Battle of the Blogs Debates (EuroYank's)

Get More Traffic By Continuing The Debate The rules to Battle of the Blogs Debates are simple ... 1. comment here 2. announce your participation here, link to your post here 3. continue this post on your blog 4. One post per blogger per theme. Each theme posted here is a basic introduction. You can expand and add your own points! (I reserve the right to choose topics and start each debate.) -------------------------------------- This Is the Third Debate Topic ... How Corrupt Is the Government? This debate will be a little different. I am citing links with a brief description for you to continue reading at How Corrupt the Government Is. Take your pick at what especially tics you off! Police Raids On Government Agencies DC employees are getting carted off in handcuffs in droves, stealing tax money and even funds dedicated to disabled children.*Government Agencies Illegal Immigration Because of mass immigration, California added more than half a million people last year alone and the Census Bureau said that in 2002, fifty-one percent of the babies born in California were Latino, mostly from Mexico. The US Congress has chosen not to interfere effectively with this unselected tidal wave of people that brings not only cheap labor for farms and factories, but vans full of drugs, outlaw gangs and common thieves who meld with those seeking jobs in the strawberry fields. Friends of Immigration Law Enforcement point out the absurdity of one federal agency being charged with deporting illegal aliens, while another federal agency is allowing them to open bank accounts. *Slippery Slope to Merger with Mexico American Legal System Corrupt Beyond Recognition The legal aristocracy have shed their professional independence for the temptations and materialism associated with becoming businessmen. Because law has become a self-avowed business. *American Legal System Is Corrupt Beyond Recognition A United States note, issued debt free by the U.S. Treasury (note the red seal) America's debt-money system! The Corrupt Federal Reserve Corporation We now have a Federal reserve note, issued as a debt. We must have a United States note, issued debt free by the U.S. Treasury, and here is *America's greatest problem Corrupt Foreign Assistance Corrupt governments tend to receive government-to-government assistance. The IMF (International Monetary Fund) knowingly makes loans to corrupt governments promoting additional corruption. *Can IMF Lending Promote Corruption? The Most Sleazy White House In Memory We have the most partisan, incompetent, elitist, manipulative, sleazy, dishonest, corrupt White House in memory, and the Democrats get scared that they might be called partisan! *A Buzzflash Editorial Government Experiments On Soldiers and Civilians The U.S. government and military have experimented on U.S. soldiers and civilians without their informed consent or knowledge on a number of occasions since 1945 and when caught or exposed, have gone into elaborate cover-up operations. *U.S. Government Experiments On Its Soldiers Or Civilians. Also Read *Nonconsensual Medical Experiments on Human Beings The Solution Videos Don't let shock overpower your intelligence and logic at *The Solution Videos This Is the Second Debate Topic ... Critical Thinking Are We Bloggers Missing the Boat? Nobody said it better than *Francis Bacon, back in 1605: "For myself, I found that I was fitted for nothing so well as for the study of Truth; as having a mind nimble and versatile enough to catch the resemblances of things … and at the same time steady enough to fix and distinguish their subtler differences; as being gifted by nature with desire to seek, patience to doubt, fondness to meditate, slowness to assert, readiness to consider, carefulness to dispose and set in order; and as being a man that neither affects what is new nor admires what is old, and that hates every kind of imposture." The Lack of Critical Thinking According to this post *Lack of Critical Thinking, there is an increase in the lack of critical thinking. This blogger has observed the election process and noted ... * The coming election cycle is causing sound bites and hyperbole to accelerate to “get the message out.” * The proliferation of blogs – especially with fact masquerading as opinion and assertion – is changing the texture of the way people present (and consume) information. * Mainstream media – in an effort to overcome the emergence of new media – is looking more like the new media – which creates a self-reinforcing loop of nonsense. * People enjoy writing opinions that are not fact based because it’s easier and - as a result – leave real critical thinking by the side of the road. * Agendas are commonplace and - if you want to accomplish your agenda – you sacrifice critical thinking for the outcome that you want. * People are too distracted to actually do the work, so it’s easier to just pile on a current theme that one finds interesting without actually thinking about it. We Are Taught Not To Ask Questions At work we are taught not to ask questions; not to challenge the status quo; to accept that “this is the way things are around here”. As children, we explore, we discover, we probe, we sense, we ask “but why?”