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Get off my lawn!
tania:
like mentioned earlier, i don't know anyone with substance abuse problems, but this probably has something to do with the fact that most of the people i associate with are fellow university students who are paying a lot of money for their degree and can't really afford to fuck it up.
the thing is, i drank far more before the age of 19 than i did after turning 19 and also had quite a few friends in high school with substance abuse problems. using maiada's example, i'm guessing social context plays a much bigger role here than the law. while raising the drinking age does help in that it makes alcohol harder to acquire (personally i wouldn't complain if for some reason or another the drinking age here was raised to 21, even though i am 20), it isn't going to accomplish much if situated in a culture where binge drinking is seen as acceptable regardless.
idiolect:
--- Quote from: E. Spaceman on 12 Mar 2008, 00:10 ---
--- Quote ---Whoa whoa whoa! Call people by whatever name that they ask you to call them by, not whatever you decide on. Jeez.
--- End quote ---
why?
--- End quote ---
Do you seriously not understand that? I really don't know how to put it any more clearly. I mean, if you told someone to call you X, and they said "Nope, I think I'm going to call you Z. How's it going, Z?" wouldn't you find that annoying and disrespectful?
--- Quote ---people are idiots and that questioning is an essential thing if you don't want to be an utter sheep.
--- End quote ---
Oh no! I don't want to be a sheep! Please tell me how to be different! Will certain kinds of music and perhaps fashion help? Are there other different people I can be just like?
/snark
Anyway, sure, okay, an active and inquisitive mind is a good thing, generally. It's also much better if that energy is put into asking interesting questions, like how the world works, what the purpose of life is, how to be a good human being, etc etc, instead of all this impertinent "questioning" about why you should do something like call people by the name they'd want you to.
Also, I don't know what you guys are talking about with the "class issue" thing -- in terms of elementary and secondary education, the schools I went to were pretty upper-middle-class, and we had to call everyone by their last names and there were pretty clear rules and requirements and such, pretty standardized disciplinary procedures. Since then, I've worked in a couple of schools that were so bad off they didn't even have toilet paper in their bathrooms, and there, everything was WAY more flexible and strange and disciplinary procedures pretty much depended on whatever teacher was there at the time, and the atmosphere of the school suffered immensely for it. Even though kids could get away with a lot more in the latter situation, the whole atmosphere was WAY more tense and unpleasant.
Now I'm back in school myself at a terribly expensive college, and we call EVERYONE (students included) by their last names in class, which lends it this (imho) cool, formalized, old-school scholarly atmosphere. This particular school is kind of a unique case though, and I could imagine that somewhere like Marlboro for instance might prefer first-name-basis naming instead.
Patrick:
--- Quote from: Sox on 12 Mar 2008, 10:37 ---The more difficult it is to obtain alcohol, the fewer people will drink it.
--- End quote ---
Yeah, uh, history has already showed us how that can backfire.
tania:
what?! banning alcohol altogether isn't even remotely the same thing as having it available only to people of a certain age. everyone gets older eventually.
Elizzybeth:
--- Quote from: Amaroq on 12 Mar 2008, 12:17 ---When I was 13, a close friend of mine got so into hard-drug addiction that he wound up stealing from just about everybody he knew, but loathing himself for it. The epitome of low self-esteem perhaps? Anyways, I promised him I'd never ever start, and then he died of an overdose. So .. the promise had a lot of weight for me.
[...]
Just figured I'd offer my own experiences and support for your choice.
--- End quote ---
I'm sorry for your loss. But thank you. It's nice to hear that people have made decisions like that and truly managed to stick to them. Some of my friends seem to have a "well, that's fine for now, Elizabeth, but one day, when you're as mature and as cool as we are, you're probably going to try it" attitude, which has maybe started to get to me a little bit (actually, my mom, too--she's been offering me pot when I complain of menstrual cramps).
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