The Soapbox

Proclamations/Affirmations

2011-05-27T12:03:00.000-07:00

1. Those accusing others of fear-mongering, without presenting evidence or having any familiarity with the accused, are themselves fear-mongers.

2. Just because something is "new" doesn't make it good.

3. Just because something is "old" doesn't make it bad.

4. "Love" is not a one-size-fits-all justification

5. Just because you don't like HOW someone says something doesn't mean you have to hate them or their message.

6. Fear of the unknown or unfamiliar is natural, but doesn't justify actively spreading hatred or fear of it.

7. A college education doesn't make you better than someone with a GED

8. Having a degree doesn't make you right

9. Having 10,000 views on YouTube doesn't make you right

10. Elitism is worse than Arrogance

11. Politicians cannot be trusted

12. Comedians cannot be trusted

13. Illegal immigrants are being used by those who claim to support them

14. A newspaper run by someone who thinks you only listen to your "Lizard Brain" cannot be trusted

15. A newspaper heavily funded by George Soros cannot be trusted

16. Evolution is not proven

17. The Big Bang is not proven

18. Science doesn't have all the answers, nor does it disprove religion

19. Bias in Science should be considered, just as it should in the news

20. Humans will always have a bias

21. Bias in education doesn't make it right

22. Public Online Polls cannot be trusted

23. Power corrupts absolutely, so why are so many in favor of giving more power to fewer people?

24. The rich don't have huge bank accounts

25. People are generally good

26. People are generally smart

27. People aren't racist

28. People aren't sexist

29. If a politician supports a particular social reform, the reform is false/artificial

30. No one is truly open-minded, least of all those who demand more open-mindedness

31. Climate Change is a symptom of an enlarged hubris

32. Political pressure for alternative fuel sources is a ruse

33. The Tea Party isn't crazy

34. News outlets shouldn't be un-biased

35. A candidate's religious beliefs matter

36. He was born in America

37. 10% of the population believes we never went to the moon. 10% of the population believes he is Kenyan. 10% of the population will believe anything. It's a non-issue

38. The birth certificate won't go away. It's one of only 2 things Obama wins on

39. "At whose expense?"

40. Some people can't be reasoned with

41. Violence is sometimes the only option

42. God Bless our Soldiers

43. Profit is not evil

44. Old-fashioned doesn't mean racist or sexist

45. Old-fashioned doesn't mean evil

46. Democracy isn't sacred

47. Democracy doesn't work

48. America is NOT a Democracy

49. Semantics matter

50. Swearing is not cool or effective

Obama's Statement

2011-05-02T09:11:00.000-07:00

I'm not a fan of Obama (understatement), so let me take my perhaps overly critical position here:

First thought. Is it just me, or does he seem almost disappointed? Or maybe he's just bored. Either way, this was hardly one of his more moving speeches. He just seemed to be going through the motions, not really invested in the moment at hand. Or, if you want to be nicer than I am, he was just tired. Too tired to turn his head slightly, or give more than a slight hand motion when speaking. Just reading the lines, staring at the teleprompter, putting emphasis where it told him to. Didn't even vary his volume that much.

Second. Can't you give ANY speech without that teleprompter? I'm sure you've been preparing this speech (of course, someone else prepared the speech, but he could have practiced it at some time, surely?) for awhile. I suppose he might have yawned in the middle of it all if he didn't have that screen to lean on. I mean, I've given speeches longer than this one, surely the great orator that Obama is could come up with enough material to fill 9 minutes!

Third, gotta love how much emphasis he puts on HIS involvement. HE was briefed. Then the lead was run aground by...no one, apparently. HE determined there was enough intel. HE signed the order. HE made sure things were certain. It might just be because his only winning argument is with the "birther" idiots, so he's gotta get something else to his name before elections next year. Still, seems disrespectful of the hundreds of people who were no doubt involved not to spread some credit around, if credit is going to be had.

Plus, just as a note, I thought it weird that he called the people who took Osama down as "Americans". I suppose they could be like...special agents or something, but I'd expect "Soldiers" or "Operatives" or some more technical term than just "Americans". We didn't hand some handguns to tourists, did we?

...Actually, looking around a little, it looks like the operation was military, involving Navy SEALS. GO SEALS! Can't you give the SEALS credit, Mr. President?

Fourth, I think he almost choked on that "under God" line. If it wasn't on his teleprompter, he might have "forgotten it" again.

Lastly, and unrelated to the speech, it'll be interesting to see where the "Buried at Sea" thing goes. I'm not sure if I trust the White House enough to assume they actually pulled it off, but it wouldn't matter that much either way. Still, there'll be all kinds of conspiracy theories about that. Plus, and I don't know myself, but I'd think that Islamic practice would require the body be buried... in the ground. Maybe it's just me, I'm no Islamic expert. Seems strange not even a photo exists somewhere, even if it's not publicly released for graphic content.

Whatever. I CAN trust the SEALS, though!

Fox News and Glenn Beck

2011-04-25T23:54:00.000-07:00

Okay, I really need to get this out of my head. I've heard a LOT about how Fox News and Glenn Beck create and report false and misleading information for the sake of boosting ratings. Most recently is the Huckabee rant against Glenn, in which he claims that Beck creates "Booger Bears" that only he can see. I've got a couple different angles to take with this, so let me start with my own personal reaction.

I BARELY listen to Glenn anymore and I pretty much NEVER watch Fox News. Why? Because the news SUCKS. Because discussions about the world and the politics of the day depress me so much I begin to seriously consider helping my dad find his mountain complex, chip in for the purchase, and spend the rest of my life raising German Shepherds, not having to worry at all about the rest of mankind as the world burns. While there are certainly those who thrive on the extra-terrestrial, CIA conspiracy mentality, I would wager that NORMAL people, you know, 90% of the population, have a similar reaction to mine. If news makes us angry and upset, we tend to NOT want to watch it.

Thus, if you want to make the claim that Fox News and Glenn Beck lie and deceive for ratings, you must really think these people are dumb, because that would destroy their ratings and their businesses. Of course, considering my later points, the idea that these people are dumb is out of the question.

Secondly, this is America. One of our primary problems is an excess of litigation. We can sue McDonalds because, for some reason, we didn't think the coffee we ordered was hot. Do you really think that if either of these organizations was literally fabricating information for the sake of hype or sensationalism that someone with the resources to do the research WOULDN'T sue them? Fox New's competition isn't short on resources and connections, and I doubt someone like MSNBC or CNN would pass up the chance to destroy their primary competition.

As for Glenn, you've got to be kidding me. The man makes enemies with all of the most powerful people in the world. He criticizes Obama, the president of the United States, George Soros, a multi BILLIONAIRE who heavily funds organizations like Media Matters, MSNBC, which, while pathetic, is still a sizable organization with money and connections. He criticizes union leaderships, who have PLENTY of resources. Heck, there are scant few people in the federal government that he likes, and he criticizes the rest. With all that money, all that power, all that influence, don't you think that ONE of them would take the time to prove that the information he presents is false? Don't you think, instead of pushing more money into the already defunct Media Matters or launching a propaganda campaign, George Soros might use his wealth and influence to annihilate Glenn on a factual level? Don't you think that if Fox News was actually manipulating their reports to cause more fear and hatred, SOMEONE would take some time and provide all the evidence to prove it, instead of the kind of vague, inconclusive speculation everyone shows? Perhaps these are such devilishly clever people that they've covered all their sources?

If that were the case, why would the present news that causes people to stop watching?

I find it sad that, instead of listening to someone, understanding their argument, then forming a rational counter-argument or, for crying out loud, just saying that you don't like someone, we have to take an irrational approach and accuse people outright of not only lying, but deliberately misleading people just because we disagree with them. You don't have to like Fox News or Glenn Beck! It's OK. Glenn blubbers like a baby, but that doesn't mean he's crying for effect. Fox News claims to be fair and balanced, and, aside from their PUNDITS (aka, people with OPINION shows, that are advertised as opinion shows), they do a fairly good job. It's okay (to a point) not to like someone for no solid reason. It's NOT okay to begin making these kinds of accusations without solid proof. For my part, I haven't seen any proof.

Course, I dislike people on my own impressions, too. Maybe I'll have to do a post sometime about it.

Anywho, please comment and let me know what you think!

Speaking as a former little boy

2011-03-29T00:07:00.000-07:00

I really apologize for the recurring topic, but it bothers me on many different levels. On one particular level, it makes me lose faith in humanity ever being able to continue existing in harmony (if you can call it that), and makes me wonder why any of us bother, because these differences are inevitably going to light the world on fire.

Abortion is a topic that people are either on one side or the other, and I honestly don't think any angle someone takes to dissuade someone from either position will actually have an effect. Those few who are still on the fence about it will probably stay on the fence until the whole thing is resolved one way or another. Still, I hope anyone reading this will tolerate my very human desire to express myself and be understood, even if my opinions don't hold any weight for you.

Another level that this topic bothers me on is the fact that I'm dismissed for reasons beyond my control. Of course, I'm speaking in the first-person, but what I actually mean is that I'm male, so I'm not allowed any credibility. I don't claim to know what it's like to be a woman or pregnant, but it's annoying that my ideas are dismissed simply because of my gender (ironic, no?). The men in this topic are also made out to be the bad guys, which I'd hardly be inclined to disagree with. However, women aren't without some of the blame, even if I'd give them the smaller part.

So, with everything I said in my last post on the subject, I feel like attacking the topic from another direction. This is mostly for my own benefit, as I'll end up pacing around the basement for hours thinking about it, and I'd rather just go to bed.

In a nutshell, I think abortion is a very poorly conceived treatment for a symptom of a larger problem. No, I'm not going to start making rotting fish analogies (hehe, references), but I think the statement is true, and we can trace it back. Abortion is being discussed because women who don't want kids are getting pregnant. These pregnancies are occurring...well, cause people are having sex. I see a couple of interpretations that you can have for that, but addressing one leads me to my own.

Many groups, Planned Parenthood being one of them, advocate an increase in sexual education and lectures about safe sex in schools. These groups also advocate for the increase in availability of condoms and other contraceptives to students of many ages. Some of these measures can happen, in a few bizarre cases, in Elementary School, but most don't start until Middle School at the earliest.

Now, I'm not one to say that safe sex practices should be abolished, because, just like trying to convince someone that an unborn life is still as valuable as a baby's life, people won't change their behavior. Pretty much any anti-abortion argument one makes has that same effect, ie none at all. I personally don't understand why taking the lower moral road should be advocated, but the point is that no one will be moved by any amount of Logos, Pathos, or Ethos. So, people will do what people will do, so safety measures are hardly something I'd be against.

However, even though I can't speak as a pregnant woman, I hope I can be allowed to speak as a former little boy. Yes, children, I too was a boy of 12 - 15 once. And there's one thing about boys that should be obvious to anyone. If you hand a boy -- especially a boy who, unlike me, wasn't raised in a religious and moral home -- a condom with the encouragement to have SAFE sex, he doesn't receive the message you intend. You intend to help prevent unwanted pregnancies by making sure kids know how to prevent them, but what you actually tell the boy is to have sex which, to a boy who has recently gone through puberty (if he's not in the middle of it), and who has no moral foundation, is a suggestion he's more than willing to follow. Whether the sex is safe or not doesn't matter to him. His friends will talk about it, make jokes about it, they'll expect him to have stories to tell, and society in general does not look fondly on men who are still virgins. Comedy bits, movies (40-year-old virgin, anyone?) and television shows make them out to be backwards, inept, and pitiful.

So, now the boy has a standard to live up to. Guess what he'll do about it? Well, duh, he's going to do what he can to live up to the standard! He's going to date for the purpose of sex, he won't feel his relationship with a girl is a satisfactory one if sex isn't an integral part of it, and if he needs to pressure the girl into the act, so be it. He has friends whose opinions he needs to improve.

Now turn the table, and think about what girls go through. Girls have magazines, television, movies, all of which are telling them what image to have, how to look, how to act. And many of them say that a girl needs to be sexy, sensual, and submissive to men if they want to be treated like a real woman, or to be liked at all by the opposite sex. They have to "put out" to live up to the society's standard, and being promiscuous is glamorous. (Sex and the City, anyone?)

We're enabling and encouraging everyone to sleep together, but without the necessary foundation of character to properly deal with it.

If I were to make my point pithily: Maybe before we hand a young boy a condom, we should focus on instilling respect for women into him. Additionally, we should instill more self-respect into the girls.

I'm not really up to code when it comes to my church, but one thing they do VERY well is this. They instill respect for others, and do everything short of actual physical violence to instill respect for women and girls into the heads of all the young men. They teach them to treat women as equals, many times you'll hear the men of my church saying they're inferior to women. They teach these boys not to make any untoward moves on the girls, THEN they encourage kids to get together, mingle and interact with the opposite sex, and...you know....TALK. Yeah, maybe dances where the men and women aren't allowed to press up against each other is considered old fashioned and prudish by the rest of society, but the fact that physical intimacy is set aside for a time in favor of really getting to know someone on an emotional and intellectual level has a very positive effect. Mormons usually marry young, and their marriages last far more often than the rest of the world. SOMETHING they do works, doesn't it? I think it's because everyone else has to learn what true love really is the hard way, so they're not ready to marry until later in life.

I contend that the issue is not abortion, but a lack of respect, both of men for women, and of women for themselves. I know making societal changes is a messy suggestion, but I'm sick and tired of my ideas being dismissed as naive or ignorant because the solutions I suggest are "too hard". I'm tired of being told by everyone else that I need to be more open-minded, but none of them will give my ideas the time of day.

I'll conclude by adding this: Giving kids the impression that they HAVE to have sex is probably the worst influence you could have on the rate of unwanted pregnancies, even if your intent is to advocate safe sex practices. Just like so many other things, we should take special care to note that NOT having sex is okay, that it can sometimes be the best decision the kids ever made. If we could just increase our society's standards a little, not through some insane government bill or program, but just as people, abortions would be largely unnecessary. And maybe, just maybe, parenthood would be given the value it deserves.

I'm going to sleep now, but please, let me know what you think. I've been told I come across as extraordinarily arrogant sometimes, so I'd like to work on that. Leave your thoughts....well, somewhere around here :P

Abortion! Tackling one controversy at a time.

2011-02-26T18:57:00.000-08:00

This one's going to be...well...messy. No horrible pun intended.

Let me cut right to the mean summary of my post: Those in favor of abortion are beginning to sound to me like entitled teenagers, whining that they can't have their fun without any responsibility at all. It's either that or they are fighting against something they're terrified of.

Aside from the infinite supply of slogans about free choice or free use of "my body", there is basically only one point at which people REALLY differ, and that's whether a fetus is another human or not. I've heard lots of rather mean descriptions of what a fetus IS, but if I may take the offensive here, at what point the baby BECOMES a baby changes for those in favor of abortion.

However, before that, the argument is always one of "keep your laws off my body" and "I can do what I want with MY body". So the argument boils down to "I want to have sex, but not the baby". The pregnancy is the problem, the fate of the fetus is an after-thought. The aforementioned arguments are ALWAYS the first argument to be brought up. The pro-abortion concern is always "me first". However, once those arguments are countered or dismissed, THEN the fate/state of the fetus becomes the argument.

