Hello my adoring fan peoples. There is a new blogger in the blogosphere. Her name is Alex Porter and she just set up her blogger account.
alexporter526.blogspot.com
You should all follow her. I work with her in Texas Freedom Network and we spent some time together while we were in DC together with Texas Freedom Network's Youth Leadership Council. She's smart and funny so check out her blog and follow it!
So, this past Friday, I was sitting in World Political Systems listening to the oh-so-interesting lecture on England's political system. More specifically their strict party discipline. Then my professor opened it up to discussion. Why is it that England has this system? Is it good or bad?
Almost immediately the hands shot up.
"It's terrible. They don't have the ability to choose what they believe in."
"They don't have any choice."
"They're stuck!"
The obviously American voices clucked on, not believing for a second that a political system that doesn't strictly adhere to the US's could be better in anyway.
But one student among them had the audacity to lay it on the line, to tell everyone what England was obviously missing.
"I think we're looking at it from this perspective because in the US we have more moral....umm, character, I guess, in our politics and the UK has none."
Ladies and gentlemen, I was stunned. So stunned I could not utter a word. I could only laugh. Loudly. Yes, I laughed at this boy. Long and hard.
Some people looked at me knowingly. But what really shocked me was that I actually received icy stares from some people. As if laughing at the complete ignorance of a person is somehow more taboo than being a xenophobic ignoramus with the nerve to indict an entire country's political system, which he has very little knowledge of outside of what he was told in the lecture.
The nerve of some people.
But, if that class taught me anything, it taught me the need to leave this place as soon as I can. New York, DC, Seattle?
Paris?
...London?
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?
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.
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.
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!
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.
