I’ve only barely started reading this but I already know I want you to read it. So read it. It is worth reading, I know this already. I may return to write something long about it. More on this if Rogers decides they like the websites I want to visit.
It’s fun reading a book with an unreliable narrator, right? Makes the whole experience that much more intellectual. Some games have used a modified version of the idea and intentionally misled the player, and when it works, it works incredibly well. Couldn’t hurt to see more of that.
This is an article proposing that depression has not evolved itself away because it inspires a cycle of improvement to prevent depression in the future. vossk tumbl’d it ages ago, then vael reblogged it not long after I started my tumblr, and I didn’t want to re-reblog it so soon. So I decided to wait until later. And now it’s later!
However, over the many months that I’ve been planning out a giant post about depression, it no longer has anything to do with that article. It is absolutely worth reading, and many of the things it proposes (rumination being used to help you avoid the same problem in the future, depressed people having a hard time caring about things they deem as unimportant because they’re too fixated on their own pain, thinking analytically when depressed) are brilliant and should feel familiar to anyone who has been depressed. I just don’t really have anything to add to it, and I want my post to stand on its own. There are two quotes I would like to draw particular attention to, though:
“I remember one patient who came in and said she needed to reduce her dosage,” he says. “I asked her if the antidepressants were working, and she said something I’ll never forget. ‘Yes, they’re working great,’ she told me. ‘I feel so much better. But I’m still married to the same alcoholic son of a bitch. It’s just now he’s tolerable.’ ”
And also:
"We end up having to keep people on the drugs forever. It was as if these people have a bodily infection, and modern psychiatry is just treating their fever.”
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I would also ask you not to reblog or otherwise share my post until you fully believe it’s complete. I won’t call it finished until I’ve incorporated the input of everyone who has anything to say about it. If you’re going to reblog it and write about it, I would instead like to talk to you about it and improve it first. If I forgot to mention something, or simply didn’t know about something you have personal experience with, I would love your input. Questions and concerns, constructive criticism, hate mail, love and adoration… I will accept all of these things and more! I have MSN, AIM, and xfire listed at the bottom of my tumblr. Whether you use Yahoo or ICQ, send me an e-mail at my hotmail address and I’ll get a hold of you somehow.
The post should be up shortly, I just thought I’d take this part off because it doesn’t really belong with the main post anyway. It feels awesome to actually sit down and write for once.
I really can’t define it better than the article itself did, thus: “George Miller Beard diagnosed ‘neurasthenia’ as an ailment caused by modern civilization’s taxing effect on the nervous system, with sufferers experiencing headaches, fatigue, depression, insomnia, and more.” Essentially, the core feeling is one of restlessness. On a wide scale, I do often feel restless about my life and what I’m going to do. On a smaller scale, I’ll often sit uncomfortably in front of the computer and try to decide which of many things I will do, or get up and pace around without any idea of what I meant to do when I got up. I definitely think the idea is very relevant, and I also think it’s a deeper, more complex problem than the handful of symptoms described in the article. The list of symptoms there almost reads like an infomercial (“do you feel lost, restless, or shiftless?” Then our product is for you!) but I can definitely see the basic idea in myself and others. More important is the cause, and how to get rid of it. Let’s try and figure that out, shall we?
The article says that “Neurasthenia is back for the same reason it plagued our forbearers; our expectations have not kept pace with changing technology and culture.” Think about that - we have so many things at our fingertips that were once impossible, and yet most teenagers and young adults only have the dated wisdom of their parents to rely on. So they’re told to go to university, get a degree in something useful enough to land a job and interesting enough to go to work on time. We’re living 20th-century style in the 21st century, and it isn’t working all that great. With all the wonderful things out there, from governments that ensure everyone is healthy to guaranteed internet access, we get bogged down by timeless “necessities” like working to pay for our food, our homes, etc. and trying to find a proper girl/boy to bring home to Ma and Pa so we can be happy. It’s not that those things are no longer necessary, but that there are options these days that fit a lot better with our new way of life than many of the dated systems still upheld by tradition. By holding onto these old expectations and trying to make them fit with a modern life, we end up feeling empty and restless, waiting to fit the ideal our parents had for themselves, which they passed on to us.
