Category: ranting

“At a public swimming pool we have gates, put up signs, have lifeguards and shallow ends, but we also teach children how to swim.”

From the Executive Summary of Safer Children in a Digital World; The Report of the Byron Review [iwf.org.uk] via Slashdot [slashdot.org]

2021.08.01: Broken link to the report updated

That sounds like common sense. I think more parents need to read and understand that. It is not societies responsibility to teach your children it’s your responsibility as a parent. There will always be things beyond a parents control and society should take steps to minimize the risks to people—children and adults—but in the end it is down to individuals to be responsible. In the case of children it is the responsibility of the parents to teach and to shelter them, for the rest of the world is is down to personal responsibility. Most people seem to have forgotten this. Too many people in the first world expect that someone will take care of them; that they have a right to be an idiot, which they do, and that society has a duty to come along behind them and clean up their mess, which it does not. We seem to have forgotten that part of growing up is leaving the nursery and the nanny behind. Rather than focus on protecting children from the evils of the world we should help parents teach their children how to protect themselves. Every child should learn to swim just in case they fall in the deep end.

Auntie Shrew: “What did I tell you? Moving day.”

Mrs. Brisby: “It can’t be.”

Auntie Shrew: “It certainly can. I don’t supposed you’ve packed.”

The Secret of Nimh

Yea, it’s moving day… 2:30 AM and I am still packing. :) Movers should be here at 8:30… So, back to packing.

Having killed for religious beliefs and then political beliefs, I believe we are now on the threshold of killing for economic beliefs.

Dr. J.W. Spellman, quoted from 1971 Winter Soldier Hearings: “What are we Doing to Vietnam?” [alternet.org]

That’s a fairly prophetic statement… in fact you should read the rest (the quote is on page two of the cited article) which follows that morsel:

It takes no prophet to predict that there will be destruction and riots and killings in the name of economic creeds in the future. And that these will seem just as valid as religion and politics have seemed to our predecessors historically.

It’s interesting that this was said by a college professor ten years before Reagan [wikipedia.org] and Thatcher [wikipedia.org] politicized the IMF and World Bank and used them to push the Washington Consensus [wikipedia.org]. The tactics, if not the basic ideas, that the IMF and World Bank pushed onto developing countries are a source of anger for many people in developing countries. Many people have linked these policies and their implementation to the Anti-American and Anti-western attitudes that have increased since the 1980s. It’s not a stretch to suggest that the current situation in Iraq is seen by many — even the majority of — people in the world as ‘killing for economic benefits.’ The Neo-con [newamericancentury.org] agenda and the many links between high level members of the Bush administration and American big-business (especially the Chaney-Halliburton situation) lend credence to this belief. True or not, it looks like we are killing for economic beliefs.

“The 20th century was about sorting out supply… [t]he 21st is going to be about sorting out demand.”

Gavin Potter, quoted in This Psychologist Might Outsmart the Math Brains Competing for the Netflix Prize [wired.com]

Won’t it be great when the computers are figuring out both the supply and the demand? The computer in my TV can decide I want to watch Gilligan’s Island reruns 24 hours a day and the networks computer can decide that Gilligan’s Island is the only TV show worth showing. Everyone will be happy!