Tuesday, May 30, 2006
The "Charity, Freedom and Diversity Party" - Dutch Child Sexual Abusers Launch Political Party
from darwinsmoustache: People like to pat the Dutch on the back for their open and inclusive society where, drug use, prostitution and open homosexuality is acceptable. This unblinking permissiveness though also allows groups like The Charity, Freedom and Diversity (NVD) party to exist. This pro pedophilia group is looking to launch a political party on a platform of reducing the age of consent and making child pornography legal.
"their open and inclusive society where, drug use, prostitution and open homosexuality is acceptable."
D'uh. So what else is new reagrding societies where the above dysfunctions get normalized, soon it follows that every other sexual dysfunction is normalized too, each by its groups of constituents, all justifying their character and mental disease using the same 1984 discourse framework.
The ugly mind of pro-homos and pro-prostitution people showing itself every time...
p.s. And did you notice the name of the party??? The Charity, Freedom and Diversity (NVD). Are these people's minds diseased or what? This is what you get when you have a society of turds that goes out to clap at "Pride Parades" and other such named groups such as "The Human Rights Campaign," and so many other similar disgusting propaganda names. Pride, human rights, charity, freedom and diversity - such perfect words for the most violent and diseased sexual minds in our world, don't you think?
Oh, and I am sure these Dutch pedophiles criticize as "moral fascists" anyone who exposes them for the violent diseased scum that they are.
And look at this:
So what kind of a society where people like this go about doing whatever they want and the rest just sticks their heads in the sand?
The image of the German people watching the trains going with people branded with yellow stars comes to mind.
The party said it wanted to cut the legal age for sexual relations to 12 and eventually scrap the limit altogether.
"A ban just makes children curious," Ad van den Berg, one of the party's founders, told the Algemeen Dagblad (AD) newspaper.
"We want to make pedophilia the subject of discussion," he said, adding that the subject had been a taboo since the 1996 Marc Dutroux child abuse scandal in neighboring Belgium. "We have been hushed up. The only way is through parliament."
"their open and inclusive society where, drug use, prostitution and open homosexuality is acceptable."
D'uh. So what else is new reagrding societies where the above dysfunctions get normalized, soon it follows that every other sexual dysfunction is normalized too, each by its groups of constituents, all justifying their character and mental disease using the same 1984 discourse framework.
The ugly mind of pro-homos and pro-prostitution people showing itself every time...
p.s. And did you notice the name of the party??? The Charity, Freedom and Diversity (NVD). Are these people's minds diseased or what? This is what you get when you have a society of turds that goes out to clap at "Pride Parades" and other such named groups such as "The Human Rights Campaign," and so many other similar disgusting propaganda names. Pride, human rights, charity, freedom and diversity - such perfect words for the most violent and diseased sexual minds in our world, don't you think?
Oh, and I am sure these Dutch pedophiles criticize as "moral fascists" anyone who exposes them for the violent diseased scum that they are.
And look at this:
The party said private possession of child pornography should be allowed although it favors banning the trade of such materials. The broadcast of pornography should be allowed on daytime television, with only violent pornography limited to the late evening, according to the party.
So what kind of a society where people like this go about doing whatever they want and the rest just sticks their heads in the sand?
The image of the German people watching the trains going with people branded with yellow stars comes to mind.
Monday, May 29, 2006
And the Death Penalty Should Go to...
Esclaves sexuels, voleurs forcés ou encore punching-balls : une centaine d’enfants ont été exploités pendant des années dans plusieurs pays européens, révèle lundi la BBC sur son site internet. Ce vaste réseau a été démantelé ces derniers jours avec l’arrestation de 41 personnes de nationalité bulgare, point d’orgue d’une enquête menée depuis deux ans, sous la houlette de la police italienne de Trieste. Les cas de 75 autres personnes font encore l’objet d’une enquête.
Selon les autorités, les enfants victimes de ce réseau ont été exploités sexuellement et contraints de plonger dans la criminalité. La plupart d’entre eux, originaires de Bulgarie, ont été enlevés alors qu’ils n’avaient qu’entre huit et treize ans. Ces enfants ont ensuite été transportés vers plusieurs pays européens, dont la Grande-Bretagne et l’Allemagne.
Ils auraient été vendus par leurs parents déshérités. Un contrat était même établi pour chaque victime entre les deux parties. En échange, les parents étaient assurés de percevoir un pourcentage sur les vols commis par leur progéniture. De son côté, le gang garantissait un minimum de 1.000 euros volés par jour et par enfant.
Première cibles des trafiquants : les jeunes victimes, épargnées par les poursuites judiciaires dans de nombreux pays. « Le groupe tirait profit du fait qu’un enfant de moins de 14 ans ne peut être arrêté en Italie », explique un carabinier italien. Les enfants, maintenus à l’état d’esclaves, menacés et battus, étaient entraînés aux méandres de la petite criminalité pour devenir des pickpockets qualifiés. L’argent, volé à l’arraché, était ensuite réinvesti dans le trafic de drogues.
Pour l’heure, les enquêteurs ont identifié une centaine d’enfants, mais il pourrait y en avoir davantage.
Why should people like this be allowed to live? So many honest people, children, dying of hunger, and crap like this is being kept alive.
Just kill them, and you send a nice message too - to all the others.
Selon les autorités, les enfants victimes de ce réseau ont été exploités sexuellement et contraints de plonger dans la criminalité. La plupart d’entre eux, originaires de Bulgarie, ont été enlevés alors qu’ils n’avaient qu’entre huit et treize ans. Ces enfants ont ensuite été transportés vers plusieurs pays européens, dont la Grande-Bretagne et l’Allemagne.
Ils auraient été vendus par leurs parents déshérités. Un contrat était même établi pour chaque victime entre les deux parties. En échange, les parents étaient assurés de percevoir un pourcentage sur les vols commis par leur progéniture. De son côté, le gang garantissait un minimum de 1.000 euros volés par jour et par enfant.
Première cibles des trafiquants : les jeunes victimes, épargnées par les poursuites judiciaires dans de nombreux pays. « Le groupe tirait profit du fait qu’un enfant de moins de 14 ans ne peut être arrêté en Italie », explique un carabinier italien. Les enfants, maintenus à l’état d’esclaves, menacés et battus, étaient entraînés aux méandres de la petite criminalité pour devenir des pickpockets qualifiés. L’argent, volé à l’arraché, était ensuite réinvesti dans le trafic de drogues.
Pour l’heure, les enquêteurs ont identifié une centaine d’enfants, mais il pourrait y en avoir davantage.
Why should people like this be allowed to live? So many honest people, children, dying of hunger, and crap like this is being kept alive.
Just kill them, and you send a nice message too - to all the others.
Mister/Master - where does it come from?
In case you didn't know, this came up in a class today...
I love etymology. :-)
master (n.)
O.E. mægester "one having control or authority," from L. magister "chief, head, director, teacher" (cf. O.Fr. maistre, Fr. maître, It. maestro, Ger. Meister), infl. in M.E. by O.Fr. maistre, from L. magister, contrastive adj. from magis (adv.) "more," itself a comp. of magnus "great."
In academic senses (from M.L. magister) it is attested from 1380s, originally a degree conveying authority to teach in the universities. The verb is attested from c.1225.
I love etymology. :-)
Honeymoon - where does the word come from?
wiki - The Oxford English Dictionary offers no etymology at all, but dates the word back to the 16th century:
"The first month after marriage, when there is nothing but tenderness and pleasure" (Samuel Johnson); originally having no reference to the period of a month, but comparing the mutual affection of newly-married persons to the changing moon which is no sooner full than it begins to wane; now, usually, the holiday spent together by a newly-married couple, before settling down at home.
One of the oldest citations in the Oxford English Dictionary indicates that, while today honeymoon has a positive meaning, the word was actually a sardonic reference to the inevitable waning of love like a phase of the moon. This, the first literary reference to the honeymoon was penned in 1552, in Richard Huloet's Abecedarium Anglico Latinum. Huleot writes:
Or, in modern English:
"The first month after marriage, when there is nothing but tenderness and pleasure" (Samuel Johnson); originally having no reference to the period of a month, but comparing the mutual affection of newly-married persons to the changing moon which is no sooner full than it begins to wane; now, usually, the holiday spent together by a newly-married couple, before settling down at home.
One of the oldest citations in the Oxford English Dictionary indicates that, while today honeymoon has a positive meaning, the word was actually a sardonic reference to the inevitable waning of love like a phase of the moon. This, the first literary reference to the honeymoon was penned in 1552, in Richard Huloet's Abecedarium Anglico Latinum. Huleot writes:
Hony mone, a terme proverbially applied to such as be newe maried, whiche wyll not fall out at the fyrste, but thone loveth the other at the beginnynge excedyngly, the likelyhode of theyr exceadynge love appearing to aswage, ye which time the vulgar people cal the hony mone.
Or, in modern English:
Honeymoon, a term proverbially applied to the newly-married, who will not fall out (quarrel) at first, but they love the other at the beginning exceedingly, the likelihood of their exceeding love appearing to assuage [any quarrels]; this time is commonly called the honeymoon.
Best comments re ACE's post on the Duke rape case
ACE decided to go on a little faux morality melodrama here, regarding the accused Duke rapists ("Oh the injustice towards those darling, pure, innocent little boys). My point as to why he is such a hypocrite is in bold, in case it's too much work to read through everything. Excerpt of Salon article followed by excerpt of ACE's long post - that began by criticizing Salon's blind defense of the woman accuser:
I would love to see the Salon column written about the exact same incident, with the exception that the races on the accuser and accused were reversed.
Posted by Clark at May 26,
I would love to see the Salon column written about the exact same incident, with the exception that the races on the accuser and accused were reversed.
It's not exactly the same, but close: Kobe Bryant.
The MSM called the 19 year old girl who accused Kobe everything short of a slutty whore for months before the trial.
Posted by Sue Dohnim at May 26, 2006 01:06 PM
But the left would invert its usual claim -- "it's better than 100 guilty men go free than one innocent man be convicted" -- in rape cases, especially, of course, when it's a minority woman accusing wealthy white male oppresors. Then, it becomes "It's better that every one accused of rape be convicted, guilty or innocent, so as not to dissuade other women from coming forward to accuse other men of rape."
================
Agree. However, this does not change the fact that the above is not the worst problem regarding rape in society. The worst problems are : rape is still happening at high rates; the majority of victims don't even sue, much less make false accusations. Is there any outrage about it? No.
The same goes for child abuse. The majority of child abusers are never CHARGED. You can't accuse someone wrongly if you don't accuse anyone at all.
Posted by alessandra at May 26,
There is also the trivial little matter that they haven't yet been proven guilty, and that makes them, well, innocent.
Posted by B Moe
================
The presumption of innocence does not apply outside a courtroom. OJ was pronounced not guilty in a court of law even though he is as guilty as sin. If her supporters what to call him guilty and their supporters what to call him innocent -- so be it.
Posted by shawn
================
Tend to agree with shawn (a first!) with one difference. But first: the failure of a legal attempt to prove guilt does not prove at all someone is innocent. Lots of guilty people have walked free in a court process. I am talking in general, not saying that I think the accused are guilty in this case (I haven't followed the details).
But the problem with jumping the gun to either guilt or innocence before examining admissable and inamissable evidence, although allowed and practiced outside (and not that rarely inside ) a court-room, can also be a show of tremendous bias or pre-conceived notions. It doesn't mean pre-conceived notions and insights can't ever be right, but it's no guarantee either.
Posted by alessandra at May 26
However, this does not change the fact that the above is not the worst problem regarding rape in society. The worst problems are : rape is still happening at high rates; the majority of victims don't even sue, much less make false accusations. Is there any outrage about it? No.
What is a problem for "society" is a statistical thing.
What is a problem in an actual case is different. There may be a problem with underreporting or undercharging rape in "society;" that says nothing at all about the immediate matter, which have flesh and blood human beings whose credibility and criminality are at issue.
And it's a mistake to link the two, or try to vindicate the problems in rape "in society" by falsely convicting individual human beings in a specific case.
I don't like these appeals to *general* problems when we're discussing the specific fates of specific individuals.
Posted by ace at May 26, 2
I know almost nothing about this case. I don't think that the female lacrosse players should wear those sweatbands, though. It's like politicizing a non-political event, in this case a lacrosse match.
The whole thing stinks. I hate the way we deal with rape. You can see it clearly in this case; people aren't making up their minds based on truth, but on wishful thinking. Circuses like this discourage actual rape victims from coming forward. Alessandra is right that most actual sexual violence never gets reported, and I don't think that "teachable moments" like this are helping.
Posted by sandy burger at
What is a problem for "society" is a statistical thing.
============
I didn't know rape victims were things.
And it's a mistake to link the two,
They are linked however, so the mistake is not to see how they link or to misinterpret the link.
or try to vindicate the problems in rape "in society" by falsely convicting individual human beings in a specific case.
Agree. But stating how much indifferent and unjust society is towards a huge number of rape victims is not the same as falsely convicting these guys. It's pointing to a hypocritical harmful mentality that is still quite prevalent in society.
I don't like these appeals to *general* problems when we're discussing the specific fates of specific individuals.
General problems that involve the rape of hundreds of thousands of individuals and their fates?
Posted by alessandra at May 26, 2006 01:40 PM
She's the girl who cried wolf. Don't take off your clothes and simulate sex in front of drunk college guys.
I know, I know--she didn't "ask" for it.
But in this case, nobody forced her to be a stripper either. You can't have it both ways and then become outraged when your word is questioned.
Posted by kevlarchick at May 26, 2006 01:43 PM
Tend to agree with shawn (a first!)
Guess I'm slipping, huh?
