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The emails have started my 20-year class reunion. It is weird to think about the time in 10’s of years. It is also weird to think that my friends now and my friends then have few if any connections. It is like there is the big split of me moving to Texas or something?
For those of you who like the where is Waldo game…
Yes I am in there. I sure I will feel old soon, but right now I ust worried someone might find me in this picture.
If you read Slashdot, you may have seen the article about Bill O’Reilly slamming the PS3 launch and video gamers in general. His guest Blois Olson of the National Institute on Media & the Family wins the blame it on the geeks award for this quote:
“The have-nots are growing. Why are they growing? Because the skill set that is necessary to earn a decent living is being deemphasized in a fantasy world of football games and shooting zombies and all that…. Now you have the ‘knows’ and the ‘know-nots’, because if you spend all your youth being prisoners of machines….. you’re not going to know anything…. You’re gonna fail.”
Bill O’Reilly Slams PS3 Launch, Gamers, iPods, Digital Tech (not in that order)
Now let us start with the premise that the have-nots are growing because they don’t have the skills to get good jobs. Why can’t Johnny program Java? Because he is too busy with being locked in mortal combat with an animated Zombie. This must be it. This is what is keeping him out of college. I sure if Johnny put down the PS3 controller and get off the welfare he could find time to go to Harvard like they have wanted him too.
However, just for a moment let’s think about who the have-nots are. Chances are they make below the median income (duh?), which in the state Texas is just 54,554. That is about $3,000 for rent, food, gas and extras like a car for a family of four. Well I can tell you, that isn’t going to cover many classes at a state school let alone a private university. Reality is probably worse then that; the lowest 20% have a median income of less then $18,500 before taxes. Imagine feeding 2 kids on that let alone buying a PS3.
I can understand why people find video games a good target for the criticism about violence. But to say that people are economically by playing video game is flat arrogant wind-bagging. Your youth is not being spent as a prisoner of a machine. That machine has a power button and plugs into a wall. I spent most of my youth playing in my room with clay and Lagos. It wasn’t until I started playing video games that got any marketable skills. I thank God I didn't sit around and watch TV all the time!
The problems of our society are too complex to muddy the waters for your own purposes. Stop blaming computers or music or books. People created these things and people use them. When something goes wrong it is not the too by the user. If Johnny can’t program Java tell him he can create his own Zombie game if he learns and yes the zombies may have big breasts. It is the price we pay for motivating people to be better.
Did you know my wife shares a birthday with Voltaire?
I find this strangely poetic …
Happy Birthday to the most amazing woman.
-Dan
It has been a good week work wise and school wise. Tuesday was a really good day at work. I felt like I started getting things done and earned my keep. There were a couple of cool new things in Java learned and I got to do some data modeling. School was better this week. I had a couple of tests this week that didn’t go as badly as things last week and the workload was better.
Spring registration starts soon. I am thinking of taking three classes. Two advanced Java classes and a math class. This would complete my programming track and leave me just math and a couple history classes to take. Two of them would be one night and one two nights. It would mean I would have class Monday-Thursday. It is not a bad schedule, but I worried about Faire, work and school.
While all in all I am feeling better about things, there are still lots of stuff I feel I not doing well at. Not sure what the answer is, but right now I know it involves going to Math class. I keep you posted.
Update: I got an 88 on the math test. My grade now depends on the final.
This is one of my office mates last day and it has taught me not to underestimate cooking. As I mentioned before, I work is the same office as international products team. If you are accent mimic good luck working in this room. What does all this have to do with cooking? Simple, flan.
One of the team members made a flan. You see I am a gringo when it comes to a great number of things. One thing I thought I understood is flan, that Mexican custard desert with the caramel stuff. You may have an image in your mind of a small round elegant desert; you would not be close to this flan. This is a 12x9 cake pan flan. This flan is meant to feed 12 teenage football players, twice, with leftovers. This is not your mother’s flan. This flan would eat your mother’s flan. This flan of jungle, flan-foo, flan the great! Let’s cut to the chase, this is a big flan.
… and it is sitting right over there. Waiting.
Yes, I edited my post from last night. Glenn Greenwald of Crooks and Liars said it best this morning.
"The basic mechanics of American democracy, imperfect and defective though they may be, still function. Chronic defeatists and conspiracy theorists — well-intentioned though they may be — need to re-evaluate their defeatism and conspiracy theories in light of this rather compelling evidence which undermines them (a refusal to re-evaluate one's beliefs in light of conflicting evidence is a defining attribute of the Bush movement that shouldn't be replicated)."
