Wednesday, May 6, 2009
It's too bad that you don't feel strongly about these issues. :-) Thank you for your insightful, passionate prose that takes risks in making a stance. Hooray that you are one of the few students who recognizes the value of a well-rounded education. An interview process for admissions is coming for you soon! Grad school sometimes requires this, and Ph.D. programs definitely do, but it would be daunting to interview 25,000 undergrads...I think teachers would die in the process, resulting in students having to educate themselves. I can't imagine what "zoo" would ensue!
Saturday, April 18, 2009
Blog #12: The Ideal College Experience
This is a difficult question to pose: what is the ideal university? Perhaps I suffer from gross ignorance of how an administration runs their colleges, because I'm not sure I would change anything. I understand the importance of having liberal arts classes in a science degree. We can't have students submerged in a one sided curriculum. It is, after all, the job of college to prepare you to be the every bit of the person you could be. There are colleges that essentially allow you to choose your curriculum as you see fit: Brown University is one example, from the ivy league no less, that will not force you to take 3 credits of humanities, 3 credits of the arts, 3 credits of history, etc.
But I feel that it detracts from the college experience. How can you be certain you don't absolutely love a subject until you took it. Things like art history may not interest you at all, until you delve into it.
People would rather get distracted. We don't have Renaissance men or women anymore. You know why? Because people would rather bitch and moan about the fine arts elective they have to take in the summer and go play their xboxes than value a complex, multidimensional curriculum.
Rant over.
My ideal university is a simple one. I don't think allowing students to teach themselves is the best solution-- kind of like letting the patients run the hospital or the animals run the zoo. Strong professors need to be present, to present their knowledge in the best way possible to the students who are trying to learn.
The professors would be closely monitored by the administration, however. A lot of professors gain tenure and then have a free pass to do whatever the hell they want, which is a crime. A teacher who fails to actually teach their students, who is despised by the people that are supposed to look up to them, should be fired, and in my ideal university they would be.
Textbooks should mostly be written by the faculty so that they can eloquently relay what they want the students to know, and they should be cheap enough that it doesn't set every student back seven hundred dollars per semester.
There should be a lot to do on campus, a wide variety of club and divisional athletics, bars on campus open to people 18 and over (18 should be the legal drinking age).
The students should be challenged no matter what their major is. They should have writing intensive courses in all aspects of school life, so that when they leave college they are capable of properly communicating in the real world.
The dorms should be large enough to give adequate space to study and sleep and enough space between roommates that they don't get into each other's ways. Or, better yet, build the dormitory buildings twice as high and have everyone in separate rooms, then students won't have to worry about how much they hate their roommates.
Classes should actually be able to fit into a predefined schedule. I don't understand why sometimes there is only 1 available time for a class and it conflicts with another class that a student in a certain degree track is supposed to take the same semester. And classes should be easy to sign up for. Making class registration painless and easy should be a top priority for any college. If a student is majoring in Computer engineering, and they HAVE TO TAKE linear algebra, differential equations, etc, then the computer system should automatically allow them into those courses. When a student goes to sign up for a class that they need to take, and they are denied and have to get an override issued in order to register, it is frustrating to the point that it makes certain people want to transfer from the offending school.
Students should take a wide variety of courses, to make themselves multidimensional. Someone who spends their entire adult life focusing on one specific topic tend to be anti-social or at least lack true people skills, so forcing students to take a wide range of topics and expose them to people unlike them will ultimately benefit most.
Every building should have solid wifi internet access so that students can go anywhere on campus and work on whatever they need to work on. Campuses with low connectivity in important meeting places are a sad affair.
A rigorous interview process would be conducted to determine who is accepted. It isn't enough for someone to have straight A's, play sports, and be in clubs. The administration needs to know more about their students so that they may properly handle them once the student enters college. People are not their grades, or their clubs, or their athletics: they are much more than that.
But I feel that it detracts from the college experience. How can you be certain you don't absolutely love a subject until you took it. Things like art history may not interest you at all, until you delve into it.
People would rather get distracted. We don't have Renaissance men or women anymore. You know why? Because people would rather bitch and moan about the fine arts elective they have to take in the summer and go play their xboxes than value a complex, multidimensional curriculum.
Rant over.
My ideal university is a simple one. I don't think allowing students to teach themselves is the best solution-- kind of like letting the patients run the hospital or the animals run the zoo. Strong professors need to be present, to present their knowledge in the best way possible to the students who are trying to learn.
The professors would be closely monitored by the administration, however. A lot of professors gain tenure and then have a free pass to do whatever the hell they want, which is a crime. A teacher who fails to actually teach their students, who is despised by the people that are supposed to look up to them, should be fired, and in my ideal university they would be.
Textbooks should mostly be written by the faculty so that they can eloquently relay what they want the students to know, and they should be cheap enough that it doesn't set every student back seven hundred dollars per semester.
There should be a lot to do on campus, a wide variety of club and divisional athletics, bars on campus open to people 18 and over (18 should be the legal drinking age).
The students should be challenged no matter what their major is. They should have writing intensive courses in all aspects of school life, so that when they leave college they are capable of properly communicating in the real world.
The dorms should be large enough to give adequate space to study and sleep and enough space between roommates that they don't get into each other's ways. Or, better yet, build the dormitory buildings twice as high and have everyone in separate rooms, then students won't have to worry about how much they hate their roommates.
Classes should actually be able to fit into a predefined schedule. I don't understand why sometimes there is only 1 available time for a class and it conflicts with another class that a student in a certain degree track is supposed to take the same semester. And classes should be easy to sign up for. Making class registration painless and easy should be a top priority for any college. If a student is majoring in Computer engineering, and they HAVE TO TAKE linear algebra, differential equations, etc, then the computer system should automatically allow them into those courses. When a student goes to sign up for a class that they need to take, and they are denied and have to get an override issued in order to register, it is frustrating to the point that it makes certain people want to transfer from the offending school.
Students should take a wide variety of courses, to make themselves multidimensional. Someone who spends their entire adult life focusing on one specific topic tend to be anti-social or at least lack true people skills, so forcing students to take a wide range of topics and expose them to people unlike them will ultimately benefit most.
Every building should have solid wifi internet access so that students can go anywhere on campus and work on whatever they need to work on. Campuses with low connectivity in important meeting places are a sad affair.
A rigorous interview process would be conducted to determine who is accepted. It isn't enough for someone to have straight A's, play sports, and be in clubs. The administration needs to know more about their students so that they may properly handle them once the student enters college. People are not their grades, or their clubs, or their athletics: they are much more than that.
Saturday, April 4, 2009
Blog #10: The T-shirt of Turin
To tell you the truth, the saturation of religion in American (and apparently foreign) lives is scaring me. I've seen these "Jesus is My Homeboy" t-shirts around, and every time I do I roll my eyes in disgust despite knowing that most of them are just parodies. My first reaction, to those doing the parody, is why validate the beliefs of others that you don't agree with by showing the world that you care enough to wear a t-shirt that you bought specifically to show your own beliefs? It is either
A) you are a self righteous prick who insists everyone knows your personal views on religion (which is exactly the same as the religious people who want to flaunt their beliefs by wearing equivalently non parodic t-shirts or apparel)
B) you are so clueless to reality that you somehow think that wearing these shirts will actually convert some of the believers to non-believers through its sheer wittiness.
or
C) you actually think these are funny, at which point I must tell you that "what you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul."(Billy Madison) You have absolutely no real grasp on humor, and these vain financial acquirements don't make you any less stupid or any more funny than you were before you bought them.
Now if you are one of the people who buys them because you love Jesus and you think this is the best way you can show the world just how much you love Jesus, all I can say is "holy shit go get your head checked." Your faith is supposed to be about your personal relationship with Jesus, not about you trying to spread your faith through distasteful marketing mechanisms. You might as well be Joel Osteen (oft criticized for not having any true faith content in his television show). Do you want to be Joel Osteen? Well maybe you do. The fact remains that the people who are already religious might think "hey, there is a nice guy or gal wearing a 'Jesus is my Homeboy' t-shirt", and the rest, the ones that are supposedly your target audience, will think "" nothing about it because none of them care about Jesus being your homeboy.
By the way, you missed the entire joke with the t-shirt, and now you are wearing it despite its anti-religious connotations.
The shirt on the left is an interesting item. For one, the first thing I notice is the lettering, which reminds me of those 1950s movie posters about space aliens coming down to earth and taking over the brains of unsuspecting townspeople and turn them into zombies. This is an interesting parallel to religion. Jesus is himself an alien, sent to earth by God to save the world, he too becomes a zombie after being in his tomb for 3 days after dying on the cross, and since then the small towns all across the world have succumbed to brainwashing by religion to turn into mindless minions to spread the word. Jesus looks like he is wearing an outfit out of the Fantastic Four, though I think he is supposed to be shirtless, he looks rather ripped so I'm thinking he must have a fantastic diet plan that you would probably like to buy. I think if religions really want to get a legion of followers, they should see if they can do something about the obesity problems of middle America.
