And don't forget..

BRUTAL LEGEND.

Brutal Legend is one of those games that was always fun, always interesting, always funny. I never wanted it to be over. The setting and the attention and love for the world of music that I grew up with made me so willing to forgive anything about the game that was not awesome. Which is an untestable hypothesis, since everything in the game was extremely awesome.

I would play in the world of Brutal Legend for many more hours (and dollars) if I could.

Like anyone, I'm selective about the events I attend. If there will be people there I would like to see, I'll go. If the interaction becomes uninteresting, tiring, or otherwise unenjoyable, I leave.

An example comes to mind: I was recently helping a new friend celebrate his birthday. I was an outsider and knew only the host; I had only met a handful of the other guests before and only knew "of" them. We were having a good time for several hours. Eventually, some other guests who had already been out drinking showed up. One woman in particular was especially loud, boisterous, and uninteresting. She singlehandledly stopped the interactions that had been happening by yelling over people with inane bullshit, and started having a pity-party and was attempting to land a guilt-trip on the host by complaining about how she hadn't been invited.

I am not sure if this was the natural inclination of this woman, or if this was amplified greatly via the alcohol, or if she felt that the expectation of someone at a party is to simply be loud and boisterous. I concede that there are certainly gatherings and times when that is appropriate, and I've played that role at times, but it seems tacky to me if you play that card and the crowd isn't enjoying it and yet you persist.

There's no reason to change the mood of a group of people who are already visibly enjoying themselves.

So, with interesting conversation having effectively been squelched, I left shortly thereafter.

There were many occasions in college when the point in the evening came when people were ready to stop "generally" socializing and get down to the serious business of smoking pot. That was always my cue to leave, as I had no interest in that sort of activity.

Like I said: my time is too valuable to me to spend it in situations I am not enjoying and don't have other reasons to be enduring.

Why?

There are a lot of structural assumptions people make about schooling that are worth questioning. People advocate for public school not because it is especially good, but because it has become the "default". Similarly, people advocate for pervasive university attendance not out of some considered viewpoint, but because it has become the "default".

K-12 and now university "education" are now seen as little more than social conditioning and workforce cog training.

If your personal goals don't involve being a well oiled cog in somebody else's machine, what is the value proposition of the typical American educational experience?

I won't even get into the fact that you carry a gun around with you everywhere.

I live in one of the safest places in the US. If you asked me why I carry it, I'd tell you plainly "incase I need to shoot somebody". My expectations of ever doing so are effectively zero.

The reasons I carry are manifold
1) because I can
2) because gun ownership is upsetting to politicians and small-minded people
3) because at different points in US history, and today in different areas of the country, daily gun carrying was/is simply part of normal life -- not something controversial or to be feared.

I think most people should carry most of the time, and re-create a culture of pervasive, responsible, respctable, gun ownership.

An aside: Until 1934, any child in the US could buy a machine gun from the sears catalog. Should society be focusing on making it hard for kids to get guns, or hard to be a low-quality kid?

Oh yay, honorable criticism from an anon!

Having the skills to cope with conflict is entirely different from having the desire to deal with people who create conflict unnecessarily and who are unable to express their differences without resorting to passive-aggressive behavior, yelling, or physical violence.

I'm married, after all. I know plenty about conflict and about resolving it. Sadly, I didn't learn much of what I needed until _after_ I got married. Luckily I am patient and a quick study, and not too proud to be above reading books about having healthy relationships, etc.

So my problem isn't with conflict, or with differences of opinion, or any such general thing. My preference is simply not to be subjected to the poor social habits of others, especially those I have no personal investment in.

The reason this type of comment tends to be warmly received on slashdot is that slashdot has a skewed intelligence distribution of readership. Intelligent people tend to have trouble relating in "normal" school settings, and so what I've written is perhaps more edgy or black and white than words others might choose for themselves, but inside of many geeks there is some leftover sense that the childhood they experienced had moments of profound injustice, and rather than blindly accepting that these moments were "crucial and necessary lessons", we wonder, if there was truly any value to said lesson, if it could have been shared in a less malicious way?

There are people who need to be abused or hurt over and over to understand that a certain behavior is a poor choice. And then there are others who can learn after just one experience, and yet still others who can intuitively understand that something will be unpleasant without having to experience it first.

If there are some sort of social dynamics lessons that kids should learn, there's no reason to assume that all kids need to learn them the same way (which is the public school model of _all_ learning).

But the "social conditioning" line of argument is so poisonous that I reject it out of hand in my original post. That entire argument seems to be that children should learn to deal with being abused, and that public school is the best place for this to happen.

While I agree that public school is the best place for children to experience being abused, I stand by my original claim that I'd rather teach my children that they don't need to accept abuse.

I was publicly schooled my entire life.

Homeschooling didn't make me this way - public schools did. And not bad public schools - the best in town. We moved many times in my childhood to navigate the maze of finding "the best" public schools.

Homeschooling might have prevented me from being this way; I might not have been surrounded by such shitty people (especially the school staffs) until I was mature enough to deal with situations more constructively.

So that blows the other unspoken assumption here out of the water.

Specifically, people who criticize homeschool and defend public school always bring up points or tests or criteria that public schools have never met. Public schools do not ensure that kids are "well adjusted", "educated", "happy", "meeting requirements", etc. They ensure exactly none of thsoe things.

So, when people who criticize homeschool bring up these topics, they do so based on their own prejudces and biases, not based on some objective standard.

Correct.

This is a short and extremely informative read on the history and motivations of public schooling. The story goes back at least as far as Calvinists and the Prussians.

http://mises.org/document/2689/

The socialization schools provide is being with people you don't like day-in day-out. That's a real life skill.

I took a different approach.

I chose to work my ass off, outside of school, learning all I could about computers, because I found them fascinating.

This has put me in a social and financial position where I am never with people I don't like.

I used my intellect and drive -- attributes that are hated in public schools -- to create and acquire wealth. I then used that wealth to change "real life" to fit my preferences.

The best results I've seen are my neighbor's kids, who interact very well with adults, but who seem like they will get eaten alive when they go off to college and have to deal with people who aren't inherently nice, logical, and having their best interests at heart.

Maybe they shouldn't go off to college then?

The idea that everyone needs to go to college is a bad idea.

I'm glad you've come out and said it: that public schools aren't for teaching our best and brightest, but instead are for some kind of malthusian social conditioning; conditioning our most gifted children to understand that their lives will be controlled by mouth breathing masochists.

No thanks. I won't dump that lie on my kids.

Today, I work for an employer where there are no stupid people and nobody who mistreats me. And I never interact with any human being unless it is on my terms. I carry a gun most places I go because I can, and because when I insist I'd rather not deal with someone, I plan on _meaning_ it.

I consider the idea that a sick and broken world might consider me "mal-adjusted" or "anti-social" a mark of excellence. To be judged normal or sane by a detestable malady of garbage would be a tremendously hurtful insult.

Your social conditoining doesn't interest me.