This is gonna be the thread where we talk about stuff

I got money on the forums becoming a haunted roller coaster ride

i not only agree but offer a follow up theory that states that whoosh! is in fact a pretty great person

I posit that whoosh! has the best username on the forum for this reason



Whoever is listed before her gains the power of flight

I'm just going to pretend this was completely intentional, because that is all kinds of excellent.

(Solaris: )

Wheat I think the professor thread is getting lonely ;-;

I always read the propaganda in the early and mid 20th century media as a response to the rising amount of support of feminism, civil rights, etc, stuff that threatened the status quo. Aside from the cold war stuff, of course
But dang everything wheat said makes more sense when. I take that into account

My knowledge of Stonewall is limited to "Stonewall was a significant event related to the gay rights movement". I only just now realized I never looked into what actually happened there. Time to do that.

One visit to Wikipedia later...

Wow. So, short version for people who don't want to look at that for themselves: the Stonewall Inn was an establishment run by the Mafia. A lot of their customers were gay or transvestites. There was a police raid, and the customers fought back, and actually chased off the police.

It was a turning point, in large part because it changed the way gay activists operated. Before this, their main advocacy groups used obscure names and were generally very subdued - they didn't even allow members to hold hands at demonstrations.

Stonewall, however, was a major and visible event. It was, essentially, a stark revelation that gay people actually existed. I can only imagine what it must have been like to be gay back then, and hear about this in the news, and realize that there were other people just like you, and they were fighting back.

That completely changed culture. Obviously there were still people in the closet, and there still are; but Stonewall was essentially a signal that they didn't have to stay there.

Just four years after Stonewall, homosexuality was removed as a disorder from the DSM-V. That obviously wasn't anywhere near the end of the fight, but again, the feeling is something I can only imagine; psychologists effectively declaring that they were wrong all this time, these attractions you feel towards other men or other women aren't a sign that you're crazy.

Oh, and this is what really surprised me. Gay pride marches are commemorating Stonewall specifically - they're held around the end of June, the anniversary of the raid. I never knew that; I always more or less assumed it was just a generalized pro-gay demonstration. I guess I'd never given much thought to how they started, or to their specific meaning to the participants.

It's a little humbling, even embarrassing. A movement I support has been holding an annual event in city after city, and I just kind of mentally dismissed it as "a good thing in a vague way" without ever learning more about it. I didn't even realize it was annual until now.

Anyhow, ramblings aside, I'm glad I looked that up. I didn't just learn about Stonewall, I learned a lot about the gay rights movement that I'd never given much thought to before. Wheat and SF, thanks for pointing me in that direction, however unintentional it may have been.

Interesting, i didn't know anything about that. To think that not long ago people actually could get arrested for being openly gay in public, geez. It's such a shame this information is not widely spread

Has anyone else here read Lies My Teacher Told Me? It's primarily about how terrible history education in America is in general but a lot of the focus is on whitewashing of history (and how this both teaches false history and makes history boring and thus make people hate the subject), and I'm curious about other perspectives on the book.

I don't know much about it, but I hear that physics education in American high schools appears to be rather out-dated, never venturing at things past 1850.

It's true!

there's things to learn past 1850 :o ?????

Maybe? But it's almost like complaining that students learning calculus aren't being taught any math post-Newton. It's not going to take them any less time to grasp the concepts, and rushing ahead means sacrificing mastery of more fundamental ideas.

("mastery" is a term I'm using very, very loosely. I suppose "exposure to the point of vague recollection" is more appropriate)

It would be possible to design and present a physics course that explores topics like particle physics, special/general relativity, quantum mechanics, string theory and the like, and there would be definite advantages to doing so, but it would mean that the course would have to become much more concept-based than practice based. (example: talking about how the force of gravity gets weaker with distance rather than calculating it with known masses.)

There have been some pretty big pushes lately (from what I can tell) to reduce the amount of math required in high-school physics (at least in Texas), so that students who have just learned what a variable is (algebra 1) can take it. This means separating the math from the science, it is doable to an extent, but is it something we really want to do? Right now I can teach kids about basic motion, but only in one dimension, or at nice even angles. Anything that involves a sin or cos is right out. Though this isn't an example of reducing the rigor to expand the scope, it's just about making things easier because having students reach the minimum standard is the current prime directive.

This turned from a simple defense of the status quo to a minor bluh bluh at the trend towards "conceptual physics". My personal opinion: whatever the course, the more you can get students to invest in it, the more worthwhile (and fun) that course will be, pre-1850 or not.

Giving people a baseline education in physics and chemistry concepts early on would probably be a good thing; you don't need to understand the underlying equations to know some of the general rules and concepts, and more people knowing them early on could help prevent the widespread continuation of a lot of misconceptions about the world.

