The way I understand it (which may be flawed), when Wal-Mart caves in, it caves in to market pressures. When they 'censor,' they are censoring what they are willing to sell, not what the artist can produce. Wal-Mart's refusal to push somebody else's idea of art does not constitute censorship, despite what your article says.
Your link makes it sound as though there's some Church Lady in the back of every Wal-Mart Distribution Center who is bleeping out the F-Bombs on each individual CD that comes her way. And her neighbor with an airbrush, blurring out all the nasty cover art. No, they come to Wal-Mart pre-censored, and not by Wal-Mart executives. If you want to blam someone, blame the artists who are willing to violate their artistic integrity for the sales boost they get from having their albums sold at Wal-Mart.
Don't kid yourself. Amazon doing what they think is best for themselves, as is Wal-Mart.
Well, I've found that to be true, and also untrue. Let me explain: I heard one of these interminable discussions once and decided to find out for myself. I went to Apple.com and priced a sweet MBP and then went to 1toppc.com and priced an ASUS notebook, configuring it to be as close as possible, and found that I would save well over $100. I didn't save the exact specs or savings, though, so I may be a little off, plus I did this months ago. That's why I have to disagree with you.
Why I agree with you is that I find the Mac OS to be superior. I just like it. I wish, oh how I wish, they would let me put it on my Dell at work (and have it work!).
The other reason I find myself forced to agree with you is that my PowerBook is lighter and still has better battery life than any other lappy the same age. In fact, if I ever raise the money to repair the screen I'm gonna make it my computer I take with me to conferences and stuff: It's lighter, better battery life, and doesn't play games to distract me from what I should be doing.
It seems to really come down to a matter of preference. I don't like Apple as a company: they piss me off with their stupid commercials and their (successful) efforts to hijack the term PC for their own purposes and their (successful) efforts to turn themselves into some kind of religion and their nightmarish tech support (at least for the people I work for, they say it's simply too expensive to work with (but I have my doubts as to their objectivity, I think they just hate Macs)), but if I had enough money I'd buy a MacBookPro. If my the IT people over at the main office weren't punks, I'd have a MacBook on my desk right now (If Techno-Nathan at the Tech Office is reading this, I don't include you in this 'punk' designation.).
"Or, if you are pro-life, you have to take care of a single mother's child. For the twenty years or so it takes to raise a child through college."
They already do this. Several friends of mine are into this. In fact, there are huge waiting lists, and they pay like $20,000. Some people I know actually flew to Taiwan, where it is apparently a simpler process.
"The military have had aerial reconnaissance at their disposal since the first balloons were invented. They have much better aerial imaging than Google gives out, they can see from which points their barracks may be attacked, where are the houses and alleys that can be used by eventual attackers."
That's not the point. The point is that the military would like every possible advantage over the enemy. Limiting the enemy's resources for battle planning would add to the advantage.
Where's the proof? Proof that sex is worse for kids than violence? I doubt we'll ever see that, partly because they overlap, like with rape and molestation, as was said elsewhere on this thread.
If I were in charge of the school, I would have not had that sub come back. If I were in charge of the school district, I would make sure that sub didn't come back to sub anywhere in my district. If I were the District Attorney, I would not prosecute her. Cleary, some of the parents of some of these students disagree with me. Apparently the jury does, too.
I would not have the substitute back in my school because I think that porn is bad, and not just for kids. I wager the majority of the parents in my area would agree with me on this. In fact, I bet the parents would demand the sub be fired. I would not press charges, because from what I read the sub was not "showing" porn, it just kinda happened. The kids were not permanently harmed by this, from what little we can tell from the article. I feel we are not getting the whole story, but I am betting there are some overanxious parents.
As for the teenager in your linked article, I certainly agree that it's excessive. I don't understand why they gave the kid 10 years. I don't think he should have gotten off, but 10 years seems like a lot for a minor.
Well, there's an argument to be made that sex is more harmful to children than violence.
