Annoying Questions I'd Like Answered...

Eikre · Post by **Eikre** » Thu Feb 27, 2014 3:40 am

nockermensch wrote:@virgil and Eikre: You read goblins, and the first deficiency you notice in the author is his artistic skills?

Um... yes?

Because you can show a page of his comic to literally anybody and that is the first thing they would notice is crappy, too?

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Thu Feb 27, 2014 4:01 am

I think the point nockermensch is making is "It's not just the art, the whole thing is really shitty". A statement with which I would agree.

Sashi · Post by **Sashi** » Thu Feb 27, 2014 4:14 am

I dunno, there are parts of goblinscomic that I've really enjoyed

erik · Post by **erik** » Thu Feb 27, 2014 4:17 am

Carmen Wong Ulrich is the former host, haven't seen why she's no longer host. Her twitter feed, marketplace page, facebook page,personal webpage, and wikipedia offer no great insight.

I imagine something will come out soon enough.

If you want, for your net-fu's honor I could edit her wikipedia page to say she has taken a leave to go on a psychadelic walkabout to follow Hunter S. Thompson's footprints. Then you could show that to your wife and gain the upper hand as she gets snookered.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Thu Feb 27, 2014 4:31 am

So we're having state elections soon. That"s the one people don't really give much of a shit about because you can't change the Prime Minister with it, and besides, you can't drum up good media fire here because South Australia doesn't exactly get boat people (from what, Antarctica?) We get penguins from the sea. Actually we don't, they've been dying off for some reason that is probably not our fault, keep doing what you're doing, people!

Anyway, the funny bit first is that our state is vaguely run/represented by Labor (no u there for some reason), which is the less-bad party. The attack ads run by Liberal (or the Liberal-National Coalition of Evil, the conservative party) are hilarious: "blah blah blah they're bad and stupid and dumb. AND IN THE LAST EIGHT MONTHS, X JOBS HAVE BEEN LOST!"

Note: in the last eight months, the national power changed hands from Labor to Coalition, with a Liberal becoming PM. So while they think they're saying "Quick, vote us in to save the state!" what they're really saying is "We've already fucked up on a national level, let us fuck up on a state level too! If you voted Coalition in the national one, you should feel bad!"

Anyway, here's the question: a "stop population growth" party has appeared. They're big on buzzwords and "If we stop the bloat of population growth we can solve ALL THE PROBLEMS" but don't put any real information forward. So:
A) Do these parties tend to actually just be racist anti-immigration things and what they really mean is "Don't let funny coloured folk into our lands"?
B) Assuming the answer to A is no, what do these types of party even propose people do? Is there an incentive for sterilisation/contraception use/everyone turning gay? Is there a forced cull of the elderly? An actual punishment for people who have children?

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Thu Feb 27, 2014 5:27 am

Well, I dunno about your local variation, but Russia and China historically totally have cut down on population growth by instituting penalties for having too many children. Nowadays it's come back to bite them in the ass with skewed demographics, but it did reduce their population pressures.

You could cut back on or even reverse tax credits for having more children to get a mild form of the effect, but actually birth rates have totally been declining without any specific governmental effort, so they're probably a racist dog-whistle group.

Starmaker · Post by **Starmaker** » Thu Feb 27, 2014 8:47 am

name_here wrote:Well, I dunno about your local variation, but Russia and China historically totally have cut down on population growth by instituting penalties for having too many children. Nowadays it's come back to bite them in the ass with skewed demographics, but it did reduce their population pressures.

If you meant this unironically and not as a reference to the perestroika / healthcare reform / social security reform (which cuts down on population growth like nothing else), stop smoking whatever it is you're smoking.

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Thu Feb 27, 2014 2:37 pm

Ah, I had gotten confused on that one; the USSR had the opposite problem and went for the opposite solution of taxing childless people. Which the Russian Federation cancelled, dropping the birth rate a lot.

Cynic · Post by **Cynic** » Thu Feb 27, 2014 4:22 pm

erik wrote:Carmen Wong Ulrich is the former host, haven't seen why she's no longer host. Her twitter feed, marketplace page, facebook page,personal webpage, and wikipedia offer no great insight.

I imagine something will come out soon enough.

If you want, for your net-fu's honor I could edit her wikipedia page to say she has taken a leave to go on a psychadelic walkabout to follow Hunter S. Thompson's footprints. Then you could show that to your wife and gain the upper hand as she gets snookered.

