Monday, May 30, 2011

A Proper Memory.

How should we remember the Confederates and the Confederacy?

We are celebrating the 150th Anniversary of the start of the Civil War this year.

I just want to start off by stating that I think secession was illegal and that South Carolina was a sore loser in 1860 and exaggerated the threat of Abraham Lincoln. I do not believe in all this southern revisionism that makes Lincoln an aggressor and puts the south as the innocent defenders of their rights. The Confederate States of America took up arms against the government and refused a peaceful resolution to the Fort Sumter crises. There were many Northerners willing to make compromises on slavery. Lincoln said in his First Inaugural and before that he respected slavery in the territories it was in and that he could not constitutionally do anything about it. The South fired on Fort Sumter; Lincoln had the right to call for troops to quell the rebellion.

With that said, and believing that the south had basically committed treason, how do we look at these people? These people were Americans. They were fighting against something they thought was a legitimate threat; a large, overbearing government trying to usurp power and destroy state’s rights. With the Radical Republicans and Reconstruction after the war, their fears were pretty much spot on. But was bloodshed the answer? What about voting and participation? The election of 1860 showed that a President did not need the south to win. Every state from Massachusetts to Illinois was a solid Republican state and they were the largest by population, meaning they had more Electoral Votes. The House of Representatives was overwhelmingly Northern and the Senate, which was once the last hope of maintaining balance, lost out after the Compromise of 1850 and the Free states outnumbered the Slave states. They felt as if their voices would not be heard.

So, did they overreact? Is it enough to claim to die for a just cause? Terrorists claim to be dying for a just cause. I can’t excuse their actions because they think they are right. Of course, there is a big difference between terrorists and the Confederates. The south could at least give some legal and historical reasons for their actions. Small Government versus Big Government is a legitimate debate with no answer. How big or how small should the government be? The south wanted smaller government while the north wanted bigger government.

Terrorists are just dicks.

But was secession the right answer to this problem? What is the point of having any kind of central government if states can freely leave when something doesn’t go their way? Is it right to work with someone when things are good but abandon them when things go sour? What is the point of having a central authority if it can just be overridden at will? That was the government under the Articles of Confederation, and our Founders knew that we needed a stronger federal government in order to function. The states give up some of their autonomy to receive the protection of the federal government and the whole United States. I don’t believe that under the Constitution the argument that “we willingly joined, we can also willingly leave” applies. That would have been true under the Articles of Confederation (and maybe just to the original 13 states, just maybe), but under the Constitution, states are administrative districts of a much larger nation.

Another thing, these people were Americans, not some foreign force. After the war, they became Americans again. How do we remember their sacrifice? Like I said, I feel that they committed treason, but did so for a cause they thought was right according to their interpretation of our Founding Fathers (it would help if the FF’s weren’t so vague). Overreacting or stopping a threat?

Portraying the south purely as traitors would have to make us rethink the Revolutionary War. Those men took up arms against what was seen as an unjust government trying to rob us of our rights. They were also viewed as traitors and would have hanged as traitors. What is the difference between the colonials of 1775 and the southerners of 1861? The former won and the latter lost? Winning makes you right and losing makes you wrong?

(I don’t want to bring in all that slavery and racism crap. Don’t paint the North as anti-racist and the South pro-racist. Very, very few people took up arms with the sole purpose of destroying or preserving  slavery.)

So once more; how should we remember the Confederates and the Confederacy? Traitors? Heroes? Or some combination of both?

I don’t believe they are villains, but I don’t believe they are heroes either.

Sunday, May 22, 2011

I've got a hundred problems...

I don’t understand why TV shows or web comics or etc. make a big deal out of making it to 100 episodes.

The Colbert Report had a big celebration for their 100th episode. Of course, the show is on four times a week, with some weeks of vacation. It only takes 25 weeks (~half a year) with no vacations to get to 100 episodes.

Most TV series have about 22 episodes per season, with one episode a week (with a few weeks off here and there). That means you have to make it to Season 5 to make it to the magic number. Julia Loius-Dreyfus noted NBC’s ambivalence to Seinfeld by giving cast members a paperweight with the words “100th episode” in celebration for reaching that milestone. At that time Seinfeld was quickly rising in ratings. A nice gesture, but little effort.

