I wanted to write today. The only thing that I could think about was who I wanted to write for. Which topic would intrigue who; what sort of discussion could I spark; how can I inspire my friends and family to think today?
Here it goes, from the beginning:
There are so many things to do.
Productivity, strives for achievement, self-improvement (consult Oprah or Forbes for reference).
And yet...
I am distracted insurmountably by engaging in activities that connect me to other people. Past and/or present, I've been playing around on facebook, following blogs, as well as dicking around with my own (e.g. this one). The media through which I attempt to communicate with others is electronic because I sit by myself in a windowless, florescent light flooded box of a room in front of a computer all day long. Which got me thinking...
Why must I work alone?
Being social is not just an activity utilized for just entertainment purposes. Why do I keep thinking that communicating with my friends and family is a "distraction." Distraction from what? Sociability, as I SHOULD know being a damn sociology major in college, is necessary to maintain simple sanity.
So if that's true, why must I believe that I work better alone? That I'm better alone? Even like I did as a kid (and I know other people though this way), I say, "Ugh, I hate group projects because I always end up doing everything." Truth of the matter is I didn't trust anyone enough to do the work well. Taking over the microscope, the sliced-up dead frog, the calculator, the textbook, the magnetic poetry pieces, the discussion even... I would get "us" A's. That kind of reinforcement only proved to me that my decision to dominate and exclude or ignore was perfectly justified. Letting someone else contribute would only compromise the possibility of marked success, right? Not only that, but I wanted my group members to think I was competent, impress them, let them know that I could provide them with something great. Additionally, and probably most importantly, I didn't used to trust that the end result would be what I imagined it to be.
But of COURSE it wouldn't end up being what I imagined. That's the nature of the group dynamic... as a unit, things are created that you couldn't possibly create with only YOUR mind.
Many times, the end result is better than you could've ever, ever, ever anticipated. This is something I believe to the core of my being.
I guess what I want to say is that I don't take any of my friends for granted. My longing to talk, chill, invite you to discuss stupid things like organ printing, have you join this book club, and party with you guys comes from the fact that WE enjoy EACH OTHER'S company... it's not just me looking for you or you looking for me.
Also, I've truly learned, and excuse me if I'm being really stupid-cliche, that even I am a product of a group project, so to speak. All of you have had a hand in creating me, as I have had a hand in creating you... even if it's been slight. I trust you. I'm glad you have contributed. I want you to contribute.
And that's something I am truly in awe of.
Thanks, guys.
:)
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Monday, June 22, 2009
Obama, don't make me doubt you!
"Part of the key is also to isolate the extremists who have been wreaking havoc around the world."
Obama made this an important point in a calling-all-Muslims speech in Cairo on the 4th. The first thing I thought was:
Oh, God. (...Is that an ironic word to come to mind? heh.)
We all know what HE means, or at least implies, when he talks extremism. And what he means is clear when he elucidates, continuing, "We simply want to make sure that our common enemies, which are extremists who would kill innocent civilians, that that kind of activity is stopped..." This sounds really really logical and helpful, all in all, right?
The thing about using such vague terms (e.g. extremists, enemies, activity) is that perpetrators can be defined based on whim... or all sorts of weird or corrupt ideological motivations, depending on who's doing the prosecuting. Also, the actions to be taken against "them" are used so loosely (e.g. want to make sure, stopped) that it's impossible to know what tactics will be used to off the behavior.
I also know this is a speech meant for laymen and moral boosting. There are just so many stories of a government pegging one group of people dangerous to society. I'm thinking specifically of the kind of rhetoric that allows for human rights violations under oppressive governments, though. Lines and definitions blur so profoundly. I highly highly highly doubt that Obama or his administration intends on whacking anybody just because they'd be politically inconvenient or anything like that... but it's the language of his speech that *really* made me raise an eyebrow.
I hope I'm being irrational!
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/06/22/obama.pakistan/index.html
Obama made this an important point in a calling-all-Muslims speech in Cairo on the 4th. The first thing I thought was:
Oh, God. (...Is that an ironic word to come to mind? heh.)
We all know what HE means, or at least implies, when he talks extremism. And what he means is clear when he elucidates, continuing, "We simply want to make sure that our common enemies, which are extremists who would kill innocent civilians, that that kind of activity is stopped..." This sounds really really logical and helpful, all in all, right?
