Aussies, sucks to be you

Southern Australia apparently bans R-rated movie displays/promotion?

Wow. I know people who live down under bitch a lot about their country (and I largely ignore them), but this seems pretty over the top to me.

You can't advertise or have movie covers with R rated movies on them? Damn, I thought the UK was bad.

 

There's the possibility it's an inside job.

 

*groans* Sometimes I'm really ashamed of my fellow countrymen. No surprise that it's in South Australia though, land of Michael 'I Am A Fucktard Who Believes People Can't Think For Themselves' Atkinson and his ilk.

 

What an unfortunate name.

 

Note, I didn't write the following, and it is written for the Sony Online Entertainment game FreeRealms, but it's a rant about censorship and conveys my feelings pretty well so I'm pasting it here.

 

*applauds* Whoever wrote that rant needs to be given a medal RIGHT FUCKING NOW because he has hit the bullseye and split his poor opponent's arrow in twain. God knows the dumbest people I've ever met are the ones who were too damn sheltered. My parents never tried to shelter me and as a result I'm smarter than the vast majority of the people I went to school with because I have an inquiring mind and they freak out every time something doesn't fit their precious little world view.

And so I say - fuck censorship. Fuck all this 'think of the children' bullshit, it's there for the parents, not the kids.

 

I knew a girl who was home-schooled, and went to one highschool class a day. She took a programming class with me. She wasn't any good at it, but she was very nice, and willing to try. She wound up passing with a decent grade. I asked her one day, during class, why she attended, and she said that her mother was making her take programming to spot potential husbands. They wanted her to marry a smart man, who would be a good provider. I avoided her after that. She was a nice girl, but looking in the wrong place for the wrong thing. I wish I could convey the way she spoke it... it was just... eerie. This strangely polite, sweet, and simple view of "well, I need to get a smart man, who will provide, so I can produce children, I'll then educate."

...and that is why I am terrified of homeschoolers.


Oh, yea, and fuck censorship.

 

Out of curiosity was she mormon? I met a mormon girl exactly like her in one of my programming classes.

 

Okay, yeah, that's creepy. That sounds more like a religious thing than a homeschooling thing, though.

 

Homeschoolers are typically pretty socially inept in my experience. After all, who wouldn't be if the only people you spoke to on a typical day were your parents and siblings? And those parents are usually socially inept themselves. I can appreciate the principal, educating your own children and shielding them from some of the jacked up things in the world, but there is a big tradeoff.

 

The mentality of homeschooled kids tends to vary. There's two kinds - the kind who study online or over radio with other kids and actual teachers, and the kind whose parents teach them exclusively.

I have a very good friend and a classmate at the Polytechnic (different people, mind you) who were both homeschooled in the online sense, and they're both pretty well adjusted and very intelligent people.

On the other hand, I had another classmate at the Polytechnic (who got booted out after first semester, and all I want to know is how it took so long) who was functionally illiterate. And who had some very peculiar ideas about microbiology that I shan't expand upon because repeating them would ensure that some twerp stumbled across them and took them as gospel. (Bitter? Me? Never!)

Long story short - homeschooling, when done properly, is fine. It's when it's done poorly and/or by the insane/retarded that it goes horribly wrong. (Christopher Paolini and his incredibly fucked-up life, for example...)

 

Ok - I'll bite. What does he think they are?

 

That's better than what our creationists say:

"The fossils were put underground by God to test us and seperate the heathens from the faithful"

 

Creationists make me laugh. Except of course when they do show themselves to be a clear threat to scientific learning, such as the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District case of a few years back. That scared me shitless.

 

Ugh. At least the Intelligent Design advocates lost that case. Unlike the case in Kansas, or so I've heard.

 

I think that was reversed the year following it, although I wasn't able to find much information (that was coherent) about it. Last I checked, Idiot Design advocates just keep dripping anal grease in the form of various legal overtures to get laws changed to allow "equal" representation of both "sides"....as if there was two sides to science. Thankfully all the Roy Comforts, Hovinds, and Kirk Camerons of the world do a wonderful job of demonstrating the scientific veracity of I.D.

 

Heh... The thing that gets on my nerves about the I.D. supporters most is when they go and list names of "prominent scientists" who support them... What's funny is the "evolutionist" counter to it: Project Steve

But seriously, the only way I.D. could ever be a scientific theory is if there was evidence found that the DNA's were engineered. Even if they are, it must've been a terrible job, because we have lot's of "garbage DNA", not to mention some basic faults in our anatomy. Otherwise (like today), the whole thing-that-cannot-be-named-a-theory is a huge fallacy known as argumentum ad ignorantiam. Made to "prove" God exists.

Hard to believe religion can still try to halt science in this modern age.