Starship Asterisk*

Posted: **Sun May 06, 2012 5:06 pm**

neufer wrote:
Moonlady wrote:
Oh I think I must have been in the worst public libraries in the world...in one city I lived, it was even closed because it couldnt be funded and the most horrible one was, when I lived for two years in another country, I was banned from the public library because of the political opinion of my stupid parents.
Are we ever going to learn where these places are that you are talking about

First one was a village in Germany, and second one in Turkey.

My parents are from Turkey and wanted to stay in Germany as workers for a short period, they wanted to change the Turkish Government while staying in Germany.
My parents participated in the eighties and nineties a new islamic political party which was criticizing the Turkish secular and
laicistic government. It was mostly funded by moslems outside of Turkey, because the government in Turkey would not allow that. The party leaders
were succesful by raising money in Germany since in Germany were a lot Turkish workers.
Laicism seperates government from religious institutions. Religious people were (still) not allowed to work for the government (e.g teachers or public officers), some
party leaders were arrested, the party was forbidden several times and appeared again only by changing its name. The government and the Turkish Army rule as equal. They
do not want any influence by religious-spiritual might. My parents sent me to Turkey to a religious school, which was an institution of said religious party. That school did not get
money from the Government.
I was half-evil in the eye of the government. Our regular post was opened and looked through by the post office (belongs to government) and had seals that it was opened by the
government.
I was not allowed to use the public library and my highschool diploma would not be accepted at the universities if I had finished school there. (The religious schools had financial problems,
bad equipments since it was run by donations. We had times were in winter, our class-room was cold. (Worst school ever --> We were told to make sacrifices and be obidient muslims,
and we will have access to paradise...)
But I returned after two years to Germany to my parents. (My parents wanted to turn back to Turkey, but failed, so I was brought back) Oh I was twelve years old then!

My parents are fundamental religious people and think that sharia (islamic rules) is the only acceptable way. They could not turn back to Turkey because of financial problems.
If they had turned back, they would have a lot of problems to be accepted by the people there.
Turkish government is still laicistic.
My opinion is totaly the opposite of my parents, which seperates us in many levels.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refah_Partisi

Posted: **Sun May 06, 2012 5:49 pm**

Moonlady wrote:
My parents are fundamental religious people and think that sharia (islamic rules) is the only acceptable way. They could not turn back to Turkey because of financial problems.
If they had turned back, they would have a lot of problems to be accepted by the people there.
Turkish government is still laicistic. ( )

My opinion is totally the opposite of my parents, which separates us in many levels.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refah_Partisi

Things could be worse for you: http://www.rferl.org/content/afghanista ... 67560.html

Posted: **Sun May 06, 2012 10:22 pm**

[
My parents are fundamental religious people and think that sharia (islamic rules) is the only acceptable way. They could not turn back to Turkey because of financial problems.
If they had turned back, they would have a lot of problems to be accepted by the people there.
Turkish government is still laicistic. (

)

My opinion is totally the opposite of my parents, which separates us in many levels.

Things could be worse for you: http://www.rferl.org/content/afghanista ... 67560.html[/quote]

here the correction:
Laicism , laical...oh ...If I do not look up every word, I keep writing nonsense...

Oh believe me, I had my share of any kind of abuse...till I could at least flee bevor being forced into marriage. The perils of being open-minded black sheep of the family.
When enough time has passed and me going public is not lifethreatening anymore, I want to try to help girls (boys who are also forced into marriage) who have problems
with their families. German Government does not help, they have less social workers for people living in Germany with an immigration background. They would not know
what to do or how to act anyway, they would be totally overstrained.
Victims can hardly go public because of threats and they can hardly speak German.
Teachers at school do not help girls either, they think that these girls will quit school early and be married anyway. So I was an exception when I finished highschool.
My parents and older sisters (who are also fundamental extremists and preachers) were scared because they thought I would be totally rebellious by going to a highschool. It was me,
speaking hardly German, bad Turkish knowledge, a little bit English, no general knowledge, no help from teacher or school, family which burdened me with tons of work
to do, and many restrictions, so it was me driven stubbornly to find out the whats and whys about nature.

So how is it still manageable to make science and sceptical mind go into any kind of culture, world-view, belief...
There are many prejudices that prevents going in touch with scientific research.
Religious people tend to experience science as an assault toward their culture, they do not see that science is neutral.
I think scientist should go more public and explain what they do and how they work. They should not wait till someone finds the labs and knocks their door even when there is a big
invitation sign. They should go to the people and ask "Do you like to know what XY is about?"

