[quote]doogie wrote:
harris447 wrote:
Just for the record…the “Oranjello” thingis an urban legend. That’s why no one has ever met this person directly, just heard of him/his mother through “friends of friends”.
It’s in the book Freakonomics.[/quote]
I know. I read it. Good book.
Still an urban legend.
Only in America (a politically correct one) could a man speak the sentiments of two intelligient men, who happen to be black, and be called a racist.
As I said before, priceless!
[quote]harris447 wrote:
doogie wrote:
harris447 wrote:
Just for the record…the “Oranjello” thingis an urban legend. That’s why no one has ever met this person directly, just heard of him/his mother through “friends of friends”.
It’s in the book Freakonomics.
I know. I read it. Good book.
Still an urban legend.[/quote]
Sorry, it really did happen. My friend filled out the paperwork himself and swears it’s true. Known the guy since elementary school and he’s not a liar.
I had a friend whose cousin went to Vegas and picked up a really hot chick at the bar and he woke up in a tub full of ice and his kidney was missing and there was a Sasquach in his closet. True story.
[quote]Headhunter wrote:
Sorry, it really did happen. My friend filled out the paperwork himself and swears it’s true. Known the guy since elementary school and he’s not a liar.
[/quote]
Bill Gates just sent me a check for $15,000 for forwarding an email to, like, a whole bunch of people.
[quote]The Mage wrote:
My meaning that it is not real means it is a concept that exists in our minds, not in reality.[/quote]
Let me guess: “The Matrix” is one of your favorite movies of all time?
What defines “real”? For example, is your conscience real? Are your feelings real? Are your thoughts real? Is Gravity real?
So, let me ask you: what IS real? What is NOT a concept that exists in our minds?
Are we discussing language or are we discussing philosophy? Or are we discussing reality?
Is there a spoon?
[quote]The Mage wrote:
That means regardless of where a person is born or from, they will not suddenly grow up with the culture of their birth if they are raised by people of a different culture.[/quote]
Absolutely. Because there is no “culture of their birth” – culure is something that we grow into. Not something we are born with.
[quote]hspder wrote:
What defines “real”? For example, is your conscience real? Are your feelings real? Are your thoughts real? Is Gravity real?
So, let me ask you: what IS real? What is NOT a concept that exists in our minds?
Are we discussing language or are we discussing philosophy? Or are we discussing reality?
Is there a spoon? [/quote]
I knew this was too complex for you to wrap your mind around. Do I need to dumb it down for you?
Is Santa Clause real? I am thinking of him right now, does that make him real? The idea of Santa Clause has had a big impact on society, and yet there is no Santa Clause. (Sorry rainjack.)
Really if you think about it, instead of trying to just arguing anything I say, this is obvious.
Would it be better if I said that culture is learned behavior that can be changed at a whim? (An artificial construct to which a group of people conform to and which is malleable.)
About the Matrix, which pill do you want? Taking things deeper, we can even question what we think is reality. (Warning, about to get weird.)
Everything we know is based on our senses. Our brains interpret what our senses perceive, so reality is just how we are interpreting our environment, and responding to it. We do not react to the environment, but instead we react to our interpretation of the stimuli of the environment. The only reality is what is created by our minds.
Along the same lines, we are all kind of living a shared delusion. A person says he is a doctor, and we accept that. He thinks he is a doctor because he got a certificate that says so, by a University that assumes it can tell people they are doctors, because they believe they are accredited. They think they are accredited because the government tells them they are, because the government thinks it can. This can go on until you realize whoever started this process just made it up without any authority.
Everything we know and believe is just a functional delusion, and we attempt to use concepts to define what reality is. Talk to a physicist sometime. They know that physics is not reality, but an attempt to create a representation of reality, and that is the best we can hope for.
And no I don’t want to spoon with you so quit asking.
[quote]The Mage wrote:
Is Santa Clause real? I am thinking of him right now, does that make him real? The idea of Santa Clause has had a big impact on society, and yet there is no Santa Clause. (Sorry rainjack.)
[/quote]
Son of a bitch.
[quote]firemedichcfr14 wrote:
As to the original topic I think black history month is stupid too.
Where is the Spanish history month?
Asian history month?
How about Italian or Irish history month?
We are all americans and the idiots who try to separate us are the real racists.[/quote]
The University I went to was building a new Black Cultural Center while I was there. It really pissed my buddy off, he was a Japanese-Eskimo. There are never any Japanese-Eskimo Cultural Centers!
[quote]The Mage wrote:
I knew this was too complex for you to wrap your mind around. Do I need to dumb it down for you?[/quote]
Don’t patronize me. And when you do, at least try to learn how to spell “Santa Claus”…
End of discussion.
[quote]hspder wrote:
The Mage wrote:
I knew this was too complex for you to wrap your mind around. Do I need to dumb it down for you?
Don’t patronize me. And when you do, at least try to learn how to spell “Santa Claus”…
End of discussion.
[/quote]
There is no end to this until somebody proves to me that there is no Santa, dammit.
[quote]hspder wrote:
The Mage wrote:
I knew this was too complex for you to wrap your mind around. Do I need to dumb it down for you?
Don’t patronize me. And when you do, at least try to learn how to spell “Santa Claus”…
End of discussion.
[/quote]
Yes with all your misspellings you need to talk to me about spelling. (Apparently you don’t like Tim Allen.)
