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Great Acts Of Stupidity

Interesting thing about "warnings". A short general warning about a significant risk is safer than a list of minor risks.

If you list 10 minor risks and the 11th is the one that happens, the person who is inclined to sue may have a stronger case. They can argue that the list of risks appeared comprehensive, and that by making it so long, you assumed responsibility for ensuring their safety.

I quite like the ratings systems for films. There are only a few ratings, and they have definitions such as "includes minor peril". That's just enough to allow a responsible parent to"pitch it about right" when choosing a film for their child.

A similar system for books may not be a bad idea. However, who's to say what may trigger one reader or another?
 
As someone who's childhood was punctuated by traumas caused by so-called 'children's' books and films (Bambi, Black Beauty (Ginger! :*( ), Old Yeller, The Yearling, Watership Down, Run Wild, Run Free, Tarka the Otter, The Fox and the Hound, Ring of Bright Water, etc etc..), I'm sure my parents would have appreciated that, rather than deal with an inconsolably weeping child on a regular basis :(
What in Peter Pan or The Railway Children is there to scare even the most timid, aside from the crocodile i suppose.
 
Interesting thing about "warnings". A short general warning about a significant risk is safer than a list of minor risks.

If you list 10 minor risks and the 11th is the one that happens, the person who is inclined to sue may have a stronger case. They can argue that the list of risks appeared comprehensive, and that by making it so long, you assumed responsibility for ensuring their safety.

I quite like the ratings systems for films. There are only a few ratings, and they have definitions such as "includes minor peril". That's just enough to allow a responsible parent to"pitch it about right" when choosing a film for their child.

A similar system for books may not be a bad idea. However, who's to say what may trigger one reader or another?
I'd understand if this were stuff like The Machine Gunners or The Nargun and the Stars (which has the creepiest prologue of any book) but these titles are innocuous. What next, trigger warnings on the Mr Men?
 
As someone who's childhood was punctuated by traumas caused by so-called 'children's' books and films (Bambi, Black Beauty (Ginger! :*( ), Old Yeller, The Yearling, Watership Down, Run Wild, Run Free, Tarka the Otter, The Fox and the Hound, Ring of Bright Water, etc etc..), I'm sure my parents would have appreciated that, rather than deal with an inconsolably weeping child on a regular basis :(
Well, me as a child who found some things like Bambi traumatic... It showed me how limited my understanding of life was. The fox and the hound was a GREAT story... because of the lesson that, what you want you can't always have.
 
Well, me as a child who found some things like Bambi traumatic... It showed me how limited my understanding of life was. The fox and the hound was a GREAT story... because of the lesson that, what you want you can't always have.
We acquired a grandson just under 3 years ago. He stays with us overnight quite often. We have a routine before bedtime where he watches something calming on the TV. That usually means one of the Beatrix Potter stories.

Before this, I had never encountered Beatrix Potter and I had a vague assumption that her stories were twee tales of fwuffy bunnywabbits with names like Tiggywinkle. I now realise that the stores are very dark indeed.

Badger chatting with the old rabbit until he falls asleep, so that badger can steal the baby rabbits in a sack intending to eat them. Pigling Bland being invited to spend the night in a farmhouse with a farmer who clearly sees Pigling Bland as potential bacon. The frog character fishing and very nearly getting eaten by a big fish. This is largely unsentimental stuff observed by someone who lived in the real countryside and understood about nature red in tooth and claw.

Of course, our little grandson doesn't understand all the implications, but the point is these "wholesome children's stories" contain things that an older child might find upsetting, but needs to learn about as they grow up.

OK, a city kid my not need to know about badgers and rabbits but they do need to understand about predatory behaviour, and exploitation, and abuse of trust because they will encounter these things in different forms throughout their lives. It might be the creepy uncle, or the local gang culture, or the pushy double glazing salesman, or the internet scammer, but the world is full of hidden threats, and we are doing kids no favours if we hide that from them.
 
It might be the creepy uncle, or the local gang culture, or the pushy double glazing salesman, or the internet scammer, but the world is full of hidden threats, and we are doing kids no favours if we hide that from them.
I couldn't agree more. Far better for children to find out about the horrors of life for the first time through fairy stories than through real life.
 
Scottish university ridiculed over trigger warning applied to Peter Pan
What kid of country have we become when we need trigger warnings on Peter Pan, The Railway Children and the Narnia books?

https://www.scotsman.com/education/...jYfu1yVQAbcDJIw9Ttx31Vee61x3aI3K3jPRoAHU295AY

Young adults in 1944:

c07d1442584a21eebd3d742151612341


maximus otter
 
What kid of country have we become when we need trigger warnings on Peter Pan, The Railway Children and the Narnia books?
We have become the kind of country in which we are not allowed to criticise the fact that warnings have been put on these sorts of things as we would be accused of being bigoted or gammons or similar.
 
We have become the kind of country in which we are not allowed to criticise the fact that warnings have been put on these sorts of things as we would be accused of being bigoted or gammons or similar.

