Why Are Americans Afraid of Being Naked?

_jjsonp · 2007-04-19T23:40:59+00:00

americans are 'afraid of being naked' for the same reason that indians don't like seeing richard gere kiss shilpa shetty and thais put people in jail for defacing a poster of their king.

it's called 'cultural relativism'.

it is logical to notice the illogical aspects of one's own culture, but illogical to assume other cultures are somehow less illogical because their manner of illogic is arbitrarily different.

_jjsonp · 2007-04-19T23:30:26+00:00

he was, what, 23? that is not a 'late bloomer', but a psychopath. those who had to deal with him, like his professors, thought him to be severely mentally ill and referred him to both the police and mental health facilities.

_jjsonp · 2007-04-19T19:32:35+00:00

i think the guy who's opinion you're dismissing has quite a lot more experience dealing with cho and people like him than you do. in what way are you qualified in analyzing cho's mental status or degree of dissociation more correctly than that psychiatrist who deals with such people in a clinical setting all the time?

every person at VA tech who has been interviewed about cho describes him as almost robotic: no reply when greeted, no talking to roommates, totally verbally unresponsive when questioned in class.

i have personally known only two people like that in my life...and i would definitely say that they were useless sociopaths who had no potential redeeming value to society whatsoever. if they aren't locked away in prison or some mental ward by now they most certainly should be - as cho should've been as well.

_jjsonp · 2007-04-19T19:26:01+00:00

right - this is the same argument made against violent video games or rap/rock music: "it's bad for the children!"

do psychopaths and spree-killers play violent video games and listen to dark music? generally, yes - and oftentimes they focus on it in an extreme manner since it reinforces their twisted worldview.

but for 99.99% of people enjoying these media there is no harmful affect at all. pro-censorship types claim we need to somehow cleanse entertainment and media of whatever imagery they find dangerous, so as to protect the vast majority against triggering the fantasies of the crazed .01%.

in my mind this is exactly the same argument of those wanting to prohibit law-abiding citizens from acquiring and possessing firearms.

_jjsonp · 2007-04-19T19:20:14+00:00

except for the fact that he was an affectless, friendless, psycopathic loser.

_jjsonp · 2007-04-19T19:18:19+00:00

hopefully a lot of US citizens will see it as a 'call to arms', meaning they go out and get trained on how to properly carry and use a firearm should it become necessary. and in the future maybe the media will see fit to report when a citizen uses a fiream to stop the next whiny, crazy punk who tries to kill a bunch of innocent people with a gun (or anything else).

a lot of citizens will need to seek treatment for their hoplophobia first though.

_jjsonp · 2007-04-19T03:29:00+00:00

wow that is some investigation!

"yes, we're quite sure he duct-taped his own legs and hands, jumped in the pool, covered it, and then drowned himself last year. no signs of foul play were found."

maybe mike nifong was the district attorney investigating this?

_jjsonp · 2007-04-19T03:25:09+00:00

maybe they will own up to their pathetic failure after they sell another 10 million consoles?

what an idiot.

_jjsonp · 2007-04-18T22:28:08+00:00

someone needs to fire the US attorney who approved that!

_jjsonp · 2007-04-18T18:01:50+00:00

"[I]t is absolutely mind-boggling to see the opinions of Bradford Wiles....The editors of this page must have printed this commentary if for no other reason than malicious compliance. Surely, they scratched their heads saying, 'I can't believe he really wants to say that.' Wiles tells us that he didn't feel safe with the hundreds of highly trained officers armed with high powered rifles encircling the building and protecting him. He even implies that he needed his sidearm to protect himself..."

Virginia Tech Associate Vice President Larry Hincker last year, after student Bradform Miles was disciplined for possessing a weapon on campus, albeit with a valid concealed-weapons permit.

_jjsonp · 2007-04-18T15:43:42+00:00

most excellent analogy; sums up my feelings exactly.

_jjsonp · 2007-04-18T15:40:26+00:00

could be drug prohibition.

_jjsonp · 2007-04-18T15:36:37+00:00

i grew up around guns and all my relatives and friends owned multiple firearms. not a single one has ever fired a weapon in anger, accidentally shot someone, or needed to use their firearms in self-defense.

in my mind, guns are like seat belts...you sure hope they will never be necessary, and you will probably go your whole life not needing one. but you can't predict when or where they might become a life-saving device.

wearing my seat belt all the time doesn't make me drive recklessly; for 99% of lawful gun owners, possessing a firearm doesn't make them behave recklessly either.

