Dissension in the Ranks

You know what pisses me off? People talking about what pisses them off and how things could be better. Or how they could be worse. Can't you people find anything better to do than talk about the present? and yourselves? and the situation around you?

If you really want to bitch about something, bitch about how much you have to bitch. It's more fun, anyway.

And get an imagination. There's more to life than reality.

http://www.toothpastefordinner.com/071405/eighteen-year-old-anarchists.gif

Have We Come a Long Way?

In 1607, a few men sailed across the Atlantic and built the foundations of what would become the United States of America -- the 'Land of the Free'.
But these foundations were built on stolen land. Today we know that. Today we repent for the injustice done against the first Americans. We're supposed to respect Indian property and culture, right?

Last month, the North Atlantic Division of the Corps issued a draft permit, allowing the creation of a 1,526 acre reservoir on the Mattaponi River. This reservoir would greatly harm the environment, flooding hundreds of acres of wetlands and destroying the Cohoke watershed.

And it would have a disastrous effect on the people of the Mattaponi and Pumunkey tribes, who to this day hold the river sacred.

The city of Newport News maintains that the reservoir is needed to meet the city's projected water needs. However, there is undeniable evidence against this claim. The damage to the wetlands would be massive. The NN reservior in New Kent County is providing more than enough water for the city. The proposed reservoir would flood land held sacred to a people who have more right to it than anyone.

And yet they push on.

I took a trip to this beautiful place last weekend. Today, the Mattaponi River remains much the same as the first English settlers found it 400 years ago. Much of the land surrounding the river was once part of the Mattaponi reservation, but the size of the reservation has dwindled. A few years ago, Assistant Chief Carl 'Lone Eagle' Custalow of the Mattaponi tribe expressed great hopes for this pristine land:

"When I was a boy in the early fifties, my father, Chief Webster Little Eagle Custalow, would bring me on a crisp spring morning to the banks of the Sandy Point tract on the Mattaponi River. I still feel the thrill of seeing the river flowing, the herons fishing, and ducks nesting in the marshes. Occasionally an eagle or an osprey would soar overhead. I used to long for this large piece of our original Homeland to become part of our Reservation again. The fish, wildlife and bird habitat make Sandy Point an especially sacred site for our Tribe.

"When I returned to the Reservation and became Assistant Chief of the Tribe, I had this vision of a modern Hatchery, a beautiful three story Cultural Center built over the water and a Living History Village to study and teach our culture to tribal members and the general public alike...

"The vision for my beloved Reservation, the beauty of it all and the chance to protect rich Virginia natural resources, forests, meadows and wetlands, while strengthening our cultural heritage, gave me the will to hope..."
(read the entire letter here.)

Groups such as The Southern Environmental Law Center and The Sierra Club are fighting for this hope, but hope is fading quickly.

We'd like to think that the American government has changed its ways, but Native Americans have been getting the short end of the stick, 400 years and counting.

Plain Jane America - No More

So these wise econologists get this idea... elephants and lions and the like are nearing extinction in the great continent of Africa, so why not bring them to a protected habitat in our own Great Plains.

Part of me panics and says America has no less of a population issue. Then I remember all the green empty spaces in many states, in every state, and I remember the 17 kids per family in India - and I kind of grow to the idea.

Ted Turner, owner of CNN and other entitities as well as the single largest private land owner anywhere, has showed interest and support in the idea. I say slim chance it does happen - but bravo if it does AND makes a difference to their numbers.

Benefits? Ecotourism and biodiversity, mainly.

Mars Encounter

I thought some of you guys might be interested in this.
Throughout the month, the distance between Earth and Mars will decrease until August 27, when the planets will be at their closest in recorded history. Astronomers aren't sure when we will be this close to Mars again, but it may be as long as 60,000 years. On August 27th, the distance between Earth and Mars will be 34,649,589 miles. Mars will appear with a magnitude of -2.9, and will be, next to the moon, the brightest object in the sky. It will rise at nightfall and reach its zenith at 12:30am.

Natalee Holloway: Raise Your Hand if you Still Care

So im sure that by now everybody knows that when they drained that pond in Aruba, they didn't find Natalee's body. Yet im equally sure that by now nobody was really biting their nails over it either. I know I sure wasn't! And if I was, it was because I was so annoyed with the whole drawn-out situation. Listen up Fox news.
#1- i hate to say this but when i read about a crime, i sometimes have to smack my forehead and think that the victim was kind of asking for it. if i went to some seedy bar in aruba and trusted 3 random guys to drive my drunk ass back to the hotel, i could pretty much assume that i was about to get raped and tossed into the ocean. seriously.
#2- ok it's kind of a bummer that people are like that, but they just are, and being 18 natalee should have realized that by now. of course her disappearance warranted some media coverage, but her story is dominating CNN like leather is outta style. SHE JUST ISN'T THAT IMPORTANT. NO ONE IS. It's just embarassingly obvious why the media is fixated on it too: what tv station doesn't jump at the chance to shamlessly showcase shot after shot of rich, barely-legal blonde girls in exotic locations?
#3- bad stuff happens to other people too. If an overweight minority got 'lost' in some mundane location such as, say, Oregon, the media wouldn't care!

