NaNoWriMo
Someone give me a powerful and elaborate reason why I should sign up for NaNo this year (being the first time I will have done it). And I don’t mean a rampaging “NaNo is awezum, you muz do itz cuz it roxors” stuff. A good, valid, convincing reason for me to do it despite all the stuff I’m supposed to be doing otherwise. Edit: For clarification, I’m asking readers to give me a reason to do NaNo. I haven’t decided to do it. I think there’s some confusion on that front. Anywho! (Don’t click the read more, there isn’t any more after this!)
McCain = Hypocrit
This will be short, but I should also mention that I will be talking about politics on occasion here. The reason being that this is my blog and, well, I want to talk about politics a little. You’re free to ignore the posts on politics, or argue with me if you feel the need to. Anyway, on to the topic on hand. I just read on a Yahoo news article (thank you Yahoo for putting interesting tidbits of news on my email) some things that McCain has recently stated that have forced me into a “WTF?” situation. I’ll quote the article and the specific passages for you so any of you remotely interested in my political rambles can also join me in the WTFery that is the McCain/Palin campaign: Republican John McCain, taking a cross-state bus tour aimed at keeping vote-rich Florida from swinging to the Democrats, on Thursday accused rival Barack Obama of saying “anything to get elected.”…While criticizing Obama, McCain also targeted his own party. He complained the Bush administration was not yet buying up mortgages so homeowners facing foreclosure could renegotiate them at a more favorable interest rates. The GOP nominee has proposed a $300 billion plan, but a similar one is included in the $700 billion Wall Street bailout recently passed by Congress. Both McCain and Obama voted for that plan.“I call on the administration to act now and buy up these mortgages and keep people in their homes,” McCain said before singling out Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. “And why is the secretary of the Treasury not ordering them to do that?”…“Whether it’s Joe the Plumber in Ohio or Joe over here,” McCain said, pointing into the crowd at All Star Building Materials in Ormond Beach, “we shouldn’t be taxing our small businesses more, as Sen. Obama wants to do. We need to be helping them expand their businesses and create jobs.” WTF? So, Obama will say anything to get elected, but McCain won’t? Really? Let’s talk about that for a moment: McCain has been caught putting out ads that intentionally lie about Barack Obama in an attempt to paint Obama as a bad person and untrustworthy. McCain and Palin have actively sought to paint Barack Obama as a terrorist by repeatedly pointing to the same two or three things (mostly the Ayers fiasco), inciting anti-Muslim and racist verbal attacks (like the clever “Kill him” and “He’s an Arab”). McCain has repeatedly lied about Obama’s tax plan regarding small business orders and continues to do so because it’s a cheap political point and pretty much the only thing he has going for him as far as the economy is concerned. The problem is that his lying forces people to ignore the truth, which is that Obama’s tax plan will actually give more people more money than McCain’s plan. The only people that should be pissed off about Obama’s plan should be those making over $250,000 a year. If you make less than that you’ll actually spend a hell of a lot less in taxes with Obama than you will with McCain. Remember, McCain wants to give the biggest cuts to rich people, not to the 99% of Americans who aren’t rich. McCain’s plan is a big “fuck you” to the people that actually drive the economy and a nice hand job for those that most of us hate for being rich, filthy, immoral jackasses. Think about that. Obama wants most Americans to get more back, because if you’re going to give a tax cut you should give it to people that will actually use it to build up the economy. McCain has now turned to criticizing the Bush administration because his association with Bush has obviously hurt him. So, the end result is that McCain is just a hypocrite. Obama may be a politician and he probably is saying things just to get votes, but that’s sort of how the game is played. The difference is that McCain has turned to a rhetoric dominated by negativity and smearing; Obama is trying to appeal to the people: us. Obama is saying things and promising things that we want; McCain is promising things that either don’t make sense or that we don’t want. And don’t get me started on Palin, who is probably as corrupt as Presidential candidates come (just read up on all the crap that she’s been pinned with lately). Anyway.
What Happened to America?
