Another One Fell Through The Cracks

Most kids who get shipped away to college find their niche. Most of them find some group with which they can identify. It's a group where their closest friends are, the group where they feel most comfortable. It's a group where they can do the things they like to do with minimal fear of rejection or being outcast. It's just where they "fit".

Some kids go to college and never really find that niche. I'm one of these kids. I don't seem to fit. I've struggled with it for almost 3 years now. I just can't seem to find a group of people with whom I can identify. In high school, I had no problem fitting. I felt so comfortable in my high school choir, band, and speech team. At church, I felt at home in my youth group. But college has been altogether different.

I feel like I have a fairly unique story too. I carry it with me to remind myself how I came to where I am. I've seen a lot of strange, wonderful, terrible things in my college experience. The person I am today and the person I was as a first-semester freshman are absolutely completely different. And I have a completely different view of people around me too. My political views now are the opposite of my political views in high school. And that's only the beginning. I could go on and on.

I hate how so many of my peers seem to just find their niche like its no big deal. Due to chance, they just meet some people who share similar interests with them and are really cool. And it's more than that. These guys grow to become best friends. There's a comraderie between them that is unique--unlike any other group of friends anywhere. I just can't find that. Maybe I'm hot on the trail. I don't know.

Tonight, I'm just feeling the angst associated with the reality of transferring to a different school. It hasn't been any easier here. I know that God called me to transfer, and I know that I wanted to transfer anyway. I just keep looking for the big picture. And I'm not seeing much. For now, I feel like another kid who fell through the cracks somehow.

Writing Class: Suck My Pink Pet

Writing classes are a joke.

Grading is so subjective in writing classes. Ever had that conversation with an English professor? That "how do grade your papers" discussion? What constitutes an A-, professor? What constitutes a C+, Doctor? Their answers are always conveniently vague. They give verbose, complex answers to coax you into believing that their grading standards are legitimate. But all of that gets shot to shit when you start doing peer review. You begin to read the most ignorant papers written in human history. Some of these students have such a poor grasp of the English language, you begin to wonder how they made it to college in the first place. Then, as if this isn't shocking enough, these incredibly dumb writers get B's and you get a C. Ludicrous.

If you haven't already figured it out, I'm sitting in my writing class again.

Syntax Error; Sin Tax Error

Okay, let's talk about the 43 Bush Administration. Let's talk about finances.

First, we need to lay some groundwork. Alright, in the 1980s, a number of leading U.S. economists began to champion the thinking of neo-conservative Austrian economists. Incidently, the Austrians were largely influenced by philosopher/author/activist Ayn Rand. Ayn Rand--possibly one of the cleverest conservative minds in human history. Anyway, one of these leading U.S. economists happened to be George Gilder. Gilder was an economic adviser for the Reagan administration. An advocate of supply-side economics, he would later help shape one of the greatest economic debacles in recent history: Reaganomics. Gilder influenced President Reagan so much that Reagan decided to adopt this Austrian, Randian philosophy. Meanwhile, the United States was being buried under inflation, high nominal interest rates, and budget defecits. We needed a new strategy to rise above our financial woes. But a rise above would not come without a "trickle down". The phrase "Trickle-down Economics" was how Reagan described his ideas. The crux of it basically involved a real tax cut benefitting the wealthy which would eventually result in a "trickle down" effect that will benefit the poor. Look at it this way. Reagan thought that if we give a bunch of tax cuts to big businesses and rich people, then that will put more money in their pockets. Therefore, unemployment will be reduced because firms will have greater incentive to hire. Economic activity will increase which will in turn increase the standard of living...yada yada yada.

Now, when someone lowers taxes everyone shouts "Hooray! Our leader is a man of the people!" The problem is that, when you mess with taxes, you stand to mess things up for a long time. And things did get messed up. Unfortunately, not all the boats rose when Reagan implemented his new policies. Some "trickle down" did occur, but income inequality began to grow at an alarming rate. Here's why T.D.E. does not work.

Warning: This is very simple. This example is of course ceteris paribus.

