Jump to content

About This Club

In-depth discussion, multiple viewpoints, and - really - being boring is the one unpardonable sin....
  1. What's new in this club
  2. Let's try to include source material when we can. https://www.canlii.org/en/on/onhrt/doc/2022/2022hrto1044/2022hrto1044.html?searchUrlHash=AAAAAQAmT3R0YXdhLUNhcmxldG9uIGFuZCBnZW5kZXIgYW5kIE5pY2hvbHMAAAAAAQ&resultIndex=2
  3. I read this today. Somewhat disturbing: https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/grade-1-teacher-who-said-boys-and-girls-no-different-in-gender-fluidity-lesson-cleared-by-rights-tribunal This is why I prefer teachers stick to facts or teaching theories as theory instead of teaching theory as facts.
  4. I'm still calling for examples. I'm going to keep this thread as a list of discussion points rather than have the discussion here on the thread itself.
  5. There's more of a spectrum of opinions on this than one might assume. Zeitgeist: Kids do need to learn about reproductive cycles, including ovulation and menstruation. They need to know how females become pregnant and learn about the risks of STD’s, the responsibilities of raising a child, etc. They need to learn about consent and the level of responsibility required to manage sexual behaviour, which is why many social teachings, religious and otherwise, promote abstinence for young people and people who aren’t in committed relationships.
  6. I found this: https://ok2bme.ca/resources/parents-educators/resources-for-schools-and-classrooms/ It provides lesson ideas for teachers for LGBTQ2+ education in Ontario. And this one for BC - https://bc.sogieducation.org/sogi3
  7. Tried to investigate specific claims about what is being taught in Canada with @Nationalist The discussion ended when we didn't get specific examples. Last post:
  8. Well, I guess my question is: are the people who use the term 'CanaDUH' assholes or traitors ? I'll list them and you tell me: RedDog WestCanMan taxme dre posit FTA lawyer Now - bush_cheney2004 - is not Canadian so the question is thus answered It's JUST FOR FUN FOLKS - DO NOT GET OFFENDED !!! ?
  9. I do not claim to be an expert in any of the fields discussed below but having said that, I did spend considerable time at a university learning about such topics earning at least one or more semester worth of accreditation in each. Before we begin I'd like to go over basic definition as to not confuse and conflate very difficult topics. First Law of Thermodynamic: Energy cannot be created or destroyed, only transform from one state to another. Entropy: "essentially describes how to measure the entropy of an isolated system in thermodynamic equilibrium with its parts. " The end state of energy (heat etc...) Economic Consumption: Transfer of one service or good for another. Financial lending system (credit): Credit cards, taking a mortgage, loans, car financing etc... Let's begin, The reason why the US has such a large GDP is because of a very advance and mature financial system based around consumption. 300 million people do not necessarily have more productivity then say 2 billion people. The lending system in the form of credit cards, loans, etc... essentially allows consumers to spend beyond their purchasing power by lending into their "future" productivity. This is the same system that allow all of us to buy cars, houses, things that are normally very difficult to acquire with upfront capital. When we take out a loan for said purchases we are in essence borrowing our future value or productivity. This in theory allows the consumer to spend well beyond their normal capacity. Take this concept but multiply it by infinity. Lets say I can borrow infinity into the future and allow everyone else including the financial lenders to do so as well. The whole point of acquiring capital is to consume it. You take a loan out to buy things, the lender take that repayment money and use it to either loan out more or to spend it on their payroll, in essence the financial system or banks are also consumer. This system of trading goods and services is the definition of a economy. With infinite lending into the future you are able to consume infinitely, buy as many cars as you want, buy as many houses as you want, etc... This is not currently possible due to restriction of your input, how can you lend that much without repayments, well say we make that repayment as small as possible, 500 dollar, or 400, or 1 dollar all the way down to zero. But if we consume infinitely then who would be the one making all these item or provide these services to us? In the future we will have equipment, robots, and machine that can reduce the human labor input to zero if not very small. This is not a novel or new idea as we have seen during the agricultural revolution, farm equipment allowed the US to out produce agricultural good well beyond its consumption capacity and reducing the human labor input. Take this thought along into the future with automation