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Very funny. Do I look like Dan Rather? From a new blog called Dennis the Peasant – Help! Help! I am being repressed!
Just from the title of the blog, you can tell the guy can be funny.
Exasperated with obnoxious patients in the clinic where she’s the office manager, my aunt put up a sign that read: “If you are grouchy, irritable, or just plain mean, there will be a $10 surcharge for putting up with you.”Clearly some people took the sign to heart. That same afternoon a patient came to her window and announced, “The doctor said he would like to see me every month for the next six months, so I’m going to pay all my $60 up front.”
From “All In a Day’s Work”
This is cool. Smart reactions such as SPW are starting to pop up in society.
One of the best essays on post-modern thought I´ve ever seen. I have been awed.
Two. One to change it and the other to wait for the world to revolve around him.
One of the best light bulb jokes I´ve heard, in my opinion. And God only knows how many consultants I´ve had to observe as being the slime of the world. And fool others into paying millions to them at the same time.
This article is worth thinking about. Not just because it´s one more example of science-babble that the cheap infotainment media has found a market for. There is so much junk-reporting of science studies out there, that I´m not even going to bother critiquing what they are reporting. But I think it´s important because of another point.
Dark thoughts can get you down in more ways than you are often aware of. So, it´s always a good thing to remember to do a reality check and see if you are not falling into a pessimism trap. On the other hand, playing dizzy Polyanna in grave situations can get you dead or in even worse trouble. The trick is not making either of these two mistakes.
And in Germany, where sexual exploitation is freedom, comes this gem:
‘If you don’t take a job as a prostitute, we can stop your benefits’A 25-year-old waitress who turned down a job providing “sexual services” at a brothel in Berlin faces possible cuts to her unemployment benefit under laws introduced this year.
Prostitution was legalised in Germany just over two years ago and brothel owners who must pay tax and employee health insurance were granted access to official databases of jobseekers.
Comments from pejmanesque:
I bet she could bring suit at the European Court of Human Rights (or whatever the heck it’s called) on the grounds that they’re not also trying to force men to become gigolos.
Posted by Steven Den Beste at January 30, 2005 11:33 AM
And the Euro Court would reply, “For shame! Why aren’t you forcing men to become gigolos? You must commence doing so at once.”
Posted by Mark at January 30, 2005 12:23 PM
Jesus freaking christ. I cannot believe that.
And you can’t tell a brothel from a bar? WTF??!!
Oh my god.
Posted by JCoke at January 30, 2005 01:00 PM
Alessandra:
Beautiful example of how a diseased and violent society legitimizes everything that is wrong. On the other hand, maybe only with examples like this will society start to think that neither turning a blind eye to illegal prostitution nor legalizing prostitution are solutions.
JCoke:
“Jesus freaking christ. I cannot believe that.
And you can’t tell a brothel from a bar? WTF??!!”
I had the same reaction. On the other hand, so many university social sciences departments and corporate offices are now indistinguishable from brothels and homo saunas, I´m not surprised. The latest gem I saw was a panel in a Queer conference advertising for papers on the erotic lives of professors. Now that´s material for jokes…
Quote from Emile Zola (1840-1902) – Writer
I had seen the media do a big hoopla about this self-esteem study, thinking, “there we go again…” I would like to remind people that the media loves to take one single little study in a very complex field and throw it out in a sensationalist, biased way. You don´t know how this study was designed, and you don´t even know if there are a million other studies that show this is not so. You don´t even know what the researchers here defined as self-esteem, and what exactly were they measuring and how.
Self-esteem is a necessary psychological process for mental health and happiness. I don´t want to make this a treatise on the subject, but it´s just ridiculous to say “because some students with less self esteem have achieved something, self-esteem is a human throw away thing.”
This study must make all the people responsible for destroying self-esteem in youngsters ecstatic, they now must feel less guilty, and less stupid. And aren´t there a lot of these kinds of people?
Don´t buy it, self-esteem is fundamental for *life*. It´s a fundamental role of any teacher to “fuel” it in their students.
Update – Jan 31-2005- Response to AC´s comment to this entry. (Too big to write in the little comment window).
AC, hi,
I appreciated your comments. You actually wrote a lot in little space.
So, let me just say a couple of things. There are a million studies regarding self-esteem in people of all ages, demographics, etc. Published, reviewed, talked about, analyzed, etc. etc.
This statement that you made (that there were no previous studies on self-esteem) is lunacy. And where did it come from? From the stupid grrrr argh %$#@* infotainment misinformation article, yes? I saw a lot of people in blogs repeat the same thing! It was driving me crazy! People who never read a psychology study in their lives were being misinformed en masse. It´s like saying no one ever studied conflict, anger, depression. Psychology literature is filled with studies in these areas, including self-esteem!
Now, perhaps, there was something specific about the focus of this study where the researchers could claim it was something no one ever studied before, some detail. But to say no one has ever done a study on self-esteem is patently absurd. I suspect it was just a cheap tactic to get a lot of media attention for free, which I´m sure these researchers are delighted at. Which makes me even despise them more. Even though some things you mention do seem very interesting.
“If you want to say that self-esteem is fundamental, you can, of course — you just can’t do it with a scientific basis at the moment.”
Actually, as I mentioned, there are thousands of articles that show self-esteem is fundamental, beneficial, and in certain instances, one of the variables that are life-saving in a crisis situation. This article has told you absolute gobbledygook regarding what exists and what doesn´t exist in terms of psychology studies. You are not going to make me list dozens of such studies here, are you? Take my word for it, or go to your university library, they´re there. You can probably find many on the Net as well.
“I’m not trying to be flippant or anything; it’s just that my experience with self-esteem has never corresponded with the dominant paradigm.”
Didn´t think you were being flippant, quite on the contrary. I found your comments raised important points and I am glad the articles were useful to you.
I´m just lazy or I would have sat down and written a pretty post on self-esteem, serious, long, thoughtful, that explains to you other things I know about self-esteem, to give you perhaps the other side of the story, which may be different than what your other gf said too. Perhaps I will do it in bits. I would have some things to say about what is self-esteem, dynamics of self-esteem, your experience, and so on, but it doesn´t fit into 3 lines 🙂
Maybe I will just wait for someone to do a nice critique of these studies and put the link here. :-)))
The sin of sloth is a most terrible thing… I´m lost…
Quoted on Evangelical Outpost – Outakes:
Two weeks ago Josh Claybourn mentioned he didn’t like “blogging about blogging” and found it “incestuous and self-serving.” This week John Rabe weighed in by asking, “You know what I’m getting a bit sick of? Tedious blog posts about blogging.”
I never thought I would hear someone considered barely legally coherent say something so stupid.
Blogging, which has exploded, is now on its own a huge field to be studied in every respect, sociology, communications, tech, psychology, politics, media, etc etc. Only very stupid people don´t have a single intelligent observation to make about blogging and the immense blog universe. Which, we can conclude, probably includes a lot of bloggers, given that blogging requires no intelligence, no thinking is necessary to apply.
If you can blabber, you can blog.
Reflections, Reflections by Alessandra 
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