Are the protests spreading across the U.S. the sign of an 'American Spring'?

Erica Ambler wrote:

I went to see Tony Benn on one of his book tours. It was a packed hall of angry young men, but he insisted he would only take questions from women. Cue 10 minutes of embarrassed silence.

Maybe he just wanted to bone them?

Erica Ambler wrote:

I went to see Tony Benn on one of his book tours. It was a packed hall of angry young men, but he insisted he would only take questions from women. Cue 10 minutes of embarrassed silence.

There's actually some printed research out there (on the Internet) regarding how often females in a mixed-gender setting, whether in a class room or as adults in a workplace environment, are always less likely to raise their hands to ask or answer questions from a teacher or speaker even though they know the answers and the rest of the class knows they know the answer. I even saw it myself a few years ago when I went for some courses and the females in the room just refused to raise their hands in front of men. I'd wait...wait...wait, as would other guys, and finally the teacher (who was female) would just give up and finally call on us so we could get the class moving along.

Too often smart women don't like to show that they know anything in front of men and boys; that's one reason why some education reform advocates have been pushing for public schools to be separated on gender, but the National Association of Gals constantly tries to push back against such measures. There's also been a call for young black males and females to start up their own charter schools, but too many liberals fight against that as well.

The problem is that modern social sciences don't want to accept that there are innate differences in men and women. Instead they've been pushing to make all people "the same" and advance a feminist-centric agenda, even if it means willfully turning a blind eye to biology.

I think that's a very good point. Indeed society could profit enormously from gender separated schools. I'd even go so far as making that race, gender and sexuality separated education. I wouldn't have had to endure all those inhibited homosexual white male prats who were to afraid of their own homosexuality and tried to make up by acting especially macho and right-wing. That bunch really ruined British public schools.

Boy or girl?

Brooklyn–Battery Tunnel

Mr. Brown wrote:

Boy or girl?

Not sure. Based upon the lack of dental work, though, we have to assume it is British.

6of1 wrote:

I'd even go so far as making that race, gender and sexuality separated education.

That's a bit too far - take the example of my friend: she thought she was a lesbian so by your reasoning she should've been in a seperate school, and yet now she is dating a boy, so she's evidently bi. How do you account for that especially when people aren't really sure if they are homosexual or not? Besides that it is creating a divide between people and asking for trouble IMO.

And the race card I don't agree with at all.

Gender-based schools is different ... I do attend an all-girls school. I have since I started high school (previously went to a co-ed). I can't really say I prefer it considering I haven't been in a co-ed school setting since I was younger so obviously I will have changed but I do feel it has been beneficial.

However that was a choice made to have a same-sex educationg after primary school. Being seperated by gender is fine IMO as long as that is a choice because I still do have friends who go to a co-ed school and find it fine. It should always come down to choice however that is only availible if there are schools around offering that naturally.

Fae wrote:

And the race card I don't agree with at all.

Gender-based schools is different ... I do attend an all-girls school. I have since I started high school (previously went to a co-ed). I can't really say I prefer it considering I haven't been in a co-ed school setting since I was younger so obviously I will have changed but I do feel it has been beneficial.

However that was a choice made to have a same-sex educationg after primary school. Being seperated by gender is fine IMO as long as that is a choice because I still do have friends who go to a co-ed school and find it fine. It should always come down to choice however that is only availible if there are schools around offering that naturally.

A lot of female teachers seem to think girls would do better in school if they were in separate schools from boys, or at least had classes all to themselves. But then the blowback comes from teachers unions and the whole idea gets dropped.

As for being separated by race....I've seen many black educators call for having not simply all-black schools (which we have unofficially here in Atlanta anyway), but all black male schools. It's kind of hard to argue against such a concept when we don't have to live in their neighborhoods and see the effects of truancy and delinquency among young black males. With drop-out rates near 50% in some all-black high schools and districts, what could possibly be lost by separating them by gender and race? Young black males (and to a slightly lesser degree females) have the worst illiteracy rates in the country; they are severely ill-equipped to move into college and the business world, and for way too many of these students, if they don't have an NBA or NFL career track, they are worth nothing once they "graduate" from high school (and trust me, in Atlanta that hasn't been hard to do; the Atlanta School District is caught up in the largest cheating scandal in the history of this country, with teachers having "correction" parties to alter black kids grades so that they could pass the CRCT and move on to the next level, and so that the Superintendent Beverly Hall could get her fat 500k bonus).

It's easy to say we shouldn't separate classes by race and gender, but I've seen first hand the kids coming out of the Atlanta School District, and you'd be hard pressed to explain to me how their position in life could be any worse by having all-black, same-gender schools.

Salomé wrote:

Les extrêmes se touchent.

The GOP has the Tea Party, and the Dems have these retards.

Oh please.

:roll:

Please show me an extremist position espoused by the Tea Party. These Occupiers, OTOH, is just plain nuts.

Fae wrote:

6of1 wrote:

I'd even go so far as making that race, gender and sexuality separated education.

That's a bit too far - take the example of my friend: she thought she was a lesbian so by your reasoning she should've been in a seperate school, and yet now she is dating a boy, so she's evidently bi. How do you account for that especially when people aren't really sure if they are homosexual or not? Besides that it is creating a divide between people and asking for trouble IMO.

And the race card I don't agree with at all.

Gender-based schools is different ... I do attend an all-girls school. I have since I started high school (previously went to a co-ed). I can't really say I prefer it considering I haven't been in a co-ed school setting since I was younger so obviously I will have changed but I do feel it has been beneficial.

However that was a choice made to have a same-sex educationg after primary school. Being seperated by gender is fine IMO as long as that is a choice because I still do have friends who go to a co-ed school and find it fine. It should always come down to choice however that is only availible if there are schools around offering that naturally.