In the other shirt, which graces us with a little color, Jesus is holding up two fingers in a peace sign, a white do rag that holds his red locks back (Jesus was middle eastern, so the chances of him having bright red "ginger" hair seem very small to me), and hippie garb. The man is definitely hippiefied in this shirt, which seems to me to be an obvious parody. Overall both shirts are just ridiculous to me.
Paul Mitchell's story "Faith and Fashion: The Power of T-shirt Evangelism" implies in the title that there is some power in the t-shirt, but his entire article is about how no one cared at a rock concert that he was wearing a t-shirt praising his faith. "I was expecting someone to say something, anything. But no one did," he writes on page 324. Interestingly, he also says, "What I was doing that day was what Christians have tried to do for centuries--make some kind of outward sign of their inner conversion, to show the world that yes, I'm different." Different from what? The millions of other Christians who do the same thing on a daily basis? If you want to do something different, as far as Christians are concerned, set yourself on fire and don't scream. Buddhist monks do that to show their devotion. You wear a t-shirt. I"m not trying to judge, but you seem like you aren't all that interested in actually showing the world how different you are when you do the same thing that everyone else does. You just look like an exact copy of another Christian created from some generic template.
Do yourself a favor, Paul. Do something original.
If the t-shirts only conveyed the text, they would only seem slightly less parodic. Let's face it, the slogan "Jesus is my Homeboy" screams of parody without the need for any visual aids. First off, homeboy is a word that was first used in the 70s and 80s to denote that someone was in the same gang or from the same turf that you were. As The Free Online Dictionary defines it, homeboy is slang for a close male friend from the same town or neighborhood, or a fellow male member of a gang. Gangs connotate violence and mischief, so representing Jesus as a fellow gangmember doesn't honor his memory, so obviously these shirts aren't meant to be taken seriously. For those wearing them in response to their hatred or disgust of religion, get a life and do something good with your time. Nothing good comes from destroying or trouncing others beliefs. Expanding their minds through logic and reason is the only cure for what you consider disgusting.
Back to the t-shirts. They are unnecessary. I know some of you can't help but be offensive, but realize that you make yourself no more righteous by using these t-shirts to convey your shallow points. And to those of you who think this is the best way to show your faith, the best way you can show your faith is to live by Jesus' words by doing the right things, offering help to those in need, and not hurting others. Live by his very words, not by some false idol on your chest.
A) you are a self righteous prick who insists everyone knows your personal views on religion (which is exactly the same as the religious people who want to flaunt their beliefs by wearing equivalently non parodic t-shirts or apparel)
B) you are so clueless to reality that you somehow think that wearing these shirts will actually convert some of the believers to non-believers through its sheer wittiness.
or
C) you actually think these are funny, at which point I must tell you that "what you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul."(Billy Madison) You have absolutely no real grasp on humor, and these vain financial acquirements don't make you any less stupid or any more funny than you were before you bought them.
Now if you are one of the people who buys them because you love Jesus and you think this is the best way you can show the world just how much you love Jesus, all I can say is "holy shit go get your head checked." Your faith is supposed to be about your personal relationship with Jesus, not about you trying to spread your faith through distasteful marketing mechanisms. You might as well be Joel Osteen (oft criticized for not having any true faith content in his television show). Do you want to be Joel Osteen? Well maybe you do. The fact remains that the people who are already religious might think "hey, there is a nice guy or gal wearing a 'Jesus is my Homeboy' t-shirt", and the rest, the ones that are supposedly your target audience, will think "" nothing about it because none of them care about Jesus being your homeboy.
By the way, you missed the entire joke with the t-shirt, and now you are wearing it despite its anti-religious connotations.
The shirt on the left is an interesting item. For one, the first thing I notice is the lettering, which reminds me of those 1950s movie posters about space aliens coming down to earth and taking over the brains of unsuspecting townspeople and turn them into zombies. This is an interesting parallel to religion. Jesus is himself an alien, sent to earth by God to save the world, he too becomes a zombie after being in his tomb for 3 days after dying on the cross, and since then the small towns all across the world have succumbed to brainwashing by religion to turn into mindless minions to spread the word. Jesus looks like he is wearing an outfit out of the Fantastic Four, though I think he is supposed to be shirtless, he looks rather ripped so I'm thinking he must have a fantastic diet plan that you would probably like to buy. I think if religions really want to get a legion of followers, they should see if they can do something about the obesity problems of middle America.
In the other shirt, which graces us with a little color, Jesus is holding up two fingers in a peace sign, a white do rag that holds his red locks back (Jesus was middle eastern, so the chances of him having bright red "ginger" hair seem very small to me), and hippie garb. The man is definitely hippiefied in this shirt, which seems to me to be an obvious parody. Overall both shirts are just ridiculous to me.
Paul Mitchell's story "Faith and Fashion: The Power of T-shirt Evangelism" implies in the title that there is some power in the t-shirt, but his entire article is about how no one cared at a rock concert that he was wearing a t-shirt praising his faith. "I was expecting someone to say something, anything. But no one did," he writes on page 324. Interestingly, he also says, "What I was doing that day was what Christians have tried to do for centuries--make some kind of outward sign of their inner conversion, to show the world that yes, I'm different." Different from what? The millions of other Christians who do the same thing on a daily basis? If you want to do something different, as far as Christians are concerned, set yourself on fire and don't scream. Buddhist monks do that to show their devotion. You wear a t-shirt. I"m not trying to judge, but you seem like you aren't all that interested in actually showing the world how different you are when you do the same thing that everyone else does. You just look like an exact copy of another Christian created from some generic template.
Do yourself a favor, Paul. Do something original.
If the t-shirts only conveyed the text, they would only seem slightly less parodic. Let's face it, the slogan "Jesus is my Homeboy" screams of parody without the need for any visual aids. First off, homeboy is a word that was first used in the 70s and 80s to denote that someone was in the same gang or from the same turf that you were. As The Free Online Dictionary defines it, homeboy is slang for a close male friend from the same town or neighborhood, or a fellow male member of a gang. Gangs connotate violence and mischief, so representing Jesus as a fellow gangmember doesn't honor his memory, so obviously these shirts aren't meant to be taken seriously. For those wearing them in response to their hatred or disgust of religion, get a life and do something good with your time. Nothing good comes from destroying or trouncing others beliefs. Expanding their minds through logic and reason is the only cure for what you consider disgusting.
Back to the t-shirts. They are unnecessary. I know some of you can't help but be offensive, but realize that you make yourself no more righteous by using these t-shirts to convey your shallow points. And to those of you who think this is the best way to show your faith, the best way you can show your faith is to live by Jesus' words by doing the right things, offering help to those in need, and not hurting others. Live by his very words, not by some false idol on your chest.
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Blog #8: Socialism? Science? Public Education?
Step 1: Design a CD and 5 songs
Song 1: Broken Education is the source of all woes
Genre: Alternative
Explanation: The pubic education system in America is to blame for most of our social, economic, and intellectual problems. The way school is set up teaches children how to fail (through memorization) rather than how to succeed (through learning and problem solving).
Song 2: They are dying, but we don't care
Genre: Rap
Explanation: Genocide seems to happen every few years, but the world forum does not care. While politicians garner huge audiences who applaud at their rhetoric, war criminals and warlords murder dissenters, firebomb peaceful villagers, and create panic, fear, and hatred in parts of the world that no one seems to care about (Darfur, Rwanda, Serbia). How can we call ourselves human when we allow this to happen?
Song 3: The Rise of a bitter Slave
Genre: Drum n Bass
Explanation: Artificial Intelligence will soon be a reality. But with the creation of neuron like structures, emotive mimickry, and rational thought will come a new wave of thinking, feeling beings that will have to fight for equal rights. Considering we can't even give minorities or gays equal rights, the fight against the machines will pose a real challenge for men who believe they are better than everything else. AI will be stronger, faster, smarter, and more easily replicated than man, so who will win this war?
Song 4: A New World Order
Genre: Classical
Explanation: This bass drum and trumpet heavy classical piece's purpose is to incite a realization that political figures promise one moment and break their promises the next, and this will continue to happen as long as you allow it.
Song 5: Biological Imperative
Genre: Dark Step
Explanation: People are too busy with their lives to realize that producing successful offspring is the reason they are on this planet. Their lives are too self important and self consumed to bring children onto the world and take care of them the way that children need.