Basically, the argument starts out with "it's not a human", "it's just a few cells", etc. But then, in an incredibly odd twist, the argument becomes "think of the child". What was a few minutes ago just a few cells has become the focal point of an emotional plea in favor of a mercy killing. The child isn't wanted, so it will have a bad life. Would you want to be in that position? Of course, "killing" isn't the right word, because it's only a few cells, but it WILL be a mercy killing, because the baby it WILL become will undoubtedly be miserable. But remember, it's not actually alive, it's just a few cells, but it WILL be a life.....a sad life.

However, the argument in favor of letting the fetus live because it WILL be a human being is dismissed as sheer religious zealotry, or a matter of opinion, which is subsequently dismissed. How does that add up?

So, as a society, we are to acknowledge, educate, even encourage sexual activity but also push for the "getting rid" of the consequences of said activity. One of those being pregnancy and parenthood. Is it really socially beneficial to our country to encourage irresponsible behavior by allowing those women who don't want kids, but want sex, to abort the fetus (which both parties acknowledge WILL be children) simply because:

- First off, they (the mother) don't want them
- Secondly, they'll be sad children

I find this to be a very bad policy. Two consenting adults should be aware of the risk they take by sexual activity. Considering the number of stories about sex-ed happening in elementary schools, I find it hard to believe anyone could be so ignorant as to not know that sex is where babies come from. If you have sex, you COULD get pregnant, no matter how many preventative measures you take. We as human beings should be mature enough to understand the risks (if you consider them risks) and be prepared to accept the outcome of our decisions. Our government certainly shouldn't be legalizing "get out of jail free" policies.

If we're going to be making the argument that women should be able to have sex without the fear of pregnancy, I suggest that all women be temporarily sterilized. Any woman who wishes to have children will have to apply for fertilization with their local BHD (Baby-Having Department). Upon submission of the application, a 3 month waiting period will be required, during which the woman's parenting skills will be evaluated so that no resulting child will be sad.

Seriously, though, my real opinion is that abortions should only be available to women in cases of rape and when the pregnancy threatens the mother's life. Even then, the doctor must also be willing to perform the operation. For rape cases, the woman didn't HAVE a choice, so I'm willing to allow her one about the pregnancy, and I don't see why I or any government agency should be making the decision for a woman whose life is at risk. Of course, pregnancies don't usually threaten lives anymore, but you get the idea.

The alternative explanation for the feverish advocacy of abortion is the fact that motherhood is SCARY (seriously). Perhaps some think that the permanent emotional and mental scarring that comes with an abortion is preferable to having a kid. Of course, that explanation makes them look very very bad, even to themselves, so they compensate by being outraged by those people who want to tell them "what they can do with their bodies". It's much easier to feel offended by an invading or oppressive force than it is to acknowledge one's own fears.

Mac vs PC War

2011-01-26T10:33:00.000-08:00

This was inevitable. Sitting here with a blog I use to rant and rave about whatever gets under my skin meant I was eventually going to get to this particular flame war. I recently read a little blurb from someone on DeviantArt that got me going on the subject again, so let's get it over with, shall we?

So, Mac vs PC. PC, or personal computer, is a label that can be applied to all...well...personal computers, but it is and has been synonymous with Windows based computers for a LOOONG time now, so anyone using that to win an argument against any idiot mac user with an Air should be ashamed of themselves.

BUT, let me go on a rant on how I see the differences between the systems in my typical categorized fashion.

Compatibility
This can be taken two ways: compatibility between the operating systems and compatibility in software.

First, the former. Macs are more compatible than PC's. Simple as that. A Mac can read any flash drive or harddrive formatted by a PC, but a PC can't read anything formatted by a Mac. A Mac can run Windows natively, but a PC can't run Mac natively, unless you go and download a hacked version of the install disk, then go through the horrendously painful process of getting hacked kernels to work properly, then can handle the computer crashing constantly, all of which I've gone through. A custom built or store-bought PC is incapable of running the Mac operating system without extensive help from hackers.

This latter point, though, is due to the fact that Mac OSX is locked down TIGHT. It isn't meant to run on a computer not made by Mac, and the pros and cons of that fact will be discussed in a later section.

As far as software is concerned, Mac is capable of about anything a PC is, though the specific software may not be compatible. As a 3D modeler, I have to use Windows to run 3Ds Max, but I could just as easily use any of the other modeling software available for the Mac, such as Cinema4D, Maya, ZBrush, Blender, etc. 3Ds Max is something of an odd-man-out at this point.

Video Editing? We've got Final Cut Pro and Adobe After Effects. Gaming is where the argument gets heated, and Macs are admittedly not included in the vast majority of game releases. However, the trend seems to be swinging in Mac's favor, with Valve beginning simultaneous releases and Cider technology advancing quickly. Heck, Blizzard is one of the biggest names in gaming, and they've been supporting Mac gaming from the beginning. Everyone else is just late to the party.

Security
This isn't even a fair section. PCs are ridden with spyware, viruses, and malware, and Macs have had maybe a couple hundred reported cases of infected computers in the world. The Mac operating system is designed to be secure. It runs only on the computers it's supposed to, and it knows what files should be present in the system. Anything weird or out of place is ignored. This means that hardware will be slightly limited, but also that viruses will be non-existant. Considering the amount of pain and frustration PC users go through to keep their computers running at full capacity with anti-virus, technical support, and full system wipes, the limitation in hardware seems like a small price to pay.

Price
This one is a PC user's fallback argument. PCs are better because they're cheaper. Well, I could agree with both that statement's meaning. The unfortunate fact is that PCs are priced by the pre-built models from Dell and HP. These models, however, have the bare minimum of hardware. An okay processor with MAYBE 2GB of RAM and a reasonably sized hard drive, likely with only the onboard graphics chipset. This is not a good computer, but because Dell prices them around $500, that means that PCs are somehow inherently less expensive than Macs.

The truth of the matter is that the hardware that goes into a Mac or PC is virtually identical. With a Mac, you buy a pretty robust machine from the get-go, but a PC REQUIRES expansion for anyone doing anything more than email. Think of it this way, if there was a Mac that met the basic requirements of a typical Dell computer, how much more expensive would it be?

Oh wait, Mac has the Mac Minis! The basic model has 2.4 ghz duo core processor, 2gb of RAM, an Nvidia card, 320gb of harddrive space, and a dual-layer superdrive to boot. All for 700 bucks. Now, you can rightfully say, "That's more expensive than a Dell, HA!", but let's examine the reason. First off, the hardware is already superior to a typical 500 dollar Dell. Let's also consider the fact that a Mac Mini has been crafted with lasered-aluminum, and is about as big as a stack of CD cases. The casing itself would make up the difference in price, but the superdrive is also superior to the typical Dell optical drive. Does YOUR basic Dell burn DVD's? No? Oh, my tiny Mac Mini does.

Take my own Mac Pro and try to create an equivalent PC with the same specs. Oh wait, don't bother, cause I've already tried that. The price comes out to be the roughly the same. You have to buy a special server-sized case to hold the oversized motherboard so you can get the two processors in there, and after you try and get all the hardware the same, you still can't have as much RAM as this thing already has, and certainly not as much as it can support, and the case will be made out of tin and plastic instead of the sleek aluminum the mac pro is made of.

All that, and within a few minutes you'll likely contract a virus and have to reinstall your system, assuming the motherboard you ordered isn't defective, as happens quite often, unfortunately.

Expansion
PC users think that, because they can open their machines up and add more of something that that makes their computers superior. In many cases, they might have a point, most Macs aren't designed to be opened by people. An iMac is designed to be used as is, and not to be expanded on too much. However, this argument falls apart in several ways. First off, Macs that CAN be opened are opened quite easily.

My Mac Pro, for instance, has a lever that releases the side panel, letting me access all the stuff inside without having to find all the tiny screws on the back and sliding a razor-edged tin plate. Additionally, everything in my Mac is neatly tucked away in compartments without all the messy, tangled cabling found in PCs. Also, since this computer was specifically crafted for the hardware inside it, the temperature management is fine as is. I don't need to install some water-cooled contraption into my delicate, electronic computer to keep it cool, it maintains an ambient temperature of 21 C all by itself.

I have 4 PCI-E slots that are easily accessed, with back slots that don't require me to break metal, but slide out naturally, making it easy to remove and replace them. I have easily installed hard drive bays, and enough RAM slots to hold 8 RAM cards. How many RAM cards can your PC hold? I can answer that for you, because the brand-spanking new, bestest Windows operating system out there can only recognize 8GB of RAM. It literally will not work with more. Yet, my Mac, which you would call inferior, already has 14GB of RAM, and that's not even half of what the operating system can support. Just try and match my specs with a computer less expensive than this one.

I can tell you where to look for computers that can match and out-perform my computer. They're called Alienware computers, and they start around $6,000, which is twice what I paid for my computer. Oops, so much for that argument. And, ironically, Alienware computers are just as susceptible to viruses as a typical Dell, yet my computer is unaffected. Huh.

Summary
Ultimately, what computer one gets depends on the use. There isn't much use for a die-hard Call of Duty fan to buy a Mac. Though, to be fair, I can play Call of Duty games on my computer, too, since I can run both Mac and Windows. When it comes down to it, some people thrive on the endless stream of numbers and codes found when building their own computer, and don't mind the instability of custom-built machines and the operating system struggling to run them. Some don't mind having to deal with virus and malware attacks, and some people simply have enough luck not to have to worry about them.

There's a difference between a Ford Taurus and a Bugatti, and there's a difference between a PC and a Mac.

Demo Review: Dead Space 2

2011-01-04T13:31:00.000-08:00

I just finished the Xbox demo for Dead Space 2 and wanted to give my 2 cents. Let's begin!

Gameplay: As far as I can tell, pretty much unchanged from the original. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, though it means that your plasma cutter will once again pretty much be your best weapon, and it'll be the first thing they give you. Some of the other weapons will be fun to use, like the Javelin gun they let you play with during the demo, but for raw functionality, the plasma cutter will not only be the most efficient, but will likely have the most ammunition. This was the case in Dead Space 1, and I predict that it will be the same in this new installment.

The ONLY gameplay change I noticed was the zero-gravity segment. It was really short, but it let you navigate freely without having to jump from wall to wall getting motion sick from the camera changes. This is a pretty okay change, though I would like to see Isaac land on the ground without me having to press a button to tell him to.

Graphics: Hard to tell with a Demo, but it looks pretty much like the original. Possibly higher resolution textures in the final game, but there's only so much you can do with random metal bits sticking out of the protagonist's suit. Though, speaking of protagonists, Isaac has a face now, which....looks pretty much like every other protagonist out there. I think he kinda looks like the stock face for Commander Shepherd. (Sans buzz-cut, naturally)

Also, Isaac has a voice. I dunno if that's good or bad, he doesn't speak much in the demo. Personally, I'm an advocate for him being faceless and voiceless. Games like this are more enjoyable, I think, if the player can project themselves into the character.

Story: Obviously non existent for the demo, you'll have to buy it to find out. The only thing it gives us is that Isaac has been out cold for 3 years, but has woken up slightly more insane and, as I gather from the demo, hunted by some people. That's all the demo gives us.

Effectiveness: The demo didn't really sell me on the game either way. I think the biggest problem I was having was the "Survival Horror" tagline for the game. Ever since playing Amnesia, games like Dead Space don't qualify as Survival Horror to me. See, Amnesia got the Horror element down quite well, even if it subsided a bit near the end as I figured out how the game worked. It made the player so completely defenseless that some of the ambient sound effects would send me running for the nearest closet. That along with other gameplay choices made the process of moving from room to room frightening and stressful. Hiding or running from a monster because you have no other option, or hiding in a closet hoping the monster doesn't happen to look in there now strikes me as Horror. The epitome of nightmare is running down a scary hallway with SOMETHING chasing after you, but you can't look back and see what it is, you just feel like it's right behindyouohpleasedon'tgetmeasItrytoopenthisdoorquickshutit before the thing gets you.

Dead Space doesn't do that. It simply startles. There are plenty of instances even in the demo that made me jump, but all of them were because a monster came crashing out of some wall or glass tube right next to me with the soundtrack giving that horrible, high pitched violin spike. That or something would fall down from the ceiling right in front of me, with all the loud noises and camera effects to...well... surprise you! And it works, but I don't call it Horror. Something about using the very basic plasma cutter to shoot the arms off a monster, then walking over and stomping on it till it coughs up some more ammo doesn't strike me as horrific. That's why I classify this game as a Thriller, not Survival Horror.

Bottom Line: Some people have different (I would say lower :P ) standards for games, so they'll likely buy this game, play through it, then sell it without any regrets. I, personally, will rent it whenever Gamefly sends it to me.

Additional: Apparently this new Dead Space includes multiplayer. Ever since Assassin's Creed's multiplayer, I've been kinda wanting more original multiplayer components. Assassin's Creed was really new and innovative, even if it has already been taken over by the glitching and game-breaking crowd.

I predict Dead Space's multiplayer will be like Aliens vs Predator's multiplayer, i.e. humans vs aliens/monsters with grappling and dismembering features, etc etc. About as much fun with about as much longevity as AvP had.

Immigration

2010-12-08T16:22:00.000-08:00

Former resident of subjugated Aztec land protests America

Alright, I've got to get this one out of my system before I vomit. Illegal Immigration, Immigration, all things relating to immigration policy. I'll try to make this short....I'll probably fail, though.

First off, I'm finding it more and more effective to define the argument before speaking on it. There is nothing more unifying between diverse people than the ability to communicate effectively. However, politicians are MASTERS at NOT communicating, so the topic of immigration has become a non-discussion, as everyone is arguing different things.

People like the ones shown in the above image think that people who are against illegal immigration are racists who oppress Mexicans. This, I contend, is favorable to politicians (note that I leave party affiliation off). It's very easy for a politician to establish a situation where a minority can be convinced - preferably in a language most of the rest of the voter base doesn't speak - that they are oppressed and victims of racism.

This is not the debate, nor is it the argument being made by ANYONE but the revolutionary liberals and their political representatives. Here's a good rule of thumb you can all help me test. If an argument from either side of the political aisle consists, even in part, of accusations of racism or bigotry, then the point being made is not indicative of the true discussion, nor is it the real position of the opposing party. Try that out for me, and let me know how well it works.

So here's the REAL discussion. Nobody denies that our immigration system is in need of fixing. The real discussion is what KIND of fixing it needs. There's no racism involved in this debate. Mexicans, however, are targeted as the minority of the day, so that politicians can use them for political clout.

Secondly, I feel the need to qualify terms. Again, politicians are masters of non-communication, and if you can have people get into an argument over a misunderstanding of terms, then all the easier for them to gather power and control. Illegal Immigrants are people who enter the country without the knowledge or authorization of the country itself (also known as "illegal aliens"). We have gateways into the country so that we can make sure no contraband (IE, weapons, drugs, people) come into the country, but also so we can know WHO is coming into the country. This is essential for our ability to protect ourselves, our property, and our RIGHTS as citizens. Immigrants, on the other hand, are people who come here under the law and are considered citizens, who pay their taxes as everyone else does, who has a say in our political system, just like everyone else, and who are able to enjoy the freedoms we possess here, just like everyone else.

That is perhaps my first point. The debate FOR illegal immigration, or for amnesty measures, or whatnot, are all couched as "fairness" acts. Apparently, the fact that illegal aliens aren't eligible for all the benefits of citizenship is unfair.

