Maybe the end?

I think I'm going to end the current run of this blog since my topics have yet to seem to converge to a particular niche. I have a couple of ideas for new blogs with more specific focuses than whatever the hell type of topics this blog tried to cover.

In any case, if I choose to continue this blog, I may lessen my post frequency to that of a biweekly basis. I might even change this to a more personal (and maybe private) journal-like blog (in which only friends would be able to view ... so friend me?).

The ideas are still not clear. I'll (hopefully) update this with a clearer goal later in the week.

UPDATES:
01/06/10: New blog: Crack Theory Thursday

Dating tips

You've seen them. Articles and headlines about how to date better, more effectively, or whatever. On the one hand, they do offer some advice to beginners in the dating market. But on the other hand, they are absolutely ridiculous in their immaturity, generalizing, and sexism. I now only read them for amusement purposes, really.

[Actually, no text will be forthcoming. I've decided that this topic will be elaborated at a later date in a new blog.]


Unrelated: The following music video is a hilariously awesome video from Major Lazer (a DJ/Producer duo consisting of DJs Diplo and Switch) for their latest single "Keep It Goin' Louder" featuring Ricky Blaze and Nina Sky. The video is directed by Eric Wareheim. You might remember Nina Sky from a years ago from their single "Move Ya Body." They are exponentially hotter in the offering below, as is Diplo (the white DJ ... Switch is the crazily-dressed fellow who doesn't do the rapping).

Trust no one

We should kick out immigrants.

They leech off the American system of well-being. True, some may be quite productive to society, but how can we tell the good ones from the bad ones?! We simply cannot. Undocumented workers are a legal mess and cause significant undercounts in employee numbers and business income accounting. And the documented ones provide foreign competition to our domestic companies (which should be our top priority, of course). It would be easier just to kick out anything that did not resemble Americanism.

Any attempt to "mainstream" outsiders, such as bilingual education or affirmative action, should absolutely be met with ridicule, scorn, and immediate rejection. America should have one language. Americans aren't going to go to other countries anyway, so why embrace linguistic diversity at all? And affirmative action is silly. If minorities can't get accepted at schools or jobs on their own merit, then doesn't this just prove their inferiority? YES. The answer is unequivocally yes. Furthermore, we all know real and true Americans don't use drugs, so we should without a doubt push for all the costs of maintaining a war on drugs. It will be worth it when we can one day look at each and every American citizen and see a completely sober face. Likewise, we should outlaw alcohol, cigarettes, and any type of medical drugs. We Americans are hardy enough to not need to be sedated during open-heart surgery or whatever.

We should also keep in mind subversive insiders such as the immoral gays and lesbians, lazy welfare recipients, violent gang members, hippie feminists, and self-labeled "progressive" thinkers (who really just want to change the current American ideals). You're bisexual? Jail. You're a bum on welfare? Cut off. You're in a gang? Kicked out with those illegal (or legal ... who cares, right?) aliens. Feminist? Force you into a male-breadwinner marriage. A thinker? Who are you kidding? We should never tolerate such insider factions in America because change and diversity only leads to corruption and devolution.

America is an economic and military power-house and the most populous developed nation in the world. If we allow such alien outsiders and domestic immoralities to continue existing in and changing the very fabric of what it means to be American, we could lose this stance. Never mind the fact that the world and the political/economic global landscape is constantly changing. We should be the single beacon of stability and continuity of the world, if need be. If a man is swept away by the current of a river, he should cling tight to a tree limb to avoid drowning. He should continue to cling tight to his morals branch even if his surroundings change. Even if rescue comes. Even if the river dries up and there is no longer an imminent threat (maybe another one will appear!). Even if the man sees a wave of cyanide-filled needles approaching quickly from upstream. If he lets go, who knows where he will go? Perhaps the situation downstream is a hundred times worse!

So let's keep America just the way it is. Well, the way it was before all these other cultures (outside and within) tried to change the sameness and monotony that should make America what it is. Out with the foreigners and repress the insiders!



Unrelated music video! This is Emilie Simon's "Fleur de Saison." I don't actually know much about her, but the video is pretty cool. And I'm not sure if my friend who referred me to her mentioned it or not, but she's gorgeous/hot. (Yes, I understand the irony of including a French song with this post.)

An ode to hatred

A series of haikus about hatred(/evilness/badness)! (Because why the hell not?)

It's easy to hate.
When stressed, emotions run high,
And snap-backs frequent.

When one hesitates,
Trying to choose love or hate,
Quick choosing yields hate.

On God and Satan,
It's not simply good or bad,
But loved and hated?

Morals stress goodness,
But history proves diff'rent.
Society fails.

We strive hard to love,
But clear-thinking hap's not oft
Because hate's easy.

Unrelated music video. This is the Norwegian indie/folk band Kings of Convenience's "I'd Rather Dance With You." Their music is nice and mellow and a great listen!

We aren't ready for democracy

On Sunday, November 1, 2009, Swiss voters voted to suppress the Muslims in their country. With a surprisingly high 57.5% of the vote, the Swiss population (or at least those who voted on Sunday) have voted to pass a ban on the new construction of minarets in the country. Minarets are the tall distinctive spires on Muslim mosques.

I'll let you read the (controversial?) back story from the two article links above (and other sources you can easily find yourself if you're an overachiever) because what I really want to do is comment.

It's one thing when America continually votes against basic human rights (à la LGBT rights, gay marriage, health care, and so forth), but this is a European country doing it! America is generally viewed as quite conservative compared to its developed-nation counterparts, so the Swiss vote was definitely surprising to me. But the more I thought about it, the less surprising it should have been.

Europe probably has just as many issues as America has. One of the continually-discriminated groups in Europe are Gypsies. A few months ago in August, Madonna had a concert in Romania where she tried to briefly talk to the crowd about how wrong such discrimination was. She was booed.

