributed to culture and science in many, many ways - but your cheese is the foulest thing that anyone has ever had the gaul to pass off as food. I tried pretty much all of it until I found somewhere that imported proper English cheddar which I bought with great relief.
1and1 had the worst support and worst financial services department I have ever experienced. I had an extremly bad experience with them and I warn people of them at every opportunity. You're okay with them so long as everything goes by the book. Once you pick up the phone it goes to Hell in a big way. I'm with Fasthosts now who offer MySQL 5.0 by default and then of course there's getting your own server if you really need it. It's pretty cheap as a business cost.
Not to mention that my employers have started (without any process of considering implications whatsoever) started to use Google services for all their meeting arrangements, annual leave sheets, some internal email communications. I imagine some other places are doing the same. I wonder if it will get to the point where having your Google account suspended will be cause for a dismissal. At any rate, not everyone has the option of not using Google. I imagine the number of such people will increase.
Apologies for replying to my own post, but I have an addendum. I'm not at all sure that this hypothetical argument is not just an attempt to slip in the underlying premise which is that women are statistically less capable at science. Of the women that I have known who were scientists / studied a science, they were all to my recollection on the scale of competent to very talented. Are these a self-selected bunch? Of course - so are the males. The question is what influences that self-selection? You say you don't care whether that "what" is a result of biological or cultural factors. I say it's a crime for anyone who has an inclination to studying the wonders and joys of Science to be discouraged from doing so because our culture does not encourage them to pursue that interest.
I don't think it matters if the difference are biological or cultural. I should have said that clearly.
I can answer most of your post with one point. It very much matters whether differences are biological or cultural because biological ones may be very difficult to change on our timespans, but cultural ones can be changed very rapidly. Culture can and should be changed if it leads to an improvement in society. And as to biological differences, your argument works along the same principle as saying that only some people have the capacity to be really strong, therefore nobody else should train to be moderately strong. Even people who aren't going to revolutionise mathematics can make excellent maths teachers. We need more people qualified in science - the Western world is filling up with Sociologists and Media Studies graduates. I quite frankly don't care if someone isn't Stephen Hawking, so long as they make a reasonable scientist capable of research, lab work or starting a new generation on the path to science, my society can gain from that person studying it. And even if you maintain your belief that women are inherently less inclined toward science, you're surely not trying to argue that the difference is so marked that most couldn't study and learn it if they chose? It's a career and that career pays money and it should be an option with no more barriers to entry than any other career other than ability.
I don't understand your point about "not discounting culture" because you are the one that is saying you do not care about cultural factors. I am addressing that there are such factors and pointing out that they reduce efficiency in society if people who are potential scientists are dissuaded from that career because of those factors. Pretty simple. You say you don't see why it's a bad thing, this is why.
As for differences between genders OR races: Everything is too PC these days to really study it
That's not the case. There have been numerous studies done on intelligence and race. None have found a supportable difference to my knowledge and it is an area that I have followed to some extent. Even if there was a difference in potential "intelligence," the point from the previous post stands which is that the difference would have to be huge (to the degree that it was not just scientifically measurable but blatantly undeniable to all society) before it became more efficient to profile applicants based on race, rather than judging individually. That is not the case. Discrimination based on race is woefully inaccurate and inefficient for society.
Stereotypes are an anecdotal sort of conventional wisdom, and while they're often used to justify prejudice and bigotry, I don't think it's fair to completely discount them and the premises they claim.
You may not think it is fair, but that's science. You are welcome to try and show that there are differences in intelligence between races. It's all going to be irrelevant after another century of interbreeding, but I doubt you'd find anything anyway. Many people have tried to prove a difference in intelligence. They keep failing. There are also a couple of errors in your statement. Firstly stereotypes are not used to "justify prejudice and bigotry" - stereotypes are prejudice. Prejudice means pre-judge. It's judging someone not on what they are but on their category, in this case negative racial stereotypes. The other problem is that it has been shown that the human mind more easily and rapidly forms negative stereotypes than positive ones and that this leads to statistically unsupportable stereotypes. Everyone should be aware of this tendency within themselves and distrust any stereotypes they find themselves establishing or acquiring. An intelligent person should not need a stereotype to help them judge a person they meet.
That is precisely the type of logic and reasoning that prevents end users from thinking linux is something they might be interested in.
