Where are the Thompsons of Yesteryear?

What happened to reporting?

Better yet, what happened to having journalists who questioned the government rather than feeding us the official story?

I recently bought "The Great Shark Hunt," a collection of articles and essays written by Hunter S. Thompson. Most, if not all, of the entries are ones he wrote for magazines, newspapers, etc. The very first article is called Fear and Loathing in the Bunker and describes how Nixon (this was written soon after the Watergate Scandal) had fallen under the weight of his own follies. Thompson says not only who he voted for but also calls out the Democrats saying that they probably would have done the exact same thing as Nixon, the only difference would be that they would probably get away with it. Thompson then goes on to lay out what he thinks Nixon could do (and most likely will do) to protect himself from impeachment.

Thompson's obviously thought out plot was never realized, but that doesn't matter. He does not only call out the government, but he also warns us of what it is capable of.

Why do we not have that today. Our analysis today consists only of what they said and how that might affect the popularity of the administration. Where was the outcry from our newspapers and news anchors over the Iraqui invasion? Where were they when our army crept into Pakistan? Why were they not demanding the release of all the pictures of the detainees who were abused?

I want my news to take sides and admit it. I want them to tell me the truth, after having gotten the official story and then researching to see if it was true. I want my news not just to report but to actually investigate.

Take your Katie Courics and your Soledad O'Briens'. I would take gonzo journalism any day.

What? Tomorrow?!

Sitting in my living room. It's interesting. My bedroom used to be my command center; everything that was accomplished (or wasn't) happened in that room. It seems now that I have commandeered the living room for my purposes. It happened slowly one day, for a reason I can't remember, and now here I am, typing on the couch.

Interesting weekend. Watched Fiddler on the Roof. Watched Rent. Both great musicals. Watched The Proposal. Nothing like watching Sandra Bullock shake it to "Get Low." I can't tell you how entertaining that was.

Finished "All Men are Mortal." Excellent. I assumed it would be a simple fiction tale about an immortal man, but it ended up being a work of historical fiction. Considered values and meaning through mortal an immortal viewpoints. Examined a existential crisis and solution throughout the ages. Main characters rarely the existential heroes. Small conversations carry the theme. Beautiful work.

Starting "Things Fall Apart" now. Simple writing, but so far I'm intrigued. Only finished the first chapter. I have to read a book about Andrew Carnegie and the rise of big business. The book is similarly titled. Don't want to read anything other than books of my choosing. I'm trying to hit the shorter books in my stack. Norwegian Wood, Rules for Radicals, then I'm going to start my recently acquired "Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius." It's a somewhat fictionalized autobiography of Dave Eggers. He is known as the co-writer of Away We Go and the founder of 826 Valencia.

I'm dying of fatigue. I haven't slept well this weekend. I'm not sure why.

Talked with Morgan about how I keep going when nothing means anything. Conversations on philosophical notions of meaning and value moved from Pei Wei to Barnes and Noble.

Need more money. Getting it in the form of a raise. Federally required. $7.25 is now the lowest you can pay your workers.

Saw Food Inc. Still a omnivore. Horrified while watching the movie, but ordered a hamburger 20 minutes later.

Aldus Huxley's "The Doors of Perception" is staring me down. It demands to be read. Sooner or later I will succumb.

We have an impoverished language. So Morgan tells me. Must use pronouns. Jazz is on the TV. May have stumbled upon a jazz channel. Listening to Sun Ra. Consciousness fading away...

New Post but not Here

I just updated my Baylor Watch blog. I thought you should know. The new post contains some pretty interesting news so I hope you check it out.

http://baylorwatch.blogspot.com/2009/07/what-baylor-isnt-telling-you.html

Check out the entire blog too. I didn't write all of the articles. The Cahnz helped out as well. I'm going to try and update it more often....


EDIT: I just remembered this video. It's of Arizona State Senator Sylvia Allen contending that the Earth is 6000 years old and therefore Arizona should be digging for uranium.



Duly noted on thinkprogress, the site I stole this from, is the irony of what Allen is suggesting. It is because of the radioactive decay of uranium that we know the earth is billions of years old.

Math is as Arbitrary as Language

As an interesting exercise, try and think of all the mathematical concepts that can be derived from themselves, or first principles. Go ahead, I can wait.

If you came up with anything besides arithmetic, you're wrong. Anything that involves measurements of any kind are arbitrary. Which means, to a certain extent, physics and chemistry are arbitrary.

