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Jagchosis posted:Thing about Pope is that he is already an old dude and won't be Popin for several decades like JPII was able to. He has to make changes to the church that are enduring and can't just be rolled back by the inevitably reactionary pope the cardinals are going to elect once he kicks it. That requires incremental changes and persuasion. Don't you think this kind of significantly lessens the probability of institutional change in the church?
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May 13, 2014 12:40
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AstheWorldWorlds posted:Don't you think this kind of significantly lessens the probability of institutional change in the church? The Church is an inherently reactionary institution, both mechanically and ideologically. The pope suddenly giving a mandate ex cathedra to give the sacrament to gays would just result in some serious poo poo happening after he died. Stability is a powerful thing when it comes to making change because it gives those changes an air of credibility to say "look, the Pope said (things) and did (things) and St. Peter's is still standing, what's the big deal with these old fogeys making a fuss about it?"
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May 13, 2014 12:48
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FAUXTON posted:The Church is an inherently reactionary institution, both mechanically and ideologically. The pope suddenly giving a mandate ex cathedra to give the sacrament to gays would just result in some serious poo poo happening after he died. Stability is a powerful thing when it comes to making change because it gives those changes an air of credibility to say "look, the Pope said (things) and did (things) and St. Peter's is still standing, what's the big deal with these old fogeys making a fuss about it?" Alternatively, the dark side of incrementalism shows its face and the aberrant is ignored and discarded as business returns to usual as the system seeks greater consistency. It is one man with bold rhetoric but little action versus an eviscerated leftism in the church and a highly conservative, reactionary, and right wing structure. I will be surprised if Francis causes anything to stick. Pleasantly surprised, mind you, but still surprised. In order for any of these arguments that Pope Francis marks a new change for the church to be valid in my estimation the leftist movement would have had to not be taken in the back and shot. This is of course assuming he is sincere. His previous writings have been fairly mixed in terms of intent and overall opinion of the left. AstheWorldWorlds fucked around with this message at 13:06 on May 13, 2014 |
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May 13, 2014 12:58
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VitalSigns posted:States have the RIGHT to shut the gently caress up and let me have slaves. I am firmly in the camp that you have to be loving kidding yourself to think that slavery wasn't the key element behind the rebellion, but doesn't this clause ban the confederate central government from banning slavery, rather than state governments from banning slavery on their own?
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May 13, 2014 13:04
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Honestly I'm not sure. It's part of the same clause as no bills of attainder or ex post facto laws, and I thought in the US Constitution those bind the States as well, but I'm no lawyer or anything. Perhaps this is a better one quote:Article IV Section 2(1) Article 4 poo poo is definitely about the States.
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May 13, 2014 13:26
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withak posted:What do they need gas for? Those crosses aren't going to burn themselves.
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May 13, 2014 13:48
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quote:Article IV Section 2(1) They just had to make sure to have their internal passport handy if they wanted to use that "right of transit and sojourn".  Your Gay Uncle posted:Those crosses aren't going to burn themselves. Was looking for an excuse to use 
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May 13, 2014 14:21
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Prester John posted:Some very thoughtful and heartening things. Well this is awkward. I recently got hired on as a teacher would 'supervisor be a trigger word? for a start-up school in China using the A.C.E curriculum. I mean, hardly the same culture, obviously. Chinese Christians aren't bigoted in quite the same ways, and its interesting how actually being oppressed by the government does wonders for one's acceptance of others But I'm familiar enough with the material to know I'm basically propagandizing for a living wage. And none of the students are High school age so we're only wallowing in low grade just world bullshit and Biblical just-so stories. I'm not exactly an expert on it, and I certainly haven't steeped in it for a K-9 education, but if there's interest in a thread I'll contribute what I can to it.