No, actually, illegal immigration isn't fair at all, for ANYONE. I have to say that this post was caused by Pat Gray playing audio of a stupid college "dead in"....I'm going to put this next bit into its own separate box.

-------------------
Okay, College students are some of the most incredibly useful idiots to ever walk the planet. You put them in a dorm room on some campus boasting the word "university" or "college" on a sign out front, and just because they get drunk every other day and sleep with their "significant others" while existing on a campus means that they know how the world works. Again, a politician shows up and gives them a helpful pat on the back, encouraging them to be socially active, and they'll grab the nearest megaphone and start advocating something they know nothing about because they're "smart".

A college education doesn't make you smart. Being at a college doesn't make you smart. Having a degree doesn't make you smart. I don't know how many times I have to make this point, but each INDIVIDUAL decides their level of intelligence. College is a GREAT tool for gathering knowledge, but simply BEING at a university does not infuse you with some kind of increased wisdom your parents or your elders somehow don't possess. These kids, who seem to think that allowing ILLEGAL immigrants to attend OUR schools with preferential treatment is fair, are NOT smart. They haven't lived a real life, and likely never will, because their institution has convinced them that the only way to make people happy is coddle them, tear them apart with political activism, and widen the divide with insurmountable multiculturalism and indecipherable language blocks.

College students with placards = useful idiots 90% of the time. Just sayin.
-------------------

I reiterate that unity in language is unity in society. The accusation that wanting immigrants to learn english is hateful and racist is INSANITY. You'll never ever ever get beyond the local McDonalds or janitorial position if you DON'T know ENGLISH. Being bilingual is also a fantastic resume buffer. How is it hateful to encourage new citizens to acquire the skills and knowledge necessary to boost themselves UP in society? It is advantageous to know both languages, but it is essential to know english. The only demands we make of immigrants is that they learn the language and obey the laws. THAT'S IT. Everyone obeying the same laws regardless of nationality or race seems to be the fair thing to do. Not this preferential treatment based on "citizenship status".

Being able to communicate with each other means we can actually talk about the issues of the day. How can I discuss the implications of the Dream Act with someone waving a placard in my face, screaming in Spanish? I can't communicate with you! We can't fix society if your only interest is fighting a crusade that some politician recruited you to! You fled the drug cartels, now you want to give them full access to our borders?

I would also like to point out how unfair this illegal immigration discussion is to legal immigrants. Immigrants are awesome. They have so many different experiences, yes, DIFFERENT cultures, and skills to bring to our country. It IS the reason we're so exceptional. However, we're trying to say that the ends justify the means. You can come over ILLEGALLY and receive BETTER treatment than if you come here legally through the door. How is that at ALL fair to our legal immigrants?!

Lastly, my solution. It's simple. Close down the border, widen the door.

I've discussed the immigration process with those who's parents immigrated. I know the process is long, convoluted, and needlessly expensive. If we can STOP the cartels from smuggling people across the border (people they will later enslave for their own purposes) and make it easier for people to immigrate legally, then we have a lot of new citizens with new skills who are learning english and helping us perfect our political system. And they get to improve their situation in our (formerly) free society! Yeah, it means a wall, it means armed forces on the border, it means deportations, it means encouraging people to obey the law. Go back to your country and come in through the door. WE'VE MADE IT EASIER FOR YOU!

Net Neutrality

2010-12-03T16:11:00.000-08:00

So let's go over this controversial issue. Net Neutrality is an ambiguous conversation, as many people look at it from different angles. While some will oppose Net Neutrality when it comes to government regulations, other's think the internet providers are the enemy. Universally, I think, everyone wants the internet to be free and open. To be left as it IS, basically.

So that's my first point. We HAVE net neutrality NOW. I don't have to pay money to connect to YouTube or Facebook, and nobody is being charged extra because they're visiting sites.

Now, consider the argument that Comcast and other IPs will charge sites like YouTube or Facebook extra money for their sites to be sent to Comcast clients. While the stigma against corporations and capitalism in general has been systematically and carefully cultivated over decades, let me be INSANE, and argue the very obvious outcome.

Comcast charges YouTube extra to transmit the traffic. YouTube, the home of true anarchist groups, teenagers, losers, celebrities, and influential figures, where everyone says what they want without consequence, do you REALLY think that information won't get out? They land YouTube and Facebook with an extra expense, they will move to an IP that won't charge them, AND THEIR ENTIRE AUDIENCE WILL FOLLOW.

Facebook and YouTube users are RAVENOUS. The slightest offense is met with long, hate-filled comments, and the vast number of trolls that exist on both sites would never stand for their favorite haunting grounds to be gone. Comcast will go out of business in short order.

Now, consider the FCC, who apparently thinks it's their responsibility to TELL us what is neutral or not. Does anyone right now really think that, should they get the authority to determine what is neutral or not, they WON'T enforce something like the fairness doctrine? Fox News' website get's a large amount of traffic. It's not neutral for that site to get so much traffic, while the poor Huffington Post gets so little.

It might be tinfoil hat material, but I don't think I'm the only one who has exactly zero trust for anything government related right now. You want net neutrality? YOU, as a CONSUMER, need to keep your internet provider very aware that they will lose your business if they abandon Net Neutrality. It's that simple, and we are capable of doing it. Strange how freedom works, isn't it?

Thought Dump

2010-10-23T11:10:00.000-07:00

This week has been full of different ideas and rants. I tend to avoid making these posts, since they turn out extremely long and boring most of the time. So, this time I'll make my points as concisely as possible. Here we go.

Evolution vs. Intelligent Design
Evolutionists, as soon as you can demonstrate the following things, I'll accept your theory as fact:
1. Show how amino acids can possible be combined by natural events to create a single-celled organism
2. Show how evolution brings about the combining of multiple cells into one, more complex organism
3. Show how things like eyes, brains, and nervous systems can be created step by step
4. Explain how human beings managed to evolve well beyond all other organisms so fast
5. Explain the evolutionary process behind abstract and existential thought
6. Explain the evolutionary process of self-awareness

Intelligent Design advocates, you will have to somehow prove the following things to have your theory accepted as fact:
1. Provide physical evidence of said Intelligence
2. Show unnatural/intelligent tampering throughout history
3. Find the source of this intelligence
4. Explain its purpose or nature

Until either school of thought manages to do these things, we should get off our soap boxes, quit fighting about which is RIGHT, and begin teaching both on equal footing as THEORIES.

Abortion
I believe that abortion is wrong except in life-threatening situations. In those cases, the choice then falls to the parents. I've always been wishy-washy about cases of rape or incest, but I believe Pat Gray made such a good point that he's convinced me. Basically, a woman has the right to choose, so if she chooses to have sex, then she no longer has a choice about being pregnant. However, if she's been raped, she never had that choice, so she should be able to make a choice on the pregnancy. Very good point, Pat.

Homosexuality and Gender Reassignment
The idea of a gay trans-man poses very peculiar questions. Was he straight and really a woman, or gay and trapped in a woman's body? Is this a matter of his own perception of his sexuality and gender, or something that is medically beyond his control? Mind melting, it is.

Also, if gender identity is a disorder, then what is homosexuality? Shouldn't the two fall under the same category, one way or the other? Is society, which considers sex to literally be love, capable of even considering the question without launching some kind of pro- or anti-gay crusade?

Separation of Church and State
It doesn't exist anywhere in the Constitution. The federal government does not have the authority to mandate a national religion. That is all. Without religion in the state, there is no power greater than man, and man is easily corrupted by power. And don't give me that bull crap that evolution isn't a religion. You believe in something you cannot prove, just as any religious person cannot prove the existence of God.

'nuff said.

A Complicated -if sarcastic- Answer

2010-08-16T16:27:00.000-07:00

So I got a few "answers" to my simple question in my previous post. Here, at LONG last, is the answer sheet.

If you answered "A)", you are likely a normal person who has a level head when dealing with friends and other "relations." Goes to show how normal my family is :D.

If you answered "B)" you are apparently Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, who is currently planning on cheering America up by building a Mosque (or "community center") a couple of blocks away from Ground Zero, and who wants to improve the healing effect of this building by dedicating it on the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

(if you answered "C)", fooled ya!)

This is, of course, laying aside all supposed or actual connections or sympathies the man may have towards Hamas or terrorism in general. This fantastic man, whom the Cordoba Institute (Cordoba, to my knowledge, being an episode in which Muslims subjugated and oppressed christians) describes as someone who has fought to "empower women", and who is all about building bridges between Islam and the Western World.

If the contradiction escapes you, you might need to do a bit more research.

Also, the fact that he refuses to classify Hamas as a terrorist organization while donating money to a group that was the biggest donor to the "Peace Flotilla", a project meant to break Israel's blockade on a Hamas-controlled sector of the Gaza Strip (assuming my geography is good), and also placing blame on the Western world for terrorist attacks makes for a very suspicious character.

Naturally, any STUPID person who hasn't looked "extensively" into this matter would think that. All us SMRT people would know that what's going on here is sheer, unbridled bigotry.

Also, if the last reference escapes you, you need to do more research :P.

A Simple Question

2010-08-15T17:36:00.000-07:00

Suppose your friend has had a bad day. It's pretty obvious what's wrong, and you want to cheer them up a bit. So you come up with a plan to improve their day. Upon telling them of your intentions, much to your surprise, they get angry with you! What do you do next?

Do you:
A) Back off and apologize, because you sincerely didn't mean to offend.
or
B) Shove it down their throat, because you know better than they do.

Foundation of Stone

2010-08-06T18:29:00.000-07:00

*headdesk repeatedly* Okay, so this is a topic that I've run through many many times before. I had intended to NOT post anything about this, but now it's stuck and I have to get it OUT of my head or else I'll never sleep tonight :D.

So. The Constitution as a Living Document...

Now, in understanding of the one who caused this post (you know who you are!), many writings are open for interpretation, and are usually designed to be that way. The Constitution, on the other hand, is something completely different.

Consider this analogy: Would you rather have your house built on a concrete foundation, or a foundation made of water?

Since the question is obvious, let me answer it for you. You would rather have your house built on a foundation of STONE because water will not hold up the house, and it will fall apart and likely kill your family pet while you're away. Stone is preferable because it is strong and remains unchanging, allowing the structure on it to remain steady.

Why, then, would we want or even THINK that the foundation of our Union is made of water? The Constitution is set up very specifically to maintain the integrity of the Union by preventing Government from becoming oppressive, and to ensure equality for all of its citizens. This is why we have the articles that spell out the structure of national government and the checks and balances involved as well as a bill of rights that clearly state the liberties that CANNOT be changed or infringed upon by that government.

Let me just put this one thing out there. It is a self-evident fact that Government, as a natural force on earth, will inevitably increase its own size and power, and will continue to do so no matter what. Name, for me, a government that has lost a bit of its power, and has immediately begun to shrink until it was non-existent. On the other hand, name, for me, a government that has been given some power and begun to increase its size until it was oppressive and tyrannical.

This is a Fact of life. The economy will experience peaks and valleys, what goes up will come down, and Government will always increase in size.

And this is precisely why the Constitution cannot EVER be a living document. It was never intended to be a living document, and it should never been considered a living document.

Consider this scenario: A government in a fictional land has a constitution, in which the freedom of speech exists as long as the speech isn't hate-speech or fear-mongering or intimidating, etc. This may sound fine if you look at it objectively without any pretense at all, but one important question arises:

Who determines what is hate-speech?

Again, obvious question, so I'll answer it for you. Government does. More specifically, a committee created for the specific purpose of "investigating" hate-speech, all members being appointed by the Government that created it. So a new question should be asked:

Would Government ever define political dissidents as advocating "hate-speech"?

Do I really need to answer that question? If I remember right, we've already imprisoned many many political dissidents in this country. (Woodrow Wilson/FDR?) And considering that the most hated man in America is Glenn Beck specifically because he disagrees with Government policies, I don't think the question is at all hard to answer. YES.

Our Constitution, on the other hand, states the right clearly, without condition. We have Freedom of Speech and Religion. There's nothing to interpret. This is why the Fairness Doctrine is simultaneously dangerous to us and appealing to Congress. They don't have any way to interpret their enemies as hate-speakers, so they'll pass a law that gives them that power.

And yet we're supposed to consider our Constitution, the thing that ensures all those rights to EVERYONE, as a living document, open to interpretation. If Obama could interpret it as he wanted, he would bring about his dream of redistribution of wealth so he could bring about the collective salvation of everyone. Why else would he be upset that "generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. Says what the states can’t do to you. Says what the Federal government can’t do to you, but doesn’t say what the Federal government or State government must do on your behalf...". The Constitution is getting in his way, and he wants that to change.

May I also add that Collective Salvation is EVIL?

If the Constitution is a LIVING document, then it is open for interpretation. Who will interpret it? Why, not us unwashed masses. We've already seen what disregard the "authorities" have for us. We're too stupid to figure it out, so the Government will make the interpretations. Again, do I HAVE to spell out how that's bad?

Finally, before I keep going on an endless tangent, let me ask one more thing:

What is it about the Constitution that needs to be changed? What part of the constitution is out-dated or in need of reform?

People never change. That's also a Fact of life. The human condition never changes, and people never change. In 5,000 years, we're still fighting over the same things, thinking the same things, and wanting the same things. The environment may have changed, and the technology sure has, but it's all the same crap that was going on in 2010 BC. The ONLY way to have a better country, a better future, and a better LIFE, is to have something that never changes.

"What about the Amendments, BEN? HUH?!"

I've got two points to make on that. First, the Amendments we have largely spell things out more clearly to US. Take, for example, civil rights and women's suffrage. There's nothing in the Constitution that says women and blacks can't vote. The Amendment abolishing Slavery is one example to this rule, I suppose, even though the Constitution also didn't make any qualifications about rights for slaves.

Secondly, the Constitution, which I just said need to remain the same, contains WITHIN it, the process by which amendments are made. My statement stands.

Why do you think Religion relies on the Fact that God is perfect? It's because without that Fact, there's really NOTHING to believe in. And if we're going to start thinking that the Government is the source of our rights and NOT our Creator, then we're condemning ourselves to the whims of human beings who only crave more power and more control. Yeah, they wrap it up in Utopian ideals, but think of Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany, China, Venezuela, Cuba, ANY country in Africa, and I think you'll see how those Utopias turn out.

You Don't Need a Weatherman (Part 1)

2010-07-24T13:51:00.000-07:00

Weatherman Underground Logo

So Glenn Beck claims that this article is the playbook for all the things he warns about on his radio and TV show. He spoke about it for a little bit on his radio show, but I thought I'd try and take a look at it myself.

I'm hardly any kind of scholar or highly educated professor on world history. Still, what I have to say may be of interest.

Let's begin.

You Don't Need a Weatherman to Know Which Way the Wind Blows
Download the PDF

"The contradiction between the revolutionary peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America and the imperialists headed by the United States is the principal contradiction in the contemporary world. The development of this contradiction is promoting the struggle of the people of the whole world against US imperialism and its lackeys."

I'm one paragraph in, and I feel I should point a couple of things out. First off, this article is dated as June 18, 1969. The other is this definition:

Imperialism: The policy of extending the rule or authority of an empire ornation over foreign countries, or of acquiring and holding colonies and dependencies.

