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REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS
Government as a business, education as a business, ideas as a business...
Sunday, April 7, 2013 7:02 PM
SIGNYM
I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.
Sunday, April 7, 2013 8:18 PM
Monday, April 8, 2013 7:39 PM
Monday, April 8, 2013 9:22 PM
1KIKI
Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.
Sunday, April 14, 2013 1:03 AM
Monday, April 15, 2013 1:06 PM
Monday, April 15, 2013 4:44 PM
HKCAVALIER
Monday, April 15, 2013 5:41 PM
Thursday, April 25, 2013 4:14 AM
Thursday, April 25, 2013 4:24 AM
Quote:I don't find efficiency in itself to be a bad thing. After all, why do things in a way that wastes time, energy and resources when you could be doing them with less waste? Being old, and in pain, sick, and out of steam, I tend to meter my output, looking for easy and ecologically thrifty ways to do things (at a certain point ease and thrift collide, mostly I still choose thrift. That may change.) I > personally < still find a lot of value in conserving both myself and external resources.
Thursday, April 25, 2013 4:27 AM
NIKI2
Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...
Thursday, April 25, 2013 1:58 PM
MAGONSDAUGHTER
Quote:Originally posted by SIGNYM: HK, I hate to burst your bubble, but natives of all kinds (Maoris, north Americans, Easter Islanders) managed to wipe themselves out by knife-edge existance, or wasted critical resources profligately. There are stories of north American native buffalo hunts where whole herds were killed for tongues, humps, fetuses, and marrow, leaving nearly-whole rotting carcasses. THe Anasazi practiced cannibalism and strip-mined their local area of trees and water. And as far as I know, while the NE natives were matriarchal, the Plains natives treated their women like shit. The only peoples that I know of who have TRULY learned to live within limits were some Polynesian islanders who could quite often literally see the limits of their world, and who would at times send young men off in canoes whenever the population got too high. Mythologizing ancient peoples isn't going to point us in the direction of a solution.
Friday, April 26, 2013 4:08 AM
Friday, April 26, 2013 6:18 AM
Quote:I realized then, after probing my feelings like I would probe a broken tooth with my tongue, that there were a LOT of ideas I had in my head that were tightly interlinked but deeply flawed. It was like running into a wall in the dark... there it was, suddenly, when it had never been there before, and when I felt around to see how far it extended, I realized it was really, really big.
Friday, April 26, 2013 8:23 AM
Friday, April 26, 2013 8:32 AM
Friday, April 26, 2013 8:38 AM
Quote:I think you may be kinda blinded by the current paradigm. Some (a lot of) humans have learned the lesson, did learn it and applied it for centuries--on this continent, for instance. It's primarily white Europeans who have taken over the entire world with their knife-edge lunacy. Even where white Europeans do not hold sway, their paradigms have choked out the indigenous cultures like kudzu choking the native grasses.
Quote:What's needed, what's always been needed, is gratitude to the planet itself for our existence. Cultures which have held gratitude to the Earth at the center of their spiritualities flourished for millennia before the knife-edge paradigm told them to over-hunt, over-fish and deplete the soil. Many Native American cultures understood and practiced stewardship of the natural world for centuries before the Europeans mucked things up.
Friday, April 26, 2013 12:55 PM
Friday, April 26, 2013 1:22 PM
Quote:Originally posted by Magonsdaughter: Re appreaciating the earth, Cav truly you don't have to believe in god with that one.
Friday, April 26, 2013 1:29 PM
Friday, April 26, 2013 2:58 PM
Friday, April 26, 2013 3:40 PM
Saturday, April 27, 2013 6:58 AM
6IXSTRINGJACK
Saturday, April 27, 2013 1:44 PM
Quote:Originally posted by HKCavalier: The self-described atheists I've known--every last one of them--has been a materialist as well. I've come to understand that the two are generally considered one and the same thing by atheists. So, for all the atheists I've ever known, their atheism includes a denial of anything beyond or behind or in addition to the physical world as currently defined by science. I have had many experiences that fall well outside the realm of accepted scientific materialism. So I don't get to be an atheist (yet--maybe at some future vantage of history, the things I've experienced in my life will be accepted reality, but not now, not yet). So, atheism is lovely, because it doesn't include anything I consider bullshit, like God the Father. Unfortunately, a lot of what I have experienced in my life my atheist brothers and sisters tend to consider bullshit. And certainly any card-carrying theists know perfectly well I ain't one of them. They got an instinct for such things. So I'm stuck in the middle. Looking at both sides. And the one thing I think atheism lacks is a sense of something larger, something to love that isn't human. But here we have Signy, being a somewhat inconsistent (she called it "stupid") materialist. On the one hand, her water and thanks warms my heart as a beautiful expression of natural spirituality. And on the other hand, it makes me sad that she feels obliged to call it "stupid." This kind of self-denegration is not at all uncommon in the serious atheists I've known. Gratitude is not an easy fit for the atheists I've known. That's why I said what I said. I think if the atheists could fit gratitude comfortably into their world-views they would be ideal stewards for our planetary home. Here's a stupid idea of my own. This is how I think. The things we tend to take the best care of are the things we love. If we could LOVE the planet we live on--y'know, think of it maybe as a living being (you know the drill)--then we would be in a better position to take proper care of her. If you can love the Earth and be an atheist at the same time, I rejoice. I have no problem with such an atheism. Does that help?
