I don't really like the faux-investigative tone of the article either, but it's misleading to accuse him of calling for vigilantism. He drove around a rich neighborhood, concluded that he would not be able to knock on anyone's door and talk about water, and then suggested a tiered tax system so that luxury use of water is discouraged, while also noting that there are additional externalities such as runoff that aren't being accounted for.
I'd love to see what those exact same students would say if the prevailing attitude changed and a massive wave of right-wing ideology took over campus politics. I'm sure that they'd be crying about how their self-evident right to self-expression was being horribly violated. Poor things.
This kind of attack is completely unnecessary. How is anyone supposed to respond to this comment when you've already constructed a straw man for your opponent and trivialized it?
But their student brains have been replaced by brains bereft of critical faculties and programmed to conform. To the untrained eye, they seem like your average book-devouring, ideas-discussing, H&M-adorned youth, but anyone who’s spent more than five minutes in their company will know that these students are far more interested in shutting debate down than opening it up.
This base-shoring piece ironically panders to people who've already made up their mind and are uninterested in engaging in any kind of meaningful discussion. You can't possibly write something like that and expect to convince anyone that you're arguing in good faith.
There is UberX in Philly now, although as far as I know there were no regulatory changes (and Black still operates legally). The PPA actually did a handful of "sting" operations against UberX drivers when the service started, calling an Uber and then impounding the vehicle (http://www.phillymag.com/news/2014/10/26/uber-philadelphia-u...).
I agree with your first point. Personally, I draw the line at the ability to suffer. It is well understood that dogs, pigs, cats, cows, orangutans, lambs, and many other animals feel pain the same way we humans do. Just like humans, I think they have a right not to be forced to suffer unnecessarily, by nature of being capable of it. For that reason I don't eat meat, nor do I go to zoos.
As for the second, I think that's an unfair and paralyzing comment but I don't think you mean it in bad faith. We all have different capacities to help alleviate suffering in different ways, with different impacts. The fact that there are "bigger" injustices does not mean that small ones should be ignored, especially when they are within your community and you have the ability to fix them yourself.
Or - if you're interested in stepping a little outside mainstream opinions - what makes animal suffering any less important than human suffering? Are we really special in some way that other animals aren't?
I don't think this sort of empty, dismissive comment helps anyone. Besides, is there even that much difference between someone who is genuinely hateful and someone who's just saying hateful things because they enjoy making other people upset? If it looks like a duck...
It's not really a policy change though is it? Aren't they enforcing laws that cyclists previously were breaking with impunity? I would like them to show their work too, but I don't really see the policy conspiracy angle to this.
I wasn't saying that meditation isn't measurable, or that it's a waste of time, I was talking about the idea of the brain as a "receiver of consciousness". Meditation is definitely interesting, but it is dangerously easy to cross from "this helps/interests me personally" into "I have constructed an irrational belief system based on insights that are ill defined and not supported by evidence"
I would be careful comparing the work of pseudo scientific "spiritualists" to that of neuroscience. Why do you think scientists don't embrace these ideas? Is it really because they're somehow spiritually devoid and foolish and intentionally ignoring whatever truth you think you're grasping? Or is it because what you're talking about is nebulous and inherently impossible to test, with no theoretical underpinning based on experimental observation?
My point was that the game is specifically designed to remove the aspects of hardship, frustration, and uncertainty from the work. It's not an analogy for real world problems because the real world isn't designed to coddle you and make you want to keep playing (or working). You might as well say that Cookie Clicker provides useful life lessons.
Edit: Feel free to disagree with me, but personally I wouldn't see WoW on a resume and think, "This person has experience doing hard work in the face of adversity".
Is that a good thing? Aren't games like that designed to provide constant, positive, encouraging feedback for the player's "work"? There's no real risk of failure as long as you put enough time in, unlike the real world.
It really sounds like you're trolling. If you're actually trying to have a debate in good faith, please read back over your posts and edit them to reflect that. Using dismissive language such as calling space probes "toys", or space exploration "some arbitrary aim" doesn't help your cause - it makes you sound juvenile, defensive, and bitter.
Yes, the critical theory is what I'm talking about, and I think that knowledge is definitely associated with the political "left". The issue I had is that the skepticism is almost always ignorant and dismissive. It's just impossibly frustrating to try to talk to someone who refuses to do any background reading but wants to tell you you're wrong about concepts that live in an academic and historical context.
As for the military, I guess that one is more debatable. I agree that the Bush-era "support the troops" jingoism isn't around much, but I used to see a lot posts where it's implicit. Things like hugely popular photos of special ops soldiers followed by adoring comments of how "badass" they are.