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May 13, 2014 15:16
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Can we go back to higher education talk for a sec? There was an interesting discussion on C-SPAN this morning with Charles Cook of the National Review, talking about the "fetishization of college education" in the US. Apparently he wrote/is writing an article for the NationalReview on this similar to an original he wrote here. Now getting past the issue of defending Scott Walker because he didn't go to college, I thought the actual discussion this morning was fairly interesting. At least one person that I caught called in talking about his student loans he'd be paying off until he dies and Cook just went "Sorry, I have no sympathy for you, you knew what you were paying and what you were paying for." which while callous, I agree with. Neither of my parents graduated from college. I was saturated through both my family and the media of "If you get a college education, you will make more money and be happier" with multiple correlation-equals-causation bar charts comparing lifelong earnings of high school and college grads from a time when college grads were <30-40% of the workforce. But nobody told me to be financially irresponsible. Nobody told me to go to an expensive university, or the best local university - people told me essentially "get a degree and don't bankrupt yourself." I guess I was lucky in this respect. Others were probably pushed toward particular universities and told not to worry about the paycheck. This is another reason I think personal finance classes should be mandatory in high schools and more money should be poured into getting more high school student counselors who know about the college application process, but I digress. I agree with Cook's sentiment though on the "fetishization" of higher ed, even though I wouldn't use that term. While I disagree that glorifying college education necessarily means alternative paths will be looked down upon as a result, I do think this is what has happened. I grew up in suburban South Carolina right next to the rural areas and even in my high school (good 50/50 split for rural/suburban) the suburban and middle class kids always looked down on those who were going to the technical school we had at the high school. Learning small machines or building houses was essentially "dirty" work. Now those kids are making bank and the ones looking down, half of them are in debt for liberal arts degrees they don't use. Pohl posted:As I am planning my enrollment in Graduate school for the fall, I'm also dealing with the reality that my undergrad loans are coming due soon. Holy poo poo this is a nightmare. I'm going to have to buckle down in the next few days and call the federal loan service and work out an extension so that I don't have to worry about it, or try and get income based repayment set up. I know you mentioned this in another post about moving away from a manual labor job due to age, but I still don't understand why you think a grad degree would help with this. Why not do some personal learning? Learn a trade, learn a programming language and tinker with it, learn some basic web development principles, learn some basic management skills, etc. All of this can be done for free with Internet and local library resources. You have a degree to get past the new "normal" of having at least a bachelor's, why does it make financial sense to you to go into debt for an education that is probably unnecessary? Warchicken posted:E: I'm halfway through my doctor of musical arts and pedagogy degree and will probably clear 100 grand in debt when all's said and done, but if I can have a living wage I'm fine with paying it back. As long as I can live a simple life with the bills covered while being a professional musician and educator I'm fine, I don't need to be rich or even middle class. But I have a feeling that even with three loving degrees and an extreme level of expertise that's not gonna be a possibility without working myself to death, and that's a big part of my desire to emigrate too because I really don't give a poo poo if it hurts a bank. Same thing here: Why is it that you felt a doctorate was necessary for something you probably didn't need a degree for in the first place? What does having a degree in how to teach music give you that simply being self-taught and teaching at a local studio doesn't? I'm speaking out of ignorance here in your two cases - obviously I don't know all the facts and context in your life and I'm not trying to pretend to. I just don't understand the idea of getting post-grad degrees and then coming back and complaining about student loan debt. Please don't mistake this for "victim blaming" or arguing with you - I just want to understand your thought process a little more because on the outside I just don't see the impetus for it. EDIT: And while I think having an educated, well-rounded populace is a noble goal, let's not forget that you'll likely forget much of what you learned in college some years out, especially if you get a job in an area that isn't related to your major. So you're bankrupting yourself over an education that you will likely not use (at least not use all/most of it) and which you will likely forget before you even pay off your loans. Amergin fucked around with this message at 15:30 on May 13, 2014 |
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May 13, 2014 15:27
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^^ Not being blessed with the gift of Prescience, due to financial difficulties preventing a diet rich in the spice melange, gatdam  Amergin posted:I know you mentioned this in another post about moving away from a manual labor job due to age, but I still don't understand why you think a grad degree would help with this. Why not do some personal learning? Learn a trade, learn a programming language and tinker with it, learn some basic web development principles, learn some basic management skills, etc. All of this can be done for free with Internet and local library resources. You have a degree to get past the new "normal" of having at least a bachelor's, why does it make financial sense to you to go into debt for an education that is probably unnecessary? I don't think it is particularly useful to guilt-trip individuals because they made a decision, based on prevailing advice, often when their brains were not yet fully developed, and which honestly seemed likely to continue being good advice until September 2008 (and not even clearly so then until 2009 or so). In my experience, they are usually already kicking their own asses twice daily and three times on weekends, and already struggling to deal with life-wrecking quantities of student loan debt.
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May 13, 2014 15:34
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Nessus posted:It's kind of telling that the implicit route to financial - not even success, but basic security, here - is basically 1. skilled trade you can learn about on the internet(??), 2. program a computer two different ways, and 3. management(?? because getting a management job is of course inherently portfolio-based and not networking-based). It is at the point where I feel as though someone's going to start saying "coding macht frei" and start advocating for the replacement of all higher education with Ruby on Rails boot camps. To your first point, those were just some examples I came up with off the top of my head. Learning a new language, learning an instrument to teach on the side, tutoring students on the side are all other ways to get supplemental income that isn't labor-intensive. Also with "well, if we push people to go through specific routes in college that tend to have higher chances of getting a job, we might as well become a Nazi-inspiried worker-creating bootcamp factory." That's just silly cynicism, but it did make me laugh so thanks for that.
