Today I learned...

[Iain Aschendale]

Speaking of weird laws, the Vagrancy Act of 1966 made it illegal to pretend to tell fortunes, or practice witchcraft, sorcery or enchantment. And they kept that as law until 2005. (It's still illegal to engage in fraudulent activities while claiming to practice witchcraft or fortune-telling, of course. That comes under "fraud").

Too lazy to look it up, but there was a teevee preacher in the US who got indicted for mail fraud. He promised people that, if they sent him a "donation" along with their prayer request, he would pray to the Lord on their behalf. His secretary testified that she was in charge of opening envelopes, pulling out the cash and/or checks, and tossing the prayer requests in the trash. The post office didn't take a position on the efficacy of intercessory prayer, but the fact that the man promised a service which he didn't provide was a crime.

I'm using this in my novel; MC is very careful with how he phrases his scams.

 

[Rath Darkblade]

He promised people that, if they sent him a "donation" along with their prayer request, he would pray to the Lord on their behalf.

Er, isn't that a truly old scam? The Church did it for centuries. "Give us money and we'll say masses for your soul after you're dead." That's one reason why the Reformation started, IIRC.

I guess I should be surprised that people are still falling for it, but ...

 

[DLC]

The Japanese flag is actually a pie chart of countries that have been nuked

 

[Iain Aschendale]

The Japanese flag is actually a pie chart of countries that have been nuked

...in anger.

 

[Schism]

Cultural values are blindly adhered to "because reasons."

 

[Louanne Learning]

Cultural values are blindly adhered to "because reasons."

there have been a pretty steady stream of subversives down through history

 

[Schism]

there have been a pretty steady stream of subversives down through history

And more blind cattle who follow the subverts. Groupthink will always (now and forever!!!) lead to trouble, only realized retrospectively.

 

[Louanne Learning]

And more blind cattle who follow the subverts.

And that is why we need education

 

[Schism]

And that is why we need education

Hmm?

 

[CatrionaGrace]

(Pink Floyd is playing in my head now. It had better shut up before I go to bed.)

 

[Rath Darkblade]

And that is why we need education

Yes, but in some countries (not naming any!), the education budgets have been repeatedly slashed and disregarded over the decades, to the point that now some high-school graduates can't even -- to take a random example -- understand fractions.

"Duh, me don't need to know fractions. I got me a calculamator." (sic)

I have a sneaking feeling that both the politicians and the upper-level managers like it that way. Keep the people dumb and uneducated, and they won't realize how much they're getting f***ed every day.

Hmm?

*points up.*

Even organized religion, the most conservative of cultural bastions, is not immune to subversives. See: Jan Hus, Wycliffe, Martin Luther, Zwingli, et al... although they were a response to the Catholic Church's centuries and centuries of corruption and nepotism. (See: the Papal Schisms, the Saeculum Obscurum (or "Dark Age") for the Papacy, roughly 904-964 CE, etc.)

Some subversives eventually become part of the system and become much less subversive and even more conservative and fanatical than the system they railed again. (See Martin Luther ... again).

(Pink Floyd is playing in my head now. It had better shut up before I go to bed.)

I had the same problem with Josef Haydn's The Creation. Probably less known than Pink Floyd, but just as full of earworms.

Before The Creation, I had the same problem with Verdi's Requiem ... but that was for about two-three weeks after I performed in the damn thing. I dare you to listen to Verdi's Dies Irae and not have it stuck in your head!

 

[Stuart Dren]

Yes, but in some countries (not naming any!), the education budgets have been repeatedly slashed and disregarded over the decades, to the point that now some high-school graduates can't even -- to take a random example -- understand fractions.

"Duh, me don't need to know fractions. I got me a calculamator." (sic)

And that is why we need education

I think school is the "leading the horse to water." A kid could leave the best funded school still believing that fractions are a waste of time.

We have more access to information than we ever have. We just don't want to do the work.

 

[Louanne Learning]

Hmm?

Especially about ideas.

 

[Louanne Learning]

I think school is the "leading the horse to water."

I admit I have some utopian ideas about education, something that probably will never happen because it would cost too much.

First of all, I think that the basics should be mandatory. Math, Science, Language...

And there should be physical activity every day.

But a couple of hours each day should be spent in small groups reading a broad variety of classics and discussing them

(Instead we see Orwell's 1984 and To Kill a Mockingbird banned at some schools)

 

[Schism]

Yes, but in some countries (not naming any!), the education budgets have been repeatedly slashed and disregarded over the decades, to the point that now some high-school graduates can't even -- to take a random example -- understand fractions.

"Duh, me don't need to know fractions. I got me a calculamator." (sic)

HP Lovecraft had a nervous breakdown because he didn't 'get' algebra.

 

[JT Woody]

I was pretty good at math in school. I loved equations... took algebra, geometry, trig. And the sciences: physics and biochemistry all in HS.

Now, as an adult with aboslutly no use for such things in my career and daily life.... its all gone out of my head. I rely on the calculator on my phone whenever unexpected numbers come up

 

[CatrionaGrace]

I'd have rather crossed hell on a rotten log than take a single, solitary math course.

 

[Homer Potvin]

and tossing the prayer requests in the trash

I couldn't find the clip, but there was a gag in Righteous Gemstones where the money went in a bank style tube up to John Goodman's office, and the prayer letters went downstairs to a room full of people reading the letters and praying. There were dozens of people in cafeteria style tables and piles of letters of each.

 

[JLT]

And that is why we need education

And, particularly, education in civics, where we used to learn how laws were made and governments were constructed, and how important voting and information was to forming the kind of government that really worked, and how that process can go wrong if it doesn't have certain checks and balances. I'm not sure that's really taught anymore.

And, by god, logic, so that kids would learn how to recognize straw men, slippery slopes, and post hoc, propter hoc, and all that. These are indispensable tools in determining the validity of arguments.

Mark Twain said, "Education is what you must acquire without any interference from your schooling." By that, I think he meant that while facts and times-tables and such may be important, they mustn't distract from the fact that the true purpose of education is not simply to learn, but to learn how to learn. If it can't do that, it's fairly useless in most people's daily lives.

 

[JLT]

I was pretty good at math in school. I loved equations... took algebra, geometry, trig. And the sciences: physics and biochemistry all in HS.

I used to do algebra problems just for fun. And I did OK in higher math classes until I got to integral calc. That was my Achilles' heel.

Now, as an adult with aboslutly no use for such things in my career and daily life.... its all gone out of my head. I rely on the calculator on my phone whenever unexpected numbers come up

I do, too, but geometry is useful to calculate area when you're buying carpets or paint. If you don't know it, you'd better hope that the person selling you the carpet or the paint does.