Song 6: Socialism is ideologically driven but scientifically unfeasible
Genre: Alternative
Explanation: Wouldn't it be wonderful if everyone was taken care of by the govenrment? We could all pay taxes to help the poor and hungry, to give everyone medical insurance, blah blah blah. This doesn't work, even on paper. People who know nothing about economics support socialism.
Song 6 Lyrics
Where is our world, where we, live on
Where are the handouts for the needy, who crouch among the steps of necessity
Where is the world we dream of when we are young
Maybe it's time for us to open eyes and see reality
Maybe it's time for us to dream about something we can achieve
Maybe it's ty y ime for us to work to bring peace and sanity
Maybe we'll never see the light of day of ideologies.
We need to fix too much, instead supply a crutch, to those who don't produce
We need to teach our children not how to memorize but instead how to deduce
We need to do our best to bring humanity to the forefront once again
Until then, we can only imagine about Zen.
Step 3:
CD Title - The World Spins and Gets Nowhere
Step 4: CD Cover
In my cover, there is a picture of a park with children playing in it. It is late autumn, the leaves are all over the ground, and the children are bundled up in warm clothing. But the trees are twisted and odd, the children seem to be ignoring each other, not playing with each other, and the park items they play on are of strange, alien design. This signifies that we have lost our humanity, that we lost the meaning of life, or perhaps we never fully realized it. The title text is wisps of smoke, the colors dominating the picture are purples, oranges, yellows and reds for autumn, but the children are gray and yellow, their parents are all transparent. The image looks acid washed so that the colors all run together rather than concrete objects appearing discretely from their surroundings.
Song 1: Broken Education is the source of all woes
Genre: Alternative
Explanation: The pubic education system in America is to blame for most of our social, economic, and intellectual problems. The way school is set up teaches children how to fail (through memorization) rather than how to succeed (through learning and problem solving).
Song 2: They are dying, but we don't care
Genre: Rap
Explanation: Genocide seems to happen every few years, but the world forum does not care. While politicians garner huge audiences who applaud at their rhetoric, war criminals and warlords murder dissenters, firebomb peaceful villagers, and create panic, fear, and hatred in parts of the world that no one seems to care about (Darfur, Rwanda, Serbia). How can we call ourselves human when we allow this to happen?
Song 3: The Rise of a bitter Slave
Genre: Drum n Bass
Explanation: Artificial Intelligence will soon be a reality. But with the creation of neuron like structures, emotive mimickry, and rational thought will come a new wave of thinking, feeling beings that will have to fight for equal rights. Considering we can't even give minorities or gays equal rights, the fight against the machines will pose a real challenge for men who believe they are better than everything else. AI will be stronger, faster, smarter, and more easily replicated than man, so who will win this war?
Song 4: A New World Order
Genre: Classical
Explanation: This bass drum and trumpet heavy classical piece's purpose is to incite a realization that political figures promise one moment and break their promises the next, and this will continue to happen as long as you allow it.
Song 5: Biological Imperative
Genre: Dark Step
Explanation: People are too busy with their lives to realize that producing successful offspring is the reason they are on this planet. Their lives are too self important and self consumed to bring children onto the world and take care of them the way that children need.
Song 6: Socialism is ideologically driven but scientifically unfeasible
Genre: Alternative
Explanation: Wouldn't it be wonderful if everyone was taken care of by the govenrment? We could all pay taxes to help the poor and hungry, to give everyone medical insurance, blah blah blah. This doesn't work, even on paper. People who know nothing about economics support socialism.
Song 6 Lyrics
Where is our world, where we, live on
Where are the handouts for the needy, who crouch among the steps of necessity
Where is the world we dream of when we are young
Maybe it's time for us to open eyes and see reality
Maybe it's time for us to dream about something we can achieve
Maybe it's ty y ime for us to work to bring peace and sanity
Maybe we'll never see the light of day of ideologies.
We need to fix too much, instead supply a crutch, to those who don't produce
We need to teach our children not how to memorize but instead how to deduce
We need to do our best to bring humanity to the forefront once again
Until then, we can only imagine about Zen.
Step 3:
CD Title - The World Spins and Gets Nowhere
Step 4: CD Cover
In my cover, there is a picture of a park with children playing in it. It is late autumn, the leaves are all over the ground, and the children are bundled up in warm clothing. But the trees are twisted and odd, the children seem to be ignoring each other, not playing with each other, and the park items they play on are of strange, alien design. This signifies that we have lost our humanity, that we lost the meaning of life, or perhaps we never fully realized it. The title text is wisps of smoke, the colors dominating the picture are purples, oranges, yellows and reds for autumn, but the children are gray and yellow, their parents are all transparent. The image looks acid washed so that the colors all run together rather than concrete objects appearing discretely from their surroundings.
Saturday, March 14, 2009
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Blog #5 : My Mistress the Needle
In the YouTube Video "Truth About Steroids," Bryant Gumble makes a fascinating observation when he says "Americans, when drugs are concerned, rarely choose logic when they can opt for hysteria." That statement is more profound than the average person can appreciate.
In "Truth," researchers and bodybuilders proclaim that not only are there no long term studies into the side effects of steroid abuse, but that those who have been using them for decades have experienced no harm to themselves or the people around them. Unfortunately most people will ignore the strange absence of studies in lieu of believing the hype created around them by the media and Congress rather than absorbing the information and coming to their own conclusions. While it is probable that Gumble and his cronies believe they can capitalize on their pro steroid stance somehow with this report, a simple database search for steroid abuse long term effects turns up very little in the way of support for the anti-steroid position.
I happen to be a Libertarian, and as such I follow the tenets of old school Liberalism, which at its core believes that a person should have the choice to do as they wish to their body as long as those decisions do not directly negatively effect those around them through either physical or mental abuse. That means I support those who want to do steroids as long as they don't harm others. That also means that I support people who want to smoke marijuana, take ecstasy, use cocaine or any other thing so long as they don't steal from their parents to pay for their drug habit or beat their wives.
I support the stance that Gumble and company take in the video. However, the silence on some issues such as mood swings as a side effect, suicidal tendencies, sports injuries caused by overtraining, is disheartening. As someone from central Illinois, the steroid belt, who happens to know dozens of people who take steroids, the side effects can be much more negative than the video portrays. While the jury may be out on long term effects, short term effects should be addressed.
There are several major fallacies that the video uses to try to persuade its audience of the virtues of steroids. For one, their use of false expertise, their consistent interviews with body builders who are both biased and ignorant (as they like steroids cause bias, and their lack of medical degrees from accredited institutions as ignorance) to create false ethos may work on most audiences, but it does not stand up to scrutiny.
The video also noticeably doesn't feature any counterarguments. They have one argument, that steroids are not bad, and no dissenting opinions. That is the type of journalism that one would expect from first year journalism majors making YouTube videos, but not from NBC or Bryant Gumble. It borders on outright propaganda.
So TRUE: steroids are probably OK if you are a healthy adult male who did a little research into them before taking them. TRUE, most drugs or any lifestyle choice probably fit under the same principle. And it is TRUE that people would rather be "hysterical", give into their mania rather than make their own choices, but it is patently FALSE advertising for not being objective when reporting.
EVENTUALLY PEOPLE WILL RUN A 5 SECOND 100
So Texas plans on testing their high school athletes. Apparently they feel like cheating is so rampant in their system that it needs addressing. Either that or they are merely regurgitating the status quo, and stroking the egos of the morons in Congress who think everyone should be tested for everything (to the applause of middle America and the blue collar sycophants who think everyone is out to get them and everything is poisoned).
30% of students would be tested in this program (UIL), which is a huge number. I suppose this program makes sense, as Texas is known for excessive competitiveness in peewee and high school leagues. One could deduce that kids in Texas would do anything to stay competitive or excel in their sports. Plus, with as much money as people are making in professional sports today, there is a huge benefit to cheating to get that professional contract.
In my opinion this is a major violation of personal freedom and privacy, but I have no say (anymore) in Texas politics, so they are on their own. Last time I checked they were executing something like 50 people a year on death row, and they don't believe in evolution, so they are off doing their own thing anyways.
