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Thread ID: 59753	2005-07-12 00:34:00	Wanna hear a good one?	SurferJoe46 (51)	PC World Chat

Post ID	Timestamp	Content	User
371388	2005-07-12 00:34:00	Here's and article from Silicon Valley News (SiliconValley . com <siliconvalley_editor@esp . realcities . com>) , a tech-o site that prints a lot of news about . . well . . . everything computer or chip related . In Southern California, the schools here have done away with lockers for the students to store their books, knives, guns and drug stashes . The results are that the kids all have to carry their books in backpacks from class to class . We here use the "student-travels-to-the-teacher" system, and the teachers stay in the classroom where they are comfortable and have weapons to defend themselves stashed in hidden places only they can find . . hopefully . Anyway, there are a lot of complaints of children graduating with displaced vertebrae in their backs, and by graduation time, they cannot stand straight and resemble a convention of the oompah-loompahs from Willie Wonka, or the munchkins from Wizard Of Oz . Not to be accused of permanently damaging their students, California has passed a law stating the maximum load a student is allowed to carry . Now, Arizona has gone one better . . . . . . please read on: Jimmy, if you don't behave, you'll be taking a time out in the Faraday cage: Coming as it does after the proposal of a California law to ban new school textbooks longer than 200 pages, an Arizona School District's decision to replace its textbooks with laptops seems pure genius . And it may well be, assuming educators have the appropriate curriculum in place and, beyond that, have figured out a way to curb in-class instant messaging and other such distractions . "The efforts are very sporadic," Mark Schneiderman, director of education policy for the Software and Information Industry Association, told the Arizona Daily Star . "A minority of communities are doing a good or very good job, but a large number are just not there on a number of levels . " Now comes the big question: If the books in California are limited to 200 pages or less, how's a kid gonna hollow out the thinner book to carry his needles and coke spoons and hand guns? Solve one problem, and create another! :annoyed:	SurferJoe46 (51)
371389	2005-07-12 00:49:00	Why do American schoolchildren carry weapons? Yeah, there are some kids in NZ and Australia that have been reported to do that sort of thing as well, but it is quite rare . It just seems a perculiarly American thing .	vinref (6194)
371390	2005-07-12 01:04:00	SurferJoe46 yeah I also came from a place where weapons, etc. were regularly (and still are) being taken to school, and used!!!. Don't know about the drugs, but you can be assured that it will be there, next to the 357 Magnum. Isn't it worrysome the way our world has changed? In my young days my biggest worry was a) How to get to rugby practice on time and b) How to impress the girls (in no particular order)(Did not do very well with the b) too). My wife is a teacher at a High School, and it is quite problematic how some of the kids in class have no respect for the teacher, no discipline in class - but the wife says when you meet the parents you can usually see why that is so. Crickey, how will my grandkids grow up one day, with bazookas in their backpack? sarel	sarel (2490)
371391	2005-07-12 01:11:00	You might be right there . . Vinref . . . I guess it is a localized custom . Not able to delve into the psyche of the killing children here in the states, I can only summize that it is a "macho" thing for the males, and an extension of attitude that they feel distressed over the fact they have learned this activity from the wonderfull toys their parents provide them in the form of too much money to spend on Video Games and Slash-and-Gash music . I heard an interesting summary on the effect of these so-called games that are parlayed as harmless, "off-steam-letting-go" (bad pun, sorry) of pent up hostilities and general disdain for human conscience . We go to movies and if it's a sad movie (no "happily every after") we are usually solefull and sad from the experience . If we go to a comedic movie, we leave the theater in a happier or more jovial mood . Here lies the crux of the cop-killer, raping and mutilation of women, stealing cars and creating general mayhem in an anti-social way . IMHO, these are not positive (read: acceptable) activities . If we want to learn to drive a vehicle, we may use a driving simulator, and the same with flying an airplane, we use a flight simulator . Ergo: if we want to learn to kill and plunder and rape, we use a simulator for that . . . the oh-so-popular video games to train our children to have NO respect for life and hate what has generally taken a few centuries to build - - - the human condition . Since entropy is the law of the universe, and the fact that ontogeny does NOT begat phylogeny, I lay myself bare to the onslaught of Mr . Metla now, to tell me that I need his central digit thrust at me . :stare: [special note to sarel: imagine all these kids with body-piercings, and tattoos becoming grandmothers later on . . . gads!]	SurferJoe46 (51)
371392	2005-07-12 01:34:00	[special note to sarel: imagine all these kids with body-piercings, and tattoos becoming grandmothers later on...gads!] One presumes there progeny will be tattooed at birth so all will be well. It's a mad world.	Cicero (40)
371393	2005-07-12 01:49:00	You might be right there . . Vinref . . . I guess it is a localized custom . Is it a class/socio-economic thing? I used to see in all those American movies and TV shows that Blacks and Hispanics were the ones that carried flick-knives, guns, pagers, crack vials etc . Is this still true? I hear that in rural areas in the US there is a rampant problem with "meth" (better known as "P" or "special K" in New Zealand) . It is also beginning to pick up here in Australia .	vinref (6194)
