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Siskita found this on the Daily Show blog:
December 22 at 11:53AM by Dennis DiClaudioFox News Announces Winner of the Holocaust
Hey, it’s been a little more than 60 years, but they finally finished tallying up all the points from that war that they had over there in the whole world, and Fox News is proud to announce the grand champion of the Holocaust…
Congratulations, Elie Wiesel! All your hard work has obviously not gone to waste.
While I know who Wiesel is and what he is a hero for doing, I actually respect him a little less for going on Fox News in the first place. I think we should start boycotting people who go on Fox News. Clearly, they have a problem with their judgment skills.
I mean, seriously Fox News, “Holocaust Winner”? Did he win a holocaust in a contest? Or did he win the holocaust, as in, he came out of it the winner? Or…WTF?
Imagine paying extra to visit Facebook. Imagine not being able to check your tweets with your smartphone while on the go. Imagine wireless carriers charging us to do even more stuff that costs them little extra to do (like they already do with texting). This is horrible and they’re thinking about considering it.
I remember back in the AOL days when AOL used to charge X amount of dollars for X amount of hours online. Ridiculous, right? Of course. Well, it seems like wireless carriers may be thinking about going backwards. In fact, in some ways, they already have with their $60/mo-for-1GB-style plans. Now they want to micromanage what they let us do on their connections.
This is ridiculous. Please clock the link above and read more about this nightmarish scenario.
Posted this on my tech blog and thought that posting it here, too, would be a no-brainer.
Best t-shirt to have delivered to your door today. Great t-shirt to wear any day.
Found via thoughtlessfroth:
This just arrived.
AWESOME.
All of the folks out there that are going after Al Qaeda or other extremist-types with the actual means to cause physical harm, GOOD ON YOU! Keep up the good work!! All the other folks out there who go after pissed off kids and other losers who have precisely zero means to commit the acts they say they want to commit: EFF YOU.
Among the principles the United States was founded on, none of them encourages or condones the arrest of people who would LIKE to harm others but can’t actually do it. In fact, one of the most basic concepts behind our country is the idea that every human is entitled to freedom of thought.
What happens when you find a 21 year-old guy or a 19 year-old kid who are pissed off at the government and dream of killing people?
Nothing.
Well…
Read the rest at http://effyou.org
Anonymous takes down Glenn Beck Today.com
it’s even got the latest anonymous video embedded in it.
FUCK YEAH!
Here’s a screencap I took at about 4:07pm ET today:
Of course, now Beck will whine and moan about how he was hacked and use that to his advantage and his troops will rally.
As much as I enjoy seeing hacks like this happen, ultimately, sadly, they’re not really that useful. They’re sort of counterproductive for the reason I just mentioned, actually. Unless you present a short, concise argument/point through your hack, you’re not going to win the heart and mind of anyone who didn’t already agree with you. You’re sure as hell not going to convert any Glennenites to your cause by playing your hip, cool music video after hacking their Pope’s website.
And if all you’re doing is pissing them off, your efforts only serve to make it more annoying for all of us while Glenn and his fellow victims play the victim and go whining all the way to the bank.
Do real damage—be concise and make a point that no one can argue with or get bored with before you’re done making it (a nearly 2 minute YT vid? Yikes!).
Just my ¥2. ??????
Meant to blog about this a while back:
Nazis Were Given ‘Safe Haven’ in U.S., Report Says
A secret history of the United States government’s Nazi-hunting operation concludes that American intelligence officials created a “safe haven” in the United States for Nazis and their collaborators after World War II, and it details decades of clashes, often hidden, with other nations over war criminals here and abroad.
The 600-page report, which the Justice Department has tried to keep secret for four years, provides new evidence about more than two dozen of the most notorious Nazi cases of the last three decades.
Hit up the above link (in the headline) to read the whole piece. Depressing stuff. The USG hasn’t really lived up to its principles at a lot of points in its history, has it? :
Went to Book Off down on 45th over the weekend and saw this magazine cover: Zuckerberg puckering and Buffet with a dreamsicle. ????????
It’s official! I can’t keep up with the forces of evil.
Anyone wanna help out with website666.com? >_<
If it’s not the government, it’s corporations. If it’s not the corporations, it’s the government! ARG!
