The Anvil

Civil war

2007-05-31T03:47:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted in ages, but I will take the time to say that iraq has gone down the path we all saw it would: civil war. Those who would like may give themselves a pat on the back for being able to tell the future. You have the sight, young libral grasshopper.

Attention philatelists and others ...

2006-12-03T20:48:00.000-08:00

Attention philatelists and others ...

The U.S. Postal Service has created a stamp with a
picture of George W.
Bush to honor his achievements while in office. In
daily use, it has been
shown that the stamp is not sticking to envelopes.
This has enraged the President, who has demanded a
full investigation.

After a month of testing, a special presidential
commission has made the
following findings:

1. The stamp is in perfect order.
2. There is nothing wrong with the applied adhesive.
3. People are just spitting on the wrong side

Victory

2006-11-16T00:38:00.000-08:00

With the democratic win, we can breath a sigh of releaf that now there is a person, (Nacy Pelosy) who can stand against the rotten power of the executive office. But just because someone is a democrat does not mean they are a good person. I urge my fellow democrats to not loose the sense of ritiousness now that they are in power. Might does not make right, and let us hope that the democratic party will restore the hand of lady liberty to american politics.

Currently on haiatus

2006-10-22T21:55:00.000-07:00

I am currenlty in japan. I am thus far removed from Americnan politics. I am thus posting in another blog on my japan experience. If you want the address, please contact me. Those who know me know how to do so.

News from Iraq

2006-07-05T22:14:00.001-07:00

I currently am taking an intensive language course in Japanese, and it just turns out that one of my classmates has just returned from Iraq. A couple of days ago, I had the opportunity to ask him how things went overthere, and some of what he said surprised me, some didn't. Mostly, I came away with confirmation of what most people already know: it's chaos over there. According to him, the Iraqis in his area have no sense of national unity, and are incredibly corrupt. He told me how a police chief was told by a woman that her boyfriend was involved in making bombs, and she was promptly taken out into a field by him and shot in the back of the head. He tried to execute her entire family, but the Americans found out about it, and stopped him.

He also told me that the kids don't like them. Every day, he said, kids would come out and give them guff, or throw rocks at them as they rode by in their tanks. So he began piling rocks on his tank, and returning the favor. One kid, he said, he hit in the solar plexus with a large stone thrown forward from a tank going 40 miles an hour. Imagine that. That rock must have been going at least 90 and the kid could have easily killed the kid. If he died, it wouldn't surprise me if his brother tried to kill an American some time soon.

He also said that as of mid 2005, his platoon was under-supplied on ammo. They were stealing ammo from a neighboring platoon, and armoring their vehicles with sand bags. Wasn't this problem supposed to be taken care of? He wrote his father who wrote their senator, and by the time they left they did have enough supplies, but I still find it shocking that you wouldn't supply your own army.

As a side note, when I asked about the civilian project, he said that all the shit jobs go to the Iraqis.

All this really does lay bare how incredibly corrupt, evil, and pointless this war has been. We need a change in November people! Go out and vote.

WTF-fighting Dems?

2006-06-18T12:32:00.000-07:00

The Democratic website looks like the republican website, and the republican website looks like the democratic website. WTF? I think the democrats may have gone a bit too gung ho with the whole "lets copy the republican propaganda" thing.

American Public Schools

2006-06-02T08:27:00.000-07:00

Everybody knows American Public schools suck, but this takes the cake. In a pamphlet released to taxpayers in Kalamazoo Michagan, the following line of inspirational arithmetic appeared.

EDUCATION + HARD WORK - DRUGS = AMERICAN DREAM

As a math enthusiast, I am inclined to make the following deductions.

EDUCATION + HARD WORK = AMERICAN DREAM + DRUGS

EDUCATION = AMERICAN DREAM - HARD WORK + DRUGS

I guess if you pay attention in school, you will have a house a car, house, and lots of cocaine, all without having to do any work. God. What is the world comming to.

Why the sudden troop cuts?

2006-05-16T01:21:00.000-07:00

We should be watching the troop cuts which are going on all over the place recently the New York Times reported that the pentagon is reducing the troops in afghanistan by at least 2500 by next spring. ABC reports similarly, except this time in Iraq. While troop reductions are welcome, I must as ever remain suspicious. The cuts in afghanistan and Iraq are 3 months or more in the making, with the Afghanistan order being signed on Dec 20 2005, and the Iraq cuts being on the table from August 2005. There are two reasons to be doing this: one, public relations for November. Two, this frees up troops for a possible attack on Iran. While a ground invasion is unlikely, airstrikes are very likely. The fact that the troop cuts were done by reducing the number of 4th brigade soldiers who will replace 173rd brigade is very suspicious, as they are both airborn divisions. The 4th brigade are paratroopers, the 173rd are a conventional airborn unit. It does seem convienient to incriease your pilots if you are considering airstrikes, doesn't it?

Wow, do Republicans think that their constituancy are idiots?

2006-04-30T18:37:00.000-07:00

Recently, with everything looking sour for the Republican party, they have a new attack strategy: we suck, but democrats are worse. Their website has moved away from putting their best foot forward to posting facts only an idiot would believe and mudslinging at democrats. I think it is time for the Democratic party to quietly call the republicans on their favorite thing to call democrats on: playing politics. Heres a small tidbit of the idiocy:


ANWR Would Supply States And D.C. With Oil For Generations:

STATE                   NUMBER OF YEARS                          STATE           NUMBER OF YEARS 
                              ANWR OIL WOULD                                               ANWR OIL WOULD 
                               POWER STATE                                                     POWER STATE
Arizona                        108                                          Nevada                 226
California                      16                                           Montana               342
District Of Columbia     1,710                                      New Jersey            46
Florida                          29                                           New Mexico          222
Virginia                         62                                           Pennsylvania         39
Ohio                             43                                           Missouri                77
Minnesota                    84                                            Washington           68

one very important stat they forgot:

number of years that ANWR would power entire country by the Republican's grossly overblown estimates: 1.6 MAXIMUM

Thats alot less than 1,710.

Long Live the Alliance! 〈同盟万岁！〉

2006-04-14T20:39:00.000-07:00

I am not unique in that I fell in love with Joss Whedon's Firefly from the first episode, nor in that I came late to Firefly fandom, having seen it on the DVD's. I felt, as most people did who love the show, that it was solid science-fiction that didn't require too drastic a suspension of disbelief and that even if it had it would have made up for it in spades with its characters. I got involved with the characters such that I was angry enough to bash something with my head when a certain character died in the movie (I won't spoil it for those of you who haven't seen it). It was not a serial; each episode stood on its own and on the strength of the development of its characters. It simply oozed style as a gritty space-western complete with shootouts, last stands and train robberies. It was, all in all, a wonderful piece of science fiction that deserves to be remembered alongside Star Trek.

There is, however, one problem that particularly stands out. I cannot bring myself to agree with the primary messages of the series.

The story centres itself around a chevalier-mal-fait named Mal who, six years ago, fought on the side of the Independent Faction against the Union of Allied Planets (known informally as the Alliance and by the derogatory Purplebellies) in a planetary Civil War of sorts. Suffice to say, the Independents lost, and now the survivors must pick up the pieces and find work where they can (often as pirates or smugglers), on the border planets. Mal bought a small freighter (the titular Firefly) and acquired a crew, which are the foci of the TV show.

There is firstly the issue of the rather unsubtle sympathy with the historical Confederacy and Reconstruction-Era South which I find reprehensible (a country founded on the primary basis of institutionalised racism and exploitation is nowhere near deserving of this kind of sympathy in my book - this aspect goes ignored in the allegorical history of the series). But behind this there is another, deeper issue. I would describe myself as a lower-case 'd' democrat, but I believe that if democracy is going to work, it is going to have to entail some kind of communitarian ethic in which the citizens recognise their responsibilities both to each other and to the rule of law. Firefly's romanticisation of what I call the 'cowboy ethos' is, of course, understandable given the tenor of the series, but at the same time, it is something I see as the Achilles' heel of American-style democracy. As a society, we tend to emphasise the individual rights as sovereign, sometimes to the detriment of the realisation that no man lives in a vacuum - he lives among a community of other people and in a natural environment, both of which should have his respect. The language of independence and rugged self-sufficiency is, of course, a staple of American historical and political rhetoric and practise (and embodied in the mythos of the lone American cowboy), but, in general, very little attention is paid to the aspects of responsibility, of community-building and of interdependence which must also be primary realities of democratic practise.

I bring attention to the dichotomy of the main characters' views in Firefly regarding their situation in the system: on the one hand, you have the former Independents, struggling to survive on the fringes of the system, looking out for number one, exercising their right to live free from Alliance meddling. On the other side you have the Alliance: bureaucratic, heavy-handed, its citizens living in comparative comfort and closer contact with one another under (what appears to be) an oppressive, 1984-esque regime. The main characters (particularly Mal and Zoe)stand in complete support of the former and complete rejection of the latter, no doubt in part because they are still seen as the enemy.

