To Be Continued

Hello, anyone out there in blog-reading land that might actually be keeping up with these.

You're very likely confused that there was no topic post on Sunday, nor is there a 9 AM post with actual content for today.  After a bit of discussion among some of our regular contributors, it appears that we're going to put our blog on a short hiatus.  None (well... not many) of us are superhuman, and other things in life (particularly school) need to take priority.

There's no real established timetable as to when our blog will make a return, though I'd imagine the likely possibilities exist around the notable breaks in school.  That being said, if anything changes, I'm sure we'll post an update, so feel free to click back every once in a while to see what's going on.

On behalf of all of our contributors, both regular and occasional, thanks for reading so far, and we hope to see you back again when we resume this.

All cats are worth having around.

http://www.cnn.com/video/?hpt=hp_c2#/video/world/2012/09/16/mabuse-eco-leopard-skins.cnn

There's a guy in South Africa trying to sell artificial leopard skin clothing to religious tribes, in an attempt to help preserve the leopard population.  While it's not uncommon for people (particularly in other countries and cultures) to use animals and their pelts for attire, there comes a point where the desire for said pelts has to be weighed against the longevity of the animal.  Even more troubling is the fact that the laws concerning the wearing and trading/selling of leopard pelts are apparently being flaunted and nothing is being done about it.

Leopards are pretty.  Let's not kill them.

Like moving pictures in my head, for years and years they've played

I'm not a big movie person.  I never really have been.  I got novelizations of movies while I was growing up, because my parents wanted to stress the importance of reading over watching a series of pictures on a screen.  To this day, I have bookshelves full of movies that I haven't watched, and probably never will.  That being said, I'll just list off a few of my favorites... well, the ones that come immediately to mind, anyway.

Battle Royale by Koshun Takami - I think I may have mentioned this back in the "favorite books" week. ... Yep, I did.  There's a live-action movie along the same lines (and a sequel, too, which isn't as good, sadly).  Again, if you like The Hunger Games, you'll probably like this.  ... It's just a lot more violent and bloodier.

Knight and Day - I'm a decent fan of Tom Cruise.  I've enjoyed most of the movies that I've seen where he's had a significant role.  This is the most recent movie with him in it that I've seen, and I thought it was enjoyable.  Kind of like a romcom mixed with a James Bond movie.  My only real complaint with it is the main character's name.  "Roy".  ... I just don't feel like that a strong name for a badass-but-ultimately-tender good guy.  I dunno.

8 Mile - Again, mentioned in weeks past, I'm an Eminem fan -- but the mere fact that he's the starring role in this movie isn't why I like it.  I like it because it feels like a very real, honest story about someone who has a shitty life and wants desperately to get out of it, but finds himself having trouble taking that leap of faith.  It's a good story and I really enjoy watching it... and, yeah, I like Eminem too.

Tristan & Isolde - almost like Romeo and Juliet, but set in more modern times (though not as modern as the Leo DiCaprio/Claire Danes Romeo and Juliet).  I like the basic story of Romeo and Juliet a lot, and so this appealed to me right away.  I've only been able to watch it once, however, because the end of the movie left my ex a hysterical, sobbing mess and I never wanted to repeat that.  It was a good movie, though.\

War - Jason Statham and Jet Li are another two actors that I like.  This features both of them in a story of two warring factions and the people caught in the middle of it.  Plenty of twists and turns, a couple of decent fight sequences, and a fairly crazy ending.

Minority Report - Another Tom Cruise movie, about the police using psychics to prevent crime by arresting people before the crime is actually committed.  It's a good, smart story with several clever bits put in, and genuinely likeable characters.  Also, it has fantastically awesome computer-glove-things that I hope are made into reality and sold to the public one day.

Rambo: First Blood - an older movie, but still one I enjoy.  One guy comes home from serving his country in a war and finds himself looked down upon by the general population.  He gets treated like dirt and decides to stand up for himself, and it all escalates into a giant conflict.  It doesn't have a happy ending, but it's still a very real picture of what life was (and is) like for some of our veterans.

And, here are all of the other noteworthy mentions that I felt would be more mainstream (and therefore not in need of explanation):

Star Wars (yes, all six of them)
Final Fantasy 7: Advent Children
X-Men (but NOT X2 or X3)
Mortal Kombat
Avengers
Iron Man
The Karate Kid (1 and 2, not 3 or "next", jury's still out on recent reboot)
The Lawnmower Man

Violent games turn kids into killers, too, y'know.

Today's post is brought to you by the letters C, N, and N again, courtesy of this link.

