The general decline in standards today

[HoosierDaddy]

Good posts Rathdown. Yet none of that will ever matter to some.
HD

 

[MikeBravo]

Cell phones have sure changed the way I act in court. There was a time that I could be a tad short with defendants...especially on days that I was up to my a** in alligators. Now, I have to assume that someone with a cell phone is trying to goad me into saying something that would be embarrassing as heck when shown on our local TV news. So when I'm in court now, I act like just like Mr. Rogers. Johnny...can you spell "active sentence"? I'll bet you can...

AF

Do they allow cell phones into court rooms?

 

[Mark B.]

Not sure how anyone knows the sequence of events and personal actions taken leading to the shooting of Trayvon Martin. There were only two people there and one of them is dead. In any event, if I hit you and you hit me back that is self defense. If I hit you and you shoot me dead..[huh]..That is what this case is about. Anything else is just your biased opinion based on hearsay.

 

[ButteMT61]

What a wonderful use of semantics to obscure common sense.

Yeah, to hell with law and courts and juries, right? Just hang 'im 'cause you heard some stories on the interwebs. It DOES MATTER that they used bogus photos to compare the two. If you don't get that then I hope you don't sit on any juries. Common sense is not how the jury system works. It's based on evidence, or lack thereof.

 

[HoosierDaddy]

Bit more than just a punch according to some reports. 6'2" little Trayvon had punched Zimmerman several times...and was finally on top of him pounding the back of his head into the cement sidewalk when Zimmerman decided he best change the scenario..and quickly.
Everything now is hearsay...and many just don't care whether 'facts' are ever realised or revealed.

 

[Feraud]

Ah evidence like the 911 call some here are trying to spin to change the major fact that Zimmerman was told not to pursue Martin? Come on guys, we're all Monday Morning Quarterbacking here but let's not get get on our high horses and fall back on the petty insults. All of this "You were obviously never a cop" and "I hope you don't sit on a jury" is childish and undermines any points you may have.
I doubt any of us want to try the case on this forum.

 

[Rathdown]

I doubt any of us want to try the case on this forum.

Couldn't agree more.

 

[Mark B.]

The reason this case is going to trial is to try and determine the facts. Up to this point we do not know what the facts are. Our opinions are based on media reports that may or may not be correct. We were not there and neither were any of the media reps. The only information there is to go on is whatever Mr. Zimmerman states happened. That information will come out at trial and not in the media.

 

[ButteMT61]

Correct. But until then. They get to shape the perceptions as they see fit. Which is why ratings have plummeted along with credibility.

 

[AmateisGal]

Correct. But until then. They get to shape the perceptions as they see fit. Which is why ratings have plummeted along with credibility.

Yep. The media shapes the narrative, and those of us who don't look deeper and search for the facts are going to go right along with whatever they say.

 

[1961MJS]

Yep. The media shapes the narrative, and those of us who don't look deeper and search for the facts are going to go right along with whatever they say.

Hi

I've been amazed at how the media plays with the facts. I remember seeing an NRA film showing a guy shooting a watermelon with an AK-47, (7.62x39). The watermelon splits in half and drops. They eventually banned semi-automatic AK-47's. The Browning BAR in 7mm Magnum was not banned. They showed a guy shooting the next watermelon with ia 7 mm Mag semi automatic rifle. One second there was a watermelon, the next there was watermelon vapor. The nightly news shows the AK-47 and watermelon vapor. This was part of the "assault weapon" ban.

Showing 12 year old Trayvon is only the thousandth time that they've done this sort of thing.

Later

 

[William Stratford]

Thinking on this, the more I look at modern society, the more evidence I see that we are a society that consumes and discards; and so worships the new and the young and discounts the old, hence the next generation see the previous one as containing nothing of value (and why, where once sons wished to be like their fathers, now fathers wish to be like their sons). This also explains the apathy, if they (even unconsciously) realise, deep down, that this must also mean that what they themselves hold to must also be meaningless and devoid of value.

Not until people dump consumerism, based as it is on discarding the old and fetishising the new, and instead embrace inheritance, based on cherishing that which is passed on to you, is this ever likely to change. [huh]

In a bit of a philosophical mood.

 

[John in Covina]

An item has its obsolescence built in so nothing is made to last.

Well actually cars are lasting longer than ever now because of improvements to manufacturing techniques and advances in lubrication, but most everything else breaks faster and electronics are pushed into obsolescence.


Look at the consumer items and see what is meant to be repaired for continued use and what is meant to be toss in the trash today.

