Backstabbing Hypocrites

Sorry, but I couldn't let something about the whole Senator Craig fiasco go by unmentioned. If you don't know the story, then here's a brief rundown. The Senator allegedly was soliciting gay sex in an airport bathroom. He denies it, and is instead pleading guilty to disorderly conduct. He was on tape arguing with a cop over what events occurred. That's long story short, look it up on your own. What I really want to talk about is how the Republican and Democratic parties deal with party member scandals. With Craig, what you are seeing the Republican party do is distance themselves from him. They are telling him to resign. They are pretty much shunning him. With, for example, the scandal involving the one guy with 9 grand in his freezer, he's keeping office and the Dem party is not crying for his crucifixion. Call me ill informed and naive, but the Democratic party sticks together. The Democratic party stuck by Clinton while the Republican party voted to impeach. It just seems that the Republican party would rather kill one of their own than help them and support them. I guess they are trying to save what very little face they have left after what Bush did to the Republican party, but still. Killing the career of every one of their own in order to try to win is just absurd. That's a little rant. I have a small thing on the San Diego and Charger Stadium thing I'm thinking about.

The North American Union

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=14965

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Union


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T74VA3xU0EA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H65f3q_Lm9U

I encourage you all to look up as much as possible on the NAU. This is truly a disturbing turn for America. One that has been kept so secretive that nearly no one knows about it.

The Youth Soldier

This is to be a quick reflection on a core principle of the military fighting force of America (may be applicable to the world). The prime soldier is better the younger he is (the he part itself is also essential). With youth comes a general air of not being fully grown up or aware of all possible consequences to actions, or more mature ways of thinking. This youth soldier can be molded into thinking that there are clear reasons why he should fight and (if necessary) give his life for the good of the country. These things focus mostly on family. A youth soldier will most likely have a "girl back home", possibly married and impregnated her before leaving. I believe this action of marrying and mating that youth soldiers partake in is encouraged by the military in general. By creating a family at home, the youth soldier has something to fight for. They will be persuaded into thinking that the reason they fight is to protect family back home. Some may say that this is a double edged sword. The youth soldier will want to return back home as soon as possible, and will grow weary with fighting a war. They may want to go "awal" as it were. But I believe this to be a moot point. The youth soldier might think that they want to go home above all else, but they will also want to stay alive above all else as well. As their generals and platoon leaders throw them into a firefight, a youth soldier's drive to stay alive (because of want to return back home to family) will aid in his combat skills as a whole, putting him on par to the level of fighting vigor his fellow youth soldiers (who want to fight to protect family) have. The younger they are, the easier it is to make them believe they have something to fight for.

Constantly Seen But Ignored

I would like to remark on a group of people who are constantly in the public eye but are rarely talked about. News anchors. People such as Tom Brokaw, Wolf Blitzer, Ted Koppel, and the late Ed Bradley and Peter Jennings. Look at these people: They are constantly in the public eye, but they are in no way celebrities. A celebrity is someone like Angelina Jolie, Paris Hilton, or Tom Cruise. A celebrity is someone constantly under the scrutinizing view of the world. They are criticized for their every little action. They hold political views, ethical views, ecological views, and demand the attention of everybody. But news anchors are a different breed entirely. They do not go prancing down the famed Red Carpet of the Oscars. Their faces are rarely on any tabloid magazine. They are the faces of the news, and are never the news themselves. Sure, there are those choice few "news anchors" as you could call them. Bill O' Reilly comes to mind off the bat. But what he leads is what many would call a talk show. A real news anchor does not allow his or her political views to come out while delivering the news. They just deliver the news as it occurred. I find it so strange how news anchors are both so recognized but so largely ignored by the public. Most people have nothing bad to say about Dan Rathers. Lindsey Lohan however is another story altogether. And that is why news anchors and celebrities are two entirely different classes of television media.
Which brings me to another point. What about the blurred line between celebrity and news anchor. The most prominent figure that comes to mind is of course the comedian-turned-comedian-news-anchor Jon Stewart of The Daily Show. He has appeared in only a handful of movies, thus establishing himself as a small comedy actor. But his main and shining "role" is the news anchor for The Daily Show. With the growing popularity of the show, Jon Stewart is establishing himself as a very well known news anchor. While he may deny the actual impact of his show, downplaying himself as a real news anchor, he delivers news nonetheless. An outspoken Democrat, he is able to leave out his personal political views while delivering the news, something that a real news anchor must do. Jon Stewart accomplished something that nobody can. He was an actor in movies, then a news anchor. You will never see someone like Ashton Kutcher or Samuel L. Jackson (no matter how sweet that would be) becoming a news anchor, and on the flipside Barbara Walters will never be in a movie as an actor. While both a news anchor and a celebrity have to be able to act, the two will never switch places. I just felt like commenting on the news anchor. It is a role in our society that many people overlook. We feel they are just there delivering news. And upon closer inspection, we find out that's all they really do.

