Weird. Random. Interesting.

[Gfted1]

But we just got to the predictable final act where they are left with no other option than to complain about moderating.   My bad, Ill play nice.

[Amentep]

Let's play the ball and not each other. That means you too, Gfted.

 

Can do both...

 

 

 

Poor babies: https://www.studyfinds.org/survey-millennials-life-more-stressful-than-ever-before/

 

Its interesting, I was at a lecture on stress, and while on the face of it, it may sound silly to us, one of the things the study they were talking about (not this one) was that the generation after millennials is even more stressed over technology because they don't feel like they can disconnect from it, which in turn means they're stressed when they're on it and stressed when they're off it.

[Guard Dog]

Stress, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder I guess. Still seems trivial to me though. Stress is a registered letter from the IRS. Stress is trying to make payroll with insufficient capital. Stress is bills you can't pay. Or a phone call from your doctor after your last blood test. Stress is watching the river next to your house rise out of it's banks. Or watching that Cat 4 hurricane coming your way. An nothing you can do about either. Slow wi-fi and broken phones? That does not even register on the stress meter IMO 

[Amentep]

I don't disagree with you.  But I can turn my phone off for days and not be stressed about it. 

 

For younger groups, as I understand it from this talk, they rate parents and siblings as their biggest influences on their life, then friends and people on the internet.  For most younger people the cell phone is how they connect to these people, and a broken cell phone means they're disconnected from everything that (at least at this point in their lives) matters most to them.

[Gfted1]

We lost power for a few hours sometime last year and I was never more bored in recent memory. The silence was deafening. And darkness is pitch black when you don't even have the light of a router or alarm clock. I couldn't even pew pew on my phone because I didn't know when power would come back on and I felt like I had to preserve my battery.

[ShadySands]

Haven't there been several studies showing that social media generally increases stress levels for everyone? 

[Amentep]

Whenever the power goes out here and its dark, I get sleepy.

[Gromnir]

Haven't there been several studies showing that social media generally increases stress levels for everyone? 

 

wouldn't doubt there has been studies which show the increased accessibility o' studies has also increased stress levels. 

 

am not doubting social stigma has always been a major stress engine.  social media has no doubt made such stressors (?) far more immediate and problematic for people.  the thing is, looking at the link provided by gd, the things millenials is actual stressing 'bout is pretty mundane and common.  sure, "losing cell phone" is high on the list, but the vast majority o' stressful scenarios coulda' been seen on a list from 1980 or even 1950: lost keys; job interviews; late for work; traffic. 

 

*shrug*

 

am recalling another study. pool o' subjects were folks with at least a BS/BA. study claimed the most stressful time in a person's life were university years, and specific midterms and finals. am not certain how anxiety and stress were valued, but were a mid 90s thing. 

 

dunno what any o' this means, but am gonna embrace our naked confirmation bias and nod agreement at the notion millenials seems to get stressed o'er nothing far more readily than older peoples.  and yeah, Gromnir has embraced his inner curmudgeon, but just this weekend we looked out front window and saw kids playing in our yard. didn't bother us one bit.  

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Gfted1]

Students tied to U.S. college admissions scandal could face expulsion.

 

Not far enough, NOT BY A COUNTRY MILE!1111 The parents should be imprisoned, and after they die, the kids should be forced to finish their sentences! Especially in light of the way that poor rowing team had to endure an 0-52 collegiate record. No doubt scaring them for life. Squee! 

[Amentep]

Students found to have been dishonest in the admissions process face expulsion.  Film at 11.

 

This is the normal course of action in these cases.  Its generally speaking, from my experience, actually stated on the application itself that falsifying or lying in the application can result in expulsion.  A lot of times minor omissions (like not telling that you went to a previous school where you wrecked your GPA and ended up owing the college money so you can't get a transcript) won't lead to expulsions just holds until the student provides all of their information.  Other things - like lying about prior convictions, providing falsified transcripts or test scores - can. There's no surprise here that schools would look at their options within their policies to address these charges.

[Gfted1]

And some didnt even know their parents were pulling strings. College admissions scandal: What did the students know about 'the side door,' and what should happen next?

 

But ignorance is no excuse and this much buttock hurt requires blood sacrifice. Someone has to make. them. pay. 

