Q:also i know you'll probably say something about over population or how we don't really need to create more children considering all the children that exist without families, or even about the validity of those couples unable to have children so for over population it's true, and i'm not saying the threat to our existence is here now but it does go against nature. as for couples who cant have children, natural selection takes care of that.
Anonymous
I knew I’d get at least one comment like this. I’ve broken it down line by line below:
also i know you’ll probably say something about over population or how we don’t really need to create more children considering all the children that exist without families,
You “know” wrong - I won’t, and I won’t need to.
or even about the validity of those couples unable to have children so for over population it’s true
Also wrong: I don’t feel the need to judge the “validity” of other people’s relationships.
and i’m not saying the threat to our existence is here now
Foreboding, but okay. Aside from ourselves, neither am I.
but it does go against nature.
Huh. That’s interesting, in its complete and total inaccuracy.
Which part of “nature” are you referencing this being against? The part where gay animals actually exist? The part where gay animals also exist as monogamous couples? How can something that already abundantly exists in non-human “nature” be “against nature?” How can something that naturally occurs in all species above a certain intelligence threshold be “against nature?”
More importantly, how can something that naturally occurs in human beings be “against nature” unless you’re using some new and vacuously self-serving definition of “nature”? To be totally honest, this is such a specious argument that I’m not even entirely sure what you’re trying to communicate.
as for couples who cant have children, natural selection takes care of that.
So your entire argument for monogamy is procreation? I think you’re missing your own point here. In fact, I’d argue that if your goal is procreation and continuation of the species, monogamy is more of a threat as it inevitably leads to a limitation on human production. Hell, tossing monogamy would help solve that natural selection “issue” you mentioned earlier as it would allow the potentially positive advantageously procreative genes from one partner to not be limited by the other partner’s nonprocreative genes.
But that’s not what you’re actually saying, is it? You’re not actually making an argument for a human institution to be regulated by the “laws of nature.” You’re just inventing arguments that sound similar enough to scientific concepts that you hope they’ll convey scientific weight to invented arguments like attributing an innate morality to nature. Put more plainly: You’re obviously grasping at straws hoping that if you make enough small points that sound like they might be valid, they’ll come together into a larger one that will.
But that’s the funny thing about small points and logic: they don’t work that way. They each need to work together for a larger point to be made. Yours work at odds against each other: Disregarding the incorrect “definition” of “nature” as demonstrated above, either male/female monogamy is “against nature” for its inability to produce children (meaning that the goal of procreation is paramount, and monogamy as an institution falls apart) or the monogamous coupling itself as a social structure is paramount and therefore it doesn’t matter whether children are produced or not. You cannot have it both ways.
But you knew that. You were just hoping that if you threw enough of those straws into the air, your lack of an actual point wouldn’t be as obvious.
So I don’t need to say anything about overpopulation or the number of children that currently require families; while they’re important topics, they don’t need to be addressed to invalidate your argument. All I need to invalidate your argument is your argument, as it inevitably invalidates itself.
On scaring one’s self shitless in a 556hp CTS-V Coupe.
In the past I’ve made no bones about my love of BMWs. I learned to drive on one and I think certain M models are as close to automotive perfection as one can find under 100 grand. There’s a balance to the overwhelming sensory overload, and a confidence that allows BMW drivers to know exactly where the car is, where the capabilities of the car allow it to be in a few moments, and then let you to put it there. Hitting an apex in an M-tuned BMW is a matter of seeing the apex and then wanting to - it really is that communicative.
So if I love BMWs so much why, exactly, did I find myself inside of a Cadillac dealership yesterday asking to test drive one of their newest and most egregiously “American” models, the CTS-V coupe? Simply put: I’ve been hearing over and over how it’s a better M3 than the M3.
Heresy.
I must drive it.
Now, I’m certainly not the “traditional” Cadillac target demographic (being that I’m still decades away from being AARP-eligible) but in the past few years, they’ve been making a play at the exact automotive space I inhabit: younger sports-luxury aficionados who value a well-built, fun car. So after trying and failing two different times to find a dealership with a CTS-V coupe in stock, I randomly swung into a dealership whose location sat equidistant to two errands, armed with some free time and willing girlfriend.
As it turned out, there was an idling CTS-V just outside the doors, sitting there for all the world to steal see. Pictures don’t really do justice to just how ridiculous the car looks in person. With the notable exception of the twin, center-mounted, cannon-sized exhaust pipes, the massive 20” wheels and tires, and the only-very-slightly-smaller-than-the-wheels brake discs, there doesn’t seem to be a single curved surface on the entire car. A huge bulge dominates the hood, as if the engine has tried and only barely failed to escape. Every part of the rear converges into a single crease, like an axe seen straight-on. Sitting there idling, it seemed…well, aggressive but not particularly impressive.
Nonetheless, “I’d like to test drive a CTS-V coupe,” I told Mac, a man who was exactly like my grandfather, had my grandfather been alive and much more willing to let me hoon around in his automobiles. “Of course you would,” Mac replied, a slight twinkle in his eye. The unstated implication was “don’t break it,” which was made slightly more specific when Mac let me know that the last test driver wanted to buy that exact car. But Mac, consummate professional that he was, gamely trotted out back to ensure that I had my fun before the soon-to-be owner checked for pre-purchase issues.
So with my girlfriend in the backseat and Mac on the passenger side, we settled into the jet black, 4000 pound beast and I set about arranging my mirrors to allow me to see anything aft of my shoulder-blades. The beltline felt like it came up to my neck, and the rear window was like a porthole to the outside world. But the seats hugged you in a forgiving manner and the engine purred - not growled, but purred - out in front.
About that engine… There are many reasons this car is being lauded to such a ridiculous degree, and one of the biggest comes down to a very simple number: 556. That’s the amount of horsepower they’ve crammed into pushing this two-ton beast. Five hundred and fifty-six ill-gotten horses, stolen from an unsuspecting Corvette before being supercharged and set loose upon the tires. And all it took to wrangle or wreck those horses was my ankle tilting my foot six inches in a single direction. Yee-haw.
At the moment they seemed fairly happy in that engine bay though, if a little eager to run. First things first though: backing the horse-sodden coupetank 100 feet out of the dealership and onto the road.
So high beltlines and WW2 bunker-esque sightlines revealed the first checkmark in the coupe’s con column. Even with the back-up camera projecting its fisheyed view of the world behind the coupe’s behind, it still felt a little like an airline pilot asking everyone to duck their heads so he could back the 7:45am LAX-Newark out of the gate.