While I would never advocate fraud this would be the best way to go except that I really shouldn't condone another false edit on wiki. Damn it, you'd be fucking with my donation dollars at work! Oh what a quandry...

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Thu Feb 27, 2014 4:43 pm

Are there any mammals with kinky hair? Or are humans the only mammal that can grow an afro.

Redshirt · Post by **Redshirt** » Thu Feb 27, 2014 4:55 pm

A) Do these parties tend to actually just be racist anti-immigration things and what they really mean is "Don't let funny coloured folk into our lands"?
B) Assuming the answer to A is no, what do these types of party even propose people do? Is there an incentive for sterilisation/contraception use/everyone turning gay? Is there a forced cull of the elderly? An actual punishment for people who have children?

My experience is that it's generally A. Their big worry is scary, dirty brown people and their scary brown kids, but framing the conversation as one about population growth more generally lets them make arguments with broader appeal.

Since expulsion, forced sterilization, one-child policies and the like are so draconian, curbing immigration is conveniently the only policy option left standing. You know, "well shucks, I don't personally have any problems with those furriners, but, wouldn't ya know it, keeping them out is the only good option for solving this other, much more important and totally non-nativist problem. Sorry."

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Thu Feb 27, 2014 9:24 pm

Koumei wrote:A) Do these parties tend to actually just be racist anti-immigration things and what they really mean is "Don't let funny coloured folk into our lands"?
B) Assuming the answer to A is no, what do these types of party even propose people do? Is there an incentive for sterilisation/contraception use/everyone turning gay? Is there a forced cull of the elderly? An actual punishment for people who have children?

People become more clannish and selfish when they're afraid or angry. Not only is it harder for them to empathize with people further and further outside of their social circles but they're also more sensitive to visceral, obvious solutions. Xenophobia and racism makes a great vehicle for these kinds of cynical politics, for obvious reasons.

That's one explanation. The other explanation is privilege hysteria/distress.
http://weeklysift.com/2012/09/10/the-di ... rivileged/
http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2013 ... d-new.html
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2 ... umbers.php

But talking about less 'racism' is too muddled and imprecise a way to put it, though it's fine as a short hand. What we're really talking about is a declining percentage of the white population that believe whites are or need to be the dominant social group in the country. To be clear, the converse of that doesn't mean instituting apartheid or hating blacks or Hispanics or Asians or anyone else. It simply means, at a basic level and on a spectrum of meanings, who's in control and whether whites need to be the ones in control. And being 'in control' can be as simple as making up the overwhelming percentage of the population.

At the moment we're moving toward one party that is genuinely multi-racial in composition and another that is increasingly a white persons' party, albeit having limited minority representation and a small number of non-white officeholders. There's a small but substantial minority of the population that finds a new America where whites really aren't the overwhelmingly dominant group, simply in numbers, very frightening. I'd put the number at somewhere between 20% and 25% of the population. And they are overwhelmingly in the Republican party or they're right-leaning independents who vote Republican.

I don't think that Australia has any kind of imminent demographic turnover happening anytime soon, though. And you guys have like a 6% unemployment rate, so economic fear doesn't seem like a likely candidate. So I have no idea why shit is getting crazy over there. Maybe it's the above-average gini coefficient?

TiaC · Post by **TiaC** » Thu Feb 27, 2014 11:14 pm

OgreBattle wrote:Are there any mammals with kinky hair? Or are humans the only mammal that can grow an afro.

Sheep and dogs, to name a few.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Fri Feb 28, 2014 1:12 am

Lago PARANOIA wrote: I don't think that Australia has any kind of imminent demographic turnover happening anytime soon, though. And you guys have like a 6% unemployment rate, so economic fear doesn't seem like a likely candidate. So I have no idea why shit is getting crazy over there. Maybe it's the above-average gini coefficient?

Australia is an extremely racist country, so pandering to racists is actually an effective way to get some number of votes). Enough to matter? Potentially. The more "We're racist" parties you get, the more their voting base is divided, and then they really just funnel votes to either One Nation or the Liberals. Or Labor or the Sex Party or the Motoring Enthusiasts, you know, whatever. So basically, it doesn't matter that "White Christian Wealthy Families" aren't being unseated or overwhelmed. Here's a joke:

"A CEO, a reader of The Advertiser and an immigrant are sitting at a table that has twelve biscuits. The CEO eats eleven, then tells the reader of The Advertiser 'careful, I think the immigrant wants to steal your biscuit!'"