If the majority has a good basic knowledge of science, they shouldnt be able to be influenced easily by wrong information produced by "scientists"
who are working for dubious reasons.

Posted: **Sun May 06, 2012 10:34 pm**

Sounds like a hard life, Moonlady. I can only speak for how it is in the United States and I can say for certain that many people here, even religious ones, embrace scientific understanding even if they are too ignorant to realize that a lot of what science does disillusions religious beliefs. I'm afraid we shouldn't discuss religion too much as such conversations invariably lead to unpleasantly personalized debates. Needless to say, I am glad you can express your interests and learn what you can here on the internet, anonymous and free of persecution.

Posted: **Mon May 07, 2012 2:18 am**

We are not allowed to discuss religion on these boards, but I hope I am allowed to say that I think that religion is often a way to create a community around you. When you feel that you are not part of the larger society, you can turn to religion and its ideas and rules to create your own society around you, so that you don't have to be part of, or accept, the larger society out there. This happens in the West, too, and even Christian groups can create a totally different society around them. The Amish people are an example, and of course the branch of the Mormon Church that still practices polygamy.

My parents grew up in quite fundamentalist Christian families. In their cases, it meant that they were not allowed to take part of the normal entertainment around them - they could not see movies, go to the circus, dance, drink any alcohol whatsoever or anything like that. As long as they still lived in their parents' homes, they were not allowed to associate with people who did not belong to their church. On the other hand, the power of their religious families was never so strong that the families could possibly force either of my parents into a marriage that they didn't want themselves. That kind of thing was just out of the question. It was not part of their religion at all.

Many of my relatives lived on an island, whose population was about 2,000 people. There were other islands around them, and the total population of all of the islands may have been 5,000 people or more. In the 1960s, the people on these islands were like a world of their own. They needed doctors and dentists from the outside, so to speak, but otherwise they did everything they needed themselves. They built their own houses, provided teachers to their own schools, baked their own bread in old-fashioned ovens, and because the men were fishermen, they caught the fish they ate, too. They always turned to each other when they needed help with something. Later, when the fishing turned bad - because they had fished too much, I guess - the men started working on the mainland, in the Volvo car plant.

My father used to say - and I don't know if he was right or not - that our relatives paid little or no taxes. Taxes were used to maintain the overall Swedish society, but my relatives were not part of it. They paid tithes instead, and they all belonged to the same Pentecostal church.

I don't think that my relatives believed in science. When they were asked to choose between science and the Bible, they always chose the Bible. I don't think it was possible for them to do otherwise, because all the other people on the island that made up their society would have disliked them if they did. Only one of my relatives left the island. She studied at the university and became a pharmacist, and she settled rather far from the island and married someone from the outside and had only two kids.

I think that the need to belong to a society is stronger than the need to know what science really tells us about the world. That's why I personally hope that as many as possible of the subcultures that exist in our larger societies can accept what science tells us. Even more, I hope that most people will understand how science is done, and how it differs from religious belief.

Personally I think that the mini-societies that so many of us build around ourselves are a threat to the survival of the human race. Because our need to belong to our own group is so strong, very many people will choose their own group over science. That means that very many people will do and believe what their own group tells them, rather than what science says we should do - such as realize our dependence on the biosphere of the Earth for our own survival.

Ann

Posted: **Mon May 07, 2012 5:00 am**

neufer wrote:
Chris Peterson wrote:Sheep is [sic] precisely what many of those in positions of power want. And it seems to be what they're getting.

No "sic" required. The sentence is correct as written. "Sheep" is intended as a collective singular.

Posted: **Mon May 07, 2012 10:21 am**

Chris Peterson wrote:
neufer wrote:
Chris Peterson wrote:
Sheep is [sic] precisely what many of those in positions of power want. And it seems to be what they're getting.
No "sic" required. The sentence is correct as written. "Sheep" is intended as a collective singular.

[c]"Sheep" is a plural noun not a collective noun:[/c]

http://www.chompchomp.com/terms/collectivenoun.htm wrote:
Nouns name people, places, and things. Collective nouns, a special class, name groups [things] composed of members [usually people]:

army, audience, board, cabinet, class, committee, company, corporation, council, department, faculty, family, firm, group, jury, majority, minority, navy, public, school, senate, society, team, troupe

Posted: **Mon May 07, 2012 1:51 pm**

neufer wrote:"Sheep" is a plural noun not a collective noun:

I believe you are mistaken in your understanding about the range of nouns that can be used collectively.

Posted: **Mon May 07, 2012 1:58 pm**

What is the singular form of the Plural "Sheep"?

