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Another Mass Shooting

Started by Recusant, October 02, 2017, 06:58:25 PM

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Anne D.

Quote from: billy rubin on February 10, 2022, 05:36:37 PM
that is completely correct.

we burned all our garbage. we have a giant cast iron coal furnace in the basement that consumes about 4 or 5 tons of coal in the winter. also paper plates, bags, wood scraps, junk mail, old magazines, discarded books, and anything dry that doesnt go into the compost pile.

my father in law was eccentric to the point of mental illness. he would give the kids all sorts of things we asked him not to bring-- martial arts weapons (we were strict pacifists), comic books with blood-soaked illustrations, literally gabage bag aftrr garbage bag of beanie baby stuffed animals. once he brought all the kids skateboards, although we live on a dirt road miles from the pavement. you couldnt talk to him about it. he was nuts. he was a hoarder and wanted everybody else to hoard as well.

he was a follower of harold camping, and would bring esoteric berean religious books and commentaries-- not one, but five or six of each title. i still have copies of every concordance to the KJV ever written, but ive given away the duplicates.

i dont like the harry potter books because the characters were moral relativists-- evil was an accepted and necessay part of the world, and of the hogwartz school in the form of the slitherins. the followers of voldemort were distributed throughout socieyy and tolrrated there, although voldemort embodied evil. the main characters such ss dumbledore lied to get what they wanted without compunction. and so on.

the attitude towatds religion was weirdly unbalanced. every british public school has chapel, except hogwartz did not. although they celebrated christian religious holidays. voldemort had divided his soul into seven horcruxes to defend from attack.

excuse me. his soul?

and what always irked me was the exercise of magic, without a clue as to where the energy was coming from. fairies? forces of nature? aliens? cthulu? it was nevrr addtessed.

so when the kids were young i threw the harry potter books in the furnace and read them lord of the rings every night instead

when they got old enough to talk about what was in the books none of tbem had any interest in them.

Good on you, billy. My parents let me read whatever I wanted and suss out whether it was BS myself, and look how I turned out.

billy rubin

yes. i didnt keep anything away from them when they had the maturity to grasp what they were reading.

when my kids were young we didnt have a television set in the house. still dont. but i spent every week end at a farmers market in the city with them and they would watch the television set in the motel room as much as they wanted.

but they were vulnerable. they once burst into tears at a three stooges skit where one or another of the actors was left behind at a train station. small children do not have the experience to distniguish lfe from fantasy, and so i ws careful to keep them away from things that i thought they werent ready to handle, and to explain things to them as they encountered them.

as they got older, they got more detail. i never avoided a question from them, ever, on any subject. whether it was war, the holocaust, sex, politics, prostitution, anything-- they got as much detail back as they wanted or could comprehend. these days, theyre all self-confident adults with their own opinions about anything you can think of. sometimes theyre to the left of me, sometimes theyre to the right. but they are informed, and critical of their sources.

li still point out unpopular interpretations of conventional wisdom to them. and theyve changed my mind on things as well, by pointing out aspects of questions that i hadnt thought about in a long time.


News has been received from the Punjab that the Amritsar mob has again broken out in a violent attack against the authorities. The rebels were repulsed by the military and they suffered 200 casualties.

billy rubin

case in point. i wrote this down at the time because it was so funny:

My ten-year old is here. I ask: "How does sex work?"

"I don't want to talk about it."

My 11 year old:  I ask: "How does sex work?"

"It's when the male and female mate."

"How?"

"You put your penis in her vagina."

"Whose vagina?"

"The woman's."

My 8-year old:  I ask: "How does sex work?"

"Why should I tell? You're asking us about all these things we already know about."

"Do you know?"

"Yes. You know, I thought I saw the two cats mating."

"How?"

"There was one on top of the other one over by the clothesline."

My 11-year old again: I ask:  "Have we talked about orgasms yet"

(My 11-year old explains how prostates provides semen to feed the sperm cells.)

"Who do you have sex with?"

"Your wife."

"Why don't you have sex with other people besides your wife?"

