Halo

Today is the day

Good luck, Holmes!

Also, quick, everyone, we're modless. BREAK ALL THE RULES.

I Dunno

Dervish said
At least there's no wine snobs. Then it would be insufferable.

What's wrong with liking wine? >_>

Spam ship name for Nat & Joegreenbeen?

Natsumeenbean.

Driver who killed teen now suing dead boy's family

mdk said
yep.I think at some point I impressed upon you the notion that I have no interest in the court proceedings. What should have been communicated, instead, is that I have no interest in joining the (currently active) mob of reactionists, who, having read the news about a filing of a case, are already rendering their verdicts. I won't be at that circus. Nothing about the circus is good or productive or admirable or even fun, really, nobody being pissed off about the news story they just read, they just like the catharsis they get from venting their rage onto a social blog. No thanks.

In which case, I very much agree. Can't even count the amount of times I've pulled people up for the same thing. Ah, dialogue de sourds, it haunts us all. Apologies for the misinterpretation on my part.

Cool thing I learned about Reagan

mdk said
At this point I'm not arguing, I'm just remarking at our differences as they exist, because they're interesting to me.

Fair enough. That's fairly unusual in Off-Topic, so forgive me for assuming otherwise! I have to admit, I've long been fascinated by the US and the differences between my home country and there. For a long time, most of my friends were American, so I got a lot of exposure to certain aspects of American culture. I see it as a shame that I can't afford to go to uni there - I got into UCB, wanting to move to America to experience the differences for myself, but y'know, I don't have $50k a year to pull out my ass.
Anyway, back to the point at hand. I suppose I struggle to wrap my mind about the dynamics of American patriotism, despite the decentralisation, mainly because British culture does not exhibit nearly quite the same sense of national pride - or rather, it's sort of... colder. We might be very proud of our country, but I've very rarely seen a British person defend Britain with quite the same intensity and fervour that I've seen Americans do for the US. Maybe we're just cynical and such, as a trend, by comparison. I don't know that I agree that "we're all pretty much the same", as you put it - there's a very strong imprint on people from the culture they grew up in.

State-Church Separation

Arguing based on past experience is all well and good, but, in my opinion, defending something on a theoretical ground rather than simply "it didn't work last time" is always beneficial. Only one person, iirc, has mentioned the primary reason for separating church and state: conflicting interests.
In the end, government in a democratic society exists only to represent the will of the people, and to act in their best interests. As soon as they are beholden/answerable to other, religious, faith-driven obligations - for example, Catholics are answerable primarily to the Pope, hence Britain's raging hate-rection for Catholic politicians - their impartiality in acting in the interests of, and according to the will of, their country's people is questionable.
There's a freaking tonne of other arguments, but that one's my favourite because I get to talk about "society" a lot, and as a young and naive teenager nothing gets me off quite like talking about lofty ideals of rights, and "the people".

Cool thing I learned about Reagan

mdk said
Remember too the size of the country we're talking about. If it were a state, Great Britain wouldn't break the top ten largest by land area. It would be the most populous, but also the densest, and still only 1/5th the national population (unless we're counting the 300m we've already got, in which case you'd only account for about 15%). It's a great geopolitics study -- meaning, the relationship between geography and politics, like why are rice-climates more communal than wheat-climates. End of the day people still operate like people, once you get to understand the reasons they adopt certain behaviors, we're all pretty much the same.

I do recognise that it is virtually impossible to do things in a cohesive manner in the US compared to the UK (as an example), and I suppose, in some ways, that's my point. It's impossible to have that cohesiveness of society in America, and it's extremely decentralised, and yet people still identify so strongly as "American". It seems contradictory, in my mind. But I rather feel we're going to go in circles on this one, and it doesn't help that I'm deliberately generalising and oversimplifying both Americans and their culture.

