|
Post by chexbres on Jun 15, 2016 8:11:30 GMT
Thanks, kerouac - I Googled them. I just wish the police wouldn't have to kill the people who do things like this - though I realize that might not be possible. It would be better if we could understand why...
|
|
|
Post by questa on Jun 15, 2016 9:22:42 GMT
shooters like this have no 'why', they are beyond reason. If you asked as they sprayed bullets around, the only thing in their head is terminal hatred and the power they have with the firearm. What would happen if the gun jammed and he had no back-up weapon? What would he think then?
|
|
|
Post by onlyMark on Jun 15, 2016 20:11:27 GMT
I'm not too bothered by the "why". There will always be evil people no matter how much their motivations are understood and ineffectually 'addressed'. I doubt many people have ever been stopped from doing their deeds because someone else 'understands' them and knows why. It is the 'how' that is the problem for me. How was he allowed to obtain the firearms and so on deals with the gun culture in the US. In simplistic terms, alter that culture, 'address' that and the problem diminishes.
You cannot effectively control people in a democratic society so knowing why something has happened still doesn't stop it happening again until you control the 'how' of how it happened. Too many think that the US Constitution gives them the right to bear arms for their protection. How has that worked out for them then? The solution isn't to arm more people but to arm less people. Somehow they are too self-righteously stubborn and stupid to see this.
|
|
|
Post by lagatta on Jun 15, 2016 22:37:50 GMT
The other thing is, if I recall the original idea was the right to bear arms... in a well-ordered militia. An 18th-century sturdy yeoman image... Nothing to do with contemporary life, or even the "Wild West" in the 19th-century US, whice was, apart from "winning" the west from the Indigenous peoples, also the aftermath of the Civil War.
|
|
|
Post by mich64 on Jun 15, 2016 23:45:53 GMT
It was reported today that Donald Trump has requested a meeting with the NRA to discuss the possibility of Legislation that people who are put on the "no-fly list" should also be put on a list to not be able to purchase fire arms. The NRA said they would be "happy to meet with him but that they would not be changing their position", and that they will continue to support Legislation for more budget funding for Government Agencies to investigate applicants but will not support efforts to prohibit anyone from purchasing fire arms.
|
|
|
Post by bjd on Jun 16, 2016 5:47:42 GMT
So basically that let's Trump look as though he is partially addressing the problem, while the NRA can just keep doing what it wants.
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Jun 16, 2016 13:48:09 GMT
|
|
|
Post by onlyMark on Jun 16, 2016 14:19:00 GMT
On first glance it shows that LGBT crimes are now at the top of the table - but if you look at the figures you can see previously over 150 per million. Now (2014) there seem to be actually less, maybe around 140? It is difficult to say with that graphic.
The intention though is to give the impression that hate crimes against the LGBT community have increased, whereas according to their information, they have actually decreased. Just another example of the way graphics are used by bodies and organisations in a certain way to manipulate a message, when the facts are the opposite.
It should be celebrating that hate crimes against LBGT, against Jewish, Black, Asian, Hispanic and White have fallen. Muslims seem about the same. But that doesn't make for good headlines, so the graphic is designed to convey the message they want, and not the truth.
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Jun 16, 2016 14:57:20 GMT
Yes, I noticed that as well, that the total number of hate crimes (or the reports concerning them) has gone down. However, I will not accuse the media of an intention to distort the information since they did not stretch the second graph to make it look longer, although it would have been much more clear if they had put the second graph under the first one instead of next to it.
I will certainly agree that it leads to a distorted interpretation for impact on public opinion, unless people are smarter than we think they are. But are they?
|
|
|
Post by onlyMark on Jun 16, 2016 16:37:42 GMT
With the bold font and the red colour the intention is to say that hate crimes against LBGT has put them now at the top of the league as against being second. That is the only message. I'd say that most people would focus on that immediately and few would then look at it in more detail to see the truth. Most would see what the message is and then move on. It is underhand manipulation.
Most would come away with the thought that attacks are now more frequent on the LBGT community, which is the biased intention, rather than the truth, and uses basic psychology and human instinct to do so by using the colour red, which is associated with danger/importance/attraction and a bold font to draw the eyes when there is no other.
A more minor point, which can't be avoided, is the use of just letters, and capital ones at that, for LBGT, plus full stops between, to set the entry apart from the rest. Have you ever wondered why when you go to the supermarket, the basics like milk, are nearly always somewhere at the back, to force you to walk through all the other stuff in the hope you'll make impulse buys? And they move regular stuff round every so often to make you search for it. Supermarket psychology and this sort of stuff fascinates me.
|
|
|
Post by onlyMark on Jun 16, 2016 16:43:57 GMT
Ok then, be honest, who noticed in my last post I transposed two letters all the time? LBGT or LGBT? Did you see it, or did you scan across what I had written and your brain corrected it automatically without thinking about it? Did you sense something wasn't right in the paragraphs but couldn't put your finger on it?
A basic, simple, possibly too simple if most spotted it, but an example of how you scan across things and then move on.
|
|
|
Post by bjd on Jun 16, 2016 18:55:26 GMT
I didn't notice your transposition, Mark. But I did notice something else in today's paper which was left without explanation: LGBTI, spelled out as Lesbian, Gay, Bi(sexual), Trans(exual) and Inter. Huh? Intersexual? What on earth is that?
|
|
|
Post by mich64 on Jun 16, 2016 19:02:51 GMT
I had read post 40 before 39 so I understood what I was reading Mark so I can not share what my brain would have experienced.
That is how I interpreted his response as well bjd.
