"insanity and young men have serious heart failures" That's tosh. This gentleman has a congenital condition called hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (or HCM pronounced 'HOCUM' in the trade). It's a rare condition of which one variant is inheritied dominantly. Undiagnosed people who do high intensity sports are more likely to die from sudden death younger than the sedentary population with this condition - it's nothing to do with the type of sport itself.

This happens to soccer players too often. People always talk about soccer being for pussies in the US but you try running that much, it's insanity and young men have serious heart failures. One was just as recent as last season in the Premier League, Fabrice Muamba.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0XN1d6s2oU

He survived and later returned to White Hart Lane.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmNLbuvOH3o

As a referee I must point out the excellent refereeing from both refs here. I mean there's so much fakery it's hard to know what's going on at times. Both refs handled the situations well.

Some impressive beardwear from these young men.

"Hello little piggy!" Brilliant.

@chingalera
to say that every person who joins the military has some form of broken empathy system is just not accurate.
do they exist?
well i would have to concede that they do.what those numbers are is not something that can be quantified.(i looked..came up with nada).

i was in the military.
many people were in the military and they all had different reasons for joining.
for some it was a way out of poverty.
others it was duty.(which was my case)
some even due to a sense of honor and to fight for freedom.(yeah yeah..we both know how that reason turned out for them).

and i am sure sprinkled in that number of recruits were the sociopaths and psychopaths,and the number may have possibly risen due to the abolishment of conscription.

when you understand that boot camp is basically brainwashing 101.the young and fairly innocent are the easiest to break down and build back up in the model that you wish them to be.

killing is NOT a natural human activity.
it needs to be taught.
and who better than an 18 yr old?

for people such as you or i,who have a lifetime of experience,morality and well established egocentric systems in place this brainwashing would almost certainly fail.

who am i kidding....it failed when i was 18.i had a huge problem with authority even then.so i did my tour and opted out.

understand i am not making a moral argument for or against the military,just that these young men all had their reasons for joining and not all of them were to kill other humans.

and yes.
the military aint for everybody.

I just finished a nice article about black young men in Philadelphia. Check it out it's at least interesting and relevant.

http://chronicle.com/article/The-American-Police-State/142965/

Yeah, Ricky, it does suck when silly people tweet you poorly thought out complaints about your jokes.

Meanwhile, after Lindy West debated Jim Norton on rape jokes, she was the target of literally hundreds of tweets and comments saying she should be raped (or that she wishes she was raped but unfortunately she's too ugly).

http://jezebel.com/if-comedy-has-no-lady-problem-why-am-i-getting-so-many-511214385

So excuse me if I don't have much sympathy to spare for the poor oppressed comedian complaining about how people are trying to take away his FREEZE PEACH by criticizing his choice of material.

Let me quote from Lindy's post:

"I don't believe that previously non-raping audience members are going to take to the streets in a rape mob after hearing one rape joke. That's an absurd and insulting mischaracterization. But I do believe that comedy's current permissiveness around cavalier, cruel, victim-targeting rape jokes contributes to (that's contributes—not causes) a culture of young men who don't understand what it means to take this stuff seriously.

And how did they try and prove me wrong? How did they try to demonstrate that comedy, in general, doesn't have issues with women? By threatening to rape and kill me, telling me I'm just bitter because I'm too fat to get raped, and suggesting that the debate would have been better if it had just been Jim raping me."

We already give women (and men) control over their reproductive habits. It's pretty apparent that a large portion of these men and women don't deserve that control, since they reproduce without any thought or consideration to their impact on the rest of society. If everyone were mature and responsible, there would be no such thing as abusive or negligent parents. Parenthood should be a privilege, not a right. As an aside, in 2010 the divorce rate in the U.S. was over 50%. If 50% of married couples aren't even mature or responsible enough to sustain a marriage, how can these people be expected to raise mature and responsible children? Hell, how many of those couples had kids before they divorced? You ask me to have faith in people but the numbers really don't give me any reason to.

As for these young men, I'm guessing they had lousy parents who never taught them to respect other people or the law. That's probably why they raped a girl, peed on her unconscious body and took pictures of it all. If they hadn't been caught, do you really think they would have regretted their actions and turned themselves in? No, they would have just continued life as usual, grown up, had kids and raised them with the same twisted values. It's a vicious cycle that exists because we have no regulation over reproduction. Instead of wasting taxpayer money trying to rehabilitate them (and very likely fail; the vast majority of sexual predators can't break their habits), why not just end the cycle right then and there? Humanity is hardly on the verge on extinction, so getting rid of the trash and cleaning up the gene pool would only help make life better for future generations.