Obviously sports is entertainment. It isn't any more endearing or worthy than movies, theatre, professional wrestling or the circus. It is a spectacle, much like the gladiator fights of ancient Rome. People want to see huge athletes trouncing on each other and blood fall on their environment. We don't want to see things like the dead ball era in baseball, or nitty gritty 3-3 contests in football. We are Americans. We want raw power, we want 24 valve turbo diesel engines, we want double quarter pounders with cheese, we want 82 points in a basketball game from #24, we want 28 rushing touchdowns and 50 passing touchdowns, we want 9.69 World Record 100 meter runs, we want people bitten by alligators and hit by trains, we want constant input in the form of loud music and flashing lights, and we want guys hitting 60 or more home runs a year. We need these sports stars to be entertaining, and the best way they can do that is by injecting copious amounts of liquid strength into their asses twice a week. Maybe it hurts them, but we don't care, not really, which is why it took so long before anyone really noticed, and if it hadn't been for the media pushing some agenda down our throats, Congress and state legislators would have looked the other way.
In the end, we are all just sheep in some pasture being led astray.
In "Truth," researchers and bodybuilders proclaim that not only are there no long term studies into the side effects of steroid abuse, but that those who have been using them for decades have experienced no harm to themselves or the people around them. Unfortunately most people will ignore the strange absence of studies in lieu of believing the hype created around them by the media and Congress rather than absorbing the information and coming to their own conclusions. While it is probable that Gumble and his cronies believe they can capitalize on their pro steroid stance somehow with this report, a simple database search for steroid abuse long term effects turns up very little in the way of support for the anti-steroid position.
I happen to be a Libertarian, and as such I follow the tenets of old school Liberalism, which at its core believes that a person should have the choice to do as they wish to their body as long as those decisions do not directly negatively effect those around them through either physical or mental abuse. That means I support those who want to do steroids as long as they don't harm others. That also means that I support people who want to smoke marijuana, take ecstasy, use cocaine or any other thing so long as they don't steal from their parents to pay for their drug habit or beat their wives.
I support the stance that Gumble and company take in the video. However, the silence on some issues such as mood swings as a side effect, suicidal tendencies, sports injuries caused by overtraining, is disheartening. As someone from central Illinois, the steroid belt, who happens to know dozens of people who take steroids, the side effects can be much more negative than the video portrays. While the jury may be out on long term effects, short term effects should be addressed.
There are several major fallacies that the video uses to try to persuade its audience of the virtues of steroids. For one, their use of false expertise, their consistent interviews with body builders who are both biased and ignorant (as they like steroids cause bias, and their lack of medical degrees from accredited institutions as ignorance) to create false ethos may work on most audiences, but it does not stand up to scrutiny.
The video also noticeably doesn't feature any counterarguments. They have one argument, that steroids are not bad, and no dissenting opinions. That is the type of journalism that one would expect from first year journalism majors making YouTube videos, but not from NBC or Bryant Gumble. It borders on outright propaganda.
So TRUE: steroids are probably OK if you are a healthy adult male who did a little research into them before taking them. TRUE, most drugs or any lifestyle choice probably fit under the same principle. And it is TRUE that people would rather be "hysterical", give into their mania rather than make their own choices, but it is patently FALSE advertising for not being objective when reporting.
EVENTUALLY PEOPLE WILL RUN A 5 SECOND 100
So Texas plans on testing their high school athletes. Apparently they feel like cheating is so rampant in their system that it needs addressing. Either that or they are merely regurgitating the status quo, and stroking the egos of the morons in Congress who think everyone should be tested for everything (to the applause of middle America and the blue collar sycophants who think everyone is out to get them and everything is poisoned).
30% of students would be tested in this program (UIL), which is a huge number. I suppose this program makes sense, as Texas is known for excessive competitiveness in peewee and high school leagues. One could deduce that kids in Texas would do anything to stay competitive or excel in their sports. Plus, with as much money as people are making in professional sports today, there is a huge benefit to cheating to get that professional contract.
In my opinion this is a major violation of personal freedom and privacy, but I have no say (anymore) in Texas politics, so they are on their own. Last time I checked they were executing something like 50 people a year on death row, and they don't believe in evolution, so they are off doing their own thing anyways.
Obviously sports is entertainment. It isn't any more endearing or worthy than movies, theatre, professional wrestling or the circus. It is a spectacle, much like the gladiator fights of ancient Rome. People want to see huge athletes trouncing on each other and blood fall on their environment. We don't want to see things like the dead ball era in baseball, or nitty gritty 3-3 contests in football. We are Americans. We want raw power, we want 24 valve turbo diesel engines, we want double quarter pounders with cheese, we want 82 points in a basketball game from #24, we want 28 rushing touchdowns and 50 passing touchdowns, we want 9.69 World Record 100 meter runs, we want people bitten by alligators and hit by trains, we want constant input in the form of loud music and flashing lights, and we want guys hitting 60 or more home runs a year. We need these sports stars to be entertaining, and the best way they can do that is by injecting copious amounts of liquid strength into their asses twice a week. Maybe it hurts them, but we don't care, not really, which is why it took so long before anyone really noticed, and if it hadn't been for the media pushing some agenda down our throats, Congress and state legislators would have looked the other way.
In the end, we are all just sheep in some pasture being led astray.
Friday, February 20, 2009
Pissing in the bushes isn't THAT bad.
College students like to drink. That is a fact of life. But at Georgetown University, one of the nation's finest post secondary institutions, partying it up and making bad decisions has become a livelihood. According to Kinzie, the students at Georgetown University are outraged over new campus wide policies concerning partying and drinking. Now, she further states, police will arrest any student caught violating the new policies, such as drunk and disorderly, public urination, or underage drinking, rather than issuing citations as they have in the past.
I can understand the outrage by the students in this case. They are already paying thirty thousand dollars a year to attend the prestigious university, and they already spend an inordinate amount of time studying, the students obviously need some sort of release come weekend that can take their minds off the rigorous academic life at Georgetown. Having the students register their parties with Georgetown Authorities and then having those authorities issue subsequent limitations on parties is akin to sacrificing underclassmen to the Donkey God.
These ideas are also a waste of departmental resources. District Commander Andy Solberg said, "This is not something we want to do. I think everyone in the community wants cops out here patrolling for real criminal behavior"(qtd. in Kinzie).
There are also a bevy of intangible problems that will arise with the new policies. By limiting students rights on campus, those students will merely move off campus for their extracurricular activities (Kinzie). Students in Kinzie's report are worried about the safety of traversing the distances between off campus bars back to their on campus housing, and I don't blame them. Washington DC is rife with criminal activity, criminal activity that should be handled by police officers whom are now handcuffed with arresting innocuous undergraduates because of a little public urination.
There are positives in this war on College Student partying. If I was a resident of Georgetown, walking outside to grab the paper in my bath robe, I certainly wouldn't want to stumble across a bumbling 19 year old Pre-Law student passed out in my gutter with urine dribbling down his leg. People are jumpy enough as it is
I can understand the outrage by the students in this case. They are already paying thirty thousand dollars a year to attend the prestigious university, and they already spend an inordinate amount of time studying, the students obviously need some sort of release come weekend that can take their minds off the rigorous academic life at Georgetown. Having the students register their parties with Georgetown Authorities and then having those authorities issue subsequent limitations on parties is akin to sacrificing underclassmen to the Donkey God.
These ideas are also a waste of departmental resources. District Commander Andy Solberg said, "This is not something we want to do. I think everyone in the community wants cops out here patrolling for real criminal behavior"(qtd. in Kinzie).
There are also a bevy of intangible problems that will arise with the new policies. By limiting students rights on campus, those students will merely move off campus for their extracurricular activities (Kinzie). Students in Kinzie's report are worried about the safety of traversing the distances between off campus bars back to their on campus housing, and I don't blame them. Washington DC is rife with criminal activity, criminal activity that should be handled by police officers whom are now handcuffed with arresting innocuous undergraduates because of a little public urination.
There are positives in this war on College Student partying. If I was a resident of Georgetown, walking outside to grab the paper in my bath robe, I certainly wouldn't want to stumble across a bumbling 19 year old Pre-Law student passed out in my gutter with urine dribbling down his leg. People are jumpy enough as it is
Monday, February 16, 2009
Paraphrasing an Original Passage
James D. Lester wrote that research papers by students are notoriously over quoted. He believes that a tenth of the final paper or less should be direct quotations from authors, but students usually have much more, and this is most likely caused by students relying too much on taking quotes verbatim for use in their scholarly papers. If you are writing a paper, your goal should be paraphrasing the source material and using your own words.(Lester)
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Blog #4: The Action Figure Dynamic
"The Insult", a motivational cartoon created to inspire young scrawny men worldwide, is fairly critical of the "natural" size of many young adult males. It depicts the taunting of a young loverboy and his girlfriend at a beach by an overaggressive, oversized bully. The comic means to sell a 32 page book on how to transform your body from one of simpleton weakling into a lethal muscle machine. The cartoon argues that if you are not ripped and fit, you cannot possibly protect the woman you love. It plays on the hallowed alpha male philosophy that if you aren't an aggressive silverback gorilla, you are not a real man. The woman, the young scrawny man's girlfriend, an attractive, skinny brunette, is elated when the man puts on several layers of muscle and turns the overbearing bully into a whimpering, falling tree with his feet cut out from underneath him. The story seems to portray Charles Atlas (the author of the 32 page book) as the scrawny man turned super hero. The exultation of the others on the beach after his knockdown of said bully shows the importance of creating a strong, masculine physique in the cartoon.