Posted: **Mon May 07, 2012 2:25 pm**

BMAONE23 wrote:
What is the singular form of the Plural "Sheep"?

Ewe should know the answer to that.

Posted: **Mon May 07, 2012 3:23 pm**

This thread needs a shepherd

And i don't feel a bit sheepish about saying that. ::insert -baa- smilie here::

Posted: **Mon May 07, 2012 4:21 pm**

Beyond wrote:
This thread needs a shepherd And i don't feel a bit sheepish about saying that.

http://www.universetoday.com/ wrote:
Click to play embedded YouTube video.
<<51 years ago today, on May 5, 1961, NASA launched the Mercury-Redstone 3 rocket carrying Alan B. Shepard, Jr. aboard the Freedom 7 capsule. Shepard successfully became America’s first man in space, making a brief but historic suborbital test flight that propelled American astronauts into the space race of the 1960s.

The video above is made from photographs taken by a film camera mounted to the Freedom 7 spacecraft and scanned by archivists at Johnson Space Center. It shows the view from Freedom 7 as the Redstone rocket launched it into space, getting an amazing view of Earth’s limb and the blackness beyond before falling back to splash down in the Atlantic.
The video is made from the entire film reel, so at the end there’s also some shots of a light experiment inside the spacecraft.

What’s amazing to realize is that, at this point in time, the space surrounding our planet was a very empty place. This was a time before communication and weather satellites, before GPS, before Space Station and space shuttles — and space junk — and student-made weather balloon videos. Just 51 years ago low-Earth orbit was a new frontier, and guys like Shepard (and Gagarin and Glenn, etc.) were blazing the path for everyone that followed.>>

Posted: **Mon May 07, 2012 4:57 pm**

neufer wrote:
BMAONE23 wrote:
What is the singular form of the Plural "Sheep"?
Ewe should know the answer to that.

Absolutely

DICTIONARY wrote:Sheep
noun, plural sheep.
1. any of numerous ruminant mammals of the genus Ovis, of the family Bovidae, closely related to the goats, especially O. aries, bred in a number of domesticated varieties.

Singular = Sheep
Plural = Sheep

Posted: **Mon May 07, 2012 5:49 pm**

My own personal plural version of sheep is "sheepses." Perhaps "sheepsies" if I am feeling extra silly.

Posted: **Mon May 07, 2012 6:08 pm**

geckzilla wrote:
BMAONE23 wrote:
Sheep
noun, plural sheep.
1. any of numerous ruminant mammals of the genus Ovis, of the family Bovidae, closely related to the goats, especially O. aries, bred in a number of domesticated varieties.
Singular = Sheep
Plural = Sheep
My own personal plural version of sheep is "sheepses." Perhaps "sheepsies" if I am feeling extra silly.

Ewes better not talk likes dat around da mob.

A group of sheep is called a flock, herd or mob [i.e., collective nouns].

Adult female sheep are referred to as ewes, intact males as rams or occasionally tups,
castrated [or married] males as wethers, and younger sheep as lambs.

Posted: **Mon May 07, 2012 7:44 pm**

neufer wrote:A group of sheep is called a flock, herd or mob [i.e., collective nouns].

Adult female sheep are referred to as ewes, intact males as rams or occasionally tups,
castrated [or married] males as wethers, and younger sheep as lambs.

Regardless of the finer points of English, my original point stands: politicians want sheep, and sheep is what they are getting.

Posted: **Mon May 07, 2012 8:05 pm**

Isn't the correct term, in that case, sheeples?

Posted: **Mon May 07, 2012 8:32 pm**

Beyond wrote:Isn't the correct term, in that case, sheeples?

That will do, also.

Posted: **Tue May 08, 2012 10:10 am**

noun, plural sheep.
1. any of numerous ruminant mammals of the genus Ovis, of the family Bovidae, closely related to the goats, especially O. aries, bred in a number of domesticated varieties. [/quote]
Singular = Sheep
Plural = Sheep[/quote]
My own personal plural version of sheep is "sheepses." Perhaps "sheepsies" if I am feeling extra silly.[/quote]

Ewes better not talk likes dat around da mob.

A group of sheep is called a flock, herd or mob [i.e., collective nouns].

Adult female sheep are referred to as ewes, intact males as rams or occasionally tups,
castrated [or married] males as wethers, and younger sheep as lambs.[/quote]

I love sheepses

Neufer, you are confusing me here...

Now I am totally misinformedness

Why would a sheep marry

And whom does he marry?

Starship Asterisk*

The perils of being a scientist

Re: The perils of being a scientist

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A sheep of scientists

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Re: The perils of being a scientist

Re: The perils of being a scientist