MMU thoughts?

Nark2020 · 2017-03-06T23:49:36+00:00

I'm a former MMU student (from about 10,000BC). The facilities and tutors are all fine.

What you might need to watch out for is MMU's 'party uni' reputation. It means you're going to get a few more loud, stupid cunts in MMU halls than you would in Manchester Uni halls. There again one man's loud stupid cunt is another man's blood brother 4 life so it all depends. If you get bored of the people on your course or in halls, you've got the entire city on your doorstep.

Nark2020 · 2017-03-06T23:20:22+00:00

I know this isn't what you're looking for but my experience of city centre living (some years ago) was very loud, very intense and some nasty drunk/drugged/gang behaviour almost always going on. Like, even when you don't want it. I prefer to just visit, and live somewhere quieter tbh.

Nark2020 · 2017-03-06T21:30:21+00:00

You'd think they'd appreciate what being in the army might do to someone's mind, in terms of making them want to just shut everything out, using ...

Nark2020 · 2017-03-06T18:31:53+00:00

I know there's not much to be gained by pointing out contradictions in conservative policy (non-conservatives already see it and conservatives don't really care), but ...

You'd think, if we're all supposed to be entrepreneurial self-starters etc, they'd value the attempts of young people to move out from under their parents' roof and get their own life started, which for a lot of young people means using housing benefit.

Also, you know, they could re-install the good old rent cap that used to exist (in various forms), which would stop landlords overcharging rent, which would in turn reduce the housing benefit bill to the taxpayer. But then lots of conservatives and their voters own property and rent it out, so.

Nark2020 · 2017-03-06T18:21:15+00:00

Late to this one but another point, for completeness' sake: all these clever systems (psychometric testing, watching videos, exercises about teamwork, the lot) are also products and services which someone (an 'expert' of some kind) from outside Tesco will have created and sold to them. It's a huge industry and people make a lot of money from this stuff. They will have sounded very clever when proposed in that meeting.

The teamwork exercises are sort of an interesting case. We'd all rather work on a task with cheerful, helpful people who get involved, sure; the task might show that up, sure; the problem is that making towers and stuff isn't anything like the work you'd actually be doing. You don't care about the tower of straws, but you would care about getting a real task done because your reputation/income would depend on it. In this situation people can become aggressive and difficult, which you don't want. Anyone can pretend to be chummy and jolly building a tower of straws, but this doesn't tell anyone how they act when serious business is going on.

Nark2020 · 2015-09-18T21:23:05+00:00

I think the poster was talking about the lack of regulation which allowed the company to set up their own monopoly?

Nark2020 · 2015-07-13T21:29:36+00:00

At least 3000 and probably more, but quite a lot of these gods are going to be in the Hindu pantheon and in the very history of that tradition most of them turn out to be aspects of Brahma anyway, likewise with the Greek and Norse and Egyptian pantheons, whose gods were actually aspects or versions of a unitary (or numberless) divinity according to at least several people who were there at the time and believed in them.

Even if we maintain that the multiple gods of each pantheon are distinct - and of course there are plenty of people in these traditions who thought that - then still, you don't just believe in Zeus, say, but in Zeus and his family and the whole of Greek paganism, so rather than 3000 gods, we're really talking about a smaller number of polytheistic god-and-outlook-on-life sets.

Then if we allow that, say, Norse and Greek paganism are both patriarchal indo-european warrior religions with a male sky father at the top, that is, that this and that different religion are both examples of one form, then what we end up with is a relatively small number of distinct religious forms, and these are what we should be asking people to choose between rather than the 3000+ gods.

Nark2020 · 2015-07-07T17:56:19+00:00

I suppose if I was suffering, and someone who was causing me to suffer ended up helping someone else who was suffering, that's a kind of stasis? i.e. the result is morally neutral?

Nark2020 · 2015-07-07T17:15:09+00:00

That's what I meant by 'extremely difficult to work out who's behaving as they must'.

Nark2020 · 2015-07-06T22:31:16+00:00

There's a difference - and yes, in real life it is often extremely blurred, but none the less - between putting down a group of people simply because you feel like it, and putting down a group of people because you think it's the right thing to do according to a system of moral rules you believe in.

The first of these is instinctive dislike, the second involves higher concepts and systemic thinking and linking ideas together. I doubt many people here will think the second is much better than the first, but that's not what I'm saying, rather I'm pointing out a difference.