“It is the gap between our expectations about the world and how we really experience it that causes our modern 'neurasthenia.' New media and technology has seemingly brought the whole world just within our reach. But we can never seem to grasp it.” We expect the “real world” of our adulthood to be exactly as our parents told us it would be, so we’re looking for that when it no longer exists. The world we really live in requires a different kind of thinking from what we’ve been taught, and it’s very individual. No longer do we need to follow the crowd to be “successful.” Taking positive steps forward and never stagnating due to uncertainty will, eventually, lead us all to our own ways of life. When we eliminate the internal conflict between our burgeoning ideals and the expected way of life, restlessness will gradually disappear.
On the smaller scale, uncertainty is the only cause for feeling restless. “Our anxiousness comes from standing in the middle of a decision. We know we don’t really want to do something but we feel bad letting it go.” Maybe you were told to keep your options open, maybe you have a broad range of interests but no dedicated hobby. Either way, not being able to decide on what you want to do right this second is a problem when you’re spread too thin, and that’s something that happens a lot these days thanks to the power of the internet. It really is better to restrict your options some and hope it doesn’t come back to haunt you than to flounder in the middle of everything and tell yourself it’s the most efficient way to live. By focusing on the things you really like to do and forgetting about the things you “should” do or “should” experience, you’ll have more time and enjoy yourself more.
I wish it was a simple matter of 'do this, then do that’, to solve this problem. Unfortunately, thinking that everyone can follow the exact same route to success is part of what caused the problem in the first place. So I look forward to seeing your definition of success, or at the very least watching you work towards achieving it or discovering it. I’m still trying to reconcile my own ideals with the need to make money and maintain a roof over my head, but slowly and surely I’m pruning the unnecessary extremities of my life and focusing on the things that matter. I just have to figure out what all of those things are. I’ve got some, but it’s not perfect yet. And that’s just how life is!
After several weeks, I’m finally typing up my thoughts about the RSA Animate video The Secret Powers of Time about time perspective. I sent myself an e-mail with some notes so I’d remember what I wanted to say, and I think I’m good to go. Now that school’s over, I’ve got plenty of time :D
Speaking of school, yes, I am graduating from high school next tuesday. My last exam was yesterday. Of my friends on facebook, 24 of them are in my graduating class. One girl, intelligent and likely with plenty of great things ahead of her, made a status update about being glad to be done. A middle aged man commented to say that she may change her mind about that in a few years.
Really? I mean, seriously? Being a teenager and being in high school is lame. There’s nothing about that anyone sensible wants back. You can hang out with friends, relax, and have fun at any age. The fact that you’re a sad old man whose life peaked after winning the big football game is not a fact of life, it is a fact of your life. It is so simple and so essential that we refuse to accept the idea that the future is a terrible place where we will all be miserable, because it will become a reality if we don’t. If we allow ourselves to go to waste, jump into marriages we’ll regret, and generally just wait for happiness to magically come to us, yes, high school will in fact be “the best years of our lives.” If your life is on a downhill slope from the minute you accept the responsibility of being an adult and taking care of yourself, you have failed. I’m not going to sugarcoat that because I take for a given that anyone who reads this is not going to accept defeat and intends to go places with their life.
After seeing that message, I went looking for similar comments by similarly downtrodden people. I was scared that everyone would have a sad old man (or woman, but it’s typically a male sentiment) telling them not to be happy, and that they’d better get used to pain and suffering because nothing they do will amount to anything. Surprisingly, very few people had even mentioned being done of school, and there were no other comments spouting “the best years of your life” bullshit. That’s pretty good, and I didn’t really expect it. It is a pleasant surprise, at any rate.
