I was trying to figure that one out too.
I think he’s implying that’s an unpopular opinion. Actually, I believe the opposite, and I believe that is the unpopular one. No amount of education will cause kids to have safe sex. Kids just don’t think that way. This is the same for a lot of situations. What works is, well, propaganda. For example, the reason anti-drug programs have worked as well as they have has nothing to do with education. Kids just hear it so often they believe it. True education is beyond kids at this age.
I think society would fall apart if not for religious ethics. People are just too selfishly motivated for the high ideals necessary for a purely atheist and moral society to work. In other words, I think even false religions are a good thing.
And to top it all off, I loved both the TV series Charmed and the Lost In Space movie.
And here’s another one I thought of while I was out getting the mail. It’s one I’ve articulated before on this board, but not as clearly as I’m about to.
I believe that one of the biggest answers to “Why do bad things happen to good people” is because so many good people let small injustices go, and these small injustices pile up until they become big injustices. If you want what you’d consider a fair society, you have to fight against things that you would otherwise think are too small to be worth fighting over.
Here’s the reasoning*
With two people per household working, wages do not have to rise as quickly as in the past to present Middle Income America the sense of an improving lifestyle. If today were the inflationary equivalent of the 1950’s, with no feminist movement, an income of $3k then, in a one-earner family, would be the equivalent of ~$30k now. But with the advent of the feminist movement, corps can pay the guy $25k, the woman $17.5 (70% of the guys salary), getting 2 people for $42.5k when they should be paying them the historically equivalent $60k.
*Note that this is not the “fault of the feminist movement” but can be seen as a “rational consequence of” or “people/corporations exploitating the premises of” the feminist movement I don’t necessarily buy this argument, but it’s a common one out there.
And, of course, perpetuating women’s lack of economic power.
I agree that such messages can be rather trite and distasteful, but I don’t think a Hindu should be offended by prayers offered by Christians. I certainly wouldn’t be offended by Hindus praying for me.
I think where the feminist movement comes into it is the notion that women have to have it all - a full-time career, a rich family life, a beautiful home, healthy marriage and all those other things that are supposed to be part of a successful life of an “equal” woman.
The thing is, when you’re female especially you tend to be the primary caregiver. It doesn’t matter whether you work or not. No one told the baby you’re breastfeeding that you’re not the primary caregiver (surely you’re breastfeeding - if you’re not, you’re a bad, selfish person). And no one told the school who by default calls the mother when something is wrong unless there’s a custody order. You also generally happen to be the one who does the lion’s share of the household crap.
I think that feminism assumes that all women want to work and by default implied that women who don’t want to work or choose not to are somehow inferior to women who do work. It really blows, because if a woman works, she’s a bad mother because she’s farming her kids out to someone else and shouldn’t have had them in the first place. Plus, she’s considered worse at her job than men of the same age (as indicated upthread where I believe another poster indicated that he felt women of childbearing age were poorer workers than older women).
If the woman doesn’t work, she’s “just” a stay at home mom who clearly has all the time in the world and nothing better to do and clearly isn’t contributing toward her household, family or society in general. One way or the other you’re a bad person if you’re female. But I guess men have similar issues.
Ah, I see. I’m raging against the people who think that the only sex education kids should get is abstinence - I think that works even worse than trying to educate kids about sex and safe sex and not getting pregnant (and making contraceptives readily available for anyone who wants them).
You go, girl! We have a lot of hype and scary stories about child abduction, but I don’t think it is nearly as common as parents worry it is. You can’t reduce all risks to zero and still live your life; I would consider the risk of a child getting abducted as a very low one - I’d worry a hell of a lot more about my kids getting injured in a car collision. Of course, that’s easy for me to say, as a non-parent. 
Doing a bit of research, I see that I’m right; here are some stats for Canada:
{Bolding mine}
If you were in India, Mexico, or Vietnam you’d be tall. In the US you’re 2 inches shorter than average.
My ethnicity is an Asian-Russian mix. I look mostly Asian. I am generally against Affirmative Action programs, and that is highly unpopular among my non-white friends.
I’d say most liberals are fairly pro-Israel-hence why most Jews vote for Democrats. BTW what do you mean by “support Israel” because it can mean anything from “Somebody who supports Israel annexing all of their destined homeland including the West Bank and Gaza Strip and expel all the Palestinians there and preemtively nuke anybody who looks at Israel funny” to “Anybody who doesn’t immediately denounce Israel as a whole bunch of fascist warmongers”.
No offense, but I have to admit it was pretty surprising for you to say that.
