| (no subject) |
[Aug. 25th, 2007|11:59 am] |
Yes, I'm cynical. It's a piece of my character that I'm particularly proud of, as it allows me to cut through the nonsense of our 21st century world.
Up until this morning, however, I was not cynical enough to really believe that the entire voting base of America is idiotic. It's a theory that gets kicked around in academic, elite social circles from time to time, and it's certainly a joke I've cracked on more than one occasion. But, part of me always stayed the course. I could believe in an intelligent voter base, I could believe in democracy in America.
And now, I can't: http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/08/24/clinton-best-to-deal-with-terror-attacks/
I would direct your attention not to the article itself, but to the comments below it. So, not to the professional journalist, but to the words of the American public itself. Here are a few choice samples:
"Is she serious? A liberal? Better for national security? Yeah right, after they cut military spending and destroy the Patriot Act. The left just makes me laugh whenever they open their mouths."
"That’s right Clinton, “you’ve lost two recent elections” and you will lose many more until you get rid of the anti-American leftist element in your party and the gay/lesbian movement, and get back to the RIGHTS OF WORKERS AND BLUE COLLAR ISSUES. The Dems will see many more defeats, don’t be fooled by the faux anti-war election of 2006... especially after the Dems ran on an anti-war platform but have totally funded the war and kept it going since their victory."
"The liberal lie; “The US has made the world more dangerous” continues to come out of people’s mouths. We have smoked thousands of jihadists and jihadist-minded individuals, and we have YET TO SEE ANOTHER ATTACK IN AMERICA. What do these liberals base this “trendy argument” on? Ask Israel if they are more safe now that Sadaam is dead. Sadaam payed thousands of dollars to jihadists and their families for carrying out carnage within Israel. Why do liberals always have to stretch the truth?"
And that, my friend, is the tip of this most depressing iceberg. These comments are asinine, moronic, sophmoric, and vapid. How utterly disappointing. |
|
|
| (no subject) |
[Aug. 19th, 2007|02:38 pm] |
Missa set a tentative date for her wedding yesterday. Nebulous, subject-to-change details are as follows: early April, Las Vegas, black dresses for the bride's maids. It will be a stunning occasion.
I've written about my sisters getting married before, and I don't want to belabor the point. Just... Stephanie was such a beautiful bride, and Missa is going to absolutely breathtaking as well.
There's been a lot of love happening in the past year. It's been extremely overwhelming to watch and experience, and I can't dress up in words how happy I am for the both of them. It knocks me off my feet, how amazingly beautiful their marriages will be. :) |
|
|
| (no subject) |
[Aug. 7th, 2007|11:29 pm] |
Man, why don't I live in Germany? Or Spain? Or France? Or Italy? Or England? Stupid America...
Symphony X opening for Dream Theater on their Chaos in Motion World Tour 2007/2008:
DATE / CITY / VENUE
26 September, 2007 Helsinki, Finland - Ice Hall
28 September, 2007 Stockholm, Sweden - Hovet
29 September, 2007 Oslo, Norway - Spectrum
1 October, 2007 Hannover, Germany - Capitol
2 October, 2007 Warsaw, Poland - Torwar
4 October, 2007 Antwerp, Belgium - Lotto Arena
5 October, 2007 Paris, France - Zenith
7 October, 2007 Dusseldorf, Germany - Phillipshalle
8 October, 2007 - Frankfurt, Germany - Jahrhunderthalle
9 October, 2007 Rotterdam, Netherlands - Ahoy
11 October, 2007 Glasgow, Scotland - Academy
12 October, 2007 Manchester, England - Apollo
13 October, 2007 London, England - Wembley Arena
21 October, 2007 Munich, Germany - Tonhalle
22 October, 2007 Erlangen, Germany - Stadthalle
23 October, 2007 Stuttgart, Germany - Masse Congresscentrum B
25 October, 2007 Bologna, Italy - Land Rover Arena (Paladozza)
26 October, 2007 Rome, Italy - Palalottomatica
27 October, 2007 Andria (Ba), Italy - Palasport
29 October, 2007 Milan, Italy - DatchForum
30 October, 2007 Padova, Italy - Palasport
31 October, 2007 Winterthur, Switzerland - Eulachhalle
2 November, 2007 Barcelona, Spain - Palau Olimpic de Badalona
3 November, 2007 Madrid, Spain - La Cubierta
6 November, 2007 Toulouse, France - Le Phare
7 November, 2007 Nancy, France - Zenith
9 November, 2007 Newport, Wales - Newport Centre
10 November, 2007 Wolverhampton, England - Civic Hall
11 November, 2007 Blackburn, England - King George's Hall |
|
|
| (no subject) |
[Aug. 3rd, 2007|10:34 am] |
Alright, it's no secret to anyone who's even remotely a part of my life. I love Symphony X.