Now, the RSA Animate video mentions two forms of past oriented people: past positive, and past negative. The man who tells his children that high school will be “the best years of their life” could be nostalgic for his past, or fixated on what went wrong in his life to bring him to the terrible miserable life he lives now. Neither of those is particularly healthy, when taken to the extreme that any possibility of progress is ignored and the thought of improving one’s own life is impossible. An appreciation for what your past has taught you is good, and paying attention to your mistakes so you can avoid them in the future is also good. If you spend your life living in the past, you will never find your way to the future. Then you’ll be forty, maybe fifty, years old, you’ll be well on your way to losing the metabolism that kept you fit and attractive as a young man, and you’ll drink beer and watch football and blubber about the good old days. You don’t want that.
From the age of five, I have been raised to always be oriented towards the future. At the age of five, parents in Canada have the choice to put their children into french immersion (or english immersion, in places where french is dominant) or leave them in regular classes. Basically, if you are an english speaking family, your child will learn french for free and gain access to the bilingual jobs you wish you could have had. At the age of five, we don’t make these decisions on our own. Our parents, looking to give us the best life possible, have the choice to unlock a very large number of opportunities for us. Of our graduating class of roughly three hundred, only fifty or so are in french immersion. There were perhaps 60-70 in the very beginning, but that essentially tells you who looks out for the future of their children and who doesn’t.
That sounds unfair, but the effect becomes more profound as you get older. The people in french immersion mostly keep to themselves as kids, so I know most of “us.” Later on, of course we made friends with people who shared our interests regardless of whether they were in french, but that didn’t happen much when our classes were almost exclusively in french. When we got to junior high and only 3/7 of our courses were in french, we went out and made friends with plenty of people. In high school, where only ¼ of our classes each semester were in french, you would think we would almost lose the tightly knit groups of purely french immersion people. This was not the case. In junior high, there was no choice of classes. You were shuffled randomly into the required courses and went on with your life, hoping you happened to land in a class with a group of friends. In high school, suddenly we got to pick our courses, and if we wanted to be with our friends, we could make it happen. As frightened young teenagers, picking courses was something we had no experience with. So we turned to our parents for guidance once again.
What do you think the wise future oriented parents of french immersion children said? “Keep your options open. Take all the science classes, take the extra math classes, just in case you need them or find you really love them.” The “english kids,” who never actually thought of themselves that way, are a mixed bag. There are perfectly intelligent individuals whose parents never forced them to learn french, and likewise there are individuals who made poor choices after their parents chose to give them a chance at awesome bilingual jobs and ended up being not as intelligent. I can name each individual in french immersion who didn’t follow the model path their parents set out, yet I can also name the individuals outside of french immersion who took every science course, calculus, advanced english, etc. without giving up.
Taking advanced english is a very good indicator of just how hard you’re willing to work for future benefit. Further, taking Advanced Placement English for university credit is the epitome of being future oriented. To put it bluntly, none of the thirty or so people who signed up for it were intelligent enough to survive advanced english. The twenty four people exiting that classroom, after much effort and an admirable amount of mental breakdowns, are finally intelligent enough for advanced english. Those who couldn’t handle the prospect of improving upon their failures (or couldn’t be bothered to read books) dropped the class, and instead took an easier english course where they might have received better marks. I’ve got a photograph of our class and those who elected to take AP English, and here’s the breakdown:
Nine out of 24 in french immersion doesn’t sound like much, but that’s nearly 1/5 of the french immersion students. However, seven of those nine students took at least 2/3 science courses this year and last year, as well as advanced math and calculus. There are, of course, students in french immersion who also did the science and math but not advanced english, and off the top of my head there’s… nine or ten people who did all the science but not advanced english in our french classes. That makes 16 of 50 french immersion students “keeping their options open” and overloading themselves with work for future benefit.
