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Hooray for Hollywood
Magics, all parties have been notified. You have my private email. Let's plan this there, k?— June 9, 2009 2:25 p.m.
Hooray for Hollywood
"And that whole debate got me thinking about Bret Michaels." Whaa? Wow, talk about stream of consciousness--you were definitely ready for la la land when you wrote this, Josh. However, it is fun to see you thinking more metaphorically. "Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle (has a movie title ever more accurately described the film? I guess "Dude, Where's my Car?" is a close second)" Hmmm. Both movie titles. Both full sentences. "Nothing irritating me more than talking with a professor friend of mine that is always involved in the rights of minorities in the San Fran area." Nothing irritates you more than someone passionate about his activism for underrepresented social groups? I thought nothing irritated you more than film titles with at least a subject and a verb! I also thought nothing irritated you more than people who are always hounding you about bias in educational testing. It sounds like you are trying to make an argument for 'everything' as a merit-based system, but it is hard to jump from whiny child stars who say they've been permanently typecast (yes, they have, and yes, as commenter #1 says, if they have flexibility and talent wanted on the market, they can break out of the mould), straight to the situation of so-called minority groups and a level playing field.— June 9, 2009 2:16 p.m.
As Expected, GM Will Go into Bankruptcy Tomorrow
response to post #37: There are always subterranean meanings in our expressions, and "gutter" is relative, Mr. Bauder. For example, I can analogize my mind to a healthily twisting raingutter, with attractive gargoyles spouting here and there. You know, I thought "scrub" referred to a penniless loser in Spliff's lingo. Nevertheless, as a scrub, I like to think of myself as a hardy native California high-desert succulent, far from the tracks laid by those four wheel-motoring enthusiasts who would mow me down.— June 9, 2009 1:47 p.m.
Idiotic Football Players
(cont) I agree that rickeysays should spread a little more of the 'love' here, and am happy to see that he cares about his point of view enough to expand on it elsewhere. But I find that his analysis leaves out the complex interactions between contributing factors he cites. It is a popular argument to make that there are no bad teachers, and that we are wasting money trying to fight nature, which doles out natural intelligence unevenly. Sure there are bad teachers--I have seen them in action. I have trained with them in situations I cannot appropriately disclose here. I have met bigoted, poorly educated primary and middle school teachers, who are unwilling to think outside of the small-minded views they pass onto their students. I have also met teachers who are overqualified to teach in these divisions, who inspire their students to move on to greater things. However, I have rarely met faculty at a solid, accredited institution of higher learning who are not well-rounded enough to merit their positions—this goes for the graduate students who do much of the core teaching, as well. The fact is that just as MDs expect to get paid for the massive effort they put into medical school, people with Masters and PhDs also hope to be paid in kind, and do not as often choose lower-paying positions in primary and middle schools, where so much of a human being’s intellectual foundations are laid, and cognitive tools acquired. Money enters the dicussion here, to be sure. I am in a somewhat unique position, in that I just haven’t finished my doctoral dissertation, and have of financial necessity taught school at all of the levels I describe. I will stress, however, that while I have been around a lot of public school faculty, I have only taught for private institutions, which do tend to employ university degreed, but not state-trained folk. Importantly, I have never met an individual with superior training at highly respected institutions who wasn’t able to overcome to great extent the poorer and ignorant circumstances in which s/he was raised. A product of one’s genetic disposition surely, but also of one’s social opportunity, and attendant desire to learn, understand, and succeed.— June 9, 2009 1:24 p.m.
Idiotic Football Players
(cont). Why cannot it be both and more, both your eithers and your ors? (Have you ever examined your own dreams? In your dreams, everything is an endless “and,” as Freud showed us). It is when we wake up that we lose a lot of this creative, expansive thought potential and begin to limit ourselves. Think of perceptions and social codings of race, gender, social and genetic environments as a dynamic structure of shifting layers in a palimpsest--one overlaps the other and interacts with the other. If a child of average intelligence is plucked out of the rural or urban intellectual ‘wasteland’ and placed in an environment of Renaissance-style learning, there will be positive cognitive change. There will always be people who choose to push a broom and punch a timecard—but wouldn’t it be nice if we gave them a richer inner life? How many of you who have either traveled abroad, or at least traveled domestically by cab, have been astonished to find that your basic Russian or French cabbie can quote you at will from Voltaire or Kafka, or discourse upon Impressionist painters, or thinkers of any given cultural revolution? Education, people. I am not necessarily talking about implementing a more rigid tracking-style system, but I am talking about equal opportunity and a fuller, more demanding, but more flexible education for our kids. A difficulty arising with ideals like mine arise when you think pragmatically about what kinds of curricula are appropriate to a given population—what is likely to best serve that population. Training by trade? More abstract, classical training in the humanities and sciences? Might we be doing a disservice to an inner-city population by focusing on subjects that will not likely help them in the “real” world scenarios of our projected economy? Perhaps. These are things to be factored in and considered, but I still hold that a demanding liberal prescription will open up the possibilities and help forge those neural pathways. Genuinely equal opportunity, which does not yet exist, is so important--it provides the kid with a chance to grow and fulfill more than an average destiny. The brain is a very supple organ, and with proper stimulation, new neural pathways will form and function. This is fact, folks.— June 9, 2009 1:23 p.m.
