(01-08-2022, 07:19 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:(01-08-2022, 02:04 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: ...©ollege education... is overrated as an assurance of competence. College-educated people can still be cranks or get enraptured in pseudoscience. I've met people with college degrees who can't hold a credible conversation. I have known some who have done stupid things like use street drugs, sleep with anything that moves in the time of AIDS, drive drunk, join cults, and fall for extremist causes. One is more likely to do those things if one is a half-wit. The connection between IQ and formal learning is generally well established, as the high-school dropouts are largely dummies. Such is also true of the connection between intelligence and crime. Crime is stupid. Some burglars (nasty people, as many are also rapists) who feel assurance that the little yapping dog is only a Jack Russell terrier. My observation with dogs is that the smaller the dog, the more tiger-like its behavior is. Hospitalization rates by breed are twice as high for bites by kitten-sized Yorkshire terriers than for dogs in general. Little ankle-biters? I'd rather be bitten on my thigh, thank you, because that will not cripple me.
I am at most an amateur at assessing risks. All that I can rely upon is the statistical evidence.
You're not going by statistical evidence or science at this point. You're going by what the Left Wing Media, the Democratic Party, Left Wing bureaucrats, Left Wing Institutions, Left Wing propagandists, Left Wing interest groups/organizations, Left Wing SCOTUS's 's and the Biden/Harris Administration are/have been telling you the entire time. Personally, I doubt COVID itself has killed anyone so far. OK, maybe it has killed a few people so far. We don't know that answer, we only how many deaths are COVID related. Oh, you won't find a dog that's built like a bear or a tiger either.
...as if you ever go by statistical evidence or science at any point, Clasic X'er. Many of the differences on any social science between those who disagree on the most divisive issues disagree on moral values. You seem to believe in such a principle as "He who owns the gold makes the rules" and that people unlike you do not merit your trust. I am convinced that most of the ethical values that make life tolerable are well established, and deviations that we have accepted have been accepted only upon careful reflection that weighs consequences of the alternatives. The rightful relationship between asset-owners and people in need due to their humanity has yet to be fully solidified. A few centuries ago such was settled in this way: that the poor have responsibilities to the rich (the aristocrats who owned everything and had the power of life and death over everyone) and the aristocrats have none to the peons who are 100% expendable. When such was no longer enforceable only the aristocrats and their intellectual flunkies believed that -- if they were so inclined. Then came the French Revolution that shook the aristocratic ethos at its core, and finally the chaos of the Russian Revolution and the Second World War that led to the the annihilation of the aristocracy as a class. Some people thought that people could be literal possessions of others -- before the American Civil War made such an obvious absurdity.
Quote:You should quit referring to dogs as tigers or saying there are dogs that are like tigers because it makes you look/sound stupid to people like me.
Maybe I overdo this, but the point is that dogs are a criminal's worst enemy. They are the strongest mammals for their size, they are swift, powerful, cunning, and agile. They have keen senses and sharp teeth and claws with dangerous muscles behind them. If they attack, they might attack as one, in which case four 80-pond Rottweilers, Dobermans, or German Shepherds are potentially as dangerous as one giant cat. We are in Dog Country, and we behave ourselves in their presence or we can get hurt badly. Dogs are far more effective at deterring crime than are guns. I could as easily have compared dogs to lions or bears. But know well, that a dog can be a perfectly harmless pet and even a companion to a cat (the dog treats the cat as a fellow dog). Unlike a gun, it is far safer to you and your loved ones. Know well that the typical criminal is stupid, motivated only by the most primal of drives. Fear can be more powerful than greed or lust. The real point is whether, should you have fear of crime, to have a dog or a gun. The criminal will never turn the dog against you. Should you be in despair, a firearm is a highly-reliable tool of suicide, and a beloved dog might console you. You can shoot the wrong person in error, but the dog is unlikely to attack the wrong person. Guns are easy to steal, and dogs aren't.