. Organisations do not seem to foster this natural inquisitiveness. Maybe a few words about innovation are muttered, but not curiosity. We don’t teach people trapped in the citadels the skill of curiosity. This is explored further in *The Death of Curiosity. America, as someone who's made it out of the Matrix, you really need to wake up and take stock of what's happening around you on a daily basis. A cursory glance of the New York Times or Washington Post would show you how truly messed up things are on Earth. The Republican party has thrown aside the Constitution in a political power grab that threatens our very democracy. Poverty aided and abetted by the Bush administration, whose goal of eroding the social safety net has all but been achieved. Your rights are under fire, and the longer you wait on the sidelines, the less chance you'll have once you wake up to what's going on. Many people have simply lost their curiosity. They’ve lost their desire to know what’s going on. To stay on top of the news. To be aware of the world extending beyond their general social circle. I thought the time of our lives was meant to be spent shaking things up, questioning authority, figuring out how messed up the world around us really was. Instead, I fear that we’ve folded up shop, accepted the reality as Bushworld has described it and settled in for the long haul toward old age. Does the Paris Hilton Mentality Rule Do we still read newspapers for anything other than the daily crossword puzzle? Do we listen to the radio for anything other than the latest Maroon 5 single or football game? Do we surf the Internet for anything other than buying clothes, forming social networks, or watching Paris Hilton have sex? I’m starting to doubt it. Have you ever noticed how young kittens explore their world? They approach an unfamiliar object quietly, crouching and using their soft paws to probe the object. They spring back when anxious or frightened by the unfamiliar and yet continue to gingerly close in on the object in their determination to discover, conquer and reduce uncertainty. Are we bloggers just following the mainstream, repeating, repackaging, not questioning, not researching, not debating. Have we bloggers missed the boat? This Is the First Debate Topic ... Cultural Differences Between Eastern and Western Thought Do you understand people different from you? Do you feel threatened by foreigners? They think different from you. Its all about culture. In this post *Differences Between East and West Discovered in People’s Brain Activity . Culture can affect not just language and custom, but how people experience the world at stunningly basic levels. Western culture, it has been found, conditions people to think of themselves as highly independent entities. When looking at scenes, Westerners tend to focus on central objects more than on their surroundings. In contrast, East Asian cultures stress interdependence. When Easterners take in a scene, they tend to focus more on the context as well as the object: the whole block, say, rather than the BMW parked in the foreground. HABITS OF THOUGHT Habits of thought affect the brains of East Asians and Americans even as they perform simple tasks that involve estimating the length of a line. If you're looking at an elephant in the jungle, the Westerner will focus on the elephant and the Easterner is going to be more thinking about the jungle scene that has the elephant in it.” If it changed how you saw the world, it would make the barrier higher for people to agree on what they are seeing and talk with each other,” he said. “If it's in the thinking stage, even though our work suggests it's harder work to see things from a different perspective, it's much more within your reach.” The older people get, it seems, the more pronounced those cultural differences become, as if the older you are, “the more you're steeped in your own cultural mode of processing.” Some initial psychological studies suggest that when an Easterner goes West or vice versa, habits of thought and perception quickly begin to change. So beyond perhaps helping defuse tensions a bit between cross-cultural roommates or spouses, does East-West brain research have real-world applications? It could have implications for, say, Western mental health care workers trying to help Easterners. On a broader scale, researchers say, it might be useful in business schools for students preparing to work in East-West trade, to help clarify culture gaps. CULTURAL DIVIDE How much difference does there have to be between the Asians and the Westerners in a particular experiment to demonstrate a cultural divide? In a few experiments in which the groups