Violence (participating in it, not seeing it necessarily) is less likely to be repeated by the child. Example: a 5th grader gets addicted to porn, and molests his baby sister. This happens. More than you think. And when it does, the victim can be (and usually is) scarred for life. Example: that same 5th grader gets addicted to Naruto, and comes to school and beats up a 1st grader. This doesn't really happen very often at all, but when it does, it is right out in the open and easy to handle, and the 1st grader is not scarred for life. In fact, you can replace Naruto with something REALLY violent, like The Matrix or Saving Private Ryan, and you still don't have repeats of murders.
So the violence/sex comparison doesn't really work. The consequences of deviant violent behavior seem to have fewer long-term consequences, but they are permanent (murder, mutilation); and the consequences of deviant sexual behavior seem almost as permanent, and they are almost all long-term.
As for how this "sex is harmful to see for children" came about, people who have been watching children (teachers, school counselors, parents) recognize that sex disturbs children somehow. And it's not just that they are more comfortable around it, it's that they don't understand it. You have a kid out on the playground humping a basketball hoop or playing with a tree's breasts, and you have a disturbed kid. You have a kid who is not 'hung up on these preconcieved notions of sex' and you have a kid who will be guilty of sexual harassment before she leaves the third grade.
To answer your question, the article says she was impairing the morals of a child. You don't seem to believe that pornography impairs the morals of a child, despite the fact that it can impair the morals of adults, who know all about sex and are physically and mentally prepared to deal with the stresses of sexuality. Still 40 years seems very excessive, so I went to the article and it seems like 40 years is just the maximum allowable sentence. I'm sure she'll get a lot less (at least I hope so).
Plus, is there such a thing as a power plant that doesn't spew toxins? I guess there's solar, but then you're supporting the toxin-spewing manufacturer of solar panels, so you're stuck with wind power (which kills birds, spoils the view, and messes up local wind patterns).
The point in the original post was that whatever the GF does is guaranteed to tick off someone, somewhere.
...those religious whackos who demand that advertisers pull their ads off of "offensive" programming. I suppose the best solution is to spend your money where you see fit, and let the other people decide how to spend theirs.
I doubt very much that it's the whackos' demands that get the results. What gets results is that the advertisers see that the "whackos" will no longer "see fit" to spend their money that way. The fact that the whackos band together and pool their spending is what's effective.
I hope I understood you correctly. It sounded like you hadn't taken that into account.
first step is to get rid of the idea of the education major and have CS majors teach CS, math majors teach math, engineers teach...
In my state (Utah), you can not teach in a high school without a degree in the subject you are to teach. They have bent the rules, but in the past couple of years it has become much more strict. I understand that there is still some bending of the rules in small, rural schools, but it is still discouraged.
In Utah, if you major in education, you can teach grades 1-8. In practice (at least in my county) that doesn't include math. If you want to teach anything higher than Math 6 you have to go back to school and get an endorsement. Also, if you major in Special Education (usually dual major with Education) you can teach special classes K-12. Minors or emphases you take in college can count for something as well. For example, a Spanish minor might get you certified to teach up through grade 9 in Spanish, and a Math emphasis would certify you to teach Pre-Algebra (or maybe it's Algebra 1).
If you majored in Math or something like that and later decide to get a teaching certificate, you have to go back to school to take some Education classes. You learn about stuff like content area literacy, classroom management, and so forth.
So my point is that you already have what you want: CS majors are already teaching CS, etc., at least in secondary schools in Utah. I think implementing that sort of thing in elementary schools would be very difficult.
He's not suggesting any such thing. Since he explicitly states that our attitudes towards sex increase promiscuity and teen pregnancies, and that our 'taboo' attitudes make behaviors worse, the only thing I can come up with is that the GP believes that our obviously more open society is not nearly open enough. He therefore must believe that only in a society of total openness and permissiveness will this behavior decrease.
