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| A few small updates. | March 29, 2013, 5:33PM |
 by: eon |
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I made a few small updates and bug fixes today: 1. Inline image re-sizing. If you post an image that is wider than 800 pixels, the image will automatically be re-sized to a width of 800 pixels. Additionally, the image will link to the original so that it will be easy for anyone to click it and view it in full size. This applies to images posted in profile comments, forum posts, article comments, and almost anywhere else on the site. 2. YouTube stuff. Just a small update and bug fix here. You can now use the [tube] tag with the new "youtu.be" type addresses to link to videos. A bug was also fixed with embedded YouTube videos which caused some of the controls not to work properly. As always, Enjoy... | |
topic: Site News | |
[reply] [5 comments] |
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| The New Document | March 13, 2013, 3:54PM |
 by: Springheel.is.dead |
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There has never been anything like the internet. Not since the formation of the Silk Road has the free exchange of information between different cultures become so available, yet the onset of the digital age far surpasses it in magnitude. The world is simply a more populous place than it was, and to offer the entirety of humans the opportunity to participate in a greater world culture is a miraculous and complicated thing. It implies change in all facets of world culture: the economy, entertainment, correspondence, publication, and language. People use the internet for lots of reasons, but it is clear that the average user wants to enjoy themselves by pursuing knowledge and experience regarding their private interests. It is the nature of entertainment to provide abstract insights into the human experience, and people who are entertaining themselves are not only seeking to understand life, but also to understand entertainment. Entertainment is comprised of common points of reason and emotional appeal. It is a person’s viewpoint applying to many, and so in seeking the human experience, humans seek to understand one-another. http://homenet.hcii.cs.cmu.edu/progress/purpose.html To understand one-another, we must speak the same language. More than fifty percent of the internet is written in English, and has been for some time. There is an implied change in this trend, but so far the internet has developed as an English place, and so participants would need to read English. http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats7.htm There are many defendants of the purity of language, to the degree that certain invasive or viral words will be redefined as another word more suited to the context of the language. However, the evolution of language is an inexorable fact. As societies mix, we naturally seek to understand one-another. Sometimes the response to this is a hostile insistence on one’s own lingual point of view, but it seems that the trend of language is to change, and so those opposed to its diversity must be a minority. http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/evolenglish.html The effect of this has been a necessary reduction of complicated discourse in the past, and so it is in the interest of preserving the integrity of elevated language that these proponents of lingual isolationism perhaps act. Ironically, these objections to mixing language are born from a desire to better understand one-another. In preserving the elevated functions of language by keeping the waters clear of multi-cultural discursive mud, the ability to speak and understand one-another about more abstract or academic ideas becomes cemented into an isolated culture. This presumably comes at the cost of alienating other cultural viewpoints, and so the quest for knowledge seems incomplete at either end. “…meeting places for community and university values, language, and knowledge to become mutually informative and sustaining, places where greater numbers of people have a say in how knowledge is made, places where area residents, students, and faculty explore works of art, literature, and film to find ways in which these works still resonate with meaning and inform everyday lived struggles.” The Public Intellectual, Service Learning, and Activist Research Ellen Cushman PG 810 Document page 819 https://bb.umflint.edu/bbcswebdav/pid-2515070-dt-content-rid-1404255_2/courses/201320.ENG340.01/Cross-talk.pdf This passage, taken from Ellen Cushman’s article in Cross-Talk in Comp Theory, describes the aims of service-learning, where a student is made to become part of a greater community in order to learn from that community’s goal-related perspective. She talks about bringing the intellectual world down from the ivory tower to find a common audience with non-academic people. This article was written in 1999, so she may not have realized that her intended results are achieved by the internet, for the first step down from the ivory tower is one that finds common language. Many websites publish in multiple languages. There is a decidedly interested exchange of media between the two biggest web cultures: the east (China) and the west (United States). We watch each other’s movies, listen to each other’s music. We want to understand one-another, but that one frustrating barrier remains: language. The obvious answer to this is for a service to translate the web. All of it. We could reach each other in forums, share our lives through pictures and video, navigate all the websites, and generally become an absolute melting pot of all available world culture. The threat of altered language would no longer be from bilingual expressions. However, many documents would come to resemble a certain mode of discourse which comes from direct translation. Those wary of losing an international