Tag: Issues

Posted in Issues

Background Info: Important or just a freakin’ waste of time?

Posted on by The Maker

I’m wondering something and I wonder what everyone else thinks.

Is it really important to know background information? Aren’t solid facts enough without reasoning, subtlety, and explanations? True, it’s nice to know, but is it really necessary? Do you really need to know every detail about combustion engines and the history of oil manufacture to drive a car? Obviously you do not, but there are less extreme cases. Consider Math. You can get by perfectly knowing that logarithm (log) can be used to determine y in 9^y=x with y =log5(x). You don’t need to know what log is, just how to use it to find y in the equation. Beyond finding it on your calculator, this is all you need, in your current situation, to know about logarithms, right?

So why are people so concerned with background info? Is it not enough to know that the Protestants fought the Catholics in the 30 years war without going into differences in dogma, which sprung from protestant reformation leaders, each with their own history that coalesced into their motives? Who cares? Who really needs to know about Zwingli or the Ursuline order of nuns or who attended Martin Luther’s trial? Correct me if I’m wrong, but NOBODY DOES!! NOBODY CARES!! True, some historians or socioligists might care, but 1) they aren’t us, who aspire to achieve something less boring, and 2) the past is past and doesn’t matter to us. Or maybe it really does matter.

Which brings another point. WHY do we have to study history at all? True, it tells us why things are the way they are, and sometimes we want to know that (but it’s more often with social interactions involving someone of the opposite sex) but we can get along perfectly without it. Do we need to know about particle physics and thermodynamics to build a hot air balloon? What’s wrong with knowing that hot air rises and leaving it at that?

Honestly, one could say ignorance is bliss as information builds shades of gray which are annoying. But it’s always nice to know things in case they come in handy. But that is for future necessity, not current need. And then one can say information breeds insight. But mostly it just causes confusion and hesitation, as one weighs the possibilities. So what do you think? I would love to know if I’m insightful or just totally conkers.

Posted in Issues, Politics

Three down, forty-seven to go…

Posted on by Aardvarki

Tell me: what do these three names have in common: “Massachusetts, California, and Connecticut.”
That’s right, folks: these are the names of the states in which gay marriage is now legal! The Connecticut Supreme Court today, in a 4-3 vote, decided that a ban on gay marriage constituted “cognizable harm” and infringed on a “fundamental right” of same-sex couples, and was, overall, unconstitutional. If you’d like to read a bit more about the ruling, copy this URL and paste it into your URL box: http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSTRE4996BE20081011

Posted in Issues

Conforming

Posted on by The Maker

Since none of you OBVIOUSLY cared not about stem-cell research, this submission is upon the basic dichotomy of conforming to society or dancing to your own tune. I know bullying isn’t as much a problem as it was a long time ago, both in last decade and elementary school (young kids seem more discriminatory), but still.

They’re always there. Everywhere you go, you see buff, pumped up, steroid munching jocks and anorexic, implanted models. They are The Fad. The Style. The thing to be. Everyone around you subscribes to this belief: everything they do is Right. The world constantly attempts to squash out any difference with a military neatness. They mold you like clay to adopt their merchandise, their virtues, their thoughts. One is pressured to conform, encouraged by every medium to adhere to brand-name conformity and adopt uniform, national blandness.

But what of those who refuse? The dissidents of Pop culture. They wander, receiving quizzical looks, suffering the jests and jeers of outraged authority, who themselves discarded their uniqueness to adapt to society. Is the reward of personal contentment, to know that you AREN’T the product of Hollywood and Madison Avenue, enough to shield you from the constant insults, the unrelenting hurricane of prejudice against difference? Is it better to be oneself even if that self is not socially accepted? Do the masses mock and malign you for your dissidence, taking refuge in the fact that you arn’t suffering like they are, stripped of their thoughts, their values, the very essence that makes them an individual? Do you sit alone, wearing your personally tailored suit or outfit that went out of style last century, or do you sit with ‘friends’, wearing glittering lip gloss and Aztec Blue eyeshadow or munching on steroids, laughing and discussing a funny movie you all saw?

Posted in Issues

Stem Cell Recearch

Posted on by The Maker

The picketers, they line the aisles
with their signs, their chants, their winded rants.
They scream, “Infidels” and “Infanticide”
None of them where the smile
They all wear the face
of grim protest
against an issue they detest.
They stock up references,
Potential situations
The enmity swells.
The people rally around their beliefs
their code.
their way the world should work
“It’s not right!” they cry.