This is something I’ve noticed the USG and the FBI doing for a while. See if you can notice what’s wrong with the following cutting from a November 28, 2010 article at LATimes.com reporting on a 19 year-old naturalized American (originally from Somalia) who wanted to blow up a bunch of Americans (I’ll add italics to make it obvious):
“The threat was very real,” said Arthur Balizan, special agent in charge of the FBI in Oregon. “Our investigation shows that Mohamud was absolutely committed to carrying out an attack on a very grand scale.”
According to the FBI, they arrested Mohamud after he dialed a cellphone that he thought would detonate a huge bomb — six 55-gallon drums, diesel fuel and a large box of screws — in a large white van parked near the tree lighting.
But the bomb was a fake built by the FBI, and the packed crowds who enjoyed a youth choir and a symphony orchestra at Friday’s holiday celebration at Pioneer Courthouse Square were never in danger, authorities said.
Let me break this down for you:
The FBI finds this teenager who’s pissed at the USG, builds a pretend bomb for him, hands him the detonator and then arrests him when he activates it.
Where’s the crime there, exactly?
I mean, sure, he’s “wrongthinking” like in the Orwell novel, 1984, but wrongthinking isn’t illegal (yet).
On top of that, this guy had no obvious means to make a bomb to kill anyone on his own. He’s a kid. I remember how moody and obnoxious I was when I was 19! (If you think I’m bad now!)
Why is it that we only hear about these toothless tigers and not actual threats being foiled by the FBI? Hell, the Times Square Bomber from earlier this year failed in his attempt to blow up a bomb only because he was a complete and utter fucktard. The FBI didn’t catch him beforehand and nearly lost him as he tried to flee the country.
Seems the FBI can only catch a terrorist if they arm him and supply him first. It’s like a literal version of the “Straw Man Argument” where you, effectively, make a false statement and then prove it wrong to show how cool you are. This time, they prop up this kid as a terrorist and then brag about it when they take him down.
There’s something deeply wrong about this.
Target carries Pocky and Wasabi Peas? When did they get so Japanesey? (Not that I’m complaining.)
Wish it existed for the DS.I noticed this over the past few weeks as I read various coverage of iPhone apps that Apple was and was not letting get through. Check out these headlines:
Radio Station Apps: No Longer Welcome in the App Store
Apple Bans Android Magazine From The App Store
Why Does Apple Make Donation Apps So Hard?
In short, Apple seems to be using it’s position to stop certain information from getting onto it’s devices. Want to listen to your favorite local radio station now that you live in a different city? Sorry, you won’t be able to on your iPhone. That’s a shame since it’s just a little station with a tiny budget and not much ability to reach a national audience. Now, thanks to Apple, a great (and inexpensive) channel for reaching a national audience is gone.
Then, we’ve got Apple deciding whether or not you can read about competitors to Apple on Apple devices. I don’t know about you, but I don’t like Apple telling me what I can and can’t read on my iDevice. Sure, I can always pull up that Android magazine’s website in Safari, but then, what’s the difference between Safari and an app?
Finally, that last article I link to above talks about how Apple has stopped accepting apps that allow in-app donations to charity orgs (or anyone else). Why is this? It sure seems like it’s because it means money passes through Apple’s infrastructure without them getting a cut.
Over all, I feel that it’s this kind of “walled garden” mentality that makes us less free as consumers. When we start accepting limits on what content we are allowed to consume and how we consume that content, I think we become less free as a people, too.
You don’t really appreciate how important Net Neutrality is until you don’t have it anymore.
Umberto Eco (via thedaytheytriedtokillme)
Yep, that Umberto Eco.
Yes, that’s right, Assange’s SWISS bank account has been closed—there’s buckets of irony there. How many international criminals have used Swiss bank accounts for hiding their money?? And here comes Assange who, apparently, lied on his application regarding a Geneva residence. I’m sure this lie coming to light now has nothing to do with international pressure.
Assange should go to the bank that all the baddies on TV go to.
Meanwhile, George W. Bush’s ATM card is still working fine, I bet—and he admitted to ordering torture!
>_<
Found via thedaytheytriedtokillme.com.
My favorite is how he admits that a goodly chunk of the remaining docs to be published refer to UFOs. :) And no, it doesn’t sound like there’s anything really “good” in there like admissions of cover-ups or the like. :(
My own sense is that we should err on the side of telling the truth, even when it’s inconvenient or when it makes our lives—or the business of government—more complicated. And that people who tell the truth should at the very least not be denigrated. That’s something I learned when I was young, and that I tried to impart to my three boys when they were growing up. As Albert Einstein is reported to have said long ago, “The search for truth implies a duty. One must not conceal any part of what one has recognized to be true.”