I'm not entirely sure what they mean by "Revolutionary Peoples". I assume they're talking about the revolutions that have happened previously in those areas, but I'm not sure if there was any actual revolutions occurring at that time. American Imperialism, however, is likely referring to our Military actions in places like Vietnam and Korea, among other places, I'm sure. America doesn't actually HAVE colonies, but it likely doesn't make a difference, since we do have military bases around the world. This is likely considered pretty much the same thing.

Also, even though this is only the first paragraph, I'm confused about what they mean by the "principal contradiction". I believe they're using it in a different way than I would. By "contradiction", they mean "conflict", as they would look upon these "Imperialists" as oppressing the revolutionary peoples. Thus, the development of this contradiction promotes a world-wide revolution in favor of the people against the US Imperialism.

"...the main struggle going on in the world today is between US Imperialism and the national liberation struggles against it. This is essential in defining political matters in the whole world: because it is by far the most powerful, every other empire and petty dictator is in the long run dependent on US Imperialism, which has unified, allied with, and defended all of the reactionary forces of the whole world. Thus, in considering every other force or phenomenon, from Soviet Imperialism or Isreali Imperialism to "workers struggle" in France or Czechoslovakia, we determine who are our friends and who are our enemies according to whether they help US Imperialism or fight against it."

One word in this paragraph is very telling. Referring to those forces that US Imperialism has defended as "Reactionary" immediately labels this group as Marxist/Fascist/Socialist. This isn't necessarily surprising, since they are in favor of the revolutionaries in other countries, who are also likely to use this word:

Reactionary: of, pertaining to, marked by, or favoring reaction, esp. extreme conservatism or rightism in politics; opposing political or social change.

Any movement relating to Marxism is radical and revolutionary, and will inevitably bring about political or social change. Progressives are pretty much the same way, though less obvious. They call movements like the Tea Party as "anti-government", and Obama has claimed, on multiple occasions, that he will do away with the "politics of the past". Those opposed to such movements are considered "Reactionary".

To me, it's a rather underhanded way of getting a point across. Not many people would really know what they mean by the term, but the term itself makes people dislike whoever is labeled by it. Reacting is bad, but being proactive is good, right? Also, Marxists are always fighting for a "Democracy". Another word used to entice people to join a revolution, because Democracy is good, right? Unfortunately, not only is Democracy NOT good, but that's not what any Marxist revolution gets. They always end up with tyrannical dictators and mass genocide or political murder.

"So the very first question people in this country must ask in considering the question of revolution is where they stand in relation to the United States as an oppressor nation, and where they stand in relation to the masses of people throughout the world whom US imperialism is oppressing."

This goes along with the last paragraph. They say that their "friends" are determined by their opinion of the United States. If you consider the US an "oppressor nation" and you fight against it, then you are their allies. If you support the US in any way, you are their enemies. Very black and white. In fact, it's probably ALL about Black and White. After all, who is it that is oppressed by the US?

"The primary task of revolutionary struggle is to solve this principal contradiction on the side of the people of the world. It is the oppressed peoples of the world who have created the wealth of this empire and it is to them that it belongs; the goal of the revolutionary struggle must be the control and use of this wealth in the interests of the oppressed peoples of the world."

I'm having a hard time remembering a quote, but it went along the lines that we don't begrudge someone their wealth and success if that wealth is used for the good of the community. (If you know what quote I'm talking about, let me know :D)

So not only is redistribution of wealth the primary task of revolutionary struggle, but that redistribution has to come about through some organization. The wealth will be taken from the oppressor and, not given to, but USED in the interest of, the oppressed peoples of the world. So we've got a New World Order and Redistribution of Wealth. Obama has stated not only that it's possible to have TOO much money, but also that we have a debt to repay. Van Jones, the former Green Jobs Czar, went into a very passionate rant about giving wealth to the American Indians through green energy. Black Liberation Theology teaches of a collective salvation that can only be brought about if the Whites (seriously, whites in particular) give up their wealth and power to the minorities. Obama believes that his personal salvation does not come about without a collective salvation for the country.

And I'm pretty sure Obama has described us all as "Citizens of the World", too.

"It is in this context that we must examine the revolutionary struggles in the United States. We are within the heartland of a worldwide monster, a country so rich from its worldwide plunder that even the crumbs doled out to the enslaved masses within its borders provide for material existence very much above the conditions of the masses of people of the world. The US empire, as a worldwide system, channels wealth, based upon the labor and resources of the rest of the world, into the United States. The relative affluence existing in the United States is directly dependent upon the labor and natural resources of the Vietnamese, the Angolans, the Bolivians and the rest of the peoples of the Third World. All of the United Airlines Astrojets, all of the Holiday Inns, all of the Hertz's automobiles, your television set, car and wardrobe already belong, to a large degree to the people of the rest of the world."

I'm reminded of all the apologetic speeches made by Obama and Hillary Clinton. According to this, we oppress other nations and remove their wealth and resources and funnel it all into the US.

I'd also like to point out the very first impressions of what I think will be my biggest problem with this article. I can sort of see where some of these comments come from, but it makes no sense that we in the US are hurting other countries by importing their goods. And it makes no sense that we are hurting other countries by outsourcing jobs to them. I thought jobs was what it was all about?

Also, what were we getting from the Vietnamese, Angolans, and Bolivians?

Given the restrictions on business in our country today, and most likely also back in the 60's, I find it hard to fault companies for taking their work to other countries. Said restrictions are always brought about by Marxist/Progressive policies in Washington DC, so I think there's either a split on that side of the political spectrum, or there is a massive dose of hypocrisy going on here. We raise the minimum wage here in America "for the good of the workers", but doing so encourages companies to take those jobs overseas where they can get a better price for the labor.

And yet, I again find it hard to understand how providing a steady job for a worker in a third world country is bad. Certainly, it reduces the number of jobs in America, but doesn't it help the third world country?

And more than that, isn't the existence of the United States the reason third world countries have even a single car? Or electricity? Or any kind of medical supplies? Already, the United States has improved the quality of living for the entire world, and the reason those other countries remain so terribly impoverished is because they have ALREADY had this magnificent revolution the Weatherman Underground espouses, and it has left them with dictators and cartels. Massive violence and an utter lack of prosperity.

I recall some audio Glenn has played several times of a Federal Agent who had infiltrated this group. At a group meeting he asked what they intended to do after the revolution had taken place. What kind of governance would exist? How would you care for the people? He said they had no answer. Maybe the country would be broken into pieces and seized by other countries, but they had no other plans.

So, not only do they espouse a false Democracy, but their ideals are very much Anarchist. They want to throw the world into a full-blown revolution, trusting that the end result would inevitably be better than the current system, since they obviously had to ideas on what a better system would be.

That, my friends, is the first page of this article. I'm thinking I might continue reading it and making posts like this, so let me know if you're interested in me doing that. Also, let me know what your thoughts are!

Well, yeah, SURE

2010-07-20T15:53:00.000-07:00

SURE socialism is a system that robs human beings of their natural free-will, turns them into mindless state robots, and sure, Nationalist/Socialist Germany attempted to exterminate the Jews, and succeeded in killing 6 million of them while launching random missile attacks at Britain and invading France, who, of course, now has plenty of unproductive workers in their magnificent socialist system sitting in rooms and being paid to do so, and sure, socialism breeds radical jingoism, pitting one group of people against another...

and SURE, Communism is just as Marxist as socialism and is responsible for the mass-starvation of millions of people in the Ukraine and China, and yeah, okay, Stalin was a communist dictator with a god complex who let uncounted numbers of his political enemies rot in the gulag, and yeah, he ran a country that was incapable, despite being 3 or 4 times the size of America, to out-produce them during the Cold War, and yeah, the awesome message of equality and unity espoused by Communists resulted in a broken system in which the most wealthy of society were the least productive, and the economy was incapable of designing a half-decent car, said car only being available to those with party connections, and okay, lots of their citizens tried to emigrate, but that's entirely why they had to put up the iron curtain, though, granted, that was because the people weren't given extra reward for their extra effort, and any attempt at intellectual learning was met with book burnings and trips to the gulag....

and OKAY, the wonderful dictatorships in southern America have resulted in the mass kidnappings and beheadings perpetrated by the drug cartels, holding down the ability of their people to progress, and instigating violence all over the continent, and, fine, the brilliant dictators in the middle east have been the cause of a couple thousand years of warfare between two religions and the random bombing of innocent children, not to mention the indoctrination that drives said children to carry AK-47s and call for the mass slaughter of infidel...

and FINE, capitalism has achieved in 200 years what the rest of these obviously superior systems were incapable of doing over nearly 5,000 years, and literally improved the quality of life throughout the entire world, and yeah, that same system has provided former luxuries to even the most impoverished citizens, and yeah, the vast majority of all technological breakthroughs have come directly from this system and sold around the world, and yeah, that same country donates more money than pretty much every other country combined and is the most charitable county and people throughout the course of human history, responding faster to disasters in other countries faster than any other...

and WHATEVER, so the last century's worth of progressive and marxist-leaning congressmen and presidents has steadily repressed that capitalist system, instituting tax upon tax and breaking the American people into classes with their progressive tax policy, pitting them against one another, and sure, they have rewritten text books and revised learning programs all over the country to teach an alternative perspective on economics and religion in America, and yeah, their socialist tendencies has resulted in a massive 50 trillion+ dollar debt with China, who, okay, is now one of the biggest economic powers in the word due to their use of the capitalist system, and okay, everything the current administration along with the past administrations way on back to Wilson is doing leads us to emulate the socialist and communist systems of Europe, setting up for, if not directly causing, the Great Depression and our current recession, and yeah, it's causing our society to fall apart right into their hands and our country to lose our standing in the world.

Sure, all of THAT'S true, but Capitalism doesn't work. Aren't you glad we're all socialist now?

The Analogy!

2010-07-13T22:10:00.000-07:00

Here it is! Well, I only posted a teaser about it a few minutes ago, so who cares?

This popped into my head today as being rather appropriate. I consider this scene to be a pretty good analogy for what we today call The Game of Politics in America.

Said scene is straight out of a movie I rather like, the 3 Musketeers. And no, not the Disney remake, though it's been a while since I've seen that one, so I might like it, too. Hmm.. Anywho

I figure I'll let you judge how good the analogy really is without me gabbing on about it.

If you need a hint: Think of the Musketeers as our politicians, both democrat/leftist and republican/right-winger.

A potentially uncomfortable post

2010-06-30T21:43:00.000-07:00

You've been fairly warned!

Okay, so I might end up regretting this particular post, but I think I have to cover it for the sake of getting to sleep on time tonight.

I frequent a few of the video series over at The Escapist, one in particular being a movie review series done by a guy called Movie Bob (or something like that). His videos are very similar to another series on that site called Zero Punctuation (which is hilarious), and they both sometimes strike one of my many nerd nerves. However, Movie Bob tends to annoy me a heck of a lot more than Yahtzee does, mostly because he sometimes goes on tangents completely unrelated to the movies that voice some opinion of his that I take offense to.

Yeah, and it's okay to be offended, people. Relax, no need to start spamming The Escapist with hate mail on my behalf, I'm coping just fine. In fact, this response to his latest review is a good coping mechanism.

Okay, so he reviewed the latest Twilight movie. (Yeah, I wish I could take a day off to see a movie *shake fist*, though not that one) His review was mostly what I would have expected, filled with white hot hate. I can't say I disagree with what he said about the actual MOVIE, (seriously, poorly animated werewolves taking on a bunch of hoodie-clad teenagers? There's something completely wrong about that) but he started on a tangent that has left me feeling kinda depressed.

Anyone who doesn't know that Stephanie Myers graduated from BYU (Brigham Young University) and is likely (though I don't know for a fact) Mormon has successfully avoided the Twilight craze and should be applauded. Naturally, this being HER series, some of her personal beliefs filter through, like marrying young and maintaining a code of abstinence all the way to the wedding.

Now, here's where I and Movie Bob part ways. I wonder, why is this belief so bad? Movie Bob is quite irate that such a thing is being implied to all the teenage girls who read the books. It's the typical complaint about indoctrination through movies and books that is never brought up on any issues other than morality.

Of course, this is the guy who absolutely HATED Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland because it wasn't a second Edward Scissorhands, so take what he says for what it's worth.

When it comes to abstinence, I see it as a very smart and safe rule to follow. Knowing how guys think, I would advise any and every single girl to date a guy for an extended period of time before even CONSIDERING sleeping with them. If you make a guy date you for a few months or more, or if you refuse them sex until you get married, you have successfully eliminated every single misogynistic dirt bag out there. The reason is simple: If you don't give them what they want quickly, they will leave.

This obviously isn't completely fool-proof, but just consider how much of an improvement this kind of policy would make on the single-mother households, the abandoned children, the orphanage population, the abortion rate, the abuse rate. If people didn't sleep together almost immediately, get pregnant unexpectedly before they even really KNOW each other, the world would be a much better place! How many STDs would disappear if you actually had to, you know, GET TO KNOW someone, then commit to MARRYING them BEFORE sleeping together?

In short, the destruction of the family unit is one of the biggest causes of pretty much every ill you find in our society. Crime rates, unemployment rates, welfare rates, suicide rates, etc etc. That and progressivism, but I'm not talking politics right now.

So, I find Movie Bob's quick jump to hating on morality very disturbing. I understand we're a society that's built on immediate gratification and lack of consequences, but some things are a bit more important than that.

Oh, and his assumption that traditional marriage is all about the woman being submissive to an "emotionally dominating man" is....oddly feminist. Yeah, Movie Bob's a guy, but he's talking like a feminist. Not sure where he gets that idea, but I think it might have to do with some deep-seated bitterness about his own failed attempts at a relationship. (yeah, I'm probably just making that up)

Other than that though, I'm with Movie Bob on hating the Twilight Series. I haven't quite decided yet if it's plain Emo, Goth, or a mixture of both? It does have some problems with necrophilia and beastiality, too. Not sure THOSE are good messages to send....

Relativism

2010-06-24T21:42:00.001-07:00

This is a concept I've been trying to wrap my head around for some time. It was the central characteristic of a fairly minor character in Atlas Shrugged, and it's been popping into my head periodically the past few weeks. So, while I'm still trying to figure it out, here's what I have so far.
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Relativism....more freakin wordplay
Wordplay is perhaps the most infuriating thing about trying to sort through all the political ideologies out there. More than half the time, I find myself defining words before any discussion can take place, and even when the discussion has already begun, the issue of the word's definition continually comes into question. Relativism is no different. Obviously, it refers to the idea that things are relative. This is true in many cases, I'm sure. Some thing may feel soft to one person, but rough to another, for instance.

But the Relativism I'm referring to is more philosophical....or religious, I suppose, in a way. I've run into that, too, that religion is relative. What is true for one person may be false for another. I counter that argument easily by saying that two different interpretations of one Truth (capital "t") are not BOTH right, necessarily. Relativism is used in this sense to justify not only one system of belief, but ALL systems of belief. It disregards all possibility that a universal, eternal truth exists, and instead proposes that anyone's belief in anything is acceptable.

Relativism in that regard may be irritating, but it's usually not a big deal. I'm hardly pursuing my understanding of God for anyone else's benefit, and I mostly don't care what other people want to believe as long as they don't hurt anybody in the process.

But the Relativism I'm zeroing in on is more... well, political, really. However, some make it a core part of their religious beliefs, too. Or lack thereof.