Meanwhile, the policeman
and father of one
is at the hospital with his only son
Who is into baseball. He’s getting pretty good too.
The doctor waits with a calm face
and tells the dad that his son is going blind.
The policeman asks what can be done
The doctor replies, “I’m afraid hope there is none”
the father refuses to believe
He looks it up, and visits
the Clinic at the edge of the city
Where the human body is kept under ice.
He waits with another woman, whose niece has been paralyzed, and finally gets to see the doctor.
“The technology is here,” the doctor sympathizes,
“But we need money to get it approved by the FDA, and that is not likely as we are primarily
government funded.”
The policeman goes back to his son, who is squinting at baseball cards. He looks into his eyes, already blurry with cataracts.
“It’s not right,” he cries.

Posted in Issues

I couldn’t get into it (This blog is about gays) (read it)

Posted on by Bri

I’m not going to post a music blog today.

No, no I won’t. Because I’ve got something on my mind. So you all know I’m in newspaper class. One of my articles (big suprise) is about the gay marraige disputes in California, Florida, and another place that escapes me at the moment. Unfortunately, we’re putting it under “news”, meaning that I can’t express my opinion on the dumb people I interviewed.

But then I think… I have a website!! I can dig into the dumb people as much as I want! I won’t mention names, just know… these are exact quotes from actual interviews that I conducted. Keep that in mind.

BRI: What is your opinion on the people polling for the rights for gays to marry?
DUMB KID 1: It’s WRONG. They don’t deserve rights.
B: Why not?
DK1: They’re not real people (laughing)
B: So gay people are not real people.
DK1: No
B: Why not
DK1: Because they’re less than human.
B: What makes them less that human
DK1:They’re gay
B: What defines a human, then?
DK1: Um, that you’re attracted to the opposite sex
B: That’s the only thing that makes you human?
DK1: In my opinion

Ok, dumb kid 1, in your opinion, what makes something a human is that is attracted to the opposite sex. Notice he did not specify physical attributes. Using his logic, the two dogs in the park that you don’t want to look at are human. You know, the ones who are being ignored by their owners until they start making a… scene. They are humans. And the proud duck parents trotting around with their ducklings, they are humans too.

BRI: What’s wrong about gay marraige?
Dumb Kid 2: Uh, a guy liking a guy is…. way beyond belief.
B: Why?
DK2: I can’t wrap my mind around it… I dunno. It’s just my opinion
B: There has to be a reason for your opinion.
DK2: I really don’t know
B: Is there a basis for this opinion of yours?
DK2: Actually, no, it’s just a choice I made
B: Choice? You don’t have to be gay to be pro gay marraige.
DK2: Yeah, but, I’m not FOR gay marraige
B: Why not?
DK2: I hate gays
B: Why.
DK2: Because they’re gay

So this interview with Dumb Kid Two just went into a circle. I was getting very frustrated. I thanked him and walked away, then lamented to Bart about it. He just laughed.

PLEASE NOTE: I am not making fun of people who are against gay marraige. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. I am making fun of the people who are against gay marraige for reasons they don’t even understand, and the people who have silly arguments. I mean, come on. The what is a human argument should be enough to tell you that some people just don’t get it.

The reason I don’t take these people seriously is that they
A. Have no basis for their opinions, or
B. They can’t back up their arguments

Now, I want to address one more thing. Dumb Kid One told me that marraige should be between a man and a woman, because it’s in the bible. Because it is his belief, and because I know other people who agree, I’m not going to make fun of this. I wouldn’t have, anyways, because hey, if that’s what you believe, I respect that.

But here’s my problem; people forcing others to believe. In our Constitution, we are awarded the “freedom of religion”. The religious people against gay marraige recognize the right for others to worship in their own way, or not worship at all. And yet they still expect everyone to abide by the rules of THEIR religion. Does this make any sense? No, no it does not.

So, citizens of the United States, here is my proposal. Give us unrestricted religious freedom, or take it away altogether. Stop withholding my rights as granted to me in the Constitution, or force me to convert! There is no middle ground, America!

Posted in Issues

You’re All I Want

Posted on by Bri

So I’ve been racking my brain for a new Let’s Argue topic, but the only issues that I could come up with were gay marriage (overused), abortion (overused), the presidential election (overused), and religion (I’m not even gonna go there. Too much personal controversy for everyone)

But then finally I came up with a good one. It has to do with the fact that after working for 49 hours in the past two weeks, I earned 398 dollars but am only able to deposit 322 of it. Everything else was taken off for income tax.

This SUCKS. I got gypped out of 76 dollars. That’s 9.5 hours I was not paid for. 9.5 hours of painting nasty, gnarled nails, scraping soggy, half digested food into a bucket, breaking up fights, translating mumbling, getting yelled at, getting run over by wheelchairs, and cheating at a non-violent hangman. That’s almost three days of working that I could have slept in and wrote blogs on. That. Sucks.

