Alleged censorship on ScubaBoard

[Dr. Lecter]

Maybe not....
If you and I, and Chrpai, and Jim, and 5 or 6 other regulars were sitting down at a table at a popular seafood with a Tiki Bar, having some drinks....and talking....and the manager of the Restaurant walked up and told us he did not want us talking about Shark finning because he did not want anyone to overhear our arguments as to why Shark finning was wrong and should be eliminated....I would tell him thanks for your concern, and then ignore him.
I would not go back, but at that point, I would feel as though he transgressed on us, and my inclination would be to become more expressive than ever, on the evils of finning....but I would be polite in doing so
If he wanted to call the police, I would let you explain to the Police why we had the right to discuss Shark finning amongst ourselves, at our table.

If the Bar owner was polite enough, I would agree to move our group to a table out of ear shot of other bar or restaurant patrons--but if I heard some ZERO TOLERANCE Nonsense about this verbal infraction we were supposedly committing, I would be chatting happily about shark fins to anyone that would chat with me, and ignoring the ZT guy.

The bar owner has the right to eject us at any time for any reason (absent his reason violating a federal anti-discrimination statute grounded in a dubious 1960s-era interpretation of the Commerce Clause, or some state variant thereon), and should we not go willingly, have the Po-po come arrest us for trespassing.

 

[danvolker]

The bar owner has the right to eject us at any time for any reason (absent his reason violating a federal anti-discrimination statute grounded in a dubious 1960s-era interpretation of the Commerce Clause, or some state variant thereon), and should we not go willingly, have the Po-po come arrest us for trespassing.

Well, since you were the lawyer in our group, you would have stood up, looked at all of us at the table, and said "I'll handle this!".....and then when the police became annoyed that you chose to explain why we were talking about the shark finning, against the wishes of the proprietor, and they arrested you, I would be there to bail you out.


A closer and more useful comparison:

Go to any Small Town , Mainstreet Bar....or a typical Redneck bar in North Florida.....

There will be locals that make up the clientele , each and every day..a home away from home for them....the etiquettes you would see are not really created so much by the owner of the bar, or exclusively by the patrons...it is a sort of molded familial culture, but with enough input from the locals that you would NOT say that the owner would set the rules for how you would dress, talk, or act. It would be a form of evolved culture.

I believe this is exactly what Scubaboard has become. If a "new" bartender was hired, and attempted to make major changes to the behaviors of the typical small town hangout, there would be "trouble" to put it mildly. This is not about what is legal, it is the evolved culture, and then a shared responsibility to protect the long standing traditions and culture. I am not talking about a slaughterhouse like in the movie RoadHouse....I am talking about normal and comfortable local hang outs in small town America, where everybody knows everybody, and everybody talks to every body.

 

[uncfnp]

Personally I think most Americans find it easier to overlook threats to our Right to free speech, or to our right to bear arms, to our basic rights in general--they just find it easier to believe that the government has our best interests at heart.


There are "some cases" where this is true….but in too many it is not… for example:

...//...

• We live in a culture today where people expect that the medical world cares about them---the reality is that we have become a population of drug addicts, and the plan of the pharmaceutical world, it to have doctors screen for SYMPTOMS when they see patients, and then PRESCRIBE Drugs to TREAT the symptoms. This is NOT about curing…If you cure an adult diabetic, which is actually easy enough to do most of the time, you cost the Diabetic Care Industry billions…so no cures are unveiled ( hint….it is a combination of an insulin mimic known as Vanadyl Sulfate and a diet something like Atkins--with no need for insulin production over 3 or 4 months, the body resets, and insulin insensitivity disappears)…Or people with arthritis living on drugs for life ( billions in drug revenue) when a zero sugar diet would eliminate most of the inflammation ( Advanced Glycation End Products from high sugar diets) and this can be combined with the K Laser, for either a cure, or near cure. But that would be billions lost…. Ultimately, Americans are on their way to indentured servitude, and they are still proclaiming to the world that this is a free and democratic country

Almost but not completely off topic...

Dan, I have read your other posts along a similar line and I applaud your interest in self help and taking control of your health choices but I am afraid you are in the minority. Working in health care I can tell you that what I see driving or at least enabling the pharmaceutical industry is the American public. The "I want every test" attitude and the quick fix mentality. I would gladly help people make better health choices and work with them to find the best answers but that's not what they want. They want to be handed a pill to solve all their health problems, including curing the common cold. They don't want to go to the doctor, especially now when most have a significant co-pay, and be told that they need to change their lifestyle or diet habits. No they want a "magic pill." Heaven forbid I teach them better living choices or suggest that an antibiotic may not be in their best interest.

