Tales of a Beleaguered TA

This'll probably be my last post here - Rob's asked me to join his blog site over at http://www.justiceknight.com/centrifarce . The blog side is called Centrifugal Farce (improperly introduced as Centripetal Force because I wasn't paying attention). It's been fun here - I probably won't be back here. So go there now. Been fun.

BLAST YOU INTERNET EXPLORER! I had this huge post all ready to go, so I went to split it in half and make two posts by copying one piece, deleting it, and posting the other piece, then pasting the other half in a new post. Of course, IE decided that I actually wanted to backspace in my browser, thereby losing the first half because heaven forbid that going back and forward in a series of links would actually save the text you wrote.

The first part was about my investigation into the life of Lenny Bruce and how it wasn't so much he was a putz as it was that this was a man wounded by having to grow up during the Depression and World War II, and who couldn't get a grip on his place in this world and thus spent his career lashing out at things that weren't to blame. Of course, the far left movement, which can't (or won't?) ever help itself, coddled him and sang his praises for being a First Amendment champion who "tells it like it is." I responded that, while you are allowed to do a lot of things under the First Amendment, responsibility falls upon us to use it for advancement and constructive purposes rather than just tearing at things and generally angering people for no particularly good reason (for example, a lot of Bruce's anti-establishment jokes were simply insults thrown at Catholics and accusations that they persecuted him for being of Jewish descent, which is pure crap in America if you'd like to see for yourself). You can't just expect the government to clean up or smile away the mess of any single little thing you want to do, no matter how detrimental to you and to others it is. And now the second half of the post, which is really a tangent on this note:

PART II

This is of course why putting faith in a world institution rather than God's eternal law is a bad idea. ;) It's also why you can't just chase after rights if you don't want the responsibilities of the rights you already have. That's how I really see it. A right is a two-dimensional quantity; you get a privilege but you are also charged with the responsibility of directing that privilege justly (something certain individuals have ALWAYS had troubles with since Adam).

A physics analogy, for the one or two people in the world who could possibly be interested, is mistaking a vector quantity for a scalar. A scalar is the magnitude of something, for example, the mass of an object (analogous to having a privilege). A vector also has a magnitude but it's coupled to a direction (analogous to the responsibility of using that privilege with a right). As a scalar and vector are, so are a privilege and a right.

That's really why I have no sympathy with certain movements today that I won't name because, although I don't do this for readership, I'd rather not get flamed for it should a person with rabid dissent happen upon this. To me, those aren't rights they've been demanding - they're special privileges that are to set these people as better than the other people who don't support it. The government is expected to pick up the tab for a variety of actions that a) are unwieldly to introduce into law as it is currently written and b) were simply flat-out immoral once upon a time (and always are but not to these people) because doing them displays a lack of responsibility that couldn't help but be detrimental to either oneself or one's fellow man.

Compare this to the civil rights movement. What Martin Luther King Jr. and his constituents wanted was equality in the full sense of the word - he wanted the rights of whites for everybody in that segregration created two different worlds for whitey and for black people, a situation which unfairly favored the paler people. That meant he wanted equal opportunity for blacks to succeed, but at the same time he wanted everyone in the US - black, white, green, polka-dotted - to share the responsibility of these opportunities by getting up, going to work, getting promoted as you earn it, and so forth. Now I know you're bracing yourself because from here there's a huge risk involved should I put my foot in my mouth, so I won't try it. This is because I don't want to sound stupid, and also because it could sound like a self-contradiction of a lot of what I've said so far. Ask Bill Cosby if you'd like further comment. :)

Also, stemming from the idea of the extreme left clamoring for privileges as opposed to rights, I'll go on to say that it bugs me because of who we are. This is America, people. Entitlement has no place here by definition. We exist as a nation for a variety of reasons, the main two of which are tolerance and an equal footing (oh, the irony!). Almost all of us are descended mainly from other countries' rejects, refugees of war, and colonial subjugates. We were never considered good enough in anyone else's class system, so there isn't, or at least shouldn't be, one implemented here. We're in this together. The last thing we need as a people is to continually gratify people who clamor for selfish wants at the expense of everyone else in a moral (growing coldness towards everyone else) way as well as a financial (tax-based) way.

And yes, this country has had issues to deal with thanks to this selfishness ever since we started out, from the original view that only white guys with property could vote, to slavery, to labor abuses, to dealing with communism, through the hippie generation, and right to today. But then, remember that as these problems pop up, we've had to try and fix them and so far we've either succeeded or making headway in unfinished business. Besides, we can't risk looking upon these issues in a presentist manner that doesn't do justice to how everybody got along regardless.

So really, it's just a derived battle that's been fought since the days of the Enlightenment where the idea of "God as a watchmaker" first clouded our vision of how life is supposed to work. I say derived because good and evil have been at it for a VEEEEERY long time and from a Christian point of view, precluding God from having an active hand in the universe's current doings is always how evil attacks intellectual thought. I'll tell you that we have to stay devoted to the Lord, and of course you'll either agree or disagree, but that is really where the whole issue started as far as America is concerned. It's also part of the grand experiment that is this country - can we progress by fixing problems caused by obsolete thinking? At the same time, can we avoid the creation of worse problems by advancing too fast, and can we keep at our hearts the eternal morals and truth that can't be fazed out in any way? The answer to these questions on paper is "yes," and we have to continue to choose it.

Okay, that's enough typing for a night. I'm honestly in a good mood, believe it or not, and I really enjoyed being able to rest today. Oh, and HOCKEY'S BACK!

Current Mood: relaxed
Current Music: "Stars," Switchfoot

So I take this silly test that Rob took online to determine my "true" political leanings.  He, of course, got Republican.  Now, as I'm clicking on the "agree/disagree" statements, I can't help but notice they're all one-sentence soundbites that don't adequately explain the sentiment I can tell they're pertaining to.  So, I'm forced to pick things that I can't say are truly my opinion on them, but of course, Rob tells me I should let it go, and he's right, it's just a dumb quiz.  Okay, click here, click there -

Now they ask me what's the one rule I would dictate if I was in charge and could put any one rule out there to be enforced for eternity.  So I note that you can't really make a rule for everyone to obey (I meant human rule, of course) that won't be goofed up by that guy who has to be a jackass, so everyone really ought to turn their hearts to God and obey His laws.  I put my answer here mainly for comparison in a minute.

Okay, I've got my results, and it tells me I'm socially conservative and economically liberal, which is pretty on the mark.  Then I notice that both qualities are labeled in terms of permissivity, and I'm pretty low in both.  Then my eyes read:

"You're a Totalitarian! :^D"

Yes, that's right, folks!  My sincere feeling of love for mankind has translated into a career as a goosestepping powermonger that completely contradicts who I am!  VICTORY IS MINE!  ...BLAST! 

Oh yeah, the objectivity kind of went out the window when, in a pic of where current famous politicians are politically, they put me squarely on Pope John Paul II, who just happened to be right next to Osama bin Laden.  Yeah, way to go, guys.  Ya sure must be truly unbiased when the CATHOLIC CHURCH is put in the same category as, say, Joey Stalin.

So, next I take this "Why does everybody hate you?" test, just because I figure they'd hate me for being, well, a dictator.  And guess what, I get:  "The perfect human."  Oh, sure, thanks, now I'm Nietzsche, now.  I suppose that's this website's way of saying they're sorry for suggesting that "you can disagree but that makes you a psycho."  Hmmm....nah, the libel suit isn't worth it. ;)

Additional results:
2-Variable Test:  Geek proper.

3-Variable Test:  The Prankster (clean, complex, light humor).  But I don't prank.

What Kind of Human Are You?:  Socialite.  Well, it's sure better than socialist.  

Current Mood: silly

Get this - the only thing I possibly had going for me tonight I almost passed on. I went because I want to hang out with this group of beings known as "other people," but the choice of movie immediately raised an eyebrow.

"What the $#%! Do We Know?!" (sic) is supposed to be this sort of reality-is-not-reality half-movie, half-documentary. The movie is structured as follows: a dissatisfied deaf photographer finds new meaning and joy in her life by ditching the materialistic way of life (good) and embracing the infinite possibilities of quantum mechanics (not so good). While all this is going on, all these PhDs are talking away at you with some gross misinterpretation of quantum mechanics into New Agey "there is no God because we are all gods that have to empower ourselves with these infinite possibilities." Oh, and they interrupt in a middle with a bit of a brain biology lesson about how we perceive and respond to things.

I had a feeling I'd be assailed with some New Age stuff, so I figured it'd be okay to put up with for the 100 minutes or so that it ran. WRONG. That 100 minutes felt like 200, mainly because they'd take one point, hammer it to death, and just when you thought they were finally done, take it in some other direction all over again.

If you want a good review of this movie, you came to the wrong two-bit blog. Granted, I give them a few good points. First of all, they do recognize that a soul dwells within the body and thus reject materialism. They also got the brain lesson down okay, at least as far as the scientific aspect of it went. They did cite an experiment where a mass meditation in Washington DC supposedly decreased crime over a summer by 25%, which is interesting. Oh, and they put in the guy who played Quark in Star Trek: Deep Space 9, which is cool.