Fae, that was supposed to be ironic.

In part.

I indeed consider repressed chubby right-wing homosexuals with a macho chip on their shoulder to constitue a gender and a race of their own.

Luckily, most of that bunch had no business at a public school.

The Tea Partiers and the Occupiers do have a lot in common. The Tea Partiers want to keep more of their own money and the Occupiers also want more of the Tea Partiers' money.

Perilagu Khan wrote:

Salomé wrote:

Les extrêmes se touchent.

The GOP has the Tea Party, and the Dems have these retards.

Oh please.

:roll:

Please show me an extremist position espoused by the Tea Party. These Occupiers, OTOH, is just plain nuts.

I assume you are kidding. If not, there is no point in us getting into any discussion on the matter.

It'll only end with Oppers telling you to get your tits out, Khan.

Such nice people, fabulous.

"Congress = slaveowner
Taxpayer = nigger.'

Dale Robertson's placard is unpleasant, badly spelt and inflammatory, but only a public sector worker with a massively subsidised final salary pension plan could disagree with his basic point. For example:

*I work until June each year just to pay the British taxman. Only after June does any of my money go to me.

*There’s 20% VAT on almost everything I buy to pay for unelected and unaccountable EU bureaucrats.

*I pay £2K a year essentially to get my bins collected by local government. You sure the private sector couldn't offer me a better deal?

In Britain, we pay taxes or go to jail, even though we have no guarantee of efficient use of those taxes, and despite plenty of evidence to the contrary.

Slavery seems a fair comparison to me.

But that ratio - work till June for the taxman - isn't much different in any country of comparable living standards. 20% VAT is mid range in the EU. And our bins would not get collected cheaper just because a private firm gets the deal. Remember what happened when British Rail was sold? I do; thanks but no thanks.

Kennon wrote:

But that ratio - work till June for the taxman - isn't much different in any country of comparable living standards. 20% VAT is mid range in the EU.

So your argument is that just because other countries governments are as unfair and inefficient as Britain's we shouldn't complain? I don't know... Sometimes I think the people deserve everything they get.

Erica Ambler wrote:

Kennon wrote:

But that ratio - work till June for the taxman - isn't much different in any country of comparable living standards. 20% VAT is mid range in the EU.

So your argument is that just because other countries governments are as unfair and inefficient as Britain's we shouldn't complain? I don't know... Sometimes I think the people deserve everything they get.

That's not my point, just bringing some facts into the discussion.
How many are we? 60, 61 million? We don't work till June for fucking nothing. You need infrastructure, roads, supplies networks, bridges, harbours, airports, public services, schools, civil servants and public workers for the whole gig. You forget to turn off the stove and you have a little 'thermal incident' in your kitchen? Nice if the fire brigade shows up and saves a few lives, isn't it? You think you live in a dangerous neighbourhood? Wait till the plans to make the police forces more effective are realised and the remaining officers first collect their bribes from the Murdoch gang before they decide to show up at your doorstep.

I'm fairly sure to govern modern societies in the 60 million individuals range there are needed lots of funds. And reflexively crying for privatisation isn't the solution in my view. The private sector can fuck up just as effectively as the public one. What is needed is a relation between economic performance, population, available resources and functions and size of the public sector. If that ratio doesn't add up you have a problem. But the simple fact that the US for example is populated by 200 million people, spread over an entire continent explains a large part of their debt. It doesn't mean there is not a problem with that fiscal balance, it's just not to be expected they would have the same debt as the UK. On top of the billions blown by the wars.

Taxation in Old Europe is insanely and unnecessarily high, and with Obama and his crowd running the show, the US is on the fast track to that same kleptocratic end. But at any rate, there is nothing fundamentally barmy or extreme in questioning the scope of the government and the tax rate. Pulling this issue off the table by labeling it "extreme" and drawing equivalence between Tea Partiers and Occupiers is just another means of bannishing fiscal conservatism from the table of polite discussion, just as Leftists have done with cultural conservatism by labeling it "racist."

Perilagu Khan wrote:

there is nothing fundamentally barmy or extreme in questioning the scope of the government and the tax rate.

Quite the contrary. Constantly questioning the necessity for government involvement is a prerequisite for a healthy society.

Adulthood and citizenship should be less to do with age than self-sufficiency.

The questioning of necessity is hardly extremist in my view. The abolition of the entire public sector is. If you really think so you ought to go the whole distance and abolish the state too. I think that's anarchism then and there I think the Occupiers and the Tea Party meet again. What do they claim, 'We, the people'?

Kennon wrote:

The questioning of necessity is hardly extremist in my view. The abolition of the entire public sector is.

I haven't seen anyone advocating that here. Just the need for restraint and efficiency. Not bad watchwords when you're spending other people's money.

Erica Ambler wrote:

Kennon wrote:

The questioning of necessity is hardly extremist in my view. The abolition of the entire public sector is.

I haven't seen anyone advocating that here.

Neither have I. Nor is this the Tea Party position. Tea Partiers are basic, mainstream conservatives, not right-libertarian anarchists.

Erica Ambler wrote:

Kennon wrote:

The questioning of necessity is hardly extremist in my view. The abolition of the entire public sector is.

I haven't seen anyone advocating that here. Just the need for restraint and efficiency. Not bad watchwords when you're spending other people's money.

Taxes are alway too much for those paying them. And too sparse for those spending them, that's just a platitude. If you feel you pay too much (really, who doesn't???) then you'll have to cut back on demands and standards, also not a bad thing IMO. But I've yet to see that Utopia that provides the same living standards we enjoy (and we live better than the richest kings lived only 150 years in the past, most of us) with a lot less taxes. If you can build such an exemplary country let us know, please. Until then I just stick with what I got.