1

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Sexual Scandals

« on: December 25, 2017, 06:29:53 AM »

Let's just say that I had a family member who worked at the same school I attended, and I'm smart enough not to name them or explain all the connections that make sense of my "wacko"-sounding explanations.

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Sexual Scandals

« on: December 20, 2017, 03:20:49 AM »

In my personal experience, I have seen several male teachers removed from their careers using this tactic. There is never a conviction--the woman merely makes the accusation, and the damage is done. The teacher's union kicks the teacher out without due process and that is the end of it. As for my involvement, I have filed written statements in at least two of these cases, and in one, my friends and I resorted to creating an underground newspaper to expose the teacher's union for what it was doing.

I've also seen this done with church pastors. It's actually a common occurrence. The tactic is to exploit church insurance policies, which are actually quite expensive because of the prevalence of these accusations. Again, no actual legal due process happens; the accusation is made, the insurance company reacts and removes the pastor, and the woman vanishes back into the woodwork. I've never had it happen to me, but I get around in the liturgical circles and have seen this happen several times to other men in my community.

I suppose you'd like names and dates, but in light of the current political climate, don't you think it more poetic if I just made the accusation and left it for people to either believe or ignore based on whether they want their side to win the argument?

Then you work at a shitty school.
In MY personal experience,this has never happened.  Hell, I had a student use the old "Do guys think about sex every 10 seconds" bit on me.  It failed cause I'm not an idiot.


Also, are you seriously comparing a bunch of teenagers to grown, mature women and using that to paint every god damn accuser?  Really?

Where did I say I worked in the school? The first time I saw this happen, I was a student. I didn't realize how organized the teacher's union was until after I saw them pull the same stunt a second time, but I also suspect them for poisoning me at the very end of the 8th grade (during finals week so I'd flunk) and "modifying" my school records in my senior year in high school so that...again...I'd flunk (which I didn't.) Very organized.

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Sexual Scandals

« on: December 16, 2017, 10:56:14 PM »

In my personal experience, I have seen several male teachers removed from their careers using this tactic. There is never a conviction--the woman merely makes the accusation, and the damage is done. The teacher's union kicks the teacher out without due process and that is the end of it. As for my involvement, I have filed written statements in at least two of these cases, and in one, my friends and I resorted to creating an underground newspaper to expose the teacher's union for what it was doing.

I've also seen this done with church pastors. It's actually a common occurrence. The tactic is to exploit church insurance policies, which are actually quite expensive because of the prevalence of these accusations. Again, no actual legal due process happens; the accusation is made, the insurance company reacts and removes the pastor, and the woman vanishes back into the woodwork. I've never had it happen to me, but I get around in the liturgical circles and have seen this happen several times to other men in my community.

I suppose you'd like names and dates, but in light of the current political climate, don't you think it more poetic if I just made the accusation and left it for people to either believe or ignore based on whether they want their side to win the argument?

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: An article about social understanding

« on: December 16, 2017, 10:47:21 PM »

Nice blog.

I'd like to add that it is even more aggravating when I agree in part to something but, because I am not in lock-step with the prevailing theory, I am treated like the enemy.

Case in point is climate change. I believe in the theory of optimums, as originally taught by the same meteorologist who coined the phrase "global warming." The two points I try to make about optimum theory are:
1) If the optimum is a natural occurrence, then it is not man-made. Those who adhere to the idea that mankind can somehow stop the natural weather cycles are skating on the thin ice of "magical thinking". We might as well go back to human sacrifice to appease the rain gods.
2) If the optimum is returning us to climate patterns that paralleled cultural advances in the classical and medieval ages, we need to stop studying how we can stop these patterns and instead study how we can take advantage of these patterns. For one: more carbon in the atmosphere means more opportunity for forestation and farmland reclamation. During the classical optimum, parts of North Africa that are now considered desert were fertile farmland.

I am already aware that other countries are using climate change to restore their deforested habitats. It is very irritating to me when I try and point this out in a climate change argument and am dismissed as both a tree-huger and an advocate for fossil fuels at the same time because I don't take a polar stance on the issue.

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Sexual Scandals

« on: December 16, 2017, 10:33:05 PM »

All parties aside, I find the Moore issue fascinating because the Fundamentalist Evangelicals have been beaten at their own game. In essence, the Left has figured out their Fundamental weakness and is able to use it to their advantage.