Let's pretend there are 5 people in a room. John, Karen, Larry, Matt, and Nancy. There is a total of $10.00 in this room. John has $4.00, Karen has $3.00, Larry has $2.00, Matt has $1.00, and Nancy is Broke Phi Broke with $0.00. Let's say George enters the room with $10.00 more dollars. He says he wants to give it to John. Well, this makes everyone else very upset. They threaten to stab John repeatedly and with reckless abandon if he accepts the money. George then asks everyone if it would be okay to give John $6.00 as long as he gave everyone else $1.00. They agree to this deal. Now, John has $10.00, Karen has $4.00, Larry has $3.00, Matt has $2.00, and Nancy has $1.00. Hooray??!! Not so much.

Before George came in, John had 40% of the total value of the room. Karen had 30%, Larry had 20%, Matt had 10%, and Nancy had 0%. With the addition of $10.00 into the economy, John now has 50%, Karen has 20%, Larry has 15%, Matt still has 10%, and Nancy has a whopping 5%. Income inequality has actually grown. The only person who really benefitted from this is John (and arguably Nancy who had nothing in the beginning anyway). This was a simplified version of what happened in the 1980s. Yes, trickling did occur, but not enough. Income inequality is at an all-time high today in part because of the divisive policies of Ronald Reagan. Why is income inequailty important? It's what revolutions are made of. The French Revolution was instigated largely by the fact that 2-3% of the population controlled a majority of the entire nation's wealth.

So now you're thinking "Wasn't he supposed to be talking about Bush?" Here we go. George W. Bush has brought the Austrians back from the dead. Remember those huge tax cuts he made in the beginning of his first term? Remember how they were largely going to benefit the wealthy? But Bush isn't as good as Reagan. After all, we have a war to worry about. We have Social Security to fix. We have health care that needs to be paid. Amidst this revival of neo-conservative, supply-side economics, how can Bush succeed? How on earth can he say "smaller government" when our government is spending so big? A war doesn't stimulate a faltering economy. It stimulates a failing economy. Our economy isn't failing, but it certainly is faltering. And I don't want to hear about recent stock market successes. Yeah, yeah. Cheney's stock options rose about %3000 in there somewhere. Way to go, Halliburton.

Maybe you can't teach an old dog new tricks, but you also can't teach a new dog old tricks and expect people to be impressed. That's what Bush is doing. Trying to fix a new economy using old solutions. And believe me, I'm using "solutions" in its broadest sense.

I don't know how my title for this entry fits in, but I thought it sounded awfully clever.

Weapons of Mass Disinformation

The more I read and the more I research, the more reasons I find to detest The Christian Right. Certainly, I think they're entitled to their opinions, but I don't see how Religious Righters can read selected portions of the Bible and still support President Bush with unwaivering tenacity. The problems begin when you start to buy into his whole "God-talks-to-me", "evangelical", "Finally! A Christian President!" image. For some reason, this nation has decided to expect that family values and moral responsibility are chiefly important to Republicans. That is, we would expect to hear phrases like "morality", "family", and "values" from the Conservatives' camp much more often than we would from the Liberals'.

The larger issue is generalization. When people generalize something, there's nothing inherently wrong. In fact, sometimes generalization is necessary for the sake of argument. But when you start generalizing, you eventually start to pidgeonhole people. Indeed, when someone says "Democrat", certain hot-button issues are called to mind. These are issues that we have learned to associate with the whole mire of Democrats in this country. The same holds true for Republicans. We like to have folks fit into neatly organized categories. If you are conservative, then you must be pro-life, anti-gay marriage, anti-stem cell, "laissez-faire" and the rest of it. If you are liberal, then you must be pro-choice, pro-gay marriage, pro-stem cell, larger government, etc. But people don't fit into these nice, neat categories. Or at least they shouldn't. If you're a Republican, yes, you should feel free to oppose capital punishment. If you're a Democrat, of course you should feel free to oppose abortion. There are such things as liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats. Remember after the 2004 elections were over? Everyone was pleading for our nation to come together and do away with this rigid partisan polarity. What happened to that?

