October 30, 2006
Straight Up, Cut and Dry: If Jesus were here today, he would be in Iraq wasting some ragheads.
It’s easy to ask “How would Jesus vote?”? But it’s another thing? to ask “What would Jesus do about the 101 Americans killed in Iraq during the month of October?”
Some people? say that asking “what would Jesus do?” is ridiculous because it takes a worshipped? historical figure of unmeasurable importance and transports him into an extremely complex post-modern nihilist world that he could never have conceived. People that say this use too many big words, some of which are certainly dubious, ie: “post-modern”.
Asking “what would Jesus do?” is no different than postulating what the Little Mermaid might do if she were placed aboard the International Space Station. We can assume certain things:
1) That she would still love that guy.
2) That she would enjoy vacuum-sealed astronaut meals primarily composed of fish and seaweed.
3) That she would apply the same ethical standards towards the production of laser weapons and satellite surveillance as she would under normal cirumstances under the ocean.
See? So wear your “WWJD” bracelets and T-shirts proudly; after all, Jesus? would have approved of? turning religion into marketable novelties. In fact, we can assume he was diametrically - that is, he occupied a completely opposite position - opposed to not marketing religion.? Eh??
October 29, 2006
The site http://www.msn.41m.com? is a scam. There doesn’t seem to be much information about it on Google, so I thought I’d write this and spread the word.
A friend in Ottawa used it and it changed her MSN name. Who knows what else it does.
Assholes.
October 24, 2006
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? From 1960 to 1963, Yale social psychologist Stanley Milgram explored obedience to authority with a series of experiments. This subject was important because of the holocaust and other atrocities, and it continues to be important when we think of the recent incidences at Abu Ghraib. Milgram wanted to focus on the way people came to view themselves as means for carrying out the wishes of others, or in other words, the essence of obedience.? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? He did this by finding out how much pain somebody would inflict on another simply because they had been ordered to by a Yale experimenter. He chose this type of experiment because it would allow for a good amount of variation and variables could be controlled, in turn eliminating rival explanations for obedience. It was conducted like this: Two people would arrive at an official-looking Yale lab to conduct an experiment on punishment and learning, and each were assigned the role of “learner” or “teacher”, however the learner was in fact always an actor hired by Milgram. After an explanatory brief by the experimenter (also an actor) the learner was strapped into a chair with an electrode attached to his wrist, and the teacher, or naïve subject, was seated in a room with the experimenter and instructed to read word-pair questions. When the learner answered incorrectly the subject would administer electric shocks of increasing intensity using a shock generator. In reality, however, no shocks were given, although the sequentially spaced grunts, protests, and screams from the learner/actor would have convinced any subject otherwise. What would an ordinary person do when told by an apparently legitimate authority to administer up to 450 volts, where the shock generator read “DANGER – SEVERE SHOCK”, to another?
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? When Milgram surveyed people asking whether they or the subjects would administer the shocks, the answer was no. The experiment, however, proved otherwise. Milgram explained the source of this error by noting that respondents too often focused on the autonomous individual abstractly rather than on the situation and context.
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? Milgram conducted numerous innovative and essential variations of the basic experiment described above, and the results are shown in the table below. Obedience here is measured by the number of subjects that proceeded to the highest level on the shock generator, by which time the learner was apparently unconscious.
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? Description of Experiment? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? %? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
Learner protests vocally.
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63
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Exp. moved to basement of building, learner complains of heart problem.
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65
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Actor switch – new experimenter is unaggressive, new victim looks tough.
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50
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Women as subjects.
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65
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Learner participates on condition that he is let out when he asks.
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40
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Exp. moved to an office building in an industrial city.
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48
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Below we see the effects of physical distance between the subject and learner and subject and experimenter:
No vocal complaint heard from learner, wall separates learner and teacher.
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65
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Learner protests vocally, learner and teacher in same room.
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40
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Learner only receives shock if teacher puts learner’s hand on a shock plate.
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30
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Experimenter gives orders by phone.
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23
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? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? For experiments 12 to 16 Milgram altered the roles of people involved in the experiment, playing with the position, status, and actions of participants, and for experiments 17 and 18 Milgram examined group effects and the significance of conformity. Again, such variations and his control over variables allowed him to account for rival explanations.
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? He discovered, for example, that obedience was highest when people perceived a legitimate authority. It was also high when the subject performed subsidiary acts or merely witnessed the situation instead of shocking the learner themselves. It was low, however, when the subject was faced with two rebelling peers.
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? These results led Milgram to the “keystone” of his analysis, which he termed the agentic state - the mental state people enter when they see themselves as an agent for carrying out another person’s wishes. It is, in essence, openness to regulation from authority. While the results were disturbing, Milgram saw this as evidence that people are born with a potential for obedience that has caused considerable devastation in the past, and is sure to affect the future.
October 17, 2006
This picture just reminds me the hollywood movies, when after an alien invasion, the last “chief commander”, the hero addresses the aliens…
Only this case… She is the Alien looking one…
October 9, 2006
Because today it was all over the news that North Korea tested a nuclear weapon. And now North Korea has confirmed suspicions that they are as big of a dumbass as the rest of the nuclear states.
Not only do both North Korea and the U.S. have nuclear weapons, but both countries:
1)? Are led by mental midgets
2) Are good at keeping their populations ignorant, and;
3) Spend more on their military than anything else in their budget.
Years ago, President Bush said he would not tolerate nukes in North Korea, and today he lived up to his word by… uh… making a bunch of phone calls and trying his hardest to make a face that resembled the face of somebody who knows what’s going on.
Officials in the Bush administration are baffled as to why North Korea would want to destabilize the region by developing a sort of pre-emptive first strike capability.
“I mean, it’s as if they are afraid somebody is going to attack them first”, said Condoleeza Rice over the phone.
U.N. officials are considering sanctions, which? would be convenient since the five permenent members of the U.N. security council? (the U.S., China, Great Britain, France, and Russia) are all nuclear powers. North Korea is like the retarded kid they won’t let into the treehouse.
Hey, I have an idea. Why doesn’t the U.S. lead the world in a project to disarm all countries of nuclear weapons?
?
?
October 3, 2006
I was reading an article today and couldn’t help thinking on how truth its content was. A little while back one soldier was taken away from Israel and we had to watch his entire life, the plea of his parents, the cause of Israel and finally how Israel “retaliates” by wiping an entire country. Now for over two months, Palestine has had 1.4 million people in an “open” jail of 380 kilometer square. Over this period of time 239 individuals were tagetted by Israel as militants or terrorists. Out of these 239, 36 were children according to human watch… Terrorists indeed.
Now maybe we can understand why someone who has nothing to lose is ready to give his/her life to go at an ennemy who leaves nothing behind but hatred, corpses and destruction. The state of Israel has been condemned by anyone who has any sense of humanity and decency, this includes rabbis, priests and immams.
Is it time yet for the international community to drag the war criminals to justice? Or should we still dwell about? the? possibility that? it was an accident for the majorit of lebanon to be wiped out.
