Regarding the American cop, the telling thing for me is that he had his hand on his gun before the dog came through the door. He was getting ready to shoot prior to the dog "attacking him." (Assuming the dog was attacking.)
Really? Depending on the situation (why you're at the house) I would think having your hand on your gun is a standard practice for safety's sake. As would having it drawn be, again, depending on the situation.
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Really? Depending on the situation (why you're at the house) I would think having your hand on your gun is a standard practice for safety's sake. As would having it drawn be, again, depending on the situation.
Wasn't it already said that the cop was just there being a nice guy and telling the H/O that her car door was open?
Definitely a good reason to be reaching for his heat before knocking.
How in blue hell Girl Guides ever sold cookies is beyond me.
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Really? Depending on the situation (why you're at the house) I would think having your hand on your gun is a standard practice for safety's sake. As would having it drawn be, again, depending on the situation.
I think the main piece of knowledge being missed is the fact that the officer was coming to the animals den and disrupting it. When an unusual being comes across an animals home the first instinct is to a) be curios and b) protect. I have 2 dogs, if someone approaches the house and knocks on the door my dogs think...wtf? who is intruding on my territory. I also grab both dogs and make sure they can't get outside. The officer should have proper training on how to handle a situation when dogs maybe at the home without shooting them.
On the other hand. Why didnt the dog owner hold her dog back and make sure the officer was safe on her property.
Either way a 210 lb pound officer shooting a 40 lb dog seems ridiculous.
Honestly...this is exactly how I see, in my mind, Sliver handling any dog situation he comes across.
Charging an 8 year old is totally ludicrous. Like that kid has any idea what the hell he is doing or at least to the extent of what he did. It's actually a terribly sad situation but the 8 year old is a victim as well. That mom is a horrible person.
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Before Halloween, some students complained to them that Yale administrators were offering heavy-handed advice on what Halloween costumes to avoid.
Erika Christakis reflected on the frustrations of the students, drew on her scholarship and career experience, and composed an email inviting the community to think about the controversy through an intellectual lens that few if any had considered. Her message was a model of relevant, thoughtful, civil engagement.
For her trouble, a faction of students are now trying to get the couple removed from their residential positions, which is to say, censured and ousted from their home on campus.
Campuses in the United States (and probably elsewhere, really) have degenerated into a cesspool of morons who don't actually want to think about anything but are anxious to be told what they should think about everything, and then yell obscenities at those who disagree with them. They're violently in favour of every possible kind of diversity except for diversity of thought.
Yes, freedom of ideas IS more important than not offending minorities. This shouldn't be difficult to see. It's really the only thing that's non-negotiable. People are free to be horribly, horribly wrong about things, so that their wrongness can be corrected. If not offending minorities is important, and to some degree it certainly is, then it'll be easy to convince everyone of that importance using ideas. Not censorship or mob rule.
I am really, really starting to despise my own side of the political spectrum. Actually, I'm starting to suspect it's been entirely hijacked at the youth level. It used to be that the conservatives were the ones obsessed with controlling the behaviours of other people - stop sleeping with certain people, stop watching violent TV or playing violent video games, enjoying sex is immoral and you should be pure and nun-like, etc. Now religious justifications for those sorts of authoritarian dicta are out of fashion, so we're going to justify our urge to control other people under the new guise of political correctness or safe spaces or whatever term you'd like to use.
Just shamefully illiberal fascistic behavior.
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SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — A jury on Friday convicted a California woman of first-degree murder and assault in the microwave oven death of her 1-month-old daughter, rejecting her argument that she was in the midst of a seizure and didn't know what she was doing.
Ka Yang, 34, is facing 26-years-to-life in prison, and she is scheduled to be sentenced in December, the Sacramento County District Attorney's Office said.
Prosecutors say Yang put her daughter, Mirabelle Thao-Lo, in the microwave at her Sacramento-area home for 2½ to 5 minutes in March 2011. The girl suffered what authorities said were extensive thermal injuries.
Yang's attorney, Linda Parisi, said after the verdict that she was disappointed, the Sacramento Bee reported.
Campuses in the United States (and probably elsewhere, really) have degenerated into a cesspool of morons who don't actually want to think about anything but are anxious to be told what they should think about everything, and then yell obscenities at those who disagree with them. They're violently in favour of every possible kind of diversity except for diversity of thought.