were broken down further by specific nationalities, the differences between Asians and Westerners became very fuzzy indeed. In one, 75 percent of Americans and Canadians gave ''Western'' answers, and only 20 percent of Koreans and Singaporeans agreed with them. The Japanese were close to the Koreans and Singaporeans at 30 percent. This would seem to lend credibility to the hypothesis -- except that the French, Italians and Germans also weighed in at 30 percent. Understanding cultural differences in the mind is really important as the world globalizes. WHAT IS CULTURE? Culture in general is concerned with beliefs and values on the basis of which people interpret experiences and behave, individually and in groups. Broadly and simply put, "culture" refers to a group or community with which you share common experiences that shape the way you understand the world. The same person, thus, can belong to several different cultures depending on his or her birthplace; nationality; ethnicity; family status; gender; age; language; education; physical condition; sexual orientation; religion; profession; place of work and its corporate culture. Culture is an essential part of conflict and conflict resolution. Cultures are like underground rivers that run through our lives and relationships, giving us messages that shape our perceptions, attributions, judgments, and ideas of self and other. Though cultures are powerful, they are often unconscious, influencing conflict and attempts to resolve conflict in imperceptible ways. Cultures are more than language, dress, and food customs. Cultural groups may share race, ethnicity, or nationality, but they also arise from cleavages of generation, socioeconomic class, sexual orientation, ability and disability, political and religious affiliation, language, and gender - to name only a few. Two things are essential to remember about cultures: they are always changing, and they relate to the symbolic dimension of life. The symbolic dimension is the place where we are constantly making meaning and enacting our identities. Cultural messages from the groups we belong to give us information about what is meaningful or important, and who we are in the world and in relation to others Each of us belongs to multiple cultures that give us messages about what is normal, appropriate, and expected. When others do not meet our expectations, it is often a cue that our cultural expectations are different. We may mistake differences between others and us for evidence of bad faith or lack of common sense on the part of others, not realizing that common sense is also cultural. What is common to one group may seem strange, counterintuitive, or wrong to another. Cultural messages shape our understandings of relationships, and of how to deal with the conflict and harmony that are always present whenever two or more people come together. As conditions change, cultural groups adapt in dynamic and sometimes unpredictable ways ... In an interview conducted in Canada, an elderly Chinese man indicated he had experienced no conflict at all for the previous 40 years. Among the possible reasons for his denial was a cultural preference to see the world through lenses of harmony rather than conflict, as encouraged by his Confucian upbringing. Labeling some of our interactions as conflicts and analyzing them into smaller component parts is a distinctly Western approach that may obscure other aspects of relationships. Culture is always a factor in conflict, whether it plays a central role or influences it subtly and gently. For any conflict that touches us where it matters, where we make meaning and hold our identities, there is always a cultural component. Conflicts like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or the India-Pakistan conflict over Kashmir are not just about territorial, boundary, and sovereignty issues - they are also about acknowledgement, representation, and legitimization of different identities and ways of living, being, and making meaning. Conflicts between teenagers and parents are shaped by generational culture, and conflicts between spouses or partners are influenced by gender culture. In organizations, conflicts arising from different disciplinary cultures escalate tensions between co-workers, creating strained or inaccurate communication and stressed relationships. Culture permeates conflict no matter what- sometimes pushing forth with intensity, other times quietly snaking along, hardly announcing its presence until surprised people nearly stumble on it. Continue the debate ... 1. comment here 2. announce your participation here and link to your post 3. continue this post on your blog. 4. one post per blogger per theme. (I reserve the right to choose topics and start each debate) Bloggers Participating Current Activity Report *Revellian - Capping Credit Card Interest and Economic Revolution *Caoimhin - Future Shock *Enlightened Bits - Critical Thinking Stumble It!