audience may necessarily have to simplify their language in order to be translated with absolute success. Academic writing in the new international context once again contradicts itself; with a desire to be complete and complex in execution tempered by the want to be heard. In the world outside academic writing, the average internet document is changing the most. The document is malleable. There is never a finished product. It can be edited at any time, updated, or otherwise changed, sometimes by many different users in a collaborative effort. The most direct expression of this is seen in articles which are literally a collaboration. They have multiple authors and can be accessed and updated by anyone. Wikipedia is a good example of this, as are google documents. Articles without explicit collaboration seem collaborative as well in that they make more available their citations in the form of hyperlinks, which perforate the work and perhaps draw the interested internet user away from the work source to chase a series of links in their pursuit of knowledge. Furthermore, collaboration occurs when commentary on the article is an available option. Comments can range from simple sentences to full-on articles in response. Authorship becomes less authoritative and more subjective. The readers are the author as much as the author is, and it is unclear who we should listen to. Mostly, authority is granted to whomever sounds convincing, and so it is assumed that this is a product of proper grammar and intelligibility. In short: we acknowledge intellectual authority based on not only a convincing use of language, but also a relatable use of language. If the reading is too dense, it is likely someone else has written it more simply, and may even be credited with a link in the article. This also may take the form of a comment in the article, which allows a user faced with acquiring the most efficient source of information another avenue through the work, circumventing the intended path set by its original author. Water takes the course of least resistance, and, with a world of information to choose from, so does the user of the internet. There is clearly a change in the way that we of the digital age acquire knowledge. “…students learn well by reading and writing with each other, responding to each other’s drafts, negotiating revisions, discussing ideas, sharing perspectives, and finding some level of trust as collaborators in their mutual development.” Distant Voices Teaching and Writing in a Culture of Technology Chris M. Anson PG 788 Document page 797 https://bb.umflint.edu/bbcswebdav/pid-2515070-dt-content-rid-1404255_2/courses/201320.ENG340.01/Cross-talk.pdf Those participating in internet discourse are always collaborators, and so we are always placing our trust in that academic-sounding voice to guide our learning. Oftentimes, that voice is each other, and so we teach as we learn, offering a variety of perspectives and sources. This cloud of information is a haze in which much reading can become lost. As the user follows one link to the next, what they are reading is truncated by an attention span assaulted by a myriad of distractions. Not only is online interaction beset by life’s normal spectrum of diversion, but also things published in the document, such as advertisements, hyperlinks to other articles, and the supplementary commentary, which may be accessed first to gage the worth of the piece and its worthiness in the face of valuable and distracted time. A wary web article must consider this in addition to its international applicability, and so seeks to be brief and elegant in the points it makes. If one seeks to be a popular source, that source must be to the point enough as to represent absolute knowledge as readily available as possible. Indeed, much of the web’s knowledge-seeking behavior occurs when something is brought up in casual discourse and those participating in the collaborative learning event wish to discover the truth behind their speculation. Such a thing commonly occurs on a mobile internet-accessible device of some kind, and so brevity becomes not only desirable, but explicit, if a source is to be considered. As these knowledge absolutes, such as the kind provided in question and answer type forums, become more prevalent, the result is a reduction of discussion in general. Instead of seeking to find a reasonable truth by talking about it, the answer can simply become available. The quest for knowledge once again truncates itself, becoming ironically as brief as it is expansive and expandable. “We’re already practicing brevity constantly. Twitter maxes out at 140 characters, Facebook statuses max out at 420 and wall posts stop at 1,000. Hashtags encourage #smushingtogethershortsearchablewords and most texting services have a character limit, too.” http://www.thenextgreatgeneration.com/2011/03/the-art-of-brevity-communicating-in-the-modern-age/ Within all these paradoxes and self-contradictions, the new digital document gestates. Its real face lies in the whim of the masses, where it is continually being redefined, revised, and collaborated on. If what is popular in web documents now becomes more popular, the normative practice of writing an article will change considerably. For one, all documents will be web documents. Newsprint is on its way out. In 1999, Chris M. Anson predicted that the new newspaper will be downloaded onto a tablet, where the reader can enjoy a multimedia experience. We are not so far off from that now. Digital versions of much reading, from comic books to textbooks, are available and thriving. With this adaptation to web-living, the nature of the text is necessarily subject to the limitations (and simultaneous limitlessness) of all web documents, and so will come to resemble them more and more. The concept of necessary brevity will become a prevalent one, so much so that an article may only resemble a fraction