If you have a better way to reconcile what he said with the obvious facts, let me know. Likewise, if you have some better facts than I have, I should probably be corrected.
The REAL questions I have are these:
1. Is this man an employer?
2. What would he do to an employee who was hooked on cocaine?
That is only because some people are easily fed "trigger" words or phrases and easily trained to react a certain way whenever they are used. Reasonable people understand that social justice does not equal Communism.
People who advocate 'Social Justice' use the term to produce a specific reaction: support. Many people who hear the words are easily trained to react a certain way (support) whenever they are used. Reasonable people understand that 'Social Justice' does not necessarily equal justice. It is not their fault that they react defensively when they are presented with meaningless words as a cloak for the same old ideas. We have indeed been trained to automatically mistrust high-sounding words.
Plus, people often have different ideas what justice means.
The point is not about guns, though, or even about changing the Constitution. The Constitution is meant to be changed. The real point is about how it is changed.
That article you linked to is fascinating in many ways.
Besides the statement you quoted, I found this:
IF the current trend continues we will see drastic consequences in our own lifetime.
That's the problem with systems as mind-bogglingly complex as the ocean: you can't count on current trends continuing. I've recently been studying weather forecasting, and it sounds like they can't have any accuracy at all past like 14 days. They have learned that they can not count on the current trends continuing.
The wise course of action to take regarding this information is to watch it carefully and avoid jumping on bandwagons. I suppose, though, that if you have to take a step, it would probably be wise to err on the side of caution. That's easy for me to say, though, as my family's well-being isn't tied to my success as a fisherman.
Don't forget Jim Matheson, my Congressman, a Democrat. He won last time, and I expect he'll win again.
But don't expect Pete Ashdown to win this one. Sorry.
I've done what I could to get rid of Hatch. I even went to the county convention to cast my vote where it really counts, but to no avail. If Hatch doesn't win, I'll be shocked.
Are you intentionally ignoring my point (and the direction the discussion was taking), or is this simply a knee-jerk reaction to any skepticism about whether or not socialized health care is a good idea?
Sooooooo, are you saying I should get rid of my ID badge I wear at work?
No, seriously I understand you are frightened of the government getting too big for its britches, I just wonder if you really think that ID badges at work are a bad idea, or just for the government.
I hope you are three times as frightened at the idea of the government taking over health care (I mean even more than it already is).
Not necessarily. Let's make a bad car analogy. If I am a superdriver, and know my car inside and out, and have been driving this car for years, and know every nut and bolt, I am a good driver. If something minor goes wrong, I will notice.
Conversely, if I do not take care of my car, then when I lose my muffler or knock a hole in the bottom of my transmission, I might not even notice, or maybe I'll notice and think, "Oh, a new smell. Cool!"
A better analogy would be an olympic runner vs. me. The olympian might notice if his shoes are a little too heavy, but I probably wouldn't.
Slashdot Mirror
No fires. The flight crews waited in the B-17 until they were rescued. The only fires documented were the ones they made themselves from oxygen tanks.
Or are you saying that these good things are actually being reported?
Your link makes it sound as though there's some Church Lady in the back of every Wal-Mart Distribution Center who is bleeping out the F-Bombs on each individual CD that comes her way. And her neighbor with an airbrush, blurring out all the nasty cover art. No, they come to Wal-Mart pre-censored, and not by Wal-Mart executives. If you want to blam someone, blame the artists who are willing to violate their artistic integrity for the sales boost they get from having their albums sold at Wal-Mart.
Don't kid yourself. Amazon doing what they think is best for themselves, as is Wal-Mart.
Why I agree with you is that I find the Mac OS to be superior. I just like it. I wish, oh how I wish, they would let me put it on my Dell at work (and have it work!).
The other reason I find myself forced to agree with you is that my PowerBook is lighter and still has better battery life than any other lappy the same age. In fact, if I ever raise the money to repair the screen I'm gonna make it my computer I take with me to conferences and stuff: It's lighter, better battery life, and doesn't play games to distract me from what I should be doing.