“Don’t scratch the already-bought 70k coupe on an Escalade, you jackass,” I told myself. ”And don’t look like you’ve never driven a performance car either,” my ego interjected. Hush, you two; I’m trying to concentrate here.
With the side-mirrors cranked outward and alternating between the backup camera and looking over my own shoulder, I navigated the relatively drama-free affair with nary a touch to the gas petal. That’s the thing about an engine that additionally has 551 pound/feet of torque - it’s got idle covered. Hell, it’s probably got towing the aforementioned 767 at idle covered. Pulling the shifter down to drive, we started down the street.
A brief sidenote on transmissions: personally I’m transmission-neutral. I prefer manual but live in LA so an automatic does have its benefits. That being said, if I’ve never driven a specific model of car, I always - always - test drive an auto. I don’t want to spend the entire affair getting used to that specific car’s clutch take-up point and pedal effort and miss the details of the rest of the car. So I test drive an auto, and then try to find the best deal I can with a transmission-neutral attitude.
In the CTS-V, the auto isn’t some fancy duel-clutch affair, it’s a somewhat better-tuned, gear-selectable version of the familiar PRND automatic we’re all used to. Yes there are buttons on the back of the wheel that let you go up or down, and yes you can push the shifter to the right of D and do the same, but it’s nothing particularly new or exciting in the realm of speed and power management. Back to the drive.
Pulling out behind the dealership, the dynamics of the car were still a mystery, so I eased onto the go-fast pedal. Surprisingly there was no lurching or bucking from those broncos, just a smooth forward momentum that felt as at home in a Cadillac as it would in a mid-level 3 series. Tipping in a little further, it responded with the same amount of drama-free linear acceleration.
Interesting.
While Mac discussed the relative merits of the navigation system, I was feeling out the steering. A little overboosted, and way too light on the effort, but it tracked nicely and even felt nimble. Yes, I just said that a 4000+ pound car that I’d previously described as a “coupetank” felt “nimble.” Trust me, it surprised me too, but there’s no denying that the same slight directions that my BMW translated into inertia-destroying sideways movement elicited the same results here. A one-inch caress of the wheel and we changed lanes. No seeing or sawing necessary here, it tracked straight when needed, and turned quickly when asked.
The suspension was a surprise too. As is my test drive wont, I aimed for every crease, nook, cranny, rock, and small bug I could see ahead of me, just to get a sense of how the car can handle drama. Much to my surprise, the CST-V handled everything with aplomb. As many of you may well know, the major surface streets of the San Fernando Valley are well known for their driving prowess and excellent surfaces, so long as both of those phrases are intended to mean “filling-shattering brokenness.” But as I banged the 20” low-profile tires off of a small-ish intersection pothole, the car communicated the exact physics of what had just happened underneath me without forcing me to feel the harshness. It was like getting an email from a cousin that reads “Discharged from the hospital today, turns out it’s benign.” Full awareness of the situation, but not concern; exactly like my BMW.
Hmmm.
So it steers well, communicates well, and remains drama-free until asked - a couple points in the win column there. But about that engine…
“Let’s let you open the taps a little,” Mac asked, right on cue. “Two stoplights up, hang a right, find an opening, and punch it.”
Oh Mac, you lovely, lovely man.
Keeping the car in auto, just to be safe(er), I did exactly as he said. Coming around the corner, I glanced down at the transmission indicator, which displayed a bright red “4.” Three inches of pedal travel later, it dropped to a “2,” the engine growled a few octaves higher, and two things happened simultaneously: The first was an immediate forward momentum the likes of which I’ve simply never felt before. It was what I imagine being kicked by a mule would feel like - one minute you’re in one location, and the next you’re not. The second was my girlfriend’s response to that acceleration: a squeak of surprise, slight indignation, and utter glee emanating from the back seat. A few dozen MPHs later, I back off before I rear-ended some unsuspecting Kia.
“Hehehe,” said Mac about two feet to my right, “it’s a fun car.”
“That was fun, let’s not do that again,” I hear, whispered through a smile behind me.
But there’s a problem with this: I’m hooked now. I’ve had that taste and I need more. It’s not enough to see the light, I need to see if I can touch the sun. Three miles later, I decide to do it again, this time without Mac or anyone else’s permission. Coming up on a red light, I’m alone in the right-hand lane with a couple cars to my left. 50 feet away from the crosswalk, the light turns green. I set my jaw, click off three ticks to the left-mounted steering wheel button - bringing the transmission down to first gear - and bury the pedal 3/4 of the way down to the floor. Your move, CTS-V.
But then word comes back up to me through the system: “Bad move Barrett; now you’ve made me angry.”
The gods shrieked down upon me in fury, or that’s what I remember hearing as light bent around the front of the car the same way it does when the Enterprise decides to go explore that distress beacon. The CTS-V allowed the slightest moment of hesitation as it prepped itself, went through its preflight checklist, dug in, and then hit the big, red “Fuck You” button.
Simply put, I’ve never, ever felt anything that accelerated with the kind of quantum warp feelings that this car does. It simply rearranges your understanding of immediacy and velocity. Less than one second later, I’ve bounced Mac’s skull off the Recaro seats, hit 4500 RPM, travled a hundred yards or so, and absolutely scared the shit out of myself to the point where I have to pull off the throttle completely. I glance down at the tach as I do so, and see that I’ve still got another 2500 RPM before the redline. 20 to 60 in about a second, at partial throttle.
Holy fuck.
“Thanks, you just broke my head,” Mac genially jokes. I get the sense this isn’t the first time someone’s taken a bit of liberty when it comes to his personal safety. He’s smiling though, his expression offset by my own sheepish grin. I don’t dare look back towards Beth, more out of fear of the car than her. We trundle back to the dealership, with me not daring to poke the sleeping dragon again along the way.
After a nice parting chat with Mac, we walk back towards my car, and I ask Beth what she thinks. Surprisingly, her response is to giggle a bit, letting me know that despite her predispositions she actually liked it. I call her on it too, to which she replies that if I buy it, she’s nicknaming it “The Beast.”
“Because of the way that it looks, the way it sounds, or the engine?”
“Everything.”
And she’s absolutely right, it is a beast. A beast in a tuxedo, but a beast nonetheless. A day later though, I’m thinking a new nickname is in order, because for all its Doctor Jekyll-like upper-class luxury tendencies around town, it’s got 556 little Mr. Hyde’s lurking, waiting, and ready to burst free at a moment’s notice.