of an article, with the option to expand by linking to another article, or engaging in the discussion that the article generates. An article will go beyond text, incorporating mixed media to grasp in hand firmly the attention span of its viewer. It will become almost a plea to listen, hashtagged somewhere in the white noise of countless voices trying to tell, sell or entertain a user. With so much to know, the only things worth knowing will be things known quickly, all in order to seek the next bit of knowledge. An article may then need to be broken into segments, with relevant headlines existing as a thesis statement, and just enough supplemental information to entice interest in the next link. The internet user wants to navigate knowledge on their own terms, and so seeks to find information from a variety of sources, even while looking for the one that reinforces or informs them absolutely. The internet user wants two very different things, then: to find reasonable truths stated explicitly, but also to find them themselves. The internet user makes the information their own when they learn to formulate the questions they want to ask in a way that the internet will respond to. Finding the right search engine terminology is essentially the act of discovering knowledge for an internet user, and so in seeking to learn what the internet has to teach us, we learn the language of the internet. Articles which exhibit phrasing common to search terms will be most often read and so most often referenced, and the kind of discourse they exhibit will inform future article writers. As aforementioned, this language will become most common because of translation and general elegance and brevity, and will be the next transformative step in the advancement of English as a language in the information age. The most explicit example of the evolution of English in the world wide web is perhaps the onset of internet slang. Internet phrasing is so prevalent a lingual phenomenon as to find use in our spoken dialect. Anagrams allow us to represent emotional states, ideas and interjections in a readily-definable and overall elegant way. It is a movement defined by one over-arching principle, which governs the change of the article as well as the change in language it implies: We all want to understand one-another as quickly and easily as possible. If the result of the multi-cultural internet phenomenon is not to adopt foreign words and phrasing, it is at least to create a language as foreign as any and intersperse it into English, which is encouraged in many ways to become more simplified as a whole. The irony lies in the fact that becoming a generally more knowledge-seeking people seems to result in a depreciation of our ability to explain said knowledge. It could be said to cheapen the experience. Where people would previously sit down to a whole knowledge meal, there is now the availability of knowledge fast food. Quick and easy may be the American way, and the internet, which is an American construct, is coming more and more to resemble that ideal. Indeed, the most popular articles are usually ones featuring a list of some kind. The ‘top ten’ something or other is a commonly circulated internet archetype. It is easy to see how this caters to a deficit attention, and provides the type of easy knowledge statements that are valued by the typical internet user. The academic up side of this is that there is simply more information to consume. While it may be more difficult to discern the type of article an academic would be interested in reading from the countless many available in the average internet experience, there will always be academic journals intent on publishing knowledge the old way, for an audience that can appreciate it. These will perhaps serve as resources for those dedicated to reforming knowledge for the new internet audience, but they will never be as popular as a short article in simple, clear language, perhaps featuring a cute video with a cat in it. | |
topic: Essays | |
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| Keeping: How Treasure Makes Monsters | March 2, 2013, 4:18AM |
by: Springheel.is.dead |
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In the early years of the 1600’s, north England and Scotland were host to monsters. The mutant tribe of Sawney Bean “lived exclusively from robbery - and from cannibalistic murder.”(Thomas) They were a family raised on a foundation of murder; acts so atrocious that they led to the manhunt and eventual public castration and execution of the whole clan. These activities were hallmarked by an attitude towards material wealth that has often been a sign of monster-dom in even the earliest instances of literature. “…the soldiers found piles of money, possessions and clothes, taken from the Beans ' many victims.” (Thomas) In addition to being murderers and cannibals, the Beans were also hoarders, a condition as indicative of their evil as taking human life. This attitude can be attributed to similar monsters; those found in the epic Beowulf. While the unprovoked murderous intent of these two monsters clearly separates them from the ranks of civilized men, their description could not be complete without their hoarding of material wealth. Indeed, it is precisely this attribute that preliminarily identifies them as monsters, and gave cause for writing them as such. To examine this necessary treatment of treasure, one should note the way that the distribution of wealth is regarded in that time. In many instances of early literature, the craftsmanship of goods, especially those made of gold, is something truly to be revered. From the annals of old Troy to Beowulf, it is not uncommon for an author to wax poetic about the gilded details of a warrior’s armor, or the lustrous sphere of their shield. It is not only the admiration of these things that distinguishes the actions of men as opposed to