Posted by shawn at May 26
But stating how much indifferent and unjust society is towards a huge number of rape victims
Society is neither unjust nor indifferent to rape victims. Your beef was that the rapes weren't reported. How do you blame society for that? If indifference is the problem, it's apparently indifference on the part of the victims.
Posted by Roy at May 26, 2006 01:55 PM
There's a great line in the lawyer's closing arguments in "A Time to Kill" (it was in the movie also) after he described to the jury all the terrible things that were done to the little girl. He says, "Now imagine she was white."
How true it is.
==============
The victim is struggling on another front. After insisting the nasty white boys didn't use condoms, the DNA from her vagina and rectum has positively identified three individuals; her boyfriend and his two friends who drove her to the Lacrosse party.
Doh.
Posted by Jacko at May 26, 2006 01:57 PM
I didn't know rape victims were things.
Come on, that's not what Ace meant at all.
It's pointing to a hypocritical harmful mentality that is still quite prevalent in society.
I agree with you. And, whether or not Ace makes it the priority you do, he hasn't said anything which contradicts this, either. All he's doing is insisting that these men get a fair trial based only on the facts of this specific case; society at large is an entirely separate issue.
As for the problem of sexual violence in general, I'm quite sure that false rape accusations don't help matters any, and I'm sure you agree.
Posted by sandy burger at May
If indifference is the problem, it's apparently indifference on the part of the victims.
I don't buy it. Look, I know a few women who were raped, none of whom reported it, for a number of reasons. They certainly weren't indifferent to having been raped, though.
Posted by sandy burger at May 26, 2006 02:08 PM
How do you blame society for that? If indifference is the problem, it's apparently indifference on the part of the victims. Posted by Roy
=======
"In the past, the reason people didn't report was that they feared nothing would be done, or that they wouldn't be believed, or that it was too personal a crime," said Jamie Zuieback, spokesperson for the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network in Washington, D.C.,
Where did these fears come from? From seeing that nothing was done or that victims were attacked in a variety of ways if they tried to speak out.
The only person on Earth that could be deemed "indifferent" to being raped is a person not being able to function as a human being, such as a concentration camp survivor or profound abuse survivor who's psychological functioning was so ill, they could not consciously deal with more violence being done to them. More correctly it would be to term this total incapacity - not indifference.
Practically speaking, there is no such thing as "indifference" to being raped.
Posted by alessandra at
And, whether or not Ace makes it the priority you do, he hasn't said anything which contradicts this, either. All he's doing is insisting that these men get a fair trial based only on the facts of this specific case; society at large is an entirely separate issue.
=================
What I am pointing out is that for every such case, there are thousands of real rape cases that nobody gets outraged about, nor do they blog about the injustice of the un-reportedness. Nor the difficulty in prosecuting real rapists. It's clear to me that what people get outraged about is part of the larger social problems with rape.
As for the problem of sexual violence in general, I'm quite sure that false rape accusations don't help matters any, and I'm sure you agree.
I don't think people who promote porn, stripping, and prostitution have much of a moral stand about how awful it is for a false accusation to happen, since all of these things profoundly create a culture of sexual exploitation and violence, and which includes violent and degrading sexual behavior.
Which is different than saying " falsely convicting someone will vindicate the sexual violence in society."
Posted by alessandra at
Alessandra,
It's a bit cheap to suggest I meant something I have to imagine you know I didn't.
What I meant, obviously, was that general statistical evidence about the underreportage or underprosecution of sex offenses has NO BEARING on specific cases. So I don't see the point in bringing general statistical "evidence" up when discussing a specific case.
It is statistically true that young black men are greatly overrepresented in committing street-level crimes. Such evidence, however, does not speak to the guilt or innocence of a specific young black man charged with a mugging.
It's so tedious to even discuss an issue with someone who argues in bad faith.
"So rape victims are things?"
Yeah, Alessandra, they're things. They're objects without sentience or humanity. That's precisely what I meant, and I applaud you for seeing through my obfuscations.
Posted by ace at May 26, 2006 02:36 PM
I don't think people who promote porn, stripping, and prostitution have much of a moral stand about how awful it is for a false accusation to happen, since all of these things profoundly create a culture of sexual exploitation and violence, and which includes violent and degrading sexual behavior.
Once again, Alessandra removes herself from the bounds of reasonable discussion.
Later on I think I'm going to watch a Kayla Kleavage video. Just doing my part to keep rape alive.
Posted by ace at
I don't think people who promote porn, stripping, and prostitution have much of a moral stand about how awful it is for a false accusation to happen,
I've frequented a strip club or two in my time. Clearly, I have no moral standing to complain if someone decides to falsely accuse me of rape. Hell, I was pretty much asking for it.
Posted by The Warden
It's still immoral to hire strippers. I'm glad the law will treat the fornicators as innocent, because that is the law of the land for the time being. But then abortion is legal, too. It doesn't make an abortionist "innocent" of a grave moral sin, it only makes them innocent in the eyes of the law.
I don't care if it is part of the ace of spades lifestyle or something. Lust is a sinful behavior. You shouldn't try to put a political spin on it.
Ace, you spend all day trying to cut through BS like double-standards and the immorality that is destroying our nation's moral fabric. You do a great job. But then every once an a while you totally drop the ball.
To totally flub up an otherwise consistent moral framework to leap to defend the "innocence" of a bunch of fornicating creeps makes it seem like you have a special soft-spot for men who pay money for the right to treat women like dirt. It's a free country and all that... and even sex perverts have a right to a defense... but why fall all over yourself trying to candy coat what we know they did?
They probably don't belong in jail, but they still are a bunch of dirtballs.
Posted by at May 26, 2006
The real question is how often false reporting of rape occurs in high profile cases, which I suspect is significantly higher than the false reporting rate for "normal" rape cases. I don't think applying the mean rate to cases where the "victim" has substantial opportunity to gain is likely to be very accurate.
Posted by geoff
ACE: It's a bit cheap to suggest I meant something I have to imagine you know I didn't.
This is what I wrote:
I don't think there is anything cheap in the above, quite on the contrary.
Posted by alessandra at May 27, 2006 12:01 PM
Alessandra: "I don't think people who promote porn, stripping, and prostitution have much of a moral stand about how awful it is for a false accusation to happen,"
============
The Warden : "I've frequented a strip club or two in my time. Clearly, I have no moral standing to complain if someone decides to falsely accuse me of rape. Hell, I was pretty much asking for it."
============
If you think it's just fine to exploit and degrade women as you please, your moral standing is the same as a false accuser who thinks it's fine to accuse anyone as they please. On the same level...
And I guess it's so comfortable to put one's head in the sand about just how much degradation and violence there is in porn, prostitution, and stripping and then bring on the hyperventilated "oh my God, if they convict those poor little boys..."
Just a tad completely full of bs, but we can't expect certain people to face it...
Posted by alessandra at May 27, 2006 12:14 PM
============
This sure won't bother so-called Christians on your blog. You know, it's just the thing they think they are following Jesus in.
============
==============
Obviously, the above first criticism is nothing that so-called Christians can contribute to.
And on a final end-note, when so-called Christians everywhere -who are specially well-represented in Texas- aren't lewd or violent, they behave so cowardly.
Salon:
By wearing sweatbands saying "innocent," Duke's women's lacrosse team is displaying a pack mentality -- and disrespecting women.
By Kevin Sweeney
Innocent.
That's the word written on sweatbands the Duke University women's lacrosse team will wear when they take the field Friday at the start of their sport's premier event. (The women's lacrosse Final Four, which determines the NCAA championship, takes place this weekend at Boston University's Nickerson Field.) With the bands, the women are apparently suggesting that the Duke men's lacrosse team, and the three members charged with sexual assault, are innocent.
I generally assume women tell the truth about rape. I'd say that 95% of rape charges are true (or pretty much true). But that leaves 5% of charges which are fraudulent, and that is not an insignificant percentage.
ACE:
But the left would invert its usual claim -- "it's better than 100 guilty men go free than one innocent man be convicted" -- in rape cases, especially, of course, when it's a minority woman accusing wealthy white male oppresors. Then, it becomes "It's better that every one accused of rape be convicted, guilty or innocent, so as not to dissuade other women from coming forward to accuse other men of rape."
The writer concludes his idiotic essay by suggesting that the womens' lacrosse team display the word "Respect" on their wristbands, rather than "Innocent." It could, you see, mean many different things to many different people.
Well, that sort of defeats the purpose of trying to send a message, doesn't it?
Why not just have them wear writstbands that say "Bush lied, people died"?
I grow so tired of the left lecturing us that we must never render an opinion as a citizen on a case of political import, unless that opinion agrees with their own, in which case, have a lynching party. We heard this claim constantly when Bill Clinton was accused of his various crimes -- we must not assume his guilt, we were told -- as they nearly simultaneously proclaimed his complete innocence.
It's one or the other, guys. One or the other.
I would like the sentence "We should not try this case in the media" barred from ever being spoken again. It's an empty platitude; of course we all have opinions on cases as we hear them, and there's nothing in the Constitution that demands we stay silent about those opinions.
Further, as a technical matter, you simply can't be "convicted in the media." You're either convicted in a courtroom or not at all.
I would love to see the Salon column written about the exact same incident, with the exception that the races on the accuser and accused were reversed.
Posted by Clark at May 26,
I would love to see the Salon column written about the exact same incident, with the exception that the races on the accuser and accused were reversed.
It's not exactly the same, but close: Kobe Bryant.
The MSM called the 19 year old girl who accused Kobe everything short of a slutty whore for months before the trial.
Posted by Sue Dohnim at May 26, 2006 01:06 PM
But the left would invert its usual claim -- "it's better than 100 guilty men go free than one innocent man be convicted" -- in rape cases, especially, of course, when it's a minority woman accusing wealthy white male oppresors. Then, it becomes "It's better that every one accused of rape be convicted, guilty or innocent, so as not to dissuade other women from coming forward to accuse other men of rape."
================
Agree. However, this does not change the fact that the above is not the worst problem regarding rape in society. The worst problems are : rape is still happening at high rates; the majority of victims don't even sue, much less make false accusations. Is there any outrage about it? No.
The same goes for child abuse. The majority of child abusers are never CHARGED. You can't accuse someone wrongly if you don't accuse anyone at all.
Posted by alessandra at May 26,
There is also the trivial little matter that they haven't yet been proven guilty, and that makes them, well, innocent.
Posted by B Moe
================
The presumption of innocence does not apply outside a courtroom. OJ was pronounced not guilty in a court of law even though he is as guilty as sin. If her supporters what to call him guilty and their supporters what to call him innocent -- so be it.
Posted by shawn
================
Tend to agree with shawn (a first!) with one difference. But first: the failure of a legal attempt to prove guilt does not prove at all someone is innocent. Lots of guilty people have walked free in a court process. I am talking in general, not saying that I think the accused are guilty in this case (I haven't followed the details).
But the problem with jumping the gun to either guilt or innocence before examining admissable and inamissable evidence, although allowed and practiced outside (and not that rarely inside ) a court-room, can also be a show of tremendous bias or pre-conceived notions. It doesn't mean pre-conceived notions and insights can't ever be right, but it's no guarantee either.
Posted by alessandra at May 26
However, this does not change the fact that the above is not the worst problem regarding rape in society. The worst problems are : rape is still happening at high rates; the majority of victims don't even sue, much less make false accusations. Is there any outrage about it? No.
What is a problem for "society" is a statistical thing.
What is a problem in an actual case is different. There may be a problem with underreporting or undercharging rape in "society;" that says nothing at all about the immediate matter, which have flesh and blood human beings whose credibility and criminality are at issue.
And it's a mistake to link the two, or try to vindicate the problems in rape "in society" by falsely convicting individual human beings in a specific case.
I don't like these appeals to *general* problems when we're discussing the specific fates of specific individuals.
Posted by ace at May 26, 2
I know almost nothing about this case. I don't think that the female lacrosse players should wear those sweatbands, though. It's like politicizing a non-political event, in this case a lacrosse match.
The whole thing stinks. I hate the way we deal with rape. You can see it clearly in this case; people aren't making up their minds based on truth, but on wishful thinking. Circuses like this discourage actual rape victims from coming forward. Alessandra is right that most actual sexual violence never gets reported, and I don't think that "teachable moments" like this are helping.
Posted by sandy burger at
What is a problem for "society" is a statistical thing.
============
I didn't know rape victims were things.
And it's a mistake to link the two,
They are linked however, so the mistake is not to see how they link or to misinterpret the link.
or try to vindicate the problems in rape "in society" by falsely convicting individual human beings in a specific case.
Agree. But stating how much indifferent and unjust society is towards a huge number of rape victims is not the same as falsely convicting these guys. It's pointing to a hypocritical harmful mentality that is still quite prevalent in society.
I don't like these appeals to *general* problems when we're discussing the specific fates of specific individuals.
General problems that involve the rape of hundreds of thousands of individuals and their fates?
Posted by alessandra at May 26, 2006 01:40 PM
She's the girl who cried wolf. Don't take off your clothes and simulate sex in front of drunk college guys.
I know, I know--she didn't "ask" for it.
But in this case, nobody forced her to be a stripper either. You can't have it both ways and then become outraged when your word is questioned.
Posted by kevlarchick at May 26, 2006 01:43 PM
Tend to agree with shawn (a first!)
Guess I'm slipping, huh?
Posted by shawn at May 26
But stating how much indifferent and unjust society is towards a huge number of rape victims
Society is neither unjust nor indifferent to rape victims. Your beef was that the rapes weren't reported. How do you blame society for that? If indifference is the problem, it's apparently indifference on the part of the victims.
Posted by Roy at May 26, 2006 01:55 PM
There's a great line in the lawyer's closing arguments in "A Time to Kill" (it was in the movie also) after he described to the jury all the terrible things that were done to the little girl. He says, "Now imagine she was white."
How true it is.