 

[ButteMT61]

As long as consumers buy a new car/iPad/iPhone/house every 2 years, they'll not care about quality. If folks cut back and stop spending like drunken sailors, they might have to go back to more expensive, better-made products. I have always taken the buy better, lasts longer approach.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Maybe this needs to start with kids. When you grow up taking for granted that everything you own will be replaced by something better and more expensive as if by magic, you aren't going to have a particularly responsible view of things when you grow up.

A little personal deprivation might be just what the rising generation needs. I submit that a kid can have more fun, more imaginative fun, and more beneficial fun playing in the back yard with rocks, dirt, and a cardboard box than they ever can with a $300 video console.

 

[Feraud]

To be more specific this should start with the parents. Parents are doing their children no good giving them everything they ask for. A bit of want is good for the development.

My wife and I were just discussing a co-worker who cannot stand to be around his college graduate daughter. The guy spoiled the kid and took on huge personal loans for her education. They are at a point where she is an unbearable, un-employed design major snob who must live in Williamsburg Brooklyn among the other "artists". This dodo thought she was too good to intern with a major design house because she wasn't being paid for it.
Dad (or as I call him, The Idiot) has been footing the bill for her overblown sense of self and lifestyle for way too long.

 

[ButteMT61]

We made our daughter pay for her college and currently, grad-school. We spoiled (I did) the kids when they were little - not in a gross way, but in a way that I enjoyed as I wanted them to have good childhood memories, etc. Initially, she was very p*ssed with us and we had a tough couple of years. But being pushed to do for herself, she figured out how to get loans and grants. She's finishing her last year at USC and is excelling like never before. People need a push, but they also need to know someone's there for them. Tough balance as a parent. I'd never take out student loans for my kids. That's insane. And she spent plenty of night sleeping in her car at LMU to study late, and arrive early for exams because she also had to work.

 

[Angus Forbes]

I agree with the idea of a little bit of deprivation. Also, it helps if the parents set an example of living a little below their own means. For well-off people, a Honda rather than a BMW, even if they can afford the BMW.

My experience with education has been a little different. My parents paid for every cent of my education. In turn, I have paid for my kids' educations, through college graduation, and have been quite glad to do so. They have done extremely well; the older is a PhD candidate at a major university, the younger is a recent Phi Beta Kappa graduate about to start post-grad study. Both are thrifty, responsible young men. I hope that someday they will be able to pay for the education of their own children. Making the kids pay is not necessarily the only way that works, although I am not sure what I would have done if I had not been so fortunate that I could pay for them without taking loans . . .

 

[William Stratford]

To be more specific this should start with the parents. Parents are doing their children no good giving them everything they ask for.

Those parents are only doing that because they themselves have come to believe that the old are here to serve the young (which is part of the whole neophilic worship of the 'new') rather than old and young alike being here to serve something bigger (which it is the duty of the old to pass on the trust of to the young). Its no surprise when a generation grows up with a sense of entitlement when that is what our society constantly teaches. [huh]

To get past this, we have to re-awaken the love of the old, so that the young learn how to value what is handed on to them - not for its utility, because would continue the whole "it has value if it serves me me me" mentality, but intrinsic value that goes beyond its rationalised use. Society today is so rationalised, so focused on utility, so obsessed with "what can it do for me me me", that it has forgotten how to love (hence it now uses "love" to describe how we feel about chocolate icecream ).

The only way that we can do that is by example; through acts of personal sacrifice to something greater than us (and our children) that we wish to communicate the love of and rightness of the loving of.

Maybe this needs to start with kids. When you grow up taking for granted that everything you own will be replaced by something better and more expensive as if by magic, you aren't going to have a particularly responsible view of things when you grow up.

A little personal deprivation might be just what the rising generation needs. I submit that a kid can have more fun, more imaginative fun, and more beneficial fun playing in the back yard with rocks, dirt, and a cardboard box than they ever can with a $300 video console.

I agree completely, but we need to start that by living by example - accepting personal deprivation ourselves in clear sacrificial service to something that we value beyond ourselves and our children.

 

[Edward]

Maybe this needs to start with kids. When you grow up taking for granted that everything you own will be replaced by something better and more expensive as if by magic, you aren't going to have a particularly responsible view of things when you grow up.

A little personal deprivation might be just what the rising generation needs. I submit that a kid can have more fun, more imaginative fun, and more beneficial fun playing in the back yard with rocks, dirt, and a cardboard box than they ever can with a $300 video console.

I firmly believe tv and video games are not the key when it comes to kids not playing outside anymore. Rightly or wrongly from the late Eighties on was created a culture so afraid of the paedophile bogeyman and whatever else that kids simply aren't given the freedom some of us had to play outside. Then the vidro games come in and exacerbate it, sure.