In "Evolving Ideals of the Male Body Image as Seen Through Action Toys," the authors, Pope, Jr., Olivardia, Gruber and Borowieki hope to draw attention to the fact that over the last 5 decades, action figures have evolved from skinny, expressionless seemingly insubstantial stick figure into a hulking, musclebound, unrealistic dynamo that children collecting these figures should aspire to. The figures have grown in bicep and chest size while losing much of the waistline that their earlier counterparts featured. The action figures are a grim reminder of the superficial reality that current generations are placing on masculinity. The most popular and long lasting toy lines, Star Wars and GI Joe, have consistently put more pressure on the children collecting them through subliminal and obvious means that they shouldn't look like the average person, but instead should exude confidence, anger, and the ability to grow to obscene proportions in the quest for the perfect body. Television, print ads, and magazines all support this notion.
In "The Insult," the author, the ad agency or Charles Atlas himself, seems to be taunting and tormenting young adult males through the use of the story. The tone is one of abject pity on the viewers of the cartoon, telling them that they aren't really a man. Sand kicked in the face of the protagonist and his girl screams "you are not good enough for the woman at your arm." The bully tells the protagonist that he would beat him senselessly except he isn't worth his time, and as an extension the advertisement is telling the reader that they(the reader) aren't really worth the time and effort to make lean and muscular, but they are going to do it anyways as a favor to them. His girlfriend calls him a "little boy," further inciting rage and violence (in the next frame) to inspire the man to become a "real" man. He uses Charles Atlas' program and becomes a big strong masculine individual capable of turning away all bullies. This sets the tone that any person reading the ad could become who they want to become, and that person that they want to become is a large muscular alpha male with the potential to secure any woman and win any fight. The audience is clearly pre-pubescent and young adult males who have not yet grown into their bodies. Many of them get taller and noticeably skinnier as they go through puberty, and that body image creates a negative impression on their fragile developing psyches. Young impressionable men do not realize that the period of being skinny and susceptible to bullying is a short one that they just need to bear through, and Charles Atlas looks to capitalize off of this fact.
In "Evolving Idelas of Male Body Image as Seen Through Action Toys," the tone switches from one of emasculating the audience to one of informing the audience how they are being manipulated by negative body images. In this case, the audience appears to be the parents of children who seek out to buy action figures. They use statistics of body size paradigms to show the gross change in proportions of popular toy brands that children gobble up to the extent that they remain popular for decades. The authors seek to connect negative body images from consumption of plastic toys with eating disorders in young adult males, though it is doubtful that such a logical connection can be made. Eating disorders are not a wholesale problem for young adult males, making the connection tenuous at best.
In the case of Charles Atlas' comic, he is a human being trying to make money off consumerism as everyone else is, and the fact that his article preaches that "YOU ARE NOT GOOD ENOUGH" is not enough for me to dismiss the article as trash. I understand the reasoning behind his method. He was at one time skinny and effeminate, and he made himself a successful alpha male through hard work and study, an attribute that could carry over into further success for those that read his book.
The other article seeks to blame toy action figures for eating disorders and other negative body images of young men by pleading with the parents of those men to look objectively at the toys they are buying. In this case, they fail miserably as no one in their right mind (ad hominem) would actually believe action figures influence anything outside of how children spend a few hours a day rather than watching television.
My parents never prevented me from reading, watching, or playing with anything. My favorite action figures growing up were GI Joe figures back before they grew to proportions that gave them masses equivalent to bodies floating in space capable of forcing orbits of smaller less massive bodies. While they were violent action pieces, I never grew up to be violent. While they had interesting clothing selections, I not once started dressing like them. The fact that they were expressionless and emotionless never inspired me to become a sociopath. The argument is weak at best, and outright propaganda at worst. My favorite cartoons were always my favorite action figures, and neither the cartoons nor the figures ever made me into some violent peon bent on assuaging my master's wishes. Expectations are realistic: blaming the expectations on toys is sophomoric.
In "Evolving Ideals of the Male Body Image as Seen Through Action Toys," the authors, Pope, Jr., Olivardia, Gruber and Borowieki hope to draw attention to the fact that over the last 5 decades, action figures have evolved from skinny, expressionless seemingly insubstantial stick figure into a hulking, musclebound, unrealistic dynamo that children collecting these figures should aspire to. The figures have grown in bicep and chest size while losing much of the waistline that their earlier counterparts featured. The action figures are a grim reminder of the superficial reality that current generations are placing on masculinity. The most popular and long lasting toy lines, Star Wars and GI Joe, have consistently put more pressure on the children collecting them through subliminal and obvious means that they shouldn't look like the average person, but instead should exude confidence, anger, and the ability to grow to obscene proportions in the quest for the perfect body. Television, print ads, and magazines all support this notion.
In "The Insult," the author, the ad agency or Charles Atlas himself, seems to be taunting and tormenting young adult males through the use of the story. The tone is one of abject pity on the viewers of the cartoon, telling them that they aren't really a man. Sand kicked in the face of the protagonist and his girl screams "you are not good enough for the woman at your arm." The bully tells the protagonist that he would beat him senselessly except he isn't worth his time, and as an extension the advertisement is telling the reader that they(the reader) aren't really worth the time and effort to make lean and muscular, but they are going to do it anyways as a favor to them. His girlfriend calls him a "little boy," further inciting rage and violence (in the next frame) to inspire the man to become a "real" man. He uses Charles Atlas' program and becomes a big strong masculine individual capable of turning away all bullies. This sets the tone that any person reading the ad could become who they want to become, and that person that they want to become is a large muscular alpha male with the potential to secure any woman and win any fight. The audience is clearly pre-pubescent and young adult males who have not yet grown into their bodies. Many of them get taller and noticeably skinnier as they go through puberty, and that body image creates a negative impression on their fragile developing psyches. Young impressionable men do not realize that the period of being skinny and susceptible to bullying is a short one that they just need to bear through, and Charles Atlas looks to capitalize off of this fact.
In "Evolving Idelas of Male Body Image as Seen Through Action Toys," the tone switches from one of emasculating the audience to one of informing the audience how they are being manipulated by negative body images. In this case, the audience appears to be the parents of children who seek out to buy action figures. They use statistics of body size paradigms to show the gross change in proportions of popular toy brands that children gobble up to the extent that they remain popular for decades. The authors seek to connect negative body images from consumption of plastic toys with eating disorders in young adult males, though it is doubtful that such a logical connection can be made. Eating disorders are not a wholesale problem for young adult males, making the connection tenuous at best.
In the case of Charles Atlas' comic, he is a human being trying to make money off consumerism as everyone else is, and the fact that his article preaches that "YOU ARE NOT GOOD ENOUGH" is not enough for me to dismiss the article as trash. I understand the reasoning behind his method. He was at one time skinny and effeminate, and he made himself a successful alpha male through hard work and study, an attribute that could carry over into further success for those that read his book.
The other article seeks to blame toy action figures for eating disorders and other negative body images of young men by pleading with the parents of those men to look objectively at the toys they are buying. In this case, they fail miserably as no one in their right mind (ad hominem) would actually believe action figures influence anything outside of how children spend a few hours a day rather than watching television.
My parents never prevented me from reading, watching, or playing with anything. My favorite action figures growing up were GI Joe figures back before they grew to proportions that gave them masses equivalent to bodies floating in space capable of forcing orbits of smaller less massive bodies. While they were violent action pieces, I never grew up to be violent. While they had interesting clothing selections, I not once started dressing like them. The fact that they were expressionless and emotionless never inspired me to become a sociopath. The argument is weak at best, and outright propaganda at worst. My favorite cartoons were always my favorite action figures, and neither the cartoons nor the figures ever made me into some violent peon bent on assuaging my master's wishes. Expectations are realistic: blaming the expectations on toys is sophomoric.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
What really makes me mad is...
What really makes me angry is communism. The idea that mankind in all its self consume, self absorbed selfishness would all unite to make their fellow people better off through hard work and effort is naivete at its finest. Economic science has come a long way in 200 years and to see such a large portion of the population proselytize communism out of some overly optimistic views is aggravating.
It cannot work. Communism is a fantastic utopian theory, but utopia isn't realistic. We need to use the best economic theory available to us, and that is free market capitalism.
