You're trying to blame the victim, which is troublingly common when someone has been raped or sexually harassed but it is never the right response. It is traumatising when these things happen, it is personally demeaning and it is never acceptable.
Justine is brave for coming forward and we should encourage everyone in a similar situation to do the same and support them when they do.
The deeper cultural problem here is that your comment has been voted to the top.
I don't see how you can interpret my post as blaming the victim. I'm blaming society for the extreme damage the crime has done to her and I propose ways to mitigate some of the damage.
I'm not addressing the perpetrator at all, because he's obviously guilty of a crime. That doesn't change anything about the fact that we can mitigate the results of the crime.
It's absolutely still victim blaming, though thinly veiled under the guise of societal expectations being the reason for her supposedly blowing the whole thing out of proportion. Even if you pretend to be blaming society as the main culprit, your argument still essentially boils down to "it's not that bad, deal with it" and there is no denying this. I'm not saying there isn't any validity to your original argument, but don't back off and act like you're not saying that it's her failure to psychologically cope and deal with it that is causing all of this suffering. I've never had any person close to me experience sexual assault, but to argue that it's a societal problem and to imply that it's less psychologically traumatizing than it actually is is a dangerous argument to make without any kind of experience or knowledge of the actual psychological impact.
The solution isn't to make society believe that it's not a big deal, and that people are expected to make a timely recovery. I feel like this would lead to even more victim blaming and even more self hatred for those who don't meet the societal expectations of quick recovery. The proper message isn't "you should get over it quickly", but instead "you CAN get your life back"... and unless I'm mistaken, I believe this is what people helping those with rape try to teach the victims to believe.
I am unable to understand how a long post about how "societal expectations makes the suffering of the victims even worse than it might otherwise be" is anything except sympathetic towards the victim.
If you're seeing blaming in it, please do explain why since I'm as confused as the OP was.
We blame the victim all the time. Many alcoholic, drunk driver, bad-at-their-job people would rather not be like that but they're suffering some kind of severe emotional trouble and don't have the willpower to overcome it, much like this girl. They still get fired and charged with DUI regardless.
"Blaming the victim" means suggesting that the victim of a crime perpetrated by another was not the fault of the person who committed the crime, but rather their fault is somehow absolved by the actions of the victim. This is considered a terrible thing to do because it completely removes the victim's right to NOT be a victim.
If the victim actually, definitely and factually is partly to be blamed, why cannot the victim be blamed? Or do you disallow facts to be said? (This comment is general and doesn't make claims about this particular case).
When you board a commercial airline you have to show that you have a valid visa/passport for your destination however that is not technically checked until you go through that country's immigration service.
So would it be possible for a private jet to pick up Snowden and drop him in Ecuador where he could officially apply for asylum? It sounds like the main issue is that he has to be in Ecuador to apply.
I grew up in the US however I'm Australian and attended university in Australia.
The Australian system (HECS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tertiary_education_fees_in_Aust...) of managing higher education costs seems very fair. I studied two degrees at a leading university over 5 years. The accumulated cost for five years was about $30-35,000 for Engineering and Politics (some degrees are more expensive). My degree cost the university more than I paid with the remainder being covered by international students (thanks!), government subsidies/grants and donations.
All local students entering a university automatically go into this system. Each year you get a statement that lets you know how much debt you've accumulated and how much is left to pay. If you want to pay upfront then you receive a discount (10-20% off or something). However almost no one does because your debt is interest free and only indexed to inflation.
You don't start paying it off until you earn over $49,000/year (http://www.ato.gov.au/individuals/content.aspx?doc=/content/...), at which point you pay about 4% of your income until you've paid it off. If you earn more then you pay it off more quickly and at a higher percentage.
This system has enabled me to work on my startup right after finishing uni without the burden of a debt that needs to be repaid immediately. It also let me focus on enjoying university without upfront costs. I think it also removes the cost barrier for students wanting to go to uni, as all universities cost the same and are all covered by HECS. You can decide where to go based on convenience, degree and anything else without worrying about the cost.
Lots of people here still complain about the cost and the system could surely be improved a bit. But it's quite a good solution and I'm glad the article mentioned it.
The university is paid upfront by the federal government so it can still cover all of it's costs. The taxation office then collects the repayments, which are just taken out of your income.
There are risks for the government. For example, lots of Australians work overseas and unless they return to Australia to work, they won't pay back the debt.
http://theconversation.edu.au/expat-workers-have-cost-austra... But that's probably not a huge percentage of outstanding debt.
The 10-20% discount is just another way of saying the loans have a direct cost of 10-20% and then get indexed to inflation. With that 10-20% upfront cost plus inflation adjustments work out close to the same net cost as my 3.2% student loans in the US assuming you pay them back in a 10-20 year time frame.
That's a cop-out. It's not that our government is too dumb to implement a system that works just fine in another first-world country, it's that our politicians are too ideological to adopt such a system and our business sector is too anti-social to allow such a system.
That's 28 months - not weeks. So assuming you would normally upgrade every 2.5 years then it's about the same cost. If they release a new version each year then the subscription service would win easily.
More importantly, creative suite is now affordable for a huge range of people. Freelancers, students and small businesses can now afford a legal and full version.
The upgrade is usually $200 or less. So $20 a month is way more expensive than it is now. Assuming I upgrade every 2 years that's $200 to upgrade outright or $480 at $20 a month.
Asimo seems quite a bit more advanced overall than those robots. They are designed for quite specific purposes and domain - it's hard to tell but they also don't seem autonomous. With Asimo, Handa is going for a general purpose robot that can emulate a human while Boston Dynamic appears to be going for more specific military needs with things like BigDog.
From what I learned from a BD engineer, Japanese legged robotics use mostly static equilibrium in contrast with the (more advanced?) dynamic balancing of US and European robots. Asimo might look cute, but if you compare the gait of any of the popular MIT, Boston Dynamics or CMU robots to the Japanese, you soon notice that the latter don't look very natural or adequate to unpredictable terrain.
That's true enough, but only the military and EMS need robots that can instantly handle unfamiliar terrain. Meanwhile, the Japanese are most of the way towards a consumer product, since the interior of a building is highly predictable.
Good point, but if you don't need to handle unstructured terrain, you might just as well put the robot on wheels. The humanoids robot Justin from DLR [1] for instance has an omnidirectional wheeled platform that even allows for adaptive foot print. The only current advantage for ASIMO that I see at the moment, is that it doesn't have to take the elevator but can use stairs.
I remember someone on Silicon Beach said they went through it. It sounded good so I had a look and called up about it however you aren't allowed to launch your business until you complete the program. It also seems geared towards small local businesses (e.g. businesses must be 'not competing directly with existing businesses').
However I like the idea behind it. I was even thinking of some program similar to the way university is funded (HECS scheme) that provides interest free capital (maybe right after you finish uni) to explore starting a business. After spending 4 years at uni, an extra year to learn and explore business ideas would be very rewarding even if you end up working after that.
Thanks, great job on trying to change Tourism Australia - some of the campaigns I've seen from them are just embarrassing. It really does feel that those startups which have been successful have done so in spite of being in Australia, not because of it. I, like you, am determined to try and do it on my own.
The only other successful startup I have spoken to in Australia was Zendesk. The founder I spoke with went 2 years without a salary and the startup was self-funded.