Battle of the Blogs Debates (EuroYank's)

Get More Traffic By Continuing The Debate The rules to Battle of the Blogs Debates are simple ... 1. comment here 2. announce your participation here, link to your post here 3. continue this post on your blog 4. One post per blogger per theme. Each theme posted here is a basic introduction. You can expand and add your own points! (I reserve the right to choose topics and start each debate.) -------------------------------------- This Is the Third Debate Topic ... How Corrupt Is the Government? This debate will be a little different. I am citing links with a brief description for you to continue reading at How Corrupt the Government Is. Take your pick at what especially tics you off! Police Raids On Government Agencies DC employees are getting carted off in handcuffs in droves, stealing tax money and even funds dedicated to disabled children.*Government Agencies Illegal Immigration Because of mass immigration, California added more than half a million people last year alone and the Census Bureau said that in 2002, fifty-one percent of the babies born in California were Latino, mostly from Mexico. The US Congress has chosen not to interfere effectively with this unselected tidal wave of people that brings not only cheap labor for farms and factories, but vans full of drugs, outlaw gangs and common thieves who meld with those seeking jobs in the strawberry fields. Friends of Immigration Law Enforcement point out the absurdity of one federal agency being charged with deporting illegal aliens, while another federal agency is allowing them to open bank accounts. *Slippery Slope to Merger with Mexico American Legal System Corrupt Beyond Recognition The legal aristocracy have shed their professional independence for the temptations and materialism associated with becoming businessmen. Because law has become a self-avowed business. *American Legal System Is Corrupt Beyond Recognition A United States note, issued debt free by the U.S. Treasury (note the red seal) America's debt-money system! The Corrupt Federal Reserve Corporation We now have a Federal reserve note, issued as a debt. We must have a United States note, issued debt free by the U.S. Treasury, and here is *America's greatest problem Corrupt Foreign Assistance Corrupt governments tend to receive government-to-government assistance. The IMF (International Monetary Fund) knowingly makes loans to corrupt governments promoting additional corruption. *Can IMF Lending Promote Corruption? The Most Sleazy White House In Memory We have the most partisan, incompetent, elitist, manipulative, sleazy, dishonest, corrupt White House in memory, and the Democrats get scared that they might be called partisan! *A Buzzflash Editorial Government Experiments On Soldiers and Civilians The U.S. government and military have experimented on U.S. soldiers and civilians without their informed consent or knowledge on a number of occasions since 1945 and when caught or exposed, have gone into elaborate cover-up operations. *U.S. Government Experiments On Its Soldiers Or Civilians. Also Read *Nonconsensual Medical Experiments on Human Beings The Solution Videos Don't let shock overpower your intelligence and logic at *The Solution Videos This Is the Second Debate Topic ... Critical Thinking Are We Bloggers Missing the Boat? Nobody said it better than *Francis Bacon, back in 1605: "For myself, I found that I was fitted for nothing so well as for the study of Truth; as having a mind nimble and versatile enough to catch the resemblances of things … and at the same time steady enough to fix and distinguish their subtler differences; as being gifted by nature with desire to seek, patience to doubt, fondness to meditate, slowness to assert, readiness to consider, carefulness to dispose and set in order; and as being a man that neither affects what is new nor admires what is old, and that hates every kind of imposture." The Lack of Critical Thinking According to this post *Lack of Critical Thinking, there is an increase in the lack of critical thinking. This blogger has observed the election process and noted ... * The coming election cycle is causing sound bites and hyperbole to accelerate to “get the message out.” * The proliferation of blogs – especially with fact masquerading as opinion and assertion – is changing the texture of the way people present (and consume) information. * Mainstream media – in an effort to overcome the emergence of new media – is looking more like the new media – which creates a self-reinforcing loop of nonsense. * People enjoy writing opinions that are not fact based because it’s easier and - as a result – leave real critical thinking by the side of the road. * Agendas are commonplace and - if you want to accomplish your agenda – you sacrifice critical thinking for the outcome that you want. * People are too distracted to actually do the work, so it’s easier to just pile on a current theme that one finds interesting without actually thinking about it. We Are Taught Not To Ask Questions At work we are taught not to ask questions; not to challenge the status quo; to accept that “this is the way things are around here”. As children, we explore, we discover, we probe, we sense, we ask “but why?”