So what didn't I like? You got an hour?

Well, fools say in their hearts, "There is no God", and that makes these guys pretty wise fools. Instead, according we are supposedly gods ourselves that shape reality around us to something we believe will happen. Not only is this illogical (they contradicted themselves by discussing how the brain works, period, without recognizing that they may just believe that's how the brain works), but quite frankly, I've believed a lot of false things - that pool ball is going to go the way I plan it to, this midterm won't be so bad - and the truth has always gotten thrown back in my face. If we were really gods, we'd know everything there is to know and control everything there is to control.

There is also that nagging argument of what happens when two people will opposite realities that can't coexist. they claim that Columbus' ships weren't seen by the natives at first because they didn't know what a clipper ship was so therefore they couldn't believe it was there. Well, Columbus was right there anyway. The shaman couldn't will him out of existence.

Next, there was the element that took liberties with what I think and who I am. They decided to cover a Polish wedding and have the Polska groom do a fairly explicit little roll in the hay with a bridesmaid right after he said his vows, not to mention the hokey polka dance where everyone was sliding around on an IV stand that was supposed to represent the chemicals from our hypothalamus that are our emotions (flying a bit in the face of their whole "ghost in the machine" idea). I only wish I were making that up. Oh, and a "dumb Polack" comment or two. How very multiculturally classy of you, jackasses (I'm mostly Polish).

Also, none of these guys supports organized religion, but of course it's not enough to just say so - they say it's because we've got this backwards, arrogant conception of right and wrong, and that we are good so we can get a reward instead of eternal punishment and who God is. Quite self-centered, really, and that's exactly how the Church says we shouldn't act. We worship God because God is infinitely holy and lovely and deserves our praise. God loves us to the point where despite ourselves, He wants us to be with Him forever at the end of the age. We also love and pray for others so that they too may see God in all His glory. The "get a reward" idea is just a part of this, and it's more of an acknowledgement of John 3:16 ("For God so loved the world...") than a self-serving salvation plan. In addition, the PhDs made a feeble attempt at blanketing all religions but the storyline stabbed specifically at us Catholics. But what the bleep do they know. Of course, they can rectify that at least, by ACTUALLY ASKING SOMEONE WHO DOES KNOW HOW WE ROLL WITH PAPA RATZI. Homies.

This leads to my greatest rebuke of this film. It reeks of that same self-important, cold-hearted, imperious pontification that is the know-it-all liberalism of the age. These PhDs were recruited in part because of all their accolades and the big names whence they got their degrees, etc. etc., as well as their holding of these beliefes, but I sure wasn't impressed. Why not? Because it's very easy to be brilliant at what you do and hold a pet theory with it that may or may not be so brilliant. I see it at work all the time. I'll see people use patient logic to solve their problem one moment and then blame the President for the extinction of the dodos the next. It's downright galling that having expertise in one's field entitles one to talk down to people like they do because they MUST be correct about something they ADMIT they can't even explain. For every academia nut you can toss at me with one of these crackpot theories, I can give you one that's just as accomplished with a much better thought out view of why science supports the Bible. So if you're going to try and sell me this brand of metaphysics, this isn't the way to do it.

Oh, and that person who claims that she's possessed by this benevolent 35,000-year-old soul of a lost Atlantis warrior woman? Yes, she was on the movie too. I'd say you'd really have to see it for yourself, but the whole movie might have made me less intelligent for having watched it. It's that insane.

Current Mood: cranky
Current Music: "Superstar," Lucerin Blue

Just out of sheer interest/boredom last night, I looked up William Jennings Bryan online mainly to see what was up with that Scopes trial in which the media says he played Clarence Darrow's foil. Bryan was a pretty interesting guy, now that I read about him further.

This guy was a jack-of-all-trades, but mainly a very gifted orator. He was a liberal in the true sense - as you may know, I think today's "liberal" should in actuality be called "libertine" instead - as a forerunner for women's suffrage, graduated income tax and child labor reforms. He ran for President but lost twice to an equally affable William McKinley - a loss attributed to being really young for a candidate and lack of advertising - and once to a much more stout William Taft. He also served as secretary of state but resigned out of protest over Woodrow Wilson's political handling of the Lusitania sinking by German U-boats, although he supported the war effort in the ensuing war. Rather refreshing compared to certain individuals today, don't you think?

Then there was that Scopes trial. The media really made him out to be this irrational Bible-thumping hick to Darrow's cool, rational sophistication. I think once I said here that William Randolph Hearst was the epitome of using media spin to manipulate the public, and H.L. Mencken (the specific reporter in question) was attempting the exact same thing. I also like to think it alludes to one of my pet theories that today's troubles and badly-founded agendas aren't anything new, just highly amplified by technologies of the more intrusive kind.

If you go to www.reasons.org and search for Bryan, you'll find this blurb about how he was perfectly willing to accept what is known as "old-earth creationism," which in a sentence is the idea that recent scientific findings actually confirm that the Biblical account of creation is correct without compromising it - the argument isn't compromised by a lack of scientific background, as the guy in charge of it is an astrophysicist himself. And of course, it debunks evolution. I ascribe to this theory myself and encourage other people to consider it.

Bryan actually expressed this view when Darrow put him on the stand, apparently just to ridicule him and mock his lack of scientific expertise. I'll tell you right now that I really dislike Darrow. I see him as the typical countercultural elitist who has no understanding and thus no use for the very reason America exists - to live and worship without being kicked around by elitists. He professes not to know (care, really) if God exists and looks down his long, "educated" nose at guys like you and me who definitely follow not just any God, but a God alluded to by a specific faith, denouncing him as backward, inferior, etc., and the media trying to find something relevant sings his praises in that sort of paradoxical mainstream anticultural way we all know and despise. Look him up yourself if you want, I'd rather talk about Bryan. Great, three tangents in three paragraphs!

Okay. ANYWAY. Here's my main point. If you can find a good enough source, you'll find that Bryan was the one who kept a cool head and answered as he could, while Darrow railed away at everything people believed in rather than defend his client on the real case of whether he had broken the law - which he DID. This makes sense to me, as it seems downright unnecessary to attack an opposing lawyer so viciously as to put him on the stand and grill him like that, not to mention vicious, even for a laywer. Bryan actually died a few days after this trial ended in his favor. Some people attribute this to being completely shattered by Darrow's scintillating double-talk, but the real reason Bryan died was that he was diabetic, in the days where insulin treatment didn't exist. So there's another reason I dislike Darrow - I interpret these facts in the following manner. If Bryan looked like he wasn't holding up well against Darrow's questioning, it was because he was dying of diabetes, not because he couldn't cope with the ideas. I've tried to think before on low blood sugar many times and let me tell you, it SUCKS - never mind what a diabetic without insulin has to go through when he's being grilled by an uncouth putting on airs.

So why did I bore you with all this? Mainly because I wanted to at least support the movement to set the record straight. Bryan was a good man and used his education in a noble cause, and I hope to meet him in Heaven someday. I actually look up to the guy because he stood up and didn't care what the elitists had to say, because he knew the truth from the get-go and wouldn't give it up for any bull anybody tried to feed him.

And yes, it takes a academia nut to have this opinion of somebody who died 80 years ago.

A funny thing happened yesterday.  I was busy talking with Rob about how the people supposedly in charge seem to be reacting to the hurricane flooding by finger-pointing to boost a political position rather than, I don't know, asking us to help the victims while taking some initiative themselves.  Rob then replied that this isn't really their job anymore; if a coalition for a problem fixes the problem outright, then that coalition doesn't need to exist anymore, which is good for the public but bad for business for certain individuals who apparently care more about lining their pockets than advancing their cause.  This is the issue with labor unions today, as they're more interested in wooing political clout than their original cause of fair management because we actually attained fair management at one point (now it's swinging towards the unfair again because the unions are thence losing relevance by their actions).  It's also the reason people are finger-pointing, because there's plenty of organizational backs to be scratched - pork project interests, to be specific.  Keeping the organization alive is more important than solving the problem the organization is meant to solve.

All of which I agree with.  I've hated political pork as it's influenced politicians to make stupid decisions for generations.  The media is apparently also susceptible, as they've been using their usual sleight-of-hand to spin this crisis into an agenda.  I keep forgetting that politicians sometimes aren't making altruistic decisions, which is why this argument admittedly took me by surprise.  Eh well, good point again, Rob.

The funny thing that happened (now that I've lost your interest) is that two other people, within the same day, came to this conclusion without my mention of this conversation or the topic whatsoever.  My dad vouched for it with a later phone call, and the Anchoress (http://theanchoressonline.com/2005/09/09/both-parties-entwined-in-mediocrity-2/) also stated so in her blog. 