And shouldn’t news organizations be defending WikiLeaks and doing some soul-searching of their own about why they aren’t devoting more resources to the search for the truth? Why is it that the National Enquirer and Internet blogs sometimes seem better than they are at finding out what’s really going on?
NationalJournal.com - To Tell the Truth - Thursday, December 2, 2010
This is a great little piece on our priorities during a time when a website is made to seem like the greatest threat to democracy.
Seriously—WikiLeaks a terrorist organization??
W.T.F.
This is kind of insanely amazing—yet I bet it got buried under news of WikiLeaks. Check out this cutting from CTV.ca:
Mon Nov 29, 10:00 PMScientists find way to reverse aging in mice
CTV.ca News Staff
Scientists in Boston have made an astounding discovery, taking aging mice and turning them young again, like tiny little Benjamin Buttons. (AP / Bebeto Matthews)
Scientists in Boston have made an astounding discovery, taking aging mice and turning them young again, like tiny little Benjamin Buttons.
Just like the title character in the Hollywood film version of “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” the mice appeared to not only stop aging but grow younger.
The gist isn’t quite as promising as it sounds, sadly. Turns out they could only reverse the aging in mice they’d already aged artificially by giving them that disease that mimics the effects of old age. However, if it works on these mice, why wouldn’t work on humans with the same disease? Or on mice and/or humans who are old, if the effects of the disease are so similar to the effects of regular old-aging?
Check out the whole article to read the specifics. It’s fascinating stuff for sure. I’ve always had the feeling I’d live forever. Now I have the feeling I just might know how I’ll do it. :)
Gizmodo’s Tim Wu blogs about how innovation was stopped in its tracks, effectively, due to capitalist interests. Funny how we’re all told capitalism is great for innovation. Too bad that’s only true until innovation might damage the current business model. Take the example of the answering machine that existed in the office of a Bell Labs engineer… in 1934.
I posted this over on website666 and thought it would fit here, too.
I noticed this over the past few weeks as I read various coverage of iPhone apps that Apple was and was not letting get through. Check out these headlines:
Radio Station Apps: No Longer Welcome in the App Store
Apple Bans Android Magazine From The App Store
Why Does Apple Make Donation Apps So Hard?
In short, Apple seems to be using it’s position to stop certain information from getting onto it’s devices. Want to listen to your favorite local radio station now that you live in a different city? Sorry, you won’t be able to on your iPhone. That’s a shame since it’s just a little station with a tiny budget and not much ability to reach a national audience. Now, thanks to Apple, a great (and inexpensive) channel for reaching a national audience is gone.
Then, we’ve got Apple deciding whether or not you can read about competitors to Apple on Apple devices. I don’t know about you, but I don’t like Apple telling me what I can and can’t read on my iDevice. Sure, I can always pull up that Android magazine’s website in Safari, but then, what’s the difference between Safari and an app?
Finally, that last article I link to above talks about how Apple has stopped accepting apps that allow in-app donations to charity orgs (or anyone else). Why is this? It sure seems like it’s because it means money passes through Apple’s infrastructure without them getting a cut.
Over all, I feel that it’s this kind of “walled garden” mentality that makes us less free as consumers. When we start accepting limits on what content we are allowed to consume and how we consume that content, I think we become less free as a people, too.
You don’t really appreciate how important Net Neutrality is until you don’t have it anymore.
If this week’s post on EFFYOU.org didn’t give you enough reasons to support WikiLeaks (or at least understand why they are important) here are a few more reasons I’ve snipped from another great post from underpaidgenius:
Jeremy Geelan contacted me about the Wikileaks mess, and wanted my two cents. His piece is an interesting juxtapositioning of cloud computing and political intrigue.
A few snippets:
WikiLeaks & Web 3.0 - A Commentary | Cloud Computing Journal
[…]“The Internet is open, we have to embrace that. I for one, am proud there are secure silos around the world that can host material and get it out to the people. Yes we have to take the rough with the smooth, and while we do not agree with what they publish, if we live in a free society then this is what we have to swallow if I am to be able to stand up to be heard without fear.The Internet can keep governments honest…or at least more honest than historically allowed. We have to keep things open.”