Yes, the Alliance seems quite sketchy from Firefly's perspective. Many of the officials are corrupt in the vast bureaucracy, there are strong corporate ties with megacorps straight out of a cyberpunk novel (the logo of the 蓝日 'Blue Sun' company appears in many places), it dabbles in abduction, assassination and human experimentation (as the backstory of River Tam shows). But the Alliance is also run by a Parliament (perhaps in name only, but even so), its citizens are by and large happy and well-off (and more civilised), and the attitudes portrayed by characters in the series who have a strong Alliance background (Inara, Book, Simon and River Tam) display without a doubt that they have no trouble expressing their own opinions on touchy issues (a good, democratic quality). Joss Whedon even made parallels in the commentary between his Alliance and Gene Roddenberry's more optimistically-portrayed Federation, and admitted that the Alliance was being portrayed from a very specific point-of-view.

In jest, I asked a fellow fan of the series whether she thought me a total fascist for having more sympathy for the Alliance than for the former Independents. She pointed out many of the same points in the Alliance's favour I've made here. It strikes me that if the democratic dream is to come to full fruition, it is going to have to establish a dialectic between individualistic ideals of independence and more communitarian ideals of mutual respect, support and social capital. We should build a democratic society on the twin pillars, to borrow Dr. Amitai Etzioni's metaphor, of individual rights and responsibilities to one's community.

For more good ideas from a radical-centrist with his head screwed on straight, allow me to recommend his weblog: http://www.amitai-notes.com/blog

Here's to finding a balance:

Long Live the Alliance! 同盟万岁！

Lesson In Political Systems

2006-03-24T11:32:00.001-08:00

I didn't write this, but I think god did. Its amazing (now new, with edits by norm dyer!)

Lesson In Political Systems

DEMOCRACY

You have two cows.
Your neighbor has none.
You feel guilty for being successful.
Barbra Streisand sings for you.

REPUBLICANISM

You have two cows.
Your neighbor has none.
So?

SOCIALISM

You have two cows.
The government buys one and gives it to your neighbor.
You form a cooperative to tell him how to manage his cow.

COMMUNISM

You have two cows.
The government seizes both and provides you with milk.
You wait in line for hours to get it.
It is expensive and sour.

ENTREPRENEURIALISM

You have two cows.
You sell one, buy a bull, and breed a herd of cows.

BUREAUCRACY, AMERICAN STYLE

You have two cows.
Under the farm subsidy program the government pays you to shoot one,
milk the other, then pour the milk down the drain.

AMERICAN INVESTMENT BANKER

You have two cows.
You sell one, lease it back to yourself and do an IPO on the 2nd one.
You force the two cows to produce the milk of four cows.
You are surprised when one cow drops dead.
You spin an announcement to the analysts stating
you have downsized and are reducing expenses.
Your stock goes up.

FRENCH CORPORATION

You have two cows.
You go on strike because you want three cows.
You go to lunch and drink wine.
Life is good.

JAPANESE CORPORATION

You have two cows.
You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow
and produce twenty times the milk.
They learn to travel on unbelievably crowded, unbelievably fast, trains.
Both are at the top of their class at cow tutorial school,
but one commits karoshi.
You accept this as fate because you only had room for one cow anyway.

GERMAN CORPORATION

You have two cows.
You engineer them so they are blond, drink only beer,
give excellent quality milk, and run a hundred miles an hour.
Unfortunately they also demand 13 weeks of paid vacation per year.

ITALIAN CORPORATION

You have two cows.
But you don't know where they are.
Someone spray-paints grafitti on your cows.
Your neighbor thinks these are insults meant for him.
He pays a hit-man to take you out.
While leaving town, you see a beautiful woman.

You break for lunch.
Life is good.

RUSSIAN CORPORATION

You have two cows.
You drink some vodka.
You count them and see you have five cows.

You drink some more vodka.
You count them again and learn you have 42 cows.
The Russian Mafia hears about this, and takes all your cows.

NEW YORK CORPORATION

You have two cows.
Cows are not allowed in the city.
You are fined more than the cows are worth.
Before you can dispose of them, the cow manure smell so upsets your neighbors,
you are sued for property devaluation: 3.2 million.
Central Park artists create sculptures of the cows and become instantly wealthy
after appearing on the David Letterman show.

CALIFORNIA CORPORATION

You have 100 cows.

They make real California cheese.
Only five speak English.
All but two are illegal.

Arnold likes the ones with the big udders.

Chicago Anti-War protest

2006-03-19T23:35:00.000-08:00

This Saturday night I decided to go with my family to the anti-war protests that were arranged in Chicago. We took the red line up to Division St, from which point we had heard the march was going to be starting. We got out of the train, and after a bit of confusion on my parents part about which way we were supposed to go, I pointed them in the right direction East down Division toward State St. Crossing state, there were a large number of police wagons, also a police helicopter overhead, and in true Daley fashion, many street cleaners going after the protest to clean up the mess. After being yelled at quite rudely to get out of the way of the St cleaners, we headed down to the starting point of the protest, and found no one there because the procession was already on Michigan avenue, the main rout for the protest. Pretty soon we found them: a solid mass of people streaching across the intersection, sounds of chanting, and vague sounds of drums. As we joined in we passed a group of "Billionairs for Bush" doing a cute little act. There were some cute signs such as "bush is a category 5 disaster" scrawled in marker on a board, other ones such as "bring the troops home" or "restore not war." It was silent when we joined, but pretty soon people got a chant going "hey! Ho! George Bush has got to go!" which gave the march an invigorating feeling. As we continued marching, I noticed the police in full riot gear who were lining the rout, each armed with a billy club and a helmet, some with guns. There were a few Republican anti-protesters here and there; one group was holding a large sign which said "support our troops." The guy next to me started hollering "support our troops, bring them home!" I joined in and we got about 10 people to chant that as we passed. In complete contrast, we passed a large sign which drew applause which said "Bring the troops home. Send Bush and congress instead" in black block letters on a white background. At the Michigan Avenue bridge, we were turned onto Wacker Drive by 20 mounted police standing in a semicircle. As we crossed the river, I was interested to notice that they even had a police boat in the river, for what purpose I cannot imagine. Some point along here we got stopped, and the current chant was "peace! Now!" I distinctly remember a woman a little over to my left trying to get a call and response started, and saying "what do we want?" "peace" "when do we want it?" "now!" She didn't have too loud a voice so I took up the call for her, and after a while had a good rhythm going with a nice call and response. After a few times my voice broke, and I quit. A few minutes later, I took up the call with again, and got into the army sergeant roll...It took about a minute for my voice to break again, but this time, when I stopped, so did everyone else. When I got it going a third time, I started pumping my fist and really got people going. I think at one point I must have had between 75 and 100 people doing the "what do we want?" "peace!" "when do we want it?" "Now!" when my voice broke again, I was pleased that I got a round of applause. At some point a different woman behind me did the same thing with another cheer, and got another call and response going "Tell me what democracy looks like!" "This is what democracy looks like!" it didn't catch on as well as the "peace" one, but it was still fun. We also tried to get a call going
"where should the monkey go?" "out with the monkey!" but it didn't catch, probably because it was so silly. It was nice, however, to hear my cheers being passed up and down the line with other leaders taking their hand at the call response thing. By this time we had reached Daily Plaza, where there was a small rally. I was pleased to here that people were still doing my cheer while they gathered around the rally speaker who unfortunately had only a small megaphone. After hanging around for awhile, we took heed of the police order to disburse by 9:00, and left the way we came on the L. Official numbers for the protest were 7,000, but I would say It was more like 8,000 to 10,000. It was a good evening, and a great way to get your voice heard by lots of people, even if you couldn't speak for the rest of the evening.

Fayt ownz Lloyd

2006-03-10T20:37:00.000-08:00

Okay, I've seen some pretty silly crap on the Internet. But it seems that hell has no fury, like a Namco fanboy scorned, and there is apparently an entire forum dedicated to trashing the Square-Enix RPG Star Ocean 3: Till the End of Time.

http://s8.invisionfree.com/Lloyd_Owns_Fayt/index.php?showforum=18

I consider myself a pretty avid amateur gamer. I love nothing better than a good RPG, my favourites being the classics Chrono Trigger and Seiken Densetsu 3 (聖劍傳說3, known as Secret of Mana 2 here in the States). I will as readily sit down to play a Bioware game as a Black Isle as a Square-Enix as a Nintendo, with no preconceptions. Given that, consider this a non-biased, non-partisan gamer's opinion.

A good RPG is driven not by its battle engine and not by its world designs. A good RPG is driven by its story. A great RPG will also have a well-designed world (or multiple of them) and an intuitive battle engine - even better (though this is icing on the cake), it will have a kick-ass soundtrack. But it won't matter one bit if it's got the greatest battle engine since Tri-Ace and all the beautiful world designs of Chrono Trigger. If the story is poorly written, the game will be boring.

Say what you like about Fayt Leingod's name being silly; say what you like about the Star Ocean universe ripping off Star Trek's Prime Directive and Guardian of Forever. Star Ocean 3's story was engaging. When it wasn't concerned with Fayt's separation from his family and friends or with his rescue by the shadowy QUARK, it was dealing with a side-quest which was just as interesting. The politics of Elicoor II were convincing (though there were some moments in the negotiations that made me cringe) and the characters were realistic, well-developed and sympathetic.