So, after seeing the news about the monument they want to erect at the former WTC site, and how the plans are apparently to wash out the real meaning of the tragedy into some blandish "tolerance awareness" theme, I'm wondering if a time of actual, honest-to-goodness change is about to happen in America.  Already, several people (including the Anchoress) are urging the silent majority to rise up and get rid of the unnecessary bloat that is today's political games and resulting lowered standards on life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.  Perhaps we ought to do it.

This nation does exist in part because the average person was sick of this exact bloat at the top of the food chain.  It's in our blood.  We don't like it when a system gets too complicated to effectively govern us.  Now, we really, really should avoid nihilistically ripping everything apart, as the government as a system worked just fine for a long time and it should continue to do so.  I'm just saying perhaps we ought to put some pressure on our parties, so that our Congress, our President, and our Supreme Court can stop acting in a seemingly selfish manner and start doing what the Consititution and its derived articles tell them to do as part of their actual job. 

Not to grandstand here, but what's going on today is really why I became a moderate.  I remember growing up in a community where conservative and liberal politicians alike would compromise the quality of life of the people living around us.  Republicans recently signed a really crappy water deal that essentially lets my home county get kicked around by a neighboring larger county - we pay more for dirtier water.  Why?  Because the local city council head/lead orthodontist/etc. kicked it stupid hard about this deal, and two days after it was signed, got appointed to a higher-paying cushy job.  Democrats?  Well, the libbies in charge of the state laid off a lot of folks I know because honest pay for honest work was deemed "an unnecessary expense", all while they touted sticking up for laborers on a national level.  Did we put together what was going on?  Yes and no.  Yes, because we saw right through it.  No, because we didn't think it was that serious and blew it off. 

To be fair, today's politician is almost forced to make under-the-table deals with certain groups in order to survive as a politician.  Purely honest guys who stick to their principles don't last long in this field - you have to back up somebody you don't like at some point for career reasons.  This has repercussions later on, as you have to vote for something you know is bad for the people you serve, but you're trapped into it.  Even Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, one of my favorite politicians, was forced to vote pro-choice even though he personally abhorred it because the planned parenthood group saw to it that New York State would vote him out of office if he didn't.  So, honestly, this isn't a diatribe against politicians in general, or at least I don't mean it to be. 

But I am beginning to think there should be an anti-special-interest-group law passed.  I'd bet anything most politicians would do it in a flash if their livelihood wasn't being tampered with.  After all, the voters ultimately make the decision, and voters often have to work with special interest "information" that may or may not be true.  That's why we should stand up and ask this of our politicians.  The system is still intact enough that they still work for us, after all, not the other way around, and we ought to reassure them that they won't get voted out for getting these special interst monkeys off their backs. 

This changes my mind about the media as well.  I used to think they were screwing up America by themselves, albeit not on purpose.  It's still somewhat correct to me.  To an extent, the media can actively do things, but at the same time, to an extent, the media just plays back whoever's making enough noise to get face time.  In the latter case, I'd like to look into who's telling the media what.  Who's buying the screen time, so to speak?  Who's figuratively grabbing the mic from the reporter?  Who's getting some of the news stations to twist the truth to the point that a sizeable portion of the country (and world) thinks Bush is the devil?  Somebody's got to be pushing at least some of the buttons. 

In the meantime...maybe time is better spent praying over this situation and providing what aid we can to our fellow human beings/Americans and ignore all this crap until things are, if not entirely fixed up, at least squared away for them.

 I.  HATE. When. This. Blog. Loses. What. I. Just. Wrote. Because. It. Wants. To. Switch. To. Rich. Text.

Basically I was venting about the one meeting I have to attend on Fridays.  I know, I know, boo freakin' hoo.  Don't worry, I spend enough of the week trying to catch up on reading and get homework and research done.  In general, I strongly dislike meetings, not because I mind being mentally enriched with the ensuing talks that are given, but because I'd really much prefer to keep working on my project for the day instead of being there.

Anyways, it's a luncheon where people all over the department get together and share outside research as well as their own on a semi-voluntary, semi-randomly-selected basis.  First there is a voluntary talk about the volunteer's current research, and then there is a randomly selected paper in which highlights are showcased and then the paper is briefly discussed by the audience.  It's a nice gesture, and that was why I was looking forward to it.

Imagine my surprise when we spent the first twenty minutes painfully staring at each other to see who'd get up and sign up for the "voluntary" talks.  I was getting quite a few eyeballs - nay, said the new guy who doesn't have a paper to his name to present yet.  Fortunately, my prof stated aloud that I shouldn't have to do it for those reasons, in as many words.  (This is one of the many reasons I think he and I are going to work together just fine, and I'm quite happy about that.)  This part wasn't that bad, as I can envision myself signing up when I actually do have official results from research in about a semester's time, but it was rather uncomfortable.

Where it started going south, however, was when I was introduced to the "kamikaze" (I suppose in lieu of "Russian roulette") way we're going to treat the random papers.  Instead of drawing someone's name to do it the following week, which would be, and I'm possibly speculating here, much more practical and easier on everybody to do, the name is drawn right before the talk is to be given, effectively forcing everybody to find time amongst our already-crowded schedules to read the thing as well as background on any parts we don't understand, every single week instead of just the week we'd be picked to do it - just in case we get picked to present right then and there and consequentially anyone else who didn't read it will get to hear about and understand it anyway.  I would gladly entertain any possible justification for creating additional work for ourselves for a so-called optional activity, as I highly doubt that such justification can indeed emerge.

Finally, the idea of the luncheon is, obviously, that everyone is eating lunch as we do this.  Today, those who wanted to eat brought their own food, while those who didn't simply waited until it was time to leave to partake in sustenance.  I find this quite satisfactory.  So, I must ponder why we needed to appoint official food-getters to buy lunch, which coincidentally everyone has to pay for anyway.

Getting on my high horse, you say?  I am certain it wasn't just me, because the majority of participants - graduate student and professor alike - expressed visible and/or audible dissent about the kamikaze presentation.  There was also the painful manner in which volunteers were obtained for the voluntary talks.  Is there now, I put it to the reader, sufficient interest to overcome the unnecessary burdens?

Now, you may dismiss this as being a fairly trivial thing to be getting all upset about.  The gist of my frustration is that I spent a long time last year opining about the same approach being used for the core courses, and even for the classes which called upon me to assist in tormenting freshmen, when I would much rather have gone about everything the usual way, and found time to rest besides.  I can unequivocally state that this department's mentality is to create unnecessary additional work for both itself and for its constituents, with the negative effects of lowered morale and deprivation of sleep and other aspects of life; that is, we really, really need to chill out more.  Furthermore, I emphatically insist that learning and achievement can occur to the same degree without various complicating elements as with, if not further due to ridding oneself of the encumbrance.

There.  That is all.

Current Mood: cranky
Current Music: cool trance music that i borrowed with a name i can't find

On a lighter note, I did another fantasy football draft Friday, and this is what happened. I had the ninth position in a 12-man league, and there's three main differences between this league and the other: 1) receptions count, for half a point; 2) QBs take double penalty for INTs, -4 points apiece; and 3) the team starts 3 WRs, not 2. I wasn't quite so happy with this draft, but I figure it'll do.

1) Domanick Davis, RB. Everyone keeps saying this guy is going to rock the house, and frankly I don't understand it myself. He hasn't done anything out of the ordinary in the preseason. But I took him here because this particular league rewards receptions, which is what Davis supposedly gets an awful lot of. At the same time, I'd sure like some more security, seeing as he got stuffed four times in a row at the goal line in the preseason. But you take what you can get at #9.

2) Kevin Jones, RB. Another guy that's supposed to be awesome but has yet to play a full season. Considering his QB is just as inept as Davis' right now, he should get a lot of carries. I went for stability in the other league, so now I guess this league is my roll-the-dice league.

3) Joe Horn, WR - People were swiping away WRs left and right at this point, so rather than have two Houston guys on my team (Davis is the other), I passed on Andre Johnson and took Horn, whom I can pretty much expect to behave a certain way all season. He's a decent #1. No breakout potential, no bust potential. May as well have someone anchor the team.

4) Brett Favre, QB. Why? I don't know. He singlehandedly blew my Sportsline league shot at the playoffs last year by playing any which way but the way I wanted him to. And yet, I take him again. Honestly, I didn't really like the #2 WRs sitting there at the time, but Favre was the only other option. I hated having to make this pick between the options I didn't like.

5) Isaac Bruce, WR. Torry Holt's been known to let Bruce carry the game sometimes, so I figured I may as well take a chance before he retires. He's supposed to be a #3 WR as he doesn't score TDs, but since we changed the scoring to help out yardage guys more, this isn't so bad. Besides, people were just gobbling WRs off the board. I have tried to depend on really good WRs in the past and they always fail me way too many times to give me a shot at the playoffs. So I figure here I'll just try and stock up my other positions.

6) Jason Witten, TE. My best steal of the draft. He's supposed to be in an elite group of TEs with Tony Gonzales (who went in round 2!) and Antonio Gates, but people passed on him in favor of three lower-ranked guys, and one person even took the time to explain why he didn't like Witten. I never take a good TE (with the exception of my waivers pickup of Gates last year that kept me somewhat afloat), so this year I'm giving it a try.