[- Alan Williamson]
STOWE BOYD, self-declared social philosopher and “webthropologist,” takes Williamson’s “We have to keep things open” stance to another level.
“What WikiLeaks represents is civil disobedience channeled through an agenda of radical openness,” declares Boyd. “The individuals involved on a personal level are deciding that laws that may or may not designate their activities as illegal are illegitimate, that our obedience to the state is coerced, and therefore can be morally opposed and countered.”
Boyd goes on to explain this in more detail as follows: “Wikileaks is an example of direct action, like Greenpeace activists attempting to shut down the Knightsnorth power station, claiming that the laws against trespass and destruction of private property were outweighed by the need to counter global warming to prevent far greater property damage around the world. They were acquitted, the first time such a claim was used as a ‘lawful excuse’ for committing a crime (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenpeace). One form of “direct action,” Boyd continues, is to expose secrets, especially when governments or large corporations are saying one thing publicly and doing another clandestinely.
“In some cases these exposés might involve criminal wrong-doing, or simply duplicitous behavior,” says Boyd.
“Amazon or other hosting providers that opt to decline support for WikiLeaks or other activists may be acting because of alternate moral viewpoints, or through coercion, or fears of future repercussions when governments may decide that the hosts are culpable in some way,” he adds.
Incidentally, according to the WSJ, Amazon has said that they weren’t coerced by the USG to drop WikiLeaks, but that they were in violation of their TOS. More miraculous timing! Like that rape charge this isn’t really a rape charge, according to a Gizmodo post (turns out he didn’t use a condom—seriously! You can clearly see why Interpol was required to catch this man! >_<).
UPDATE 20101205: Turns out it *was* a rape charge after all. Isn’t this supposed to be the communication age? >_<
Incidentally, I head Assange’s lawyer say on Democracy Now last week that when this story first broke he offered himself up to authorities to work out what was going on. Turns out they didn’t take him up on it and now want to arrest him. Go fig!
Fareed Zakaria thinks WikiLeaks isn’t hurting America? THAT COMMIE!
Found via coalspeaker who commented:
I think Julian Assange is going to be the TIME PERSON OF THE YEAR.
I think he should be chosen. Everyone is certainly acting like he’s the most powerful/influential person on the planet (even though he isn’t).
For more on my opinion on WikiLeaks and Mr. Assange, check out Episode 35a of the 666cast or this week’s EFFYOU recipients at http://EFFYOU.org.
nathansgotsole:who remembers Cow&Chicken?
From effyou.org:
The whole problem with absolute power is that there can’t possibly be a check or balance placed on it. In case you haven’t noticed, America has no check or balance on it currently and hasn’t had one in quite a while. No military is stronger than America’s and only a few economic powers could ever hope to compete with the US economy (despite it’s recent and huge collapse).
So, why all the tough talk regarding WikiLeaks? WikiLeaks has no military, no national economy, very few ways to defend itself and it’s only power or influence in the world is through words.
Why are so many world leaders afraid of what words might end up on WikiLeaks.org? Perhaps it’s because those words draw attention to behavior that would normally not be acceptable if it were done in public?
Read more at http://effyou.org
…
Many feel the situation has reached crisis proportions. In the academic world, critics have begun to argue that universities are producing and distributing more knowledge than we can actually use. In the recent best-selling book “The Shallows,” Nicholas Carr worries that the flood of digital information is changing not only our habits, but even our mental capacities: Forced to scan and skim to keep up, we are losing our abilities to pay sustained attention, reflect deeply, or remember what we’ve learned.
…
- Ann Blair, Information overload, the early years
A very solid and well-researched examination of the attention overload meme, similar to the themes I discussed in The False Question Of Attention Economics.
(via stoweboyd)
Please read: The TSA is still bad, but the media sometimes isn’t even the media.
I found the above screencap and the quoted commentary on it below via stfuglennbeck (who has since taken it down and it’s still on strikegently at least as of this writing):
Wait. Wait. Wait. WAIT.
“Goddamn Arab”?!
Thats not racial profiling. Motherfucker. He was jerking off at women athletes. Not a fucking Arab. I dont know how people think they can just get away with saying racist ass shit like that. Like SERIOUSLY?!
(I tend to curse when Im angry, sorry.)