(My 11-year old explains sexually transmitted diseases and then walks off to bed before we get into morality.)

My seven-year old:  I ask: "How does sex work?"

"I don't know."

"Are you interested?"

"Not really."

"Do you know how babies get in?"

"No."

"Do you know how they get out?"

"Yes. They come out the vulva with a 'bilical cord on their belly button."

My four year old:  I ask: "Where do babies come from?"

"The kittens?"

"Human babies."

"The human babies come from Shawna and you. They came out of her vulva."

"How do the babies get in?"

"They come out of an egg, and you can't see the egg, because it's inside Shawna. It's cracked inside her."

"Do you want to know any more about sex?"

"Okay. Kevin, do you know where the eggs come from? They come out of the body. Like the puppies. Where's my paint? And Kevin?"

"What?"

"The puppy dogs have sex, too. Do you think the cats are allergic to dogs?"


all my kids were born at home so the older ones were familiar with the process.



News has been received from the Punjab that the Amritsar mob has again broken out in a violent attack against the authorities. The rebels were repulsed by the military and they suffered 200 casualties.

Anne D.

I'm gobsmacked that you burned some young adult fantasy books rather than let your kids read them b/c you didn't want them possibly influenced by "moral relativists." Wow.

billy rubin

#304
Quote from: Anne D. on February 12, 2022, 07:49:41 PM
I'm gobsmacked that you burned some young adult fantasy books  . . .


my kids were not young adults.

would you give your very young kids stacks of snuff film pornography for them learn about human relationships from?

id be gobsmacked myself if you did.

after they were older i didnt regulate anything they wanted to read or watch.

this is the kind of stuff my father in law would give a three year old child:



no. just no.


News has been received from the Punjab that the Amritsar mob has again broken out in a violent attack against the authorities. The rebels were repulsed by the military and they suffered 200 casualties.

Anne D.

Quote from: billy rubin on February 12, 2022, 08:08:38 PM
Quote from: Anne D. on February 12, 2022, 07:49:41 PM
I'm gobsmacked that you burned some young adult fantasy books  . . .


my kids were not young adults.

would you give your very young kids stacks of snuff film pornography for them learn about human relationships from?

id be gobsmacked myself if you did.

after they were older i didnt regulate anything they wanted to read or watch.

this is the kind of stuff my father in law would give a three year old child:



no. just no.

Moving the goalposts there. I'm referring specifically to your stating that you burned Harry Potter books rather than allow your kids to read about characters you considered moral relativists. That's what gets the wow.

billy rubin

then you need to read th ewhole thing, anne:

i dont like the harry potter books because the characters were moral relativists-- evil was an accepted and necessay part of the world, and of the hogwartz school in the form of the slitherins. the followers of voldemort were distributed throughout socieyy and tolrrated there, although voldemort embodied evil. the main characters such ss dumbledore lied to get what they wanted without compunction. and so on.

i dont know whether you have raised children. but in my case i consider raising children with a moral sense of right and wrong to be an essential foundation of their upbringing.

do you believe in right and wrong? that harming innocent people is wrong, and that defending the defenseless is right?

that challenging evil in your neighborhood is a good thing to do, and accepting evil in friends and neighbors is something that is less good?

that distinction is not present in the harry potter series. as i said, malfoy and the slyhterins and their obvious evil were just another part of the family. the town where they bought their magical accoutrements had its own merchants for black magical purchases. the death eaters that tormented the muggles were not confronted or stopped. harry and dumbledore practiced deceit and dishonesty to achieve their ends, in the same way that the so called villains practiced theirs.

harry potters world had no underlying structure of right or wrong. evil and good were equally acceptable strategies for building a society, and no matter what you were there was a dormitory at hogwaertz that would let you hone your skills, and a world outside where you could practice them with impunity and acceptance.

the heroes in harry potter were no different from the villains, except that in the end, they were ones that won.

moral relativism is the idea that right and wrong do not exist. i personally do not believe that they do, but i believe that the concept is one that takes more maturity to comprehend than a five year old child possesses. there is plenty of time for a young adult to evaluate young adult subjects with the skills that come with being a young adult.

so yes. i screened what my impressionable very young children were exposed to, and i think anybody who would do differently would be a pretty poor parent. children grow in judgement and discernment as they get older, and to treat a five year old the same way i would treat a fifteen year old is as flawed a manner of parenting as i can imagine.