And that’s the thing: that on-demand Jekyll/Hyde differentiation is always what made the BMW M’s so special. They’re the business casual of automobiles - sports jacket when you want it, but leather jacket when you don’t. That balance - that on-demand, free-flowing tap of fun and whimsy, hidden in the back of the company Christmas party - is what made the M3 the perfect car for those of us who still think from time to time that we’re just “playing adult.” Instant kid, just add right foot. And that’s the same ballgame the CTS-V coupe is trying to play.
I don’t know if it’s ready for that league though, as 24 hours after the drive, I still don’t know whether I want a CTS-V for anything longer than an afternoon. For all the things it does right, there’s just as much it does wrong. It’s the most “American” automobile I’ve ever driven in that the excesses are accentuated to a ridiculous degree, and its faults are both directly related to those excesses, and simultaneously hidden away in the hopes that they’ll be forgotten.
The engine is just plain bonkers, as are the brakes - slamming to a stop in this thing must feel like hitting a freight train head-on. It’s got style in spades and the interior is luxurious without hinting at bling. But the engine and style force you to notice how difficult it is to see anything not directly in front of you, and the steering and very slick magnetorheological suspension (meaning magnetic fluid inside of the dampers allows a computer to control how hard or soft the suspension is, based on driving conditions) can’t help but remind you that the whole car’s got to really work behind the scenes to hide a weight that can be measured in whole number multiples of Volkswagen Beetles. Coupled with all of that is that if city driving revealed anything, it’s that trying to hit apex in this car would be like trying horseback archery - possible, but only with an overall skill and familiarity with the mount that few possess.
There’s a definite passion there, and in many ways that’s the biggest pro a car can have, but it’s mitigated by its own nature to only worry about moving forward as quickly as possible and not concern itself with anything in the past. In the end, it feels like a roller coaster - awesome to experience for a short period of time, but exhausting as well. Even for someone who values automotive adrenaline injections as much as I do, I think there comes a time when you reach the point of “too much for its intended purpose.” Maybe that’s the true achievement of the CTS-V coupe - revealing that exact point of “too much.”
Though, with that being said, maybe I need another test drive…just to be sure.
Yes, does the climate change? Of course it does, it’s changed for thousands of years. But the idea that one factor, and man’s contribution to that one factor, of which there are hundreds of factors that have an influence on climate, that that one factor of which man’s contribution is a small part of, is somehow the tip of that tail that wags the whole dog, and that we have to change all of our economic policy based on that, is just a pure overreaction that is not backed up by any kind of real evidence.
- Rick Santorum via Santorum to Huntsman: Yes, You’re Crazy
There are so many things wrong with this statement, but the one I’m going to jump on is the following: the earth is not thousands of years old - it’s billions of years old. The climate has changed for billions of years. Billions, not thousands.
Furthermore, I’m going to be very loud and very clear here that if you truly believe that the earth is only thousands of years old - based I can only imagine on the “infallible word” of a single, poorly translated document overruling an overwhelming preponderance of evidence - then your inability to critically think, understand basic first-grade science, and/or divorce your personal beliefs should immediately disqualify you from candidacy for any political office.
I’ll even double-down on that one and make it even more clear: If your religion flies in the face of accepted science, and you accept those religious tenets as being more accurate than science, then you should not be allowed to hold a political position in this country. Your own irrationality and your own inability to differentiate science and religion has disqualified you, and under no circumstances should you be allowed to hold sway over people’s lives and livelihoods. We should not accept willful ignorance from the people who run and rule the most powerful country the planet has ever seen and we should not allow that ignorance to burden the populace at large.
To be totally clear, I’m not denigrating religion here, though full disclosure demands I admit to finding them all a bit silly. What I am denigrating is the wanton disregard of established fact in favor of personal religious opinion by those in a position to affect millions of others with that opinion. Freedom of religion in this country goes both ways - you’re free to believe what you wish, but you cannot assume that your beliefs should translate or influence other people. THAT’S what the first amendment guarantees: not just the freedom to worship, but the freedom from undue influence of any single religion, including Christianity.
We are not a “Christian Nation.” This is an indisputable fact. Do you know how I can say this? Because in the Treaty of Tripoli, signed only five years after the adoption of the First Amendment, and one of the few items put before the Senate to be unanimously ratified, it states:
As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion,
That seems fairly clear to me.
The outright denial of science in your political decision-making because it interferes with your religious viewpoint is no different than demanding a population-wide acceptance of your religion. It’s really that simple. You’re welcome to believe what you want to believe, but I’m welcome to demand that the people who hold sway over the country as a whole be able to critically think and divorce their personal religious sentiments from the actions that directly affect me as a United States citizen.
If they cannot do so - if their religious delusion is so great that they can’t or won’t accept commonly understood science like the established age of our planet - then they should not holding political office in ours or any other country that has enacted and still recognizes a separation between church and state. Anything less, and we should just admit that the whole uproar over “Sharia Law” is really just because you want to get there first with yours.
Penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself.
Jimmy Carter calls for an end to the War on Drugs (via maxistentialist)
Just legalize the lot of them already. You’re never going to legislate away poor decision-making, nor should you try. Legalize everything, put a sin tax on it, and remove a massive amount of problems inherent to the current system.
(via spytap)
I’m gonna reblog myself here because I have more to say on this issue. Apologies for the upcoming stream-of-consciousness.
At some point we’re going to have to acknowledge that the entire United States has an incredibly hypocritical viewpoint of drugs, and it’s a massive drag on our entire societal structure. We let alcohol advertise itself as a fuckfest of a party in a bottle and encourage kids to look up to the sporting event that fills in the gaps between commercials, or buy chemically-laden soda in cups so large they’d rent for 1000 a month in NYC, but then shout “won’t someone think about the children?!” when the mere idea of legalization of marijuana comes up.
Let’s be brutally honest here: right now there is nothing stopping your kids from obtaining and partaking in any substance, be it alcohol, weed, or meth. The only thing standing in the way now or if they were all 100% legal is parenting - but nobody wants to admit that they may be a subpar (let alone a bad) parent. Don’t want your kids using drugs? Maybe parent (it’s a verb too, you know) a little better. Don’t want your kids spending all day in front of the television? Maybe parent. Don’t want your kids stealing cars and going on three-state joyrides? Parent. But when they’re adults they get to make their own decisions – good or bad – and that’s the ultimate reflection on your parenting.