All that said, you're right that issues like poverty, lack of education, etc, are all relevant here. But would those still be issues if everyone were raised to be contributing members of society, as opposed to worthless parasites that exist solely for the sake of existing? There are a finite number of jobs and classrooms out there. There aren't enough to accommodate every living person. That's why we need population control. If you extend yourself beyond your own means by having kids you can't afford to feed or send to school, you're just making the problem worse.

The book is filled with statistics that support the position (often to the point of information overload).

And you're right that we need to address the root of the problem but you have the wrong root. Lousy upbringings can indeed lead to criminal behaviour, but what leads to lousy upbringings?

Lack of education, unemployment, perceived social inequality all factor into it. And yes, some people are just messed up and shouldn't have kids, but I'd say they are a minority.

So instead of your frankly insane, dystopian, eugenics-based future, we could instead look at ways to make everyone better off. First step, give women control over their reproductive cycle. This has been shown time and again to be one of the keys points in raising a societies economic and social values.

To get back to the original point here, how do these young men, (who had every advantage in life, compared to 90% of the world anyway) fit into your future?

Cry me a f*cking river CNN, THis girl was carried around from party to party, was violated, photographed naked, URINATED ON, and then had the images spread around through social media.. Promising young men dont do that kind of sh*t. Promising young men see that happening and they shut it down and stick up for the poor girls honour. Alcohol is no excuse either.

This is the oldest trick in The book. Pro tip for young men in America: Youth night at the church is an EXCELLENT source for ass. Truth.

"Oh look, it's those nice young men who like to feed me. Thanks for all the mouses!"





(Yes, I know, it's mice. But mouses sounded better.)

I believe you, @gorillaman. If those sentences read the same to you, then they read the same to you. It IS hard for me to understand how that can be true because my experience is radically different, but that is my problem, not yours.

I'm sure it is a generational thing (although I know that there are young men and women who are careful with their language, so it isn't JUST me and my generation. You made some pretty sweeping statements about the whole world, as if the way you experience things is the standard. Gotta disagree with you there. And your use of "we" does seem a tad bit ... over-reaching.) It blows my mind how things have changed in the past 40 years. I grew up with arguments about whether it was okay to call an author who happened to be a woman an "authoress." Can you imagine? Making the act of writing a book gender-related? That word is gone. As is "poetess." And very few women were reporters -- if they wanted to work for a newspaper, they were mostly relegated to the "women's section" where the news was all about society events and recipes. It was even labelled "women's section." It was a different world, and I do NOT miss it.

I too would love it if gendered nouns and pronouns went away. I just learned that until relatively recently, it was proper usage to say "their" instead of "his" as the gender neutral version. And it was a woman who worked hard to change it (I guess it bugged her that a singular subject would have a multiple pronoun, or whatever the grammar terms are.) I'd love to go back to "them" and "their".

I disagree with you that my "radical" version is unsound. I acknowledged that the cultural significance has changed in the past 40 years. However, I dare say you would not go up to a 35 year old black man who is a stranger to you and call him a boy to his face. Although if you do it, I would love to hear the results. We would need a sample of more than one, right? -- you might get a polite person, after all!

If you try this experiment, I urge you to avoid a Southern accent and turn the "boy" into a two syllable word.

As to your question -- "What do you think is the #1 reason 'girl' as a synonym for 'woman' is in more common usage than 'boy' for 'man'?" -- you wouldn't accept my answer, I fear. It hasn't changed in 40 years. I hear things you don't, right? I am happy to tell you, if you really want to hear. I am afraid what I say will just cause you to scoff.

I would love to hear your answer to that, though. Why is that? Why is it okay to casually, consistently, overwhelmingly call a grown woman a girl, but we don't do that to men? Why the difference? What is gained from that word substitution? What is lost?

And why is sometimes okay to use "girl" and "boy" for grown men and women? I do it all the time. Boys' night out, girls' night out -- those are just fine with me.

Personally, I would love to see the word "guy" get ungendered. I have a very butch Lesbian friend who HATES it when a group of women is called "guys." I can't stand the word "gal" -- don't know why. It is just... ancient and stodgy. I love being out with the guys, but lord save me from being out with the "gals".

