The endless thread seems to be all caught up in British electoral politics lately…they all sound like a bunch of parliament groupies.
Carry on.
(Current totals: 10,140 entries with 981,135 comments.)
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Hmmm. Shall we start this one out with Bill Maher pointing out a few oddities in the terrorists-versus-South Park controversy?
http://videos.mediaite.com/video/Bill-Maher-Slams-Muslims-On-HBO
Maher also takes a couple of excellent swipes at mormons and at Fred Phelps.
Wow… Professor Myers found a Monty Python sketch I hadn’t seen before (albeit a very short one).
I must go offline now and get back to revising administrative law, though. And consume some more caffeine, lest I collapse at my desk from lack of sleep.
As for British politics, the only event that’s stuck with me from the recent campaign was Gordon Brown calling a bigot a bigot … on an open microphone. I liked that. She was a bigot.
The part where Gordon Brown had to visit the bigot, kiss her ass and then announce to the world that he had kissed her ass … not so amusing.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/may/02/conservatives-philippa-stroud-gay-cure
British politics you say? Ya, she wants to pray away the gay.
Would you like some more bile with your coffee? Here’s Ann Coulter defending the new anti-immigration bill passed in Arizona. Coulter starts out with some unintended irony, making a comment about “airhead celebrities” lying about the law.
I’ll still can’t figure out Coulter’s logic, but she somehow also blames the ethical failures of Goldman Sachs on Democrats.
Another memorable comment from Ann Coulter, “… chubby coeds who believe in global warming…”
If I may borrow from the immortal Frank Zappa: Looking for logic in Ann Coulter’s rants is like fishing about architecture.
Food. Just because.
Fresh Figs with Bacon & Goat Cheese
4 to 6 regular smoked bacon slices
12 small fresh ripe figs, such as white or Calimyrna, halved lengthwise
About 1 tablespoon aged balsamic vinegar*
1/3 cup (about 1 1/2 ounces) crumbled mild herbed goat cheese
Preheat the oven to 350° F. In a medium heavy skillet, place the bacon slices in a single layer and cook over low to medium-low heat, turning as needed until just beginning to brown. Transfer to a paper towel to drain. Cut each bacon slice into 4 or 6 pieces.
Arrange the figs on a baking sheet, cut sides up. Brush the cut surfaces with balsamic vinegar. Place a piece of bacon on each cut side. Top with a small crumble of cheese. Bake until the figs are warmed, about 8 minutes. The cheese will not melt but may toast a bit. Serve immediately.
*Aged balsamic is best, for the needed sweetness to contrast with the cheese.
For a woman, Ann Coulter has always been remarkably misogynistic. Don’t get me wrong – she doesn’t seem to like men very much either – but she reserves her worst bile for other women. (Remember the “shrieking harpies” comment about the 9/11 widows?)
The sad part is that she almost certainly knows when she’s talking utter bullshit. Unlike most political pundits, she’s actually clever and well-educated: she went to Cornell and U of Michigan, and used to be a constitutional lawyer. She does what she does deliberately because she likes selling books and making lots of money: she’s found a niche, making money out of exploiting prejudice and fear, and she’s making a good living out of it without doing anything that could be considered “work”. (I remember reading that she rarely gets out of bed before noon, though I don’t know whether this is true.)
I get the impression that she just has a massive amount of contempt and disdain for humanity in general (assuming, I suspect, her fans).
Feynmaniac, (#4) that reminded me – BBC ‘merica is airing V for Vendetta tonight. ;D
In other news, layoffs continue to happen.
Perhaps the solution to congress is the same as V’s solution to parliament (spoiler alert!):
Who uses the word “coed” anymore?
As for British politics, the only event that’s stuck with me from the recent campaign was Gordon Brown calling a bigot a bigot – Lynna, OM
From the transcript, the relevant comment from Gillian Duffy is:
“You can’t say anything about the immigrants because you’re saying you’re [sic], but all these eastern Europeans coming in, where are they flocking from?”
I’d say that’s rather mild as bigotry goes (compare with Pat Condell!). However, it does suggest she’s pretty stupid – she doesn’t know where eastern Europeans are “flocking” from? There’s a hint there in your own words, Mrs. Duffy!
Brown has said he interpreted her next remark:
“So what are you going about do about students who are coming in now? You’ve scrapped that now Gordon, to help students go on to university.”
as about east European students, but I think by “coming in now” she just meant “going to university now” – Labour replaced grants with loans, and added tuition fees, and she’s worried about how her grandchildren will manage. However, I suspect Brown was really most pissed off that his photo-op was spoiled by Duffy saying she was now ashamed to say she supported Labour.
@Walton #10 actually coulter isnt that smart. If you have the misfortune to see her on the air you will notice she doesnt really understand the issue but is very clever in heaping sarcastic abuse of whatever she is opposing. Shallow with a little dim on the side.
Knockgoats (or anyone) – out of interest, and too much laziness to research it – How does the British university system now deal with students from Europe? When I went to University it was non-Brits who essentially helped keep the whole system going (predominantly US and Arab students as far as I remember, at least at my Uni – when we found out how much tuition they had to pay we were pretty shocked, compared pretty well with what a US student would pay going to an out of state school).
As a brief answer to the SC in the last incarnation of the thread (lacking time for a huge response now, yard work and impending field work getting in the way, I’m sure all involved are vastly upset) – no, I don’t get paid to argue on the internet – my job at Monsanto is Research Associate for the corn yield nitrgen team – essentially working on two major themes – either getting corn to yield 10% more under normal N application as a function of improved nitrogen metabolism, or, and this is the one that I feel is more important (although sadly vastly less profitable), developing corn which can yield the same as it would under ‘regular’ N application (whatever is advised to hit maximal yield with respect to N application – generally 120-180lb/Ac) but at reduced rates of application (30-60lb less).
More here about the links between the Tories and Christian groups.
Which is also a pretty good description of the unmitigated assholitude manifesting itself as the Grand Old Party. Anything said on any issue can bring abuse.
One example off top of my head:
Keep your tires inflated, it helps save gas. Which was followed by weeks of GOP and Mediahead sniping. No discussion of the validity of the statement. No attempt to meaningfully engage the idea, or challenge the idea. Just seven-year-old kid style temper tantrums which would have gained my kids a very early bedtime. And probably loss of Legos.
I’m sure we’ve had this one before, but since we’re talking about the Conservatives and Coulter.
I’ve always been a Silly, I cannot not vote for the Silly party now. What would my Silly friends think?
I’ve been watching the LDS Church cozy up to Catholics — they needed allies in the war against gay marriage. Now they are cozying up to Muslim clerics in much the same way. Mormon leaders have condemned Catholics, Muslims, and, well … everyone who is not a mormon, and the condemnations are all in print, all official. Now these other religions are all magically okay? And their practitioners are no longer influenced by Satan?
Source: http://www.sltrib.com/lds/ci_14382290
iambilly #19
its fairly easy to understand. The republican party is no longer the party of lincoln, its the refuge of disgruntled democrats who left the democratic party during the civil right era. They were a democratic mainstay without which the democrats couldnt gain the federal government. When they left the republicans gained the whitehouse congress then finally the senate.
Now a lot of old school republicans, tight purse not much on social engineering became disgruntled at the fooferee and nonsense and became independents.
Im not sure if the demopubs and repocrats that currently run the asylum really understand that and that its time to move on.
Walton (previous thread, just got back to see it)
Yee Ha!
I’ve got to hold my nose and vote Labour. Them or the Tories here. My sitting Labour MP is one of those less tainted by the “Expenses” affair. He only had to pay back £2,400 (I think) for claiming for stationery he’d used to send birthday and religious festival cards to his constituents. (He loves to send stuff. Since I signed the Libel Reform petition he sends me a letter a month, about various matters he thinks I might be interested in, and begs me to vote Labour, of course). He was against the Iraq war, but, since becoming a junior Transport Minister, has voted against an Inquiry into the war.
Incidentally, my LibDem candidate thinks we went to war in “Eraq”. In big letters, on glossy card.
Update: Iain Dale (who is gay and an agnostic) says the Observer has been unfair to Philippa Stroud.
And I wonder if anyone who is knowledgeable about economics or business could comment on this post? Apparently some entrepreneurs are concerned that the Lib Dem proposal to raise capital gains tax could be very damaging to entrepreneurship. I don’t personally know enough about small business to judge whether this is true or not, though
I should add as an addendum to #24 that I’m not totally convinced by Iain Dale’s defence of Philippa Stroud. I wasn’t hugely impressed either when Dale interviewed Michal Kaminski (of the Polish Law and Justice Party) and later asserted that Kaminski was not a homophobe, not addressing the evidence of Kaminski’s history of homophobic remark
At the same time, Dale has a long record of speaking out against homophobia both within and outside the Tory Party – and as Dale is openly gay and presumably knows homophobia when he sees it, and knows Philippa Stroud personally, I do think we have to take his opinion seriously on this.
For some reason, I seem incapable of using full stops to end sentences today. :-/
as Dale is openly gay and presumably knows homophobia when he sees it, and knows Philippa Stroud personally, I do think we have to take his opinion seriously on this. – Walton
Not unless we have some independent reason to consider him honest. After all, the guy is both a Tory and a professional politician! Here’s a clear hint from your link that he is not:
“Newspapers happily lap up any kind of lurid allegation – especially when it concerns a Conservative candidate in a LibDem target seat.”
This is garbage. Most of the press is supporting the Tories – AFAIK, only The Grauniad and The Observer are supporting the Lib Dems. Dale will have been instructed by CCHQ to defend Stroud. Also, read the comments. Stroud has played the old trick of denying something that has not been alleged – that she considers homosexuality an illness – and has not denied what was alleged – that she thinks it is caused by demonic possession.
#17 Ewan R: IIRC foreign students get charged full whack ie 10k at least. Problem is the immigration system has been tightened so lots aren’t getting their visas in time. If they start giving up and going elsewhere the universities will be (even more) seriously out of pocket.
On the subject of timewasters:
Anyone here familiar with the Napoleon game of patience on Windows? I’ve now spent three days trying to solve game #23017 …
Not to worry, Walton. We’ll let you use periods instead.
:-?
Knockgoats: That’s true. And whether or not Stroud thinks that homosexuality is an illness, it is pretty clear that she’s a bit of a loon, and it goes without saying that I would not vote for her if I lived in her constituency.
I do, however, know and like my local Tory candidate in my home constituency (and have campaigned for him in the past) and I’m really in two minds about the whole thing.
I like the LibDems in general, but I think their idea to scrap the ID card and the NHS electronic medical record to save money is both wasteful and misguided.
To wit: as a tourist in England, not a taxpayer of any sort, I was treated in a UK hospital. I had full medical insurance. I tried to pay, and was not permitted to do so.
That’s ridiculous. It’s why we have health cards in Canada, so health tourism (in our case, folks from the states generally) does not get to occur. It took my now-husband a few months to understand it, but now he’s wondering why they’ve not done the same over there. Certainly, a national ID could do that.
And electronic medical records are essential for efficient accurate communication in this day and age. They allow each physician to care for more patients, make chart storage much simpler, and save huge numbers of man-hours (professional and administrative) in paperwork. That’s a huge cash savings.
Safety-wise, these records in Canada are not networked, but can communicate easily, with patient permission. They can be locked for privacy (I have asked to have my husband’s chart locked on our EMR- he is seen by a physician on the same system- so that he feels full confidentiality).
Further, the project is underway, so scrapping it now flushes the progress already made, and the money used to make it, down the shitter. If it wasn’t cost effective, no way in hell would the Canadian governments be funding it, for example.
Poorly thought out, and pandering to the zOMG computahz groups (like my elderly inlaws who think banks are evil).
Anyone a fan of Marty and Doug’s New Religion?
Here!
http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Marty-and-Dougs-New-Religion/201749931746
redrabbitslife: You are conflating two unrelated issues. Labour’s proposals for national ID cards are nothing to do with NHS electronic medical records. They go far beyond that; Labour want to mandate compulsory national ID cards for everyone, which is totally illiberal and a violation of the most basic civil liberties. If such a scheme is ever implemented, I will refuse on principle to pay for or carry an ID card. And I don’t understand how anyone who cares about personal liberty can even consider voting Labour.
ID cards are completely useless for any legitimate purpose. They do nothing to prevent terrorism; the 7/7 bombers were British citizens. They do nothing to prevent identity theft; in fact, they will likely make it easier, by concentrating more information about a person in one place which can be lost or stolen. Rather, ID cards are about one thing and one thing only: allowing government to collect and centralise more information about, and therefore extend more control over, the individual citizen. They are about power, and they are a step along the road to a police state. And, of course, it goes without saying that they will also be ludicrously expensive.
This is just one of the many erosions of civil liberties that this Labour government have perpetrated – along with massively extending the coercive powers of the police over suspects in pre-trial custody (Criminal Justice Act 2003), extending pre-trial custody for “terror suspects” (Terrorism Acts 2000 and 2005), detaining foreign national terror suspects indefinitely without trial at Belmarsh Prison (until the House of Lords ruled against this in X v Secretary of State for the Home Department) and now imposing “control orders” on terror suspects, introducing “ASBOs” which are civil penalty orders with a civil standard of proof but amount in substance to punitive criminal sanctions (Crime and Disorder Act 1998), and introducing wider police “stop and search” powers (which are routinely abused, especially against working-class and ethnic-minority youth). Anyone who votes Labour in this election is either an authoritarian follower, or needs his or her head examining.
Poorly thought out, and pandering to the zOMG computahz groups – redrabbitslife
No. These are sensible measures to save money. The NHS computer system is already way behind time and over budget, and still a long way from working. It was hugely over-ambitious. As for ID cards (and the database that goes with them), these are not necessary to prevent health tourism, will be very expensive, and are a threat to civil liberties.
There, redrabbitslife, now look what you’ve done – forced Walton and me into agreement :-p
I saw ‘parliament groupies’ and immediately thought George Clinton, not George Osborne. Though I know who’d make the better Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Clue: the one who didn’t go to Eton.
Mainly I delurked to aim Pharyngulans at this Guardian column and comment thread in which happy-clappy evangelist and former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey gets a slap from a senior judge (and the columnist ditto, from a host of legally minded commenters) for expecting special treatment for the religious.
Beautiful.
I will add that the erosion of civil liberties over the last two decades didn’t, to be fair, start with Labour. The downward slope started around 1992, when Michael Howard was Home Secretary, and found expression in his ludicrous “prison works” speech in 1994 and in the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994. But Labour have enthusiastically continnued and extended the same authoritarian policies, to a level where many (though not all) Conservatives are deeply uncomfortable with the erosion of liberties.
It’s becoming clear to me that it’s all a manifestation of a particularly nasty punitive, judgmental trend in our culture. This mindset – exemplified by the Daily Mail and the Sun – is based fundamentally on fear and hate, directed towards immigrants and asylum-seekers, “anti-social” youth, Muslims, “terror suspects”, gay and transgender people, and other marginalised groups. Sadly, this way of thinking seems to have been in the ascendancy in Britain since around 1992 or 1993.
The main manifestations of this prejudiced, fear-based mindset can be seen in the illiberal policies adopted on criminal justice and immigration over the last twenty years, but some of it can be seen in other political contexts as well. In particular, the right-wing tabloid press direct periodic bouts of vicious, irrational, categorical hate towards those who receive state benefits, particularly refugees and asylum-seekers, accusing them of “sponging off the taxpayer”. This has sometimes been pandered to by governments of both parties, as, for example, with Peter Lilley’s revolting “I have a little list” speech in the early 1990s. Which is why I’m a little uncomfortable with too much talk of “welfare reform” – more often than not, such policies tend to be an attempt to pander to those who hold prejudiced views.
*waves*
Looks like this would be a good thread to learn a bit about English politics from… too bad I’m happily distracted :D
#4 Feynmaniac, Chimerical Toad
I have sympathy with your feelings about UK MPs. However, there are some exceptions. One example is Dr Taylor MP for Wyre Forest in the W Midlands.
A few points:
1) He is an independent who asks what his constituents want him to say and considers those views when he has the opportunity to speak (which, as for most back- and cross-benchers is not often. The big names get an inordinate amount of time.)
2) As a result of 1), he is not in thrall to any big party machine (“the whips”) and can vote as he sees the arguments.
3) He won the seat intially because he stood against the Labour candidate whose role was to gain public support for closure of the local hospital. He failed, utterly, and lost his seat. The former Home Secretary has a close-by constituency and was using her influence to keep her local hospital open.
4) He is a genuinely honest man. He was the 3rd or 4th to publish details of his expenses in the local press and on the internet. Down to the finest detail. He has a relatively small constituency (in area) and finds that it is not worth the effort claiming local car travel (to which he is entitled). So he doesn’t. He uses the train to get to London and rents a small flat (apartment) when he is there. His costs are some of the lowest of any MP. No duck houses. No second homes and flipping.
5) He is a retired General Practitioner (local, general purpose, Doctor). He knows how to talk to people and how to listen. He is well respected by other MPs and Ministers. He sits on the Health Select Committee. He shouldn’t be there. Seats are apportioned according to the number of MPs in each party. He is in a party of 1. The Tories gave up one of their seats for him.
6) He is widely respected and consulted on general health issues by Government, Opposition and other MPs over national and local issues.
7) He tends to vote with the Lib Dems but is not a part of them. I would guess he would be a Democrat in the US. He most certainly would not be a Republican.
8) I do not agree with him on everything (indeed, on some issues I disagree strongly with him). I shall be voting for him next week, primarily because he is an honest man. This will be his last term because he is getting too old for a further term after this. Age, experience, old-fashioned honesty. Goes a long way for me. There are so few who could claim the same (although there are a few others).
Ooooh. I gather from your blog that you’re in Paris, yes?
(Regrettably, despite it being only a couple of hours away on the Eurostar, I have never been to Paris. One of my friends keeps telling me how awesome it is and that I should go.)
Sorry to all for filling this thread with rants about British politics. But it is election time. :-)
I can see myself regretting it horribly if I vote Lib Dem. But I’m really pissed off with the direction of Tory policy at the moment, and I wouldn’t vote Labour if my life depended on it. And there are no other feasible choices. (I don’t even have a local Monster Raving Loony candidate!)
I don’t think I ever contributed to the endless thread.
This is my contribution.
Walton, things were nuts before the US election. Your election, your turn. Just don’t forget to sleep (very important for memory) and study.
Yep. Got in this afternoon and just got back from dinner. Your friend is right, it’s very nice.
What keeps you from going? It’s so close! You could leave in the morning and be home again by dinner.
I envy Europeans for their ability to live in awesome cities and then furthermore to live in awesome cities that are only a few hours away from each other.
It takes me a day just to get to the end of my (admittedly awful) state, and even then I’m still likely to be in another awful state.
Ah well, I’ll give you a pass as you’re always busy it seems, but you should go with your friends some time!
And if by some strange accident you or anyone else finds themselves here in the next week or so, give me a shout :D
No, I understand that the ID card and the EMR are two separate entities.
What I am saying is that, granted, an ID card may be prone to abuse by an overly nosey government. You guys are already essentially on-camera 24/7, the most surveilled populace in the world. However, there are uses for such an ID.
You could just use your driver’s license or other such for the same purpose, but in the UK you’re not required to carry that even when driving, which is stupid. How is a cop supposed to know who is licensed and who isn’t? Mostly it’s not worth their time to call in a plate and match it to a name. In other parts of the world, you can get hauled into the station for not carrying your DL and proof of insurance, or at least get a massive fine.
I merely used my experience with the not being able to pay for my treatment as an example of one of the many possible uses for a national ID. You guys have an excellent social network (libraries, medicine, jobsearch, open university, public school, …..) that is incredibly open and prone to abuse because you are all so offended by having to prove who you are, but you still wind up with groups like the BNP pissing and moaning about immigrants and migrant workers and abuse of the system. If there is a way to say who is and who isn’t allowed to use what services, suddenly there’s less to bitch about. There is a middle ground, is all I am saying.
But again, that’s up to you lot, it’s only my $0.02.
The EMR is a different matter. Again, the people implementing it are trying to do too much all at once, so of course it’s late and over budget. But that doesn’t mean the whole idea should be scrapped. I mean, for the whole country to be networked, sure, it’s desireable in some senses, but it should not necessarily have been the first thing off the mark. Groundwork is important, and doesn’t seem to be the strong suit of whoever it was put in charge of the EMR.
Baby and bathwater, though. An EMR is *eventually* going to result in cost savings. Unless they really have cocked it up that badly, what do I know.
I’m in medicine, a rural family doc, so everything I see comes back to practical uses in medicine, so sorry if it makes it look like I thought the ID card and the EMR were interrelated. They could be in the future, but they aren’t necessarily.
And lol at Knockgoats agreeing with Walton. I’ll see if I can find other things to argue about, this could be fun. I’m not *actually* a contrarian, honestly.
Non-issue. If someone is driving dangerously, they will be stopped. If they’re unlicensed but driving perfectly safely, then who cares? In any case, I’d rather risk dying in a car accident than give police the power to force me to carry identity documents. Those who surrender liberty for safety will, as we all know by now, lose both.
I have yet to see any evidence that there’s any real problem with “abuse of the system” or “health tourism”. It seems to me to be a red herring created to justify authoritarian measures.
For how many of the things you mention would proof of identity actually be relevant or useful? Believe it or not, I think there are more important issues than people fraudulently obtaining library cards! (And to be honest, as I’m opposed in principle to most immigration restrictions, I personally want illegal immigrants to be able to access government services without being forced to prove their identity. Anything that undermines our current crazy immigration laws is fine by me.) I certainly don’t see that there’s a problem here sufficient to justify forcing everyone to carry identity documents and produce them on the order of state officials. It’s a solution looking for a problem – and a horribly illiberal and authoritarian solution, at that.
Yeah, what can I say, I have no problem with anyone using the libraries etc. either. I don’t mind the odd person slipping through and taking advantage of the Canadian healthcare system. I’m pretty happy that our roads are open to anyone, and that our military are protecting citizens of other countries more than they are protecting us.
But I don’t get why the British are so frightened of personal identification. I have to present mine to buy liquor, to license my car, to drive across the border, to register for courses at university, to visit my doctor, to… well really, most anything.
I can’t see what’s so scary about that.
Ah yes, British Politics…like all politics of late. It seems to boil down to two characteristics: 1) We must cut, cut, cut…which ends up being done on the backs of the poor. 2) Then they claim that’s something new and innovating. /sigh
ID is required to buy alcohol in Britain, something to which I don’t object too much, though I think it tends to be over-zealously enforced.
But fundamentally, it should be possible to go about your daily life without government agents demanding your identification papers. Sure, if you are choosing to do something that actually legitimately requires a thorough identity check – like applying for a job working with children or with sensitive military secrets, say, or buying a dangerous weapon – then checking into someone’s background and personal information is fine. But I am completely against the idea of everyone being forced to carry ID when out in public. And it will be used, in practice, as yet another way to oppress immigrants and other marginalised groups.
<high-shrieked laughter at comment 4>
That thing about political stance depending on information… I’m serious about it. For instance, I bet that neighbor who wants to live in a world where teh ghey is outlawed doesn’t know that that would make as much sense as outlawing blond hair, because he simply knows fuck-all about biology.
Double LOL!
…and Fearless Flightsuit went to Yale and Harvard! Yet, he actually is stupid enough to have fallen for the warmongering with Bible quotes he got from his handlers.
I’ll accept a peer-reviewed scientific paper as evidence of general cleverness. But merely having seen a university from the inside doesn’t cut it.
What does that mean? I don’t suppose you’re going to actually build the whole nitrogenase pathway into corn? (That would be way cool, but must be seriously difficult.)
Take your keyboard, turn it around, and knock on it to make the dust fall out.
You should go, but often the Eurostar is more expensive than a Ryanair flight. I used Ryanair to get from Paris directly to Bristol and back in September.
In my case, I have biscuit crumbs under the keys, as well as dust. I really need to get one of those keyboard-cleaning devices (and start taking care of my trusty old laptop a bit better, considering that it’s literally the focal-point of my entire lifestyle).
Yes, but he got in (to Yale, at least) as a “legacy student” – that is, he got automatic preference in admissions because his father went to Yale. (I fid this a somewhat bizarre concept, though I’m certain that some Oxford colleges would also adopt this system if they were allowed to – if only to make it easier to raise funds from wealthy alumni in exchange for admitting their sons and daughters.)
See, there’s the rub, Walton: what evidence do you have that that actually *will be* the case?
It’s a valid fear, and has happened in the good old US of A (look at the crazy shit going on in AZ right now), but that does not mean that it is bound to be the outcome there.
It hasn’t been, here.
I don’t see the nefarious intent that you do.
Just one if the reasons we Brits are so paranoid:
To any lowly clerk can snoop on you. That and the propensity of civil servants to leave DVDs containing the names, addresses and personal details of every child/family getting child benefit on trains, (or similarly to lose the database containing the pay and personal details of every member of the armed forces…and that’s when they’re not selling the info the dataminers) is a combination of megalomania, mission creep, greed and utter incompetence that does not inspire trust.
I certainly intend to be an ID card refusenik.
But I don’t get why the British are so frightened of personal identification
It’s less the ID card than the national database, which will bring together large amounts of personal information (more than in any other country IIRC) and make it very widely available to the authorities – and, since they have proven quite unable to look after sensitive information securely, to anyone willing to pay enough for it. Go tohttp://www.no2id.net/ for further information.
Skydaddy
Just looking for feedback on some music I have been working on, and the horde seems like the best (or possibly worst, if nobody likes it) place to get it. I have lurked around the site for a year or so and posted very infrequently, and consider Pharyngula a haven for preserving my sanity (being a skeptic and atheist in Indiana can be stressful.) If you have time, give my stuff a listen and send me some feedback. If you aren’t on Facebook, send me an
email. I don’t want to tie up the thread with feedback about the myriad ways that I stink. Thanks in advance, and please, be gentle.
Studies of the workings of the criminal justice system, in the UK and other developed countries, disclose a massive amount of evidence that existing police powers – stop and search, arrest, detention, interrogation – are already disproportionately used against a particular demographic: young working-class men, particularly those from ethnic minorities. People in this group are also more likely to receive inadequate legal advice and/or to be wrongly convicted. Racial profiling and classism, inadvertent or otherwise, are very much real features of the criminal justice system in the UK and elsewhere. There are already serious abuses of civil liberties, which often go unnoticed because they are directed mainly against poor and marginalised people. (Source, inter alia: Sanders and Young, From Suspect to Trial, Oxford Handbook of Criminology, 2007.) I don’t know much about the situation in Canada, but I suspect it’s not so dissimilar.
Giving police and other state officials the power to demand identity documents would only exacerbate this situation. And it would make illegal immigrants even more oppressed and marginalised, since they couldn’t even walk down the street without risking being asked for identity papers; this would, in turn, open them to even more exploitation and abuse by employers and organised crime.
‘So’, not ‘to’ and I closed a blockquote tag in the wrong place. Apologies – can only plead being in hospital and a state of post- kidney-transplantedness.
If they’re unlicensed but driving perfectly safely, then who cares? – Walton
I do! They may be driving safely on that occasion, but they may never have passed their test, or have been banned for dangerous driving. Moreover, if they are not licensed, they can’t be insured, so if they knock you down, you won’t get compensation for injury. However, this again is nothing whatever to do with the ID card and database. To drive, you have to have a licence, and every vehicle is registered by owner. You don’t have to have your licence on you, but if the police stop you (normally they have to have reasonable cause) they can require you to produce it within a few days (can’t remember the exact time). That’s the right balance I think.