Now, what I mean by arbitrary is this: the numbers do not have to be what they are. Take Density as an example. Density, if I remember correctly, is mass divided by volume. Now, take mass. It is an arbitrary principle. What makes a gram a gram other than what people have decided it was. Take volume. What is volume but a liter but a meter to the third? And what is a meter? Another arbitrary principle.

For language, it's the same thing. What sound does an A make? Why? Why is a B the shape that it is?

But for all the arbitrariness of both math and language, so much is built upon it. Math has given us physics which has given us so many things. Entire theorems are based around what could have been completely different and language shows what could have been. Each language is based on arbitrary, yet universal, components and from there and entire way to communicate is created.

Think of it in an interesting way. The math for an alien planet could, and probably would be, completely different from our math, but the principles would be exactly the same. The only difference would be the symbols and measurements used. It's the exact same thing with language. Spanish and English are radically different but each shares prepositions, clauses, nouns, adjectives, etc.

I'm not really sure what the point of this post was. One point is to get people to understand how arbitrary everything in our lives really is. Another is to show that while it's arbitrary there are still universal things.

Go See "Away We Go"

It was a great movie. Very sweet, very cute. It follows the couple Bert and Verona as they travel around the country (and one stop into Canada) to find a perfect place to raise their child after Bert's parents decide to move to Belgium the month before the baby is due.

Bert is your typical lovable John Krasinski character, almost reminiscent of Jim from The Office. He works selling insurance futures from the phone and adopts an interesting voice whenever a client calls him. At the very beginning of the movie, the pregnancy doesn't scare him. He seems to care more about whether his girlfriend will keep her breast size after the birth. Verona is Bert's girlfriend (she refuses to marry him though she promises to stay with him forever) and is pretty big for her term (at one point she is turned down a flight because the airline people think she is more than eight months pregnant when she is only six). Her parents died when she was in college and a decade later she still finds it hard to talk about it.

In looking for the perfect place to live, the pair go around the country meeting up with old friends and relatives to see if the cities are where they want to settle down. Each city gives the couple an different perspective on children. First there's Verona's old boss. She constantly ridicules her kids and her husband is part creepy, part lame, and too many parts just weird. At one point he starts talking about Arizona going through a drought and lists off the order of extinction that would happen. In the second city they meet up with Verona's sister, but not before an interesting and hilarious encounter with a uptight, alway teaching mother and her slightly-off son. Then they go off to Madison, where they meet up with Bert's carzy, ultra-feminist "cousin" (though one conversation makes it seem like they're a bit closer related than that). Hilarity ensues. Next is Montreal where the audience is introduced to the perfect family, but, of course, not everything is what it seems. Lastly the pair visit Bert's brother whose wife recently left him and their young daughter.

What I enjoy about this movie is that each family has something wrong with it. It repeatedly, and at times almost heavy-handedly, drives home the fact that no childhood is going to be perfect. From crazy new-agers to frontal lobes being sliced off, there are so many things that can go wrong with raising children but many of the children who go through these things can lead well adjusted lives. If anything, the families that Bert and Verona meet serve as models of bad behavior or humbling experiences.

Some real life elements found their way into the script. Written by wife-husband duo Vendala Vida (author of Girls on the Verge and editor of The Believer) and Dave Eggers (author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius), the script mirrors in a slight way the true life of Eggers. Like Verona, Eggers parents died while he was in college and he was charged with taking care of his little brother, much like it is implied that Verona took care of her younger sister.

Overall, I give this movie a B. Heavy-handed at times, it was still heartbreakingly sweet and gutbustingly hilarious. It could have used a bit more cohesiveness but nevertheless and entertaining film.

Go see it!

Stalking vs. Love

If you've ever talked to me about the whole Twilight craze, you know I have many things to say about it. Few of those words are positive. One of the "character traits" of that Edward fellow that just doesn't rub right with me is that he is a stalker.

Ladies, he stalks Bella (is that her name?). If I were to watch someone who I'm not in an intimate relationship with while they sleep, I could be arrested. The creepiness doesn't change just because you have glittery skin and fangs. Actually, that just means you were probably kicked around as a kid in high school. I'm sorry for that. Kids are jerks.

I'll ignore that I've been told that the first book has middle school grammar mistakes or that the girls who fawn of this Edward fellow have a propensity for black clothes and white make-up. I'll even ignore that this book was written by a Mormon (which, considering the Orson Scott Card debacle, is a tough thing to do), but what I cannot ignore is that girls all over the world are being deluded into believing that aggressive and potentially dangerous behavior is a sign of deep love. It's not.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer knows that stalking does not equal love though and she is out to make other girls know it too. Here I present Twilight Remixed.