Not ironic here: I was at a very low point, and what I did was ditch everything, brought some gear to sleep outside, and decided to see how long I could stay outside with just my fishing gear.
To be fair, I brought freeze-dried food for a couple days, but after about a week I felt better enough to head back to society.
What I did that week was primarily fish for dinner and gather firewood for the evening. Did wonders for my psyke.
It's a relevant question either way: Regardless whether you think all education should be free (which I agree, it should), this is about how they plan on resolving this specific case of making education more accessible right now.
Whether education should be free altogether is a whole different question. In that case, it would make sense to also discuss whether it should be free for everyone, or whether there should be some income limit.
In Norway we've landed on a solution where the education itself is free, but in order to qualify for a government stipend and government-backed loan (with very good interest rates) in order to support yourself studying you need to have a fortune below a certain (high) threshold. Personally, I think that's a nice trade off between accessibility and preventing rich people from making money off of a welfare program.
My deepest core belief is that there is a non-zero likelihood (which may be quite high) that everything I think I know about the world is wrong.
If it was proven to me beyond a doubt that something I know is undoubtedly correct, I would probably think that there was a possibility that the proof was wrong and go on with my day.
I still think it's a fair question to ask, because as far as I understand, there's nothing forcing Harvard to use the same method as the federal government. Have you seen anything on how they plan to do that?
There has to be some objective method of categorising whether someone lives off their parents income or not: it's a relevant question to ask.
Someone can live in the same house as their parents while paying full rent and being responsible for their own food, effectively being economically independent. They can also live on the other side of the country while being 100% sponsored by their parents. It's not trivial to categorise whether someone qualifies for something like this.
I think the possibly final test for American democracy will be the midterm elections in two years. By then, I think that either trump will have broken the system enough to get a sham election, or we'll see real, verifiable push-back against him. International organisations that monitor elections will probably take part in shaping my opinion on whether the election is fair or not. I think it's worth remembering that whenever countries hold "fake and forced elections" there are plenty of international observers that point out the major rigging going on.
Little fun-fact: We still have a trace of this left in Norwegian, where the most common way to say "1.5" is not "en og en halv" ("one and a half") but "halvannen" which roughly translates to "half second".
We abandoned the "half third", "half fourth" etc. very long ago (if we ever used them), but "halvannen" just rolls nicely off the tongue.
It's funny how we interpreted OP's comment completely oppositely. I interpreted it as
Classrooms should, as a starter, be uniform. However, we need to expose kids to all kinds of things and not overly shelter them from different opinions, therefore these signs should remain.
If I understand correctly, you interpret OP as arguing that the signs should be removed?
I'm saying that taking down the signs is being "overly sheltering" in the sense that it's showing kids that you can just make anything you don't like go away. This is an argument to keep the signs in order to help the kids learn to deal with exposure to the world, regardless of whether they like what they see. I honestly have a hard time seeing how OP's comment can be interpreted differently?
I don't see how people are so opposed to the idea that "we should help our children become strong and robust so that they're not offended by everything".
Life is a lot easier when you can handle people saying and doing things you don't like without it breaking you. I'm not saying injustice should be tolerated: Quite the opposite. I'm saying that fighting injustice is easier if you are robust enough withstand it when it's directed at you.
My impression is that that's what you mean, in which case I wholly agree.
I had forgotten about that! However: That wasn't sanctioned by the government though if I remember correctly, it was done by civilians that requested governmental military support which was refused.
I'm not quite sure if you're disregarding the fact that Norway and Denmark haven't had a war for hundreds of years because they don't share a land border? In any case i can point out that there were plenty of Norwegian-Danish hostilities before the union time. With both Norway and Denmark being big on seafaring, the waters between Norway and Denmark have historically been seen much more as a highway (as you say about the Anglo-Portuguese waters) than anything else.
The distance is shorter though, so I would rather compare the Norwegian-Danish border to the Anglo-French border, and the lack of a land border there hasn't really prevented any wars.
Why don't you go ask the Nazi sympathisers we executed for treason after the war about that?
If a state permits its citizens to betray the country in favour of an adversary in the event of a war, it's incapable of protecting itself. The most important task of any society is to keep its members safe. A crucial aspect of that is accepting the social contract that everyone on the society will help keep each other safe, even in the event that an outside adversary invades and threatens to kill you. If you break that social contract- guess what? The rest of society will typically (at least historically) brand you as a traitor and imprison or execute you. Why? Because you've shown that you're willing to put their head on the block for your own benefit, so they see you as a threat (perhaps the worst thinkable threat) to the security their society provides, and decide to remove that threat to protect themselves.
No matter what oath you have or haven't taken, societies obligation to keep you safe only extends as far as your willingness to protect the society. This is why treason, in most societies, is seen as one of the worst, if not the worst, crime you can commit. It's literally stabbing strangers that are willing to die for you and your family in the back.
Quite a surprising one here: I think the Norwegian/russian border can actually match that. I believe Norway is the only country neighbouring russia that has never been invaded by them (sans WWII, where they invaded Nazi-occupied Norway and willingly left after the Axis was defeated).
I also think the Norwegian/Danish border has been conflict-free for some hundred years (to be fair, we were in a union for ≈450 years ending in 1814). We've had some skirmishes with the Swedes throughout the years, but I believe the last one was in 1814.
Do you really think a good solution to the US slowly going haywire over the past 20-30 years or so is snuggling up to dictatorships, of which two have boots on the ground in the first major European war of aggression since WWII, and the third is the only thing keeping the economy of the other two afloat? I think not. I think alienating said dictatorships is a good idea. I also think the US needs to be confronted and forced to make a decision on whether it wants to remain on good terms with the civilised world.
This makes sense to me, I was thinking of the situation where I'm from, where you don't get much more than a pat on the back and the good feels of helping out when you donate blood.
It's honestly kind of insane to me that there is a system in place to get desperate people to literally sell their blood for money... No one should ever be made that desperate :(
Ok, so systems for donating blood are different in different places, I get that. Where I'm from, the only benefit you get from donating blood is a thumbs up, pat on the back, and a popsicle or a coffee cup or some other small gift.
People say this? I've never heard anyone donating blood say this, and I personally would say that all precautions taken by the professionals that collect blood donations should be taken very seriously. It's not, at the end of the day, up to me to be the judge of what is or isn't a condition serious enough that my blood shouldn't be accepted. I'll give the professionals as much information as possible, and then let them judge whether or not it is safe to give my blood to someone else.
I would never even dream of lying in order to donate blood, when that could end up actively harming someone, and I honestly cannot see the argument in favour of doing that. The whole point of donating blood is helping people.
Not ironic here: I was at a very low point, and what I did was ditch everything, brought some gear to sleep outside, and decided to see how long I could stay outside with just my fishing gear.
To be fair, I brought freeze-dried food for a couple days, but after about a week I felt better enough to head back to society.
What I did that week was primarily fish for dinner and gather firewood for the evening. Did wonders for my psyke.