Panoptic

I'm a senior engineering undergrad. There have been a bunch of times where I felt like dropping out over the past 3 years. I couldn't stand the methods by which they teach. I mean seriously, taking differential equations in a classroom of 300 people? They don't care about you at all, the money goes to new additions to the football stadium, new dormatories for honor students that are full of 3D TVs and useless crap, new everything except quality of the education and roads. I ride my bike to school looking up at all of these beautiful new buildings while having my back broken by every pothole I run over just to go to class to get grad students as teachers. The roads are falling apart, there are no priorites (not saying that government should do roads, but you get it). Dropping out would have been a good option for me, except by the time I decided I wanted to drop out I was already $60,000 in debt. It wasn't logical to drop out since I was already enslaved. The only option was to get more debt and finish so that I could get a good paying job that would allow me to pay it off. So I'm essentially being forced to stay in college and graduate. My point is that the biggest issues to think about when it comes to college are funding, and time. If you're going to be pulling out federal loans for your whole time to pay off school, don't do it unless you are becoming a scientist, engineer, lawer, or doctor. Even then, time is a huge issue. School is absolutely merciless when it comes to time. It fills me with apathy and stunts my free thought. You go to class for a few hours a day only to go home and do homework all night, never feeling fully confident for the test you studied for. Is this what education is supposed to be? I feel like I have been stabbed in the back by society. I've stumbled through 3 years of math and physics, only to realize that I understand none of it that well when it comes time to use it in upper division courses. I could have not gone to college, got a job, and studied math in my free time at my own pace and learned much more, and would have been making money, not making debt. Of course, some companies require a degree, but who the hell cares if you start your own? Its far more fun anyway. Just like Stefan says in these videos: (Jump to call at 4:05) My reply is a bit unorganized, but feel free to ask more questions or you can PM me too if you'd like to talk.

I saw this video and thought it should go here. It is very interesting. It talks about how we learn facial expressions to survive in our specific culture. I wonder what effect this has if any on our internal emotions. I have to say, jump to 23:42 if you want to see the very creepy, good stuff. Its called "microexpressions". Tell me what you think! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m72bqvf_qDg I also wanted to add this short video about it. If you don't have time to watch the long one, this one is good too. He says how people can learn to spot microexpressions on the internet and it only takes about an hour to teach someone how to do it.

This is something to think about^ I've always accepted the "get to know first" way, where you become friends with them first before you take it further. But then, for the people I've known to do this, they get to the point where they have established a friendship with them and want to advance the relationship, then they come to me and say I don't know what to do, I don't want to "ruin" the friendship. Of course, if the relationship advances and is good, you would still be good friends (or else it would be horrible), and if you try and it doesn't work, and it ruins the friendship, maybe you don't want to be friends with them (assuming you did the correct things).

I must say Wesley, you stole my idea for this thread! I like that we put lyrics and meanings though. I'm posting an entire album but only quoting a few songs. Zero-Sum AlbumNine Inch Nails http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOv8fAQ5tOk Here is the plot of the album from Wikipedia: The band also created an alternate reality game for this album, which you can learn more about by clicking on the links from Wikipedia in the quote above this. Here are the songs in the album that I like the most (the times for all of the songs in the YouTube video are linked in the description of the video). "HYPERPOWER!" (intro, no lyrics)The term hyperpower is currently used to describe the United States because the U.S. is currently considered the world's only superpower, and it dominates the world in all spheres of influence (militarily, economically, culturally, etc.)The song speaks for itself "The Beginning of the End" - pretty much about the failure of U.S. imperialismLyrics:We think we've climbed so highUp all the backs we've condemnedWe face no consequenceThis is the beginning of the end...We think we've come so farOn all our lies we dependWe see no consequenceThis is the beginning of the end "Survivalism" - about the brainwashing of U.S. society through propaganda, and how nobody notices until its too lateLyrics:I got my propagandaI got revisionismI got my violenceIn hi-def ultra-realismAll a part of this great nationI got my fistI got my planI got survivalism "Zero-Sum" - about how humanity continues to do wrong, and deep-down knows what its doing, but chooses not to do the right thing, and when the world ends, they only now fully realize it (the singer believes in god and describes the end of the world like that, but he is not religious in a sense of "practicing" a religion)Lyrics:And we knew betterIn our hearts, we knew betterAnd we told ourselves it didn't matterAnd we chose to continueAnd none of that matters anymoreIn the hour of our twilightAnd soon it will be all said and doneAnd we will all be back together as oneIf we will continue at all I have to say, this album was depressing for me. But I know what will make you happy. The singer told all of his fans to steal his music because the label he was with was selling them at too high of a price. He called them out on it and they were pissed so he left and is now trying to produce his own music without labels anymore.