The thing about using such vague terms (e.g. extremists, enemies, activity) is that perpetrators can be defined based on whim... or all sorts of weird or corrupt ideological motivations, depending on who's doing the prosecuting. Also, the actions to be taken against "them" are used so loosely (e.g. want to make sure, stopped) that it's impossible to know what tactics will be used to off the behavior.
I also know this is a speech meant for laymen and moral boosting. There are just so many stories of a government pegging one group of people dangerous to society. I'm thinking specifically of the kind of rhetoric that allows for human rights violations under oppressive governments, though. Lines and definitions blur so profoundly. I highly highly highly doubt that Obama or his administration intends on whacking anybody just because they'd be politically inconvenient or anything like that... but it's the language of his speech that *really* made me raise an eyebrow.
I hope I'm being irrational!
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/06/22/obama.pakistan/index.html
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Letterman v Palin OR Semantics v Literality
So, a friend of mine (THANKS, NICK!) asked my opinion of the recent Palin/Letterman spat.
For those of you not necessarily acquainted with the happenings, here's a recap. Letterman made a stupid joke about Palin's daughter during one of his shows. He said, "one awkward moment for Sarah Palin at the Yankee game during the 7th inning, her daughter was knocked up by Alex Rodriguez."
HAHAHA!
Ok, so we get the joke, right? RIGHT?
Palin's a conservative, morality toting, religious nut whose young daughter gets pregnant by a stranger at an all-American sporting event. In the atmosphere of apple pie, the negation of the option of contraception/abortion makes the abstinence policies that Palin's type promotes look completely ridiculous. And to think... that baseball player would've f*cked daughter right in front of the mommy who advocates for the failed policies that make the joke! Wow, Letterman, that's a good one! Dumb, but we get it. The shock value of suggesting public erotics right in front of mommy, if anything, makes it even more laughable (not more funny, but we laugh harder out of a little anxiety at that because it was a close-to-taboo joke he just made!).
This is Letterman. I don't particularly watch The Late Show, but from what I understand, jokes like this are par for the course. He has an audience he caters to. Because of the type of humor he typically uses, this shouldn't be of much surprise to anyone. Not only that, but... come on. What's all the hubbub? It's just a joke.
Just a joke...
That's where things get messy. There are advocates for the dismissal, that's right, downright termination of Letterman's employment with CBS. Why? Because when it comes to suggesting statutory rape in ANY context, especially in the case of a "joke," people get upset. I think this is understandable. Not only that, but there are a lot of people calling the joke
IN BAD TASTE.
Now, what exactly is that supposed to mean? "In bad taste." Well, to many, "taste" represents a certain by-law of codes we live by to subsist peacefully in the social realm of regular communication. Their a set of moral standards that go rather unquestioned in the popular consciousness. These are called mores (pronounced moor-ays, for those of you unfamiliar with the term). Something the feminist movement had attempted to do was to normalize the aversion to sexual exploitation of anyone, particularly women. Even if Letterman hadn't particularly suggested violence, which he didn't, the act of sex between that baseball player and the young Bristol would definitely constitute statutory rape. That falls under the jurisdiction of sexual exploitation, for sure. In any case, the point here is that he failed to demonstrate what we like to call "professionalism" in his choice to joke about Palin's daughter. The joke, of course!, was not aimed at the daughter, no. It was intended to make fun of the religious conservatives. Nonetheless, though, he did in fact **directly** make a seriously inappropriate joke about a young girl.
I said this to Nick, and I'll say it again,
I'm glad he apologized. I don't think he should lose his job for that comment. BUT, his job is a public one. Not that he must pander to EVERYBODY since that's absolutely impossible. The joke's semantic intention has been outshined by the literal interpretation of it, sure. But if he's going to keep his job, it's been made clear that he should probably save those KIND of jokes for the cigar lounge.
For those of you not necessarily acquainted with the happenings, here's a recap. Letterman made a stupid joke about Palin's daughter during one of his shows. He said, "one awkward moment for Sarah Palin at the Yankee game during the 7th inning, her daughter was knocked up by Alex Rodriguez."
HAHAHA!
Ok, so we get the joke, right? RIGHT?
Palin's a conservative, morality toting, religious nut whose young daughter gets pregnant by a stranger at an all-American sporting event. In the atmosphere of apple pie, the negation of the option of contraception/abortion makes the abstinence policies that Palin's type promotes look completely ridiculous. And to think... that baseball player would've f*cked daughter right in front of the mommy who advocates for the failed policies that make the joke! Wow, Letterman, that's a good one! Dumb, but we get it. The shock value of suggesting public erotics right in front of mommy, if anything, makes it even more laughable (not more funny, but we laugh harder out of a little anxiety at that because it was a close-to-taboo joke he just made!).