Also, Africa is definitely not known to be human-rights friendly, but one such story I came across recently caused me raise an eyebrow. Apparently, albinos are being killed in Burundi and Tanzania simply because they are albino. What the hell?

Asian cultures tend to hold some sort of traditionalistic view. However, of more noteworthiness, I suppose it's a recent phenomenon, but in Japan, older people are starting to become discriminated against more and more, possibly leading some elderly to commit suicide in larger numbers than before (the reasons for increasing elderly suicide rates in Japan are more complicated than simply age discrimination, of course).

So what I'm trying to convey through these examples is that in all different parts of the world, some type of discrimination still exists that would be viewed as outrageous by (some of) the other parts of the world. That said, given the "pervasive" support of democracy (or something that resembles democracy) by the more-developed nations of the world, democratic nations are allowing the general populace to vote with their biased collective mindsets on issues that should really only be legislated by the progressive, more-intelligent higher-ups. A great example here is gay marriage in America. It has never been passed (or kept) by popular vote. It has always been legalized through the legislative or the judiciary system.

This is an excellent place for this comic: http://xkcd.com/603/

So it seems to me that well-educated people tend to have more-progressive, less-discriminatory views that the general population does not share. But we still allow the general population to vote with their collective, biased mindsets on issues that affect everyone--"everyone" including people who might be biased against by the general population. I'd say that people right now aren't fully-educated enough to realize the non-progressiveness of some of their views. Even a marginally additional amount of open-mindedness could go a long way. But otherwise, we just aren't quite ready for democracy with our current population.


Other links of possible interest:

Another article on the Swiss vote (you need to have a NYTimes account to read it now):
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/30/world/europe/30swiss.html?_r=1&hp

(Anti-)Creationist comic
http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=1604



Unrelated music video! Here is Shayne Ward's "If That's OK With You." He's from England and was the winner of the second season of the British series The X Factor. I became a fan a couple of years ago from the song below, "No U Hang Up," and "Breathless." The non-single songs "Easy to Love You" and "Melt the Snow" from his first(-ish) and second albums, respectively, are also noteworthy listens.

'New Moon' and women's sexuality

Due to New Moon's record-smashing box office over its debut weekend this past weekend, I think I have no choice but to offer my own commentary on the latest Twilight movie offering. I should preface everything by saying that I have neither read nor seen any Twilight books or movies, but I'm not commenting on the depth (LOL!) of the plots or characters so I think I'm good.

In its first three days of release, New Moon made $142.8 million. In case you live under an economic rock, that's a fuck-ton of money. So much so that it's the third best opening ever. The only two movies with better debuts are comic book movies (The Dark Night and Spider-Man 3), while the movie that got knocked out of third place was about pirates (Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest). Not only that, but these three other movies were released during the summer. Here's some movie trivia for you: big-budget blockbusters are usually released during the summer months because they have a better chance at making more money. By comparison, movies released during the slower months can top the weekend box office with about $15 million or less (for example, Sept 4-7, 2009; Feb 27-Mar 1, 2009; and Apr 4-6, 2008). Movies in the weekend box office pole position generally make in the $30-60 million range (don't quote me on that), so there's a significant difference.

Okay, so there's the non-summer-release box office smashing going on, but there's also another factor that we need to look at. Dark Night, Spider-Man 3, and Pirates all have appeal to both male and female audiences. Not to stereotype too much, but there's some action for the guys and some romance for the girls. You would think with a Batman movie, the audience would be overwhelmingly male; however, for the debut weekend, only 52 percent of the audience was male. With Pirates, the audience was "equally divided" between males and females. I couldn't find gender percentage data for the Spider-Man movie. But with New Moon, the audience was 80 fucking percent female. So if you're male and you went to see New Moon this past weekend, you were outnumbered 1 to 4. That $142.8 million was carried mostly by women.

Now I can't claim to know what the appeal of the movie is or why so many more women than men are appealed, but I'm going to try to theorize. I say that it's the "sex appeal" of the the two leading actors Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner. (Does anyone even know the name of the lead actress?) They have been gracing the covers of so many tween girl (and other) magazines for the past few months that it would be shocking if New Moon didn't make as much money as it did with so much easy publicity. Factor in the widespread critical panning of the movie, and you cannot honestly say people flocked to the movie because it was good. It was due to Pattinson's and Lautner's "hotness" (I put this in quotes because I'm still confused about their hotness ... I don't really think they're that hot. Twi-fan women....).

Of course, the implications here aren't too uplifting. Have hot, sexy, shirtless guys that want to do absolutely anything for the love of a girl put into a movie, and SUPERCRAZYFANGIRLS will ensure the movie's financial success. If you have a bunch of hot, sexy, scantily-scad ladies swarming over one man in a movie by offering to his love slave, what's going to happen? 1) Feminists will go batshit crazy. 2) Where are the death-defying action scenes? 3) Guys have porn for this. (Okay, I'm kidding on number 3 here, but I can't imagine such a meager plot widely-appealing to male audiences. Of course, I might be biased.)

So my question here would be as follows: If we can essentially boil down the appeal of New Moon to the (demure) sex appeal of lead actors ("demure" because, well, is there even any nudity or sex in the movies??), then aren't women's sexualities more visually-based than normally thought-of (i.e., men and women aren't really that mentally-different sexually)? Can women really be this shallow?

Related articles that I didn't use:

• From Dracula to Edward: The changing face of vampires: Interesting article showing the gradual sexualization of the Vampire in pop culture
• The Oatmeal blog post: How Twilight Works: This guy actually read most of one of the Twilight books and maybe saw a movie or two
  

Unrelated, but here is (one of) my guilty pleasure(s) Australian singer Anthony Callea. He's done other things since this video, but I became a fan of him from this 2004 Australian Idol performance of his of "The Prayer." The single still holds the record the for the highest- and fastest-selling single in Australia.

