“ my solution would be every able bodied Jewish man and woman join the French (or Polish, Russian, British) army and fucking fight…”

I agree that’s the noble thing to do, but I can’t condemn the ones that choose to seek safety in numbers with Jewish Palestinians as exclusively invasion minded aggressors. My 6 million tag was maybe a bit sharp, but you also know that the Nazi’s took Paris and as much as it sucked to be French or European under Nazi occupation, you also know adding Jewish to that carried a lot of extra consequence and danger to your family.

My POV is agnostic of everything save Isreali people today having a right exist as a nation. Which at this point from my POV leaves 1947 as somewhat academic.

It’s your insistence that Jewish people, and the existence of Israel, have always fundamentally been invaders that I was objecting to as it is so intensely at odds with factual history.

You gave a brief nod on not being a scholar of Palestinian history, but then proceed to just count all Jewish refugees as good as Zionist aggressors from day 1(or close enough), and the local Arab population as nothing but pure, kind caring victims of these invaders.

I will state again, that is ahistorical propaganda and NOT what actually happened. And for my POV, its enough generations back as to be Academic, but for your POV it is fundamental because without being able to writeoff Israel as invaders from day 1, nuance enters the calculus and suddenly the conflict is flooded with shades of grey because lots of parties all contribute to the bloodshed, and many with reasonable motivations from both sides yet too.

Please find me any reputable sources to refute the reality of 1920-1940s Palestine:
-Mass Jewish immigration fleeing European oppression raised tensions between Jewish and Arab Palestinians.(as one must expect)
-Arab palestinians were already chaffing and resisting British colonial rule(as one must expect)
-These tensions led conflict, initially more ‘civil’ with the Arab majority trying to refuse all business, sales and trade with all Jews.
-Escalation followed throughout that time, but in drips and drops and NOT a ‘surprise the Zionist army has arrived’! style of aggression

The violent escalation was a fight here, a beating there. Little individual fights, escalating into deaths. Retaliations slowly grew, with each side exchanging small escalations.

-the culmination of this was eventually all out civil war, and the Jewish side immediately accepting a UN mandated 2 state solution

-this culmination coinciding with the end of WW2 and revelations of the true extent of the holocaust can’t be ignored, it certainly shaped the Jewish mindset in the conflict.

-Their mindset was pretty clearly not inaccurate either, as the immediate response of all neighbouring Arab nations was a declaration of war on the new ‘state’, with bold claims of how quickly the Jews would be swept into the sea. The confidence was so high, a call was sent it for ALL Arab palestinians to abandon and flee the entire region of Palestine to better enable the complete cleansing of the land.

The above is all pretty much inarguably factual, and I’d bargain you could get an Arabic and Israeli scholar together to more or less agree on those facts which is saying alot.

——
Propaganda from both sides would like to declare that the Arabs harboured deep Nazi sympathies, and thus Israel was pure and true in all it did. Or from the other side, more or less your narrative of Zionist bad guys launching invasion from day 1(ish).

Both though are just sprinklings of half truths, with anti-British resentment naturally breeding some leanings towards the axis, and even genuine Nazi cleanse the Jews believers. And absolutely Zionists featured prominently within the Jewish population. Neither of those partial truths though make the propaganda of either side true, but instead just an incomplete and intentionally biased picture.


Again, please find me sources demonstrating I’m terribly wrong on all that, but the only ones I can find are clearly biased and the accurate accounts paint the picture above, the propaganda very, very clearly copies the real story more or less with just deletions of inconvenient bits

This would make a good movie.. You could name it something like Red October and get a Scottish guy to play the Russian captain so everyone would be able to empathize with how noble he is.

To be fair, he has a point about evolution. Has anyone checked if certain republicans are actually australopithecus with suits and decent haircuts?

(Cheap dig for a cheap laugh, I know. My apologies to my noble ancestors.)

Nurburgring?

I dont have anything against racing electric cars. I think the endeavour to create a mechanical dolphin is most noble. Its still about pushing the limits.

And yet I find the world where the lion tamer cannot step into the cage, the monkey cannot bite your finger off through the bars and you cannot miss a gear heading out of a corner somehow less worth living than the world of my childhood. Yes the smells too.

Maybe the bears are going to miss riding the motorcycle around the arena. Lions born in captivity would be cargo cultists if set free. Push a button to overtake. Sad.

Last names as a way to determine ethnic diversity, lost me there.

Cool though, that makes my sister latin american.

Too bad I am stuck with a name thats probably German in origin.

Diversity is fine. It was the tolerance of the society to entertain the notion that feeding a bunch of good for nothing intellectuals was a noble idea that made a golden age possible. Also the possibility to travel and communicate, the spread of information was helpful. Language barriers came down. That tolerance ended around 1250. Muslim lands were still ethnically diverse after that, but no more tolerance for science.

So tolerance of different ideas, customs, religions, foreigners and races seems more important than attempting to induce diversity artificially.

Tolerance naturally leads to diversity - you can see this in areas like scientific teams, hi-tech companies, or top sports teams. If you want the best people you arrive at not evaluating their race, but their abilities. That is if the society around you lets you do that.

