Seriously, you can blame the 60's SJW's for many of the mental health issues were facing today. They didn't like the way people with mental illness were being treated and got all the institutions shut down. Very similar to the 80's and 90's....everyone was screaming "We need to get tough on drugs & criminals!" Now everyone is whining "Why are all the black men in jail on petty drug charges?" Because that's what folks asked the politicians to do.
http://www.al.com/news/index.ssf/2015/09/alabama_will_require_students.html Alabama will require students to learn about evolution and climate change. It was voted in by an all republican board and no one spoke out against it.
Not sure what the fuck SJWs are, but I'm and old fart, so who cares. But, the empty the psych hospitals and other facilities really got rolling under then governor of California Ronnie Ray-Gun in the early 1970s. He looked at the cost savings, and touted outpatient care that never was funded in any meaningful way, so he could brag about lowering taxes. As a result almost all the crazies were loosed on the rest of us. Other states followed. I worked in the Department of Public Social Services then running eligibility checks on applicants. Lets just say the "quality" of the applicants declined precipitously in mental health terms.[/QUOTE]
From: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...cts-about-americas-mental-health-care-system/ The shift away from inpatient spending traces back to the 1960s, when states began moving away from institutionalization for the mentally ill. Jeneen Interlandi offered some context in a recent New York Times Magazine story, starting with the Community Mental Health Centers Act of 1963. That law pushed for more treatment in community settings rather than in state-run, psychiatric institutions. By treating the rest in the least-restrictive settings possible, the thinking went, we would protect the civil liberties of the mentally ill and hasten their recoveries. Surely community life was better for mental health than a cold, unfeeling institution. But in the decades since, the sickest patients have begun turning up in jails and homeless shelters with a frequency that mirrors that of the late 1800s. “We’re protecting civil liberties at the expense of health and safety,” says Doris A. Fuller, the executive director of the Treatment Advocacy Center, a nonprofit group that lobbies for broader involuntary commitment standards. “Deinstitutionalization has gone way too far.”
Thanks for the added prior info. Historical footnote: A friend of mine was one of the attorneys for a Chinese man who had been locked up in the Camarillo State Hospital. It seems he got off a boat from China and had lost the instructions on how to contact his stateside relatives. He, understandably, was very agitated and only got worse when a Mandarin speaking translator was unable to communicate with him. 20 some years of hospitalization in the psych ward later someone figured put he only spoke Cantonese! This was one impetus for the Lanterman-Petris Act requiring, inter alia, periodic review of institutionalized people. My somewhat hazy recollection may have the sequence of events somewhat out of order, but the basic facts are personally known to me. In any case, the emptying of the mental help facilities has, on the whole, been a debacle. Fifth and Main, the L.A. downtown area where fairly innocuous bums and hobos would hang out, now has a significant and dangerous collection of drug abusers and violent psychos. My wife was mugged by an obviously disturbed woman at Broadway and Seventh. Luckily my adult son was there and shoved her away. Police, often poorly trained, end up shooting or severely beating the mentally disturbed when they get rowdy. The mentally disturbed who cause less violent reactions often end up in jail or prison where they are preyed upon by criminals and still receive minimal medication at the very best.
A little historical info from our friends at Wikipedia: "The Lanterman–Petris–Short (LPS) Act (Cal. Welf & Inst. Code, sec. 5000 et seq.) concerns the involuntary civil commitment to a mental health institution in the State of California. The act set the precedent for modern mental health commitment procedures in the United States. It was co-authored by California State Assemblyman Frank D. Lanterman (R) and California State Senators Nicholas C. Petris (D) and Alan Short (D), and signed into law in 1967 by Governor Ronald Reagan. The Act went into full effect on July 1, 1972. It cited seven articles of intent: To end the inappropriate, indefinite, and involuntary commitment of mentally disordered persons, people with developmental disabilities, and persons impaired by chronic alcoholism, and to eliminate legal disabilities; To provide prompt evaluation and treatment of persons with serious mental disorders or impaired by chronic alcoholism; To guarantee and protect public safety; To safeguard individual rights through judicial review; To provide individualized treatment, supervision, and placement services by a conservatorship program for gravely disabled persons; To encourage the full use of all existing agencies, professional personnel and public funds to accomplish these objectives and to prevent duplication of services and unnecessary expenditures; To protect mentally disordered persons and developmentally disabled persons from criminal acts. The Act in effect ended all hospital commitments by the judiciary system, except in the case of criminal sentencing, e.g., convicted sexual offenders, and those who were "gravely disabled", defined as unable to obtain food, clothing, or housing [Conservatorship of Susan T., 8 Cal. 4th 1005 (1994)]." As can be seen, the act was passed in 1967 and signed by R. Ray-Gun then, but was not fully operational until 1972, my era. Obviously, some parts were sorely needed, others not so much.
Some magazine in the early-mid 60's did an exposé on the horrors of mental institutions. Folks who had never been subjected to the severely mentally ill got the vapors and immediately started calling for an end to this barbarism. And they got it. Pretty much what they did is open the doors and tell the patients "You're free. Now go on and get." Yes, mental institutions were horrible, awful places but that's kind of what happens when you throw a bunch of mentally ill people all together. Some of them have to be put in straight jackets or strapped to a gurney for not only their own protection, but also for the safety of others. It's not pretty and personally I'd rather be dead then be in one of those places. God only knows what the answer is, but closing the institutions and turning the patients loose was not it.