Maybe I’m just naive. Maybe I grew up not having to worry about things like racism, bigotry, discrimination (with school bullying aside), and other such horrors that so many people apparently deal with on a day to day basis. Maybe the reason I find myself so reactive to discriminatory/bigoted politics is precisely because my mother is homosexual. I don’t know what it is, but the more I see these sorts of opinions in the news and the more that these opinions snatch people in–speaking of the discriminatory/bigoted opinions here–the more I find myself wondering what happened to the country I grew up loving.I’m an American. I will always be an American and I have always loved my country. I’ve been proud of the things this nation has accomplished, and I should be, because without the accomplishments of over 200 years of history, I wouldn’t be here and I wouldn’t have the things that make my life so great–like free education and now practically free college and the options to make college possible. But, I find myself losing that pride in my country when I see this country battling with the same racist rhetoric that brought us to the Civil Rights Movement, or, if you want to take things further back, to Lincoln’s brave attempt to remove slavery from our historical present. I see religion being used for hate, being used to denounce others simply because they are different. These same people would have denounced people for their skin color because of religious beliefs some hundreds of years ago and yet they see no issue with doing the same to people of Muslim faith, to homosexuals, to transgenders, to people who aren’t Christian.And this hurts. I grew up in a time when I thought these things didn’t exist. I grew up living a fantasy, and in the last 10 or so years I’ve seen that fantasy become shattered. The truth is a surprisingly horrible beast in this instance. I find myself questioning whether I want to call myself an American anymore if I will be associated with the kinds of people that would tell me that my mother cannot marry the person she wants to, or that she can’t have the same rights as me simply because she is attracted to other women. These people would tell me that my mother is a sinner, and because of that I will go to hell too and burn for an eternity. They hold their signs up and denounce my mother and my family for no reason other than they don’t agree with her lifestyle and because they hate my mother. Why?My mother is not perfect, but that has nothing to do with her sexuality. I know plenty of absolutely terrible parents who are heterosexual and Christian. So why should it matter that my mother is homosexual? Why do these people hate her and those like her?And why has this sort of hatred become so prevalent? It’s like we’ve de-evolved. We’ve gone back to the same hatreds that plagued us long ago, but instead of skin color, it’s sexuality. And not enough people see anything wrong with this. Here in California the religious right is attempting to ban gay marriage because they are under the delusion that marriage is a Christian institution. Nevermind that this is factually inaccurate and that marriage has existed since well before Christianity ever showed up on the scene. People like Bill O’Reilly would have homosexuals hide who they are simply because they don’t comprise a majority; this is, obviously, another logical fallacy. Nothing would ever get done in this country if minorities (racial and political) simply kept to themselves. I’m not saying you have to agree with the homosexual lifestyle, but to suggest that they should just pretend they aren’t homosexual just so you can feel comfortable is nothing short of hatred.Why should my mother pretend to be heterosexual? There is no logical reason. My mother is gay. Deal with it. Stop telling her she is going to go to hell. Stop telling me that I will go to hell if I don’t stop her from being who she is. Stop telling others not to be gay, or that they don’t deserve to be considered human like you just because they don’t share the same values as you. Would you suggest we tell all the Muslims they can’t be Muslim anymore? Maybe we shouldn’t let atheists exist in America either, right? Well, the religious right would say yes to those questions because they believe they are the only ones who should have a voice. And I say bull.This all has made me question what happened to my beloved country. When did we cross the line and begin accepting discriminatory politics again? When did bigotry become acceptable? When did true America die?And can we bring true America back? Or is it too late?I don’t have the answers. All I know is that I will be voting no on Prop. 8, protecting marriage for all, not just for those who happen to fit into the religious ideal. I will always support marriage for all, because we can’t call America a free country if we’re willing to take away rights from ordinary citizens all over now can we? This is a fight to be known as “free for everyone” not “free for everyone but gays and people Christians don’t like”. We’re not a Christian nation. We are a nation of many peoples, from many religions, opinions, ideologies, etc. And we all deserve to be treated as human, not as subhumans. That is all…
The Financial Market Put to Rest (For Now)
I will let the wonderful L. E. Modesitt, Jr. say what I’d love to say. This is exactly why the Bush Doctrine is an utter failure, along with many of the political designs the preceded it. That is all. (Don’t click the read more, there isn’t any more after this!)
Broaching the Education/Science Problem (one stop at a time)
The other day I had a rather unusual experience while walking downtown on my way to the bus stop and ultimately home up in the lovely forested mountains. It started in front of Borders. There was a crowd and some really big things sitting in the middle of the sidewalk. It occurred to me, after a second or two of staring, dumbfounded, that they were telescopes. Since that evening was also “dress-up-like-a-celeb” night, I figured it was someone dressing up as some scientist that nobody other than myself would get anyway, and moved on into the Borders to peruse the aisles for a short while (it makes me feel good to see books lined up in alphabetical order on the bookshelf). When I came out the crowd had dispersed slightly and I soon realized that they weren’t replicas or some kid’s science project or something else. They were real telescopes and people could actually look into the night sky with them. What’s even more interesting is that the guy who had them set up on the street had built them by hand. That’s right. By hand. They looked it too, but when I took the time to actually look I got a chance to see Jupiter (and what looked like three of its moons) and an amazingly detailed view of the moon (the likes of which I hadn’t seen except through photos online). It was an amazing experience. I don’t know when it was that I last saw Jupiter or the moon through a telescope. What makes it more amazing is that this man, whose name I didn’t get for some stupid reason, was not only allowing people to see these things through his handmade telescopes, he was handing out literature too. It was the first time I think I’ve ever seen an educational display on a public street that wasn’t part of a science fair or