Thanks for the new replies. I haven't been on here in the past few days so I'll give my situation update before I respond. I talked to my parents about my situation. Although my parents are relatively manipulative, my mother actually gave me a good suggestion. She told me to go to my advisor and see if I can switch to another major that I would enjoy more and not have to start all over again. Of course, finishing college after you're already 3 years in is probably the only good option (if you can find the motivation to do it). So I ended up switching to systems engineering. I figure I'd try something new while I'm here (systems engineering is considered to be "easy" compared to the other engr majors, so it was one of the engr majors I was able to switch into with my current GPA). It seems pretty interesting so far. Let me reply to the last two comments. In the past few days I have drastically switched my mentality. Graduation is my most practical option because finishing will allow me to get a job that will pay well and keep me afloat. In terms of what I want to do though, that question is still up for grabs. It seems that most people agree that finding out what you want to do in life (as a career) is a continuous process where you keep trying new things (they say you don't know until you try it right?). Also, in this economy, a college degree is the new high school degree. I think attitude and motivation play a large part in all of this. Its difficult to force yourself through college even when you really want the end result. I'm trying to keep imagining myself graduating with a degree and getting a nicely paying job even though I have no idea what will happen. It helps with motivation. Attitude is important as well. I think you need to enjoy your life day-by-day and stop worrying so much about the future. I'm trying to stop that too. When you worry about the future you don't get anything done and end up regretting the past, then you feel like time has gone by so quickly. If you enjoy every day of your life time seems to go by much slower and is more enjoyable. All of this is still controversial to me though. The question is, should we subject ourselves to this system in order to get results like everyone else or should we set ourselves apart? If I want to be an engineer but the only way to do that is to put myself through this miserable system called college, what should I do? I think many people face this question. I have thought about self-education before, and I was actually thinking about making a topic on it later. If anybody wants to keep talking to me you can PM me and we can chat.

This is a question I have been wondering myself. I personally don't think the animal can love back. I think that the animal may have attachment to you since you provide it with food and shelter, but there is no "love", since love is a response to virtue. Animals are not virtuous (at least in the way that humans are) because they are not concerned with other beings other than for reproduction (they seem to care for protecting their own, but it is for the advancement of their genes). It is very interesting though, because some animals are more intelligent than others. And although I don't think any animals on this planet love, I wonder what it would be like if other homo species still existed and were still primitive compared to us. They obviously were far far more intelligent than other things around them, but its hard to tell where love begins to exist.

