Kevin Beal

I think it's totally awesome you've committed to peaceful parenting and that you are doing the homeschool thing. How's it working out so far? Welcome to the boards

You can't tell people that everything is mere opinion and then tell them that their opinion is wrong. It's completely insane. Having a debate where you can propose rules you violate at will is the very meaning of: "It isn't a very constructive discussion", "it is rather pointless to argue", etc If you can't acknowledge something so basic as following the rules you put forward for other people, then please don't engage people in debate anymore. All that's going to happen is it's going to go in pointless circles, nobody's going to learn anything about the topic and it's going to make people resentful. You need to learn the basics of making arguments, propose an explicit standard by which you determine that statements are true or false and then make a case. Here's an introduction to philosophy that will help you have productive debates.

Utopic as compared to a system that is inherently violent, thieving and sadistic. It's not like we're comparing different DRO approaches to violent crime. The current approach is a clearly evil system that does everything in it's power to prevent justice. I would hope that a peaceful alternative was utopic by comparison.

FDR#2 Caging the Devils: The Stateless Society and Violent Crime This is, I think, a great introduction to alternatives to the police.

This topic is off limits as per the guidelines of the forums: http://board.freedomainradio.com/index.php?app=forums&module=extras&section=boardrules Here is a link to all the videos Stef has made about the topic:http://www.youtube.com/user/stefbot/search?query=determinism

Haha, yes, definitely. I have myself an FDR (freedomain radio) shirt right now that got attacked by some moths apparently. Probably statist moths at that I'll be getting myself a new one at some point. Also, here's a cool Kickstarter that might interest you: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/595168866/wear-your-heart-on-your-sleeve-t-shirts-for-philos

I just got myself an Anarchy Saves Lives shirt. Love the design!

If memory serves me, it is only for government jobs or if your parents own the business. It is totally ridiculous. But at least I got to start working at an earlier age. That helped me a lot to get jobs later. Another idea that I had having watched the careers of many Googlers, is that it can be good to find a company you like a lot and do work for them for free or do work that benefits people in general. For example some of the better known Googlers come from the open source community and put in lots of time working on projects they never got paid for (except thru donations). Kevin Rose (another Googler) has a show he does where he interviews successful entrepreneurs in the tech field (which is great just btw) and someone redesigned his website for him for free and he got mentioned on the show, and I'm sure he got work out of that since he did such an awesome job, and worked for people with similar values too I'm sure. It sounds like you are very proactive like that already having your own online store and taking part in competitions. It's just crazy that someone like you would be pushed out of the workforce. We live in some very strange times.

The recording of the presentation was awesome! I love the uncompromising model of masculinity he's presenting. It also helps the way you (Phil) make the distinction there about violating the NAP and what he's actually saying. I also grew up feeling ashamed and was told that male virtue is in being more "feminine". More recently those sentiments are met by me with resentment or acute sickness. It's actually quite a malevolent thing, I think. It's hard to find voices on masculinity that I can take seriously. Almost everyone it seems has castrating ideas about what it means to be a man, castrated by becoming some sort of manly woman, or through suppression and denial. So in that light, I really appreciate the metaphor you made about the rogue protector. It resonates a lot for me. I've added the book to my Amazon cart. I look forward to reading it. Thanks for posting!

Hi Melissa I checked out your t-shirts and they are totally awesome. And congratulations on the contest wins! I know what you mean about the child labor laws. It's totally absurd. Ironically, it's legal to work from age 13 in Arizona (where I'm from) if you work for the government, and I don't know if they had the same number of hours restriction, I don't think so. (My first job was working for local government). It's insanely hypocritical, but there you have it. I don't have any advice really, but I think that if an employer can get past the "minor" thing, then you are in an awesome position to get an entry level position since you are so self directed and ambitious. And the right kind of employer, I think, will try and figure something out even if there is that (government introduced) liability. I think it's a great idea posting this on the FDR forums too since it seems ideal to work with/for other liberty folk. Good luck!