Now THAT, my friends, is a dedicated Pharyngulite kind of commenting schedule.
Whether it went in or came out, best wishes for a speedy recovery.
Ok, that’s true, you guys are the country of the MTAS debacle as well.
Seriously, though, if that had been my personal information, I would be leading the charge for a lawsuit, and I don’t understand why there hasn’t been a similar outcry. My university won’t release my personal information to *ME* unless I have proper proof that I am who I say I am.
So, like you said, Knockgoats, the ID card isn’t really your major issue. Perhaps part of the same battle, but not really what the war is about.
WOW! Hope you have a quick recovery then!
Walton, those of us in the states tend to carry our drivers license with us most of the time. For example, if I’m driving in some of the local towns and am stopped for some reason, and can’t produce a valid drivers license, the car can be impounded even if there is another licensed driver in the car. Since the cost to get the car out of impound often exceeds the driving without a license fine (the state requires it to be readily available, on your person, purse or glove compartment, if you are operating a vehicle on public roads), it is wise to carry the license. And enforcing that did cut down on some bad unlicensed drivers. The roads are a bit safer since they started that program.
Carlie:
it’s a Dutch hospital (donor’s a cloggie) and although I can’t fault the care it’s the crappy tea that really bothers me. Oy, what I wouldn’t give for a decent cup of PG tips and some hot buttered toast.
Palau:
Don’t apologize! That’s an incredible thing to have gone through. I hope you’re doing well. Congrats on the new kidney.
redrabbitslife:
Oh, I don’t think you can say that. In the U.S. cops most certainly do discriminate against those who aren’t carrying ID; it can be used as an excuse to arrest someone. And racial profiling is alive and well in the U.S. I’m not in the habit of carrying my ID and I’ve been hassled for it.
Not being an Englander, I don’t lose much by agreeing. It’s not my face that’s getting spitten/spote by cutting off the nose.
NEWSFLASH: You’re gonna regret no matter who you vote for. We all are and do. It’s just a question of how much.
I’ve already forgotten where I got this link (I think it was Guardian’s CiF):
http://chopornot.channel4.com/
What would you cut to make ends meet?
Plenty of holding your nose to be done.
#50 Walton
As Walton is aware, this is not strictly correct. Proof of age is what is necessary. To buy alcohol you must be over 18 by law. If someone sells you alcohol and you are under 18 then the person who sells it to you (starting with the cashier) is liable to a nasty shock. Under 18s are sent round every now and then to act as agent provocateur or to try to entrap you, the shop keeper. Often, they will be close to 18 and looking more.
(Recently, a boy aged 15 and not far from 16 was sent to a pet ship and bought a goldfish. The shop keeper (69, 73 something like that) was prosecuted for selling a pet to someone who is underage (you have to be 16 to buy a pet). An inspector found she was guilty of one or two other breachres of the law. She was fined and put under a night time house curfew with an electronic tag. Her som, also working in the shop was also fined. As a result, she has a criminal record for the first time in her life, put under the emotional stress of arrest, waiting for a trial, the trial itaelf – all because of selling a goldfish to a boy who looked and acted over 16.)
As a result, shops selling alcohol have introduced an Under 21 policy to show they are “doing the right thing”. This also applies to other age-restricted items (like aerosols – you might be addicted to the propellant …). If you look as if you might be under 21, you are likely to be challenged to demonstrate that you are over 18. Some shops, for fear of being prosecuted, have pushed that to 25. Parents accompanied by under 18s have been refused alcohol because “you might give it to your child” – which is totally legal in your own home once they are over 5.
Thus, you don’t YET have to prove you are Alan B, born 14th June 1945 in Sussex, and currently living at … married with 3 children etc. etc and you don’t have the number of units of alcohol already purchased recorded on a database.
YET. But that is what people are concerned about with the slow creep of statism under the control of nameless, faceless bureaucrats in Brussels.
You can already be fined for putting out your rubbish bin on the wrong day or at the wrong time, or leaving it all day where it was put by the bin men because you weren’t at home to move it. And woe betide if the bin lid is not properly closed – a few mm open is enough to get you a £100 fine in some places. And, by the way, you are always guilty. If it’s your word against the climate SS then they are RIGHT and you are WRONG. Because their word is more acceptable in law than yours.
If you put 3 melon pips into the box for garden waste to go for composting then heaven help you. You have committed the ultimate green crime of contaminating the garden waste with food waste. And, no, you can’t take them out yourself. The box and its contents are contaminated by YOU – the horrible, flat-earth, catastrophic climate-change-denying “Enemy of the People”.
I have already established a friendly relationship with our bin men and recycling collectors. I smile, wave, say “Thank You”. Now, I would do that anyway because I am like that naturally but so far my occasional green sins have been overlooked.
This has come slowly, inexorably. Tiny step by tiny step. Salami slice by salami slice.
There are a lot of people over here who are most unhappy about how our liberties are being whittled away by a tiny minority of control freaks.
(By the way, the ID card would be ideal for further control. You want to buy tobacco products, alcohol, gas/petrol for your car, a ‘plane ticket? Any thing could be logged on a central computer. Monitoring and controlling your Carbon footprint via your ID card has already been proposed and quietly dropped. But is still available once the sheeple are willing to accept further encroachment on thier liberties.)
Walton & Knockgoats – Nice to you two such buddies!
I agree about your position re ID cards. The last straw for me was the retention of DNA profiles (taken after arrest)even if the person was released without charge or acquitted. That DNA profile would end up on the card. All this concern can sound paranoid (and perhaps it is) but although our present and potential future governments are relativly benign, who can be sure about the situation in ten or twenty years? We didn’t think that the obcenity of ‘Ethnic Cleansing’ could happen ever again in Europe – but it did.
I would far, far rather have a few cases of medical tourism than take one more step down that road.
#59 palau
Get well soon!!!!
If you were local I would be tempted to risk Matron’s wrath and bring you in a flask of PG myself. Having to undergo a serious operation and NO TEA?? Hardly bears thinking about. I always thought the Dutch understood us. Still, they can’t help being CONTINENTAL.
If necessary I would get a drip set up to inject it intravenously – not the same thing but radical problems call for radical solutions. Get out of there and back to sanity ASAP, you hear!?!
BTW There are many long-term contributors who have no idea about blockquotes. You are in good company!
@ Caine #66- clarification: “here” = Canada
Ok, uncle, whatever. Your government has way more control over your daily lives and way more information about you than does ours. Here, you lot would qualify as paranoid enough to earn you hospitalisation and medication.
Compost crimes? Srsly? Wasn’t that an Audi commercial? *shakes head*
Really, ID cards are probably not the actual issue.
Also, @Palau: quick recovery!
Aha! Some dirt on Nick Clegg.
So he’s not made entirely of rainbows and unicorn farts.
No. You need to take your laptop, turn it around, and knock it gently. :-) Taking a sheet of paper and using a corner to shove the dust out from between and around the keys is also a good idea.
Enough with those consumerist assumptions! :^)
no, they’re not even all that similar: she’s holding one with a gold cylinder; the boyfriend’s gun has a steel-gray cylinder.
*victory dance*
they always do. It’s like a pavlovian reaction to any and all proposed regulations & taxes. (this is my knee-jerk reaction to this. I don’t actually know much about this, but I simply find businesses and their buddies have cried wolf too many times; I see no evidence for it being different now)
which is pretty much the sole reason that system exists over here, in the first place. alumni donors are prrrrrecious and need to be pandered to at all costs (even works for state universities to a degree)
wow, that’s dedication right there! ;-)
– – – – – – –
and on the subject of discrimination, I remember a conversation I once had while working at Starbucks in Seattle. A customer was trying to get some money changed, and we got into a discussion about policies and enforcing them. she was insisting that it was “discriminatory” to follow procedures and we should be allowed to “use personal discretion” when to just let someone change money and when not (because obviously she wanted such preferential treatment). I told her that it was quite the opposite, and treating different people differently was discrimination. She disagreed, and said that “honest persons” shouldn’t be treated like they’re suspicious so I asked her what about a person’s appearance would tell me whether they’re a honest person or not. She just gave me a look and didn’t answer.
Saw Disney’s Oceans, aka 200m under the sea.
/pointless comment
Their skin color, of course! The fact that you asked her to verbalize it aloud probably showed her that you weren’t to be trusted either.
redrabbitslife:
No, they aren’t. It’s what they lead to that’s the monster sitting in the living room. The U.S. isn’t as bad as England (yet) but that’s mostly because there’s more room to spread out here. Plenty of large cities have that degree of insanity and it’s spreading.
The reason I live in my tiny eccentric’s refuge (pop. 79, people actually mind their own business, there’s a good saloon, no cops, no “rules” about houses, etc.) is so I can pretend in my daily life that the intrusion on our lives hasn’t gone crazy.
It seems everywhere there’s a large population of people, you get different groups who want tyranny by minority. This group wants this, that group wants that, and everybody wants it in this database and that database. There’s reason for the paranoia. The Patriot Act hasn’t helped the paranoia go away, either. There’s always something.
This objection does actually have a coherent rationale, though.
At the moment, capital gains are taxed at a maximum rate of 18 percent, which is much lower than the maximum rate of income tax. This is politically unpopular in left-wing circles, because it means that people whose income comes mainly from share dividends and other investments, rather than from wages or salaries, pay a much lower rate of tax. (Hence the whole “tycoons paying lower tax rates than their secretaries” thing.) For this reason, the Lib Dems have proposed to increase the tax rate on capital gains.
But the author is pointing out that, at the moment, many small business are able to get started because of “angel investors” providing startup capital. In deciding whether to take risks on startup companies, these investors can take into account that, if the company succeeds, they will only pay a very low rate of tax on their dividends and will therefore make a fuckton of profit. If the capital gains rate goes up, the post argues, these investors will have less to gain, and will therefore be less likely to invest in startup companies – which will make it harder for people to start businesses, leading to less job creation.
Possibly Dale is being hyperbolic in suggesting that the Lib Dem tax policy will “kill entrepreneurship”, and I really don’t know how big the scale of the problem will actually be. I’m waiting for ‘Tis Himself, or someone else who knows about economics and business, to comment on this issue.
The same is true here: Oxford and the individual colleges all put a massive amount of effort into alumni fundraising. The University also tends to upset leftie students by accepting large donations from arms dealers and dodgy multinational businesses. (The Said Business School at Oxford is named after Wafic Said, its benefactor, a Saudi businessman who is best known for brokering the controversial Al-Yamamah arms deal with BAE Systems.)
The Oxford tutorial system is absurdly expensive, and the university and the colleges are currently panicking about a funding shortfall, in light of the forthcoming cuts in government spending on education. A few university administrators have even proposed the idea that Oxford and other top British universities should “go private” and operate outside the government funding system, which would allow them to charge tuition fees as high as they wanted. (At the moment, the University of Buckingham is the only fully private university in Britain.) I think “going private” is a bad idea, since it would entrench class division even further by making the best universities too expensive for non-wealthy students. (This is already a huge problem with the Ivy League colleges in the US, where tuition fees can be as much as $40,000 per annum; but at least they, unlike British universities, are good at alumni fundraising and can therefore afford to offer generous scholarships.)
I don’t know what can really be done about British higher education. The system is simply financially unsustainable; we simply have too many universities and too many students (we now have around 40 percent of young people going into higher education, many to do courses of rather dubious rigour and value). The choices for the next government are, essentially, either to make massive cutbacks in funding for teaching and research, or to hike tuition fees. Either option will be highly controversial and will have harmful effects. (The Lib Dems claim they’re going to abolish tuition fees – a cynical ploy to win student votes – but are rather quiet about how, exactly, they intend to pay for this.)
Walton #80
If you have a bunch of money then the usual way to make more is to invest it. Right now, in Britain (and the US) capital gains are taxed at a lower rate than income. So the people who invest money in startup companies and get a return have a higher profit than someone who makes the same amount of money as income.
However, comparing capital gains taxes to income taxes is rather an apples and oranges comparison. Someone who invests in a company and makes a profit on their investment already has the money to invest. Somebody, either the investor or an ancestor or someone, got the money previously. If they stuck the money under their mattress they’d still have it and it would be untaxed. But instead of letting the money sit idle they’ve invested it in hopes of making a profit from money they already have. Note they could lose all or part of the money if the investment goes bad.
Someone earning an income gets the money when it’s paid. They didn’t have the money previously. It’s not an investment, it’s wages and is taxed when earned. So the people comparing capital gains to income are looking at two completely separate ways of getting money.
My feeling, and I have no evidence to support it, is the people who previously invested in startups will continue to invest in them. They’ll get a smaller profit because the taxes on their profit will increase but they’ll still get a profit, unlike if they just let the money lay under the mattress.
18? Over here it’s 25.
That’s good. These days, a lack of education guarantees you won’t find a job other than maybe a McJob.
You know, there are countries that have actually done it.
@ Caine- I live someplace very similar, but being Canadian, the saloon is actually a hockey arena (OT- go Habs!).
I have oft been accused of being insufficiently cynical.
It can go the other way. Montreal: huge government, powerful unions, massive infrastructure; little to no government interference in daily life. It’s not utopia, by a long shot: language wars, separatism, funding shortfalls, strikes. I like it, though.
redrabbitslife:
True. I just don’t see that happening in the U.S. until I’m close to dead or past it. (Which isn’t all that far off, I’m 52 now.) I try to be optimistic, but when you look around at how people have been reacting to the current healthcare reform, it’s disheartening. So many people here have this idea of America which is an idealized 1950s ‘merica, one that never existed outside TV sitcoms.
My master’s thesis, she is written, final draft. Need to run around quite a bit in the morning to print it (cause I planned ahead for my black ink and completely forgot to check my color ink supplies), but it’s done and dusted and I’ll even be able to get a full 5-6 hours of sleep tonight.
Just wanted to brag about that before crashing.
I’m drained, but in a good way.
Palau, good luck, get well soon, and I hope that you and your new kidney will be very happy together. :)
@Cerberus – WOW! Congratulations.
@Palau – get well soon! And isn’t it wonderful to live in the 21st century where we actually know how to do such incredible things?
Caine:
Pffft. You’ve got a good 30-40 years left in you to be acerbic and biting about social issues.
As far as I can tell, you’re just hitting your stride!
ID cards? Don’t like the idea on impulse, but I don’t quite know why…
I think most of us Brits are the same: we’re all used to carrying cards which prove our identities, sucha as credit cards, but we don’t want to have to, we don’t want to produce them for a man in uniform, and we certainly don’t want to pay for them (last time I heard about £80 – is that right Walton?). It really does strike us an affront to our civil liberties.
I’m really not sure why we feel that these are under attack. Walton puts it, albeit in a nuanced way, down to the Labour goverment but I’m not sure that’s entirely correct, or if so it was not intended. Rather, I think it’s a consequence of their desire to use legal means to improve our civil rights – anti-discrination and workplace policies, for example, and to banish any risk whatsoever (fucking Health and fucking Safety). The result has been an alarming beaurocracy and a concommitent rise in the need for recording and thus records.
And Alan B’s quite right about the absurdity of our anti-alcohol* laws: a friend of mine’s 9-year-old son was putting his shopping on the conveyor belt at a supermarket, and was surprised to be asked if he were 18. My friend explained that although his son wasn’t he was, and the wine was for him. There ensued a lengthy argument involving managers summoned, policies explained, attempted solutions (I’ll put my shopping back and get it all myself) and finally an abandoned trolley and a resoltion never to visit the supermarket again, on account of teh stupid.
*Wholly ineffectual – we really do seem to be turning into a nation of drunks.
On the UK capital gains tax, 18% is too low 50$ is way too high because the investors are gambling their own money, not working at a fixed rate. Here in the states its 28% up from 15%.
There needs to be an incentive to invest and a proper tax on winnings. Dont know the perfect number but I know a few startups and at 28% angels are still around but they want a bigger taste for the money which causes the startups to tend to use them as a last resort which makes them more susceptible to failure.
Walton’s voting Lib Dem! Hooray!
What a wonderful question. Of course you can tell honest people by their fancy clothes and pale, pale skin. Wasn’t it Joseph Smith who said righteousness would make a person’s skin paler?
Cerberus Good job.
Palau May your recovery be swift and uneventful.
Congrats, Cerberus!
And best of luck. :-)
Cerberus,
CONGRATS!!!!!
Palau,
I’m glad you got a new kidney. Here’s hoping for a speedy recovery and no complications :)
David,
That can be true, but some British degrees, from some of the less prestigious institutions, are now devalued to the point that they don’t actually help a person to get anything better than a McJob. I know this sounds horribly elitist, but it’s something that has to be said.
Elroy:
Well, with luck I’ll have that long. While I look forward to many happy years of being acerbic, it does bum me out a bit. I don’t think I’ll be around to see real change, and I’d like to see that. On the other hand, perhaps I won’t be around when some moron blows the planet up. Ya never know. ;p I just don’t want to die. Not until I’m terminally bored, and I think I could live a long, long, long time before that happened as I’m easily amused.
True dat – my dad was offered a job as a lecturer at his university on qualifying with a bachelors degree (which he took later in life) – he now categorically could not get his own starting job with the qualifications he has.
It would be vastly better if the British education system hadn’t essentially got rid of Polytechnics etc etc (when they began to fund them differently) by making it more profitable to transition over to being universities (which I believe was another great conservative initiative…. vote lib dem….) making it such that those better suited to vocational qualifications could go out and get em, and those going for a non-vocational university education could do that.
Plus it’d be great if more people would actually just get into the world of work before going to university in the first place…. you’d have a far lower dropout rate, a bunch of people would just stick with work, etc etc.
David Marjanović wrote:
A lot of people are getting degrees but aren’t any more able to get a non-McJob than they were before. In Australia, because of the increased number of places, a lot of people got in and, because of the lowered standards, got through without gaining much (if anything) from the experience – and are now no better off than they would have been had they gone straight into the workforce.
However, since I know people who went to Uni basically as a lark but who, once there, discovered they had a real passion and aptitude for learning in that environment (compared to high school) means that changing the system from what it is now may end up disadvantaging more people than a different system might benefit.
AnthonyK:
It’s quite interesting, reading comments about this situation while watching V for Vendetta on BBCA.
Nick Kristof is a fucking twit:
Antiochus Epiphanes clear back @14 asks “Who uses the word “coed” anymore?”
Pornographers.
Ol’ Greg, Do try to see the Rodin Museum. It’s one of the most impressive I saw there and is unfortunately easily overlooked. Also, if you are into amazing mineral specimens, the natural history museum is world class.
Finally, Paris is one of the few places besides Sri Lanka where I’ve found Sri Lankan food–not to be missed.
Cerberus, congrats on the thesis! Have a beer…heck, have two.
Argh. It’s 2am here and I want to go to bed. But must keep studying. :-(
Advice to anyone thinking of doing a law degree: don’t. Just don’t. (Unless you are insanely clever, and/or have the self-discipline to avoid wasting half your life on the internet, unlike me.)
Speaking of V for Vendetta: I haven’t seen the whole movie, but this scene always makes me cry. :-(
Walton, yes, that’s a poignant scene. One of these days, when the law study isn’t clogging your brain, you should catch the whole flick.
Stained Glass Flying Spaghetti Monster
Walton, congratulations on daring to step outside your comfort zone and let your conscience guide your decisions (as you have certainly done before). I appreciate that you are no real fan of the other parties, but I am very happy that you are continuing to pull back the curtain on your formerly beloved Tories.
And Pharyngulites…do you now see what is possible?
After years of relentless and exhausting debate with dozens of this site’s crème de la crème…one highly intelligent, open-minded individual has changed his mind!
Only countless millions of stupid, closed-minded fools to go!
I’m highly amused at the irony of this being posted on The Thread, which is inhabited almost entirely by procrastinators!
Their shoes!
@AnthonyK
I had a similar problem in the US with my daughter when she needed grain alcohol to preserve her spider collection. Fortunately the guy behind the counter let me pay for it, but told me that the law required that I carry it out of the store. I’ve heard a lot of similar stories in which kids comment about wine labels, funny beer names, etc. and end up getting the store to refuse to sell to the parents.
@Guy Incognito
Have you actually read much of Kristof’s writing? He routinely calls attention to the poorest, most maltreated people on the planet and uses his bully pulpit to help a lot of people around the world. I might disagree with aspects of this particular column, but I will give him the benefit of the doubt. I won’t give Bill Donohue or other RCC apologists the same benefit of the doubt until I see them either work as hard on behalf of the poor as the two people profiled or spend as much time calling attention to their suffering as Kristof has.
I think the institutional RCC has done a lot of harm over the centuries. Nevertheless, I can still acknowledge that RCC teachings have led some people to do extraordinary good in the world (and why am I not surprised that such good people often attract disapproval from the RCC hierarchy?). People who do good work for religious reasons may be deluded, but I’m going to save my venom for those who don’t help or who actively harm others. Kristof is right – the two people profiled would make far better popes than the ones the RCC seems to select.
I don’t think that a few admirable members lets the RCC as a whole off of any of the many hooks that it’s snagged itself on, but when the most egregious thing about the RCC that Pharyngulistas have to complain about is the mistaken beliefs underlying some very admirable work and Nick Kristof’s selective admiration for the people doing such work, I think we will have made some startling progress.
I’m going to do something about my procrastination tomorrow…by the next day for sure.
By the way: I spent a wonderful Sunday in Salem, Massachusetts – a.k.a. the heart of witchcraft (known these days as atheism). I did not forget to sacrifice a Christian child on behalf of each and every one of you.
@Mr Fire
Only countless
millionsbillions of stupid, closed-minded fools to go! Fixed.And amazingly, I figured out how to do the html magic to get the strikeout to work. (My google fu is improving.)
DRINKS RECIPE!
Because, why the hell not?
half and half grapefruit juice and white lemonade
1 measure of vodka
2 thin wedges or 1 slice of lime
ice
serve in a tall glass, enjoy
Cerberus:
Really, now… must we use gendered language for this?
;^)
Seriously, congratulations! Do you have any sort of oral defense left, or stress over a final reading/grade, or does this mean the degree is a fait accompli?
I don’t know what procrastination means, but I was definitely thinking about looking it up tomorrow too!
MrFire (@114):
Salem is cool, isn’t it? It’s the northeastern U.S.’s equivalent of St. Augustine, FL: A heady mix of genuine history and shameless tourist trap, with plenty ‘o fun for the whole famn damily!
Anyone else wondering about when PZ will hit 1,000,000? I’m guessing May 20, specifically in the evening. Don’t know if he would be willing to monitor this for us but a guessing game might be fun. Course than someone would have to come up with a prize.
This is an interesting read – Christian Music Meets its Gay Stars – *of course* most the comments are trully frightening…
Never put off until tomorrow something you can put off till next year
Never put off until tomorrow something you can get someone else to do today.
And for those who can’t get enough of the crazy – Sovereign squatters a national movement – it trully boggles the mind when you look at their justifications… their ‘proofs’ & logic are mind-blowing (to say the least).
Ugh, I just saw a commercial for Kleenex hand towels. They’re disposable paper towels for your bathroom. That’s just what everyone needs, more stuff to create more trash. The commercial gave it all a health spin. If you’re a good mom who cares about her kids, you won’t make them use filthy reusable towels. You’ll buy disposable paper towels so they never get sick, or you know, you could wash the hand towels in your bathroom every so often.
@Pygmy Loris: I saw those at the grocery store yesterday. Made me roll my eyes.
If they were in boxes that were even remotely attractive, I could possibly see using them in a guest room. But they weren’t even that.
What a waste.
*head go boom*
I fucking hate consumerism.
I lol’d when they mentioned Robert Beale. Crazy father, crazy son.
His case, like the others, was bizarre:
Pygmy Loris:
This was the same “reasoning” used to sell just about every mom Dixie Cups and dispensers waaay back when. I don’t know if anyone else remembers those. “Much healthier than a filthy, icky, germy, dangerous glass in the bathroom, oh my!” Those things generated a lot of waste.
I really hate this advertising line, all it does is create yet more people who won’t have a clue about doing something simple, like laundry. I also find the ongoing germ paranoia annoying as hell. I’m so glad I was actually allowed to play when I was a kid, which included getting nice and filthy. A lot. I was remarkably healthy, too.
ditto. I actually think my moms parenting style would have qualified as child endangerment in the U.S. today.
Honestly speaking, I don’t find it a cynical ploy to get rid of fees. It might be vote grabbing (I don’t know enough about the context or UK politics to comment on that), but in terms of policy I think it’s a great idea. Public education is an investment in the future, it’s a means to train people to do jobs.
For myself personally, there was no way my parents could have funded me through university or paid my tuition. I didn’t have the grades for a scholarship. Yet now I have a degree in a field requiring skilled workers where I have a much higher earning potential than I would otherwise. In effect, the sacrifice the goverment made to pay my fees and give me a living allowance while studying meant that I have the possibillity to earn enough to make it more than enough to pay back that investment and be a contributing member of society.
To my mind, it is very narrow-sighted to look at the raw numbers of tuition and operation when the benefits of having education far outweigh not having it. In Australia, there’s talk about filling the skilled-worker shortages by having skilled migration from overseas – which is really just using the infrastructure of other countries to train up people in the same way as the education system should work here.
Though I could be wrong, and maybe the numbers don’t add up. But to my mind, the value of education even from an economic perspective far outweighs not funding it.
Same here. I encourage my kids to get outside and get dirty. And antibacterial soap is nowhere to be found at our house. We use plain soap, thank you, and do just fine.
More Cuccinelli:
Jadehawk:
Same here. The last place my grandparents wanted to see me in the summer was inside. It was always “go outside and play” which I happily did. I’m pretty sure I didn’t have skin on my knees or elbows for years. ;D
Katrina:
Yep. The closest I’ve gotten to that antibacterial stuff is seeing it on store shelves.
Caine,
I bugged my mom so much to get me dixie cups, not because of the germ thing, but because I thought they were cool kid-sized cups. She laughed ans bought me one package. The fun wore off fast, and we never got any again.
Same here. We literally played in the dirt. When I was about 6 I found a bone the dog had buried in the yard when I was digging in the dirt. I was so convinced it was a dinosaur bone that my mom had to let me keep it on a shelf in my bedroom. Eventually it “disappeared” and now I know it was only a ham bone, but at the time I was heart-broken. She’d thrown my fossil away!
hah… too true. I don’t think you could get away with kicking your kids outside and not knowing what they’re up to anymore. Not having your child within line of sight at all times makes you a Bad Parent™!
and as for playing in dirt… I vaguely remember eating earthworms from my grandfathers garden. I seem to have survived that experience just fine.
My mother had a degrees in bacteriology and pharmacology, we never used anything other than plain soap. If my toddler doesn’t need her bath at the end of the day it wasn’t a particularly good day. :) Mind you, living in rural Australia mean outside fun is the norm.
Jadehawk, earthworms are good protein. I’m pretty sure I ate one or two.
Pygmy Loris:
Sorry about your fossil. I did my share of dirt play, but I was mostly about the trees. I spent a great deal of my childhood up a tree. When I was around 5, I discovered the joy of an old, massive weeping willow. I’d climb, lay down on a branch and be completely hidden. I could watch (and hear) everything going on in the neighborhood. I loved that tree.