So this week’s Let’s Argue topic; how do you feel about income tax? If you don’t like it, what are your suggestions to change it?

Personally, I think it should be eliminated. They can raise sales tax a little to even it out a bit, but I want to keep all the money I earn. ALL OF IT.

Posted in Issues

Abortion: My final view

Posted on by Aardvarki

*This is just a copy of my original blog. I didn’t want to delete the other because it had comments attached to it. You can still view the comments on my original blog, but I just needed to get into the habit of the whole re-orginization thing. If you want to post comments non-related with the ones on the original, you can post them here.*

Okay, there are pobably many people who are going to be unhappy with me bringing up this subject again. “But I thought we were all done with this contraversial crap!” you’ll say. Sorry, but we’re not. At least not for now. And I’m not really saying that you have to leave comments, this is just my view, and if you see a flaw, please comment and I will answer you as best as I can. And, if I cannot prove my point, and you prove your’s instead, well, then you will know that you have changed my mind. But let me remind you: my mind is very hard to change; you will have to make some very good arguments for your cause. So, enough blabber-jabber, here it is: the final, unedited, unrated, unsomethinged view:

I think that abortion should be kept legalized because of several reasons. The most important of these is that when it is made illegal, abortions will not stop. Just like what was seen when cocaine was made illegal, and ecsacy, and LSD, an marajuana, abortion will not just dissapear, instead there will be a pluthera of illegal abortions. And illegal abortions will not be sanitary, they will not be performed correctly, and, just as in many third-world countries like Nepal, they will be fatal. And, just to clear something up, I am against abortion. I think that it is wrong to kill human beings, born or unborn. But I think that legal abortion is the lesser of two evils. And I believe in being pro-active rather than reactive. I also think that women have the right to choose what to do with an unwanted baby; it should not be just decided for them. Isn’t that the meaning of freedom, after all? To have the freedom to choose without fearing for our lives; isn’t that the priciple that this country was founded upon? I think that the best way to fight abortion is to be proactive; discouraging it, supplying a pluthera of choices, and, in the case of teenage pregancies, make sure that there is a nearby clinic that can offer counseling and set up a way to put the child up for adoption or put it into foster care. And, I guess if you wanted to be truly proactive, educate teenagers not to have sex. And you know that there are a lot of kids at your school that have sex; ther’s no turning a blank eye to it. The best way to make abortion obscure is not to have the baby in the first place, athough that probably will never happen. There is something about an hour of sexual pleasure that humans are so willing to risk the rest of their lives over. Bloody stupid, if you ask me.

Posted in Issues

The Pasta Theory

Posted on by Bri

Recently (ok, today), I’ve noticed something. Something strange. Something ground breaking. Something…. well, you get the picture. And here it is:

I have found a direct correlation between God vs No God arguments and pasta preference.

Yes folks, I sure have. I know you’re all probably shaking your heads right now, but hear me out, ok?

Here is our typical religious argument:

Random Arguer 1: “I believe that there is no God.”

Random Arguer 2: “You’re so wrong, there is too a God. How dare you insult my religion?”

Now, let’s replace the bold faced statements:

Random Arguer 1: “I believe that bowtie pasta is the best.”

Random Arguer 2: “You’re so wrong, linguine is the best. How dare you insult my taste in pasta?”

Uncanny, isn’t it? But keep listening. It all comes down to this: It is an OPINION. Here’s the truth; you cannot prove or disprove God, just like you cannot prove or disprove that linguine pasta is the best, because it’s a matter of opinion. Let’s look at another correlation:

You are Christian, and your friend is an Atheist. So you take your friend to church every Sunday, you read them passages from the Bible, and you attack them at every chance you can with religious quotes and wisdom. There are two outcomes to this: either your friend decides that he wants to convert to Christianity, or they decide to stay being an Atheist and get extremely annoyed.

Let’s change this to pasta again.

You love linguine, and your friend loves bowtie pasta. So every time you go out, you order them linguine, you talk about it all the time, and you list the ways linguine could enhance their lives. There are two outcomes to this: either your friend decides that they like linguine as well and agrees that is is the best pasta, or they decide that they still like bowtie pasta better and get extremely annoyed.

Here’s the moral of this story. Well, actually there are two.