==============
The victim is struggling on another front. After insisting the nasty white boys didn't use condoms, the DNA from her vagina and rectum has positively identified three individuals; her boyfriend and his two friends who drove her to the Lacrosse party.
Doh.
Posted by Jacko at May 26, 2006 01:57 PM
I didn't know rape victims were things.
Come on, that's not what Ace meant at all.
It's pointing to a hypocritical harmful mentality that is still quite prevalent in society.
I agree with you. And, whether or not Ace makes it the priority you do, he hasn't said anything which contradicts this, either. All he's doing is insisting that these men get a fair trial based only on the facts of this specific case; society at large is an entirely separate issue.
As for the problem of sexual violence in general, I'm quite sure that false rape accusations don't help matters any, and I'm sure you agree.
Posted by sandy burger at May
If indifference is the problem, it's apparently indifference on the part of the victims.
I don't buy it. Look, I know a few women who were raped, none of whom reported it, for a number of reasons. They certainly weren't indifferent to having been raped, though.
Posted by sandy burger at May 26, 2006 02:08 PM
How do you blame society for that? If indifference is the problem, it's apparently indifference on the part of the victims. Posted by Roy
=======
"In the past, the reason people didn't report was that they feared nothing would be done, or that they wouldn't be believed, or that it was too personal a crime," said Jamie Zuieback, spokesperson for the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network in Washington, D.C.,
Where did these fears come from? From seeing that nothing was done or that victims were attacked in a variety of ways if they tried to speak out.
The only person on Earth that could be deemed "indifferent" to being raped is a person not being able to function as a human being, such as a concentration camp survivor or profound abuse survivor who's psychological functioning was so ill, they could not consciously deal with more violence being done to them. More correctly it would be to term this total incapacity - not indifference.
Practically speaking, there is no such thing as "indifference" to being raped.
Posted by alessandra at
And, whether or not Ace makes it the priority you do, he hasn't said anything which contradicts this, either. All he's doing is insisting that these men get a fair trial based only on the facts of this specific case; society at large is an entirely separate issue.
=================
What I am pointing out is that for every such case, there are thousands of real rape cases that nobody gets outraged about, nor do they blog about the injustice of the un-reportedness. Nor the difficulty in prosecuting real rapists. It's clear to me that what people get outraged about is part of the larger social problems with rape.
As for the problem of sexual violence in general, I'm quite sure that false rape accusations don't help matters any, and I'm sure you agree.
I don't think people who promote porn, stripping, and prostitution have much of a moral stand about how awful it is for a false accusation to happen, since all of these things profoundly create a culture of sexual exploitation and violence, and which includes violent and degrading sexual behavior.
Which is different than saying " falsely convicting someone will vindicate the sexual violence in society."
Posted by alessandra at
Alessandra,
It's a bit cheap to suggest I meant something I have to imagine you know I didn't.
What I meant, obviously, was that general statistical evidence about the underreportage or underprosecution of sex offenses has NO BEARING on specific cases. So I don't see the point in bringing general statistical "evidence" up when discussing a specific case.
It is statistically true that young black men are greatly overrepresented in committing street-level crimes. Such evidence, however, does not speak to the guilt or innocence of a specific young black man charged with a mugging.
It's so tedious to even discuss an issue with someone who argues in bad faith.
"So rape victims are things?"
Yeah, Alessandra, they're things. They're objects without sentience or humanity. That's precisely what I meant, and I applaud you for seeing through my obfuscations.
Posted by ace at May 26, 2006 02:36 PM
I don't think people who promote porn, stripping, and prostitution have much of a moral stand about how awful it is for a false accusation to happen, since all of these things profoundly create a culture of sexual exploitation and violence, and which includes violent and degrading sexual behavior.
Once again, Alessandra removes herself from the bounds of reasonable discussion.
Later on I think I'm going to watch a Kayla Kleavage video. Just doing my part to keep rape alive.
Posted by ace at
I don't think people who promote porn, stripping, and prostitution have much of a moral stand about how awful it is for a false accusation to happen,
I've frequented a strip club or two in my time. Clearly, I have no moral standing to complain if someone decides to falsely accuse me of rape. Hell, I was pretty much asking for it.
Posted by The Warden
It's still immoral to hire strippers. I'm glad the law will treat the fornicators as innocent, because that is the law of the land for the time being. But then abortion is legal, too. It doesn't make an abortionist "innocent" of a grave moral sin, it only makes them innocent in the eyes of the law.
I don't care if it is part of the ace of spades lifestyle or something. Lust is a sinful behavior. You shouldn't try to put a political spin on it.
Ace, you spend all day trying to cut through BS like double-standards and the immorality that is destroying our nation's moral fabric. You do a great job. But then every once an a while you totally drop the ball.
To totally flub up an otherwise consistent moral framework to leap to defend the "innocence" of a bunch of fornicating creeps makes it seem like you have a special soft-spot for men who pay money for the right to treat women like dirt. It's a free country and all that... and even sex perverts have a right to a defense... but why fall all over yourself trying to candy coat what we know they did?
They probably don't belong in jail, but they still are a bunch of dirtballs.
Posted by at May 26, 2006
The real question is how often false reporting of rape occurs in high profile cases, which I suspect is significantly higher than the false reporting rate for "normal" rape cases. I don't think applying the mean rate to cases where the "victim" has substantial opportunity to gain is likely to be very accurate.
Posted by geoff
ACE: It's a bit cheap to suggest I meant something I have to imagine you know I didn't.
This is what I wrote:
I don't think people who promote porn, stripping, and prostitution have much of a moral stand about how awful it is for a false accusation to happen, since all of these things profoundly create a culture of sexual exploitation and violence, and which includes violent and degrading sexual behavior.
AND
stating how much indifferent and unjust society is towards a huge number of rape victims is not the same as falsely convicting these guys. It's pointing to a hypocritical harmful mentality that is still quite prevalent in society.
I don't think there is anything cheap in the above, quite on the contrary.
Posted by alessandra at May 27, 2006 12:01 PM
Alessandra: "I don't think people who promote porn, stripping, and prostitution have much of a moral stand about how awful it is for a false accusation to happen,"
============
The Warden : "I've frequented a strip club or two in my time. Clearly, I have no moral standing to complain if someone decides to falsely accuse me of rape. Hell, I was pretty much asking for it."
============
If you think it's just fine to exploit and degrade women as you please, your moral standing is the same as a false accuser who thinks it's fine to accuse anyone as they please. On the same level...
And I guess it's so comfortable to put one's head in the sand about just how much degradation and violence there is in porn, prostitution, and stripping and then bring on the hyperventilated "oh my God, if they convict those poor little boys..."
Just a tad completely full of bs, but we can't expect certain people to face it...
Posted by alessandra at May 27, 2006 12:14 PM
Alessandra: "I don't think people who promote porn, stripping, and prostitution have much of a moral stand about how awful it is for a false accusation to happen, since all of these things profoundly create a culture of sexual exploitation and violence, and which includes violent and degrading sexual behavior. "
============
ACE: Later on I think I'm going to watch a Kayla Kleavage video. Just doing my part to keep rape alive.
============
This sure won't bother so-called Christians on your blog. You know, it's just the thing they think they are following Jesus in.
============
ACE: Once again, Alessandra removes herself from the bounds of reasonable discussion.
Dave in Texas:Boy I sure didn't see that coming.
==============
Obviously, the above first criticism is nothing that so-called Christians can contribute to.
And on a final end-note, when so-called Christians everywhere -who are specially well-represented in Texas- aren't lewd or violent, they behave so cowardly.
Sunday, May 28, 2006
Apparently well-meaning, but such stoopid people
So I was looking to join a book-club and ran into an older woman who participates in one, so I asked her for information on it, because, I explained, I was interested in joining one (d'uh).
"You don't want to join mine, there's only old people in it," she said with that "end-of-conversation-I-know-what-you-want" adamant tone of voice.
And I was like, "What??"
What nonsense!! Isn't it irritating when people who don't know you, and have no idea what you like or dislike, and don't even bother to ask, simply assume so instantaneously and so stoopidly what you must want?
I had to answer politely, but I felt so much like saying, "You retard! As it happens, I love being around a whole bunch of different ages, from babies to old people, and as long as they are decent and intelligent, and not closeted pigs and other things, that's what I care about. Thanks for thinking that I would be one of those morons that solely relates to people ranging from 2 years older to 2 years younger than myself."
"You don't want to join mine, there's only old people in it," she said with that "end-of-conversation-I-know-what-you-want" adamant tone of voice.
And I was like, "What??"
What nonsense!! Isn't it irritating when people who don't know you, and have no idea what you like or dislike, and don't even bother to ask, simply assume so instantaneously and so stoopidly what you must want?
I had to answer politely, but I felt so much like saying, "You retard! As it happens, I love being around a whole bunch of different ages, from babies to old people, and as long as they are decent and intelligent, and not closeted pigs and other things, that's what I care about. Thanks for thinking that I would be one of those morons that solely relates to people ranging from 2 years older to 2 years younger than myself."
That obsessive egotism that is the basis for a liberal mind
So I was talking to this married woman who is a liberal, but not the worse kind, she does get in touch with reality every now and then.
So she tells, "You don't know what I went through when I was living in bla bla."
"Tell me."
"My best friend, I mean, the most best friend I had ever had, who was also married, she totally betrayed me. You know that kind of rare friend you can tell everything to, that really understands you? We used to talk so much. She totally betrayed me! It was so painful and crushing."
So what pops into my mind? She slept with your husband. But I continue listening, empathic expression on my face. So she goes on, "You can't believe what she did."
"What?"
"We were both members of this gym, you see, and I found out, right before we moved from there to here, I found out she had slept around with the entire gym!! And she had always kept it a secret from me!! She had never told me anything!! I mean, I don't care if she wants to sleep around, I don't care if anyone wants to sleep with the entire gym, with the entire army, go for it, but she didn't tell me!! And I felt like such a fool, for not knowing it, for thinking that she was my friend and would tell me things."
And I felt like asking her, "Do you know that there is no way a human being can have a more diseased egotistical mind than yours? So you don't care if she betrays her husband, trashes her marriage, her family, betrays everyone else she slept with that also supposedly had a commitment, treats everyone like shit, but it is a problem if she doesn't tell you? You have a diseased mind."
This is why liberals stink so much, they have such a diseased sense of entitlement, they have such a profoundly exaggerated opinion of their own importance, they always think they can destroy anything and anyone for their kicks.
As with the psychological profile of many criminals, liberals are too much trash to have an ounce of ethics or accountability. They are always glibly justifying to themselves their slimy, unethical, harassful, destructive, or violent attitudes and behaviors.
Related post: Excuses offered for covering up sexual harassment.
So she tells, "You don't know what I went through when I was living in bla bla."
"Tell me."
"My best friend, I mean, the most best friend I had ever had, who was also married, she totally betrayed me. You know that kind of rare friend you can tell everything to, that really understands you? We used to talk so much. She totally betrayed me! It was so painful and crushing."
So what pops into my mind? She slept with your husband. But I continue listening, empathic expression on my face. So she goes on, "You can't believe what she did."
"What?"
"We were both members of this gym, you see, and I found out, right before we moved from there to here, I found out she had slept around with the entire gym!! And she had always kept it a secret from me!! She had never told me anything!! I mean, I don't care if she wants to sleep around, I don't care if anyone wants to sleep with the entire gym, with the entire army, go for it, but she didn't tell me!! And I felt like such a fool, for not knowing it, for thinking that she was my friend and would tell me things."
And I felt like asking her, "Do you know that there is no way a human being can have a more diseased egotistical mind than yours? So you don't care if she betrays her husband, trashes her marriage, her family, betrays everyone else she slept with that also supposedly had a commitment, treats everyone like shit, but it is a problem if she doesn't tell you? You have a diseased mind."
This is why liberals stink so much, they have such a diseased sense of entitlement, they have such a profoundly exaggerated opinion of their own importance, they always think they can destroy anything and anyone for their kicks.
As with the psychological profile of many criminals, liberals are too much trash to have an ounce of ethics or accountability. They are always glibly justifying to themselves their slimy, unethical, harassful, destructive, or violent attitudes and behaviors.
Related post: Excuses offered for covering up sexual harassment.
You are as old as the context you are introduced in...
So I met this woman who is 10 years younger than myself, who's married with lots of kids. She's a bit overweight and has a mature voice. So I thought she was my age and she thought I was 10 years younger, or her age!!! (not that I look younger, but just because of the context that we met in I probably seemed that way to her)
Ring, Ring - NOT!!!
IT IS a familiar and unnerving sensation: the false belief that you can hear your mobile phone ringing or vibrating.
Now the phenomenon is so widespread it has an official name: "ringxiety".
People have grown emotionally dependent on their mobiles for feelings of self-worth, claim psychologists.
So when we "hear" an imaginary ring, or think vibrations on a bus are a call, it is the subconscious calculating how popular we are.
[...]
British psychologists say it is a sign the human brain is struggling to adapt to today's demands.
Lancaster Centre for the Study of Media, Technology and Culture professor Michael Hulme said: "You want to feel you are being contacted."
Now the phenomenon is so widespread it has an official name: "ringxiety".
People have grown emotionally dependent on their mobiles for feelings of self-worth, claim psychologists.
So when we "hear" an imaginary ring, or think vibrations on a bus are a call, it is the subconscious calculating how popular we are.
[...]
British psychologists say it is a sign the human brain is struggling to adapt to today's demands.
Lancaster Centre for the Study of Media, Technology and Culture professor Michael Hulme said: "You want to feel you are being contacted."
Caritas Christi Head Resigns Amid Sexual Harassment Allegations
Article Date: 28 May 2006 - 9:00am (PDT)
Which just goes to show that people who think they are free to behave as they please towards anything related to sex are slime.