It was positive to see that the actual number of Hate Crimes has decreased. Thinking of how many States have had Marriage Laws and other LGBTQ issues challenged in Court over the past 10 years is a likely cause. Realizing that there are that many Hate Crimes though is very disturbing.
|
|
|
Post by fumobici on Jun 16, 2016 19:06:05 GMT
Almost, if not as bad, as politicians offering their "thoughts and prayers" and nothing of actual substance are the politicians (almost every one in the US) who have no problems at all having friendly relations with countries like Saudi Arabia where killing homosexuals is not only not frowned upon but is the official policy of the state.
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Jun 16, 2016 19:07:01 GMT
Yes, they keep adding letters. That one is for "intersex" -- hermaphrodites and other unclassifiable situations. Another term that is used is LGBTQ which apparently is used for both militant "queers" ("We're abnormal even in the community.") and "questioning" (I don't know what the fuck I want.")
If you see an A in the growing list, it is for asexuals.
|
|
|
Post by questa on Jun 16, 2016 23:53:53 GMT
Where is it going to stop? Instead of uniting all the people who see themselves as "not straight" this string of letters seems to divide the groups like a fractal until it becomes absurd. I await the self-identified sub-group of left-handed people who prefer doing it with penguins.
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Jun 16, 2016 23:58:38 GMT
|
|
|
Post by questa on Jun 17, 2016 2:58:37 GMT
When they are born, most babies have swollen genitalia from the mother's high hormonal input. I have been at a delivery where the doctor told the parents they had a son after a quick look at what appeared to be a normal penis and testicles. While giving the baby a bath and full examination the nurse noted that the child had a very enlarged clitoris and labia resembling male genitalia. The doctor had to explain to the parents that their little boy was actually a little girl.
|
|
|
Post by cynthia on Jun 17, 2016 6:30:50 GMT
Another example of how irrational the shooter was is that at one point he shouted something to the effect that he would not shoot any black people as they had been treated badly enough but then he shot two young black women hiding in the bathroom. They were cousins and one did not survive. Of course none of it makes any sense.
|
|
|
Post by bjd on Jun 17, 2016 7:01:28 GMT
Yes, they keep adding letters. That one is for "intersex" -- hermaphrodites and other unclassifiable situations. Another term that is used is LGBTQ which apparently is used for both militant "queers" ("We're abnormal even in the community.") and "questioning" (I don't know what the fuck I want.") If you see an A in the growing list, it is for asexuals. When I was young, this community was just generally called "queer". Then as that went out of style as it all fractured more and more, I noted with amusement that "queer studies" exist in academia.
|
|
|
Post by onlyMark on Jun 17, 2016 9:42:52 GMT
There are queer particles studied in nuclear physics.
|
|
|
Post by questa on Jun 17, 2016 10:11:10 GMT
"Gay" meant carefree, happy and bright. This lovely word has been stolen from the English language and no longer carries such a cheerful meaning. It is now a pejorative, or a word that carries a hint of defiance.
"Queer" a word of many meanings...strange, suspicious, feeling faint, deranged, jeopardise, spoil ones' chances among many more. Are we to lose this word as well so that it only refers to sexual diversity? Pity, it was such a useful little word.
|
|
|
Post by bjd on Jun 17, 2016 10:46:44 GMT
There are queer particles studied in nuclear physics. For the time being. One of these days nuclear physicists will have to find a politically correct term.
|
|
|
Post by rikita on Jun 17, 2016 12:09:29 GMT
"Gay" meant carefree, happy and bright. This lovely word has been stolen from the English language and no longer carries such a cheerful meaning. It is now a pejorative, or a word that carries a hint of defiance. "Queer" a word of many meanings...strange, suspicious, feeling faint, deranged, jeopardise, spoil ones' chances among many more. Are we to lose this word as well so that it only refers to sexual diversity? Pity, it was such a useful little word. what exactly do you mean by stealing? according to wikipedia: "The word may have started to acquire associations of immorality as early as the 14th century, but had certainly acquired them by the 17th." - though the use specifically for homosexuality happened much later ... so it is not like someone just recently decided to change the words meaning ... and by "pejorative" do you mean the meaning of homosexual, or the way some people call anything they find silly and dislikeable "gay"?
|
|
|
Post by rikita on Jun 17, 2016 12:20:36 GMT
i don't see a problem with strings of germs like lgbtqia - or as i have recently seen lgbttqi* (lesbian gay transsexual transgender queer intersexual everyone-else) - using one word (like "queer") to describe all can be useful in some contexts i suppose, but then, it also implies it is all kind of the same "weird mess that is different than us" ... when even the general areas this refers to (who someone is attracted to sexually vs. how someone identifies vs. how someone was born vs. all kinds of other things) are quite different. kind of like saying we just need one word for "non-WASP", because that is all the same strange mess ...
|
|
|
Post by onlyMark on Jun 17, 2016 13:17:46 GMT
All these combinations seem to start with lesbians.
I think it's discriminatory against gay males.
|
|
|
Post by questa on Jun 17, 2016 13:35:28 GMT
In Oz the use of the letters is fairly new. Most of our things are 'Gay and lesbian' health service, mardi gras, rights lobby, venues etc.
So, onlyMark, the chaps are more equal than the wimmin here.
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Jun 17, 2016 14:49:37 GMT
+1 for rikita. You put it better than I ever could myself.
|
|
|
Post by onlyMark on Jun 17, 2016 17:42:39 GMT
I don't know about more equal, but I do sometimes make a pig of myself.
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Jun 17, 2016 21:23:17 GMT
|
|