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May 13, 2014 15:40
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Amergin posted:To your first point, those were just some examples I came up with off the top of my head. Learning a new language, learning an instrument to teach on the side, tutoring students on the side are all other ways to get supplemental income that isn't labor-intensive. As for the latter part, I don't know if it's silly cynicism because I have heard (even before the collapse) a cavalcade of "oh, ha ha, your degree that wasn't in (insert a surprisingly narrow slice of STEM fields here) is useless!" I imagine the shoe will be on the other foot once the supply of those STEM fields is sufficient. Perhaps there will be an issuance of bootstraps, then. I would say something like 'this doesn't mean the guy who paid for an English major from a private uni on student loans didn't -' and then I realized, you know what? gently caress it. Maybe he made a bad call, but that doesn't mean he deserves crippling, life-destroying debt.
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May 13, 2014 15:46
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Mr Interweb posted:I support Obama and the Dems 110% and all, but poo poo like this really needs to stop: Producing software systems on time and on budget isn't something the industry is good at in general and Massachusetts maybe should have had a special exemption since they already had a working version of the same law. Supplanting the locally tailored, working laws they had with the generic PPACA was bound to cause problems and really highlights a deficiency in our governmental framework in that the national government can't just tell the states that they have to find a way cover everyone and let the locals figure out how best to do that. Oracle really sucks donkey taint, though. Their effort was a goddamn joke and I hope Oregon sues them over it.
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May 13, 2014 15:50
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Nessus posted:I would say something like 'this doesn't mean the guy who paid for an English major from a private uni on student loans didn't -' and then I realized, you know what? gently caress it. Maybe he made a bad call, but that doesn't mean he deserves crippling, life-destroying debt. Or put another way... 
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May 13, 2014 16:18
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Nessus posted:Learning a new language, practicing a new instrument, and tutoring students on the side is rather labor intensive. It may not be tilling the soil but all of these tasks do not require trivial effort. Oh, don't get me wrong, I understand they do require a lot of effort. I just meant in a "physical labor that gets more difficult with age" sense. Nessus posted:As for the latter part, I don't know if it's silly cynicism because I have heard (even before the collapse) a cavalcade of "oh, ha ha, your degree that wasn't in (insert a surprisingly narrow slice of STEM fields here) is useless!" I imagine the shoe will be on the other foot once the supply of those STEM fields is sufficient. Perhaps there will be an issuance of bootstraps, then. While I don't agree with the whole STEM>all other majors and if you're a liberal arts major you should feel bad sentiment, I also can't really sympathize with those who come out with a liberal arts degree and thousands of dollars of debt, can't find a job, then complain about it. Again, it's partly misinformation/people pushing the whole "get a job you love never work a day in your life #justnaivethings" logic, I'm not necessarily blaming the student, but I really don't think they have a legitimate reason to complain to anyone but themselves.
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May 13, 2014 16:18
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I think there was a large swath of people who graduated without the necessary information, largely because a bachelors for so long was enough. But most people entering university nowadays have more than enough to be able to make an informed decision. My favorite are those law school twitter accounts that beg people not to go to bottom tier Cooley-lites and they almost always respond negatively because they think its an easy way to making 200k a year. It's remarkably dumb.
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May 13, 2014 16:25
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Amergin posted:Oh, don't get me wrong, I understand they do require a lot of effort. I just meant in a "physical labor that gets more difficult with age" sense.
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May 13, 2014 16:27
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Nessus posted:When are people permitted to complain, milord? When does it become OK to experience suffering, as opposed to piously declaring, "I have sinned in making a poor decision, and yea, this cross of giant-rear end student loans is my cross to bear, for this is truly a Just World?" Complaints on the Internet about anything that may lead people to seek a solution that could conceivably inconvenience me are bad. You should stop making them.
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May 13, 2014 16:29
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tbp posted:I think there was a large swath of people who graduated without the necessary information, largely because a bachelors for so long was enough. Every time I feel the urge to take the LSAT I just read the last few pages of the law school thread 
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May 13, 2014 16:29
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Am I the only person who believes a liberal arts degree prepares you for the widest range of jobs? You can take a BA and do pretty much anything with it, in any field, any industry, any position. You may need additional, specific training, but a liberal arts education is meant to prepare you to learn anything. I'm tired of hearing people suggest that any education is a bad education. That's what you all sound like: damned plebes, learning poo poo and junk.
