LeoLeonardoIII - I just want to let you know that your posts make me very angry, and thus I can not really respond to them in an effective manner.
You have clearly demonstrated, however, that you don't particularly understand other people or why they might have values you don't share.
That is all.
Sorry about that GlyphGryph. I'm not trying to make you guys angry, I'm trying to vent various frustrations. I do take exception to your claim that I don't understand other people. My views don't always match up with everyone else's, which is totally fine. There are people who go to church and tithe and pray and do community stuff related to that - it doesn't mean I don't understand why they do it or their viewpoint just because I don't do those things. When you lead an examined life you kinda have to examine other people's lives too, otherwise you're only feeling part of the elephant.
EDIT: There may be an impression that I don't lend much credence to someone else's opinion, for example if I think it's a dumb opinion. That's fine too. Some people are wrong about some things - heck, I'm wrong about stuff too sometimes. Believing that someone is an ignorant jackass isn't necessarily always intolerant and narrowminded - sometimes, an ignorant jackass really is just an ignorant jackass.
The question is whether I'm actually that jackass, whether I've fooled myself into believing that I'm right through circular, specious reasoning and flawed source material. I'm confident that at least my consideration of that possibility elevates me above the baser types of jackass and suggests that I'm actually openminded but once I settle upon something close to truth I'm willing to stand firm on it unless better evidence comes along.
Here's a great example. Searching for info online about dangerous dog breeds results in some expected conclusions: everyone is really biased. When you open a website you can tell whether it's going to be pro-pit or anti-pit. They both cite sources but you don't know how good the sources are. The CDC, which you would expect to be disinterested in the subject, suggests that pits are not especially likely to cause a fatality when you consider their high population - the chance of being attacked by any given pit is the same as the chance to be attacked by any given random dog. But if you are attacked, it's probably gonna be a pit just because the population is so high. However the CDC talks about breed-specific fatalities, while recognizing that fatalities are an extreme minority of attacks, and that we should really be talking about attacks that are bad enough to enter an emergency room.
Go outside a .gov and you're getting into bleeding heart territory - whether biased in favor of pits (animal welfare organizations) or against them (which seem to just be organizations that ... don't like pits? weird). A common thread in anti-pit sites is studies that look exclusively at fatality or emergency room incidents, not a rate per 10k animals, for which pits are far and away the highest contributor. The pro-pit sites cite studies similar to the CDC but occasionally go overboard, trying to make pits out to be angels made of butter and marshmallow fluff. The truth is likely closer to the CDC analysis.
Which means, upon doing some research, I've changed my mind. I'd amend my previous complaint about pits to include all dogs:
Finally, I'm going to go there: stop raising fighting dogs (like people do all the time with pit bulls and rottweilers), people. All you see are news stories where the wailing mother says "the dog was so wonderful and then one day it just snapped!" and that's a best-case scenario where the dog is nominally okay but may turn into a murderhound at any moment. Worst-case, it's a jackass who wants the dog because he can beat it and make it mean so it'll kill whoever tries to break into his house. There's a reason dogs bred for fighting have a bad reputation. Why is it illegal to have a bobcat or an alligator but if you want the biggest, meanest, deadliest dog it's totally fine? I know it's only a change of one phrase, but it's more accurate. The whole statement still stands. Why do we see such a majority of pit bull population as pets? It can't be that everyone just looves that little kissy face.
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Topic: Things that made you go "WTF?" today o_O (Read 14908294 times)