A clear example that the slimes of the world don't exercise an awareness about themselves, including their diseased attitudes and behaviors. Like most liberals, they never hold themselves accountables for anything.
as they say, "De-nile is just not a river in Egypt..."
It's always the same excuse: the victims misunderstood everything, they imagined it, they're crazy...
Which also goes to show that formal complaints by victims in a corrupt environment are ineffective. Unless they victims employ other aggressive and punitive tactics, the result will always be this profoundly unjust circus.
Dr. Robert Haddad, Caritas Christi Head, allegedly hugged and kissed women inappropriately, leered at women and in some cases phoned their homes late at night. He was eventually given the choice of either resigning or being fired. He opted for the resignation, which included benefits, plus ten-months' pay - a golden handshake of $830,000.
Dr. Hadded had previously been told off for sexual harassment and ordered to submit himself to sexual harassment sensitivity training. This did not happen as further allegations from women began to surface.
Which just goes to show that people who think they are free to behave as they please towards anything related to sex are slime.
According to Dr. Haddad, there was nothing inappropriate in his behaviour.
A clear example that the slimes of the world don't exercise an awareness about themselves, including their diseased attitudes and behaviors. Like most liberals, they never hold themselves accountables for anything.
as they say, "De-nile is just not a river in Egypt..."
Haddad had been head of Caritas for two years, and had managed to turn finances round from a $12 million loss in 2004 to a $26 million profit in 2005. He did this after implementing a series of measures which included layoffs and budget cuts. Some say Caritas hospitals now suffer from serious staff turnover rates.
Victims of sexual abuse say the Boston Archdiocese's managing of this case runs along extraordinary and painful parallels to the way the church had tried to cope with sexual abuse and harassment cases in the past - the whole thing is shrowded in secrecy, allegations rise and punishments are minimal.
Habbad, American born and of Lebanese descent, claims people misunderstood the hugs and kisses, which in his culture would have been received warmly. For an American born to say this is puzzling - he must be aware of what is and isn't acceptable in America. Phoning women in their homes late at night - accepted warmly in other cultures? Four allegations followed by another ten - a cultural misunderstanding between 14 women and a man who was born in the same country?
It's always the same excuse: the victims misunderstood everything, they imagined it, they're crazy...
People who have been sexually abused by priests say that the initial decision to tell Habbad off rather than firing him is a classic case of the church trying to protect their own people.
In 2003 Cardinal Bernard Law resigned after severe criticism about the way he tried to protect priests amid accusations of sexual abuse. O'Malley was brought in to replace him. Many victims of sexual abuse by priests see the same pattern happening all over again.
Helen Drinan, a Caritas human resources executive, had urged the board to fire Haddad immediately after the four initial allegations. After he was just reprimanded and told to go on a course, she warned the board what would befall the organization when people found out that the church in Boston, once again, had opted to protect the powerful predator, rather than the powerless victim.
Which also goes to show that formal complaints by victims in a corrupt environment are ineffective. Unless they victims employ other aggressive and punitive tactics, the result will always be this profoundly unjust circus.
Saturday, May 27, 2006
And in another of those glaringly stupid research studies conclusions: "Coffee has the power of persuasion"
Or, should we say, I can't believe someone got money to do something so fraudulently "scientific:"
as a new research has revealed that caffeine works best to get messages through in the morning.
After waiting 40 minutes to let the caffeine enter the bloodstream, the undergraduates were presented with strong arguments against euthanasia.
Well, d'uh. That's because all those partying undergrads finally woke up to hear what the counter-argument was!!
So we coin a new term: science-babble.
When is it that anyone puts a really attractive guy serving coffee and the women won't notice it? Heck, he can serve coffee, stale tap water, or bat's wings juice, the explanation is not in the drink, people!!!
These "researchers"... :-P Pay them the mininum salary, now! And make them clean sceptic tanks.
Sydney, May 27: The next time you want someone to agree with your views, just put forth your ideas before him/her, over a cup of coffee, as a new research has revealed that caffeine works best to get messages through in the morning.
Researchers have discovered that a morning dose of caffeine can work wonders to drive home a persuasive message.
UQ researcher Pearl Martin, who is looking into the effects of caffeine, gave the equivalent of two cups of coffee to students who agreed with voluntary euthanasia.
After waiting 40 minutes to let the caffeine enter the bloodstream, the undergraduates were presented with strong arguments against euthanasia.
Most of students in the study were persuaded to reverse their views on the subject after they were given this new information.
Dr Martin said the caffeine helped the students concentrate more effectively on persuasive messages. "If the argument is strong, forceful and convincing, then people are more likely to see the strength of the argument and be persuaded by it," she said.
as a new research has revealed that caffeine works best to get messages through in the morning.
After waiting 40 minutes to let the caffeine enter the bloodstream, the undergraduates were presented with strong arguments against euthanasia.
Well, d'uh. That's because all those partying undergrads finally woke up to hear what the counter-argument was!!
However, plying people with litres of coffee before a conference or presentation could have the reverse effect. According to the study`s co-author, Blake McKimmie of the Queensland University of Technology, people overstimulated by the popular psychoactive drug are less likely to focus on messages and more likely to focus on peripheral issues, such as the attractiveness of the person pouring the coffee.
So we coin a new term: science-babble.
When is it that anyone puts a really attractive guy serving coffee and the women won't notice it? Heck, he can serve coffee, stale tap water, or bat's wings juice, the explanation is not in the drink, people!!!
These "researchers"... :-P Pay them the mininum salary, now! And make them clean sceptic tanks.
Internet is having a profound damaging effect on Australian marriages
By Daniel Dasey
May 28, 2006
THE growing trend for people to meet over the internet is having a profound effect on Australian marriages, with cyber romances playing a role in thousands of break-ups.
Lawyers and marriage counsellors say the number of cases in which a spouse has strayed with a new partner met over the net has surged in recent years and is set to grow further as we become increasingly computer literate.
New university research shows as many as 50 per cent of people dabbling in online romances are already in relationships and many are having multiple affairs.
"It's happening more and more often, particularly over the past three years," said Eric Hudson, the western Sydney manager for counselling network Relationships Australia.
"A client will come in to talk about their partner having a relationship on the internet. The internet gives people anonymity. It allows them to create a slightly different persona and a life that's a little different from their own."
The Australian trend echoes the experience in countries such as Britain and the US.
Mr Hudson said internet affairs had become so common that counsellors were requesting specific training to deal with it. Spouses generally strayed online when intimacy and communication broke down in their off-line relationships.
Tom Altobelli, a family law practitioner with 25 years' experience and a spokesman for the Law Society of NSW, said about one in 20 of the cases he handled involved internet infidelity. He estimated that figure would be echoed in other lawyers' practices, meaning the internet could play a role in about 2500 Australian divorce cases a year.
"It's certainly coming up more and more often, especially in the past five years," he said.
Dr Altobelli's experience is mirrored in two new research papers by academics at Melbourne's Swinburne University of Technology.
Psychology lecturers Elizabeth Hardie and Simone Buzwell quizzed more than 1000 people about online behaviour and found 13 per cent had formed relationships on the internet.
May 28, 2006
THE growing trend for people to meet over the internet is having a profound effect on Australian marriages, with cyber romances playing a role in thousands of break-ups.
Lawyers and marriage counsellors say the number of cases in which a spouse has strayed with a new partner met over the net has surged in recent years and is set to grow further as we become increasingly computer literate.
New university research shows as many as 50 per cent of people dabbling in online romances are already in relationships and many are having multiple affairs.
"It's happening more and more often, particularly over the past three years," said Eric Hudson, the western Sydney manager for counselling network Relationships Australia.
"A client will come in to talk about their partner having a relationship on the internet. The internet gives people anonymity. It allows them to create a slightly different persona and a life that's a little different from their own."
The Australian trend echoes the experience in countries such as Britain and the US.
Mr Hudson said internet affairs had become so common that counsellors were requesting specific training to deal with it. Spouses generally strayed online when intimacy and communication broke down in their off-line relationships.
Tom Altobelli, a family law practitioner with 25 years' experience and a spokesman for the Law Society of NSW, said about one in 20 of the cases he handled involved internet infidelity. He estimated that figure would be echoed in other lawyers' practices, meaning the internet could play a role in about 2500 Australian divorce cases a year.
"It's certainly coming up more and more often, especially in the past five years," he said.
Dr Altobelli's experience is mirrored in two new research papers by academics at Melbourne's Swinburne University of Technology.
Psychology lecturers Elizabeth Hardie and Simone Buzwell quizzed more than 1000 people about online behaviour and found 13 per cent had formed relationships on the internet.
If you think you can't -- you're right!
This is great! LOL :-)
Source: Achieve-IT!
Posted on Saturday, May 27, 2006 @ 12:29:50 PDT by vlad
General Brad Isaac's funny but true article at "Achieve-It". Indeed, "the reverse psychology approach (reverse motivation) to getting folks off their butts can be very effective".
10 Steps You Can Take To Guarantee Failure
1. Make your goals vague - When setting your goals, use adjectives such as "more" and "some." Goals like "I want to make more money" or "I want to lose some weight" virtually guarantee your progress will be minimal. Be as wishy-washy as possible. And while you're at it, you might want to set a goal of getting a job doing something.
2. Make your goals difficult to visualize - A good way to do this is to keep changing your mind on the details of your goal. If you are thinking a goal such as: "I want to own a red, blue or yellow Corvette or just a Mustang", then you are definitely on the right track. If you kept that goal planted firmly in your mind, you are virtually guaranteed you'll never go above a used Hyundai.
3. Think and speak negatively about your goals - Try using words like "I can't" and "It's too hard". Goals such as "I can't get a promotion, It's too hard to take on more responsibility" will certainly keep you at the bottom of the food chain. If you can put it in writing or work up enough courage to tell your boss directly, he or she will almost definately avoid promoting you from that point on. Who knows, you might get lucky and get fired! It's worth a shot anyway.
4. Avoid planning incremental steps - It's likely that if you have made it this far you are already following this rule already! Take a goal - even a specific goal like "I will double my income by this time next year". Then simply leave it as-is. Don't write down any tasks or steps you'll need to complete in order to achieve it. Just consider the goal a wish and nothing more. Creating a step-by-step plan will only confuse matters because it's all too easy to take action on simple steps. Action in the direction of your goal would lead to success and you definately don't want that.
5. Don't Do - Talk - Because talk is easier than action, this step one of the easiest steps for you to take. Try to fill up as much of your day with socializing as possible. Talk about all the things you will do someday or that you were gonna do. Just make sure you don't mess it up by doing anything productive. Action is your enemy. Embrace your excuses!
6. Wait until you are motivated - Let's face it, it's much too difficult to go jogging or open a mutual fund account when you simply don't feel like it. So just wait. Waiting gives you the peace of mind that someday, you might do something. But not yet, the timing isn't right and you aren't motivated anyway.
7. Don't set a date - Setting a date when you expect to achieve your goal is too much pressure. Who needs it? Definately not you if you want to avoid progress. You know that goals with dates get done, so by not setting a date you avoid making a commitment. You can keep putting off stuff. Even though people may ask "When are you ever going to get around to reaching your target?", you have a wild card. By not having a date, you can put off actually doing anything.
8. List why it's impossible - Now we are getting into the mental game of failing. This is quite possibly your greatest weapon against achievement because it destroys hope and optimism. So as soon as possible, set aside some time to create a long list of how impossible your goal really is. No matter what your target is, I am sure you can come up with plenty of reasons why it's impossible. Be creative, make up some if you have to (i.e. "It's impossible for me to lose weight because I was kidnapped by space aliens and injected with a fat-serum.") Bonus: You get extra points if you can come up with an excuse using UFOs, ghosts or the Bermuda Triangle.
9. Don't research your goal - You're the kind of guy or gal who likes to "wing it." Reading about how others have succeeded achieving a goal similar to you is just a waste of time. Instead of standing on their shoulders, they should be standing on yours! Sure, they might have overcome unbelievable odds to get from homelessness to CEO or 450lbs to a 180lbs - but they were probably just "lucky" anyway. Don't read anything that promises to help you get to your destination.
10. Think of anything except your goal - Here's another mental strategy that will put you on the fast track to failure. Think of anything except for your goal. Why visualize success when there's plenty of clouds, teddy bears, and TV reruns to think about? And while you're at it, take action on these flights of fancy instead of your goal. I know what you're thinking...you're thinking "I wonder if there are any green teddy bears out there?" Now you're getting it! Focusing on your goal for long periods of time can be difficult and challenging. Thinking about unicorns is easy and fun. Take the easy path, that's the only way you can fail in record time.
To conclude, I know you might be a bit overwhelmed with all the work you have to do to avoid reaching your goal. You might even think it's even more work. Never fear! You can do it. Print out a copy and hang it on your bathroom mirror. Post it in your office. Read it every day. Internalize these principals and you can reach depths of failure you have possibly never imagined!
Source: Achieve-IT!
And the Best Comment Oscar re the Enron Convictions Goes To...
Sentence to servitude
More:
The greed will continue
You can rest assured that the Lay and Skilling verdicts force the "good old boys" to put on their thinking caps to find many, many new ways to scam their companies and the government. Lots of money seems to breed evil and greed. The more you got, the more you want.
In the long run, this type of corruption will continue. The shame of it all is how these people, who could have done so much good, have forced so many people into near poverty and put a black mark on the American dream.
Paul Savine
West Bloomfield
Former WorldCom Inc. Chairman Bernard Ebbers, sentenced in 2005 to 25 years in federal prison for leading an $11 billion fraud, is free pending his appeal. Cendant Corp.'s former Vice Chairman E. Kirk Shelton faces 10 years in federal prison for accounting fraud. He is also free pending appeal.