There is absolute truth though. Natural selection through reproduction is a fact. Scientific laws are absolute truth, and while evolution isn't a scientific 'law' like gravity, it's every bit the absolute truth anything else is that works 100% of the time. You can only say they aren't absolute truths within the most abstract far reaching meaningless philosophical nonsense of arguments. I would actually be fine with schools teaching a bit of religion as long as it's in a history class. It's impact is just too big to completely ignore, but keep it out of the science classroom. It's good that Alabama is making understanding the basic tenets of evolution mandatory, but it's also pretty sad it took them until 2015. To gain even the most modest knowledge of how biology works, evolution is one of the few things that absolutely has to be in the coursework..
That's excellent. It's also astonishing that it's 2015 and it's still newsworthy to say, "hey, look at this! Legislators who are responsible for implementing education guidelines managed to avoid crushing science under the weight of their religious beliefs!" Gee, thanks guys. A+ work there. Right up there with, "avoided setting the capitol on fire during the vote" and "did not kill any puppies on the way in to work."
They're well backed up by lots of observational data with no data to refute it. When a phenomena has been observed thousands, or millions of times with not one sensible alternative that's even theoretically coherent that's at least pretty damn close to an absolute truth isn't it? How far would you take this? Is gravity not an absolute truth? Is there any way it isn't an absolute truth that actually has anything to do with logic or isn't philosophical far reaching pseudoscience? Even if there could potentially exist a system where it wasn't a law or didn't apply, isn't it still a fact in our universe? If it's not a fact, then is anything a fact? Should we say it's possible I don't even exist because you could be hallucinating this post and heeeeyyyy it's possible. I know this is kind of a silly discussion. I just find the whole post modernism, limits of our knowledge philosophy stuff kind of irritating. There's a place for that and I'm only disagreeing with you to a certain extent, but I don't see why it gets taken to such extremes.
Do you not think that perhaps you're using a false equivalency fallacy? Are people who believe in gravity really just as bad as someone who believes the sky is pushing down on us? Am I just as bad as someone who is a moon landing or holocaust denier? From what I can tell, advocates of evolution education often very specifically say that they don't "believe" in evolution, but they understand it to be true (or if we want to be technical about it accept it as the most viable explanation blah blah blah). Precisely because it isn't a belief, but an understanding of how the world works based on observation and evidence. And given they wealth of observational data we have on animals evolving, is that really just as bad as creationism?
So basically you're saying that Bill Nye is legit, but non-scientists who believe - or agree with, or whatever - what Bill Nye says are sheep who might as well be listening to Archbishop Ussher talking about the age of the earth.
Is it ok to talk about the hilariousness that was the GOP debate? And is it just me, or did Fiorina win it and it wasn't even close?
As long as we're talking about ignorance of science: 14 year old student arrested for bringing a homemade clock to school. I actually think this is less about technological ignorance and more just straight up racism/islamaphobia. I say this because as far as I can tell from reading the article none of school administration actually reacted as if they really believed it could be a bomb; they didn't evacuate the school or conduct any actions you'd do for a real bomb threat. They just made up this bullshit in order to punish and humiliate him.
No, no, no. Jesus I'm sick of people crying racism about everything. Throw his name and religion out the window. Now factor in today's climate of theater massacres, school shootings, and whatever else. What if it HAD been a fucking bomb and it blew up and children had died? There is protocol to be followed. It was handled all wrong and I do agree with that. But who exactly was it that alerted the media and made a point of his religion? That's the big question in my mind. This is, pure and simple, the culmination of media hyperbole and public hysteria gone way to fucking far. Racism/islamaphobia.? No. A complete loss of common sense? Yes.
This is bureaucratic and police ignorance. If the school actually thought it was a bomb, they should have evacuated. They didn't, therefore they knew it wasn't a bomb, they were just following their "Zero Tolerance" policies. This is the same reaction as making "pow pow" finger actions or eating a pop tart into the shape of a gun... it's got nothing to do with race, only stupidity and fear of having to think for themselves and suffer the consequences of a social media horde of stupid stay-at-home moms. The police arrested and held him illegally, failing to state a clear and concise reason for the arrest, and then denying him access to his parents until he was released, and they are not allowed to do that... a child is not allowed to be detained or interrogated alone. The best line of the whole thing was their statement of: "the only thing he would tell us is that it's a clock". Well no shit, you fucking morons... because it really was only a clock.
To play devil's advocate to your devil's advocate, why are you so sure race had nothing to do with it? I agree that the school was justified in taking action as a precaution, but: I'm not convinced it would have gone that far if he wasn't Muslim (and his name comically so... Ahmed Muhamed??). There's no litmus test for racism in these cases, but it doesn't seem like a stretch to say it was a factor in how this was handled.
Indeed. The only difference between this device and a bomb with an attached clock was the absence of a bomb.
I watched parts of the debate last night, and was sorely disappointed by the moderators. The amount of times I saw a candidate dodge a question, and not be taken to task for it, was alarming. People do realize this is a job interview, right? Not entertainment. Listening to the same talking points from 11 people all desperate to say something without saying anything was what you expect. That's why it's important for the media in a free society to be more discerning and more pointed in their questioning. The other debate was no better.
I agree that we should be teaching science to people, but you're taking this to an absurd extreme. It's still better that people believe in a well tested scientific theory even if they don't fully grasp what the scientific method entails. Not everyone will learn how to think.