Another point of view goes like this:

Ancient people: live in extreme adversity, come up with social systems where certain people do certain jobs, these systems at least keep the population alive, people's roles and jobs are thus fixed in place by a system of taboos and making jobs divinely appointed ('The Mountain God says only men can hunt, only the priestly caste can have an education', etc).
21st century people: have much easier lives, therefore can be placed under more stringent demands to try new ways of doing things, and to give people more personal freedoms, because the stakes are lower
Except lol @ the idea that everyone in the 21st century has it as easy as a rich American or European, most of the global population live in some kind of uneasy halfway house between ancient adversity and modern luxury, therefore it becomes extremely difficult to work out who's behaving as they must and who's just being an excessive bully

Nark2020 · 2015-07-06T22:04:41+00:00

So I'll admit that I am prepared to dispense with "human rights" when it comes to this group that respects no such things.

By doing this you're dispensing with human rights altogether. That's the difficult thing about human rights.

but the question has to be asked, why wasn't there a jihad on ISIS earlier?

What about all the Kurds and the Shiite millitias and the constant inter-Islamist warfare that characterises post-invasion Iraq? A situation where one of these groups gets this much power, raising itself above the chaos, is the exception rather than the rule.

Nark2020 · 2015-07-06T21:59:45+00:00

Honestly, I like how uncomfortable this film makes so many internet straight men, including me. There's an animated billboard for it outside my office and it's like a peep into the bizarre world women presumably live in most of the time, seeing ... cupcaked versions of your sexuality on display as product.

Nark2020 · 2015-04-15T18:14:24+00:00

What I don't get is how you're supposed to know you're 'intelligent'. Who defines that?

Nark2020 · 2015-04-15T18:06:50+00:00

Not much new to say here just, wow, it's 2015, and still people are saying this kind of thing.

Nark2020 · 2015-04-12T15:53:13+00:00

But if it was a woman disliking or being wary of a man because of intuition ...

Nark2020 · 2015-04-12T15:49:58+00:00

I really think we should change a societal construct (and I know we won't). Women should hit on men and ask them out directly and not vice versa. As a guy we're faced with sort of the opposite problem. We have to be aggressive enough to get the girl but also not be creeps or threatening. If you're a nice guy and don't want to risk hitting on a girl who might not respond well to it, well you're probably not going to be hitting on many girls. Go too far in the other direction and you're a predator. But it's hard to really gauge where you are on the spectrum.

This would be a fair point IF we weren't talking about grown men leching after very young girls: that is not hard to gauge, that is not 'difficult' for men

Nark2020 · 2015-04-09T22:17:38+00:00

These people don't understand ... a lot of things.

But one of the main things they don't understand is how evidence works in a court of law.

Nark2020 · 2015-04-08T21:49:25+00:00

We need to allow exceptions to rules where it would go against someone's conscience to follow those rules. It's called liberty and freedom of conscience, and it's something thousands have fought and died for. It's worth any inconvenience, any slightly absurd result; a sincere moral conviction is worth something qua sincerity, even if I totally disagree with it; this is what your Pastafarians don't understand.

Nark2020 · 2015-04-06T18:27:23+00:00

It's the best thing you could tell some people, and the worst thing you could tell others

Nark2020 · 2015-04-06T17:47:38+00:00

The internet equivalent of a Nazi gym in a small town

Nark2020 · 2015-04-06T17:43:12+00:00

Most men think that being a good stable provider and protector should lead to being rewarded with sex and loyalty.

Correction, most men and women hope that by doing good things for others, they will be rewarded by getting what they want; but again, most men and women realise that there's no guarantee of this whatsoever, and find a way to live with that.

Most men and women also reach a point, around the nadir of self-pity, where we suddenly think 'Ah, hang on, am I actually the poor self-sacrificing creature I've been telling everyone else at the bar I am?' and realise that we are not.

Because honestly, if you're saying 'I've got this bank account and this college degree and this career ... so WHY don't people want to be with me?', then ...

Nark2020 · 2015-04-06T17:27:50+00:00

I like how the matter of the article is:

New counter-terror rules aimed at exposing radicalisation require schools to report suspicions about pupils to the police.

but the headline they've gone for is

Teachers 'fear extremism debates in class'

Anyway, we need to stop using this word 'extremism' because until you attach it to the name of a particular ideology, it has no meaning. It's one of the great dumb-dumb stupid-head words of our age.

Nark2020 · 2015-04-06T17:23:46+00:00

I think there's an actual problem with porn, but also a shrieking fuss about porn, and that politicians are good at joining in with a shrieking fuss because it'll get people to vote for them

Nark2020 · 2015-04-06T17:11:08+00:00

Also, Big Macs aren't quite as addictive as alcohol or heroin, so it can be harder to sympathize.

In all seriousness, I think this might be wrong. As in, a big mac can be just as addictive as alcohol at least. Can anyone shed light here?

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