I rest my freaking case!

"London is a Leaky Tap"

Bombs going off in Subways…hmmm…sounds an awful lot like a literary allusion to Hell. Just goes to show that while we popularly believe that we-in-reality control the world-of-fiction, it is really those characters that pull our strings.

But more to the point, metros remind me of giant, blind worms slithering beneath the city. Sort of like the giant worms slithering above ground (whoops, metaphors again, sorry). But when you think about the people in them, it’s more like an ant colony. Working, working, working. For Pete’s sake, it took 50 people dying to spice up the commuting habits of these droll Londoners. At least the Iraqis know how to keep life exciting.

Which reminds me of a quote by Shaikh Zakaria al-Tamimi: “This is because Iraqis are like chicken and nobody cares about the killing of a chicken, but the British are the lords of this world.”

I wonder how many Londoners cried about the bombings and then went home to some chicken? And of course, they cried more after dinner. Tragedy like this can’t be gotten over that quickly. (drip drip drip.) And, to further enliven the hypothetical, I wonder how many of those crying, chicken-devouring Londoners have the title ‘lord’? It all comes together, sort of like a mystery novel. The unraveling of the knot.

Or if this was compared to a literary work of slightly more enduring character, we could return to the Hell symbolism and endorse human primitivism and naturalism or even the inborn guilt of man(andwoman)kind. But that stuff is beyond this situation. It’s not some storybook to be moralized. Of course not. (drip drip drip.)

Breaking News?

I put this in my own blog a few minutes ago, and figured I'd put it in here too. Cur non.

I felt like posting about the London thing yesterday, but never got a chance to. Everything about it is so wrong on so many levels. First of all, just that someone would do that in the first place is sick. Sick beyond belief. But what do we do with it? Feed it to you, because you LOVE it. All day on CNN was nothing but the London bombing. Why? Because the populace can't get enough. Before every commercial break? "Log on to our website for FREE VIDEO FEEDS from the London bombing, including interviews and special news reports!" Hell, if I didn't know better, I'd think CNN bombed the place. And how Eurocentric do we have to be to care so much? Doesn't this happen every other day in Israel? 33 dead in the Middle East is lucky to land a spot on the news ticker anymore. CNN Newsbreak: "London Police Cheif Thinks The Seperate Bombings Were Co-ordinated." Thanks. Let the police deal with it. We know what happened, and how terrible it is. The next step? Catch some al-Qaeda guys and give stupid American citizens more reason to hate Arabs. And I blame al-Qaeda for that, because they intentially fuel hate, which is disgusting. But isn't al-Qaeda pretty much a branch of U.S. Military? They wouldn't exist if our tax money hadn't funded all their weapons. It really just seems like the ball is in U.S.'s court, and we should do something about it. I wish.

Oh, Dear China

China, you humor me. Immensely. NASA may think it has some huge victory, or minor confidence boost, in their recently successful Deep Impact.

Yet, NASA - maybe an entire decade or two - relies on the one and only upcoming Discovery shuttle mission. Nonetheless, China who is number three in the line of getting things up into space seems to have some rather heightly ambitions. They are currently "focused" on a moon probe, yet some people are taking time already having planned their own Deep Impact mission.

Well no, their mission they like to say is more about preventing a comet or asteroid moreso from hitting Earth. Star Wars anyone? O wait, that never happened.

Nonetheless, despite any initial to blow it out of the "sky", China says their mission would be to soft land a vessel and merely use a huge ass engine to thrust the meteor off course. Okay.

Oh but wait, they aren't even sure yet if their radio signals are working. Does anyone else agree that China needs to split up the first 4 or 5 decades of space technology into multiple missions? The next thing they will say is they have a Mars probe that will detach and wildly send itself off halfway to the comet. Grow up China, you already have a bigger military - I think someone is scared of the celestial space above as an attack ground.

24 Years Between Them, But Mommy Doesn't Care...

A Lebanon mother was sentanced to 30 days in jail for giving her 15 year old daughter written permission to have sex with a 39 year old man.