News has been received from the Punjab that the Amritsar mob has again broken out in a violent attack against the authorities. The rebels were repulsed by the military and they suffered 200 casualties.

Anne D.

Quote from: billy rubin on February 13, 2022, 01:21:10 AM
then you need to read th ewhole thing, anne:

i dont like the harry potter books because the characters were moral relativists-- evil was an accepted and necessay part of the world, and of the hogwartz school in the form of the slitherins. the followers of voldemort were distributed throughout socieyy and tolrrated there, although voldemort embodied evil. the main characters such ss dumbledore lied to get what they wanted without compunction. and so on.

i dont know whether you have raised children. but in my case i consider raising children with a moral sense of right and wrong to be an essential foundation of their upbringing.

do you believe in right and wrong? that harming innocent people is wrong, and that defending the defenseless is right?

that challenging evil in your neighborhood is a good thing to do, and accepting evil in friends and neighbors is something that is less good?

that distinction is not present in the harry potter series. as i said, malfoy and the slyhterins and their obvious evil were just another part of the family. the town where they bought their magical accoutrements had its own street for black magical purchases. the death eaters that tormented the muggles were not confronted or stopped. harry and dumbledore practiced deceit and dishonesty to achieve their ends, in the same way that the so called villains practiced theirs.

harry potters world had no underlying structure of right or wrong. evil and good were equally acceptable strategies for building a society, and no matter what you were there was a dormitory at hogwaertz that would let you hone your skills, and a world outside where you could practice them with impunity and acceptance.

the heroes in harry potter were no different from the villains, except that in the end, they were ones that won.

moral relativism is the idea that right and wrong do not exist. i personally do not believe that they do, but i believe that the concept is one that takes more maturity to comprehend than a five year old child possesses. there is plenty of time for a young adult to evaluate young adult subjects with the skills that come with being a young adult.

so yes. i screened what my impressionable very young children were exposed to, and i think anybody who would do differently would be a pretty poor parent. children grow in judgement and discernment as they get older, and to treat a five year old the same way i would treat a fifteen year old is as flawed a manner of parenting as i can imagine.

I did read your whole post. You don't trust your kids to think for themselves. You read the HP books yourself, came to the conclusion they promoted evil, but didn't trust that your kids could come to their own conclusions. Thousands of other kids read the books as youngsters and somehow emerged unscathed. But you chose to burn the books rather than let your kids read them. I'm just remarking that that's pretty fucking extreme and, if I do say so myself, fucked up.

billy rubin

#308
anne, have you noticed that we re talking about a five year old child who cannot read at all, much less make adult evaluations about right and wrong, truth and fiction, or good and evil?

would you drop your five year old child off at the bus station alone to make a cross country trip, by themselves?

apparently so.

would you send your unaccompanied five year old child off to a party in the company of un-supervised teenagers?

apparently so.

would you notice that a five year old does not have the intellectual or emotional experience or discernment to understand and process human behaviour and societal norms in the same way that a young adult does?

apparently not.

for crying out loud, anne, observe the context here.


News has been received from the Punjab that the Amritsar mob has again broken out in a violent attack against the authorities. The rebels were repulsed by the military and they suffered 200 casualties.

Anne D.

Quote from: billy rubin on February 13, 2022, 01:57:10 AM
anne, have you noticed that we re talking about a five year old child who cannot read at all, much less make adult evaluations about right and wrong, truth and fiction, or good and evil?

would you drop your five year old child off at the bus station alone to make a cross country trip, by themselves?

apparently so.

would you send your unaccompanied five year old child off to a party in the company of un-supervised teenagers?

apparently so.

would you notice that a five year old does not have the intellectual or emotional experience or discernment to understand and process human behaviour and societal norms in the same way that a young adult does?

apparently not.

for crying out loud, anne, observe the context here.