[quote]rainjack wrote:
hspder wrote:
The Mage wrote:
I knew this was too complex for you to wrap your mind around. Do I need to dumb it down for you?
Don’t patronize me. And when you do, at least try to learn how to spell “Santa Claus”…
End of discussion.
There is no end to this until somebody proves to me that there is no Santa, dammit.
[/quote]
I was wrong, here is a picture of him.
[quote]rainjack wrote:
hspder wrote:
The Mage wrote:
I knew this was too complex for you to wrap your mind around. Do I need to dumb it down for you?
Don’t patronize me. And when you do, at least try to learn how to spell “Santa Claus”…
End of discussion.
There is no end to this until somebody proves to me that there is no Santa, dammit.
[/quote]
There is no Santa. The guy in the red and white fur suit and tricked-out flying ride is a pimp. He got the North Pole on lock with those elf-bitches.
[quote]doogie wrote:
I had a friend whose cousin went to Vegas and picked up a really hot chick at the bar and he woke up in a tub full of ice and his kidney was missing and there was a Sasquach in his closet. True story.[/quote]
Bullshit dude. That was my buddy, and he’s no liar!
[quote]doogie wrote:
I had a friend whose cousin went to Vegas and picked up a really hot chick at the bar and he woke up in a tub full of ice and his kidney was missing and there was a Sasquach in his closet. True story.[/quote]
My friend is Youth Minister at our church and a lifelong friend. I saw no reason for him to lie. We were discussing unusual names of some of my minority students, and how such names, while ‘trendy’ in the black community, would probably give a racist at IBM (it’s an example guys!) an excuse to throw that person’s resume in the trash can.
[quote]rainjack wrote:
hspder wrote:
The Mage wrote:
I knew this was too complex for you to wrap your mind around. Do I need to dumb it down for you?
Don’t patronize me. And when you do, at least try to learn how to spell “Santa Claus”…
End of discussion.
There is no end to this until somebody proves to me that there is no Santa, dammit.
[/quote]
Ho, ho…Ho! where’s my money?
[quote]The Mage wrote:
Everything we know is based on our senses. Our brains interpret what our senses perceive, so reality is just how we are interpreting our environment, and responding to it. We do not react to the environment, but instead we react to our interpretation of the stimuli of the environment. The only reality is what is created by our minds.
Along the same lines, we are all kind of living a shared delusion. A person says he is a doctor, and we accept that. He thinks he is a doctor because he got a certificate that says so, by a University that assumes it can tell people they are doctors, because they believe they are accredited. They think they are accredited because the government tells them they are, because the government thinks it can. This can go on until you realize whoever started this process just made it up without any authority.
Everything we know and believe is just a functional delusion, and we attempt to use concepts to define what reality is. Talk to a physicist sometime. They know that physics is not reality, but an attempt to create a representation of reality, and that is the best we can hope for.
And no I don’t want to spoon with you so quit asking.
[/quote]
What you are endorsing is called Solipsism. Solipsism is false. Berkeley’s idealism rests upon the premise that everything is consciousness – this is a contradiction. A consciousness w/o anything to be conscious of, other than itself, would not need senses to attain this consciousness. It would be self-contained. I refer you to the Empiricism of Hume and the later Positivists.
It IS true that the only reality we understand is that attained by our senses. Our senses organise sensations into perceptions. We then abstract from these to form concepts. This is the process of Reason and why Aristotle called us the Rational Animal, the animal that uses conceptual thinking.
Ayn Rand has some excellent work on this subject as well.
Interesting thread… I too like hip-hop culture, particularly funk and new soul.
What is difficult for me to deal with is the difference in language that has developed, particularly in the past 10 years or so. Call it ebonics or whatever, but it’s been very detrimental to the goal of unity among races. Now different pockets of culture not only look different, but sound entirely different as well. I acknowledge that the evolution of the English language is unstoppable (language is ever-changing), but this is different. Ebonics is distinctly a “black” way of speech. Caucasians cannot speak ebonics and be socially accepted. Most black men I know like the idea of ebonics because it helps to segregate their culture from white culture. Again, this is contrary to our goal of unity.
Any thoughts? I would like to be wrong about this…
[quote]Hamster wrote:
Interesting thread… I too like hip-hop culture, particularly funk and new soul.
What is difficult for me to deal with is the difference in language that has developed, particularly in the past 10 years or so. Call it ebonics or whatever, but it’s been very detrimental to the goal of unity among races.
Now different pockets of culture not only look different, but sound entirely different as well. I acknowledge that the evolution of the English language is unstoppable (language is ever-changing), but this is different.
Ebonics is distinctly a “black” way of speech. Caucasians cannot speak ebonics and be socially accepted. Most black men I know like the idea of ebonics because it helps to segregate their culture from white culture. Again, this is contrary to our goal of unity.
Any thoughts? I would like to be wrong about this…[/quote]
The traditional way out of poverty has been to ‘do what middle-class people do’. To reject that and adopt traditions or garb, or speech of native cultures simply leaves those people out of a middle-class existence.
I’m sorry, but mainstream employers, suburban housewives, the bulk of the middle-class, will simply not include people who behave in outrageous mannerisms – this is especially the point of Dr. Cosby.
I simply don’t get why he was villified by the black community. He stated a truth: “Follow the traditional way out of poverty or doom yourselves to stay there.” Seems like common sense to me.