Empire State Building Declines to Light Up for Mother Teresa

Why is Phil Donohue wasting his time trying to get people that obviously don't want to celebrate a religious figure to do it anyways? Answer: God only gave freewill to those that believe in him.

What does this "lighting up" of lights actually do? Who stands to benefit? Answer: those who want to idolize a dead person (borderline sin, but who cares right?).

Why is he not protesting against authority figures within his own church that molest children? Answer: the Devil made them do it.

Why is he KICKING AND SCREAMING FOR FUCKING LIGHTS TO LIGHT UP IN A CERTAIN WAY FOR SOME DEAD LADY THAT HELPED A FEW PEOPLE THAT GOD SHIT ON? Answer: He needs all the lights he can get (he isn't all that bright to begin with).

Donohue would rather live in the past than to fight for something that really matters. I suppose many Christians are this way—it is their heritage to care more about old dead things that are irrelevant, than to focus on real problems that are happening NOW. There are many to pick from (like the BP oil spill). Douchebags like this guy would rather blow a gasket over some stupid lights in the name of religion than to help people just for the sake of helping them (religion is a killer of priorities). I suppose it is what it is, but it is funny.

Stephen Hawking on Religion: 'Science Will Win'

Certainty (poem)

those who are certain know it all

those who are honest are stupid

we are all certain

certain in our core

ignorant of our body

denying the self

God the explanation

god of human knowledge

answer to the universe

answer of ourselves 

we are not explained

no point left

just heaven 

 God is gone

nothing left

just certainty

Hatred (Poem)

I hate racism

I hate bigotry

you must

hate is evil

it is bad

it must be destroyed

hate will be gone

as soon as I'm gone

It's Genius: California Likely to Legalize Marijuana

It's brilliant! As we know, California is having very tough economic times—they are going to make an obscene amount of revenue if/when marijuana becomes legal. Not only would they make a lot of money from the taxes, but they will be making bank off all the increased tourism as well (from not only the Americas, but from around the world). You can disagree on whether or not weed should be legalized, but you must agree that this is a very smart move for California economically. I have little doubt that by legalizing weed alone, California will find themselves crawling out of their financial hole. Of course that will only last so long, when all the other states see the large amounts of revenue, they will want a piece of that pie as well.

Do I believe weed should be legalized? Yes, but that is not because I am all that interested in doing it. The question of whether or not something should be made illegal by a government is if that thing is deemed harmful to the society. I think weed is as harmful to society as women over 50 that wear revealing clothing in public (seriously, nobody wants to see that). So, if the government is to be that sensitive towards removing all things which may cause slight harm to society, then I propose the following laws:

• All women over the age of 50 must conform to a certain dress code (turtlenecks, sweatpants, sweatshirts, baggy shorts etc.).
• Cigarette/Cigar smoking should be banned.
• Alcohol should be banned.
• It should be illegal for people under the age of 17 to talk louder than a whisper.
• Child singing stars should be banned, and anyone that continues to listen to them will be dragged into a field and shot execution style.
• Old people should no longer be able to get plastic surgery (just a terrible waste of resources).
• Breast implants should be banned (having them is a form of fraud).
• Nascar should be banned... actually, no, rednecks in general should be banned.
• Lobbyist should be banned.
• Fast food restaurants should be banned.
  
  

All of the above can be argued as being as bad as marijuana for society. Here is a list of the harm marijuana is to society when made illegal. 

• Drug dealers
• Prison destroys a person's life far worse than smoking a joint.
• Can't be taxed, and all the income made by the selling of it goes to the drug dealers. 
• Wasted money spent on the prison's baby-sitters; those professional baby-sitters could be doing real, productive, jobs. 
• Housing a person in a prison cell cost a lot of money and eliminates the productivity that person could have in the outside world. 
• Causes marijuana to be a possible gateway into further crime due to the current criminal nature of obtaining it.
• Hemp has many uses such as making cloth and plastic-like materials (would be good for American industry); not having it prevents the benefit of having it.

I believe that like gay-marriage, the idea of marijuana becoming legalized pisses off the religious conservatives in this country, which may be one of the main reason why I support it.

Our Failing Education: The Bullying of the Grading System.

