A few things for Cornbread, who can dish it out but not take it, and who likes the sound of his own voice, but deletes the words of others:
“Oh yeah… fergot <sic> that maybe that the computer era had something to do with this… which yet again -”
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This of course is the reason why there are people able to do more work in less time.
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I cannot stress how computers and technology should be a tool to use, not a crutch to lean on. Crutches = DUMBING DOWN – DUMBING DOWN = BAD!
If it had nothing to do with dumbing down, how were you able to base an argument on it?
You don’t back your conclusions about machines dumbing us down with evidence as you stated. The only fact your citations support is that mechanical assistance lets people do more work, and that’s not dumb at all.
“FACT – a good majority americans can not do long division in decimals without a calculator
FACT – a good majority of amercans can not do simple algebra without assistance via Computer or Calculator”
these are completely unsupported, and probably not true (keep in mind “A good majority” means well over half.) I would concede that a large portion of americans – esp. if children are included – can’t do these tasks.
You phrase your post as a rebuttal when it is actually an attempt to change focus and shift attention awawy from your previous statements by the introduction of new material. You failed to address my questions about your argument:
I said that dumbing down wasn’t a recorded phenomenon and was a media promulgation, and that you were buying into it. Your only response was that you don’t watch much TV.
I questioned your contention that all schools have books. You didn’t respond. There are schools in america where students share desks and the ratio of appropriate textbooks to students is as bad as 1:3.
“Ok, first off, I agree that there are schools with no books that don’t give anyone a chance. I think I said that and made that perfectly clear. Or rather, let me just sum everything up in one paragraph rather than picking him apart – THIS IS A GENERALIZATION AND DOESN’T INTEND TO GET SPECIFIC WITH EVERY DETAIL IN EVERY SITUATION!!!!!!!!! I can’t believe I have to spell it out to fucking ingrates – thus proving my dumbing down statement.”
The exact statement I was replying to was that every school you knew of had books. What part of that statment qualifies it as a generalization? It sounds an awful lot like a blanket implication that most if not all schools have books, esp. as it was phrased as an offhand brush-off of my statement that some don’t.
As for deleting my post – you didn’t do it because I made fun of you. I didn’t make fun of you that bad…what, did I hit to close to home when I said your attempt to sound worldly didn’t impress me? Jesus, what balls – listen man, you need to reflect a little on the fact that what you *banned* me for had less vulgarity and crudeness in it then most of the stuff you leave on people’s sites as a “supportive” comment. You want to talk about abuse? You’re probably the most foul-mouthed sob I’ve seen on xanga! It isn’t a personal attack for me to undermine your ideas, it’s legitimate debate.
You deleted it because I used your own words to make you look bad. Addmittedly, my intention. You banned me because you want a venting forum where you can say any damn thing and not have to deal with anyone calling you on the parts that are wrong. If you had faith in your ideas and you truly thought my argument was weak, you wouldn’t try to hide, censor, and halt the debate – you would be enjoying it.
And as for me being an idiot, it’s not really material, but I can do all of the things you named without mechanical assistance. I also know how to spell hypocrisy. Once again, you resort to personal attacks rather then responding to my points regardin your veiws on education vis a vis “dumbing down” – you really don’t know how to argue. At all.
And as for me not knowing anything about you – that’s not true. We have a great many mutal friends and I’m from a small town you lived in for quite a while. We’ve talked quite a bit on the internet, and I read your xanga. So unless what you post has nothing to do with what you are actually like, I do know a fair bit about your opinions and how you think.
Preach it brother Beavis.
You know what I find funny? You and solomon are jabbing at me for being “Godly” and that I need to come down a few pegs. Yet – it seems in your eyes, everything you have said is right and everything I have said and done has been wrong.
You are just pissed off because I stopped you from pretending to be the Know it all , be all, end all of every piece of knowledge on my site.
The problem with someone like you is that you THINK you know everything, about everything, and that whatever you say is absolutely right and that nobody can have an arguement or opinion against it.
I didn’t ban you because of what you posted in a rebuttle, the opinion you had, or whatever. I banned you because you could have been a little more respectful to other peoples opinions. I don’t expect you to agree with me, and apparently you won’t agree with me on hardly anything – however, don’t come to my site and flame me. You read my post and assumed quite a lot without getting the whole point of the post – and now what makes this so fun for me is that you keep setting an example of the very nature of my original post. So keep it up, because you are only proving my point even more.
Your site just keeps getting FUNNIER every time I read it!
