winsor

A) I 'believe' nothing. b) You can suppose whatever you wish.

If you take a professional certification exam, there is no preference to anyone. Period. Thus, if you hire a Licensed Surveyor, Architect or Engineer you know it didn't make any difference if their grandfather built a building on campus or if they they got preferential admission due to a fashionable social category. They either passed or they didn't. I don't claim the there is ever a level playing field by your standards, but I've come across instances that come close. BSBD, Winsor

Neither do I. As an ideal, however, a level playing field is infinitely better than anybody's version of unearned privilege. I tutored athletes who could be criticized as getting a free ride at an institute of higher learning by dint of skills wholly unrelated to education. Having said that, I worked with kids who took their opportunity seriously, and immersed themselves in the toughest courses they could. I would hire people with that kind of drive any day. Funny thing - though I got many swimmers, gymnasts and the like through advanced Math, Physics and Chemistry, I don't recall any Football (the American variety) players. BSBD, Winsor

You play the hand you're dealt. A level playing field allows the best of every sector to succeed, or the worst to fail. Discrimination of either the 'bad' or 'good' variety helps the scum to rise to the top. Equality is a double edged sword. 'Equity' is bad news. BSBD, Winsor

When the goal is to replace one repellent flavor of racism with another equally repellent variant, the quest is flawed.

Some people are getting fed up.

FIFY CRT is every bit as egalitarian as the KKK. BSBD, Winsor

Not to worry, the Catholic church is shameless.

I thought gay Catholic men were called "Priests."

So if you can somehow portray anything else as being anywhere nearly as fucked up as Woke that makes it okay? I'm not supporting anything else in particular when I point out that Woke is pathologically fucked up. I also find anything Trump to be nauseating, but that is a different thread. BSBD, Winsor

My main objection to Woke ideology is its intolerant to the point of totalitarian nature, but its fundamentals are seriously FUBAR coming and going: https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/p/the-trans-movement-is-not-about-rights-67e A more pathological disease of denial than Woke does not readily come to mind.

If someone changes lanes abruptly and then locks up the brakes, all bets are off.

I got the Salk vaccine and got Polio. I got the Smallpox vaccine and got symptomatic Smallpox. A 'mild' case of either Polio or Smallpox beats the shit out of the full-blown disease, and I get vaccinated against pretty much anything that I can.

Not "the Truth" or "the Science," but it is one standpoint: https://swprs.org/professor-ehud-qimron-ministry-of-health-its-time-to-admit-failure/

Yeah, I did too.

I suppose that's one way of looking at it. I like the Onion's treatment of "Misremember the Alamo!," which pretty much nails the garbled treatment of the subject so typical in popular 'culture.' Ron Howard's film addressed the subject in a manner more consistent with the documented realities than did the fanciful film starring John Wayne et al. Texas seceded from Mexico for slavery, rather than 'freedom,' and the decisions related to defending the Alamo were more ill-considered than heroic. Similarly, any account of "Custer's Last Stand" that bemoans the lack of survivors to tell the tale rather overlooks the fact that there were indeed thousands of survivors, rather a few of whom provided eyewitness accounts of the fracas. "Examining" History through a lens focused solely on one issue is bad, regardless of which issue is under consideration. A legitimate treatment of History is generally dispassionate, and takes a skeptical view of popular accounts. When an account indicates a particular bias, I'm with Dr. Peter Venckman (" I'm fuzzy on the whole good/bad thing"}, and I prefer to focus on the data. Paymaster's records are preferable to the accounts given to the King by his minstrel. I'm not supporting whoever or whatever you deem to be 'conservative' so much as to point out that anything Woke is guaranteed to take any point that may have merit and ensure that it is rendered chock full of shit. BSBD, Winsor

For better or worse, Trump has a knack for making everything sound like unhinged bullshit. It is reminiscent of jokes whereby one tells the absolute truth in such a way as to convince the listener that it is a lie, and either gets out of trouble or gets the benefit of the doubt thereafter when actually lying. I again contend that accusing Trump of lying is unfair, since it gives him credit for being able to tell the difference between 'truth' and 'falsehood.' From what I can tell, the very ideal of 'truth' is viewed as an irrelevant abstraction, and he is comfortable with blurting out whatever crosses his mind. I very much doubt if he even cares whether what he says matches objective reality with any regularity. The fact that he occasionally says something worthwhile is somewhat entertaining, but of no particular interest otherwise. BSBD, Winsor

I just kind of like this “Political correctness is fascism pretending to be manners.” - George Carlin Cancel culture - political correctness amped up on steroids, the self-righteousness of a narcissistic age, and a mass-marketed pseudo-morality that is little more than fascism disguised as tolerance - has shifted us into an Age of Intolerance, policed by techno-censors, social media bullies, and government watchdogs.

The title of this thread refers to Trump being forgotten. Since I'd be happy never to hear his name again, what will it take to completely forget the sonofabitch? There MUST be some way he can be disqualified from having anything to do with the Government again. Admitted, potential candidates from either party are a real rogues' gallery of cretins and losers, but Trump and Clinton really pin the meter. What did we do to deserve this? As you were, Winsor

Unfortunately, some posters are impervious to killfiles.

I think abortion should be mandatory in a variety of cases. Since people talk about eliminating poverty, it should be noted that one sure way to take the likelihood of poverty to the next level is to have kids you can't afford. I have lived in neighborhoods where kids were a cash crop. A single mother who had been on public assistance since she was a teenager somehow got pregnant right when her daughter was due to turn 18. I'm sure that was just a coincidence. At any rate, I would support some kind or rules where, if you have kids and are on the dole, having further kids would disqualify you from any further assistance for life. Subsidized contraception and free and available abortions should be de rigueur. Taking it one step further, a condition for public assistance should well be free reversible sterilization for everyone involved. If you can't afford the procedure to restore fertility during childbearing years, you sure as hell can't afford further children. Considering how seriously fucked up kids tend to turn out when coming from the welfare baby factories I have witnessed, I would greatly support providing and incentivizing abortion for anyone whose birth control failed. The same goes for girls who get knocked up and gave the kids up for adoption upon birth - bad juju. Of course, if I get pregnant I'm keeping the baby, but that's just me. BSBD, Winsor

Agreed. That would be a bad thing.

Vaccines are good in general, but I'm a fan of information regarding the benefit/detriment analysis. Apparently the courts agree: https://www.sirillp.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/ORDER_2022_01_06-9e24e298ae561d16d68a3950ab57077b.pdf

An endless wellspring of sources to discredit anything Woke there is: https://www.city-journal.org/black-lives-matter-reuters-and-the-price-of-dissent?wallit_nosession=1

In a sense this it true, but the conclusions one reaches are typically predicated upon how the question is phrased. Oliver Sacks came across some work that was done in the early 20th century, and was puzzled by the fact that there was no mention of the syndrome after the teens. Going to lunch, he came across rather a few people on the streets of Manhattan who displayed the symptoms described in Dr. Tourette's work. His conclusion was that in 1914 the medical establishment in Europe became overwhelmed by the carnage of the Great War, and many of the developments that immediately preceded the conflict were largely forgotten by the time it was over. At about the same time Siemens was investigating some copper oxide devices, and gave up in frustration around 1912 when they hit a wall due to nonlinearities they could not eliminate. A researcher coming across their work concluded that they had, in fact, produced a transistor and didn't know what they had. In all fairness, the triode tube was not patented until 1914 by R. H. Goddard, so there was scant familiarity with electronic amplifiers. In any event, once a discover has been made it often becomes apparent that the solution was staring you in the face all along. BSBD, Winsor