[Amentep]

Typically colleges will have some sort of review process and appeals process for students in this matter since they're already admitted (when false records or cheating is discovered when they're just an applicant the applicant is generally just denied admissions if it warrants it, although usually there are still ways to appeal).

 

The hope is that the rush to distance themselves as much as they can from the scandal doesn't rush to judgement with respect to the kids and give them a fair review.  That said some of the stuff that's been reported - if true - implies either a complicity in the scheme at worst or an almost staggering amount of naïveté at best.

[Gromnir]

purposeful misreading or just missed the important stuff?

 

first of the two recent linked articles by gifted, right in the title, says students "could" face expulsion.  is nothing in the article which suggests all the students caught up in the scandal will or should be expelled, though there is an admitted argument for such.  is no entitlement to a four year degree when you are granted admissions to a university. you pay per quarter or per semester.  that's it.  most scholarships (including all d-1 athletic scholarships) are valid only for 1 year at a time, requiring student to meet various eligibility requirements to continue.  if it turns out a student didn't actual meet admissions standards in the first place, why not have student re-apply?  if they has already paid for the semester, expelling seems unjust unless the university is certain the student were complicit in the scheme. 

 

regardless, the actual articles don't go near as far as Gromnir... do no more than state obvious: students could lose their seat.  there is gonna be a review. omg, no!  students part o' a multi-million dollar bribery and fraud scheme are having their admissions reviewed. reviewed?  

 

 

"squee" indeed.

 

"Others might be treated more harshly, she said. "If the kid is 18 at the time he sits to take the tests and the proctor is feeding him answers, I don’t see why he shouldn’t be liable. And I think it’s an interesting prosecutorial choice. I think it says something about how they view the nature of the wrong," she said."

 

seems fair.  again, fraud is bad; that observation should be axiomatic. if a student were knowing part o' the scheme to gain admission to school under false pretenses, why should school be forced to keep the student? ain't forced to keep other students who lie or cheat or bribe, but these kids get some kinda free pass?  why?

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Gfted1]

No mercy. And if they have already joined the workforce they should immediately be fired and blacklisted from their chosen profession for life. People wont learn a lesson unless we treat every molehill like a mountain.

[Gromnir]

reductio ad absurdum 

 

nevertheless, hidden in the silliness, is actual a valid point. unlike comic absurd lifetime bans, school expulsion is not gonna be the end o' the student's career unless they choose for such to be the end.  nothing prevents the kids from reapplying to same or other universities.  heck, maybe olivia jade can turn her life story into a feelgood hallmark movie opportunity.  get booted from usc and and is depressed and people on youtube is mean to her, but she dedicates herself to genuine study and eventual gets into UCirvine where she eventual earns a degree in computer science and becomes a successful... whatever.  becomes face o' a new fashion and cosmetics line entitled genuine. donates 90% o' proceeds from her fashion endeavours to helping underprivileged kids get into major universities.

 

*sniff*

 

beautiful film.  haven't cried at a movie since brian's song, but that one got us right in the heartstrings.

 

the government coulda' pursued charges for those kids 18 or over who participated, but they didn't. instead, these kids is being taught a valuable life lesson at relative little cost, a lesson which some folks never learn: cheating is bad. 

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Gfted1]

Imprisonment and blacklisting are the only path foward.

[Gromnir]

In the last decade alone, American taxpayers have spent at least $40 million on Confederate monuments and groups that perpetuate racist ideology

 

the real fake news?

 

during a tour o' of jefferson davis home and presidential library--

 

A woman in a white floor-length dress decorated with purple flowers gathered a group of older tourists on the porch of the “library cottage,” where Davis, by then a living symbol of defiance, retreated in 1877 to write his memoir, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government. After a discussion of the window treatments and oil paintings, the other visitors left, and we asked the guide what she could tell us about slavery.

 

Sometimes children ask about it, she said. “I want to tell them the honest truth, that slavery was good and bad.” While there were some “hateful slave owners,” she said, “it was good for the people that didn’t know how to take care of themselves, and they needed a job, and you had good slave owners like Jefferson Davis, who took care of his slaves and treated them like family. He loved them.”