Are We Robots?

I just finished reading an article in the fake newspaper "The Onion". I know, it's not exactly an entirely reliable source of news, but it is funny, and that's what counts. But what caught me so off-guard was this article right here. Titled "Hey, Wasn't There Some Sort of National Tragedy A Few Months Back?", it brings to light a deeply disturbing and very real aspect of American life. After reading the entire article (which I suggest you do before reading this), I came away with a little twinge in my gut. Was there really a national tragedy a few months ago? What was it? Was it the school shooting? I'm pretty sure the entire nation mourned over that. Then there was the mistreatment of soldiers at the hospitals. That was upsetting. And every month in Iraq is pretty much the deadliest month of the war. This line in particular really got me thinking.

"You'd think the details of something on that level would be burned into my mind forever—burned into the whole collective consciousness of the country, for that matter. Maybe after 9/11, and Katrina, and the war, and everything else that's been happening for the last however-many years, the collective consciousness just doesn't have any room left for new tragedies to be burned into it.

Or maybe I'm just imagining things. That's the problem with the media these days—they fill our heads with so much violence and so many terrible things that you find yourself believing that it's real sometimes."

How terrible to think that the American population can no longer retain memories. Sure, there are some who would say that all tragedies will stay with you, but it's no use to dwell on them. In fact, it's better to just move on from terrible events. But not like this! What we are doing in America today isn't just moving on from a tragedy, we are completely ignoring it as though it never happened! Maybe it is just me who thinks that this is how things currently are. And that's a very real possibility. It could just be me. But you cannot disagree with the simple fact being that there seem to be more and more terrible things occurring in America now than ever before. Or is it just that the media is feeding us unreal pieces of news in order for higher ratings to be achieved? Of course sensationalism is the key to capitalism, but should that come at the cost of our very humanity, turning us into hollow drones who react to things when instructed and ignore what they are told? I guess there is no ultimate answer to this but one that time will tell.

Prisonalized Correctionalized Instituioned

What is the purpose of a prison? Using the politically correct term, the question is supposedly answered: Correctional Facility. Ideally, it is a place where we send those whom we imagine not fit to live among other humans in the hopes that they will be reformed into fully functional members of society. Nearly half of all prisoners end up being re-arrested once they are released. And with the United States leading the world in prisoners per percent of population, you know something is not working the way it is supposed to. But how can we reform prisons in an effective manner? I would like to bring up the novel 1984. People who did not fit in with society were tortured and brainwashed until they did. When they were returned to society, they functioned as a model citizen, but they were no longer the same person. They're very character and personality were destroyed in the process of making them fit in with society. The cause of this was because society saw their personality itself, their way of thinking and rational, as a flawed and abnormal ideology. What, then, is to keep a person from saying that there is no way to change a criminal since being a criminal is part of who they are? Maybe more later.

Reality Time

I've had a thought which has been running circles around my mind for some time now. Everybody knows that electrical impulses are sent through the nervous system of the body. Things such as taste, touch, smell, and sight are all merely interactions between neurons which are then interpreted by the brain. Since electricity does have a top speed, there is a certain amount of time it takes for a person to say, actually smell a flower, and for the smell of the flower to register in our minds. This got me into thinking about the concept of reality itself. Now, I don't want to go too philosophical or metaphysical here. I just want to address the issue of how we interpret reality on a small scale. Think of it this way. A sloth moves so slowly because it does not have a myelin coating around its neurons that speed up electrical impulses. It is therefore slower than us. However, from the sloth's perspective, this slow moving lifestyle is natural, and everything around it just moves faster. There is a very different way on how the world is experienced between sloths and humans. However we humans are also at a slight disadvantage. While we do have myelin coating our nerves, there is still a delay between the act of touching something and when our brain interprets the touch itself. And here is where reality comes in. We experience the entire world in a delayed frame. Sure, it may not be that noticeable to us, but who's to say that? A sloth surely thinks that there is nothing wrong with the way it interprets the world. It still gets by just fine without the myelin and with the long delay. However with this sloth there is no real delay. Same goes for humans. We don't think about the delay it takes for us to actually interact with the world. There are those who would say "Well, it's only a few nanoseconds of delay. It's hardly worth noticing at all." Well how exactly can we be so sure that it is that much of a delay? Any type of thing that we try measuring will be subject to the same delay. Think of it as a person with a stopwatch (a very accurate stopwatch). If the person started the stopwatch then stopped it, much more time would have actually passed in the real physical universe than what the person experienced and timed. There is the time it took for him to actually make the decision to press down the button, the time for the impulse to be sent down the arm to press the button, another impulse to remove the finger from the button, then a time for the man to repeat the process and stop the timer. All of that adds up, and for an observer unaffected by this delay, there might actually be a noticeable difference. Who are we to say? For all we know reality could be more different then any of us can imagine. But that's another topic for another day: The Perspective.

