Date: Wed, 23 Jul 1997 12:36:12 -0700 (PDT) From: "Jonathan M. Bresler" <jmb> To: msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au (Michael Smith) Cc: jmb@FreeBSD.ORG, msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au, pechter@lakewood.com, softweyr@xmission.com, freebsd-chat@hub.freebsd.org Subject: Re: FTC regulating use of registrations Message-ID: <199707231936.MAA09373@hub.freebsd.org> In-Reply-To: <199707231737.DAA10591@genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au> from "Michael Smith" at Jul 24, 97 03:07:51 am
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Michael Smith wrote: > > (I don't want to start a brawl here; I suspect that in many regards > we're really in violent agreement, so I'll just pick on the points > that I feel are worth expanding.) yes, i think we are in violent agreement. i used some terms that are too over-loaded in my first message...natural language is so much slippier than C. > > Jonathan M. Bresler stands accused of saying: > > > This closed-mindedness is intellectual death. It serves the goals of > > > politicians and the people that benefit from manipulating the masses > > > very well; if all you do is react without thinking, you can be > > > trivially controlled. > > > > whoa, mike! please read what i have written and dont load me > > down with a load of material i have have not advocated. > > Er, you came out pretty hard and fast with the old "gotta be one parent > winnin' the bread and one holdin' the babies" line. Sorry, but that's > just what I'm about. doesn't have to be. specialization does work well, though. every "advanced society" that i have every read about is based upon specialization. one trick is how to keep the specialists from making unreasonable demands upon everyone else, but i digress. > > > > Aha. And because there is only one "right", you only need one > > > "structure". Very good. > > > > "the right thing" is to raise the children to be a credit > > to their family and society. if we cant agree on that, > > i'll drop out of the conversation. > > That depends on who gets to decide what is a "credit". If you define > "credit" in the context of the preexisting society, then again you > are advocating stagnation and the ultimate death of said society. > > You can look at the current situation as an excellent example of what > happens when people are raised with the intention of "making" them a > credit to society. There is a very good treatment of this in Neal > Stephenson's "The Diamond Age". Do you still have time to read books? not as much as i would like.....still have not read a number of russian classics that i want to read, there is a new translation of the iliad that is supposed to be excellent. read Les Miserables recently (unabridged) ;) > > 8) <-- note no i have not read it. but it looks interesting...i have to see if i can get a copy. http://www-user.cibola.net/~michaela/diamondage/stephen.htm Neal Stephenson is 35 years old and lives in Seattle, Washington. He has written three other books, The Big U , Zodiac, and Snow Crash. Bruce Sterling has said that he "is the first second-generation, native cyberpunk science-fiction writer. Unlike most of the original '80s cyberpunks, he grew up in the new technoculture and, with a hacker's background knows how it really works." Some of his major influences include Heinlein and Andre Norton. > > > did i hear you say it was easier? it is possible to write > > fortran to do string processing, i would not advocate it > > to someone. > > No, you didn't. "easier" is a relative assessment, suitable for > evaluation of situations on a case-by-case basis. > > The static family can often seriously inhibit a childs emotional and > intellectual development by imprinting irrational and contrived > behaviour patterns. Later in life these can cause some fairly > unpleasant problems. This is wandering off-topic though. "static family" is not a term that i am familiar with. i dont know what it means. > > > > The "back in the 50's and 60's everything was right in the family > > > world" line _is_ a myth. It is a call to the current parenting > > > generation's early childhood, and that of their parents; a direct > > > accusation that the current crop of parents are getting it all wrong > > > where their seniors were just perfect. > > > > who said "everything was right"? > > can we limit this to a single issue? > > I'm trying to 8) The selling of any single solution to "society's > problems" is what I'm aiming at. > > > you forgot racism and anti-semitism. > > No; these seem to be fairly constant. People are easily convinced hmmm....lot fewer lynchings in the usa than there were 50 years ago. a black on the supreme court and two jews. the previous chief of staff was black. i think somethings have changed. at least for the