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No.  That's what outlet covers are for.  If they did try to mess with them, I'd just say, "No, ouch, hot" and move them away.  Seemed to do the trick.

Yes, because when visiting other peoples' houses, it is totally acceptable to ask them to baby-proof their house before you arrive.

Maybe he kept his assets well protected at his own home all the time. That seems to be the more responsible policy.

I was spanked, although I'd be quick to say they never overdid it. Its definitely not the spanking which has stayed with me over the years.

My dad has recently expressed some weird views on this, though. He said it is most useful for the parents; that a lot of the parents he saw who never spanked their kid would instead get very frustrated, bottle it up, and create an atmosphere of tension that would upset the kid more because they can't do anything about it. To his way of thinking, at least with a quick spank, its all over afterwards and both parent and kid can feel like the issue is resolved.

I'm not sure I agree, but I don't have kids and have no plans to change that any time soon, if at all. I do not feel in any way qualified to tell anyone else how to do it.

I think he's wrong too, but it does sugest an interesting idea: that just because you don't spank your kid, doesn't mean you are a great parent. You have to look out for other forms of emotional abuse too.
The article linked in the OP mentioned that yelling, which many people use instead of spanking, is also ineffective.

Corporal punishment used to be used as punishment for minor crimes. The punishment would be public, of course, for maximum humilliation. Now we have all those pesky laws that forbid cruel and unusual punishments, so they don't do that to adults anymore. But children aren't really people in the eyes of some adults, so of course, when dealing with children, people revert to those more primitive practices.

Just out of idle curiosity, how many kids do you have?

You guessed correctly, I have zero.
Iḿ aware there is probably a good reason, or at least a clever rationalization, that can justify the behaviuor which I unfairly described as a "primitive practice".

Problem is the children themselves sometimes don't share those rationalizations. They don't understand them, or sometimes they understand but don't agree with them. When that happens, no amount of spanking is going to change a child's mind, so there's frustration all around.

I've raised two, and I can state that you can't reason with a toddler about light sockets and other immediate hazards.

Spanking won't make them understand or change their mind, either...But it will condition them to stay away from such things, which keeps them alive, which is in fact your first responsibility to them.  It is also important to distinguish between "spanking" and "beating the shit out of the kid".  The cited article backs me up on this, and on the next paragraph:

But by 4-5 they can in fact listen, and can be instructed without this sort of nonsense.  And the upside is that they are in the habit, by that point, of paying attention.  So spanking past age 4-5 IS in fact useless, and even counter-productive.

Lastly, the only way to teach compassion, unfortunately, is pain and/or distress.  Now, I have NOT read any research on this, but in my experience with other parents, the ones that say "never spank at any age" always seem to have horrible sociopaths for teenagers.  Again, anecdotes only, here, and you and I both know anecdotes are not evidence.

That makes sense. Spank them so they won't get hurt even worse by themselves.
I think it's great that people are researching this stuff seriously, so thanks for sharing that link with the research, and also your illuminating anecdotes.
Anecdotes ARE evidence, by the way. They are just weak evidence, compared to actual research.

Corporal punishment used to be used as punishment for minor crimes. The punishment would be public, of course, for maximum humilliation. Now we have all those pesky laws that forbid cruel and unusual punishments, so they don't do that to adults anymore. But children aren't really people in the eyes of some adults, so of course, when dealing with children, people revert to those more primitive practices.

Just out of idle curiosity, how many kids do you have?

You guessed correctly, I have zero.
Iḿ aware there is probably a good reason, or at least a clever rationalization, that can justify the behaviuor which I unfairly described as a "primitive practice".

Problem is the children themselves sometimes don't share those rationalizations. They don't understand them, or sometimes they understand but don't agree with them. When that happens, no amount of spanking is going to change a child's mind, so there's frustration all around.

I don't think it's a human universal. Most American indians didn't spank until the post-colonial era. It goes very against traditional childrearing values.

Hmmmm

http://aolff.org/spare-the-rod/the-spanking-files-2/history-of-spanking

I don't know how accurate that is. By "I don't know" I mean that I don't know, not that I'm questioning its accuracy.

It does look like it's illegal in quite a few countries, but I have no idea how that reflects historic attitudes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestic_corporal_punishment

That's very interesting. I can't believe I didn't make that connection before, it makes too much sense:

Corporal punishment used to be used as punishment for minor crimes. The punishment would be public, of course, for maximum humilliation. Now we have all those pesky laws that forbid cruel and unusual punishments, so they don't do that to adults anymore. But children aren't really people in the eyes of some adults, so of course, when dealing with children, people revert to those more primitive practices.

The part about christians using it as a form of absolution is also very interesting, because we can compare christians with non-christians to see if there is a difference.

ETA: The law in my quaint little South American Soy Republic is that corporal punishment is forbidden at school, but you can do whatever you want to your children at home.

I saw that study just a few minutes ago!

I wonder sometimes where the tradition of spanking came from, and whether it's related to the American national obsession with punishment.

It's common in South America, and I heard that it's common in Asia.
Maybe hurting defenseless people when under stress is some sort of human universal? I understand child rearing can be frustrating.

