Trump seems to be doing well so far...

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lazyeye6 said:
xbacksideslider said:
The scary thing is that it IS possible for the human condition to go backward. Knowledge is fragile. Cultural error, or a change in context, can result in a reversal of progress. One example, some Polynesian groups, isolated on islands, lost the knowledge of how to build ocean going canoes. Multiculturalism's insistence that all cultures are equal, devalues those that achieve.
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The scary thing is that reactionary attitudes like this devalues the hard work and positive achievements of my nephew who was born in Mexico of multicultural parents, who earned a PhD in environmental engineering (chemical engineering/water science) from a major American university, who interned at Lawrence Livermore Laboratories, who did post doctoral research at the Sorbonne and who is the director of water quality for a major metropolitan water district in the USA.

Perhaps this poster could cite exactly which Polynesian groups, isolated on islands, lost the knowledge of how to build ocean going canoes and how this is demonstrative of multiculturalism devaluing achievement.

Unbelievable!
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Lighten up.

Multiculturalism's demand, insistence, that all cultures are equal is a stupid refusal to recognize that some cultures and idea sets are more successful than others in serving human needs. Perhaps you think that the quality of life in the USSR or the CCCP of the 1970s was superior to that in the free world? Perhaps you think that the life of American blacks under southern prejudice and bigotry was equivalent to their life in the north? Obviously not.

No, culture matters.

As for cites, here you go, several cites, which document how many Oceanic cultures lost knowledge, both of how to build transoceanic craft and of the methods of transoceanic navigation; this is not to knock Polynesia but to show how it happens to all cultures. Oceana offers illustrative case studies of the loss of cultural knowledge precisely because of the isolation that the fact of islands provides to the analysis.

http://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/scholarl ... d1-d3.html

" . . . .The Maori has forgotten the art of building the form of sea-going craft in which his ancestors reached the shores of New Zealand from the islands of the Central and Eastern Pacific. . . ."

http://www.pbs.org/wayfinders/polynesian8.html

" . . . .the reconstruction and sailing of ancient voyaging canoes becomes more than adventurous and anthropologically-fruitful excursions into the past. These projects become ways culturally-uprooted Polynesians can themselves rediscover the means by which their islands were discovered and settled, indeed their ancient cultural heritage as a uniquely oceanic people. . . . ."



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polynesian_navigation

" . . . . . Knowledge of the traditional Polynesian methods of navigation was widely lost after contact with and colonization by Europeans. . . ."
 
Australia has a problem with culture which is probably the same problem America has to some extent. The only basis upon which Australia can compete globally and still justify our overheads - educated workforce and high salaries, is on the basis of QUALITY. We have the wrong mindset and most of us buy on price rather than quality. I don't think we should all become Japanese, but they always seem to 'do it right first time'. If we don't get our industrial situation right, we must all become losers.
 
xbacksideslider said:
lazyeye6 said:
xbacksideslider said:
The scary thing is that it IS possible for the human condition to go backward. Knowledge is fragile. Cultural error, or a change in context, can result in a reversal of progress. One example, some Polynesian groups, isolated on islands, lost the knowledge of how to build ocean going canoes. Multiculturalism's insistence that all cultures are equal, devalues those that achieve.
Click to expand...

The scary thing is that reactionary attitudes like this devalues the hard work and positive achievements of my nephew who was born in Mexico of multicultural parents, who earned a PhD in environmental engineering (chemical engineering/water science) from a major American university, who interned at Lawrence Livermore Laboratories, who did post doctoral research at the Sorbonne and who is the director of water quality for a major metropolitan water district in the USA.

Perhaps this poster could cite exactly which Polynesian groups, isolated on islands, lost the knowledge of how to build ocean going canoes and how this is demonstrative of multiculturalism devaluing achievement.

Unbelievable!
Click to expand...


Lighten up.