No, it really isn't. Are you seriously suggesting that someone is going to express an interest in Linux and then lose that interest if they happen to see the words "vmlinuz-2.6.20-16" instead of say, "vmlinuz-2.6.16-06-08" ? Rubbish! The AC below has a better point.
You have a confusion of scale. It is not the parent poster that needs to change his actions to get a different result, it is the american people. Get a reasonable number to vote for a third party candidate and the game will change dramatically. That should be the goal of anyone wishing to change the US by voting.
Obama has not yet done much you can use to judge whether his politics are the same as yours. He has, however, said a lot of things which is not the same as actions. Only time will tell if the two match when he becomes President.
This change-tracking by the McCain campaign is a great service to the public. It will help catch any attempts to shift "beliefs" according to public mood. Hopefully the Obamites will respond in kind and then we, the public, will get the benefit of an overall increase politicians being monitored for duplicity.
Oh please! Nobody in a position to be making decisions based on kernel version should be put off by a number like 2.6.26. Can you honestly see a PHB in ever being allowed by the developers to be in a position to say, "No, I don't think we should go with this kernel, lets go with another one." The closest anyone who would be bothered by "2.6.26" gets to making this decision is saying "We will use that one called Hairy Hardon - I like the sound of that one." Kernel versions are off the radar as far as marketing goes.
The thing is, and I'm in the UK and I'm guessing you're in the UK but I expect it is similar, the economic model has changed. Since the Second World War, it has shifted from a society where one earner can support a family and partner (irrelevant of gender) to one where two earners are the standard. That's much more so because birth control allowed women to enter the workforce like never before (it's no longer a choice between job and sex, which quite frankly, would have wiped out the male workforce entirely). This means that for a decent standard of living, there is a disincentive to have children which take away from work. And society needs children - our populations are verging on decline, ageing, and offset only by immigration. Society needs employers to tolerate female employees having children. Government compensation to employers is probably the best way of achieving that. Make having children financially viable again.
Ha! That's great to hear. I had a friend who told me what he wanted in a girl was someone little and submissive who needed him to look after her. I told him there were plenty of girls like that, and that my children would conquer his children.:D
The vaguely relevant point? I've met several girls who consciously or unconsciously limited themselves because they were afraid of intimidating potential boyfriends and it's always gratifying to find a girl that doesn't let that happen. I always wondered at those meek, underachieving girls if they really accepted they were just going to attract men that were afraid of them?
Exactly. Quotas enforce a distinction based on race, gender or whatever and the desired end state is no distinctions based on these irrelevant things. Now there are positive ways that you can address the balance, like funding programs to encourage and assist under-represented groups to enter such areas. This preserves choice but recognises that there are barriers to these groups which need to be overcome.
In reference to the GP, whilst it may be arguable that there are natural inclinations that lead women to generally be less inclined toward the sciences, there are three important points that impact on this. The first is that even if in the general case women have a lower potential ability in a field (emphasising 'if' and 'general' especially), very few careers really demand a persons maximum potential. Just because a man may be more likely to win the noble prize for maths, doesn't mean either gender isn't going to make an excellent maths teacher. Indeed, given other general traits that women tend to have over men, they may prove better maths teachers as a whole. Note that this is only if we allow the GP's belief in gender-divisions, which is not proved to the best of my knowledge.
The second important point is that even if such tendencies do exist, they are exaggerated by society and this can be countered. To illustrate, if women were less inclined toward maths than men, to the hypothetical degree of 40% less likely to be interested in it, does that mean you get 40% less girls choosing maths? No - because girl X may look at what everyone else is choosing and say to herself "well my friends are choosing English and I'm going to be surrounded by boys with hardly any girls." Bang - discincentive! This is a bad thing if able people are being dissuaded from studying something due to other factors. My Computer Science course had about a hundred people in the year and around five of them were girls. Do you think a girl notices that? Yep - you can be sure of it. Plenty of girls wouldn't let that stop them, others would. So if there's a means to counter a social discincentive to study, perhaps through some sort of marketing, publicity or assistance scheme, then that reduces an innefficiency in our society.