I had some more time to think. Its amazing how much self knowledge you can gain so quickly if you are just honest with yourself. There's so many questions you guys brought up for me to think about, why I feel so apathetic, if I even want to be in this field, how should I define success for myself. I thought about why I wanted to do engineering in the first place, because it had a lot of science and math, and I wanted to be intelligent. Eventually I had to choose a field within engr, and so I talked to my dad. He was heavily biased towards EE because he works in the power generation industry. He even took me to his work and set up meetings with some of the managers there where they all "talked" to me about doing EE (more like convinced me). They all said the same thing, EE pays well, you'll always have a job, and the field will need more people in the coming years. My decision then was based on this. I wanted to be successful, intelligent, and to make my parents proud. I now know that how my parents feel is irrelevant. So then I thought about why I wanted success and intelligence. I think I really just wanted to impress other people. I'm not 100% sure why I wanted that, but I think its related to my procrastination. I read that article on procrastination that masonman provided. It generally comes from others placing expectations on you and you feeling bad about yourself if you can't meet these. My parents never expected me or forced me to do anything until college. It wasn't until high school ended where I realized that I had done nothing successful in high school and felt guilty. I think that original sense of guilt came from societal expectations that I did not meet. I then put high expectations on myself to do better in college. These expectations where so high that I wasn't able to change my life that quickly and failed to meet them, which in turn caused me to heavily attack myself at the end of the year. It got worse every year since. All I know is, the reasons I wanted to do EE did not include "its something that would be fun", because I still don't know what EEs really do. I'm sure this is what causes my apathy for school deep down, because I don't really understand what they do. I actually "tried" to take a break from school when I first burned out but my parents found it unacceptable. I explained that I felt horrible that they pay for me to go to school and I just ended up failing, and that I would like to take a break. Their response was strange; they kept asking me why I would want to drop out, even though I said nothing about dropping out. I told them I would surely come back later, and they reminded me of how my cousin dropped out of college because he was getting bad grades. They said I would never come back if I give up now. So I kept going. This was their first warning of my performance, they continued to get more warnings as I attempted recovery and failed, but they seem so ignorant about my situation. I think it is a very good idea to take a break though. I have looked this up before and so many people take breaks when they fail, come back and succeed in school. I would love to take a break, 3 years of doing something you're not sure of is pretty tough. I think that would be my best option. I just have to figure out how to deal with my parents reaction because they won't accept it. I may just turn around and drop all the classes I'm in if they don't accept. Anyway, no decision yet but the semester has already started so I must overcome my indecision. For the workout suggestion, I thought that was extremely interesting. I have been working out on and off for the past 4 years. The last time I was really consistent with it though for more than a few months was 3 years ago. I just got back into the gym 2 weeks ago, so I will keep that in mind for motivation.

Thank you for the extensive answer, I really appreciate it. I'm beginning to make some connections that I could not figure out before. Here is what I think, I still have a lot to think about though. My response is long. I don't expect you to read all of it, but just writing it out helped me a lot which is what's important. I think its important to be alone sometimes but I couldn't imagine going my whole life with nobody to talk to and be friends with. I had "friends" in high school, more like buddies. I think a friend is more than that. But I still don't know what a friend should be. It seems like I go through most of the semester alone, tending to stay away from people and being fine with it, but every now and then these depressing and lonely feelings arise and I feel as if I've missed out on so much. I question whether or not I can ever find a woman to love and marry if I don't even know what its like to have real friends. But that's a topic I was going to write for another thread soon probably. I think I get what you're saying though. Living my life in solitude allows me to think far more clearly and I have more time to think about my own issues and life. No distractions. My parents have always tended to tell me not to worry about things. I can't remember a single time where I had a real, engaged conversation with them about any issue. Our family relationship has always been extremely shallow. My parents moved away from my extended family before I was born so I have no relationship with any of my extended family at all (although I see some of them sometimes). There is no communication in the family other than letting each other know what we are doing. Its cooperative; we simply do what needs to get done and nothing more. No real personal communication at all. I feel quite empty inside, a lot of the time I have no emotion to anything happening around me. That has begun to change though, very slowly. I think the mention of procrastination is actually quite true. This is how I see my problem after more thought. I really do want to become an engineer but my parents also happen to want me to do so. I decided that I wanted to go to college, which they also wanted me to do. Then I decided to become an engineer and they were very happy about that (thus they wanted me to do it). So since I have procrastination problems, whenever I screw something up my parents get upset with me and I begin to see it as a flaw in myself. This causes me to procrastinate even more. This cycle begins to rip apart my original ambition to become an engineer since it now seems like other people want me to do it. I then begin to question if I even wanted it in the first place. I start to believe that I didn’t, even though I did. I then begin to consider other things to do, almost as an act of passive resistance to my parents. I tell myself that I would much rather do something else like joining the military, changing majors, and now becoming an electrician. Although these things truly seemed fun to me at the time, my original ambition was being an engineer. At the same time, I begin to wonder why I even wanted to become an engineer in the first place. What were my motives behind it deep down? Something for me to think about... My issue consists of two parts, an internal part and a practical part. The internal part is about gaining self-knowledge, but the practical part involves what I should actually do with my situation. Gaining self-knowledge is obviously important, but it won’t change the fact that I am in a desperate situation with my grades. My procrastination problems have led up to this, and now it seems like it’s too late to fix my current situation. In other words, even if I do finally understand my reasons for wanting to become an engineer, and decide that I really do want to do it, it won’t matter anyway if I drop out. So what should I do? If I say becoming an astronaut is my dream, but I have no legs, then what is the point? I feel like dreams and ambitions are overrated. If you live your life by your values on a day-to-day basis and are happy doing so, does it really matter what I am doing? In fact, I think that is the only way to live your life. Living up to dreams and ambitions seems like nonsense for some reason. Nothing turns out the way you expect anyway. So why am I even worried about my career? Maybe it IS all just other peoples’ expectations that I’m worried about. You're right, I need to become independent. Sorry, I'm confused about what you are saying here. Could you explain more? I have thought about it before, but I feel more accomplished figuring these things out on my own. Its more fun that way too!