and artificial intelligence. You can perhaps have a world where there is no longer humans required to produce goods and services. We all then by principle become the consumer. But what about raw material and environmental degradation of this level of consumption. This is where the First Law of Thermodynamic and Entropy comes into play. The end state of the universe simply states that all energy will be converted into a un-usable form. Remember energy is equal to matter times the speed of light squared (E=MC^2). This is the fundamental relationship when calculating energy from its various forms. When we produce say coal to provide us with electrical energy, we are simply converting coal, a piece of matter, into another form of use-able energy, electricity. This conversion process is not 100 percent efficient and we loose some to entropy (heat, carbon emission, etc...). Entropy is a form of energy that is un-usable or at least with the current technology that we have. So with infinite consumption of a finite amount of resource inside our planet we would have to reach out further and further away from earth to mine for resources and materials consuming those resources along the way. Essentially we are a catalyst that converts energy into its final state of entropy thus destroying the known universe along with ourselves. This is the end game Michael.
  10. http://all-that-is-interesting.com/marshall-mcluhan-global-village Short read about McLuhan's "prediction" of the internet. While I disagree that he predicted it, I do agree that he had a sense of the appetite for some kind of global information system. Therein was his genius, that he could sense what people wanted from technology, and therefore product what would eventually come without describing it exactly.
  11. What I don't understand is how the conclusions seem to abandon the idea of 'Public' broadcasting even as they talk about the flaws in the current model: Is 'Public' broadcasting charity ? Is it civic responsibility ? As such, it just can't be doomed. These aspects of human living still exist today, even if the morality has changed.
  12. https://www.knightfoundation.org/public-media-white-paper-2017-kramer-o-donovan A somewhat interesting perspective on how American Public Media drifted towards "a" public from "the" public. The relationship between "the" public and "a" public is as such: "a" public is a subgroup of "the" public. Human groupings align according to natural in-born perceptions of "us" vs "them" and our natural processes of reconciliation and separation from others. What makes the square dance even more dynamic is that this happens upon media that are forever changing. What makes the barn burn down is that the original media for politics in America were the printing press juxtaposed with the public town hall. ( See Neil Postman "Amusing Ourselves to Death") So National "Public" Media drifted to those publics that donated to them, and poorer communities were left behind. The craftier private networks found cheap ways to engage with poor people, sometimes as a loss leader to convincing them to support their pet projects (payday loans, quack cures, conspiracies, right-wing radio, etc.)
  13. I don't know McLuhan, or Narcissus, for that matter, other than as names and vague associations, but I do know some gadget lovers. They are not ignorant of ideas, so much as fickle slaves to them. I agree that the trend, in both men and women, is nauseating, and this McLuhan fellow would probably take ill if he could see what technology was doing to people and their brains today. Did he have a hand in writing Wall-E? Still, all that said, I did figure out how to stream the Ashes this week.
  14. Again, McLuhan saw beyond the news of his day, the cultural trends and even philosophy to that point in time. He saw where the narcotic of technology had taken us, and projected where it would go. One aspect of today's media that is missed is the equivalent intellect and spiritual narcissism. Ignorance of the ideas, and spirit of other people is at least as prevalent as ignorance of others' physical beauty.
  15. “The Greek myth of Narcissus is directly concerned with a fact of human experience, as the word Narcissus indicates. It is from the Greek word narcosis or numbness. The youth Narcissus mistook his own reflection in the water for another person. This extension of himself by mirror numbed his perceptions until he became the servomechanism of his own extended or repeated image. The nymph Echo tried to win his love with fragments of his own speech, but in vain. He was numb. He had adapted to his extension of himself and had become a closed system. Now the point of this myth is the fact that men at once become fascinated by any extension of themselves in any material other than themselves….” – The Gadget Lover, Narcissus as Narcosis, Chapter 4, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (1964), p.41, MIT Press ed.
  16.  

×
×
  • Create New...