Those glasses that she wore - are they for fashion or a medical condition i wonder? They look really heavy duty and a bit where's wallyish to boot, but i know Japanese fashion can sometimes appear unusual to a westerner and vice versa i'm sure.

Unrelated but it makes me remember when i first reluctantly got glasses as a kid, my dad just picked some random frames that he'd pick and they were huge and hideous, i was mortified and nearly in tears. What i can only assume was my fairy godmother interjected from across the room, clearly not wanting me to wear a bully's target and said "he's got a small face, he needs thin ones" and showed me a bunch that i actually ended up liking. Forever grateful whoever and wherever you are!

Yeah, I used to like Maher too, but I'm kinda over him now. Even when I agree with him, he makes his point in such a douchey way that I find myself wanting to NOT agree with him.

As to the points, in each instance you've basically said that if the child is behaving badly, they should be corrected. Of course they should.

But a child is not automatically in the wrong.

A parent might have good reasons for siding with a child. I'm grateful my parents did when I was a kid. I stood up to a bully and got in trouble for fighting, and I refused to accept punishment for it. My parents listened to me and accepted that I was defending myself.

A child can talk with adults as long as they realise the whole conversation doesn't revolve around them. My friends 4 year old is really excited about learning to ski and she will often sit with her dad and I as we talk about snowboarding trips and ask to see pictures or ask about mountains. She knows not to interrupt, but she also knows we won't tell her to be quiet either.

I have studied Spanish all my life and am constantly reminded how grateful I am that I didn't have to learn English as a second language. The difference in the details of spelling and pronunciation between the two languages is orders of magnitude apart. On the other hand verbs, nouns and adjectives are less complex in English. I'm still trying to get a grip on the subjunctive tense after all these years.

*quality explanation of the intricate task. To think, I've been doing it wrong for 20 years by grating my cheeses directly into the large bowl.
Now I know...and as GI Jose said 'you already know enough'.
*how to

In addition to not having guns, a large percentage of police that i've ever met have been fairly decent people - but i've never had to deal with inner city police or lived in a majority ethnic community. I definitely think that quotas and under-funding have had a negative impact though, since the times of the classic bobby on the beat. So whilst i'm grateful we're not getting shot, there's underhand influences at work including profiling and also things like kettling and agent provocateurs at peaceful and legal demonstrations.

Feel free to be specific, and not just coy and vague. Which parts were intended as 'tongue in cheek' - was it linking to right wing activist blogs? I am truthfully and honestly unsure, because we don't know each other - for some people, quoting CHS would be a joke, similar to quoting Anne Coulter, and for others it's a valid source. I still don't know which, if either, opinion you hold.

Trust me, I will happily and heartily chuckle at your wry, irascible tongue in cheek wit, if you can tell me which parts you thought you were being tongue in cheek about, and what your serious arguments are.

As to whether Christina Hoff Sommers is a feminist or not, I would guess that it's not as easy as just calling yourself a feminist. I can call myself a conservative, but the evidence is against me: I never vote conservative, I typically espouse progressive views, and I usually criticize flaws in conservative thought and policy, comparing it unfavorably to progressive thought. I think a reasonable person would have to say that I'm either being disingenuous if I call myself a conservative, or that I'm very very bad at it.

I don't get to decide what CHS calls herself, but as a rational person I have to look at her argument and see if it's based in feminism or in something entirely different, and make up my own mind about it regardless of labels.

As for the rest, I'm not sure, again, which parts you say are just straw manning it up and which parts we agree on. I thought we had some disagreements but you might have been tongue in cheek about all of it, for all I know.

For example, I thought we were in agreement on this: "so the situation is not some cut and dried situation,and there are extreme elements of any social movement,but those elements should not invalidate the message" - so I didn't comment on that part. It makes sense to me, and unless you were being tongue in cheek, we're in agreement.

I thought we came to an agreement (?) on the prevalence of rape and the need to look at the whole picture, but also agreed (?) that there are several other disheartening factors at work in the so-called justice system.

I thought, however, that we disagreed about your entire first point (both about how making discrimination illegal should eliminate the wage gaps, and about how no serious economists cite it). This is where I thought CHS was a poor rebuttal - regardless of her right wing activism, she's certainly not an economist; she's a philosopher by education, and not a particularly credible source on the economy. Again, if you were being tongue in cheek when quoting her I'll just erase that part and assume that we agree.

As for contradictory evidence, I can't swear that I'll be influenced by it, and I certainly won't accept it uncritically - we all have a hard time breaking down our own biases. But I'll happily and gratefully read it, as I assume you will too.

I agree about the over-reaction to the "white slavers" comment, which I think just got hyper-PC types riled up.

And he does seem pretty humble and wise, although if he was really going to practice what he's preaching he would just butt out and not say anything. To be fair, he probably got invited on the show and is just responding honestly to the questions -- which is a fair bit different than if he sought out a soapbox to complain from.