I LOVE, just fucking LOVE, the way you insist people who disagree with you must not have read your post or got the point of it – it can’t be that they read it and disagree, can it? Trust me, pal, I read, and I understood, as much as any meaning can be extracted from your horrible writing and for what little the revealed opinion was worth. Your opinions and thoughts read like you are regurgitating and misquoting editorials you read in right-wing newspapers. OP-ED, not even articles.
I didn’t even contradict you orignally – I ASKED YOU SOME QUESTIONS ABOUT THE ORIGIN AND BASIS OF YOUR OPINION and pointed out so problems I had with it, namely do the people you are discussing actually have a chance to escape their circumstance and is the dumbing down effect you allude to a FACT? You didn’t address those questions – you simply resorted to an ever-degenerating downward spiral of sophistry.
Note that I won’t be deleting your post – I’m not afraid to have people read what’s written about me.
I am sorry, I didn’t know that i had to provide a bibliography for you about something I post about.
Ummm.. and wait a second – you didn’t ask any questions in your first comment. SO why not stick to the truth and the facts instead of attempting to spin it to make you look like you still know everything.
**I didn’t even contradict you orignally – I ASKED YOU SOME QUESTIONS ABOUT THE ORIGIN AND BASIS OF YOUR OPINION**
You didn’t ask one question…. not ONE! Try again tubby. That is my whole point – you don’t ask to gain knowledge, you assume. And your assumptions were wrong! I plainly rebuttled that to set you straight and you came in with a flame attack. That further proves my point that you try to be a know it all about everything and don’t bother to question to learn more.
Also, I don’t mind if you point out problems, but the issues you had were as follows:
A comment you made was about affirmative action – my post had nothing NOTHING to do with affirmative action.
You said choice is not a matter when a school has no books – and that wasn’t the point again. The point was that you have a choice in a school that provides and equal opportunity of education. Had nothing to do with less fortunate schools which is a totally seperate issue altogether!
sweatshop worker, why don’t you just go to an english class and get a real job – another of your quotes – yes, he does have a choice! The government provides low income funding for those individuals that make a lesser salary and can’t afford school or college – so yet again Mr Smarty – the chioce is still his! FAFSA or something like that is the acronym of the program – can’t remember off the top of me head.
I think you go off about a lot of stuff that’s totally abstract to you. – your last quote. Let me ask, do you know me? I didn’t think so… so again, an assumption that you made that was again wrong.
I rest my case, however, I feel as if I am wasting my time with this whole thing because the concept is simply beyond you. Something is telling me that after you read this, you will again, miss the entirety of everything I have said. Thus, why you work a meaningless job in Casper WY where you will never be any better off than you are.
Hey, Cornbread. That’s fucking low. You’re a fucking asshole. Have a nice day.
What the fuck did you just say to me, you crumby little asshole? What the fuck just came out of your mouth? You pathetic, projective little dickweed. Why don’t you whore yourself out at a truckstop for three or four days and scare up the bus fare to come back home and say that. I’m not even going to address all the things I’ve done that you never have, and never will. I don’t need to, because I’m better, better then me needing to ennumerate my accomplishments to repudiate your crap. And all I really have to do is zoom in on your crap to defend myself from your lifestyle imprecations: At least I don’t run, continuously, from state to state, unable to get laid or keep a friend, always convinced the problem is the place and it will be different somewhere else. What are you going to do when you run out of states and still haven’t found anyone who can remotely fucking stand you? Cry alot? Give Mexico a try? If I get word you do that, I’m gonna foward all your anti-immigrant bullshit to your new “girl friend” and then you’ll find out not even a 14 year old mexican boy desperatly saving to have his cock lopped off before puberty sets in and ruins his presumptive exotic dancing career will take your money to screw you if you offend his pride enough.
You stupid fucking ingrate. You puss-pissing piece of crap. I’m sorry, does my job (Which, actually, pays just fine and has quite a bit of advancement potential) not live up to your fucking cubicle monkey standards? When you wither in your bed, dying of fucking boredom after a short retirement immediately following a career of dickless, imasculate, tie-wearing pussification, remember the people you made fun of that lived their lives. Picture me and Vicar dying of cihrossis and VD 15 years earlier on a beach in Belize, wearing white suits, doing lines of heroin off of supple virgins to cope with the pain, wearing white linen suits and having no regrets.