Here’s the real kicker that so many people hate to hear: You cannot legislate away someone’s bad decisions. You just can’t. People make poor decisions every day, from staying at a shitty job they hate, to not kicking their abusive significant other to the curb, to eating 4000 calories of brownies before bed - but they’re perfectly allowed to do so. That’s their right. People are allowed to make bad decisions because it would be ludicrous to suggest otherwise.
A non-nuclear family member of mine was an alcoholic, but that wasn’t because of alcohol, that was because of my family member. Alcohol didn’t make him an alcoholic any more than meth makes someone a meth addict. He chose to use, chose to repeat the actions, and chose not to seek help. At some point it’s arguable that it was out of his control, but that doesn’t change the fact that the onus was still on him.
If weed is legal then yes, some people will smoke and drive. That’s not a reflection on weed, that’s a reflection on some people’s inherent ability to make very poor decisions. It already happens, in fact. If they hurt someone else in the process, that’s still not a reflection on weed, but on their continued ability to make poor decisions. And we have laws in place that cover you hurting someone else regardless of the reasoning behind what lead you to make a left hand turn on green into oncoming traffic - drunk, high, distracted, or stone-cold sober.
What bothers me the most is that we already know all this. We know this because we drink a coffee, a beer, a milkshake, or smoke a cigarette knowing that it has a physiological effect on our bodies; in some cases *because* it has a physiological effect on our bodies. Each of these has negative effects, and in some cases the only positive effect is “it makes me feel good.” But these are considered the “okay” drugs. The other drugs though, those are the bad ones. Not the 3500 calorie Baskin-Robbins “food item” or the “kids meal” with enough chemicals in it to outweigh the actual food ingredients; those are just good-old American convenience commerce. But if we don’t break down some doors and throw people in jail, someone’s gonna grow, dry, and smoke a plant indigenous to half the Eastern Seaboard just to feel better – no, I meant the other plant with the exact same general description.
So joking aside, are some drugs really bad news? Sure. So is BASE jumping, but we’re not outlawing quick-open parachutes. Rock climbing is dangerous as hell. Boxing and football cause massive trauma to the brain - arguably far more than almost any drug - but we’ll happily cheer on both a local and national version of those regardless. In every single one of these cases, you’re absolutely willing to say “well, that’s their decision, and if they get hurt or die then they get hurt or die.” So what’s the fucking difference?
If you BASE jump or even jump out of enough planes you’ll eventually die. There is no way to make skydiving 100% safe. If you drive enough, you’ll eventually get into an accident - and that would be the case if everyone were 100% sober 100% of the time. People have ruined their lives over drugs, alcohol, food, or video games - in every case that is not a reflection of the item to which their obsession attached, but of their inability to properly deal with the obsession. Life has inherent risks to everything that we do and don’t do, and yet in most cases, we’re given absolute freedom to make stupid decisions regardless of whether or not they’ll have an effect on someone else and only punished if that negative effect comes to pass.
Fine, you want to get controversial: guns kill people. Defensively, or offensively, guns exist for a singular purpose: to kill. There is simply no other use for a gun. And I’ll even go so far as to claim that target shooting is simply the emulation of killing using a target as a stand-in for flesh. Should we outlaw guns? They have nefarious possibilities, after all.
So all it really comes down to is an arbitrary notion that these are good drugs and these are bad drugs. And we must do everything possible, and ruin whatever lives necessary to keep these drugs from being ingested, while doing everything possible to push the ingestion of these other drugs. It sounds really stupid when I write it out, right? That’s because it is.
Look, if you want to eat a Big Mac, or eat ten Big Macs, or have a beer, or smoke a joint, or shoot up heroin, or huff paint, there’s nothing that should stop you from using or abusing your own body. It’s yours to do with as you see fit so long as you don’t bother or hurt other people - and as stated above, we already have laws that cover that.
So aside from puritanical hypocrisy, can anyone give me a logically valid reason why we shouldn’t simply legalize all drugs, tax them, and acknowledge that the system up until this point is a complete and total 100% utter failure at everything aside from self-perpetuation?
Honestly, I’d love to hear a single logical counter-argument because even though I don’t even smoke weed let alone do anything harder, I can’t fathom why someone else shouldn’t be able to make that same decision for themselves. Feel free to either email me or use the ask feature.
(via spytap)
Actually, the WiiU is probably going to do horribly in terms of actual games. Developers doing multi-platform games HATE developing with console specific functionality in mind, which is why the Wii utterly failed in 3rd party support.
Also, MS and Sony are probably going to go to the next generation in a few years, so the WiiU will still be the underperforming console on the market with weird but unrealized gameplay potential.
Short version: If you get a WiiU, don’t expect amazing stuff to come out for it. Except for from Nintendo (maybe).
My brother Eric, commenting on this post, and probably accurately predicting the future. (via lizlet)
No offense Liz, but I totally disagree with your brother’s premise, as well as his conclusions.
The Wii was the most successful console of this generation, so I don’t understand his “still be the underperforming console…” comment. It sold more consoles and more games than any other, and made more money than PS3 and 360 - combined. Chart here, numbers on the right hand side.
Coupled with the fact that it sold 50% more consoles than either Sony or MS, is the fact that Nintendo is the only console manufacturer that sells its consoles at a profit - the other two lose money on hardware, hoping to make it up later on software licenses. So even if they all three sold the same amount of hardware, Nintendo would have made more money already.
Speaking of software, yes, the Wii lacked in 3rd party support, but no - I don’t think Nintendo minds. In fact, they might happily continue giving EA and Activision the middle finger because doing so made them a metric fuckton of money. Since they sold more software (again, see the chart here) and since it was mostly first-party developed, they made far more money than they would with robust third party support. A single copy of Mario Kart makes them 2-3 times more than a copy of Madden (this is sort of an oversimplification, but at million sales+ scale, it ends up being somewhere between 2 and 3x.)
So given the above, where they make more money on a single console sale, more money on a single software sale, and sold (by FAR) more software and hardware than their competitors…how are they underperforming?
Their market strategy as brilliant - “we’re not going at it like last time, where it was the gamecube VS the PS2 VS the Xbox, we’re going to be the system you have *in addition to* your hardcore platform. AND, since we won’t have as many cross-platform games as the other two - who will be forced to duke it out against each other for the Metal of Battlefield Warfare crowd - most of our best games will be exclusive to our platform.”
Genius.
(via spytap)
Healthy debate! Though I think Eric’s point has more to do with the creative success of the Wii as opposed to the business. Nintendo might be happy with how the Wii has performed, but what about the millions of users who got bored of bowling and Rayman after six months? And that alone could have an effect on Wii U sales — it’s a cool toy, but people might be wary of shelling out for a new device to gather dust.