Yet the RSA Animate video even says that a future oriented person must be able to trust that their decisions will benefit them in the future. Some people can’t trust that future benefit will follow their decisions because they are ignorant of the possibilities, and those are the people who never become future oriented. Of those who are, when we become disillusioned with the life of a model citizen, we crash. When we no longer trust that taking all the hard courses in high school, then university, will give us the perfectly happy (and also rich) lives we were promised, we doubt ourselves. We doubt the system itself. Will the degree I signed up for today be worth $20,000, even $50,000+, in the future? Will I be able to pay for getting it in the first place? Will it land me a good job so I can provide for the little munchkins who will one day follow in my footsteps?
This is where I am now. I don’t know if I can run off to spend an exorbitant amount of money on learning about a field that I can’t guarantee will bring me either the joy I want or the money (and thus freedom) to find it. So I’m thinking about skipping that whole process. It’s possible that I will go to university to take something practical and tell people I’m smart so they’ll hire me, but that’s to be determined by my financial situation. If I either have far too much money or far too little, I’ll go. Maybe I’ll become a teacher and inspire a future group of kids much like those of us who took smarty pants classes like Advanced Placement English… Looking at this picture of us with Ms. Barrett, I can almost see it happening. I’ve never wanted to be a teacher, because it’s a mediocre job and I’m not very good at teaching people things, but I mean, I’ve got the perfect name for it. Sure, they’d laugh at first, but it’d be endearing after they realize how awesome I clearly am.
Now I’m off to run through my daily routine of browser based games for future oriented mice like me who crave some immediate reward with their long-term plans. A character I’ve been playing for something like two years is almost the strongest among his class :’) He’s all growed up, and soon I’ll get to turn him into an immortal powerhouse. Aww yeah.
Some more random links this morning. I question the authority of this writer if they think The Pirate Bay is somehow a deep, hidden part of the internet, but I’ll start with the funny article.
China sensors Garfield, Paris Hilton, and more in an attempt to block porn
The Dark Web/Deep Web/whatever you want to call it: cool in theory, terrible in reality
The Pirate Bay is fearless and evil and lol
How cute :3 He thinks torrenting is some secret little club.
Some assorted stuff today. Again, I would have finally typed up my prom post, but I un-gave up on getting the other pictures I was missing because my english teacher said she’d want a copy of the picture I got with her, so that will come SOME DAY MAYBE OR MAYBE I SHOULD JUST MAKE A POST WITH WHAT I’VE GOT, I DON’T KNOW. I guess if I don’t do it tomorrow, it’ll be so late as to be useless. Two weeks late is a bit much. I’ve already got today’s post planned out, so oh well!
First is an interview with Polar Bear Club, which is cool because they discuss how they’ve been helped by the advertising power of the internet, rather than hurt by music piracy, but the real highlight for me is this story:
Your new album is coming out on Red Leader Records this month. Where did the name “Sometimes Things Just Disappear” come from?
We were in the studio and having a really tough time coming up with a memorable/cool/meaningful name that we could all agree on. Actually, pretty much the only thing we EVER agree on is that Taco Bell rules. So we were well in the midst of a competition amongst ourselves that we affectionately dubbed the “Taco Bell Challenge,” during which we all tried to eat one of every single item on the menu over the course over our studio time. As you could probably guess, no one finished and we were all pretty miserable for having tried. But one of the days when some of the guys went to order some tacos, they had a really huge order and were a little short on money, and they had a pretty awkward encounter with a really slick 17 year-old manager guy in a suit who turned out to be one of the best individuals any of us have ever encountered. Our old bass player, Greg, was trying to order his Mexican Pizza and was surprised at the price, and told the manager he was short…to which our hero replied, “you know what? Sometimes things just disappear…” and proceeded to take out a mysterious card and swipe it, giving Greg all of his food for free. Manager dude…if you read this, we love you, and sorry if this gets you fired.
