How does the World view America these days?

throwing trash at the body? what the fuck?

Indeed, what the hell

Sometimes though, I get sad at 'murica.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/12/23/ohio-homeowner-told-to-take-down-his-zombie-nativity-scene/

  On 12/24/2014 at 10:32 AM, chenGOD said:

Sometimes though, I get sad at 'murica.

 

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/12/23/ohio-homeowner-told-to-take-down-his-zombie-nativity-scene/

  Quote

It is unclear if Dixon will fight the town, but when one person on his Facebook page urged him to keep the display up, he responded, "Dangers my middle name."

Journalism at its best.

Da comments on that article tho.

Perhaps there were lots of young kids living in the neighborhood that got scared?

Zippy1958 has it right:

  Quote

So, will he be allowed to put this display back up at easter, to celebrate the rising of the dead from the earth?

 

Will we still be allowed to go to communion to drink blood and eat flesh?

 

This is so very confusing.

my grandma would say, "God gave everyone the right to choose. That man is choosing to go right to hell and if thats what he wants, so be it. ill just close my eyes when i drive by!"

My views on America are much like Louis Theroux's I think

There's no need for all the focus on the negative, it seems to be all you ever hear about America is the negative things

  On 12/25/2014 at 7:35 AM, PhylumZunami said:

my grandma would say, "God gave everyone the right to choose. That man is choosing to go right to hell and if thats what he wants, so be it. ill just close my eyes when i drive by!"

Your grandma would close her eyes while driving? That sounds like a bad choice and one that would land you in hell for mowing down pedestrians while doing so.

Yeah, that was the cherry on top of the joke. Nicely played.

  On 12/19/2014 at 2:50 AM, coax said:

 

  On 12/19/2014 at 2:28 AM, StephenG said:

 

  On 12/19/2014 at 2:22 AM, coax said:

 

  On 12/19/2014 at 12:26 AM, msalami said:

I, also, am really bored with media constant sensationalism (like StephenG said before). Quite often I have the feeling that american society is very "media-oriented"... Too emotive.

Maybe it's not just about the U.S. by the way.

 

There are nuggets of more serious coverage. Part of the reason is capitalist drive of course, but the more interesting underlying thing is how attention span and complexity in daily life of people make it very hard to even have time to get deep into concepts.

I find this an extremely interesting concept.

 

Is this your own idea or do you have material supporting this idea? Would love to read anything in this area if you can PM me any articles/papers etc.

 

Edit: sorry, to elaborate. I'm fully aware that as a people we are constantly shifting focus and are busy (though statistically we are spending less time working and more time on leisure than ever before in history). I'm most interested in how this applies to broadcasting/news and the delivery of news etc. (A relevant point I think might be the length and frequency of commercials on television?)

I don't have any studies offhand but there is this book by Nicolas Carr http://www.amazon.com/Shallows-What-Internet-Doing-Brains/dp/0393339750/ref=asap_B001JS2HYY?ie=UTF8

 

And also this video talks about it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0KqvieRgnU(it mentions a "growing body of evidence")

 

These are mostly about internet, so it's kind of my own thing that it affects news, but I don't think it's a stretch to say media in general is mostly the same thing as far as consumption is concerned. I also know from my own relationships that people can have really strange hatred of celebrities on tv or leaders of a political party and when you ask them about it they have totally shallow reasons they just heard in a news snippet or from a friend, and a lot of the time those beliefs are blended with their own views on how the world should be or what the world is, and they don't make a distinction at all. Again my own views: but from a neuroscience perspective it makes sense. The nerves in the brain are connected in conceptual models, and the more symbols you have in the model (words, sentences, images etc) and the more diverse those models are, the more neutral your view on something is. Well in a lot of popular media, stories and explanations of events and people are simplified, so the brain only has a few symbols to put in the model and those symbols are connected only in a few ways and isolated, as opposed to connected in complex and nuanced ways. This leads to islands of bitesized models of things in isolation, also physically in the brain, rather than diverse nuanced complicated models. But of course, you need the symbols from reality, and the symbols should be as close to true and in accord with reality as possible, so there's a lot of work to do. Again just my own thesis!

I just read today that a guy (in Tennessee I think) pulled a gun on McDonald's worker because they accidentally forgot one of his mc doubles. So I'd say America os pretty fucked. I read stories like that every day. If that happened in Canada it would be in the news for a week lol

  On 12/27/2014 at 7:11 PM, StephenG said:

I just read today that a guy (in Tennessee I think) pulled a gun on McDonald's worker because they accidentally forgot one of his mc doubles. So I'd say America os pretty fucked. I read stories like that every day. If that happened in Canada it would be in the news for a week lol

Heh, that's where the classic defences of unrestricted gun ownership fall apart. A lot of people say guns are "the great equalizer" which can deter crime by removing the advantage of physical strength or whatever. That could well be the case in a world where everyone thinks rationally. But when hotheads with IQs lower than their shoe size are allowed to own guns (and pull them on people for pathetic reasons like above), then you're halfway to a Somalia situation

The McDonald's employee should have also had a gun.

