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Question: is there anyone in the entire world who can say 'Before this incident, my opinion was {A,B,C}, which you can find documented at {cite source}. As a result of this incident, I have come to the conclusion I was wrong. I now believe {D,E,F}. My reasons for changing my mind are {1,2,3}'? No I didn't think so.
Which tells you that the rational content of 'discussions' of this incident will be approximately 0%, the emotional content 100%.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, waging all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies.
-- Sarah Hoyt
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That is the most flawed piece of logic I've heard in a long time!
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"flawed" is the word that came to mind instead of awed.
"I had the right to remain silent, but I didn't have the ability!"
Ron White, Comedian
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The government should issue guns to kids when they turn five so they can shoot back if some madman all dressed up in combat gear goes on the rampage. Giving them bionic limbs to enable them to outrun bullets will be too expensive, giving them guns is the best and most cost effective method to give them a fair chance of survival.
Und wenn du lange in einen abgrund blickst, blickt der Abgrund auch in dich hinein - Friedrich Nietzsche
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When a child dies, all rationality goes out the window. For some people, at least.
Maybe it evolved that way, as way to ensure that people will, to the point of irrationality (and beyond), try to protect the genes they passed on. Even if it really has zero effect because they're not even living on the same continent, because all rationality has disappeared at that point.
To irrationality and beyond!
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harold aptroot wrote: When a child dies, all rationality goes out the window. For some people, at least.
Good point. Although I am not sure about the qualification at least as it relates to those personally involved with the child.
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harold aptroot wrote: Maybe it evolved that way, as way to ensure that people will, to the point of irrationality (and beyond), try to protect the genes they passed on. Even if it really has zero effect because they're not even living on the same continent, because all rationality has disappeared at that point.
Were it biological; the evolutionary pressure would have been the other direction. When you look past the headline number of an ~40 year life expectancy in pre-industrial societies; what you're seeing is not most adults dieing between 30 and 50, but rather the combination of adults having a good chance of living into their 60s or 70s and childhood mortality rates of 30-50%. The extreme sort of reactions you see today didn't start happening until typical family sizes shrank from lots of kids to only 1 or 2.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, waging all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies.
-- Sarah Hoyt
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Dan Neely wrote: and childhood mortality rates of 30-50%.
I can only suppose that you meant something different with that phrase/sentence and with the numbers given.
Dan Neely wrote: The extreme sort of reactions you see today didn't start happening until
typical family sizes shrank from lots of kids to only 1 or 2.
That is a simplification.
Although (presumably) implicit from your previous statement, because child mortatily rates are so much lower, parents no longer expect/accept the death of a child like they did when the rate was higher.
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In other words, Dan, you think anyone who is having an emotional reaction to the tragic deaths of twenty children, a community's beloved school principal, and other adults: is not logical ? And that, for people to express that reaction, here: indicates they are defective in rational abilities ?
To decry, with emotion, the insane irrationality (is there another kind ?) of America's (my own country of origin) deadly tragedy of allowing easy access, for anyone, to weapons of mass homicide, meant for killing human beings in warfare, and for use by police in dealing with criminals: not for hunting: is not rational ?
"The supreme function of reason is to show man that some things are beyond reason." Blaise Pascal
The needless deaths of twenty children: are beyond reason !
I believe that to experience what is "beyond reason:" in this case a horror of an atrocity that indicts humanity, and society; is: to then, as Kant suggested in his "Critique of Pure Reason," be morally compelled to consider, with all our rationality: "what we must do."
But, at this moment, surely, it is most reasonable to grieve, profoundly, at this nightmare of the snuffing out of the human potential of the young and innocent.
yrs, Bill
"We live in a world ruled by fictions: mass merchandising, advertising, politics as advertising, instant translation of science, technology, into popular imagery, increasing blur of identity in realms of consumer goods, preempting any free, original, imaginative, response to experience by the television screen. We live in an enormous novel. For a writer it's less necessary to invent a novel's fictional content: fiction's already there. A writer's task is to invent a reality." J. G. Ballard, 1974
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BillWoodruff wrote: To decry, with emotion, the insane irrationality (is there another kind ?) of America's (my own country of origin) deadly tragedy of allowing easy access, for anyone, to weapons of mass homicide, meant for killing human beings in warfare, and for use by police in dealing with criminals: not for hunting: is not rational ?