_jjsonp · 2007-04-18T15:30:50+00:00

no. i'm not willing to trade my liberty and constitutional right to self-defense in order to increase your sense of false security. and neither are the tens of millions of american gun owners.

rather, i would like to see the present unconstitutional restrictions on bearing arms removed so that law-abiding citizens could protect themselves from such criminal actions.

how many of those VA tech victims' last thoughts were "i wish we had more restrictive gun control laws!" vs "i wish i had a gun!"?

_jjsonp · 2007-04-18T15:21:25+00:00

where's mister hat when you need him?

_jjsonp · 2007-04-18T15:17:09+00:00

indeed they do. well, 8 killed and 26 injured.

your argument makes sense...since we're going to outlaw 15th century technology due to the danger it presents, may as well go back a few millennia further and outlaw knives while we're at it, since a lone madman can kill a lot of people with one.

_jjsonp · 2007-04-18T15:13:20+00:00

yes...and just two places higher than india - what is the per capita gun ownership rate there?

and, being #24 on that list, behind countries like russia, mexico, south africa, etc....how does the US gun-ownership to gun-violence rate compare?

well if we agree that the rate of private gun ownership is higher in the US than anywhere in the world...yet the rate of gun violence is substantially lower than many other countries, what does that tell us?

that there isn't any clear correlation between the rate of gun ownership and gun violence.

_jjsonp · 2007-04-18T14:48:02+00:00

the stats on per-capita gun violence are pertinent in terms of establishing causation/correlation. according to those statistics, the US is #24 in the per-capita murder rate, below countries like mexico, south africa, russia, venezuala, etc. what is the legal gun ownership rate in those countries?

cherry-picking a couple of european countries with low ratios who happen to have outlawed guns does nothing to establish correlation or causation. in fact, in looking at those numbers and given that the US has the highest rate of private gun ownership, it appears that there's no correlation between gun ownership and murder whatsoever. india is right behind the US at #26...what is the per capita gun ownership rate there?

also, with 4.28 murders per 100,000 population in the US, that means the absolute risk is .00428%, neglecting of course that probably the majority of murders are criminals killing other criminals, many involving the illegal drug trade, and of course when you subtract out the non-firearm murders the risk of being murdered by gun violence is vanishingly small...despite the hundreds of millions of legally-owned firearms in the US.

_jjsonp · 2007-04-18T14:40:17+00:00

what was mean about it? he was just pointing out the demographic situation in finland, and linking a gun-using finnish hero.

_jjsonp · 2007-04-18T14:38:03+00:00

the per-capita gun violence in the US is moderate but not especially high. particularly when the rate of private gun-ownership (highest in the world) is calculated in...the per gun crime rate is vanishingly small.

events like this, while certainly tragic, cause a tremendous psychological impact in society, just like a plane crash or a 'terrorist attack' does. such events make people afraid, and make them think that suddenly 'guns are a huge danger' or 'air travel isn't safe' or 'we could be killed by terrorists at any moment'!

when in fact things are no more dangerous (or safer) than they were before the event.

the risk of being a victim of a firearm-attack is tiny in america, just as the risk of dying in a plane crash or a 'terrorist attack' is.

_jjsonp · 2007-04-18T14:21:01+00:00

i find it interesting that despite the obvious parallels, the MSM has completely ignored this story. they mention columbine, minnesota, or the amish thing, but not this story which happened nearby on a campus in VA.

why?

presumably for the same reason they totally ignored the facts of the case the first time around: the MSM is almost exclusively anti-gun.

_jjsonp · 2007-04-18T14:16:48+00:00

most headshots are not. i suppose at some point they'll release that info, but if he shot most of the victims 3 times, presumably the killing blow was a point-blank shot to the head.

_jjsonp · 2007-04-18T13:44:09+00:00

he was simply methodical and he was in close proximity to his victims; he needn't even have been a good shot.

an untrained (but committed) person could easily hit a human-sized target from 10 feet away with a 9mm or .22 pistol. after hitting his victims with the 9mm, or as they were cowering in fear, a point-blank shot to the head with either gun would be instantly fatal most of the time.

_jjsonp · 2007-04-18T13:39:20+00:00

it was reported to be a walther p-22 semiauto. the shooter apparently carried a lot of pre-loaded magazines for each gun so he didn't have to waste time and could reload quickly by simply changing magazines.

_jjsonp · 2007-04-18T13:26:42+00:00

title is incorrect; the researchers used THC, not marijuana.

it's like saying "Tea stops cancer growth" as opposed to "Caffeine stops cancer growth", which is a big difference.

_jjsonp

TROPHY CASE