My friends son just spent 6 months working in a chemical lab in Sweden. Met few Swedes, mostly worked with people from all over the world. So he helped with a Swedish project, he can now go back to work on his own project and he knows all these people from around the world who work on similar stuff. No one gives a damn about what ethnicity any of the people involved are or if the lab was "diverse". They all concentrate on the project. If a commision goes in and starts counting how many Laplandian scientists are filling a quota the scientists would show the (imaginary) commision their collective middle finger or just leave.

So i would argue that ethnically diverse scientific teams are not more succesful because they are diverse, they are more successful because they are open and tolerant (and that has led to their diversity).

Forcing diversity will not bring the same result.

Long? Sorry.

Thank you! I feel very noble now.

I think that basically what the Nitrogen method is, iirc any of the noble gasses will work in that capacity. He mentions problems with that method but never elaborates on what they are, I have heard that if done right you basically go to sleep. And if you buy helium on the internet you want to make sure it's pure helium, many manufacturers of party helium started diluting their helium with oxygen to stop people from using them in suicide kits.

Step aside. Step aside. Pardon me, Step aside. Let this woman through.



There is unrest in the forest
There is trouble with the trees
For the maples want more sunlight
And the oaks ignore their pleas
The trouble with the maples
And they're quite convinced they're right
They say the oaks are just too lofty
And they grab up all the light
But the oaks can't help their feelings
If they like the way they're made
And they wonder why the maples
Can't be happy in their shade?
There is trouble in the forest
And the creatures all have fled
As the maples scream 'oppression!'
And the oaks, just shake their heads
So the maples formed a union
And demanded equal rights
'The oaks are just too greedy
We will make them give us light'
Now there's no more oak oppression
For they passed a noble law
And the trees are all kept equal
By hatchet,
Axe,
And saw

Unknowingly of noble birth, receives a call to action, is the only one who can save the day, blah blah blah. It might be an exciting movie if you've never seen an epic before. In other words, bring the kids.

But can you blame 'all' of the problem on Bush/Obama?

I can recall many changes in the 80's from Reagan, huge cuts to school lunch programs, and many attempts to either reduce or totally eliminate the Department of Education.

In 89, Bush Sr. and the Governors of 'every' state held a summit, where they developed some of the first goals for future changes to education. These included some of the first recommended changes to standards-based education.

During both of Clinton's terms they steamed ahead at full speed on these goals, leading to massive changes forcing standards-based education. They implemented ESEA, which was succeeded by the two later programs you mentioned.

So we clearly can't pin it to just one group, as both led the charge at one point or another. This is what I meant by my statement. Neither Liberals nor Conservatives can point a finger and say, "Is this a dagger which I see before me, the handle toward my hand?" They both grasped it and wielded it.

So, now as you mention, we have a climate which puts incredible importance on standardized testing. Because of this, and how the schools are funded, students are basically learning how to pass a test based on minimum standards as set by the government. Students aren't taught what they 'can' learn, but what the government thinks they 'should' learn.

I graduated in 1992, so I missed the true first wave of standardized tests. But if I had not been, I know I would have been *incredibly* frustrated at being forced to learn at a slower pace because all students needed to pass. I can almost guarantee I would have acted out, become more of a clown and troublemaker than I actually was in school, because I would have been bored to tears.

As you mention also, we have a highly media based group of children today. I agree cell phones should be not be allowed.

As far as the publishers, perhaps it is less than noble to prey upon the environment that we have currently. I can't blame them, however, because it would be akin to blaming cell phone makers for making products that children want for connectivity to social media. Like any company, they are in it for a profit. It just happens to be that currently the profit is more in tests than innovative learning tools/textbooks. They are simply doing what they have to do, like any corporation. I'm sure a lot of that includes lobbying to keep standards based education in place.

We can blame a lot of different groups, even parents. But that isn't solving the issue. I have my ideas of how to begin fixing it, which may differ from yours because I am not in the 'business' nor do I have children. I would say the following would be some baseline changes I would implement or suggest:

1. School Uniforms - It makes it harder to differentiate between children and helps against the forming of cliques.

2. A complete 180 from standards based education.

3. We have to invest more money into hiring more teachers. Smaller classes means less stress, more personal interaction, and more time for the teacher to be aware of 'problems' before they blow up.

4. Students should only be allowed to access devices owned by the school, ones that are for education and not instagram. What they have available before and after school is on their parents, but they shouldn't have it in class.

5. I will probably take some flack, but I do believe that vouchers should be allowed versus forced public school attendance. Forcing people who cannot afford private schooling to send their children to public education means you remove choice of the quality of learning. Once public schools start to even out in quality due to the aforementioned changes, then we can remove vouchers.

@newtboy

"Discriminating against people for their legal, culturally accepted, natural behavior makes the person doing the discriminating an asshole. "

Slavery also exists in nature, so it's natural, and once upon a time it was legal and culturally accepted. Discriminating against slave owners though, even back than, is contrary to your claim, quite noble.