You can't argue your own point. Classic moving the goal posts move. The issue is this: If my five year old kid can read, and (s)he picked up a HP book, then have at it, kid. You keep bringing up more and more outrageous scenarios that are far from the original scenario you posted about. You're being totally disingenuous and keep deliberately trying to change your original argument.

In second grade, I had an elementary school librarian try to stop me from checking out a book. My parents were fine with me reading whatever I could get my hands on. HP didn't exist at that time, but my parents wouldn't have given one wit if it had and I'd wanted to read it. You have a different philosophy. Fine. Own it.

billy rubin

well, i dont know what to say, anne. ive told you what i did, and why i did it. repeatedly.

nothing i have said is inconsistent with anything else ive said, but the more information i give you, the less you understand it.

im not going to try anymore. we ll just have to move on to some other subject, i guess.


News has been received from the Punjab that the Amritsar mob has again broken out in a violent attack against the authorities. The rebels were repulsed by the military and they suffered 200 casualties.

Bad Penny II

Quote from: billy rubin on February 10, 2022, 05:36:37 PM
i dont like the harry potter books because the characters were moral relativists-- evil was an accepted and necessay part of the world, and of the hogwartz school in the form of the slitherins. the followers of voldemort were distributed throughout socieyy and tolrrated there, although voldemort embodied evil. the main characters such ss dumbledore lied to get what they wanted without compunction. and so on.

The heroes of the story didn't tolerate evil, they fought it.
We are better than them, their place is below us, we will put them in their place.
You who are like us, join with us or die.

It's a bit Hilterish.
Some decided to defy.
Consider the tortured comatose Longbottoms, Harry's dead parents.

They lied, maybe, or twisted a truth, to save lives to prevent great wrongs, pffft.


Quote from: billy rubin on February 10, 2022, 05:36:37 PM

the attitude towatds religion was weirdly unbalanced.

Fuck religion


Quote from: billy rubin on February 10, 2022, 05:36:37 PM

so when the kids were young i threw the harry potter books in the furnace and read them lord of the rings every night instead


Ha ha, chortle chortle, orks eating and orking any flesh they can get is OK
Take my advice, don't listen to me.

billy rubin

Quote from: Bad Penny II on February 15, 2022, 11:17:34 AM
The heroes of the story didn't tolerate evil, they fought it.

i did not see that. i saw two co-equal factions fighting for supremacy.

the good ate alongside evil in the canteen, shopped in the same part of town (different stores) and spent time with evil as equal and rightful citizens.

Quote from: billy rubin on February 10, 2022, 05:36:37 PM

so when the kids were young i threw the harry potter books in the furnace and read them lord of the rings every night instead

Quote
Ha ha, chortle chortle, orks eating and orking any flesh they can get is OK


you miss the point.

the lord of the rings made a distinction between good and evil. harry potter makes no such distinction.


News has been received from the Punjab that the Amritsar mob has again broken out in a violent attack against the authorities. The rebels were repulsed by the military and they suffered 200 casualties.

Bad Penny II

#313
Quote from: billy rubin on February 15, 2022, 04:51:20 PM
Quote from: Bad Penny II on February 15, 2022, 11:17:34 AM
The heroes of the story didn't tolerate evil, they fought it.

i did not see that. i saw two co-equal factions fighting for supremacy.

the good ate alongside evil in the canteen, shopped in the same part of town (different stores) and spent time with evil as equal and rightful citizens.

Quote from: billy rubin on February 10, 2022, 05:36:37 PM

so when the kids were young i threw the harry potter books in the furnace and read them lord of the rings every night instead

Quote
Ha ha, chortle chortle, orks eating and orking any flesh they can get is OK


you miss the point.

the lord of the rings made a distinction between good and evil. harry potter makes no such distinction.

I could see why you'd think that, if your morality was suffering something akin to an autoimmune disease.

Let us consider the House Elves.
The fascist types owned them, enslaved them.
Hogwarts had some, Dumbledore treated them as well as he could.
Meals just appear, people don't ask from where, like shoes from Asia.
Hermione is outraged by the situation and takes action.
Harry frees an elf from his evil master through deception involving a sock,
obviously in your moraly absolute universe he was wrong to do so.