Schools have been letting down generation after generation; you may be asking yourself why that is. Well, it is not a straight forward answer—in fact it is probably not one particular thing at all, but a bunch of little things. I will be writing several blog posts on what I think those things are.

My first opinion for why the educational system is failing is because of the bullying nature of the grading system. It seems to me that a child's interest in becoming educated can be greatly diminished by the grading system.

How often do kids which once shinned in school, find themselves to be in the D and C range later down the road? There may be many causes to this, one being the bullying done by the jealous students which do not have the motivation or intelligence to get those high grades. Students that are unable to perform will be labeled as "stupid", and the ones that do well as "smart". This creates jealousy among the majority of students against the 'intellectual elites'—jealousy oftentimes leads to bullying, ultimately leading to the condemnation of doing well by the kids who are unable or unwilling. This is all caused directly by the grading system, and the intelligence hierarchy it creates (similar to how the Third Estate rose up against the nobility during the French Revolution). But not only that, but what about those kids which are not as intelligent as the majority of their peers (when it comes to intelligence, people obviously have great variation)? Those kids will be brainwashed into believing that they are lazy and/or stupid for their entire childhood just because they were born a certain way (subject for what should be done instead is another subject altogether). A person who is born without great intellectual ability should not be attacked psychologically for their entire childhood just because of the way they were born—there is little difference between this and the bullying nature of racism. Most of us know first hand that some kids can breeze right through school with good grades and little effort, and some other kids can put in great effort and barley pass.

We also have those kids that get stuck in the 'barley passing' mode. These kids can be as bright as any, but become unmotivated by the stinging nature of getting a bad grade. People do not like to do things that they are bad at; if you are bad at a certain subject, and you get that fact rubbed in your face, you will be that much more unmotivated. Virtually everyone does bad on a test at some point, and this is where the bullying of the grading system is perhaps the most destructive. When a child receives a bad grade, this is giving them the message that they are either lazy or stupid. Regardless of how a child processes it, this will lead to zero motivation beyond doing what is required to pass. A single bad grade is an insult to a child, they are being called "lazy" and "stupid" by their teachers use of red ink—this is believed to be best way to motivate a child, how ironic. Handing out bad grades is an intentional effort to bully students into performing. Ever hear of the expression "you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar"? Well, that is absolutely true in this case; the grading system seeks to "catch flies with vinegar", which causes harm to the confidence of majority, and at the same time causes the 'intellectual elite' to be the target of bullying by the jealous majority.

The grading system has resulted in the creation of terms like "nerd" which virtually all students dread to be labeled as (nerds are viewed as social outcasts, unpopular, wimpy etc.). Being an intellectual should not come with negative stereotypes, yet the grading system is the main reason for why it does. 

I believe I have laid out why using a grading system is itself bullying, and also causes bullying; in-case you are not convinced let me further explain it. Many people believe that bullies do their bullying because of personal insecurities—they vent frustration at those perceived as an easy targets (which may be the case in some instances of the use of grading). But I do not believe this is telling the whole story for why bullies bully. I believe bullies, rather than picking on easy targets just because they are easy, are instead looking for those that do not conform to the ideal that they hold themselves to be. Bullies pick on kids that stand out from the pack, and this is done to deter what is perceived as an undesirable deviation from the pack. This applies to grading in that it aims to attack a child's confidence in hopes of making those children conform to the desirable (grades of A's and B's).

Grading, like all types of bullying rarely have a possitive effect—all grades do is create anxiety which may lead to psychological problems down the road (1 in 4 adults have some sort of mental disorder). Not to get too hung up on this, but anxiety caused by grades can cause great harm for the learning process. You may get some old-fashioned dinosaurs that think it is needed, obviously I disagree. I believe that those early years should be as enjoyable as possible, and at the core of that enjoyment should be learning about the world around them—it should not be a period of anxiety to perform and conform to a grading system would uses bullying tactics in order to get results.

The system which should, in my opinion, be put in the old's place is the subject for another day, so I'll leave it at that.

June 2, 2010: Clusterf#&k to the War House - Korean Peninsula & Middle East

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Clusterf#&k to the War House - Korean Peninsula & Middle East
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