Obama for president

I hope Obama makes it past the primaries.

If we talk point-by-point then Kucinich is the guy I should vote for. With Obama, there are some serious differences between his and my opinions. But I think that the person who should get that position is more than his talking points.

Obama seems to have a pretty amazing personality (as noted by several columnists who've met and followed him around for the past 4-8 years). He's obviously a clever person, well educated, aware of the world around him more than any other candidate this year. He treats everyone with the respect they deserve. Many have said that he's the kind of politicians that can communicate with 'the other side' in not only a constructive way, but in a way that makes Americans feel proud of what our political system could be.

Here is a New Yorker article about Obama which should make you feel proud too.

How great is it?

It's great to have free time! And to keep up the child hating persona, this is what I discovered:

20

Looking for payday loans?

Let's hope this hypothesis will never be tested.

To smile...

Now that academic obligations are completed (for the quarter) I feel like I can relax and maybe smile a little.

This link here made me smile.

The thing inside you

I know that people think the whole gestation thing is a miracle of life. I think it's an incredibly interesting process myself, but I have to admit that the whole "living thing inside you, stealing your neutrients, oxygen, etc" creeps me out, and it creeps me out a lot . . . to the point where it gives me nightmares.

People are often appalled when I share this side of me so I feel that I should clarify that I don't hate babies and I think they are all precious and cute (though I do think that recently-birthed babies are mostly scary and ugly and most definitely NOT cute). But I can't lie about the fact that it completely freaks me out that they spend 9 months growing inside our loved ones.

Today I stumbled across the following video on the YouTube:



Fodder for nightmares to come...

On staying positive

Overheard on the street yesterday:

Middle-aged man to younger man: "Well, it might look like it's bad for the economy, but hopefully [the weak dollar] will make those illegals think twice about coming here"


Yup... whatever we can do to keep the brown people at bay...

In the meantime, rich European women are flocking to boutiques in New York taking advantage of the situation, Australians are importing all of their electronic goods, and rap stars are flashing foreign currency in their music videos.

What to do when something is wrong in your community

I'm one of those idealists that believes that the best way to go about social change is to educate the general public. Most people are just not aware of the bad things going on around them, and even if they are, they often feel helpless OR they believe such is the natural state of things and should not be interfered with. So educating someone isn't just about exposing the problem, but also about providing evidence that it doesn't have to be that way and it's worth putting forth the effort to change something.

The problem is that getting through to the average 30 year old, or a 40 year old, or a 50 year old is really really hard. I've tried and failed, and I've seen people more clever than myself try and fail. (The problem, if you care to hear my opinion, is that, while they are quick to feel the offense, they are even quicker to forget and go back to the status quo using the "I can't do anything about it" excuse to make themselves feel less culpable -- something which I know I am often guilty of doing myself).

So we have to educate young people.

Websites like "the story of stuff" are doing that and I commend them for it.

As I watched their presentation I felt that they were being a bit alarmist. Being a middle of the road sort of person, I often filter arguments to simple emotionless cores. But recently I've realized that even if the situation is not dire, people need to feel that the sky is falling in order to get their ass involved.

My epiphany? I now, finally, learned what that fable is really all about. I know that the story sometimes changes to have a more interpretable moral but here is my take.

Chicken little notices a problem. She is, of course, mistaken. The reader knows it's not really a problem, but she's determined to do right so she goes to the government. Along the way, she meets lots of characters, and each of them is alarmed by her story, but only temporarily. Like adults, they soon forget about the real problem and are swayed off course and promptly eaten by the fox. But Chicken little is singular minded and progresses on to the King who ultimately shows her the error of her ways. But she wasn't eaten by the fox... which is a good thing. She followed her goal to completion, even though it was based on faulty assumptions.

I would rewrite the ending. In my version, shortly after the King explains it all, setting chicken little straight, the acorn tree falls onto the chicken coop killing everyone inside. Because I love irony. And gore.

I have ceased to be surprised by these sorts of things years ago

An Arkansas legislator wrote some incredibly ignorant things a few weeks ago. I'm sure that legislators from all over the US... all over the world actually... say stupid things like this all the time. This one just happened to write them in an e-mail which, somehow, became publicly available.

I ceased to be surprised about these things but I continue to be disappointed. I wish there was a way for me to fix the problem or learn to ignore it.