As for the sad state of feminism, its mostly a PR problem...
To an extent, but a more fundamental problem seems to be complacentsy. Uboa mentioned in the Sexism thread that there was a woman who viewed intolerance to sexism as something that can be afforded. One might wonder where the sentiment of "give me liberty, or give me death" went: one might well say that one can never afford to give up one's humanity, or to willingly let others take it.
There is a problem in that there is a difference between "give me liberty or give me death" and "give me liberty or take away my means to eat tonight." It is easy to be high-minded when one's possible future death remains only a long-term possibility. It is far more difficult to defend the cause when the negative results are very immediate.
This expands beyond just the women in the trenches. If one happens to grow up in a fairly nice area, it is easy to conclude that racism and sexism doesn't still occur merely by the fact that one hasn't yet been exposed to it. I happened to grow up somewhere that was fairly homogenous. There were individuals of other ethnicities in the area, but there were also no overt indications that they were discriminated against. Perhaps they were, but the appearance was that they were not. I have subsequently moved to Texas where the racial divide is thick enough that one can develop seasonal allergies to it. If it's a low paying manual labor job, 90% of the workers aren't white (depending on the exact job, it may be primarily blacks or primarily Mexicans). If it is a well-paying service job, 90% of the workers are white (with Asians making up 8% of the remaining).
One might think, then, that if growing up away from inequality allows individuals to believe that it doesn't exist, growing up inside of it should do the opposite. Yet last I checked, Texas isn't on the top of the equal-rights movement. This is partially because when you live with something every day, for your entire life, it seems normal. There are parts of the world where death-by-wolf/leopard is common, where it is expected. People try to remain safe, sure, but the very concept that people needed not be preyed upon is utterly foreign to them.
As headway is made, headway becomes harder to make. What was once real and next door is now far away and easily ignored. And what is in our own home is just how things are.
Actually, on the matter of ESP-*runs to get his Psych textbook*
But in all fairness, there have been some reliable observations of UFOs and some scientifically sound evidence for telepathy(source). Readint the scientific literature on these two topics, one has little choice but to conclude that some of these experiences have some validity. Remember, open skepticism is the hallmark of science. If there is scientifically sound evidence for something-even if it is difficult to explain-and it can be replicated, then we have to accept it.
Haha, just got done reading/studying that chapter. Hooray for college!
And for Youth! But that's unrelated.
A distinction should be made in that there are indeed some "legitimate" occurrences of the "paranormal," but that often refers to the fact that the experiences weren't hoaxes, not that they were actually paranormal in nature. Project Blue Book is rather famous in this regard. A number of UFO reports that they investigated were hoaxes. The majority of the reports were misidentified natural occurrences. And then a small percentage of reports remained unresolved. Those cases are considered "legitimate" in that they were not hoaxes, but that doesn't necessitate that they were UFOs. It doesn't preclude that possibility either, but evidence "for" paranormal events largely remains in the "unknown" category. Things happen, the people relating them are telling the truth as they see it, but the actual occurrence remains uncertain because the people relating the events aren't all-knowing.
The usefulness of ideas like lunar orbit comes from their ability to explain past, present and future minimalistically; they illuminate the past, help understand the present and have predictive power. Investigation of 'paranormal' conjectures like ESP invariably doesn't explain at all, but just tries to prove the existence of some phenomena. They don't deserve scientific treatment because they're not scientific hypotheses...
To be fair, humans had to first prove the existence of DNA before we could prove that certain genes were could cause heart disease. A lot of "research" into the paranormal isn't scientific, but that doesn't preclude the possibility of scientific research into those fields. Various "paranormal" phenomenon could be tested scientifically. Let's design an experiment right now to test for telepathy.
Let us have two rooms separated by a reasonable barrier (sound proof, light proof, etc). Let us have two individuals who had not met each other previously. We introduce them, give them a certain amount of time together (30 minutes perhaps), and then separate them into these two rooms. Hypothesis: person A will be able to produce information relating to person B's thoughts without a mundane information exchange.
Person B is given a set of pre-established "thoughts" to focus on. Mostly likely these would be simple yet intellectually or emotionally engaging (possibly a few clips of war atrocities). Person A attempts to then record what Person B is experiencing.
Of course, we need controls. Person A might not actually go past the meeting stage. Same with Person B. The pre-established "thoughts" might be non-engaging (tax forms, perhaps). Neither the individuals nor the individuals recording the information is aware of which are the controls and which are not (double-blinded). Let us also have some individuals not meet the other person first and just go into a room directly. And let us have some rooms that are not next to each other but rather in other buildings.
Give the results to a statistician. If there is a notable difference between the controls and the variables, double check the procedures. If the difference remains, give to a colleague to confirm. If the differences remain, publish. Next step is to hook the two up to machines to see if there is unusual brainwave activity, or something to that effect. Once the phenomenon has been identified, it can be examined and we can attempt to explain it.
Sure, there is little to no evidence suggesting that telepathy exists. But scientists are supposed to approach topics in an unbiased manner, so that isn't a relevant factor.
Someone at Amazon had a neat summary of the book "Mother Teresa: Final Verdict"...
Sounds like an interesting book, and it has now been added to my reading list.
EDIT: Edited for spelling