Hey guys. I guess I’m looking for some advice. I can’t figure out if I’m doing something wrong or if I’m headed down an inevitable path that may be for the better. Either way, if I do end up dropping out I’m not 100% sure what I’ll do. I’m not looking for sympathy either. I’m seriously trying to figure out how to fix my issues. I’ll start off with my super shortened story (lol, it ended up being long). I’m in my 4th year of college as an electrical engineering student. If I continue it’ll take me another 1.5 years to graduate (after finishing this 4th year). I have no friends, not even a single person to talk to about life. I am 100% dependent on my parents. I’ve never received a scholarship; my parents have already taken out $60,000 in loans which I’ll end up having to pay (if I choose to finish it’ll be around $80,000). Of course, as an electrical engineer, even that much debt shouldn’t be the end of the world, but my problem is a bit bigger than that. The reason I’m so far behind is because in my 5th semester of college I got totally burnt out. I got sick of the endless routine, get up, go to school, sit in class, study my ass off, then do horrible on the tests anyway, for 2 years straight. No engagement, no fun, no friends, and no real experience. My GPA after my second year was an acceptable 3.1, then for that semester I got a 0.8 GPA after failing 2 classes for the first time in my life, and getting a D and a C. Since then, I’ve tried and failed at attempting to raise my GPA back up. It wasn’t high enough to continue into my upper level courses, so the college is currently stopping me from advancing until I get my GPA up. I currently have to retake one class and take two other math classes that I would not have had to take if I was able to continue. Unfortunately, the class I have to retake is the one I failed because I forgot all of the basics from the prerequisite class and now I’m retaking it another year later where I remember even less. This is probably my last chance before they dismiss me from the college. My problem is that I can’t find the motivation any more. Even though my future is in the balance I just don’t care about school. It seems like after I burnt out, my motivation left for good. I feel apathetic towards it. I mean, I’m not apathetic about my future, but about school. Sometimes I imagine how cool it would be to just live my life 100% independent, even if it’s in a crappy apartment with a job that maybe doesn’t pay too well but is at least stable. I want to be free from this. I want to figure out everything for myself. I am 100% aware of the state of our education system in the U.S. After looking up some articles on the matter, about 60% of students that start off in S.T.E.M. majors either change majors or drop out of school, simply because they are “bored”. I know how that feels. Of course, there’s always more to the story. I try to talk to my parents about my worries, but they are always in denial that I am in trouble. They tell me everything is fine and that it will always work out in the end. I tell them my backup plans and they tell me to stop worrying about that. It’s strange now that I think about it. I’ve always been brought up with them telling me that they have everything taken care of, everything is fine, and I get some sort of guilt when they don’t approve of something I want to do. When they do approve, I get ecstatic, like I finally have a chance to do what I choose. But that is rare. I have a backup plan to become an electrician, but I am afraid to talk to them about it. They’ll start saying that they thought I wanted to be an electrical engineer and how I’m throwing it all away. I do want to become an engineer, but my situation is bleak. They don’t seem to understand. I would love to become an electrician though. It is far more hands on and it seems pretty damn fun. But even I am afraid to implement the backup plan. I’ve never had much responsibility in my life so I’m afraid of how difficult it will be, especially when I have so much debt to worry about and knowing that my pay won’t be anywhere near what it could have been if I became an engineer. I will also consider myself a failure. I’ve never completed anything in my life (high school doesn’t count for anything). I even realized this back when I was graduating high school. I remember sitting in my chair that night at the ceremony listing to the speaker and thinking how I wasted the past 4 years of my life doing nothing. I didn’t even want to be there, completing high school means nothing. I wanted to change it when I got to college, get good grades, become successful in clubs, have a bunch of close friends, and I was so determined to do so, but the past was here to stay. What do you all think? Am I doing something wrong? Should I be worried? Sorry if the topic seems confused, because I am confused. I’m just stressed out and am having trouble figuring out what’s going on internally. I’m not sure what to think. It seems like my parents aren't helping me at all, but I don't want to just blame everything on them. I had the chance to figure out what I wanted to do before high school ended, but I never took the time to do so.