The (generational) lag of online media

In the past week, I've perused the following stories concerning online media:

• November 13, 2009: Facebook status update provides alibi
• November 16, 2009: Patients Turn To Online Community For Help Healing
• November 17, 2009: "Unfriend" named word of 2009
• November 17, 2009: Report: Countries prepping for cyberwar
• November 17, 2009: Can the law keep up with technology?

It goes to reason that people are not unaware of the changing cultural norms and customs regarding online tools. From the third article above, the New Oxford American Dictionary even named the single word of the year for 2009 as a word from the world of the Internet. Not since the dot-com boom of the late-1990s has a word from the online arena been dubbed Word of the Year.

So what makes 2009 different from the rest of the years of the '00s? Arguably, the Internet came to mass appeal in the '90s (which could explain how online-related words claimed the Word of the Year throne for six non-consecutive years during the '90s), but it wasn't until throughout the '00s that it has ultimately fundamentally changed the way people function, work, and interact with one another. Think about it. You can apply to colleges and graduate schools online (some only have online applications). You can apply to jobs online. Email is the preferred method for a lot of professional dialogues. If a company doesn't have a website, it is probably severely hindered compared to those that do have one. The company names "Google," "YouTube," and "Facebook" have all become verbs. Most younger people probably couldn't function without Internet access of some sort. You can watch movies and television shows online. You can go shopping online. You can compare prices between/among various competitors online. I could go on and on.

Ergo, this collection of events has essentially been spiraling toward a point in which the legal/cultural/infrastructural boundaries of yester-decade are being hard-pressed to change. Online tools have changed the population, but the infrastructures currently in place are for a population essentially before the Internet. From the articles above, people are relying on online social networking sites like Facebook for legal alibis, people are turning to the online community for mental help, countries are anticipating some type of new warfare via the Internet, and the laws of today rudimentarily apply to issues in the cyberworld.

So how can all these issues be rectified? The people currenly in power (that is, the older working-age population [ages 35-65]) could hardly be said to understand the Internet as well as those coming into power (i.e., the younger working-age population [ages 15-35]). As with any cultural shift, the effect undeniably affects the younger people much more than it affects the older ones, with the more-affected younguns bringing the changes with them as they age to become the older ones of tomorrow. Therefore, any type of foundational change (legal, economical, etc.) related to these cultural shifts must be implemented by the younger generation coming into power, which of course would take roughly a generation (20-30 years) to occur.

Unfortunately, we are already feeling the strains that the online world have been putting on our legal system since current laws have set geographical precincts. The online world doesn't quite understand national/state boundaries. We'll have to see what happens.

By the way, Mashable.com's CEO is surprisingly handsome.


Today's unrelated music video comes from U.K. singer Emma Deigman. I became a fan of her from her acoustic cover of the Killers' "Human" (which you should YouTube ... as well as her acoustic cover of Lady Gaga's "Just Dance"). This video is her official single "It Was You":

Electronica = next musical phase?

I'm calling it. The next phase of popular music will be electronica/dance. We had ballad-y powerhouse songs in the early 90s (a la Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston). We had teenybopper music in the late '90s (e.g., 'N Sync and Britney Spears). We had R&B music in the mid '00s (such as Beyonce and Rihanna). What's in store for the '10s? Electronica/dance, yo.

We're seeing some of the early pioneers of this with Lady Gaga's music. Her music--admittedly fucking bizarre--can definitely be roughly classified as dance-y/electronica-y (I mean, her Wikipedia entry classifies her as such). Here is her latest offering, "Bad Romance":


Two weeks ago, Owl City's first mainstream single "Fireflies" topped the Billboard Hot 100. Owl City is without a doubt electronicky ... and catchy. I first heard the "Fireflies" song on the radio and went mad-crazy when the DJ didn't name the song or artist upon the song's completion. It wasn't until I heard the song a few more times on the radio before I was able to find out these details.

Owl City is a a band led by Adam Young, a Minnesota native. He accumulated fame via his MySpace music page and was the musician with the most listens who was unsigned by a major record label (with something like over 10 millions views). So a record label (or labels? I didn't closely read his bio....) took notice. [Insert commentary about Web 2.0 and how it's changing the "normal" procedure of things. Please note that I want you to fill in the blanks there as I could comment a lot on that, so I'm just trying to save some space. Yes, I'm trying to save virtual space. Please stop judging me.]

Of course, other musicians are not unaware of this changing musical climate. If we look to mainstream artists who have remained relevant through "musical phases" (that is, they have a career that spans at least a decade), we can quickly see that they have observed the shift toward electronica as well.

In September 2009, Britney Spears released the very dance-y song "3":

In August 2009, Shakira released this electronica-like song "She-Wolf":

In March 2009, the Black Eyed Peas released the dance/electronica(?) song "Boom Boom Pow." They might say they're an R&B group, but all their recent stuff ("I Gotta Feeling" and "Meet Me Halfway") says otherwise.

In September 2008, Christina Aguilera released the "futuristic"-sounding song "Keeps Gettin' Better":

Granted, my musical knowledge is not that of an "expert," so I could be completely wrong. I know I'm leaving a lot of "evidence" out. I also realize that some of these songs might be annoying (i.e., "Boom Boom Pow"). But they do help to prove whatever point I'm trying to make. I should also qualify my "theory" by saying that anything that is mainstreamed into popular music will not be true to its home genre, so these songs will be no doubt "pop-ized" with influences from electronica or dance ... or something.

SIDE NOTE: Some of these videos are not hosted by YouTube because those songs can't be embedded outside of YouTube.