7) Eddie Kennison, WR. The Chiefs' #1 WR, or should I say, #2 WR behind Gonzales. Still, he's supposed to be good for 1000 yards and a decent number of TDs, and I still need a starter, so why not.

8) DeShaun Foster, RB. Well, he was the best-rated one left. I found out hours later that he was deferring the starter job to Stephen Davis but would see enough time as a backup. Stephen Davis? The guy who didn't do anything for a full year? Honestly, Panthers.

9) J.J. Arrington, RB. I can NOT believe I got him this late. Carnell Williams was still around too, but seeing as Arrington is the unquestioned starter in Arizona and his offense is supposed to explode, this is another steal. So, I'm set for RBs, now I need some backup WRs and another QB before I think about D's and K's.

10) Jets D. Scratch that. Everyone made a huge run on these things, so I figured I'd better grab the Jets while they were still around. The AFC East is tops in defense around the league anyway.

11) David Givens, WR. There, I took the token "player on a team I despise" that proves I'm no homer and thus I deserve some consideration for a title. Brady passes the ball around enough anyway to make him a backup.

12) Byron Leftwich, QB. He was the last backup QB left that I still somewhat liked, and he does have some sleeper potential. At least I can use him when Favre starts ticking me off again. I'll give Byron this much - he'll get that one extra point you need in a close game, both in real life and fantasywise.

13) Matt Jones, WR. Huge guy who was a QB in college and seems to fit the position well as a rookie. If for some wild reason Jacksonville explodes this year I'm set. Ha.

14) Rian Lindell, K. Ugh. First of all, spell your first name right. Second, hit the freaking extra points - ALL of them. Third, this was one of the several moves for which I'd like to chastise my league co-members, after I'm done here. At least Losman's performing in such a way that Lindell gets a lot of chances.

15) Miami D. What? There was nobody left that I really cared for. I have the two slightly worse AFC East Ds, so that should count for something. They can't both play the Pats or Bills at the same time, and they should work over anybody else.

Now, for my critique of the rest of the league. I sound unduly irritated, but I mean it to be somewhat facetious and in good fun. These are good guys without which I would never have had the backyard football experience, and I owe them a lot.

- Should you draft a QB like Peyton Manning in the first round, and then have the sheer fortune to get both Clinton Portis and Ahman Green, YOU DO NOT GET TO WHINE ABOUT IT. Odds are your team is the best in the league whether you will it to be or not. You also do not make fun of the guy with Favre if you yourself are so unhappy with your QB. He doesn't buy your BS if he's that brave or foolish.

- I outwardly cringe and inwardly gloat when the two guys I helped out with setting up their drafts (without giving away my own plan, of course) kicked everyone else around with autodraft. Paul fared a little worse, as both his TEs are in a bit of trouble playtime-wise, but Rob really laid down the law. So what's that say about the rest of our draft strategies?

- With regard to kickers, honestly - A KICKER IS NOT THE END-ALL BE-ALL OF YOUR TEAM. And as for the three of you - you don't need ****ing two of them. All it does is make me take a slightly worse K much later on. Oh no, I'll have a whopping 1 fewer point than half of you. At the same time, I'm mainly mad because that one point will be when my genius of a kicker misses an extra point. Nice move, tools.

- Acting like a total n00b doesn't work when everyone else in the room has seen you draft much better in the past several years. Self-deprecation gets you no favors when you make fun of someone because you think he's talking to himself and he's actually chewing out someone who took the kicker he wanted.

- That one guy who auto-drafted Tatum Bell in the 3rd is really screwed.

Current Mood: nerdy

First, I'm very, very sorry about Mississippi and New Orleans, and I will be donating money as I can to the Church to distribute to the victims of that category 5 hurricane. Everyone's heard about what's going on, so I won't really elaborate too much. I will say this, though - it's very, VERY inappropriate to turn this into a political thing, as many mouthpieces have been doing. Some have said that this was God's retribution for us tolerating gays; others say that Bush is somehow to blame for not being rightfreakingthererightawaynownownow when the hurricane was confirmed to be as strong as it was and on the trajectory it was. Kanye West even went so far as to use fuzzy logic to compute that the hurricane proves that Bush and the media are likewise racist.

Honestly, people, can we stop saying snarky things about people who disagree with us until the two states that got ripped apart are put back together again? Come on, we were able to pull together just fine during 9/11. Can't we do it again now? Is Bush really Satan, that people have to attack him even as he's trying to help the local governments take care of this disaster? Granted, I'm no rabid fan of Bush's, but you try dealing with a state emergency while you're trying to juggle a war that you have to shoulder blame for...and social security...and welfare...and foreign diplomacy... Nobody likes the backseat driver.

And do people on the other side of the coin have to exacerbate it by saying people who do certain things deserved this? Nobody deserves it any more than anybody else. I'd like to go into the idea of original sin more here, but for this I'll instead ask that you consult an online Catechism site or something similar, as it's understood by some and ignored by the rest.

Anyway. My thoughts and prayers are with all the people affected by this. I urge the reader to donate to Catholic Charities or the Red Cross or some equally viable organization.

Current Mood: sad

So this is how my draft actually went. Overall, it went all right - I would have liked for it to do better but seeing as I was sandwiched between three really good drafters, and right in the middle of the draft, I can't help being pleased.

1) Edgerrin James, RB - Aside from the top 4 guys, the first rounders this year are a formless quagmire of potential plusses and minuses in addition to their general reliablity. So, I figured Edgerrin James was good for 5th because he had Manning at his side, he was in a contract year, and he hasn't been injured for quite some time. Throw that in with somebody reaching for McGahee at 4th and he was right there for the taking.

2) Ahman Green, RB - This guy hasn't lost any steam from last year, but the facts that he fumbles a lot and that Green Bay looks shaky this year have both made his stock a bit lower. What really happened, though, is that one guy took Moss and Owens for his first two picks in between mine, and Culpepper went in the first round too, so a lot of RBs were floating around coming back. I almost got Jamal Lewis too, except the guy in front of me took him. Can't blame him really. The biggest RB steal had to have been Deuce McAllister falling to Matt after he got Corey Dillon - I think the category 5 hurricane about to undrainably flood New Orleans has something to do with it. God bless those people - I hope everyone gets out okay.

3) Andre Johnson, WR - Here's where I goofed a bit. He was ranked 7th in all the preseason rankings I've seen, and seeing as people were gobbling up WRs, I figured I'd better nab him. Only after I drafted did I learn that his QB is throwing wobbly and not making good decisions all of a sudden. Joy. Nice going, fantasy insider bullcrap. Oh well, at least he'll do his job serviceably. Can't complain after landing Green and Edge, anyway.

4) Michael Clayton, WR - Same story as above. Come on, Griese, you have such passing precision, there's no excuse for going goofy on this guy. But again, at worst, I've been assured he's another respectable #2. That's fine by me, especially given that the fellow with Moss and Owens is REALLY hurting at RB right now.

5) Michael Bennett, RB - My choice was between him and Mike Anderson, the deciding factor being that Anderson's coach, Mike Shanahan, liked to play musical chairs with his RBs all last year, even though Anderson's the unquestioned starter right now. Bennett, meanwhile, is coming off a neck injury (!) and tends to punk out as the season goes. So, I think I second-guessed myself here. But, again, all I need is a backup that can fill in for a week or two. I can trade for a stronger RB later if I really want. My plan for grabbing a TE unraveled as I saw people pouncing all over them...AGAIN. I mean a gimpy Todd Heap went early in the 6th. For those of you who don't follow this, TEs (after the elite ones) USUALLY start trickling away in the 7th. Jeez, guys.

6) Jake Plummer, QB - Jake the Snake. I really saw no difference between him and Tom Brady statwise - both were available here. He throws more INTs but he also does more in the passing and running departments. Besides, I haven't had Plummer on a team yet. At this point, I figure I shouldn't be looking so much for a backup QB later on as one that I can platoon with Plummer.

7) Steelers DST - Why here? It's a bit early, right? Well, seeing as not one, but TWO DSTs went in the fifth round (one of those guys actually mocked me out for "letting Pitt go to my head" with this choice), and a couple others had gone earlier, ones that I didn't think quite so highly of. Given this league, who likes to get all their starters down before grabbing reserves, I figure I may as well do it here. Besides, what better way to snap out of the funk I've been in so far than to nab a defense I really like? On a funny note, the most valuable handcuff, Larry Johnson, has been finked from the guy who drafted Priest Holmes.

8) Rod Smith, WR - Seeing as Denver's #1 WR, Ashley Lelie, was gone already, I figured this guy would be the best to take. It's not the dream combo of, say, Manning-Harrison, but it'll do for my purposes. Besides, if both my starting WRs turn out to be flakes (they usually do every year), Smith will at least be serviceable. Of course, I doubt Denver's going to be a huge offensive juggernaut this season, but meh. I'm still unimpressed with the TEs, so why not get depth at WR.

