Fnord, thats doing a disservice to the Meiji oligarchy who possessed great ability and intelligence. Most right-wing Japanese nationalities possess neither.
Kazzy, I hear stories about people doing things like all the time. To a certain extent I envy them. I just don't have the personality to take a risk like that no matter how badly I want to. Its a combination of responsibility and fear. I keep wondering what the negative consequences would be. At the same time, a lot of these people do screw up their lives and I have a bit of schnderfraude (sp?) over it.
Jaybird, if thats true than thats one of the stupidest laws I've ever heard of. Bust size is not necessarily a signifier of adulthood.
Virtual child porn is a tricky thing. Making it illegal makes no sense since no actual children were involved, probably. Yet, its very easy to be disgusted by it. There is a lot of virtual child porn in Japan and it freaked me out during my stay there. It was one of the few times in my left that I felt that something had to be done to stop this and I was only twenty.
I recognize myself to much in that quote. I'm not a conservative in the political sense but I was blessed or cursed with a sense of caution that really prevented me from getting really wild. I've done some amazing things in my life but none of them were hedonistic.
Yeah, I can imagine that a kid raised in sheltered bubble is likely to experience a lot of pain unless the kids stays in the bubble after they grow up or have some natural paranoia, cunning, and luck. You have to teach your kids to be prepared for the bad and the good as much as possible.
Yes, lets all go back to the days where most people ate a grain or tuber of some sort for the most part with some vegetables, heavily salted meat, cheese, and butter if they were really lucky.
During the much longed for earlier days of our republic, most people ate horribly. From Gotham by Burrows and Wallace, the diet of the NYC working class consisted of "bread and potatoes, corn and peas, beans and cabbage, and milk from cows fed on 'swill' -by-products of the city's distilleries." The horrible diet of the rural poor in the South and the diseases and malnutrition it caused is well known.
Long live properly regulated free trade and the FDA.
I'd also argue that the law favors families over hedonism considering how hard it is to get a liquor license, open a drinking establishment, or a club. If its hard to make cities more family friendly, its because nobody wants to pay the tax dollars necessary for family friendly cities. Besides adequate housing, you also need daycare facilities, schools, parks, museums, and other services and amenities for people with kids. These things cost money and business people seem uninterested in providing these services and amenities for the most part. You make a lot more money by providing "adult playground" amenities. The cities largely turned into adult playgrounds because policy favored the automobile suburb since 1945. With a different set of policies, our cities would still be places to raise your family rather than adult playgrounds.
I also still think that your freaking about one riot. Should riots happen? No, they shouldn't but one minor riot in one city in a huge nation isn't a sign that culture is on a decline.
The Childless City article is hogwash. I live in one of those famed hipster/adult playground neighborhoods in NYC and I see plenty of parents with kids and babies in strollers. These parents are looking for ways to educate their kids in the city rather than having to move to one of the suburbs. People of my generation and socio-economic group generally want to raise their kids in the city.
The adult play ground aspect of neighborhood is not that hedonistic either. Its people hanging out with friends in bars or restaurants or, weather permitting, in parks or on the street.
I'm fine with Obamacare but my fantasy solution, because it will never happen, is an American equivalent of NHS. I even have a name for it, the United States Public Health Service. I'd also like PBS to be funded through taxes like the BBC. Give them a decent budget to make their own comedies and drama rather than having to show British stuff for that.
I'm having a very difficult time remembering all the passwords and pin numbers that I need to. Especially if I don't use the passwords and PIN numbers often.
Glyph, I think there are some logistical problems to electric monitoring/house arrest. Mainly, if the prisoner rents and can't work while under house arrest; who pays the rent? How do you get food, toilet paper, and the like to the prisoner? Your presuming that each prisoner will have friends and loved ones that will help take care of these things. Prison allows us to take care of the daily needs of prisoners better than house arrest.
I think that the problem is that producers of tv news constantly underestimate the intelligence of their audience. Maybe there is a good reason for this, I don't work in the tv industry. However, if you aim for the lowest common denomintor than you get something shallow.