America's Guide to Dominating the World Economy as a Developed Country

Step 1: sell poor countries all the stuff they need to grow the food that you want

Step 2: be a large enough market so that your needs are all they produce

Step 3: subsidize the farmers in your own country so that they can beat all the competition from the aforementioned poor countries

Step 4: ignore the poor farmers in the poor countries with no other crops, no other income, and nothing to pull themselves out of poverty

Reference: http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/94EDA125-897B-4494-8D97-1FC747697890.htm

This is an ongoing process/experiment, but clearly a successful one.

What Generation is this Again?

So, as mentioned previously, podcasts have arrived. And so has a new, cheaper, slicker, better, in-color iPod. 60 GB with photo capabilities.



How much longer before Pocket PC and iPod are one in the same? I think those making pocket Dells and the like, have a much quicker route to allowing huge hard drives and music capabilities on their 2006 line. Is it coming? Why bother let it coming, when the next step is to merge into a cell phone as well?

Either way - it's sexy and I'm jealous that it is only $100 dollars more than the non-color 4 GB Mini I just bought. I feel highly retarded as a consumer, and well... always have.

Nevermind though, because Podcasts are about to take the biggest step in their carving revolution yet. Now that over 3,000 (and rapidly growing) are free and online through iTunes 4.9 - they are getting attention in places and homes never expected to be heard of.

Personally, I have subscribed to the ABC News Shuffle and AfterNote, the ESPN Radio Podcast, iTunes New Music Tuesday (podcast form), and the Podcast Network's Movie Show. All of which are delicious and through the settings menu can check for updates and auto-sync when my iPod is docked. So easy - I love you Apple.

Apathy in the Blogosphere

For those of you who are not familiar with the fairly new practice of "blogging," it is a modern form of journalism and critical discussion through the revolutionary medium of the internet. This practice takes the average person, with no necessary background in journalism, and lets them express their views and concerns across a network accessible by billions. Unfortunately, a recent plague of extreme apathy and lack of "posting"(the act of writing an article on a "blog") has stricken this widespread blog network. One blogger, "Calder," on a notable socio-political blog that I will leave anonymous out of respect, is quoted posting "I'll post something big and controversial as soon as I get the motivation gathered." Is this an attitude formed by the simplicity and accessibility of this new media form? If you look around, one does not see such respectable news networks as the televised FOX News quitting their groundbreaking stories. This could lead one to believe that it is at the heart of the nature of "blogging" that has brought upon itself this affliction. This comes as a great blow to myself, as a self-proclaimed "blog journalist." I ask simply of the reader, if you are familiar with this world of "blogging," to remain active in your blog community despite your predispositions in everyday life. Thank you for your time; I hope you have learned some about this new technology and perhaps have grown more motivated.

America, America, America......

My friend comes from China. He moved here a couple years ago (during his freshman year of high school) and is now getting ready to move on to college. He speaks Chinese fluently, as can be expected, but we always had trouble communicating in English, regrettable since he’s probably one of the most interesting people I’ve ever met.

To the point, though. Last year, during the summer, he was doing his summer work for AP English, which the school had signed him up for. The summer work: reading David Copperfield. Imagine trying to read David Copperfield in whatever language you’ve been taking in school (Spanish, French, whatever) and you have an idea what that was like. Excruciating. But he had to take AP. Cause he’s smart. Don’t you love our education system?

Now I know an artist at VCU, who came from Ecuador, also during high school. He was put in AP English, too, though his most interesting experience was with Chaucer (again, just imagine). However, now he is near the end of his studies at VCU. He is getting a degree in sculpture. But he has to get another English credit to graduate. That’s right. They can refuse to give him a degree in sculpture, no matter how good he is, just because he can’t write a benign term paper for English 201. This just doesn’t make sense to me.

Both of my friends mentioned here are amazing visual artists. The Chinese one in particular continuously amazes me with his skill, versatility, and creativity. But my fellow Americans in the field of higher education administration are screwing them for all their worth. This is sickening to see. An education system that is actively holding back its immigrants. America is supposed to be about inclusion and assimiliation. You know, the American Dream and all that shit. Well, Ni and Jaime have a dream and more than enough ability to achieve it. If only we’d let them out of this prison we built with our own stupidity.

Charging Iraq and Selling More Weapons

A New York Times article reported a few weeks ago that at the peak of the Iraqi tensions and occupation, we were selling weapons to countries once banned from sales, or countries never heard of. The sad thing here is, this doesn't even scrape the nation's debt hole.