9) Ben Troupe, TE - Nobody else left at TE, so I'd better get him. He's supposed to be a huge sleeper for TE, as McNair is fully healthy again and seems to be solid enough that only his WRs could possibly hold him back. In which case, tossing to the TE a lot is very plausible. Speaking of McNair...

10) Steve McNair, QB - Ah, the perfect guy to platoon with Plummer. If the Titans come out of nowhere like a lot of people are speculating, I've got just the guys to surprise opponents with. McNair's been awesome when he hasn't been hurt (and even when he has!), and having a season off to heal his cracked sternum among other things should do him really well.

11) David Akers, K - I get this guy every year. He's become the mascot for me really. :) That, and McNabb can easily get him a lot of scoring chances consistently. Only two other kickers have gone so far, and those are the two guys that are supposed to be better choices anyway. I don't care. Akers is the man and will be as long as he's in this league.

12) Antonio Bryant, WR - Ha! I found a #1 WR still on the board! Albeit for Cleveland, of course. I heard he's been wowing in camp and actually did something worth a hoot in the last preseason game. May as well grab him as a sleeper; even if it's a lousy team, he's still going to get a lot of chances. He could possibly also spell me if my starter WRs flake out.

13) Derrick Blaylock, RB - This is me finking someone else's handcuff for Curtis Martin. We all did this to each other at some point - someone's already taken Mewelde Moore from my Bennett way back in the 10th. NOBODY has successfully secured a handcuff. Quite humorous. At any rate, Blaylock's good for 10-15 carries a game already. I doubt Curtis Martin's going to get hurt or benched, but it's good to have at least that much insurance.

14) Greg Lewis, WR - Hey, how about that other guy McNabb throws to besides TO? Few other people in this draft have even heard of this guy. The starting job fell to him after they lost the original starter to a broken Achilles tendon. He's looked really good in the preseason too, and since D's will be double-covering TO a lot, and since McNabb is the kind of QB that can elevate the game of anybody else he throws to...let's just say I passed on Westbrook's handcuff and a viable backup DST to take this guy. The handcuff, for a shocker, was actually taken by the guy who owned Westbrook already, thus letting at least one guy follow through.

Well, that's my draft. As you can see, I'm weak at WR and could use a better backup RB, but otherwise I should be set for this year, particularly if I use the waiver wire to cycle backups through for my K/DST/TE. Plummer or McNair should work out, barring injury and their WRs pooping out. However, this time I won't be so reluctant to trade, as I have no delusions of grandeur with any of these guys.

One final note: I notice one guy took 3 Steelers, much like I did last year; it won't bode well for him, as the Steelers have been winning primarily with good D and special teams. If Hines Ward breaks out, I'll be rather annoyed, as he spent most of last year being used as a slot receiver after I burned a second-rounder on him. Not cool, Rothy. ;)

Way past my bedtime. Classes begin tomorrow, and I must be fresh and ready to go. God bless this academic year and may I survive it intact.

Current Mood: satisfied
Current Music: "Monday Night Football Theme," NFL

I flipped through this special ecology edition of Scientific American today and found one article that seemed a bit funky to me. Perhaps I'm not understanding the details, but it went something like this: in order to prevent an ecological disaster, man-made economy must stagnate.

By man-made economy, they mean roads, technology, etc., as opposed to natural economy, or as what everyone else calls it, natural resources. According to the author's pet theory (making him an eco-economist ;P), economy can grow to the point where it's irreversibly damaging the environment (of course) and also making life increasingly unpleasant (less leisure time, too many work hours, expenses skyrocket). The immediate solution - and long-term ones are needed too - is to make our technology run more efficiently on fuel, which means things like getting rid of those blasted SUV engines. This is the part of the argument I found agreeable. I'd rather not poison this world to the point where nothing can live here anymore.

However, and this is always the stickler, the article seemed particularly cold to the human aspect of this situation. It stated that we have to make the birth rate equal the death rate, and while the guy could be simply stating a hypothetical, you know planned parenthood and mad scientists are going to use this as an excuse to destroy more human beings (at least they can't use it for cloning).

On less of a tangent, if the man-made economy has to stagnate then we have a handful of issues dealing with the welfare of people on this planet. How exactly does one solve that problem? Can't exactly tell people to stop working and jump on permanent welfare or worse, just go off and die somewhere so the rest of us can live better. Or is that what this mission to Mars is all about, sending "excess population" somewhere to fend for themselves? Perhaps this is all fairly hyper speculation, but I still smell a rat here.

This may be because lately the world has grown particularly cold towards its fellow man. More specifically, it seems the left has turned against the very people it once purported to fight for - if not intentionally, because it let the looney fringe dictate its policies too much - while the right assumes the pro-people choice but still has the problem of the good ol' boys in charge being completely oblivious to what the average person needs. And of course you have the usual politician stereotypes on both sides.

Think about it - all these funky "rights" without responsibilities that all these activist groups want that involve the perversion of American culture and in some cases destruction or exploitation of its people. Increasingly difficult working conditions as labor unions disintegrate in being and in purpose. Judges overriding the voted will of the people. The press basically ignoring one side of the argument to push the other side and thus ignoring its basic tenets. All this stems from lack of love, towards God and towards your fellow man.

Yes, I know, I'm seemingly falling into the rhetoric trap. The truth is, there's plenty of sources out there that verify this. And of course, I acknowledge that I may be overreacting to the reasonably objective Scientific American article - but I'm just getting really tired of seeing it every day.

I guess this really means that I should just lighten up. The world's depraved - always was, but nowadays it's only made more obvious as information gets spread around. What really matters is, am I going to do something that matters?

Well, it's been about a month since I updated this thing, so I'd better go to. A lot of good stuff happened over break so I'll go through some of it here:

- Got to see Niagara Falls again for the first time in years. Despite all the crap they did to the place since I've gone - charge 8 bucks to park anywhere (when it used to be FREE!), not even using any of that cheat change to maintain the park so weeds grew everywhere, Canada's side doing ever better than ours thanks to politicians at all levels - it was still one of the more awesome things you ever get to see. I wished that we had more time and that our cash hadn't been eaten up by parking; Cave of the Winds is the best way to experience the Falls and that's what I would have done with it.

- Hit the Renaissance Festival where two of my improv friends from college (S and J, for privacy reasons) performed this summer and I got to run into a third as well! R (also for privacy) was there with S's family because it was the last weekend (the same reason I went) and, while S's sister and we failed in our attempts to find our acting friends so we'd have a mini-reunion, we still got to catch up a bit. I did run into both of them separately, though. S even let me in with a bit of improv with a friend and fellow actor. J never really saw me - either it was a comedy of errors trying to get his attention or he needed to be elsewhere at that moment, but eh well, it was all good just to get to see him as well. If only N and B were there to complete it - but I'm thankful enough.

- Met up with my old roomie and most of our mutual friends - several couldn't make it - and we designed a couple cars on Gran Turismo 4 after I was treated to dinner. You don't need me to describe how incredibly awesome that game is, and I don't care to talk about it anyway. Basically, we learned that rocket boosters + race cars = pirouetting in the air at about 1000 miles an hour (no exaggeration) and absolute high comedy, with a remainder of actually getting GT4 to crash. We also learned that a big minivan that is loaded down with 200 pounds of ballast does really well handling, and that it's darn near impossible for an amateur to steer a supercar.

- Rob joins me live about 40 miles away from here, ready for some graduate school of his own. Whether he has to put up with insufferable Penguins fans or insufferable Bengals fans remains to be seen, but things are looking good for him.

That's about all for now - I'll write some more later when I can think better.

Well, our ultimate team is falling apart at the seams - we started out nearly invincible and suddenly we couldn't beat a single team. On top of that, of our 6 losses (7?), 4 (5) occurred when I wasn't there because the person offering me a ride ditched me. THREE TIMES. Just because I do what I do for a living doesn't mean I can teleport myself 20 miles away, you know. And then, then they tell me that they need me, that I'm missed. Well, gee, I'd love to come play and possibly help get a win, but I can't really do that if I can't get down there, and I can't get down there IF NOBODY WILL DRIVE ME, not even Port Authority. Eh well. At least the first half of the season was fun.

Meanwhile, I'm getting really close to finishing up my project. As of Friday I take off for another break in August. Home isn't all that exciting, but I suppose I need the rest - my sleep patterns are rather thrown off, and that's at least partially my fault. Now would be an excellent time to reset.

So I noticed Israel thwarted a would-be suicide bomber by nailing him right at the border. The story is linked to by the Anchoress (http://theanchoressonline.com), and two things struck me about the story.

First off, the bomber was 18. Eighteen! I was trying to figure out what I was supposed to do with my life at 18, not how to take out the maximum number of innocents with me. This, included with a recent frontline article from the CS Monitor (the only newspaper I can trust by default anymore) that describes how particularly violent imams in London are actively recruiting jihadists roughly my age plus/minus 3 years, is pretty scary in itself. This is my generation here, and some of it's being bred to destroy itself and others. On a tangent, I've seen examples of being bred to do nothing but be the best at playing golf or tennis or something - and I mean THE best in the whole world, not #2 - until at age 21 they are deemed "over-the-hill." And how about those who were already thrown away completely by people who think not only can you have an abortion but you absolutely have to if it's going to interfere with your wants.

