Idiot of the Day

[Grefter]

Shouldn't have read the comments.  A guy claiming both Nazi concepts and American Liberal party concepts come from Hegel and Marx as well as other "Nihilist" authors.  Here is a quick summary of the life work of Hegel for people that don't have a massive hard on for Philosophy from Wiki.

Hegel influenced writers of widely varying positions, including both his admirers (Bauer, Feuerbach, T. H. Green, Marx, Bradley, Dewey, Sartre, Küng, Kojève, Žižek, Brandom) and his detractors (Schelling, Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Stirner, Peirce, Popper, Russell).  His influential conceptions are of speculative logic or "dialectic", "absolute idealism", "Spirit", negativity, sublation (Aufhebung in German), the "Master/Slave" dialectic, "ethical life" and the importance of history.

Which sounds you know, a whole lot of generic things that you can apply to any kind of politics.  They are also pretty much the starting point for almost all kinds of idealist philosophy to come out for the next 200 years after he died.  Almost any modern political theory at least has SOME roots from Hegel, even the stuff that is pretty distant from it like Real Politik is something of a response to it.  That is like attacking McCain's run for president because he was just like that George Washington mother fucker.   Edit 2 - Errr just realised hours later realised that this sentence might come off as an attack against McCain's run for president, where I am more meaning, this is 200 years after, so is just completely distant from the other source.

Also of note from the sentence before that, almost all of the Nihilists are on his list of detractors (Key points being Nietzche, Kierkegaard and Schopenhauer).  So not only is the argument chock full of fallacy, but it is arguing that something is evil because it is related to one of the starting points of modern political philosophy.

Edit - Bad sentence fixing of making better good good good.

[NotMiki]

That argument is quoting from this book.  It's a useful book to me in the sense that if I ever hear the author's name I know in advance that his arguments are worthless.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

Political discourse in this country is so pointless that I'm almost ready to go to neo-Feudalism.  It works in the Inner Sphere.

[metroid composite]

That first one is just sick.  You don't do expose kids to that kind of shit.  (PETA's done similar things, showing elementary school kids videos of slaughterhouses).

Eh, pretty sure I did study the stages of fetal development at some point during school.  Grade 6 I remember being Flower reproductive organs and names, so...either grade 7 (which was still elementary school in Canada) or grade 8.

I don't remember any fetus dolls, granted, though I do remember plastic human guts models that show the internal organs and blood vessels.  And...used properly, plastic fetus models could be OK--like...say you had 9 of them to show the different stages of development.  Or, say, models of a number of different animal fetuses at an early stage of development (like at the stage in fetal growth where most animal fetuses look kinda fishlike and you can see the gills before they get morphed into other organs).

I mean, it really depends on the context; how old the kids were, whether it's early development fetus (which looks alien, slimy, and creepy) or a late development fetus (which looks like a baby).  What the kids were told when given the dolls.  And stuff like that.

[Meiousei]

Eh, pretty sure I did study the stages of fetal development at some point during school.  Grade 6 I remember being Flower reproductive organs and names, so...either grade 7 (which was still elementary school in Canada) or grade 8.

I don't remember any fetus dolls, granted, though I do remember plastic human guts models that show the internal organs and blood vessels.  And...used properly, plastic fetus models could be OK--like...say you had 9 of them to show the different stages of development.  Or, say, models of a number of different animal fetuses at an early stage of development (like at the stage in fetal growth where most animal fetuses look kinda fishlike and you can see the gills before they get morphed into other organs).

I mean, it really depends on the context; how old the kids were, whether it's early development fetus (which looks alien, slimy, and creepy) or a late development fetus (which looks like a baby).  What the kids were told when given the dolls.  And stuff like that.

I had to click through the article and a link to the second one to find out a bit more about it. According to the second article:

An Oakwood teacher told The Pilot that the "squooshy" dolls had been given to students in the third, fourth and fifth grades over several months. The teacher, who asked for anonymity to avoid retaliation from the school for speaking out, said several parents and staff were upset.

http://hamptonroads.com/2010/05/antiabortion-fetus-dolls-handed-out-norfolk-students

The problem with teaching reproductive at that age steams from the fact many parents don't want their kids to learn about it yet. It's why when they wanted sex ed taught to younger ones (and I believe that I heard somewhere that in other countries, they do teach it early), they got really anal about it, even when the government wanted to try it. Personally, it is sick (because of how I was raised), but at the same time, it's sad that we can't expose our kids and wait until later on to teach it.

[superaielman]

That first one is just sick.  You don't do expose kids to that kind of shit.  (PETA's done similar things, showing elementary school kids videos of slaughterhouses).

Eh, pretty sure I did study the stages of fetal development at some point during school.  Grade 6 I remember being Flower reproductive organs and names, so...either grade 7 (which was still elementary school in Canada) or grade 8.

I don't remember any fetus dolls, granted, though I do remember plastic human guts models that show the internal organs and blood vessels.  And...used properly, plastic fetus models could be OK--like...say you had 9 of them to show the different stages of development.  Or, say, models of a number of different animal fetuses at an early stage of development (like at the stage in fetal growth where most animal fetuses look kinda fishlike and you can see the gills before they get morphed into other organs).