I would like to say I feel the world has turned around. However, this is just the beginning of a very long fight to return our country to the principles that all men are created equal with the right to liberty and justice. The next step, remind everyone what liberty is.
liberty:
The right and power to act, believe, or express oneself in a manner of one's own choosing.
Doesn't that sound like a revolutionary idea?
I am scared. My fear is that the election will once again end mysteriously. That the mystery will once again point to conspiracy to undermine democracy by people with an ideological agenda. A conspiracy I don’t want to believing. This is my fear.
According to the Census Bureau in the last mid-term election only 42.3% of eligible people voted. Minorities were less likely to vote. To that point, less then 20% of eligible Hispanic or Asians voted. Only 17.2 of people 18 to 24 voted. Most voters were White, over the age of 45 with a household income over 75K. Over 80% of that population voted. If you want to change politics, the solution has to include you voting. Today is that day. You are not too busy, you can lookup were the polling place is, go vote.
I am from a small town where most people that voted where retired with out children. When school bond elections came up they almost always got voted down. As a student, I felt the impact of that. I learned early that voting may not feel important, however not voting is crippling.
…Voting is democracy
I have a wide swath of contempt for popular culture. Some may say it comes from years of being thought of as a social pariah. In high school, I grew out of my wallflower nerd stage and straight into my geeky skater kid stage. This assured I would never get a date to the prom. While I can understand why this is fertile ground for conspiracies about my contempt for popular culture, it is not the true reason. The real reason I dislike things that are popular is that they are dumb.
Anything that is popular is by definition stupid. Let’s face it; half of all people have to be below average and in order to achieve popularity you have to pander to some of them. This strips away the clock denial around my one true prejudice. I hate stupidity.
If you are wounding what even has raised my ire today, it is the fact that “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip” is headed the way of “Sports Night.” The show is on its last legs with NBC because of ratings. If you have not seen either “Sports Night” or “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip,” they are from the creator of the “West Wing.” He writes character based show about real people. By real, I mean people who have real problem, emotions and dreams. I do not mean freaks that auditioned for a Reality (c) based TV show. A bright spot of literature in the darkness of popular culture is headed for the trash heap.
If you have not seen the show, do yourself a favor and watch it before it becomes the set of DVDs everyone is passing around. This was the fate of “Sports Night.” Everyone I have shown a single episode too, has watched the whole series and cried. They cried not only because it was canceled before its time, but because they writing are that good. When a friend showed me “Firefly,” I felt the same why.
I want more shows on TV written well. Shows that have more then a seventh grade vocabulary. Shows that include characters that face problems and standing up for ideas. My gosh, I want people to write about ideas! I have nothing ageist saving the cheerleader to save the world. But the shows mystery is based on facts they just haven’t told you anything. Writing a mystery into a story is more then not telling audience who done it. You should be able to watch it more then once and still be entertained.
If you want to see something good on TV, tune in, before it is gone. But I must warn you it is on the same time as “CSI: Miami,” “The Tyra Banks Show” and “The Bachelor: Rome.”… The choice is yours. For myself, I am going back to loathing popular culture and reading books.
Sometimes I feel like it is just too hard. I feel school and other things are just not going as well as I would like. Math is kicking my butt, not just because I have not done fractions in 20 years, also because keeping up with the workload is killing me. Tonight I found out that I missed an on-line quiz. I spent most of last night and tonight doing the 6 assignments due for class this week. During that process I forgot to look to see if there was an online quiz last due. There was it was due last night.
Additionally, tonight my Java II instructor called me stupid. I misunderstood one of his poorly worded assignments. This has become par for the course in Java. I have not gotten more then a 95 on an assignment since the first one. Which is kind of discouraging since this is the 3rd time I have taken class that is teaching this same martial. No, I got A’s in both classes. I took the continuing education class on Java and C++, both taught the exact same syntax. Granted C++ is a different language, but it is very similar syntax. I am now hopping to get a B in a computing language I use everyday.
I don’t feel I am doing well in photography either. Just don’t have the time to shoot any of the assignments. I have put some serious thought into dropping my ‘fun’ class.
The rest of my life is, well maybe it is just my outlook right now. I really feel it is all just too hard.
Early voting is going on now. If you are register, go to the same polling place you plan on voting at (or plan on avoiding) on Election Day and vote. The polls are open from 7 to 7 all week. This is what democracy is gang. If you are like me, worried about the way things are going, go vote. Yes, things may not change on November 7th. However, I plan to be making rash political statements for a long time and this protects my right to do so.
Go vote!