mdk

can you teach me how to edgy

Frizan said
/shred

/fred

can you teach me how to edgy

Ferguson, MO protests and police brutality.

The Nexerus said
This is the underlying attitude that is responsible for the riots in Ferguson. Race has nothing to do with it, and the specific situation in question has very little to do with it either. The salient issue here is that a large demographic of people have a complete lack of respect for officers of the law, and are either still inside of or never bothered to leave their adolescent rebellious phase. The shooting of Michael Brown wasn't the reason for the protests, it was the excuse for them.To all of the people complaining about the involvement of riot police: what is the appropriate response to an angry mob burning down a gas station and looting streets full of businesses? Should the police have instead sent sternly worded letters to the mailboxes of the rioters?

The reporting is telling, too. From a headline I read today: "Police fire teargas grenades into protesters who weren't peacefully protesting." In other words: Teargas rioters. But no one will call it a 'riot,' because that would make the police force seem justified, It's newspeak and mind-control, people, pay attention, it's happening *right now*.

Ferguson, MO protests and police brutality.

Unrelated, but worth reading.

I have no facts and thus no reaction to the Ferguson case. All I know is what has been reported on the news -- three principal stories.

1, the news is selling news about the treatment of the news, and hopefully that phrasing tells you how much stock I put in their word. They're literally invested in uproar, and I don't trust their accounts of mistreatment. I'll dig into witness accounts when I have the time for it, and probably share it here, because I know you guys care deeply what I think about things.

2. The racial advocacy community is selling news about racial injustice. Same story. I don't mean to discredit any person or organization (or, needless to say, ethnic body) by saying this -- only, that a white cop and a black victim does not a hate-crime make, and I have much more digging to do before I'm prepared to render a 'Racist' verdict. Nor am I ready to vindicate the shooter, just based on his badge -- don't take me the wrong way. I'm only stating my skepticism.

3. The police are selling the story that the victim wasn't a victim, and that if anything they should've shot him sooner. OKAY, not those words, they're just saying that the kid was literally robbing a place shortly before he was shot. That's a pretty serious allegation and, again, having no facts, I'm not ready to pass judgment.

These are the three things I'm going to look at first, and I'll see where the rabbit hole takes me. On the off-chance that someone has applicable resources I can use to speed things along, feel free to share -- be warned that I hate pretty much every variety of journalist, and I'll probably find fault in your sources, but hey, even fault helps me sort things out, so whatever.

Solving the fermi-paradox

We don't find an abundance of life because we're only searching through time and space. It's like searching for sharks in a goldfish bowl -- sure, sharks live in water, water exists in goldfish bowls, and with enough bowls, you'd logically encounter a sufficient volume of water that a shark should exist within. But no matter how many bowls you examine -- a hundred, a thousand, an infinite number, holding infinite gallons of water, no goldfish bowl will contain a shark -- because that's not where sharks live.

We cling to the fallacy that because our society exists in space and time, among matter and energy, that these are the dimensions in which another intelligence must exist. We're wrong. We're the fish in the bowl, not the sharks in the ocean. Alien life is beyond us.

20th century vs 21st

20th century wins, because that's what century Fox is.

Another spamfic thing

Edit: Changed my mind. I mean it was this or the rap one, and I like the rap one a little better, but deep down, I *am* a street-walking cheetah with a heart full of napalm.

Grrrr

on oldguild (or maybe like, SUPEROLDguild) I sometimes had to go to my profile page and refresh a few times to get it to work.

Common Core State Standards

My reservation is that, ultimately, I think Common Core evolves into a budgetary principle. School admins are going to have to focus on the core, and devote a disproportionate amount of money to meeting those standards. My experience with a 'core curriculum' comes from college, where I had to take (literally) rocket engineering classes in order to earn a PoliSci degree. If that seems like a waste of time, it was -- I didn't use rocket science once. Of course I never used polisci either, but whatever.

Point being, NCLB sort of demonstrates to me that federal education solutions have unforeseen negative impacts on the actual students. I think privatization responds better to local and personal needs than federalization, so to me, this is a step in the wrong direction. But a slim majority of teachers reportedly like the idea, and I guess in the broad sense, not a lot of bad things can come from teaching more maths, so I guess we'll see.

Westboro Church to picket Robin Williams funeral

Honored Brother said
That or a wall of hot lead.I think bullets would be more cheaper than napalm.

Napalm is packing peanuts and gasoline. Bullets are like 80 cents a round.