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Marxism, the root of all evil

Okay, maybe not ALL evil, but it seems like every horrible idea out there is somehow related to, or rooted in, Marxism. I didn't realize before a month or so ago that Socialism (specifically Hitler's Germany) Communism, and Fascism are all political ideals whose core beliefs are found in Marxism. I don't think they take their ideas specifically from the Communist Manifesto, but from all the writings of Marx. Class warfare, the new world order, the ideal man (called the Aryan Race by Hitler) all come from this one guy.

Relativism, as far as Marx was concerned, manifests itself more as a call to abolish all Bourgeois Morality. Religion, family values, even education. Everything that currently exists is Bourgeois to Marx, and it must be abolished, and replaced with a new ideal (which he tactfully neglects to outline, if I remember right). Apparently, everything we know about God and right from wrong is a fictional construct designed by the ruling class to oppress the workers.

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The deconstruction of God

I can already tell that I'm meandering around my initial topic, but it's all so intertwined, I feel like I have to hit on a few different ideas.

So...Fascism. Basically the Father of our American Progressivism. Everything Mussolini did in his Fascist Italy is what Progressives believe should be done here. Progressives base their beliefs on a Godless foundation. I don't see any other way to explain it. Woodrow Wilson (I'm with Glenn, I HATE that guy!) believed that man becomes clay in the hands of the consummate leader. The leader was the one who forged the way into the future. Not only was that the best way to create the perfect world, it was, in fact, the ONLY way.

Even though the random name-calling in politics is annoying, I'm finding that calling Politicians "Elitists" is far more apt that I thought. Progressives see Intellectuals as the salvation of mankind. A bunch of Intellectuals, who likely have no personal experience in anything other than academic endeavors, but who are SMARTER than everybody else can, according to Progressives, create a perfect system that will literally force human nature to change and match their ideals. The evil, greedy citizen of the day will become the altruistic servant of the people tomorrow, all because the Intellectual Elite are at the reigns.

This is precisely why our politicians don't listen to their constituents. It's why Obamacare was passed, even though the majority of the people wanted, at the very LEAST, for the congress to READ and REWRITE the law before they passed. And we STILL got Pelosi and her giant gavel. (I can't get over it, really. A giant gavel? Through the protesters, when you have all kinds of underground tunnels to travel through? Why would you taunt us like that?) It's because these politicians went to Harvard and Yale. They're SMARTER than you. They know better.

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Relativism....finally
One might ask, as I do now, "How can they justify taking over people's lives like that?"

The answer is Relativism, with a bit of Darwinism sprinkled in.....Okay, I take that back. With ALL of Darwinism sprinkled in.

Progressives, as I stated above, are Godless. While they may posture as faithful believers in God, and use religion to legitimize their agendas, what they fight for is ultimately Darwinistic. Take social justice, of instance. An idea that, if you listen to Glenn's shows at all, is something he's gotten a heck of a lot of flak for fighting against. Social Justice is, the progressives claim, the ultimate implementation of Christ's teachings. Taking care of the sick and the poor, mourn with those that mourn, etc etc.

Sounds pretty good, eh?
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John, Chapter 21, verse 17:

He saith unto him the third time, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me? Peter was grieved because he said unto him the third time, Lovest thou me? And he said unto him, Lord, thou knowest all things; thou knowest that I love thee. Jesus saith unto him, lobby the Pharisees to bring about social reform, so that the government will feed my sheep.
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....Uh, that WAS how it went, right?

Despite the religious clothing, this progressive wolf doesn't believe in any eternal or divine morality. The morality that directs them is Relativism.

Finally, to my point. Relativism to Progressives is Morality dictated by Popular Opinion. That is pretty much the whole of it. And since morality is dictated by popular opinion, anyone who controls popular opinion, controls morality itself.

Enter in our so HIGHLY esteemed media.

I've heard several times that the Nazis learned their propaganda techniques from us. Not surprising, since Woodrow Wilson apparently rewrote the entire history of the United States so that Blacks would be completely omitted from the ranks of heroes that brought about freedom for the first time on Earth. Did anyone else know that Paul Revere wasn't the only person riding that night, warning that the British were coming? And did ANYONE know that the second rider was BLACK, and, if memory serves, a great scholar?!

I mean, seriously, it's pathetic that the only way I get such valuable insight like that is through Glenn Beck. Come on.

Let me pose a different question. Does anyone know what the Tea Party Movement stands for? Or do you all think that they're just a bunch of rich white racists fighting to bring about Anarchy to America? That's what the media would have you believe, anyway, but I happen to know otherwise. Most of the Tea Party goers are middle class, of various racial backgrounds, and no violence has ever been incited or engaged in at any Tea Party event to my knowledge.

Rather than try and "convert" you to a movement I'm not even a part of, I want to demonstrate to you Relativism in action. If you listen to Glenn Beck for a week, maybe two, and actually try and get to know the guy, you'd likely figure out that he's really not that crazy, not that radical, and doesn't engage in Fear Mongering. If you were to listen only to the media, you would think just the opposite. Despite all the extraordinary accusations he's made to his audience (third largest on radio, second largest on TV, hardly something to dismiss) the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, with all it's resources, has failed to prove him wrong. They just propagandize against him to turn the popular opinion to their advantage.

By the way, Glenn is saying that the oil moratorium will greatly benefit an oil company in Brazil in which George Soros is a major shareholder. Additionally, he also mentions that Obama just recently sent 2 billion dollars to that same company. What Obama is doing will make Soros very very wealthy.

A) Anyone know if that's true?
B) Why isn't anyone else in the media talking about this?
C) Wouldn't that be something Obama or Soros could easily disprove if Glenn was wrong? And wouldn't they WANT to prove him wrong?

Relativism in action. What the popular opinion dictates will be right. Anyone who listens to Glenn Beck is an indoctrinated idiot who can't even think for themselves, and is likely racist and uneducated. I know that from experience. No discussion, no intelligent reasoning or consideration, just straight to the name calling and character assassination.

Why?
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Darwinism is a topic that would be best saved for a different post entirely (I may have already done one). Progessives, though, believe firmly in Darwinist philosophy in relation to Relativism. We disregard the Constitution because it's old. It was pretty good for THAT time period, but we've Evolved beyond that. And, again, we're not to actually READ the Constitution, because popular opinion dictates that it's a "deeply flawed document" and only crazy militia members who listen to Glenn Beck read it.

Jeez, if I keep up this vehement defense of Glenn, I'll start bawling and yelling "LEAVE GLENN ALONE!!"

Gun Control

2010-05-31T22:44:00.000-07:00

I'd like to start by saying that this is a REALLY bad idea on my part. Usually when I get some argument in my head that I want to blog about, I let it sit and cook for a day or so, hopefully giving me something cohesive to write. However, at times like this, the issues get me so riled up that I can't function well enough until I get it out. Right now, I can't sleep until I make the post, so keep that in mind. If this seems specifically directed at anyone, you're right, it is. I'll try not to be too offensive, I'm more passionate than angry or vindictive.

So, gun control. I know what some of you are thinking: "Gah, this old worn out argument again?! Haven't we had enough headache over this stupid topic?"

To which I would say "absolutely." This is one of those debates that make me want to smash my head into a concrete wall until either one breaks, and I honestly wouldn't care which. It's so riddled with bleeding hearts, logical fallacies, inaccurate premises, and fear. Yes, FEAR. You know, the thing we Americans refuse to live under? (Yay, recent political reference. And you wonder why I can't sleep)

For this post, I thought I'd try something a little different. Bold lines are the arguments I'm responding to. The rest is my biased rhetoric. Shall we begin? I'll start with the easiest:

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Guns kill people!

No, people kill people.....

What, not enough? Oh, fine...

This is an argument that tries to lay all the blame of violent crimes, accidents, or incidents on inanimate objects. Honestly, if someone was going to murder someone, they might shoot them. If they don't have a gun, they'd stab them. Failing a knife, they might go for a bludgeoning tool. Nothing heavy enough around? Straight on into the strangling. So, following the logic of the above argument, I say we outlaw all necks.

A gun is a tool. It is morally ambiguous, it has no inherent good or evil. How it is used determines its morality, and even that is a direct effect of the user's intent. If someone had the intent, you could kill someone with a toothbrush, but I don't hear anyone calling for bad dental hygiene to save lives.

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Guns are handed out willy-nilly

A quick search gives me a little information on the laws in Colorado. All firearms, including rifles and shotguns, are to be sold ONLY after a background check is completed, and all information about the customer is recorded. This includes Name, address, job, age, as well as the firearm's make, model, serial number, caliber, etc. This information is kept by the firearm Dealer, and is always open for inspection by all law enforcement agencies. That's some of the requirements of just BUYING a gun. Carrying it is another story.

Carrying the gun while concealed requires a permit. Carrying it exposed is legal as long as the place you're in allows it. Many public locations do not. A permit to carry a concealed weapon requires the wearer to be a legal citizen of colorado, be over 21, prove they are a competent firearm user, and has not been convicted of any crime. They must also prove they are not addicted to any illegal substance or habitually abuse alcohol. Suitably enough, they also cannot have any restraining orders in effect at the time of application. All these requirements must be met and only the Sheriff may give out permits. These, obviously, are also kept on record.

In short, guns are hard to get. In some places, basically impossible.

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You own a gun to protect yourself, but from other people with guns!

As I stated above, a gun is a tool used for one's purpose, and if your purpose is crime, a gun is bad. If your purpose is to save or protect yourself or someone else, then a gun is good. But let me go a slightly different direction on this one. This seems like a logical argument at first. You have to protect yourself, and you're protecting yourself from people with guns. Therefore, if you remove the guns, you won't have to own one to protect yourself.

While this seems alright, it's actually entirely false. I would LOVE to live in a world where criminals were so STUPID as to use a gun they lawfully bought and registered to commit a crime of any kind. I placed my previous segment strategically for this bit of the argument. Everything you do to get a gun is recorded and stored, by either the dealer or the police. If you own a gun, there are records of who you are, where you are, and what you do. You cannot carry a gun over state lines without first registering it with the state you're entering. You cannot carry a concealed firearm legally without the sheriff knowing about it. If you so much as fire a shot with your gun, they can find out what caliber it is, what gun it came from, and quickly get a record of all the owners of such guns in the area. It will be EASY to find you.

So what do criminals do? They steal a gun from someone else? A responsible person (or just a person with a healthy self-interest) would report a stolen or lost firearm immediately, which means the police are on the lookout, and already on your scent, likely long before you even commit a crime. Criminals might also buy a gun off the black market, which operates autonomously from our government and firearms dealers. That means that even if you outlaw all firearms at all times, there will still be a way for criminals to get their hands on weapons. Black market is supplied by....you guessed it! Smugglers, crime lords, and other criminals/thugs that from across the borders (note that I made it plural).

It is far more helpful for a criminal to think they might just be gunned down by a citizen carrying a lawfully concealed weapon than it is to take those guns away from the law-abiding citizen who hold them.

People living in Chicago can't even own handguns, and another quick internet search shows the results. Denver, in 2003, had around 1,400 robberies. These likely involved the use of firearms. Chicago, on the other hand, had about 17,300.

Now, before you protest, I realize the error here. Chicago has a much larger population. With a little mathematical workings (averaging robberies by person) I can find a more comparable number. I find that for every 168 people in Chicago, one was robbed. In Denver, one person was robbed out of every 398. Fat lot of good harsher laws in Chicago are doing.

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Failing any good ideas for other arguments to respond to, let me make some other comments myself.

This argument against guns is largely based out of fear. Some people have a strong bias towards guns, and so issues like this become muddled. It's the same stumbling block I see when trying to make any argument in favor of capitalism or against free health care. People's emotions drive their heads, and they become blind to reality.

So let me point out one of life's Truths. Yes, this is a Truth, meaning that it applies to me, you, and everyone else in the world. There are and always will be BAD people in the world. There will always be people who oppress, control, hurt, or torture their fellow man. There will always be people who rob, rape, steal, murder, hurt, and scare others. You cannot, I repeat, CANNOT LEGISLATE MORALITY. Legislation can only hurt the good citizens of your country. Criminals don't give a flying crap about laws, they don't care about other people, they don't care about your pompous authoritative control you try to pass as moral legislation. If they cared about what laws you pass, why would they break them?

I don't want my ability to live my life the way I want to be impeded or infringed upon by anybody. If that means I have to go through the process of obtaining a handgun so I can protect myself against criminals, so be it. As I heard someone put it, when seconds count, the police are just minutes away.

Right now, I'm more worried about the weasels trying to tell me I can't "cling to my guns and my God". If they want to reduce crime in America, they need to stop the flow of illegal weapons, which means stopping the flow of illegal people, substances, and cargo into the country, and then maybe get the heck out of our hair so we can take care of ourselves and our communities.

Watch your phraseology!

2010-05-20T18:16:00.000-07:00

I have a few thoughts I've been wanting to address, but haven't been able to decide which one to tackle. (Writing a novel can take just as long as reading one, after all :P) The more I think about it, though, the more I realize that they are all connected in a way. I'll apologize ahead of time if I end up making next to no sense as I skip around a little, but I'll do my best to be organized. Here goes!

I'm coming to the conclusion more and more that people's perspectives have become skewed. I'm honestly not the kind of person who demands that everyone conform with my view of the world, or that everyone MUST share my thoughts, opinions, or beliefs. However, whenever a person's perspective flies in the face of reality (yes, there is such a thing as a reality that applies to everyone), I feel I have to protest. This relates greatly with one of my previous posts about Education. You don't gain an education simply by entering a classroom. Education has ceased to be something that is facilitated by schools and classrooms and has become something that is obtained in schools and classrooms. As I said to a friend of mine on facebook, Education is a personal desire. You can attend all the big-name colleges and have the best professors in the world, and you will not gain an education if you do not have a personal desire to have one. Conversely, if you have no access to a college, professor, or university, but you have a great desire to learn, you can be one of the most educated people in the world. Schools and professors don't CREATE educations, but they CAN (but may not) encourage and improve one's education.

Also, having an education without any practical experience or application for your education makes it rather useless. You can be the most intelligent person in the world, but also the most foolish.

This is also the same kind of skew that incites the greatest amount of contention in politics. I believe that the people control the government, and the government doesn't control the people. This is not only the system designed by the founders, but also the best and most effective. That and a lot of other things, but you get the point. Others believe that the best solution is for the the government and sub-organizations to control, regulate, and legislate the people into line. The perspectives are polar opposites, and that makes it very hard to communicate with people.

Speaking of such people, I've experienced a reaction on my part that I've had a hard time deconstructing. Whenever the word "society" pops up in a debate or discussion, I feel a twinge of annoyance in the back of my skull, as if I was being impressed to protest somehow to what was being said. For the longest time, I couldn't understand why I seemed to hate that word more and more, but I may have a good idea now.

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Society

To put it as simply as I can, "Society" is a false term. It does, in part, refer to a collection of people, but it more often is used as a generalization and a justification for our biases towards people. We seem to think that individuals are driven by this "society" and that society isn't driven by individuals. I had always thought that roast beef was good by itself, not that it was only good when used on a sandwich, if you know what I mean.

This difference of perspective tends to become the underlying bone of contention within the political sector. While one group may believe in the individual, and want to focus on how best to accommodate them, the other group wants to perfect the world by increasing the influence of "society", if you will.