Also, add to this the fact that there is a shortage of good science-fiction RPG's out there: KotOR tops my list, and there's also Fallout (I haven't had the fortune to play any of the Front Mission games yet), but I haven't heard of any other big names on the sci-fi RPG docket. This game definitely tickles my Trekkie tastes without being too blatant about it. Then there's the soundtrack - I'm begging your pardon, Bruce McCulloch, but I just love the jazz. I'm still listening to 'Fly Away in the Violet Sky' and 'Pert Girl on the Sandy Beach', not to mention the more rockish numbers 'The Divine Spirit of Language' and 'Expiration'. Thirdly, there's the plot twist - but you'll have to play the game to get that one. Suffice it to say, it's almost as good a plot-twist as KotOR's, and that's no mean praise. I was liking the character designs as I saw them (Nel Zelpher's in particular; I am obligated to concur with Cliff Fittir's elegant, if rather brusque, assessment of her maidenly pulchritude), and the voice-acting wasn't half-bad for a Squenix RPG, Michelle Ruff's Sophia notwithstanding.

And seriously, folks, comparing the merits of Star Ocean 3 and Tales of Symphonia (the much-touted Namco game for NGC developed by the same team, Tri-Ace) should be no contest. I wasn't an hour into the game before I was cracking 'Lloyd... I am your father' jokes about Kratos and singing 'Your own personal Jesus' whenever Colette opened her demure little messianic mouth. Tree of Mana connecting the worlds... my God, where could I have heard that one before? And of course, I could see it coming a mile away that our heroes' quest was going to piss someone off in some other world down the line. Angels = evil; yes, I saw that one coming also - I have watched a certain Hideaki Anno anime, you know. (To be fair, they did the evil angels thing in Star Ocean 3, too, but when it came to foreshadowing Squenix did have to their writing a marvelous little thing called subtlety.) And then the player interface rubbed me the wrong way (what the hell was with that font?), the voice acting was annoying (except for Jennifer Hale's contribution to Shiina Fujibayashi, naturally), and the sound and music were a rather underwhelming experience.

A little advice, Namco, if I may be so bold: stick to what you do best. I love the Soul series, though I'm not a fighting-game man myself. Soul Calibur III was polished and colourful, the battle system was shiny, the characters were well-balanced, hell, you even put gave the game some decent music, sound-effects and voice acting! You had the gravity-defying, incomparable good looks of Taki gracing the franchise since the arcade days. But Sales of Tymphonia left a lot to be desired, in character development, in plot development, even in concept. Leave the RPG development to Bioware.

And as to Lloyd 'owning' Fayt, this is an interesting match, so let's walk through this one. Fayt Leingod has height, weight, reach, age and training on his side, meaning that in a straight-up fencing match, he's probably more likely to win. Lloyd does have two katanas on his side whereas Fayt's only got his zweihänder. As any D20 player knows, however, unless the little dude's got the Master Two-Weapon Fighting feat, he might get more attacks per round, but with his to-hit penalties he'd be lucky to land Fayt even one. Aside from all that, Lloyd's got no supernatural or paranormal abilities whereas Fayt's got the Destruction Gene. Sorry, Mr. Irving, but the writing on the wall reads 'Mene mene tekel u-Faytin'.

I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.

more fox BS

2006-03-07T20:47:00.000-08:00

Another story furthering thier agenda of keeping liberal politics out of schools.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,187126,00.html

Fox, Horrowitz, and media bias

2006-02-27T21:32:00.000-08:00

This is an article I wrote for my college debate magazine.

I would like to talk about anti-intellectualism in America. First off, I agree with Mr. Cooper [fellow debator] completely on the accusation that America is rife with anti-intellectualism. It is a simple fact that one can find a guttural distrust of the ivory tower that goes back to our frontier days. What Mr. Cooper failed to mention, however, was who was doing it and why. Anti-intellectualism is not a universally held philosophy, but rather one held mostly by people bound together by conservative ideologies. Before conservatives take offense to this, know that there are particular conservatives who do this, and it is therefore not a universal trait among all those who claim to hold conservative ideals in the United States. The particular conservative who runs the Republican Party’s anti-intellectual machine is named David Horowitz. I have been looking for a way to expose effectively to people his methods of advancing his cause and how damaging they are, and I believe that I have finally found a satisfactory example. The story below is a seemingly innocuous news story that appeared on Fox News about a class at UCLA on whiteness studies. It is not only an example of someone promoting anti-intellectualism, it is an excellent snapshot of the Republican spin doctors in action, and of the one-sidedness of Fox. While I have added comments throughout, I suggest that you read the Fox story first and then reread it with my comments.

William Lajeunesse: Well Martha, whiteness studies is actually taught at 30 universities around the country from Princeton to San Francisco State.

Even in the subject of the news story, it is clear that the reporting had an agenda. The use of the word “actually” sets up an element of surprise. "This course is actually taught?" An impartial phrasing of this would be "Well Martha, the new field of whiteness studies is currently being taught at 30 universities around the country, from Princeton to San Francisco state." While the sentence is innocuous out of context, it sets up an unspoken presumption in the article that this field is inappropriate.

It is based on the idea that whites are born to privilege, a position used to oppress blacks, Hispanics and Native Americans for 200 years. [Said while showing Asian students]

This is fine, but apparently not the whole truth. According to the student’s comments below, the course supposedly did not focus on "white against the other." This also sets up the ideological premise for the story, that teaching the above is, as the announcer says below, "racist and one sided."

We contacted a half dozen universities about their whiteness studies programs, and each declined to talk.

This could be taken two ways. Either as plain fact, that they didn’t respond, or it could be read to mean that they didn’t respond because they had something to be ashamed about. I mean, what university wouldn’t want to talk about their courses on national televistion? The real reason they didn’t respond was that fox has incredibly intrusive reporting methods, and these professors understand that is not for the purpose of curiosity, but for ridicule that Fox seeks them out to interview them.

We also approached Dr. Eric Avila who teaches understanding whiteness at UCLA.

I e-mailed Dr. Avila, and it appears from an op-ed that he sent me that fox sought him out because he was put on a list of UCLA professors who taught "radical" views called the "Dirty 30." This list was compiled by a UCLA alumnus and former employee of David Horowitz, Andrew Jones, who was interviewed for this story.

Now, according to the syllabus, it introduces students to the process of racialization and examines what it means to be white.

Ok. First impartial, unloaded line in the whole piece.

Avila refused an interview although his students defend him [rising intonation, implying surprise] saying his class is neither racist nor one sided.

Here they say their thesis, which they have been hinting at since line one of the story. They are saying “The class is racist and one-sided, and is a perfect example of liberal intellectuals gone awry. ” They have been building up to this thesis, and use the rest of the piece to pound it into our heads.

They continue with this line of attack immediately. We have not even seen any material from the course, no-one has been quoted as saying that the class is racist or one sided, yet they further their agenda by asking unprovoked whether the class is racist propaganda, as we are supposed to believe. I quote Dr. Avila here:

“This course, labeled "sub-academic rubbish" by [Andrew] Jones, recently drew the attention of a certain television news network, who has been hounding me for an interview on this course. Long suspicious of what this network foists upon the public as "news," I ignored its invitation for an interview and left it to UCLA's Office of Media Relations to explain my unavailability. But last Thursday, as I was preparing my material for the course in question, I hear a quiet knock on my door. As I open the door, it is nudged open by a reporter from this network, who is accompanied by a cameraman moving closely towards my face. The reporter fires a barrage of questions: "Isn’t your course simply racist propaganda?" "Aren’t you biased in your classroom?" "Can we interview your students?" Though I am caught off guard by these sneaky and invasive tactics, I dismiss the questions, depriving the reporter of his story. Fifteen minutes later, approaching my classroom, I discover the same reporter questioning my students as they enter class."

Now the student’s interviews.

Serina Salinas: Again, its that language, of white against the other, and its so much greater than that. That's simplifying it to a term that is not justifying the course.

Adriana Garcia: you cant just say 'oh white people are privileged' or white people are that. Because that's not always true.

In defense of Dr. Avila, we have two quotes out of context that effectively make no sense. We do not know what questions they were asked, but we know that they had to defend themselves against accusations by the reporter, just as their professor did. After giving no voice to the professor or his students, they go on to trash his class.

William Lajeunesse: A critic, a former student, calls the program academic garbage, and a UCLA campus activist recently accused his professor of turning the classroom into an anti-white campaign, a charge that Avila denies.

Here, our hero, William Lajeunesse, is saying in a formal, matter-of-fact, news-announcer voice, that the program is academic garbage. Wait. Have we talked to the professor? No. Have we heard a complete sentence from his students? No. Have we trashed the shit out of him using a formal medium which people rely on to be unbiased? Certainly. Also, Who was the critic, and who was the former student? I think that they were the same person, who they interview next. And it ony gets better.

Andrew Jones FMR whiteness studies student: What this class, and what a lot of major Chicano studies do, is give people the ideological ammunition to feel beset by the white race, beset by the man to feel put upon to be a victim.

More on Andrew below.

David Horowitz, center for popular culture: I mean, what they’ve done here is entirely improper, in setting up a whole field, which is a concocted spurious field, designed to show how bad white people in America are.

Ahhh. David Horowitz. He looks like a professor, and sounds like one too. He’s not one. Here we have yet another authoritative voice telling us that the class is inappropriate garbage when we haven’t seen any of it.