I would include an "unrelated" yet cool music video, but there are already way too many videos in this posting. I would have just re-posted the Owl City song at any rate. :-)

The tech generation is now

In the past two days, two of the many leading stories that have appeared as the "main story" (the story with the biggest picture near the top) on CNN.com have been Web 2.0-related. I check CNN.com frequently throughout the day and the stories usually are more "timely" news stories rather than the feature-like content of the two Web 2.0 stories I noticed. (These two articles are here [on social networking] and here [on cloud computing].)

If you peruse the articles (especially the one on cloud computing), you can't help but feel the informality of the tone of the article (I mean, the picture for the social networking article has a gratuitous KITTEN in it....). They are also both definitely in favor of online technologies. Obviously, CNN has realized the importance of the Internet to people and devoted front-page property to it, even if the articles on it aren't necessarily super-serious and "newsy" in tone.

On the social networking article: The numbers in this article are surprisingly low to me, although the percentages of kids with online profiles is still pretty high (for example, 38 percent of kids age 12 to 14 have online profiles). I think that with most "new" phenomenons, there co-exists an immediate backlash against them focusing on the negatives; social networking websites are no exception. However, as time drudges onward, larger proportions of people realize how silly such negativity really is. (This parallels wonderfully with gay marriage, although homosexuality is not really "new"....) I also have to commend the Bigbie parents in how they deal with their children having online profiles: they don't shun such technology and allow their children to have profiles, but the parents know the passwords. I can imagine the case in which as the children grow to high-school age that the parents allow them more online privacy. I feel that this is great parenting concerning an issue that didn't exist when the parents where younger themselves. The article's inclusion of social networking sites targeted toward younger children as a potential springboard for "older" sites like Facebook was a nice touch.

On the cloud computing article: This was totally not an article; at best, it's a narrative-like column, although I'm not going to discredit the great information it provided. Where the hell are all our online information stored? Are they stored in one place or several places? Is it possible to go to a physical location and see the saved data? How is it even possible to store the massive amounts of information? Lots and lots of question that the author tries incredibly nobly to answer. His attempts are futile though since most of the companies probably want to keep their competitive advantages secret, which is really a shame. People's personal information is being hidden ... and quite well too! It's good to be aware of the few "answers" he did manage to uncover though.

Of course, what does this have to do with the "tech generation," as I've phrased it? Well, cloud computing basically "fuels" social networking sites--since they require lots of storage space with online profiles, photos, videos, etc. These two issues (among others) are closely interrelated, and this is the atmosphere today's youth are growing up in. Little five-year-olds can be more adept at using a computer than a middle-aged or elderly person ever could hope to be! It's downright astonishing!

So we have the Baby Boom generation born from WWII to the 50s. We have Generation X from the 60s to the 70s. We have Generation Y from the 70s to the 80s (wOOt for Gen Yers!). Generation Z then spans the 90s and 00s. So what about beyond? Whomever's idea it was to begin naming generations at the end of the alphabet was not thinking very far ahead. Generation Yers have sometimes also been dubbed millenials or Generation Nexters. Generation Z is still young so it's hard to characterize them, but they and the following generation will no doubt be incredibly connected with the Internet, texting, cell phones, IMs, social networking sites, Web 2.0 tools, and so on and so forth. "Generation Tech," anyone? The Technies?



Unrelated to the "tech generation" stuff: I just discovered the hilarious musical episode "Once More with Feeling" of the cult-favorite series Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Season 6, Episode 7). Lots of hysterical (and catchy) songs. The following video is the clip of Spike singing his one solo song. Who knew James Marsters could sing and sing sexily? I did some light research and found out he had or has a band or something. Needless to say, I'm a fan now. The singing in this video starts at 1:01.

Buffy - Spike - Rest in Peace - MyVideo

Please stop being sexy

Dear hot people,

It would really help me out if you could stop being so sexy. Seriously. You know the people I'm talking about. It's those people who are just so goddamned sexy/hot/attractive who walk around nonchalantly, explicitly exhibiting their natural beauty, being super distracting.

Is it not wholly satisfying enough for you to just be hot? Do you have to cause me to lose a few precious seconds as I do a double-take? It would also be uber helpful if you could always sit toward the back of the class (preferably completely behind me) so that my eyes don't just naturally drift toward you and your kind. Even better, it would be extremely helpful if when you go out to walk around and shop, walk, or whatever, that you slather your face in grease and wear mismatched clothes so as to de-sexy-ize yourself.

You hot people already have tons going for you.

• More-attractive people tend to have more-educated spouses (more-attractive people tend to "marry up," regarding education).

• Attractive people tend to marry other attractive people (although men tend to get the better deal).

• Attractive people tend to have better job prospects.

Obviously, the list of "hot" advantages could go on and on.

Therefore, I sincerely believe that it would be most favorable to all parties involved if sexy people just stopped being sexy all the fucking time. They should be required to go out of their way to do so. Dating would be like a lottery; one would figure out they nabbed a hottie only after the fact (of marriage or feelings or what-have-you). The uglies would have a more-equal chance of attaining a job. Productivity would go waaay up. Of course, these are just speculations.

So, hot people, please stop being hot.

Yours truly,
Timmy


P.S. I thought it was amusing to include two random pictures of attractive people who decided to put their arms up to explicitly (and maybe unintentionally) exponentiate their sex appeal factors.

Also, unrelated but super-hilarious music video! This is "Danger! High Voltage" by Electric Six:

Are we too politically-correct?

Jack Johnson was a champion boxer who was jailed for 10 months in 1920. Why? Essentially because he dated a white woman, which was against the law back then. He died in 1946 in a car wreck. Oh, he's also black. The reason why Jack Johnson is (re)gaining media attention around now is because there's a movement calling for a (rare) posthumous Presidential pardon to rid him of his "crimes" of interracially-dating.