This is Letterman. I don't particularly watch The Late Show, but from what I understand, jokes like this are par for the course. He has an audience he caters to. Because of the type of humor he typically uses, this shouldn't be of much surprise to anyone. Not only that, but... come on. What's all the hubbub? It's just a joke.
Just a joke...
That's where things get messy. There are advocates for the dismissal, that's right, downright termination of Letterman's employment with CBS. Why? Because when it comes to suggesting statutory rape in ANY context, especially in the case of a "joke," people get upset. I think this is understandable. Not only that, but there are a lot of people calling the joke
IN BAD TASTE.
Now, what exactly is that supposed to mean? "In bad taste." Well, to many, "taste" represents a certain by-law of codes we live by to subsist peacefully in the social realm of regular communication. Their a set of moral standards that go rather unquestioned in the popular consciousness. These are called mores (pronounced moor-ays, for those of you unfamiliar with the term). Something the feminist movement had attempted to do was to normalize the aversion to sexual exploitation of anyone, particularly women. Even if Letterman hadn't particularly suggested violence, which he didn't, the act of sex between that baseball player and the young Bristol would definitely constitute statutory rape. That falls under the jurisdiction of sexual exploitation, for sure. In any case, the point here is that he failed to demonstrate what we like to call "professionalism" in his choice to joke about Palin's daughter. The joke, of course!, was not aimed at the daughter, no. It was intended to make fun of the religious conservatives. Nonetheless, though, he did in fact **directly** make a seriously inappropriate joke about a young girl.
I said this to Nick, and I'll say it again,
I'm glad he apologized. I don't think he should lose his job for that comment. BUT, his job is a public one. Not that he must pander to EVERYBODY since that's absolutely impossible. The joke's semantic intention has been outshined by the literal interpretation of it, sure. But if he's going to keep his job, it's been made clear that he should probably save those KIND of jokes for the cigar lounge.
Friday, June 12, 2009
LOVE: The Disorder
Trapped in her brain;
it tramples the cerebellum grey.
Anxious red and paranoid black
comfort her by pacing, pacing back
and unfree like OCD.
Trapped like a battered wife;
In a meeting of her post-life
and his predominance, intact,
they've signed a pact
to traumatize she like PTSD.
Conduct your psychosurgery!
Electroconvulsive therapy!
Through each capillary,
She craves his electricity.
Again, she feels it come,
and welcomes the numb...
it tramples the cerebellum grey.
Anxious red and paranoid black
comfort her by pacing, pacing back
and unfree like OCD.
Trapped like a battered wife;
In a meeting of her post-life
and his predominance, intact,
they've signed a pact
to traumatize she like PTSD.
Conduct your psychosurgery!
Electroconvulsive therapy!
Through each capillary,
She craves his electricity.
Again, she feels it come,
and welcomes the numb...
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Organ Printer or Fountain of Wealth, I mean Youth?
Organ Printing.
Apparently, by means of the technology utilized in your average household laser-jet printer and some medical magic, human FLESH (currently tissues) can be engineered. That's what they're calling the process, really. Bio-engineering. So ultimately, the medical community would love to be able to fabricate whole human organs. Now, here's the real genius of this: each organ would carry your own perfectly tailored blue-prints! This is because doctors would take you-samples and use the appropriate stem cells in order to construct custom-made kidneys, livers, hearts, you name it.
WHAT?!
On the plus side, if you need an organ for whatever reason, you'd have less time to wait. Since you could have someone grow a spare organ for you, you wouldn't really have to wait on a list for a compatible organ someone else donated. Many donated organs, even if they are compatible with your body, are rejected by your immune system. They are treated as foreign intruders. Using your very own (albeit Frankenstein-ian) back-up would minimize the number of rejected organs.
It is also a plain enough fact that the ratio of people who need organ transplants and the number of available organs is incredibly high. A clinician quoted in the Impact Lab article below states, “I just had to watch them die... Clinical doctors can’t give them treatment that isn’t in textbooks. I clung to the hope that medicine will make progress and save more lives in the future.”
Here's the flip side...
(*Note: This might make me sound incredibly insensitive. Granted, I am not a doctor; I have never had to stand there and watch when someone close to me could be saved by future medical advances but died anyway... besides my grandma Gerri, but we all accepted that. I've never needed an organ. I've never faced vaguely certain death because the wait list was too damn long for a kidney.)