But may I just drift a little off my topic for a second and make the claim that, contrary to the popular theory of evolution, society actually DEGRADES over time. Society breeds problems, especially when it is completely disconnected from the individuals that make it up. We start out with a nice idea about something, but society steps in and breaks it down. We used to have a favorable opinion of churches starting out. We believed in the freedom of religion, of always being a moral people. Then we just start going about our lives, not paying church as much attention. Then we try and separate it from our public lives. Then we remove all evidence of it from public areas. Now church is just a place for stupid people to go so they can cling to their gods (and their guns....Obama). Church ceases to be a place where people learn to live decent lives and be decent people and Society claims that it only brainwashes you.

We used to applaud those who were inventive. We used to praise entrepreneurs and congratulate those who made it out of poverty and into success through hard work and perseverance. Then we started looking down on businesses, made them out to be slave drivers. Then we started seeing corruption in the leadership of the businesses, then we started expecting corruption. Now we assume it. All the while, Society wants us to believe that ceos are greedy and evil. That working hard doesn't get you anywhere because the man is keeping you down. Society wants us to believe that the rich should be taxed at a higher rate, given harsher restrictions, and commonly perceived as wasteful scrooges living in their ivory towers, sneering down at us from on high.

And the question arises; what is society? What creates society? Do our actions direct society, or are we slaves to the ethereal concept that is Society? And who is it that sits and interprets Society so that the rest of us can know how we're supposed to act? Intellectuals? Scholars? "Experts"?

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Dehumanizing People

I had an ironic thought. The more I try and focus on the nitty gritty of politics and "the world", the more it seems to me that the real solution is a narrowing of our view. If I only had to worry about myself, my friends and family, my loved ones, and my neighbors, everything would be so much better. I can walk down the street, if I so choose, and meet the people there. I can know their names, their stories, their issues. I can know THEM. Bring your view out a bit, and suddenly those people are just part of a small side street that resides in Littleton, and that city is just a suburb of Denver. Already, the people I knew intimately hardly even register in our view. I wouldn't be able to pick them out of a crowd from here, and I certainly don't know what's going on in their lives.

Pull out even more, and now we can't even see them. We see the whole of the united states, and all of it's problems. The larger gears can be much easier seen from here, but the people? The individuals that make up the country are so small, they seem almost irrelevant.

Politicians deal in Society and categories. What do they mean by "Real Americans"? What do they mean by "hard-working Americans"? Why do they need to send the census workers to our houses to determine our race and political bent? Why do they need to have big oversight committees dedicated to trends and generalities. The people, the individuals their laws influence, even just in small ways, are just numbers at that point. How can you intimately know the people you "serve" when you don't even meet them? When all they are a list of statistics, races, creeds, and classes? We're broken down into "conservatives" and "liberals", "White" and "African-American". Political correctness boils us down even more, making us unisex and unirace. We are no longer people, just random, meaningless words spoken by rulers whose perspective is set so high, so zoomed out, that you don't even register to them.

And yet, these same politicians are the ones making tear-jerking speeches about poor Sally Muckenfutch (perhaps the best fictional name ever) who can't walk because some evil doctor cut her feet off because she has diabetes (also Obama). They use a single anecdotal example to justify lumping everyone into a single category, regardless of an individual's needs and desires. They want to make things BIGGER and more inhuman, while all the while trying to pass themselves off as altruistic saints wanting to help each and every little footless Sally Muckenfutch. Is it just me, or is that a contradiction?

What if we were able to govern ourselves? What if the only politics you had to worry about were the politics happening 15 minutes away in the Town Hall? Instead of beating my head against a metaphorical brick wall, I might be able to attend one of those meetings and speak my mind. Maybe, just maybe, the governor would be someone who was truly connected with his constituents. Someone who really knew the people in his town and had their best interests at heart. How can Obama, Pelosi, Reid, or any other congressman or politician in washington have any amount of empathy for the census statistics? They don't bother to write any bills, let alone read the ones presented to them, and then call people like me the heartless racists who don't care about the poor and needy. These people are RICH, and I give more to charity than they do. That's just wrong.

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Final Thoughts on Wordplay

More and more words mean nothing. Glenn Beck has been attacked recently for saying bad things about Social Justice, and everyone seems to be arguing apples and oranges, if you know what I mean. What does Society mean? What IS it? I don't know anymore, and it means different things at different times, and it's always vague and unquantifiable. What is Social Justice? Who knows? I could ask three people and get three answers, but it's become such a bone of contention, and I get the unsettling feeling that some people in the argument know the game they're playing. Just learning the little I have about what Fascism and Progressivism really are indicates to me that those who truly understand and believe that ideology understand how much of their agenda involves smoke and mirrors, but have deluded themselves into believing it's in the best interest of "the people". Another vague word that means nothing.

Utopia

2010-05-10T22:07:00.001-07:00

A true Utopia needs no government. It needs no authority, and it needs no regulation.

So why is it, then, that all the political ideologies that claim to be able to provide Utopia demand that ultimate power be given to a small group of people?

Utopians would have to be perfect! Unfortunately, people aren't perfect. So we must therefore continue to be vigilant, and watch out for the vices of mankind. And what worse vice is there than the love of power over one's fellow man? Anyone who claims to be able to make the world better by seizing control over any part of anyone's life is advocating a lie. You cannot, and will not, have a Utopian society, or even an improved society, by allowing someone to dictate your life via legislation. You can only even come close to Utopia if you yourself are capable of being a Utopian.

Be a strong human being. Be the kind of person that doesn't need regulating, that doesn't need policing. Be the person that doesn't run to the government to make all your hardships better. That weakens you, personally, and all mankind, collectively.

Public Education and "Propaganda"

2010-04-25T21:27:00.000-07:00

Alright, so this is another response to a facebook post. Instead of spamming some poor bugger's status with a comment the length of a small brochure (as I tend to make) I thought to post it here and simply include a helpful link.

So this time around I'm checking out this link: Glenn Beck Hates Education?

This biggest issue I run into with this is that I tend to have my opinion shoot off on it's own and I fail to mention all the things being said on the linked video. That and being a little bit too passionate about things, which makes it hard for me to make a good argument. Still, here's my best attempt

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Education in general

I don't think there's a soul alive that thinks an education is BAD. Least of all Glenn, who on many many many occasions will urge his listeners to read as much as they can. Read history, read fiction, whatever, he encourages people to get an education. Being educated, at the very least, is not the issue at hand, and I point out that the pseudo-news anchor on the linked video takes the position that Glenn Beck hates education. That's absolutely false.

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Public Education

The real issue at hand is the method by which people get their educations. Glenn advocates public schooling, and I can agree with him to an extent. On this particular point, I find there is a distinct difference in people's basic pretenses. Some honestly feel that the only good education is a secular education or at least an education from professionals IE people with degrees in their subjects, and not the common parent who may or may not have years of experience in what they're teaching.

The opposing view, one that I tend to hold, is that education is the responsibility of the parents. This is true in pretty much all cases. If the parents aren't involved in their children's education, the child will not get an education. I can attest that the only real reason I am as bright as I am is because my parents were there, encouraging me to do better and also teaching me a lot outside of school. Other kids without that kind of parental input become useful idiots. I'll address useful idiots in my next segment.

Public education and teachers are not inherently sacred. I've found that the general understanding of most people is that you can only ever get an education through public schools or universities. For one, I spent 90% of my public schooling experience being bored out of my mind, since public schools cater to the lowest denomination. The No Child Left Behind act is a big cause of this problem, but it was a problem before that, too. When previously a "C" in a class would be considered average, "A"s are now the norm. A "B" is below average, and it's pretty darn hard to do your best on a test and come out with anything less than a "C". Public schools encourage mediocrity, both through this grading system (which is within their control) and the public school environment (which is less within their control). Being a smart bookworm will get you nothing but ridicule up until about your senior year in high school, and even then nobody is going to be inviting you to any parties.

As for universities, I can't really say my experience with them is all that positive. Yes, going to college will help you learn things. No, you're not incapable of gaining the same knowledge on your own. Again, the idea that education can only come through university becomes a barrier on a topic like this. I have an english professor who ostensibly has a master's in English, but doesn't know the difference between "theme" and "genre" when it comes to literature. Having the piece of paper does not mean that you actually know what you're talking about, it just means you forked out the dough to attend college for 4 years. My mom is a circuit board engineer without having that slip of paper saying she went to college. Practical education is just as good (and in many cases better) than a formal education. I, for instance, far outshine my classmates in Advanced 3D, not because I'm some sort of prodigy, but because I had played with 3D modeling for a couple of years on my own before going to college.

The public schooling system is broken. I learned more about English by reading books than I ever did in english class, and I learned more about History by talking to my parents and playing Call of Duty than I did by going to History class. All that being said, there's nothing necessarily wrong with going to public school or university as long as you are the one in control of your own education, as I was.

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I'm coming to my little segment on the actual video, so please bear with me.
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Useful Idiots

This is a term reserved for people like the pseudo news-anchor on the linked video. These are people who get it in their heads that they are so much smarted and better than other people for simple, superficial reasons, such as having a formal education. I would say that far too many kids coming out of our public schooling system are useful idiots. I had countless experiences in my public schooling experience where the teacher would begin a tirade about some subject (usually political) and no one in the class would ask questions or voice opposing opinions. They would just brainlessly take down notes on all the specific information he gave and soak it all in like a sponge. This helps illustrate my point that teachers are not saints. I would, in many of these instances, attempt to raise my hand and voice the opposing position, and I would generally be shut down or ignored. My opinions weren't welcome in the classes I attend. I took to ignoring the teacher entirely and reading a book because what they were saying was so obviously biased.

The best kind of teachers are those who present both sides of an argument and encourage their students to discuss and evaluate each side. In my 12 years in public school and the addition of my 2.5 years in university, I can attest that teachers like these are in short supply. Not that any of the students cared, because all they wanted to do was take down the notes they would need to score an "A" on the next test. Education itself didn't matter, the only thing that matters in public schools now is knowing which day some dead guy did something we don't care about.

And this mentality, this mindless note taking without any thought at all, is precisely the reason home schooling might be a better option. While a teacher may only care about getting their pension, a parent is far more interested in giving their kids a proper education. Will that education differ in morals, values, and principles? Why yes, yes it will. Will those morals be BAD? I highly doubt it. For those parents out there, you know that you just want your kids to be good people, right?

Useful idiots, on the other hand, is what public schools are good at. Go to class, take your notes, ace the next test, just like everybody else. But more importantly, who are you taking to homecoming? People like these, who can't think for themselves and can't think through a subject critically and logically, are the people who are standing in line hoping to get a slice of Obama's stash. These are the people who continue to play party politics and vote only for the guy with the best smile or the best slogan, with no consideration for policy, history, or the candidates past. Politicians LOVE this kind of person. They are easily manipulated. Oh, and if you hadn't guessed, Politicians aren't saints either.

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The Actual Video

So I like Glenn Beck. I think he's a pretty okay guy. I also understand a bit better where he's coming from, and I'm not so quick to jump on the bandwagons about him. This pseudo-news anchor complains about conservative propaganda, but fails to realize that he himself is engaging in the very same practice. He has an extraordinarily arrogant attitude, claiming to be oh so much smarter than Glenn, but failing to recognize the irony of his positions, or to take into account the very past events he's using as ammunition.

So let's start with the first thing they jump on Glenn for: that washington and jefferson were homeschooled. The pseudo-news anchor complains that public education didn't actually exist at the time, and claims that this fact blows Glenn's point out of the water.

So wait, let me get this straight, there was no public schools.....so where did Jefferson get his education? At home? Really? So Glenn's point is true. Washington and Jefferson were homeschooled and the fact that there were no public schools is completely moot. Jefferson advocated public education, but not only would I venture to say he didn't advocate it at a federal level, I also would venture that he would be appalled by the state of our public education today. Regardless of that, the FACT (things that people like this pseudo-news anchor are only interested in when it suits them) that Jefferson was extraordinarily intelligent and educated WITHOUT public education should tell you something. Unfortunately, people like this pseudo-news anchor don't think through things far enough to realize this.

He again goes on to rip into Glenn, complaining that parents aren't able to teach, because they both have to work. I believe he had cotton in his ears, because Glenn SAID that if you are ABLE to homeschool, you should. Now, you might just be as stupid as Glenn, but having to work to support your family makes you UNABLE to homeschool, so there's no problem, right?

Additionally, this pseudo-news anchor (man, I'm tired of typing that) continues by whining about republican and conservative propaganda, missing a few things entirely. That "conservative" is not a party and that Glenn is NOT republican nor does he support them.

Jumping to conclusions is a very big part of this video. "Teachers are bad". Uh, did Glenn say that? I don't think he did. I know he doesn't like Unions, but then again, neither do I. I don't believe that all teachers are bad, but I DO think that there are a lot of bad teachers. And these same teachers are part of a Union, which makes it nearly impossible to get rid of them. They have seniority, they can do what they want. They can TEACH whatever they want. This pseudo-news anchor (and many people like him) need to grow brains and stop assuming that having a problem with a group of people like teachers means that you assume that all of them are bad or nasty or horrible. Instead of spending 2 to 3 minutes saying that Glenn is stupid, maybe you should start thinking critically about his point, and maybe acknowledge that you don't entirely understand his point.

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Part of Glenn's Point

One of Glenn's points which is tactfully ignored by this pseudo-news anchor is his reference to the progressive movement. Typing everything I know about this movement would require an entire post of it's own, and I don't know all that much. But knowing a little bit about it will help you understand Glenn's position on public education.

Progressivism is America's version of Fascism. That's putting it bluntly, without accounting for the interpretations of individuals. It is a movement that echoes many many ideologies, but Fascism is a big one. Fascism is the religion of the state, relying heavily on federal legislation to control, correct, and perfect human nature. It does away with the idea of right and wrong that something like religion instills in people and instead believes that if something is the will of the general people, then it is right. With that being understood, it's logical to say that if someone can control the will of the people, they control ultimate power. They can decide what is right and wrong. So, what is the best way to control the general will? Propaganda, mostly. The use of media outlets to influence the opinions of the people so that the general will falls in line with your agenda.

As a current example, the Health Care act. As I likely mentioned in a previous post, the health care act was opposed by around 70% of the population (according to a CNN poll). At the very least, this majority of the population wanted Congress to wait and write a better bill. What did congress do? They just passed it anyway, ignoring not only polls like this but the protesters outside capital hill on the day the bill was passed. Many of these congressmen are progressives, believing that the law they passed is in the best interests of the people.

So why is this bad, you might ask? It again largely depends on your pretense. If you think laws can be passed to perfect human nature, then you likely have no problem with it. But you must understand the other pretense. That human nature cannot be controlled through compulsion, and that nothing the government tries to force on you will work out. I ask again of everybody who reads this post. What has the government done RIGHT? What have they excelled at that any private individual couldn't have done better?

So back to the point. Progressives believe they can pass laws to make us better. To justify their laws, they need the public's support, because otherwise they lose their jobs and their powers. To make sure they have the people's support, they engage in propaganda, but adults are resilient to propaganda's effects. What is the next best thing?