I wish I could be slick 17-year old manager guy who’s comfortable enough with his job that he can do whatever the hell he wants. I do not wish to fail to have that job, however, and so I won’t go looking for it.
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Next up is an article about how pirating books hurts the industry. In the middle, when she mentions what happens when a publishing house loses money, that scares me. Not having money means they can’t continue to make money, which basically means bad things in the future unless they get really lucky, and I don’t want that to happen to any of the series, authors, or publishers I really like.
Then the part about the money she actually makes scares me, because it makes me terrified about the prospect of ever living off of my writing, which I never honestly planned to do, but it was nice to think I had the option! She says she “wrote rough drafts, then did edits (in one case, grueling edits), copy edits, and final pass edits. I wrote back copy and front copy, and acknowledgements and dedications. I maintained a website, I blogged, I did copious interviews, I ran contests, I travelled and spoke at whatever convention would have me. I Tweeted, and Facebooked, and paid for a launch party, swag, and postage for review copies and bookplates.” For $25,000. Three books, if you have never in your entire life read a book, is a lot of writing. Many authors I read release at most a book every year, though perhaps theirs are much longer than hers, and perhaps as well their niche is a much stronger one.
I can’t imagine I would magically become a Steven Erikson or a Robert J. Sawyer overnight, and from some of the other things I read the day I found this about how brutal it is being an author who doesn’t sell hundreds of thousands of copies (have I posted that stuff? I don’t even know, man) I find myself no longer considering writing novels as a career. Writing as part of a greater project, where my work is part of a whole and I’ll still get paid relatively well if nobody buys the product, is still an option, but you can’t just stumble onto those jobs and unfortunately my chance to be Anthony Burch has already passed.
Then there’s how getting paid an advance actually works. “For keep in mind that an advance is just that: an advance on royalties. So I won’t make another penny on my first three novels until I pay back my advance.” Got that? You get paid with a loan. Then, some day, if you become rich and famous, you get some actual money of your own. Until then, you will sweat blood and books for your masters. However, the internet, as shown by the Polar Bear Club interview, offers many wonderful opportunities for alternative means of success. Perhaps I could sell e-books of my novel to generous strangers until I make enough money to print them off out of my own pocket and make something of a profit. Perhaps I could give my books away and ask for donations. Maybe a major change to the publishing industry is looming on the horizon, waiting to be unleashed the day I get the freedom to write for a living. Who knows?
The ordeal involved to become a famous author only gets worse, according to the rest of the post, but it’s all there if you want to read it. The main subject is, vaguely, piracy, and so my responses to what she’s said follows.
I’m one of those people that will go into their local bookstore and actually look for books to buy. I’ve spent many hundreds of dollars on books, and I don’t regret any of it. I don’t expect much for my $15-30. I want, essentially, 2-4 hours worth of entertainment. It’s what I paid for. Generally, I get more than that. That’s awesome. I often buy random books and continue to read everything that author writes until I accidentally forget they exist. I bought The Sleeper Awakes by H.G. Wells because a couple of songs I have reference it, even though Project Gutenberg has it for free. In the future, I plan to read through the “1001 books to read before you die” and, if I can, own many of them. I also plan to have a somewhat impressive collection of books with which to intimidate future acquaintances.
I have, however, pirated two series of books. One is the Haruhi Suzumiya books, only a few of which are translated officially, and I get the impression they’re not amazing anyway? I’d have a hard time tracking them down and a harder time reading them in public because they’re all fluffy looking. So I suffer through a terribly translated .pdf and it’s ok because I don’t know if I’d get $10-15 worth of neat out of them. The other thing I’ve downloaded is all of the Discworld books, all 30-something of them, and like the Haruhi books they’re pretty short and stuff. They’d probably run me like $10 each - nearly $400 - for like 100-200 pages each I think? Maybe 300, I don’t know.