It wasn’t long ago that everyone was screaming about needing more security.
But now we’ve taken it way too far and it’s turning into a sexual/racial issue.I travel by train/boat/bus/car and I have no intention of getting on an airplane until this is taken care of. You have more privacy at the gynecologist anymore.
Yeah, well, don’t get your X-Ray-proof panties in a bunch about the above article or the image in the screengrab above. It’s a complete fake. I did a Google News search for the headline “Body Scanner Operator Caught Masturbating at Colorado Airport” and got no hits. Then I did a regular web search and found an article explaining how the image, allegedly of an X-rayed woman, was actually just taken from a stock photography package and then inverted in Photoshop to give it that X-ray flavor. Then I did a search for the reporter “Hugh Muzzbe” and found hundreds of hits, all on the same article being reposted and reblogged all over the place—but nothing else by him.
I know, I know, you’re thinking: “HUGH MUZZBE KIDDING ME!”
>_<
Does this mean that the X-ray machines and the body searches are any less invasive or any less of a violation of our rights? NOPE. It just means that, as usual, we have to keep our heads when reading about this stuff—ALWAYS CONFIRM EVERYTHING. If you’ve read one story in one place, don’t assume it’s accurate until you confirm it with other news sources.
But remember, just because this one image and this one article was faked, it doesn’t mean the TSA isn’t super creepy or at all competent in their job or not violating our rights—they most certainly are all those things. Alternet.org posted their list of the top 7 creepy things about the TSA and Mythbuster, Adam Savage, just the other day, admitted he walked right through one of the TSA’s machines and then onto a plane to Seattle with two 12-inch razor blades on his person (he carries a lot of weird stuff around with him and forgot he had them).
Oh and the good old fourth amendment of the Bill of Rights promises freedom from unlawful search and seizure. Last time I checked, the TSA checks are not done by law, but by regulation. Big difference. I was reminded of this while reading this account of the blogger behind NoBlasters.com being held up by TSA after flying. Essentially, if you simply ask if you’re under arrest, and they say “no” you can go. I wouldn’t try this, but if you’ve got plenty of money for a lawyer and don’t mind missing your flight…
Ultimately, the moral of the story is that we can’t trust people to do their job, whether they claim to be in the media or that they’re doing it for our own good.
If you are unaware that “Bikini Bottom” is the name of the place that Sponge Bob lived and not the region in which this children’s toy shaving kit would like you to focus, as my mother was, you might be a bit horrified…
sirmitchell:Wahoo! 13,000 followers!
To celebrate, I will give away a “NOFATCHX” t-shirt from my new shop to a random person who reblogs this!
Check back in a week to see who the winner is!
There’s a double entendre in the above pic, I think… regardless:
For that statement, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell gets the…
Read the rest at http://effyou.org
“I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.”—
Stephen Roberts. (And my favourite Atheist quote to date.)
That is an awesome quote. In fact, that’s the atheist quote to end all atheist quotes!
In fact (again), critical thinking is something I encourage all people, of faith and not, to do since it cuts through a lot of the crap we have to deal with every day.
Say, why do mobile phone companies charge so much to text while email is effectively free?
LOVE it. So, the souls of the gays must be beyond redemption by that reckoning. Ah well. How about atheists? I wonder…
This photo has been popping up on the lower right corner of my dash today. Someone put a comedic caption to it. Ha ha ha. Look at that silly dolphin using a shopping bag.
It’s estimated that around 100,000 marine mammals die each year due to plastic litter in the North Pacific. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is estimated to measure between the size of Texas and the continental United States; the North Atlantic Garbage Patch is hundreds of kilometers across. Most plastic bags are made from polyethylene, which comes from petroleum, and cannot biodegrade. They are affected by photodegradation, meaning they eventually break down into tiny synthetic granules because of the sun’s ultraviolet radiation, but they are not thought to degrade fully. This means that, on top of all the other trash and waste polluting the ocean, these microscopic bits of plastic are ingested by marine animals all over the world. That’s when they’re not mistaking plastic bags for food, or playing with them, and getting them stuck in their digestive tract until it slowly kills them.
So, yes. Hilarious.
People on Tumblr post snarky comments about a dolphin with a shopping bag on its fin while completely missing the sad, fucked up irony? I can’t imagine!
Oh wait, yes I can. Well said, Mockingnerd!