I believe repressed memories are often true. Not always true, but I am more inclined to believe them than the average person is.
This has me wondering. Supposedly one of the ways men do benefit from marriage is that they live longer, while married women IIRC have shorter lives than single women. But what about gay married men? Or gay married women?
I think the world would be a much better place if people weren’t so desperate for some moral superiority over other people, and so intent on punishing others for their supposed moral inferiority.
Hear, hear!
Not remarkably unpopular, but: I think most Asian martial arts, marketed to kids and parents alike as being for self-defence, are completely bullshit and do more harm than good in giving kids a false sense of security. Mixed martial arts competitions like UFC have just confirmed that. Out of the eight current UFC male champions, across all weight classes, 100% of them to my count are experts in a form of boxing, whether Thai or Western, with a good dose of wrestling of one form or another thrown in. Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is the only non-boxing Asian-derived martial art that figures. No Karate, no Japanese Judo, no Taekwondo, etc. The message seems pretty clear — want do learn to defend yourself? Learn to box or wrestle.
European politicians are basically dangerously incompetent, and their continued buffoonery is a good reason why the entire world economy is moribund. The whole Euro crisis has put paid to any sort of legitimacy for claims that European politicians are somehow superior to North American ones. The same crisis has also validated the claims of every opponent of proportional representation — a disaster of a voting system where decision making is beholden to tiny and testimonial parties alike.
Europeans need to swallow their pride and learn a little from the Americans when it comes to entrepreneurialism and forward thinking (compare American and British kickstarter projects: the American site has about six different projects proposed by startups aiming to put satellites into space, the British one is filled with shitty rock bands trying to get funding for an album no commercial record company will touch). Was any European surprised to hear that the company thinking of mining asteroids was American? No? Why?
On a related note: European academics (in STEM at least) also need to get the hell down out of their ivory towers and actually engage with industry, like American academics do. It’s no coincidence that the one area in the UK with a university that actually engages with industry properly, and heavily promotes spinout companies and the commercialisation of its research amongst its academics—Cambridge—has a massive tech centre all around it built almost single handedly by the university and private money, with one of the lowest unemployment rates in the country. There’s no reason why the likes of Manchester, with one of the largest universities in Europe, could not have built the same sort of tech cluster around itself, other than a lack of foresight by city officials and the university (which is still continuing to this day — their lead in graphene is being thrown away FFS!)
Eh, it’s not worth it. It never is.
I don’t think this is too out there. My younger brother is a 3rd degree black belt ini Tae Kwon Do. He actually trained/was invited to a funded group training for the Olympics. In other words…he didn’t suck.
He came to your conclusion as well and what convinced him is what you mention above…that tradition Oriental Martial Arts don’t do well in mixed competitions. In addition, he was involved in 2 fights during his adult life. In both cases he said his martial arts were of dubious use and he said the best skill to learn in a real fight is a form of wrestling followed by a form of boxing (exactly as you say).
He is a fan of Judo though. He started taking that many years ago and is pretty good at it. He says Judo is more applicable to real life as it is essentially a glorified form of wrestling.
That’s an interesting argument, and one that I’ve seen others make, and one that I suspect has a lot of truth to it. But it does not follow from your evidence.
The various forms of martial arts, boxing, and wrestling each require different raw skills to be successful. The people who are most successful in each field will be people who have these raw skills. Matching up successful people in different fields is not a test of people who are randomly selected with only the field as the variable. You’re testing people who have been selected for different native abilities.
For example, in boxing, it’s crucial that you have punching power. If you take a random sample of successful boxers, you will have a group that tends to have a lot of punching power. If you take a random sample of successful wrestlers, you will have a group that, on the whole, does not have that level of punching power. But that does not mean that an individual considering whether to become a boxer or wrestler can assume that if he becomes a boxer versus a wrestler he will have as much of an edge in punching power over what he would have had as this group of boxers has over this group of wrestlers.
In light of this, the mixed competition in UFC matches is not a valid test.
I am a liberal an I don’t get the outrage about drones. War is hell.
Sure, it’s not a perfect test, but it’s about as good as we’re ever going to get modulo some properly constructed scientific study which is likely never going to be commissioned. It’s also more evidence than karate schools have ever brought to the table to justify their sale to middle class parents as a self-defence tool for their kids.
UFC neatly demonstrates that the ability to punch and grapple is more or less central to fighting ability. No Eastern spiritualist bullshit. No silly poses. Just a proper guard and the ability to throw a good punch. Merely by taking up boxing and hitting a punchbag a few times a week your punching power increases dramatically, anyway, so I’m not convinced self selection is merely all that’s going on here.