To Bush on Schiavo

Let the dead die.

Short post today (i.e. STOP BLABBERING)

I was searching the really popular blogs, and I had a revelation. They all have short posts. I didn't run down the street naked and yelling, like certain mathematicians of antiquity did, but I realized what the alpha rule of the alpha blogger is: the long post is reserved for when you have something really important to say...

Well today I am sick to death of politics (So is Mrs. Shiavo) and have a 4 hour drive ahead of me. (Langweilig.) So today the subject is physics. We are the citizens of a world that has seen the cataclysmic ideas of the great scientists, and are educated in them in school and supposedly live by them. We have seen the wonders that we have been able to achieve from simple equations like F=ma and E=mc^2 from space flight to nuclear fusion and fission. The thing that astounds me is there are simple facts we remain unaware of. For example, did you know that a car tire on the ground is not moving at the point of contact? Or that we weigh less because the earth rotates? or that there is no gravity at the center of the earth? or that the earth doesn't rotate around its center because Asia is so big that the earth is essentially unbalanced? or that the center is rotating faster than the surface? Did you know that it is possible to stop light, or teleport information? (can't do it faster than light, don't get your hopes up) Or that modern physical theory says that there is a minimum distance one can move, a minimum amount of time that one can measure? The humdinger of it all: if you took 2 billion years to walk through a door, you would defract like light! What we can learn from all of this is that Socrates was right: we know nothing! Its a crazy world we live in, and who knows what the possibilities are. Lets go exploring.

The college dating scene...

It’s been 3 days since I've posted anything. Damn. I've been visiting a friend, and I haven’t had any time to get a post up. I'm working on one, but I want it to read well, so I'm waiting on it. In the mean time, I'm going to treat u 2 a little gossip! *giggle* Oh - my god, I was watching TV a couple of days ago, and there was a special on the show "Chicago Tonight" about the college dating scene. It was a commentary on a special done in the Chicago Sun-Times on how the college dating scene has changed. They had a panel of current students and analysts who sat with the host and painted a rather morbid picture of an American student body which had morally lost its moorings. College students, they said, are living in such an incredibly charged sexual environment that true relationships are suffering. Relationships, they said, had degenerated to the idea of the "hook-up," i.e. sex in the manner of a mafia man, "a hit and run" experience, bada-bing, bada-boom and its over. They were stuck in a maelstrom of peer pressure that had as its dictum "materialistic sex," i.e. that having sex before dating was okay, and that it is better to have no strings attached. Put simply, the parentheses of the statement were the college environment is becoming a cesspool of polygamous immorality. To someone with a love of traditional values, this could be seen as an affront to the social order, and as the ultimate proof that secular relativism was leading our society to an existential cesspool of demonic lust, where having sex with the next thing that moved is seen as high social etiquette. This article is meant to reassure those who think that. Instead of being representative of a deterioration of morals, the current "sexually charged environment" is actually a result of a restructuring of the courtship ladder. Let me explain how.

In the last 50 years, we have been constantly told that what truly matters are the core character qualities of the human being. Things like sexual orientation, skin color, and economic class are ephemeral trappings that are shuffled off with our mortal coil; they aren't what truly matters when interacting with another person. Unfortunately, sex has been grouped into this category as something nice, but also something that does not, and should not define relationships. it is true love and interactions of the soul that should. Sex is not love.What has resulted is a change in dating attitudes from what I will call the traditional dating structure, to what I will call the dating neostructure.
I will outline both and what the differences are. Remember, these are idealized.

The traditional dating structure is as follows. The man is the initiator. It is his job to court the girl, get her to like him, convince her that it is him that she should be interested in above all else. During this time, both would be sexually inactive and contact would be limited to hugs, gift giving, talking, etc. When things get more serious, the guy would ask the girl out on a date if the answer was no, it would end there. If the answer was yes, official Dating would start. Once the couple was dating, they would have the green light to start a dance of descent toward sex. 1) Hand holding 2) Kissing...n)sex. Sex would represent a culmination off all efforts and the ultimate expression of love, and that would be the only role that sex would fulfill. This model still is the standard, "ideal" date structure, but it is not the one that is being used today in college. The neostructure is as follows.

In today's colleges, there is what I would like to call an "Open Market" that exists before the realm of dating. It is essentially a big free for all where everything that used to only happen while one was dating happens much quicker, and with no strings attached. It is very complicated. In the Open Market social mentality, things like cuddling, hugging, sitting on laps, kissing on the cheek, etc. are considered an expression of friendly love. Everyone who is social can do this without fear of repercussions. The next step would be "hooking up." This is sexual interaction with no strings attached, a high speed dance of descent that occurs before there is any commitment. At this point, it goes two ways. Either the "F***-buddy" mentality continues, or the people start a relationship and become truly girlfriend and boyfriend. There are several things expected in a relationship, the first and foremost of which is good old-fashioned fidelity. It is also expected that a relationship will give something on the personal level. The relationship in the dating neostructure is just as deep, if not deeper than what went on before, and from this point on, they are ideally the same.