There's actually an FDR meetup group in Philly: http://www.meetup.com/Freedomain-Radio/Philadelphia-PA/

I think it's an awesome idea. I would totally be willing to contribute to this endeavor. It wouldn't have to be a lot of effort. There wouldn't have to be an upload for each one. You could create a database (which likely already exists) of all the podcasts and create an ajax fed feed of the podcasts broken down by whatever criteria (volume, search term, tag etc) and play the podcasts like a playlist. Each podcast can have as much or as little data as you want attached with a comment thread, ratings, tags etc. I've already got a spider written in PHP that harvests all the podcast data from feedburner into Mysql (or MongoDB), and I also have JS code to play audio files when you supply it an mp3 file path. I've also got a (nearly) working example on my website. The spider does assume a Codeigniter backend or the latest MongoDB driver, but that can be changed. Also I've heard of other people on the board who've thrown together similar databases. I think most of the work is: - figuring out how to setup a Cron job (I don't know servers...) to automatically grab new podcasts - creating an interface that jives with this board system (is responsive) - and wiring up the ajax calls in a way that uses authentication so that it isn't abused by third parties. (not necessary but useful)

Here's Mike explaining the Sunday/Wednesday Shows protocol: http://board.freedomainradio.com/topic/36509-call-in-show-information-wednesdays-at-8pmsundays-10am-eastern/ From the post:

I believe that if you talk to Mike (MMD on the boards), he'll get your skype handle and add you to the call with you on mute until you ask your question. If you go into the chat room during/before a show, the people there will be more than happy to point you in the right direction. I called in a couple years ago, and I'm assuming it's basically the same protocol now.

I'm just curious what hurdles you ran into. I've got a decent amount of experience with this so I might be able to contribute something. Who knows, you could maybe start a git repo and get a decent number of contributors. There are an oddly high number of technically savvy people on the FDR boards. Just an idea.

Sure, it can be taught. The concept of psychoanalysis focuses on the relationship of the analyst and the client. The analyst models healthy ways of relating to ourselves and us as clients learn new tools to practice relating to ourselves. What would it mean to learn except through relationship? A math teacher doesn't type an equation into our brains and have us regurgitate the answer. Principles are put forward and the application of those principles is demonstrated. The same is true for self knowledge. There are things unique to each and every person, but not everything. Those things we have in common are important and a huge part of self knowledge, but even the things that are unique to ourselves can be taught to us. I had this insecurity that my shoulders weren't broad enough, and then someone told me they thought I had great shoulders and that my insecurity was not because I had bad shoulders. I'm not sure how you can reasonably distinguish learning the tools involved in self knowledge from self knowledge itself. You can't learn conclusions, to learn is to learn tools/principles.