Former Tyco International Ltd. CEO L. Dennis Kozlowski and his former finance chief Mark Swartz are serving 8 1/3 to 25 years in New York state prisons for stealing from their company and defrauding investors.
plus
You are telling me that they are only going after $62 million?? Easily, I would put at 10% of the rest of their fortunes that are stashed away in offshore and (Swiss?) bank accounts and other scam-like places to place huge amounts of cash.
Fork it over, Fannie Mae
The mortgage giant is paying for its accounting tricks.
May 27, 2006
IT WAS WAY BACK IN 2004 when mortgage giant Fannie Mae came under fire for using risky investments and accounting tricks to meet its earnings-per-share targets. On Tuesday, the company finally announced that it would pay $400 million in fines and accept stiff restrictions on its operations in a long-awaited settlement with the federal government.
The settlement, along with the release of a scathing report by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, is welcome not just because it is a victory against shoddy corporate oversight. Bringing Fannie Mae to justice is important because of the company's unique ties to Washington.
Fannie Mae's board should consider the next best thing to retroactively firing former Chief Executive Franklin Raines and former Chief Financial Officer Timothy Howard, who were allowed to take early retirement in 2004. It should force Raines and Howard — and any others who profited through the accounting tricks — to reimburse the company for the compensation they received by falsely achieving earnings targets. According to the report, $52 million of Raines' $90 million in compensation from 1998 to 2003 was linked to "achieving" earnings-per-share goals.
For Skilling and Lay, there should be a set of penalties for all of the lives they have destroyed. First, liquidate all of their assets, wherever they may be hidden, and give the proceeds to the tens of thousands of people permanently crippled with hardship because of what they and their confederates have done.
Second, have Lay and Skilling spend the rest of their natural, healthy lives touring the country to serve those they bilked. Scrubbing septic tanks comes to mind.
Gregory Stack
Livonia
More:
The greed will continue
You can rest assured that the Lay and Skilling verdicts force the "good old boys" to put on their thinking caps to find many, many new ways to scam their companies and the government. Lots of money seems to breed evil and greed. The more you got, the more you want.
In the long run, this type of corruption will continue. The shame of it all is how these people, who could have done so much good, have forced so many people into near poverty and put a black mark on the American dream.
Paul Savine
West Bloomfield
Former WorldCom Inc. Chairman Bernard Ebbers, sentenced in 2005 to 25 years in federal prison for leading an $11 billion fraud, is free pending his appeal. Cendant Corp.'s former Vice Chairman E. Kirk Shelton faces 10 years in federal prison for accounting fraud. He is also free pending appeal.
Former Tyco International Ltd. CEO L. Dennis Kozlowski and his former finance chief Mark Swartz are serving 8 1/3 to 25 years in New York state prisons for stealing from their company and defrauding investors.
May 26 (Bloomberg) -- Now that Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling have been convicted of the fraud that destroyed Enron Corp., the government is poised to seize $62 million of their assets.
Prosecutors are seeking to recover $57 million in cash, securities and real estate from Skilling, including his Houston home. They want Lay's high-rise condominium, worth about $5 million. The U.S. froze the assets in 2004, when Lay and Skilling, both former chief executive officers of now-bankrupt Enron, were indicted. A jury yesterday found them guilty of fraud and conspiracy.
Forfeitures are permitted if prosecutors can connect the assets to the crime. Under federal law, the seized assets could go to law enforcement, regulatory agencies or victims.
``Given the convictions, this will probably be a fairly perfunctory proceeding,'' Kirby Behre, a former prosecutor now in private practice and co-author of a book on federal sentencing for business crimes, said today. ``The judge has some discretion in the amount of the forfeiture order.''
plus
Enron, once the world's largest energy trading firm, had more than $68 billion in market value before its bankruptcy in December 2001 wiped out thousands of jobs and at least $1 billion in retirement funds that held company stock.
You are telling me that they are only going after $62 million?? Easily, I would put at 10% of the rest of their fortunes that are stashed away in offshore and (Swiss?) bank accounts and other scam-like places to place huge amounts of cash.
Fork it over, Fannie Mae
The mortgage giant is paying for its accounting tricks.
May 27, 2006
IT WAS WAY BACK IN 2004 when mortgage giant Fannie Mae came under fire for using risky investments and accounting tricks to meet its earnings-per-share targets. On Tuesday, the company finally announced that it would pay $400 million in fines and accept stiff restrictions on its operations in a long-awaited settlement with the federal government.
The settlement, along with the release of a scathing report by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, is welcome not just because it is a victory against shoddy corporate oversight. Bringing Fannie Mae to justice is important because of the company's unique ties to Washington.
Fannie Mae's board should consider the next best thing to retroactively firing former Chief Executive Franklin Raines and former Chief Financial Officer Timothy Howard, who were allowed to take early retirement in 2004. It should force Raines and Howard — and any others who profited through the accounting tricks — to reimburse the company for the compensation they received by falsely achieving earnings targets. According to the report, $52 million of Raines' $90 million in compensation from 1998 to 2003 was linked to "achieving" earnings-per-share goals.
A Profound Simple Truth
(AgapePress) - C. S. Lewis argued in The Abolition of Man that humans, unmoored from the restraint occasioned by fidelity to a transcendent moral order, would create a world of their own choosing. Humans think that by doing so they will be free to make of themselves what they will, but Lewis disagreed, noting "For the power of Man to make himself what he pleases means, as we have seen, the power of some men to make other men what they please."
By Dr. Marc T. Newman
MovieMinistry.com
May 26, 2006
By Dr. Marc T. Newman
MovieMinistry.com
May 26, 2006
Friday, May 26, 2006
Interesting detail criticising the "Da Vinci Code"
Consider how genealogy actually works. Go back 80 generations (2000 years), and your family tree has one septillion slots to fill. If Jesus had any living descendents today, He'd have millions of them. Almost the only way there could be just one surviving heir is if the dynasty had relentlessly inbred so incestuously that the latest Magdalenian would have three eyes.
# posted by Steve Sailer ::
That's funny, I didn't think of this when I read the book, not that I ever liked biology at school. And not that one needs to study biology to understand this, but it didn't even spring up for me. So true. But if Brown had written that Jesus had spawned millions of descendants, it becomes drabby and dilluted as the "biggest coverup story of humankind," very different than one mysterious line of a few exclusive "royal" ones. If everybody were a "celebrity," no one would want to be one. Talk about a bit of psycho-babble wisdom ;-)
Although the above is a nice little revelation about the incongruency of one plot detail in the book, I still think that such factual critiques don't matter at all in determining if someone will believe in Christianity or Dan Brown - both of which compile a ton of illogical claims not based on fact. The need for religion does not stem from what would be an analysis of logical or factual claims, that is posterior to psychological, social, and emotional needs - which make people justify whatever religious claims they chose to believe in, no matter how logically or factually absurd to non-believers.
On the other hand, I don't recall seeing Christians/Catholics furious that other people are "blindly" believing non-dogmatic claims to basic tenants of Christianity. Atheists never made a big cultural splash with their ideas, not that they are small in number, but they have often taken the logical or historical fact approach to analysing religious claims. However the Christian reaction was not so much anger but to always deem them fools, dismissing them as clueless children - in other words, there was no feeling of threat. Obviously this is a very modern reaction, very different than you "burn all the heretics" type of reaction from the past.
Maybe I was too small (or not around) when some other modern dogma questioning scandals happened, like when there were the first big scandals regarding authors/books/movies that suggested that Christ was a common man and not a deity - which I don't even know exactly at which date it happened - I mean in the last decades, not in the 19th century. Maybe in the 60s - that's when it became significantly tumultuous.
In a way, it's almost as if Christians didn't mind that much if someone was totally unreligious, as they mind if someone comes along and completely tampers with and rewrites their Christian dogmas. And I can understand this difference because certainly the second one seems to undermine much more their claimed authority regarding the absolute truth.
# posted by Steve Sailer ::
That's funny, I didn't think of this when I read the book, not that I ever liked biology at school. And not that one needs to study biology to understand this, but it didn't even spring up for me. So true. But if Brown had written that Jesus had spawned millions of descendants, it becomes drabby and dilluted as the "biggest coverup story of humankind," very different than one mysterious line of a few exclusive "royal" ones. If everybody were a "celebrity," no one would want to be one. Talk about a bit of psycho-babble wisdom ;-)
Although the above is a nice little revelation about the incongruency of one plot detail in the book, I still think that such factual critiques don't matter at all in determining if someone will believe in Christianity or Dan Brown - both of which compile a ton of illogical claims not based on fact. The need for religion does not stem from what would be an analysis of logical or factual claims, that is posterior to psychological, social, and emotional needs - which make people justify whatever religious claims they chose to believe in, no matter how logically or factually absurd to non-believers.
On the other hand, I don't recall seeing Christians/Catholics furious that other people are "blindly" believing non-dogmatic claims to basic tenants of Christianity. Atheists never made a big cultural splash with their ideas, not that they are small in number, but they have often taken the logical or historical fact approach to analysing religious claims. However the Christian reaction was not so much anger but to always deem them fools, dismissing them as clueless children - in other words, there was no feeling of threat. Obviously this is a very modern reaction, very different than you "burn all the heretics" type of reaction from the past.
Maybe I was too small (or not around) when some other modern dogma questioning scandals happened, like when there were the first big scandals regarding authors/books/movies that suggested that Christ was a common man and not a deity - which I don't even know exactly at which date it happened - I mean in the last decades, not in the 19th century. Maybe in the 60s - that's when it became significantly tumultuous.
In a way, it's almost as if Christians didn't mind that much if someone was totally unreligious, as they mind if someone comes along and completely tampers with and rewrites their Christian dogmas. And I can understand this difference because certainly the second one seems to undermine much more their claimed authority regarding the absolute truth.
Thursday, May 25, 2006
More votes than any presidential candidate in US history
That's the tally for Taylor Hicks, the new American Idol.
Goes to show what is important to people when they have plenty of bread: circus.
Don't you love this dimension of "democracies?"
p.s. I would swear he's 35, I haven't seen such an older looking young guy in awhile. Supposedly he is 29.
Goes to show what is important to people when they have plenty of bread: circus.
Don't you love this dimension of "democracies?"
p.s. I would swear he's 35, I haven't seen such an older looking young guy in awhile. Supposedly he is 29.
Tuesday, May 23, 2006
More Tidbits on the Da Vinci Code Phenomenon
From post at ACE's commenting on Juan Cole's take on the book/film. (I didn't even bother to read the whole thing, just what ACE extracted).
Juan Cole:
ACE:
Me:
Juan Cole:
The novel has a binary structure. On the one hand you have the Church hierarchy, which is patriarchal, doctrinal, monotheistic, ascetic, and authoritarian. Those attributes are its normal pole, but it is open to corruption when they are over-emphasized. The first step toward over-emphasis is Opus Dei, which stands for a cult-like kind of monotheism in which individualism is much more surpressed than in the Church generally. But even Opus Dei is not so far from churchly normality. The villain of the movie is the man who corrupts the principles of Opus Dei itself, Bishop Manuel Aringarosa and his acolyte, Silas. They take self-denial in the direction of manic masochism, so that Silas routinely inflicts excruciating pain on himself in emulation of the crucifixion. And he has moved so far in the direction of giving up his individualism that he will do anything he is told by his master, including committing murder and torture. Inspector Bezu Fache, a representative of bourgeois order as a policeman, is likewise willing to put aside due process to obey his cultic master, violating individual rights and attempting to railroad a suspect, though he later has an ethical awakening.
Silas is, of course, a religious terrorist. With his monk robes, he inevitably nowadays evokes Bin Laden and al-Qaeda. Corruption of an authoritarian and partiarchal tradition leads in the direction of murder for the faith.
This pole of the film reflects the authoritarian side of modern institutions and culture. It isn't about Catholicism at all, or about Opus Dei. It is about the unchallengeable doctrines (norms) of society, and about the constant danger that ordinary obedience to the law can turn into a cultic exaltation of the law above principle and spirit. The Silas's of the US are the Ollie Norths and the Irv Lewis Libbys, apparatchiks who are willing to break any law and throw over any constitutional principle in order to serve their masters. (I.e. Cheney gets to play Aringosa in the Plame scandal). As for patriarchy, it is still dominant in much of American life, from the presidency to the CEOs in the boardroom to the US officer corps, and it is linked to the bands of brothers who form gangs and go overboard in imposing conformity. Joe Wilson had to be punished for challenging the orthodoxy that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
The other pole in the Brown narrative is the priory around the female descendants of Jesus through Mary Magdalene. This pole is about paganism, feminism, individualism, scientific rationality and sexual freedom. This pole, likewise, can become corrupt and antinomian. Thus, the pagan orgy or hieros gamos repulses Sophie Neveu and causes an almost fatal break between the Grail (herself) and the priory. Likewise, scientistic society has led her to become an unbeliever, so that the Grail itself is corrupted by doubt. Sir Leah Teabing is the symbol of this pole gone to unethical extremes. In his quest for the Grail, he is willing to deceive and to kill. He is Silas's structural analogue.
The "pagan" (in Brown's sense) temptation is a significant feature of contemporary American life-- which can be lived without much immediate penalty as libertine, selfish, and undisciplined. Untempered by spirituality and ethics, science can be soulles and led to e.g. eugenics experiments.
Neveu, like Fache, is in the police and a symbol of middle class order. But she is willing to put her ethics above her professional discipline. When she sees that Fache has become a cultist and lost his perspective, she defies him and helps the fugitive Professor Langdon. She stands for genuine justice rather than only procedural justice.
...
The Brown narrative does not advocate replacing the patriarchal,authoritarian, self-denying Church with the feminist, individualistic, pagan, libertine priory.