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May 13, 2014 16:36
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All this "well you picked wrong, sorry about your fifty grand and four years of your life, better luck next reincarnation" makes me think that American Universities should be held up on massive fraud charges.
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May 13, 2014 16:38
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anonumos posted:Am I the only person who believes a liberal arts degree prepares you for the widest range of jobs? You can take a BA and do pretty much anything with it, in any field, any industry, any position. You may need additional, specific training, but a liberal arts education is meant to prepare you to learn anything. This would be a valid statement if employers didn't demand a 4-year degree in exactly what they're hiring and were willing to train new employees.
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May 13, 2014 16:47
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Stultus Maximus posted:This would be a valid statement if employers didn't demand a 4-year degree in exactly what they're hiring and were willing to train new employees. Um, privatize the profits, socialize the losses, hello? Serious answer, if companies did train workers to that extent, it would be indentured servitude since they wouldn't train without a 10-year contract to ensure they didn't train employees who left for a better-paying company.
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May 13, 2014 16:49
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Stultus Maximus posted:This would be a valid statement if employers didn't demand a 4-year degree in exactly what they're hiring and were willing to train new employees.
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May 13, 2014 16:50
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Nessus posted:Don't worry, it's more like "five years experience in what you're doing, and are also presently working a full time position in that field, but you feel like taking a pay cut." The best are companies that require 10 years experience in a 5 year old programming language.
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May 13, 2014 16:51
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Amergin posted:While I don't agree with the whole STEM>all other majors and if you're a liberal arts major you should feel bad sentiment, I also can't really sympathize with those who come out with a liberal arts degree and thousands of dollars of debt, can't find a job, then complain about it. Again, it's partly misinformation/people pushing the whole "get a job you love never work a day in your life #justnaivethings" logic, I'm not necessarily blaming the student, but I really don't think they have a legitimate reason to complain to anyone but themselves. You seriously don't feel any sympathy for someone trapped in what is potentially a life-long inescapable debt sandpit because they picked wrong at college when they were likely a dumb loving teenager? How easy do you think it is to predict what jobs will be necessary when you finish your four year degree? Do you just expect them to change majors halfway through(and load even more debt on) if the current "graduate with this degree and make E-Z-MONEY" trend changes? How wise and forward-thinking were you when you were 19?
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May 13, 2014 16:54
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lothar_ posted:Um, privatize the profits, socialize the losses, hello? China has this for pilots actually, but they still hop companies because the next company just pays off the debt to the first and now you have a debt to the second company. Its worth it because the 2nd company gets a known good pilot for less than the cost of training a new one.
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May 13, 2014 16:54
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My current job made it perfectly clear that they will refuse to hire someone who does not have a degree-- even to answer the phones. My job pays better than being a retail clerk, but on the other hand, it doesn't pay enough to actually repay my loans and pay rent at the same time. Before getting this job, I was turned down for years for not having a degree. Then I got a degree, and I got a job. But again, see: "doesn't pay enough to repay loans". Who is in the wrong here? Me, for getting a liberal arts degree that my current employer requires? The employer, for requiring a liberal arts degree just to answer phones? The college, for charging $50k+ for a liberal arts degree that only gets me a ~$14/hr job?
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May 13, 2014 16:55
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lothar_ posted:Um, privatize the profits, socialize the losses, hello? As I understand it there used to be a drive to keep your employees happy so they will want to continue working for you and won't leave and waste the money you spent training them. Of course this doesn't happen anymore, and these days in the software engineering world if you want your pay to keep up with the increasing cost of living you have to hop jobs every few years because no one gives raises big enough to cover cost of living increases.
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May 13, 2014 16:57
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M.c.P posted:Well this is awkward. I recently got hired on as a teacher would 'supervisor be a trigger word? for a start-up school in China using the A.C.E curriculum. I'm curious, why would you accept this job that you know is dumb bullshit? Just that desperate for a wage? Dunno your salary, but you can find secular english teaching in China pretty easily, though the pay isn't great.
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May 13, 2014 16:57
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hobbesmaster posted:China has this for pilots actually, but they still hop companies because the next company just pays off the debt to the first and now you have a debt to the second company. Its worth it because the 2nd company gets a known good pilot for less than the cost of training a new one. So the indentured servant gets to change masters? Awesome, sign me up.