monsters, but the way they are handled. Kings and feudal lords, especially in medieval Scandinavia, were characterized as giving treasure to their subjects. “…he would share everything with young and old that God had given him.” (Luizza, L. 72) is said of Hrothgar. “…he gave out rings, treasure at table.” (Luizza, L. 82) This practice was so prevalent that kings were called ‘ring givers’. One can see the way that this may make a warrior into a king. Not only does it seem to trade wealth for loyalty, but sets a standard for the way that gold should be treated, and the way that it can translate into camaraderie. Set very much in contrast to this is the attitude of the monsters towards their treasure. “…he [Grendel] saw no need to salute the throne, he scorned the treasures; he did not know their love.” (Luizza, L. 168-169) In this way, Grendel rejects not only treasure, which he has mounds of back in his lair, but also the social system built upon that treasure. It is in this light that Grendel is absolutely distinguished as being a monster. While from monstrous lineage and bathed in the blood of thirty dead thanes, it is not until he rejects wealth that he is fully alienated from the social world and made a true pariah. In many ways, the Beowulf poem seems to desire to draw parallels between lordship and the moral good intended by Christianity, and so there is something distinctly anti-Christ about hoarding within the context of the poem. There is a clear distinction between “…distributed treasure and unused treasure, for the former seems to be a metonymy for lordship and the Christian ideal, while the latter seems to be a perversion of them both.” (Marshall) This ‘perversion’ is further reinforced by the actions of the dragon, who sits on an enormous treasure horde not his own. While Grendel perhaps took his treasures from his many encounters with the world of men, the dragon sits apart from it entirely, and took for himself a cave full of treasure belonging to a once-prosperous nation-state. This is perhaps even more grievous, for while Grendel seems to have ‘earned’ his horde in a sense, the dragon has just come upon his, and has no real relation to it. Unlike Grendel, he desires his treasure, noticing when even some of it comes up missing. We can see a point of contrast here between Beowulf’s earlier dealings with monsters and their wealth. While he left the hoard of Grendel, Beowulf desires the dragon’s treasure, even unto giving up his life for it. There are many reasons purported for this. Marshall notes that “given the recent destruction of his entire kingdom by the dragon, it necessarily follows that Beowulf now has virtually nothing left to dispense.” (Marshall) This makes sense, considering the attitudes towards treasure-giving being a function of a lord, but there is another nuance worth discussing: The dragon’s wealth has a known history, one which ends in the death of an entire people. The dragon’s horde is the remnants of their economy. It has not been removed forcibly from circulation by the murderous hand of an anti-Christian beast, but abandoned in perhaps the only acceptable way: a natural termination of the treasure-giving system that represents order and right in the Scandinavian world. The gold, while made unavailable by a hoarding monster, is still ready to flow through the veins of the economy once more. It was amassed there by men, not monsters, and is earmarked for use by men. It is clear that the function of distributing treasure is an important one in Beowulf. One can understand how it shapes the economic whole of the medieval Scandinavian world. This was in a place when people mostly farmed or subsisted on trade and the lifeblood of their own day’s efforts. The warrior class was made to live on plunder and the generosity of their lord. Without a person to give them treasure, the warrior’s life would be impossible. In the closing action of the poem, Wiglaf exhibits precisely this principle when he says “-he gave us these rings- that we would pay him back for this battle-gear, these helmets and hard swords.” (Luizza, L. 2635-2637) The tools of a warrior’s trade are counted among the treasure he is allowed, and they become a material symbol for the obligation one has to their lord. Because war and the men who participate in it are often romanticized, their interests were popularized as well, and so the listening populace would appreciate treasure much the same. People would enjoy these songs about violence, and so enjoy the treasure that brought it to them. Treasure was popular. It looks nice, and men paid by treasure and gratuity were their only protection against barbarian hordes and other ‘monsters’. Treasure was the most coveted representation of ‘work’ that existed, and so the exchange of it and the receiving of it was a big thing; perhaps the pinnacle of social interaction. By contrast, it is clear that the hoarding of treasure is a decidedly anti-social statement. It makes a thing into a monster not only by being in opposition to the social order, but, especially in the dragon’s case, by being in opposition to a lord. To dispense with the dragon and gain the treasure, one is gaining an increase in lordliness as well. Beowulf was able to save his people from a treasure-less life of abject poverty at the end, acting not on avarice, but on the desire to further his people, and prove himself a worthy ring-giver. “…it is important to notice that Beowulf is only gratified because he was able to acquire the treasures for his men.” (Marshall) The epic hero is set against a monster not only because the monster exists in opposition to the concepts that structure his kingliness, but also because he keeps for himself the things that allow a man to be a king; the very fuel for the fires of lordship. It seems our heroes and monsters are fated to always be opposed. The monsters represent the cease of social commerce; of keeping when we should be sharing, and keeping to ourselves when we should be working together. The heroes are the collective voice of the people, representing the bonds between men, and how they can be made stronger. It is unclear why Beowulf would be uninterested in the wealth of Grendel but later trade his life for it at the hands of the dragon. Perhaps if he were a lord with a responsibility to pay his men at that earlier time in his life, he would have chosen differently. Works Cited Bammesberger, Alfred. "Who Advised Beowulf to Challenge Grendel?" ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes and Reviews. Routledge, 31 Oct. 2011. Web. 31 Mar. 2012. Thomas, Sean. "Monster of the Glen." News Bank. Daily Mail, 5 Apr. 2006. Web. 1 Apr. 2012. Marshall, Joseph E. "Goldgyfan or Goldwlance: A Christian Apology for Beowulf and Treasure." Studies in Philology. University of North Carolina Press, 2010. Web. 1 Apr. 2012. Liuzza, RM. "Beowulf." The Medieval Period. Peterborough, Ont.: Broadview, 2009. 47-91. Print. | |
topic: Essays | |
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| Universal BBCode and other things. | March 1, 2013, 8:13PM |
by: eon |
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You will now notice that BBCode works in most all areas of the site. This includes forums, groups, profile comments, as well as article, poll, and blog comments. Not sure what BBCode is? Check it out here. Basically, it's a quick and easy way to add links, videos, and other things to your posts. In addition to the aforementioned areas, BBCode will also work on profile pages. That is, in the About Me / Likes / Dislikes / etc. sections of your profile. Some other changes have been made to the way the sections of your profile are displayed. Here are the two most important items: 1. Spacing is now handled automatically. This means it is no longer necessary to place <BR> tags to add spaces within your profile sections. If you have previously done so, you may notice some extra space on your profile--you can fix this by removing any tags which add extra space. 2. Profile sections are now checked for bad HTML, and some mistakes will be automatically corrected. If you notice that your profile now displays a little differently, you might need to compare the source code being displayed vs. the code you have entered in your control panel to see what was fixed. Most importantly, make sure you're closing all tags you open within each section of your profile. I don't think this will be a huge deal for most people. Another small change is that it's no longer necessary to use any special code to post a link. In any of the above mentioned areas, if you post something stating with "http://", it will automatically be turned into a clickable link. Let me know if you encounter any bugs and... Enjoy. | |
topic: Site News | |
[reply] [15 comments] |
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| Forgotten Passwords | February 1, 2013, 9:32PM |
by: eon |
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It seems that many people who re-activated their accounts have forgotten their new randomly assigned password. I'm not quite sure why so many people deleted their re-activation email (which conveniently displayed the new password) or didn't decide to change their password to something more familiar (possible if you go to Control Panel -> Manage Account), but I have restored the function of the "Forgotten Password" page for those of you with this trouble. Please click here if you have forgotten your password. The "Forgotten Password" page will now allow anyone who has already re-activated their account--or who created their account on or after January 14th, 2013--to reset their password. Let me know if you encounter any difficulty! | |
topic: Site News | |
[reply] [11 comments] |
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| Our New Gods | January 16, 2013, 9:22PM |
 by: Masigno |
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During Greek times, it was thought that there were many different gods, sitting high and lofty upon Mount Olympus and they were the sole benefactors of our fate. There was a God of the Sea and a God who rules the skies. The Greeks had a complex map of overlapping God’s that designed and lorded over their various parts of creation. Many have described it as mythology, a religion and by religion; they mean a way of explaining things they didn’t understand. Tragedy happened frequently before modern science and affixing it to the will of the Gods was a means of coping with disaster and hopelessness that a common person of the time couldn’t begin to understand. There are many stories about incomprehensible wills and desires of the God’s Greek art work is constantly referencing man’s insignificant place in the world, even great men like Odysseus were humbled by the will of the Gods. Here in America and most of the western world, we worship gods, and I’m not talking solely about the one with his big Church. I’m talking about institutions, another word for gods. The ancient Greeks, placed value on the God’s because they made up the parts of the world they didn’t understand, just as we do for our institutions. You have no idea specifically how the sewage and electrical systems of the city of New York work, you simply understand they do their intended job, nor do you likely have the frame work for the power grid of the eastern seaboard. But, you understand that it works. You, like the Greeks are subject to the will of powers that you cannot directly change or assert your will upon. You can express your discourse but you’re still subject to its will. We live in what we call a democracy but we’re subject to an electoral college. Think about that. Our leaders are elected based on the will of a system that is the collective opinion of the people though not certainly the collective will of all the people. Just because our God’s are