I go to the gym 4-5 days a week. But I'm in college so the gym is "free" so of course I use it. Once I'm done in school though and get my own place I'm going to start building up my own home gym. If you have enough room to make a home gym, I would start building one up. If you have an adjustable bench, a bunch of dumbbells (or a set of those awesome dumbbell handles where you screw on the weights, and its far cheaper), a pullup bar, and a good amount of open space, you can workout your entire body. Dumbbells are actually considered the best way to weightlift (apart from using machines). You have a greater range of motion, it requires you to use more stabilizing muscles, and it can ALL be done without any spotter. You don't even have to train to failure to get bigger. Of course a home gym won't build itself instantly so you may want to get a gym membership at first. One VERY important thing. Don't think of working out as a chore. You'll never get the results you want. Think of it as something to do to relieve stress. I actually find it more fun if I go when my life is really busy, because its a set amount of time for me to relieve stress. Whatever you end up doing though, working out only has benefits. When I am consistent with my workouts, I notice that my overall stamina increases (even without cardio), I am more awake throughout the entire day, I pay more attention in my classes, and my motivation in school stayed higher for longer through the semester. It takes a few months to start seeing these results (including visible results, unless you do extreme cardio), but it is so worth it. I am a member on the bodybuilding forums (here). Its the largest workout forum in the world. You don't have to sign up, but go through and read through all the stickies (you'll get enormous amounts of info that even I wasn't aware of after 4 years of working out), make your own workout plan so that you'll stick to it, and finally go to the MOTIVATION section to keep yourself going every day. Anyway, your workout will depend on what your goals are. So figure out your goals before making a plan.

I am so saddened by your story. I've never had bad abuse in my family but when I was in high school I dated a girl for a few years that had a very similar situation as you. She was adopted and her parents horribly abused her, would always make her feel guilty, and blame all of their problems on her. Her brother on the other hand, who seemed far more dysfunctional than she did, got in little trouble at all and even took part in abusing her. I have witness to some of the abuse as well. It is absolutley disgusting that this is so common. I never had any understanding how somebody could do that to another human being, especially when it's your own family. I think the "love" you feel is actually called attachment. Attachment is much different from love and most people have huge misunderstandings of what love really is. If you get the chance, you should read Stef's free book "On Truth, The Tyranny of Illusion". It can be downloaded here (http://www.freedomainradio.com/FreeBooks.aspx). It talks a lot about this sort of problem and explains the differences between love and attachment. It's very short (only about 70 pages) and you can always go back to it when your confused about something. I'm glad you found Stef by such an odd chance. I think this is will be a new beginning for you and you will never go back to being so miserable. Truth is painful to hear, but it can only lead to a happier life. Once you hear the truth and take the pain that comes along with it, you will be able to push on and overcome your fear.

Who is we? Is there some sort of club where you meet up? Do you have a website or something?

It seems tensions are beginning to rise very quickly. I have no idea what's going and I'm sure nobody really does. Here are some recent news reports I saw. U.S. sends warships Iran threatens payback on Syria Russia sends warships U.N. inspectors begin to pullout over possible U.S. strike soon Iran threatens strike on Isreal if U.S. strikes Countries already explicitly involved are France, Britain, U.S., Turkey, Quatar, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iran, and other factions. My God I hope this doesn't become big. The real reasons will be hidden but everybody will pay for this war.