It cannot work. Communism is a fantastic utopian theory, but utopia isn't realistic. We need to use the best economic theory available to us, and that is free market capitalism.
Saturday, February 7, 2009
Blog #3: Thintimacy
- Main Entry:
- 1dis·or·der
- Pronunciation:
- \(ˌ)dis-ˈȯr-dər, (ˌ)diz-\
- Function:
- transitive verb
- Date:
- 15th century
1 : to disturb the order of 2 : to disturb the regular or normal functions of
Anti - Ana
So there are these websites out there floating in cyberspace that most people will find deplorable. There are websites where people dress up in leather and spank each other..websites featuring grown women dressed in fur costumes with whiskers and whiplashes, and there are even websites where Christian teenagers can meet others of the same ilk to try to find true love (disgusting).
Then there are websites whose sole purpose appears to be enabling the behavior of irrational young women almost to the point of death. These websites are labeled "Pro-Ana" (or pro-anorexia, as in FOR ANOREXIA).
Two such sites, Livejournals Pro-Ana Community and House of Thin, are pillars of the Pro Anorexia community and operate as a hive of information and activity among those that wish not to eat even a single calorie for the day. They hide behind the mask that they are not truly pro anorexia sites, but instead are intended to be a helpful place where anyone suffering from an eating disorder can go to learn helpful information about eating correctly again, therapy, and suicide prevention.
Unfortunately they don't work that way. On the front page of Livejournal's community is a list of recent comments by members. Most of them seem truly pro anorexic, as they speak volumes about their psychology as they list the meager amounts of food they have consumed that day, or simply profess their random, chaotic thoughts about their eating disorder, how they view themselves, how the people around them treat them knowing they have a disorder, and other things that are not innocuous to those reading them.
House of Thin is similar, but possibly more menacing. They have a comforting, warm website design, with thick velvet curtains draped over their logo and a warm, vibrant background reminiscent of the Victorian carpeting that insulated the grand mansions and castles of the mid 19th Century. It appears they are actually having a party, a binging and purging or starving party, right there on the website. They seem eager to lure in the minds of insecure, young females and ensnare them in the philosophy of thin. Their words on the front page warning people that inside their website you will find nothing like tricks, tips or "thinspiration" does little to actually repel any person from wandering into their forums to seek "help" from other deranged individuals.
These websites enable this type of behavior by showing those that suffer from it that others are going through the same thing, and the fact that most of them are perfectly happy with it betrays a naive assumption that it is OK to partake in such behavior. Pro-ana websites look to affirm that this behavior is perfectly acceptable, or that these girls are part of a group of special individuals who show the utmost willpower in their daily activities by preventing the consumption of nutrition or the ability to eat as much as they can before forcing them to vomit it back up. This is a lack of willpower, because it is their body image that is forcing them to do these things to themselves. True willpower is the ability to see that you are who you are without necessitating life threatening changes in your life so that you can be popular, fit in, or exceed limitations.
They make the logical fallacy that since they are a large community of people suffering from the same types of disorders, that somehow they know what is best for the community at large, and they are not truly offering help to their members by directing them to the proper authorities. They tell you that seeking help from family and friends is unnecessary, thus their members tend to hide their true feelings and psychosis from those around them in the false belief that those people will turn their backs on them. Worse, they air a feeling of self righteousness on the topic, stating that it is a way of life or a lifestyle rather than a disease. Because of that they are dangerous to the people who view the websites.
Pro-Ana
Americans are fat. There is no doubt about it. The United States has blown up to epic proportions thanks to the constant assault of fast food advertisements and cheap nutrition packed into inexpensive packages served to you at a moment's notice whenever you get an urge to gorge yourself with fat, cholesterol and calories. I find it quite refreshing that I see women dieting to the extreme and working out until all hours of the night.
People have problems. Most people in some area of their lives are not absolutely normal. The fact that we allow websites to gather these people in search of others like them is part of why America is such a great country to live in (most of the servers of these websites are based in America). To take away the abnormal would be akin to taking away people's humanity. These women with disorders should feel safe when they confess their problems, thoughts, and feelings in a web community of like minded individuals. If you want to cut yourself and show the pictures on the internet, that is your prerogative. If that is what you want to do, then do it, and don't let other people tell you you shouldn't do it.
Think about the amount of energy we save by allowing these women to consume as little food as possible also. That food can go towards feeding the poor, the dredges of society that no one cares about. Obviously people care about these girls with an ED, so it is time to spread around the care to others who could not possibly procure food even if their lives depended on it.
To Be an Ana Centrist
Obviously these eating disorders are bad. They are the most severe and most lethal of any psychological disorder known to man, from heart disease to suicide, more women die from anorexia nervosa and bulimia than of any other mood disorder. Someone needs to help these women.
That help can be found in these Pro-Ana communities, as long as they are strongly moderated by people who actually care for the members rather than those who will only enable this type of disorder. For me to claim a disgust of what these websites are trying to accomplish would be hypocritical. I am not perfect myself, and I should not judge anorexics or bulimics. I fear that their lives are in danger, that they need to eat in order to stay healthy and survive, but it certainly isn't my place to point a finger of blame at them when I do not know them, or tell them that they are worthless. Everyone needs to be willing to listen to these individuals and point them in the right direction towards a successful future. These Pro-Ana sites have the ability to do that as long as those running them are willing to be objective about the situation.
Anti - Ana
So there are these websites out there floating in cyberspace that most people will find deplorable. There are websites where people dress up in leather and spank each other..websites featuring grown women dressed in fur costumes with whiskers and whiplashes, and there are even websites where Christian teenagers can meet others of the same ilk to try to find true love (disgusting).
Then there are websites whose sole purpose appears to be enabling the behavior of irrational young women almost to the point of death. These websites are labeled "Pro-Ana" (or pro-anorexia, as in FOR ANOREXIA).
Two such sites, Livejournals Pro-Ana Community and House of Thin, are pillars of the Pro Anorexia community and operate as a hive of information and activity among those that wish not to eat even a single calorie for the day. They hide behind the mask that they are not truly pro anorexia sites, but instead are intended to be a helpful place where anyone suffering from an eating disorder can go to learn helpful information about eating correctly again, therapy, and suicide prevention.
Unfortunately they don't work that way. On the front page of Livejournal's community is a list of recent comments by members. Most of them seem truly pro anorexic, as they speak volumes about their psychology as they list the meager amounts of food they have consumed that day, or simply profess their random, chaotic thoughts about their eating disorder, how they view themselves, how the people around them treat them knowing they have a disorder, and other things that are not innocuous to those reading them.
House of Thin is similar, but possibly more menacing. They have a comforting, warm website design, with thick velvet curtains draped over their logo and a warm, vibrant background reminiscent of the Victorian carpeting that insulated the grand mansions and castles of the mid 19th Century. It appears they are actually having a party, a binging and purging or starving party, right there on the website. They seem eager to lure in the minds of insecure, young females and ensnare them in the philosophy of thin. Their words on the front page warning people that inside their website you will find nothing like tricks, tips or "thinspiration" does little to actually repel any person from wandering into their forums to seek "help" from other deranged individuals.
These websites enable this type of behavior by showing those that suffer from it that others are going through the same thing, and the fact that most of them are perfectly happy with it betrays a naive assumption that it is OK to partake in such behavior. Pro-ana websites look to affirm that this behavior is perfectly acceptable, or that these girls are part of a group of special individuals who show the utmost willpower in their daily activities by preventing the consumption of nutrition or the ability to eat as much as they can before forcing them to vomit it back up. This is a lack of willpower, because it is their body image that is forcing them to do these things to themselves. True willpower is the ability to see that you are who you are without necessitating life threatening changes in your life so that you can be popular, fit in, or exceed limitations.
They make the logical fallacy that since they are a large community of people suffering from the same types of disorders, that somehow they know what is best for the community at large, and they are not truly offering help to their members by directing them to the proper authorities. They tell you that seeking help from family and friends is unnecessary, thus their members tend to hide their true feelings and psychosis from those around them in the false belief that those people will turn their backs on them. Worse, they air a feeling of self righteousness on the topic, stating that it is a way of life or a lifestyle rather than a disease. Because of that they are dangerous to the people who view the websites.
Pro-Ana
Americans are fat. There is no doubt about it. The United States has blown up to epic proportions thanks to the constant assault of fast food advertisements and cheap nutrition packed into inexpensive packages served to you at a moment's notice whenever you get an urge to gorge yourself with fat, cholesterol and calories. I find it quite refreshing that I see women dieting to the extreme and working out until all hours of the night.