The third important point, when it comes to taking account of the any possible general distinctions in ability, across whatever distinction you draw, is that the difference in ability would have to be huge before it became efficient to discriminate based on that difference. Not just because potential caps on ability are irrelevant in a society where few reach their potential and dedication and consistency are the qualities most needed by employers, but because even if there was a difference in actual ability to the level of - absurd hypothetical - 75% of women candidates being less able than men, it still wouldn't be efficient on the part of an employer to make gender a distinguishing factor between candidates - you'd lose more than you gained. Therefore if there are means of countering any cultural tendency to make such distinctions, they should be found and considered. It's established that negative stereotypes form more easily than positive ones and that negative stereotypes do not require a statistically accurate basis. Therefore to be efficient, a society should actively counter negative stereotypes where needed.
Now much of the above allowed the GP's belief that there was a provable difference in ability between genders, which is still open to debate. Disentangling any biological differences from cultural ones is extremely difficult and I have doubts that it has been shown that there are such real differences. It's all too easy to prove what you are looking for. The GP also slipped in a line about there being provable racial differences which I definitely have never seen good evidence for. All the above arguments would be relevant if there were, however.
Our societies have a desperate need for educated pe
Oh.... doh! "Sun raeder". I salute you. I have rarely seen such an elegant correction as this fabaceaen-themed mockery. I'll try not to mung my spelling in the future.;):D
You may just be going for the Funny mod, but as it happens, I read the Independent. I'm serious though, I think a lot of people, particularly men, in the UK are very inhibited in expressing any affection or interest in children and wary of working with them, because they are afraid to be thought of as a peadophile. There is a lot of fear here and people are very familiar with the power of rumour and suspicion. Everyone recalls the story of the poor peadiatrican who's house was attacked by a mob in the middle of the night and who fled in terror when a rumour went around that she was a peadophile.
Well that certainly beats the lines I was going to post:
Ulysses, Ulysses, soaring through all the galaxies, in search of Earth, flying into the night!
Ulysses, Ulysses, fighting evil and tyranny with all his heart and with all of his might!
Ulysseee-eee-eees, no-one else can do the things you do!
Ulysseee-eee-eees, like a bolt of thunder from the blue!
Ulysseee-eee-eees, always fighting all the evil forces, bringing peace and justice to all!
It's me Nono, small robot you know, friend of Ulysses!
Uly-eeessseess!
It's me Nono, small robot you know, friend of Ulysses!
Ulysses, Ulysses, could not find his destiny, leaving earth such a long time ago!
(AIR GUITAR)
Clothes serve two functions: the practical - warmth, pockets, etc - and the social. The social aspect is to favour those with wealth and power. If you have a king who is chubby and forty, and a common boy who is seventeen and fit and good looking, then the latter will make the former feel inadequate, unattractive, etc. And of course, we don't need to resort to kings and commoners - it's just an illustration.Clothes allow the wealthy to establish a new system of sexual signals, causing attraction to power to be based not on obvious physical ability but on the tokens of wealth. And of course nakedness must be denigrated to support that.
I don't know why there's a flamebait mod on this. I am British, I live here, and I can tell you that there's a ridiculous amount of groundless fear and hysteria in this country. The article saying that they are struggling to find people to work with children because people are terrified someone will think they are a peadophile is spot on. I don't know how this country is in comparison to other countries, so maybe that's where the flamebait comes in, but it seems to me that things are pretty bad here and we need to find a way to make it acceptable to actually like children again and enjoy spending time with them, even when you don't have an "excuse" such as being their parent.
I suspect that all the Founding Fathers have been spinning like bobbins on a sewing machine for some time now. A little more angular momentum wont make any difference at this point.
Slashdot Mirror
Prostitution isn't a victimless crime. It could be, and sometimes is, but the general case is that it's gross exploitation and if you're looking for a victim, the prostitute is it. Sometimes a student or someone will make a money by selling themselves for sex. That's their choice. But for most prostitutes, the circumstances are so bad that you can't really apply the word "choice" any more. The reality of prostitution is a grim one and more complicated than someone making a decision to trade sex for money - it's surrounded by and part of a whole mesh of other crimes and abuses. I don't know about the USA, but the plight of immigrant girls from Eastern Europe forced into prostitution not just in countries like Turkey (where the slang term for prostitute is "a Russian") but even here in the UK, is widespread and as nasty as it gets.
We can debate the nature of the laws on prostitution, as well as how and when they are applied, but to consider prostitution to be a victimless crime and that the objection to it is founded in Christian puritanism, is except in a few cases, wrong. It may be that the puritanical attitudes that accompany Christianity and Islam make the situation worse for prostitutes in defining it as a shameful activity, but, although I think trading your body for money is usually damaging for reasons far more fundamental than any religion our species has evolved, it's a separate debate. If you want to see the victim in prostitution she (or he) is right there in front of you.