Man this sounds exactly like the problems I was facing. I'm not going to use any metaphors since I'm bad with those but here is what I say. (also sorry for my unorganized response, I just wanted to get you answers soon to help out because I know how it feels) I was in the same situation as you. A little over a year ago I had my "political" awakening. As my self-knowledge grew and grew my life became more miserable slowly and slowly. Eventually I found Stefan and things got really bad. It amazing that the more truth you know the more crappy your life becomes (when you first become awakened). But the reason your life is becoming worse isn't because you are finding out more and more truth, its because you are taking out the pain you're feeling about the world around you on yourself. Let me give some advice for what its worth. Although I'm not religious (I used to be Christian) there is a really good verse in the Bible that I recall. It says that God will reveal the truth to you slowly over time, because the entire truth is too much to bear at once. The human being cannot bear so much truth at one time because of how good your inner human self naturally is. I hate to say this but I would slow down on the truth doses (you don't have to stop but seriously take a break for a while). That's what I do. I was listening to multiple Stefan videos every single day and it became real bad for myself (because of MYSELF not because of Stefan). But I know how bad anxiety is because I was having problems with it and this is what helped me to keep my sanity. I also think you are being irrational. You need to do things you enjoy and appreciate the world around you. Think about it. The world seems so bad, but human beings are good people. If they somehow knew the truth, they would feel the same way we do (here in this thread). People aren't horrible, they're just reacting to their environment. Life is not "blank". There are always going to be people in the world that want to help you if they knew you were in a bad situation . If you want to take action and be happy, then you need to take action in your own life. Like Stefan said in one video (I can't remember which but I can find it if you want), take action in your own life where you have effect. You cannot change your environment. I also learned this in a naval ROTC class I took, don't try to change things that cannot be changed, it wastes time and energy, when you can have effect in the immediate environment around you that is your life. Now I get to the part where you said you hate being bound to something (I know random order right?). I thought for this a bit before I answered because this is the same problem I am currently having. It might be different for me than you but lets see. You don't hate something for no reason (hate doesn't come out of nowhere). Hate is a reaction to something else. So I thought about why (when I first became awakened) I stopped caring about homework. I started to hate school and think to myself how stupid and pointless it was. I think for me it was a personal act of rebellion. I previously said you are taking out your anger on yourself, but in this case, maybe this is how you are taking out your anger on your environment. I kept being irrational and thinking that the world was such a horrible stupid place and so I thought, why should I continue to go along with it? Think about it, if this is not how you feel than correct me. But if it is, it must be more irrationality. It is not your fault that the world around you is the way it is. As long as you live your life by your values on a day-to-day basis then it would not matter what your path is. You having to go to work to get money to live is not doing anything against your values (unless you're in the mob). Finally, I don't think you will magically fix all of your problems in one day. We ALL have to work to fix our problems. Keep yourself together man we're all here for you. We all have to climb over the same mountain. I think Stefan has become this successful because he's been thinking about truth for almost his entire life. Then he takes his massive amount of experience and dumps it on people going onto his YouTube channel. This is probably why so many people get stressed out so badly. Its like, "damn Stefan SLOW DOWN" ha.

There are thousands of supplements. Are you trying to figure out what would be best for a person to take? It is totally dependent on what your lifestyle is like. I workout a lot so I take whey protein after and I take multivitamins in the morning. Essential nutrients (vitamins and minerals) are chemicals that the human body cannot produce and needs to take in from external sources. Every nutrient takes a different amount of time for the body to metabolize. Some leave the system within hours, others remain in your body for weeks. This means that certain vitamins and minerals are not needed as often as others. Your body type will also determine rate of metabolization. Also, some nutrients can be taken safely in enourmous quantities far greater than the body needs (like vitamin B3), and others can cause harm in larger amounts (like iron). I don't know much about this so this is why I shy away from going insane with supplements. I take one multivitamin per day and I'm healthy. But if you are an athlete you may need more of certain nutrients depending on the sport. There are also other newly popular supplements like Omega-3 which ARE essential but there is a lot of rave about their supposed added health benefits. There has been no conclusive proof that Omega-3 fatty acids have any benefit other than essential metabolism. Do your research before engaging in these fads. Not saying you are, but I'm just providing discussion material.