Or to claim that others are irrational simply because they don't adhere to ones own opinion. That certainly is a long tradition in the US.
BillWoodruff wrote: The needless deaths of twenty children: are beyond reason !
Like the over 1,000 that die every year from child abuse in the US?
Or that the leading cause of death for children in the US (age 0-14) is motor vehicle crashes? And not only that several thousand die, but the hundreds of thousands are injured - every year?
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Dan Neely wrote: is there anyone in the entire world who can say
A lot, but most aren't proud of the fact that they "learned" something. To most people, it feels like having to admit that they, once, were wrong.
I don't like East-coast brackets in code. After seeing Luc's code, I have to say that at some points, it's more readable than mine.
Been programming against the DbConnection class when I first met .NET, nowadays we use the IDbConnection .
..but nay, even when remembering the source, it's hardly an academic exercise where one checks the validity of the source.
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I think seizing a horrible tragedy to make a political point is very sad.
We probably should spend some time crying with the victims.
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MehGerbil wrote: We probably should spend some time crying with the victims.
You knew them?
Otherwise, I'd start to wonder about the stability of your emotional life.
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Very sad? Would you like to rephrase that to something less emotional? Really now, this is not the MehGerbil I know.
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MehGerbil wrote: We probably should spend some time crying with the victims. Good words, MehGerbil; I agree with you wholeheartedly, but, I would add, that: after the time for sharing grief: I believe there comes a time for action, so these needlessly destroyed, precious, young lives,' so violently snuffed-out: have meaning, and, to prevent such tragedies from occurring again.
Unfortunately, the place where "action" must occur, to stop the ready availability of weapons of mass homicide in the U.S., is in the nasty arena of political life. It's in that polluted stream of political power that we must, as Hamlet says, "take up arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing, end them."
Your words bring to my mind these words of Kahlil Gibran:Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh and the greatness which does not bow before children. sadly, Bill
"We live in a world ruled by fictions: mass merchandising, advertising, politics as advertising, instant translation of science, technology, into popular imagery, increasing blur of identity in realms of consumer goods, preempting any free, original, imaginative, response to experience by the television screen. We live in an enormous novel. For a writer it's less necessary to invent a novel's fictional content: fiction's already there. A writer's task is to invent a reality." J. G. Ballard, 1974
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The one thing you will never, ever read on the forums is "You know what? All this time I was wrong. Thank you for correcting all my opinions that I previously got from newspapers. Who knew that I wasn't as well informed as the people who do this science thing day in day out."
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Gun control posts. Both sides putting the jerk into knee-jerk reactions.
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Pete O'Hanlon wrote: Gun control posts. Both sides putting the jerk into knee-jerk reactions. Hi Pete,
And, from whence, anatomically, cometh the reaction, that you are putting into this thread, at a time when twenty schoolchildren are dead, and twenty-six, or more, families are bereaved ? Are your knees stock-still ?
At the time of the Dunblane School massacre in your country, in 1996, seventeen dead, many children; at the time of the Hungerford massacre in 1987, fifteen dead: did you not have an emotional reaction ? Did you not feel sympathy, even grief, for the bereaved, at the terrible news ?
What is fact is: that the Dunblane and Hungerford massacres in your country directly led to strongly enforced laws controlling possession, and licensing, of semi-automatic, and fully automatic, weapons of any type, hand-guns, shotguns, and rifles (even to regulating which type of air-guns, or "fake weapons" could be purchased, and/or used): public policies, that resulted in your now, in England, and, to some extent, the rest of Great Britain, enjoying a very low rate of homicide, and, your now, in England, being able to allow most of your constabulary to go about without guns (as they have done, traditionally).
Would it not be rational for an American to want to see their country of origin experience the same freedoms from random violence, by a population armed with (easily accessible) weapons meant for mass homicide, that your country (the true "mother country" of America) enjoys ?