Lets recap a little. First Fox provides a series of nonsensical blurbs to create the illusion of a defensive argument from the professor, all the while asking accusatory questions which make it look like the university knows what its doing is inappropriate and doing it anyways. After having no defense from the professor or his students, we have a matter of fact reporter, then a smart sounding "student," then a "professor" trash the class, all expressing their opinion as fact. So here, in summary, we have the process by which fox news plants ideologies in its listeners. They find a provocative subject, such as whiteness studies, then make the people who defend it uncomfortable, and through this, make them seem like they have no defense for their actions. They then interview far more people who have the opposite view, and present it as fact. In this case, it was the news announcer, the smart student (not really a student anymore) and the professor (not a professor anymore). Once you are convinced by a news story (which people trust to be sources of fact) which is apparently unrelated to a political cause, you run into the political cause already knowing about the “problem” that that cause is addressing. They do this again...and again...and again. Planting these news stories creates the illusion that the problem is “all around” you and that they are addressing something real, when in reality they are propaganda pieces for a special interest organization, in this case, David Horowitz' and Andrew Jones'.

Here we can begin to see how deep this really goes, Andrew Jones is not an "FMR whitenes studies student" as we are lead to believe. He is actually the founder of the Bruin Alumni Association, which is the group (which has only one member, him) that compiled the "Dirty 30" UCLA professor list. This man definitely has an agenda, and it matches perfectly with the hidden thesis of this news story, that liberal profs are whack and need to go. His agenda is simply to get all liberal professors fired. In January, Andrew Jones issued the following notice to UCLA students:

UCLA STUDENTS: Do you have a professor who just can't stop talking about President Bush, about the war in Iraq, about the Republican Party, or any other ideological issue that has nothing to do with the class subject matter? It doesn't matter whether this is a past class, or your class from this coming winter quarter. If you help expose the professor, we'll pay you for your work.

Andrew Jones is also the former Employee (he was fired for falsifying student testimony) of David Horowitz, who in 2002 kicked off the anti-liberal intellectual campaign we have been discussing with a survey collected by Frank Luntz, Republican pollster and propagandist. They collected now oft quoted data that liberals outnumber conservatives by huge proportions in Ivy league institutions and began crying bias, arranging news conferences, holding conferences, and getting conservative columnists to write about the issue. He created Students for Academic Freedom (SAF), an organization not run by students but by professional lobbyists out of Washington DC which sets up Republican groups at Colleges across the nation which do the same thing Jones does: Bully liberal professors. They have a pre-made, mail-order club, with constitution, by-laws, and even pre-made flyers which make it easy for the average Republican to become a brownshirt liberal-intellectual-hater in just five minutes. He has his own online magazine to further his cause, called front-page, which from time to time feeds delicious little tidbits to the mainstream media about how the intellectuals are acting up today. He has taken his fight to the courts, trying to get a "student's bill of rights" passed, which would provide disgruntled students and people such as Jones legal process by which to silence liberal professors. This Fox story is just one of their typical publicity stunts that tries to convert people to believing that there is a liberal bias in academia, an issue that no one gave one hoot about before Horowitz’ special interest groups planted it in an unknowing press.

But why go through all the trouble to do this planting of stories and spreading of slander? Its quite simple. Conservatives don't like that universities are liberal, and Horowitz wants to change that.

If this isn’t McCarthy style anti-intellectualism, blatant propagandist media manipulation, and a sorry hit below the belt in the political debate, I don’t know what is.

Reporter: " can I just ask you a question?"
-"no!"
-"you don’t want to answer a question?"
-"no!"
-"they say its racist propaganda"
-"I'm sorry, youre not going to ask me any questions!"

This was the end of the fox piece. My only comment: Jackasses.

Okay, back online.

2006-01-16T17:30:00.000-08:00

Posts wont be quite as frequent as before, but I still have something to say. Here's what:

Just tell me that this add from Captain's Quarters Blog isn't racist as hell:

Oh, yes, democrats want to save those big scary black people while all letting all of the poor white babies get brutally murdered by thier mothers. Trust political adds to adhere to gross characatures in the hopes of getting your grassroots support riled up enough to give you money. Both sides do it, but this one is sick.

Blog Shutting Down

2005-10-15T20:27:00.000-07:00

I regret to inform everyone that this blog will be temporarily shut down as my workload is high right now and I do not have the time to maintain it on a regualar basis. If there is some thing truly of note, I will post it, so you might want to check back, but for the next month at least I will be too busy to post. Thanks.

The Wedge Strategy: Ulterior Motives to Pseudoscience

2005-09-17T18:44:00.000-07:00

One of the most disturbing trends (to my view) in the current administration is its endorsement of 'Intelligent Design' theory. The idea itself, as with the philosophy behind it, seem rather innocuous: that life is too complex to have been created by a mere act of chance, and that there must have been some intelligent power behind life's genesis (in other words, God). It's a view I would accept and, as a theistic evolutionist, applaud. But it is not science, and does not belong to the field of scientific inquiry. Science makes hypotheses about the natural world that a.) are observable, b.) are quantifiable and c.) can be falsified. And there is no real way to observe or quantify such a power or prove that such a power doesn't exist.

It's bad enough that conservative politicians, lobbyists and pop pseudoscientists are trying to establish ID as a legitimate field of scientific study both in public schooling and in research circles when it isn't legitimate scientific study period. But there is an ulterior motive to creating this establishment.

The euphemistically-named Centre for the Renewal of Science and Culture, a lobbying organisation dedicated to discrediting standard evolutionary theory affiliated with the Discovery Institute, issued in 1998 a document outlining the 'Wedge Strategy', outlining the five- and twenty-year goals of the Intelligent Design movement. These are its self-describing governing goals, as put forth in the Wedge Document:

To defeat scientific materialism and its destructive moral, cultural and political legacies.
To replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and hurnan beings are created by God.

Five Year Goals:
To see intelligent design theory as an accepted alternative in the sciences and scientific research being done from the perspective of design theory.
To see the beginning of the influence of design theory in spheres other than natural science.
To see major new debates in education, life issues, legal and personal responsibility pushed to the front of the national agenda.

Twenty Year Goals:
To see intelligent design theory as the dominant perspective in science.
To see design theory application in specific fields, including molecular biology, biochemistry, paleontology, physics and cosmology in the natural sciences, psychology, ethics, politics, theology and philosophy in the humanities; to see its innuence in the fine arts.
To see design theory permeate our religious, cultural, moral and political life.

As seen here, design 'theorists' are not interested in an objective and honest line of scientific inquiry. They're not even interested in working to convince the scientific community. They have a clear ulterior and unscientific agenda to muddy the waters of scientific inquiry in both secondary schools and the wider community and ultimately, to see their weltanschauung dominate the discussion not only of life's origins, but also of morality, culture and public policy, regardless of whether it's right or wrong.

This is scary stuff. It's an affront to the scientific method, which takes nothing for granted, and it's an affront to the open and democratic spirit of the scientific community. Its broader goals are an affront to the principles of our society. Though Discovery Institute pundits have since disavowed the Wedge Strategy, it still remains a black mark on their movement's record. It is imperative, now more than ever since an avowedly friendly administration holds the reins of power, to subject the Intelligent Design movement to increased scrutiny and to ensure that it isn't still trying to wedge its way in where it doesn't belong.

Walmart... Faster than a speeding FEMA

2005-09-16T19:50:00.000-07:00

I have been paying attention to the various news sources that have been releasing investigations into the Katrina crisis. There was recently a show on PBS called Now where they were interviewing various people involved in the Katrina relief effort. The greatest thing of all said was that WALMART of all places was one of the fastest organizations to get supplies to people in need. Hilarious.

Ho-ly shit.

2005-09-07T18:44:00.004-07:00

There is a reason why the National guard was so a late to arrive in New Orleans. According to this German webcast from Tagesschau, a major German news source, this is what went on.

"With the arrival of the National Guard, the city has changed. And the Nation [USA] asks itself, why weren't they here earlier? The answer is quite dramatic: the Pentagon restricted them, held back troops. They were supposed to go to Afghanistan.

All I can say is, OH-MY-GOD. And not as in these people are idiots. But rather, as in- HOW COULD THEY?

One more thing.

2005-09-06T22:36:00.000-07:00

One thing that must still be proven from my previous post is that the governor specifically asked for immediate search/rescue/food relief, or that the President had an implied responsibility to give it, when the acts described in the letter to the president were invoked. She invoked the Stafford Emergency and Disaster Relief act, under section 401 of which she can make a request to the president for assistance. This gives him the power to declare a disaster area, and says that he MAY, repeat MAY, not shall, send what aid he deems necessary, there is no time limit. There is also section 5170b, subsection C, paragraph 1, which says the following:

During the immediate aftermath of an incident which may ultimately qualify for assistance under this title or title V of this Act [42 U.S.C. §§ 5170 et seq. or 5191 et seq.], the Governor of the State in which such incident occurred may request the President to direct the Secretary of Defense to utilize the resources of the Department of Defense for the purpose of performing on public and private lands any emergency work which is made necessary by such incident and which is essential for the preservation of life and property. If the President determines that such work is essential for the preservation of life and property, the President shall grant such request to the extent the President determines practicable. Such emergency work may only be carried out for a period not to exceed 10 days.