People call each other all sorts of names all the time.

Are you saying that these are hurtful beyond the usual background noise? Or that <insert preferred name for your self-defined group here> are particularly vulnerable and in need of protection?

Digging behind the headlines, it's one or two MPs who have got their knickers in a twist. He says "I am baffled by any decision to warn students away from its study." They aren't to warn people off. They encourage people to do whatever it is anyway, with greater understanding.

As Aberdeen Uni says

“... students are informed about the content of the texts and, as critically mature adults, they are empowered to make their own decision about which text to read.

I think it says a lot about the two MPs views and understandings when one says

This kind of molly-coddling warning on J.M. Barrie’s magnificent story, and other basically innocuous children’s classics...

Reading the posts above this rather demonstrates that the really good stories have much more happening than this uncritical surface reading suggests. In other words, they really have read the headlines and totally missed the point!
 
Maybe Adults need to be protected from Peter Pan but Kids dont need to be.

Even the Lost Boys whom he was clearly exploiting.

The age in question will be 17+ (with some few at 16).
 
Maybe adults should stop investing adult emotional content into childrens material?
When we hear "let children be children" it's great. But all of a sudden, you have adults declaring what a child experiences.
Paedophiles have always existed. In the European society, it's always been considered abhorrent (to be clear, as a grandfather and father I do too).
Now ...
We have an issue with the discussion of words of a 'sexual' nature involving children ... but you have to define a child?

Anyhow ...
A lot of problems I've seen is adults investing and creating a lot of emotional content into adult issues ... but not involving kids? I mean, as a potential victim, might it not be useful to warn them?

I dunno.

Like a public broadcast how 'a friendly stranger in a posh car who offers to show you the latest PS5 game' might not have your best interests at heart?
 
But this seems real:

Poland’s top cop hospitalized after grenade launcher gifted by Ukraine explodes

Jaroslaw Szymczyk, Commander in Chief of the Polish police, was injured after the gift exploded inside the department’s Warsaw, Poland headquarters, the interior ministry announced.

Though officials have not revealed what the gift was, polish outlet Wyborcza reported that it was a grenade launcher.

Szymczyk had been given the offering by one of the heads of the Ukrainian emergency services during his visit to the war-torn country earlier this week.

The gift blew up at 7:30 a.m. Wednesday, two days after the top cop returned home, in the room next to Szymczyk.

“As a result of the explosion, the Commander suffered minor injuries and has been in the hospital for observation since yesterday,” a ministry statement said.

The ceiling and ground floor of the room collapsed and the rooms on the second floor sustained some damage, Polish news site RMF 24 reported.

Polish authorities have asked Ukrainian officials to “provide relevant explanations” as to why the gift exploded. The case is being investigated.

https://nypost.com/2022/12/16/polish-police-chief-jaroslaw-szymczyk-injured-after-gift-explosion/
 
We have become the kind of country in which we are not allowed to criticise the fact that warnings have been put on these sorts of things as we would be accused of being bigoted or gammons or similar.
Sticks and stones may break my bones but names can never hurt me.

And. largely, they haven't. Bearing in mind I was a classic white crow because of my eye problems and lack of knowledge how to interact having spent so much early life in hospital - in adult wards because there was no specialist juvenile eye unit in my local hospital. .

I'm not saying everyone should grow a hide like a rhinoceros but you do have to be taught to have some resilience.

Not least because adults will never keep up with children's latest insults.
 
Sticks and stones may break my bones but names can never hurt me.

And. largely, they haven't. Bearing in mind I was a classic white crow because of my eye problems and lack of knowledge how to interact having spent so much early life in hospital - in adult wards because there was no specialist juvenile eye unit in my local hospital. .

I'm not saying everyone should grow a hide like a rhinoceros but you do have to be taught to have some resilience.

Not least because adults will never keep up with children's latest insults.
One thing I learned in high school: banning words will mean the people who wanted to use those words will find new ones to say the same thing.
 
One thing I learned in high school: banning words will mean the people who wanted to use those words will find new ones to say the same thing.
Indeed.
Like when they changed the name of "The Spastic Society" because it was common to insult people by using the term 'spaz' (which resurfaced in US song lyrics recently and the acts had to change the wording).
The name of the aforementioned charity was changed to "Scope" instead.
And now the 'kids' throw insults by using the term 'Scopey'.
 
Did the trainer attempt to rugby tackle the horse?

Thank goodness it was a dummy!
 
As someone in the comments pointed out (I thought the same myself), there's already a thing called a travois that has been used for hundreds, if not thousands, of years, and works perfectly well; as a horse lover, I knew that was going to happen; terrible design, and that horse wasn't happy from the start :rolleyes:
 
As someone in the comments pointed out (I thought the same myself), there's already a thing called a travois that has been used for hundreds, if not thousands, of years, and works perfectly well; as a horse lover, I knew that was going to happen; terrible design, and that horse wasn't happy from the start :rolleyes:

exactly! the ears, the shifting, the eyes... I do wonder if they had ever actually done it before.
 
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