Idiotic Football Players
The problem with most people's postings above is that they are all or nothing in premise and limited in scope. It is very easy to say x is y, and then pile on attributes of x, forgetting y, or to make false connections of analogy. X appears to connect to y in this fashion, so we hold tight and make of it a cause and effect relationship. Josh, you rely too heavily on a long quotation from rickeysays which does all of the above--common errors made by many students of the argumentative essay. To be specific, it seems in these arguments to be EITHER environment OR upbringing. Parents are stupid, so kids tend to be stupid, and there is nothing we can do about it. If we really existed on such a flat, homogenized continuum, be you very sure we would not have progressed as socially and technologically as far as we have, although our intelligensia and technocratic populations are still embarrassingly small. The kind of argument above is most often employed in either ignorance or in support of a rhetoric of hate. If you do not believe me, record, take apart, and examine VERY carefully the claims supporting the rhetoric of Limbaugh and others on right-wing radio and tv. Another problem with all of us, and I include myself here, is that we must rely heavily on anecdotal evidence. Some of us throw out statistics, but these can be read variously—even those who do not admit that interpretation plays a large role in our lives will attest that statistics can be variously read, and issue from multiple and complex causal sources. In rickeysays’s case, the crux of the argument about inflexible native smarts appears to be largely in the interest of not wasting tax dollars. This is a common concern but can lead to very short-sighted argumentation, and reveals how we tend to conflate throwing money at schools with geographic and cultural disadvantages with progress in education. I agree with rickeysays on one point—we cannot just assume that throwing money at a situation will always resolve it. The irony is that possible solutions to unequal education may involve structural changes to the system that might be initially costly, but profitable in brainpower in the long run. But we have to be willing to think differently and more creatively. If no social change is possible, then it is easy for us to feel superior to, denigrate, and give up on those we see as unworthy of our support, educationally and financially.— June 9, 2009 1:23 p.m.
And then I didn't
I'm on a flaming diet, no flaming after 7pm, and no religious flaming. There are others who do so quite well on this site. All good points you make, and I wonder where you were when I quoted Coleridge on the drinks and where we drink them thread ;) Btw, I got your ironies, and should have better responded to show that. One last thought on the cat video guy--the way he describes Ugly's tribulations, it is like the passion of Christ, with video guy as mama Mary. You should have quoted Scriptures instead!— June 9, 2009 12:52 a.m.
Idiotic Football Players
[blush!] I am SDaniels and I approve this message. Disclaimer: No campaign contributions were made at any time to one refriedgringo. Seriously, I don't agree that anything I said above could not have been better phrased, but it's from my (arterially bleeding) heart. It certainly takes all kinds, as the saying goes, and I hold myself to the same ideal--learn everyday something from an unlikely source, asking also, why unlikely?— June 9, 2009 midnight
And then I didn't
Well, I'm a flaming atheist, and you and god and campbell still love me, don't you?— June 8, 2009 11:30 p.m.
Idiotic Football Players
Josh, didn't my post offer any understandable explanation at all? I do think you need to be more open-minded about the influence of socially acquired prejudice and prejudgement on our ideas and opinions--our life views. Though I don't really want to rekindle that topic, your impossible wholesale statements to the effect that there is no bias in educational testing alone suggested to me that you might do well to consider that we are all far more programmed emotionally and intellectually than we literally think. Your consistent failure to explore this, and your tendency to react in emotional, knee-jerk style, does tend to somewhat cripple your ability to analyze many of the human and social phenomena you bring up. Yes, he trolls, and trolls in repetitive fashion, but sure, there's something to learn from Spliff's experiences and views, if he will share them seriously. He has a point about racism--he just needs to actually make it--and be patient enough to provide clear and persuasive support for each claim. You could have more curiosity about why he is so impassioned, rather than just assume that he is using race as a crutch or excuse to vent. And if he could in turn listen to what you are saying about individuals and their preferences for gender and sex, he might learn something, too about not only tolerance, but understanding of human nature. I think you are on the right track when you say that low self-esteem is not a cause of so-called "dysphoria" of gender or sexual identity, though it might be a symptom of living with desires that contradict social norms. I'm just encouraging you guys to break out of your usual scripts, and entertain something new to you. There is no shame in learning from seemingly unlikely sources. In post #46, Spliff makes a great point: "Because to have a open mind really means , to look at the world you are living in and question the lives we are living..." And among other thoughtful statements in #39, you, Josh, make a good point here: "Well...there are people that are born with both sets of sex organs. So, they might have a sex change, because as an adult they feel they know which sex they should be." Together, Josh and Spliff could forge a brave new world of understanding. Love and peace, --Your basic, bleeding heart mumbo-jumbo spewing liberal--SD. :)— June 8, 2009 10:51 p.m.