A condition directly related to public demands for comprehensive weaponry regulation "triggered" by outrage at just the type of tragic event that occurred this week, in Sandy Hook, in the U.S.A. ?
have Mercy, Sir.
sadly, Bill
"We live in a world ruled by fictions: mass merchandising, advertising, politics as advertising, instant translation of science, technology, into popular imagery, increasing blur of identity in realms of consumer goods, preempting any free, original, imaginative, response to experience by the television screen. We live in an enormous novel. For a writer it's less necessary to invent a novel's fictional content: fiction's already there. A writer's task is to invent a reality." J. G. Ballard, 1974
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Bill, I am well aware of the history of these massacres. However, my point still stands, that this is a knee jerk reaction. Arguments are being made from an emotional stand point because they happen immediately after, and the way that both sides are trivializing the issue to support their arguments is disgusting. A tragedy has occurred. That is all that matters.
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Hi Pete,
Forgive me, please, if my response to you seemed "judgemental," or, ad hominem.
I know, well, that you are a compassionate, and caring, human being; I have seen ample evidence of that, over years, here on CP.
Perhaps I am "missing something," in terms of whatever dialog has been going on here on CP related to the Newton tragedy: I have not read the "other two threads" referred to by the OP of this thread.
So, perhaps, I have not seen the "trivialization" you refer to: but, I wonder if: an immediate reaction, an outpouring of grief, and, accompanying that, statements that we must "do something" to prevent such calamities occurring again: is not a natural phenomenon: after a senseless tragedy that leaves twenty children dead.
My personal views on how military grade, assault, and mass-homicide, weapons, should be regulated by any country, in the "age of terror," are simple: I think what your country, England, has done, is a fine example. My personal views on this issue have been consistent for many years.
The great, I believe, insoluble, problem in this area will be the virtual impossibility of stopping someone insane, or psychopathic, from getting hold of some means of mass murder.
And, how do you deal with the possibility that someone who today is a responsible, trained, vetted, licensed, owner of weapons for hunting or self-defence, five years from now, after divorce, job loss, alcoholism, etc.: then becomes a menace.
To deal with that problem without creating an intrusive political state of the type envisaged by George Orwell, in "1984:" "aye, there's the rub," as Hamlet says !
Yet, all that said, I feel I understand how, if a given person, and family, is living in a high-crime, high-homicide, urban area, where the possibility of home-invasion is real: how: they might wish to own a weapon(s) for self-defense that would be semi-automatic. Again, I like what I see as the "English model:" training, permits, and regular renewal of permit, required (if I understand the "model" correctly).
Of course, you could well "hoist me on my own petard" here, by just pointing out the fact that you can't compare England with America in terms of personal weapons ownership and usage, in history, culture, in "reality." America has about eighty-eight guns per 100 people !
I grew up in an American family with a father who was a farmer's son, who grew up hunting, and fishing (as much for food, as for sport, particularly in the Great Depression times when my grandfather lost his vast, bank-financed, land-holdings, and was just barely able to hold onto the family farm), but who only had a handgun when he was in the Army in WWII. He tried to get me "into" participation in hunting and fishing "culture," and I had my own double-barreled shotgun at age 12.
But, as with everything else about him, his attempts to mold me, shape me, into the "manly" ways of his American old-south "culture of fierce honor," in that area, as in every other area: failed. My appetites were, always, only for literature, science, and the "life of the mind," and the worlds of imagination, and creativity. So much for the "legendary athlete," later, football-coach's: first son
May this day be one of blessings and safety for you and your family, and all families everywhere.
regards, Bill
"We live in a world ruled by fictions: mass merchandising, advertising, politics as advertising, instant translation of science, technology, into popular imagery, increasing blur of identity in realms of consumer goods, preempting any free, original, imaginative, response to experience by the television screen. We live in an enormous novel. For a writer it's less necessary to invent a novel's fictional content: fiction's already there. A writer's task is to invent a reality." J. G. Ballard, 1974
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Dan Neely wrote: No I didn't think so.
Presumably you mean this very specific one. The problem with that is that because it is so new it would be difficult to do that.
Dan Neely wrote: Which tells you that the rational content of 'discussions' of this incident will be approximately 0%, the emotional content 100%.
And your point is?
Perhaps you think that by making this statement you are going to effect some change?
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