I mean, I really love Symphony x. I travel 4+ hours every time I catch them in concert. I own enough Symphony X apparel to wear a different item every day of the week. I once stood outside of a sketchy club in the Bronx for 3 hours in the dead of winter, wearing (among other things) some very non-insulated Converse high-tops just so I could stand right up at the stage in front of Michael Romeo. And I'm thinking about following them around the country the next time they tour. Not kidding, they're amazing. I may be one of their biggest fans.
So, when even I have trouble enjoying their new music video, you know there's trouble. Check it out if you want, just... be gentle. |
|
|
| (no subject) |
[Aug. 1st, 2007|12:48 pm] |
So, sorry about lying. I've been far too busy and far too tired from said busy-ness to sit down and write about skydiving. I'm horrible, I know.
I do, however, have some time now to jot down a quick note about Wikipedia. In particular, I'd like to point you to the article entitled "Children of God". And, to get even more specific, allow me to share another e-mail exchange between my mother and myself:
( (Parts of)My e-mail )
( (Pieces of)My mother's response ) |
|
|
| (no subject) |
[Jul. 25th, 2007|09:08 am] |
Please note that I will, in the very near future, be writing about my skydiving adventure. I've found that it's quite hard to capture on paper the experience of jumping out of a plane at 10,000 feet. Perhaps if there were an easier way to spell the sound of one's own screaming as the noise of 100 mph wind fills one's ears, the process would go faster.
As a sort of "tide-me-over", my mom wrote me an e-mail yesterday morning. This is a particularly hilarious excerpt:
So, I've been wondering (as a mother) what other pertinent facts I might have missed in your formative years as it is obvious that I missed a biggie in not informing you that it is customary for one to wait for the plane to land before departing the aircraft. At least, I know that I covered the no umbrella in a thunderstorm. Did I ever mention not swimming in shark infested waters?
I *heart* my mom. |
|
|
| (no subject) |
[Jul. 12th, 2007|11:58 pm] |
Symphony X is tomorrow. Were it possible for me to make text sing through the sheer force of my will, you'd be hearing a chorus of angels right about now.
In other, less silly words, I'm so unbelievably stoked! |
|
|
| (no subject) |
[Jul. 11th, 2007|11:37 am] |
Hold on, WeatherChannel.com.
Are you actually telling me that you 1) Piggy-backed on an installation of RealPlayer to get your Weather Services software on my computer, which 2) Refused to install correctly through my firewall and 3) Caused RealPlayer to operate so horribly that I was forced to uninstall it and then 4) Forced me to uninstall your software as well, even though it didn't install correctly, an ordeal that ended with 5) You opening a browser window to a survey entitled "Wait! Why are you going?" that has the audacity to 6) Leave off the real answer to the question, which is (of course) because "I didn't want to install it in the first place and it made my computer function most horribly"?
Ridiculous. |
|
|
| (no subject) |
[Jul. 9th, 2007|11:24 pm] |
I question the act of "burying" a word. And I mean ever burying a word.
There's certainly a lot of baggage associated with that much-hated member of the English lexicon. But, as my good friend George Orwell will attest to, restricting language is dangerous. Excluding words from our vocabulary, regardless of the good intentions surrounding the deletion, restricts human thought (read: not good).
What would the short term effect of this deletion be? We can assume they'll be good. Less people will hear the term being used, so there's a good chance that there will be less psychological damage caused by its usage. (Here, I'm assuming that a comparable experience is hearing the word 'fag' get thrown around by a group of straight people; it's very intimidating and emotionally disturbing because you can't identify the proper context). I very much so doubt that racial integration attempts will be bolstered by this change, but I don't want to rule it out. So, all good things. But what about any short term negatives? People have to think before they speak, which is probably a blessing in disguise anyway.
But, what about the long term effects? We lose the baggage. THIS IS NOT A GOOD RESULT. The word encapsulates entire generations worth of struggle, torment, and battle. It's a repository of historical knowledge. It draws educated and open-minded people back to a time where very real, brutal, and inhumane treatment of our fellow man occurred. I don't believe that erasing this history will be good for our culture in the long run. Our past indiscretions are what make us up.