I have called the Governor's office for a list of all requests for federal aid by State Operations Officer Art Jones. They have yet to get back to me. If he did make a specific request under a provision like the one above, this is obviously the Administration's fault. If he didn't, things are more ambiguous. However, the list of requests is crucial.

Read this!

2005-09-03T18:50:00.000-07:00

http://www.gov.state.la.us/Disaster%20Relief%20Request.pdf

This MUST get around.

It says what the governor of LA was doing and what she expected of the president, inlcuding the quote;

"I have concluded that the incident will be of such severity and magnitude that effective respose will be beyond the capabilities of state and the affected local govornments and that supplimentary federal assistance will be necessary"

Since the Repubs are trying to stick the blame directly on the Governor and Mayor, saying it was their responsibility, this will prove as invaluable counter evidence and put the blame where it belongs: on the Monkey himself.

FUCK BILL OREILY!!!!

2005-09-03T00:22:00.000-07:00

BILL OREILLY IS A MOTHER FUCKING CUNT WHORE WHO CAN LICK MY BALLS!!!!! IF I HAD A HAMMER, I WOULD HIT HIM!

MESSAGE TO BILL:

MAY YOU HAVE AS MUCH PAIN IN YOUR LIFE AS THOSE SUFFERING FROM KATRINA. YOU ARE THE MOST SHALLOW BUSHLICKING BITCH TO EVER WALK THIS EARTH. DU GEHOERST MIT HITLER IN DER HOELLE!!!!

FUCK YOU!

How to catch a fly.

2005-08-14T18:37:00.000-07:00

If you have ever wondered how to catch a fly without hurting it, here is how. And yes, I made this up.

Materials: clear glass that doesn't refract the image much if you look through it, paper, loose fly, you.

Procedure: Wait until your target has landed. It is optimal if your fly is tired. Hold glass as indicated in picture, with thumb and pointer around the lip. Descend over your fly carefully, directly from above.

Once you are over your fly, he will try to escape by flying straight up, because he cannot see the bottom of the glass. The little poo eating genious will fly right in.

How it really is:

how your fly sees it:

Once your fly is in the glass, quickly lower it to the surface your fly was on before. Then, with him trapped, put a paper underneth and prepare him for release into the wild. Perhaps give him a treat as a reward, or take him for show and tell if he was good.

Final result:

Waldorfian take on the evolution debate

2005-08-03T20:08:00.000-07:00

First of all, for those reading this whose first reaction is " what the hell is Waldorf?" it is a schooling philosophy. The first school was founded in the 1920's by Austrian Rudolf Steiner at the behest of the CEO of the Waldorf-Astoria cigarette company (hence the name Waldorf) to serve as an educational facility for workers at his company. Steiner founded it on the philosophy that the whole child needed to be developed at every point of the education. The school works around an integration of art and science that is seldom seen in education anywhere. The basic structure is a k-8 system with a tightly knit homeroom class and a teacher that stays with you those 8 years (after eighth grade, this ends.) The days structure is a morning lesson that changes in monthly blocks (a system which some colleges use) with track classes taught by various other teachers in the afternoon. The children make their own textbooks from the subject matter that the teacher presents. As the children get older, these "morning lesson books grow in complexity until they are often artistic portfolios of essays and what the child learned during the block. The idea behind this structure is to enforce an environment where "children relate what they learn to their own experience, they are interested and engaged and what they learn becomes their own. Waldorf schools are designed to foster this kind of learning." (http://www.awsna.org/education.html) You can read more about it at Wikipedia or in a Google search for Waldorf.

It is the Waldorfian take on the teaching of sacred myth and science that I want to discuss here. In the lower grades, the sacred mythology of the world's major cultures is taught periodically in the morning lesson. For example, second graders might hear the stories of the Christian saints while third graders would be hearing the stories of the old testament. These stories, in turn, are each taught without a word to their truth or falsity, and given to the child directly on face value, with the emphasis on the fact that for the people who created these myths, the were ultimate Truth. When each story comes, in the moment that it is being taught, that is the truth-for that moment. It is the same way with religious practice. Children are invited to celebrate various holidays from all of the major religions. While studying the old testament, often the third grade class will have a sader, or build a sukkah. It is common to light advent candles in the classroom, and I have fond memories of my class' Kwanza celebration. Again, these rituals are presented on face value with the added explanation that they are truth and all-important to those who practice them. The teachers never say, this is the right path, but they teach respect. Having gone through this system, I can accurately say what a child’s reaction to these stories and religious ceremonies are. Because young children (i.e. in the younger grades, below fourth) do not have full critical processes, are not naturally developing them yet, and for the most part have no interest in developing them yet, they pass over these stories with a sensation of "Wow. What a good story." I can remember making no judgment as to the truth or falsity of any of these stories, but can remember understanding what the story was trying to say. For a second grader, that is enough. There is plenty of time later when the child is older to develop critical thinking skills.

As the child graduates to the fourth and fifth grades, more critical thinking naturally begins to set in, and science classes start. Early Waldorf science classes revolve around the importance of observation. They understand that learning science is not being indoctrinated to a collection of facts but the process of mastering a method, specifically, the scientific one. The principal components of the scientific method are clear observation and analysis. Waldorf classes start with observation, so, early on, conclusions take a secondary role. Fourth fifth and sixth graders will perform experiments in the classroom and make all of the observations they can. I have a distinct memory of going onto a darkened stage and the teacher lighting a candle. He told us to make all the observations we could and write them down. The class sat in a big circle, and noticed every thing they could about the candle. It is amazing how many pages of stuff you can come up with just observing a candle. You should try it sometime, really LOOKING at something. It will teach you why a picture is worth a thousand words.

At the same time, religion is still taught. The stories become more complicated, and while students still learn the stories, they also learn the history of the people. In the Ancient Roman block, students learn not only factual history, but also the roman classic legends. It is given alongside science, because it is accepted that the two both have value, and that the student can learn something from both.

As the student reaches seventh and eighth grade, annaylisis and conclusion take a more vital role in the study of science. Instead of just observing, the student is asked to make conclusions based on their observations from the experiment, as well as swallow the prepackaged dictates of the scientific establishment. Religion studies become more analytical, and are taught from a context of the history of the people who practiced the religion. Still, though, there was no dictate of ultimate truth. Science isn't right, religion isn’t wrong.

When the student graduates from grade school, it is time to develop full blown critical thinking. From then on, the student studies science from a rather unique perspective: the perspective of the scientists who discovered the theory. In 9th grade, my class duplicated Galileo’s experiments of dropping objects and from the measurements did a statistical analysis to derive the acceleration of gravity. We spent 3 weeks doing this and in the process learned how to run a good experiment, gather data, analyze the data statistically, and make conclusions. We also learned basic Newtonian mechanics, learned about acceleration from a mathematical perspective, and as a golden cookie, derived the famous number for the acceleration of Earth's gravity. We got 15.99 ft/sec^2. The actual number is 16.08 ft/sec^2. Religion is taught as it would be in any high school, from an analytical perspective.

Ultimately, I graduated from there with an excellent sense of both the world of science and the world of religion. I didn't have to have little stickers on my book that told me that evolution was a theory, I knew that everything is a theory, whether the theory said it was that Jesus created us, or whether we were by a cause and effect process known as evolution. I could look at and scrutinize both, and then decide for myself. Because the greatest asset of Waldorf education is the understanding that one, truth cannot be taught, it must be found. Two, that perception of truth changes with the ages, and the best way to make sense of it all is to non-judgmentally expose yourself to ALL of it in the proper time and order and THEN decide. All that I have to say to the evolution/creation debate is this:

By the grace of god, may the fittest theory win.

When was Harry Potter born?

2005-07-21T22:25:00.000-07:00

With the new release of J.K. Rowlings books, children every where are going bonkers. With her sixth book, our favorite author has deffinately shown her almost limitless ability to create a timeless magical world. Wait... did I say timeless? It is very interesting to note that not once does Rowling mention the year in her books. She probably does this in order to create that very effect, i.e. it could be any time within the last 20 years and anywhere in the general London area. However, in Rowling's books, as we all know, the devil is in the details. In book one, she lets a few details slip which actually allow the reader to place not only the year it takes place, but also Harry's birthdate. In true Harry Potter style, we have to piece the mystery together. Here are the hints.

In the first book, on page 43, Dudley says "Its monday. The Great Humberto's on tonight. I want to stay somewhere with a television."

On page 45, it says, "the lighted dial of Dudley's watch told Harry that he would be 11 in 10 minutes time."

This would mean that Harry's birthday, well known to be July 31, would fall on a Tuesday. Out of the last 30 years, in only 3 of them does July 31 fall on a Tuesday. These years are 1984, 1990, 2001.

This, however, is contradicted by book 2 where Harry celebrates Nearly-Headless-Nick's 500th deathday party and sees a cake that says that he died October 31, 1492. This would make the present date in book 2 1992. If the first theory was right, Harry would have started his third year in 1992. Also, according to the Harry Potter Lexicon,

"In book four, Harry tells Sirius that his cousin threw his Playstation out the window. Sony released the first Playstation in December of 1994, and that was in Japan. If we accept the timeline derived from the Deathday Party cake, Harry is telling Sirius about this incident in July of 1994, a half-year earlier."