Same old song, I know - this crap's been going on ever since Adam and Eve bit the apple - but every time I see some young person being misled to their destruction in some way it's downright scary, as I never thought it'd happen to my batch of peers when I was a kid. It could be alarming to me because our culture is PROMOTING this. Was it really that long ago when all the media did was inform and entertain you on a reasonably genuine, reasonably honest basis, and we deemed it just fine as it was?

Second, as several blogs point out, the TV media says NOTHING about these sort of things when they happen, things that are good and encouraging, things that tell you "hey, maybe this is worth it after all." This prompts some general ideas I have about the media's apparent subjectivity (other than its general potential to become the false prophet).

My original thought was, why is the media so trusted anyway? When European newspapers are about as bad as tabloids and ours aren't much better, why do so many people just swallow whatever is said? Maybe everyone's used to the idea of the people in charge saying what we are supposed to believe, and that if a commoner takes it into his own hands then there's more objective truth to it because he isn't influenced by any agendas. People really value a free press because it's not what the king said, it's what some guy like us said after personally investigating it. Naturally, there'd be no reason for him to lie in that case. Even if he isn't telling the truth, the public can relate to a reporter much more easily than to media designated by the political heads of state.

There's also the media's natural element of being progressive. By definition, "news" is what's happening now that we'd be interested in hearing. As an example in which this actually works out for the best anyway, for someone to reassert Newton's laws for the 1500th time would be boring compared to somebody debunking them with special relativity. As a more negative example, the USS Maine blowing up due to a probable accident is less interesting than Spain sending spies to sabotage the ship, as William Randolph Hearst decided a century ago.

It helps that the media actually has many shining moments in its history - in this country alone, Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" is a great example as it prompted the FDA's birth; encouraging posters kept us working hard and united during a grisly war in the '40s when nothing less would topple three oppressive regimes; and so on and so forth. Naturally the public will tend to believe whatever is said and naturally assume that the paper has its facts straight.

In short, media moguls naturally feel entitled to be liberal. It is insufficent and downright irresponsible to some to merely give the facts; it is their right, nay, their duty, to keep the public up to speed with advancements and necessary change with as much color commentary as possible. That may not be so much a malicious agenda as it is a framework of existence that would shatter the minds of some people if it were ruptured by conservative leanings. Hence, you hear all this increasingly irrational rhetoric from the media towards those who want to keep things as they are because the current status quo actually contains solutions to problems we've been struggling with.

In order to fully address the problem, let's take "current" to be 1968, not 2005. That's when the civil rights movement prevailed and what was essentially the last change that America needed to address past wrongs towards fellow humans was made. The concept of equality was, at least legally, finally brought to fruition. On the more serious side, we were in another war, helping out South Vietnam as we could. As a result, one of the agents for promoting change, the media, had nothing to actively engage . Rather than going back to business as usual and being content or perhaps even reflecting positively upon the successes, the network executives decided instead to start pushing the envelope farther and farther, as well as questioning our motives and "good guy" status in Vietnam.

And from there we have our current state of very shrill, very vicious accusations from the NY Times and so on of anything that doesn't agree with the next new thing; I take the increasing degree of venom to be an internal fear rising within the likes of the Times that perhaps they are actually wrong this time. If you're very committed to a way of thinking and something that disproves it seems more and more plausible, naturally you'll feel an increasing hatred for it, whether you are right or wrong. Then again, that is how most of America feels right now with the media as well, as they took a reactionary conservative bent in last year's elections. So such an issue swings both ways on this, and that's how America got so polarized. One side had its ideologies ingrained to the point that a debunking fact threw it into attack mode, forcing the other side to become equally disinterested in finding common ground and take an opposite, equally intolerant stance.

The problem is, both sides claim they were justly reacting here, and only one really did, the people next door minding their own business, having the media overreact to Iraq's moderate success, and suddenly finding themselves in the crosshairs.

Oh, and this is another rant altogether, but the judiciary branch of the federal government pretending to be the legislative branch since the days of Earl Warren hasn't helped matters either.

Current Mood: contemplative

Just saw a repeat of Jon Stewart's invitation of Bernie Goldberg and his book "100 People Who Are Screwing Up America" onto the Daily Show. It quickly became a debate that I will not shrink from describing as an ambush, with Mr. Stewart's remarks being intelligent and civil enough to keep it several notches above blatant righty-bashing. It was clear that Mr. Goldberg is a writer, not a debate artist, and he made a decent go of it with counterpoints of his own; however, he was clearly overmatched and made a couple mistakes given that a typical NYC-liberal audience was there to "YAY!!" whoever seemed more to the left and "GASP!" at whoever seemed more to the right. And of course, you'll see all the libby blogs singing the praises of this "giant victory for the People's Republic of Free Thinkers." Nothing new.

What really got to me is Jonny's assertion that the [conservative] politicians who hold the power are far more bad than any of the [liberal] people cited in Mr. Goldberg's book. Now it'd be rather naive to blindly trust any and all politicians. Heck, the government's supposed to be set up so that it interferes as little as necessary, and the trend of politicians on both sides trying to take matters into their hands is beginning to shockingly front on that.

But to simply dismiss the power of the media like that, that's just as frightening. It particularly bothers me that Jon Stewart of all people neglected to see this. His official stance is to make fun of the news, not promote one side over the other, and for the most part this task is carried out just fine. And yes, he has to pander to the perceived NYC liberal crowd that the media itself is trying to egg on, so I'm at least somewhat aware of his position in that respect.

Still, it's even more naive to disavow the role that media has played in history. And to have Jon Stewart, a man that most of us trust, say this is quite dangerous.

On the positive side, the Guttenberg Press allowed culture to spring forth and knowledge to be spread effectively for the first time. The American Revolution never would have gotten off the drawing board if it weren't for packets like "Common Sense" being distributed throughout the colonies. Newspapers, and eventually visual media as well, allowed ordinary people to see the outside world and understand it to begin with, which I believe is where inherent trust in media comes from to begin with. You can see outside your little section of the world, if you're interested, and learn about what you choose.

However, throw in a scoundrel or two and there's the inevitable negative side. Lenin, Stalin and Mao all got their start from Karl Marx and his buddies kicking it stupid hard about socialism, an idea which looked good on paper but was inherently doomed by its own arrogant pride in humanity. Hitler had his own propaganda buddy brainwash a desperate and angry nation into something far more terrible. The French Revolution, which started off at a moderate clip, was done in by the radical followers of Rousseau and Robespierre passing around rhetoric who got their way. France then got a taste of murderous chaos followed by Napoleon and arguably hasn't quite recovered yet. William Randolph Hearst singlehandedly fibbed our way into a war with Spain. America's hand in Vietnam was misinterpreted and decried by all the intellectuals and media in the US until we said "the heck with this" and left South Vietnam to be screwed over by North Vietnam - and need I mention that this same protesting process is going on today in much the same fashion.

The media - all these leftist talkers - have a very real power, the power of insistence, of suggestion, of forcing you to believe they're right no matter how actually right or wrong they are. Say what you will but I know too many people who've been brainwashed by "Fahrenheit 9/11" and can't be reasoned with anymore. What was that one quote? "Say something five times and it's true?" I think President Ronald Reagan, Hollywood actor, said it.

Why do you think Kerry lost? He listened to all the wrong libby people thinking that's what we wanted. That's another way media has control. It makes politicians think that's what we want because it squawks far louder than the most determined libertarian in New Hampshire. Here's a third way. The RIAA complained very, VERY loudly to the government to decide that a college kid couldn't legally share his music. Apparently all media businesses with a big enough mouthpiece can do that now. Here's a fourth way. We can't tell what's true anymore because the media in Europe uses nice headlines like "How can so many American voters be so dumb?" and thus a bunch of people hate us over there. Here's a fifth way. I have a college textbook that actually figures out how to spin and stretch and flat-out lie until the US is now the country that started WWII with Germany.

Is that enough for ya, Jon Stewart? Huh?

Current Mood: mischievous
Current Music: "Tessie," Dropkick Murphys

I really should know better by now.

After a great 4th of July weekend that included family, hot dogs, a ballgame, two museums, a zoo, and a conservatory (you have to give the latter a chance to really appreciate it best, as today's people are a bit high-strung, shall we say, to enjoy lots of unique plants), all of which was really fun, I should know better than to read user comments on FARK.com concerning the following:

http://www.13wham.com/news/local/story.aspx?content_id=DD427162-B871-4F38-A532-6ACBD4CA684D

Basically, a church relatively nearby used images of worldly warfare to emphasize spiritual warfare and the need to pray for our troops so they get back home. The article seemed quite fair for a news article, and the stuff people said made perfect sense to me.