on a school campus (or provided by the lovely religious people who offer free food in exchange for them preaching to you for an hour). And this all goes to the point of this blog post: education and science. It’s a well known fact that people in America are consistently ignorant of the basic laws of science. Additionally, there seems to be a, shall we say, negative reaction to the very idea of science–even mentioning the word “science” earns a few rolled eyes. Most kids these days (including myself, actually) are given an education in basic science that falls below the “rudimentary” line. Most of them, as Richard Dawkins has made most apparent, don’t even trust the natural laws that we know exist. What are we to do about this? Well, that gentleman downtown has a good idea. It’s probably unlikely that he had any intention of being a part of the “educational revolution”–a term I’m going to use here to indicate the battle that science and its related fields are waging right now to maintain its relevance in a society of people that don’t even understand it. But what that man had done was introduce people to a field of science that is more than just long division, algebra, and other “boring” number games. They got a chance to see that science can actually be beautiful, perhaps artistic. It occurred to me that most of the folks who looked through his telescopes probably had no idea that the dark areas on the moon are actually at lower elevations than the rest. But maybe some of them know now. A few of them actually took his literature (perhaps some of them will have a desire to build their own telescopes, or at least buy one).The problem with this country is that we aren’t embracing science. By “we” I mean the United States as a whole. Most of us aren’t scientist material (I don’t think I am even though I do love science), but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have some basic understanding of how physics works or what’s up with all those burning balls of gas in the sky, etc. We’re shunning these very things because we don’t understand them. Think of it along the same lines as the various things once feared by the Church so long ago that were considered sins. Science is, in a way, the new witchcraft and America could very well be the new Salem (and I’m not suggesting here that this is a religious war, although certain religious groups have had a heavy hand in ruining scientific credibility in this country). What we need more than anything else right now is a collective explosion of cool science. I don’t mean projects like the LHC, which most people largely don’t give a frak about anyway (I care, but I’m not most people). We need to see what made science so “cool” and “fascinating” so long ago, when our kids were actually interesting in winning scientific prizes and what not. I suspect a lot of that “fascination” had to do with the fact that science was up-and-coming. Astronomy was just beginning to sprout as a truly engaging medium right along with the push to put people in space. The problem, perhaps, is that science has lost that exciting flare. This is the same argument used against science fiction from time to time and it’s a valid one too. There’s no gosh-wow. But there could be. That’s the key. There could be a massive gosh-wow moment if we were to introduce people to the beautiful aspects of science. Nobody has to be a genius to enjoy what science has to offer. We just need to get them thinking and enjoying things. I’d be happy if more people were interesting in the stars, at least enough to look at them and want to see what they look like through telescopes. It’d be better if more people understand some of the basic principles of physics (I’m not genius on physics, but I think I have a firm grasp of the basics,
This Is Not the Great Depression x 2
Take this into account before we all start tossing our cookies and thinking the world is crumbling into another Great Depression and the U.S. is going to fall apart, or that life is ever so hard right now: 1930sPopulation: Roughly 123,000,000 (census was taken in 1930, so there will have been growth)Unemployment Rates: In 1930 it was 3.7% and climbed by 1933 to 24.9% 2000sPopulation: Roughly 300,000,000 (give or take a few million for growth)Unemployment Rates: In 2000 it was roughly at 4.0% and climbed to a current 6.1% in 2008. That’s a measly 2.1% jump in eight years in comparison to a 21.2% jump in three years during the Great Depression. And we’ve been in a relative recession since Bush took office in 2000, if you look at the figures. Is it possible that unemployment might climb to record proportions? Yes, but it’s also possible that Galactus will descend from the sky and consume the Earth, but not as a big supernatural cloud like they had in that Fantastic Four movie, but as his big, pinkish self with the funny hat and all that. Or maybe some other giant celestial being will descend upon us, like that one planet with the mouth (Ego I think). So, stop your bitching. We are nowhere near the panic point. When unemployment jumps over 10.0%, then start worrying, but until that happens, stop throwing a fit about how bad life is right now. We have nothing to bitch about as a collective entity. The people in the Great Depression had something to bitch about. We at least have minimum wage. They basically were allowed to breathe in exchange for work in horrible conditions, etc. Consider yourselves blessed that we live in the America we have now. Yes, get pissed at the President, get pissed about things changing, etc., but stop talking like this is the Great Depression, because it’s not and it makes all of you look like idiots. Do you have food in your belly? What about hot water? How about clean water? Plumbing? A roof over your head? Do your kids get to go to school? Do you have a car? If not, do you have a bike? If not that, is not having a car or bike a personal choice because you can get to work/school via other means? If you said yes to any of those questions, tuck your tail firmly between your legs and find something reasonable to bitch about, like how your President is violating your rights or how almost nothing has been done to help stifle the current recession and how there shouldn’t even be a recession remotely visual enough for people to be upset about. Or maybe just get upset that our President is a moron and that another moron is running for office and hired a religious wacko who has about as much political experience as Gumby. Plenty of things to bitch about. Thank you. P.S.: And before anyone goes, “Oh you’re all secure with your college money and blah blah blah,” it should be noted that I will be over $21,000 in debt to the government when I graduate with my BA. So, I have a good reason to be concerned about the economy and jobs too, because I have to deal with the conditions when I get my degree. I just don’t have concerns that I won’t find a job, just that I won’t find the job I want. There are plenty of jobs out there, but they are jobs that people don’t want to fall back on and I respect that. I don’t want to work at Taco Bell either, not after all this damned college work. And I know those of you who had careers or have careers and are worried about losing them don’t want to go from such a good spot to the living hell of customer service.