So unless nearly headless Nick is getting senile in his old death, and Duddley has a Japanese Playstation there is a contradiction. I think that his is in fact the best way, because Rowling obviously wanted her stories to be timeless. It is interesting though; The dates almost fit, but not quite. This is perfectly in line with the spirit of the books. They took place some time in the recent past, we just don't know exactly when.

Stay on task!

2005-07-20T22:37:00.000-07:00

Don't let the supreme court nomination derail us from the Karl Rove controversy! Stay on terget...stay on target! (<-starwars)

You say tomato, I say tomahto.

2005-07-11T21:06:00.000-07:00

I don't know if it has something to do with the southern image that conservatives have, or cause Bush says it, but they tend to say "folks" where liberals say people. Its just another one of those subtle differences in how we define our worlds.

Link To Amboss

2005-07-08T17:57:00.000-07:00

I now have a banner. You can link with the following html. Just control-copy it onto your website. If you don't want the banner, then just make a text link

<a href="http://amboss.blogspot.com"><img src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4223/946/200/banner1.jpg"></a>

David Horowitz follow-up

2005-07-07T22:46:00.000-07:00

My last post was about planted issues and how Students for Accademic Freedom is policing universities. I have some great examples of what they consider to be complaints, which were gleaned from www.studentsforacademicfreedom.org. (admittedly, they are the funnier ones) The response to this stuff should be, if you can't deal with a teacher with opposing views, TOUGH NUTS and you're an intelectual weakling. Also, be sure to read the last one (liberal bias?)

Class: History

Subject: history of united states up to 1870

Professor: Susan Westbury

College: Illinois State University

Nature of Complaint: Singled Out, Mocked Political/Religious Figures,

Description of Complaint (please be as detailed as possible, including quotes from your professor where applicable):

The professor will randomly go off subject and complain about Bush. Will make comments about how she can't wait till november. she mainly just constantly makes remarks and jokes about Bush. I feel out of place since the whole class agrees with her. then the class goes on a tangent talking about how they hate bush.

Action Taken:

i do not say anything. just keep it to myself since i believe what they are doing makes them look ridiculous

Response from Professor or Administrator (If Any):

Time of Posting : Friday, February 27, 2004

Response from Abraham: Stand up for yourself, you douche, instead of running to a neocon police unit, and realize that in an America where we have the worst president in 100 years, people are going to want to express their views and will do so in the classroom. BIG FUCKING SURPRISE THAT TRASH BUSH IF THEY ALL HATE HIM!

Class: Human Anatomy and Physiology II

Subject: Human Physiology

Professor: Steven Thomas

College: Nashville State Community College

Nature of Complaint: Introduced Controversial Material, Mocked Political/Religious Figures,
Description of Complaint (please be as detailed as possible, including quotes from your professor where applicable):
I am in a physiology class, there is no reason I should know my professor's political affiliation. We have never spoke outside of class. He mentioned the 'disaster last November' when praising the apologist book "We're Sorry" that came out. He made some stupid joke about Bush and most of the class chortled along with him. The worst thing he said was when he was discussing defibrilators (we were discussing the heart). He mentioned that Dick Cheney has a pacemaker that also is a defibrilator. He said, "I can't wait to see that thing go off. I hope it happens on TV". Cheney would have to have a heart attack for his defibrilator to "go off".

Action Taken:

I did not confront the professor. I will after I have passed the class, but I honestly believe it would influence my grade if I let him know how I feel. I do not want to chance it. I'll let him know I didn't appreciate his comments once I pass the class.

Response from Professor or Administrator (If Any):
Time of Posting : Sunday, June 26, 2005

Response from Abraham: I hope it goes off on TV too.

And the kicker:

Class: Creationism

Subject: God

Professor:

College: Bob Jones University

Nature of Complaint: Required Readings, Singled Out, Introduced Controversial Material, Forced Students, Mocked Political/Religious Figures, Conducted Political Activities, Biased Grading, University Funds,
Description of Complaint (please be as detailed as possible, including quotes from your professor where applicable):
Was repeatedly forced to repeat "darwin is a loon" on all assignments. Any arguments presenting evidence of evolution were denounced as "Satanism". We were also forced watch video's of IDF forces butchering Palestinian kids while the teachers said that "judgment" was being meted out. We were also told that we are not allowed to question the president and that God had appointed him to lead the Christian armies in smiting the Arabs so that we can steal all their oil. We were also told that global warming is fake, and when I presented evidence to the contrary, the teachers accused me of witchcraft.

Action Taken:

dropped out.

Response from Professor or Administrator (If Any):

Sinner Repent

Time of Posting : Friday, February 18, 2005

Nice two subjects in one: Planted issues and David Horowitz

2005-07-03T23:07:00.000-07:00

I hate being manipulated. Absolutely hate it. Of all of the things that people can do to me, being manipulated tops the list for things that piss me off. But I must say, its one of the most useful tools in politics for getting people riled up about whatever issue you want them to be riled up about. There are many ways to manipulate people. You can lie to them about the issues. Or you can tell half truths about an issue. Or you can just plant one. The best way of all to manipulate people is to plant an issue that was nonexistent the day before, and water it with twisted rhetoric until it grows like a tree. Then all you have to do is watch it grow and take on a life of its own while you sit back and enjoy the fruit.

But what is a planted issue? Its one for which a group of people sit down, make up an issue that furthers their agenda and say, "this is what we want people to care about." Then they work day and night to plant this issue in our consciousness as something that is important. For example in the 1920's, smoking was considered a man's activity. Considering this bad business, the tobacco giants hired public relations genius Edward Bernays. His solution was to pay women to dress as feminists and smoke while marching in the 1929 Easter Parade in New York City. They were instructed to refer to their cigarettes as "Torches of Freedom." This planted event was a catalyst that caused smoking to become acceptable for women. (http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/resources/educational/handouts/tobacco_advertising/women_and_girls.cfm) Once the idea was planted in peoples heads, it only needed watering in the form of positive encouragement from the tobacco industry. Another such planted issue is Hitler's scapegoating of the Jews. German society had no previous record of committing such heinous crimes against Jews on such a scale, but they were suddenly convinced that an ethnic group was responsible for all their problems. Although he watered fertile soil, he cultivated well, and we are still eating the deadly poison fruit that tree bears today.

So this is what a planted issue is: an issue that people sit down and invent for their own purposes that has no contribution to the common good. They manipulatively plant it in our consciousness in a way that we can accept, and then we are suddenly, passionately campaigning for this crap as if it came out of our own volition. Then when we start dealing with these manipulatively planted issues, their resolution only makes society and the body-politic worse. Women start smoking. Jews die.

So what about modern examples? A strong example is pundit David Horowitz and his Students for Academic Freedom (SAF). In 2002, in tandem with Frank Luntz of Luntz Research, Horowitz came out with a survey on the ratios of conservative professors to those with more liberal leanings. He found that there were more liberal profs on campuses by a ratio sometimes as high as 30 to one in certain fields. Using this data as a springboard, he started speaking about how a liberal dominated system was excluding conservatives, even though this ratio is probably due to the fact that conservatives just don't want to become teachers, much like liberals don't want to become soldiers. Nevertheless, he proclaimed a "Liberal bias" in higher education, and decreed that diversity of thought was in danger on college campuses. He created Students for Academic Freedom, a lobby organization with headquarters in Washington DC which has the aim of getting every university and state legislature in the country to pass a "student's bill of rights." His logic is that professors are using the classroom as a "moral pulpit" or "political soapbox," assigning "stacked reading lists" which are meant for moral indoctrination. For ammo in his arguments, SAF collects complaints that people send into them about what the bad, bad professors are doing now. By placing articles in his online magazine FrontPage, holding conferences, etc, he has gotten a large group of people jumping out of their shoes about this. The thing is, before he released his info in 2002, no one gave one hoot about this. No articles were being written, no people were complaining. By calling on our sense of oppression though, he has planted a sense that it is vital that we police our universities.

SAF does exactly that. They tell you how to set up your own student organization, and give you everything from bylaws to constitution to flyers to goals. In their handbook, they tell you what the problem is you are supposed to be combating, how you are supposed to do it, and what the ultimate solution is. They give examples of the "violations" that you're supposed to watch out for. If your prof makes remarks on a political issue in math class, that’s a violation of academic freedom, and you're supposed to write it up and send it away to SAF. Or if his readings are only pro or only anti affirmative action, do the same. You get to help water the tree.

It is from this document, the handbook, not with the actual student bill of rights that the real problems with this system become evident. May of these outlined violations come directly from the AAUP's professional code of conduct and are SAF's own evaluation of what a violation of their bill is. This effort is then a codification of a workplace conduct code into law. If you violate a workplace conduct code for a fireman, you are a bad fireman. If you violate a workplace conduct code for a store clerk you are a bad store clerk. If you violate a code of conduct as a prof, then you are a bad prof. So now what, is being a bad teacher suddenly going to be illegal? Since when is having a good teacher a right? The plague of bad teachers is as old as time itself, and opening up the court system to disgruntled students could be disastrous. Have you ever been in a class larger than 20 people where everyone loved the teacher? Probably not. So what’s to stop a student from suing every time they get an F? Or someone suing for representation of neo-Nazi views in a class on the holocaust? or someone demanding that Marxism be taught in an economics class? The potential for this to stop acadamia in its tracks is limitless.