real doesn’t make us free from their wrath. This is a different age with the same mountain far above us looming in the background. But instead of Zeus, Aries, and Apollo looking down upon us, it’s the Department of Education, Citibank, The Department of Homeland Security. Keep in mind that these institutions are not controlled by any one person, one person may embody their will but taking the wrong direction will mean your destruction. Imagine if President Obama, went against the will of the Democratic Party and by executive decision made it illegal to wear short pants in public. What do you think would happen? It would be a stirring grandiose effort to usurp him because he wasn’t acting in his god’s favor. Or think about the inner workings of a retail store, I work as a cashier, there is a front end supervisor, a supervisor over him and eventually a store manager who listens to a regional manager and from there a higher office that answers to a board of directors with a CEO who answers to the stock holders who are basically any and everyone. It’s to my horror that its collective human behavior to continually serve the Gods that fail us, that we are incomplete vessels that must live off one another, instead of having the ability to be truly free. It’s more disturbing that we have the mental power to appreciate what the wild birds embody, but lack the ability to do the same for ourselves. In order to survive in this day in age we must serve the greedy, vote for the incompetent. There is no suggestion for changing any of this, it’s human nature, it’s how we’ve become who we are but at the cost of destroying us as individuals. | |
topic: Philosophy | |
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| Mass Murders: An American Phenomenon | January 14, 2013, 8:55PM |
 by: Analiethia |
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This is a consultation with a colleague... A young man kills 20 children and 6 adults in a town in Connecticut. But why? I have worked with many of my colleagues and listens to killers as an expert psychological witness in murder cases, I have spent a lot of my time over the last few years trying to understand how and why young men and women kill, maim, and attack others. The mass murders like those in Connecticut, Colorado, Virginia are followed by shock, anger, and sadness. These are understandable first- hand reactions, but in the long run they accomplish nothing. As long as the discussion does not move beyond labeling these events "senseless violence," horrors like these, we will never move us closer to a place of deeper understanding. A greater understanding is crucial here, because understanding leads to more peace and less violence through preventive action. All the crime scene investigations in the world will not do this. Although all our instincts urge us to dissociate from the killer, achieving better understanding requires us to put ourselves in his or her shoes no matter how frightening and distasteful that may be, that my friends is why I did what I did with that unsavory woman. I have done this over the past few years, and I have learned that it is the only way we can understand a fundamental truth: Although to the rest of us, the observers and the victims, extreme acts of violence seem "senseless," these murderous acts make sense to the shooters. This is true whether it be Adam Lanza in Newtown, Connecticut; James Holmes in Aurora, Colorado; Seung-Hui at Virginia Tech; Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris in Columbine, Colorado, and the thousands of others who wage war against their society, either in the form of high-profile massacres, or the daily grind of shootings around the country that barely make the local news. How do we go about this process of "making sense?" Do not confuse this as a way of excusing it, but rather as a path to understanding and preventing violence. We start by recognizing that many young Americans (and other young people around the world) develop and carry with them a kind of moral damage, which some have come to call "the war zone mentality." No matter how it develops, they grow up with a damaged sense of reality. They view the world as if they are soldiers confronting a hostile environment that they perceive to be full of enemies. An example of that behavior being that they record everyone they speak with. Once they get fixated with their skewed world view, they may hatch the delusion that even teachers, and young children are their enemies. For Adam Lanza, apparently even his mother was an enemy who had to be destroyed. There is no one cause. It is as if they are building a tower of blocks, one by one, that can get so high the blocks fall over, with innocent people dying. Some examples of these building blocks can be found in dangerous neighborhoods, or schools rife with bullying. They can be found throughout the Internet and mass media. there are many, many web sites and videos that promote paranoid views of the world, and validate violent action in retaliation. This site being one on that list. You can find them in the pervasive and intense playing of video games, with the hands-on virtual violence that desensitizes young people to proxy killing. These games have become a psychological pathway to real killing by dampening impulses of compassion and altruism. The blocks can also come from a culture that supports access to lethal weapons. As many states have little to no gun control the crazy availability of guns like the Bushmaster semi-automatic rifle used by Adam Lanza that are, in effect, weapons of mass destruction when turned against children at school, or moviegoers in a theater or shoppers at a mall have cost countless lives. These weapons have no place in the hands of mentally unsound civilians. Moral damage and a misperception of reality, usually, are not enough to lead to murder. The typical killer is emotionally damaged and has developed