I almost wonder if this is something we just shouldn't dabble in. The world population is such that we can't take care of everyone. One could argue that we just WON'T take care of each other. However, in all honesty, I highly doubt that the powerful, the politicians, the war mongers and the wealthy (or one of all of the above), are going to want to slacken their hold on those they could be construed as being responsible for: their fellow (hu)man(ity). Given our undeniable construction of worldwide hierarchies of resource distribution, the number of people on the the planet is unsustainable.
Not only that, but who is to afford such a procedure? I would wish it not so, but yet another means of stratifying life's resources would be set in place. The wealthy could literally be read, fed, and stitched back together til the world's end...
Additionally (and this is more of a Western (at LEAST) cultural issue) I think that the focus on youth as more highly valued than old-age is causing issues like this. Old age doesn't necessarily stand for wisdom and experience... it speaks upon the out-of-touch, the traditional (which should be castrated to make room for "progress"), and the senile. If I may speak as (some) women here, aging can be considered shameful. Our most desirable features are related to our physical youthfulness. Here's what I'm getting at here. Our all too credulous search for the "fountain of youth" as it were, that age-old (ironically) chase after never-ending life, is exemplified in the rigor of the development of organ printing.
What it comes down to is this: at this moment in history, too many of us are haunted by the unwillingness to accept death as a natural part of life.
http://organprint.missouri.edu/talks.php
http://www.impactlab.com/2008/11/09/emerging-field-of-organ-printing/
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=1603783&page=1
Apparently, by means of the technology utilized in your average household laser-jet printer and some medical magic, human FLESH (currently tissues) can be engineered. That's what they're calling the process, really. Bio-engineering. So ultimately, the medical community would love to be able to fabricate whole human organs. Now, here's the real genius of this: each organ would carry your own perfectly tailored blue-prints! This is because doctors would take you-samples and use the appropriate stem cells in order to construct custom-made kidneys, livers, hearts, you name it.
WHAT?!
On the plus side, if you need an organ for whatever reason, you'd have less time to wait. Since you could have someone grow a spare organ for you, you wouldn't really have to wait on a list for a compatible organ someone else donated. Many donated organs, even if they are compatible with your body, are rejected by your immune system. They are treated as foreign intruders. Using your very own (albeit Frankenstein-ian) back-up would minimize the number of rejected organs.
It is also a plain enough fact that the ratio of people who need organ transplants and the number of available organs is incredibly high. A clinician quoted in the Impact Lab article below states, “I just had to watch them die... Clinical doctors can’t give them treatment that isn’t in textbooks. I clung to the hope that medicine will make progress and save more lives in the future.”
Here's the flip side...
(*Note: This might make me sound incredibly insensitive. Granted, I am not a doctor; I have never had to stand there and watch when someone close to me could be saved by future medical advances but died anyway... besides my grandma Gerri, but we all accepted that. I've never needed an organ. I've never faced vaguely certain death because the wait list was too damn long for a kidney.)
I almost wonder if this is something we just shouldn't dabble in. The world population is such that we can't take care of everyone. One could argue that we just WON'T take care of each other. However, in all honesty, I highly doubt that the powerful, the politicians, the war mongers and the wealthy (or one of all of the above), are going to want to slacken their hold on those they could be construed as being responsible for: their fellow (hu)man(ity). Given our undeniable construction of worldwide hierarchies of resource distribution, the number of people on the the planet is unsustainable.
Not only that, but who is to afford such a procedure? I would wish it not so, but yet another means of stratifying life's resources would be set in place. The wealthy could literally be read, fed, and stitched back together til the world's end...
Additionally (and this is more of a Western (at LEAST) cultural issue) I think that the focus on youth as more highly valued than old-age is causing issues like this. Old age doesn't necessarily stand for wisdom and experience... it speaks upon the out-of-touch, the traditional (which should be castrated to make room for "progress"), and the senile. If I may speak as (some) women here, aging can be considered shameful. Our most desirable features are related to our physical youthfulness. Here's what I'm getting at here. Our all too credulous search for the "fountain of youth" as it were, that age-old (ironically) chase after never-ending life, is exemplified in the rigor of the development of organ printing.
What it comes down to is this: at this moment in history, too many of us are haunted by the unwillingness to accept death as a natural part of life.
http://organprint.missouri.edu/talks.php
http://www.impactlab.com/2008/11/09/emerging-field-of-organ-printing/
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=1603783&page=1
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