Really, America? Really?! Johnson died half a century ago. Such a pardon would only be symbolic at best and a waste of time and attention at worst. It seems that in this day and age (in the U.S.), we are constantly walking on eggshells, afraid of offending someone. Several minority groups have risen and created groups just to bitch and whine when some sort of semi-high-ranking public official makes a slight gaffe that honestly unintentionally "discriminated" against a group.

• When Saturday Night Live did a parody of New York Governor David Paterson who is legally-blind that may have parodied Paterson's blindness more than his incompetence, Paterson issued a statement saying that the sketch was "third-grade depiction of people and the way they look."

• When white police Sgt. James Crowley arrested black Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr, the story gained national prominence and eventually led to President Obama holding a "beer summit" with the two (and Vice President Joe Biden) at the White House to clear the air.
  

• During Senator Hillary Clinton's bid for the Democratic Presidential nomination in 2007-2008, news anchor Chris Matthews apparently made a comment on-air about Clinton that caused many people to cry out "sexist." So much so that Matthews had to apologize for his comment.
  

• A couple of weeks ago, Boyzone member Stephen Gately unexpectedly died. Gately was openly gay. Daily Mail columnist Jan Moir then wrote in her column some speculation about Gately's death and tied it to his homosexuality. The column "received the highest number of complaints the Press Complaints Commission has ever received."

The list of examples of political or social faux-pas can obviously go on and on and on. The common thread occurring through these stores and others of a similar fashion is the need to want to "make amends" for doing something that sort of offends a minority group. Is that really necessary? Can't that group just accept that someone is bigoted against them?

It just seems that we're (un?)intentionally creating an atmosphere that fosters hostility. Do we really need to be made aware of all the linguistic loops and jumps that we need to go through before saying anything, to prevent seemingly-attacking a group (or groups) of people? There are just so many layers of political correctness that exist nowadays. I mean, there are classes you might have to take that go over these issues (classes you need to take for a job, a program, school, etc....).

Anyway, just some scattered thoughts....


Unrelated, but I find this music video hilarious. It's "Jesus Is My Friend" by Sonseed:

It's okay because I have friends who ___

"I'm not a racist. I have piles and piles of black friends." This a quote from Keith Bardwell, justice of the peace in Tangipahoa Parish in Louisiana. As reported in the news Thursday of this week, Bardwell denied a white woman and a black man a marriage license because he does not believe in interracial marriage because he feels children from such a union will be adversely affected through being biracial.

The obvious reaction I should be having is as follows: What the fuck, Bardwell? This is clearly racial discrimination. What the hell were you thinking? Why are you still defending your actions as if you're in the right days later after this story has not only gained national attention but also the disavowal of several high-ranking public officials?!

However, I am choosing to only focus on Bardwell's quote that I began this blog entry with. Of course, my reaction still remains the same: What the fuck, Bardwell?!

This (il)logical qualification has frequently been used to justify a discriminatory stance on something. "I just don't believe in gay marriage. I'm not homophobic though; I have a gay uncle." "I'm not entirely sure the Holocaust actually happened. I'm not an anti-Semitic though; I mean, I have Jewish friends." "Is it really the rapist's fault? That woman was just asking to be raped with her scantily-clad dress in the workplace. I'm not a sexist pig though; I love women." (Okay, so this last one is a stretch, but I think my point shines through.)

I cringe every time I hear something like this. Why would you think you need to qualify your statement by saying you know people who are so-and-so? The only reason I can think of is because you're afraid that what you just said was fucking bigoted. And how else can you quickly qualify such bias with your tiny, close-minded brain? Oh, that's right: mention that you know someone who is black/gay/Jewish/female/whatever. I mean, do you think people live in bubbles where there only exists people who are exactly like themselves and the fact that you know people who aren't exactly like yourself will astonish people? If so, please wake the fuck up.

Honestly, I can't comprehend how mentioning your social network adds to your argument or even begins to justify anything at all aside from the notion that you know such people. Unless you're trying to socialize with me, I don't care that you know person X, Y, or Z. If you don't think your perspectives, knowledge, and stances can speak for themselves through your words (logical structures, rhetoric style, vernacular, etc.), then what you're saying is full of shit. That's it. I don't know what else to tell you.

My name is Timmy, and I think close-minded people should go fuck themselves so that they will die out through inbreeding. But it's perfectly okay for me to say these things; I have friends know people who are incompetent idiots.


EDIT: Picture of Bardwell!



Unrelated, but I highly recommend bluegrass group Nickelcreek. Here is "When in Rome":

No time to date

My taste for people who say they're "too busy" or "don't have time" is slowly but steadily and surely declining. I've expressed my distaste before (although I've made an exception for those exceptional [lol! at the exception/exceptional word play here] individuals who are working multiple jobs, doing the school thing, socializing amazingly well, and running a small country on the side). Honestly, I think such people just have poor time management skills and don't want to admit it--because in admitting it, it would somehow be a failure or something.

My reasoning for this rant isn't necessarily of personal concern (although there is indubitably some personal appeal) but rather of a broader conceptualizing of "relationships." I haven't watched many movies or television shows as of late, but I've seen enough both now and in the past to notice a particular pattern regarding the dating world: people want to be "in the same place" and be "free" to pursue a relationship without having personal, work-related, or other hangups. This "phenomenon" isn't restricted to just movies/television and extends to the "real world" as well. Of course, my question at this point is ... why the fuck should that be the case?