Quote:Does the notion that there may not be a supernatural So blow your hippy noodle That you would rather just stand in the fog Of your inability to Google? Isn't this enough? Just this world? Just this beautiful, complex Wonderfully unfathomable, NATURAL world? How does it so fail to hold our attention That we have to diminish it with the invention Of cheap, man-made Myths and Monsters?
Saturday, April 27, 2013 6:25 PM
Saturday, April 27, 2013 9:19 PM
Saturday, May 11, 2013 9:59 PM
Saturday, May 11, 2013 10:50 PM
Sunday, May 12, 2013 9:03 PM
Sunday, May 12, 2013 11:10 PM
Monday, May 13, 2013 6:18 AM
Monday, May 13, 2013 6:26 AM
Monday, May 13, 2013 7:49 AM
Quote:Who Is Profiting From Charters? The Big Bucks Behind Charter School Secrecy, Financial Scandal and Corruption Studies shows that charter schools don’t typically outperform public schools and they often tend to increase racial and class segregation. So one must wonder, what exactly is motivating these school “reformers”? And why have they pushed for more and more closure — and new charter schools — at such an unprecedented rate in recent years? Pro-charter supporters will tell you that it’s time for public institutions like our schools to start competing more like for-profit institutions. Test scores and high enrollment, then, define success. Unsuccessful schools, they say, should close just as unsuccessful businesses do. For neoliberal school reformers from today’s Arne Duncan-led Department of Education to scandal-ridden movement leader Michelle Rhee to billionaire Bill Gates, it is taken on faith that market principles are desirable in education. But since it’s not clear that market principles are benefiting students on a large scale, it seems likely that something else is at stake. And reformers may be more than a little disingenuous in publicly ignoring that other, less high-minded thing: Profit. Critics of charter schools and school closings point out that proponents may not really be motivated by idealism, but by self-gain. But who precisely is profiting? And how? Untangling answers to these questions is a more daunting task. Compared to public schools, charters schools are an extremely unregulated business. They contract with private companies to provide all kinds of services, from curriculum development to landscaping. Most of the regulations that bind charter schools are implemented at the state level. And unlike public institutions, the finances of charter schools are managed on a school-by-school basis. Because they are not consistently held accountable to the public for how they distribute funds, charter schools are often able to keep their business practices under wraps, and thus avoid too much scrutiny. For an article of this scope, it’s impossible to describe the profit issue in anything approaching thorough and accurate generalization. Instead, we will look at a couple of decades-old federal incentives for charter investment that may have helped pave the way for the explosion of charter schools today, and provide some examples and snapshots of what is happening on the ground in those major cities where the charter school movement is most influential. The rest at http://www.alternet.org/education/who-profiting-charters-big-bucks-behind-charter-school-secrecy-financial-scandal-and?page=0%2C1&paging=off
Sunday, June 30, 2013 5:49 AM
Quote:Good luck on that. Given that bigger systems tend to be more efficient, the general "drive" will be towards larger and larger systems. History is a good indicator of this trend. There ARE countering forces... primarily, disasters which force systems into smaller, self-sufficient units (with large loss if life, given our history of breeding past environmental/ technological carrying point!) but that kind of corrective factor is intermittent and stochastic. So, in sum: I don't think it's gonna work. It's not economically favorable. Given that bigger systems tend to be more efficient- Population size_ Larger population allows division of labor, greater technical advances, and a higher standard of living. Many papers on the topic. Technological level reversibly depends on population size; once population falls below a certain threshold the technology can no longer be sustained. Geographic area_ Larger geographic area means higher likelihood of obtaining specific resources or being resilient to local disaster. Examples: tantalum, the floods in Georgia. Yes, you can get this by trade, but that means disparate groups have to have safe trade routes and common currency or common trading practices, common language and clock or calendar. Look at how far the 24-hour day has spread, and the seven-day week! In effect, they ARE tied together in a larger system, which rewards greater internal efficiencies. Bulk handling_ Producing and handling items in bulk is much more efficient than producing and handling piecemeal. It doesn't make much sense to set up a production unit, make one or two items, and then retool for something else. Far more efficient to run the unit 24-7 until it wears down ... this is simply a ratio of the investment you made in your production capacity versus the output. I could go on with several other factors, but... you get the point? So, YES, larger systems ARE more efficient. Less labor is used to produce more goods. It is an obvious economic and historic fact. You might be confusing that with being more resilient. Larger units are NOT more resilient, particularly if they have been tweaked to maximum efficiency. A maximally-efficient system is highly interdependent, with no internal redundancy, "spare parts", or resources laying idle. In that case, the system is subject to the slightest disruption in trade, power sources, internal dissent etc.
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