In most cases, the sales aren't that bad - we are merely helping out undemocratic nations in a democratic-spreading terror and lies war. Kuwait and Egypt are perfectly harmless in the current decade. But unstable Saudi and Uzbekistan and others like them make me worry that Cheney is so blood-thirsty that they are ignoring mistakes discovered in Afghanistan (yes, back in the only legitimate campaign Bush ran) - Don't sell weapons to people you plan to piss off in your lifetime.

Either way, it's all hunky-dory now, but why not spread peace? Why not sign a clean air bill or a nuclear arms bill? Oh, that's right - we're selfish America.

Real dancing?

Lafayette's prom was this weekend. I just want to know what happened to real dancing? When did the salsa and foxtrot give way to mindless booty shaking? I mean, don't get me wrong. I like getting out there and doing my own thing as much as the next person, but the type of dancing high schoolers do nowadays is not very artistic and is sometimes obscene. I went to governor's school two summers ago for German, and we took dance classes. At the dances we had every weekend, people would actually do stuff like the waltz and the cha cha. It was very tasteful and quite a refreshing change from the average high school formal. I understand that the music played at prom doesn't exactly lend well to ballroom dance, so I think it would be nice to have more of a variety. They could keep some rap but also include some Latin for salsa-ing and big band for swing dancing. This would have a lot of benefits, like reducing the simulated sex on the dance floor and preparing high schoolers for stuff like weddings and other functions. I know with my sister's wedding in 3 weeks, I'm going to make a fool of myself, at least until the DJ starts playing Nelly.

Theme and Variations on "Current Event"

In my opinion, my personal opinion, the phrase ‘current event’ is an awful phrase.

For starters, any event can be current if it is discussed currently or relived currently or treated currently. Hitler is current. Gandhi is current. Jesus (yes, I’m using the deutschified version) is current. Eve is current.

For a main course, the word implies some sort of vibrancy, some sense of anbaric shock. And yet nothing like that accompanies it. Some current events have that, but many don’t.

And I guess for dessert, the same purpose can be achieved by less disputable terms, like recent events (ignoring arguments about the flow of time) or breaking news. Or recently broken news. Why use a term that stirs up controversy when you can use one that doesn’t? It distracts from the focus of the events (though it does add a little vibrancy).

And for coffee and cigars, I just don’t like the words current event. The rhyming implies structure and order, yet most often, they present a world without order. It’s just plain misleading.

So We're in the Garage?

A few weeks ago I ran across an article on a convention in CA called D: All Things Digital. The guests were Gates, Apple, and many, many others. They all had neat things to say and I've already covered Apple's newest promises and promotions. But - the bloggers in attendance got their own morning of discussion.

I'd like to share with you two main ideas I ran across in the sub section of the article.

Although some criticized blogging to "go back to the roots of journalism" - having one man newspapers - others say this just gives people another countless way of getting their information and also allows for the reader to decide how participated they want to be in the news. This is great - you can go from limited to reading to fully engaging comment wars (or even eventually posting in the case of The Flak).

Second - creator of Movable Type ( a swell, famous software bit for making blogs that I admire ) says that blogging is like punk rock - eventually they'll make it mainstream, but someone will always be in the garage. And I think that analogy fits snugly here. The watchdogs become watchdogs, the greats become emulated, and slowly the blogosphere makes its presence blend with the media. It seems every other day I find an article on the BBC or elsewhere about a blog with an influence. A half hour after major speeches now, news teams on TV will "jump to visit the blogosphere" and see what journalists are saying - sometimes half a day before the first newspaper articles are read.

I just hope Google/Blogger gets it together and adds the features most demanded by its users. Then I won't be tempted by Movable Type.

Congratulations...You're Not Helping Anyone

Families and students of my wealthy New England town often slap a college sticker on the rear-window of their automobile as soon as an attendance letter is mailed back to the admissions office. Riding high with revered names plastered to their windows, far too many proud parents and relieved seniors, in their happiness or pride, unknowingly cause feelings of inferiority and contribute to the escalating problem of competition notoriously involved in the town’s college process. What is it they believe the name of a college will engender when rudely shoved into the eyesight of a following driver? Surely a parent’s intention is not to say, “Look at what my child did, you anonymous driver stuck behind me in traffic! She may be attending Princeton on her own merit and intelligence, or she may have a sub-normal IQ and was offered admission solely to lead the varsity Tiddlywinks team—but that does not matter, and you will never know the circumstances. All that matters is that my child is better than yours. Which means, of course, that I am better than you. It was nice having you on my tailpipe.” If a parent was simply proud of his or her child’s accomplishment and understandably enjoyed, after years of difficult parenting and devotion, hearing other’s remarks of admiration, then college stickers would have no use. The social circle of parents in my town is so tightly wound and competitive that word travels like wildfire and compliments would undoubtedly be abundant.