Then again... there's a contradiction in all of this. My hesistation to employ the N-word in this opinion is an example of all that is wrong with the elimination of this diabolical sequence of six letters. So, the final note here must be this: Is self-censorship in this instance an act of discretion or one of guilty erasure? I fear it's the latter, but then again, I'm not black. Perhaps I am unable to identify the proper context. |
|
|
| (no subject) |
[Jul. 7th, 2007|10:45 pm] |
|
Given the criteria for selection, I'm surprised that the ever-magical Internet was not even included in the voting for the new seven wonders of the world. |
|
|
| (no subject) |
[Jun. 28th, 2007|01:44 pm] |
|
I really can't find the words to mock Manquarium. There will be no puns or other witty commentary on my part on this one. Any contributions I make towards Manquarium's stupid quota would be a drop in its self-made ocean. |
|
|
| (no subject) |
[Jun. 27th, 2007|03:58 pm] |
I think this whole ongoing bit on the Supreme Court's recent decisions is really interesting.
Then again, I would.
It would be nice to learn enough about the law to really dig deep into constitutional rulings and, perhaps more importantly, understand why those rulings turned out the way they did.
Studying complex legal matters for fun and absolutely no profit. How's that for a weird hobby, eh? |
|
|
| (no subject) |
[Jun. 26th, 2007|04:46 pm] |
Some fairly funny satire from Newsweek.
The best part is a rather tangential (and snide) comment at the bottom, which reads as such:
"Elsewhere, in a serious setback for former Florida governor Jeb Bush, new research finds that the eldest children in a family tend to havehigher IQs than their younger siblings" (link mine). |
|
|
| (no subject) |
[Jun. 25th, 2007|12:18 pm] |
Many of you will probably not appreciate this cynical analysis of the Semantic Web for its subject matter. Metadata is completely uninteresting to a very wide variety of people, and I understand that. Still I can't help but reference it because of this little gem of a sentence: "IQ tests privilege people who are good at IQ tests, Nielsen Ratings privilege 30- and 60-minute TV shows (which is why MTV doesn't show videos any more -- Nielsen couldn't generate ratings for three-minute mini-programs, and so MTV couldn't demonstrate the value of advertising on its network), raw megahertz scores privilege Intel's CISC chips over Motorola's RISC chips" (emphasis mine).
Is that true? I've asked the Internet, but I can't seem to verify the claim. It would be interesting to finally have an economic argument to counter the incessant whining that MTV is music television and yet fails to play music videos. |
|
|
| (no subject) |
[Jun. 24th, 2007|08:02 pm] |
Ugh. I've become addicted to CNN. Not the website. It's far worse than that. I'm actually starting to enjoy watching the news. On television.
There's a pretty sensational topic this week on CNN. And, just so I'm perfectly clear, the word 'sensational' in this context means "designed to produce a startling effect," as opposed to "extremely awesome." I'm always on the fence about the media's focus on this topic. On one hand, it's sort of nice to see some education going on. But, on the other (more weighty) hand, I can't help but feel like I'm being marginalized for ratings. |
|
|
| (no subject) |
[Jun. 21st, 2007|09:40 am] |
A quote, from an article entitled "Gag Order", found in today's issue of Slate: "Can it really be that the cure for the problem of ambiguous courtroom language is to permit less of it?". (The full article, while not the subject of today's random musing, is quite interesting and can be found here).
That quoted sentence is absolutely delightful because it's criticizing amibguous language in a courtroom setting while being itself ambiguous. What phrase does the word "less" point to? "Ambiguous courtroom language"? That doesn't make sense; the cure for less ambiguous courtroom language would indeed be less ambiguous courtroom language. So, should "less" point to the word "language" exclusively? It's an interesting ambiguity, because it's syntax versus semantics. Fantastic.
Ah, the tint of great language is combining nicely with the double cheeseburger I had for breakfast. (Yes, you're disgusted. You should be. My breakfast habits are getting a little nauseating.) |
|
|
| (no subject) |
[Mar. 7th, 2007|01:22 pm] |
Darkwing Duck is one of the funniest cartoons ever made. I think I'd rank it number three, in fact. Right after Rocky and Bullwinkle, which takes up the first two spots for being just so incredibly awesome.
On a related note, I'm getting absolutely no work done today. I wonder why... |
|
|
| navigation |
| [ |
viewing |
| |
most recent entries |
] |
| [ |
go |
| |
earlier |
] |
| |
|
|
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
wanna_blessedbe's journal