People have problems. Most people in some area of their lives are not absolutely normal. The fact that we allow websites to gather these people in search of others like them is part of why America is such a great country to live in (most of the servers of these websites are based in America). To take away the abnormal would be akin to taking away people's humanity. These women with disorders should feel safe when they confess their problems, thoughts, and feelings in a web community of like minded individuals. If you want to cut yourself and show the pictures on the internet, that is your prerogative. If that is what you want to do, then do it, and don't let other people tell you you shouldn't do it.
Think about the amount of energy we save by allowing these women to consume as little food as possible also. That food can go towards feeding the poor, the dredges of society that no one cares about. Obviously people care about these girls with an ED, so it is time to spread around the care to others who could not possibly procure food even if their lives depended on it.
To Be an Ana Centrist
Obviously these eating disorders are bad. They are the most severe and most lethal of any psychological disorder known to man, from heart disease to suicide, more women die from anorexia nervosa and bulimia than of any other mood disorder. Someone needs to help these women.
That help can be found in these Pro-Ana communities, as long as they are strongly moderated by people who actually care for the members rather than those who will only enable this type of disorder. For me to claim a disgust of what these websites are trying to accomplish would be hypocritical. I am not perfect myself, and I should not judge anorexics or bulimics. I fear that their lives are in danger, that they need to eat in order to stay healthy and survive, but it certainly isn't my place to point a finger of blame at them when I do not know them, or tell them that they are worthless. Everyone needs to be willing to listen to these individuals and point them in the right direction towards a successful future. These Pro-Ana sites have the ability to do that as long as those running them are willing to be objective about the situation.
Monday, February 2, 2009
Logical Fallacies: Non Sequitur
Programming: If we continue to support open sourceware, we leave ourselves open to external attacks and the software industry will become obsolete over night.
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Blog #2: Dirty Advertsing, how Pearl Izumi muddied the message waters...
Pearl Izumi is an outdoors athletics company that specialize in running shoes, climate control outfits for use in variable running conditions, and extreme sport accessories. They have industry experience in an industry that is littered with weekend warriors and paper tigers. And it is in this partition of outdoorsmen that they miserably fail with this ad campaign.
The advertisement above is dirty, filthy, grimy; it wreaks of hard work, sweat and perspiration, and days where the only thing the people wearing this shoe looked forward to was sitting at a desk listening to the rantings of a customer in Canada who couldn't find out how to plug in their microwave over a headset that doesn't quite fit sipping coffee that is three hours too old. Until they could finally escape their reality and find a dark, wooded trail where for a brief instant in their life they felt like wild, uncivil beasts as their legs pumped furiously back and forth to cover that last 200 yards of hill.
But those people are few and far between. Most people jog, bike, row, or sprint to stay in shape, to ward off high cholesterol and pounds of extra belly fat that has been directly linked to high incidences of heart disease, the number 1 killer in the civilized 1st World. An advertisement is meant to solicit a buyer's response from those that it targets in order to drive up the bottom line, so that companies can make money and promise a high return on investment to their stock holders.
Pearl Izumi doesn't do this. They alienate their consumer base by making it seem that most of them aren't serious about running. The "wearenotjoggers" website is a collage of negativity towards people who spend an hour a day on treadmills trying to look like Brad Pitt or Christian Bale, the very people that Pearl Izumi should be appealing to. Perhaps they are trying to motivate the treadmillers into becoming more extreme about their sport, to learn more brand recognition and to take pride in their sports wear, but as a runner, I do not see any success in this tactic.
The story on the advertisement is one of melancholic discovery. The kind of people who should wear these shoes are the ones that happen upon grizzly crime scenes where serial killers dump their victims. Perhaps the serial killers themselves wear these shoes: that is how truly extreme these shoes are. Perhaps the campaign should be "we are not crimes of passion," but instead they are cold, calculated savages that take everything to the ultimate.
I'm a little insulted by this ad. I run on a treadmill, usually 5-10 miles a day, and I listen to my iPod and watch ESPN because where I live is ugly and traffic riddled. There are few paths to speak of, and those paths are very short and journey to streets packed with cars steered by horrible drivers and the anarchy of the DC metro area. I can't run around in a small circle and pretend I am hardcore. So what is it that Pearl Izumi is trying to tell me? Am I less of a man because I don't live in Montana where running trails stretch for ten or twenty miles? Am I less of a man because I don't run during the dead of winter when black ice covers the pavement and temperatures reach below zero? Perhaps the people wearing these Gortex Pearl Izumi tops are not real runners because real runners would run naked over the arctic tundra barefoot--Now that is extreme running.
I received a very strong emotional response the first time I read the ad and a further emotional response from reading the pages of the website. The campaign appeals to one of my most intense human emotions-disgust. I am disgusted that I never run through three feet of snow or traverse chaotic mudslides on my way through a 5k. I can only imagine what types of emotions they stirred up in the viewing public. Pathos is by far the strongest of the three elements of persuasive writing in this campaign, though ethos is strongly represented. They are, after all, a sporting goods company specializing in extreme outdoor sports. They certainly know what type of person makes the ultimate Pearl Izumi consumer. I doubt I received the message that Pearl Izumi hoped I would receive from their campaign, but I have to admit that at least they got me thinking about upping my running intervals and finding a group of elementary school children to leave my footprints on in the near future.
Despite the ad campaign's misgivings, it is still much more effective than the Reebok campaign. While most people really are casual exercisers, and while most of us prefer to sit on the couch and watch fictional runners find dead bodies on CSI rather than actually stumbling upon a lime pit in the middle of the Appalachians, none of us actually want to be that guy that is happy with mediocrity. We want to be the person that doesn't let a little physical pain or mental anguish from long, intense workouts stop us from performing at our peak. We aspire to be billionaires, to date supermodels, and to be the center of attention. With that in mind, Reebok is telling us to be happy with being nobodies, while Pearl Izumi is telling us to "stop eating an entire pizza on a Friday night all alone while watching reruns of One Tree Hill, get up and lace on a pair of extreme running shoes, and go solve a murder mystery by yourself, Superhero."
The advertisement above is dirty, filthy, grimy; it wreaks of hard work, sweat and perspiration, and days where the only thing the people wearing this shoe looked forward to was sitting at a desk listening to the rantings of a customer in Canada who couldn't find out how to plug in their microwave over a headset that doesn't quite fit sipping coffee that is three hours too old. Until they could finally escape their reality and find a dark, wooded trail where for a brief instant in their life they felt like wild, uncivil beasts as their legs pumped furiously back and forth to cover that last 200 yards of hill.
But those people are few and far between. Most people jog, bike, row, or sprint to stay in shape, to ward off high cholesterol and pounds of extra belly fat that has been directly linked to high incidences of heart disease, the number 1 killer in the civilized 1st World. An advertisement is meant to solicit a buyer's response from those that it targets in order to drive up the bottom line, so that companies can make money and promise a high return on investment to their stock holders.
Pearl Izumi doesn't do this. They alienate their consumer base by making it seem that most of them aren't serious about running. The "wearenotjoggers" website is a collage of negativity towards people who spend an hour a day on treadmills trying to look like Brad Pitt or Christian Bale, the very people that Pearl Izumi should be appealing to. Perhaps they are trying to motivate the treadmillers into becoming more extreme about their sport, to learn more brand recognition and to take pride in their sports wear, but as a runner, I do not see any success in this tactic.
The story on the advertisement is one of melancholic discovery. The kind of people who should wear these shoes are the ones that happen upon grizzly crime scenes where serial killers dump their victims. Perhaps the serial killers themselves wear these shoes: that is how truly extreme these shoes are. Perhaps the campaign should be "we are not crimes of passion," but instead they are cold, calculated savages that take everything to the ultimate.
I'm a little insulted by this ad. I run on a treadmill, usually 5-10 miles a day, and I listen to my iPod and watch ESPN because where I live is ugly and traffic riddled. There are few paths to speak of, and those paths are very short and journey to streets packed with cars steered by horrible drivers and the anarchy of the DC metro area. I can't run around in a small circle and pretend I am hardcore. So what is it that Pearl Izumi is trying to tell me? Am I less of a man because I don't live in Montana where running trails stretch for ten or twenty miles? Am I less of a man because I don't run during the dead of winter when black ice covers the pavement and temperatures reach below zero? Perhaps the people wearing these Gortex Pearl Izumi tops are not real runners because real runners would run naked over the arctic tundra barefoot--Now that is extreme running.