Yes, freedom of ideas IS more important than not offending minorities. This shouldn't be difficult to see. It's really the only thing that's non-negotiable. People are free to be horribly, horribly wrong about things, so that their wrongness can be corrected. If not offending minorities is important, and to some degree it certainly is, then it'll be easy to convince everyone of that importance using ideas. Not censorship or mob rule.
I am really, really starting to despise my own side of the political spectrum. Actually, I'm starting to suspect it's been entirely hijacked at the youth level. It used to be that the conservatives were the ones obsessed with controlling the behaviours of other people - stop sleeping with certain people, stop watching violent TV or playing violent video games, enjoying sex is immoral and you should be pure and nun-like, etc. Now religious justifications for those sorts of authoritarian dicta are out of fashion, so we're going to justify our urge to control other people under the new guise of political correctness or safe spaces or whatever term you'd like to use.
Just shamefully illiberal fascistic behavior.
Well said. That's why I made a large donation to Carpay's group. I don't have time for for his religious views, but he is the only one actually fighting the intolerance on campus in courts.
Yes, freedom of ideas IS more important than not offending minorities. This shouldn't be difficult to see. It's really the only thing that's non-negotiable. People are free to be horribly, horribly wrong about things, so that their wrongness can be corrected.
Is it ever really corrected though? Bigots don't tend to repent.
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If not offending minorities is important, and to some degree it certainly is, then it'll be easy to convince everyone of that importance using ideas.
Oh really? So all minorities have to do to convince racists that racism is wrong is use the power of ideas? Man, it's too bad you weren't around a few hundred years earlier. We could have had this all sorted out a long time ago.
EDIT: Have you actually sought sources for black voices (blogs, articles, etc.) where these ideas may be being discussed beyond the whole "everyone is too PC" narrative you've decided to settle on?
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I am really, really starting to despise my own side of the political spectrum. Actually, I'm starting to suspect it's been entirely hijacked at the youth level. It used to be that the conservatives were the ones obsessed with controlling the behaviours of other people - stop sleeping with certain people, stop watching violent TV or playing violent video games, enjoying sex is immoral and you should be pure and nun-like, etc. Now religious justifications for those sorts of authoritarian dicta are out of fashion, so we're going to justify our urge to control other people under the new guise of political correctness or safe spaces or whatever term you'd like to use.
Just shamefully illiberal fascistic behavior.
"I wish minorities would stop complaining about their feelings of marginalization because it's buzzkilling my Halloween costume."
Yawn. Anyways, I'm super happy for the "edgy" white dudes who have had their views on the "PC-nazis" validated by a cartoon written by a couple of libertarians.
And, of course, you take that way out to left field. What he is referring to are things like "male free" zones, not letting anybody who is sympathetic to Israel speak on campuses, not letting Ann Coulter speak here, etc, etc, etc. Don't demean his post by making this about freedom for racists. Shame on you.
And, of course, you take that way out to left field. What he is referring to are things like "male free" zones, not letting anybody who is sympathetic to Israel speak on campuses, not letting Ann Coulter speak here, etc, etc, etc. Don't demean his post by making this about freedom for racists. Shame on you.
It's Rubecube, man. That's just his schtick. Nonetheless, I'll respond at least once because I really don't think he's able to self-examine and may not have people challenging him on his assumptions about what's right.
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Originally Posted by rubecube
Is it ever really corrected though? Bigots don't tend to repent.
Are you serious? You can't be serious. You've never seen someone change their mind on this? I can count multiple among people I know just on the gay rights side of things. Certainly you've met any number of people who have moderated previously held racist views, whether you know it or not.
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Oh really? So all minorities have to do to convince racists that racism is wrong is use the power of ideas? Man, it's too bad you weren't around a few hundred years earlier. We could have had this all sorted out a long time ago.
EDIT: Have you actually sought sources for black voices (blogs, articles, etc.) where these ideas may be being discussed beyond the whole "everyone is too PC" narrative you've decided to settle on?
Jesus, you just love identity politics, don't you? No, I haven't sought out "black voices". I do not give a damn if the voices are black. People are either right or wrong on any given issue regardless of their skin colour.
For exactly this reason, "minorities" do not have to convince racists that racism is wrong, everyone does. I do not need to be a woman to engage in a discussion about the morality of abortion. If you can't express why skin colour is a stupid reason to discriminate against a person, you're not trying very hard.
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"I wish minorities would stop complaining about their feelings of marginalization because it's buzzkilling my Halloween costume."
Is this what we're doing now?
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Originally Posted by Rubecube
The only problem with the holocaust was that they didn't finish the job.
Annoying, isn't it?