You could be South Park and wait until the 7th Season before hitting 100 episodes because they only have 14 episodes per season and their backwards method of showing seven episodes from March-May and then again to October-December.

Or, you could be like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and have five episodes in the 1st Season and 47 episodes in Season 3! Almost one episode per week for a year (five weeks without a new episode). Damn!

If the season is a long running series like The Simpsons, reaching 100 episodes was soooooo long ago. They are going to be celebrating 500 episodes next season. Holy Crap. I think they even made fun of this notion of celebrating episode milestones by having an episode celebrating 138 Episodes.

For web comics, it might be hard to do something special for your 100th comic if you have storylines. You can’t just interrupt the story for a fourth-wall-breaking celebration. You could arrange for something big to happen if you are forward thinking enough. Like The Colbert Report most web comics are done semi-daily, so hitting 100 can be done in the first year.

Printed comics are a different story. Being published seven days a week, you can hit 100 in 14 weeks, or three and a half months. You have to suck really hard to be cancelled that quickly. Usually, how old they are or how many newspapers they are printed in is the measure of success. With the decline of the newspaper industry, the latter is becoming less prestigious. I doubt any comics will be drawn by their original creator for 100 years straight.

When it comes to Nation-States, being 100 years old isn’t that big of a deal. When you look at countries like England (or the United Kingdom), getting to 100 seems easy. The Romanov dynasty of Russia lasted a little over 300 years! Modern countries like Russia, Germany, France, India, and China have been politically organized for less than 100 years, but their history goes back much longer. I’m pretty sure China should be celebrating 4000 years right now.

Friday, May 20, 2011

[Insert REM reference here]

Well, we have less than 24 hours until the end of the world (or more or less depending on where you live).


Yes the world will end on May 21, 2011. Or it will be the beginning of the end. AT 6 PM local time around the world, earthquakes will start and destroy everything, in that time zone. It says so in the Bible! The secret code said so! (It also said ‘be sure to drink your Ovaltine’)

I’m sick of this Bull. Do you know how many times people predicted the end of the world? It’s like the Boy who Cried Wolf 200 times!

(even this game makes fun of doomsday predictions)

I can come up with a date too if I picked random numbers from random passages and randomly added or subtracted or multiplied them!

Also, this is the second time this guy predicted the end of the world. He said it would end in 1994. Well, Republicans did take back Congress, so I guess that counts. If someone claiming to be God gave me incorrect information, I would start considering the possibility that SATAN was tempting and tricking me and wouldn't believe anything else that guy said to me...

I guess that could be a test by God to take a leap of faith!

 (Or forced perspective)

I don’t know the code, but I can read English,

“But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” (Matthew 24:36)

The Bible says that even JESUS doesn’t know when the end will be. And yet God told some guy in Missouri.

Speaking of being able to read English, wouldn’t the code be written into the original language of the Bible, NOT the King’s English? (FYI, this is the 400th Anniversary of the King James Bible, the 1st English translation). Also, don’t Catholics and Protestants use different Bibles? What about the books not included in the Bible? Mistranslations? Deletions? Couldn’t that change the ‘code’?

There is one thing Jesus did accurately predict; these people.

"As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately. 'Tell us,' they said, 'when will this happen, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?'
Jesus answered: 'Watch out that no one deceives you. For many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am the Messiah,’ and will deceive many.'" (Matthew 24:3-5)

 Here's a little treat:



Leonard Bernstein!

Saturday, May 14, 2011

"Stating the obvious, Assuming you’re an idiot"


I’m usually a cool cat. Unless, of course, I misplace a check. Then I breakdown faster than an American automobile.

But one thing that will drive me up a freakin’ wall is the “stating the obvious, assuming you’re an idiot” comment. What do I mean? Take yesterday.

Part of my job has me transferring animal tissue (from companies doing various medical/pharmaceutical testing) from the client’s original packaging to our own packaging. Usually, they use similar packing bags that are easy to cut open and transfer. But this company had to be special and put things in plastic jars. You don’t have to cut them open like with the bags (most of the times, which is a lot harder with hard plastic), but there is no need to store rat fetuses (the size of an average paper clip) in a big jar. It is like storing a tic-tac in the Empire State Building, and then filling it two-thirds of the way with formaldehyde. At least that is better than cramming a jar full of tissue and not getting it out and resorting to cutting the damn jar.