 

The subject resurfaced the next day, before a mock battle, when Jefferson Davis—a re-enactor named J.W. Binion—addressed the crowd. “We were all Americans and we fought a war that could have been prevented,” Binion declared. “And it wasn’t fought over slavery, by the way!”

 

another example re: the the A.H. Stephens park in georgia

 

Alexander Hamilton Stephens is well known for a profoundly racist speech he gave in Savannah in 1861 a month after becoming vice president of the provisional Confederacy. The Confederacy’s “foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery—subordination to the superior race—is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.”

 

That speech was nowhere in evidence during our visit to the park. It wasn’t in the Confederate museum, which was erected by the United Daughters of the Confederacy with the support of the state of Georgia in 1952 and displays Confederate firearms and uniforms. It wasn’t among the printed texts authored by Stephens that are placed on tabletops in the former slave quarters for visitors to peruse. And it wasn’t in the plantation house, called Liberty Hall.

 

Our guide, a state employee, opened the door of a small two-room cabin once occupied by Harry and Eliza—two of the 34 people Stephens held in bondage. The guide pointed to a photograph of the couple on a wall and said Stephens “kept them good, and took care of the people who worked for him.” We went on many tours of the homes of the Confederacy’s staunchest ideologues, and without exception we were told that the owners were good and the slaves were happy.

 

After the war, Stephens spent a great deal of energy pretending he wasn’t entirely pro-slavery, and he returned to public life as a member of Congress and then as governor. Robert Bonner, a historian at Dartmouth who is at work on a biography of Stephens, said the Stephens memorial maintains the fraud: “The story at Liberty Hall is a direct version of the story Stephens fabricated about himself after the war.”

 

it is worth noting, much o' the $40 million dollars referenced is money spent maintaining parks and monuments.  however, a surprising amount of taxpayer cash involves new constructions.

 

on a lighter note, a possible destination for hurl's next road trip.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Guard Dog]

The "Lost Cause" narrative has changed somewhat over the last 150 years. I daresay no one alive today would find virtue in slavery. Even the notion that the slaves were mostly well kept according to some does not make it less repellent to anyone today. Even the folks waving confederate flags and calling it heritage. Today the lost cause story generally leaves slavery out all together and frames the war as a contest of "state's rights". Better not to ask "State's rights to do what?".In four years the US Civil was killed 2.8% of the population of the United States. Over 20% of men living in the Confederate States were dead by the end of the war. I believe there is a need in people in the South today to find some meaning to that that is coupled with an unwillingness to admit what the real meaning of it was. It was a war fought to perpetuate slavery. 

 

The ideal of the lost cause does no survive more than a cursory examination of history. Therein lies the problem. The history most folks learn does not dive below the surface and if often fraught with bias one way or another.  But there is plenty of writings by actual participants of the Civil War that you don't need to guess at what they were thinking.  

[Gfted1]

So about 4M / year on average. Spread out over how many monuments?

 

I honestly cannot believe that our government can accomplish anything that economically!

[Gromnir]

from the linked article, right at start,

 

"One gray October morning, about 650 local school children on a field trip to Beauvoir, as the home is called, poured out of buses in the parking lot. "

 

the lost cause is what more than a few kids in the south is being taught as part o' their school lessons. ain't much to be done 'bout past generations, but have current taxpayer money support and promote lost cause narrative is actual a bit o' a surprise to Gromnir.  were our understanding, much as you explain, the slavery issue were being glossed over or ignored, but at these parks and historical sites, we got scenes such as the following:

 

 

“I want to tell them the honest truth, that slavery was good and bad.” While there were some “hateful slave owners,” she said, “it was good for the people that didn’t know how to take care of themselves, and they needed a job, and you had good slave owners like Jefferson Davis, who took care of his slaves and treated them like family. He loved them.”

 

am admitting we would be utter dumbfounded to hear such stated out and open and proud to a bunch o' school kids in 2019, but that seems to be the reality.

 

$4 million a year to keep monuments to dead confederates free o' trash and spray paint tags is not exact the bargain gifted seems to think. hell, if such is the case, Gromnir shoulda' changed professions. coulda' retired much earlier. as we noted, if gifted reads the article, he will see many instances o' new construction being described. nevertheless, is interesting to see what gifted took from the article.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Gfted1]

Eh, Im never going to be one to cry into my beer over the sins of our forefathers. I just don't care beyond a historical perspective so I might as well try to find some interesing value in the discussion.