To summarize the difference in one sentence, whereas before the order was low key flirting, dating and relationship, then sex, the order is now a free market where the joys of the flesh are traded with less shame, then relationship. So ultimately, whatever new stresses arise from this new structure, I do not think that it is all that threatening. It is merely a new order to what went on before. Sleep easy my friends. The college world isn't going to pot.

We are a bunch of s*** thowing monkeys!

In opening my blog, I am going to do something that hasn't been done before: I am going to keep my political affiliation a secret for a while. My motive in hiding my colors is very simple: the partisan baggage that goes along with declaring oneself as a rider of either the donkey or the elephant in this age and day is so powerful that it siphons true sanity from the political discourse. For example, if I were to declare myself a liberal, all the elephants would try to stomp on me. No self-loving conservative would ever be caught dead reading my blog, except to snoot at all of the stupid leftist wish/wash that was being spewed out of my donkey cheeks. And if I were to declare myself a conservative, every donkey within kicking distance would be after me like a battering ram. There would also be a lack of scrutiny. People of my conviction would come to nod mindlessly to my blubbering, while wondering why the stupid liberal/conservatives couldn't see the jewels of thought coming out of this "genius’s" trunk/mouth. In other words, the lens of party affiliation has always thrown a colored cloth over the political debate, and what I am trying to say would be lessened if I revealed my alliance with the greater powers that be.

In the current political climate, regardless of the ultimate genius or folly of any party's policy, whatever stance on a hot issue that is taken by party A is damned and misrepresented by party B. From top to bottom, names are called, and truth is twisted. Don't believe me? Liberals, go to www.anncoulter.com, and conservatives go to www.michaelmoore.com. I guarantee what you see there will make your heart bleed. The thing is that both of these people love to stretch truth to play the harp of emotion. For you conservatives, let's first discredit Mike. All of you who saw Fahrenheit 911 will remember the "egg-throwing scene," and the assertion that Bush was pelted with eggs during his inaugural parade. Nope, not quite true. The correct sentence would read, "Bush was pelted with EGG (singular intended) during his inaugural parade." (Note that I am NOT directly quoting Michael Moore) There was only one egg, yet Michael Moore had to say "eggs" instead of "egg" and make the world think that there was media cover-up of the egg pelting that went on. (Source: http://www.davekopel.com/Terror/Fiftysix-Deceits-in-Fahrenheit-911.htm) Now for Ann. (lets hear a cheer from the liberal side) One of the best ways to lie is to have a footnote/endnote that doesn't support what you say. Ann is an absolute meister at this. Here's something from www.anncoulter.blogspot.com: "...On page 5, Coulter writes: “Yale law professor Bruce Ackerman recommended dropping the war against global terrorism (‘declare war the first decent opportunity’!) and instead concentrate on ‘home-grown extremists.’” REALITY: In the column Coulter cited, Ackerman does not advocate concentrating on domestic terrorists (as opposed to foreign-born terrorists, who are the focus of the column). In fact, Ackerman only mentions “home-grown extremists” in passing ('And I do not deny that other attacks may well occur — perhaps committed by home-grown extremists.')"

These two examples alone prove little, yet one can easily find hundreds of them (omnipotent Google). And whether the accusations are true or not makes no difference. If they are true, then we see how on both sides of the fence, there is indiscriminate truth twisting. If they are false, we can still glean useful information from them. One must only notice that the critics will ALWAYS be united by their political affiliation. In other words, only party A is willing to look at the flaws of party B. Furthermore, this bad behavior is by no means limited to the high-up mucky-mucks. In the general course of political debate in one day, more names are called I think than people live in Chicago. To prove this, I will try a little experiment while I am writing this. I am going to enter "Liberal asshole" and "Conservative idiot" as search queries and see what I find..............

The results weren't surprising. Under "conservative idiot", there were 1650 results, the first of which were "The Top Ten Conservative Idiots, No. 82 - Democratic Underground," "Who is a bigger conservative idiot? - DEMOCRAT.com," and "Grouchy's Liberaltopia: The new Top Ten Conservative Idiot list is..." You get the idea. A similar search for "Liberal asshole" yields 1800 results. The difference in number only reflects the popularity of the phrase. You can do this experiment for yourself. Why not try "Conservative nut job" or "Liberal kook?"

What I find so frustrating about slander and truth twisting is that these strategies don't change anything. If you lie, your lie only works until someone finds out about it, and then it backfires. Slander never works. Indeed, it just alienates the opposition. The reason for this is simple. People define their political beliefs based on fundamental values, and having your fundamental values proved wrong is synonymous to being proven evil. And unlike Saturday morning cartoon villains, most people don't take pride in that designation. It is a distinction for which people will go to ultimate lengths to avoid. True, insulting someone you hate can let off steam from time to time, but defamation and lying have no place in a political arena. Whether it has existed in the past or not, today's political environment calls for a little comity. So whether or not liberals are standing in the way of the war on terror, or Neocons are trying to turn our country into a fascist state, it is truly the ultimate statement of boorishness and pig headedness to assume that a belief system - conservative or liberal - which is held by 100,000,000 people in the United States is the result of stupidity or lack of foresight. If 100,000,000 US citizens have sub-par intelligence, we are all goin' down to Davy Jones' Locker together.