It seems to really come down to a matter of preference. I don't like Apple as a company: they piss me off with their stupid commercials and their (successful) efforts to hijack the term PC for their own purposes and their (successful) efforts to turn themselves into some kind of religion and their nightmarish tech support (at least for the people I work for, they say it's simply too expensive to work with (but I have my doubts as to their objectivity, I think they just hate Macs)), but if I had enough money I'd buy a MacBookPro. If my the IT people over at the main office weren't punks, I'd have a MacBook on my desk right now (If Techno-Nathan at the Tech Office is reading this, I don't include you in this 'punk' designation.).
They already do this. Several friends of mine are into this. In fact, there are huge waiting lists, and they pay like $20,000. Some people I know actually flew to Taiwan, where it is apparently a simpler process.
"The military have had aerial reconnaissance at their disposal since the first balloons were invented. They have much better aerial imaging than Google gives out, they can see from which points their barracks may be attacked, where are the houses and alleys that can be used by eventual attackers."
That's not the point. The point is that the military would like every possible advantage over the enemy. Limiting the enemy's resources for battle planning would add to the advantage.
If I were in charge of the school, I would have not had that sub come back. If I were in charge of the school district, I would make sure that sub didn't come back to sub anywhere in my district. If I were the District Attorney, I would not prosecute her. Cleary, some of the parents of some of these students disagree with me. Apparently the jury does, too.
I would not have the substitute back in my school because I think that porn is bad, and not just for kids. I wager the majority of the parents in my area would agree with me on this. In fact, I bet the parents would demand the sub be fired. I would not press charges, because from what I read the sub was not "showing" porn, it just kinda happened. The kids were not permanently harmed by this, from what little we can tell from the article. I feel we are not getting the whole story, but I am betting there are some overanxious parents.
As for the teenager in your linked article, I certainly agree that it's excessive. I don't understand why they gave the kid 10 years. I don't think he should have gotten off, but 10 years seems like a lot for a minor.
Violence (participating in it, not seeing it necessarily) is less likely to be repeated by the child. Example: a 5th grader gets addicted to porn, and molests his baby sister. This happens. More than you think. And when it does, the victim can be (and usually is) scarred for life.
Example: that same 5th grader gets addicted to Naruto, and comes to school and beats up a 1st grader. This doesn't really happen very often at all, but when it does, it is right out in the open and easy to handle, and the 1st grader is not scarred for life. In fact, you can replace Naruto with something REALLY violent, like The Matrix or Saving Private Ryan, and you still don't have repeats of murders.
So the violence/sex comparison doesn't really work. The consequences of deviant violent behavior seem to have fewer long-term consequences, but they are permanent (murder, mutilation); and the consequences of deviant sexual behavior seem almost as permanent, and they are almost all long-term.
As for how this "sex is harmful to see for children" came about, people who have been watching children (teachers, school counselors, parents) recognize that sex disturbs children somehow. And it's not just that they are more comfortable around it, it's that they don't understand it. You have a kid out on the playground humping a basketball hoop or playing with a tree's breasts, and you have a disturbed kid. You have a kid who is not 'hung up on these preconcieved notions of sex' and you have a kid who will be guilty of sexual harassment before she leaves the third grade.
To answer your question, the article says she was impairing the morals of a child. You don't seem to believe that pornography impairs the morals of a child, despite the fact that it can impair the morals of adults, who know all about sex and are physically and mentally prepared to deal with the stresses of sexuality. Still 40 years seems very excessive, so I went to the article and it seems like 40 years is just the maximum allowable sentence. I'm sure she'll get a lot less (at least I hope so).
Oh, how I wish I could take credit for that one. I got it off Jon Stewart.
The point in the original post was that whatever the GF does is guaranteed to tick off someone, somewhere.
I hope I understood you correctly. It sounded like you hadn't taken that into account.