 

Does the article mention if the pictured "Southern Belle" also doubles as the grounds keeper? There could be some savings there.

[Gromnir]

Eh, Im never going to be one to cry into my beer over the sins of our forefathers. I just don't care beyond a historical perspective so I might as well try to find some interesing value in the discussion.

 

 

kinda missing the point though.  this isn't 'bout the sins o' the forefathers.  is a sin o' your tour guide/groundskeeper, and many others.  teaching kids fake history? 

 

as we said, interesting pov.

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

ps if gifted genuine don't care 'bout sins o' the forefathers, then he should be doubly angry 'bout the $40 million in taxpayer money.  one o' the only arguments for maintaining the monuments is so folks do not forget sins o' the past.  if such is a non-factor, then what is the other justification for spending so much taxpayer monies? 

Edited March 20, 2019 by Gromnir

[Amentep]

A lot of people here about don't really want to do an even cursory examination of the history.  There's the perpetuation of the lost cause ("it wasn't about slavery, it was about states rights (to keep slaves over the Federal Government's objections)", "it wasn't about slavery, it was about economics (because the wealthy couldn't maintain their wealth without the forced labor of slavery)" etc) without examination most likely because people kind of know the lost cause won't stand up to scrutiny, so it has to be taken on faith.

 

Its possible this may have to do with keeping private donors happy, but its frustrating to read something like continuing the happy slave narrative from a supposedly educational historical location. (There was a local situation in the last year or two where the demographics of an area with a private museum changed.  And a recently elected representative expressed concern / complained about a the museum flying the "confederate flag" which ultimately led to the private donor of the items pulling the items and the museum closing.  It was silly considering the flag known as the modern "confederate flag" never flew over the confederacy; its proportions are wrong to be the battle flag of the southern regiments and its colors are wrong to be the 2nd naval jack and only the second and third confederate flags even sported a red/blue St. Andrews Cross.  So all of this could have been avoided by, perhaps, displaying the actual 1st flag of the confederacy that might actually be able to be viewed as the part of history it is.  But instead they decided to die on the hill of the modern re-interpretation of the Confederacy).

Regarding the monument upkeep, I imaging the majority of that funding goes to keeping up period plantations, battle sites and museums with relatively little for things like upkeep of markers, columns, statues and such that have no personnel involved daily.

[Guard Dog]

I've read enough about and from Jeff Davis to believe he probably did love his slaves. Just as he loved his horse and his hunting dogs. The fact that he can equate the three as being equals is the problem with the whole notion of human beings being considered property. Well, as bad as that is you can't hold it against him too much. He was a man of the time he lived in. Tha more than half of Americans found his views abhorrent says more about them than it does about him. I am 100% against rhetorically digging these guys up and hanging them in the street. Of course I'm also against deifying them or holding them out as some kind of example.For the most part they were not evil men. They were wrong and a lot of people paid a heavy blood price for it. 

 

That said you can't argue some good didn't come from slavery. There are millions of really good people who would have never lived in the country but for slavery. Most black Americans today can trace their ancestry to emancipated slaves. Had the US been an more enlightened country in 1788 and dealt with the issue before ratification a lot of people we all know, love, respect, hate, etc would never have been born and I can't thinking we'd be much less without them than we are with them. So there was nothing good about it, but some good has come from it. 

 

I read the article in full. This kind of thing a real outlier. It's not what is taught in schools I think and with the exception of one place I visited in Savannah some time ago is not the kind of history you get at most confederate historical spots. 

[Gfted1]

kinda missing the point though.  this isn't 'bout the sins o' the forefathers.  is a sin o' your tour guide/groundskeeper, and many others.  teaching kids fake history?

Uh oh, now we have to deconstruct our entire educational system. It is riddled with "history is written by the victor". How mush do we pump in annually to that circus?  

 

ps if gifted genuine don't care 'bout sins o' the forefathers, then he should be doubly angry 'bout the $40 million in taxpayer money.  one o' the only arguments for maintaining the monuments is so folks do not forget sins o' the past.  if such is a non-factor, then what is the other justification for spending so much taxpayer monies?

Ive reached the point in my life where the government jacking something up "only a little bit" is a win for me.