And don’t you sell computers for a living? Aren’t you a fucking cunt-hair from a retail clerk? Keeping in mind you are five, ten years older then me, why aren’t you “ahead” …What do you think, Joe, that you are going to be a big success with your limited business know-how, stunted intellect, pathetic technical vapididy, and last, but not fucking least, your wonderful people skills?
As for my questions, no, they weren’t in the form of questions, they were raised as counter-points. Discussion of opportunity is relevant to discussion of choice. Without opportunity, there is no choice. You don’t have to provide ” A bibliography” but if you don’t base an opinion in fact, it’s just ignorant ranting. And saying a sweatshop worker should go fill out the fafsa and get out of their situation as if by magic – that’s so fucking WASPy and ignorantly, assumptively, middle class, I bet your feet are clawing their way up your body to kick your own ass. I like how you are trying to spin what you said -“The point was that you have a choice in a school that provides and equal opportunity of education” –that wasn’t your point at all. You didn’t actually put that qualifier in what you said, so how would anybody without a usb compatible ESP device know what the fuck you meant? You phrased it like a blanket statement, and an abrasive one at that. the meaning every reader I’ve tt who read it took from it was that you meant it unilaterally, so that colored your responses. The affirmative action stuff was directed to nails and vicar, and had to do with their comments, not your post, which was pretty clear if you read them.
Oh, and for the record, Princess, THAT was a flame. if your goal was to get me to be brutal and foul-mouthed, you succeeded – but it still has less profanity then you posting about making a sandwich. Which you probably do with two ten year olds and a five-gallon bucket of live earthworms.
You know what? I’m taking my ball and going home.
Cornbread, I’m sorry. I apologize. I’m calling the match. This has gone way to far, and gone on long enough.
I am not going to delete the above though – because I want you to know that when I read your post, above, I was mad. It didn’t make me laugh, or even feel what I usually feel around you – a polite debater’s irritation that you aren’t seeing my point. I thought it was a low, cowardly, disrespectful, petty thing to say, and if you had said it in a room with me, I am pretty sure you would be in a hospital bed and I would be in jail. I want you to understand that the turning point here was that you made my physically angry, that I was thinking about pulling up priceline, visiting some friends and family on the coast, and dropping by your work to cut off your thumbs. That’s when I thought, “This is totally fucking stupid. Why am I letting some guy from online incense me and drag me back into behavior patterns I’ve buried for years?”
So, I had a screwdriver and took a deep breath, and I’m sorry if I offended you. Have a nice life.
Holy crap!!? Can’t even fathom your blood pressure chuck or imagine you’ll make it to 30, but after reading grundie’s post I thought I would take a look at yours. Damn if you ain’t having fun then wtf is the point, and I thought I was sad before, cuz bread deleted all his “good” (I use that word very loosely) posts and boredom returned to his site. Hell if I wanted that I would read my own damn site. My point of maybe saying “What fucking USofA school has no books, show me, I want proof” and “The computer is a great tool and is prob being used by those who would use books otherwise, and pulling up the intelligence of those that don’t.” is lost now for the most part. What boggles my mind is that both you and bread are more intelligent than any o that crap and pettyness. Guess I will once again thank grundie for a good post and quit blogging for the day.
WTF? I hope I never get on your bad side….err….that was scary. Find a happy place.
The fool thinks he has won a battle when he bullies with harsh speech, but knowing how to be forbearing alone makes one victorious. Samyutta Nikaya I, 163
Ok, which one of them is the fool? I’m hedging my bets…
Wow, was that your higher education speaking? Just wondering…
You know, I thought you were cool at one point – but I can see what your problem is. You are angry and spiteful. Everything you just posted is probably a mirror of your own life – and it just pisses you off that I am so much better off than that…. that I am so not Middle class – I bet it eats at you ever night that you have to try so hard to be liked and respected and constantly fail miserably. It is really sad… you should seek counseling tubby. Sounds like you need it.
PS – I am living my life, and apparently enjoying it a helluva a lot more than sitting in some worthless shithole like.. oh… Casper WY. Best thing I ever did was move away from that hole in the ground – and I am never looking back! Thank God for my infinate wisdom to get out of that shit pile. And ever since that day things keep getting better and better. Hope you enjoy spending the rest of your miserable, angry life there.
heh. heh. heh-heh. Cornbread, I haven’t even lived here as long as you did. I’m not from here, and I’m probably not staying here. I’ve already seen and done plenty, and I’m going to see and do more.
PS – you spelled ‘infinite wisdom’ wrong. Keep up the good, ironic work.
Oh, and hey, pop quiz – name my ‘shitty’ job…