That's very interesting. Because I don't like to state (or repeat) things that I haven't verified, are you able to actually provide some compiled statistics that show this, as you say? I'd like to see such data and if it looks valid, this is a new angle I can consider.
It's possible. But I worked my way through all the shops I could find when I lived there and was always buying whatever was most expensive and never found anything that tasted nice. I did find a cheese that had jalopeno mixed into it which was at least inventive, though.
Speaking as a European, I have, and really no offence, found US cheese to range from bland for the better stuff, to disgusting for the most mass-market ranges. And the thing you call processed cheese is beyond description all together. I'm sorry, I really am - the people of the USA have contributed to culture and science in many, many ways - but your cheese is the foulest thing that anyone has ever had the gaul to pass off as food. I tried pretty much all of it until I found somewhere that imported proper English cheddar which I bought with great relief.
I guess it's just one of those things.
1and1 had the worst support and worst financial services department I have ever experienced. I had an extremly bad experience with them and I warn people of them at every opportunity. You're okay with them so long as everything goes by the book. Once you pick up the phone it goes to Hell in a big way. I'm with Fasthosts now who offer MySQL 5.0 by default and then of course there's getting your own server if you really need it. It's pretty cheap as a business cost.
Not to mention that my employers have started (without any process of considering implications whatsoever) started to use Google services for all their meeting arrangements, annual leave sheets, some internal email communications. I imagine some other places are doing the same. I wonder if it will get to the point where having your Google account suspended will be cause for a dismissal. At any rate, not everyone has the option of not using Google. I imagine the number of such people will increase.
Apologies for replying to my own post, but I have an addendum. I'm not at all sure that this hypothetical argument is not just an attempt to slip in the underlying premise which is that women are statistically less capable at science. Of the women that I have known who were scientists / studied a science, they were all to my recollection on the scale of competent to very talented. Are these a self-selected bunch? Of course - so are the males. The question is what influences that self-selection? You say you don't care whether that "what" is a result of biological or cultural factors. I say it's a crime for anyone who has an inclination to studying the wonders and joys of Science to be discouraged from doing so because our culture does not encourage them to pursue that interest.
I can answer most of your post with one point. It very much matters whether differences are biological or cultural because biological ones may be very difficult to change on our timespans, but cultural ones can be changed very rapidly. Culture can and should be changed if it leads to an improvement in society. And as to biological differences, your argument works along the same principle as saying that only some people have the capacity to be really strong, therefore nobody else should train to be moderately strong. Even people who aren't going to revolutionise mathematics can make excellent maths teachers. We need more people qualified in science - the Western world is filling up with Sociologists and Media Studies graduates. I quite frankly don't care if someone isn't Stephen Hawking, so long as they make a reasonable scientist capable of research, lab work or starting a new generation on the path to science, my society can gain from that person studying it. And even if you maintain your belief that women are inherently less inclined toward science, you're surely not trying to argue that the difference is so marked that most couldn't study and learn it if they chose? It's a career and that career pays money and it should be an option with no more barriers to entry than any other career other than ability.
I don't understand your point about "not discounting culture" because you are the one that is saying you do not care about cultural factors. I am addressing that there are such factors and pointing out that they reduce efficiency in society if people who are potential scientists are dissuaded from that career because of those factors. Pretty simple. You say you don't see why it's a bad thing, this is why.
That's not the case. There have been numerous studies done on intelligence and race. None have found a supportable difference to my knowledge and it is an area that I have followed to some extent. Even if there was a difference in potential "intelligence," the point from the previous post stands which is that the difference would have to be huge (to the degree that it was not just scientifically measurable but blatantly undeniable to all society) before it became more efficient to profile applicants based on race, rather than judging individually. That is not the case. Discrimination based on race is woefully inaccurate and inefficient for society.