mental health problems, perhaps exacerbated by being bullied and rejected by peers, or abused and neglected at home. He or she might be suffering from profound sadness, depression, despair, self aggrandizement and narcissism. The mental health problems that result from emotional damage require more, not less, social support, and not just from parents, who may be overwhelmed and ashamed of their offspring. The children and young men and women can be socially isolated because their damage makes peers and the community turn away from them, and that only compounds their problems. Couple deluded thinking and rage with the rationale of the war zone mentality, and the result can be a boy or young man ready to kill, sometimes with horribly spectacular results. This is more commonly seen in the "routine" killings that I consult on as a psychological expert witness in murder cases across the country. The crucial point is that even "crazy" people operate in a particular culture, a particular society, a particular time and place, and within a certain world view of how to manage your rage, your hurt, and your sadness. While not uniquely American (it has happened in recent years in Europe and the Middle East), the mass murder that took place in Newtown, Connecticut, is especially an American trait. Our increasingly socially toxic culture promotes paranoia, desensitization to violence, almost unlimited access to lethal weapons, opportunities to practice mass murder via realistic "point and shoot" video games, and games that justify violence as a legitimate form of vengeance in pursuit of an individual's or group's idea of justice. That begs the question, what do we do? We can improve mental health services in schools and communities, and discourage bullies by supporting the ones being bullied even if you don't like them. Many parents are frustrated that there is nowhere to go with their troubled kids. We can work harder at getting kids to share disturbing information with adults with the confident expectation that those adults will help not punish and stigmatize. We can get behind efforts to increase screening for people that wish to purchase guns. We can step up efforts to prevent kids from having access to the point-and-shoot violent video games. We can work harder at creating emotionally safe schools where bullying and rejection are antithetical to school spirit. We can do the same for online sites as well. One part of this is teaching boys that being compassionate and emotionally expressive is part of manhood in the 21st century. If we don't help, there will be more dead and wounded. It has become an American phenomenon, and an epidemic. Only by getting close to killers and finding out what we need to do to integrate troubled youths and young adults into society do we have any hope of preventing more carnage. | |
topic: Life | |
[reply] [78 comments] |
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| Welcome Back! | January 14, 2013, 11:02AM |
by: eon |
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Welcome back, everyone. To gain access to an old account, please visit: Account Reactivation If you contacted me on the temporary forum and received a password there, but don't remember what it was, you can still visit the temporary forum here. If you received a password from me in a PM on the forum, you can simply log into your account with that password, no need to do anything else. In the process of securing everything, I fixed quite a few bugs I encountered in various areas of the site. Having said that, I'm sure I introduced a few new ones as well. If you see something that's not working quite right, please report it to me immediately via profile comments. Thank you, everyone, for your patience, and... Enjoy. | |
topic: Site News | |
[reply] [23 comments] |
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| Twenty to hit with my Rightwing | October 26, 2012, 11:06PM |
by: Masigno |
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It’s 4 AM, I awake to a strange noise. My dog, Bella sits up on the edge of the bed and growls. I spring out of bed and take the 9mm from beneath my mattress. I go to my back door and make an inspection, then to my front for another. Nothing to speak of, turns out my broom fell out from beside the refrigerator. No point to this story really, other than to illustrate that I have the right to defend myself and that I choose to do so. In this story, I am using a handgun to ensure my safety, however what I intend to discuss are “assault weapons” and their sale in America. If you don’t know about America’s gun laws, it differs from state to state but here in my home state of Kentucky, there is no registration on handguns or rifles though a background check is required to buy any gun. Nationwide, in the recent past we were under what we knew as the Clinton Assault Ban, this was not a piece of legislation that was voted on, it was an executive order made to last for the next ten years. In every way imaginable, this law failed to accomplish anything. This law didn’t prohibit the sale of weapons of this type just production of new ones; that meant that cost went up on firearms already in existence. It limited, modification of certain parts of a firearm that could possible make it look like an assault rifle. Under this ban, we sold more firearms in the US than previous periods without regulation; we saw no reduction in gun violence. The laws also forced closed several companies that manufacture firearms here in the US costing thousands of jobs and millions in tax revenue. Personally, I own several weapons, knives, swords, firearms, I enjoy collecting weapons, I like to shoot and I admire the history behind a lot of firearms. I will agree, that I don’t need an Ak47 or a Sig 552, but I don’t need a Dodge Challenger either, I don’t need a 1080p television, but I’m a free man and I have the money to buy what I want. When