On the side of professors, what is to stop them from feeling like if they say the wrong thing they could loose their reputation and job? It would be, after all, the student who judged whether to take the prof to court on an issue, whether the case was won or not, so the prof would always be doing guesswork as to what would be "political indoctrination" or not. Even if they were aquitted, appearing in court costs time and money. In this situation, I would go teach in England. So if we want to gut our higher education system, which is right now the best in the world, lets go along with this planted issue and take the quick bus to hell.

Feuer Frei!

2005-07-01T19:17:00.000-07:00

My friend and I were fooling around and ended up making a music video to Rammstein's feuer frei [fire at will]. It was a lot of fun. Dancing arround like an idiot behind Target in jeans and an undershirt will get you very tired.

New layout

2005-06-29T00:55:00.000-07:00

How do you like the cool new layout?

Blog back online!

2005-06-06T11:01:00.000-07:00

I'm feeling beter! Expect more posts and new layouts and adress soon.

Blog shutting down for a while

2005-05-25T23:00:00.000-07:00

I got a severe hit to the head and passed out and stopped breathing for 5 minutes. I had a siezure and afterward said that the fives table went 1,5,7. I was in the hospital for a day and have to stay home for a week. I will continue on my site when I'm better. By then it should hopefully have moved to amboss.i.ph (shorter address) and have a cool new layout. Till then, tschuess!

BAH!

2005-05-12T00:51:00.000-07:00

A mistake people constantly make when talking about things such as genocide is an assignment of guilt from past sins to a contemperary national identity. I hear it constantly in every facet of arguements: "well you think the nazis are horrible, just look at what we did to the Japanese in World War 2!" or "When some people attack Islam for inciting struggle in the name of justice, they forget the Boston Tea Party and the American Revolution" or "you think that what happened in darfur is bad, just look at what we did to the indians!" The thing is, WE didn't do any of those things, our ancestors did, and our ancestors are (for the most part) dead. The moral character of a country is defined by those currently alive, not by those who are dead. Although we think of a country as a person, it is not, and we cannot allow our psyche to be burdoned down with the sins of the dead. If we do this with conviction, then we as a country need have no guilt for slavery, or lesse fair capitalism, or any of the labor conflicts. Germany should (in about 20 years) have no guilt for what it did to the jews. WE, who are alive and breathing today, did none of those things. And while we must remember, we must leave useless guilt behind.

How did Hitler really sound?

2005-05-02T19:29:00.001-07:00

Did you know that Hitler's voice was an oratory act made up to intimidate people and make him sound powerful and compelling? That the demagogue didn't really sound like a foghorn with throat cancer? According to www.spiegel.de, (the German equivalent of Time magazine), our least favorite dictator actually had a very deep, full voice. It was secretly recorded by a Finnish clerk who was listening to Hitler explain battle plans. It is the only one in existence, and I have translated the article from the German below. To my knowledge, this is the only translation of the article to date. Unfortunately, I searched everywhere, but the sound file itself is, as the Germans say, nicht zu finden.

How Hitler's voice really sounded

In 1942, a Finnish radio technician secretly recorded a conversation between Hitler and a General in which Hitler explained the current course of his world conquest. It is the only known recording in which one can hear the "Fuhrer" talk in a everyday voice. Here is SPIEGEL TV's take on an out-of-the-ordinary sound recording.

For generations to come, Hitler will be remembered for the fanatic way he spoke. Early on, he honed his excellent talent for demagoguery through acting instruction, and as the years went by he perfected his rhetorical skills. His speeches were so effective that it he was successful in turning his listeners en masse into one of the most evil regimes of all time.

But there was another side to Hitler beyond the demonstrations and the triumphant Nazi propaganda events that celebrated the German spirit. The normal conversation tone of the dictator is hardly known to posterity. In a recording from 1942, he can be heard talking in an unpressured atmosphere. With the help of this document, the star of "Die Untergang" [The Downfall] Bruno created his persona in representing the dictator.

A Finnish radio technician recorded the conversation secretly. In it, Hitler speaks, dauntingly harmless, in a deep, full voice that one could hardly associate with the "Dictator-voice." Hitler explains to Carl Gustav Mannerheim his view of the progress of the war. He remarks among other things, that the German Panzers aren't properly outfitted for the winter. Surprisingly, he expresses himself rather jerkily. [I have translated the following word for word]

"Our entire weaponry is naturally tailored for the west. And we were all convinced, that is, until now, that was our opinion, since forever. You can’t fight a war in winter. And we also have the German Panzers, that haven't been tested out for the purpose of furbishing a war in winter. Instead we did trial runs in order to prove that one can't fight a war in winter." How right that evaluation was. Seven months later, Hitler suffered a major winter defeat at Stalingrad.

The original is at http://www.spiegel.de/sptv/magazin/0,1518,319655,00.html.

Bound for Earth, or Low-Key Entertainment

2005-04-27T18:41:00.000-07:00

Remember the 1994 SNES classic RPG 'EarthBound' (known in Japan as 'Mother 2')? It was (and is still) a gem of a game, though it shows none of the marks of a gem or a classic. Music? Bleeps, blips, corny melodies sounding like they came straight out of the '70's. Graphics? Nothing to write home about, save for some interesting psychedelic backgrounds. Story? Four teenage kids, armed with baseball bats, yo-yos, frying pans and pop guns, set out into a world of fart jokes, Beatles references and Mr. T lookalikes to defeat Giygas, the Universal Cosmic Destroyer. Not really material for an epic movie (though if they did decide to make one, I'd probably be there on opening night). Gameplay? Good for one go-through, maybe two, but it lacks any real replay value.

So what is it that makes the game so great? How did it gain such a large cult following in Japan (and a smaller but equally devoted one here)? By every measure it looks to range from mediocre to okay, certainly nothing spectacular. But it has a certain je ne sais quoi, a certain charm, that still eludes the Final Fantasies and the Lord-of-the-Rings epic fantasy RPGs out there. Maybe it's that same je ne sais quoi that so distinguished the Matrix from its spinoff movies, Reloaded and Revolutions. Maybe there's something to be said for keeping a production low-key while at the same time pushing the envelope. EarthBound was revolutionary in that it was one of the first RPGs not to be set in a fantasy-style environment and not to rely so much on graphics for its popularity.

Both EarthBound and the Matrix did keep their worlds well-contained, not trying to stretch beyond their capacities. Yes, in EarthBound you fight such weird villains as New Age Retro Hippies, Abstract Art paintings and Li'l UFO's, but at the same time it never strains to make anything too grandiose or cinematic (with perhaps the exception of the final boss). The Matrix does push the envelope with the 'Bullet-Time' animation technique, but it also never does anything too over-the-top with it (the most effort being put into the now-famous rooftop bullet-dodging scene).

Two sides of the same coin? Perhaps.

What's your deffinition of terrorism? Leave your comments!

2005-04-25T15:05:00.001-07:00

You read about it every day, "Baghdad bombings continue despite arrest of key terrorist!", "Terrorist blows self up in Israeli settlement!" or "suicide bomber this! Suicide bomber that!" but when you really think about it, what defines terrorism as opposed to say, a desperate attack or another type of crime? And do our legal definitions currently work? Do we even know what our legal definitions of terrorism are? To start with, I will give my definition of terrorism.

Unjustified, non-state, premeditated, militant action that uses scare tactics indirectly or directly targeting the establishment (meaning "The Man"), sometimes with an intended audience.

I think its pretty good, as it excludes stupid things like "eco-terrorism" to leave them in the realm of vandalism. Blowing up parked trucks at a dealer for example is not militant. Serious vandalism? yes. Terrorism? no.

I took a long time to come to this conclusion, and did so with the help of Kalliscrow. You can view it all here.

From this definition, we can see that terrorism is a slippery thing. With state sanction, a terrorist ceases to be a terrorist and becomes a private military unit. Look at piracy. If you had a "Letter of Marc" from the king, you were a privateer and had all the rights of a navy ship. Without one, you were a pirate and could be executed by any country. Or what is justified? Blowing up the Gestapo HQ wouldn't be terrorism, would it? Actually, that's looking at it from an Allied standpoint, in which case it is not terrorism, but to the NAZIS, this would be terrorism. (Issues of ultimate good or evil are irrelevant to this argument.) And its gotta be premeditated, because something like a protest stampede is definitely not terrorism. So we can see that terrorism is a pretty subjective term, and when given a good definition, can be applied to many different acts from different points of view.

However, I am just a mere citizen with no power to sway the public opinion, and what really matters is our legal definition of it. So what is our legal standpoint? The CIA website says (http://www.cia.gov/terrorism/faqs.html):

The Intelligence Community is guided by the definition of terrorism contained in (USC:Title 22 Section 2656f(d)):

—The term “terrorism” means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by sub-national groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience.

—The term “international terrorism” means terrorism involving the territory or the citizens of more than one country.

—The term “terrorist group” means any group that practices, or has significant subgroups that practice, international terrorism.

If you actually check the code, the section is a mandate for an official report to the speaker of the house on terrorism (which Bush recently canceled). The convenient thing about the USC is that definitions are only valid in one section, and can be redefined in another.