It is, in fact, only the melding of the two poles that would create the happy medium. That would lie in gender equality, and in moderation in each of the values of authority and individualism, self-denial and self-indulgence, law and ethical principle.
That is the centrist position the public is looking for. It is religious, but for the most part values individualistic spirituality above dry Church discipline. It is willing to sacrifice, but not at the price of giving up self-actualization and individual ethical integrity. It is increasingly challenging patriarchy, though that struggle is lively. It recognizes the need for authority but is suspicious, in the Madisonian tradition, that too much authority will corrupt its holders.
The film is popular because it isn't about Catholicism or France or some odd conspiracy theory centered on Mary Magdalene. It is popular because it is about the dilemmas of secular modernity.
...
Still, it did big box office, and is hitting a nerve. Critics should be interested in what that nerve is.
ACE:
How about "No"?
First off, Brown isn't quite suggesting that the aggressive, evil, dominating, authoritarian, pleasure-denying pain-loving murder-worshipping power structure of Christianity needs to be mixed just a tad with the peaceful, good, cooperating, individualistic, pleasure-seeking, pain-avoiding, murder-abhorring structure of neo-pagan feminism. He's pretty damn sure the latter needs to completely replace the former-- and who could argue, when it's put like that?
True, Cole saw the movie, and didn't read the book, and the movie was more watered down. (In fact, the book waters itself down in the last few chapters, suggesting -- almost surely at an editor's insistence -- that all the evil people in the book be recast as simply misguided, and the Catholic Church be entirely absolved of any bad behavior the previous 430 pages suggested it was guilty of.)
Still, he gets the main message wrong.
Beyond that-- is this really a very interesting or novel message? It's a Goldilocks solution-- not too hard, not too soft, ooooh, this Christian/neopagan fusion religion is just right. That's the sort of split-the-difference "let's just bury our differences and agree that we should get high and mellow" "answer" that leftist soft-heads like Cole propose when they wish to seem reasonable. (When they're being more honest, they're fire-breathing preachers of hate, just on the other side.)
Me:
I liked the fast pace of the twists and turns of the DVC - and I think Brown should concentrate on writing screenplays, because this is one genre (fast-pace action with twist and turns, light mystery) that produces an entertaining result for movie goers. In fact, when I was reading the book, I often had the feeling I was reading a prose version of a movie script and not a real novel.
I was profoundly irritated with Brown's lefty political ideology, and also yes, even though it's clear his core lefty thinking is vehemently against conservative thinking (also Sue D.'s comment), it's all watered down in order not to diminish those sales figures.
I actually liked Cole's attempt to relate the book with larger issues - not that Brown is intelligent enough to intentionally do something that grand - and not that Cole did it that well. But it does give so-called "intellectual" profs something to justify their tenure posts with.
Among some of the main points that I disagree with Cole is this:
This pole of the film reflects the authoritarian side of modern institutions and culture. It isn't about Catholicism at all, or about Opus Dei. It is about the unchallengeable doctrines (norms) of society, and about the constant danger that ordinary obedience to the law can turn into a cultic exaltation of the law above principle and spirit.
I think the book has very little to do with challenging authoritarian anything in modern institutions, the only authoritarian challenge is against very old institutions, the very conservative Church (religion) and patriarchy. Challenging religion authoritarianism and secular authoritarianism -which is what the left practices all the time- are two very different things.
I think the main reason the book has generated so much interest is exactly because it challenges the basis for Catholicism/Christianity and it reflects a growing questioning about religion in general and specifically regarding Cath/Christ. dogma.
I see many people who like to call themselves Catholic or Christian as long as they can be very liberal at the same time, in order words, there is a tremendous weakening of the power of Cath/Christ Churches to instill religious dogma as the truth (compared to 500/300/200 years ago). Society has also shifted and changed in some profound ways regarding women and the book (like the left) loves to represent itself as a newer, more enlightened paradigm - at the same time that it mixes the qualities of a smart professional woman with sex object "Jesus Christ's hot daughter." That's the formula for most of these very sexist action movie women characters nowadays and it affirms a core type of sexism in both the right and the left, once again a nice formula for big sales. More exagerated versions of this are Lara Croft and all that genre. It's the institution of a new sexism versus the old one (the 50's house wife and all that, for example)
The novel has a binary structure. - which is profoundly irritating since it destroys any possibility for more human characters, you end up with theses pseudo-characters, these caricatures of people who are supposed to positively represent Brown's stupid corrupt wishy-washy leftism.
Surprising that aside from the female character Brown did not have two male heros, the Tom Hanks character and a homo - who faces all these mean "prejudices" from Christianists and makes all the pro-homos gloat to death about how "enlightened" they are. It's exactly what John Le Carré-The Constant Gardener- degenerated into.
most recent related post: I refuse to pay money to go see it.
Posted by alessandra at May 23, 2006 04:21 PM
Sunday, May 21, 2006
And the Greatest Revolutionary Movement Oscar Goes to...
I was thinking back today about something a professor said in a class about changes in society, several years back. He commented that he thought the women's movement was the greatest revolutionary social movement he had seen in his life-time (he's still alive).
I think that Marxism was the greatest ideological revolution from the 1850's to the beginning of the 20th century. That's when the first beginnings of the modern women's movement start developing, but it will only come into fruition several decades later. In the 20th century, along with the explosion and spread of the women's movement, the broad and profound development in the domain of knowledge regarding human psychology is to me the other enormously revolutionary ideological change in modern society.
Modern psychology (which should not be confounded with psycho-babble or cheap psycho-professionals/therapy-industry/pro-homosexuality-porn-pedophilia junk) has rendered a lot of previous "wisdom" found in many religions as stale and stunted in knowledge.
I think most religions today are relevant because of ethical and morality teachings, family values, commitment and developing a personal and spiritual conscience, but not regarding knowledge about a lot of complex human psychology and behavior issues. This partly explains, though, why so many very old religions appeal to so many people today. The majority of humans on Earth still have very little knowledge and also very mediocre minds when it comes to understanding life and others and long years of complex study doesn't do it for most people. Not to mention, like in all sciences, the more complex it gets, the more it restricts the number of people capable of grasping it. I'm still a silly optimist to think that it could all still be greatly improved and that we could someday have a much more informed and knowledgeable mass of human creatures running around the Earth. Nevertheless, the results of the opening of the "Da Vinci Code" and the colossal audiences for reality shows and "American Idol" go to show how dellusional my hopes are.
Probably one needs to include all the anti-racism movements together with the women's movement as tremendously revolutionary, but I'm not sure how much the civil rights/anti-racism struggles have prevailed. In the US, a lot of the racism has shifted from skin color - disapproved, at least on the level of public discourse - to profound racisms now played out in nationality (American vs. non-American)/West vs. Islam realms - all very much touted and approved of.
On the other hand, maybe the anti-racism movements don't seem that big to me because I could not imagine being born in a society that had slavery and Jim Crow as normal and right. Although one side of my family in the past had slaves (if I am remembering things correctly), both sides have always been extremely racist. It seems so distant though and that is probably proof of how much has changed, in other words, it attests to how revolutionary the paradigm shift has been regarding slavery, and consequently, racism.
I think that Marxism was the greatest ideological revolution from the 1850's to the beginning of the 20th century. That's when the first beginnings of the modern women's movement start developing, but it will only come into fruition several decades later. In the 20th century, along with the explosion and spread of the women's movement, the broad and profound development in the domain of knowledge regarding human psychology is to me the other enormously revolutionary ideological change in modern society.
Modern psychology (which should not be confounded with psycho-babble or cheap psycho-professionals/therapy-industry/pro-homosexuality-porn-pedophilia junk) has rendered a lot of previous "wisdom" found in many religions as stale and stunted in knowledge.
I think most religions today are relevant because of ethical and morality teachings, family values, commitment and developing a personal and spiritual conscience, but not regarding knowledge about a lot of complex human psychology and behavior issues. This partly explains, though, why so many very old religions appeal to so many people today. The majority of humans on Earth still have very little knowledge and also very mediocre minds when it comes to understanding life and others and long years of complex study doesn't do it for most people. Not to mention, like in all sciences, the more complex it gets, the more it restricts the number of people capable of grasping it. I'm still a silly optimist to think that it could all still be greatly improved and that we could someday have a much more informed and knowledgeable mass of human creatures running around the Earth. Nevertheless, the results of the opening of the "Da Vinci Code" and the colossal audiences for reality shows and "American Idol" go to show how dellusional my hopes are.
Probably one needs to include all the anti-racism movements together with the women's movement as tremendously revolutionary, but I'm not sure how much the civil rights/anti-racism struggles have prevailed. In the US, a lot of the racism has shifted from skin color - disapproved, at least on the level of public discourse - to profound racisms now played out in nationality (American vs. non-American)/West vs. Islam realms - all very much touted and approved of.
On the other hand, maybe the anti-racism movements don't seem that big to me because I could not imagine being born in a society that had slavery and Jim Crow as normal and right. Although one side of my family in the past had slaves (if I am remembering things correctly), both sides have always been extremely racist. It seems so distant though and that is probably proof of how much has changed, in other words, it attests to how revolutionary the paradigm shift has been regarding slavery, and consequently, racism.
Cervical Cancer Vaccine - Is It True?
The efficacy claims seem too enormous to me... And all the recent pharma drug test scandals come to mind. If this vaccine is at least partly effective and it doesn't have Thalidomide-type side effects, a great step in fighting cancer indeed. Otherwise, more of the same...
WASHINGTON — A vaccine with the potential to greatly reduce worldwide deaths from cervical cancer, the No. 2 cancer killer in women, should be approved for sales in the United States, a federal panel said yesterday.
A Food and Drug Administration advisory committee voted 13-0 to endorse Merck and Co.'s Gardasil as safe and effective. It blocks viruses that cause cervical cancer.
The company said the vaccine could cut worldwide deaths from the disease by two-thirds.
"This is certainly a wonderful, good step in addition to our screening processes" in helping eradicate cervical cancer, said Dr. Monica M. Farley of the Emory University School of Medicine, acting chairwoman of the advisory panel.
Tests in more than 17,000 girls and women have shown that the vaccine is nearly 100 percent effective in blocking cervical cancers caused by the sexually transmitted human papilloma virus. Two strains of the virus are thought to be responsible for 70 percent of the 15,000 cervical cancers diagnosed and the 3,500 deaths caused by it in the United States each year.
Worldwide, 400,000 women are diagnosed with cervical cancer each year and more than 200,000 die of it.
The virus, commonly called HPV, is the most common sexually transmitted disease in this country, with about 20 million people infected.
The FDA panel stressed that Gardasil does not eliminate the need for cervical-cancer screening, such as the Pap smear test, because the vaccine does not protect against all HPV strains.
The vaccine is most effective when given to girls before they become sexually active, which would require administration between the ages of 9 and 13.
The FDA is not required to follow the recommendations of its outside panels of experts, but usually does. The FDA is expected to decide by June 8.
`Impressive data'
Farley said Merck had submitted "very impressive data" to the panel about the vaccine's efficacy. [Impressively true or impressively fabricated?]
Public-health groups, nine of whom testified before the panel yesterday morning, were unanimous in recommending approval of the vaccine.
"It is common sense, good medicine and a groundbreaking step forward in the fight against cancer," said Cecile Richards, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
Making their case for approval, Merck officials suggested that Gardasil could be the biggest advance in preventing cervical cancer since the Pap test.
"Gardasil has the potential to meet an unmet medical need as the first vaccine to prevent cervical cancer," Merck's Dr. Patrick Brill-Edwards told the Vaccine and Related Biological Products advisory committee.
A vaccine utilization committee of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is scheduled to meet on June 29, at which time it could vote on whether to recommend universal use of Gardasil in females. A draft proposal recommends vaccinating all girls ages 11 and 12.
Merck said the vaccine could be used in females age 9 to 26, but would work best when given to girls before they begin having sex.
Requirements for its use, however, can only be mandated by individual states.
Even if it should become a requirement, added Wendy Wright, president of Concerned Women of America, all states allow children to opt out of mandatory vaccinations for medical or other reasons.
WASHINGTON — A vaccine with the potential to greatly reduce worldwide deaths from cervical cancer, the No. 2 cancer killer in women, should be approved for sales in the United States, a federal panel said yesterday.
A Food and Drug Administration advisory committee voted 13-0 to endorse Merck and Co.'s Gardasil as safe and effective. It blocks viruses that cause cervical cancer.
The company said the vaccine could cut worldwide deaths from the disease by two-thirds.
"This is certainly a wonderful, good step in addition to our screening processes" in helping eradicate cervical cancer, said Dr. Monica M. Farley of the Emory University School of Medicine, acting chairwoman of the advisory panel.
Tests in more than 17,000 girls and women have shown that the vaccine is nearly 100 percent effective in blocking cervical cancers caused by the sexually transmitted human papilloma virus. Two strains of the virus are thought to be responsible for 70 percent of the 15,000 cervical cancers diagnosed and the 3,500 deaths caused by it in the United States each year.
Worldwide, 400,000 women are diagnosed with cervical cancer each year and more than 200,000 die of it.
The virus, commonly called HPV, is the most common sexually transmitted disease in this country, with about 20 million people infected.
The FDA panel stressed that Gardasil does not eliminate the need for cervical-cancer screening, such as the Pap smear test, because the vaccine does not protect against all HPV strains.
The vaccine is most effective when given to girls before they become sexually active, which would require administration between the ages of 9 and 13.
The FDA is not required to follow the recommendations of its outside panels of experts, but usually does. The FDA is expected to decide by June 8.
`Impressive data'
Farley said Merck had submitted "very impressive data" to the panel about the vaccine's efficacy. [Impressively true or impressively fabricated?]
Public-health groups, nine of whom testified before the panel yesterday morning, were unanimous in recommending approval of the vaccine.