My mother has degrees in bacteriology and pharmacology, we never used anything other than plain soap. She mentioned once that for cuts and scrapes the only reason she put disinfectant on them was because we wouldn’t hold still for a quick scrub.
If my toddler doesn’t need her bath at the end of the day we don’t consider it a good day. :) Mind you, living in rural Australia means that outdoor fun is the norm.
Apologies for the double post.
Childhood: Then and Now
Caine,
Tree-climbing was a favorite of mine when we moved to an area that had more trees. The house I lived in until I was ten had exactly two trees in the yard, both planted by my mom when my parents moved in while mom was pregnant with me. Our subdivision was relatively young, so there weren’t a whole lot of climbable trees around. Our later house and nearby park had tons of trees.
FossilFishy,
LOL!
I grew up in suburbia, and we played outside all day. This whole indoor playing all the time seems very strange to me. Aren’t kids supposed to get fresh air and exercise?
Of course this doesn’t apply if one lives in an actual dangerous place like Cabrini Green where playing outside the apartment might get a child killed.
Pygmy Loris:
I grew up in Santa Ana, California. Not rural. ;) You’d think kids should get fresh air and exercise. This could just the The Old&trade talking, but it seems to me that there was simply more reliance on common sense. My grandparents expected me to use my brain, as in strangers, crossing the street, etc. It’s not to say bad shit didn’t happen then, it did, but we weren’t sheltered to the point that we were super trusting a/o helpless.
The Chester the Molester hysteria didn’t really hit and get going until I was in my teens, so I was spared the effects of that. When I was 9, my mother decided I had to go live with her. We lived in a duplex, the back house. One night, I was in my bedroom and thought I heard my cat scratching on my window screen. I unlatched the screen and was calling for my cat, when my eyes adjusted to the dark and I made out the shape of a man in the dirt below my window, with one gloved hand on the wall right below my window.
I was lucky I wasn’t grabbed, I was hanging out the window. I pulled myself back in and went out yelling for my mother. I told her what was going on, she told me to stay calm and called the cops.
There wasn’t anything to say who the person was, but a report was made and we were told to be very cautious, yada, yada, yada. About a week or two later, the winds were high but I thought I heard our old chaise lounge creaking. I forgot about it that night and went to sleep. The next morning, I had a feeling and walked around the side of the house and found the chaise lounge under my side bedroom window. Upshot, I had a stalker for some little while. There was no hysteria, I wasn’t forbidden to play, I still had to walk to school every morning and walk back home every afternoon. It was expected I’d be observant, smart and careful, and I was all of those things. Never did find out who it was, but the stalkery things stopped after about 3 or 4 months.
I
grew upgot bigger in a very rural setting. I always wanted to be a mountain man, until I hit puberty and realized that mountain men rarely got laid. At least not by female humans.My backyard was @1 square mile of forest. I left in the morning and never showed my face back home until dusk or later. Mom never freaked out. Sure, I ended up in the emergency room for stitches and concussions, etc. on occasion but so what?
I used to swim in the old stock pond and get covered in leaches and algae. Would go on 2-3 day “camping” trips and live off the land eating nettles, high-bush cranberries, hazelnuts, rabbits, squirrels, etc. I’m pretty sure it did my immune system a world of good. And it was fun, goddamnit.
I was trusted to go into the woods alone with a rifle when I was 12. I’m pretty sure you’d be arrested if you allowed your kid to do that today.
I didn’t have video games or Cartoon Network, we had rabbit ears that got exactly 3 channels. My options were:
-go fuck off in the woods behind the house, or, if it was shitty weather
-stay inside and read books
There are some who may disagree, but I think I turned out OK. Never had a play date. Never had my time structured. Never had a paranoid parent hovering over me every minute. The apron strings were cut at a very early age and I believe it served me well.
Kids today? Well, for one thing, they can stay the fuck off of my lawn.
Ah, when I was a kid war games were all the go. Specifically “Aussies vs Japs”. There being only one kid of Asian appearance in the area (German dad, Filipina mum), he got to be the “Nip”, and we would catch him and put him in the hole that served as our prison camp. So very cruel :(
Kel @#130:
I see your point, but today the numbers just don’t add up. Thirty years ago, in my parents’ generation, there was a much more generous system of grants for students; this was feasible because only about 7 percent of young people went to university at the time, and there were far fewer places. Today, it would simply be financially unviable to provide the same level of funding for the 40 percent of young people who now go to university.
Broadly speaking, we can either have free higher education or we can have 40 percent of people going to university. We can’t afford both. If you think we should scrap tuition fees, then we need to halve the number of funded university places first.
Works in Germany.
Almost had a revolution when some states introduced fees of 500-1000 bucks per semester a while back.
Walton, WTF?
http://www.nasfaa.org/Annualpubs/Journal/Vol37N1/Kantrowitz.PDF
Seeing as we’re talking about the good old days when children played outside, I thought I’d pipe in as an 18 year old who stayed inside, was never out of my mother’s site, and had play dates.
My mom would let me and my (now 14 year old) sister go down to the end of the street and play in the grassy knoll there with the neighbor kids, but only because the neighbors could keep an eye on us through the kitchen window. Honestly, I’ve always hated physical activity like playing tag and even as a baby I would cry when my hands got dirty, so I’m not the best example. I also had severe Tourette’s syndrome as a kid that impaired my major motor skills so I sat out on PE as a kid from the age of 8 on.
I had a great childhood. I loved playing inside, I played a lot of pretend games with my sister and made a city for my collection of tiny plastic rabbits I call “bunnytown” out of polymer clay and blocks. It’s quite fancy and I still have it.
ok, time for me to retire from the intertubes. I said “site” instead of “sight” how embarrassing.
That doesn’t go away with age though ? Sorry, just curious…
actually, it has gone away with age. Unfortunately it lapsed into OCD, I was diagnosed with ADD but I probably always had that, and later depression. Then you get the weird neurological stuff like being unable to walk for days at a time due to tremors. I’m a mess. :)
Haley,
Bunnytown sounds adorable! I’d been a bit glum thinking about what a dick I’d been as an eight-year-old, but that cheered me up :)
Oh wow. I’m sorry to hear about your horrible problems, though :(
Have you seen this show called Obsessed? It follows Americans with OCD as they undergo several weeks of cognitive behavioural therapy.
It was a real eye-opener for me. I never realised how crippling OCD can be, and how much incessant fear and anxiety lies behind it. The people in the episodes I’ve seen all did really well with the CBT. I hope they were able to keep it up after their therapy ended.
boygenius: I don’t know how accurate that is as regards American universities, but it certainly doesn’t hold true for all British degrees, at least not those at the bottom of the scale. A 2.2 degree in media studies, say, from a university at the bottom of the league tables, will not get you anywhere in the job market or increase your earning potential. This sounds harsh, but it’s true.
What I would do is increase tuition fees, but increase the amount of the student loan to cover it. Everyone, whether from a low-income or a high-income family, should be able to afford to go to university; but he or she should also be prepared, once earning a salary, to pay back the cost of his or her education. So the government student loan programme is essential (I, for one, couldn’t have gone to university without it), but I don’t begrudge the fact that my loan will need to be repaid.
Hm, I’m interested in this.Will look into it tomorrow.
Thanks for the congrats everyone.
Bill @117
I have an oral defense in about two weeks, but besides that I’m free and clear. Overall, I’m really excited. A long frustrating year and 6 weeks of panicked sleepless work, but it’s all over and I’ll get to enjoy the World Cup this summer with absolutely nothing hanging over my head*.
Now to go turn it in as it’s finished printing (and with 40 minutes to spare too). After that, I’m probably getting a couple of bottles of Blå Thor and a tasty Jordbær Tærte and celebrating. Cause, damnitt, I deserve it.
*besides repatriation, making sure I have a job before I reunite with my partner, getting a job for the summer, and going through the stuff I left behind at my folks’ place to see what I still want, and oh yeah, coming out as trans to them since I wanted to do that face-to-face. But besides all that, nothing.
I even made a church for bunnytown when I was about 12. They worshiped an idol of my real pet rabbit Carmel Creme and the devil was my sister’s rabbit Mocha. The whole making up absurd religions was a huge part of my childhood. Once, my sister’s friend came over and they were playing and added a catholic priest looking rabbit and a cross to my rabbit worship church and I was pissed.
Pagan rabbits? Outstanding! All bow down before the might of BeelzeBugs! Or feel the wrath of his mighty carrot! Which is quite pointy!
Hint: Carrots are not Narwhals. The main difference is Narwhals are neither orange nor yellow. The incidence with a confused interior decorator was an accident, Ok?
Cross-posting my own comment from Jadehawk’s blog:
I’ve increasingly come to the realisation that I’m a moderate liberal, not a libertarian. I’m certainly nowhere near as left-wing as some people here, but I support welfare and a decent standard of living for everyone, and some government intervention to redress the gross imbalances of power between the wealthy and the poor, in addition to supporting social liberalism and civil liberties. I suppose that, by a lot of measures, this really puts me on the centre-left of politics.
I guess the one other thing with education is that is really should be valued beyond its economic potential for an individual to earn. A child may fare better economically by making him work in factories, what’s spending 12 years learning about science and history going to do for his economic satisfaction? If someone is standing behind a cash register, do they need much more than kindergarten mathematics?
Education for most people doesn’t really matter. Someone who becomes a plumber needs little of what they learn at school in their profession, yet they could make a lot more than what a lot of graduates would. Heck, even in my education I had to waste time learning how to critically analyse Jane Austin! Talk about a useless endeavour for an aspiring programmer. I also did music, mainly because I enjoyed it. Nothing comes from that at all, music is such a waste economically…
But surely Walton, you can see the value in having a society that values education. Even if economically not every graduate is going to make it worth the investment, the fact that anyone can have that opportunity makes it worthwhile.
Kel: I’m not disagreeing with you in principle. I’m just saying we can’t afford it. The numbers don’t add up.
We can, and arguably should, have free or less expensive higher education. But if we wanted to do that, we would have to either reduce the number of funded places, or slash spending on teaching and research. We cannot sustain the present level of higher education spending while abolishing tuition fees, if we are serious about reducing the already-massive budget deficit.
Narwhals? Erm… oh… kay…
BTW, Carrots never used to be orange. Some overly patriotic Dutchman bred the orange kind and then all the other ones disappeared. [Michael Caine] Not a lot of people know that. [/Michael Caine]
Walton,
I think we’re all born with scales over our eyes. I like to think that I’ve had enough of mine rubbed off that I can at least squint out of the corner of one eye.
First-world poverty is horrific, not least because it simply shouldn’t exist. Have you had the opportunity to see the Third World kind? The first time I did I was really quite distraught. I’d seen it on TV and all, but to actually have children coming up begging for scraps from my dinner plate was something else.
I got over it fairly quickly, though. Now I just pretend that my modest monthly donations to Oxfam and Amnesty are well on the way to solving all the world’s problems.
ambulocetacean: No, I’ve never been to the developing world. I would only go out there if I actually had some skills to contribute which would allow me to do something real about poverty, rather than passively observing it. I get the impression that most people who actually work in international development are not too keen on privileged Western kids who go out to developing countries on their “gap yaah”, to “find themselves” or “expand their mind” or go on a “journey of self-discovery”, without doing anything to actually help anyone.
(The above link is to a satirical sketch which, while funny, is also a sadly accurate depiction of many clueless overprivileged people’s behaviour.)
Welcome home, Walton.
I stopped worrying about you when you name-dropped Alexandra Kollontia but that’s just the way my mind works, I suppose.
Believe me, I’m not ideologically in-step with Alexandra Kollontai. She might be considered just a little bit far-left even by Pharyngula standards. :-)
Is this a situation unique to England, this current financial situation, or a universal maxim? This is where I’m a bit confused as to your position.
Congratulations, Cerberus!
I don’t dispute that at all. Nothing guarantees any job anymore – note my careful wording. :-)
Also, if you are into amazing fossil specimens, or comparative anatomy of extant animals, or evolution, the natural history museum is again world class! It’s spread across several buildings in the Jardin des Plantes (métro stations Gare d’Austerlitz and Jussieu).
I bet it turned out you were too tired for that.
Magnificent!
“He who saveth one life saveth the whole world.”
– Some psalm or other. I know it from the end of Schindler’s List.
<headdesk>
It’s not even the church as a whole that selects them. (I wish.) The pope creates* the cardinals, and the cardinals elect the next pope…
* Yep, that’s the term.
LOL!
For your bathroom at home? WTF. I’ve only encountered them in public places, and in one of them the electric hand drier was advertized as more hygienic and better for the environment.
I still walk through thick brush in a crouched position whenever possible… it’s part of the whole “discovery” and “science” thing. Haven’t climbed a tree in years, but that’s mostly lack of opportunity…
Same here, though that came from running and falling on paved ground, not in the wilderness that had only wild roses and blackberries to offer.
That’s scary.
You ate living earthworms? With earth on them, too? I suppose that explains something… :-þ
*poke*
Our immune system is in overdrive anyway; it needs something to do. That seems to be a big reason for why allergies seem to have become that much more common in the last few decades.
Well, most of the volume consists of primary urine :-)
Downloaded and bookmarked. I’ll have to read it sometime.
You actually want people to start their adult lives in debt!?! To work for years without being able to save anything?
People who do get a job after a university education already more than repay the cost of their education – in income tax, because those jobs tend to be better paid.
LOL!
The UK has a budget deficit. We have to cut something. The major parties are currently pretending that we can make “efficiency savings” without cuts to front-line services, but this is not going to work.
I don’t want cuts to essential welfare, healthcare or emergency services. I don’t want cuts in public-sector pay for the military, health and social workers, teachers, or other people who are already doing difficult jobs in tough conditions for relatively low pay. Nor do I want Labour’s rise in National Insurance to be continued, since it will function as a “tax on jobs”, hurting small businesses and making more people unemployed. In light of all this, higher education seems like a sensible place to cut. And the cuts are already being made to teaching and research funding, as I noted above. I’m just saying that, if the Lib Dems succeed in scrapping tuition fees, this will necessitate more cuts to spending – unless they tend to cut funding from other services, which would be politically unpopular and generally a bad idea.
For all my fellow Brits bemoaning the dearth of good candidates to vote for, please spare a thought for those of us in Northern Ireland, our little part of the UK is carved up between two sectarian tribes.
If I were to go straight out to work next year without any more education, I would start with £18,000 of debt from my undergraduate degree. This debt is to the government (since undergraduate student loans are provided by the state-owned Student Loan Company) so is interest-free.
However, I will actually start my career with much more debt than this. I’ve been offered a place on a masters course (MSc in Social Science of the Internet) which I may or may not take up; if I do, I’ll have to fund myself as I’m not eligible for research council funding. After that, if I want to pursue a career as a solicitor, I also have to pay for the one-year Legal Practice Course (unless I can find a law firm who will fund my LPC, which is unlikely in the area of law I want to work in). If I do both of these things, I will likely start my working life in around £40,000 of debt.
I’ve always known that getting into lots of debt was the cost of my higher education. And that is, I think, the right approach. Higher education isn’t free; someone has to pay, and since it’s me who will get the benefit, it’s me who should be paying. If we wanted to provide it for free, we would have to hike income tax, or implement a separate additional “graduate tax” (which has been proposed by some people).
Knee-jerk reaction alert: what are the UK expenses for the military like, and what are they really good for?
I’d like to vote for the Labour party but not only to they refuse to field any candidates in my area, they wont even let me join the party.
I could join if I lived in the Republic of Ireland but not Northern Ireland.
In Australia we have deferred payments for university education. It’s taxed only once you hit a threshold and the only interest on it is inflation. I started in the workforce about 20K in debt to the government, now that I earn above the threshold I’m beginning to pay this back.
How much can be saved by pulling out of Iraq / Afghanistan?
Walton, yeah — the military expenditure is so essential… Without those aircraft-carriers, Dear Old Blighty would undoubtedly be in dire straights indeed!
That ol’ gunboat diplomacy might be, ugh, compromised!!!1!!
As long as we are in Afghanistan, we need to pay for adequate equipment, training and support for the troops. There is already a serious shortage of helicopters, which has led to unnecessary deaths on the front line. There is also a need to provide adequate pay, pensions and disability benefits for the armed forces. One Lib Dem policy I like is that they have pledged to raise the pay of front-line soldiers to be in line with that of police officers. At the moment, the lowest ranks in the armed forces are poorly paid: a Private starts on around £14,000 a year.
That said, UK defence spending is massively misallocated. The two new QEII-class aircraft carriers for the Navy are not really necessary; their aim is probably more to create jobs in shipyards in marginal constituencies than to actually fulfil any defence needs (a classic case of pork-barrel spending). The defence budget should be focused on the wars we’re actually fighting in the real world, not on imaginary threats. I’m also not sure we need to renew the Trident nuclear deterrent.
Walton @162
I always think it’s a disservice how our culture always sells “growing up” or evolving one’s beliefs as something only the young do. Overall, it is a lifelong struggle for all of us to find out new things about the world, overcome old casual bigotries and overturn unknown ignorances. It’s not something to be ashamed of as ideally we are all on similar trajectories, learning, empathizing, growing to all become better people today than we are yesterday.
So, yes, I join others in saying I am proud of the growth you have made and that you had the humility to accept said growth. None of us are perfect, but ideally we all try to better ourselves and that’s all anyone can ask. (And yes, that includes myself as well).
Also, jordbær tærtes may be one of the greatest dessert inventions ever. Strawberry, cream, thin cake, pie crust, yum, yum.
I feel so damn good right now. Walking home, the flowering trees have just started blooming so the streets are just filled with color. The sun is shining, the ash clouds have mostly dissipated.
Life is good.
No, Walton @ 168! I didn’t think you had changed to that extent: just that you could see her somewhere on the far horizon and were at least close enough to argue with her.
<reaching through tubes of Internet>
<grabbing Walton by shoulders>
<shaking>
This is utter horror!
Well, no. It’s society as a whole that will get the benefits of having one more competent lawyer.
We all get the benefit, we all should be paying.
It’s an investment: we invest in the production of good lawyers, knowing we’ll reap financial rewards 10 years later.
We no longer have a major UK military presence in Iraq. As for Afghanistan, I’d say we’re morally obliged to maintain our presence there for as long as it’s practical. The whole situation is an utter mess, but we would only make it worse by abandoning the place to the Taliban.
David: It would be selfish of me to complain about my own debt. As I said, I’m becoming aware of my own privilege, compared to lots of people; I might never be rich, but I’m also very unlikely to face poverty or homelessness. I’d far rather that public money was spent on helping struggling single mothers in the position of JustALurker, say, or on international development and reducing poverty in the developing world, than on subsidising higher education for the likes of me.
Walton,
Um, I don’t have any facts, so I’ll just ask:
Over and above that, do they not get:
* Uniforms (clothing and gear);
* Food
* Lodging
* Medical care
* Amenities (gymnasia etc)
* Training and education transferrable to the private sector
* Pension plan
Which are not deducted from their pay?
What is their tax burden?
Do they get additional ‘combat’ pay and tax breaks?
#170 David Marjanović
From the Talmud and from the Quran 5:32
My feeling is that it is probably more likely to be Jewish and quoted by Mohamed but I have no inside knowledge. Definitely not from the OT Book of Psalms (unless anyone else knows different …).
Thanks for all the good wishes, much appreciated.
Walton: my sympathies, I had to give up a place at bar school and a career in maritime law, just because my bank didn’t want to give a Career Development Loan to a lone parent.
I could’ve been the lawyer who stopped mining companies and the New Guinea government exploiting the offshore vent fields but for an idiot bank clerk who thought lone parent=deadbeat.
Is it practical?
How much good does it really do?
Would the Taliban come back automatically?
Would UN Blue Helmets do a better job?
Perhaps even more radical solutions would help? Carving the artificial country up wouldn’t work because it would leave us with half a Pashtunistan, which would make Pakistan very, very cranky indeed.
I don’t pretend to have answers to these questions. I only know that the present situation looks a lot like Vietnam and Iraq – military objectives are not met, civilians die, the standard of living fails to improve, and there’s no exit strategy.
Oh yeah, I think I remember now.
Hi Walton,
Since you’re embroiled in several domestic and foreign-policy debates at the moment (and since I should be doing some work) I won’t hold you up, other than to say that it’s quite possible to do a small amount of good simply by travelling in the developing world.
A lot of countries have bugger-all income apart from tourism. It helps in a small way if people do visit and stay in small hotels or home-stays, eat at mom-and-pop noodle stalls, lay 50p on the odd beggar and buy knick-knacks direct from tribal folks (rather than overpriced souvenir shops that pay the artisans bugger-all). Of course it might help more just to donate the plane fare to Oxfam, but still…
Most backpackers aren’t hooray Henrys or penny-pinching pretend-spiritual scumbags, though there is of course no shortage of those.
I’m not saying that the purpose of travel should be to gawk at poverty; it’s just that if you want to see the pyramids or Angkor Wat or whatever you’re going to see poverty, and that that does give a person a slightly different perspective on things.
The main reason I haven’t been to India yet is because I thought I would have trouble coping with the poverty there. But now I do intend to go at some stage in the next several years.
For my part, I’m socially liberal. Very much so.
Economically, I’ve actually gotten more moderate than economically leftist – and used to be more economically leftist, oddly enough; I don’t like economic rightism and my preference, if I had to choose between economic rightism and economic leftism, would be economic leftism, but there are also problems with more than a certain amount of economic leftism as well. You’ve got to be able to provide something of a safety net when someone has a financial fuckup that’s not their fault or falls into dire financial straits, and you absolutely have to provide things like education for the masses – I am all for significantly reducing the cost of a degree, being an undergrad myself – but you have to go about it in a way that makes you be able to pay for what you do.
There have to be some concrete limits on how much debt a country is going to incur before they incur that debt.
Oh, look.
Another conversation about Walton.
*logs off*
I did find this from the Babylonian Talmud.
The poverty in Thailand was about as much as I could handle. Nothing quite so powerful as beggars outside of a Buddhist temple containing the world’s largest solid gold Buddha statue.
Gotta love this – fundamentalist churches dealing with the problem of pornography addiction among women. No need to mention that the many of the women were sexually abused as children, which might have contributed slightly to this behavior.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/03/us/03addiction.html?hp
It is also my opinion that rich people and poor people alike can be very bad with their money, and if you are sufficiently crap with your own money (i.e. max out your credit cards on really stupid shit), you should get no help.
Because you can’t fix dumb.
<headdesk>
It could be pretty harmless, but more likely it’ll be utterly devastating, and we don’t even know enough yet to tell.
So I know this girl right, she’s dark-skinned, 20yo, african background, got raped at 18, currently a uni student, and is facing the prospect of being married off at 22 at the latest by her family.
This is Australia, mind you.
There is no , and I repeat, no way she will not be married off at 22, I have tried my all for the last few weeks, the worst thing is, she is kind of resigned to the fact and ready to accept it.
Makes me so angry all I can think of(after offering her to elope) is this.
Not going to cut it, I know.Neither is appeals to the enlightenment or this being the 21st century.
Suggestions appreciated.
But you can fix making dumb lifestyle mistakes.
Come on. This one is actually interesting!
And did you see the toothless goodness last subthread?
And left to starve, or what?
That’s like Britney Spears declaring her support for the death penalty “so he [the evildoer] learns his lesson for next time”. Sometimes it’s too late for a deterrent.
It’s called psychiatry. Sometimes it even works.
Kel, Yeah, it’s terrible to see such squalor in Thailand. But I don’t suppose you can start melting down religious artifacts because they’re, well, religious.
I don’t follow Thai politics as much as I’d like to, but I think Thaksin did some good stuff, or at least some populist stuff before he went into exile. Anybody else know anything about that? His war on drugs was bad, though: basically a green light for cops to go around shooting anyone they didn’t like.
I hope like hell that things with the Islamic separatists down south don’t get worse.
So, I had a really good time on Saturday. My sister and her friends came down for a romp around DC. We went to the Natural History museum (tried to get my sister to understand a bit about science and she kinda blew it off to ‘goddidit’) and then walked down the mall to the Lincoln Memorial.
At the steps of the Lincoln Memorial was a whole… 30 or so(?) Christian apologists praying and saying how America abandoned god. Now – keeping in mind my sister is an evangelical Christian – we were all creeped out! These women were ranting and screaming and shouting. We went to the memorial, took some pictures (it was neat because there were like… twenty people inside the memorial), and got the hell out of dodge before going to the zoo.
The best thing, I think, was that my sister kind of agreed with the fact that the ranting, screaming, shouting Christians give other Christians a bad name. It was a good time, and I did get to show her a little bit of the science that fuels my passion.
Rorschach @197, makes me angry too, but at the end of the day, it’s her choice.
Like you say, this is Australia. Nothing is stopping her from packing her bags and moving away from home, if she really wanted to; the law is on her side.
Other than a round or three of headdesking?
Shaming the family somehow?
Eloping sound good, except for her studies.
Her family is stopping her from packing her bags, I bet. Illegal, but could probably only be stopped by police…
Moving away from home is also a money problem.
The Britney Spears analogy is rather off base, wouldn’t you think? I’m saying if they fuck it up that badly then one shouldn’t trust them with, well, more resources. Sure, make financial information available, but I see no inherent sense in spending money on someone who can’t direct a dime for anything useful to save their lives.
And psychiatry doesn’t fix dumb. It fixes depressed or anxious or schizophrenic. But it doesn’t fix dumb.
Crap, Rorschach, can you give more information on the clusterfuck this girl is in?
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2010/05/quoth_richard_dawkins_i_am_proud.php
I agree with him about the centrality of arriving at beliefs scientifically, of science as means. It’s actually at the heart of the argument I’ve been having with some of the accomodationists.
Back to work again. Soon I will be free!
Unfortunately, simply making it to Australia (or any other similarly civilised country) doesn’t mean you’re safe from old-country attitudes or traditions.
This poor woman‘s husband strangled her with her own veil because she was becoming “too Australian”.
I can’t imagine the nightmare she had already been through (seven years in refugee camps in Iran), and then to have it all end like that.
@cerebus #158 not meaning to intrude but since you have a masters Im pretty sure you are over 18yo or so. Are you sure your parents dont know or are you coming out to them to make it official. Please ignore this post if its too nosey.
How about an ‘uneducated idiot tax’ instead? A ‘graduate tax’ strikes me as extremely anti-intellectual.
Me too !
16 years to go !
broboxleyOT @209
I figured it out myself about a year and a half ago now myself while still over here in Denmark (I moved to Denmark for two years for my master’s program). So, I haven’t yet told them since figuring it out myself.
Overall, though, it’s pretty much a formality. I’ve come out to them already as poly and asexual and as having a bi partner and they’ve been pretty LGBT supportive overall and have known that there has been something “different” about me for years now (assuming back then that I was gay).
I expect some common, “buh wah, huh” style temporary responses, but given their track record so far, I imagine long term they’ll say the same thing they’ve said about all the other “weird things” I am, which is that they love me and support me and who I am or what I do (short of hurting or killing someone) will never change that.
But yeah, I’m out to all my friends and have been dropping hints like a mofo for about a year now so it hopefully won’t be too big of a shock, but I’ve been putting off the “official” coming out until I was in the same area because I imagine they’ll be a little confused in the short term and might want personal reassurances that I won’t be having some sort of personality transfer and will be the same nerdy crazy kid they’ve always had, just female.
@Cerberus:
Hope they take it well.