The children. Children are young, moldable, impressionable. If they can instill progressive ideas into the kids, then they have invested in future public support. And where can they have this influence? Why, in the public schooling system. Hence my many public school encounters with posters proclaiming "It takes a village" (A progressive/socialist mantra) and Che Guevera T-shirts and tactful omission of Soviet atrocities, Cuban dictatorships and Italian Fascism . Hence the progressive, socialist grading system and a focus on national reliance rather than local pride. Hence the severe degradation of the quality of curriculum and the increased focus on sports rather than books. Hence the one-sided subject matter and the completely secular environment. You can't pray in school, nor can you say the pledge of allegiance, because you must rely more on the bureaucracy of government than on religion.

When you begin looking at the world with an understanding of what progressivism and Fascism really is, these things seem less and less radical. Glenn goes on to say that we have to stop thinking that we can't do it. Instead of helping the poor around us, government would pass a law to force people out of poverty. Instead of finding out how someone made their multi-billion dollar fortune, Government would have us hate those richer than us. Instead of believing in the goodness of people, Government would pass laws to force good behavior. And public schools do not encourage us to think for ourselves. We must absorb, store, and regurgitate what the teacher says to us so that we can get an A on our tests and get that stupid piece of paper that says "good for you, you graduated" and be recognized by snotty people like this pseudo-news anchor. Practical, self-taught education is frowned on. You can't do that yourself, you have to go to college to do that. You can't teach yourself, you have to have a "professional" do it.

Do you understand a bit better where Glenn is coming from? Parents have to be involved with their kid's education. Going to public school is fine, but not if the parents aren't involved. Homeschooling is even better because the parent has the control. I don't know for certain but I would bet money that Jefferson would have preferred that public education be a local organization, run by the parents, who control the curriculum and monitor the content of lessons in their local schools. He would have had it be a state organization at MOST. Instead, we have a system in which a history teacher can tell ME what MY religion teaches me, and grade me on it in a test.

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See? A little passionate, hopefully I still made sense. Please comment here or on my facebook page with your ideas.

The Constitution of the United States of America

2010-04-14T13:18:00.000-07:00

Alright, I'm opening a big can of worms on this one. Wish me luck!

So, I'm sure many of you have heard the following quote from Barack Obama on the constitution:

"But I think it is an imperfect document, and I think it is a document that reflects some deep flaws in American culture"

SOURCE! (I got this from an article printed at this site: NewsMax. I'll be referring to some of the other things Obama is quoted as saying in this article, so you might like to read it.)

Okay, so since I'm such a scatterbrain on something like this, I think I'll try and break up my points as much as possible. I'll even add this little helpful graphic to show that I'm starting my first point. (Oh, and this will likely be extraordinarily long...so you might have something more important to spend time on :D )

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Difference in Premise
So I find out that the first hurtle to get over is whether or not the Founding Fathers were Divinely Inspired to write the constitution. This represents a very annoying contradiction that applies to most other topics in our lives. The Founding Fathers weren't inspired, they were just smart people who, as Obama describes it "had a blind spot" while writing the constitution. To Obama, the blind spot is described as relating to Slavery. He figures that the Founding Fathers didn't see Slavery as a moral issue but as a "nagging problem" that they didn't want to deal with at that time, which was a blind spot that Obama claims "continues to this day". Keep those quotes in mind. I have a section coming up that deals with that more directly.

Right now, I'm talking about the contradiction this poses. The founding fathers were smart, but human. Humans are flawed so the Constitution is therefore flawed itself. Now, far be it from me to claim that human beings can ever be perfect, or that the constitution is or was absolutely perfect (as my friend put very well "if it's perfect, why do we need amendments?", also part of another section). I might point out, however, that if human beings are flawed, then what makes Obama or anyone else capable of fixing it? If it's a living document (not an Obama quote, mind) that must be fixed because it's old and out of date, then who is going to make something better? Are we to suppose that the people in washington are capable of doing what those Founding Fathers (who I thought were pretty darn smart at the very least) couldn't, when their very lives were being put on the line? Reeeeeally?

To expand a bit on that particular point, I focus on Obama. The man who proudly claims he associated with all the radical marxist professors and students in school (his own autobiography, I believe) and who attended at LEAST one radical church in which the pastor railed against government because it kept blacks down. The man who wants to make all of SEIU's agendas realities and who came to power in one of the more corrupt cities in the country. All things that one might be able to prove don't affect their opinions or agenda, and yet in the article cited, Obama says he's upset that the civil rights movement failed to bring about redistribution of wealth in America. And must I really point out that his Obamacare, which would fix everything for everyone eventually (except those dirty rich people, of course) had to be passed with Nancy Pelosi and a group of congressman marching boldly through their constituents (who had gathered to protest the bill's passing) complete with Pelosi's Giant Gavel?

That's just coming from my own knowledge of the man. So... can we really accept his criticism of the document that founded the first free nation in the world (at least to the best of MY knowledge) as being entirely objective and unbiased? This is a nation of free thought, but he's in a position of power, capable, apparently, of overturning the actions of Congress with an executive order. And he thinks the constitution has a very deep flaw. Might I ask what this deep flaw is, if not Slavery? If not racism, what is Obama's problem with our founding document?
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Amendments
Which leads me to my next point. The question I ask and discuss is: What is this deep flaw I'm supposed to believe exists in the Constitution?

So, slavery. This may not be the supposed flaw Obama is referring to, but he did use it as an example. Slavery, at the time the constitution was framed, was a definite source of contention in the colonies. Anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of American History remembers that the Civil War was fought when the southern states seceded from the union, mainly BECAUSE of the issue Slavery was becoming. If after the revolutionary war and the time since the issue STILL resulted in a very bloody civil war, I propose that had the Founding Fathers taken on the issue directly within the constitution, the colonies would have been divided during the Revolutionary war, and America would never have come to be in the first place. The Founding Fathers, being the smart men they were, not only chose to let that issue alone for the time being, but also avoided putting property as one of the unalienable rights they described in the Declaration of Independence (hey, I know which document that quote comes from! I'm smarter than 80% of our congressman!). Having "Property" as an unalienable right would have given the South a very important piece of ammunition, since slaves were considered property.

In short, the topic could NOT have been addressed at the time of the document's framing. Luckily, that problem was remedied with several amendments. The 13th, 14th, and 15th. That particular "Deep Flaw" has been taken care of.

Now, could the deep flaw in the constitution be sexism? I hadn't realized it before, but some believe that the constitution implies that women do not have the same rights as men. I've tried to explain it a million times: "Men" used to have a different meaning in "the olden days". Much like in the bible, "Men" is a word that can, yes, refer to a group of adult males, but is just as often used to refer to MANKIND. I'm sorry, should i call it "Personkind" or something? What's the politically correct way to use that word? In short, the word is used the same way in the Declaration of Independence. All MEN are created equal. All MANKIND are created equal. Or all personkind if you prefer. Now, I might not know that much, but is there an amendment that specifically states that women are also eligible for public office? It might have been included in the 19th amendment. Let me check something here....Okay, I just went over the article that establishes the Presidency. It refers to the president as "He", which some might say implies that it is only available to a male candidate. While I suppose the Founding Fathers could have spent the time saying "He/She", "it", or "This person", I would like to make a couple of additional points:

-The Founding Fathers were not mindless drones enslaved to our unwritten political correctness laws
-The Section stating what requirements a President must fulfill addresses age and citizenship, but takes no stance on the gender of a candidate
-One of the biggest problems with our legal system is the constant microanalysis of comma placement and simple word choice such as this, don't be stupid enough to perpetuate the problem

All that being said, the 19th amendment makes sure that there can be no misunderstanding about Women's place in our governmental system. That potential "Deep Flaw" has also been addressed.

So I might ask, what IS this deep flaw? Obama was vague aside from slavery in the article I cited, but he maintains that the constitution is imperfect, flawed. It shows a blind spot that persists to this day, yet I don't know what flaw he's talking about. Can anyone help me? And if I'm to believe that a deep flaw IS present in the document, why should I trust Obama or anyone else in congress to make an amendment fixing it when people like them passed prohibition and removed congress's salary cap? They kinda can't do anything right most of the time....

Anyone have an example where they did something right?

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The Fruits of their Labors
So there's this idea that floats around the bible. It's the idea that you may know them by the fruits of their labors. In other words, if someone does something that causes a horrible catastrophe, you can say that that person either made a horrible mistake, or was actually out to cause trouble. Hitler, without even reading Mein Kampf, can be considered evil because he started the Holocaust. Stalin with the mass-starvation of the Ukraine, etc etc. While we could also use this method to say that Marxism is a load of baloney, since both Hitler and Stalin believed in his philosophy, most people would call that fear mongering, cause Communism/Socialism/Marxism is cool for school. *shudder*

But let's use this same idea with the Founding Fathers and the country they helped found. With a quick google search, I find that recorded history spans about 5000 years. America has existed for less than 300 of those years. Math now: that means America has existed for 6% of the entire recorded history of man (oops, I mean person...kind) thus far. Mankind, from the first recorded history to the framing of America, progressed technologically and geographically as far as wooden boats with sails and horse-drawn carriages. You can also say that the printing press was invented and, unless my history is wrong, the cotton gin. That's after 4,700 years of human existence. From inventing the wheel to putting them on a box and strapping a few animals to it.

America is founded, and 300 years later, we have mass-produced cars where carriages were often only available to rich, planes that can be used by almost anyone. Electricity, refrigeration, space travel, computers, the internet, much larger, more effective printing presses, and huge combines that can harvest entire fields of cotton without the need for slaves or the cotton gin. That's just to name a few. I might also point out the extraordinary advancement in our understanding of the human body along with the rest of medical science, most of which originated in America but was made available to virtually everyone in the world. I'm just barely above the bracket for the middle class, and I can afford a car of my own, and I can take that car and drive it across the country in a few days when in the past it used to take nearly a year, with many people dying along the way. I can send an email to the other side of the world and it will arrive in a matter of seconds. I can access all this information at will on the internet.

In short, in a few short centuries MANKIND has progressed many times farther than we did in the 4,700 years preceding the founding of our Nation. The fruits, so to speak, of the Founding Father's work is quite good, to put it lightly.
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So tell me which is less likely. The idea that there was some kind of divine inspiration that helped these Founding Fathers frame a document that created a country unlike any other in history, or that a bunch of sweaty (but smart) colonists with powdered wigs on their heads got together and wrote a "remarkable" document that just happened to be kinda effective.

Also, "remarkable" is an extraordinarily cold adjective to use. After all, the Communist Manifesto and Mein Kampf were pretty darn "remarkable" too.

Healthcares kills us all

2010-03-22T16:41:00.001-07:00

I just read an article that informed me that Congress passed the Healthcare reform bill, and it will be signed into law this Tuesday (Tomorrow).

We've handed a playground bully a baseball bat and promised him we'll turn a blind eye to all his previous run-ins with the kids smaller than him. A repeatedly proven failure of an organization is being given yet another trillion dollars to run a huge part of our economy. These are, again, the same people who are incapable of obeying their own laws and can't even run their own catering service.

Would we give the keys to our cars to someone who couldn't tie their own shoes? We're freaking giving our health care system to people who can't even feed themselves! What is wrong with these people?! Medicare and Medicaid is broken and constantly over budget, and your solution to the "problem" is to make it BIGGER?!

I'm not sure I can cope with this. The world is upside down and inside out already, and I've got plenty of crap in my own personal life I'm not sure I know how to go about dealing with. And now this.

Anyone have words of comfort to give? All we responsible, hard-working Americans (who are going to suffer the most because of this bill) could use some right now.

The Fatal Flaw

2010-02-08T20:21:00.000-08:00

I've been reading Liberal Fascism recently. I read a passage in it that got me back on this particular tangent I had a while back. I thought at the time it was a bit TOO much related to video games and game design theory, but this book has put it into context for me.

"The conservative or classical liberal vision understands that life is unfair, that man is flawed, and that the only perfect society, the only real utopia, waits for us in the next life."

Socialism and Communism are always touted as "progressive" or "humane", whenever you can find someone who is shameless enough to say so. And if you remove absolutely every form of humanity and spirituality in me and place these two political ideologies before me, so that I can review them with a completely objective viewpoint, I would probably agree. Communism is all about throwing off oppression, uniting as one, and working together to a better tomorrow, right?

But you know what the fatal flaw in Communism, Socialism, Modern Liberalism, Progressivism, and anything related to them such as universal healthcare is?

People.

It reminds me of a video game I used to play with a friend that demonstrates this problem perfectly. In this particular game, players are divided into two teams. Each player has a commander and a number of officers. The commander is elected by the team, and the officers are appointed by the commander after the elections. The rest of the games become squad members of one of the officers. The purpose of this hierarchy is to create order and teamwork during the match.

The commander takes the role of the omnipotent general. He views the battlefield from above, placing buildings and issuing orders to the officers, who, with their troops, fight on the ground. When everyone sticks together, and the officers listen to the commander and relay the orders to their troops, a team can be a serious force to be reckoned with. It's very gratifying to watch your team work efficiently together, pushing across the map and defeating the enemy with their superior teamwork.

But of the dozens of matches I played, I only encountered a team that could do this maybe once. More often, everyone would grab whatever character they wanted, spawned on the map as soon as they could, and run for the hills. The commander is left to impotently issue orders that are ignored, construct buildings that have no protection, and, in short, sit on their butt and watch their team get slaughtered. There isn't anything wrong with the game design, the interface, or the command structure. The only mistake the game makes is relying on the goodness of the players to make a great gaming experience.

This is the case in pretty much every game you can play online. You play Halo, everyone jumps like idiots. You play Call of Duty, everyone is a sniper. You play Battlefield, and some jerk jumps in a fighter plane just so he can parachute out of it and single handedly get himself shot by the opposing team, wasting a perfectly good plane and injuring his team's ability to compete. In Left 4 Dead, you're more likely to die at the hands of your teammates, who apparently think the point is getting the most kills, than having your brains eaten by the zombies.

When it comes to political ideology, if someone is advocating a plan that relies on the inherent goodness of human beings, you can rest assured that that idea will fail, and will fail quickly. Universal Healthcare might seem human on the outside, but it relies on the goodness of the very people we demonize. The enemy is the greedy fat-cat CEO, right? The richest 1% of the country are the big enemies of our times, and to solve our healthcare problem we will increase the taxes of ONLY the richest 1%.

But....if the rich are greedy and horrible, what insanity in your head makes you think they will allow increased taxing on their precious wealth? Penny grubbing Scrooges are supposed to sit back and passively let us pilfer their coffers? What is so wrong with your reasoning that you can't see they will take their wealth overseas? They will leave the country and take their money with them. And when the richest 1% are gone? Who will be the rich then? Who will pay for healthcare after that?

Communism and Socialism fails because you place a very small group of people in complete power and expect them to only have the people's interest at heart.

Capitalism and our Democratic Republic has succeeded (so far) because we don't expect people to be inherently good. If you own a business and you start gouging prices, people will shop elsewhere. If you rob a bank, those whose money you sold will persecute you in court. If you work in government, you should (in theory, but not practice at the moment) reap what you sow. And not that many of these examples require a law be passed in congress, it's just how things work.

And that is why Capitalism is always going to be better than Communism. It doesn't have The Fatal Flaw. Though, now that I think of it, our current nation actually does have the Fatal Flaw. It's in Washington.

Daybreakers: World Commentary

2010-01-16T21:34:00.000-08:00

Well, I was told that The Soapbox was being boring, so I thought I'd make a post on a tangent I just got off on with a friend of mine. I hope you all find it rather entertaining. Have a jolly good larf! :P

So, continuing the movie rants, Daybreakers! I haven't seen this movie, and what I've heard of it has mostly been good, but I have a couple of bones to pick with it.