"It is common sense, good medicine and a groundbreaking step forward in the fight against cancer," said Cecile Richards, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
Making their case for approval, Merck officials suggested that Gardasil could be the biggest advance in preventing cervical cancer since the Pap test.
"Gardasil has the potential to meet an unmet medical need as the first vaccine to prevent cervical cancer," Merck's Dr. Patrick Brill-Edwards told the Vaccine and Related Biological Products advisory committee.
A vaccine utilization committee of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is scheduled to meet on June 29, at which time it could vote on whether to recommend universal use of Gardasil in females. A draft proposal recommends vaccinating all girls ages 11 and 12.
Merck said the vaccine could be used in females age 9 to 26, but would work best when given to girls before they begin having sex.
Requirements for its use, however, can only be mandated by individual states.
Even if it should become a requirement, added Wendy Wright, president of Concerned Women of America, all states allow children to opt out of mandatory vaccinations for medical or other reasons.
I refuse to pay money to go see it.
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - All the protests and all the bad reviews could not prevent "The Da Vinci Code" from recording a $224 million worldwide opening, the second-biggest debut ever at the global box office, its distributor said on Sunday.
The controversial adaptation of Dan Brown's best-selling novel, the story of a Vatican cover-up involving Jesus Christ and his supposed offspring, sold about $77 million worth of tickets at movie theaters in the United States and Canada during its first three days, according to Columbia Pictures.
Box-office watchers had predicted a North American opening of between $50 million and $80 million for the most eagerly awaited movie of the year.
The biggest North American opening this year had been $68 million for "Ice Age: The Meltdown" seven weeks ago. But "The Da Vinci Code" numbers were still far from the $115 million record held by 2002's "Spider-Man."
"The Da Vinci Code" earned about $147 million overseas, the biggest international opening ever. The previous record was last year's "Star Wars: Episode III: Revenge of the Sith" with $145 million, Columbia said.
The total haul of $224 million ranks No. 2 behind the $253 million tally for the "Star Wars" movie, the studio said.
Columbia Pictures, a unit of Sony Corp., released the $125 million film in 90 foreign markets, following its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival on Thursday.
The strong sales came despite -- or because of -- an onslaught of protests and publicity not seen since another religious movie, Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ," earned $84 million domestically during its first weekend in February 2004. It grossed $612 million worldwide.
Wow.
90 foreign markets??!!!
The power of certain film marketing/distribution tactics.
The power of this topic.
Amazing.
And it's such a mildly deep book, even the word "deep" is inappropriate for how superficial it is.
In any event, super hype or no super hype, I refuse to pay money to go see it. Simply. Refuse.
And a related comment on ACE made me remember this author and book:
Related posts:
The Da Vinci Code - 25 millions of this? - Updated April 13 ; Eco and the demise of Western civilization; Harry Potter - 270 MILLION books sold! - UPDATED JUL 20.
The controversial adaptation of Dan Brown's best-selling novel, the story of a Vatican cover-up involving Jesus Christ and his supposed offspring, sold about $77 million worth of tickets at movie theaters in the United States and Canada during its first three days, according to Columbia Pictures.
Box-office watchers had predicted a North American opening of between $50 million and $80 million for the most eagerly awaited movie of the year.
The biggest North American opening this year had been $68 million for "Ice Age: The Meltdown" seven weeks ago. But "The Da Vinci Code" numbers were still far from the $115 million record held by 2002's "Spider-Man."
"The Da Vinci Code" earned about $147 million overseas, the biggest international opening ever. The previous record was last year's "Star Wars: Episode III: Revenge of the Sith" with $145 million, Columbia said.
The total haul of $224 million ranks No. 2 behind the $253 million tally for the "Star Wars" movie, the studio said.
Columbia Pictures, a unit of Sony Corp., released the $125 million film in 90 foreign markets, following its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival on Thursday.
The strong sales came despite -- or because of -- an onslaught of protests and publicity not seen since another religious movie, Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ," earned $84 million domestically during its first weekend in February 2004. It grossed $612 million worldwide.
Wow.
90 foreign markets??!!!
The power of certain film marketing/distribution tactics.
The power of this topic.
Amazing.
And it's such a mildly deep book, even the word "deep" is inappropriate for how superficial it is.
In any event, super hype or no super hype, I refuse to pay money to go see it. Simply. Refuse.
And a related comment on ACE made me remember this author and book:
Elaine Pagels is a preeminent figure in the theological community whose impressive scholarship has earned her international respect. The Harrington Spear Paine Professor of Religion at Princeton University, Pagels was awarded the Rockefeller, Guggenheim and MacArthur Fellowships in three consecutive years.
As a young researcher at Barnard College, she changed forever the historical landscape of the Christian religion by exploding the myth of the early Christian Church as a unified movement.
Her findings were published in the bestselling book, The Gnostic Gospels, an analysis of 52 early Christian manuscripts that were unearthed in Egypt. Known collectively as the Nag Hammadi Library, the manuscripts show the pluralistic nature of the early church and the role of women in the developing Christian movement. As the early church moved toward becoming an orthodox body with a canon, rites and clergy, the Nag Hammadi manuscripts were suppressed and deemed heretical.
The Gnostic Gospels won both the National Book Critic’s Circle Award and the National Book Award and was chosen by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best books of the 20th Century.
In her most recent New York Times bestseller, Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas, Pagels focuses on religious claims to possessing the ultimate “truth.” She contends that, as Christianity became increasingly institutionalized, it became more politicized and less pluralistic. Says Pagels, “I’m advocating, on some level, the inclusion of [religious texts] that were considered blasphemous. I suggest that there are ways of embracing a far wider spectrum of religious diversity within Christianity and quite beyond Christianity.”
Related posts:
The Da Vinci Code - 25 millions of this? - Updated April 13 ; Eco and the demise of Western civilization; Harry Potter - 270 MILLION books sold! - UPDATED JUL 20.
Telling a Bigot to Shove It - One of the Best Things a Human Being Can Do in Life
I don't like bigots. I really don't like bigots. And everytime a bigot is put in his place the world is better for it. I'm dealing with this slime of a bigot called "andy" over at RWS's . This is the sequence of comments from the thread regarding that very disingenuous HS questionnaire on sexuality.
If you have never slept with someone of your same gender, then how do you know you wouldn't prefer it?
This is getting the order of events backwards. Sexual experience is borne of desire, not the other way around.
tamdar | 05.19.06 - 1:26 pm | #
=================
But desire is a complex set of compounded thoughts and feelings that are profoundly shaped by many factors, including culture, peer pressure, master narratives, personal history, functional and dysfunctional psychological developments.
alessandra | Homepage | 05.20.06 - 12:07 pm | #
Where, exactly, does this fit in the overall mission of actually educating children ?
JD | 05.17.06 - 3:24 pm | #
================
This is how andy educates children.
alessandra | Homepage | 05.20.06 - 12:12 pm | #
This is how andy educates children.
Odd, I'm not a teacher, so that comment made about as much sense as the insane ranting on your blog.
P.S. It's nice to have you back, psycho!
andy | Homepage | 05.20.06 - 12:33 pm | #
from comment at ACE - a perfect description of andy:
quote from student interviewed in the article: "Reuter said she was sympathetic to supporters of the survey who had hoped it would reduce harassment of homosexuals, but she thought the survey backfired."
"I think it just got people really, really mad," she said.
And that, sadly, is the result of being a bigot.
You go around with blinders on, insensitive to anyone else's feelings, opinions and values, determined that your way is the only way... and surprise surprise, people react negatively.
Homosexual activists (I use that because I'm conservative... gay means happy, queer means strange, and a fag is just something you smoke... well ok, maybe they can have that one) have become that which they most hated.
All the more ironic that they, like most "victim" groups, really seem to be taken with the role of oppressor.
Posted by krakatoa
alessandra | Homepage | 05.20.06 - 1:07 pm | #
Odd, I'm not a teacher, so that comment made about as much sense as the insane ranting on your blog.
================
I guess you are too stupid to notice that I didn't say you were a teacher. It doesn't mean you would educate children differently.
andy wrote:
Agreed. At the same time, though, if we're going to have depictions of heterosexuals in school classes, I have little problem with depictions of homosexual relationships as warranting acceptance.
P.S. It's nice to have you back, psycho!
Oh, look! the pro-sexual-violence homo-obsessed bigot is calling OTHER people pychos. Cute.
alessandra | Homepage | 05.20.06 - 1:15 pm | #
I guess you are too stupid to notice that I didn't say you were a teacher. It doesn't mean you would educate children differently.
Ah, but you didn't say "would." You said, and I quote, "This is how andy educates children."
I'm sorry that I rely on those pesky rules of grammar to make sense of what someone is saying; it's the elitist in me!
Oh, look! the pro-sexual-violence homo-obsessed bigot is calling OTHER people pychos. Cute.
You're funny. I mean, in that "laugh at the sad git of a woman" kind of way.
I wish you the best of luck in finding a man, alessandra, and soon.
I feel sorry for the man, of course, but maybe it will help you lighten up a bit.
andy | Homepage | 05.20.06 - 1:26 pm | #
Oh, look! the pro-sexual-violence homo-obsessed bigot is calling OTHER people pychos. Cute.
I wish you the best of luck in finding a man, alessandra, and soon.
I feel sorry for the man, of course, but maybe it will help you lighten up a bit.
andy |
==========
If you think marriage makes people lose character and knowledge, you must be thinking of the trash you married.
alessandra | Homepage | 05.20.06 - 4:17 pm | #
If you think marriage makes people lose character and knowledge, you must be thinking of the trash you married.
Look, you f*cking c*nt, you're welcome to insult me all you like, but you leave my wife, my kids, and my dead friends out of it, ok?
My wife happens to be a wonderful mother to two beautiful children, whereas all you seem to have given the world is the whiny rantings of a bitchy prude in denial about her own sexually-abused past.
I belong to that school of thought that a man should not a hit a woman, but if you had said that to my face, you'd be picking your teeth up off the ground.
Go f*ck yourself.
andy | Homepage | 05.20.06 - 7:20 pm | #
P.S. RWS, again my apologies for the word choice, but I won't have some anonymous witch slagging my wife.
Hey, at least I didn't say "tits."
andy | Homepage | 05.21.06 - 1:27 pm | #
As long as you're so cowardly classy to think you can insult women as you please, don't complain if they return the class towards you or any of your relations- all of whom are in the same category of trash, btw.
Go flush yourself down the toilet and make the world smell better, andy, and take that slimy c*nt full of tripe and VD of your wife with you.
You insult me, you get insults back. It's called equality of rights, andy. You are always spitting forth such vile insults - and you always justify them to yourself. Now you get them back. If you haven't learned, violence begets violence, that's all that bigoted trash like you accomplish in life.
I belong to that school of thought that a man should not a hit a woman, but if you had said that to my face, you'd be picking your teeth up off the ground.
I belong to that school of thought that knows a violent pig who thinks he can insult/hit women needs to have his mouth bloodied and we can bloody the mouth of his wife too if needed to teach him a lesson about making such cowardly statements to other women.
P.S. RWS, again my apologies for the word choice, but I won't have some anonymous witch slagging my wife.
RWS - for a long time women were battered by garbage of men like andy, who just make sorry speeches about freedom, but don't take two seconds to let the mask fall and show how underneath the veneer, there is a violent pig who thinks he can abuse women whenever he feels like it - specially if he can't argue any of his lame positions of a discussion. Then he starts with the personal insults. Then if he gets insulted back, he becomes more and more verbally violent to the point of "if you had said it to my face, I'd do this and that" threats.
The time for men to threaten women with such violence is over. Not only should women react and put slime like andy in their place, people like andy need to remember they have a wife and children and if he thinks other women are a fair target, don't ever complain if his woman becomes a target in the very same way he behaves towards others.
Like my copied comment above said : Homosexual activists have become that which they most hated: bigots.
It's easy to see by the way he reacts that andy has always been a bigot, and as all bigots, the more he thinks other people don't have rights, the more he thinks he can be as violent as he pleases, whenever he pleases. It's time for andy to get real about the rights of other people, specially women.
I also think more and more, women are telling men like andy to take their bigotry and their double standards and shove them. And that is a good thing.
alessandra | Homepage | 05.21.06 - 4:13 pm | #
Saturday, May 20, 2006
Funny HS Science Report
What a lot of students would write, if they had the freedom to do it, one must say:
Saw link at ACE's.
Electron Band Structure In Germanium, My Ass
Saw link at ACE's.
Ridiculous! Le pauvre Goleo!
This is the most badly designed mascot I recall seeing in a long time.In this picture, in particular, he looks like he is saying "Baaah" as a sheep! He appears totally uncoordinated and lacking most things associated with a World Cup winner, fierceness and dynamism being a few of biggest ones!
Either you make a really cute and cuddly mascot, or you make an athletic and winner type. Goleo just looks like a horribly gone awry hybrid. Not to mention that he looks too fat for an athlete and not plump enough for a cute baby toy.
Le Monde: Le fabricant de peluchess'est refusé à préciser le nombre de Goleo vendus à travers le monde.
Hmm, 3?
Goleo, dessiné par Jim Henson Company, le fabricant des célèbres poupées du Muppet Show,
Atrocious choice, because he looks very much like a derived Muppet. And what were they thinking with his wind-blown, gelled in every direction hair?? That is not a mane, that is hair as French youngsters trying hard to look hip like to style it.
Produit en Asie pour réduire les coûts, il n'a manifestement pas trouvé son public. Les sarcasmes n'ont pas tardé à fuser à propos de sa tenue. Goleo porte le maillot blanc de l'équipe nationale d'Allemagne et des chaussures noires. Mais il ne porte pas de short.