Know if it was my situation, it would be really bad… evangelical Christian families do not make for good situations of that sort. Considering I’m afraid to tell them I don’t believe in their god, I couldn’t possibly imagine how hard it would be to come out.
I don’t follow Thai politics as much as I’d like to, but I think Thaksin did some good stuff, or at least some populist stuff before he went into exile. Anybody else know anything about that? – ambulocetean
A bit. Yes, Thaksin Shinawatra did launch some highly successful anti-poverty initiatives, and was very popular with the poor (particularly the rural poor), and very unpopular with the rich, as a result. My impression, though, is that the red-shirt movement has largely outgrown him: what they are now demanding is immediate elections – the current government has no democratic legitimacy whatever.
The Black Rabbit of Inlé would dispatch with that priest, I’m sure.
Cerberus – congratulations on the defense!!! And good luck with your parents. You come off as so self-assured and comfortable that I assumed you had fully transitioned years and years ago. I hope it goes well.
@cerebus #212 like I tell my kids, just because I love ya, doesnt mean that I hafta like ya. In our culture sexuality isnt a big deal, Lots of room in the community for everyone. Im glad you think your parents will be cool with it, it saddens me when parents cannot deal with such things, they are hurting themselves most of all.
ambulocetacean @155:
For best results, just add religion.
In darker times, I once spent an hour trying to say the last ‘amen’ of a prayer just right.
My thinking at the time was, “because it is such a trivial thing is exactly why I know that God must be testing me on it. He wants to punish my complacency and keep me on my toes.”
It’s a complex and horribly fascinating condition.
Hi Knockgoats,
What I really don’t understand is where the king fits into all this. Does he really have no power (“soft” or otherwise), or is he actually happy to go along with whichever military coup happens to be taking place in any particular year? It seems like he’s at least reliably acquiescent.
The Thai reverence/worship of the king could be kind of quaint except for the fact that people keep getting locked up for lese majeste all the time.
I wonder what the soldiers stationed at the massive Democracy Monument in Bangkok think about it all.
Kevin @213
Again, I’m not too worried about it. I’m very privileged and very very lucky to have wonderful supportive parents with a very good track record of supporting me. They barely blinked about the asexuality, polyamory, dating a bisexual or traveling halfway around the world for my master’s degree on short notice and really pride themselves on being progressive, supportive, non-douchebag type parents.
My partner has a family with immense catholic baggage and has been terrified for awhile about coming out as bisexual and poly (though she has come out to her mom and a couple of aunts) and I greatly sympathize and my heart breaks for all those who live in families where coming out or being honest with oneself risks being thrown out of the house or worse. (In fact I actually know someone with this sort of situation who’s the sister of my best friend and my partner had a “lesbian relationship in everything but name” thing with a former friend who was so terrified about the potential cost of coming out that she immediately denied ever having feelings for her).
I am not “brave”, I lucked out in the “spin the wheel” game that is life and have parents who have proven themselves during every other “mom, dad, I’ve got something to say” I’ve done so far.
The only thing I’m worried about is basically that there is very little information out there about trans people and a lot is sensationalized, so I want to be there to take them back down to Earth and dispel any potential worries, but I have no doubts that they’ll love me and support me and treat me just the same as they always have.
It’s a confidence born from the empirical evidence of their history.
Because I’m a lucky bitch.
Well, no, because…
…that’s not what you said. You said they shouldn’t get help.
OK, then try education.
After all, it’s easy to train one’s ability to solve an IQ test…
@Rorschach
Are there groups that work with women from her particular community to protect them from arranged marriages? I know there are such groups in the UK, similar to places women can go to escape domestic violence. It seems to me that short of nuking the offenders from space, arranging for her to talk with other women who have been in the same situation might be the best help you could give her.
Carlie @215
Nope, I’m a newbie. ;)
And I’m not fully done with my master’s stuff. I still got to defend in two weeks, but I’m done with the paper and I’ve got some downtime before I have to prepare my defense.
broboxley OT @216
That’s pretty much been my parent’s response. I’d frankly be shocked and hurt if they reacted poorly because I think they consider it a point of pride that they aren’t like “those” parents who freak out and stop loving their kids over stupid bullshit. I think they may have some general confusion just because trans issues aren’t well known, but I don’t envision a negative reaction other than maybe my mom worrying about my safety. Again, I’m really really lucky in that regard and I am very very thankful that I can always count on their support no matter how “weird” I get. Not every person is so lucky.
@Cerberus:
Well, good! Sounds like it shouldn’t be too hard for you then. Good parents are hard to find. I hope that when the time comes and I have some little versions of me running around that I will be able to provide them with all the best regardless of all the talks they need to have with me.
I have wonderful parents as well, but they’re stuck in evangelical Christian dogma. Like I said, I can’t even tell them I don’t believe in their god because I’m afraid of their reaction – my father’s reaction to the fact I have “The God Delusion” on my bookshelf was “I hope you have that book because you want to know how to deal with the enemy.” I wasn’t even blatant with it, it’s in a pile of books that includes evolutionary books, political books, Biblical study guides, and devotionals (I need another bookshelf, but I don’t have any room in my apartment.)
I’m glad that someone in your situation doesn’t have to deal with parents like mine. I don’t know how they’d react. It’s scary, too, cause I harbor slight bi-sexual leanings (physically attracted to men, but not sexually.)
David, maybe I should have been more specific when I said ‘help’: I meant something more on the order of monetary help. Not financial information. I think EVERYONE should have access to financial information.
I’m saying that if one handles money really, really badly, one shouldn’t get any more that they don’t make themselves.
MrFire, you too? How horrid. How are you travelling these days?
Do you think the TV series Monk has been good or bad for public understanding of OCD? Monk makes OCD seem a little bit sad but kind of cute and no huge deal really. But the folks on that Obsessed series were doing it really, really hard. They were utterly exhausted and miserable.
The changes on that show (each episode shot over several weeks) were amazing, but I wonder if they were just a bit too amazing for them to keep it all together without a bit of ongoing help.
@Cerberus, Good luck with it all.
RE: OCD:
I’ve got OCD’s little brother. I’m very anal retentive. Things bother the heck out of me if they’re not straight and orderly (with notable exceptions – my work desks are horribly cluttered and messy) but I won’t go to great length to make sure everything is straight and orderly.
When I used to work in WalMart (never work at WalMart) I worked in Lawn and Garden. We had these mesh canopies over the area so it wouldn’t get too hot. One of them had a corner that was hanging, and it bothered me so much. I would have fixed it, if not for the fact to fix it I would have had to take several really heavy pots off a shelf, move the shelf, get a ladder, set up the ladder, fix the canopy, put the ladder away, put the shelf back, and put the pots back on the shelf. So I left it, and glared at it every day at work.
I’m saying that if one handles money really, really badly, one shouldn’t get any more that they don’t make themselves. – Katharine
And if that means their children starve, well, that’s natural selection, eh Katharine?
[/callous arsehole]
Cruithne (#172):
You have my sympathies. As a NI resident I never voted at all as a matter of principle – it wasn’t until I moved to England in my mid-20s that I cast my first vote. That said (and in full acknowledgement of the hypocrisy of the following advice) there is at least one potential honourable option open to you – if the DUP have a chance of winning in your constituency, vote against them.
Labour don’t organise in NI because they recognise the SDLP as a “sister” party, and so have an informal agreement with them not to put up rival candidates. In return, SDLP MPs usually take the Labour whip at Westminster. I used to be tempted by the SDLP, back in the day, but their social policies always struck me as being too infected by Catholic dogma. I don’t know how true this still is, but the SDLP are still the nearest you’re going to get to Labour.
Sinn Fein may yet still metamorphose into a party of acceptable social democratic principles, but you’re probably in a far better position than I am to determine how far down that road they’ve got (or are likely to get). They do appear to be one of the more progressive parties in NI on gay rights, however.
I do remember how frustrating it was to find a suitable repository for an centre-left vote in Northern Ireland that might actually make a difference. There’s always the Alliance Party and the Greens, I suppose. But still, tactical voting against the DUP seems worth thinking about.
Kevin @223
Giant Hug.
Yeah, that’s a shitty situation to be in. I guess, just work on loving yourself and then worry later about any “coming out” of whatever flavor. And always remember that if you do “come out” in whatever form you choose and they reject you, that’s all on them, not you.
Beyond that, live your own life and don’t care what your parents would think about it. If they are worth loving, they will support you even if they disagree. If they are not, they were not worth self-censoring yourself. This is most critical when you’re living your life not around them.
I’ve always been a little sad at how people will self-censor things they do in their own homes or with their own homes entirely because of things like “my parents could see, find out, etc…”.
Beyond, that…
Giant hug. That is why I fight, so everyone can grow up, eventually, as lucky as I am.
Cerberus, glad to hear you finished your thesis. Lots of work there. Let us know how your defense comes out.
Pretty much. Thaksin is a good symbol of what they want (equal representation for everyone, truly democratic elections, modernization of rural farming, and so on), but his flaws seem to have undone him. Not that he was completely corrupt.
It’ll be interesting to see what happens. The king seems to be pretty frail these days, and the prince is not well-liked or trusted at all. The red-shirt movement does seem like a populist uprising. (Why did they choose red shirts? Don’t they know what happens to redshirts?)
I just hope it doesn’t lead to more bloodshed. But if something doesn’t give soon, I don’t know how it can be avoided.
Funny anal-retentive story: I’m pretty much a slob about most things, but I have my little tics. While my son was being evaluated for autism, one of the tests was an observation of the two of us playing together. There was a cash register and a pile of money, and he dumped it out and I organized it and then we played store for a few minutes. During the results the psychologist said “I noticed you organized the money for him, and understand that you were trying to make things easier and how he liked it, but you need to step back and let him deal with those kinds of situations himself” and I was all “Um…yeah…I was organizing it for him, sure…” ….
ambulocetacean@218,
Must admit I don’t know much more – I think the King has considerably more day-to-day say in what happens than, for example, the British monarch, but it’s partly personal – he’s been around a long time and is a canny politician in his own right. My guess is that he and the army leaders are reluctant to move to crush the red shirts, as they clearly could do – the failed attempt to arrest of red shirt leaders recently looked suspiciously like a deliberate bungle. This may indeed be because they are uncertain how far they could rely on the obedience of ordinary troops, who will come largely from poor rural families.
@Cerberus:
*equally giant hug* Thanks. I’m still quite newbish to the whole ‘rational thinker’ thing – only began commenting here… what… in November? So I’m getting quickly attuned to finding out the little nuances of life.
I absolutely love my family. I would be devastated if they rejected me – although I’m pretty sure the only one who would go straight out to that level would be my father. My mother would be disappointed, and probably try to evangelize. My sister wouldn’t care, she’s the most level-headed of my entire family. I don’t know about my brother, but he seems level-headed enough to not be so angsty.
I’m very happy with who I am, or who I’m finding out who I am. I’ve always been scientifically minded (space and dinosaurs, though every boys’ favorite things, were definitely mine.) I just rejected a lot of science during my Christian life because it was ‘anti-Biblical.’ Which is very sad, because I’ve got a grade-level understanding of scientific matters, and could never attain to be a scientist regardless of my love for it.
It’s remarkable, really, how much I’ve grown in the last eight months compared to my twenty-five years of life prior to renouncing Christianity. I’ve accepted that I’m physically attracted to men (and men with accents… *rowl* Ask me about the phone rep I got from Cox…) I’ve accepted science that a year ago I would be calling stupid. I’ve accepted everyone as equals, when a year ago I’d be here calling a person like you depraved and sinful.
Religion retards mental growth…
Totally OT (so this is the right thread), but something in this thread got me to check something on YouTube, which lead to another thing on YouTube, which reminded me of Dark Star, so I just finished watching. (Not that I recall what any of those somethings are now.)
And then noticed some hair sticking out my keyboard, started to clean it out, and pulled three surprisingly large (thumb-sized) mostly-intact hairballs out from between/under the keys (not to mention a fair amount of dust and dirt). Yeesh…
@Carlie:
That’s pretty hysterical. I was playing with my nephew at the end of March when I was up in Boston. We were playing with some blocks he had. While he was content to put the blocks in random places on the tower we were building, I was trying to direct him to put them in places that would support structural integrity and where they were in a pattern.
“No no, put the red block here next to the yellow block. The other red block is next to the other yellow block. Haven’t you ever heard of symmetry? Now stop chewing on the block, you’re making it all slimy.”
@blf:
Eww…
A grade level understanding of science/scientific matters, and a love of science leaves you well placed to be a scientist if that’s what you want to do – hell just the love of science part would do.
I think the last thread had a whole sub-plot of ‘don’t give up on shit just because you’re in your late 20’s – life’s long’ which would equally apply to someone who’s had the blinkers of fundamentalist religion removed after 28 years.
@Ewan R:
Well, actually the reason I couldn’t be a scientist isn’t because of a grade-level understanding of science (I’m fixing that, I bought Coyne and Shubin’s books.) I can’t be a scientist because I’ve got dyscalculia. Numbers just don’t work right in my head and I have absolutely no ability to tell distance, time, or direction without actively seeing such.
Ah, Thailand. So beautiful, so corrupt.
@My 239:
Oh, and for the curious. The way I got through college math was with a wonderful calculator that told me the answers to the equations. Heehee, silly professors. Graphing calculators aren’t the only ones that can help you get the right answers *snickersnicker*
Oh – yeah, I could see how that would impede progress in most areas, particularly getting through chem classes and whatnot – however with a recognized condition like that is there not some kind of assistance you can get to get through that sort of thing – I know dyslexics(ok a dyslexic) who had a monumentally hard time with anything at all to do with reading/writing until they received assistance – if I remember correctly they now have a pHD despite having essentially been written off as educationally incapable early in life.
Also, given the level of mathematical and temporal awareness of some plant physiologists… it may be that there are some areas of science where dyscalculia would go relatively unnoticed…
@My 241:
No, I didn’t cheat, either. I just had the calculator tell me the answer, did the work, and if I didn’t get the right answer, I had to go through to figure out where I went wrong – which was usually in carrying over or some kind of algebra issue.
@#241 – if your calculator can get you through college math my guess is you’re either underselling your own ability to use novel solutions to your problem, or overselling the importance of math in all areas of science (particularly the importance of math that can’t be bypassed by either using a computer/calculator to do the work, or by getting someone else to solve the problem… collaboration is the win)
@Ewan R:
I did what I mentioned in my posts 241 and 243, mostly. I’ve worked out ways to deal with the fact that I just can’t do mathematics. I still have trouble with the other problems with dyscalculia. Left and right are almost always reversed in my head. I honestly have no temporal awareness, this conversation has been going on for almost 20 minutes, and my brain is telling me it’s been about 5. I also can’t accurately figure out distances. Like I know the wall next to me is a little bit further than three feet cause I can’t touch it, but my brain is saying it’s less than that.
It’s bizarre, but not terribly damaging.
The mass of the two major parties here contributes to our country’s famous polarization. I envy countries like the UK with shitty electoral systems because ours is so much worse. To vote for someone viable outside the donkey party!
A hung parliament is a good thing. And a coalition with more libdem is preferable to one with less.
Absolutely.
Unfortunately, it’s illegal to hang them.
@Ewan R:
That’s precisely the thing. I didn’t even recognize I had a learning disability until a few months ago when I was on a forum and someone talked about it. I looked it up, saw I match pretty much 90% of the stated symptoms, and knew I had it.
Just for the past in school and such, I always found ways to get around the disability. I developed my own little cheats and tricks to do so. I never add numbers straight together, I always look for patterns to work with – 10s and 5s.
And yes, that calculator was AWESOME. You plugged in the equation as it was written, hit a few buttons, and wham, it gave you the answers. Didn’t give you the work – which all of my college professors asked for, but I at least knew whether or not I was correct at the end of actually performing all the work. It died a sad death, though – I think I accidentally crushed it with another book, or a chair, or something.
Hehe…
http://rationalwiki.com/wiki/images/7/7f/FoxNewsInfromed.jpg
Out of completely tangential interest…. I seem to recall you played WoW – does the inability to judge distances etc translate into 3d environments in games too? As an inability to judge distance there would, as far as I recall, make for lot of dying quite spectacularly (particularly if you raid…)
On the rest…. I’ll shut up I guess… I still get the feeling that you’d do great in certain areas of science, just due to your obvious level of enthusiasm for science and your capacity to think logically, however obviously you know yourself well enough to make decisions (just don’t rule out all of science if that really is where your passion lies – it’d be a loss to science imo)
@Ewan R:
Yeah. I die a lot in 3D games. Funniest thing was in one of the God of War games, there was a part where there were two ledges over a precariously bottomless pit. The checkpoint was right before these ledges. I must have jumped and missed them for a good fifteen minutes before asking my roommate to do it.
“Dude, I can’t do this, you do it for me.” *hophop* “Now, never mention this to anyone.”
I usually use the top-down camera in places of important positioning, because I can tell where my character is easier in that place.
Katharine, you aren’t promoting freedom.
“Death to queers.” Not liberal.
“Death to blacks.” Not liberal.
“Death to poor people.” Liberal? Why? How? “If they make poor decisions managing money.” They should starve?
Freedom to starve to death in the street? You’re what is fashionably known as a libertarian. Not liberty-promoting.
Letting people die is a social issue. Even when it’s not in a place like the USA where economic survival is so closely related to race and gender.
ambulocetacean says, “Ah, Thailand. So beautiful, so corrupt.”
Damn, it’s been 21 years and 3 months since I was in Thailand. Amazing place. Land of a thousand smiles, they call it, but as soon as anybody got pissed off, they’d be thrashing each other with their belts–with BIG metal belt buckles.
Banana-Passion-Fruit Lassi’s under a tree overlooking the river in Chang Mai. Food so hot it would corrode metal. Damn. I took a course in Thai Massage there. $80 for a two week course. 8 hours a day and 7 days a week. You could easily live on $4 a day then, even as a tourist. Sigh
Manifesto of the Hung Parliament Party
Dear fellow subjects,
There is one issue so important, so critical, to the well-being of this land, that we have formed a new party to ensure the Government cannot ignore the issue and deals with it properly. For centuries now our representatives in Parliament have been corrupt, stupid, and useless. Remember the expenses scandal? That is only the most recent incident in a long line of behaviour that, if you or I did it, would earn us a spell in gaol.
The Hung Parliament Party vows to change this. Our manifesto is simple:
Hang all MPs.
If you’re an MP, you’re corrupt. You’re stupid. And you’re useless.
A dead MP’s corruption is finished. A dead MP’s stupidity won’t harm the country. And unlike a live MP, a dead MP is useful. Its corpse is ecologically-sound fertiliser.
Hang all MPs.
We know this sounds funny, but we’re serious. Elect your HPP candidate, and they will happily commit Seppuku on their first day in Westminster.
Hang all MPs.
Thank you for your votes,
The Hung Parliament Party.
p.s. Are you interested in helping your HPP candidate? Or even standing as a member of the HPP? If so, please contact us. We also accept donations of rope, burning torches, pitchforks, and sharp knifes.
My dad taught me that one! I was so frustrated trying to add sets in my head one by one, especially when the 7s and 8s were near each other (which I remember reading a study about once – 7s and 8s are the hardest for the majority of people to do basic mental math with). I was kind of furious once I realized how much easier it could be, and my teachers hadn’t taught it to me that way. However, I now wonder if the problem was not being taught it, or a rigid adherence to a particular order in which I thought I had to do things *cough*autistic tendencies*cough*
How common is it to write capital F similar to a 7 with a cross-bar (as in commonly done in France and elsewhere, in technical notes, and when copying (receiving) Morse code)? I keep reading that as THANK YOU 7OX NEWS 7OR KEEPING US INFROMED which is as surreal as it is funny.
found this link on another blog, discussing hate mail. Maybe PZ needs to add an audio component to his “I get email” posts sometimes?
Hate Mail Dramatic Readings
Whoa! In Thailand they used to beat each other with belt buckles? I’ve spent several months in Thailand over the years (not that that makes me any sort of expert) and I’ve rarely seen anybody look even remotely close to losing their sh*t.
I heard that you lose face if you get angry. I always figured the Thai way was just to smile and secretly wish the farang a painful death. I’d never want to piss off a Thai guy -they’ve all been in the army and done muay Thai.
A digression on OCD follows, for those interested.
ambulocetacean:
I never had issues with travelling per se. I did have serious problems learning to drive, because I had to have every component of the driving process playing out smoothly in my mind in order to make the next move (leading to much stalling and hesitating while in traffic, infuriated driving instructors, and ironically a far larger danger hazard). However, I was quite aware that it was my particular problem, and aside from motion sickness, I’d rarely been concerned about other people transporting me.
My OCD centered around bargain-making and repetitive actions* (hence, the the perfect marriage with religion). There were small overlaps with germophobia (to weave in another part of The Thread), such as having to let tap water flow for several minutes**, and then rinsing out my mug enough times to in order to feel ‘comfortable’.
However, I’ve come a very long way since that time. Few people can claim to be cured, but a combination of therapy*** and happier circumstances have made me essentially ‘normal’.
I haven’t watched enough Monk to get a solid idea of how I feel about it. From what I’ve seen, the show doesn’t exactly trivialize his condition, but neither have I seen an example where it has actually defeated him, and made an irreversible negative impact on his life (aside from its very existence). If the setup of the show is truly to have his OCD as a sort of nemesis that he is, however, always able to overcome (or circumvent), then I would consider that to be an unhelpful portrayal of the condition. OCD is not a Minion With An F In Evil.
I will definitely check this out – thank you for bringing my attention to it.
*This scene from The Aviator was very…nostalgic.
**Appropriately enough, there is a ‘boil water’ order right now in my neck of the woods, due to a burst pipe. It so happens that both the town where I live and the town where I work are unaffected, while the mostly all the surrounding and intervening communities (>30) have tainted water. Rest assured – back in the day I would have taken this as a warning from God (just to me, of course!): ‘I got lucky this time, but to stay in his good graces, I’d better up the ante and sacrifice something more drastic to show that I take him seriously.’
***Failing to understand the problem sometimes made my efforts counter-productive. As part of tackling my superstitions, I would deliberately select ‘unlucky’ numbers in any situation where the option might arise. Perhaps you can see where this is going…I became obsessed with choosing the formerly ‘unlucky’ numbers, before finally realising that it did not fucking matter.
Shit, how did you get from what I said to labeling me a homophobe, a racist, and anti-poor-people?
I’m assuming you’d agree that death to queers and blacks is not liberal. I’m only calling you anti-poor. What’s this about starving to death?
@Carlie:
It’s all manners of thinking. Which for me falls under the fact my brain tells me things about numbers that are completely wrong. Working it out is why I am as smart as I am.
@blf:
This is my first time seeing it. I write my lowercase fs a little strange – like the ye olde English(e) S with a bar through the center.
Goddamned borked links.
Minion With An F In Evil.
Scene from The Aviator.
I don’t know how I managed to screw up both.
I said nothing about gay people or black people.
Gay and/or black clearly does not equal stupid with one’s money. There is no logical relation between either.
Poor people can be poor for a number of reasons besides being shit with money.
But if you’re shit with money, whether you’re rich or poor, I really think if you’re too bloody stupid to make use of your brains to get to somewhere with a computer or other resources and obtain financial info (which I think the government should give out freely), then you’re too bloody stupid to have government money. I don’t believe in assisting the stupid/unimaginative, no matter how rich or poor they are. Make the resources available to everyone, get the information out, teach people about it, but if you’ve been given the information and you’re too dumb to make use of it, well.
re: 10s & 5s, 7s & 8s
I do that, too. I’m generally not bad with numbers. I actually enjoy working with them. But I always relied on calculators. Then I learned to start grouping them more often. For a long time I was still pretty obsessive over trying to get precise results when doing a quick calculation and have just in recent years started to get the hang of doing a quick estimate by rounding things to a 5 or 10 before multiplying or dividing.
@KOPD:
It’s probably more common to do it that way. My major issue comes with forgetting to carry (if I’m doing a whole bunch of numbers or numbers bigger than 9, for example.) I am almost always off by forgetting to carry over the bits that push it past. My mental estimates are off by powers of 10 almost always.
Look, asshole. My parents grew up in poor families. Their parents were nothing short of dumb. My parents scrimped, saved, got money for college by working (Dad went through the military) and now live as upper-middle-class folks and have graduate degrees.
My best friend is dirt-poor. He’s about to finish his undergraduate degree in computer science. The only money he gets is tuition money from his relatives; he doesn’t get money for anything else and has to save virtually everything he’s earned to feed his face and only very occasionally do anything fun.
I’m not anti-poor. I’m anti-moron.
I’m also assuming #264 was written before #261.
“I don’t believe in assisting the stupid/unimaginative, no matter how rich or poor they are.”
You can be stupid and unimaginative and still make money in this society, a situation which apparently serves you well, Katharine.
Have you considered what it means for labor to be a commodity, and what happens to wages as an economy approaches full employment? Our form of industrialization requires a nonzero amount of unemployment. Why should certain individuals be punished for entering a valley that the system requires someone to occupy?
Hi Mr Fire, Sorry, when I said “how are you travelling?” I meant “how are you going?”, as in “how are you faring in the battle with OCD?”. Glad to hear that you’re doing so much better.
I think you might have had link fails there. If the top one is TV Tropes I’ll try to refrain from clicking.
Re: Howard Hughes, I heard that his erratic behaviour was probably the result of head injuries in his various plane/car crashes.
A: it’s not the rich morons who starve to death.
B: you will have to present peer-reviewed literature to support your claim that intelligence correlates with economic success in your country. (USA?) Have fun looking.
Well, what? What do you propose the rest of that sentence to be? It’s all well and good to think charitably of everyone, and to think that everyone can do better if they just give it the ol’ college try, but even if you can get all the education necessary to everyone (which isn’t happening by a long shot) a lot of people simply can’t. They can’t deal well with finances. They can’t plan well for long-term goals. Some people are literally “too dumb to make use of” information, and some people are brilliant in some areas and terrible in others. What do you think should be done with those people?
That’s a really chilling statement considering that a certain percentage of society really do fall within that definition. Not everyone who does poorly in life is a lazy jerk who just wants to play Xbox all day. What do you think should happen to people who can function independently, but aren’t all that smart besides? Who are people who can’t quite handle much more than a minimum-wage job? Are they just shit out of luck and need to be weeded out of the population in your view? Because what you’re saying really, really sounds like that’s your opinion.
There is a correlation between education and financial success. Unfortunately, since most of the high schools in the US are funded through property taxes, poor communities tend to have fewer resources for education. This leads to a cycle in which poor families tend to stay poorly-educated, and so stay poor, especially since few can afford tuition to a decent university.
I’ve met a couple of stupid rich people. That’s just an anecdote, though, and not peer-reviewed. It could be there’s no such thing as a rich stupid person.
On a side note, I wonder if there’s a correlation between sociopathy and financial success?
I also do that, but not quite so pronounced with a diminished lower “tail”, sortof halfway between usual(?) modern rendering and ye olde S-with-crossbar rendering.
Other quirks: The vertical downstroke on my digit 5 is deliberately pronounced, otherwise they tend to look like capital S. And despite the crossbar, I’ve had people complain my digit 7 looks like a digit 1. I can’t write legibly on a whiteboard/chalkboard at all. And my r has a tendency to look like v except when I try to avoid that, in which case it looks vaguely like a squashed d with the upper horizontal(-ish) line extending past the vertical line to the right.
