You could probably get away with posting it if you label it as the tantric symbol of "shakti" (just looked that up). The asterisk and the orgasm have crossed paths many times in my life, so I suppose that makes sense.
Is that the Hindu peace symbol the swastika was designed from? I've heard of it briefly. In which case you'll have plenty of use for the asterisk clusterfuck that is the asterism!
Quicksand can work slowly....quick in this case means alive, as in the quick and the dead and in the quick of your nail.
Problem lies within our very own education system. They teach children how to pass exams, rather than teaching them meaningful knowledge which they will be able to apply into everyday life.
I agree, but look at the pressure on teachers and schools as a result of league tables. Then you have the problem that companies do not want to train people anymore and demand that kids have all the skills the require before getting a job. I can't really see teaching school children how to operate a scanner at Tesco's although that pretty much what their CEO has been calling for!
Education is obviously very important but but i know lots of non academics who are blessed with great qualities that have served them well in life .On the other hand i know lots of academics who are failing in other areas in their make up ie emotionally , lacking in common sense, discontentment etc etc .For me if my children were well educated but rude lacked compassion or humour and honesty and other human qualities i would worry for them.I myself work as a general builder and have at 52 had to learn over many years how to make the best of my practical skills how to liase with customers how to run my accounts etc and i still learn new things all the time.If you study my posts you will recognise i have no academic skill but people much wealthier and cleverer than myself have to employ me to do the things they cant do so as thick and as inarticulate as i am i have my rightful place in society as most people do clever or not
We as a society make judgements which assign more value to some occupations than we do others and it is not unusual for those values to be at odds with the values of other societies. In the UK engineering and manufacturing do not enjoy high status and hence we have nearly lost our industrial base the Germans on the other hand value their engineers highly and respect and reward them accordingly. They have a thriving industrial base. We look to the Banking sector to generate wealth and all they have done is bring the country to its knees. Chaplow's Shiny Head raises a very important point. Some knowledge is more highly valued than others. To be a builder you need knowledge of structures, construction processes, materials, planning law, health and safety legislation, standards and specifications, project management, people management, financial and accounting skills, knowledge of continually changing building regulations and the ability to bring a wide range of skills to bear on the safe completion of a building project. This all involves a very high standard of occupational competence involving knowledge skills and understanding acquired through education, training and experience and most importantly all of these bear in a very positive way on all of our lives through the environment in which we live. As a society we dismiss the non academic preferring to value the academic more highly. That is why politicians talk about the A level exam as the gold standard and reject the value to young people of vocational qualifications even though they are in many cases as rigorous and demanding and often of more value to the young person. Employers are quite right to complain about how poorly prepared young people are for the workplace. Schools are run by people who studied academic qualifications and went to University and they prepare young people to follow the same route and expect them to go to university. The kids who are not going to succeed along that route are left with nothing.
As we are fast becoming a nation of clerics again, of some sort or another - i.e. the service industry, what we need is another era of dissenters. We would gain from their work ethic and their values in society. We can just leave out the religion, although learn to respect and love others, without the fall-back of needing religion to tell you that it's a good thing to actually do it.
I agree with many of your points, especially about our financial services, which when you think about it are bonkers. You could however argue that many employers are out of touch and that the people selected are through contacts (who you know) not skills. I have watched most of my 'skilled' friends with university backgrounds depart these shores in recent years due to lack of opportunity and they have been snapped up in North America and continental Europe. I see the main problem being the continual population growth and the adherence to an inherently flawed economic system/model that we are sticking to; economies cannot continually grow therefore we are creating a boom bust cycle.