371394	2005-07-12 02:10:00	Plenty of white kids shooting up the schools, The so called trenchcoat mafia made quite a dent with the media . Chris Rock does a good take on it in one of his stand-up routines, Refusing to get in a lift with crazy whitekids,and sending his kids to a black school where its safer . As to the video games, they are designed for adults,and age restricted to adults, if kids are playing them then its the adults at fault, not the games . And those kids who take guns to school . . . they have mighty messed up heads with massive issues, if you took a look at the upbringing and quality of homelife it would soon become cyrstel clear that its not the games at fault . Brings to mind the 2 drunken messed up kids who commited sideways a few years ago, then their parents sued Judas Preist . The parent tried to ignore the fact the kids had a history of drug and alcohol abuse,violent assults, and were consumed by hate for life itself . Then they left them to drink,drug and play with guns for 10 hours in a basement . . . . . . . and then blamed the tape in the stereo . . . . Parents create the damn kids, they should do their job, if they don't then they should be held responcible right alongside the kid	Metla (12)
371395	2005-07-12 02:34:00	Now I'm not a grandmother, but I quite fancy a discreet butterfly or somesuch on the backside. (Relic of the swinging 60s when I should've done it as a youngie maybe?) Not that I'll probably ever do it - but if I did, I wouldn't want you stuffy fellers judging me on that. After all, many of my old WW2 mates & more recent naval friends have tattoos. Theirs are completely accepted, so why shouldn't mine be? I've still got it on the "maybe" list - just for the hellofit... What I can't stomach are the nose rings today's young women have. They just seem so unhygienic - considering normal nose-blowing requirements... And as for those in the tongue- how do they eat a normal meal? My mind boggles over the disadvantages for a real food-lover... What they do down below is presumably a matter of preference, but I find it hard to believe they've found an improvement on the basic old-fashioned version.	Laura (43)
371396	2005-07-12 02:52:00	Seems here that the drug of choice is black tar heroine . For a fill-in substitute, they use vicadin with 5mg of codeine that they cook outta it and smoke or shoot . We seem to see it as a non-class abuse here: I see kids from very rich with too much $$ and fast cars and $300 . 00/day habits, to street people who commit crimes and petty thefts to subsidize a $50/day habit . There are areas that flourish with it more than others though . We have the ghettos, and the barrios and the lower "classes" that seem to be the worst . There are kids with no family, or to read it as the papers put it, with no male model (father) to give guidance . The real crime is that these people (users) tend to make very large splashes in society by killing the people who walk in on their home being robbed, or in the affluent parts of town, by the criminals who "follow home" the occupants driving an expensive car; the followed people winding up dead and robbed and most often raped and tortured . The actual effect of driving under the influence of drugs (DUI in cop jargon), isn't much of an issue . The drunk driver (502) causes a lot more carnage on the highways than the dopers . "Crazed" dopers are few and far between, and the typical Hollywoood stereotype does not exist any more . Then there are the "drive-by shooters" who will spray the corner of a school yard with bullets from a semi- or full-auto AK-47 or a MAC 12, or even from a carfull of occupants with multiple weapons . They kill everyone that they can on the off chance that the person they want to kill MIGHT be in the group! It is not uncommon in the Vietnamese neighborhoods for one angry dealer to throw a satchel charge or a surplus handgrenade into a crowded restaurant with lots of partons for the same reason and getting the same effect . Life ie especially cheap to these persons (persons being a single word oxymoron here), not like the old days of the mafia! In mafia days, they had a beef with one person, and that was it . . . they didn't kill anyone else . . . just the guy they wanted . We had real pride in the mobs in those days . That pride is gone . :stare: Really, nowadays we get no safe quarter from these people . In my experience I have been in the middle of both sides of the slippery slopes . I played guitar for a living for a while, and I saw that this was not the place to be with being up till 4AM, and sleeping the daylight hours away untiul I had to be playing again the next night . I saw a lot of really good talent go up in literal smoke (marajuana days these were, and a smattering of LSD and other brain melters), guys who were about to break out into the big time . . . dead . So, truly I cannot say it is a class thing . . but a classless obsession . Drugs are fun and an escape, or they would not be so popular . Murder is a necessity to obtain the drugs (at least on the lower pay scales anyway), and killing and maiming and raping is just a lot of video fun . . right? :thumbs: There is a lot of rhetoric about free needles and drugs; free anti-abuse programs and after school care centers, but they haven't worked yet . The "It takes a village" mantra from the socio-psyches has proven to be a lot of Bandini, and it doesn't matter if the users/killers/misbegottens/creeps/dealers/rapists/sodomists/vid gamers and rappers are to be "understood for their social values", they surely have little to offer and nothing to give . And as an aside: I you are travelling in a strange area, and you see graffitti on the walls, cars, highway signs, dead people on the ground, you are in drug-country! Be gone by the fall of dark, but that's not true any more . It is dangerous there in broad daylight .	SurferJoe46 (51)
371397	2005-07-13 00:27:00	[special note to sarel: imagine all these kids with body-piercings, and tattoos becoming grandmothers later on . . . gads!] Its just a phase . These are symbols of rebellion for youth and are driven by peer pressure . The piercings generally disappear in the mid 20s because they are uncomfortable . Tattoos can be removed once regretted . The weapons problem in the US is directly tied to the constitutional right to bear arms . This is an historical anachronism but is jealously guarded by arms manufacturers and conservative constitutionalists . Unfortunately the US Constitution, while a laudable document, is merely a set of words put together 200 years ago which has attained Ten Commandment status . It is very difficult to change which means disarming the American populace is currently impossible . And yet, can anyone name another Western democracy where pistols etc can be owned by everyone? While I like and admire Americans generally, this guns business is a curious blind spot .	Winston001 (3612)
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