Multiculturalism's demand, insistence, that all cultures are equal is a stupid refusal to recognize that some cultures and idea sets are more successful than others in serving human needs. Perhaps you think that the quality of life in the USSR or the CCCP of the 1970s was superior to that in the free world? Perhaps you think that the life of American blacks under southern prejudice and bigotry was equivalent to their life in the north? Obviously not.

No, culture matters.
"
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Fair enough. And to quote the preeminent cultural anthropologist of the 20th century, "If we are to achieve a richer culture, rich in contrasting values, we must recognize the whole gamut of human potentialities, and so weave a less arbitrary social fabric, one in which each diverse human gift will find a fitting place.
 
With the right kind of progressive leader, it is possible to change the culture. The problem is that we are all very conditioned, so 'as it was, so it shall ever be' is the normal mindset. The only cultures which have changed dramatically in modern times, have been those which have been almost bombed into extinction - Japan and Germany - now world leaders, thanks to the Marshall Plan and American know-how.
 
Ahhh, yes, that's a quote from the greatest punk of the 20th century - Margaret Mead.
Free love in Samoa. Just what the "hung up" prudish conservative values of the West needed.
Made her career. Instant professor. Instant celebrity.

But . . . she, the queen of 20th C anthropology, fooled by her own arrogance, her own wishes, and the sexy stories of the adolescent Samoan girls she wanted to believe, and who she thought her lessers. Punked.

http://scribalterror.blogs.com/scribal_ ... samoa.html

And . . . . academia naturally loved it - free love in Samoa - they ate it up . . . for 50 years . . . . until Derek Freeman discovered the punking.

Of course, there followed decades of politicized counterattacks on Freeman.
Lots of PC . . . . . "I haven't read Freeman's book but I KNOW he's wrong." Typical.
It continues, in anthropology classes today, professors refuse to assign Freeman's book.
Better that their students hear no evil, see no evil, smell no evil.
That's science for ya. Politicized science.

Here's an interesting, and even handed, history of the affair -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOCYhmnx6o8
 
If you read about Captain Cook's voyages to the Pacific, one of the reasons sailors wanted to go with him was they would visit Tahiti, where most of the natives had the clap.
 
acotrel said:
If you read about Captain Cook's voyages to the Pacific, one of the reasons sailors wanted to go with him was they would visit Tahiti, where most of the natives had the clap.
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I wonder where the natives got it from in the first place :?: :shock:
 
Camels in Tahiti, that’s a new one on me, seriously have you seen any Arabs with his 100 camels and 20 wives on this island lately :?:
 
Camels are where they claim the Romans originally caught the clap. They took it to England and the Poms took it to Tahiti. Love conquers all ?
 
Question; of which Kingdom was Tahiti part of until its annexation in 1880 :?:
A ; the French, I’ll say no more

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tahiti

BTY, if the Poms gave Tahiti the clap, how come you Aussies haven’t been complaining when we shipped loads of people down under through the ages :?:
 
I recently read a book about Captain Cook's voyages to the Pacific. He ended up as mad as a hatter. He thought he could give the Hawaiians a hard time and they cut him up into little pieces. On his last trip, he had Captain Bligh with him. When Bligh later went to Tahiti with the Bounty his crew went sex-mad and mutinied to get back there. I don't think there was any more clap amongst our convicts than there was in the English population in London. Bligh ended up as Governor of Australia until the conservatives undermined him. He was not all bad.
 
