unixknight

I can understand that. And maybe we disagree on this but even though many things are nuanced, this isn't one of them, in my view. The instant we start using censorship to shut up people with undesirable opinions, we have now established a precedent that says that free speech isn't for everybody. Once that happens it's only a matter of time before it's gone completely. So I too condemn, in no uncertain terms, efforts at political censorship.

I'd like to add to my collection a Coleco Adam, which was my very first real computer. Our first game console? A pong console. Never did get an Atari 2600. I had an Odyssey 2 and then went from that to a ColecoVision (which is why we got the Adam to go with it.) Haha I had a Red Ryder too... and I almost shot my eye out with it.

What @mirkwood is looking for is a strong statement of condemnation. You did say you were concerned about it, but that falls a bit short of direct condemnation.

It's the way I roll. Wanna see my Commodore 64 collection?

I prefer the Uranium Pu-36 Explosive Space Modulator, myself, though either is acceptable.

The same is true for retailers here. If you take a typical franchise gas station like Exxon for example, it works like this: The land the station sits on is owned by Exxon. The business itself is owned by a private business which rents the land from Exxon. (Maybe the building too, I'm not sure.) They also have to buy their fuel from Exxon as part of the franchise agreement. It used to be very common to see an auto repair shop attached to gas stations, but convenience stores have a much higher profit margin with lower risk so most of them converted form shops to retail. But yeah, whenever I get annoyed at fuel prices I think about our cousins across the Atlantic and I feel a little better.

Seconded. I have a leftist friend who actually thinks it's a virtue to not understand the opposing views. That's right, ignorance is a virtue. And yes, he's one example, he typically points to his sources for that attitude. The Atlantic, The Guardian, etc. He regards any public conversation about conservative ideas to be "giving a platform to hate" because that's how it's expressed in the media he consumes. He, like the mayor of Berkeley, is perfectly at ease with Antifa's efforts to forcibly shut down events with conservative speakers because to him, they're defending freedom against Nazis, no different than the warriors who stormed the beaches of Normandy. "Stop exaggerating, unixknight." I am doing no such thing. This guy expressed to me how weird he thinks it is that I'm "defending Nazis" when I express my views on free speech.

Wait... you mean @NeuroTypical was wrong about the secret Moon base? I WANT ANSWERS!

I get where you're coming from and I think you get where I'm coming from, so I think we're good here. Additional note: I do agree that people often use that as an excuse. It's one of the things that makes it hard to defend certain points.

My closest friend in the world is a teacher in a public high school, and the stories he tells about the way things are done in that county will raise the hairs on the back of your neck, and this isn't an impoverished or low income area of the state. The problems have to do with corruption, backside covering, and manipulating statistical data to make the county schools' performance appear much better than it is. He often tells me the county where I live is much better and that my kids are way better off here than in his county. The sad fact is that he lives in that county and our houses are only about 20 minutes apart. The difference? My county covers a rather more conservative region of Maryland, while his is one of the most liberal. Correlation =/= causation, but still...

I'll admit there's a part of me that wants to go just to be able to say I've seen every single Episode in the theater when it came out... but I'm pushing back against that, because it feels like a silly reason to go.

There's a really good book by C.S. Lewis called "The Problem of Pain" that addresses that very question. I used it as a source for a talk I recently gave at Church on this very subject.

You guys suck.

Well, that's kinda beside the point. Most of those examples are still just using something else as a screwdriver. My point here is that sometimes no matter where your priorities are, you have to have a tool that accomplished the purpose, and getting it sometimes involves sacrifice.

Ok guys, time for another rant. Know what the second most irritating thing in the world is? When you have an epiphany about something, you share with a friend, and they respond with "Oh yeah. I knew that already." Know what the most irritating thing in the world is? When the above happens, and they're lying. A couple of years ago I was watching The Return of the Jedi and it came to that moment in the throne room atop the Death Star II. Luke is standing at the window, watching the battle in space. The Emperor is on his throne room, trying to provoke Luke into giving in to his anger and rage. Vader is just standing there, silent. The Emperor... "Gooood. I can feel your anger. I am defenseless. Take your weapon. Strike me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the Dark Side will be complete." Luke turns away. For a moment, it looks like he's kept his cool... but no. He turns, uses the Force, snatches the lightsaber and activates it and strikes... but Vader's lightsaber stops the blow. For most of my life... from when I first saw that movie in the theater in 1983 until relatively recently, I believed that Vader deflected the blow out of loyalty to the Emperor... He wanted to see Luke turn and this was all part of the plan. "The Emperor will show yo the true power of the Force. I MUST obey my master." But then as I thought about it more deeply, with the perspective of a father, I saw it very differently. Vader didn't act to save the Emperor from Luke. He acted to save his son from the Dark Side. I was very excited to share this new understanding with friends, so I went to one of my buddies whose level of Star Wars love rivals my love for Star Trek, and shared this with him. HIs response. "Oh yeah. Totally." In that "I already knew that" tone. No, no you did NOT know that you doorknob. We've discussed this scene over and over. Never once did you mention it, never once did you say anything that even hinted at it, and now you're gonna stand there with that smug look and that irritating tone and talk to me like this is old news? Is your ego so fragile that you can't handle somebody else realizing something about Star Wars that you didn't? In fact, nobody I have ever spoken to about this move has mentioned that perspective. I could be completely wrong about it. But as a general word of advice to people... If somebody is sharing with you the joy of a new idea that they just realized, and it truly hadn't occurred to you before, don't be a jerk. Don't let your ego take it away from them. If you agree and find it convincing, share the excitement.