But I can get a trilogy of Drizz’t books for $30, which is easily 1000+ pages - i.e. a fair bit more value. If I were buying books, Discworld would be at the very bottom of my list. Like all the music I’ve pirated, I likely would never have paid any money for those things. I don’t need them, and in fact I haven’t read through any of the books I’ve downloaded. I don’t have an ebook reader, and I have a hard time sitting down to read a 200 page .pdf file in front of my monitor. So the fact that I downloaded those books just shows a slight interest on my part, and if it turns out that I’m wrong, and these books are books I would be proud to own and display - I will gladly go out and buy them, no matter how hard they are to find.
Lessee… Link dump first. Found a group of people doing music reviews on Destructoid and found some stuff, thus:
http://www.myspace.com/periphery
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Corrigan
First link is obvious, and I think I like them. I’m not sure. I think they’ll go into the same category as Lostprophet’s first album - something I like to listen to, but that I can’t in good conscience call “good” or tell people to listen to.
Second link is an interview with their main man, who recorded the album in his apartment, which doesn’t show at all in the music. Then he takes it to the record labels and says “hey, I’ve got this here album, want to distribute it for me? no? fine, I’ll find someone else” and ends up signing five different record deals without any bullshit attached. Seems like a pretty smart guy, though he does say that “all of this is affecting the music industry in ways we can’t even predict because of all the ripples that it causes.” What an empty sentence.
Last time I read a useless sentence like that was reading an article about Tim Hortons basically getting screwed out of a bunch of money by some wonderfully opportunistic businessmen. “‘We consider the uncertainties surrounding this announcement to be a negative development,’ Peter Sklar, an analyst at BMO Capital Markets, said in a report Friday.”
We consider the uncertainties to be a negative development? Thank you. Your eloquence astounds me.
Third link: Someone, somewhere on the internet, recommended this. I skipped through the first volume or issue or whatever and could not understand why. On every given page was something that made me depressed. One features our sad, middle-aged protagonist going to the grocery store in the middle of summer with a heavy coat, and teenagers accost him saying it’s “too warm for that fucking shit!” He feebly replies “but it gets cold in the grocery store…”
Anyway, back to my post, which consists of things I completely forgot from my last post. The other thing making life horrible was a cold I got from my grandmother, who sounded like she was dying for three days then got better just as I started getting sick. But then I got better last night! Exercise and plenty of fluids seem to have cured me.
Now this part is kinda weird. Thursday night, when I managed to fall asleep by accident in between blowing my nose and breathing through my mouth, I had a dream that I was hanging out with a handful of french immersion people. We all pretty much know eachother from different classes over the years. Many of us are in french immersion because we have smart parents who push us to be smart and have opportunities and stuff, and so we’re in all the science courses and advanced english and etc. So these are the people with lockers beside mine, who talk to me about our teachers/homework/whatever, who are freaking out about their grades and scholarships and spending $20k a year on some local bullshit “elite” university, all that stuff. As far as I’m concerned, they can have all the scholarships I’m busy not snapping up because I’ve already got plenty of money.
So I’m hanging out with these people I’m not really friends with, but that I’ve always kinda known, and I’m acting like I usually do to make sure people like me because that just makes life easy for everyone. We’re walking around and hanging out and stuff, and that was cool I think except it was like a fast-forward music-less montage. Near the end of the dream, we’re at an intersection that basically leads to nowhere, except a really, really, long road that kinda leads back to my place, or a different long road that circles around town and has an ice cream place on it. We’re waiting for a few cars to go by, and this really attractive, outgoing girl turns around and says “you know, Matt, you’re pretty fake.”
How exactly she would notice that during our brief conversations at our lockers and whatever happened during the dream was completely beyond me, and so it took me entirely by surprise. Normally I’d agree, because clearly I wasn’t being myself since that might not go over as well, but it surprised me so much that I kinda stammered and said that I’d better head home and went up the long road home, while they went off the other way for reasons unknown. If we wanted to guess, the dairy bar would be a good reason. Then I wake up.