I mean, it really depends on the context; how old the kids were, whether it's early development fetus (which looks alien, slimy, and creepy) or a late development fetus (which looks like a baby).  What the kids were told when given the dolls.  And stuff like that.

The children in the article are aged 9-11. I spent way too long studying those type of dolls in human anatomy class, and there is no benefit to handing those out to students without enough backround to understand the parts. They aren't even being used as teaching aids, just being handed out to students in a hamhanded attempt to try and influnce them.

In short, teachers/admins responsible for this are morons and deserve exactly what they get.

[Shale]

http://thinkprogress.org/2010/06/02/barbour-oil-milkjug/

Dumb liberals reporting on even dumber conservatives. I think this story may create a singularity.

[Shale]

http://www.northjersey.com/news/opinions/kelly/95748769_On_this_ground__zero_tolerance.html?page=all

After hearing that an old department store a few blocks from Ground Zero is going to be turned into a mosque, a crowd of morons plants itself at Ground Zero to protest this horrifying display of...er...something. Freedom of religion, I guess. Talk about un-American! I'm shocked that such a thing is going on in one of our nation's biggest cities.

Anyway, a pair of Middle Eastern men show up speaking Arabic, and the crowd turns somewhat ugly, yelling at them to "go home" and the like.

Predictable, if depressing, behavior toward a couple of innocent bystanders? Nah, funnier. First, the "Muslims" are actually Egyptian Christians. Second, they flew in from friggin' California to protest the same mosque. I'm sure they're just bursting with pride for their cause!

[superaielman]

http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20394174,00.html?hpt=Mid

Perez Hilton: Still a moron.

[Yoshiken]

Very light-hearted IotD, just made me laugh a little more than it should've.

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/showbiz/2010/06/17/fury-as-top-psychic-derek-acorah-cancels-show-due-to-unforeseen-circumstances-86908-22339276/

[Cotigo]

In case anyone's forgotten, here's some more evidence that G4 sucks.

http://www.dorkly.com/video/1847/olivia-munn-interviews-david-jaffe

I love how annoyed Jaffe gets with the stupid questions.

[Grefter]

HEY GUYS SHITTY CARS IS WHAT WE WANT TO TALK ABOUT RIET?

[BaconForTheSoul]

In case anyone's forgotten, here's some more evidence that G4 sucks.

http://www.dorkly.com/video/1847/olivia-munn-interviews-david-jaffe

I love how annoyed Jaffe gets with the stupid questions.

Olivia Munn is an idiotic bitch and belongs in Idiot of the Year.

[Luther Lansfeld]

http://www.personalliberty.com/chip-wood/the-scariest-picture-youll-ever-see/

80% OF THE LANDMASS OF THE U.S. VOTED REPUBLICAN THIS IS THE SCARIEST THING EVER THAT THE DEMOCRATS WON

no it just means that a lot of people live in cities and they vote democrat. breaking news.

[NotMiki]

yeah news flash: Wyoming has 6.5% the population of New York City.  Hell, Staten Island alone has almost the population of Wyoming, and Staten Island, as any New Yorker will tell you, doesn't even exist!  Urban legend, that place.  Check Snopes, you'll see.

I'm doubtful of the tax money giving/receiving numbers, too.  While it may be true that more people in the red areas pay more than they receive (I have no idea if that's true or not, and there ain't any footnotes in the article), the biggest tax-money receiving states per capita tend to be red: Alaska, South Carolina, etc, and the states that pay the most most per capita are (if I'm not mistaken) New York and Massachusetts.

[Luther Lansfeld]

Well it strongly seemed like he pulled that out of his ass, since he neither provided numbers nor a source.

[Dhyerwolf]

Don't forget the large, large corn-related farming subsidies!

[Luther Lansfeld]

http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2004/09/red_states_feed.html <-- From 2004, but yeah. Makes the point.

EDIT: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/04/the_red_state_ripoff.html <-- Also!

[NotMiki]

Don't forget the large, large corn-related farming subsidies!

Politically speaking, I've heard farm subsidies continue to exist despite their unpopularity because they're a political tradeoff for food stamps, which primarily benefit poor people in cities.  Yes, that's perverse.

[Cmdr_King]

Funny part is where, at the same time they subsidize farming, they also pay people with farmland to NOT farm the land.

[metroid composite]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBkbj_S3etY
Soccer - America's Path to Socialism.

This is fantastic.

[NotMiki]

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2010-07-02/b-gata-h-kei-studio-writers-get-multiple-threat-letters

Jesus Christ, guys...

[Cotigo]

YOUR H-ANIME IS NOT TO MY TASTES CHANGE IT OR I WILL FUCKING KILL YOU </XboxLive>

[AndrewRogue]

WHAT DO YOU MEAN MAI WAIFU IS NOT A PURE UNCORRUPTED VIRGIN? I KEEL YOU.

[metroid composite]

http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?topicId=25626109041&sid=3000
Blizzard is tired of people trolling behind alt accounts.  Their solution?  Everyone posts with their real names!!!

Words fail me.  Also: http://www.thenoobcomic.com/index.php?pos=378