Choices Choices Choices

I can't decide what I want to read next. I just finished Nausea by Sartre last week and from there I started Doors of Perception by Aldus Huxley. I think I'm going to finish that but I don't know what to read.

I have A LOT of non-fiction books. I could read my newly acquired Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes by a one Jacques Ellul. I also have The Rastafarians a book about the history of the Rasta movement. I have Profit Over People, Towards a New Cold War, Hegemony or Survival, Deterring Democracy, For Reasons of State, and Objectivity and Liberal Scholarship by Noam Chomsky. Or maybe I can finish Freedom and Neurobiology by John Searle or Rules for Radicals by Saul Alinsky.

Oh Zues! The fiction. Oh the fiction! Restaurant at the End of the Universe (the sequel to HitchHiker's Guide), Lolita by Nabokov, Pale Fire also by Nabokov, Breakfast at Tiffany's by Capote, Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky, The Castle by Kafka, Something Happened by Joseph Heller (author of the wonderful Catch 22), The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemminway (who for some reason I imagine as a black man...), The Sound and the Fury by Faulkner, The Mandarins by the ever inspiring Simone de Beauvoir, Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller (supposedly a superclassic), Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by one of my favorite authors Haruki Murakami, Wild Sheep Chase also by Murakami, and JD Salinger's Nine Stories, among others of course.

Too many choices. But I think to cut down the choices I'll go with a system of one non-fiction book then one fiction book. And that means after Doors of Perception I will be reading a fiction. Oh what shall I choose?

Assimilation

First, I would like to apologize for the lack of posts in the past week. I was in Vegas with my significant other and left my computer in Waco because I was worried about my number of carry-ons. Hopefully I will be posting with more frequency from now on.

I hate the way America's cultural system works. Though many may want to deny it, America has a cultural hegemony at work. It is that of the White, Protestant, Upper-class Male. This particular class sets up what is the foundation of what is American and what is not. And because those in power want to maintain their power, this class dictates how others should assimilate and how they should be "other"-ed.

America is not the melting pot it believes itself to be. You have to fit a particular mold before you can be considered at best a second-class citizen. You must speak English without an ESL accent or slang, you must celebrate the holidays of "Americans" and you cannot epouse any political belief other than those popular here.

This creates a battle in foreigners and the marginalized in this country. Should you give up your cultural heritage to fit into society and give your children a fighting chance in this country, or should you keep your heritage and risk not being able to function in society. This is honestly what it has come down to. There is some chances to preserve your heritage, but for the most part it's ship up or ship out.

What makes this particularly vexing for me is that the dominant culture does not give any concessions. They do not assimilate, for the most part, to the new changes being brought their way. They "other" the new change and allow it to go on in their midst without ever attempting to participate or understand. Sure, change is sometimes forced on them, but how many kids who were forced to take a foreign language class in high school and college can actually or want to actually speak the language. No, they grudgingly accept that they have to do this, but they care not to understand what they are doing or make an effort to use it. They just do the assignments, half-halfheartedly, smirking in that knowing way with the rest of the kids who do the same because they don't have to worry about this crap, their culture is dominant.

It's Been Way Too Long

Not much to post. Just posting because I haven't in 2 weeks. I've been busy, I'm sorry.

I got a 4.0 in summer school. I was pretty excited about that. I read a couple books this summer, and hoping to get a few more out of the way before school starts again. Got my apartment organized just last night, which is surprising. Hopefully I can keep it this way.

Other than that nothing really, so I'll leave you with this video.

New Discoveries!

I learned today that human beings have been wasting time opening bananas for centuries. I'm not sure what happened, but we have found a way to make banana opening a sometimes difficult and damaging (to the fruit at least) process.

From what I understand, the majority of humans open their bananas from the "top" or the stem that forms somewhat of a "tab" (to quote the horrendous Ray Comfort of "The Atheist's Worst Nightmare" fame). This "tab" does not always yield easily. Sometimes you have to dig your finger into the skin, sometimes you have to cut it, and sometimes the top comes out mushy.

No longer! Apparently, humans are the only species to do this. It's quite interesting. All other species open it by pinching the bottom of the banana and peeling the two flaps that are created.



This presents an interesting conundrum for the previously mentioned Ray Comfort.



Notice how he describes the banana. He describes it from the "top." Everything that he says is presented from the human view of opening a banana. But, if you try opening the banana from the bottom it is a lot easier. So interestingly, by looking at a banana from the majority human perspective with an intent of using it for the argument from design, the argument completely fails.

I love fundamentalists. If you love them too, I recommend you watch

Thunderf00t's (that's two zeroes instead of the letter o) Why do people laugh at Creationists series


And Thunderf00t's debate with Ray Comfort:




Also, I'd like to point out Richard Dawkins debates too. Not the John Lennox one though, that was a patently rigged debate.



In other news, I rediscovered Python, the programming language. Now, I must admit, I never actually used Python, I simply had it. I didn't know the language so I couldn't ever create something. But, I recently found that the Baylor libraries keep guidebooks to different software programs as "electronic resources" which means that they can be accessed at any time from a computer. That's pretty sweet in my opinion. So I'm gonna try my hand at Python and maybe learn the language!

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.