Meant to post this one the other day. It’s just so messed up when law enforcement/”security” types can’t just be fricken reasonable. That’s what this whole thing is, by the way, unreasonable. I think it’s reasonable for some kind of security when you go on a plane. But assuming everyone is a terrorist until they prove they are not seems to go against everything our country was founded on.
I don’t think this post on Gizmodo by a former law enforcement officer quite does what the title suggests, but it is definitely a worthwhile read.
In it, the officer suggests that the TSA needs to get their act together and decide what they are really trying to do. Their procedures are not consistent and not thorough and even then they are intrusive and of questionable use against fighting terror.
I still maintain my position that if we’re going to live in free country, anything more than metal detectors and X-ray conveyor belts is abusive and an infringement of our human rights to control our bodies.
We can’t trust our authorities to do anything right because they’ve manage to fuck everything up so far. Not really sure what to say or do about it at this point.
I mean, the level of hypocrisy here is absurd. They say they want to protect our lives by making them less free.
I’ll pass, thanks. Can we at least have the option to fly with an airline that doesn’t jam a snake-cam up our buts?
And my wife and I are supposed to be flying to NoCal during the holidays. :
From blogdrop.posterous.com:
Just to put this into perspective, Ariana Huffington transported, for free, around 10,000 New Yorkers to Washington DC for the Rally for Sanity and/or Fear on October 30, 2010. That’s a third of the Taliban and more than Al Qaeda.
Here’s another graphic I nicked from blogdrop.posterous.com:
If you are pro-life you should be horrified by this. Of course, if you are pro-only-your-own-life, you’ve already rationalized this away. Sad, either way.
Just thought this was interesting:
Heroin, crack and crystal meth were deemed worst for individuals, with alcohol, heroin and crack cocaine worst for society, and alcohol worst overall.
The study by the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs also said tobacco and cocaine were judged to be equally harmful, while ecstasy and LSD were among the least damaging.
…
The study involved 16 criteria, including a drug’s affects on users’ physical and mental health, social harms including crime, “family adversities” and environmental damage, economic costs and “international damage”.
As a practice, I don’t drink. But the older I get the more I find myself tempted to start since I’m at the point in my life where I’m really not likely to drink recklessly. That said, I still generally stay away from alcohol and always have. Nice to see my lifelong choice supported by science.
Science is cool. :)
He looks a little like General Ripper from the Stanley Kubrick classic Dr. Strangelove, doesn’t he? And it’s an ironic likeness since this guy is batshit insane with paranoia.
Read the rest at http://effyou.org
Got any suggestions for who should get the next EFFYOU? Let me know!
Chinese woman sentenced to a year in a labor camp for a tweet (via Gawker)
I’ve been complaining a lot about the US police state, as mild as it is, but seeing this in my Tumblr stream reminds me of just how mild our police state is in the US.
Apparently, Cheng Jianping, RTed her fiance’s tweet about really sticking it to Japan by destroying the Japanese Expo pavilion in Shanghai—she apparently added a comment that jokingly encouraged China’s youth to go do exactly that. Of course, any moron could see that she was kidding, but the commie bastards that run China’s government stuck her in a labor camp for “disturbing social order.” Ah yeah, by joking.
The only place we can’t joke, here in the US, is during a TSA security check.
Read more about it on Gizmodo. Not sure why they were blogging about this story, but then Gizmodo does waste a LOT of time with posts having jack to do with gadgets. Sounds like SOMEbody needs to spend some time in a Chinese labor camp! ;)
“We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology.” — Carl Sagan
That is so true. I have noticed many children have lost that innocence and wonder for science that was so strong just a few decades ago with the founding of the space program and all the research and development that NASA has done. It seems that most people today only want the new technology in order to fuel their status or appearance. Such as, “Oh, I have the iPhone 4. That makes me better than you.” This is the direction our children are headed. We all need to get off of our computers and our facebook and our youtube for just an hour a day and take a walk in the park. Maybe camp out in the backyard and look at the splendor of the galaxies of stars above. When I say this, I’m not necessarily downing technology, but we don’t need to lose the appreciation and responsibilty for what Providence has bestowed upon us. I look around my neighborhood and I no longer see children taking nature hikes or playing in the yard like I did just over a decade ago. It saddens my soul to witness this ignorance of what children really need. Parents so often allow themselves to believe that as long as they “provide” for their children materially, that they’ll grow up fine. This is so wrong. Children don’t really care about the newest piece of technology on the market, they want the love and attention that only the parent can fulfill. Parents, if you want your children to appreciate you, then you need to take the time to nurture and teach them. Because if you’re not, then who is? Is that really how you want your children to be? Think about it, please.