Not the full story there appears to be a large chunk missing from your version of the Bounty’s history lesson, Blight might not have been a bad man when he had mellowed in his old age, but read the following;

Bounty had left England in 1787 on a mission to collect and transport breadfruit plants from Tahiti in the West Indies. After A five-month layover in Tahiti, the Bounty made its way back loaded with breadfruits of which there was not enough water carried on broad to water the plants, the captain Blight, in his infinite wisdom, rationed the amount of daily water the crew could drink which finally sparked a mutiny amongst some of the crew- a sure fire death sentence if they were caught and court martialled, so the rest is history…..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutiny_on_the_Bounty
 
Bernhard said:
Not the full story there appears to be a large chunk missing from your version of the Bounty’s history lesson, Blight might not have been a bad man when he had mellowed in his old age, but read the following;

Bounty had left England in 1787 on a mission to collect and transport breadfruit plants from Tahiti in the West Indies. After A five-month layover in Tahiti, the Bounty made its way back loaded with breadfruits of which there was not enough water carried on broad to water the plants, the captain Blight, in his infinite wisdom, rationed the amount of daily water the crew could drink which finally sparked a mutiny amongst some of the crew- a sure fire death sentence if they were caught and court martialled, so the rest is history…..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutiny_on_the_Bounty
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Crew were probably of less £ value than cargo!

The 'good old days' weren't necessarily good for everyone I guess...
 
It depends on who is telling the story. The conservatives have one version which was used to justify the actions of Captain John Macarthur in fomenting the Rum Rebellion. The left have another version.
In the good old days - ten days out of port and it was rum, sodomy and the lash and they were eating weevils.
 
Eddie, I think that many people such as yourself, don't have an appreciation of the Australian mentality. The convicts made us what we are. One thing we don't teach our kids about in school, is the Rum Rebellion, because part of the mindset involved still exists to this day. When Bligh was governor he had responsibility for running the NSW colony and had responsibility for doing public works using convict labour. The currency used to pay the convicts was rum. Macarthur was a free settler who had come out of regiment which was used to guard the convicts. He had his own still, so effectively printed his own money and used convicts to work on his property. Bligh confiscated the still, so Macarthur fomented a rebellion by impugning Bligh's character and ultimately arresting him. The Brits then sent Lachlan MacQuarie to restore order. Macarthur then went to London and approached the Privy Council to square-off. The Brits were not stupid, they had seen all the scams, so they sent him on his way. The descendants of the two groups - redcoats and convicts are still in Sydney to this day in the form of cops and criminals.
 
Danno said:
Trump will never resign. He can't admit the least little mistake, much less his biggest one- thinking he was qualified to run the country on the experience of being a big-time real estate crook.

It's the dumbed-down government-of-no-government that started with Ronny Rayguns and we had all hoped peaked with W. But never say never. To assume we couldn't elect anyone dumber than Bush II was a gross underestimation. Plus, this guy has diarrhea of the mouth AND constipation of the mind. At least W had the good sense to consult his handlers before he started shooting his mouth off.
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As an outsider , I was confident you guys could not elect anyone dumber than Dubya, boy was I wrong.

I was also confident you couldn't possibly fall for the BS coming out of Trumps pie hole, wrong again.

Apparently , sadly, I've been giving you guys to much credit for common sense.
 
johnod said:
Danno said:
Trump will never resign. He can't admit the least little mistake, much less his biggest one- thinking he was qualified to run the country on the experience of being a big-time real estate crook.

It's the dumbed-down government-of-no-government that started with Ronny Rayguns and we had all hoped peaked with W. But never say never. To assume we couldn't elect anyone dumber than Bush II was a gross underestimation. Plus, this guy has diarrhea of the mouth AND constipation of the mind. At least W had the good sense to consult his handlers before he started shooting his mouth off.
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As an outsider , I was confident you guys could not elect anyone dumber than Dubya, boy was I wrong.

I was also confident you couldn't possibly fall for the BS coming out of Trumps pie hole, wrong again.

Apparently , sadly, I've been giving you guys to much credit for common sense.
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His backers were smart enough to play the Electoral College "losers win" game and Hillary stepped on one toe after another, but there is much truth to what you say.
 
Trump is the President the Americans had to have. He is the natural extension of 'the cult of the individual'. However what follows will be very interesting - the reaction to Trump's idiocy. He is also good for Australia. We have elected some real ratbags from time to time.
 
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