In my state (Utah), you can not teach in a high school without a degree in the subject you are to teach. They have bent the rules, but in the past couple of years it has become much more strict. I understand that there is still some bending of the rules in small, rural schools, but it is still discouraged.
In Utah, if you major in education, you can teach grades 1-8. In practice (at least in my county) that doesn't include math. If you want to teach anything higher than Math 6 you have to go back to school and get an endorsement. Also, if you major in Special Education (usually dual major with Education) you can teach special classes K-12. Minors or emphases you take in college can count for something as well. For example, a Spanish minor might get you certified to teach up through grade 9 in Spanish, and a Math emphasis would certify you to teach Pre-Algebra (or maybe it's Algebra 1).
If you majored in Math or something like that and later decide to get a teaching certificate, you have to go back to school to take some Education classes. You learn about stuff like content area literacy, classroom management, and so forth.
So my point is that you already have what you want: CS majors are already teaching CS, etc., at least in secondary schools in Utah. I think implementing that sort of thing in elementary schools would be very difficult.
If you have a better way to reconcile what he said with the obvious facts, let me know. Likewise, if you have some better facts than I have, I should probably be corrected.
The REAL questions I have are these:
1. Is this man an employer?
2. What would he do to an employee who was hooked on cocaine?
"but not your claim to being a scientist, as scientists only believe in that which is proven, and you believed even though it was unproven."
The fact that you use the word 'proven' like this demonstrates that you are no scientist, or perhaps only that you are not a very good one.
My car is a '90. Is yours newer? That might be nice.
If you get more than $36,000/year, I'll take some of that, because I make less, and have a family.
Also, any video games you aren't using anymore.
And a small Mr. Pibb.
If I have misunderstood you, please explain.
People who advocate 'Social Justice' use the term to produce a specific reaction: support. Many people who hear the words are easily trained to react a certain way (support) whenever they are used. Reasonable people understand that 'Social Justice' does not necessarily equal justice. It is not their fault that they react defensively when they are presented with meaningless words as a cloak for the same old ideas. We have indeed been trained to automatically mistrust high-sounding words.
Plus, people often have different ideas what justice means.
The point is not about guns, though, or even about changing the Constitution. The Constitution is meant to be changed. The real point is about how it is changed.
But seriously, maybe they meant that Marks & Spencer makes (make?) ugly suits. That's really what I thought when I read the summary the first time.
Upon further reflection (like the 20 seconds it took me to write that), I think you're right.
Besides the statement you quoted, I found this:
That's the problem with systems as mind-bogglingly complex as the ocean: you can't count on current trends continuing. I've recently been studying weather forecasting, and it sounds like they can't have any accuracy at all past like 14 days. They have learned that they can not count on the current trends continuing.
The wise course of action to take regarding this information is to watch it carefully and avoid jumping on bandwagons. I suppose, though, that if you have to take a step, it would probably be wise to err on the side of caution. That's easy for me to say, though, as my family's well-being isn't tied to my success as a fisherman.
Bison.
Maybe there ought to only be laws against lying about having a license or something. That's a tough issue for me. I haven't decided.
But don't expect Pete Ashdown to win this one. Sorry.
I've done what I could to get rid of Hatch. I even went to the county convention to cast my vote where it really counts, but to no avail. If Hatch doesn't win, I'll be shocked.
Gaim 2.0 supposedly supports Bonjour (or Rendezvous, or whatever it's called). Has anyone ever gotten that to work?
No, seriously I understand you are frightened of the government getting too big for its britches, I just wonder if you really think that ID badges at work are a bad idea, or just for the government.
I hope you are three times as frightened at the idea of the government taking over health care (I mean even more than it already is).
Conversely, if I do not take care of my car, then when I lose my muffler or knock a hole in the bottom of my transmission, I might not even notice, or maybe I'll notice and think, "Oh, a new smell. Cool!"
A better analogy would be an olympic runner vs. me. The olympian might notice if his shoes are a little too heavy, but I probably wouldn't.