I've seen circus acts on television, and the dog acts and tiger acts are practically identical except that the tigers create awe and the dogs are for comic effect. They can be built much alike. Yes, a tiger wins any conflict with any dog because the dog is smaller. but a dog that I outweigh by a ratio of three to one wins a fight with me should I do something very stupid. If I have said "the smaller the dog, the bigger the tiger" it is because the smallest dogs can get away with more aggression and are more likely in need of using aggression. OK, small dogs have the size of house cats, but we all know what a cat can do with any creature smaller than itself except for the one non-cat that is its peer in a dispute: a similarly-sized dog. I like dogs, but I certainly respect them.
Here's one other odd similarity: tigers do not so much roar as howl. Except for a higher pitch due to a smaller throat, a dog can make a similar howl. But, yes, dogs are tame -- which means that they are predictable, and tigers are extremely unpredictable.
Quote:You have a blue stereotype that some blues created for themselves to live up to or fail to live up to/die by in your case. I know a high school drop who works with Tesla. I know another one who owns/runs the gaming/ gaming development division associated with a global internet company. I know several others who have succeeded/are succeeding at whatever it is they do as well. You don't seem to know when it's time to stop and lick your wounds and reassess your situation/position. You're not alone that appears to be a common problem with those on the Left.
When America was more of a manufacturing country, it was possible for high-school drop-outs to get and hold manufacturing jobs that depended upon strong muscles, a solid work ethic, obedience, and the willingness to put up with body aches from the work that they did. The factory was the most reliable exit from grinding poverty, which explains why Booker T. Washington put so much emphasis on industrial education for blacks who were never going to get white-collar jobs anyway. In general most employers are chary of hiring high-school dropouts except for raw labor. Back in the old days people dropped out of school to meet the needs of their families as the bread-winning father wore out around age 40. Today dropping out of high school is the mark of someone that no employer wants: a rebel. Someone who cannot deal with the comparatively lax bureaucracy of a K-12 school will quickly find the more rigid and demanding bureaucracy of a fast-food place overwhelming. It is possible for a complete dullard to get a high-school diploma through special education. With a good attitude and integrity one can do menial but necessary work.
I have seen the critique that people with college degrees typically have any entrepreneurial character drummed out of them. Some of the most successful entrepreneurs knew enough to not stay in school and get a BA or BS degree. Most entrepreneurial activity is honest-to-Horatio Alger work. College grads have an infamous reputation for not wanting to get their hands dirty or to risk industrial accidents that might damage the fingers that give delight from playing classical music on a piano, violin, or cello. Much work that college grads do is glorified clerical work whose purpose they do not understand, as Orwell suggests is the case for white-collar workers. With comparative privilege dangled before them, meaning a house somewhat 'better' than the tract home that some blue-collar worker might have, a new Buick or Chrysler every seven years, and maybe a cruise in the Baltic or Mediterranean after twenty years when they finally get three weeks of paid vacation that they can finally put together they might ask no questions and hear no lies.
If you want my idea of who has the sanest economic order in America it is that of the Old Order Amish. They have no bureaucracy and very few white-collar jobs. Such white-collar jobs as they have are selling farm produce or clergy work. It's not an easy way of life, and I could never do it. I wouldn't want my education cut off at eighth grade and age 16, and I am glad that I can appreciate the Haydn string quartet in the background. It takes a certain level of intellectual refinement to recognize that a work described as "Quartet for two violins, viola, and violoncello in G minor, Opus 20 #3" is worth listening to despite the complete lack of any clever title. Music such as this has gotten me through some depressing times as pop music can't. On the other hand, I didn't milk cows or do oil changes which would be far more useful to society than exploring classical music.
Should things go badly as in a horrible war then milking cows, picking fruits or vegetables, or pushing a wheelbarrow will be necessary for re-establishing the material basis of a tolerable life. Those people who made a decent living managing the paperwork for a company that finances long-term purchases of ATVs or pianos will find such work vanishing because people will be unable to buy pianos or ATV's. Just imagine what it would be like at age 40 to have to pick up the bricks that once formed the building of the insurance company in which you recently worked, sweating in the hot sun and wearing out your best clothes because those somehow survived the war. Yes, it is the construction laborer, the farm worker, and the toiler on a mind-numbing assembly line that creates the basis for a job pushing papers.
Life can be absurd. At age 66, I have never stopped trying to sort it out.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.