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Yawn. Anyways, I'm super happy for the "edgy" white dudes who have had their views on the "PC-nazis" validated by a cartoon written by a couple of libertarians.
What's wrong in theory with libertarianism? Given the sheer volume of authoritarianism that seems to be frequently rearing its head these days, we could use a bit more libertarianism. Or at least classical liberalism. Allow me to show you how to quote someone accurately for a change:
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Originally Posted by John Stuart Mill
If the arguments of the present chapter are of any validity, there ought to exist the fullest liberty of professing and discussing, as a matter of ethical conviction, any doctrine, however immoral it may be considered.
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And, of course, you take that way out to left field. What he is referring to are things like "male free" zones, not letting anybody who is sympathetic to Israel speak on campuses, not letting Ann Coulter speak here, etc, etc, etc. Don't demean his post by making this about freedom for racists. Shame on you.
Maybe he should have been more specific then? He linked to an article that, from what I could tell, had to do with cultural appropriation and Halloween costumes. I wasn't suggesting he was asking for freedom for racists, either. No idea where you got that from. What I said is that saying that we can get people to stop offending minorities by fighting them with ideas is incredibly naive and patronizing.
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Maybe he should have been more specific then? He linked to an article that, from what I could tell, had to do with cultural appropriation and Halloween costumes.
Specifically, it dealt with a university asking people not to put together hallowe'en costumes that might be considered racially insensitive, followed by someone raising a series of thoughtful points about whether that policy should be followed or at least to what degree, followed by... mobs of students pulling their hair out and demanding she be fired and removed from campus for rather soberly expressing her point of view. Here's the letter:
Spoiler!
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Dear Sillimanders:
Nicholas and I have heard from a number of students who were frustrated by the mass email sent to the student body about appropriate Halloween-wear. I’ve always found Halloween an interesting embodiment of more general adult worries about young people. As some of you may be aware, I teach a class on “The Concept of the Problem Child,” and I was speaking with some of my students yesterday about the ways in which Halloween – traditionally a day of subversion for children and young people – is also an occasion for adults to exert their control.
When I was young, adults were freaked out by the specter of Halloween candy poisoned by lunatics, or spiked with razor blades (despite the absence of a single recorded case of such an event). Now, we’ve grown to fear the sugary candy itself. And this year, we seem afraid that college students are unable to decide how to dress themselves on Halloween.
I don’t wish to trivialize genuine concerns about cultural and personal representation, and other challenges to our lived experience in a plural community. I know that many decent people have proposed guidelines on Halloween costumes from a spirit of avoiding hurt and offense. I laud those goals, in theory, as most of us do. But in practice, I wonder if we should reflect more transparently, as a community, on the consequences of an institutional (which is to say: bureaucratic and administrative) exercise of implied control over college students.
It seems to me that we can have this discussion of costumes on many levels: we can talk about complex issues of identify, free speech, cultural appropriation, and virtue “signalling.” But I wanted to share my thoughts with you from a totally different angle, as an educator concerned with the developmental stages of childhood and young adulthood.
As a former preschool teacher, for example, it is hard for me to give credence to a claim that there is something objectionably “appropriative” about a blonde-haired child’s wanting to be Mulan for a day. Pretend play is the foundation of most cognitive tasks, and it seems to me that we want to be in the business of encouraging the exercise of imagination, not constraining it. I suppose we could agree that there is a difference between fantasizing about an individual character vs. appropriating a culture, wholesale, the latter of which could be seen as (tacky)(offensive)(jejeune)(hurtful), take your pick. But, then, I wonder what is the statute of limitations on dreaming of dressing as Tiana the Frog Princess if you aren’t a black girl from New Orleans? Is it okay if you are eight, but not 18? I don’t know the answer to these questions; they seem unanswerable. Or at the least, they put us on slippery terrain that I, for one, prefer not to cross.
Which is my point. I don’t, actually, trust myself to foist my Halloweenish standards and motives on others. I can’t defend them anymore than you could defend yours. Why do we dress up on Halloween, anyway? Should we start explaining that too? I’ve always been a good mimic and I enjoy accents. I love to travel, too, and have been to every continent but Antarctica. When I lived in Bangladesh, I bought a sari because it was beautiful, even though I looked stupid in it and never wore it once. Am I fetishizing and appropriating others’ cultural experiences? Probably. But I really, really like them too.