Unemployment is getting worse though - since Abbott got in power, an additional 500 jobs have been lost per day (in some areas that's most pronounced, with massive factories shutting down). For the record, he awarded himself a 49% pay increase, so he actually gets more money than Obama does, these days. He is not concerned with your unemployment or low income and shitty working conditions, he's doing just fine, thanks for asking!

And it does specifically call out congested roads (the main solution would actually be investing in infrastructure - these roads were build in the 1320s [Citation Needed] and have simply had patch jobs on the potholes ever since. Pumping money into redevelopment of the roads is actually precisely the answer, and also helps with employment), and clogged hospitals (the main problem being that more and more has been privatised, creating artificial shortages for those with public health cover).

There's general resentment and discontent, but not enough to storm the imperial palace and behead Dong Zhuostorm parliament house and force the PM out of power. So people will blame anything.

Darth Rabbitt · Post by **Darth Rabbitt** » Mon Mar 03, 2014 1:18 am

Does anyone know a free program that will remove any password requirements from a password-protected PDF? I have the password but it's as annoying as fuck to have to enter it each time I want to view the PDF. The PDF in question is 447 KB in size if that matters.

Cynic · Post by **Cynic** » Mon Mar 03, 2014 3:37 am

Darth Rabbitt wrote:Does anyone know a free program that will remove any password requirements from a password-protected PDF? I have the password but it's as annoying as fuck to have to enter it each time I want to view the PDF. The PDF in question is 447 KB in size if that matters.

If you have the password then you should be able to use acrobat to remove the password or security on the file.

Adobe's blog shows you how.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Tue Mar 04, 2014 3:32 am

So, let's make a dangerous assumption for a moment: that right wing governments aren't merely incompetent and stupid, but actually intend the poverty and destruction they cause. Okay, it's actually a fairly safe assumption half the time, but I don't like to assume competence that often.

If that's the case, and they are actually working for Team Evil, but without any Vrocks to summon*, what's their ideal position regarding kids in school? Do they:
A) Want kids to stay in school so they're "just students" and are still in their parents' care so "we don't need to pay for them!"
B) Want them to get out of school ASAP so there are even more people clamouring for the same reduced pool of jobs (bonus: you don't have to pay kids as much money!)
?

*They really need to look into this.

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Tue Mar 04, 2014 3:35 am

Historical evidence suggests B.

Maj · Post by **Maj** » Tue Mar 04, 2014 3:37 am

Doesn't historical evidence suggest that right wing governments want to privatize schools so basically only the wealthy can attend?

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Tue Mar 04, 2014 3:41 am

Nah, historical evidence shows that right wing governments want to privatize schools so basically the government is giving tax money to privately owned companies own by the right wing fatcats.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Tue Mar 04, 2014 4:05 am

Yeah clearly B, which is why you always see Right wing organizations promoting the stupid math that not going to college and getting a job out of highschool is more money most of your life.

Because you know, if you just use the average salary who has a job and assume they have that job for the entire time you are in college and after you graduate, and ignore all the unemployed people who predominately don't have degrees, and ignore all the people who lose their jobs and have to change and not get payed for the intervening time, predominately non graduates, you can totally get numbers that slightly favor not going to school.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Tue Mar 04, 2014 4:19 am

That makes a lot of sense, I'm just puzzled: they seem to be pushing for various "keep kids in school" programs here (although I imagine it's actually "if they're registered as a student, make sure they're in schools under watchful eye at all times", not "encourage more students to keep going to school and aim for higher education").

I mean, at the same time as they're trying to make "go to Uni" synonymous with "take on a huge student debt, get fancy qualifications but the job market is saturated so you won't get a good job", so clearly they want to make "staying in school" a terrible choice. But some of the ideas of our government actually seem like they're just throwing bad ideas at a wall without having a specific evil plan with clear goals and ideas.

Redshirt · Post by **Redshirt** » Wed Mar 05, 2014 2:36 pm

Does anyone know the statistical breakdown of suicide methods by age and gender, particularly gun deaths? I can find the overall percentage of suicides caused by gun deaths, and the rate of suicide for different demographic groups, but not a combination the two.

TiaC · Post by **TiaC** » Wed Mar 05, 2014 4:31 pm

In what country?

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sun Mar 09, 2014 3:55 am

If anyone has the stomach for it, can someone tell me the whole arc of the Evil Jewish Banker stereotype?

Rationalwiki only gives broad strokes and Google searches for things like debt slavery and Rothschild Family quickly end up turning my stomach. Just on the front page of Google I get some really questionable link summaries. Anyone feel like shining some light on this issue?