Greg gets one of my points. My other point is that I think that people have less of a concept of privacy than they do in the past, especially millennials. I'm going to really be surprised if people born after 2000 are going to have any concept of privacy since their parents are posting pictures of them to the entire world through social media. People are simply putting too much out in public on the internet for me to say that they have a sufficiently developed concept of privacy.
The idea of privacy implies that there are things that you want to keep secret from government, from your family, from your friends, from your neighbors, and from your employers. We have people openly posting things to the internet that would have destroyed their lives not so long ago if anybody found out. One thing that we didn't mention in our discussion of Babbit was that there used to be a facade of respectability that most people had to maintain. We don't have that anymore. We're more free but maybe privacy was a fatality of giving up the facade of respectability.
I'm going to add that a lot of people don't care about this because the Internet is pretty much destroying any idea of privacy. People willingly and knowingly share some very intimate details of their life online. We are having an entire generation of children whose parents are exposing their growing up to the entire world.
If we want government to respect our privacy, we need to have a concept of privacy. A lot of people don't anymore. They desire to stand naked through out the world on the Internet.
I think the enlightened conservative response would be not to like it personally but to shrug and have a what can you do about it type attitude and go along. That is not prohibit or punish for it but don't actively support it or cheerlead or it either.
Americans tend to have more space than Europeans on average. Having more space to fill in their homes or even apartments, Americans are more likely to go for the cheap things since most people don't like the minimalist look. It doesn't look homey. I suspect that Australians, Canadians, and New Zealanders are similar to Americans in purchsing choices.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Cultural Kelvin”
Fnord, thats doing a disservice to the Meiji oligarchy who possessed great ability and intelligence. Most right-wing Japanese nationalities possess neither.
"
Kazzy, I hear stories about people doing things like all the time. To a certain extent I envy them. I just don't have the personality to take a risk like that no matter how badly I want to. Its a combination of responsibility and fear. I keep wondering what the negative consequences would be. At the same time, a lot of these people do screw up their lives and I have a bit of schnderfraude (sp?) over it.
"
Jaybird, if thats true than thats one of the stupidest laws I've ever heard of. Bust size is not necessarily a signifier of adulthood.
Virtual child porn is a tricky thing. Making it illegal makes no sense since no actual children were involved, probably. Yet, its very easy to be disgusted by it. There is a lot of virtual child porn in Japan and it freaked me out during my stay there. It was one of the few times in my left that I felt that something had to be done to stop this and I was only twenty.
"
I recognize myself to much in that quote. I'm not a conservative in the political sense but I was blessed or cursed with a sense of caution that really prevented me from getting really wild. I've done some amazing things in my life but none of them were hedonistic.
"
I'm pretty sure that people have been telling this about other people since the dawn of time.
"
Yeah, I can imagine that a kid raised in sheltered bubble is likely to experience a lot of pain unless the kids stays in the bubble after they grow up or have some natural paranoia, cunning, and luck. You have to teach your kids to be prepared for the bad and the good as much as possible.
"
You forgot, "and they won't get off my lawn."
"
That sounds about right. The diet of most people till relatively recently, maybe even still, was monotonous and not exactly nutritious.
"
Lets not forget the public housing programs built by various social democratic parties.
I'm particular fond of what exists in Vienna. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemeindebau
"
Why won't people act like automatons rather than you know, people?
"
Yes, lets all go back to the days where most people ate a grain or tuber of some sort for the most part with some vegetables, heavily salted meat, cheese, and butter if they were really lucky.
During the much longed for earlier days of our republic, most people ate horribly. From Gotham by Burrows and Wallace, the diet of the NYC working class consisted of "bread and potatoes, corn and peas, beans and cabbage, and milk from cows fed on 'swill' -by-products of the city's distilleries." The horrible diet of the rural poor in the South and the diseases and malnutrition it caused is well known.
Long live properly regulated free trade and the FDA.