@KOPD and Kevin:
I’ve never done well with numbers in my head, but I figured it was just the “artist” in me. It wasn’t until I started helping my children learn math that I started to learn some of the “cheats” to adding in my head.
Adding eights iseasier if I subtract two and add ten. Sounds more complicated, but somehow I can add faster that way.
My 8-y-o son, on the other hand, is scary with numbers. He does double and triple-digit addition in his head, carrying and all. He’s got most of his multiplication tables down, too.
@blf:
I never write a lowercase q in the normal style, it’s just a smaller uppercase Q. When I write th, the top bar of the t goes right into the h, resembling a more fancy h in the end, because I write the h with a really low curve (it almost looks like an L.) My g and j have really long tails.
@Katrina:
I think I understand what you’re talking about, but it actually does make a lot of sense. I don’t usually break up numbers, rather leaving them off to the side until the end or until I make a number that can then be turned into a 5 or 10.
Like 8 and 6 is really 10 and 4? I do that too sometimes. It points at a certain fungibility in numbers that I do wish were part of the way that math was regularly taught – that groups of numbers are fluid within themselves. I’ve tried to teach those kinds of shortcuts to my 10 year old, but he wants none of it. Numbers are NUMBERS, BY GOD, and they WILL be added in the correct fashion in his mind. But then again, he can do long division in his head, so it’s probably best I leave him alone to it.
@Carlie:
Math is extremely poorly taught. I’m honestly not surprised it’s the most dreaded of academic studies. It would be a lot easier to understand algebra and higher level maths if you were given that understanding that numbers aren’t rigid and can be adjusted as necessary.
Of course, go too far and you wind up with this: Math
Carlie, I suggest you introduce your kid to Paul Erdos.
Surely you were awake during the last presidency.
Mr Fire, I clicked your links but went no further into TV Tropes than the page you linked. Your Trope-fu cannot harm me. Truly, you are the Diet Coke of evil.
nigelTheBold,
Well, there certainly is a trifecta between sociopathy, financial success, and awesome.
Your Dunning-Kruger problem is showing.
Yes, it is true that a nonzero amount of unemployment is required (and it strikes me as silly that we’ve industrialized this way), but the thing is, the people who make up that percentage can surely flow, eventually, out of that state of unemployment. I have no problem with unemployment benefits. However, it depends how long you occupy that state. Unemployment, if I remember correctly, runs out after a certain amount of time.
Katharine, just what sort of people do you think would be harmed by the removal of welfare programs in your country? Anything more specific than “stupid”?
And so they do. (What then is your problem, I’m not sure.)
So you’re fine with unemployment. How about TANF?
I don’t know what we should do with them.
But I sure don’t want to give them money.
Where’d I say anything about removing welfare?
Don’t push me, walking whale…you might find I am a Worthy Opponent.
Well what do you suppose this means?
blf wrote,
I’m not a student of typefaces by any means, but in the few books I have printed in the 18th century (reprints of The Spectator and the like printed in the 1770’s). I was always interested to see that the long-s wasn’t an ‘f’.
In all the examples I have, the crossbar on the long-s doesn’t go completely across the vertical stroke, but is only on the left side of the vertical. Or is it the other way around, and it’s only on the right side? Bother! Now I’m going to have to check this when I get home.
Either way, it was a different character than an ‘f’ by a half a crossbar. It must have been maddening for typesetters and proofreaders.
@Flex:
“What’s this say? ‘Fufficient’? Or is it ‘sussicient’? What kinds of words are these? ‘Fuperficial’? ‘Sond’?”
Interesting! I don’t recall ever noticing that before. The “A Specimen of typeset fonts and languages, by William Caslon, letter founder; from the 1728 Cyclopaedia” at Wikipedia shows you’re right. The long-s crossbar is only on the left; you can see this in the name of the street, which is Chiswell Street, but which looks (approximately) like Chifwell Street.
David M:
Indeed. And not really a conversation about Walton at all, IMHO, but a conversation about the social benefits and costs of higher education, in which Walton is an example, rather than the subject.
Walton’s projected debt of £40,000 is indeed horrific, but AFAIK still not huge compared to what many American students who go through the same course — including a postraduate degree and professional school — that Walton lays out.
I was lucky (30+ years ago) to attend a well funded public university (in Texas, no less) at which my fee statement (i.e., including not only tuition, but all student fees) for a single semester was never as much as $300 and on-campus room and board for a full academic year was never more than $2,000. Even with books and incidentals, my total cost was well within the (relatively modest) savings my parents and granparents had put aside for my schooling (even after I gave up a scholarship to change majors). My first Master’s degree (at another public university) was entirely funded by a teaching assistanceship, and my second Master’s degree was funded by my company’s Employee Scholar program (not only funded, but I got a cash bonus for graduating!). So I’ve never had any educational debt in my life.
But that was then and this is now: The cost of an education at a public college or university has skyrocketed in the decades since I started school, and grants and scholarships haven’t come close to keeping pace, such that it’s pretty damn difficult these days to get a meaningful education without incurring a sizable debt. I don’t have data on this point, but my sense is that even community college (2-year degrees) and students at post-secondary vocational schools are typically graduating with nontrivial debt.
Ironically, my daughter will graduate from Yale — one of the more expensive schools in the country — with no debt primarily because Yale is private. Yale and its peer schools (other Ivies, and their equivalents) generally have huge endowments (which have been fairly resilient even through the recent financial crisis), and a few years ago (perfectly timed for my family), a cascading wave of financial aid reform went through these schools, in which many of them committed to financial aid that no longer requires students to take out loans. I was personally intent on seeing that she graduated (at least from undergraduate school) with no debt, even if it meant my wife and I mortgaged everything we owned… but happily it’s not going to come to that.
Good as this situation is for my family, though, I’m not really comfortable with the idea that it’s getting easier for the relative minority of haves (not that my family is part of the economic elite, but my daughter surely is part of the intellectual elite) to get a high-end higher education while it’s also getting harder for the middle class and working poor to get any higher education at all.
IMHO, we should make all college tuition tax deductible to whoever pays it, whether parents or the students themselves. But income tax deductions have little to offer to the working poor, whose income tax burden is relatively low, if not nonexistent (note that this does not mean the poor pay no taxes, because we have plenty of other regressive forms of taxation). So we need to make the cost of college, up to some amount that represents the realistic cost of a basic post-secondary education, a refundable tax credit (actually, there are some new tax credits for college costs, but they don’t go nearly far enough). I’d make post-secondary education through a Bachelor’s degree (or equivalent) be simply free if I had a magic wand, but that’ll be a realistic possibility in the U.S. about a week and a half after we get a federal national health service!
IMHO, though, investment in education is like investment in basic research: It’s a public good that enriches a society, quite indepently of whatever capability it confers on individuals and companies to generate wealth for themselves.
The mormons are winning. The thumbs-up votes for the Jeffrey Holland video are at 5347; while the thumbs down votes are at 4154.
The video is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkKblIMfmjI
PZ wrote about the campaign to put this fraudulent video on the YouTube home page here: http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/04/shall_we_frustrate_some_mormon.php
PZ noted how illogical Holland was in this talk. It’s an affront to reason. And I can add that the Book of Mormon he holds up, and claims is the BoM in the jail on the day Joe Smith died, is not authentic. One lie after another.
Earlier, PZ suggested we vote thumbs-up for a Thunderf00t video: Go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Rqw4krMOug and add your thumbs-up vote. The Thunderf00t video provides the added value of including some ex-mormons, like Mr. Deity.
Ah, but… but…
You win this time, missy. But I’ll get you in the end!
oh, look.
Another conversation about how I rashly misinterpreted a previous conversation.
*logs off*
I’m curious… how would you pay for this? This isn’t snark. I genuinely don’t understand how, even i a world with no political opposition, you could possibly fund free higher education for the vast number of students in the US, without either massively increasing government debt (Reagan-style, albeit with degrees instead of missiles) or implementing cripplingly high tax rates.
@Bill Dauphin #293
I think that Walton would essentially be looking at 40,000 pounds in debt upon finishing an undergraduate degree in the US right? (at least… depending on school) and then probably at more than 150,000 upon completion of a law degree (probably on top of the initial 40,000) compounded by having to pay back the loan essentially from the moment you take it (at one rate of repayment) ramping up to full repayment rate 6 months after graduation.
Up until the introduction of fees in the UK life was Rosy for students – I lived my entire student life on an approximate 50:50 split of grants and loans – and this year will, unless the exchange rate wobbles in my favor, be the first year I have to actually pay anything back.
I’d make the change here that it is pretty damn difficult these days to get a meaningful education – it’s more about what you do outside of school (part time jobs etc) than about what you do in school that’s going to land you a first position – at least in my experience (as an absolute lazy sod from age 13-22) – probably of more value to get a crappy degree from a crappy school while working nearly full time than to get a decent degree from a decent school and not have a well padded resume (although a degree from a really good school probably negates a lot of that)
I agree that to a certain extent investment in further education (under/post grad) is an investment in society, and so should be provided by the government, although I think restricting it, or splitting degrees between vocational and (whatever a good word is for the non-vocational kind…) degrees as per the old polytechnic/university split in the UK, would be a help – a university education isn’t worth a crap if it essentially qualifies you to do a job you could have got without it (which a lot of qualifications essentially do) – a bachelors 20 years ago is probably equivalent to a masters today (and a masters to a pHD etc) which is entirely down to a bachelors being practically a ubiquitous qualification (at least comparitavely)
Perhaps infact the system would work somewhat more efficiently if you had to pay full whack for your bachelors (with various scholarships available etc) and then the msaters was covered – not ideal, but some sort of entry level filter would
a) take the pressure off the system financially
b) bring back some actual value to having a BA or BSc
So… you can tell when a man is handsome, but not when he’s sexy? And how do “men with accents” fit in?
What do you mean by “financial information”?
How many managers are like Enron managers?
That’s how I do it, too – I outright imagine writing the stuff down. Takes some time.
“Adding eights”? Does that mean things like 18 + 28? Like everywhere where a threshold of 10 needs to be crossed, I first split one 8 into 2 and 6, leaving me with 18 + 2 = 20 and 28 – 2 = 26, and then 20 + 26 gives me 46 without further crossings. This, too, takes some time. All calculation takes some time with me.
Yeah, many math teachers are surprisingly bad at explaining.
(No contest with the music teachers, though. The ones I had were completely incapable of teaching. <facepalm>)
fſfſfſfſfſfſfſfſfſfſfſfſfſfſfſfſfſfſfſfſfſfſfſfſfſfſfſfſfſfſf
go fuck yourself. really.
I’m sick of hearing from you spoiled-ass brats that I shouldn’t be getting school paid because I’m devaluing your precious degrees. fuck you and your precious elitism.
@David:
I more or less mean that I can find a man to be handsome and sexy, but I wouldn’t want to have sex with them.
And men with accents makes me swoon, I called up Cox (my cable company) to extend my contract for another year, and the guy who answered the phone had a beautiful Spanish accent. He sounded like Antonio Banderas. If I could have kept him on the phone longer, I certainly would have.
Ah. This font cheats by giving no crossbar to the ſ at all.
<sigh> Then talk about Cylindraspis instead!
SC has not been involved. You have nothing to fear. Really. Honestly.
Well, degrees are cheaper than missiles by several orders of magnitude.
And, again, it’s an investment.
Some fuckwitted judge has released the Hutarees on bail.
JH – it was a perhaps, not a definite, not particularly well thought out, and with the parenthetical (with various scholarships etc) added to cover those who ‘really’ should be getting education at this level.
I’m far from a spoiled ass brat. If I’d had to pay for University (particularly in the US) I’d essentially have been screwed, having gone through the system and come out realizing how next to worthless my degree was (the first job I got that actually required it wasn’t until I moved to the US ~8 years after graduation) I guess it left me longing for a time when upon graduation with a Bachelors you actually had a piece of paper that meant something, rather than something which was next to useless as its absorbancy was somewhat lacking for utilization as an arse wipe.
Although that said, it isn’t currently completely worthless – it’s a piece of paper that says “I stuck something out for 4 years, so I’m slightly better to hire than someone fresh out of highschool, although probably not better than someone fresh out of highschool who’s held down a vaguely similar job for a year”, it also gets you into postgrad courses, which you can then utilize to get a job that 20 years ago your bachelor’s would have got you.
And frankly, based on your writing, both here, and on your own blog, you’d quite clearly qualify as one of those who’d get into the system based on the whole merit clause I inserted, whereas I can guarantee you that a lot of the people I shared a class with at University would have fallen by the way at least in that respect.
Oh. My. God.
I have never seen that movie. I am now tempted to watch it.
Jadehawk,
I don’t think that’s what Ewan was saying; he did say that scholarships should continue to be provided. Obviously, there should be sufficient financial aid for students on low incomes; no one wants poor people to be shut out of higher education. Rather, what we’re really discussing is whether people from middle-class families, like me, should pay for our own educations.
For students in the UK, if your family’s household income is under a certain level, you can get grants to cover tuition fees etc. Some people view this as unfair because it’s premised on the student’s family’s household income, though: so there is no financial aid for students who have wealthy parents who refuse to support them. But it’s hard to see what other criterion could feasibly be used in the allocation of financial aid.
What Jadehawk just said. a) is trivially true, but a stupid outcome, because we need more people with tertiary education, not fewer; b) commits the fallacy of confusing relative and absolute value. If the Seven Wisest Men In The Kingdom are still stupid, they’re not wise, no matter if they’re only seven out of seventy million.
Kwok yourself sideways with a Leica rangefinder, you ridiculously porphyritic granitoid!
yeah, like I said: fuck you. because according your your arbitrary criteria, I’m actually not one of those people. No one gives high-school dropouts scholarships for writing blogs.
a university education isn’t worth a crap if it essentially qualifies you to do a job you could have got without it – Ewan R.
There speaks a clod-brained oaf. For the individual, learning how to think and study is a huge benefit even if you spend the rest of your life sweeping roads; and a well-educated population is if great benefit to a society not only economically, but in the defence and extension of democracy. Of course, I can see how someone who prostitutes their talents working for Monsanto would prefer that other people remain uneducated.
Mormons are declining to speak out against fraud!? Boy am I surprised. /sarcasm
Source: http://www.sltrib.com/faith/ci_14993866
Later in the article there was a great quote, but the LDS Church member neglected to mention that the Church itself is one big pyramid scheme, and that’s it is founded on a series of fraudulent claims and scams.
I’d raise fucking taxes, of course! Exactly how is a matter of (social) engineering, but the fundamental principle at work is that the public pays for the public good.
I don’t think of public education as a “freebie” for the individual students; I think of it as a matter of national fucking security, and any suggestion that we “can’t afford it” is delusional: Even in these perilous times, we remain a nation of great wealth, and the question of what we “can” afford is really more a matter of what we’re willing to afford. And BTW, there’s a huge gap between the level at which Americans — particularly the wealthiest of us — are currently taxed and anything that could reasonably be called “crippling.”
I’m no economist, and am reluctant to even feint in the direction economic theory in the presence of the actual economists among us, but I can’t help wondering if there might not be a trickle up effect: Mightn’t a better educated workforce generate more income, which would in turn generate more tax revenue?
Somebody upthread suggested a degree-tax: I wonder if a tax on the “excess” income earned by degree holders (i.e., income over and above some reasonable estimate of the person’s earning power without the degree) mightn’t work. At first blush, it seems like an incentive not to get a degree, but look again: You get the education free to begin with, and you only ultimately pay for it if it makes you richer… as opposed to the current system, in which you pay for the education upfront, whether it makes you richer or not (and regardless of whether your motivation is even to get richer in the first place).
But regardless of the funding methodology, I’m convinced that investing in a more highly educated population would be a fundamentally sound investment.
End of semester. No time to talk about anything. And I ain’t afeared o’ no SC.
However, I will note that this:
is a pretty limited view of the meaningfulness of education.
1)I don’t qualify for scholarships, since my sole achievement in life is not having thrown myself off the nearest bridge yet.
2)I am technically from a middle-class family, so your restrictions are indeed applying to me, even if I am, taken just by myself, an extremely poor person.
3)Financial aid for the poor is a Catch-22; student aid rarely covers enough, so you need to earn money to cover the rest, so next year you’ll have an increased income, so you’ll get even less money. And don’t even think about taking a year off to work to save up money, because then you won’t get any assistance at all.
I genuinely don’t understand how, even i a world with no political opposition, you could possibly fund free higher education for the vast number of students in the US, without either massively increasing government debt (Reagan-style, albeit with degrees instead of missiles) or implementing cripplingly high tax rates.
Start by cutting military spending by 50%. That gives you $300bn/yr. That’s a lot of fees and grants.
Katharine (answering Carlie);
From this excerpt, I get the impression that your irritation at ‘stupid’* people outweighs your interest in seeing them find a way to better their situation. Is this a fair impression?
*not equivalent to people bad with money, but I think that just got lost somewhere in the to-and-fro.
Ha! Try to grapple with me and you’ll find yourself holding naught but my Slippery Swimsuit.
Oh, so this is actually a discussion about whether the degree of bachelor should exist?
In Austria it didn’t till a few years ago. (I got my M.Sc. equivalent directly, after… theoretically 5 years of studying.) Then it was introduced across the board – though only at the deadline for most studies, several years after it was announced! – because “industry wanted it”, or so we were told. Meanwhile “industry” says bachelors are useless because they don’t know enough yet… the “told you so” across the land is pretty resounding.
Over here parents don’t have the right to refuse to support studying children.
(At least in theory. I’m told practice is a bit more complex. I mean, who can simply sue…)
Enough to pay for every college student in the USA right now, assuming that the government sets an upper limit at the average price.
Enough for enrollment to double in the excitement, actually. We’ve about 14m students and $9000 average annual tuition+fees.
Knockgoats,
Nooooo no no no.
I wish there wasn’t so much anti-militarism around here. People always remember the disastrous fuckups of Western military intervention (Vietnam, obviously, and the second Iraq war), but they forget the successes. They forget Sierra Leone, where British intervention literally saved thousands upon thousands of lives, and Tony Blair is still hailed as a hero. They forget the former Yugoslavia and the various conflicts through the 1990s, where, again, NATO and UN intervention saved thousands of lives. They forget Somalia, where the US military saved thousands of lives by ensuring that humanitarian aid got to the people instead of being commandeered by warlords. And they forget the times when we didn’t intervene militarily in time, and thousands did die: if the UN Security Council had been willing to authorise military intervention immediately in Rwanda when the genocide began, more than half a million innocent lives could have been saved. In all these cases, all the talk and diplomacy in the world achieved nothing. Multilateral military action was the correct path.
Yes, we could survive if the US and NATO countries trimmed down their militaries. But this would be at the cost of leaving much of the world to fend for itself. That isn’t a liberal or humanitarian stance, IMO; it’s a selfish isolationist one.
It’s important not to construct a strawman view of this. Those of us who advocate a strong military are not still fighting the Cold War. Do we need thousands of nuclear missiles in the modern world? Obviously not, hence why the US and Russia are, quite rightly, getting rid of them through phased disarmament treaties. Similarly, we don’t need huge blue-water navies any more, or massive conventional armies. But we do need to maintain a strong ground-based military, with sufficient air support and decent training and equipment, so that we – in accordance with international law and the requirement of a resolution from the UN Security Council – can be prepared, where necessary, to intervene to prevent genocide, civil war and mass slaughter.
shorter walton: education should only go to those few worthy of it, but we should definitely have enough guns to blow up the entire world twice over because a large part of the world is made up of ignorant barbarians.
There’s a similar arrangement at Oxford for mathematics and some of the sciences. If you’re an undergraduate mathematician or scientist, you generally do a four-year course and come out with a master’s degree (M.Math, M.Phys, M.Chem, and so on); it is possible to leave after three years and graduate with a BA,* but few do this.
*At Oxford, for historical reasons, most undergraduate degrees are Bachelor of Arts even if they are actually in the sciences. Similarly, my degree would be called a Bachelor of Laws, or LLB, at any other British university, but in Oxford terminology is actually a BA. Even more confusingly, Oxford offers some degrees that are called bachelor’s degrees but are actually masters-level qualifications, such as the BCL, Bachelor of Civil Law, which is equivalent to an LLM at other universities.
The other really weird thing about Oxford (which also applies at Cambridge and Dublin) is that, after I get my BA, I am entitled to “upgrade” it to an MA after another four years with no further study. I just have to pay a fee and attend a graduation ceremony. This is why you see “MA (Oxon.)” or “MA (Cantab.)” after Oxbridge graduates’ names, to differentiate it from normal (examined) masters’ degrees.
Nice strawman. Did you actually read my post?
Answer me this: do you think it was right to intervene militarily in Sierra Leone? Somalia? Yugoslavia? How do you think we could have prevented mass slaughter in those countries without military intervention?
See, that’s cool and all, but cutting 50% of the US military budget would mean we’re only spending 3 times as much on military as the next leading nation.
The US really overspends on the military.
As we’ve told you NUMEROUS times the military isn’t primarily being used to prevent slaughters or wars. The way it’s currently being used is to extend Western power throughout the globe. This discussion of humanitarian intervention is irrelevant since that doesn’t really describe the situation.
different question: do you think these places/people are inherently violent? do you indeed think that it’s entirely impossible to prevent these things from happening, and therefore the only useful tool here is a really big stick, to beat some sense into all these violent savages?
it wasn’t a strawman, it was me pointing out the irony of talking on the one hand about limiting access to education, and on the other hand whining about a state of the world caused among other things by lack of access to education
So the highly successful interventions in Sierra Leone, Somalia and Yugoslavia don’t count?
oh yeah, and what nigel and Feynmaniac said. cutting the US military budget in half won’t affect its ability to brazenly go in and bomb other countries, but it might prevent them from permanently invading and occupying them.
50% is anti-militarism? Fine, cut it 25%. The cost of the Iraq war alone is more than enough to pay for current post-secondary enrollment.
Really? You’re going with “you’re just focusing on the times there were ~100,000/~1 million causilites” argument?
Another strawman. No, of course I don’t. Indeed, the mess in several of these countries is largely the fault of Britain and the other European powers, since many of them were our former colonies which we exploited for resources and then decolonised in incompetent, ham-fisted ways.
And, obviously, long-term, we should focus on providing aid to rebuilding these countries – as we have been doing in Sierra Leone – with the aim of preventing these horrific situations from happening again.
But I do think that when the situation in a country has gone beyond the stage of diplomacy or humanitarian aid, and where people are actually being slaughtered by the thousands in a horrific conflict, sending in international peacekeeping forces is the right thing to do. And to do that, believe it or not, we have to actually spend some money on the troops.
Bill Dauphin wrote at #311,
I suspect you’re right. And it gives me a chance to mention my favorite hobby horse.
/begin irrational rant
Between around 1947-1963 there was a 90% tax bracket hovering around income greater than $400,000.
While most economists seem to think that the boom of the 1950’s is a reaction to both the suppressed demand and government innovation caused by the depression and the war, I think at least part of the reason is due to this bracket.
While there were people who did earn quite a bit of money, and paid the high taxes on it, there were also a lot of executives who voluntarily capped their income rather than pay the government any more money.
(From the perspective of that theoretical man, homo economus, this is irrational behavior, 10% of the income is still better than nothing. However, we all know people like my cousin who says, “If the Government is going to take that much, they’ll get nothing! I’d rather cut off my unmentionables than give them 90% of my income.”)
The result, as far as I can determine, was in increase in company payed perks for executives. But there was too much money to simply spend it all on perks. So the union busting stopped, because companies had enough extra money to meet the union demands. Employer based health care was created and extended to dependents. Pension plans became common, and real wages increased. Long term research and development programs developed in private industry.
Of course, at the same time conglomerates developed which do not easily adopt to changing business conditions yet at the same time stifle startup competition. The stagnation may have also promoted the stereotyped behavior of minorities and women. It wasn’t all rosy.
It also meant that there was enough government money to fund colleges, enabling them to reduce admission fees and offer scholarships to deserving students.
The benefits from this period of high marginal taxation drove American R&D for decades and expanded the size of the middle class while reducing number of the poor and wealthy.
/end irrational rant
But the next time some conservative suggests that the 1950’s was an idyllic period, remind them of that any income they made over $400,000 would be taxed by the federal government at 90%.
That’s funny. That’s exactly what Barney Frank (my new boyfriend) is proposing.
Great minds think alike! (Yet fools seldom differ.)
I once saw a guy (who admitted he didn’t have a degree) tell an e-mailing list that not having a degree was better. Generalising slightly, his example was someone with a degree is trained in only how to use X, and so tries to solve everything with X. In contrast, someone without a degree is aware there are other ways of solving problems (because, if I recall correctly, they must have worked harder to achieve a broadly-similar position).
The way most people (including myself) could ever make sense of this argument was that he was confusing product- or technical-training (in how to use a certain X) with University education. In context, this confusion seemed possible, since the e-mailing list was all about a certain class (an X) of software, and so it’s reasonable to assume the people on it were familiar with such training. Unfortunately, he never responded to any of the questions put to him, so whether or not that was his mistake remains unresolved.
And Jadehawk, you still haven’t answered my question. How would you stop a genocide or a horrific civil war without sending in peacekeeping forces?
Oh man, if we only have to pay for real humanitarian interventions, we’re going to have enough left over to pay off the national debt too.
About 3 months ago I mentioned the pseudonymously published book “Research in German” which explains how scientific* research and careers therein are supposed to work in Germany, and how they really work. Below is my translation of most of the chapter “Basic research – what for?”:
“Economically or medicinally important research is done by industry, and industry keeps its research results secret. Progress and methods of academic research, however, are published as quickly as possible. Thus, everyone can cook according to the recipes that are the rare commercially usable results in papers. It is cheaper and more comfortable to let others do research and to limit oneself to exploit their results in business. For decades the Japanese left academic basic research to others without getting into economic trouble, and the glorious role of the English in academic research did not prevent the decline of their economy. Indeed, Figure 5 [with 5 data points] shows that there is no correlation between the investments into basic research [in 1973] and the later changes to the gross social product [1979 – 1983].
Evidently, neither the economic nor the medicinal good of the world spring from academic basic research. Nonetheless, the latter draws its justification not only from the education of researchers for industry.
a) The reason that drives businesspeople and employees in higher management to buy modern paintings or bizarre cast-concrete structures is, apart from their wives, the fact that their social standing increases this way. Thus, research is for the state what the long fingernails were for the Chinese [Mandarins in imperial times]. It gains prestige by supporting commercially useless basic research, because nothing brings more honor than to be able to afford an expensive uselessness. For similar reasons it pays for professional sports. This is not meant ironically: after all, the taxpayer can be proud of having discovered the genetic code with just as much justification as for having won a soccer World Cup. [Insert Walton’s favorite YouTube video here.]
b) There is an interest of the common public in purpose-free scientific questions, e.g., how the diversity of antibodies arises or how the nerve cell processes messages. If this interest is noticeably larger than for Celtic numismatics or for the techniques of medieval castle-building is an open question, but it exists. Popular scientific magazines are not only bought by researchers.
c) Occasionally, basic research starts developments, such as modern molecular biology, to which the purpose-directed research of industry or medicine are blind.
d) Basic research warns of dangers that industry research does not see or is not allowed to see. Examples are the greenhouse effect and the ozone hole.
e) Experimental basic research protects from mental altitude sickness. Esotericians are rare in scientific research. It heals to experience how difficult it is to testably predict the behavior even of the simplest systems, how easily convincing lines of reasoning hurt themselves at the hard edges of experiment, and how quickly words heavy with meaning lose any sense as soon as one tries to measure their content in numbers. Theoretical reasoning is not only gray[**], but wrong most of the time, too.
f) Research is an interesting way to pass time. It keeps people occupied who would otherwise increase the flood of physicians or lawyers, speculate at the stock exchange, or meddle with politics.
