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[G-Flex]

It's not even vague stuff like that. It's also the way they talk about it, and specific weird little inclinations like:

Satura was here on September 3rd

People were literally doing the carve-your-name-and-date-on-something thing thousands of years ago. It's like some kind of bizarre instinctual behavior. It's pretty amusing, really.

My point is just that even though philosophical paradigms change, industries change, communication methods change, and so forth... when you really examine what common people were like in any era, it seems like people themselves don't change much at all. It's just hard to see that sometimes, because most of what we read from a given era is centered around how those people wanted to present themselves, not so much their day to day thoughts and actions.

[MonkeyHead]

People stay the same, but change the world around them. You might be very similar (on a base level at least) to a human in 800 years from now, but the world they live in will be what has changed. Just imagine yourself in the 1200 to 1300's...

[Leafsnail]

I know this post kind of sounds like it's making out scientists to be the One True Knowers of the World or something, but I'm not trying to say that. Faith isn't necessarily inferior, and being a scientist really means shifting that faith into certain other areas (like the reliability of your colleagues and such). You can check any fact, but you can't check every fact, after all.

The thing is, I have no problem at all with "having faith" in people.  You can gauge their trustworthiness and assess the likelihood that in fact they're all conspiring together purely to mislead you.  So I tend to trust peer reviewed scientific studies because a) it's very unlikely that rival scientific groups would be conspiring with them, seeing as how they usually shoot down flawed papers and b) if they were lying someone else could just repeat the results and contradict them.

On the other hand, I don't really understand how you can "have faith" in a god to exist.  I mean... it doesn't matter how good you believe this god to be, if he doesn't exist then he doesn't exist and his amazing personality or trustworthiness can't change that.

Basically, I feel like "having faith" in people to not be having a massive and easily brought down conspiracy against you and "having faith" in a god to exist are two completely seperate things even though it's possible to use the same words for them.

[Frumple]

Basically, I feel like "having faith" in people to not be having a massive and easily brought down conspiracy against you and "having faith" in a god to exist are two completely seperate things even though it's possible to use the same words for them.

Mm, yeah. That's actually how I like to view faith, on a personal level. There's two basic types of faith, faith in the unverifiable (Belief in what cannot be tested -- tests that cannot be communicated, i.e. post-death, don't count.) and faith in the not-yet verified (Belief in something you have not yet tested, but can be tested). Most faith related to the divine is of the former sort, most faith related to science the latter. While they're both faith (untested belief), there is definitely a difference in their nature. They're both important (Even science has some unverifiable axioms in it), but testable faith is much more applicable, i.e. useful, in a general sense. You can't really do much with an untestable proposition, other than see what the logical/practical consequences of its assumption is. A not-yet tested proposition, though, can be, well, tested. If nothing else, you add determining truth value to the actions possible related to it.

Once something is verified or proven to be false, its state turns into knowledge of some sort or another. That does have the implicit consequence of making untestable beliefs incapable of becoming knowledge, but I'm fine with that

[Solifuge]

Not entirely work safe, but nothing too terrible: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqDzKad2Q3M&feature=share

I've never seen this series before, but I rather like it! Sometimes, the amount of under-the-radar sexism in our culture is baffling... another reason I'm glad I stopped watching television!

[Nadaka]

I am sure there are more serious things to complain about... but: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/school-suspends-cancer-survivior-teen-over-hair-plans-160537479.html

Zealous authoritarian school administrators demand absolute compliance and conformity. A young cancer survivor is growing his hair out so that he can donate it to others going through cancer treatments and is suspended from school for failure to comply with zero tolerance conformity.

[RedKing]

That Pompeiian graffiti is great stuff.

II.7 (gladiator barracks); 8792: On April 19th, I made bread

Who knew the Romans had Facebook? 


I've also seen similar "So-and-so was here" graffiti on the Great Wall of China. I remember finding one that just had a soldier's name and a date that was in the early Qing dynasty. It was actually kind of powerful to think about the soldier making that mark on some lonely, cold watch and then that scrawl surviving through all that came afterwards, long after the man himself was but dust. When the Dynasty fell, it remained. When the Japanese invaded, it remained. When the Chinese Civil War raged, it remained. And then, five centuries later, a laowai from a land he'd never even dreamed existed came to see it.

[kaijyuu]

I am sure there are more serious things to complain about... but: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/school-suspends-cancer-survivior-teen-over-hair-plans-160537479.html

Zealous authoritarian school administrators demand absolute compliance and conformity. A young cancer survivor is growing his hair out so that he can donate it to others going through cancer treatments and is suspended from school for failure to comply with zero tolerance conformity.