What were they thinking?! It looks ridiculous!! Either put a shirt and shorts on, and a complete uniform would look cute on a mascot, or he should simply wear nothing human-like. Oh, maybe he was designed by pro-homos... that would explain a lot... ;-)
And what's with the weird design on the soccer ball? A true soccer has black pentagons on it, like on the poster hanging by the display. Even the soccer ball looks gay.
Pro-homos Are At It Again... and Again... and Again...
I wasn't even going to blog on this, because society is now under a deluge of such homo-obsessed tactics, but ACE and RWS blogged on it, then I commented on it, so... :-)
Good comment:
If you've never been hit in the face with a brick by me before, how do you know you wouldn't like it?
Let's find out.
Posted by: ZRyan
Now I would have been embarassed with myself if I had come up with such an illogical non-question back in the third grade. I assume these oh-so-intelligent gay activists, however, are wallowing in their own smug self-satisfaction over this paradigm busting question. How effing sad.
Posted by: AxL on
Why not ask'em if they've tried heroin?...after all, they might prefer it over say twinkies or ho-ho's.
Ever since I started torching hobos I realize I like it a lot more than roasting hotdogs in the back yard.
Posted by: Purple Avenge
Hmmmm. Survey was conducted by 2 high school social studies teachers.
How much you wanna bet that the surveyed kids haven't been taught a goddamned thing about the constitution?
Gee. I wonder why so many people are ignorant about politics and government.
Posted by: Log Cabin
==============
Alessandra wrote:
Correction: Survey was conducted by 2 PRO-HOMOSEXUAL high school social studies teachers.
Not that pro-homosexuals are homo-obsessed in any way...
Never...
I never said I thought this was clever, but I stand by my opinion that this boils down to recruitment (under whatever dopey guise), and is no more appropriate for a high school classroom than it would be to invite Jehovahs witnesses or members of the UFO society to come in and make snide self-serving comments to a captive audience of teenagers.
Posted by: Scott on
I'm with Russell. I'm sure whoever wrote the question just wanted the reader to consider that it is possible that gays are as gay as straights are straight.
here's another question for the straights. Imagine that being straight was no longer cool (forget procreation, we are all Gattica and shit) Suppose the population was over 90% gay.
Posted by Seattle Slough
===================
Alessandra wrote:
You've just describe ancient Greece (although there was no such thing as "gay" then, they were mostly bisexual and homosexual in ways that don't really exist in our culture. Which only goes to show how stupid the idea that " it is possible that gays are as gay as straights are straight."
=======================
Further suppose there were vast swaths of the world were it was essentially impossible to be openly straight. Under those circumstances would YOU still be straight?
Or would you be gay to fit in? For me, I assume that I would be courageous enough to be who I am.
Posted by Seattle Slough
=======================
Alessandra wrote:
Ancient Greece proves that most people who are brought up in a society that conditions humans to be bisexual/homosexual turn out that way. This includes desire - that famous concept that homo activists like to claim is innate and unchangeable.
So if you were raised in such a society, the question about being "who you are" is already wrong in the first place.
Are pedophiles courageous for being pedophiles?
Not only that, with today's sexually charged culture, a kid who doesn't pick up most of the knowledge he needs just by watching TV and talking to their peers isn't exactly El Swifto.
Besides -- and say it with me now -- it's not the government's job.
Posted by: bbeck
===================
Alessandra wrote:
But what is there to pick up on TV? Isn't most of it exactly the same drivel that these teachers are saying? What about the messages in porn? Pride parades? Brokeback Mountain?
I think there is a big contradiction here (not just with bbeck's post, but with many others).
If schools are supposed to educate and kids need to be educated regarding personal behavior/relationships/sexuality and a lot of kids do not have parents who will correctly educate them on such matters and their sources of information are equal or a lot worse than these teachers, the result is atrocious for a considerable slice of society.
If only parents have the right to educate their kids regarding such matters, I think it is ridiculous to get worked up about two teachers when adolescent and adult culture is extremely saturated with pro-homosexuality and normalizing homosexuality and shoving it down society's throat as normal behavior, as equal to heterosexuality.
I also think that if you are a parent and your public school is teaching garbage to your kid, you should be entitled to part of your taxes back, or to have a school that teaches a healthy curriculum to youngsters, otherwise you are being robbed of your money to finance a dysfunctional society.
Reuter said she was sympathetic to supporters of the survey who had hoped it would reduce harassment of homosexuals, but she thought the survey backfired.
"I think it just got people really, really mad," she said.
And that, sadly, is the result of being a bigot.
You go around with blinders on, insensitive to anyone else's feelings, opinions and values, determined that your way is the only way... and surprise surprise, people react negatively.
Homosexual activists (I use that because I'm conservative... gay means happy, queer means strange, and a fag is just something you smoke... well ok, maybe they can have that one) have become that which they most hated.
All the more ironic that they, like most "victim" groups, really seem to be taken with the role of oppressor.
Posted by krakatoa at May 18
If you have never slept with someone of your same gender, then how do you know you wouldn't prefer it?
This is getting the order of events backwards. Sexual experience is borne of desire, not the other way around.
tamdar | 05.19.06 - 1:26 pm | #
=================
Alessandra wrote:
But desire is a complex set of compounded thoughts and feelings that are profoundly shaped by many factors, including culture, peer pressure, master narratives, personal history, functional and dysfunctional psychological developments.
alessandra | Homepage | 05.20.06 - 12:07 pm | #
HS Sex Survey Asks Kids, "If you have never slept with someone of your same gender, then how do you know you wouldn't prefer it?"
– From Ace
Again: it's just creepy that they're so fascinated with kids.
Follow-up questions asked:
1) "Do you like movies about gladiators?"
2) "You ever seen a grown man naked?
3) "Have you ever been to a Turkish prison?"
[more... ]
Good comment:
If you've never been hit in the face with a brick by me before, how do you know you wouldn't like it?
Let's find out.
Posted by: ZRyan
Now I would have been embarassed with myself if I had come up with such an illogical non-question back in the third grade. I assume these oh-so-intelligent gay activists, however, are wallowing in their own smug self-satisfaction over this paradigm busting question. How effing sad.
Posted by: AxL on
Why not ask'em if they've tried heroin?...after all, they might prefer it over say twinkies or ho-ho's.
Ever since I started torching hobos I realize I like it a lot more than roasting hotdogs in the back yard.
Posted by: Purple Avenge
Hmmmm. Survey was conducted by 2 high school social studies teachers.
How much you wanna bet that the surveyed kids haven't been taught a goddamned thing about the constitution?
Gee. I wonder why so many people are ignorant about politics and government.
Posted by: Log Cabin
==============
Alessandra wrote:
Correction: Survey was conducted by 2 PRO-HOMOSEXUAL high school social studies teachers.
Not that pro-homosexuals are homo-obsessed in any way...
Never...
I never said I thought this was clever, but I stand by my opinion that this boils down to recruitment (under whatever dopey guise), and is no more appropriate for a high school classroom than it would be to invite Jehovahs witnesses or members of the UFO society to come in and make snide self-serving comments to a captive audience of teenagers.
Posted by: Scott on
I'm with Russell. I'm sure whoever wrote the question just wanted the reader to consider that it is possible that gays are as gay as straights are straight.
here's another question for the straights. Imagine that being straight was no longer cool (forget procreation, we are all Gattica and shit) Suppose the population was over 90% gay.
Posted by Seattle Slough
===================
Alessandra wrote:
You've just describe ancient Greece (although there was no such thing as "gay" then, they were mostly bisexual and homosexual in ways that don't really exist in our culture. Which only goes to show how stupid the idea that " it is possible that gays are as gay as straights are straight."
=======================
Further suppose there were vast swaths of the world were it was essentially impossible to be openly straight. Under those circumstances would YOU still be straight?
Or would you be gay to fit in? For me, I assume that I would be courageous enough to be who I am.
Posted by Seattle Slough
=======================
Alessandra wrote:
Ancient Greece proves that most people who are brought up in a society that conditions humans to be bisexual/homosexual turn out that way. This includes desire - that famous concept that homo activists like to claim is innate and unchangeable.
So if you were raised in such a society, the question about being "who you are" is already wrong in the first place.
Are pedophiles courageous for being pedophiles?
Not only that, with today's sexually charged culture, a kid who doesn't pick up most of the knowledge he needs just by watching TV and talking to their peers isn't exactly El Swifto.
Besides -- and say it with me now -- it's not the government's job.
Posted by: bbeck
===================
Alessandra wrote:
But what is there to pick up on TV? Isn't most of it exactly the same drivel that these teachers are saying? What about the messages in porn? Pride parades? Brokeback Mountain?
I think there is a big contradiction here (not just with bbeck's post, but with many others).
If schools are supposed to educate and kids need to be educated regarding personal behavior/relationships/sexuality and a lot of kids do not have parents who will correctly educate them on such matters and their sources of information are equal or a lot worse than these teachers, the result is atrocious for a considerable slice of society.
If only parents have the right to educate their kids regarding such matters, I think it is ridiculous to get worked up about two teachers when adolescent and adult culture is extremely saturated with pro-homosexuality and normalizing homosexuality and shoving it down society's throat as normal behavior, as equal to heterosexuality.
I also think that if you are a parent and your public school is teaching garbage to your kid, you should be entitled to part of your taxes back, or to have a school that teaches a healthy curriculum to youngsters, otherwise you are being robbed of your money to finance a dysfunctional society.
Reuter said she was sympathetic to supporters of the survey who had hoped it would reduce harassment of homosexuals, but she thought the survey backfired.
"I think it just got people really, really mad," she said.
And that, sadly, is the result of being a bigot.
You go around with blinders on, insensitive to anyone else's feelings, opinions and values, determined that your way is the only way... and surprise surprise, people react negatively.
Homosexual activists (I use that because I'm conservative... gay means happy, queer means strange, and a fag is just something you smoke... well ok, maybe they can have that one) have become that which they most hated.
All the more ironic that they, like most "victim" groups, really seem to be taken with the role of oppressor.
Posted by krakatoa at May 18
If you have never slept with someone of your same gender, then how do you know you wouldn't prefer it?
This is getting the order of events backwards. Sexual experience is borne of desire, not the other way around.
tamdar | 05.19.06 - 1:26 pm | #
=================
Alessandra wrote:
But desire is a complex set of compounded thoughts and feelings that are profoundly shaped by many factors, including culture, peer pressure, master narratives, personal history, functional and dysfunctional psychological developments.
alessandra | Homepage | 05.20.06 - 12:07 pm | #
Sunday, May 14, 2006
Parasite News
One thing that I hate about the DrudgeReport is how it constantly feeds to its audience these very violent sexual crimes news bytes, many against children or babies, plus the sexually bizarre ones against adults, and also other extreme child abusive crimes. Most of the time I don’t want to read them. You can guess most of the main components just by the title, it also gives you an idea of exactly how putrid it is, and there is nothing you can do about it, and it just becomes like some parasitical and sadistic form of voyeurism to grotesque acts practiced against children (or adults). What do I picture his audience like? Many are ignorant or yuppie or selfish or with too much time on their hands, educated or not, they like tabloid news, the kind of people who loves to tiltillate themselves with reading about horrible crimes *in detail* - the more prurient the detail, the better - and they do nothing. Nothing, about any of the problems they read about.
Doesn’t this strike you as diseased ?
I hereby proclaim my invention of an inovative news format, which should be adopted by all these news web sites, every single tv news hours, etc. At the end of any news item, you would get a list of organisations to contact, information on legislative action, political action, volunteer possibilities, donation options, etc. The idea being that readers/viewers just don’t sit there like a disgusting parasite getting horror thrills out of the extreme suffering of abused babies and others, but if they did take interest in the matter, they then were at least prompted to act on it and be a responsible and solidary human being.
OK, so there are times when web sites and tv news people already do this, but it’s just a tiny percentage compared to what it could be. And from personal experience, I know that when you prompt people to do good acts, you often get a result *in action*, as compared to the couch potato or computer potato who just does nothing. It may not be a lot of response, but many good people respond.
On a tangential note, you know that studies show that the profile that gives most to donations for third world children organisations are older women ? Women whose own children have grown up and gone, but who nevertheless haven’t lost the sense of their maternal feelings and role in life.
p.s. I had been meaning to write about this for quite some time, because just about every week Drudge posts something like what he has now: "MOTHER HORROR: Fla. Mom Charged With Killing Her Baby... 2 charged with rape of newborn... "
And it always made me angry, it's disgusting. It's the kind of thing that should be against the law, to use child abuse news reports as sensationalist infotainment for a diseased audience.
Doesn’t this strike you as diseased ?
I hereby proclaim my invention of an inovative news format, which should be adopted by all these news web sites, every single tv news hours, etc. At the end of any news item, you would get a list of organisations to contact, information on legislative action, political action, volunteer possibilities, donation options, etc. The idea being that readers/viewers just don’t sit there like a disgusting parasite getting horror thrills out of the extreme suffering of abused babies and others, but if they did take interest in the matter, they then were at least prompted to act on it and be a responsible and solidary human being.
OK, so there are times when web sites and tv news people already do this, but it’s just a tiny percentage compared to what it could be. And from personal experience, I know that when you prompt people to do good acts, you often get a result *in action*, as compared to the couch potato or computer potato who just does nothing. It may not be a lot of response, but many good people respond.
On a tangential note, you know that studies show that the profile that gives most to donations for third world children organisations are older women ? Women whose own children have grown up and gone, but who nevertheless haven’t lost the sense of their maternal feelings and role in life.
p.s. I had been meaning to write about this for quite some time, because just about every week Drudge posts something like what he has now: "MOTHER HORROR: Fla. Mom Charged With Killing Her Baby... 2 charged with rape of newborn... "
And it always made me angry, it's disgusting. It's the kind of thing that should be against the law, to use child abuse news reports as sensationalist infotainment for a diseased audience.