I mean, we do empirically see some sort of societal symptom of this: the average age of marriage for both men and women has increased steadily in the past 50 or so years from the lower 20s to the upper 20s (at least in the U.S., this is the case ... although it's the case in many developed or otherwise nations as well). We also see increasing average ages over time for bearing/fathering children. The predominant rationale behind this is generally that more people are going to school or putting "career first" before venturing out into the dating market to find a mate/spouse and "settle down" (as if marriage/family is a "settling" matter). This reasoning makes sense at a surface level, but going just two inches deeper, we have to ask a very probing question: are people today really that much more busier than people in the past? Or could there be some other reason for the increases in the average ages of marriage/bearing children/almost everything else?
Obviously, I don't know the answer to this, but I do have my own personal speculations. I think that it *could* boil down to cultural shifts ... that is, cultural shifts toward that of a more self-egocentric nature. The notion that "the world revolves around me" may never have been increasingly truer the closer one gets to the current time. Paradoxically, in the past decade, the generation growing up has also been forced to be more worldly ("caused" by events such as 9/11, the southeast Asian Tsunami, the formation of the EU, the rise of China, etc etc etc).

At the individual level, there really shouldn't be any of the "I'm just really busy" or "I don't have time for a relationship" or "We're just not at the same place" bullshit. Firstly, everyone is busy. That's life. If you're not busy, you should be because you're probably a loser and making absolutely nothing of your life. (Harsh but undeniably true.) Secondly, when the fuck are you going to even have time for a relationship? Are you planning to set aside "relationship time" when you're single for the off-chance that a relationship comes up and fills that void? If so, what do you say to your friends? "Oh, sorry, we can't hang out tonight because it would take up some of the time I've set aside for a relationship that I'm NOT currently in but want to be in"? The corollary to this is the "I'm not looking for a relationship now." Is a relationship supposed to be something you're on the look-out for ... like keys or a lost puppy? If relationships tend to work like this for you, PLEASE give me some tips; I'd appreciate it greatly. The third outlook I gave is also completely illogical. How can two people with usually-completely-different lives ever be in exactly the same place and time? "I'm sorry, but I just don't like you as much as you like me" or "I think I like you more than you like me" are both crazy-talk. Shouldn't the fact that you both like each other be enough? It seems to me that the case that two people like each other EXACTLY the same amount is virtually impossible. If two people like each to varying amounts, then perhaps dating/relationshipping will increase the amount of liking of the lesser-liking person. If not, then how the hell else would you figure this out? Playing the incredibly-inaccurate guessing/hypothesizing game? Furthermore, I don't think I know anyone who is "in the right place" for a relationship (of course, this could be due to the fact that I'm a young adult). If someone says that he/she isn't in the right place for a relationship and you ask him/her when is a good time, they very-often will not be able to answer that question. But I can give a pretty clear answer: they will never be ready; they are one of those people who always wants things to be just "perfect," essentially setting up any- and everything up to fail because things "just won't be right." There's a country song (I know, I'm sorry) called "Perfect" by Sara Evans whose lyrics say, "Baby, every little piece of the puzzle doesn't always fit perfectly / Love can be rough around the edges, tattered at the seams / But honey, if it's good enough for you / It's good enough for me-eee-ee." I almost couldn't have put it better myself.

Anyway, I wanted to end on this note: You're not that busy. Get over yourself. If you think you are, your priorities are probably all sorts of messed-up.



Mostly unrelated, but I recommend Nosaj Thing's "Aquarium":

I still listen to old-school 'N Sync

That's right. I was a big fan of the late-'90s/early-'00s bubble-gum pop music explosion, and I still am. I still somehow know the lyrics to so many songs from back in the day that it's not even funny. The list of artists include, but is not limited to, the following: 'N Sync, Backstreet Boys, Spice Girls, Christina Aguilera, Britney Spears, Jessica Simpson, Mandy Moore, 98 Degrees, LFO, and BBMak. For the past three hours, I have been youtubing various songs from this era and singing them. Passionately. Right now, Sugar Ray's "Every Morning" is on.

A decade ago (holy shit! a fucking decade!), I remember actually hiding my fondness for pop songs from my peers and fellow classmates for fear of ridicule and humiliation. If I share such affinities now? A flood of reminiscing stories flows forth from childhood memories. It's bizarre and intensely interesting how/why this occurs. Maybe I just didn't have the right social circles.

Pop music that captures pre-teen and teenage attention is incredibly influential, I think. It may not appear like it at the time since top music critics and other adults will scoff at the over-commercialization and shallowness of much of the more-successful pop music. But the important thing to keep in mind is that the sector of the population that such pop music caters to will become the said adults themselves in a matter of time. Not only that, but the young population is being captivated at a highly-impressionable time in their lives. As such, it would be interesting (though probably impossible) to see if a generation would be grow up differently had it grown up listening to the pop music of a previous or later generation.

Furthermore, pop music, I think, really does unite people to a certain extent. If I (as a native Texan who grew up in Texas) meet someone who grew up on the west or east coast, we may not share very similar backgrounds due to slightly or vastly different school systems, neighborhoods, and local culture, but we sure as hell will have common ground as far as national pop music/culture of yester-decade goes.

I feel like I'm rambling around a lot. What I'm trying to say is that while pop music can easily be scorned critically musically, pop music (and culture) actually have far-reaching implications for the people affected/listening to it and for society and culture at large. I want to elaborate further, but I might try to legitimize my ideas at a later point in time with some sort of research or evidence, so I'm going to spare you, my dear reader(s).

In the meantime, here is a list of other essentially one-hit-wonder songs from the late-'90s/early-'00s that I also found/find enjoyable:

• Dream - "He Loves U Not" and "This is Me"
• 3LW - "Playas Gon' Play"
• O-Town - "Liquid Dreams," "All or Nothing," and "We Fit Together"
  
• Soul Decision - "Faded" and "Ooh, It's Kinda Crazy"
  
• Len - "Steal My Sunshine"
• Crazy Town - "Butterfly"
• Hoku - "Another Dumb Blonde"
• Samantha Mumba - "Gotta Tell You" and "Baby, Come on Over"
• S Club 7 - "Never Had a Dream Come True"

Mostly-unrelated: Here is the song "Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?" by She & Him, an indie folk duo consisting of Zooey Deschanel and M. Ward. I'm not necessarily digging the song, but the video is amazingly cute ... as is Zooey Deschanel.