But it's not for the benefit of feminists, a response would be for people who are on the fence or just learning about the "debate". It certainly would be crazy to expect to change their minds, but like Stef's response to John Stewart's 19 tough questions for libertarians isn't actually to convince John Stewart. I do have some criticisms of the article though. Just some thoughts, nothing too rigorous. In the part of the article where the author points to three major problems with Men's Rights arguments concerning the family court being biased toward women, she summarizes them as: 1. They Draw Incomplete Conclusions from the Divorce Statistics 2. They Demonize Women 3. They Value Fathers’ Rights over Children’s Rights In the first response she simply states that it's biased against men, but only because of patriarchy since it's a "patriarchal" notion that men are not meant to be caregivers. She does not explain how the voluminous articles on the courts bias against men draw "incomplete" conclusions, nor does she explain how her explanation is more complete. All she does is say that because the courts favor women, it's because of patriarchy. If they had not favored women, I can imagine the explanation would be *drum roll please* patriarchy! There is no null hypothesis, it's simply always patriarchy. In the second "counter argument" she claims that Men's Rights advocates who talk about the courts bias against men are demonizing women. She does this immediately after accusing her opposition of drawing incomplete conclusions based on limited information. Obviously there are some people who blame women for it all, but that's not the position of the fathersrights.com organizations she links or any other men's rights organization that I'm aware of. She is guilty of exactly what she blames men's rights advocates of. Further she misrepresents fathers rights advocates when she says: Then she cites a Huffington Post article that draws the same conclusion she does. It does actually make a case I can't dismiss entirely, but it's clearly guilty of "drawing incomplete conclusions from the divorce statistics" as it is only a few paragraphs long, cites only one source and it's conclusion isn't necessarily justified from the argument she makes and stats she presents. As for "counter argument" number 3, she simply asserts that men care more about themselves than their children when they are fighting for fathers rights to be in their children's lives. There is no argument made here, just some pretty gross malevolence for father's rights advocates. That is except for something implicit linked earlier in the article that states that men spend less time with their children on average even though both parents work, so they must only care now that it's affecting them negatively. She states this almost explicitly in this section. She also mentions that some fathers rights groups advocate reducing child support payments, and without reference to any reasons these groups would be for that concludes that this is anti-child and anti-woman. From that point on she goes into gender roles and how men are to blame for not being in their kids lives enough, and it's not like that's entirely untrue, but the point of the article is clear. She's blaming men for the way the family courts are biased against men. Mostly she does this by making men out to be selfish and not caring about their own children. The only piece of evidence or reasoning she provides is implicit in the average time fathers vs mothers spend with children. I have my own bias if that wasn't completely obvious, lol, but that's what I have to say about the article. If I've got something completely wrong, please let me know. I know that a lot of men (including my own father) gave up as soon as the mother says she's keeping the children because men know that the odds are stacked against them. Not that I would have chose living with my father over my mother necessarily, but still. Speaking personally, I didn't receive much child support until I was old enough that I was moving out. I never had new clothes, and I often went without food in the early years, so the child support money that did come in went toward rent and paying off my mother's debts. The back child support just went to my mom who had no children still living with her, for a few years until my father took her to court over it. I wouldn't defend either of them, and I imagine that a lot of people's experiences are like mine, and that maybe sometimes there is an unfair bias toward the women. That they must care about the children since they live with her, and the father must be some kind of deadbeat because they don't live with him. I don't know how these kinds of situations should be solved, I just think it would be great if there wasn't so much propaganda around the issue.

Stef talks about the false dichotomy presented here in that same video. It's not shaming nakedness vs nudism, there are more than the two options.

I only really listen to FDR. What other channels/podcasts/shows you would have on this hypothetical TV station? I never really got into AvtM. I liked listening to the Love Police for a while. There was (is?) Porc Therapy which was kind of cool. Free Talk Live has some decent stuff. I've watched everything Jeff Tucker has on YouTube. Other than that, I'm not really aware of what else is out there along this vein. One suggestion I have is that if you have a list of shows you'd love to share and have all in the same place, you could mirror those videos or set a backdrop to the audio and create a YouTube channel made up of that. There are some relatively successful channels that do that already but not really of these kinds of channels (more economics than the stuff on FDR or AvtM). You could break things down into smaller chunks like a single sunday show call or a really good Stef rant or something like that. You could do that without having to buy any software and while editing can take time, at least you aren't having to come up with all this material yourself and present it. People watch Youtube more than they watch TV nowadays. The monopoly you speak of is quickly disappearing.

Your link doesn't work. It seems to be a private book or something. It shows a strange error with yellow highlighted sections in the background, but no text Also, if you liked my post you could upvote it

The corpus callosum shrinks with neglect and abuse compounding the problem. So right handed boys who are abused/neglected have the smallest corpus callosums and take the longest to recover from abuse. The Psychohistory podcast stef narrates on the Origins of Male Violence goes into some detail about this.

Slightly off topic, but left handed boys have larger Corpus Callosums so that (like girls) they can recover from trauma more quickly. I know a guy who is left handed but forced himself to write with his right hand when he was a kid so that he's essentially ambidextrous. I don't know what kind of effect it had tho...

Lol. Thanks Mike It feels good to help out.

Works in Chrome too! Very cool

To not have it download right away you can change the jPlayer initializer "preload" property to "none". like so: (function($){ $.fn.playerInit = function(podcastURL) { this.jPlayer({ ready : function(event) { $(this).jPlayer('setMedia', { mp3: podcastURL }); }, preload : "none", // RIGHT HERE <---- swfPath : 'http://www.jplayer.org/latest/js/Jplayer.swf', supplied : 'mp3', solution : 'flash, html', cssSelectorAncestor : '.jp-audio-container' }); }})(jQuery); In the documentation they do warn though that: "Preload is a hint to the user agent, not a command. Some browsers ignore this option." I think generally it works fine and am not aware of what the exception to this rule is.