. Organisations do not seem to foster this natural inquisitiveness. Maybe a few words about innovation are muttered, but not curiosity. We don’t teach people trapped in the citadels the skill of curiosity. This is explored further in *The Death of Curiosity. America, as someone who's made it out of the Matrix, you really need to wake up and take stock of what's happening around you on a daily basis. A cursory glance of the New York Times or Washington Post would show you how truly messed up things are on Earth. The Republican party has thrown aside the Constitution in a political power grab that threatens our very democracy. Poverty aided and abetted by the Bush administration, whose goal of eroding the social safety net has all but been achieved. Your rights are under fire, and the longer you wait on the sidelines, the less chance you'll have once you wake up to what's going on. Many people have simply lost their curiosity. They’ve lost their desire to know what’s going on. To stay on top of the news. To be aware of the world extending beyond their general social circle. I thought the time of our lives was meant to be spent shaking things up, questioning authority, figuring out how messed up the world around us really was. Instead, I fear that we’ve folded up shop, accepted the reality as Bushworld has described it and settled in for the long haul toward old age. Does the Paris Hilton Mentality Rule Do we still read newspapers for anything other than the daily crossword puzzle? Do we listen to the radio for anything other than the latest Maroon 5 single or football game? Do we surf the Internet for anything other than buying clothes, forming social networks, or watching Paris Hilton have sex? I’m starting to doubt it. Have you ever noticed how young kittens explore their world? They approach an unfamiliar object quietly, crouching and using their soft paws to probe the object. They spring back when anxious or frightened by the unfamiliar and yet continue to gingerly close in on the object in their determination to discover, conquer and reduce uncertainty. Are we bloggers just following the mainstream, repeating, repackaging, not questioning, not researching, not debating. Have we bloggers missed the boat? This Is the First Debate Topic ... Cultural Differences Between Eastern and Western Thought Do you understand people different from you? Do you feel threatened by foreigners? They think different from you. Its all about culture. In this post *Differences Between East and West Discovered in People’s Brain Activity . Culture can affect not just language and custom, but how people experience the world at stunningly basic levels. Western culture, it has been found, conditions people to think of themselves as highly independent entities. When looking at scenes, Westerners tend to focus on central objects more than on their surroundings. In contrast, East Asian cultures stress interdependence. When Easterners take in a scene, they tend to focus more on the context as well as the object: the whole block, say, rather than the BMW parked in the foreground. HABITS OF THOUGHT Habits of thought affect the brains of East Asians and Americans even as they perform simple tasks that involve estimating the length of a line. If you're looking at an elephant in the jungle, the Westerner will focus on the elephant and the Easterner is going to be more thinking about the jungle scene that has the elephant in it.” If it changed how you saw the world, it would make the barrier higher for people to agree on what they are seeing and talk with each other,” he said. “If it's in the thinking stage, even though our work suggests it's harder work to see things from a different perspective, it's much more within your reach.” The older people get, it seems, the more pronounced those cultural differences become, as if the older you are, “the more you're steeped in your own cultural mode of processing.” Some initial psychological studies suggest that when an Easterner goes West or vice versa, habits of thought and perception quickly begin to change. So beyond perhaps helping defuse tensions a bit between cross-cultural roommates or spouses, does East-West brain research have real-world applications? It could have implications for, say, Western mental health care workers trying to help Easterners. On a broader scale, researchers say, it might be useful in business schools for students preparing to work in East-West trade, to help clarify culture gaps. CULTURAL DIVIDE How much difference does there have to be between the Asians and the Westerners in a particular experiment to demonstrate a cultural divide? In a few experiments in which