(via lizlet)
I think *some* people got bored with the console, but the reality is that by setting itself up as the “additional system” it was never going to be the primary console for hardcore gamers. Additionally, those other consoles (the 360 and PS3) set themselves up as media centers with a ton of extra functionality beyond gaming - I, for one, spend a fair amount of my “PS3 time” with Netflix, Blu-rays, TV shows, and other assorted non-gaming areas. So yes, for some people the Wii may have gathered some dust in between sporadic game purchases, but the reality is that for the vast majority of the Wii’s consumers, it did so about on par with the other consoles, and that’s reflected in the software sales.
It’s tough to calculate a formal attachment rate (i.e. median number of games purchased for each system sold) so we’re going to fudge it a bit by going for the average by dividing the software sales by the hardware sales and calling it close enough. Within those guidelines, it was very close for every console.
Wii - 7.8 games sold per console sold
360 - 9.0 games sold per console sold
PS3 7.8 games sold per console sold
It’s right in line with the PS3, and just a little more than one purchase behind the 360. So from an overall standpoint, it doesn’t look like there were that many “bored” consumers who stopped purchasing Wii games. Some did, probably, but some also did for 360 and PS3.
But to put more of a point on the question “what about the millions of users who got bored of bowling and Rayman after six months?” Well, they bought new games. That’s pretty much how it goes. For every Wii customer who bought two games and then let it gather dust, there was another who bought 18 - just like the 360 and PS3. If there were that many unsatisfied consumers, Nintendo wouldn’t have sold almost 700 million pieces of software. The retail, if you will, doesn’t match the rhetoric; or rather, the constant refrain of the rhetoric.
So where does the refrain come from? Well, I’ve got my opinion, but it’s probably going to make more than a few people feel like I’m personally insulting them. Sorry folks, I promise it’s not personal, but it needs to be said:
What I think this comes down to is the eternal argument of the “true” (read: “more hardcore”) gamers who spurned the Wii, and their very vocal opposition to the casual people’s gaming machine. “They’re not real gamers” was a frequent comment I’ve read over the past few years, coupled with “the Wii is just kiddie games” mantra, reiterated ad nauseum. It’s similar to how Halo players feel about Farmville - that’s it’s not a real game, and the “culture” surrounding it isn’t representative of “gamer culture.”
But here’s my real issue: gamer “culture,” isn’t. I’ve been playing video games since I was about 4, and given my background there’s no way anyone could question my gaming credentials (Proof? I’ve owned six consoles, several hundred games, built and rebuilt my own gaming PC a dozen times, logged about a thousand hours into CS, and co-captained a TRIBES clan - just to start.) But the reality is that gaming “culture” is inherently exclusionary. I get it, it started as a self-embracing response to being spurned and mocked by the mainstream, but despite being a bigger industry than feature films, it still has these vestiges of “US VS THEM” that permeate and seek to exclude certain factions.
These exclusionary factions believe that there is one “right” way to be a gamer, and that involves a certain amount of necessary hazing from outside the community to earn one’s stripes, and when that ceased to be applicable due to the mainstreaming of gaming, that hazing started to come from within. This vocal faction is, I believe, the minority. I sort of have to believe this to be willing to continue calling myself a gamer, because this minority, vocal as it is, also serves often to reinforce the least appealing aspects of gamer culture.
Need an example? Go play multiplayer Halo on the 360, the most “hardcore credible” console. Within thirty seconds you’ll conclude that the only solution for humanity is to nuke the entire planet from orbit - it’s the only way to be sure. Granted this single example doesn’t apply to everything, but it serves as a valid illustration to knowing where a lot of the Wii criticism is coming from. This contingent A) expects online multiplayer to be a part of every game, B) vocal communication to be a part of every online multiplayer experience (whose sole use is generally to mock the defeated) and C) that games *must* be hardcore to be “real games.”
None of this - not one single iota is accurate. But by choosing to embrace exactly zero of these “understood” rules, and by actively eliminating that hazing element, Nintendo put itself against the vocal minority. This pissed them off. When Nintendo won, as demonstrated in sales - this pissed them off further. So they stopped playing the Wii, and the world continued on, and the Wii continued absolutely dominating the charts despite that minority’s exclusion of the platform, which bruised a few community egos. So the vocal minority did their best to expunge the Wii from the ranks of “real gaming.”
To which I respond: if gamer culture is best represented by calling someone a fag after you shoot them in the face, then I’ll gladly sign off to play Mario Kart with friends while having a beer.
I enjoy gaming, I really do. We’re in a golden age of gaming, that - proliferation of the Madden and Halo series aside - is better in almost every respect than ever before. I’ve loved the Uncharted series, and both Portals are still in my go-to list. I still get giddy at any Half Life 3 or even Episode 3 rumor, and have spent some time recently getting to know the intricacies of my friendships through who heals my ass in Left 4 Dead 2. But I also like the various versions of Mario, Zelda, and Metroid I’ve been playing on the Wii. They’re different, but that’s not a bad thing for me. Some are better, some are worse, but all are - and this is the really key thing here - enjoyable to play.
All the above serves to illustrate my main point: that I believe the rhetorical refrain of dust-covered Wiis and millions of disappointed customers is more likely the backlash of a small subset of vocal gamers who are more than a little mad that gamers aren’t the Rebel Alliance anymore; but in fact the Empire. Perhaps it’s that more importantly, the erstwhile leaders of the rebel alliance have been usurped by a less militant majority - the people who just like playing video games because they’re fun, and have no desire to wave a flag of allegiance. That’s who the Wii caters to, and as it turns out that’s a bigger consumer audience.
(via lizlet)
Questions and Answers on Atheism
I found this via luvisalluneed; I hope she doesn’t mind if I link to her answers while using the space below to answer with my own. Warning, a serious amount of text sits below the fold:
5 blog posts from 2010 that I’m really proud of.
One of the best parts of owning your own business is that you get to set your own schedule and devote time as you see fit.* 2010 gave me both the material, inspiration, and temporal opportunities to get a lot of what I consider to be really quality writing done. Aside from some secret projects, most of that writing ended up on my blog. Sometimes it was just a paragraph or two, sometimes it was 4500 words. If you’ll allow me a bit of bragging though, these are my five favorites from 2010:
- On The Topic Of My Worldview, Or Why I Have And Will Continue To Support Wikileaks - This post took me a full three weeks to write. It was written, rewritten, scrapped, and brought back to life numerous times. I debated whether to post it after it was done, fearful of financial and other repercussions, and only after the consultation with friends and loved ones decided that fear wasn’t a good reason to avoid doing anything. In the end, I think it’s one of the best pieces I’ve written in a long time.