I do wonder about this part of your attempt at this experiment -- "words come up ... in the wrong contexts." I don't understand what that means. It is a simple list of rules. You hear the word "man", change it to "boy." You hear the word "girl" applied to anyone age 20 and older, you change it to "woman." If you are adventurous, you use those words when talking. How can there be "wrong contexts"? That is exactly the experiment, isn't it?

Any way this plays out, I really appreciate you engaging me on this. This is the most fun I've had with this topic EVER. And I really appreciate hearing from a different generational perspective. I'm letting it percolate and I can feel things shifting a bit.

>> ^shinyblurry:

>> ^RFlagg:
Problem is, they say the reason we were doing better was because we had God in schools, then we took him out of the schools and everything else... everything comes to how god was involved back then and less so now therefore we are paying the punishment of not having god in our lives... never mind how well many of the more atheist countries are doing (they think atheist countries are more like the old USSR)...
>> ^Fairbs:
Something most Republicans can't grasp is our country is better off when the rich are taxed more. 40 years ago, taxes on capital gains were 80%, but now Romney feels he's taxed too much at 15.


The argument isn't really about countries that are more atheist versus countries that aren't. It's that the United States has uniquely been a Christian nation since its founding. We are one nation, under God. Most people don't understand what that means; they think it is archaic when it is really the most important founding principle we have. The rapid decline in civil society has to do with the fact that, for the first time generations of Americans are growing up without the judeo-christian ethic being instilled in them from society, especially from their schools. And what we've seen since 1963 is a dramatic increase in the rate of violent crimes, teen pregnancy, STDs, the divorce rate, broken families, drug use, etc..the list goes on. There are the top 7 problems we had in our schools according to government records in 1940 vs 1990:
1940
1. Talking out of turn
2. Chewing Gum
3. Making noise
4. Running in the Halls
5. Cutting in Line
6. Dress-code violations
7. Littering
1990
1. Drug abuse
2. Alcohol abuse
3. Pregnancy
4. Suicide
5. Rape
6. Robbery
7. Assault
So, the argument is really that, we as a society have collectively turned our back on God, and therefore God has also turned His back on us. The principle is, you reap what you sow, and that's exactly what is going on right now. That's why this nation is facing calamity after calamity, because we have lost our way and we refuse to repent and turn back to our Creator.


You are picking and choosing your details man. I think you are also getting your 'facts' about the 40's and 50's from tv shows and movies and using them to spin your idea of 'how golden and free of crime America was before we turned out back on God.' And what about the decades before the 50's, certainly we hadn't 'turned away from god', so how do you explain the debauchery of the 20's, the turn of the century 'robber barons' that lived in luxury while their sweat-shops were worked by the masses of poor and children. The herione gangs and the waves of violence around 1910, 15.

It is really funny how some people (mostly white, older and male) see the 40's and 50's as this shining era of godly love, no crime and family harmony. It was all like 'leave it to beaver'. Dad made the big bucks, mom stayed at home and the most the kids ever got into trouble was when they broke a neighbors window. Yes, generally crime rates were low in the 40's and 50's but you cant attribute that to people 'having the fear of god' back then but skip over times that had just as much, if not even more religious fervor but also plenty of social upheaval and crime. Point of fact crime rates right now in most states are at historical lows, nearly to the levels of the 50's, but you still see murders every day. The information age has changed these things. In the 50's the only news you had was local. You might never have heard about some crime rave in another state.

Other things can attribute to the lower crime rates of those years. How many young men were serving in WWII during the 40's, that certainly would account for a drop in crime rates. And as to the 50's, the threat of nuclear war was constant. 'In God We Trust' wasn't added to money in the mid 50's because it was a particularly religious era, but rather because if the threat of communism. The term used to denote a healthy and proper family in the 50's wasn't coined the 'nuclear' family for nothing.

Last I'd like to point out that the US was 'never' designed as a Christian Nation and has only receive that monicker in the last number of years. I know bible-thumpers and hard-right politicians would have you think, hell have even changed school books, to wipe out ideas like the simple fact that many of the founding fathers wanted nothing to do with religion, though certainly not all. You can twist the words of John Adams, Benjamin Franklin or Thomas Jefferson all you want, but they above all abhorred the idea of religion influencing politics. This is not to say that they were all anti-religion, many advocated religion as a personal foundation of morality, but to hear modern republicans suggest they wanted Christianity to be the basis of the constitution and this country, they would be rolling over in their graves.