I received a very strong emotional response the first time I read the ad and a further emotional response from reading the pages of the website. The campaign appeals to one of my most intense human emotions-disgust. I am disgusted that I never run through three feet of snow or traverse chaotic mudslides on my way through a 5k. I can only imagine what types of emotions they stirred up in the viewing public. Pathos is by far the strongest of the three elements of persuasive writing in this campaign, though ethos is strongly represented. They are, after all, a sporting goods company specializing in extreme outdoor sports. They certainly know what type of person makes the ultimate Pearl Izumi consumer. I doubt I received the message that Pearl Izumi hoped I would receive from their campaign, but I have to admit that at least they got me thinking about upping my running intervals and finding a group of elementary school children to leave my footprints on in the near future.
Despite the ad campaign's misgivings, it is still much more effective than the Reebok campaign. While most people really are casual exercisers, and while most of us prefer to sit on the couch and watch fictional runners find dead bodies on CSI rather than actually stumbling upon a lime pit in the middle of the Appalachians, none of us actually want to be that guy that is happy with mediocrity. We want to be the person that doesn't let a little physical pain or mental anguish from long, intense workouts stop us from performing at our peak. We aspire to be billionaires, to date supermodels, and to be the center of attention. With that in mind, Reebok is telling us to be happy with being nobodies, while Pearl Izumi is telling us to "stop eating an entire pizza on a Friday night all alone while watching reruns of One Tree Hill, get up and lace on a pair of extreme running shoes, and go solve a murder mystery by yourself, Superhero."
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Blog #1 : The US Army's Desperate attempt at making war fun.
The United States Army came out with a game several years ago titled "America's Army", which is now in its 3rd edition. The game is meant as a pre-enlistment preparation tool that people thinking about joining can use to "prepare" themselves for combat situations, or it is just a fun, free game reminiscent of Call of Duty or Medal of Honor.
The website is laid out fairly well, as I was expecting a preponderance of military propaganda to assault my eyes before visiting, but when I visited there was very little that someone could call propaganda on the website. While there is a glaring large rectangle detailing the heroic antics of some of America's finest, it doesn't pop out as anything more than a side note to the overall professionalism of the site. "America's Army"'s site actually quite reminds me of classic gaming websites like Blue's News, the Warpcore, Gamespy, etc, that pander to the gamer in American children. While propaganda is noticeably missing, the appeal of subtle persuasion for adolescents seems obvious on 2nd viewing.
They splatter each of their pages with real military jargon, while also throwing in instances of "exciting" or "action" to entice the people who visit the website to delve deeper into its pages in search of adventure and glory. Each page is a recruiting poster waiting to happen. Other than that, they use some simple CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) tricks in order to make the pages interesting visually, like you are sitting at the controls of NORAD waiting for instructions from the President to implement DEFCON 1.
The target audience appears to be teenagers, as first person shooters appeal most to this generation of Americans. Teenagers happen to be the easiest target for recruitment, as many of them are looking for college scholarship money and a chance to get away from their parents upon completion of High School. Should the web page statistics ever be made available, I'm positive that most of the people who visit the site
fit in the 14-19 age range. The rhetoric of the website definitely works more to indoctrinate people susceptible to the types of language found there.
Noticeably missing from the pages of the website are the horror stories and realities of any war. Pictures of soldiers missing limbs or the lifeless bodies sitting in pools of blood do not coincide with the stories of heroism and the game's specifications. Also missing are the stories from soldiers over in Afghanistan or Iraq right now about the long periods of waiting they must do between assignments, followed by the brief moments of absolute terror they experience while orders are being yelled in their ears and bullets are whizzing past their heads. As such, I agree with Navy veteran Boyle in that this website glorifies what can subjectively be discerned as the good aspects of war while remaining silent on the reality of those who must fight in them.
My good friend Lance has been to Iraq twice, and each time he came back a different person. His stories detailed long droughts from fighting in which he had to find some way to keep himself occupied, where the others in his unit horsed around trying to stay entertained by pulling stupid stunts, the shortage of ready and willing women to play around with, and many times where they just sat around staring blankly at dirty walls rife with nude centerfolds that further desensitized them to reality. This, coupled with the hours of patrolling his unit had to go through where danger lurked around any corner, their sweeps of abandoned buildings in sectors heavily damaged by bombing and street fighting, and interviewing suspected insurgents or people who could be hiding them, the dismal experience he relayed to me tells a very different story from the one detailed on the America's Army website.
While the website may be a nest of misinformation and persuasion, I do not believe that video games or mere words written on a website will incite children to violence. Violent people are violent, regardless of where they were raised or what they are taught. The fact that some people play video games and then sack their schools with automatic weapons is not a testament to the influence of violent games, but instead a testament to the inadequacies of the human genome. People are violent, they have been for thousands of years, and they will be for thousands more. Video games certainly didn't make Hitler, Stalin, or Che Guevera kill thousands or millions of people, so I am sick of hearing this argument that video games created these monsters.
Until we begin to implant computer chips in baby's brains that control hormone levels, synaptic firing, and neuronal growth, and we can control them with a few strikes of a keypad, we are going to have people killing each other seemingly senselessly. As a species that has seen this play out over and over again, it is about time to accept it as a fact of life and stop blaming things that are only secondary factors.
The website is laid out fairly well, as I was expecting a preponderance of military propaganda to assault my eyes before visiting, but when I visited there was very little that someone could call propaganda on the website. While there is a glaring large rectangle detailing the heroic antics of some of America's finest, it doesn't pop out as anything more than a side note to the overall professionalism of the site. "America's Army"'s site actually quite reminds me of classic gaming websites like Blue's News, the Warpcore, Gamespy, etc, that pander to the gamer in American children. While propaganda is noticeably missing, the appeal of subtle persuasion for adolescents seems obvious on 2nd viewing.
They splatter each of their pages with real military jargon, while also throwing in instances of "exciting" or "action" to entice the people who visit the website to delve deeper into its pages in search of adventure and glory. Each page is a recruiting poster waiting to happen. Other than that, they use some simple CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) tricks in order to make the pages interesting visually, like you are sitting at the controls of NORAD waiting for instructions from the President to implement DEFCON 1.
The target audience appears to be teenagers, as first person shooters appeal most to this generation of Americans. Teenagers happen to be the easiest target for recruitment, as many of them are looking for college scholarship money and a chance to get away from their parents upon completion of High School. Should the web page statistics ever be made available, I'm positive that most of the people who visit the site
fit in the 14-19 age range. The rhetoric of the website definitely works more to indoctrinate people susceptible to the types of language found there.
Noticeably missing from the pages of the website are the horror stories and realities of any war. Pictures of soldiers missing limbs or the lifeless bodies sitting in pools of blood do not coincide with the stories of heroism and the game's specifications. Also missing are the stories from soldiers over in Afghanistan or Iraq right now about the long periods of waiting they must do between assignments, followed by the brief moments of absolute terror they experience while orders are being yelled in their ears and bullets are whizzing past their heads. As such, I agree with Navy veteran Boyle in that this website glorifies what can subjectively be discerned as the good aspects of war while remaining silent on the reality of those who must fight in them.
My good friend Lance has been to Iraq twice, and each time he came back a different person. His stories detailed long droughts from fighting in which he had to find some way to keep himself occupied, where the others in his unit horsed around trying to stay entertained by pulling stupid stunts, the shortage of ready and willing women to play around with, and many times where they just sat around staring blankly at dirty walls rife with nude centerfolds that further desensitized them to reality. This, coupled with the hours of patrolling his unit had to go through where danger lurked around any corner, their sweeps of abandoned buildings in sectors heavily damaged by bombing and street fighting, and interviewing suspected insurgents or people who could be hiding them, the dismal experience he relayed to me tells a very different story from the one detailed on the America's Army website.
While the website may be a nest of misinformation and persuasion, I do not believe that video games or mere words written on a website will incite children to violence. Violent people are violent, regardless of where they were raised or what they are taught. The fact that some people play video games and then sack their schools with automatic weapons is not a testament to the influence of violent games, but instead a testament to the inadequacies of the human genome. People are violent, they have been for thousands of years, and they will be for thousands more. Video games certainly didn't make Hitler, Stalin, or Che Guevera kill thousands or millions of people, so I am sick of hearing this argument that video games created these monsters.
Until we begin to implant computer chips in baby's brains that control hormone levels, synaptic firing, and neuronal growth, and we can control them with a few strikes of a keypad, we are going to have people killing each other seemingly senselessly. As a species that has seen this play out over and over again, it is about time to accept it as a fact of life and stop blaming things that are only secondary factors.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
This is a test
"This is a test of the Emergency Broadcast System. The broadcasters of your area in voluntary cooperation with the Federal, State and local authorities have developed this system to keep you informed in the event of an emergency. If this had been an actual emergency, the Attention Signal you just heard would have been followed by official information, news or instructions. This station, Life Circuitry, serves the DC Metro area. This concludes this test of the Emergency Broadcast System."
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