"
I'd also argue that the law favors families over hedonism considering how hard it is to get a liquor license, open a drinking establishment, or a club. If its hard to make cities more family friendly, its because nobody wants to pay the tax dollars necessary for family friendly cities. Besides adequate housing, you also need daycare facilities, schools, parks, museums, and other services and amenities for people with kids. These things cost money and business people seem uninterested in providing these services and amenities for the most part. You make a lot more money by providing "adult playground" amenities. The cities largely turned into adult playgrounds because policy favored the automobile suburb since 1945. With a different set of policies, our cities would still be places to raise your family rather than adult playgrounds.
I also still think that your freaking about one riot. Should riots happen? No, they shouldn't but one minor riot in one city in a huge nation isn't a sign that culture is on a decline.
"
The Childless City article is hogwash. I live in one of those famed hipster/adult playground neighborhoods in NYC and I see plenty of parents with kids and babies in strollers. These parents are looking for ways to educate their kids in the city rather than having to move to one of the suburbs. People of my generation and socio-economic group generally want to raise their kids in the city.
The adult play ground aspect of neighborhood is not that hedonistic either. Its people hanging out with friends in bars or restaurants or, weather permitting, in parks or on the street.
On “Poverty: Giving a Damn”
I'm fine with Obamacare but my fantasy solution, because it will never happen, is an American equivalent of NHS. I even have a name for it, the United States Public Health Service. I'd also like PBS to be funded through taxes like the BBC. Give them a decent budget to make their own comedies and drama rather than having to show British stuff for that.
"
We're doomed. Libertarians rejoice, we might get your version of government through gridlock.
"
I'm having a very difficult time remembering all the passwords and pin numbers that I need to. Especially if I don't use the passwords and PIN numbers often.
On “Weekend!”
I'm going dancing on Saturday night. I'm doing laundry on Sunday.
On “Death Penalty in Decline”
Glyph, I think there are some logistical problems to electric monitoring/house arrest. Mainly, if the prisoner rents and can't work while under house arrest; who pays the rent? How do you get food, toilet paper, and the like to the prisoner? Your presuming that each prisoner will have friends and loved ones that will help take care of these things. Prison allows us to take care of the daily needs of prisoners better than house arrest.
On “TV Makes Us Look Stupid”
I think that the problem is that producers of tv news constantly underestimate the intelligence of their audience. Maybe there is a good reason for this, I don't work in the tv industry. However, if you aim for the lowest common denomintor than you get something shallow.
On “Don Draper’s Purgatorio”
They had a lot of cool books from back then. Does mom still have the Strange Death of Liberal England?
On “Life Is Short. Hug Your Loved Ones.”
I wish your father the best Will.
On “The End of Benign Ignorance”
Greg gets one of my points. My other point is that I think that people have less of a concept of privacy than they do in the past, especially millennials. I'm going to really be surprised if people born after 2000 are going to have any concept of privacy since their parents are posting pictures of them to the entire world through social media. People are simply putting too much out in public on the internet for me to say that they have a sufficiently developed concept of privacy.
The idea of privacy implies that there are things that you want to keep secret from government, from your family, from your friends, from your neighbors, and from your employers. We have people openly posting things to the internet that would have destroyed their lives not so long ago if anybody found out. One thing that we didn't mention in our discussion of Babbit was that there used to be a facade of respectability that most people had to maintain. We don't have that anymore. We're more free but maybe privacy was a fatality of giving up the facade of respectability.
"
I'm going to add that a lot of people don't care about this because the Internet is pretty much destroying any idea of privacy. People willingly and knowingly share some very intimate details of their life online. We are having an entire generation of children whose parents are exposing their growing up to the entire world.
If we want government to respect our privacy, we need to have a concept of privacy. A lot of people don't anymore. They desire to stand naked through out the world on the Internet.
On “De-gendering the School”
I think the enlightened conservative response would be not to like it personally but to shrug and have a what can you do about it type attitude and go along. That is not prohibit or punish for it but don't actively support it or cheerlead or it either.
On “What Online Education Shares with IKEA”
Americans tend to have more space than Europeans on average. Having more space to fill in their homes or even apartments, Americans are more likely to go for the cheap things since most people don't like the minimalist look. It doesn't look homey. I suspect that Australians, Canadians, and New Zealanders are similar to Americans in purchsing choices.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.