More education ≠ higher incomes

People with bigger shoe sizes have, on average, higher IQs. In a large representative population, this is absolutely true. But does this mean that smart people have big feet? Or that small-footed people are stupid? This "statement" is often-used in statistics courses when showing that correlation does not necessarily mean causation. The reason that people with larger shoe sizes have higher IQs is that as people age and get older, their feet grow, as do their knowledge bases. So it's not that X causes Y or Y causes X but rather Z causes both X and Y, two otherwise-unrelated variables.

With this concept in mind, let's explore education. We always hear how higher-educated people have substantially higher starting salaries, higher median incomes, and higher wealth-accumulation abilities. Therefore, we have this notion in which we feel that if we go to college and get degrees, we will have better incomes. But is this really the case? Brace yourself because I'm going to blow your mind (or, at least, my mind was blown--BLOWN--when I learned about the following theory that I will attempt to detail).

People think that they go on to higher education (undergraduate, graduate, doctorate, law school, med school, etc.) to advance their careers, gain knowledge and a better understanding of the world, and have higher starting salaries when they embark on their chosen career path. But what they are actually doing, though, is signaling to employers that they are high-productivity individuals. That is, because they went on from high school to pursue higher education, they are much more likely to be highly-productive than those who decided they were finished with education with just a high school diploma.

For example, taking a step downward on the education ladder, people with high school diplomas obviously have higher median incomes than high school dropouts. However, we are led to believe that high school diplomas and GEDs (general educational diploma or general equivalency diploma) are about the same and that people with one or the other have similar incomes (since "high school diploma" and "high school equivalent" are almost always grouped together). But what do we see when we make GED its own category? How would its median income look compared to that of high school dropouts and to that of high school diplomas? Interestingly enough, the median income of GEDs is closer to that of high school dropouts than to high school diplomas. So we are forced to determine why this is the case. To unravel this conundrum, we need only look at the population of people who have high school diplomas, who are high school dropouts, and who get GEDs. The characteristics of people with GEDs more closely resemble the traits of dropouts.

Now why did I just overly-inform you about the financial statuses of high school equivalents and dropouts? Going back to my contention that education does not determine future income, we see that even though GEDs and high school diplomas should be on-par with one another, the income level of each group is vastly different. People with high school diplomas stick it out for 4 years, while people who received GEDs basically dropped out for reasons probably akin to the reasons high school dropouts leave school. We see here that high school serves as a filter between the "more-productive" high school diploma people and the "less-productive" GEDs and high school dropouts. So getting that GED will not necessarily put you on the same income level as that of high school diplomas because people with diplomas don't make more income necessarily because they have more education but instead because by finishing high school, they have signaled that they (on average) are more productive individuals. And it is in being more productive that people gain more income and potential for upward movement in the workplace, both positionally and financially. It is not solely due to more education.

Bringing back higher education into the picture, we see a parallel to the high school case in that people who finish a 4-year degree being more likely to be "high-productivity" people than those who are college dropouts or finish 2-year degrees. Likewise, 4-year degrees are likely to be "less-productive" than masters degrees, professional degrees, and doctorate degrees.

So essentially, education serves as a filter for high-productivity people. Much in the same way that panning for gold separates the gold from the dirt/rocks/pebbles, education separates high-productivity people from low-productivity people. Therefore, it's not that getting more education will garner higher salaries; instead, it's that the people who naturally would want to get more education are likely to be more-productive and thus better-suited to advance economically in the workplace.

Ergo, more education does not necessarily cause higher income. Instead, being a high-productivity person could cause one to want to go on to higher education and to be professionally-efficient (causing one to be much more likely to get raises or promotions). I say "could cause" because there are always exceptions, such as highly-productive college dropouts like Bill Gates or Michael Dell. It's not a "fit-all" standard, of course, but it's definitely a "fit-most" rule.

By the way, this economic theory is part of the Signal Model. Your level of education signals to firms looking to hire you if you're a high-productivity or low-productivity person since they can't know how productive you may be until years down the line. Education simply serves as one of the signals firms can use to determine your potential capacity. So if you have a lot of high-productivity signals, you're probably more likely to be hired because you have better potential to produce more output for the firm over the length of your career with them.


NOTE: My apologies for the sucky pictures; recommendations to replace them are welcome! :-D Also, the chart picture isn't the ideal example I was trying to find of GED versus high school diploma, but it is extremely difficult to find something that is. If I find something better, I will be replacing it at will. Thanks!


Unrelated, but I'm currently listening to a cover of Bob Dylan's "Boots of Spanish Leather" by Tyler Hilton (and Alexa):

Oh, American democracy

Democracy is such a grand idea in theory. I mean, it's "power to the people"! How can "majority rule" not do no wrong?! (My apologies to people who have trouble comprehending the negation of negatives. My advice? Learn almost any other language. Double-negatives are not grammatically-incorrect in several non-English languages.)

In America's case (since I can't claim to know much about how democracies in other nations work), the short answer to why democracy fails: lobbyists and minority groups. Well, maybe "fail" is too strong a term; let's go with "inefficientiates," that is, a pseudo-verb form of "inefficient."

The origin of lobbyists is admirable, I'm sure, but in today's atmosphere, I'm very much not too confident that lobbying is all that "respectable" any longer. There's an urban-legend-like story of lobbying originating during President Ulysses S. Grant's terms in the 1870s. Because smoking was not allowed in the White House, President Grant would saunter over to the nearby Willard Hotel and smoke his cigars in the hotel lobby there. Eventually, it became known that President Grant frequented the lobby, so people wanting some Presidential influence would come to see him in the hotel lobby. Of course, the actual start of the term "lobbying" was in the U.K. in Parliament and the House of Commons, with "lobbying" occurring in the U.S. even before the Grant administration. But those stories aren't as fun as the Grant story, so I'm not going to share those.

