Status Updates From The American Paradox: Spiri...

"Faith is like love. When we hoard it, it shrivels. When we live and express it, it grows. So to deepen faith-or any attitude or conviction-we had best not sit passively, waiting for conviction to overtake us. Rather, enact what little faith we have."

...and those who see humanity in the image of God"

Woops this is on page 283

A quote from someone Jonathan Sacks
"The power of the Judaeo=Christian tradition is that it carts a moral reality larger than private inclination....It suggests that not all choices are equal; some lead on to blessing, others to lives of quiet despair........the scene is set for a genuine debate between two conflicting visions-between those who see the individual as a bundle of impulses to be gratified and those...

"Religious conservatives...fear that when a politically correct educational establishment gets into the values business their parental authority will get undermined...Will education promote the homosexual agenda or an internationalism that undermines patriotism?"

Obviously not. I mean how could it? He's poopooing their concerns.

Didn't age well, now did it?

Why is right wing the only thing associated with censorship? Arguably, left wing governments have been responsible for censorship on a greater scale, for a longer period of time, than what has come from the 'right'.

I'm thinking China and the USSr as compared to Nazi

Again, didn't age well, the Cosby show as an example of being both profitable and principled........

The problem, sir, is that when companies and advertisers unite to promote 'the moral voice of the community' is that the community isn't always moral. And the movements that they espouse aren't always good or ethical, and we just might find ourselves being fed entertainment slop that, while fully in line with the moral voice of the community, is the opposite of good.

I agree that the coercive side of law can be used as a last resort to control socially unwanted behavior. I just don't agree that it should be the first resort. Which is basically what this author wants.

Pass a law curtailing tv violence and soon there will be book banning, news censorship and curfews! How idiotic.

Only that happened too. Granted, not as badly as under a communist dictatorship. But...it did happen. So the slippery slope people also have a point and can not be just summarily dismissed.

Another thing that didn't age well: "But reasonable laws-all of which restrain our freedom-seldom cascade us down a slippery slope or trip a line of dominoes."

Seldom? Seldom is a bit strong.

Also, his examples were pretty funny because they included : If we let them ban cigarettes, next they'll be controlling our food. How ridiculous...only it happened in New York.

...not know the consequences?

Power ranger imitation can be fixed pretty easily: act hurt. If the child is concerned for you...which most will be...you can show them the consequenes of their actions and direct them towards something else.

Even monkeys know this. A baby monkey bites another monkey, they get a cuff on the head. The baby monkey learns not to bite.

Is this violence a problem of not being corrected?

...a kick is aggressive?

What about people kicking in their sleep? Babies kicking their legs? Is that aggressive?

Were these 'aggressive behaviors' demonstrated towards another person?

If a kid is imitating power ranger movements, does that mean he is aggressive, or that he is learning the limitations of his body? If he aims it at another person, it might not even be aggression then, is it aggression if you do

He still has never started talking about root causes.

Yes, if children watch an adult beat up a doll in anger they are more likely to behave aggressively towards a doll.

Is that an increase in aggression? Or is that a permission structure to allow innate aggression out?

Those are two very different things.

I just find the analysis shallow.

"randomly assign some children to watch violence and others nonviolence. Then observe their aggressiveness. If the two groups differ, it must be due to the one difference: what they watched."

Not necessarily. How big is the sample size? Random selection can filter out a lot, but if we are talking 25 children...it can't fix a small sample size.

I am questioning this guy again...he's quoting John Money.......

"The popular arts are not ineffectual; they color consciousness and teach us how to act."

The political asides are also absolutely crazy.

If this dude is so willing to take allegations and use them as examples in his book, unproven allegations, allegations that are still unproven, 28 years later. Then...I doubt his use of studies as well.

Like, how much of what you are saying is because that's what you want to be real?

Are you being guided by data? Or are you guiding the data?

I'll never know unless I dig through the bibliography in the back and read the actual study for myself....

Am I that outraged?


no....

I want to see this experiment too.

Because this may not be 'this porno woman is so much prettier than my wife and now I'm going to rate my wife lower on the beauty scale'. It could just be 'here is a new and exciting woman, I am intrigued' as compared to 'here is my wife, who I already know really well'.

I'm not saying it's GOOD. I'm just saying that's not necessarily the correct interpretation of the data.

Not in social sciences anyway, that's basically a rounding error.

...sufficient variety of distractor items that they woudln't be able to pinpoint the 'goal' cause it could also be that the latter group was just better at picking up those cues.

And finally, 3. What do you mean 'more accepting of violence towards women"? What's the amount? Is it statistically significant? by how much?

Or is this a percentage thing? like 6%? Sounds impressive. It isn't.

I want to know more about this experiment: men who watch sexual movies and men who watch nonsexual movies vary in their acceptance of violence against women.

1. I want to know if there was a pretest and a posttest, because for all I know the men in the 1st group were predisposed.
2. I want to know if the pretest and postest were blind, as in the men didn't know what they were being tested on and there was a...