And just to be random, inside some of the jars, the tissue was in a small cloth sack. Why? Who knows. The sack was too big to slide out of the jar, and the cloth sack rubbing up against the sharp edge of the jar opening made it hard for the sack to come out even if it was about the right side. So I just grabbed the stupid sack out of the jar (no hard task) and placed it into the bag.

Now this is where the comment comes in. My co-worker tells me that “I don’t need to pull it out” and that I should just let it fall out naturally. What the hell was the purpose of that? I KNOW I don’t NEED to pull it out and that it SHOULD just fall out, but clearly it wasn’t coming out no matter how much I shake it (Cue “That’s what she said!”). Does he want me to sit around for 10 minutes, violently shaking the jar hoping the damn little bag will fall out on its own? Or should I take 10 seconds to just grab the stupid thing? Seriously, what was the point of telling me that?

Another time at work, while I was inventorying (writing down what was received), all of the bags were leaking. So I found these old bags that we don’t use anymore and put the leakers in them, so they stay dry until we need to transfer them into permanent bags. My other co-worker come to me and says “We don’t need to put them in bags unless they are leaking.”

Well no fucking kidding! You think I’m doing this for shits and giggles? I’ve inventoried for years and have never put all the bags into temp bags, so clearly I KNOW this! You didn’t see the soaked cardboard box, the hundreds of paper towels, or notice to horrible smell of formalin (10% Formaldehyde)? If I’m using the temp bags reserved for leakers, then the bags MUST be leaking. It’s like saying “You don’t need to use the urinal unless you only need to pee”. THAT’S WHY I CHOSE THE URINAL, BECAUSE I ONLY NEED TO PEE! This was the same person who thought she had a rare misprint of a coin because she didn’t know who the person was on it, not just that she didn’t know who was on the coin. Logic!

I guess I can give my co-workers the benefit of the doubt. I guess the first person thought I was wasting time physically removing ALL of the cloth sacks when some of them could easily fall out (he did point out a dumbass move on my part of trying to cut open a jar to get some hard to reach tissue when I could (and have done before) just add some formalin and swish it around). And to my second co-workers credit, it is unusual for that many bags to be leaking, so it may have looked odd for me to be putting so many bags in temp bags.

But the most inexcusable comment came from my mom. I love her, but what she said was really stupid.

My throat was sore and I felt like I had something in the back of my throat that I was constantly choking on. I looked into the mirror and saw that my uvula seemed a bit large. I told my mom, “I think my uvula is swollen.” Her response, “No. That’s the thing in the back of your throat”.


NO KIDDING! THAT IS WHY I SAID I CALLED THE THING IN THE BACK OF MY THROAT THAT IS SWOLLEN MY ‘UVULA’!!! BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT IT IS, MY ‘UVULA’!

Really, what kind of response is that? Instantly dismiss what I said because she assumed I was wrong?

“Hey mom! My foot fell off!”

“No. That’s the thing at the end of your leg”

I think this clip summarizes everything:

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

The Numbers Game

We are bombarded by numbers. Every day, some statistic or poll comes out to tell us how much the economy grew within the last minute or how much the opinion of Obama has fallen with single Asian cat-owners above 65.

With the election coming up, people like me are going to be following lots of numbers; going crazy when we see that a candidate lost ground in Ohio or gained in Florida.

I don’t like when numbers are used to distort, deceive. When politicians and pundits give numbers with no context, think numbers are facts in themselves, or just outright give incorrect information, it drives me up a wall. Here are some examples of numbers being misused and misrepresented.

“We spend more money per kilowatt for wind power than oil or coal!”

Whenever the debate to invest more money into wind power and cut oil subsidies comes up, we hear this argument. “The government is spending more per kilowatt on wind than oil! It’s not fair to penalize oil any further with these lopsided policies! Clearly the oil companies need more subsidies and tax breaks while we should leave wind power to its own devices!”

Notice the argument, “We spend more money per kilowatt for wind power than oil or coal!”

Look at this. Notice how little power the US produces with wind (lumped with other “renewables”) compared to oil and other fossil fuels? Well of course we spend more per kilowatt on wind. Proportionally, it makes up less energy produced. If we gave $1 Billion to wind and $ 5 billion to oil, the government would still spend more money per kilowatt on wind. Wind is a new and small technology trying to compete against old and big companies. We are trying to get it off the ground and able to compete with the entrenched competitors. Left to their own devices, wind power would never get off the ground or take too long to develop and grow.