it comes to right’s I lean toward giving more than less, I’ve never known a government to relinquish power easily. Why would I trust the government to tell me what I can and cannot have? My government is the same one that has made several bad decisions and has bloated itself on lobbyists to the point that it’s nearly a plutocracy. Firearms in America make up a billion dollar industry that provides millions of jobs and taxable revenue. I also want to point out that any form of restriction creates a worse black market and more deficits trying to restrict its sale than could be managed with legal sale. A lot of people will argue that I have no need of having a firearm with more than ten rounds of ammunition. I’d simply like to point out that a criminal certainly wouldn't obey the same rules, why would I choose to defend myself less adequately? How am I to know what the exact amount of ammunition I’m going to need will be? Keep in mind there are plenty of stories of people who’ve had to defend themselves during riots and other disasters where they were attacked by more than ten people. You also have to look at the type of people who are advocating for gun control. Rosie O’Donnell, The Clintons and Rudolph Giuliani live in gated communities and employ armed security guards to get them from place to place. It’s kinda like when the X-ray tech puts a lead bib over your balls, means while he steps behind concrete and talks to you through a microphone. I don't want to give the impression that I'm right wing or even libertarian, personally, most of my views are socialist. I'm against the death penalty, for gay marriage and a women's rights. I voted for Obama and intend to do so again. I wish my country could join the rest of the civilized world with socialized medicine. I believe in holding on to the heritage of our firearms and the rights promised us in our Constitution, our inalienable rights. | |
topic: Various | |
[reply] [8 comments] |
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| The Amplified Media | August 19, 2012, 8:12PM |
by: Masigno |
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There is a disturbing trend of absolute Hyperbole on the part of news media and political speakers. What I'm talking about is the immediate use of top shelf words like dictator, fascist, communist, and this really has to stop. Anytime something goes wrong it's an immediate Watergate or Waterloo and when something goes right its reformation or salvation. These are powerful words and we use them to describe things that we've never experienced. Even under our worst presidents, Nixon and Bush we were very far from being under the thumb of a totalitarian dictator. That's a concept that's so far out of the mind of the average American they should have to have a class before given license to use it. To juxtaposition our dissatisfaction for whatever reason to President Obama being Adolph Hitler is borderline insanity. It cheapens the holocaust, and true oppression which most of us have no right to comment on. It's also always the first person who comes to mind under brutal dictators. Hitler or Stalin. No one is ever compared to Pol Pot, Slobodan Milošević, Mao Ze Dong, and it's because it's rhetoric that's not used to illustrate fact, or make a real comparison; proof that it's only talk made to sway the opinions of those who'd have no idea who Pol Pot or Omar al-Bashir are. It isn’t a right or left problem it's both sides immediately running for the biggest guns just to make things interesting, to sell, because they have to yell at callers, speak down to people, not let anyone get a word to speak in, no one has respect for one another, and no one is able to make a compromise. I don't mean compromise on policies, I just mean on ideas. We always have to oppose all parts; there can never be any giving of ground for people on the other side of the argument. How can we expect to raise intelligent and thoughtful children when we scream bloody murder on the news because someone disagreed with your opinion? We're teaching to speak and not listen and just push the argument along until no one can hear what anyone else is saying. We also have to take into account what our use of hyperbole does when their trying to use their context clues to figure out what is going on, it’s to the point where we actually have to teach children not to take the news literally! You have to be intelligent to watch American news and understand what is going on considering you have to pull apart the facts and try and back away the perilously strong opinion of whoever they give a microphone to. It's all a ploy to get old people and soft headed young people stirred to madness by mentioning phrases and concepts guaranteed to evoke an emotional response, as though it's the appropriate way to respond. Even people I enjoy like Rachel Maddow are guilty of it from time to time and that's worse than nut bars like Glenn Beck and Michael Savage using it, because at least someone with a little bit of inductive reason could tell who the idiots are being they’re the only ones doing it. This makes us all look the same as one another and we're not. Someone intelligent enough to believe in Women's Rights or Gay/lesbian rights should be smart enough to present their point intelligently and respectfully and rely of the validity of their statement. It really boils down to strengthening our two party system and keeping it rigidly separate and ineffectively equal. We need to discuss and try and grow from one another but it seems like we're always trying to be the teacher as though someone else should be learning from us, or worse we're trying to make a point of saying something that offends their views. This also keeps them from conducting real news and getting to real answers or better yet, the real questions. | |
topic: Rants | |
[reply] [21 comments] |
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