A Quick Look at the American Situation

Has America always been this split down the middle? Democrats versus Republicans? Has this country always been in the middle of a political tug-of-war? Or is just the rise in awareness that radio, television, and the internet has brought has now opened our eyes? I really do not believe that the political system was every more cutthroat then it is today. Sure, a person can say that the election will be decided by who has the most money to run commercials. Or that the person who can run the best smear campaign will win. Then there are of course those few that believe that there is nothing wrong with the democratic system (notice the small D people) we have today. Even if this is all just a matter of being more aware to a problem that has always existed, the fact of the matter is that there is something terribly wrong with the way politics are played in America today. There is a president with a 35% approval rating. There is Vietnam-esque war occurring. People are looking forward more to the future election than fixing the problems that we have today. And that goes for citizens and politicians alike. In this I do not want to play the blame game. That is for a different discussion altogether. But what doesn't change is the fact that there really is something bad going on right now. Sure, all the media will hype it up, it's their job. Going on about Orwellian society, dictatorship government, end of the world scenarios. What the media is telling us is an overworked, overplayed, and overemphasized version of what really is happening. America won't breed the next Hitler, that's for sure. But what we can be sure of is that what is happening to America right now will affect it for the years to come. And I can't see it being a very good future in its present state. I understand that I may have deviated a bit between numerous various topics. Hence the title. Look for (possible?) elaborations on any one of these topics in the (far?) distant future.

The Evolution of Television: A Hesitation

It has been proposed that television is a strictly one-way form of entertainment and media. Concepts, ideas, and beliefs are portrayed to us in an endless stream of images and sound. The audience can do nothing but be recipients of this media. With no way to respond to television, some people say that our society is being destroyed. They say that we are being told what to think and what to believe on some subtle level. This can only be combated by making television a better, more advanced reflection of the beliefs and general attitudes of the society. A proposed idea is making television a more interactive form of entertainment. The basic idea is giving the audience more control over what they see on television through the use of internet and so forth. The ultimate goal being the transformation of television into essentially a giant real life computer game. All you have to do is press buttons to stimulate content on the television. Am I taking this concept in too absurd a direction? Well it can't hurt to consider absurdity. The big question is whether or not a more interactive, two way link between television media and the audience will solve this rising "brainwashing" problem. I, however, do not believe that will work. Television is a phenomenon that both changed the world for the better and the worst at the same time. It is a medium that links the entire world together. But, for most of us, it is also the only window we have to the rest of the world. The furthest that television can conceivably go in relation to audience interaction is American Idol. The only thing the audience can do is influence such mundane content as the simple act of voting yes or no. To go any further would be to culture a society enslaved to the television more than it already is. The television would become the sole source of any and all information. The advanced human population would in essence become completely reliant on the television. If the television becomes some all-important device, and the audience believes that what they see is controlled by them, then it is that much easier to gain control over it. Perhaps a organization, company, or government would gain sole control over this media and only pretend to let the public control it. Then we are back where we started. Only this time the public will believe they have total control when they are instead being misled. So what reality do you want? The one where you know that you don't control the airwaves, or the one where you think you do but still don't? You don't have a lot of time to make a decision.

Ritualistic Establishment

As I sit here typing this, I can only think of the common phrase "Nuke the Blogosphere". As long as I've lived (not long) I never thought I would enter into this awkward community. But here I am anyways, abandoning my feeble Zanga in exchange for this exciting piece of internet. How long will this last? What profound and insightful commentary will I put forth on this? All questions that will be answered in a manner as timely as the storyline for "Lost". As for now, I'll let you ponder the meaning of this blogosphere.