Would the wealth of the Federal Republic [of Germany] be in danger if the professors and their assistants[***] were ordered to clean the streets? Nobody knows, but probably the cleanness of the streets only has a small influence on economic development.[****] Academic basic research nonetheless has sense and use, even though it is not the one that is written in the grant proposals. Why not use a fraction of the gross social product for it? Research is after all cheaper for the taxpayer than the production of milk lakes and butter mountains.”
* Molecular biology, and only molecular biology. :-/
** Goethe: Grau, teurer Freund, ist alle Theorie, / und grün des Lebens gold’ner Baum – “gray, dear friend, is all theory, / and green life’s golden tree”.
*** Most are still not called “assistant professors” in their own right.
**** Well, of course it does once it makes the difference between disease and its absence. But I digress.
“some money” is of course not what you were claiming as necessary though, since 50% of 664 billion is still “some money” by any measure imaginable. You were distinctly railing against reducing the budget at all. either that, or you had an idiotic knee-jerk reaction. take your pick.
David – do we really need more people with tertiary education?
Perhaps this is the case – in my experience it isn’t.
Perhaps economic conditions were such that at the time of graduation and subsequent job seeking it just seemed that tertiary education was practically a complete waste of time – the handful of interviews I did manage to get had me pitted against people either with masters degrees, or people who had multiple years of experience in the field, whereas the first job I actually did get I was pitted against two other people with essentially the same qualifications, and initially didn’t get the job with the comment from the prospective employer that ‘of the three applicants you probably will find it easier to get a bettter job’ – thankfully one of the others passed on the job otherwise who knows who long it would have taken, or to what depths I would have had to stoop.
It may also be that it is too late to stop the rot, perhaps the bachelors is now always just going to be the equivalent of a high school diploma rather than even remotely a distinction of academic achievement (that’s the word I was looking for earlier… academic….) as compared to some qualification that actually has merit and is vocationally based (which at least in the UK ceased to exist when funding went preferentially to Universites over Polytechnics)
I don’t know whether the US military budget can be cut: I don’t have a line-by-line list of military expenditures in front of me, and cannot be bothered to look for one as I need to get back to work. But cutting it by 50 percent is plainly absolutely ludicrous, and would seriously compromise the US’s capability to intervene militarily where this is needed.
Also, do bear in mind that we really, really do not want to live in a world where the Chinese military is more powerful than that of the US. That is not a situation that any sane person wants to happen.
In the case of Yugoslavia many of the crimes committed didn’t occur until after the NATO bombing, hence justifying intervention on the case of humanitarianism is bizarre. As for the other two cases, I don’t feel I know enough about them to comment.
However, if you take a look at European imperialism and American intervention I think you’d see why many in the rest of the world aren’t thrilled about the idea of a Western intervention.
Citation needed.
Currently, the US spends almost half of the entire world military spending. Unless we fear the rest of the world combined, there’s no call for us to spend as much as we do, as far as I can see.
bullshit.
Also, do bear in mind that we really, really do not want to live in a world where the Chinese military is more powerful than that of the US. That is not a situation that any sane person wants to happen.even a 50% reduction wouldn’t make the US military smaller than the chinese military.
Well, this certainly degenerated. Luckily I have no more work day left. Good night and enjoy! (Might login from home)
Good. I think we’ve seen what happens when they do.
The US currently spends SEVEN times what China spends on its military. It spends more than the next 14 powers COMBINED, many of whom are allies. US military expenditure makes up 40% of the entire world’s spending. NATO accounts for something like 75% of the total. This is insanity.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_federations_by_military_expenditures
My vote for the worst game in the universe:
Eternal Progression: Make your way through the Plan of Salvtion, which is a mormon “educational game for missionaries and the whole family!”.
And if you that’s not your cup of tea, you can play LDSopoly, Temples Chess, or Build the Kingdom.
The problem is that combat troops are usually ill-suited to handle humanitarian interventions and long-term peacekeeping, simply because they weren’t trained for these tasks. To pull something like that off, the forces on the ground still need to be skilled diplomats and negotiators, and let’s face it, that’s not really what marines are being taught. These problems are especially severe when there are profound cultural differences between the would-be peacekeepers and the population they’re supposed to protect, or when they come from a country that doesn’t enjoy the trust of the locals. If you simply intervene at short notice, you’re likely to have a bunch of heavily-armed guys roaming the country and acting in “incompetent and ham-fisted ways”, getting pulled into complicated local conflicts and facing a likely futile uphill battle – not against any armed and organized foe, but in order to win the locals’ hearts and minds. The track record for humanitarian interventions isn’t exactly stellar as is stands, and the kind of military the US and other Western nations have built is especially unfit for such endeavours, so that’s not really a justification for its huge costs.
Then don’t. Learn about the history of Sierra Leone since 1990, and then tell me whether you still think that military intervention is always bad.
I find it ironic that, straight after admitting your own lack of knowledge about this area, you tell me to “take a look” at the history of Western intervention.
I’d still like to know exactly which programs Katharine thinks are being abused, to what extent, and how she proposes they should be changed. (Because I’m sure she’s not just spreading FUD.)
relevant; pay especially close attention to the numbers mentioned in the article.
Here is the top 5 countries by military expenditure:
I dunno. We only outspend the Chinese by about 9 times right now — that’s not even quite a full order of magnitude! Cutting our budget in half would put us in danger.
Oh, and another point: maintaining an active force of more than a thousand nuclear warheads, which is pretty damn expensive, also doesn’t contribute much to a country’s capability for humanitarian interventions.
Back to the math discussion.
David asked:
No, I meant 8 + 5 = 5 – 2 + 10.
I haven’t been able to figure out yet how my son does it. I’ve had him explain it to me, but he loses me about half way through. I know he’s not doing it as if it were on paper.
Way back when I was shopping for home schooling supplies, I “test drove” a program called Math-U-See. Its emphasis was on getting kids to really understand the math concepts, instead of just memorizing numbers. The program uses a lot of manipulatives to get the ideas across. Although it wasn’t what we ended up using for my (then) sixth grader, I did purchase some of their products for my (then) Kindergarteners. One item that we used over-and-over-and-over was a music CD that put certain addition tricks and skip-counting into song.
At five years old, my kids understood that 3 x 7 was the same as either counting by 3’s seven times or counting by 7’s three times.
I didn’t.
I never said military intervention is always bad.
I would say at best it’s bad ≥ 95% of the time.
I said I lacked knowledge about a particular case. Even if it was all fucking rainbows and unicorns that doesn’t compare to the numerous other times where it was disastrous.
So the highly successful interventions in Sierra Leone, Somalia and Yugoslavia don’t count?
Feynmaniac’s dealt with Sierra Leone. If you think intervention in Somalia was “highly successful” I can only deduce that you are, in fact, not a British law student but a Somali pirate. Sierra Leone was successful, but a relatively tiny operation – and one that didn’t involve the US military.
You still have quite a few right-knee-jerk reflexes, Walton!
strange gods before me:
Katharine is a rather nasty person who has said some remarkably ugly things and been called out on them before. I doubt you’re going to get the specific answers you’re looking for, all of her rants boil down to “I want to hurt stupid people”, stupid people being whoever she happens decide is stupid.
I’m not sure I laid out any criteria whatsoever. A system whereby scholarships are available doesnt necessarily mean the same system as we have in place just now. Off the top of my head a single, possible, method would be some sort of entrance exam/paper, or an in depth interview, or something only partially based on the ability of the student to actually pay for the tuition. If you’re going to change the system to the extent that I’m proposing in the first place it makes sense that there are other changes (ie to how scholarship/entry occurs) that go along with this.
I went to university with a number of people who neither learned how to think or study, each of my siblings also went to university with a number of people who neither learned how to think or study, I’d say that anyone being honest could probably think of at least a couple of people they shared a university class with who, beyond rote memorization of the topic at hand, learned not the first thing about how to think or study while enrolled in University. These are precisely the people who would be better off not getting a university education (at least not an academic university education, perhaps a vocational education would be better suited)
I also don’t see what in the merry hell this has to do with where I work, surely if anything I should be pushing for more lawyers to bankrupt more farmers, or more scientists at US universities with degrees paid for by Monsanto so that we can maintain a deathgrip on international research or something along those lines (whatever your favorite conspiracy is today). I’m all for being called a clod brained oaf on this (as I said, the whole initial conception was a ‘possibly a better idea would be’ and not some absolute statement on whether this is right or not, it’s entirely plausible that the idea itself is completely clod brained and wrong) – its completely unhelpful to this discussion to drag in pointless drivel about where I work, there’s a whole other subdiscussion on this very thread about how awful I am for working for Monsanto without having to drag it in here where it has utterly no bearing whatsoever.
Textbook Authors Write to School Board
The examples you list here are telling. Vietnam, Iraq, etc. were bloated budget busters. I have a strong suspicion that Sierra Leone, Somalia, and even Yugoslavia were far less expensive. Since we’re not really working with citations here, I shall therefore freely assert that at least 50% of US military spending is superfluous.
It’s not anti-militarism! It’s anti-waste!
I can perhaps explain some what, or rather I think I can relate. I was always told I was “artsy” and “verbal” and therefore to “stupid” to understand “math” but anyway…
If you think about it counting and adding are the same thing (ugh some one is talking so loudly behind me I can’t hear my damned thoughts)but to me the numbers are like intervals in space or time and to count you follow a pattern. To do arithmetic you just follow another pattern, kind of a map?
I noticed this when I realized you could also count by twos or threes and then it clicked some time before first grade because you just remember how much space goes where, and when you think about it some times even some formulas are just shorthand for describing patterns.
So it wasn’t hard as a child to think, for me, that 3 x 7 would be moving through intervals of three seven times and recording it on a set of notches measured 1,2,3,4… etc. or sevens three times.
Encourage him, math is simple and clear! But also he might like music?
They thought I was retarded (literally) and unable to do math when I was a child because teachers are so terrible at explaining it and I took them at their horrible words! Once in grade school I was called in for testing because my teacher had insisted upon screaming at us that we were to add these columns of numbers up and down. So I did that, literally. Up one side and down the other!
Anyway, 8 + 5 = 5 – 2 + 10 probably makes more sense because it’s a regular pattern. After all you’re just moving the two over so you can work with a 10 so you can take advantage of the more obvious pattern.
After all 8 is just 10-2 anyway, so if you borrow off the 2 first before you “move” the rest in your head then you have a nice 10 to stick whatever’s left onto right?
Ewan R.,
I called you a clod-brained oaf specficially because of this:
a university education isn’t worth a crap if it essentially qualifies you to do a job you could have got without it
Anyone who can even think such a thing for an instant is indeed a clod-brained oaf. Your job is relevant because it identifies you as a supporter of corporate power – and big corportions do indeed have an interest in keeping most of the population unable to think for themselves.
A full-speed discussion. I think I refreshed four times while writing this comment.
Wow. I didn’t notice it’s a logical circle.
I don’t know about Sierra Leone. But nothing except piracy is successful in the former country of Somalia, and nothing (even diplomacy-wise) was done about Yugoslavia for way too long (several years), and that’s apart from comment 340.
2.4 terabucks till 2017? And that’s just one estimate. Others reach up to 3 terabucks till 2006… the one I link to was made by 2 people including a Nobel-Prizewinner for economics.
Comment 335. Jadehawk didn’t actually say the military should be abolished entirely…
(Though Austria’s should be. But I digress again.)
Comment 336 explains not only why basic research is a good thing, but also why more of it – done by more people – is better.
I’m trying to say the number of jobs for people with tertiary education should be increased, too. There’s so much research to do, and so few people to do it!
Off the top of my head, several thousand new species of insects are described every year. Just described and named – nothing about any medicinal, economic, ecologic, whatever use they might one day find. This number is limited only by the number of entomologists in the world and the number of hours in a day. There’s simply no end in sight.
Oh. Same again: 8 + 2 = 10; 5 – 2 = 3; 10 + 3 = 13.
(Well, not in this example. I know by heart that 8 + 5 = 13, and that 8 + 8 = 16. But that’s how I do it with bigger numbers.)
I don’t put it in terms of counting. I still imagine it graphically, as putting 3 strips of 7 squares or 7 strips of 3 squares together.
That’s already how it works where Jadehawk comes from. The exam is taken at the end of some branches of secondary education; it’s about the same as GCS A-level.
I don’t know if an alternative exam can be taken at any time; that option exists in Austria.
Yes. Those are things that should be taught around the beginning of secondary education, IMNSHO.
I can’t, but I didn’t have much personal contact with enough people…
There should not be any such people.
For crying out loud! Such people are unfit to run a country, yet that’s what they’re supposed to do in a democracy!
As I just said, it should be explicitly taught, and that long before university.
Bingo.
Huh? Never heard about that. Gonna have to go ask the oracle* about that.
* By oracle I mean Google**
** I have this idea for a story*** where people in the far far future live in a shamanistic polytheistic society and revere a deity known as Google. Their farewell tiding to each other is “Google is your friend” and spiritual leaders “google” for the answers to life’s mysteries.
*** This story will probably never be written****.
**** Because I’m lazy and not very creative.
Walton,
Alright, let’s be generous and give you those two cases.
Here are few cases in the last 100 years where American and Western intervention didn’t end up so well (two of which you already mentioned): Iraq (Gulf War and the second Iraq war), Vietnam War (which would include Laos and Cambodia), Nicaragua (mining of the harbours), Grenada, Cuba, Panama, Phillipines, and the bombing of the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory.
There are also numerous cases of the US not only did not stop regimes from commmitting human rights abuses and atrocities, but actually supported them. The most ironic case being the US blocking UN condemnation of Sadam Hussein for using weapons of mass destruction on Iran during the Iran-Iraq war. Other cases include Saudi Arabia, Chile under Pinochet, Iran under the Shah and numerous others.
With this sort of track record it would be foolish to assume any sort of benevelont intentions.
I disagree. Higher education isn’t the same as vocational training; it has a purpose beyond merely qualifying you to do a job. It provides new experiences and expands your horizons, which is a non-economic but very real benefit. Earning more money isn’t the most important goal of human existence: learning about things you find interesting is worthwhile for its own sake. That, in fact, supports my point in this discussion; I’m happy to pay the cost of my education and take on debt, because, to me, my education has been worth the money. I get a lot of benefit out of my education, and it’s right that I should pay for it.
Some of the most interesting and mind-expanding modules in my degree have been those which aren’t directly relevant to the daily work of a lawyer – legal philosophy, for instance, and my optional module in criminology. And I also really enjoyed studying history in school, for instance, despite the fact that I didn’t go on to a degree or career in history.
At the same time, I have no idea why Knockgoats is going on about Monsanto, as it is totally irrelevant to this discussion.
KOPD, I hadn’t heard of that one either. I’m going to do a bit of searching myself. Your google story is far from implausible. Hmm, I’m reminded of an old Twilight Zone. Or possible an Outer Limits, where a remainder of war devastated people listened and obeyed the “wise old man in the cave” who, as it turned out, was a computer.
If I was going to buy into a myth, it would definitely be the one with the elephants standing on a tortoise supporting the world. I’m very fond of Discworld. ;D
Oh my. I almost wish I hadn’t asked.
Trust me, I’m all too familiar with that incident: the landmark International Court of Justice decision in Military and Paramilitary Activities in and against Nicaragua (Nicaragua v United States) is perhaps the single most important judicial decision in the whole of modern international law – not so much for its individual facts as for the principles the ICJ elucidated about the legality of the use of force, self-defence and intervention – so I’ve cited it in quite a few essays. And yes, the US behaved completely stupidly and in breach of international law.
Why would this be great? I don’t think this would actually be that good because you can always enter the workforce but once you get older you may not be able to go back to school. Your responsibilities may keep you from ever allowing yourself the opportunity to grow. I think both options should be available.
Yeah, because business needs more idiots. One thing corporate life taught me early was that the crazy people grow up. They grow up and they get jobs. It doesn’t matter whether they went to university and schmoozed their way through or not.
So many insecure idiots who mill about management offices thinking they’ll just schmooze their way to upper management with no idea what it even means to do any work or to solve a single problem. They’re no better in business then they are in school. Annoying, entitled, and stunning examples of the dunning-kruger effect.
Although when I was working towards an academic degree we always thought of business school as a country club for genteel idiots.
That being said, I’m probably going to get my MBA.
Oh, irony?
But I’m female so I have to have twice the education, and I already have the job experience so it’s not so bad.
You know when I interviewed for my job one lady hadn’t wanted to hire me because my BA was not in business?
Yep. Because a degree that can actually be googled and completed by proxy is sooooo valuable.
Knockgoats,
I don’t see that the statement necessarily does anything to prove that I am a clod brained oaf, based on my experience of the university system to assert that it teaches people to think for themselves is somewhat insane – at least at the level of a bachelors degree. Now, my experience is limited to my own (Scottish education system) and my siblings (English education system) and perhaps is far from universal, although I’d suspect at least based on what I’ve seen in the US that learning to think for oneself is completely, or at least predominantly, seperated from a university education (clearly Jadehawk thinks for herself and yet hasn’t yet attended university).
I also categorically don’t think that people shouldn’t think for themselves. I think it is important that people do think for themselves – I jsut disagree that getting a bachelors degree at a university has anything to do with the process of learning to think for yourself. I’d be interested to know where and when you went to university which leaves you thinking that it somehow confers the ability to think for yourself – because for the past decade my assertion is that it really doesnt (it did however do wonders for my ability to drink ridiculous amounts of alcohol, answer multiple guess questions, play video games, and go through various molecular biology techniques without losing all my DNA due to a skipped step or poisoning myself with ethidium bromide – 3 of which are utterly useless skills, the 4th of which is now useful but would easily have been picked up in the 6 years of working in jobs that require absolutely no university education after graduation)
My job, in your mind, identifies me as a supporter of corporate power (apparently without any bounds as to my level of support, and with the rather stupid addendum that there is an interest for all corporations in not allowing people to think for themselves, which perhaps makes sense if you live in Orwell’s universe but honestly makes no sense at all in relation to what I do) – however you have no idea whatsoever what my views are on many aspects of corporate power, I’m by no means as left as you are on the scale of socialism, which would probably still cause ideas of mine to grate on your mind regardless, but I’d consider myself as left of center of most of British politics nevermind US politics.
I really need to read Discworld. But I’m so bad at reading. I have good intentions, but never follow through on them. I checked out Vernor Vinge’s A Deepness in the Sky and though I found it interesting, I just couldn’t get through it very quickly, ended up taking it back. I borrowed Hitchens’ and Harris’ books from a friend for a year and never got past the first chapter of The End of Faith. I have a signed copy of Barker’s latest sitting on a shelf. I want to read. Or rather, I want to want to read. I used to enjoy reading books. I’m not sure what happened. The Internet, I guess.
Walton (@various):
If I tell you that I make my living working for the military products division of a major U.S. industrial firm, will you trust that I’m not some kneejerk anti-militarist/pacifist? I do believe that nation-states generally need to maintain a military capability commensurate with their position in the world, both so they will be able to join with other nations in enforcing international law and because protecting one’s own legitimate national interests sometimes involves the projection of force. I support the continued development of advanced weapon systems, even in time of peace, both because technology is a force multiplier that ultimately reduces risk to actual humans and because it’s one of the few ways that we in the U.S. can apply public funds to basic and applied research (i.e., direct government subsidies to nominally commercial companies is politically toxic here, but military development provides political cover for R&D funding that ultimately generates nonmilitary products).
Convinced? Okay: We could easily make large cuts in defense spending and still have enough capability to subdue any conceivable genocidal maniac, or defend ourselves from attack (against our mainland or our legitimate foreign interests) from any two or three other nations put together. We so thoroughly outgun the rest of the world that it’s ridiculous; the idea that we would lack the capacity to intervene in the ways you describe if we made any cuts is not credible.
We could certainly spend less on misadventures like Iraq and the result would be an increased capacity to respond to genocides and humanitarian crises, because we wouldn’t waste so many people, guns, and bombs on something so pointless (not to mention evil). Even without reducing development of new technology, we could save billions by retiring outdated systems more aggressively, or, where they can’t be retired, upgrading them to reduce operational cost. There are plenty of ways we could reduce military spending without degrading our capability to do the legitimate things one does with a military (and note that I say that, to some slight extent, contrariwise to my own economic interests).
But more to the point, national security extends to areas far beyond mere firepower. If I’m right in identifying intellectual competitiveness as a key component of national security, then shifting some investment from bullets to sheepskins isn’t really a cut in anything.
Mind you, we would never make higher education free, because we have this pernicious addiction to the so-called Protestant work ethic, which tells us that anything achieved or received without toil is worthless, and nobody deserves to get anything for free. Feh!
What’s wrong with the Austrian military? According to Wikipedia, small numbers of Austrian troops are participating in UN and EUFOR peacekeeping missions in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Chad, and Kosovo – doing worthwhile humanitarian work. I appreciate that Austria is never going to have, and doesn’t need, a massively strong military, and that it will not need to defend itself against any threats; but it should, as a member of the EU and part of the EU’s Common Security and Defence Policy, be willing and able to pull its weight in EU operations.
That said, I’m also aware that Austria has conscription – something I think should be abolished. (Many other EU countries that have conscription are moving in the direction of abolition.) As I’ve said elsewhere, conscription is, in my view, a violation of civil liberties, and also produces an inefficient military that is not much use in modern warfare. All military forces should be all-volunteer.
I don’t see that the statement necessarily does anything to prove that I am a clod brained oaf -Ewan R.
Of course you don’t – because you’re a clod-brained oaf!
Of course large corporations don’t want everyone to be unable to think for themselves – they need managers and technical experts. However, it suits them just fine if most people are a mass of easily-manipulated worker-consumers.
Also they (like you) see the value of university education solely as training for getting a job.
This I agree with.
To be honest, I have a deep hatred of universities, but that is because of my life and I really can’t separate my emotional experiences from my perception the way one might fear dogs after having been bitten twice by them.
The way I see it universities are supposed to do this but they don’t. That is fine though, I don’t think it is a matter of filtering out people who won’t learn that because it is sort of necessary to find ones own way.
I’m going to just come out here and say that I actually like working in business and find more opportunity, less oppression, and more access to education within the corporate world than I found within the schools I went to.
Scary, no?
Although I do not know if I truly want to do this. It’s hard to decide between what you might want to do and what you know you can do.
That being said maybe school has become just training for work, but ideally it should be a place where one can truly learn. There were a few times, at UTD of all places, where I really had that experience and that helped me see how schools could be. Is that important? Well, actually yes because it helped me build a framework by which I operate.
It’s one thing to learn how to operate withing a framework, but it’s much better to be able to build one yourself.
And yes, the US behaved completely stupidly and in breach of international law. – Walton
Which of course proves that we need a US military capable of acting as global policeman.
(Actually of course, it wasn’t stupid at all to attack Nicaragua – it’s very important to the US elite to destroy popular democratic and egalitarian revolutions – and they knew very well they would not be held to account.)
Disagree. There’s no conspiracy here. Large corporations don’t care about everyone. They take what they need where they need it and market what they can where they can. They only look at projected results with the goal of making money.
This emerges in something that appears to have a single focused consciousness but I swear it’s not by design, only by pure human drive with no regard for consequences.
Then you would know that the US didn’t accept the findings and blocked any efforts to enforce it?
Yes.
Initially, the US argued that the ICJ had no jurisdiction over the case. The US had a reservation to its ratification of the Statute of the ICJ, excluding the ICJ’s jurisdiction in respect of “disputes arising under any multilateral treaty”, including the UN Charter. The US therefore argued that the ICJ could not adjudicate on whether the US had breached the prohibition on the use of force in Article 2(4) of the UN Charter. The ICJ got around this, however, by saying that the prohibition on the use of force was also part of general customary international law, and that they had jurisdiction to decide whether the US had breached general international law.
But there is, of course, nothing that the ICJ could do directly to enforce its decision, in the absence of co-operation from states. Since the US is a permanent member of the UN Security Council and therefore has a veto over binding Security Council resolutions, there is no international body which can, in practice, force the US to do anything it doesn’t want to do. It’s in the nature of international law that, since states hold the power, the system ultimately rests on the co-operation of states – and therefore doesn’t always work too well.
That’s a load of stupid. Like most of the people around me at the time, I started working in High School, when I was 14. Almost everyone had after school jobs, weekend jobs, definitely summer jobs. In Junior year (11th) grade, there were work programs, you got class credit for working. What in the fuck does that have to do with anything?
Everyone should have an higher education and they certainly should have the opportunity. If for no other reason, to counter the crap that passes for education in many schools; to discover the joy of learning, to be engaged in thinking. Knowledge is a good thing.
Ol’Greg:
Arrgh! I hate the “you can either be verbal/artsy or mathy/technological, but not both” meme: It leaves us with artists who can’t count (not because the really can’t count, of course, but because they’ve been taught they can’t) and geeks who can’t write (ditto), and, worst of all, drives a cultural wedge between the sciences and the humanities. Maybe it’s just because I started as an Engineering major and graduated with a degree in English, but I think any teacher, at any level, who promotes the pernicious math/verbal dichotomy should be taken out and horsewhipped.
KG (@374):
I am entirely on your side in your struggle to straighten Ewan R out about the value of higher education, but just as a point of information, this…
…isn’t universally true: My own company has an Employee Scholar program that fully funds pretty much any degree program (within reasonable cost caps) an employee pursues, without regard to its relevance to the employee’s current job or any future position within the company. I used this program to get a second Master’s degree, in Space Studies, pretty much just for the fun of it… and not only did the company pay for it all, they gave me a nontrivial bonus for finishing. Their stated position — and their behavior bears this out — is that a better educated workforce is a better workforce.
Which is to say, even Giant Faceless Corporations® don’t always agree with Ewan’s utilitarian stance.
Criminology is about things like what motivates people to commit crimes and what deters them, right? Everyone should learn about that. That would be an investment with easily tangible benefits.
It’s not all about you personally :-)
But the Discworld turtle is not a tortoise. It’s a sea turtle, very elegantly solving the question of what the tortoise stands on!
I need to go to bed, I’ll tell you tomorrow. But you’re already on the right track.
You’re defending the fucking Sandinistas? Seriously?
The whole thing was an utter clusterfuck on both sides. The Sandinistas were authoritarian nuts who eliminated civil liberties and murdered political opponents, but the US didn’t help the situation by arming the contras, who were just as bad. It was a typical Cold War-era pointless conflict, in which, as usual, lots of people died unnecessarily because all too many people, left and right, put ideology before human life.
KOPD:
Discworld books are tremendously engaging and quickly so. They aren’t overly long, so you don’t burn out, instead you usually want more. What about audio books?
I agree with Caine. The Discworld books are awesome. Terry Pratchett is a great writer – much like P.G. Wodehouse and Douglas Adams, he has an incredible ability to craft the English language in memorable ways. And the books are always full of subtle parodies of the real world – some of them, like Moving Pictures and Soul Music, are packed with pop-culture references, while others, like Jingo, have political and philosophical undertones – so they usually work on multiple levels.