- What Is A Book? - I’m glad that others are asking this same question, even to the point where JWT Intelligence highlighted the concept in their 100 Things To Watch In 2011 (Breaking The Book, page 23) I love the idea that once we let go of legacy, we can move forward with the really interesting. I’ve still got some concepts I may try to explore in this arena in 2011.
- 2000 Words On Derivative Bullshit, WebTV, and Online Content - I sort of maybe told the WebTV community to go fuck itself. Or at least, that’s how it was received when I gave the advice on camera for web content producers to “Stop fucking making derivative bullshit!” Then an argument ensued on Twitter. In the end, an good conversation was had and I feel like progress was made. This was my blog post in response to the conversation/argument/controversy.
- Wherein I write “The Tea Party is “Patriotic™” in the same way that “Cheez™” is a dairy product.” - The Tea Party was a pretty constant source of political posts for me last year, but this was my favorite. I think it will continue to be a source of inspiration and frustration over the coming two years as well. I don’t follow sports, but I do follow politics, and The Tea Party is sort of the Washington Generals of politics.
- On News, Information, and Willful Ignorance - This will end up being a longer post in 2011, I’m sure; especially with the current backlash against Wikileaks and information. It’s still a bit boggling to me that so many are so comfortable with so little factual information when the internet provides them with everything they could ever want or need in that area. Doubly so when blatant falsehoods are spread so easily despite an ability to be proven wrong with any smartphone in about 30 seconds. Regardless, I don’t see it changing any time soon, but it did allow me a very cathartic rant at about 2am.
Bonus
- This Photo’s responses entertained me for days. Some people got the joke. Some people didn’t. Some people were flat out enraged. I didn’t make it, I just posted it, but the responses were what made me love it.
*This is also one of the most dangerous parts, but that’s another post for another day.
On the topic of my worldview, or why I have and will continue to support Wikileaks.
This post has been, like most things worth doing, long and difficult in its birth. Its impetus was a long conversation with a friend, mentor, occasional verbal sparring partner, and erstwhile business associate on December 6th, one day after Wikileaks began to release what has now become known as “Cablegate.” We were both forced to come to the conclusion that given a specific topic of conversation, there was no way we would be able to meet in the middle. This was the first time in almost three years that we’d been unable to find common ground or see each others’ points of view, and the fallout has been unfortunately severe.
The topic at hand was Wikileaks, and on one side was the idea that it was a terrorist organization, and on the other, that it was a tool and a news organization which served a vital purpose. Following that conversation, I felt compelled to write down my thoughts for a number of reasons, not the least of which was to allow myself the opportunity to put them in order. Since then, there have been many twists, turns, revelations, and repercussions in the Wikileaks saga. This has required me to re-edit, add, subtract, and change much of what I had written in my initial treatise to make sure that when it was published, it would reflect my most current opinion given the most current evidence and facts. That being said, unfortunately I won’t be able to address every aspect of the organization, leak, response, or repercussions individually, but I hope that I will address them generally by way of demonstrating my beliefs and worldview, and explaining how Wikileaks fits into that system.
Even in our own lifetime, we can recall how Britain and her leaders stood against a Nazi tyranny that wished to eradicate God from society and denied our common humanity to many, especially the Jews, who were thought unfit to live. I also recall the regime’s attitude to Christian pastors and religious who spoke the truth in love, opposed the Nazis and paid for that opposition with their lives. As we reflect on the sobering lessons of the atheist extremism of the twentieth century, let us never forget how the exclusion of God, religion and virtue from public life leads ultimately to a truncated vision of man and of society and thus to a “reductive vision of the person and his destiny” (Caritas in Veritate, 29).
The Pope, from today’s speech in the UK
Ah history: it’s only for those who bother with A) Reading, and B) Reality. Don’t worry, The Pope repeating the completely fabricated claim that the Nazis were atheists is just par for the course. At this point I’m fairly convinced that the only people paying attention to the words coming from the papal “authority” are those who have such a fucked up and warped sense of morality that they’re somehow against or unwilling to prosecute child molesters (mainly because of the belief that some people are “above human law.”) Better still are the few who are against the distribution and usage of condoms in AIDS-ravaged locations because of the .17% chance that they won’t effectively stop the spread of the virus. I’m not real mathy, but I know good odds when I see them.
The biggest irony is that this bullshit “The Nazis, and by extension The Holocaust, happened because of Atheism” claim comes from a former member of the Hitler Youth (whose indoctrination oath ended with “so help me God.”)
But should one bother reading or knowing history, they might point out that the Nazis and the Catholic Church had their own treaty (negotiated with Hitler) which guaranteed, amongst other things:
- The right to freedom of the Roman Catholic religion.
- The oath of allegiance of the bishops: “Ich schwöre und verspreche, die verfassungsmässig gebildete Regierung zu achten und von meinem Klerus achten zu lassen” (English: I swear and vow to honor the constitutional government and to make my clergy honor it;)
- Catholic religion is taught in school and teachers for Catholic religion can be employed only with the approval of the bishop.
But let’s not let logic, history or reality get in the way of religion, right? I mean, reading and writing was so antithetical to the existence of The Church, that it was occasionally banned (as was ownership of The Bible, or the translation of such into English.)
So since I can, in fact read and research, let’s quote Mein Kampf, shall we?
“… I am convinced that I am acting as the agent of our Creator. By fighting off the Jews. I am doing the Lord’s work.”
Maybe he’s faking it. Let’s check out a speech he gave in 1922 which was also later reproduced in one of his books:
My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God’s truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison. To-day, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed His blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice… And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people.
Well, that does sound convincing, but perhaps too convincing. I think Hitler doth protest too much, if you get my drift. What christian would proclaim so loudly and so often his love of Christ and christianity unless he was trying to hide something? Wait, didn’t the nazi troops march into battle wearing equipment which stated “Gott Mit Uns” or “God is with us” - that’s easily one of the sneakiest moves a closet atheist has ever made.
So how on earth is this myth still believed by anyone, let alone quoted by the pope? I don’t know. You’d think this sort of idiocy would have died out in the age of information. Maybe you just have to be the sort of person who’s willing to close their eyes and shut their ears to anything outside of that which is already pre-approved by an authority, regardless of morality, legality, or reality.
You know, like children.
