Tag: population

When the artist gets the rights of the owner…

Scenario.
I buy land on a mountain in an out-of-the way rural area. I am not farming said land, nor using it for business purposes. Without my knowledge or consent, some artist shows up and proceeds to build an amazingly beautiful 50′ tall monument carved into the mountain of an angel cradling a baby that can be seen from half a mile away, and becomes very popular tourist attraction.

Unfortunately, I purchased this land because it is away from the population, and with expectations of maintaining a modicum of privacy. I give the artist the chance to start a project to move the monument someplace else and they refuse. Eventually, I come to the conclusion that the monument must go, as people are driving up to my house at every day at all hours and I am not getting any privacy.

After the monument is demolished, the artist sues me for 6.7 million in damages to HIS work.

Does this seem right to you?

I read an article recently and it really provokes some thought on this. Recognizing the value of the artwork should not impact an owner’s rights, even if there is a loss of value to someone else, right? Whats the use of owning the property if some guy can walts up and sue you for using it as you want?

Here is the original NY Times Article




How the Mighty Are Falling-Is our IQ really falling?

Seriously…are we getting dumber? Our kid’s IQ is worse?!

Just thought about something, our IQ’s and education…

The Roman Empire survived well over a thousand years by reinventing themselves as the center of civilization, and in it’s venerable years, the center of control for the Catholic Church, which in its later years was actually for more powerful than the empire itself. I mean we’re talking like 1700 years. that’s 3 times longer than almost every other government in history (that we have real documentation of). They were among the most educated people on the planet for their time. Many many great thinkers were a part of the empire and contributed to it’s success. The idea

Now the U.S., we’re just a little over 200 years in and barely cohesive. UK isn’t much further and isn’t much better off. I see countries that invested heavily in their education system may have lived a little poorer, but are now completely showing us up. What’s worse is I feel like we’re ignoring it. We have these half-assed programs that are supposed to have a huge impact on our educational system when we’re completely ignoring the fact that we haven’t been adequately educating for decades.

What does it take to get people to see the problem here?


The article above is saying that for the first time in our existence, the average IQ of next generation in the US will not be smarter than the previous generation. How the hell does that happen? Is our education system so poor or entrenched that we cant reverse this trend? How is it that people in charge of our education system didn’t see this coming?

TonyTown - Hold No Virtue - IQ - Education in Finland might be getting it rightThis scares me. I mean, what happens in 20 years when it’s our kids in charge? I mean personally I haven’t actually seen examples of this per se, but wow how does this pan out?

By the same token, I’ve been reading about the “Flynn Effect” where our IQ’s are showing an increase, but because the generation gap is statistically affected by relative age this notion is less severe than the media it portraying. The problem in this is that most of the statistics are showing that we are not keeping up with systems in play throughout the rest of the world. However this same idea would also depict our great grandparents as being mentally retarded by today’s standards of intellectualism. So is the beauty of the increase is in the eye of the beholder? Do we have to stay competitive with other nations or continue on our path to creating a huge division in our population intellectually?

On that note, I REALLY love what has been done in Finland. They have made education a positive part of their society rather than a problematic half successful tax on their population. I put some links below if you’re interested in reading them.

/rant over.

LINKS
Great Article on where we are educationally from the ETC blog.
Article about the Flynn Effect and details on this from Smithsonian.com
Why are Finland’s schools so successful?
Heavy Details on why Finland’s education system works so well.
Another article on differences in Finland’s Education System




Listen to yourselves sometimes…

Dear Close-Minded Woman that pissed me off this week,

Perception is reality. 22% of the worlds population believes in Islam. It’s the worship of a single deity, with that deity’s word outlined in the Qur’an, and the teachings of a prophet named Mohammed. I could just as easily compare it to the Bible, God, and Moses just like my buddy did, and be quite satisfied in being correct…at least until we get into a more detailed description of the religion.

SO…maybe…just maybe…the next time someone greets you with a blessing you should be gracious enough not to act like someone just put a hex on you.

There is this knee-jerk reaction people have when engaging religions not their own that is usually uninformed, uneducated, and almost purely instinctual…almost fight or flight. That is explainable. The possibility that one may be right and the other wrong triggers a fight or flight reaction, most of the time verbally where a person spouts off whatever they can come up with in a few seconds and hide behind their faith in the argument…or worse. When in reality (personally I think religion is a horrible burden on spirituality, being now a tool for business and politic), they are both mutually destructive to one another and will continue to teach at least a small portion of their congregation that the other is the evil one.

The only end to this was to remove religious rule, and we did it.

What scares me most is that some people actually think that adapting the US government into any degree of Christian theocracy would actually protect us.

Separation of Church and State protects us. It has allowed our country to flourish where many other nations have fallen or been turned over in civil war nightmares. The First Amendment to the United States Constitution provides that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof ….” and Article VI specifies that “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”

I completely understand feeling threatened by belief systems other than your own. I actually understand the feeling more than most. I just don’t understand the need to attack others beliefs to justify your own. Disproving someone else’s religion doesn’t make you right, it makes you a judge where none is necessary.

-Tony

NO…I am NOT a Muslim. I just cant stand religious bullies.