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May 13, 2014 16:59
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Amergin posted:I also can't really sympathize with those who come out with a liberal arts degree and thousands of dollars of debt, can't find a job, then complain about it. You do know that there are very competitive fields that require liberal arts degrees, right? For example, I'm a copy editor. Every copy editing job on the planet requires at least a 4-year degree in English, Journalism, or the specific field if you work in a trade publication. It took me years to actually get an editing position, and I've been looking to trade up to another position for over a year with no luck. So it is entirely possible to go into college saying "I want to be an editor" (just as someone else might go "I want to be an engineer"), get a degree in that field, and never manage to find the job they paid to train for.
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May 13, 2014 17:02
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effectual posted:I'm curious, why would you accept this job that you know is dumb bullshit? Just that desperate for a wage? Dunno your salary, but you can find secular english teaching in China pretty easily, though the pay isn't great. Wow! Youre right, I can leave my job whenever and have swathes of employers clamoring to hire me at a wage that will offset my endless loans! Thank goodness for your enlightened heart coming here and wiping the wax from our eyes. Haha too bad our 'educations' weren't able to teach us the magical thinking you've employed in this statement!
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May 13, 2014 17:03
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HOW DARE SOMEONE FOLLOW THEIR DREAMS OR GOALS! Didn't your parents teach you to be wage slaves forever? If you only studied what was going to make you profit instead of what makes you happy, you wouldn't be struggling right now! I have no evidence to support the fact that you would be better off but trust me, I'm a genius child who doesn't have student loans, I'm obviously an übermensch
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May 13, 2014 17:07
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Iunnrais posted:My current job made it perfectly clear that they will refuse to hire someone who does not have a degree-- even to answer the phones. My job pays better than being a retail clerk, but on the other hand, it doesn't pay enough to actually repay my loans and pay rent at the same time. Before getting this job, I was turned down for years for not having a degree. Then I got a degree, and I got a job. But again, see: "doesn't pay enough to repay loans".
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May 13, 2014 17:08
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anonumos posted:Am I the only person who believes a liberal arts degree prepares you for the widest range of jobs? You can take a BA and do pretty much anything with it, in any field, any industry, any position. You may need additional, specific training, but a liberal arts education is meant to prepare you to learn anything. One thing a lot of people don't realize is that what your degree is in or where you get your degree (outside of a small number of schools) does not really matter, only that you have a degree. In other words, doing a community college for two years and then transferring into a state school to finish off your degree will save you literally five figures worth of debt compared to going to a small liberal arts school for four years.
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May 13, 2014 17:09
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The best part about this infighting is that it's regular person vs. regular person instead of regular people vs. senators.
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May 13, 2014 17:10
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Kanos posted:You seriously don't feel any sympathy for someone trapped in what is potentially a life-long inescapable debt sandpit because they picked wrong at college when they were likely a dumb loving teenager? How easy do you think it is to predict what jobs will be necessary when you finish your four year degree? Do you just expect them to change majors halfway through(and load even more debt on) if the current "graduate with this degree and make E-Z-MONEY" trend changes? I 1) did some cursory research to see which job markets were doing well and which paid the best in terms of entry-level positions, 2) went to a college the offered to pay my full tuition after busting my rear end in high school, over many other colleges that I would have preferred, 3) worked summer internships every year while in college at local companies, and 4) switched majors from Comp Sci to Psych with 1.5 semesters left as Comp Sci wasn't teaching me anything useful and, through my internships, I already had a guaranteed entry-level position waiting for me upon graduation. This isn't to toot my own horn, I'm just saying that busting my rear end in high school and doing some research on job markets really helped me out in choosing a college route. This SHOULD have been provided for me via a high school counselor but unfortunately ours were overwhelmed and thus not very reachable or useful. Now I still took out loans to pay for living expenses, but had I lived at home I wouldn't have even needed that. I'm thousands of dollars in debt, paying it off at a steady clip and have no complaints because I understand MY decisions lead me to debt, but they also helped me secure my employment after school. Hell I could have done two years at a community college and transferred for even less debt. All I'm saying is there are options available. In many cases the cards are so stacked against you that you can't really be blamed, sure. In many other cases it's due to laziness or a lack of wanting to research other options. I'm not accusing those in this thread of either one, I just wanted to know more context.
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May 13, 2014 17:10
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lothar_ posted:So the indentured servant gets to change masters? Awesome, sign me up. Just slightly more transparent than we have now.
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May 13, 2014 17:14
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What happened to that other thread that was home to interminable whining and drunkenness? Oh yeah, the Lost Generation thread. Jesus Christ, those of you who survive to reproduce are going to be more insufferable than the boomers. "Degrees don't result in paychecks, I have to network and hustle. No one told me about this. Scandinavia" 
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May 13, 2014 17:15
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