Though I think the later ones (the Vimes series in particular – Men at Arms, Feet of Clay, Night Watch, The Fifth Elephant, Thud! and so on) tend to be better than the earlier books. I’ve never been keen on most of the Rincewind books – The Last Continent, in particular, was a bit surreal and random for my taste.
Blargh… it is so hot here, but I don’t want to run my AC… and I don’t have a fan… any ideas?
@Jadehawk, OM #300 get a job you leeching fuck, no one wanted to give me or generations behind me a free fucking education but since you are studying for a science degree in hobgobbling and you want it free then complain that the people who have real degrees are seeing the value in them lessened. Every dozy fucker with highschool is encouraged to go to college for a degree in psuedo science instead of learning to earn and of course you lot never want to fucking pay for anything you use, just demand services
Bill:
I’m one of those. Well, I used to be. I barely squeaked by school math requirements and I had to struggle to do that much. It was my husband, who is math natural, who was able to get me to understand math and get over my dislike of it.
David:
Very true. This happens when a nifty myth gets fine tuned. ;)
Turtles all the way down.
Who’s seen this? I talked about it in response to a Ray Comfort blogpost where he totally uses Pascal’s Wager.
Eurrrgh,
Looks like the Vatican’t has found a patsy in its own rows, finally. Guess it’s a backup to blaming the Juice, since that didn’t work out this time.
It’s all the fault of the EBOL cardinal Sodano, who kept the TROOF from Karol Wojtyła and strong armed the poor, innocent Josef Ratzinger when he tried to bring the perpetrators to justice and help the poor, innocent kiddies.
You’d have thought the Holy Ghost coulda chosen some better representatives than two blokes so easily manipulated.
broboxley,
What the hell are you talking about? Do you know anything about Jadehawk or her background? Why do you feel entitled to fling this kind of arrogant tirade of personal abuse at a person on the internet about whom you evidently know little or nothing, on the basis of clueless assumptions?
Jadehawk and I often disagree, sometimes vehemently, and have been disagreeing in this thread. But you are just acting like a complete asshole, without any apparent provocation. I don’t understand why you feel the need to do that.
Caine,
I like the idea, but I’d have to figure out if it would really work for me before dropping $30 on one. That’s about the price that came up in my cursory check for audiobook versions of atheist books I want to read. I enjoy podcasts, so I’m sure I could manage listening to an audiobook. I’m just afraid I’ll zone out and have to rewind a chapter 4 times before I get it. That’s actually what I end up doing when I read anyway. I’ll sometimes end up re-reading the same paragraph a few times before I get it. I’d like to get an ebook reader, but they are so expensive, I just can’t justify spending that much on something I may not end up using that much. My wife, on the other hand, checks out a book from the library and reads it, then takes it back and gets another, repeat ad infinitum.
I was that way up until about 10th grade, when I took my first geometry class. Suddenly, everything “clicked.” By my Senior year, I was in pre-calc and getting A’s. Later, I found that the patterns of mathematics were not unlike patterns found in languages. Which made learning a new language that much easier.
I found that, for me, the “artist” side made visualizing 3-D mathematics that much easier. I recall feeling a lot of angry stares in my celestial navigation course because it all seemed so simple to me.
I’ve always loved science (math, not so much) but majored in humanities-type classes. It wasn’t until I had to teach my son for a year that I was able to “indulge” myself. Funny, that coincides with my introduction to Pharyngula.
Now, I have friends on Facebook who knew me as an art major wondering when I got my science degree. If I had one, I got it here. ;-P
@walton #391 I was responding to the following
from post #300
I need to get fucked because someone else feels entitled to a free ride? get a job. It may take 8 years to get the degree but you wont owe 5yrs worth of income in loans
pTerry has written (in The Art of the Discworld, if I recall correctly) that the problem with Rincewind is you know exactly what he’s going to do: He’s a coward, and doesn’t care if everyone knows it.
If I may add to that, he’s also a character that, like Granny Weatherwax and Caption Carrot, is one whose thinking is closed to the readers. In contrast, we know what some other characters, such as Vimes and Moist von Lipwig, are thinking. Rincewind is basically one-dimensional, and doesn’t really carry the story so much as be blown along with it.
Well, as a math teacher myself, the problem is often that regarding the world of mathematics one can easily become so entranced by the complexity and beauty of the subject that to get down to just one explanation seems a) trivial and b)dull. I mean, I can think of at least ten methods of multiplying 231×15, and there are many more.
But for me, getting the kids to be proficient in just one method, while seeing all the others, and appreciating what it “means” to some extent, is the trick needed for education – oh, and teaching them to pass maths exams…
Did you know that there are at least 160 proofs of Pythagoras’s theorem? I think that for some maths bods (who do not make good teachers) an inability to simplify for the needs of instruction will never disappear.
(And imagine this – a diagram of a square with an inscribed circle and the area between the two shaded. What is the area shaded if the radius is 1? Not trivial, certainly, but not difficult. A diagram like this was found on a Sumerian clay tablet c800 BCE. On the back was…the student’s solution. You can bet I get my pupils to solve this one….Maths, at least, never goes out of date: take that, science!)
Walton:
Don’t leave out Guards! Guards!, the introduction to Vimes, Carrot and the City Watch. Besides, it has dragons.
The Death books are my absolute favourites; the watch and witch books after that. The Rincewind books are okay, but once you read later books, they seem more of a sketch of Discworld, not nearly as vibrant. As for The Last Continent, I got a good laugh out of Ponder Stibbon’s encounter with god.
@AnthonyK:
Wait, I know this one!
The circle is 3.14 units in area. The square is… 2!…
1.14 units? (probably wrong)
Walton (@391):
Yeah, I kept re-reading that post, looking for a smiley somewhere, because the sheer unprovoked assholery seemed to come so out of left field that I thought it must be a lame attempt at a joke! Apparently not…. <sigh>
broboxely:
You don’t seem to know one damn thing about Jadehawk. The very last thing she’d ever feel is entitled to a free ride. You’re ignoring the huge conversation which caused her particular response as well, so yes, you can go get fucked. Sideways, with a Leica Rangefinder.
Never answer a basic question on the internet, you will get it wrong.
As written, the circle is inside the square, not vice-versa. So the circle must have a smaller area than the square.
Radius is 1, so the square has an area of (2*1)^2 = 4. The circle does have an area of ~3.14 (yay unit circle). So the shaded region would be ~.86 in area.
@Paul:
Well, I was under the impression that the square was inside the circle. I actually had the problem right with the square the other way, but was like ‘wait, the square can’t be bigger than the circle’
Still, my math didn’t work for the other way because it would be a square with width and height of… the… square root of 2?
Huh, I thought broboxley was already on everyone’s shit list. I’d say he’s the typical Pharyngula libertarian troll, but most of the others (that haven’t been banned) actually bother to attempt to build an argument, however based on flights of fancy they may be. He just rants and insults.
Just got back from a short walk, we have dandelions! Yay. (Sorry Josh, I like ’em.) Got shots of dandelions, ants, a wasp and a ladybug. Good day.
Inscribed, not circumscribed. The circle is on the inside.
As asked, the radius (I assumed circle) was 1. This would mean a diameter of 2×1, making the square 2 units to a side (making area 4 units squared). The circle, having a radius of 1, would have an area of pi*(1)^2 = ~3.14. No need to get into square roots the way it’s phrased, although that might have been the attempt.
And as I said, any attempt to answer a trivial answer on the internet is bound to be wrong. My answer is subject to the same rule. I think it’s right, but then I would :-)
@Paul:
I meant, if the square was, indeed, circumscribed in the circle, then it would have a diagonal of 2 units, and… I think the Pythagorean Theorem would give a height and base of square root of 2.
Does anyone else ever have that problem? Where you have the proper word in mind, but your fingers type a completely different, fully valid word, which is in no way similar (except superficially with regards to certain phonemes contained)? I do that a lot, and it’s rather irritating.
sweet jesus broboxley, you just signed your own pharyngula-blog death warrant.
Also, your rant is entirely self-serving libertarian bullshit.
Kevin (@398):
Hmmm…
AShaded = (2×R)2-πR2
AShaded = 22-π
AShaded = 4-π = 0.8584074
You mixed up radius and diameter: One side of the square is equal to the diameter of the inscribed circle… which is to say double the radius.
I do that a fair amount. My real problem is I tend to drop the word not—which is a rather significant error!—or else add –ed (or sometimes –ing) suffixes for no apparent reason. I blame it on the the keyboard færies.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Guess what, I worked my way through school and didn’t take a penny of your precious money. Hell I never even took out a loan for undergrad. But if I had to pay for Jadehawk to go to school out of my own pocket directly I would think more good would come of it than what seems to have come from all your “hard earned” privilege.
Got my first insect in flight shot of the year too, this time a wasp: http://moblog.net/view/928759/first-flight
<blowing obligatory Pratchett trumpet>I played Ponder Stibbons in a production of Lords & Ladies – it was great fun.</blowing obligatory Pratchett trumpet>
Paul:
Yah, but even so, that flare at Jadehawk came out of the blue, in response to something she’d said to someone else entirely (and not even a cogent response to that). In context, it just made me say “Hunhh??”
Kevin:
Ahhh, now I see that you didn’t mix up radius and diameter; you mixed up inscribed and circumscribed… about which I had to think hard, myself!
Wowbagger:
I’m sure it was, Ponder had some great lines in Lords and Ladies.
AnthonyK wrote:
When we visited the archaeological museum in Istanbul, there were many cuneiform tablets on display.
One my son particularly liked was a student’s copy of the multiplication table. It was found in Nippur and dated back to the 18th century BCE.
After serving in the Navy during WW2 my father got his masters on the GI Bill, all tuition and fees paid by the gummint and he even got a stipend for living expenses. After I got out of the Navy in 1972 I had my bachelors mostly paid for by a somewhat different version of the GI Bill. It appears our ranting looneytarian is wrong about free education.
I don’t see that as the only reason, however I do feel that a having a bachelors degree should distinguish one from the crowd, rather than being next to meaningless in terms of entering the workforce.
That is at least how it appeared to me a decade ago. Again limited experience within a single education system with a vague glimpse at how the education system in the country next door worked. Possibly not even applicable beyond my own sphere of experience within a single university.
Had a thought on the drive home specifically about Monsanto, universal education, and Knockgoats comments – I feel actually, that it would benefit Monsanto greatly if everyone had a college level (at least the first two years – in the Scottish system) education in biology with a focus on molecular and a healthy chunk of plant science thrown in. That would kill the essentialist school of thought fighting on safety issues – meaning that the main thrust of opposition would be based on business ethics etc, which aren’t going to stop/hinder the commercialization of any products, merely put constraints on the market to prevent growth into truly monopolistic areas (which at present would appear to be not in Monsanto’s interests I agree, but with an eye to the future, and the uncertainty behind who’s gonna have the next best germplasm or next best trait, it’s not necessarily always going to be detrimental to Monsanto)
It’s a load of stupid if you make the assumption that everyone grew up in the same conditions you did, which perhaps I was doing to some extent, but in the situation you’re describing then people have done what I wanted – however, in the world I grew up in, which I think is the fairer world to look at when you’re assessing the stupidity or otherwise of my statement, practically nobody I was at highschool with had jobs, and practically nobody I went to university with had previously had a job – suffice to say the world of work came as quite a shock to me initially, and I’d definitely have made a lot more of University, most likely persued at the very least a Masters (and quite probably a phD given my current situation and the extra opportunities it would open up) – definitely would have made more of the academic side and less of the social side.
That’d be great, to reiterate my stance – I don’t think that higher education is entirely without value, I do however feel that the level to which a bachelors degree has become devalued, in terms of being remotely meaningful in getting a decent job, is somewhat silly. I also do not agree that any aspect of the bachelors education, at least as far as I experienced it, has any bearing whatsoever on teaching folk to think, broadening horizons, or anything of that ilk. Again, completely limited to my own personal experience, outside of the US school system (which to me initially seemed silly, but the more I think of the more rounded education it gives at the bachelors level the more I think it may actually make more sense – particularly in light of the discussion here) – I experienced far more personal growth both in terms of learning how to think (primarily before ever going to university – although Knockgoats no doubt would disagree this ever occured), how to study (frankly not until two years ago when I got hired at monsanto and had to learn all about nitrogen metabolism and C4 metabolism in a frickin hurry – kinda tough working entirely with people who have multiple postdocs and being expected to have meaningful input – studying was never really that much of an issue at University, which may also explain/excuse my stance somewhat now I come to think of it)outside of the school system.
If universities did offer this inspirational worldview opening experience which made people better thinkers then I’d be behind universal further education completely. If I felt that providing free universal education supplied more people to do basic research I’d be all behind it (lets knock down military spending 75% and split the proceeds 50/50 with education and basic research) and frankly, at the end of the day I feel that I’d probably be behind universal free education anyway – it appears to be the case that my experience, far from being universal, is more an isolated incidence of the system not looking so great amidst a sea of people for whom it has offered more – that being the case my proposition, while still a good one in a system that works entirely as I supposed it did, sucks in a system that apparently works completely differently.
And…Bill Dauphin, OM gets the Sumerian mathematical prize – a brand new, entirely up-to-date Ctablet*. They could also solve quadratic equations using the formula! Phew!
*Made from 100% organic Euphratan clay. Please do not drop in water or all data may be permanently erased.
The other day I kept writing “problem” instead of “program” but I caught it in the preview. Does that count? They also happen to be about the same thing in my line of work.
Topic: wonderful atheist places to visit or things to do in New York City.
We have a family trip for sightseeing, education, entertainment, etc., to NYC this weekend, so if anybody has a “this is my favorite atheist thing to enjoy in NYC” thought they would like to share I’d appreciate it.
P.S. I’m really just a person going to NYC with my family. I’m not Michael Bloomberg, or the NYC Chamber of Commerce, or anything like that. Although it would be interesting progress for atheists in a way if I were.
you know what that would do? it would guarantee that “admissions counselors” would never go out of business. Already, upper middle-class parents are throwing fucktons of money at these people to coach their kids into taking the right extracurriculars, volunteering for the right organizations, acing the SATs and ACT’s and and writing just the right things in the essay part of their application, and all just to minimize the effort their Precious Baby needs to invest, while maximising the chances of getting into a university that will look good on an application.
All you’re doing here is guaranteeing that those who excelled at crappy schools, and those whose parents didn’t have the money for a coach, will never gain admission, because they will not be the ones acing those admission tests, mostly.
so what you’re really saying is that you resent grade inflation, not popularity of university per-se. Fine, I can agree with that. But do you know what the first step to combating grade inflation is? Removing the power of individual parents to blackmail schools into graduating their Precious Baby via the “if you don’t graduate them, we’ll take them and our money somewhere else” mechanism. Only universities that are funded based on the quality of their programs, rather than the number of people it gets through their program.
Charging tuition is counterproductive; so is relying on individual donors (alumni for example). If you can find other non-state funding sources that aren’t going to lead to grade inflation (and also not to the production of Fachidioten, which would happen if industry itself funded the programs it receives its employees from), I’m all ear.
that and $4 gets me a coffee at Starbucks.
so I was right, after all. It IS elitism. you don’t want people to actually get educated in absolute terms, you want a small section of people to be more educated than the rest, in relative terms. what bullshit.
I have a job, you glibertarian piece of putrefying dog-meat.
Having never been to either of these two places, I’d still recommend the American Museum of Natural History (for obvious reasons) and the Lower East Side Tenement Museum for sociological and multicultural studies. They are both on the docket for the somewhat mythical next time I get to the City.
I have the same problem. Everytime I try to write “Creationists” I keep putting “child-consciousness-abusing-fuckwits.” I fear it’ll get me into trouble with the nice folks at yourenothelping
I keep making Freudian slips: the other day, over breakfast, I meant to say to my wife “could you pass the toast, dear” and it came out as “you ruined my life, you fucking bitch.”
@MrFire #408 my rant is libertarian bullshit?
When people back in the day wanted a higher education they worked and went to night school. One friend 1n 1977 was on his last year of 8 yrs of law school at night part time while raising a family. I read Jadehawk and understood she was pissed at earlier remarks in the thread but the huge sense of entitlement in THAT particular post completely pissed me off.
Higher education is learning how to learn then off you go. 4 years free college will not accomplish that.
If I was interviewing with a Computer Science new grad and a BA music degree new grad and both had a modicum of nix skills all else being equal the music grad would get the nod because they have shown they can think. A CS depending on the school of course but even a Georgia Tech Grad EE will get hired over the same schools CS.
Personally I am highly educated. I have two more grades of education than Jethro Bodine and he was a brain surgeon and I still can feed my family in a decent manner. I would like to get a degree as well, last time I checked about 10 years ago I was told it would take 3 years general ed for a computer science degree and oh by the way would you like to teach CS while you are here? WTF guess I will live without one.
Now I am here mostly for the interesting science that comes along, poking a little fun every now and again and a rant when I see a post that sets me off.
No one needs to starve in this country, everyone that needs a hand such as training to improve their skills and a safety net that provides reasonable accommodation for those unable to help themselves.
You want free higher education, no worries join the military, dont get killed for a few years and your education is fully paid.
Higher education is not a right or basic need. Its a privilege that one should pay for in cash or in deeds.
Fire away, at Z most of you guys would be laughed off in less than a day.
Pratchett and math.
Time to tie these two subjects together. (But like grafting an olive tree to a carp, it probably won’t work.)
I greatly enjoy Pratchett, and I’ll second that his Discworld books are on par with Wodehouse. Not the same, surely, but sharing a similar philosophy. The one that Wodehouse once wrote as, “I believe there are two ways of writing novels. One is mine, making a sort of musical comedy without music and ignoring real life altogether; the other is going right deep down into life and not caring a damn….”
When recommending Pratchett however, I suggest either bouncing around or, if you must read them in order, starting with Mort or Pyramids. And of the two, Pyramids is a better book.
As much as I like and respect Pratchett, his early books are very derivative and are poor satires on the sword and sorcery genre. There are good bits in them, but I got a little tired of reading Conan or Fahrd and the Grey Mouser, or Dragonriders of Pern pastiches which were not written as well as Howard, Leiber, or McCaffery did. I know, a satire does not need to be as well written as the original. National Lampoon’s DOON was hilarious, if not to the same standards as Herbert. But the first two books of Pratchett are not really well written. I’d call them curiosities of a developing writer which were good enough to get him established, but should Pratchett have remained at that level he would be already forgotten.
Pyramids, while not my favorite novel, expands the satire beyond the sword and sorcery and into a broader literary context, I still get a laugh at the Assassin’s Guild schooling written as if Teppic was taking the place of Tom Brown from Hughes ‘ novel.
Pratchett uses that trope regularly, in fact the entire novel, Monstrous Regiment is pretty much a commentary on John Knox’s 1558 essay denigrating the abilities of women (Queen Elizabeth was not amused).
But back to Pyramids, while Mort had
Pratchett defining and clarifying the nature of a minor, but fascinating, character introduced in previous books, Pyramids created a new set of characters and satire out of the bits and pieces of all human history from ancient Egyptian Pharaohs to the Greek Philosophers, to Rugby school, to Zeno’s paradox and the various solutions and even to a satire on the scientific method itself.
Pratchett also takes a poke at species-centerism, by making the most gifted mathematician on the Disc a camel named You Bastard. Which explains, of course, their utter disdain for humanity. (I knew I could get maths in there somehow.)
Once Pratchett started using that larger source of material, stories and history beyond the limits of the genre, discworld provided him stories to write rather than the other way around.
Where Wodehouse created light, airy, soufflés, and James Joyce created a impenetrable bouillabaisse, I’d put Pratchett somewhere in the range of a plum pudding with hard sauce.
@Carlie. Thanks, putting them on the list.
@AnthonyK. Yes. One of the members of my family who will be attending. Trying to make the best of it.
BTW, to be clear, Queen Elizabeth I was not amused at Knox’s essay. I have no idea what Queen Elizabeth II thinks about Pratchett.
@JadeHawk OM #422
then use a few dollars and do an accredited degree here if you are in the US
http://www.saintleo.com/ApplyNow/Degree-Programs-4.aspx?gclid=COq3lrmtt6ECFRibnAodjW6zQg you used mud shark licker (not the current idiom wouldnt want to offend anybody)
No, people “back in the day” got Pell grants that covered about 75% of their tuition and fees. Now Pell grants cover less than 20% of tuition. Also, tuition itself is a higher percentage of overall income than it was in the 70s because public university systems get much, much less support from the state than they used to, with the direct result being that the burden of cost has shifted directly onto the students where it used to be mostly subsidized by the state.
Two years of gen ed at most places, and that’s directly related to your other quote here:
Yeah, gen ed will do that for you. That’s what makes college “college”. You want computer science without gen ed, go to ITT Tech.
“Z” being what, exactly? I myself am laughing at you trying to school a bunch of people about what higher education is all about, not having any knowledge of the varied backgrounds of the readers and commenters here.
Hmmm. New (to me) brewery with bar in Copenhagen.
2 km from the Black Diamond National Library, but unfortunately he only has imported beer (and non-alcoholics) in addition to his own brew. Not a surprise, but somewhat limiting if you want a wider sample.
Guess I should really start to look for a proper meet-up, if noöne else can be arsed. (Please?)
Ewan R (@418):
I don’t think you really needed to reiterate your stance, because I’m pretty sure we got it the first time. You can’t seem to write a single sentence about post-secondary without using the word job… which some of us think (well, I do, in any case) rather misses the point.
Yes, more jobs than ever before require a bachelor’s degree, and yes, more people than ever before seek and receive degrees… but that only “devalues” your degree if the only value you place on it is as a tool to get ahead of the next guy. In fact, education has value in its own right, regardless of its utility in finding the hallowed and elusive job. And the aforementioned fact that a larger percentage of people both need and have bachelor’s degrees only means that we’re a better educated people, and a better educated workforce; it does not mean the degree, per se is worth any less than it always was.
It’s certainly not the case that some other bright person going to college somehow diminishes you… even if she does need some financial assistance.
The more I read your comment, the more I think you must’ve had a truly suck-ass experience in school, if you honestly think that…
…but as you yourself note, that doesn’t seem to have been the case for most of us here. On the contrary, I think it’s at the bachelor’s level that post-secondary is most broadening and generally enriching; as one proceeds to master’s- and doctoral-level work, the focus is increasingly narrow, and oriented toward a particular career or field of scholarship. By contrast, lots of folks end up working (or studying or playing, as the case may be) outside their undergraduate field of study, and nevertheless cherish their college years as rich and formative.
If you didn’t have that experience, I’m sorry… but it’s no reason to piss on others’ hopes, and it’s certainly no reason to oppose making higher education available to the broadest segment of humanity.
KOPD: re: audiobooks about Discworld – if you have the right kind of mp3 player, you can get a monthly subscription to audible.com for about $23, which is good for 2 books per month. There are cheaper memberships, but you have to pay more upfront for them. Audible has a ton of Discworld books. In fact, so do I, if you’d like to borrow one.
@Carlie #430
this is what makes it easy, someone replying in the above fashion when the issue is who should pay for the higher education not what the education is about.
As far as the varied background of the people here, except for a select few they seem a fairly smart group most of the time and this IS the intarwebs so one could be a Nigerian schoolboy posing as an aussie sheep herder
And you’re claiming that individuals ought to bear the entire cost of higher education, using examples of when higher education was mostly paid for by the government. At least get your facts straight before you decide to call everyone who gets assistance for their college degree a freeloader. Even now there are very, very few people who truly pay their own way through college. Do you pay at least 20k a year for your college education? If it’s any less, you’re being subsidized somehow. If it’s a public school there is still some amount of government aid involved, if a private school likely scholarships and other need-based assistance. You were marked as a libertarian because you seem to share that faulty thinking that there is somehow a way to actually pay for the entire cost yourself, and that a lot of people somehow do this. They don’t. We subsidize education because we understand that an educated citizenry is vital to the proper working of society.
Re: audiobooks – check your local library. I know ours has a pretty good selection of downloadable audio books available.
Re: College costs. I started college in 1982. We couldn’t qualify for a Pell grant because we were farmers. Seems we were “property rich” although we were “cash poor.” Instead, we took our a Guaranteed Student Loan for each of my four years. Doing that, we were locked into the 1982 rate, which was 9%. When I went on to graduate school, I was still obliged to get a GSL. That, too, was at 9%.
My husband was in my graduating class in college. He did five years of medical school on top of his four years of undergrad. All with GSL’s at 9%.
When we married in 1990, we owed Uncle Sam over $65,000 in student loans. We worked and paid for our school – just not while we were supposed to be studying.
We took our -> we took OUT.
You get the idea.
@Carlie #435 I dont even have high school, you should read the posts you are responding too dontcha think?
I can be marked as a porn star doesnt mean that herd think is always right, you guys like to thunder right along dont you.
Nothing wrong with grants, loans etc but a right to them? A sense of entitlement? Not hardly, earn that right
@Katrina #436 also note that your husband could have gotten medical school paid by offering to do government service after graduation and internship. As other folks have noted public service and the military also provide education in exchange for service.
If you are too hot and have no fan and don’t want to run the AC, run cold water over your wrists as a temporary measure. You’ve got really large veins there just under the skin and running cold water on them will cool you off for a bit. Of course you could just wear a wet T-shirt, but I think that’s icky feeling.
@broboxley #438
My husband and I both did military time after graduation. By using our military pay to cover our student loans, we were not “locked in” to an arbitrary amount of military service.
Not that it mattered, as my husband will be retiring from the Navy in a few more years.
The point is, we took out loans. Nobody paid for our education but ourselves. AND we paid the highest interest rates ever attached to student loans.
One more thing, by going through medical school and residency before he was commissioned, my husband started at a higher pay rate than he would otherwise have had. The military gave him credit for the time he’d already spent on his education. It was a win-win situation.
What I’m saying is neither of us defaulted on our loans. We paid for our education. No one else did.
Better stock some honey folks :
Bees in terminal decline
Wowbagger, did you get a Linux netbook? What retailer did you buy it from ?
I rather think that my previous post comes to exactly this conclusion – my narrow scope of experience with undergrad level work clearly doesn’t reflect what most people experience – I guess this is down to a combination of the British education system being too narrowing from the getgo, my own experience not even necessarily reflecting the normal British experience, and the British experience not reflecting the broader international experience (and before Knockgoats gets round to it… because I’m a clod brained oaf)
that said, to deal with some of Jadehawk’s criticism….
Not really, keep in mind that when I went to university it was free for absolutely everybody(assuming you were british), with admission to all but Oxford and Cambridge pretty much entirely based on the capacity to meet certain grade requirements at school – Oxbridge entry required a tad more in the extracurricular department much to the chagrin of a friend of mine, who afaik was the only person from our school to even bother applying. What bothered me was people being at university for one, two, or three years and leaving with literally nothing, and frankly everyone know from the start that there was a high probability that this would be the case. Outside of Oxbridge I really have zero experience of the sort of situations you describe. And frankly – if the admission tests are set up in a way that works that way… they aren’t what I was proposing (although whether what I was proposing would ever work in the real world is probably highly dubious the more I think about it)
considering that I was making an arguement that attending university per-se has absolutely no bearing whatsoever on the ability to think I stand by the point regardless of how much good it does you.