Horgwarts doesn't teach evil.
Some students come from what you might consider evil families, supremacists.
Are vehicles festooned with confederate flags allowed to drop off kids at American schools?

The class system in TLOTR, makes me cringe.
My loyal Sam,
Mr Frodo
Why is Sam as subservient as magically entrapped house elf?

Take my advice, don't listen to me.

billy rubin

#314
Quote from: Bad Penny II on February 16, 2022, 08:42:41 AM
Quote from: billy rubin on February 15, 2022, 04:51:20 PM
Quote from: Bad Penny II on February 15, 2022, 11:17:34 AM
The heroes of the story didn't tolerate evil, they fought it.

i did not see that. i saw two co-equal factions fighting for supremacy.

the good ate alongside evil in the canteen, shopped in the same part of town (different stores) and spent time with evil as equal and rightful citizens.

Quote from: billy rubin on February 10, 2022, 05:36:37 PM

so when the kids were young i threw the harry potter books in the furnace and read them lord of the rings every night instead

Quote
Ha ha, chortle chortle, orks eating and orking any flesh they can get is OK


you miss the point.

the lord of the rings made a distinction between good and evil. harry potter makes no such distinction.

I could see why you'd think that, if your morality was suffering something akin to an autoimmune disease.

Let us consider the House Elves.
The fascist types owned them, enslaved them.
Hogwarts had some, Dumbledore treated them as well as he could.
Meals just appear, people don't ask from where, like shoes from Asia.
Hermione is outraged by the situation and takes action.
Harry frees an elf from his evil master through deception involving a sock,
obviously in your moraly absolute universe he was wrong to do so.

Horgwarts doesn't teach evil.
Some students come from what you might consider evil families, supremacists.
Are vehicles festooned with confederate flags allowed to drop off kids at American schools?

The class system in TLOTR, makes me cringe.
My loyal Sam,
Mr Frodo
Why is Sam as subservient as magically entrapped house elf?


good questions all of them. cant deal with them at length right now but i can offer some alternative views.

a slave master who is benevolent to his slaves is still a slavemaster. dumbledore was a generous and kindly  massa, it seems. yet he kept slaves and used them. i see no moral hero there.

hogwatrz didnt teach evil but neither did the whole culture make any attempt to restrict or even identify the death eaters who tormented muggles, in one instance. just what exactly was hogwartz teaching? was there ever a discussion of of the right and wrong use of the methods they taught? maybe so, i cant recall. but there seemed no attempt at it that i can remember. who paid for the place? was there tuition? maybe this was covered.its been along time.

regarding black and white morals, thats the funny thing about nihilism. since i dont believe morality has a genuine underpinning, i am under no compulsion tomake excuses for not following it. i dont have to generate reasons why people are actually justified in bending theirown rules, or in looking for good reasons to make up for performi g evil actions. all i do is observe that evenpeople who champion a moral structure in something like harry potter are reduced to explaining away its obvious contradictions with whatabouts and itz-not-as-bad-as-thats. if right and wro g are so easily sidestepped, what exactly is right and wrong anyway?

all im doing is observing that the literary device in the harrytter books was very shallow when it came to good and evil. i dont need to justify anything. i just describe whats there.

your e right about sam gamgee, touching his hat and loyal servant and all . it was actually worse than that. do you recall a single person in the books who wasnt fair haired and light skinned and tall and blonde and mostly anglo saxon? i think the harads from the east were described as somewhat oriental in faramirs attack at ithilien and in the scene at the mordor gates. the trilogy was much more than a celebration of mid century claszism, it was a celebration of aryan supremacy. i was talking with lovely wife about that the other day.

bjt even so, good and evil were clearly bounded in the lord of the rings.im still satisfied with my decision to expose my young children to one and let them read the other when they were older.


News has been received from the Punjab that the Amritsar mob has again broken out in a violent attack against the authorities. The rebels were repulsed by the military and they suffered 200 casualties.