It is not the pharmeticutical companies "pushing" their products that is the problem but rather us demanding a pill to cure the consquences of our poor choices and making the admittedly hard changes that are needed to make us a healthier society. Who wants to eat right, exercise, etc when we can just take a pill? And whose fault is that. If you truly believe in personal accountability, it is ours.

Lisa

 

[toddthecat]

Boy that escalated quickly!

No kidding

 

[lionfish-eater]

Almost but not completely off topic...

Dan, I have read your other posts along a similar line and I applaud your interest in self help and taking control of your health choices but I am afraid you are in the minority. Working in health care I can tell you that what I see driving or at least enabling the pharmaceutical industry is the American public. The "I want every test" attitude and the quick fix mentality. I would gladly help people make better health choices and work with them to find the best answers but that's not what they want. They want to be handed a pill to solve all their health problems, including curing the common cold. They don't want to go to the doctor, especially now when most have a significant co-pay, and be told that they need to change their lifestyle or diet habits. No they want a "magic pill." Heaven forbid I teach them better living choices or suggest that an antibiotic may not be in their best interest.

It is not the pharmeticutical companies "pushing" their products that is the problem but rather us demanding a pill to cure the consquences of our poor choices and making the admittedly hard changes that are needed to make us a healthier society. Who wants to eat right, exercise, etc when we can just take a pill? And whose fault is that. If you truly believe in personal accountability, it is ours.

Lisa

Very true, but many have that attitude because of the direct marketing of pharmaceuticals and junk food on tv and in every magazine to ignorant consumers. Their attitudes about consumerism and consumption are shaped by the advertising the are bombarded with. We would all like to take a miracle cure for whatever ails us. Me? I take a daily dose of "Phuckemol".

 

[chrpai]

Why not democratically FIX IT from the inside.....like if 2000 active members made it plain that they did not like the level of heavy handed moderation....that they wanted it for extreme Trolling behavior, and for posters that were getting reported often. Why not let the community have some control of it's destiny.

That's actually the way SlashDot works and it works really well. You have this concept of meta-moderating where individual users are randomly appointed with moderator points on a given day. They can vote up or down posts as long as they haven't participated in the thread.

Users can then choose what level to filter the comments to. They can choose to read everything or they can choose to trust the moderation and filter out comments that don't make the cut.

The point is, there are better approaches to moderating then the ruling class.

 

[toddthecat]

Yeahhh...you do know they used to live in pretty much every state

States didn't exist when they were doing their thing (if we're going to play semantics).

 

[RJP]

As a grammar Nazi, I must interject.

As long as we're interjecting Nazis...

[video=youtube;N4vf8N6GpdM]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4vf8N6GpdM[/video]

 

[toddthecat]

My handle is basically my real name.

Hey there Chr Pai!

 

[EL Pistoffo]

Thanks. I didn't want to have to hear about 9/11 being a controlled demolition, a missile hitting the Pentagon, a secret military facility under Dulce, NM with captured aliens in it, a rogue planet called Niburu that will fly by Earth and kick our planet out of it's orbit around the sun, or how half our politicians are actually our Reptilian overlords here to take us over while the little grey aliens make their attempt at galactic peace.

Wow, someone REALLY knows their conspiracies.

---------- Post added August 6th, 2013 at 07:54 PM ----------

As much as I hate the Nazi's for what they did in the late 30's and the 40's.....I took a course on Nazi Propaganda as one Sociology elective in college ( one of my degrees was Sociology)....You would be shocked to hear how much of what the US does today, exceeds much of what the Nazi regime demanded of it's people. If you could eliminate the ONE issue virtually all people consider when they hear about the Nazi's, the Holocaust, ( it definately happened--but just remove this from the equation, and look at--- the culture , the News and Propaganda Machine, and the way the populace "would have their papers checked" etc....was this the TSA??? ) the point is, the destruction of freedoms in the name of protection of the public....and the skill in News Creation and Spinning, were very major components of what remained and was different than other countries at the time. It all began with little steps, and it slowly became bigger. The changes in freedoms happened so slowly, they were barely noticed, and welcomed because they had been convinced by the News that they were in grave danger, and the country was fighting for it's life.

How can you not see the similarities? Sure the US has never killed off an indigenous people,,,,,I mean, except for wiping out the American Indians, but that doesn't count, of course.... So in this Century, of course we have never committed genocide. Right?

All valid points IMO. I agree.