No, I don’t want people to spend 4 years in school, essentially learn nothing, and come out with a degree which is meaningless and yet until closer examination on a CV pretty much equates with the degree of someone who actually did some work (given that in many universities it is becoming increasingly hard to actually fail – at least the last I heard from my father who works as a senior lecturer in a british university who bemoans the exceptionally poor quality of a sub-set of students who get in entirely because the system is set up such that you take in as many people as you can and make sure you hold on to them for as long as possible and then graduate them because this route = mo’ money for the university – again probably a peculiarity of British universities)
More than enough reason right here (although Bill and Ol’Greg already had me) to back the fuck down and shut the fuck up while humbly apologizing. Well that and the realization I’m mostly arguing about change to a system that doesnt apply globally and no longer actually exists in the country I’m arguing about it in…
Ewan R:
And yet… coming to this conclusion at the end of the comment I quoted apparently didn’t give you pause about hitting “Submit” on the fairly cynical beginning of it, nor about saying things like…
…and…
…and…
Before “humbly apologizing” in the final stanza because you don’t want us to think you’re as big a jerk as broboxley has been acting.
Either be the cynical curmudgeon you seem to be or “humbly apologize” for your narrow and impoverished view of higher education; trying to do both at the same time isn’t working… and it’s frankly a little annoying.
Rorschach:
I’ve been watching the bee decline up close and personal for some years now. It’s worrying when you’re in the middle of farm country. Last year, the bees were back in force and it was so good to see. I’m hoping they’re still around this year. I was out today, and dandelions have come up all over, and only one lone wasp was collecting pollen.
Bill, I’d rather do both. Excuse me entirely for attempting to explain where my arguements were coming from (as I felt Jadehawk was taking them somewhat the wrong way and I’d at least rather people get pissed at what I meant to say rather than how they interpretted it)- I still maintain that there is something bothersome about people freeloading through university for multiple years (particularly in a system where they aren’t paying for it now, or later), and that attending university doesn’t necessarily imbue any increased capacity to think, or that there is anything particularly noble about a university system set up to pass people who havent learned a damn thing
– that said I acknowledge that everyone should be given the chance to go through the system given that not everyone freeloads and flunks, some people do expand horizons and learn things other than just the subject matter at hand, and most people going through the system can and do pass on merit rather than by default.
(perhaps I should have responded to Jadehawk in a seperate post first, rather than as an apparently contradictory middle bit – but that would assume some sort of planning of what I was going to say rather than just going through the thread and responding point by point before adding some parenthetical wank at the bottom)
(previous comment should illustrate that the brobroxly comment was meant to be vaguely humerous, and the promise to shut the fuck up entirely figurative)
Is it best to read the Discworld books in order, or do most of them work as standalone stories?
Most mini-series within the discworld books (witches, night watch, rincewind, evolution of ankh-morpork if I remember offhand) work as semi-standalones (just read em in the right order…)- although there is some crossover. Other books not in any series also work alone.
If you are going to read the whole lot and haven’t been exposed I’d suggest going in order however, as alluded above the earlier stories lack the depth and sheer awesome of the later ones and as such I’d guess they’d come over as pretty craptastic by comparison despite as I recall were great reads first time round without any exposure to the later books.
Call me old-fashioned, but surely education for its own sake is a good thing? I went off to university and did chemistry, never became a chemist, but I did learn what science was, and what scientists did, and this knowledge – which I could not have got any other way – has kept my brain burning ever since.
Nothing to do with getting a good job at the end of it – learning, learning anything – is a consciousness raising affair.
If you get the opportunity, take it.
And fuck the job – that comes later.
I have a question for everyone regarding this whole education/cost debate. Why is it that people think offering free (or very low cost) higher educations through state schools would bankrupt the country? We make available, for free, twelve years of education to every child in the country. What’s so bad about another 4?
broboxley,
Good FSM, you’re a condescending ass, and underinformed too. Everyone has told you you’re wrong about your generation having to work so hard and how us young people just expect to skate on a free ride. If I shout will you get it? GRANTS AND SUBSIDIZED LOANS COVERED A MUCH GREATER PORTION OF A COLLEGE EDUCATION 30 YEARS AGO!
Walton,
As others have pointed out, the US military budget is ridiculously large. Peace-keeping forces could be supported for much less, but the US military is not primarily for peace-keeping. It’s an offensive military. We use it to illegally invade other countries and as a threat to those who don’t tow the party line on a variety of issues. There’s absolutely no other reason to have a military budget nearly an order of magnitude greater than our nearest competitor. If you’re so concerned about the inability of the global community to respond to humanitarian crises without the enormous US military budget, perhaps you should lobby Parliament to increase your military budget tenfold. See how you like paying for it.
Rorschach,
Oh no! This really is a nightmare. Honey has a decent shelf life, but the fruits that bees pollinate around here don’t. I’d better start stocking up on fruit to dehydrate, since it looks like it’ll be gone soon. :(
Katharine,
You really are a misanthropic jerk, aren’t you?
@Ewan R #446 back handed vaguely humorous STFU doesnt work here, the only time ANYONE on this board said that, and I took heed of it, was when they suggested I build log cabins out of popsicle sticks preferably colored because she realized that I was banging about procrastinating a task in the real world (dreaded MOPs documentation) and being fairly caught, backed out gracefully.
KOPD:
You can read them standalone, but it’s helpful to read the Witch books and the Watch books in order.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discworld provides chronological order and other helpful info. There’s also L-Space: http://www.lspace.org/ which is all things Discworld.
Pygmy Loris @450
you want to blow me while you shout that? try 1972 when I was college age cite exactly what grants that exclude the GI bill (public Service) paid for so much more so the university was free or low cost. Match the prices to the wages being made at that time.
Here is a clue by 4. Back in the day one could audit (no credit) almost any class, I had several at McGill in Montreal in psychology. Could have taken maths was more interested in people. Libraries some of the best in the world are free. If someone wants to learn there is ample opportunities all around us free. No more free auditing in most Uni’s. No more wandering comp labs and helping out in exchange for instruction. Its a marketplace now.
Oh, you want a special piece of paper that makes you worth more in the market place and you want it free on top of that. You want that piece of paper to advance you to the head of the employment line and deny that spot to anyone without your special free pass. Classic glibertarian thinking there. Change your deodorant to anti rancid dogmeat if you please.
#425
Is this supposed to be a factual statement? Rights are what we decide they are. Currently, higher education isn’t a right in the US, because we haven’t decided that it is. We could make it a right by legislating.
Further…even under our current system, higher education isn’t a privilege. It is a service available to consumers. Like electricity. At one point, we decided to make electricity more widely available to people. Then we did it. That’s how shit works.
Broboxley:
Watch your mouth. Your views are misinformed and nasty enough as it stands. You can kiss off your “back in the day” crap too. I started college in ’74. I took out loans, like most everyone had to do, but was able to take advantage of a federal grant which made my costs less.
#455
QFT.
OK Thread, we need some serious levity. If you haven’t seen this sketch from the recent Saturday Night Live, you must. This shit-your-pants funny, so have some Depends (TM) at the ready. I have only one thing to say: Teddy Graham People.
Turns out the guy I sit next to at work is a climate change denialist. He thinks it’s something that’s only come about in the last decade, based on only a few models and those models are unreliable because they are statistical analyses and have been normalised. Furthermore “peer review” is just seeking out your buddies to agree with you – as shown by events at East Anglia. And the “climatologists” (which isn’t a real branch) are claiming warming periods in the middle ages didn’t happen.
Was also told to stop reading left-wing rags. Yep.
broboxley,
I had a feeling you were a misogynist. Now you’ve gone and proved it.
Well, after a quick google, I found one state university that listed tuition back to 1972, Colorado University, Boluder. According to their website, 1972-73 tuition for an in-state undergrad was $440. An inflation calculator from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, says that that is $2,290 2010 dollars. Colorado University, Boulder’s undergraduate tuition is now $6,446. That’s a 281 percent increase after adjusting for inflation.
The Census Bureau tells us that median income in 1972 was $9,697. A year at CU-Boulder would have been 4.5 percent of the median income. Since the Census table only goes up to 2007, we’ll use the median income listed, $50,233 and the CU-Boulder tuition rate for 2007-08 of $5,418. Tuition was approximately 11 percent of the median income. So, the real cost of college has increased dramatically since you were 18.
As for grants, I admit that the Pell Grant was created in 1972, and I didn’t find much in a quick google search. However, there’s this quote from a Washinton Post article:
With that, I think I have offered ample evidence that you haven’t actually done any research about the rising cost of higher education.
Here’s the url for the inflation calculator. I couldn’t get the link to work in my last post.
http://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm
Walton to Knockgoats:
You’re defending the fucking Somozas? Seriously?
Yes, the Sandinistas committed atrocities, just like the Somozas and the US Contra terror squads. But they had been democratically elected by the time the US really went to war against Nicaragua. And Knockgoats is entirely correct in saying:
The US has long and actively opposed democracy in much of the world. All the US has ever wanted is compliant authoritarian regimes (preferably right-wing ones) that are entirely beholden to Washington. The bloodier the fucking better.
The Shah good. Saddam good (until he slipped the leash). Somoza good. Montt good. Noriega good. Marcos good. Mubarak good. Musharraf good. Niyazov good. Islam Karimov good, even though he fucking boils people alive. No wonder all those rendition flights wound up in Uzbekistan. Hell, the Taliban were good enough when Bush was trying to do that oil pipeline deal.
Allende bad, bad, baaad. Get Pinochet in, pronto.
Oh, and the Argentinian junta good. (Ever wonder why the US didn’t go to the Falklands? They liked the way the generals were throwing trade unionists out of helicopters).
Democratic governments and popular movements have no hope in hell of winning American support unless they are ideologically correct. Even Ho Chi Minh reached out to the US and what did that get him? The US put the kibosh on the elections he was going to win and he didn’t even live long enough to see the last of the 4 million Vietnamese deaths that JFK and LBJ were responsible for.
Under Bush the US was talking about putting sanctions on Nicaragua yet again if the Nicaraguans elected Ortega again (which they did). They also went mental when Hamas won in the Palestinian territories.
It’s, like, you can have any kind of democracy you want, as long as it’s the kind we want you to have.
Incidentally, that CU-Boulder website shows that 2009-2010 tuition is $6446. That’s a 19% increase over the 2007-2008 rate. Does anyone here think median income has risen that much?
Josh:
I’d watch if I could, but alas, dial up. A friend of mine has come up with a recipe for Bacon black treacle flapjacks. They look delish. I have begged for the recipe.
Caine, aren’t you s’posed to be getting a satellite dish soon?
Also,
*droolz*
Elroy, yes, sometime this Spring. Don’t know when for sure. Can’t get it soon enough.
I’m still researching netbooks and have come to the conclusion that at least one person at Asus is nuts – why else would there be so many frackin’ EeePC models out there? I can’t work out which bloody one to get.
Josh:
Levity is only allowed for those in the US it appears.
In the spirit of some people in this thread, I share:
Okay, one more:
BroboxelyOT,
Well, FUCK YOU TOO!. I received 2 associates degrees while working full time and I received financial aid. I was until last Thursday working 2 jobs while waiting for a spot in a Nursing BA program. Why the fuck do you assume I (or anyone else) don’t work their ass off while at the same time attending college and getting financial aid? I could not have gone to college or continue without financial aid. To restrict my ability to receive a college education not only sticks me in the poor house for the rest of my life but also harms my daughter’s future.
You clearly have no idea how expensive college is these days or how much financial aid pays out. Well, guess what asswipe, I not only have knowledge from attending college, I also worked as a Financial Aid Technician at a college for over 2 years. I have been trained in this area, processed student’s paperwork and awarded aid.
This was mentioned up thread so I would like to clarify. Now, for a child under the age of 25 they are still considered under their parent’s household so their parent’s income is included on their FAFSA. Only one parent is needed. Now, the only way to not include one’s parent’s are: parent’s are dead, was in foster care when turned 18 , they support a dependent more than 51% or per the new changes that take effect with the 2010-2011 FAFSA a student is homeless and meets certain requirements. A student can do a Dependency Review if they cannot meet any of the requirements above. However, not speaking to your parents or their refusal to help is not an excuse and without the parent’s information the student will not receive financial aid. For a dependency review, you must write a letter and provide documentation that you have absolutely no contact with your parents, or anyone that does have contact with them or that you support a dependent more than 51%. I have processed these myself and they are very hard to prove per the requirements set forth by the government. These are approved or denied on a case by case basis and is considered a professional judgment if your letter and paperwork meet the requirements. The experience with these will vary greatly from school to school.
Once you do the FAFSA all of the information is processed through the complicated equation to figure out you’re EFC. Your EFC is your Estimated Family Contribution and it will be deducted from the cost of attendance. Cost of Attendance includes standard amounts the government has determined you will need to pay for transportation, housing, etc. Different higher educational institutions include or exclude different costs, but the costs they do include are not personalized in any way. Your amount of aid is also based on your enrollment status and what year of attendance you are in.
For example, the community college I attended had a Cost of Attendance of 15,000. Your EFC is subtracted from the COA and what’s left is your need = total eligibility for grants, loans and scholarships. The amount you receive for a pell grant, if eligible, is calculated by your EFC. See chart for specific amounts for 2009-2010 http://www.qc.cuny.edu/admissions/fa/Documents/09-10%20Pell%20chart.pdf
Then your eligibility for loans is calculated which is based on your education level, enrollment status and if you have previous loans. This link provides a handy dandy chart for loan amounts. http://www.finaid.org/loans/studentloan.phtml
For more information, you can ask me or refer to the IFAP Handbook. http://ifap.ed.gov/fsahandbook/attachments/0910FSAHandbookIndex.pdf
Sorry, for the long post but this is an area I actually know and work in so I would like to contribute. =)
There are limits and precautions taken against these people and those who commit fraud. Ever heard of a Request for Continued Funding form? Students do have to repay Grants in certain situations and can be denied if they are not moving towards completion of a program within a certain time frame. This says with them, so they cannot just transfer and continue to waster their time and the taxpayer’s money.
“Thought For the Day”
(Not my “Thought For the Day” – the one on the Today prog)
Some muslim apologist worrying about malign influences on children – Alcohol, Tobacco and TV -didn’t mention religion for some reason.
Good thing the car radio has a military spec irony shunt. It was glowing cherry red even so.
Here is some serious levity from the Daily Mash to help out the thread and make Josh happy:
John Barrowman Easily Defeats The Power Of Prayer
Pygmy Loris,
In assessing the relative proportions of military spending, you need to take into account that the US has about five times the population of the UK and a much larger economy.
According to the Stockholm Peace Research Institute, Britain’s military budget for 2008 was around US$65.3 billion. According to my calculations, this is about 3% of Britain’s GDP.
The US military budget in the same year was $607 billion, or about 4.2% of GDP.
As such, the proportionate difference is not that great. In order to reach the same proportion, we would have to increase British military spending only to around $91 billion – which is not even a doubling, let alone a tenfold increase.
ambulocetacean,
No, I am not. Read my post again.
Yes. Which is why I said they were both as bad as each other.
Regimes that commit atrocities automatically lose any legitimacy, as far as I’m concerned, whether or not they claim to have been “elected”. This isn’t to say that the US was right to back the contras, because the contras committed large numbers of documented atrocities (including murder and rape of civilians) too. There were no “good guys” in this situation, just two sets of “bad guys”.
Same here, and can’t seem to find any Linux ones at all, Asus is phasing them out, Dell has gone back to Windoze only in Australia, HP has gone back to Windoze on the mini X10 series, it looks like I’m just going to have to get a Win one and dual-boot.
In slightly related news, rang my Telco, told them I’m going to Europe (where they have no coverage), and hence need the phone unlocked.The friendly lady in India gave me the code straight away, at no cost, and phone is now unlocked, armed and ready !
Walton,
Yes I know you weren’t defending the Somozas; that line was a gee-up because I don’t think Knockgoats was defending the Sandinistas either.
I shall try to be less deliberately opaque in future (no point me trying to be clever if all I’m doing is looking dumb).
You seem to have missed Knockgoats’ (and my) main point, which is:
Any political movement or system that isn’t a close-enough copy of American laissez-faire capitalism or which is not sufficently subservient to the US simply has to be strangled at birth.
If a non-approved political or economic system were to survive and thrive – especially in Latin America or the Caribbean – it would pose an intolerable threat (in perception at least) to the supremacy of the American way.
We will never know what Ho Chi Minh’s Vietnam, Allende’s Chile or the Sandinistas’ Nicaragua would have looked like because the US made damn sure they never got the chance to exist as their leaders intended them to.
The US still doesn’t want to give Nicaragua a fair shake, as shown by the sanctions threat before Ortega was re-elected in 2006 – after he had spent two terms out of office. (BTW, the Sandinistas didn’t just “claim” to have been elected in 1984; most international observers agreed).
US military might isn’t used for the good of humanity; it is almost always used solely for the perceived good of the US and/or the US government of the day. It is used to strengthen vicious, unelected, right-wing authoritarian regimes and to undermine or bomb into oblivion any Third World government or movement that doesn’t grovel before Uncle Sam. The US has for decades, if not a century or more, been the world’s leading terrorist state.
You could well argue that a strong US military is an essential deterrent to future Chinese expansionism but that’s about it. Most of the time US governments just use the military to fuck people over.
I’ve been thinking again: and despite my misgivings about party policy, I think I’m going to have to vote Conservative. I’m just thinking of all the people I know and like who might well feel personally betrayed and disappointed if they knew I was switching parties. Plus, my local candidate in my home constituency is a good guy.
I am pissed off with, and will continue to speak out against, Cameron’s recent pandering to the authoritarian Daily Mail brigade. But I can work from within the party to promote civil liberties and personal freedom, and the other things I believe in; I don’t need to leave the party to do that.
Longer-term, I will probably cease to be involved in party politics. But for this election, I feel like I have to remain loyal to the party I’ve supported for years.
When’s this election business finally over, so that Walton can just keep us busy with his personal struggles and not the political ones as well ?
*sigh*
Nothing wrong with a bit of hyperbole every now and then, but that’s just stupid.Please look up the meaning of the word “terrorism”.
Hmmm. Obviously, there is a good reason for having a secret ballot: to prevent people being intimidated or coerced into voting a certain way. But that is not an issue in my case. And so I feel morally obliged to be 100 percent open about my voting intentions. If I can’t defend my voting decision in rational argument when it’s challenged by other people, then that’s a good sign that it wasn’t a good decision.
For me, voting Lib Dem would feel rather like cheating on a spouse. It’s as if I’d been married to a woman (let’s call her “Conservatina”) for several years, and still cared deeply about her, but slowly realised I was actually attracted to other men instead. In that case, if I really couldn’t be happy in my existing marriage, the right thing to do would be to be honest and seek an amicable divorce. But it would clearly be wrong for me to go and cheat behind my wife’s back with a hot muscular guy in the showers at the gym, or something. (Maybe I’m making this metaphor a little more vivid than it needs to be…)
Comparing the LibDems to ‘a hot muscular guy in the showers at the gym’ is certainly vivid!
I’m not sure I want it in my head though, thanks all the same :-D
Um, OK. From the UK Terrorism Act 2000:
and the USA Patriot Act:
That is precisely how the US has operated for decades, if not longer. Threats followed by bombing and/or invasion and/or attempted assassination and/or the arming and funding of terrorist proxies like the Contras and/or the installation of terrorist regimes like Pinochet’s. All to intimidate foreign governments and civilian populations to serve a political agenda.
If Iran or anyone else is a terrorist state, then so is the US.
Walton, I think you should know that David Cameron doesn’t really love you; he’s just saying that to get you into bed.
Also, the two-party system is crumbling, so the future of British politics is hot threesomes with Nick Clegg in the middle oh dear god my eyes I’ll never feel clean again.
If you’re in Oxford East, I think the Conservatives are on around 17% anyway. You could vote Lib Dem in order to unseat the Labour incumbent- rationally defensible as the best tactical use of your vote locally.
I could. But I also have a postal vote form for my home constituency, which is a close Tory-Labour marginal where I know the local Tory candidate. This is why I have to make this decision now, rather than in a few days’ time.
Walton… didn’t you say you already voted in your home constituency in an earlier thread? Am I high?
Rorschach: I’ve always liked your attitude.
@69 (oh i ALWAYS wanted to say that) before reading what you said, I *was* going to suggest that an ID card isn’t a bad idea.
And it wouldn’t be, if the system behind it wasn’t horribly corrupt and innefficient.
Since it is, an ID card will only lead to misery and cost.
and seriously, fined and tagged and criminal-recorded for selling a fish to a kid? RLY? goddamn, that’s pathetic. Almost as pathetic (and yet far crueller) than dictating the length of sausages and the straightness of bananas.
Let’s face it, governments suck and politicians are horribly corrupt and incompetent. Going the libertarian route isn’t going to help because then the already-socially advantaged are going to exert that every way they can.
What we need is to get government OUT of the hands of people (not of THE people, just people in general). The only way I see that ever happening is with hard AI. Sigh. Roll on nerd rapture. Until then, we’ll just have to fight the stupid, even though it burns.
I’m not saying to avoid the discussion because you can’t defend it rationally, rather it may be more expedient to avoid fights with your friends. I’d phrase it as if you are forced to defend your voting decision when confronted with a hostile challenge, it’s a good sign that your friends aren’t really very nice people.
But Conservatina doesn’t really care about you; she just cares about your paycheck. (in the metaphor)
And declaring party affiliation isn’t supposed to be a lifelong commitment; it’s a statement of where you stand politically. It’s not a marriage so much as the color shirt you felt like wearing today, or the dinner you usually order when you go out.
My attitude? Towards what lol ? Will you buy me some paintings from the stalls along the Seine ? I conceived my kid in Paris, and am therefore somewhat reluctant to go back there next month….Memories and all….
Hope youre enjoying your time !!
@485: then you might find it easier to ignore the national debate and vote for X because you think X should be in Parliament. Sometimes fretting about the larger consequences simply obscures the issue. While I’d obviously prefer you to see the light and vote for My Side, Which Is Right :) I would rather you vote for a candidate you approve of and spare yourself some angst.
Katrina – I admire the way you and your husband worked off your loans, and your military service. However, if you went to a public university, you absolutely did not pay the full cost of your education. You paid the full cost of what the school charged you, but that was by no means what it cost for your personal portion of the services you received.
Justalurker –
No, I haven’t heard of a requrest for continued funding form, my whole experience, and therefore the rationale behind my arguements, was/is entirely based around the British education system (and more specifically the British education system circa 1996) – which is also what the whole debate started around (Lib Dems promising to scrap tuition fees) – where it was entirely possible to wank around and fail first year multiple times without particularly having to worry about losing out on government funding (although parental funding if you rely on that can become an issue…).
The whole system doesn’t compare well at all to the US system, now, or then – although given the fact I’ve done a 180 on my whole doomed idea, while retaining some of my misgivings, I think that the US system would operate a lot better with some of the things in place in the British system (such as not having to repay loans until you hit a threshold of income after graduating, rather than the present system which appears to be that you start paying from the getgo (which I saw as a big wtf as a condition for a student loan) and then have to start paying a considerable amount more ~6 months after graduation regardless of whether you’re flipping burgers at a fast food joint, or pulling in 6+ figures(again, this struck me as kinda unfair and more of a disincentive to get an education than I was even considering in my mistaken stance above (in which I would have expected costs to be covered by a loan payable after you can actually afford to pay it and live comfortably)
Horny goodness! Sorry, couldn’t resist the pun.
It’s the invisible hand! :-D
Not only is that true, there are even finer stupid distinctions. For instance, the Austrian school system assumes that people are good at both math and the sciences or good at languages instead. Me, I’m good at science and languages, but less so at math…
broboxley OT and Al B. Quirky are the two people who don’t read for comprehension and probably can’t. Apparently this applies not just to Pharyngula, but to absolutely everything – at least this would neatly explain why they know so extremely little and end up making one argument from ignorance after another.
Occasionally. It doesn’t even need to sound similar, I think – it’s a matter of patterns of finger movements.
Bizarre. I had molecular biology courses that involved… well, one taught an entire biochemistry textbook of 500 pages in one semester, and another taught about half of the fucking Alberts. You know, the one that’s the size of two bricks.
I accept that medicine and probably law top this, but not much else does. What did you study?
American Museum of Natural History.
Idiot specialists, who have learned more and more about less and less till they know everything about nothing. People who know their own narrow field but nothing else.
Concerning the rest of your comment, I’ve never heard of grade inflation outside the USA; the different methods of funding the universities would explain that very neatly.
Was it Blake Stacey who said he is an elitist – he likes his elite so much that he thinks everyone should belong to it? Strangely, I can’t find it in my quote collection anymore, and Google doesn’t find it anywhere on Pharyngula either.
Higher education is an investment that society makes in me. You didn’t happen to read (or, anyway, understand) comment 336, did you?
Accordingly, where I come from, fees for studying were completely abolished in 1975. University was completely for free for everyone who had managed to finish the right type of school or passed an alternative exam. Fees of 363,36 €* per semester were reintroduced in 2001, but I always got them back afterwards because my family isn’t rich, and last year they were again abolished for everyone who studies improbably fast.
I am appalled at your envy. You seem to take for granted that, because you didn’t get a free education, nobody else must ever get one either. That’s evil of you. You should be ashamed.
* That’s the nice round number of 5000 Schilling in pre-Euro money. Oh, and, non-EU foreigners had to pay twice that.
See, that’s one of the reasons why I use my meatspace name here. If you’re curious, just find me in Google Scholar.
Then why don’t you get such a free pass yourself?
The mind boggles!
We’re arguing that everyone should have such a free pass. It’s not about jobs, I’ll never be in a marketplace (again, find me in Google Scholar to find out why). It’s an investment that we as a society should make.
Link doesn’t work.
It would have been enough to just add ” ;-) ” at the end, so we can hear the tone of your voice…
Nobody must be able to find out how you vote without you telling them afterwards. The secret vote is among the most important prerequisites for democracy.
Is he better than the other candidates?
So, keep your membership, and contribute to the only signal parties understand (voting against them). Changing a party from within is very difficult and takes decades (unless you can stage a “coup” within the party, and that’s rare).
Elections aren’t about the past. They’re about the future. They’re not about who has been best for you so far; they’re about who will be best for you in the next term. They’re not a reward; they’re like giving Obama the Nobel Peace Prize.
I would like to interrupt to wish Bill a happy birthday, and to wish everyone a happy Star Wars Day. :)
Link needs to work. LINK NEEDS TO WORK!!!!!
Walton,
What do proportionality and GDP have to do with it? You said that a significant reduction in US military spending would impede peace-keeping missions. If you really believe a military as large as the US’s is necessary to global peace-keeping, and that those peace-keeping missions are more important that things like higher education, you should be willing to shoulder the enormous cost of a military like ours. You’re not.
Current US military expenditures are unsustainable and do little to contribute to the good of humanity. Many of us would like to decrease military expenditures so that we can spend that money helping people have better lives.
My facebook thingie says that too, but I always give false details to websites, so I wasnt sure if this is in fact his birthday lol…
If it is, then Happy Birthday Bill !
@Walton:
I’m kinda in your same bag, so I completely understand. My parents fully expect me to vote Conservative Republican (American conservative, not UK) where I dislike a lot of what the party stands for – the majority seem like they want a theocracy, which scares me a lot now.
Next election, I’m just gonna vote the way I want, though. My parents don’t control who I am, so I can vote for who I want. And just to give them a heart attack – I’m going to look for an Obama bumper sticker and pin it to my wall XD
Good point, Rorschach – I do that a lot too. Happy potentially fake birthday Bill!
Happy Birthday Bill!