The first is the quickest: why can't anyone get vampires right? Seriously, either they sparkle and refrain from drinking blood, or they're civilized, but turn into bat monsters when they don't get enough blood. Okay, no on both accounts, and no, they do NOT burn up when they are in the sunlight! THEY CAN FREAKIN GO OUT DURING THE DAYTIME!

Okay, back to the actual premise of the movie. Apparently the vast majority of the human race are vampires, which I think in this movie is the result of some kind of virus and isn't a supernatural condition. Way to go guys, breaking everything down into science and ruining one of the things that make vampires so creepy. But it fits in perfectly with the rest of the very poorly concealed dogma that just oozes out of the movie.

So, most of the humans have become vampires, and the rest have been captured and are being used to feed the vampires ala The Matrix. The blood supply is controlled by a company who sells it to the rest of the population, thus keeping everyone fed and prevents them from becoming the aforementioned bat monsters. But, of course, the important plot-point here is that the blood is running out. Enter the resistance group who wants to either cure the others of their vampirism, or provide another, scientifically produces supply of blood that doesn't require the farming of humans. One or the other, I'm not entirely sure. Course, this doesn't sit well with the vampires who control the blood, they'd rather just sell it. Begin action-packed extravaganza.

So, let me put it into simpler terms:

The oil supply is running out and the "resisting humans" in this example are fighting heroically against the evil corporate vampires who just want to make a buck on a dwindling energy source and trying to crush anyone who would suggest an alternative, sustainable energy solution.

I know people who would dismiss all of my political opinions out of hand because the Fox News propaganda machine has brainwashed me into believing that the alternative energy movement has been hijacked by corrupt public authorities and is being used to tighten the financial noose around our necks... and yet would probably go see this movie and enjoy it, not realizing just how much propaganda exists in its story.

And for crying out loud, could we please have a vampire who isn't scientifically explained and can go out in the sunlight without burning up?

Avatar - Hypocrisy in action

2009-12-26T12:17:00.000-08:00

Let's get the obvious out of the way first. I loved this movie. It was fun and action-packed, made me care about the protagonists, and was a technical masterpiece, in my humble opinion. The entire thing got me interested in the story and feeling rather inadequate as an artist. Most of the things they did were flawless and the imagination that went into the universe was more than a little evident. I got to see it on an IMax screen with 3D glasses, and if you want to see this movie, that's the best possible way to.

Well, with all that said, I have one thing I'd like to point out about his movie. It's freakin Dances with Wolves in space and has the same environmentalist agenda that Dances with Wolves has. In several scenes, the natives literally have tears streaking down their faces as the evil industrialists bulldoze their way through the forest. A few different things occur to me about the complicated hypocrisy present in the movie.

First off, if human beings have cryo-stasis technology and can digitally transport a person's consciousness to an alien avatar, then I think they could most likely harvest the ore they're after without major destruction to the planet or the natives. Our technology of today is such that we can harvest our "earth-killing" oil with very little impact on the surrounding environment. A reservoir of oil that lies under several dozen square miles of land can be harvested by a rig that takes up maybe a couple thousand square feet. Considering that this movie takes place hundreds if not thousands of years in the future, wouldn't you say that we'd gotten even better at stuff like that?

No, says James Cameron, these are evil corporate types who only care about making a profit, and we all know how much cheaper it is to get hundreds of mercenaries to wage full-scale war on the natives while another few hundred workers carve a rough path through the forest.

Secondly, I know just a little bit about what it takes to do 3D modeling. So, let me explain how this movie shoots its own message in the foot. 3D modeling takes place almost entirely on the computer. The characters are built, and set up for animation on the computer, the computers are used when capturing the movements of the actors, computers are used for setting up the scenes, editing the footage, and rendering the whole thing out. Assuming that the 3D is present throughout the movie (which it pretty much is) and the footage runs at 30 frames a second, then we're talking about 288,000 frames for the entire movie. Taking into account all the special effects, particles, and the sheer number of 3D assets on screen at any one time, coupled with the lighting effects, textures, and MASSIVE polygon count, rendering a single frame would no doubt take days for even a high end computer.

Naturally, a big production like this wouldn't skimp on the hardware. They probably had massive servers of computers working round the clock rendering everything out. If it didn't take the better part of two years to render, it certainly took many months. And that's not even taking into account the amount of time spent to put everything together. Also, what about all the real sets that had to be built? Most of the foliage is no doubt stock footage or composited on a set, so plenty of sets had to be built, which would require trucks, rigs, and whatever machinery they would need to get that to happen.

And don't forget the actors! They had to be housed, fed, transported probably across the country if not the world. Everyone had to have a place to sleep, plenty of food to sustain them, warmth, etc etc.

So you might ask, "Ben, what are you getting at?". Well, where the heck does all that power come from? The electricity for the computers, the gas for the trucks and planes and cars? What about the gas for warming all the workers? How about all the power needed to make all the phone calls they no doubt had to make? Paperwork?

James Cameron has us in awe of the 3D visuals on screen, then attempts to "subtly" send a message on how evil industry is while the environment-loving people are saintly, and yet the carbon footprint he made while making the movie has probably made hundreds of baby seals cry.

I'm not sure whether to go crazy at how insanely hypocritical the whole thing is or die laughing at the delicious irony!

Oh, how wide

2009-12-01T21:44:00.000-08:00

I've been attacked by some of my close friends in the past because I apparently give the impression that I expect everyone to believe I'm right and to fall on their faces in praise to my intellectual or religious prowess. Being the kind of person who gets scared of himself when nasty descriptions like this take on a credible appearance, I've spent plenty of time trying to deconstruct and analyze this aspect of myself. What I've found is that I demand some kind of explanation for people's opinions. I may not be a genius, but I can usually wrap my brain around an idea, no matter how strange, stupid, or foreign it is to me. But I find that the issues of the day are extraordinarily irrational, and I have no way of understanding them.

It's why I'm constantly saying to myself "how wide the divide".

For instance, this whole fad of hating on Sarah Palin. I certainly know that she might have given a bad interview or two or said weird things that weren't very politician-like, but I kinda like that about her. I'm also not convinced that she's the perfect John Galt choice for America right now, but I still don't understand how all that leads to lynching her on public television. I mean...what did she do? I know she said Maverick WAY too many times, but I get the sneaking suspicion that that was mainly McCain's doing. Did she say something about Joe six-pack? So what? Just because she's going to run for government, she has to say everything that's expected of her? Oh, and by the way, you actually CAN see Russia from Alaska. He saying she can see it from her house is what us pointy headed intellectuals call hyperbole.

Is it that she's religious? I know hating religion is also a big fad these days, but I thought we weren't looking into the practices of politician's churches. I know we were told very clearly that we weren't to investigate or point out Obama's churches. Talking about his crazy racist black liberation church meetings was complete taboo, but now it's okay to crucify (oh the irony) Palin for other people's interpretation of her religion?

Or could it be the whole thing with her daughter? Yeah, she got pregnant before she got married and it's unfortunate. But wait, aren't you Democrats in favor of things like that? Or, to be more fair, tolerant of them? I thought the Democratic party was all about freedom of choice and freedom to abort unwanted children. Isn't it rather hypocritical of you to be chewing her out for that? So what if her family life is *GASP* normal, statistically speaking? At least her daughter and her boyfriend are trying to make up for it by getting married.

All in all, it makes no sense to me. I tried to talk to a friend I respect about this, and she couldn't explain it to me either. The best she could do was some weird thing about Palin making women look bad. And really, all of it comes down to a few possibilities, the first being that her opponents were scared of her, so they ruined her. The second is a subtle and mostly ignored sexism rampant in politics and the american people in general. Third and last, I guess, is that the entire thing demonstrates our unfortunate slavery to "public opinion" by which I mean the propaganda presented on the boob tube. (yes, you heard me)

And since I mentioned it before, what about Obama? I know we were required to elect him because of the whole first black president thing, but now that he's in, why does it feel like everyone is getting some kind of drug slipped to them through the tap? Wasn't it just a year or so ago that the government was definitely not to be trusted? What happened to all the "Bush lied, people died" malarkey that was being tossed around? Were we really graced by the presence of our lord and savior and everyone but me knows it?

I don't understand it really. He's not a good speaker, he's a good reader. He's not moral, just ambivalent. He's not intelligent, just narcissistic. I don't even entirely buy that he's any kind of leader. I'm more inclined to think he's just a figurehead. And yet everyone looks on me with disdain whenever I try to explain my misgivings about him. He goes to a church where the pastor says extraordinarily racist things, he surrounds himself with radicals, he even talks about the radical marxists he hob knobbed with in college, but I'm crazy to suggest he might be marxist?! I'm insane to suggest that it might not be a good idea to allow the law-making body to directly compete with the private healthcare industry? I'm nuts for thinking government is inherently evil and anybody who comes into contact with it for any extended period of time will be corrupted by it's influence?

The world has gone absolutely insane.

Oh how wide the divide.

Religion and Education

2009-10-31T14:35:00.000-07:00

I'd like to talk about the feud between religion and education. I've encountered people who seem to believe that if someone is religious at all and has even a small distrust of professors and universities, that they are automatically zealots who hate intelligence and secular education.

Let me start off by submitting a hypothesis of mine. There is no such thing as secular education. No such thing as secular anything! No matter how open minded a professor is, they are still human beings with their own set of beliefs and morals, ie their own religion. They can work as hard as they can to try and make their classes as objective and "secular" as they can, but it will nevertheless have just a little bit of a slant in the direction of their own religion.

This is not necessarily saying that all professors should be disregarded, nor am I saying that universities should never be trusted. I myself am going to college, and I (and the rest of the LDS church, incidentally) strongly support education in all it's forms! However, people are people, so why should it be that I am required to fall on my face whenever a professor with a diploma opens his mouth? (see what I did there?) Yes, it's very impressive that you went through all those years of college and you got that piece of paper that says you're qualified to teach. But doesn't anyone feel just a bit wary when you stop to consider just how arbitrary that diploma is? Who decided what you had to learn to get it? Who decided what the curriculum would be? Who is the faceless mastermind behind all the accreditations for all these colleges? Furthermore, isn't it strange that some defend brick and mortar education with such religious zeal?

I'm a firm believer in practical education. For all the classes I have taken in college to learn 3D modeling, none of them thus far have been very useful to me. Why? Because I had already spent a couple of years just tinkering around with modeling as a hobby, and I knew more about the process than my own professor did, and he's the qualified one! When I enter the video game industry, I won't be hired on the merits of my diploma alone. I'll have to show that I can do the artwork they need to get hired! Couldn't I have that without the diploma?

I'm getting off topic here, so let me come back to it. The point is that a distrust of professors isn't bad. Conversely, a distrust of religious leaders isn't bad. However, both those statements come with a very important clause: it's bad to not use your head. I can attend a class with a professor who has all the credibility they could want, but I'm not going to trust them without first discovering for myself if they can be trusted. The same goes for any church or religious leader. Good men, good credibility, but the truth of what they say is entirely up to me to verify.

Ironically enough, it's the professors that are given the faith in our society. Don't insult a teacher, because that's sacrilegious! But insult religion and anyone who believes in it or leads a church, that's noble and openminded, how very COOL you are!

Let me extend the subject and include science. Science is NOT religion's enemy! If any church decries any investigation into the workings of the universe, then you can rest assured that it is a false religion. Actually, that might be unfair, it could just be a false church. Either way, science is the act of studying and deconstructing the mind and methods of our Heavenly Father. Learning how things work, gaining wisdom and experience, it's the entire POINT. And yet a distrust of the conclusions and interpretations of scientists, for the purpose of verification (i'm thinking evolution right now) is also sacrilegious!

Again, the faith is firmly planted in "secular" science, and any lack of open mindedness towards religion is praised.

Recycling and Evidence

2009-10-26T20:43:00.001-07:00

Let me start right off by giving you my 2 cents about recycling and the "green" movement...

I have nothing against the green movement. I have nothing against recycling or picking up litter or looking for alternative energy sources. I have nothing against a general progression towards cleaner everything and the reuse of everything. I, in fact, recycle quite a bit. At home, our family reuses soda bottles to store water should the world end or the tap run out. At work, I reuse anything I can. Old plastic tape spindle that's been used up? WRONG, that is a paper-folding aid. The top of a box that is about to go into the trash? NOPE, that is a convenient lunch tray. I suppose I would qualify what I do as repurposing rather than recycling, but to me they're synonymous.

Recycling, like anything green, is a perfectly acceptable idea in theory. I hold reservations about it because of how extensively it's been politicized and how vehemently the debate over it gets. (of course, by "debate" I mean "argument", by which I mean "muck raking") That's my general feeling towards anyone who wants to talk about global climate change or alternative energy. Neither is a BAD topic in and of itself, but when you've thrown all the bias, all the propaganda, all the politics, and all the CRAP into it, it BECOMES negative.

To continue on, I listen to a podcast called Stuff You Should Know. If anyone listens to podcasts, I recommend it. I like the topics usually and I like the hosts, but I definitely do not agree with them all the time. In fact, I've switched the pod off out of disgust for some of the things they've said. Recycling was one of them, and why I did it is the whole point of this post.

They were explaining how recycling works (the podcast being produced by howstuffworks.com) and they mentioned an economist who had done a study and concluded that recycling was actually MORE harmful to the environment than the landfill. They, being the environmentalists that they are, disregarded it as having no doubt been refuted by someone.

"Okay, hold up" I say to myself as I pause the ipod. "WHO has refuted it? What evidence do you have that says it DOESN'T hurt the environment more?"

And this is the point of the post. If you want to defeat a point of view, you bring evidence to bear. These two guys pride themselves on the extensive research they do on every topic, but you can't point to even ONE study that refutes this economist's findings? You don't bother to do the work because you assume he's wrong? Are you truth seeking, objective researchers/writers, or are you simply environmentalists afraid not only to lose the argument, but to lose your credibility?

This is the same rant I've been having in my head about Glenn Beck for the past few weeks. If he's so wrong, why haven't I seen the evidence? All I hear from anyone is that he's a fear-monger and fake-cries on TV. That's it?! That's all you have on the guy? It's like a judge sentencing a suspect to a month in jail for a traffic misdemeanor while at the same time ignoring all the corpses in his closet. Glenn Beck is talking about GIANT UNION CONSPIRACIES. What he talks about sounds completely insane! It sounds like something you should be reading on some poorly made online website, not on any news network. And all people can do is mock him for crying on TV? To quote Keith Olbermann (I got this from autotune) "Are we so heartless?"

Both of these are pathetic examples. Glenn Beck's rhetoric is FILLED with ideas and evidence that's just WAITING to be challenged. You've got CNN, you've got NBC, you've got the freaking GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES saying he's a nut job, but nobody can prove it? Mocking him for crying doesn't hurt him. Ignoring his arguments gives him more credibility, and the same goes for this economist.

Let's get one thing straight. I don't want to believe Glenn Beck, and I don't want to believe that recycling hurts the environment more than landfills. But I'm supposed to ignore them based solely on...what, faith? Call it ignorance on my part, but waving people off without respecting them enough to challenge their ideas with evidence of your own sounds like you just don't have any ammunition at all. And really, how objective, open minded, understanding, or empathetic are you if you're so closed to these ideas?