Even if we could agree on how to avoid offense – and I’ll note that no one around campus seems overly concerned about the offense taken by religiously conservative folks to skin-revealing costumes – I wonder, and I am not trying to be provocative: Is there no room anymore for a child or young person to be a little bit obnoxious… a little bit inappropriate or provocative or, yes, offensive? American universities were once a safe space not only for maturation but also for a certain regressive, or even transgressive, experience; increasingly, it seems, they have become places of censure and prohibition. And the censure and prohibition come from above, not from yourselves! Are we all okay with this transfer of power? Have we lost faith in young people’s capacity – in your capacity – to exercise self-censure, through social norming, and also in your capacity to ignore or reject things that trouble you? We tend to view this shift from individual to institutional agency as a tradeoff between libertarian vs. liberal values (“liberal” in the American, not European sense of the word).
Nicholas says, if you don’t like a costume someone is wearing, look away, or tell them you are offended. Talk to each other. Free speech and the ability to tolerate offence are the hallmarks of a free and open society.
But – again, speaking as a child development specialist – I think there might be something missing in our discourse about the exercise of free speech (including how we dress ourselves) on campus, and it is this: What does this debate about Halloween costumes say about our view of young adults, of their strength and judgment?
In other words: Whose business is it to control the forms of costumes of young people? It’s not mine, I know that.
Happy Halloween.
Yours sincerely,
Erika
I'm not saying any of that is right. I'm saying it was (or looks to me to be) a genuine, intellectually honest expression of a point of view. The appropriate response is to either agree or disagree, not send a demand to the powers that be that someone be for all intents and purposes run out of town on a rail. The fact that this is the response, on a goddamned ivy league college campus where debating all ideas, including (er, especially) those deemed outside the box or extreme, should always be encouraged.
Hell, this is one of the most important functions that academia can serve - the pursuits on campus are often completely impractical, and other than educating people their greatest social utility might be progressing human knowledge and culture by breaching new intellectual ground.
If she's wrong, tell her why. Nope, can't have that, burn the witch instead.
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What I said is that saying that we can get people to stop offending minorities by fighting them with ideas is incredibly naive and patronizing.
Yeah, THAT's what's patronizing.
And your option, or at least the option of these college kids which you appear to be defending - correct me if you're not - is to simply deny anyone the ability to make any statement deemed to be offensive. Or any statement that can be spun as such, really. Any sort of policy that brings to mind Orwellian distinctions like truefact and goodfact, and the sorts of things that people aren't allowed to have debates about, is a bad one. It's basically well-intentioned McCarthyism.
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It's Rubecube, man. That's just his schtick. Nonetheless, I'll respond at least once because I really don't think he's able to self-examine and may not have people challenging him on his assumptions about what's right.
Yeah, that must be it. I'm on site where I am consistently outnumbered by people whose political and social ideologies are largely to the right of mine. I've never had any of my assumptions challenged. Ah well, still a better schtick than one that would get me permabanned and then immediately outed under a new username .
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Are you serious? You can't be serious. You've never seen someone change their mind on this? I can count multiple among people I know just on the gay rights side of things. Certainly you've met any number of people who have moderated previously held racist views, whether you know it or not.
I'm not talking about the generally ignorant and uneducated, I'm talking about unabashed bigots.
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Jesus, you just love identity politics, don't you? No, I haven't sought out "black voices". I do not give a damn if the voices are black. People are either right or wrong on any given issue regardless of their skin colour.
For exactly this reason, "minorities" do not have to convince racists that racism is wrong, everyone does. I do not need to be a woman to engage in a discussion about the morality of abortion. If you can't express why skin colour is a stupid reason to discriminate against a person, you're not trying very hard.
No, but when you're talking harm and marginalization, it's generally more prudent to ask the people being harmed and marginalized, and the phenomenological approach to some of these issues would seem to be the most appropriate.
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Is this what we're doing now?
Annoying, isn't it?
I'll clarify this one. It wasn't aimed at you, but the author in the link you shared. I obviously wasn't quoting it but summing up the prevailing sentiment, hence why I didn't use the quote function.
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What's wrong in theory with libertarianism? Given the sheer volume of authoritarianism that seems to be frequently rearing its head these days, we could use a bit more libertarianism. Or at least classical liberalism.
There are number of theoretical problems with libertarianism, chiefly that it's largely incompatible with the Westphalian state, but that wasn't really my point.
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Allow me to show you how to quote someone accurately for a change:
Thanks, teach.
A right to free speech doesn't entail the right to an audience. There's plenty of precedent for telling someone "You're allowed to say that, you're just not allowed to say it here."
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. 