But there I go again, bringing children into a conversation about the Catholic Church.
It’s probably just habit by this point.
2000 Words On “Derivative Bullshit,” “WebTV,” and “Online Content”
The Past
So apparently I pissed of half of the known internet today. I looked it right in the eyes and told it yes, its ass did look fat in those jeans. In other words I gave my honest opinion without regard to feelings, sentiment, or repercussion.
In return, I got called a number of colorful names by people whose feelings I’d hurt. Some were semi-sarcastic, some were very spirited, and all were probably partially truthful. Many people agreed with me though.
Now the video in question was recorded back in May but was reposted to twitter this morning. A half hour later, it was the spark for a firestorm of discussion, commentary, argumentation, and the occasional brief moment of agreement.
What happened to LOST
I know we’re all past the emotional stage of discussing the finale of LOST, but I just listened to this week’s Totally Rad Show and it reminded me that I never got around to writing down my theory of what happened.
Note: this is just my theory and I have little hard evidence to support it.
- LOST is pitched as a show about “survivors” who crash on a mysterious island.
- Internally this island is planned/plotted out to be an inescapable “purgatory,” where, per Wikipedia’s definition of purgatory, “some souls are not sufficiently free from sin and its consequences to enter the state of heaven immediately, nor are they so sinful as to be destined for hell either.” People are healed of their bodily ails (wheelchairs, cancer, etc.) but their souls remain trapped in this purgatory.
- This inescapable purgatory was counterbalanced (and to a certain degree reinforced) by the flashbacks showing each individual’s life choices before the crash. Each character has very evident flaws and each has regrets for which they need to atone and come to terms.
- LOST premieres, and is a huge hit.
- People figure out the purgatory allegory pretty quickly. Too quickly in fact. Within the first few episodes, the theory is already gaining traction.
- Forced to reckon with a “mystery” show that’s about to lose its mystery, the writers/creators have to publicly deny the purgatory element of the series.
- This presents three problems: A) almost the entire first season reinforces this purgatory/lost souls premise, B) most of that first season has already been shot (at an incredibly expensive cost) and C) if they abandon the purgatory element they have a hit show without a premise.
- The decision is made to abandon the purgatory premise under the guise that LOST without mystery is likely no longer a hit series.
- Frustrated with this new situation, specific writers speak out publicly, mentioning the fact that they’re (now) making it up as they go, and are promptly fired from the show.
- Season 2 is written to try and pull the show further away from the initial purgatory premise. This is evident by the low quality, wandering narrative of the season. They’re buying time and trying to see what will stick. The mythology becomes unwieldy and cumbersome as questions without answers begin to pile up.
- Seasons 2-6 have almost nothing to do with the original premise except that they take place on an island and have the same characters.
- Season 6 ends with them all ascending into heaven (as in the original pitch) but for completely different and much more lame reasons.
- Having abandoned the original premise, most of the questions from the earlier wandering seasons - as well as any ultimate answers about the nature of the island itself - are relegated to “it’s magic…or God…you know what, it’s really not that important.”
So while the story outside the writer’s room the whole time was “don’t worry we have a plan,” I honestly believe the truth was that they were scrambling to maintain the show’s legs while they figured out WTF to do. Their (excellent) premise was gone, the series didn’t really make sense without it, and they had no idea what to do now. The absurdly well-written pilot episode was a some of the best and most intelligent writing in American television history - but they had to throw it all away and make up new mysteries as they went along because their “mysterious secret” had been blown way too early.
So they lied. They wrote in new mysteries that wouldn’t make sense within that purgatory premise and pointed to them as evidence that the theory was wrong, and hoped they could make up a new theory to fit what they’d already written.
In short, a brilliant first season was actually too popular and fans picked out every little clue that had been placed there as a hint. Fearful that a mystery show with a known underlying premise wasn’t a mystery show at all, the writers abandoned that premise and had to figure it out as they went along. Unable to have a non-purgatory premise make sense within the show, they eventually created a new purgatory, and decided never to explain any of the mysteries of the island itself - despite the fact that the mysteries of the island itself were one of the main driving forces of the show for the first few seasons.
tl;dr: LOST was originally about a group of people navigating purgatory after a plane crash but fans figured it out so the writers panicked and made a new show, but still had to bring in purgatory anyway since that’s the only thing that would make sense.
What is a book?
Lately I’ve been having a lot of interesting conversations with a lot of really interesting people. I’ve been fortunate to find myself in a true nexus of genius somehow, and the optimism is infectious. Lately my favorite conversations have started with the following:
What is a book?
I love asking this question, but I also use it to illustrate the unique period of media in which we find ourselves. On the surface it’s a pretty simple answer, but dig deeper and you find a truly fascinating array of answers.
We’ve reached an historic point in mass media: the point where we literally get to distill and examine the core elements that make up each individual medium and ask ourselves “which of these elements are important, and which only remain due to legacy or habit?”
Season one, episode 17
This will be a hard entry to write, as I’m friends or friendly with many of those involved with The Streamy Awards. I feel that in light of last night, it’s important enough to not pull any punches for the sake of nicety though. Our community is built on dialogue, integrity, and honesty, so with that in mind I apologize in advance to those whose feelings I’m about to singe.
I’ll be characteristically blunt here and say what’s on my mind: The 2010 Streamy Awards were awful. They were an embarrassment to our entire community and they were the best evidence that mainstream media could ever find to reiterate their belief that online content is no threat. I’ve heard many people say that they believed it set our industry back a number of years in a single night and I honestly do believe the only way to salvage The Streamy Awards and the IAWTV as an organization is for the organizers to issue a very public mea culpa.
I only want to touch on the problems briefly, as others can (and have) spoken more eloquently than I. They’re important to note, so we can avoid them in the future, but more important to me is to begin the discussion of “how do we fix this.”
The biggest issue to me wasn’t the tech, but the tone. Apparently someone at the Awards theorized that because we were coming from the internet, we could be “edgy” and “uncensored.” In practice what this meant was that an industry’s own awards show decided not to be a celebration of achievement, but a roast of everyone involved – audience and performers alike. “Surprise!” it yelled from atop a stage, “You’re the punchline of a joke!”
If I knew nothing about online content and I had tuned into the Streamy’s, this is what I’d have learned: we shouldn’t expect to be taken seriously because even our own awards show thinks we’re hacks; misogyny is funny; flash and spectacle (like musical numbers and fight sequences) trumps practicality (like security, even after having dealt with streakers two night prior); we’re desperate for any celebrities to get involved because we need their validation and acceptance; and someone, somewhere, thought a bit involving a fake porn producer getting a “lifetime achievement award” and repeatedly uttering variations on the phrase “oceans of semen” was on target to the core group of professionals present.