You may not think it is fair, but that's science. You are welcome to try and show that there are differences in intelligence between races. It's all going to be irrelevant after another century of interbreeding, but I doubt you'd find anything anyway. Many people have tried to prove a difference in intelligence. They keep failing. There are also a couple of errors in your statement. Firstly stereotypes are not used to "justify prejudice and bigotry" - stereotypes are prejudice. Prejudice means pre-judge. It's judging someone not on what they are but on their category, in this case negative racial stereotypes. The other problem is that it has been shown that the human mind more easily and rapidly forms negative stereotypes than positive ones and that this leads to statistically unsupportable stereotypes. Everyone should be aware of this tendency within themselves and distrust any stereotypes they find themselves establishing or acquiring. An intelligent person should not need a stereotype to help them judge a person they meet.
My thoughts,
H.
What? Someone who doesn't know much about Linux making a decision what kernel version to go with? No offence, but I find it hard to believe.
No, it really isn't. Are you seriously suggesting that someone is going to express an interest in Linux and then lose that interest if they happen to see the words "vmlinuz-2.6.20-16" instead of say, "vmlinuz-2.6.16-06-08" ? Rubbish! The AC below has a better point.
You have a confusion of scale. It is not the parent poster that needs to change his actions to get a different result, it is the american people. Get a reasonable number to vote for a third party candidate and the game will change dramatically. That should be the goal of anyone wishing to change the US by voting.
A woman in the engineering field may feel isolated and cut off from female companionship and the men there may think she's there to be picked up.
Obama has not yet done much you can use to judge whether his politics are the same as yours. He has, however, said a lot of things which is not the same as actions. Only time will tell if the two match when he becomes President.
This change-tracking by the McCain campaign is a great service to the public. It will help catch any attempts to shift "beliefs" according to public mood. Hopefully the Obamites will respond in kind and then we, the public, will get the benefit of an overall increase politicians being monitored for duplicity.
Oh please! Nobody in a position to be making decisions based on kernel version should be put off by a number like 2.6.26. Can you honestly see a PHB in ever being allowed by the developers to be in a position to say, "No, I don't think we should go with this kernel, lets go with another one." The closest anyone who would be bothered by "2.6.26" gets to making this decision is saying "We will use that one called Hairy Hardon - I like the sound of that one." Kernel versions are off the radar as far as marketing goes.
Nobody wins in a war. Both sides win when they realise what they have in common and working together, free trade, etc. begin.
The thing is, and I'm in the UK and I'm guessing you're in the UK but I expect it is similar, the economic model has changed. Since the Second World War, it has shifted from a society where one earner can support a family and partner (irrelevant of gender) to one where two earners are the standard. That's much more so because birth control allowed women to enter the workforce like never before (it's no longer a choice between job and sex, which quite frankly, would have wiped out the male workforce entirely). This means that for a decent standard of living, there is a disincentive to have children which take away from work. And society needs children - our populations are verging on decline, ageing, and offset only by immigration. Society needs employers to tolerate female employees having children. Government compensation to employers is probably the best way of achieving that. Make having children financially viable again.
Ha! That's great to hear. I had a friend who told me what he wanted in a girl was someone little and submissive who needed him to look after her. I told him there were plenty of girls like that, and that my children would conquer his children.
The vaguely relevant point? I've met several girls who consciously or unconsciously limited themselves because they were afraid of intimidating potential boyfriends and it's always gratifying to find a girl that doesn't let that happen. I always wondered at those meek, underachieving girls if they really accepted they were just going to attract men that were afraid of them?
Exactly. Quotas enforce a distinction based on race, gender or whatever and the desired end state is no distinctions based on these irrelevant things. Now there are positive ways that you can address the balance, like funding programs to encourage and assist under-represented groups to enter such areas. This preserves choice but recognises that there are barriers to these groups which need to be overcome.
In reference to the GP, whilst it may be arguable that there are natural inclinations that lead women to generally be less inclined toward the sciences, there are three important points that impact on this. The first is that even if in the general case women have a lower potential ability in a field (emphasising 'if' and 'general' especially), very few careers really demand a persons maximum potential. Just because a man may be more likely to win the noble prize for maths, doesn't mean either gender isn't going to make an excellent maths teacher. Indeed, given other general traits that women tend to have over men, they may prove better maths teachers as a whole. Note that this is only if we allow the GP's belief in gender-divisions, which is not proved to the best of my knowledge.