Remember how I said it was kinda weird? Yesterday in calculus, a friend was telling me that he was going to go see The Undertaker this weekend, and I asked him what year he thought it was as a joke, and he told me The Undertaker was undefeated at something or another three times in a row or something, so I laughed and told him it’s all fake and planned out anyway. The bell rings, we get up to go, and what does he come back with?
“You’re fake!”
I’ll add the comment I liked from the editorials section of today’s newspaper tomorrow afternoon or something, but for now, a handful of links:
Muslims, Christians Challenge Ontario’s More Explicit Sex-Ed
McGuinty Backs Down On Frank Sex-Ed
Sex Curriculum Is About Tolerance, Not Mechanics
Kids, Let’s Talk About Sex A Lot
First of all: bluh I could never be a parent, not until they give out degrees for parenting, and honestly I think a six-year undergrad + masters program requirement for having kids might solve a lot of our problems
Second of all, kids with access to computers (i.e. nearly all of them) can easily find porn and information about sex online long before they’re even physically interested in it. I know I did, because all the cool kids online were doing it, although they were old enough to have sex drives. I did spend a lot more time online than the average kid would, so of course I had more opportunity to do it, but even still it’s not exactly difficult.
When kids already have access to things infinitely more “damaging” than proper education about tolerance and safe sex - there are enough guys as it is who expect sex to be like porn - I don’t see why any logical human being would object to this. Of course, it isn’t the logical ones who got the curriculum pulled, but they’re being harmed by the influence of an incredibly vocal and incredibly biased part of the population, and that’s a shame.
“Teaching a 9-year old that gender identity comes naturally will save future ostracism, angst, bullying, and self-hate. Teaching a 12-year old about masturbation and intercourse will help clear taboos and misinformation associated with those forbidden unknowns.
As a family physician, I am faced daily with a plethora of fears and disastrous events emanating from ignorance, religious, and sanctioned practices. The gamut runs from forced marriages to imported cousins, female circumcision, premature ejaculation, total fear of any sexual practice and guilt-ridden obsessive thoughts. These are manifested by generalized anxiety disorders, depression and suicidal tendencies.
Parents should have the responsibility to educate children about sexual matters, but let’s be honest, how many do? Is it still healthy to have "educated” young men and women believing that each time they masturbate, they’re violating their religion and depleting their “reserves” so any slip is followed by the worst self-hate and guilt? Some parents and religious leaders still teach that semen comes from the spinal cord.
Proper nomenclature and removing taboos shouldn’t affect childhood innocence. Six-year-olds will still learn how to tie their shoes and play with Barbies, but they will know they have a penis instead of a wee-wee and a vagina instead of a coochie.“
"Is it ironic that the religious right is fighting hard to prevent sexual orientation education in the public system, since the entire purpose of public education is the prevention of unscientific policy. Despite overwhelming expert opinion that gay kids begin displaying gender variance years before puberty - I was 4 - and that attempts to eradicate undesirable orientations can lead to catastrophic harm for developing adolescents, many religious communities still insist such feelings can be "corrected.”
Yet, schools still teach lesbian, gay, bisexual/pansexual, and transgender (LGBT) issues only in the context of sex-ed programming, thereby reinforcing the widespread myth that being gay is only about sexual taste.
Religious conservatives’ right to restrict their children’s acces to medical opinion is no more of a “family value” than my parents’ right to protect my safety. Where were religious conservatives’ “family values” when their kids were beating me up?“
It seemed like a good idea, only who would I watch them with? Bah. But wait!
Second link: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/work/how-to-grow-your-brain-it-takes-more-than-just-math-puzzles/article1539814/
Revise the plan, then: watch each movie once on mute, and try to understand what’s going on. Then watch a second time with sound. Master body language in 30 days! Grow your brain!