We aren't talking about teaching the Gospel though. We're talking about public school vs. homeschool. So is a screwdriver, but no matter what my purpose is, I can't remove a screw without one.

Yeah the example you shared earlier is a really good one in making that point. I mostly agree here but, as you already know, I don't agree that the benefit of daycare provided by schools is bogus as often as you might think. But we can't really prove that part either way, because I suspect we each have personal experiences that tilt our view one way or the other.

The throne room resonates with me because over the years I've come to understand it differently. At first, I thought Vader deflected Luke's blow against Palpatine out of loyalty to his master but later, (especially after I became a dad) I realized that no. Vader stopped the blow to save Luke. ::shiver:: So good.

I'm surprised you didn't quote the balcony scene. Now THAT was a vomit inducing cringefest. I actually did like 3, but that's in spite of its many, many flaws. My favorite is Episode 6 (though I acknowledge that episode 5 is quantitatively better.) For my money, nothing beats the throne room scene.

That's really easy to say when you've made good choices and been blessed with good circumstances like we've been. I've tried that very same argument when talking to people who are in a very crappy situation in life and they set me right down into a reality I hadn't seen before. It's easy to say that "well they can pick up another skill" or "well they can just move." Yeah. We can sit in our nice house that the nice paycheck from our nice job that our nice education allows us to have and say "well if I could do it, why can't they?" And we aren't even talking about poor people per se. I agreed earlier that there are plenty of people who just don't get it and think a 200k salary isn't enough to raise two kids on. Of course that's absurd, but that's also not who I'm talking about. More on that below, because @anatess2 is making a similar point. I agree with all of this, but one also need not homeschool to raise happy, healthy, well-adjusted and well educated children. I've got 3 adult kids (out of 6) and I'll tell you right now the biggest impact on their lives, in terms of morality and reason, wasn't their having gone to public school. My oldest 2 are pretty conservative thinkers, one is to the right of me, even. The youngest is going down the leftist path and for that I blame the college she chose to go to. You know, we very often applaud guys like Jordan B. Peterson because he correctly points out that what we want is equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome. I agree with that 100%. The problem is we speak those words but we rarely think about them. We talk about equality of opportunity but how far does that go? We already have mechanisms for people to go to college, even if they're poor. We have laws to protect people from racism and sexism. We have programs to assist all kinds of people in all kinds of ways. Great. But what we forget is that any opportunity requires a person to have certain things that not everybody does. Time, energy, money and health are not apportioned to all in equal measure. (Well, time passes at the same rate for everybody, but how much of it you have at your disposal is more a function of the other factors.) I've known 2 income households who honestly are doing the best they can. I would not insult them by suggesting they could be doing better about living on one income so that the kids could be homeschooled. Some people live in areas they can't afford on one income and can't just move. Some people have health issues that result in massive medical debt. Some people have skills that just aren't in demand and don't have the ability to change that at the moment. This ain't a small list of exceptions. Well, to be fair, you take a dim view of a lot of people.

I think that's easy for those of us here to say. Not everybody has all the options you might think they do.

No, I meant I don't think you were being fair in your argument. I agree that generally people put most of their energies into that which they most value... but that assumes they have the choice to do so. Well there's a difference between counsel and commandment. When it's a commandment, you just do it. When it's counsel, it's reliable advice from someone who understands everybody's circumstances aren't the same. Changing careers ain't easy, and yes I've done it. When I was a young lad, back when the world was young, I was an auto mechanic. I did that for a few years, and was a fully certified Master Auto Tech by ASE. I guess you could say I was committed to the career. But it wasn't making enough of an income for me to move my wife and 3 kids out of her parents' basement, so I decided it was time for a change. I started going to night school, (thanks to money my dad has saved years before for a college fund I hadn't fully used) and earned a Bachelor's Degree a few years later. Now I make easily 3 - 4 times what I was making then, so yes I do know what that's like. (I'm also preparing to make another change over the next few years.) But can everybody do that? I was fortunate. I was blessed with a dad who didn't blow the college fund when I hadn't used it all. I was blessed with in-laws who let us have a basement where we didn't have the huge rent we would have in this area. I was blessed by my family with the motivation and energy to work 40 hours a week + all the schooling concurrently for 4 years. I was blessed by Heavenly Father with the wetware in my skull to handle the new skillset on top of the old one. I count myself EXTREMELY blessed by the circumstances I enjoyed. I don't think most people have all those advantages.

We need a "groan" reaction.

Maybe. As you said, another time. Things get quiet enough around here sometimes that we need a new lively topic This I agree with as one of the cons of public schooling. I don't think that's fair. I would agree that apathetic parents are more likely to prioritize a career over kids, but that doesn't account for parents who simply have no alternative. Ask a lot of those parents why they're 2 income and they'll tell you it's because they're prioritizing their kids' needs. Here's a twist: What about families that are 2 income in order to afford a private school? (Not an argument, just a thought that occurred to me just now.) I think the question of whether a family can get by on a single income depends largely on geography. You can be stuck in an area where the cost of living is legitimately high, but not have the ability to move to a cheaper area. There are plenty of possible causes for this. Maybe one of the parents has a skillset that isn't in demand everywhere so they have to go where the work is. Maybe there are other commitments like taking care of family that keeps someone in the area. I could go on but I'm sure you see what I'm getting at. I suppose those are the exceptions you mention, but I don't think we have a way to know just how often it occurs. Is it the exception to the rule? I don't think it's that rare. Not in the majority perhaps, but I really don't know.

Brutal. That's how it is. BRUTAL! I was gonna come back with Just Like Paradise... but it seems that wasn't Van Halen, just Roth. I know it's bad Internet protocol but... ...I concede.