[Closed] What's annoying you currently? II

Income taxes.

Technical changes, legal changes, practical changes. UGH!

The amount of time it's taking to add albums into a new iTunes library via "Automatically Add To iTunes". Seventeen-hundred albums (out of a total of 8000+), it's just being so slow.

Damn! Did you drink and cook?

"ouch!" Must have been a deep cut.

Synth effects that sound like ripping errors.

So I woke up, had breakfast and wanted to put on some music. A loud *POOF* came from the speakers and gone was the sound. Either the receiver or speakers are history! Damn. This is a HiFi system, and I don't expect anything less in the future, so there are costs on the horizon.

These things always happen when your economy isn't able to handle the replacements!

This will be a silent, tinnitus-heavy next few months....

A long analogue cable. The receiver is from the late 80s, I think.

Weirdly, the sound came back again now. It's as if the receiver turned itself off after the poof, and then 5 minutes later I could hear it turning on again (I never turned it off). But it's clear sign that it's reaching its end of days. It can go poof at any given minute.

People take their religio-cultural dress codes very seriously, and you won't get women throwing their burqas in the air while running to the beach to try out their new bikinis, simply because these things have been banned from shops. Also, these women are already fairly isolated from society, so telling them that they are not allowed to shop anymore, seems harmful to me, and it certainly won't do anything to address their repressive religious values, as they'll just be isolated even further.

Of course there are certain places where people have to show their face, for instance in an arport, or if a person has some career as a teacher or a judge or something, but telling them they have to show their face simply to shop, seems a bit extreme to me, and I can't really see that improving security in any real semse. There isn't really a history of women with burqas/niqabs robbing stores, while biker helmets have frequently been used during such activities, so I'm not surprised shops tend to react differently to the two situations.

Anyway, the curious thing about burqas and niqabs is that they are rather uncommon, yet people debate them like they're a major issue. We've been through these debates in Denmark as well; a country with a populationg of 5,5 million people, and only 3 burqas and 150-200 niqabs. We've barely had debates about our participation in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but whenever stories about burqas crop up in the media, it's suddenly the biggest and most pressing issue in the world.

Peter

I'd say it's par for the course. It's primarily a matter of safety and security, as well as the rules of the establishment, rather than an ideological stance (however, a point has to be made as well, religion doesn't get a free pass just because it's religion, and there will be some collateral damage).



Not at all. If a shop doesn't allow people to come in wearing anything that will conceal their identity, this is a rule that must be met equally by anyone who chooses to enter into that shop (except in extreme cases, like, say, a burn victim with bandages or something... or someone who literally doesn't have a face. Insert your own extreme example). It also means someone could use a niqab as a disguise. Yes, that's an extreme case and the chances are it would be rare, but it's still an open door. But it's not extreme to expect people to observe the rules regardless of irrational beliefs. I'd first ask them politely of course, and explain the rules. If they're not happy, well then they'll have to lump it.

Good points; although I do think it's a little more complicated than brainwashing. We're all in a sense "brainwashed" when we grow up, as we all automatically absorb the cultural norms that surround us and later in life manage to convince ourselves that all these beliefs, traditions and values we hold are things we've freely chosen to adopt. Anyway, I'm not against questioning and debating these dress codes at all, along with the much more common veil; in fact I do think that they are important to challenge and criticize.

A problem I have is when people promote laws prohibiting the wearing of this type of clothing, as if such laws will somehow make these cultural norms magically dissipate. Moreover it bothers me when people talk as if they care about the rights and freedoms of these women, yet in the same breath argue for enacting laws that will most likely only restrict and isolate them even further. I guess what I long for in public discourse is an objective critique of these dress codes, instead of the highly emotional outbursts and the proposals of laws that will do nothing to address the roots of the problem and will likely have negative consequences for the people most in need of help.

Peter

I think in the whole discussion you ignore the fact how do Muslim women feel about wearing this attire... From what I know they treat it actually as a point of pride. That's why after the Sydney situation there was a whole I'll Ride With You action... so they aren't afraid of wearing it in public, should they want to. What my opinion of the Sydney attack (whether it really was IS' doing) is another thing, though.

Muhammad did not speak to God, he spoke to the Archangel Gabriel. (According to tradition of course.)

Anyway, Steven, I don't like your aggressive attitude towards all things religion. It seems unenlightened in itself and it doesn't help your course.

The simple reason, why that shop won't go by your rule is that it would probably loose any Muslim customer whatsoever and hence a lot of money.

A shop isn't a public place. It's up to the owner to tolerate in his shops whatever he deems right. If you don't like their politics, do your shopping some place else.

Volker

Quite in contrast to Steven, I DO take their feelings into account...and I question them!
I fully realise the exceedingly (and increasingly) slippery slope here though....yet -always having been rather a fan of enlightened depotism- I feel a certain sympathy for Rousseau's philosophy to "force people to be free".
Of course it's never going to be as easy as that. It's conceivable that some people TRULY get off on wearing an insanely uncomfortable, hot, sweaty cloth while they see their men cavorting in swimsuits (yeah, this is the one point I will nit back down from: it's BLATANTLY not religious, but patriarchal, hence sexual, i.e. fearing female independence and sexuality).
Heck, some people truly only derive sexual pleasure from pain. So yeah, it's conceivable.

But the vast majority do jt out if habit, out of fear for the Powers That Be (hopelessly conservative, women-fearing clerics and partiarchs), out of cultural considerations, or -and this is the most human trait and thus I would assume the most common- out if resistance to change. ANY change.

And that makes it completely fair game to keep on challenging and pushing: slaves that freely 'choose' to remain slaves (as, analogously, happened in massive majorities right after the American Civil War) SHOULD be pushed to be free, however hard these first steps may (and will!) be!

You're right. That makes all the difference. How silly of me.



I question religion without apology, which may seem aggressive to anyone who's accustomed to treading lightly for fear of offending, but I'm not aggressive about it (plus I'm not trying to persuade any Muslims here, I'm merely venting frustration. This is why I mentioned I'd ask them politely, a point you seemed to have missed). Any form of theocracy makes me angry though, to varying degrees, and rightly so. That's what you might be getting confused with aggressiveness towards religious people, which is not necessarily the case. (In fact I recognise that many Muslims are victims. None suffer theocracy as much as Muslims themselves.)

If we were having a discussion about the choice -or lack thereof- of wearing burqas and the morality of it, and my audience were largely Muslim, I imagine my tone would be entirely different.



That doesn't negate the principle of it, that merely explains one reason why the principle isn't held up.



You're right. It's up to the shop owner or manager. A shop is open to the public, and its rules should be respected by anyone who enters into its premises. I can't believe that's a point that needs reiterating.