I think Lucas had a fantastic combination of Tolkien-esque level creativity AND knew how to adapt his specific creations to the broadly appealing "Hero of 1000 faces" fantasy prototype AND got lucky in many ways. He deserves a LOT of praise for all of that. ...BUT, for the original movies he knew how to delegate things that he doesn't do well -- dialog, directing, etc. He was reined in by internal and external constraints. When those largely went away, we got the prequels.

I love Star Wars and am very grateful to George Lucas for creating that universe. And I'm pretty much equally grateful that he isn't at the helm anymore.

why thankies!
i think all ideas should be challenged,especially my own.
if my ideas cannot withstand criticism or scrutiny,then they are probably bad ideas to begin with,and should be discarded pronto.

so i try to post videos that challenge the staus quo,or bring a new perspective and sometimes i just post videos that i agree with and see if those videos hold water.

so i am grateful that others can appreciate what i am trying to do.
stay awesome!

Thank you Chaos. When I read the reply the first time I was like...oh this fucker did not say that line spouted off by "Americanists," that one can do anything imaginable, but if they don't it's only their fault. This truly helps with understanding where you were coming from. I am grateful.

I think this is the first time I've ever been grateful that something is *blocked.

I had one of those cursing keychains back in the early 90s. Was doing IT support at work, sitting next to this executive who was having trouble with her computer. I leaned forward to point at the screen, forgetting the keychain was in my shirt pocket and suddenly hear "fuck you!" I froze and was at a loss for words. I think there was enough background noise where she didn't hear it, for which I was grateful.

how the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 6:30 a.m,
leap out of bed,
dress,
force feed,
piss,
shit,
brush his teeth and hair,
and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else,and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so?
charles brukowski factotum 1975

I'm grateful every single day that I'm not living in anything you think of as "reality." I'm not going to "teach" you history. Learners find out for themselves (from someone, in this case, with firsthand experience).

3 things, I may have mixed them a bit.

1 - past experience specifically with muslim migrants (some may have been refugees) in Europe - overall not great, mostly they consider our social system and political correctness as signs of weakness. They consider themselves superior, the first generation may be grateful for a better life than back home but the second and third generations feel superior to non-muslims (especially jews and atheists, but also christians) and entitled to benefits while hating the secular state. Will the current and future waves accomodate better? This has nothing to do with our imperative to help those in need, it is a practical problem. Also not racist - although I do admit racism and xenophobia are a major problem in many parts of Europe and trouble me very much in my own country. More so than the Vietnamese or Ukrainians or people from the Balkans "these people" organize in clans and tribes and will try to impose their view of the world on us, who organise in tiny families and on facebook. Albanian thugs are well organised but they dont hold the view that everyone else should be an Albanian thug too.

2 - current wave of migrants and refugees - lets assume we are talking only about real Syrians boarding boats in Turkey trying to reach Greek islands and not people from all over north africa trying to reach Italy or anyone else trying to reach the EU (possibly pretending to be Syrian). So we have this exemplary Syrian family which has run away from a war to Turkey. They are safe there, only they have to either stay for a couple of years in a refugee camp before they can try to find work or they have to survive in a grey economy sort of like Mexicans in the USA. They know that if they dont apply for asylum in Turkey and manage to set foot on EU soil they can ask for asylum there and be treated better than in Turkey. So these boat people are actually not running from war to asylum but rather from one asylum to another. They make sure not to stop in Greece or Croatia or Austria or Hungary but head for Germany or Sweden. Mostly I believe they have no idea of political geography but they have mobile phones and friends who have already made the journey and know how to milk the local system. So for purposes of compassion they are refugees and totally need our help but from a clinically economic (yes, materialistic) point of view they are very much migrants. Migrants we feel obliged to help because they are sort of refugees too.

3 - the mass and speed of the exodus means we are stretched to accomodate them and they will later start to passionately hate us because Europe will not be the heaven they expected it to be.
A few thousand refugees every year are no big deal even for a small EU state. Hundreds of thousands will be very difficult to take care of in the entire union. Inviting more is just irresponsible.

The good news is that the real Syrian refugees who make it to Europe will probably be the more resourceful, better educated part of the current wave of incoming people and will be able to take care of themselves fairly quickly by my estimate. Also they are mostly variants of Shia - the less orthodox branch of muslims. I am worried more about future waves than the current one.

Maybe we have messed up a bit but we need to learn from our mistakes, and even Germany is now guarding its borders. It would be better if we were able to guard the Shengen perimeter.
Then if we wanted to save more refugees we could send trains or planes to pick them up in Turkey or Jemen. You know, set up an EU consulate there so they could directly apply for asylum in the EU country of their picking. But we have to make a conscious decision first - how many people from the desolate and failing parts of the world do we want to save over a given time period so that we dont fail ourselves. Are we failing? Ask the jewish families who used to live in Malmo until recently.

Same here. Guy grates on my nerves, but I truly hope they make this film.