When people base their morality on the idea that God gets angry every time they "disobey" their pastors and political leadership, it's an easy trick to convince them that God will be mad if they vote a certain way. For decades, this is how the GOP held their position in the Bible belt. Then, on Sunday before the election, many influential pastors and even some political leaders in the GOP told voters that God wouldn't be able to forgive them if they voted for somebody who turned out to be a criminal (which is a complete joke, considering how many criminals we have elected in the past). And tens of thousands of people bought that lie. We know they bought that lie, because they no-showed at the polls and they wrote-in other names "to keep a clear conscience".

Of course, this weakness would not be so exploitable were it not for Fundamentalism also encouraging the doctrine of "don't think, don't ask questions, just obey". I'm assuming a lot of people still voted for Moore because they did their research and were pretty sure his accusers were lying (which, if you've ever been involved with this kind of scandal before, is usually the case). However, not enough of them voted to trigger the recount, so it's still a lost fight.

I'm sure a lot of people are pointing fingers here and there trying to lay the blame on political reasons, but what I see is a fatal flaw in Evangelical morality that was exploited by the opponent.
The religion that supposedly encourages the "personal relationship with Jesus" does much better to encourage people to just show up on Sunday and never question the authority of their leadership or the validity of their information sources. Personally, I don't think God wants His followers to be that stupid. Maybe this is His way of calling for people to wake up and ditch the false doctrines.

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump

« on: December 16, 2017, 10:16:48 PM »

http://thehill.com/news-by-subject/healthcare/365204-trump-admin-bans-cdc-from-using-evidence-based-and-science-based

So....
at what point can we actually say "Trump is Hitler" without sounding like we're exaggerating?  Cause I'm thinking objects in the mirror are closer than they appear.

From the factual/literary standpoint: that line should never be used.
It's like saying "Jackie Chan IS Bruce Lee". No, he might be the "next Bruce Lee", but he is not the actual guy.
Or like saying the Beatles are Jesus. No, they were "Bigger than Jesus", but they weren't that guy from the Middle East.

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Science & Alternative Science / Re: Cancer is easily cured with common grocery store items

« on: December 16, 2017, 05:41:03 PM »

As a cancer survivor who discovered (too late) that my family has been living "downwind from the Cold War", let me just say that a diet is not going to stop cancer. I've been to enough support groups and talked to enough people to know that healthy people are just as at-risk as are those who indulge in unhealthy lifestyles.

That being said, I can give you night-and-day contrast in cancer survival stories from the several recent examples that were close to me.
Interestingly enough, the two factors that most obviously have a positive effect on one's treatment are:
1) Diet. Everybody who does chemo is going to lose their hair. Get over it. But the other effects of chemo can be greatly reduced by managing one's diet. And people who go into the treatment healthy are much more likely to get a "full recovery" (which is basically as close as a doctor will ever get to saying they cured you.)
2) Adherence to the medical treatment--even when it gets unpleasant. Simply put, those who didn't stick with the program and endure its unpleasantness--especially those who chose homeopathy over chemotherapy--are not around anymore to tell me how smart they were for making those choices.

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Science & Alternative Science / Re: What makes one theory better than other?

« on: December 16, 2017, 05:21:32 PM »

Occam's razor doesn't always work very well when given to "magical thinkers".

After all, doesn't Newton's theory as to why the universe is held together "in God's hand" answer the question much more simply than modern theories of "Dark Energy"?

For that matter, is it possible that simplifying the many paradoxes of scientific measurement by theorizing "dark energy" is also a failure to seek the more complicated--yet more accurate--hypothesis?

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Science & Alternative Science / Re: How much does knowledge of linguistics help with learning foreign languages?

« on: December 16, 2017, 05:09:32 PM »

I am not fluent in any language other than my primary, but I've played at learning enough other languages that I can say a formal study of linguistics is probably not going to be as useful as an informal immersion in the culture of the language you are studying.

Language is not just the structuring of words. In some cultures, phonetics are joined with tones, so that the same word can mean several things depending on how you "sing" it.
Also, some Asian languages seem to be based on a vastly different understanding of communication compared to European languages. Sentence structure is completely different. Gender concepts are foreign. Even the concept of an alphabet is different.

It helps to first understand how that culture thinks before trying to study how they convey those thoughts through their language.