So why, oh why did I read the FARK.com user comments?

A great deal of it is snarky trash-talking, and those willing to defend Christianity are split between denouncing such actions as being fanatical extremism and upholding them as making a legitimate point, the latter of which are few in number on the board. Eh well, it's always fun when people swallow every cynical, irritable sound bite that whoever said at some point in time and spew it back out in hate-speech based on rhetoric that somehow is both "true" and "false" at the same time.

Let's see what we got in this grab bag: the usual "why don't you enlist if you support the troops?" thing that doesn't work if you have a civilian job that needs doing...the mandatory "oh, those Christians and THEIR religion" from someone who either really does follow another faith by whatever means, or decided he's too good for the very idea...knee-jerk reactions on both sides, which is particularly amusing considering you HAVE TIME TO THINK ABOUT YOUR POST BEFORE POSTING IT...comparisons to "Planet of the Apes" and the like, which is darn handy, having leftist Hollywood come up with those films for leftist people to cite...oh, I just ADORE the "American Taliban" reference. Last time I checked, Pat Robertson et. al., I don't care whether you love them or hate them, were feeding and providing for starving children in impoverished nations, not blowing their lives away over petty politics. If only some Christians-in-name-only had that kind of zeal.

This is what I went on a stew about here earlier (only buddies get to read it though). Basically, it's getting harder and harder to agree to disagree in this country about anything. Granted, all sorts of infighting has been swirling around since we broke off from Britain, from sectionalist vs. nationalist to slavery vs. abolition to nativist vs. immigration to capitalism vs. socialism (gee willikers, that one ended quickly and nicely, didn't it? /sarcasm) to status quo vs. hippie movements...

And now we have a sort of Christian vs. secular thing going on. Guess what happened last time we let these arguments get out of hand? We had a nice, tragic, brutal civil war where average people killed their own brothers because one group of rich people just wanted to have what it couldn't and shouldn't have and the other group of rich people, while having the moral upper hand, wasn't expressing it with enough, shall we say for the sake of peace, effectiveness. You might disagree but that sounds mighty familiar to me, and I'd rather not have another civil war on my hands.

However, I should also note that the very arrogance of the first group of rich people, the trait that caused them to want something they couldn't and shouldn't have, was their downfall even as the fighting started. They relied on too much conjecture to aid them when the other side had too many people and resources, and resolve, to be stopped, even if they seemed to be losing early on. Again, I'll leave that to be interpreted as the reader may, but it's pretty clear to me which side is which here.

So, after 229 years, what did we start with and where are we going? We started with a group of people who just wanted to worship God without harrassment from the state and live their lives in peace and pursuit of prosperity. Now? We have people who basically want the same thing (even if they choose not to worship at all, I'll grant that much), but in addition there's a lot of money, a lot of power, and a lot of advancement. Regrettably, a bunch of human beings still won't shut their jaws long enough to think and who are getting on everyone else's nerves, only now we have really efficient mass media to exacerbate this problem.

If you take the time to approach God about this with the proper respect and worship that Someone in charge of the whole universe should get, then He will act to stop the work of evil.

So after all that, that's the one thing I had to say. Probably something everyone knows or rejects already anyway, too. But blogs are for venting, correct?

I've heard 3 stories in 2 days concerning animals and their clashes with humanity of dubious origin, right here in Pittsburgh. Now half the Internet community thinks that we're now besieged by zombie dogs, never mind what I heard about the flock of turkeys on steroids and invading crocodiles.

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,15739502-13762,00.html

The above is a source of rather dubious objectivity concerning an event that really happened; I'm having a hard time finding a more conventional science article about it but here's the closest thing I can find to some objectivity.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,160903,00.html

In the meantime, look here for what the Safar Institute does in a more general sense:

http://www.safar.pitt.edu/

Now, as a reporter, you could say "Scientists Successfully Revive Dogs After 3 Hours of Suspended Animation," to be objective and factual with your title concerning your article, or you could say "Boffins (Aussie slang for 'scientists') Create Zombie Dogs" and send the whole world in a panic provided everybody reads it. The Australian internet news site mentioned above opted for the latter. Nice going, guys.

Let's consider the word 'zombie' for a moment. This term implies a sense of being undead, or living dead, i.e. a reanimated corpse. Since the dogs are autonomously living and breathing again, THEY ARE NOT ZOMBIES. They were pronounced clinically dead for 3 hours (which will happen if you're in cryogenically suspended animation) while their blood was completely replaced with a cold saline solution that kept their tissues from dying off. So I'm just fine here, there's no doggie "Dawn of the Dead" thing going on, etc. etc.

I've also seen it mentioned on a couple feedback posts that conservatives shouldn't be against embryonic stem-cell research if they're not against this sort of thing. Let me remind those individuals that for the former, you kill an unborn kid to get your experimental material, whereas for the latter, you are focused on PRESERVING one life while trying NOT to destroy it, or any other living thing for that matter. Yes, dogs died, and admittedly, this falls into the whole "don't use animals for scientific experiments, you big meanie" category, which will take too long to talk about here although I have to say that PETA needs to find better things to do. However, I really wish the above would be kept in mind. Besides, lookie here:

http://www.stemcellnews.com/articles/stem-cells-adult-embryonic.htm

In the very same university, other medical scientists have found that adult stem cells don't have a disadvantage vs. embryonic ones in a capacity to multiply, which is a huge factor in the whole stem-cell debate. Originally, scientists wanted to use embryonic stem cells because they were believed to be able to reproduce much more quickly, but seeing as it's now not the case, and also seeing that the human immune system even tends to accept adult stem cells better (being that you can donate stem cells to yourself), I imagine that there shouldn't be any more debate in favor of killing unborn kids to save the lives of others.

On a lighter note, a colleague noted that he found a syringe while walking down a road that cuts through Schenley Park, where wild turkeys are known to live, near where a flock of turkeys will pass through about once a day. He also remembers seeing that flock of turkeys and how huge they are compared to what you would perceive as a normal turkey size. So, put two and two together, especially in a sports town where you hear about the underbelly of pro sports all the time among other things, and I figure we have a fighting chance against those zombie dogs. No one messes with Schwarzenturkey. ;)

Also, two apparently wild crocodiles have been caught skulking about Butler County (bordering our county to the northwest), one 3 feet long and one 4.5 feet long. Uh, guys? Florida's about 1300 miles that-a-way. All we have to do now is let loose the zoo animals and we can have our very own Jumanji.

Current Mood: amused
Current Music: "Bleed," Further Seems Forever

Our cat died today, a couple months shy of her 14th b-day, of complications from liver/pancreatic cancer. I grew up with the little putty tat her entire life and she provided so many dear moments for us.

This cat, was an absolute card. She was a really big bruiser, weighing 14 pounds normal and at one point broke the scales at 20 pounds (NOT our fault, someone else overfed her during visits). And she was a crafty one too - she'd push the boundaries you'd expect a 5-year-old to try and push. So, the rest of this will be fond memories of our kitty.

- Sometimes when she got mad at somebody, she'd go to that person's bedroom, get the drawer open somehow (do NOT ask, we don't know except that she was a strong cat), pull out all the sweaters or whatever with her claws, and if she was really annoyed, take a nap on them and get cat hair all over them. We only know this from the empirical evidence of hair-filled sweaters outside the dresser we put them in, as she'd never do it when someone else was around.

- As a younger cat, she'd sleep in the tub or bathroom sink. Then we started giving her baths and that behavior stopped immediately. :)

- She also liked to try and maul people's toes as a younger cat, and if I was lying on the floor, she'd take a pounce at my head sometimes. What I did to deserve that, I still don't know.

- One time she did something bad and we chased her, causing her to jump behind the couch, only to get stuck thanks to her girth. Still afraid we'd do something to her, she swatted at us with her front paws, the only thing free.

- The ever funny fear of loud noises from things like the vacuum cleaner that you get from any cat or dog.

- She would NOT let you forget to feed her. No, this one would sing for her supper, and if you ignored her, sit on your sneakers to make you do it. This, among many other things, caused Dad to put on an air of hating cats, but we know he doesn't. :) More on that later.

- Next door there used to be a mesh fence and this huge dog that was otherwise friendly that the cat would taunt to no end. One day we go outside and what is Pumpkin doing but sitting right next to the fence, the dog right on the other side, can't get over the fence, and pretty much insane with rage, and she's ignoring him and apparently enjoying every second of it. Brat cat. :)

- Another time, she did something really, really naughty, and my grandma picked her up to put her outside. When the cat struggled, Grandma responds with "DON'T GIMME NO SH!T!!" First time I ever heard her swear, kitty stops struggling immediately, and the look on kitty's face was one of "ohhhh, boy, this time I dunit."

- Like most cats, this one killed everything - EVERYTHING - that moved and was sufficiently smaller than her. Dead snakes, mice, etc. were fairly common on our yard.