moment, perhaps for a longer period. > to be afraid of things; "different" and "strange" and "looks funny" > are good cues for this. Oddly relevant, really. > > > inner city poverty rates have risen (there once was a > > thriving black commerical district in washington dc, it > > was burned out in '68 and has never bee rebuilt.) > > ... yet the real-terms income of poor blacks in america is something like the average employee at microsoft makes over $100,000. sample distribution is everything, one outlier skews the average. but that is another topic. > three times what it was in the late 50's. The poor haven't actually > done anything about being poor for centuries; why change now? > (Warning; the above is a simplified throwaway line. Don't bite it.) > > > drug traffic (always been some, the number of murders due > > to the drug trade is higher) > > This is an artificial product, courtesy of a combination of foreign > trade, media input and government assistance. You could describe it > as an environmental effect; it certainly isn't directly or indirectly > a product of the breakdown of "family values". > > > school violence (no metal detectors when i went to school) > > ... so duelling is back in style. Well we had about a century or so > of quiet. let them duel in the fields not in the hallways :) > > teen pregency rate (did we make love less? did we know > > more about birth control? could we not have been doing it > > right?) > > Contraceptive education and use in the USA is at its lowest since > before the war. Numbers in Australia are quite a lot better. Go > figure. You need to bear variations in the reporting and recording of > numbers like this in mind as well. > > > > It has to be said that kids are an all-or-nothing prospect. Wanting > > > them "just sometimes" is a great excuse to suggest that your friends > > > have them. > > > > of course, its all-or-nothing. who suggested otherwise? > > does that mean that i cant have another couples children > > stay over one night so the parents can have some time off? > > seems very reasonable to me. > > That's just what I _said_. > > > > Personally, I prefer kittens. > > > > do you have children? > > No. I'm pro-choice, and my choice is no. > > > my feelings about the abortion/contraception issue is > > "if you are not in the game, you cant make the rules." > > > > same with regard to discussing how to raise children. > > Oh, very cute. So I can't actually have an opinion, despite _not_ > having a hormonal bias? That sounds remarkably facile to me. "a hormonal bias"???? i dont understand. > > It's right up there with "you don't agree with me, so your opinion > doesn't really count". not at all. the question is one of experience, not whether or not you agree with me. ask your friends and contacts about their ideas regarding children and how those ideas changed as their children grow. my oldest is 13, i have a lot of learning before me as she goes through her teenage years. it would be very presumptious of me to tell others what those years will be like. i can imagine, i can read, i can talk to others, but how i react when faced with a situation is unknown till it happens. imagine any difficult situation, and ask if you will behave as you would wish to...many have failed when faced with that challenge, perhaps most. in a period of racism, how many stand up for the oppressed? how many remain silent? and how many cooperate. many countries in europe are still grappling with these questions. > > > if you dont know first hand the demands of raising children, > > then let me bow out of this conversation and concede to you. > > if such is the case, we dont have enough shared experience > > to continue this. > > How can anyone that opens their eyes during their own upbringing _not_ > have a firsthand experience of raising a child? I'm no social > outcast; I have a not inconsiderable collection of friends and contacts > raising kids, and have spent my share of time participating in their > upbringing. you might be right but i have found the exxperience to be very different now that i am on the other end. > > To tell me that because none of them have my DNA I cannot possibly > contribute to the discussion is probably the truest indication of the > mindset that I started this rant against in the first place. certainly you can contribute. nonetheless i feel that first hand experience is irreplaceable. in america, teh pharse "monday morning quarterback" is used to discribe (american) football fans that "know" how the game should have been played on the preceding sunday. (i expect there is a similar pharse in oz. DNA has nothing to do with it. there are thousands of children awaiting adoption. ;) <low blow. jmb is fined $3M for biting micheal smith's ear(s)> jmb
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