If either of them shot the other nothing of value would be lost.

Exactly my thoughts. I think gun ownership has to be one of the biggest and most serious problems in the US today...I think I read that the U.S. has by far the highest gun ownership per capita? I don't really understand at all the argument in favour of owning handguns. I understand rifles (for hunting etc) but can't see why anyone would need handguns.

  On 12/27/2014 at 10:05 PM, autopilot said:

The McDonald's employee should have also had a gun.

 

If either of them shot the other nothing of value would be lost.

  On 12/27/2014 at 10:05 PM, autopilot said:

The McDonald's employee should have also had a gun.

 

If either of them shot the other nothing of value would be lost.

Lol....

The workers are just trying to earn a living I think their lives are valuable. The scum that pulled the gun on the other hand.....

  On 12/27/2014 at 10:07 PM, StephenG said:

Exactly my thoughts. I think gun ownership has to be one of the biggest and most serious problems in the US today...I think I read that the U.S. has by far the highest gun ownership per capita? I don't really understand at all the argument in favour of owning handguns. I understand rifles (for hunting etc) but can't see why anyone would need handguns.

Well I get the reasoning for the "right to bear arms", and it plugs in to very lofty (and righteous IMO) political ideals about resisting tyranny. But I'm not sure how much thought the Founding Fathers put into things like crime. I mean, sure, you can defend your property with a handgun, but you can't defend yourself against a knuckle-dragger shooting you because you mildly inconvenienced them. I guess they just didn't have people like that in the 1770s...

And yep, rural Canadians seem to have a very different outlook in my experience. Very pro long gun (for sport, hunting, launching flares etc), but also virulently anti handgun. A lot of old bush guys seem to see handguns as an American thing, that you'd only ever want if you were up to no good

I wanna get me a licence and an old Lee Enfield this year actually, so I can blow the heads off some Ditch Chickens when I get the chance!

http://youtu.be/fP3HJVp3n9c?t=15m24s

At about 15 minutes in:

http://youtu.be/fP3HJVp3n9c

I love Jim Jefferies

  On 12/27/2014 at 10:31 PM, Tricone RC said:

 

  On 12/27/2014 at 10:07 PM, StephenG said:

Exactly my thoughts. I think gun ownership has to be one of the biggest and most serious problems in the US today...I think I read that the U.S. has by far the highest gun ownership per capita? I don't really understand at all the argument in favour of owning handguns. I understand rifles (for hunting etc) but can't see why anyone would need handguns.

Well I get the reasoning for the "right to bear arms", and it plugs in to very lofty (and righteous IMO) political ideals about resisting tyranny. But I'm not sure how much thought the Founding Fathers put into things like crime. I mean, sure, you can defend your property with a handgun, but you can't defend yourself against a knuckle-dragger shooting you because you mildly inconvenienced them. I guess they just didn't have people like that in the 1770s...

 

And yep, rural Canadians seem to have a very different outlook in my experience. Very pro long gun (for sport, hunting, launching flares etc), but also virulently anti handgun. A lot of old bush guys seem to see handguns as an American thing, that you'd only ever want if you were up to no good

 

I wanna get me a licence and an old Lee Enfield this year actually, so I can blow the heads off some Ditch Chickens when I get the chance!

 

That Jim Jefferies bit sums up my thoughts on it (RE keeping the second amendment).

The government has fighter jets, tanks, nuclear weapons, etc etc so the whole resisting tyranny thing isn't really applicable anymore I suppose. Being able to defend your property makes sense though.

Supreme Court ruled that the interpretation of the second amendment applying to individuals is legit. So the whole well-regulated militia bit is a non-starter.

Still not buying it (the right to bear arms that is) though, it's just the security dilemma on a smaller scale.

How many times has the American Constitution been amended?

I mean, I know the answer.

But why can't they amend that shit out in light of the overwhelming statistics behind gun violence.... ?

Such confuse

Lobbying, politicking, general congressional fuckery.

Hey hey! What would Xmas season be without one more violent incident? Me and girlfriend walking across crowded Costco parking lot (in the crosswalk) when a fuck in a Caddie speeding thru parking lot swerving to miss pedestrians, he wasn't stoppin for nothin. He almost kills my girl with his car, I yell to slow down, so he rear ends the car in front of him, slams it into park, then jumps out and tries to assault us. My awesome lady had purchased us pepper spray and a 27" telescoping baton that I keep holstered at all times now. Well, when he saw that bad boy come out and extend, his courage suddenly dried up. I threatened to call the police if he'd like. He chickened and fled.

So glad I'm moving to UK, seriously. I hope I never have to come back to this fucked up nation until it gets its shit together.

Houston sounds... intense, man.