Driver who killed teen now suing dead boy's family

mdk said
I think we're talking about two different things, or perhaps, you're talking about the end result when I'm only talking about the means. There's a great quote by Thomas Jefferson — 'The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.' I *detest* our national media, not for bias or one-sided-ness but for a pervasive incompetence and repugnant business practices. As relating to this thread, I'm reacting to the media's involvement in national discourse, specifically in legal cases, and I'm arguing that it's almost entirely a destructive influence, with few-if-any redeeming qualities. If I'm reading you right, you're arguing that 'we still need to talk about these things,' and I agree, but if that means we need to rely on the news corps to mediate the conversation, then I want nothing to do with it. I made a thread a while ago about how I get informed on a topic -- it's worth dragging out again, stand by for an edit, I'll find it for ya....EDIT: ! Not a thread after all, just an atypically long and thoughtful response in a Turt thread, which explains why it took so long to find. Fair warning, 'guide to the news' was written while I was plastered, but I stand by it sober.

I'm saying that the courts cannot be allowed to do whatever they want, to make whatever decisions they want, without public knowledge. Let me put it this way:
Laws are made in order to act as a moral code for a society. You break the law, you've done something bad, you get punished. You follow the law, you're doing okay. That moral code is, in a democratic society, set by the public (in theory) - we vote in those who're gonna make the laws what we think they should be.
This moral code we have decided upon as a society is upheld in courts - it is where we determine whether that moral code has been broken, and the appropriate punishment if it has. It is therefore in public interest to ensure that the moral code is being upheld in the intended way - that what we think is "right" or "wrong" is what is actually being reflected in court, which should only be making decisions based on what society has, through law, decided is "right" or "wrong".
If we do not ensure that court decisions (and laws, for that matter, though one way to do that is through court) are actually reflecting our ideas of right and wrong, then we give the court free reign to do as they like and to flaunt the moral code they're designed to be upholding.

From what I can gather, you agree with me in principle, but think that the practical way we do that - through the media - is fundamentally flawed. And I agree with that. My experiences with American media reflect exactly what you're saying, and I think it's appalling. Thing is, there are ways to do the principle I'm discussing, without using the faulty lens of biased media - principally, by researching things in the exact manner you highlighted in that 'guide to the news' you posted. By doing that, you avoid biased media, and still keep abreast of what the courts and government are doing - which is what I am saying is so important to do.

Your Political Ideology

I'm a green, obviously. I generally believe that the state should not interfere in the private lives of individuals, or infringe on their rights for any reason, unless they have strong, undeniable evidence that that person has or is going to infringe the rights of others. Essentially, people can do what they want, as long as they're not damaging others in some way. I do, however, also believe in the state as a publicly-accountable medium through which society can act cohesively in order to support one another - I'm a huge supporter of public healthcare, for example.

Driver who killed teen now suing dead boy's family

mdk said
This might be a product of different legal systems (You're in GB, right?).... There are certain foundational values in the American legal system that are totally overridden by media involvement. The bulk of our 'Bill of Rights' is about trial proceedings, including rights to representation, rights to privacy, rights to impartiality, rights against search without a warrant... these are fairly central tenets of our whole country, really, and our news agencies ignore them without fear of reproach. Now certainly, we should talk about things from time to time, like 'It's not okay to gun down black people.' But what actually happens -- the practical history here -- is that news agencies whip up a lynch mob with their left hand so that they can sell torches with the right. That's how we operate and it's appalling, and I sincerely hope it's different in Britain.people should be angrier about this.

I'm certainly not arguing that the media handle these things in a responsible way. All I was ever arguing was that it's important for the individual to pay attention to court decisions. The lens through which they do that - the media - may be very faulty, but it is still an individual's responsibility to pay attention to these things, to ensure that if there is some problem with the way things are being done that that issue is addressed.
Taking your logic, people should not pay attention to voting candidates and their policies because the media may screw around with the facts, be biased, and encourage extreme or oversimplified, polarised views of things. We know the media does this, but regardless of that, it is still important for people to pay attention to political candidates, parties, and policy, no?
Maybe I'm simply missing your point - I get the impression we are talking at slight cross-purposes here.