the groups were broken down further by specific nationalities, the differences between Asians and Westerners became very fuzzy indeed. In one, 75 percent of Americans and Canadians gave ''Western'' answers, and only 20 percent of Koreans and Singaporeans agreed with them. The Japanese were close to the Koreans and Singaporeans at 30 percent. This would seem to lend credibility to the hypothesis -- except that the French, Italians and Germans also weighed in at 30 percent. Understanding cultural differences in the mind is really important as the world globalizes. WHAT IS CULTURE? Culture in general is concerned with beliefs and values on the basis of which people interpret experiences and behave, individually and in groups. Broadly and simply put, "culture" refers to a group or community with which you share common experiences that shape the way you understand the world. The same person, thus, can belong to several different cultures depending on his or her birthplace; nationality; ethnicity; family status; gender; age; language; education; physical condition; sexual orientation; religion; profession; place of work and its corporate culture. Culture is an essential part of conflict and conflict resolution. Cultures are like underground rivers that run through our lives and relationships, giving us messages that shape our perceptions, attributions, judgments, and ideas of self and other. Though cultures are powerful, they are often unconscious, influencing conflict and attempts to resolve conflict in imperceptible ways. Cultures are more than language, dress, and food customs. Cultural groups may share race, ethnicity, or nationality, but they also arise from cleavages of generation, socioeconomic class, sexual orientation, ability and disability, political and religious affiliation, language, and gender - to name only a few. Two things are essential to remember about cultures: they are always changing, and they relate to the symbolic dimension of life. The symbolic dimension is the place where we are constantly making meaning and enacting our identities. Cultural messages from the groups we belong to give us information about what is meaningful or important, and who we are in the world and in relation to others Each of us belongs to multiple cultures that give us messages about what is normal, appropriate, and expected. When others do not meet our expectations, it is often a cue that our cultural expectations are different. We may mistake differences between others and us for evidence of bad faith or lack of common sense on the part of others, not realizing that common sense is also cultural. What is common to one group may seem strange, counterintuitive, or wrong to another. Cultural messages shape our understandings of relationships, and of how to deal with the conflict and harmony that are always present whenever two or more people come together. As conditions change, cultural groups adapt in dynamic and sometimes unpredictable ways ... In an interview conducted in Canada, an elderly Chinese man indicated he had experienced no conflict at all for the previous 40 years. Among the possible reasons for his denial was a cultural preference to see the world through lenses of harmony rather than conflict, as encouraged by his Confucian upbringing. Labeling some of our interactions as conflicts and analyzing them into smaller component parts is a distinctly Western approach that may obscure other aspects of relationships. Culture is always a factor in conflict, whether it plays a central role or influences it subtly and gently. For any conflict that touches us where it matters, where we make meaning and hold our identities, there is always a cultural component. Conflicts like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or the India-Pakistan conflict over Kashmir are not just about territorial, boundary, and sovereignty issues - they are also about acknowledgement, representation, and legitimization of different identities and ways of living, being, and making meaning. Conflicts between teenagers and parents are shaped by generational culture, and conflicts between spouses or partners are influenced by gender culture. In organizations, conflicts arising from different disciplinary cultures escalate tensions between co-workers, creating strained or inaccurate communication and stressed relationships. Culture permeates conflict no matter what- sometimes pushing forth with intensity, other times quietly snaking along, hardly announcing its presence until surprised people nearly stumble on it. Continue the debate ... 1. comment here 2. announce your participation here and link to your post 3. continue this post on your blog. 4. one post per blogger per theme. (I reserve the right to choose topics and start each debate) Bloggers Participating Current Activity Report *Revellian - Capping Credit Card Interest and Economic Revolution *Caoimhin - Future Shock *Enlightened Bits - Critical Thinking