Over time, lobby groups developed, with some having more influence than others over Congress and such. How do they have more influence? Perhaps long histories with particular political parties, allegiances that may be difficult to break. Or maybe there are corrupt "deals" going on. Also plausible is that a good number of the "majority rule" people simply like the leader of a lobbyist group. Whatever the reason, lobbying undermines the basic ideals of democracy: rule by the people. Lobbyists have essentially changed the American democratic field to rule by a few passionate people. Don't get me wrong; it's admirable to be passionate about a political issue. However, when laws/bills/whatever are getting pushed based ultimately solely to just these passionate people, then what the hell happened to majority rule or rule by the people?

Also of issue to me about democracy is its "majority rule" axiom. I mean, majority rule makes sense in small settings. For example, if a group of friends and I were trying to decide where to go eat, majority rule makes sense. It'll make most of us happy. But on a national scale? A lot of fucking people are going to be marginalized, and we're talking millions here. I mean, if you think about it ... ideally, all it takes is 50.01% of the population to approve something, and it would be law. What about the other 49.99%? Their voices are lost. (Of course, here enter lobbyists again....)

So in America, white people comprise 66% of the population (in 2006). Majority rule, right? Therefore, who the fuck cares about the other races? If the white people can stick together, say goodbye to your rights, blacks, Hispanics, Asians, Native Americans, etc. (Interestingly, in both houses of Congress, the two leading political parties tend to stick together within themselves too. They really shouldn't. If everyone were able to decide for their own stances on issues instead of blindly following whatever is the "Republican" or the "Democratic" option, maybe our government would be better.) Perhaps I'm missing something here, but I don't like "majority rule by the people."

Of course, although it may not be a great system/process, democracy is the best we have--as far as appeasing the most people. We should just revert to authoritative dictatorships. I mean, if a lot of people are going to be unhappy, we might as well all be unhappy (except for the happy dictator).


EDIT: Of course, the very next morning after I post this, I find this cool article/blog(?) on the evils of the history of lobbying.


Unrelated, but I highly recommend Danish electronic musician Anders Trentemøller.
This is his visually-stunning video for "Miss You":

Fall already, America

There's something wrong with contemporary America. We seem to not only get barely anything done but also tremendously suck at efficiently accomplishing the handful of things we do do. I'm referring, of course, to our government and economic structure and school system and what-have-you. I would elaborate, but I would much rather try to explain the whys of our faults than the whats.

Perhaps we have bureacratized our processes and systems to the paradoxical point of incompetence. To achieve anything, we now need to fill out a shitload of paperwork and a dozen people need to see/read/stamp each form (who each have to approve completely each paper ... you know, each person with his/her own different viewpoint/opinion) before going through the process again at another department. (Tangent: Does this remind anyone of the Vogons from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series?)

Maybe we should look at our developed-nation peers to figure out what the hell we're doing "wrong"? Interestingly enough though, America is arguably the most conservative developed country in the world. A fascinating side note: one of the antonyms of "conservative" is progressive. Incidental coincidence or meaningful correlation? Regardless, one big (pun intended) difference is that America is fucking huge--land-wise and population-wise--so maybe we can't look to our tiny developed-nation peers. We should do something about this overabundance of conservatism though.

Also conceivably at blame is our culture. Granted, "culture" is a very broad, virtually-all-encompassing term, so I'm going to use it to refer to our current generation and its collective (pop) cultural mindset. The (younger) generation in power and the generation growing up today grew up in a world where America was unabashedly number one economically, militaristically, politically (ha!), culturally (think "westernization"), and so forth. People grew up thinking (or at least had some sort of thought resembling), "Hey, I live in a country that is the best in almost everything. I don't need to fucking do anything!" Wrong. Doing nothing does not maintain pack-leader status. Doing nothing causes our infrastructures and top positions to falter. (An easy analogy here is a top-of-the-line computer. Sure, it's awesome initially, but without constant upgrading and upkeep, it will not only wear down but also be beaten by its competitors.)

So what the fuck, Americans? I think a lot of the problem is--and I'll try not to bash conservatives again--that this is an invisible problem. How the hell does one see infrastructures falling apart? (Un)Fortunately, the answer to this (and so many other issues) is education. But the thing is ... we're not educating our population correctly! We put kids through 12-13 years of primary/secondary schooling (the second half of which is just a repetition of the first half) to learn ... nothing. People are graduating high school with little personal (and local/state/national/international) economic know-how, barely any technical skills (skills that are learned on-the-job anyway), and simple-mindedness or lack of regard for larger societal issues (which ARE important because these things will affect their lives!). Our education system is totally failing. It needs an overhaul. In this day and age, four-year college degrees are becoming the new GED; why not change the system so that the High School Diploma reverts back to what it was? We shouldn't need to pay for our education! This is only going to widen the socioeconomic gaps in our society even more (by the way, these inequalities have actually been widening in the past few decades).

Anyway, going back to this blog entry title, I'm not advocating that America should actually collapse and dissolve. I'm just confused as to why something hasn't happened to America. Why haven't we fallen from the "top spot" already? Why do Americans think we're even at the top of anything still? When is America going to fall to number two so that our top officials can finally say, "Hey everybody! We're not number 1 anymore! We need to change things NOW!" so that change can finally occur more quickly and efficiently. Remember during the Cold War when we were bitter rivals with the Soviets and put a man on the moon 8 short years after JFK ambitiously dreamt it on the national stage? We had the wonderful warm, fuzzy feeling of being able to beat someone. Maybe we need that again.


Unrelated, but I'm currently listening to British musician Steve Appleton's "Dirty Funk":