We even generalize the hot-button issues themselves. After all, isn't it a little ridiculous to say that you are always, always, always against abortion? When did all abortion circumstances become the same? Isn't the issue a little more ideologically, relationally, and economically complex than that?

Let's not forget the absolute moral obscenity that is war. Tell me....Who would Jesus bomb? Also, we didn't find any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Let me say that again. We didn't find any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Have I mentioned that there as many as 100,000 dead Iraqi civilians as a result of this war? We do not live in a theocracy.

Christian Lefters, let's start talking FACTS. And let's start talking facts IN CHURCH. I don't want to hear about "family values" unless you're willing to talk about universal health care. I don't want to hear about the infallibility of free markets until you're ready to start talking about ridiculous Pharmeaceutical profits and Oil profits that are simply gross. I don't want to hear "pray for our troops" unless I hear "pray for our enemies too". God loves Iraqis. He loves Saddam Hussein. He loves Osama bin Laden. "What would Jesus do?" Would Jesus care about politics? I think he certainly did. I think he still does.

And if we start talking POLITICS in CHURCH, you can expect to be met with much criticism. People will say "we are instigating division" and that we're going to cost our churches many pledge units. We will see personell cutbacks, downsized church budgets. We have a lot to lose. Then again, what good is it to gain the whole world but lose one's soul? Mull that over for a while.

The New MySpace?

A relatively new competitor has entered the "social network market".

Not long ago, MySpace.com was reported as the 2nd most visited site on the internet, losing only to Yahoo. That's right, it's getting more hits everyday than Google. And there have been many copy-cat networks such as Friendster which have risen only to completely crash.

Enter myYearbook.com

Will this "le chose nouveau" be able to compete with the mighty MySpace? Time will tell.

Quail Hunting With The Stars

My newest spin-off idea.

Quail Hunting With The Stars.

That's right. All the stars from the show, "Dancing With The Stars" are back for a gaming adventure. Celebrities like Jerry Rice, Kenny Mayne, and Master P go hunting together. Here's the twist. They think they're hunting quail. When they're actually being hunted. That's right. It's a deadly battle between celebrities and experienced hunters, and the winner is the only man left standing. Special guests include Simon Cowell, Bill O'Reilly, Laura Schlessinger, and Joey Buttafuoco (zing!).

Sure, maybe some stars can trip the light fantastic, but what can they do with tripwire?

Word of the Day: Tolerance

Hey boys and girls! Today's magic word is "TOLERANCE". Can you say TOL-ER-ANCE? TOLERANCE.

Good job. Do you know what tolerance means? Well, I can tell you about some people who certainly don't! All the people at www.godhatesfags.com wouldn't know tolerance if it came right up to them and permitted their continued existence....Seriously, this website seems like a bad (if inappropriate) joke at first, but then you realize that these people are actually serious. There is a church...a Christian church...that not only refuses to tolerate homosexuality, but openly condemns homosexuals as a social group. These people have chosen to focus so intently on God's obvious disdain toward homosexual acts in the Bible, that they completely miss that whole new-fangled "New Testament" with this guy named "Jesus" who talked about "loving thy neighbor as thyself" and all this other stuff. Westboro Baptist Church, thank you for instilling in me a renewed sense of guilt about my fellow believers. Thank you for reminding me that, yes, Christians can often be one of the most intolerant groups of people in society. And let me tell you, that whole intolerance thing just really reflects nicely upon the God we serve and the message of the Gospel.

I would like to modify a famous MLK Jr. quotation. "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." Here's my version. "Fundamentalism anywhere is a fundamental threat everywhere." Seriously, I don't care who you are or what religious group with whom you are affiliated. Fundamentalism is incorrect. It ought to be morally and factually indefensible, but somehow it continues to remain a topic of debate. Oh, and another really really "fun" website is www.christiananswers.net

This website actually makes assertions such as:
1) Dinosaurs lived with Adam and Eve.
2) Dinosaurs were on Noah's ark.
3) Sedimentary rock can form in a matter of months or a few years.

Ugh, that's all for now.