Now that we’re all caught up, let’s talk about the more important part which is how do we make sure this doesn’t happen again. Here are my suggestions:
- An awards “ceremony” just isn’t the right venue for this. We’re not the Oscars, nor should we try to be because it makes us look like we’re desperate to be “mainstream.” A different format is required. One thing I heard several times was “the Academy Awards were a dinner party the first two years.” Maybe that’s the right tack to take – a dinner party of peers celebrating peers – maybe you go another direction, but either way, the “Awards Ceremony” vibe feels wrong.
- Speaking of food: respect your audience. The attendees were subjected to long lines, a shitty ticket pick-up situation, commercials during the presentation, the bar closed 45 minutes into the show (apparently there must have been too much “lobby traffic” if you know what I mean) and no food at either the event or the afterparty (protip: drinks can be optional, but people need to eat every once in a while.)
- Forget about flashiness and celebrate achievement. This isn’t about gloss and hype, and while a nice stage setup gets the “oooh” for the first 5 minutes, it’s ultimately worthless. It’s obvious that this year was “trying too hard” in so many ways – to be mainstream, to be taken seriously, to be an “awards show” equal to the Grammys, Oscars, etc. Three words: Fuck. All. That. Celebrate achievement, work on showcasing quality, and you won’t have to strain your voice shouting “we’re worth all this hype” because people will already know.
- Stop denigrating online content. Look, we can all be snarky motherfuckers (well, except iJustine and Felicia Day, both of whom do a remarkably good job of staying above the snark fray) but there’s a time and a place. Telling a thousand people that their jobs, content, livelihoods, and dreams are a joke, and that the only way they’ll amount to anything is to beg their “betters” (read: “celebrities,” but the unstated implication was made very clear) to slum it in their crappy webseries…well, that’s not gonna go over well. Repeatedly joking that it’s subpar quality, or that there’s no money, future, or reason to get involved only hurts us all.
- It’s the oldest maxim in business: You want to be treated like a professional? Act it. Stop the profanity just for the sake of profanity. Stop trying to be the “edgy awards show.” Stop the masturbation, dick jokes, and sexist humor. It. Is. Not. Funny. Right now you’ve got awards nominees and winners apologizing to their fans (whom they’d asked to join in watching your show.) You literally cannot go more wrong than actual winners telling their fans “I’m sorry I told you to pay attention to this.” The best moments of the night were the classiest: Felicia Day’s acceptance speech; Chris Hardwick’s recovery from what appeared to be some sort of sexual assault on-stage; Auto-Tune The News; Mark Gantt breaking down into tears as he thanked his partner Jesse Warren for believing in him. Emphasize that, don’t give a fake award to a porn site creator.
- Stop trying to be what you’re not, and embrace what you are.
So what would I do if I were faced with figuring out the Third Annual Streamy Awards? I’d remember that at the heart of things, we’re a small community and the awards should be to celebrate the achievement of our peers. I’d pick a host from the community; someone who knows how to work a live room and who is respected amongst the group. I’d hold it at a ballroom and have a couple hundred people attending. I’d have a bar, hors d’oeuvres, and a bunch of tables set up for people to mingle and chat beforehand (and to a certain degree, during.)
Emphasize community, quality, achievement, and highlight that which is worth holding above the rest – stop worrying about what Hollywood thinks, and stop coming off as so desperate to be “mainstream.” Recognize that there’s something very affirming about seeing your friends get the recognition you always thought they’d deserved. There’s something about having your peers come together and say “in this category, we who know this world best find you to be above all else.” That’s the mark we should be aiming for, not “look how wacky we can be because we’re not on television.”
We’re not going to force a mainstream acceptance with a flashy awards show, or by alternately acting like them then acting like we don’t care about them. We’re going to do so by making really fucking good programming, challenging our peers to do better, and making other people aware of what’s best. By showing the world the best of the best, we only help ourselves – as a medium and as individual content creators. By showing them what we did last night, we’re only telling the world “we’re not ready for prime-time,” in all senses of the world.
Archdiocese defends decision to deny children because of lesbian parents - CNN.com
Here’s my take on this: It’s a horrible decision. It’s punishing the children because of an arbitrary religious law. It’s awful and shameful. But it’s the type of decision that a private institution is allowed to make.
I’m a product of a religious schooling background. The Jesuits taught me how to think, not just how to recite facts and figures. Was there religion involved? Absolutely. We had theology classes every semester. We were not required to be Catholic (nor, legally, could they only admit Catholics, so far as I know) but we were required within a Jesuit school to learn the sorts of religious lessons they saw fit to teach. It was a trade-off. They could teach the sort of things they desired since they received no state or federal monies to do so. People could choose to pay in order to receive these sorts of teachings. It happened that it was a fantastic school with a great reputation, however if its students were unable to get into colleges for lack of critical science or mathematics knowledge I think fewer parents would have chosen to admit their students.
This is why the separation of Church and State is so important. State schooling is religion-free and should stay that way. Religious schooling should be able to teach according to their own laws and morals within the boundaries of the law.
That’s the important distinction there. There’s no law saying I have to be nice. I can be an asshole to everyone, every day and it’s well within my rights. It’s a shitty way to live my life, but should I so choose, it’s a choice I can make. There’s no law (as far as I know) saying they cannot choose to not accept funds from this couple in order to school their children. Is it an abhorrent thing to do? Absolutely. Were I a member of the community would I protest? You’re damn right I would - not because I think it’s illegal, but because I want as many people to know that this place is willing to punish kindergardeners because it’s a couple centuries behind in the biological and ethical categories. Do I, and will I defend their ability to run a school according to their own rules and regulations within the scope of the law? Yes I will. They’re allowed to be assholes if they choose, just like I am allowed.
Part and parcel of me being an atheist is being on the reciprocal side of this argument - where people question my morality or my ethics because they’ve been told for decades that I’ve no moral compass. But as I said above, the Jesuits taught me to think for myself. Part of doing so is allowing others to do so as well. You can disagree with someone’s opinion, but facts are facts. They’re allowed to run this school as they so choose. They’re allowed to punish children for arbitrary distinctions in mistranslated scripture. They’re allowed to for the same reason that I’m allowed to not be forced to be a Catholic or abide by that doctrine.
It’s a classic case of disagreeing with someone’s ideas, but defending their ability to have them.