- Caused Dad to come up with some statements that may not seem hilarious here but, combined with the tone of voice, were indeed that darn funny. :D :D :D :D :D

"Come here, ya...fat, beast!" (trying not to cuss in front of us kids)
"...dumb animal..."
"...filthy animal..."
"MwAAAA-ha-ha-ha-ha, you need a BATH!!"
"Mreooowwww..." "Shut UP!" (when trying to bathe a very uncooperative cat)
"She had to pick the hedge trimmer to (insert bodily function here) on, the little genius!"
"All right, chubnik, come on." "Mrow!" (while feeding her one night)
"You want some attention, fuzzball?"
"Cat, you look just like Winston Churchill!" (this one's actually from me after she meowed about food with the right lighting and the right look on her face)

*sigh* I miss that...fat, beast.

RIP 1991-2005

Current Mood: sad

Yeah, yeah, yeah, we all know Dean's not the most brilliant oratory strategist in the world, and that's a big indicator as to what I meant earlier when I said my party disenfranchised me, seeing as he and his zaniness are in charge of the whole party.

What I thought was interesting, though, were the resulting demographics about how many white Christians were in either party, which I researched into. Demographics have the Republican party as 84% white Christian, and the Democratic party at about 62% or something like that. So I decided to do an overall comparison with the beliefs of the entire U.S.A., and here's the thing I found. I notice that, according to this site, about 76.5% of the US is Christian in some way (not counting Unitarians). But that's not the most interesting part of it. :)

http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/encyclopedia/D/De/Demographics_of_the_United_States.htm

First, note the domain name: Absolute Astronomy. Second, note the first world after the first slash: Encyclopedia. I have to admit, that is one very versatile astronomy encyclopedia. It's good to know that someday, when I'm going to need to know the demographics of the United States as a reference for my research on Lyman absorber galaxies, I'm all good to go.

Now, you notice that ONLY Unitarians are considered "not real Christians" by the survey. Huh. You're telling me that David Koresh counts but they don't? Guess I'll have to take some brochures now when they come knocking on my door.

Coming up in third place behind Protestant and Catholic: those with no faith! Societal issues regarding this aside, it's pretty obvious what this means, right? People who don't think we can know if God exists *cough*theydon'tcare*cough or people who reject the idea outright. So what's the deal with the two separate columns for agnostics and atheists? And what does that make everyone else? My wager's on the Church of the Awesome Hollywood CGI Effects. Oh, and by the by, they COMBINED MAKE UP LESS THAN 1% of the whole country.

Finally, Native American is there too. Um. Isn't that more of a racial demographic than a religious one? Come on census people, don't get all lazy on us now. (And yes, I know what they really mean but they could have worded it better.)

Frisbee time. Later!

http://www.justiceknight.com/Crusader/archives/2005/06/stem_cell_debat.html

*looks around and sees that the above link isn't deleted*

Okie dokie. Since I forgot a lot, the following will probably be inferior to what I'd originally written, but I never expected too many people to read this anyway. (See the previous post.)

Rob had me proofread this before posting it. The man has a gift for elocution in script and in speaking, and even given that, this I think is one of the better essays he's written. While the explicit topic is on embryonic stem-cell research, one of the main gists of the article emphasizes the need to look at the bigger picture of the status and rights of the unborn.

Clearly, as he indicates, this is not a position you can waffle about. Either the embryo is a human being or it isn't. One has to be sure if one intends to devote scientific inquiry to the affair. To shrug one's shoulders about it is a copout tantamount to being a devout agnostic, as someday, it's going to matter whether God is both there and really irritated at you or not. Pascal made a statement about giving God the benefit of the doubt in this case, but I forget what the thing was called. Therefore, in the worst-case scenario that people can't tell whether something that is definitely going to become a human being as opposed to an eggplant holds human rights, one ought to give the benefit of the doubt to the kid.

As for those who argue that it's holding back on cures for those with incurable diseases, there's 2 things that need to be considered:

1) Adult stem cells, as much as I could glean from the preoccupied news, seem to work just as well as embryonic ones, so why not use adult donor cells instead, and

2) While this is going to sound incredibly callous to some, it's better for someone to have had some time in this world and have it end in something that might or might not be curable if scientists worked on it, than to have someone else NEVER GET THE CHANCE TO BREATHE THE AIR AT ALL in order to cure said ailment.

The other thing I wanted to address is a point Rob made that he took in a good direction, yet I want to take in another: "These claims (of promised cure-alls) deserve to be looked at critically, not dismissed because "experts" are promising the moon with embryonic stem cells."

Since I've been hanging around scientific research for the past five years of my life, I'm sure no expert yet but I've picked up a lot in the way of facts, realities, ideas, hopes, and so forth in the general scientific community. Now, even though I'm in an entirely different field altogether than biomedical sciences, perhaps I can offer some insight from the point of view of a generic scientist.

In the purest sense, the goal of science is to use the available human means to explore the universe's inner workings to the fullest human extent. Starting essentially with the Industrial Revolution, technological innovation was appended to this goal so that advancement through technology could both supplement and benefit from it. Therefore, the scientist is looked upon as the truth seeker, as well as many other things. At the core, though, we are basically trying to figure out with our own minds how God built the universe, which sparks off a couple debates, but I'll just say that one can pretty much view science as confirming for ourselves what the Lord is willing to tell us anyway about this stuff we live in, granted we'd ask in a respectful way and that it wouldn't blow our minds. :)

Remember that scientists are people too. We each have our own little goals in this perceived altrustic pursuit of truth, even though deep down we all want to explore what's yet unknown, whether it be picking apart something in a lab or drawing some really neat theories from recent findings. It's a benevolent and innocent practice, for the most part, as science is an integral part of human advancement.

At any rate, there is a bit of a tainted element to this, a dark side to science that most scientists shun out of moral responsibility, just as there is to any occupation at all. Specifically, one could go beyond the restraints of simply exploring the truth about things and desire to tamper with things that shouldn't be tampered with, i.e., playing God. This is the Frankenstein/Jurassic Park element of science; most scientists will avoid it entirely and some will even vociferously attack it, as they should. And this element is to where I attribute embryonic stem-cell research.

Are they doing this because they specifically want to play God? Undoubtedly there are a few who do. For the most part, it seems to me to be simply the exploratory nature of a scientist expressed in an ill-advised manner. For example, let's say someone gives you a huge, $500,000, state-of-the-art high-energy laser and tells you to examine some intricate molecular patterns. You'd be tempted to forget somewhat about the job at hand for its own sake and think more about how cool this machine is and what neat stuff you can do with it.

Or perhaps, to make it more explicit, let's say you loved dinosaurs ever since you were a little kid, and now as a scientist you have the means to bring them back to life, even though it'd mean setting man-eating monsters loose upon humanity. Granted, most people would take care not to do anything rash, as there are giant ramifications for many life-based experiment but you know there are certain individuals out there who would soldier forth anyway just out of sheer passion for it.

And if they're unsavory enough, they may even make crap up like "promising the moon with embryonic stem cells" in order to get research funding. After all, the NSF isn't going to fund research that isn't going to produce results. It's particularly dangerous because the public is encouraged nowadays to look to us as secularized bastions of knowledge and truth, and because John Q. Public isn't going to readily know how to interpret an experiment involving the dielectric susceptibility of mitochondrial walls in response to uranium-238 radioactive decay, if you get my drift. ;)

Again, and I have to emphasize this even if it means hitting you over the head with it ad nauseum, remember that 99.5% of all scientists would never stoop this low and in fact go out of our way to correct this sort of thing, even report it if necessary.

So what happens if we lose sight of the evils we commit to solve the current problems at hand? Yes, it sounds like a libby argument, sure, but here it instead questions a very thing a liberal would be inclined to support. Nobody in their right mind would kill someone before they're born for the purposes of research 50 years ago, but that was before we even knew stuff like cancer existed. And now that we do, we really have to think twice about throwing things like morals out the window to make progress. The human race really can't afford to allow enough wiggle room to abandon all respect for ourselves and for God. I shudder to think what we'd do with the atomic bomb if it were a recent development whose use was egged on in a cure-all manner.

So that be those goods from a (hopeful) scientist's point of view. Just had to get all of it off my chest. Again, job well done on the original essay!

Current Mood: contemplative

Step 1: Waste 45 minutes on a commentary that was turning out really well, late on Sunday night, only to have Livejournal decide that it would lose the whole thing in order to switch to this "rich text" garbage on the whim of a missed mouse click. Time for Mr. Text Editor from now on. I'll rewrite what I was going to say now tomorrow night.

Also in my rant last week, I forgot to acknowledge the meat of the article I was referencing, i.e. that while AIDS is inexplicably rampant in many countries in Africa, here in the US people seem to get it mainly by not controlling their sexual lust and that we really ought to behave ourselves in that respect as it will hurt both the person doing it and everyone who loves him or her. It's a very poignant and true narrative by the person running that blog, and that said, I'll leave it be and tell you to go read it if you haven't already, as the article speaks for itself well enough without my grouchy fingers adding on to it.

Current Mood: infuriated
Current Music: "Screw you, IE," me