The second important point is that even if such tendencies do exist, they are exaggerated by society and this can be countered. To illustrate, if women were less inclined toward maths than men, to the hypothetical degree of 40% less likely to be interested in it, does that mean you get 40% less girls choosing maths? No - because girl X may look at what everyone else is choosing and say to herself "well my friends are choosing English and I'm going to be surrounded by boys with hardly any girls." Bang - discincentive! This is a bad thing if able people are being dissuaded from studying something due to other factors. My Computer Science course had about a hundred people in the year and around five of them were girls. Do you think a girl notices that? Yep - you can be sure of it. Plenty of girls wouldn't let that stop them, others would. So if there's a means to counter a social discincentive to study, perhaps through some sort of marketing, publicity or assistance scheme, then that reduces an innefficiency in our society.
The third important point, when it comes to taking account of the any possible general distinctions in ability, across whatever distinction you draw, is that the difference in ability would have to be huge before it became efficient to discriminate based on that difference. Not just because potential caps on ability are irrelevant in a society where few reach their potential and dedication and consistency are the qualities most needed by employers, but because even if there was a difference in actual ability to the level of - absurd hypothetical - 75% of women candidates being less able than men, it still wouldn't be efficient on the part of an employer to make gender a distinguishing factor between candidates - you'd lose more than you gained. Therefore if there are means of countering any cultural tendency to make such distinctions, they should be found and considered. It's established that negative stereotypes form more easily than positive ones and that negative stereotypes do not require a statistically accurate basis. Therefore to be efficient, a society should actively counter negative stereotypes where needed.
Now much of the above allowed the GP's belief that there was a provable difference in ability between genders, which is still open to debate. Disentangling any biological differences from cultural ones is extremely difficult and I have doubts that it has been shown that there are such real differences. It's all too easy to prove what you are looking for. The GP also slipped in a line about there being provable racial differences which I definitely have never seen good evidence for. All the above arguments would be relevant if there were, however.
Our societies have a desperate need for educated pe
Oh.... doh! "Sun raeder". I salute you. I have rarely seen such an elegant correction as this fabaceaen-themed mockery. I'll try not to mung my spelling in the future.
You may just be going for the Funny mod, but as it happens, I read the Independent. I'm serious though, I think a lot of people, particularly men, in the UK are very inhibited in expressing any affection or interest in children and wary of working with them, because they are afraid to be thought of as a peadophile. There is a lot of fear here and people are very familiar with the power of rumour and suspicion. Everyone recalls the story of the poor peadiatrican who's house was attacked by a mob in the middle of the night and who fled in terror when a rumour went around that she was a peadophile.
Fear is inhibiting people, I guarantee it.
Well that certainly beats the lines I was going to post:
Ulysses, Ulysses, soaring through all the galaxies, in search of Earth, flying into the night!
Ulysses, Ulysses, fighting evil and tyranny with all his heart and with all of his might!
Ulysseee-eee-eees, no-one else can do the things you do!
Ulysseee-eee-eees, like a bolt of thunder from the blue!
Ulysseee-eee-eees, always fighting all the evil forces, bringing peace and justice to all!
It's me Nono, small robot you know, friend of Ulysses!
Uly-eeessseess!
It's me Nono, small robot you know, friend of Ulysses!
Ulysses, Ulysses, could not find his destiny, leaving earth such a long time ago! (AIR GUITAR)
Clothes serve two functions: the practical - warmth, pockets, etc - and the social. The social aspect is to favour those with wealth and power. If you have a king who is chubby and forty, and a common boy who is seventeen and fit and good looking, then the latter will make the former feel inadequate, unattractive, etc. And of course, we don't need to resort to kings and commoners - it's just an illustration.Clothes allow the wealthy to establish a new system of sexual signals, causing attraction to power to be based not on obvious physical ability but on the tokens of wealth. And of course nakedness must be denigrated to support that.
I don't know why there's a flamebait mod on this. I am British, I live here, and I can tell you that there's a ridiculous amount of groundless fear and hysteria in this country. The article saying that they are struggling to find people to work with children because people are terrified someone will think they are a peadophile is spot on. I don't know how this country is in comparison to other countries, so maybe that's where the flamebait comes in, but it seems to me that things are pretty bad here and we need to find a way to make it acceptable to actually like children again and enjoy spending time with them, even when you don't have an "excuse" such as being their parent.
Sadly there is also more spam than ever before. I'm still looking for a good way to filter it all.
I suspect that all the Founding Fathers have been spinning like bobbins on a sewing machine for some time now. A little more angular momentum wont make any difference at this point.