As a mexican, ive always found puns as overwhlmingly retarded... maybe its swooshing over my head, but i dont think there are puns in spanish... i mean, they are possible, of course, but i dont remember a single instance, i suppose punners get rightfully murdered or something... its like a mix between jacking off and a local joke with/towards your own language, i dont know.

what we DO have is double-speak, which i quite enjoy, which can manifest thru "albures" (double entendree, sexual) or simple troll like reinterpretation thru a simple emphasis on a word...

i can provide examples if you people want

Richard Stallman has a collection of puns in Spanish that he invented.
They are all terrible.

Sorry, Roger. Didn't mean to say that it was your fault.
I just wanted to read what holist wanted to say, if possible in a different thread, so it wouldn't get in the way of what you have to say, which I find very interesting.
Sorry for contributing to derailing your thread.

I think Roger is upset that we have been discussing for several pages something that in his opinion shouldn't have taken more space than a footnote.

Maybe you can explain in a new thread your ideas about authenticity in art, and how it relates to legitimacy in governments or whatever (I'm reminded of Sabina's ideas in The Unbearable Lightness of Being, is that what you meant?).

Feel free to explain using examples from history, or anecdotes from your own experiences. That should make it easier to understand what you are talking about even if we don't agree on the definition of "authentic".

I'm still not seeing the connection between "authenticity is subjective" and "coercion and oppression are ok."

If you're still lurking, I would like to request that you expand on that some more.

I second this.
I'm still convinced that this was a communication failure, and I'm very interested in what he was really trying to say.

He was - as far as I can tell, and I could be wrong - trying to say "It's too underground for you" without actually saying "It's too underground for you".

Music is one of those subjects that certain people take as a territorial thing.

Well yes, you could take advice and summaries from the uncomprehending... or you could just wait for the real thing. 

Should we? Be waiting for the real thing, I mean.
I'm very interested in what you and Roger have to say. Too bad it seems like you can't say those things to each other, though.

I vaguely remember a book with a rocketpropulsion cyborg guard dog in some cyberpunk setting, I just can't remember the book it was in. The concept terrifies me.

Snow Crash is a book by Neal Stephenson that has some nuclear-powered cyborg dogs in it.

I'm still not seeing the connection between "authenticity is subjective" and "coercion and oppression are ok."

If you're still lurking, I would like to request that you expand on that some more.

I second this.
I'm still convinced that this was a communication failure, and I'm very interested in what he was really trying to say.

So I decided not to, not because I don't have a fucking "cogent counterpoint", but because trying to make a point against such a barrage of wilful, small-minded uncharitability is just too much like fucking work.

Difficult, subtle work. And nobody even pays you for it.
It's the most authentic form of art.

In science, you can't ever prove anything, you can only falsify it. If there is no way to falsify it, then it's outside of the scope of science. In order for a hypothesis to be scientific, it has to be testable. The goal of testing is to see if you can prove the hypothesis wrong. If you can't, that doesn't make it proven, it just makes it less likely to be false. If you can't test something, it's not science.

Just because I can't use the scientific method to find that answer, that still doesn't mean I get to make stuff up. It feels to me like that is breaking some kind of rule.

I'm guessing it is an aesthetic rule I made up myself for myself to follow, because I can't articulate an objective justification to that rule.

That rule would be something like asking myself "do I have to believe this?" where most other people would ask "am I allowed to believe this? why the fuck not, no one can prove me wrong!"

Not a word I'd use (annoys me prolly as much as faithfools does you) I always thought it related to people who were more like "someone think for me pls" than necessarily a religious connotation.

What I mean is "dupes" in that they've fallen for a line in bullshit. Same idea as if they fell for a 419 scam or similar. Thing is (and this is where I'm kinda u-turning) it is a very good and (more importantly) very well delivered line in bullshit. Most are brought up with it from birth so I guess you don't really have to be an imbecile to believe it.

Also, it isn't falsifiable.  In the end, it's a matter of personal preference.

I don't think that follows. Just because you don't know something doesn't mean you can make stuff up.
Maybe the rules are different when not only you don't know but can't possibly know something? That still sounds suspicious but I can't quite articulate why.

You can't mix science and religion.  They are by definition mutually exclusive, and attempting to apply one to the other always ends in tears.

For example, I offer the Institute for Intelligent Design.

And why is this?

Because if God is everywhere, you can't take your God detector to a no-God zone to zero it.

And if the spags DID prove God's existence, then their faith is DESTROYED, because the definition of faith in a religious context is "belief without proof".

This is going to sound weird but I think that if you can't take an hypothetical God detector to a no-God zone even in principle, then God doesn't exist. Or rather, the word God becomes useless as a description of something in reality... and now I'm trying to mix science and religion again. Dammit.

Maybe the reason I feel uncomfortable making shit up in the face of helpless ignorance is that I like to keep my worldview nice and simple. In other words, an aesthetic preference.

Not a word I'd use (annoys me prolly as much as faithfools does you) I always thought it related to people who were more like "someone think for me pls" than necessarily a religious connotation.

What I mean is "dupes" in that they've fallen for a line in bullshit. Same idea as if they fell for a 419 scam or similar. Thing is (and this is where I'm kinda u-turning) it is a very good and (more importantly) very well delivered line in bullshit. Most are brought up with it from birth so I guess you don't really have to be an imbecile to believe it.

Also, it isn't falsifiable.  In the end, it's a matter of personal preference.

I don't think that follows. Just because you don't know something doesn't mean you can make stuff up.
Maybe the rules are different when not only you don't know but can't possibly know something? That still sounds suspicious but I can't quite articulate why.