Title 18, Sec. 2331 defines "international terrorism" as

(A) Involve[ing] violent acts or acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States ..., or that would be a criminal violation if committed within the jurisdiction of the United States...;

(B) APEAR to be intended—

(i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population;

(ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or

(iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; and

(C) occur primarily outside the territorial jurisdiction of the United States, or transcend national boundaries in terms of the means by which they are accomplished, the persons they appear intended to intimidate or coerce, or the locale in which their perpetrators operate or seek asylum

Not only is this completely different, it covers just about any crime possible (with the condition of life endangerment) because you only have to have "appear[ed] to have intended" which is so vague it makes me want to barf. Lets go over that again. If you do something that endangers someone’s life, and is technically a crime (such as protesting without a permit), which only gives the appearance of coercion, even if there was no intention, then you can have all kinds of little things thrown at you. (Deportation without trial, indefinite imprisonment etc.) A protest stampede could very easily fall into this category. It even can cover something that isn't a crime if you do it in a country where it isn't a crime. So there are two in the US code, but there have been others in executive orders and reports, all of which are the same but different, ("but only if I want them to be" says George). You can get a list here: http://www.armscontrolcenter.org/terrorism/101/definitions.html.

So I come to the conclusion: We have loose legal definitions for a term
(terrorism) that implies the innocence of the victim. Why are we using it as a legal term at all? I say down with War on Terror up with War on Bad Standards of Living and Untrue Ideas About the West and Women that Permeate Islamic Culture. But..OH NO! ITS TOO LONG FOR A SOUND BITE! GEORGE CANT USE THAT! Man, this world is so hard for a Texan to exist peacefully in. And don't forget to tell me what you think, I can learn from you.

BEST SHOW EVER! (and esotaric ideas about names)

2005-04-21T21:41:00.000-07:00

GTO- Great Teacher Onizuka, is a Japanese TV show that you've probably never heard of. But you might. It was the most watched TV show ever in Japan, and it is undoubtedly a show that should go down in the annals of great dramas, not only from Japan but from any country ever. It is a fantastic drama about a punk who graduated from a third rate collage and took 7 years to do so. While he is working as a window washer, he gets an offer to fulfill his dream: becoming a "kyoshin" or high school teacher. He gets the job through a backdoor deal with the director and is put in charge of class 2-4, which is chock full of misfits and bullies. They hate him and constantly try to get him fired. Slowly, although he seems like a total buffoon, he begins to change the people around him for the better. The drama basically covers how he converts the school from a place completely devoid of spirit into a place with enthusiastic teachers and happy students. In other words, he gives the school back its soul. (While that wasn't the best description of the show, its good, believe me.) The show is ingeniously structured, with every character getting their comeuppance or reward exactly as the viewer thinks they deserve, and the conclusion is nothing short of the quality of a Zen koan in its paradoxical genius. While its a bit sappy at times it holds together mostly on the spunkiness of the lead actor, which carries through the language barrier, no small feat indeed.

The thing that stuck me the most, second only to enjoying the show itself, was one part at the end where Teshigawara, the math teacher, notices that if you take the first character of Onizuka, and put one character before it, it changes the meaning to soul. I love things like that in stories because it gives great incite into the symbolism of the character when you know the meaning of their name. In this case, Onizuka represents the soul being restored to those around him. And if you watch the show, this becomes quite obvious. The thing is, if a show or book, anything actually is good, I mean real good, then invariably, the characters, and places will have names that are extremely descriptive of the purpose that they fulfill in the story. Take Harry Potter: The Mirror of Erised, which sounds like some mysterious magic name is a simple palindrome; it is desire backwards. Or the best of all, Lord of the Rings, where every name is a multi-lingual pun. Baggins, an English name with its own coat of arms (http://www.houseofnames.com/xq/asp.c/qx/baggins-coat-arms.htm) with the motto "we trust in god" and also meaning thief, or something to do with bags. There are lots of other meanings, but I lost the book. Even great computer games, e.g., Final Fantasy 10, have great names. The name of the world, spira, means spiral in latin, and is representative of the "spiral of death" that surrounds the main enemy, Sin. (they say so in the game)

Another thing: have you noticed that sequals always suck? Probably. I think this is because after a story is finnished, that is, brought to complete resolution, anything added on is superflous and will be crap. I mean would you want to spend an evening with your date watching Lion King 2, or Lion King 1/2 for that matter?

On a closing note: Dubya, as in George W. Bush, is one of the many conjugations in latin of the word dubium, which means doubt. Take THAT biznitch! (You can download Onizuka [search GTO] with bittorrent at http://japan-tv.afraid.org:6969/)

Revisiting the Eastern Theatre

2005-04-19T19:36:00.000-07:00

There has been a lot in the news recently about demonstrations in China against the Japanese government's approval of history textbooks that downplay the atrocities committed during the Second World War. Right now, it just looks as though both Beijing and Tokyo are simply posturing for effect, which is never a good way to make any progress. Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing didn't help matters, for example, when he claimed in light of the recent protests that China had nothing for which they need apologise to Japan.

The grievances of the Chinese protesters seem legitimated, however, by a recent Japanese refusal to appeal a case by ten Chinese survivors of the Japanese occupation seeking reparation for the Rape of Nanjing and Heilongjiang biological weapons testing carried out during the late 1930's and early '40's. In light of the current situation, the Japanese government could have done far better by these people. But it seems to me that both sides are hell-bent on, in the words of Japanese PM Koizumi Jun'ichirou, 'an exchange of harsh words'. And harsh words mean harsher political difficulties.

Violent protests in Shenzhen and Shanghai have not helped matters. What sympathy the Japanese citizenry may have had for the Chinese war survivors is pretty much gone thanks to the rising tide of destructive demonstrations and anti-Japanese rhetoric coming from the mainland. Relations between the two giants have taken a major nosedive.

How to solve the problem? Both Beijing and Tokyo need to cut down on the rhetoric and engage in real dialogue. The Japanese must not underestimate the importance of the past, and they should own up to their own past, even the parts they would just as soon forget. The Chinese should not lose sight of the here and now, and what would lose if they alienate themselves from Japan any further.

Let's poison the children and see how they turn out!

2005-04-18T17:56:00.000-07:00

Man, and I thought I knew what sick was. But I'm gonna give a toast to perhaps the sickest thing that The EPA has turned out in the last couple of years, and that is ladies and gentlemen, CHEERS. What, never heard of it? It’s an acronym for Children’s Environmental Exposure Research Study, which proposed to do exactly what the title said, pay parents to expose their children to pesticides. Oh, but only if the kid is under 3. Luckily, the man who was supporting it, Bush's nomination to the EPA Stephen Johnson, had to back down or get his nomination put on hold (Thanks to U.S. Senators Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Bill Nelson (D-FL)). The sad thing is, just because the EPA doesn't support it, doesn't mean it won't happen. The pesticide industry will likely find another sap to bind to its evil will before the year is out. The American Chemistry Council has pledged $2,000,000 to the study's $9,000,000 total required budget. Of course they're trying to put on a good face. They've launched www.childhealthsource.org/ in order to show just how benevolent they are. Supposedly, they want to "protect children" (/principles.asp). YOU DON'T PROTECT THEM BY EXPOSING THEM TO DANGEROUS CHEMICALS!!!! (for proof go to www.epa.gov/cheers)

And my god, these are the kind of people the monkey of a president puts in office.

Long time no blog

2005-04-17T01:51:00.000-07:00

Today (ehem tonight) I thought I would give politics a rest and just say that image is everything, and that if you dress anything up right, and say it with enough authority, it will be believed. On 4/1/1957, the BBC made a special broadcast about bumper spaghetti crop that Switzerland was experiencing and showed pictures of a rural Swiss family gathering their harvest from spaghetti trees. The well-known announcer (Richard Dimbly) went on to say that the years great crop was due to the extermination of the spaghetti weevil, which had caused so much damage in the past. The broadcast was an April fool's joke, but what kills me is the BBC got hundreds of calls from curious viewers asking things like where they could get their own spaghetti tree. Supposedly the BBC responded "put a sprig of spaghetti in a can of tomato sauce and hope for the best." (www.museumofhoaxes.com/spaghetti.html) This might be excusable as Britain didn't really eat spaghetti in 1957, but the next one is just stupid.

Burger king ran an advertisement for its new "left hand whopper", in which (its just too good, I got to quote)

"the ... left-handed sandwich...ha[d] all condiments rotated 180
degrees, thereby redistributing the weight of the sandwich so that the
bulk of the condiments will skew to the left, thereby reducing the
amount of lettuce and other toppings from spilling out the right side
of the burger."

(www.laughnet.net/archive/misc/leftwhop.htm) The killer this time was that people came in to restaurants demanding right handed burgers, or inquiring about left-handed ones.

This is not limited to the sphere of legend. I have had experiences like this first hand, from being bamboozled into buying an Onion (paper) to convincing bums in a corner store that the Weekly World News headline was false, and no, they had not found human skulls on mars.

To me, it does two things: it gives a deeper meaning to the phrase "all we like sheep," and makes me wonder... If Fox suddenly started saying that Superman had been convicted of using steroids, how many outraged letters would they get? By the looks of it ... A LOT.

To Bush on Schiavo

2005-03-28T07:21:00.000-08:00

Let the dead die.

Short post today (i.e. STOP BLABBERING)

2005-03-27T11:40:00.000-08:00

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...

2005-03-23T19:27:00.000-08:00

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!

2005-03-20T21:57:00.000-08:00

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.