No wonder oil company representatives like to peddle this fact.

“The rich already pay more in taxes than any other group! We don’t need to raise them, we need to cut them!”

This is like the last example. The rich, by definition, have more money than the poor and middle classes. A 10% tax rate on $1 Million will net more money than a 10% rate on $35,000. That’s simple math. Even if you tax the rich much higher, it impacts them much less. A 50% rate on someone making $50,000 feels much worse than someone making $10 Million (trust me, you can live on $5 Million comfortably). When the top 1% owns 43% of the wealth, there is a lot of money to be found! (Oh and why is it “inciting class warfare” when we point this out, but not when we give the rich tax cuts and cut services for the poor?) And when corporate wages rise much higher (23%) than lower class workers, don’t be surprised when they have more money.

“Abortion/Planned Parenthood stats”

On the Diane Rehm Show a few weeks ago, she and her guests discussed the proposed defunding of Planned Parenthood. One guest constantly gave this statistic to show that money for contraception increases abortions, “Federal funding went up 80% between 2000 and 2009. Abortions went up 60% and adoption referrals fell”

Problems with argument:

1. She never mentions how much is actually spent on contraceptives and if spending for them went up as well. Planned Parenthood offers many other programs besides contraception (and abortions) like basic healthcare, STD testing, Breast exams, etc. There are a lot of other things that require funding. This is a false “causation and correlation” argument. It is like saying I turned on my light and it started raining, therefore my light causes rain. PP received more funding for contraception and abortions increased, therefore, contraception causes abortions. It doesn't make sense. Even if she did show that money for contraception adjusted for inflation went up, it would still be a false argument because...

2. Other abortion providers have stopped offering abortions. States like North Dakota (interesting when I Google "north dakota abortion" the first hit is for an adoption service...), Virginia, and Texas are passing laws restricting abortions and who can give them. Therefore, PP would be the last place to go for women as all centers must provide them (as per their standards) and would therefore see more women coming to them to receive abortions.

3. I don’t know what adoption referrals have to do with contraception (Contraception STOPS conception, therefore, adoption is not STOPPING any births). But, here is a counterpoint. People don’t go to PP for adoption referrals as there are organizations that deal specifically with that issue, and women go to those. You don’t complain that pizza sales at a convenience store are low because people mostly go to these places for gas, tobacco, alcohol, or snacks. People usually go to places that specialize in making pizza if they want pizza (unless you need to feed a lot of people for cheap).

Oh, let us not forget that abortion rates have been falling since 1990. Why? Contraception? Sex Education? Less Stigma of being a single Mother? More intimidation? Abstinence Education? Who knows. I do know that I will not say it is one or more of those things without a little research.

Stop using numbers to manipulate and conflate data. Please just give us the facts, not distorted Bullshit (speaking of BS, Penn & Teller’s Bullshit had a good episode on this topic. I don’t usually trust libertarians, but they are very good).

 I know the point was made about 20 seconds in, but I really like this scene.

GOD. D@MN. PANTS!!!

God Dammit, I hate my pants.

These things are the worst. They are both too short and too long. They are too long when it comes to my legs, but too short when it comes to my waist. I’m constantly stepping on and creating holes at the bottom of my pant legs, but if I lean slightly forward, I moon everyone. If someone was behind me right now, they would get a nice view of the Grand Canyon.

I try to hitch up my pants like an old man but they just end up crushing my genitals. You think Female Genital Mutilation is bad? The UN needs to put these pants on some Human Rights watch list. If I sit down, there is no chance of ever having children. If I even manage THAT, any slight movement will have me performing The Nutcracker.

Eventually I can get them situated just right, but it ends up numbing the whole region until I stand up again. THEN, I feel the chafing pain all at once.

I guess I could be a woman and just have a random unit of measurement for my size instead of the convenient measurement of length and width, because obviously all women's body's are made the same way. It's not like women can be short and fat or tall and thin. They all have lengths and widths perfectly proportional to each other! And how does a woman's shirt NOT take into account breast size?

Anyway, back to me.

I guess I could easily buy a new pair...





I would rather complain.