The same goes for seniors. Where you’re headed next year is no secret, and if you’re going to college, then congratulations: you will be getting a fantastic education, no matter where you are, and it’s almost refreshing to see a sticker representing an institution not nearly as renowned as the “top schools.” But if that’s all it is, pure proud representation, then let’s dispose of the anonymity. Your friends are happy for you, your parents are happy for you, and your teachers are happy for you, too. It’s the people who know and care about you that matter. No stranger is going to get out of his car at a red light, knock on your window, and ask to shake your hand. Wear your college gear around your friends and celebrate your future, but take a second to think about what you may be inadvertently doing. These stickers can logically do nothing but cut-down and hurt others, endorse competition and rivalry, and sometimes promote the idea to aspiring children that anything short of the Ivy League and its peers is a failure in the eyes of the public.

Parents and students: you’re happy; you’re on a high after so many years. So am I. It’s understandable to have placed a sticker on your car in a bout of happiness and pride. Now, if you’ve got one on a car, do the right thing and remove it. At least part of you probably dislikes the competition of the college admissions process and, most importantly, no hard-working child or proud parent deserves to be subject to even fleeting feelings of inferiority.

Art is not dead.

I must say that I thought the art show at Lafayette today was great. It's awesome that there is a tangible art community at our school -- people actually seemed to be enjoying themselves and the artwork. I'm always really excited to see the creative, intellectual students show their stuff. It's sometimes disheartening walking through the hallways and picking up bits and pieces of brainless conversation, but I was very impressed with the Lafayette art/drama/music students today.

Truth is Stranger than Fiction

After reading Calder's post, I was reminded of an entry I wrote on my own blog back in February. It speaks for itself, but this is just my take on the fundamental question of whether or not there is a God.

February 18, 2005 - Truth is stranger than fiction

My ears are still ringing from a lecture I just attended at Roanoke College by a University of Mary Washington professor, Bulent Atalay (author of Math and the Mona Lisa). Before his words blur in my mind as they physically have in my ears, I will write it down.
The lecture explained the math behind art. Now, I have never been crazy about math, by which I mean I am exchanging notes in pre-calc with Alisha every 10 minutes: "This is so boring I'm going to saw my head off with this scantron sheet to break the monotony." Our teacher just plods along, marching to the beat of Virginia SOLS, sketching linear functions and exponential equations on the board with a dying marker. This routine never gave me any type of rush whatsoever. And why should it have? Algebra, Geometry, Calculus- it was all made up anyway. Why should we have to memorize all this crap that these dudes made up to torture us with...? I don't know what my thoughts ever were beyond that point because I tend to zone out with that catatonic stare that can dissociate you from reality for indefinite amounts of time, and you suddenly realize that you have been having a staring contest with the lower left corner of your desk for Lord knows how long. You looked weird; there was probably talk. Well okay that happens to me a lot and I have no excuse, other than that my daydreams of philosophy and religion are of greater importance than learning math.
I have to say that I am always thinking about God. Not in a pious way necessarily, but in an objective intellectual way. Question everything- above all question your faith. All I can say for certain at this point is that there is definitely a God. Atheists always say we have no tangible proof of the presence of God, but I insist that everything is proof- and not in the old Sunday school sense of "God made your sweater because he loves you." Open your mind for one minute to look at the precision of nature. Nature is method. Doesn't it seem that some intelligent force meticulously crafted this universe for it to be so full of intricacies, laws, patterns- math? Isn't it a coincidence therefore that a few great minds "made up" the formulas which turned out to be the governing forces of the universe?
For example, Atalay talked at length about the parabolic spiral, and how it is 'nature's favorite.' The exact curve can be found in things from a chamber nautilus to a ram's horns to hurricanes to the spinning of galaxies. That is no accident. That was not random.
For my staunch atheists, smug in their disbelief, I ask you how such perfection and uniformity was created from lumps of dust and gas floating in space. If you were to sit and shake a shoebox full of the same material, would your efforts form such a masterpiece as the Earth with it's fragile environments? My friend it will not ever, ever happen. Because there is a divine logic which governs All. If even that is too much for you to swallow, let me take you back even further; where did this original dust and gas come from? For the Big Bang theory to work , one must concede that there had to be something to bang and someone to bang it. There is a force.
All these ideas had come to me on their own but in a vague way; I had known intuitively that God and Science were compatible, but my arsenal was weakened by my lack of any concrete knowledge. Atalay shined a bright beam of light through my nebulous ideas, illuminating my mind with the facts and numbers to support what I had believed all along. This was what I had waited for: validation of my theories.