This is an incredibly good point. However, I think parents are missing their boat in a couple ways.
First, Eva is exactly right—kids need to be taught that there is more to life than having stuff. There needs to be an emotional appreciation for what we have in the universe—not just for “what’s the next big thing.” Absolutely the case and if it weren’t we wouldn’t hear about people being trampled at Wal-Mart every year on Black Friday.
Second, parents have failed to teach children how to appreciate intelligence. Ever since I was a small kid, I’ve been mocked for being smart. I read voraciously as a child but got made fun of so much, I swapped out the books for comics by the time I was a teen. I still remember being made fun of because I compared a tornado to a black hole in science class.
Back in June of this year I saw Neil deGrasse Tyson do a Q&A session at the American Museum of Natural History. One of the many things he talked about was the culture of ignorance that we have in America. It’s a culture that all but encourages stupidity and actively discourages learning. He added, if we don’t change this, the next time we run into a major environmental catastrophe, we’ll ask the experts what to do and they’ll say: “Throw golf balls at it.”
This was a reference to something that had already happened days before Tyson did his Q&A—the BP oil spill, where BP execs proposed the exact thing Tyson mentions—which did not work.
So, what does this all have to do with the digital watch I mention in the title of this post? Simple—I recently came across an old digital pocket watch I bought for 20 bucks at a JC Penny in 2004(ish) and I couldn’t remember how it worked. See, I have a thing for pocket watches but I stopped using watches all together due to my cell phone(s) having a clock on the display. But this pocket watch had a compass on it. This is useful to a person with an old iPhone 3G (yeah, I’m not cool cuz I don’t have an iPhone 4 :( ). So, I started carrying this thing around with me and actually using it as a watch!
The problem arose when Daylight Savings Time ended. I sat there trying to remember how to work this technology—this bloody, simple technology!!
WHAT DO THE BUTTONS DO?? WHERE DO I SWIPE? CAN I JUST SYNC IT TO MY LAPTOP’S CLOCK?
WTF?!?!?!
Finally I got it changed and everything was cool.
But still, it’s just like that episode of Star Trek where Kirk, Spock and McCoy visit a planet where a people live enslaved by this master computer because it has become so foreign and mysterious to them it became a god to them. They let themselves fall into ignorance and trusted the IT guys, only to have the last IT guys die and have the information on how to regulate the machine lost forever. This allowed the computer to take over.
OK, so my digital watch isn’t going to enslave me, but if, say, I couldn’t work out how to turn off the alarm, I would be enslaved to that thing once a day.
But this is why parents need to encourage their kids to learn about the world and the technology they use every day. Hell, we, as adults, need to encourage each other to learn this stuff, too. I know so many people who willfully remain ignorant about computers despite using them every day. One acquaintance of mine recently admitted that she didn’t know how to refresh her browser.
She’d never clicked the “reload” button on her browser before. >_<
SO, LEARN!!! LEARN LEARN LEARN!
STUDY STUDY STUDY.
We’ll all be better off the more intelligent we are.
The toddler was 3 years-old.
‘nuff said.
This is big brother, kids. It’s happening. I’m not saying the viewscreens are next, but how else will the government know we’re not planning to blow up an airplane before we leave our homes?
Hopefully the invasiveness we’re seeing at these airports won’t continue mission-creeping its way into our homes, but what’s to stop it when our security must be irrationally protected from a statistically non-existent threat?
It’s like asking a militant Israeli for proof that he owns the land he lives on and having him point to the Bible.
ORLY?
Ted Koppel: Olbermann, O’Reilly and the death of real news
It’s nice to see that someone sees the same problem I do.
Apparently, Olbermann said something against this, I think? I’m so sick of that guy and 99.999% of the media. They’ve made us rock stupid. They have no right to complain about us because they’re a serious part of why we say/do stupid things. After all, most Americans just slurp up their crappy content and think nothing worse of it. I think the MSM needs STFU and stop being so sensitive to criticism.
It’s not like Ted Koppel has any kind of real influence any more.
