Posts by Rich Lock
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Hard News: How much speech does it take?, in reply to Che Tibby,
ZOMG YOU LIKE REBECCA BLACK? - twenty hours of 'musical reeducation'.
You consider twenty hours to be sufficient punishment? You must be one of those panty-waisted 'liberals' I keep hearing about.
WTF YOU DON'T LIKE TWILIGHT?!?!!!1!! - to the iron maiden
Ah, you like twilight. That explains it: the wimminz got you and brainwashed you with their knitting and....that...other....female type stuff that drains our essential masculinity.
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Hard News: How much speech does it take?, in reply to Che Tibby,
carne folk
Sounds like you 'meat' the most interesting people....
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Hard News: How much speech does it take?, in reply to Steve Barnes,
Proud of an accident of birth? and who are the English if not a product of centuries of conquest and pillage annat?
Also of note, I found it rather pointless having to swear allegiance to the Queen to gain NZ citizenship, me being a Pom an' all.
Steve, I personally don't get why people are proud of their particular accident of birth, but there are a lot of people who just are. And what I do get is that a lot of them are, on the whole, good people who really, really don't like being lumped into the same basket as shaven-headed flag-waving neo-nazi BNP extremists.
My view is that sneering at them just tends to encourage them to think that the sneer-ee is a muesli-knitting liberal pc wet whose views can be dismissed in toto, which is not particulary helpful.
Personally, I tend to agree that patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel, and I'll be helping load her maj and big ears onto the tumbril when The Glorious Day of Revolution finally dawns.
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There is a school of thought (which I semi-agree with) that for a moderm-western-world rite of passage to be meaningful, it has to be designed by the participant.
I can think of several that I did for myself, but I only really recognise them as such with the benefit of several years, and sometimes several decades-worth, of hindsight.
PS - apologies for the multi-post blurt: I only get limited windows of opportunity to read and post per 24-hour cycle.
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Hard News: How much speech does it take?, in reply to anth,
I do wonder how deep-seated the biological/psychlogical urge to ‘other’ those who are different is.
No idea.
A study from last year suggests that this is related to oxytocin, often called the "love hormone" because it was previously known for the role it plays in bonding (eg sex, childbirth). More discussion here.
It does, to a greater or lesser degree, seem to be quite deep-rooted in the human psyche. How do we deal with that?
If love and hate are opposite sides of the same coin (or hormone) then it'll be pretty hard to deal with.Nice. Thanks for that.
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Hard News: How much speech does it take?, in reply to webweaver,
Stoopid test if you ask me :)
Yes, but the fact there is a test at all is indicative of a lot of other things that are going on in relation to (UK) immigration, multiculturalism, trying to define national characteristics, etc, etc.
The fact the test was/is useless was pretty much a given from the start: it's probably impossible to actually design an effective one.
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Hard News: How much speech does it take?, in reply to Russell Brown,
I just got a letter saying “congratulations, you’re a citizen now”, which struck me as a fundamentally more British way of doing things.
Indeed. There's no need for any unnecessary fuss and flag-waving, is there?
Yes, but there is a stupidly large amount of weirdly symbolic rituals deeply embedded in public life in the UK, which does seem to run counter to that stiff-upper-lippedness. Suppress the crazy, and it squirts out somewhere else. Royal wedding, anyone?
Possibly related as well: it was for decades, and to an extent still is, considered extremely bad form in liberal-lefty-type circules to wear or display a 'cross of st george' flag. To display one was to effectively send the message that you were a neo-nazi racist thug.
I do wonder what sort of effect that opprobium has on the psyche of people who aren't really inclined that way, but who do identify strongly with 'being english' and wanting to be proud of themselves.
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Ben Goldacre in his 'bad science' book has an interesting take on the getting-people-to-understand-science.
He notes that as a medical doctor, when he has to explain things to patients that that directly affect their health in immediate and critical ways (e.g, and crudely speaking: you have cancer and I'll now explain the treatments and side-effects to you), their understanding of the basics, if explained in a reasonably straightforward way, is actually pretty darn good.
His conclusion is that people aren't dumb, but are usually undermotivated. When sufficiently motivated, people are usually pretty sharp.
So the question is: how to motivate people appropriately?
Having said that, if you can understand fourier transforms without having had a maths-heavy degree-level education, you're doing pretty damn well.
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Hard News: How much speech does it take?, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
I'd argue (if I may)
Well, that's why we're here, right?
To paraphrase Monty Python, if I wanted abuse, I'd go next door.
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Hard News: How much speech does it take?, in reply to Che Tibby,
There's a book someone on here recommended a bit back: 'the hidden rules of english behaviour', which makes a stab at a more objective definition of how the English behave in various situations.
I got a copy out of the library, but it's a hard read - rather like looking a too-honest mirror. 'Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the most-repressed englishman of them all?'