"The space study with twins showed that in under a year their genes permanently diverged a full 7%"

You gotta be careful there exactly what is being measured, they did not find that fully 7% of his DNA changed and now was that different. Depending what you measure people also claim that human and chimp DNA only differs by less than 2%...


"Twins aren't genetically identical, even at birth. ...That makes twin studies a piss poor method of gene study."

If you read your own linked article it states:
Twins share the same genes but their environments become more different as they age. This unique aspect of twins makes them an excellent model for understanding how genes and the environment contribute to certain traits, especially complex behaviors and diseases.

If you bother to read the list of peer reviewed articles I linked, they are comparing mono-zygotic twins to di-zygotic twins. The very basic and largely accepted theory being that if a trait has a genetic component, 1000 twins split from the same zygote should share the trait more often than di-zygotic twins.

My argument though really doesn't care much though. I simply argue that beliefs, choices and behaviours are the result of free will and grounds to judge(discriminate) for and against those you deem good or bad, hurtful or harmful. Similarly, gender, race and ethnicity being things that are in zero way the result of free will and beyond the control of an individual and NOT grounds to judge(discriminate) for or against.

Your video, A Noble Spirit Embiggens The Smallest Man (The Simpsons), has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

The difference between Gene Roddenberry and Seth is the america they portray in the show. Gene portrays a noble and moral america that could be. Seth portrays america as it is.

I know what you mean, but I think there is a blurred line when it comes to rape. Does sex coerced under false pretenses count?

If you claim to be in love with someone but aren't, is it rape? Or if you claim to be a millionaire but aren't? If you claim to be of their religion? If you wear a mask and they think you're someone else? If they're drunk or high and they think you're their partner? Or so far gone they don't know or care? How about if you got them drunk/high for that specific reason?

In all these and many more scenarios between, they can enjoy the act, but there's a valid argument for rape. Laws and individual morals vary, but they're all on a spectrum.

If I murder you to hurt your brother, my intent isn't to victimise you, but it still has that effect.

Finally, yes, she brought the conversation public, but under very different (and I'd argue innocent or even noble) circumstances. Revealing the reality - and reveling in the revelation - is in my view rong [sic].

@worm
ha! touche'

i come from a different perspective.
i am the dude sitting on the bench watching the ultra left and ultra right collectively pee themselves,but over such inane,and partisan of political perfunctory reasons.

the ultra left are a gaggle of cry-babies who see racism,sexism and misogyny everywhere,and they openly seek to shut down conversations and discussions by accusation of the very thing they are supposedly fighting for.

the ultra right..however...

are equally detestable in their faux hyper-nationalism,super patriotism authoritarianism.jesus came to earth so you could drive a beamer...but ONLY if your american.

who wet their wee panties at even the slightest thought of a brown person coming to take away their god given right to be a gun toting,cheetos flavored,ignorant twat.

they just LOVE to take credit for accomplishments that they never had a part in,nor had the balls to even attempt.

i am ex-military,and every right winger..and i mean EVERY right winger i know..never served a day.

so i get your point mate.
it is rather hilarious in an existential way,how both the right and left and so unabashedly unaware of their own hypocrisy.

the ultra left have chosen to fight racism,sexism and misogyny by..../drum roll....

shutting down free speech by not only calling everyone who disagrees a :racist,sexist and misogynist,but by also attempting to legislate the very language we use...you know..to communicate.

whereas the ultra right have become such boot lickers due to their own xenophobic fears of everything:different,other and strange that they literally piss themselves at even the mention of brown people,and appear to be willing to sacrifice every civil right,just so they can feel "safe".

they hide behind the flag and hyper-patriotism but thats all bullshit...they are simply trying to hide the pee stains on their camos.they hate brown people with the same viciousness that they hate the godless liberals.

they band together under the banner of jesus,god and country and state..quite loudly..that they will FIGHT sharia law in america.

while seemingly noble,it belies the fact that nobody is trying to impose sharia law in the USA,but holy jesus on a fuck stick,do they drool over the thought of having a "christian" nation,with "christian" values and "christian" laws.

so DOWN with sharia law (which there is no evidence)
and UP with christian theocracy! (which there is AMPLE evidence of).

the hyper ultra political extensions have taken control of my countries political discussion.

a gaggle of bed wetting cry-babies who dominate this hyper-partisan narrative.

and i am just sitting over here laughing my ass off at the almost surreal absurdity of what has become of my nation.

if you still think the fight is between liberal vs conservative,then i submit you have not been paying attention.

you been taken.
you been had.
you have been sold a bill of bullshit goods that has more place on a daily soap opera than in our political discussion.

the simple fact is this:
liberals WON the moral argument,but they never got the memo.
and the conservatives forgot who they were and sought solace in the arms of a corporate jesus with the face of joel olsteen.

my country has now entered the stage of farce.
we are a fucking joke.

but feel free to keep on poking liberals..

and liberals..

keep on poking conservatives.

and i shall sit here feeding the pidgeons laughing my ass off at both of you.