This is a particularly egregious example, but these sort of bullshit rules that do nothing but flex authoritarian muscles are widespread and sickening.

School districts around where I live still don't allow hats.


Gotta teach those kids how to be nice assembly line workers. Sit in rows, don't talk, do repetitive tasks all day, and sure as hell don't voice your mind on things.

[G-Flex]

I like how, in that school's dress code, hair has to be free of "unnatural or distracting colors". Are there hair colors that are naturally distracting? If so, is that person supposed to shave their head?

[Loud Whispers]

I like how, in that school's dress code, hair has to be free of "unnatural or distracting colors". Are there hair colors that are naturally distracting? If so, is that person supposed to shave their head?

Fluorescent pink, green, neon blue... Erm... And a bullseye target painted onto your forehead.

Naturally distracting? ~o_o~

[Nadaka]

Yes actually, I have heard of people with particularly vivid natural red hair being punished by school administrators.

And shaving your head is probably also against the rules, at least in some cases. A girl with a shaved head would be non-conforming and therefore "distracting".

The thing is, all the people with delusions of authoritarian grandeur but lack the social skills to get into politics? In the US they all get positions on nearly every single local school board in the country.

[MonkeyHead]

Some of my academic work has been to evaluate the American School system and compare it to those of other rich "western" cultures - one of my main findings was that the regionalized school board system creates sigifigant barriers to progress that simply arent present in other successful educational systems...

[palsch]

One hell of a lot to unpack in this article.

A lot in there I disagree with or feel very uncomfortable with, but at the same time an awful lot that is worth thinking about.

[Frumple]

Scary/sad/enraging part about it, to me, is that it didn't really present any points that aren't absolutely obvious if you spend more than about two seconds thinking about the US prison system, especially if you're a US citizen. Basically everything that was said in that article are things known, but largely somehow ignored, by our population. At least if you can get someone to think for that two seconds without beginning to yell something nonsensical so they don't have to think about it

Puts it together pretty well, though. I'd recommend it for a reading for most folks, if only to shock a bit more awareness into what they're closing their eyes to. But that the US prison system is hellaciously fucked up isn't news to anyone, really, especially US citizens. Ex-cons are screwed, completely and totally, and a prison sentence has an implicit rape attempt included with it, regardless of gender, regardless of crime. These are known things. Most of the ones not in the prisons or at great risk of being put in them somehow just don't give a shit. It just doesn't get thought of, pretty much ever, by a majority of our population.

How to fix... *vague shrug* No flipping clue.

[Leafsnail]

It's a bad feeling to read an article which you generally agree with, and which highlights important issues, until they come to their proposals.  Then suddenly you realise that the person writing it is a fruitbat.

Prison abolitionists should be ready to advocate a massive expansion of the death penalty if that’s what it takes to move the discussion forward. A prisonless society where murderers were systematically executed and rapists were automatically castrated wouldn’t be the most humane society imaginable, but it would be light-years ahead of the status quo

Emphasis not mine.  This is just... urgh.  The prison system is inhumane, so we should revert to a far more draconian measure.

The only way to sustainably curb the supply of guns is to reduce demand for guns, and the easiest way to do that would be to legalize narcotics.

There is... no explanation for this.  None.

In all likelihood, dismantling or sharply contracting America’s prison system would make the country feel more like the United Kingdom. In the UK, only 3 percent of crimes result in a prison sentence. In the United States, the figure is closer to 18 percent. London is a more dangerous city than New York. Your likelihood of getting robbed or assaulted is higher there. For educated, middle-class whites unlikely to get in trouble with the police, London is, in some ways, a tougher place to raise children.

I'm not sure why he's comparing his "kill and castrate a whole bunch of people" to the UK which does not have the death penalty, but... urgh.  The UK has a lower crime rate overall, even if the generally more affluent city of New York is safer than London, so the analogy seems odd there.  Surely he could use this comparison to advocate use of prison in fewer cases, and various other measures for less serious crimes rather than "Death penalty/castration or nothing"?

Abolishing prisons and releasing all the prisoners would amount to a deregulation of criminal punishment. It would mean letting the private sector determine how best to prevent ourselves from getting robbed. In high finance, the laissez-faire approach has proved to be a disaster; for petty crime, it would be a boon.

What the heck.  Seriously, what.  I prefer free market capitalists to... free world magicists?  I'm not even sure what to call this.