I think you are misled about the relationship between objects called guns and crime rates. In the U.K., they have heavy gun control and very little murder rates, but their violent crime rates are 3 times higher than in the U.S. Switzerland has one of the highest gun ownership rates in the world (in huge contrast to all countries around it) and one of the lowest crime rates in the world. Japan has both high gun control and low crime rates. The relationship between guns and crime is very blurry. I think culture plays a larger role than you think. Of course, everybody on here agrees that culture is a terrible thing, but the Japanese people has a different sense of honor. They tend to blame their problems on themselves instead of others, but that's just their culture.

Yes, just jump to 5 mintues and start from there. The horrible footage is over after that, then its just information.

I almost threw up from watching the first 5 minutes. I had to sit down and come back later to finish the video. I had no idea the type of torture these children are subjected to (myself a victim). I skimmed through the sources. Of course, the pro-circumcision articles are main stream media outlets that provide no sources. I did read about this on Wikipedia and it is very biased from what I could tell. Some of the evidence states that it reduces HIV, but you're supposed to wear a condom anyway so what's the point? Oh yeah, money.

I've seen this before. My ex-gf showed to me thinking it was funny (a few years ago). I found the original on YouTube here and read through the comments. Its very interesting to see how most of the comments are seemingly from females and most of them are positive or saying how its funny. I think that maybe its because the girl is the one doing to forcing in the video, so its not traumatic for the girl. Although any sane person should be alerted at a child screaming that loudly.

Hey great topic! I really like the anti-competition one. I would have never thought of that. Aside from not learning these in school, I didn't learn ANYTHING in school (high school that is). High school is 4 years of your life wasted. I had to completely start from the bottom when I got into college. I'll definitely keep these in mind when I hopefully have kids in something like 20 years ha.

I have that same sort of problem with Pepin. Its difficult to understand what is really going on, but if you study it for a long time concepts start to sink in very slowly and you feel more and more like you really do understand. But math is an abstract subject. There are plenty of things that you can do in math that aren't possible in the real world. Numbers aren't really real. The number 5 is just in your mind. The same with negative numbers, and "imaginary" numbers. Imaginary numbers are just as important in solving systems as "real" numbers are. Doing physics related math problems is a good idea because it shows you why you are doing what you are doing, and math was developed specifically to solve physical problems. Anyway, I would recommend Paul's Online Math Notes. That site has saved me some confusion when I was in differential equations but there is plenty of calculus on there (I didn't know about the site until diff-eq). Its really good at explaining things. I personally don't like Kahn Academy, I find the videos bland and extremely difficult to sit through, but you will get all of the basics there. When you find a good book, make sure you read and understand all of the examples in each section before moving onto the problems. Also, don't ever jump ahead to another section until you are done doing problems with the section you are on. You'll get confused and won't learn as much. Assuming you're doing this in your free time, you have plenty of time to work through each section. See if you can find cheap solution manuals to your textbook online as well.

I attend U of A. There's probably more people on here in Phoenix though. I am in the Phoenix area during the summer though.

Hello all from Tucson, Arizona, One year ago I had a sort of "political awakening". I used to be the stereotypical Christian republican, that's how I was raised I guess. But I've always had something inside of me intact from my childhood to question the world around me. I used to be afraid even to question things internally, but deep down I did not understand how you could support something labeled "American interests"; it seemed so aggressive and immoral. Nevertheless I continued to supress my internal alarm system and enable my apathy, until one year ago. After a wild, year-long road of confusion, constant change of values, searching for the final truth, and constantly following different people who brought me the next new truth, I stumbled across Stefan carrying this thing around called philosophy, and I decided to think for myself. I have never felt the way I do now. Although I have a long way to go I have never this free in my life. I hope I can help to spread this freedom to the rest of humanity. My goal in life is to help advance humanity to the best of my ability. I can't wait to begin my journey.