MORAL 1: Atheists and Religious People: STOP ARGUING OVER THE EXISTENCE TO GOD. Neither one of you is going to come out on top, because it is a matter of opinion. I know you’re all going to be mad at me, but listen; an opinion is something that can not be proved and is a personal belief. A FACT is something that can be proved and verified. Both atheism and religion are OPINIONS. So again, stop arguing. It’s like arguing over what pasta is better.

MORAL 2: There are plenty of things theists and non-theists argue about; the validity and interpretation of the Bible, religious and non religious propaganda, and a variety of issues like gay marriage and abortion. But because the base of their arguments is their personal opinion, it all boils down to: Does God exist or not? And again, that can not be proved or disproved, therefore basing arguments off of it doesn’t make any sense. So stop using religion to back up an objective argument, and stop using the basis of non-religion to back up an objective argument. Just… stop….arguing. It’s going to get us no where.

*BONUS* MORAL 3: Bow Tie Pasta is totally better.

Posted in Issues

A Grotesque Monster of Hypocrisy

Posted on by Bri

I love that quote. I would post my seminar response, but it’s not that good. So onto the next topic:

 

 Atheism vs Satanism



There is a common misconception going around that atheists are immoral satan-worshipers. I’m here to clear these up.

First off I’d like to point out that if you don’t believe in God (atheist), then you don’t believe in the devil (Christian) either, so how can an atheist be a satanist? Right. It doesn’t make any logical sense.

Now let’s tackle the morality issue. Tell me, what makes a person immoral? The ten commandments:     

ONE: ‘You shall have no other gods before Me.’

TWO: ‘You shall not make for yourself a carved image–any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.’

THREE: ‘You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain.’

FOUR: ‘Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.’

FIVE: ‘Honor your father and your mother.’

SIX: ‘You shall not murder.’

SEVEN: ‘You shall not commit adultery.’

EIGHT: ‘You shall not steal.’

NINE: ‘You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.’

TEN: ‘You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor’s.’

Have you never heard of an atheist who didn’t lie, steal, covet, commit adultery, murder, refuse to honor their parents, say “God” in vain, or bear false witness against their neighbor? And since they don’t believe in any gods, the first two he mentioned aren’t relevant. Religion doesn’t determine morality. Sure, religion has a lot of good messages concerning this issue, but it doesn’t directly make someone moral. In fact, I might go as far as say that sometimes non-religious folk can be more moral than theists, because no one is telling them to be moral. They do it because they want to, not because they’re afraid of being damned to eternal sunburns.

Posted in Fiction

Downfall of Society

Posted on by Bri

The first words of the constitution are “we the people”. As a revised modern draft would say, if ever compiled, “We the sexist, superficial, stereotyped maniacs whom are unwillingly pulled from our lounge chairs to vote and become part of the once envied freedom of the union of the United States of America”. Yes, it is true. Americans have become smug, comfortable, in their comfy little office jobs and their false assurances from the government that everyone is equal. Ha. Let me type that again. ‘Assurances from the government that everyone is equal'. Whatever idiot came up with that view of modern society hasn’t spent much time outside of his studio apartment in New York.

From my views, the only way this civilization will ever become equal is if, by some unexplainable miracle, people come to accept others, no matter how rich, poor, smart, or stupid they are, and that all the stereotypes are combined into one, standing group. Americans. Can we do it? Not in my lifetime.

Also, though it is said that women have been granted equal rights, due to the 19th amendment, are we really? No. In theory, yes, but in practice? Give me a break. If we were granted equal rights and opportunities, then the girls basketball team would have new jerseys of their own, not the leftovers from the boy’s season. Now, that has to be the greatest understatement of the inequality of women’s rights in the history of forever, but it is a legit and credible argument covering the issue described. But women’s rights aren’t the only things that are created for the mere reason of making us feel better.

I am sure that everyone has heard of the stereotypes described in schools and in everyday adult life, such as ‘nerds’, ‘jocks’, ‘skaters’, and ‘preps’. How many times has a person gone home upset or in tears because of their apparent social standing? I know I have, for one, come home at night utterly depressed about my inability to converse naturally with all people. My social stigma is nerd. As pathetic as that sounds, it is what me and about 10% of my peers have been tormented about since the day they set foot in grade school. To what purpose does this serve? It makes others less ‘nerdy’ seem superior. How unfair is that, America?

I’m not asking those who are pointed to in this article to give up all their social life for the sake of those less gifted in social events. I’m merely stating the obvious that is in all of our hearts, some of which are almost too deep to find, and I demand only one thing; respect. Respect me and my fellow ‘nerds’. Respect me and my fellow women. But most of all, respect yourselves, and so that at the end of the day, if someone were to ask you if you are proud of how you live your life, and how you treat and think of others, you will be able to answer them with a truthful… yes.