Gdanning
11mo ago
I'm saying that most places shut down for Christmas holidays on a fixed date, so trying to work out a different date each year for when a sub-set of your workers want time off is inconvenient.
I was referring to your initial post. As I specifically said: "I am not advocating that the US or anyone else adopt Israeli law."
You don't get to demand "I want my particular event to be publicly marked even if there are only 0.1% of the population of this faith!",
No one has "demanded" that. It has happened because it is good PR for businesses to make all their customers feel welcome (and in a mood to spend, in general and at at their establishment). Moreover, why not acknowledge the holidays of minority religions? Who does it hurt?
Gdanning
11mo ago
If Hanukkah is during Christmas, don't they get that off as part of ordinary holidays?
As you found out, Christmas does not always coincide with one of the eight days of Hanukkah. But, suppose it did? Why does that matter? You were complaining about supposed special dispensation given to Jewish people. If I happen to be born on Dec 25, would you complaint that I am getting special dispensation because I get a paid day off on my birthday, and others don't? I assume not.
And then there are the purely American secular holidays, like Thanksgiving.
Yes, and Presidents' Day, and the Fourth of July, etc. I don't understand what secular holidays have to do with anything.
So while it would be good to give other faiths days off for their holy days, it might be awkward if some of your staff were taking the first week of December off, when the official shut-down is for the third/fourth week (how long are the Christmas holidays in the USA?)
- I am not advocating that the US or anyone else adopt Israeli law. I was simply pointing out that your assumption about how minority religions are treated in Israel was incorrect
- Schools are usually closed for two weeks, but otherwise the only official holiday is Xmas day itself, and most businesses are open on the day before and the day after Xmas
Gdanning
11mo ago
That brings us back to Hanukkah, which again, is not an important Jewish holiday. This would be like if Christians in Israel started demanding if a minor random Christian holiday near Passover be given equal standing to their most important holiday
In Israel, Christians have the right to paid days off on several Christuan holy days. AFAIK, Jewish employees in the US are not entitled to paid leave on Hanukkah, nor on any other Jewish holy day.
Gdanning
11mo ago
Well, I literally copied and pasted it from your comment, so perhaps you are employing an eccentric definition of "literally."
Gdanning
11mo ago
But your initial claim was not merely that sex without a condom is better; rather it was that it was pointless: You said, "You might as well not have sex at that point." That was the claim that I was skeptical of.
Gdanning
11mo ago
I honestly don't understand this perspective. What about the rest of the meal?
If I were a woman and a guy told me that, I would be insulted.
Edit: And some of the best sex I had did not end in an orgasm, at least not for me.
Gdanning
11mo ago
The young people aren't having sex.
I want to note that the linked data is only re: "ever had sex," not "are having sex", which is not the same thing. For example, the data here says that, while 38 percent of teens have had sex, only 27 percent are currently sexually active. I know a young man who lost his virginity at 13 when he and the young woman were drunk at a party, and that was it for him for years. It might be that such opportunities are fewer these days (more helicopter parenting, other avenues of entertainment). I would like to see trends re the pct sexually active.
Gdanning
11mo ago
You might as well not have sex at that point.
I would like to suggest that perhaps you are not quite doing it correctly.
I am a bit, um, obsessed with the "sex recession": the dramatic decline in sexual activity in high school and college-aged people. Sex is perhaps the most human activity there is--the physical enactment of our Darwinian imperative, the raison d'etre of so many hormone-drenched adolescents. And yet: young people aren't having sex. Why?
As always when the data only goes back 30 years, we need to consider the possibility that the rates were just unusually high in the 90s, and have since returned to the norm (see, eg, the recent increase in suicide rates, which has simply brought us back to the rates of the mid-1980s. Which is normal, the rates of 10 years ago, or the rates of now and the mid-1980s?).
And I am sure that I can dig up anecdotes of kids at private schools committing suicide because of various pressures. The kid is overwhelmingly likely to be fine.
Edit: Not to mention easier access to hard drugs in pvt schools.
Gdanning
11mo ago
Yes, I am sure the kid would be better off in many respects. But the claim was that it was child abuse.
Gdanning
11mo ago
My unsaid thought was "that's child abuse."
If they can easily afford any of the well-regarded private schools, their kid will be fine wherever they go.
Gdanning
11mo ago
Roast pork sandwiches. And this place was good when I was there a couple of years ago.
Gdanning
11mo ago
But Nixon got punished, and vilified. Kissinger, who was a major part of the administration, skated.
Makes sense. Nixon was punished for Watergate and the subsequent coverup. I don't believe that Kissinger was implicated in Watergate at all.
Gdanning
11mo ago
I'm also starting to agree with the folks who suspect you're using ChatGPT to generate these screeds
It seems to me more like the manifestation of mental illness, sadly.
Gdanning
11mo ago
Kissinger was a Holocaust surviving Jew
Not really; his family left in 1938
a European
Again, not really. He came to the US at age 15, graduated from a public high school in NYC and then got an accounting degree from the City College of New York.
became an ardent anti-communist rather than a social-democrat
Those are not mutually exclusive categories. It describes tons of people on the left during the Cold War, including LBJ, Scoop Jackson, and the Kennedys.
Gdanning
11mo ago
"normalize" means to not be on a war footing against them, or maybe even be trading with them.
No, it means establishing diplomatic relations with them, and thereby recognizing them, not the regime in Taiwan, as the legitimate government of China.
And, it was a huge deal at the time. Kissinger and Nixon were named Time Magazine Men of the Year, and there is a reason that "Nixon to China" is a well-known figure of speech.
Gdanning
11mo ago
Rep. Dean Phillips of MN has declared. I believe that RFK Jr is now running as an independent.
Gdanning
11mo ago
Victor Davis Hanson’s The Second World Wars discusses those issues in some depth.
Gdanning
11mo ago
No, only partially compensated. If I negligently run over and kill your child, the money is not going to fully compensate you for your loss. Ditto if I render her a brain-damaged quadriplegic.
Gdanning
11mo ago
I rather doubt that there are actual AP classes which literally are nothing but rote memorizatiion. For one thing, a syllabus for such a class would be unlikely to pass the AP course audit.
Gdanning
11mo ago
took AP History, the only AP class I didn't pass the AP test for, and once again it was taught as memorization of trivia
Speaking as someone who taught AP World History for many years, that is because history is often poorly taught. It can be instead taught as a set of historical questions with no correct answers (eg, comparing slave systems), but it rarely is. It doesn't help that many teachers think that the purpose of an AP history class is to prepare students for the AP test.
In the US, most people indeed get Xmas as a paid holiday. For example, it, and all other federal holidays, is a paid holiday for federal employees, and I believe all state and local govt employees.
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