Date: Thu, 24 Jul 1997 03:07:51 +0930 (CST) From: Michael Smith <msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au> To: jmb@FreeBSD.ORG (Jonathan M. Bresler) Cc: msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au, jmb@FreeBSD.ORG, pechter@lakewood.com, softweyr@xmission.com, freebsd-chat@hub.freebsd.org Subject: Re: FTC regulating use of registrations Message-ID: <199707231737.DAA10591@genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au> In-Reply-To: <199707231702.KAA00258@hub.freebsd.org> from "Jonathan M. Bresler" at "Jul 23, 97 10:02:19 am"
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(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.) 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. > > 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? 8) <-- note > 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. > > 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 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 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. > 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. It's right up there with "you don't agree with me, so your opinion doesn't really count". > 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. 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. > jmb -- ]] Mike Smith, Software Engineer msmith@gsoft.com.au [[ ]] Genesis Software genesis@gsoft.com.au [[ ]] High-speed data acquisition and (GSM mobile) 0411-222-496 [[ ]] realtime instrument control. (ph) +61-8-8267-3493 [[ ]] Unix hardware collector. "Where are your PEZ?" The Tick [[
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