That said, for a mathematical examination, the early physics seems to be the best to teach early on. Everything's built off calculus, but basic mechanics and electricity can be worked with adequately just by knowing some equations.

Also, we could move to speed up math learning; from my memory, grades 2-7 were just review after review to drill in arthmetic, when I would think there'd be room to bring algebra and other things in early. Algebra isn't even really harder than arithmetic; it just doesn't have so much time spent on it in primary school.

I'd be lying if I said I learned more from private school than I do from the posts Wheat makes.

Thanks, America.

I think there should be mandatory logic classes in public schools, with a particular emphasis on identifying fallacies. It's incredibly useful to know regardless of who you are or what you do, but as it stands you have to go out of your way to learn it.

That just doesn't make sense.

As long as there is an accompanying session of "hey just trading observations about what fallacies your opponent just used doesn't count as a discussion"

I really hope these bill nye videos have torrented when I wake up in 4 hours, otherwise my students (and my partner teacher's students) are going to have a very boring worksheet day.

____

They did!

Spending the early grades learning languages when kids are good at learning them rather than teaching them watered down useless caricatures of history that teach nothing and inoculate against further learning sounds like a good and simple change.

It doesn't have to be looking into the other side to see if they're right even, necessarily, though. A lot of young and angry liberals see conservative opinions as being forged from pure hatred, malice, and stupidity, and this is a dangerous idea to hold. Even if you know you'll never agree with the other side's conclusions, leaning how they came to them can help you understand them, and even outside an understanding and enrichment sense it adds practicality. The best way to counter someone is to know where they'll be coming from, and if you just see them as subhuman you'll never be able to convince them to change their ways.

Not that I'm saying you have to abandon the safety of a like-minded group. I know for my own safety and mental well-being I just outright don't associate with people who are going to dislike me for what I am. But I'll read what they're saying and try to learn where they're coming from when I'm comfortable enough to.

I know I definitely have fallen into the trap more than once of criticizing neoconservative opinion and policy on the basis of their alignment instead of looking into their contents and analyzing why it is that I disagree with them. I'll add that I think it's important to have a good knowledge of logical fallacies and have a wider picture of the context when considering opinions from outside your comfort zone.

On that matter, I am pretty sure that I have enough context on the religious fundementalist viewpoint of life get me out of here

Wheat, while for the most part I agree with your essay up there, there's a part I'd like to contest. For the most part, I feel ability to focus on broad, abstract, real world issues is easier when one has more free time, not less. When I was working 60-70 hours weeks I spent all my free time on cartoons and shitty VNs; when my parents came home from work they wanted television or books and not political discourse. This is all obviously personal anecdotes, but I feel it makes sense, too; putting energy into things with no immediate personal consequence seems easier when one had more energy to spend.

I think the idea is that people tend to envelop themselves within their own comfort zones and thus choose to be oblivious to issues which involve serious harm to other people. It would be great if we, as a forum, were able to bring some of these issues to light and help encourage others to take an active role in fixing them.

It's not unlike what you've done with the LBGT thread. You've maintained a welcoming and patient focus around an idea and cause you believe has real-world importance. It would infuriating if someone brought up those issues and was told to "leave it in srsbsns" or whatever.

The "fandom" isn't bad. It's not wrong to enjoy things. But when someone uses that enjoyment to blind them from the suffering of others, there's a real issue there.

I think there's a difference between a "fandom" and a "community".

Fandoms are, essentially, about worship. They revere a webcomic, or a TV show, or specific interpretation of the Bible, and then they elevate it to supreme importance. They don't necessarily do it in every setting ever, but most of their projects are first and foremost about the object of reverence.

A community, on the other hand, is primarily about the people. Whether or not MSPAFA started as a fandom, it quickly turned into a community. We weren't just making adventures and talking about adventures. We were trying to help adventures get noticed even as ten or more started every day; we were making podcasts about adventures; we were starting games; we had thunderdomes; we had battles. Most of all, we had shared experiences, and they weren't just about adventures.

And, of course, you can have a community of fans. But over time, those fans will be less interested in whatever they're fans of and more interested in each other as people.

I'm an admin on an Advance Wars forum. Nobody talks about Advance Wars over there any more, because Intelligent Systems hasn't released anything in that series since 2008.

The forum has slowed down as a result, but it hasn't died. People still talk to each other. Maybe not as often as they do on other forums, but they have a reason to stick around, and it's not Advance Wars.

Supes, I'm gonna say at least I see it that way; your thread's pretty amazing in that it's there as both an inclusive and safe place and a way to bring people in to learn more about it.

Sociopathy only presents itself in three to one percent of the population

I would be interested in source and definitions for this statement.