Underage drinking has always been an interesting subject with me.  Neither of my parents are particularly heavy drinkers.  Occasionally, my dad may have a rum and coke at home; more commonly, if we go out to eat at Ruby Tuesday, he'll order one of their tall glasses of beer.  Sporadically, he and my mom will go to tastings at one of the various number of wineries in the area.  That's about it.  I can likely count on one hand the number of times I've seen either of my parents severely intoxicated.  My sister, on the other hand, is a heavy drinker.  There was a point where she would completely shitfaced every night, which led to a lot of anger and stress and yelling and needless drama.  The worst of that -seems- to have passed, though I'm not ready to swear to that just yet.

So, underage drinking.  Obviously, I have no idea what went on with my parents back in their younger days, but given that my dad joined the Navy fresh out of high school (... I think?), I'd assume he had at least a few drinks before the age of 21.  My sister... well, who knows about her.  I wouldn't put it past her.  A lot of people make an association between underage drinking and alcohol abuse/addiction, and I don't think that's fair.  Other countries have significantly lower age requirements for drinking, and as far as I know, there haven't been reports of mass alcohol-induced chaos from any of them.  ... Except, maybe, for Ireland, but that's a different story.  One of my friends/ex-co-workers took a trip abroad for a notable amount of time, and he drank freely while he was there.  It didn't change anything about who he is, or his behavior, except that he complained more about the US's age limit for a while.

One of the key questions at the heart of this matter is whether allowing children to experience alcohol before the age limit is more beneficial or damaging.  The answer, I think, is pretty simple - it depends entirely on the person, and on the environment that is created for them.  I can freely admit that my parents let me taste wine, champagne, and beer long before I was even 18.  The first experience was almost nondescript, and the latter two only reinforced my line of thinking that they weren't for me.  In this situation, the experience was a positive one - I was able to learn from the experience in a safe, controlled environment.  It was more than a bit different in the neighborhood I grew up in, though.  One kid's parents' were of the mindset "Whatever, he'll do it somewhere if we say no, what's the point", and gave him free access to all of their alcohol.  Irresponsible?  You bet.  On more than one occasion, when I went to hang out with the group of kids, they reeked of beer and other alcohol, and I found myself infuriated at their inebriation.  Drinking, to them, became just another thing to do - almost like a game.  It didn't take long for me to cut all of my ties to them, swiftly and completely.  Those ties are still cut today.

I don't think introducing alcohol to someone under the age of 21 is necessarily a bad thing - but ONLY in the right manner, and ONLY in a safe, controlled environment.  The key point, also, is that it should be an introduction; an experience to learn from.  Once it becomes a habit, it's already gone too far.

Just for shits and giggles, here, have a very loosely-related Calvin and Hobbes comic that I enjoy.  It's a bit bigger than I would have liked, but otherwise you can't read it, and it's useless.

And I'll bet Calvin never wanted to smoke again.

Different Degrees

Higher education used to be something that was expected of you, if you wanted to do anything meaningful in life and be a contributing member of society.  But I think that mindset has changed somewhat recently - I believe that fewer people are rushing to attend college straight out of high school, based on several different factors.

First, as previously stated, there's the money issue.  The basic truth at the core of higher education is that college is expensive as hell.  Most people can't simply say "I want to go to college", and then do so, without some sort of preparations.  Over the last several decade, there's been a notable increase in the number of people over the age of 21 who are enrolling in college.  I almost feel like it's become "normal" for people to work for a bit after graduating high school, in order to save up enough money so as to be able to (almost) afford college.

Next, there's the question of the necessity of a college degree for some people.  I'm going to use myself as an example for this, because I think I make a pretty damn good example.  I started working in retail immediately after I graduated high school, and that's about all I did for the next ten years.  I did start attending college briefly in 2006, but I didn't continue with it after I got a promotion at work.  I only recently stepped down from my position and resumed taking classes because I've grown tired of doing what I've been doing for the last ten years.  Had I wanted to, I'm sure I could have (fairly easily) continued to climb the corporate ladder of GameStop, and I honestly don't doubt that I could have been a district manager within the next year or so.  The notable thing about this is how far I've gotten (and how far I could've gone) without any sort of degree or anything.  For some fields, a degree of some kind is almost necessary - but if you're talented in what you do (and you enjoy doing it), it's not always a necessity.  I question, sometimes, why certain people are attending college - not because of any deficiencies on their part, or anything of the sort, but because they don't seem to need to do so.

Finally, my take on the environment of various places - truthfully, I don't see any change whatsoever in the environment of... well, anywhere.  I've been in college classes that include high school students, as well as older people.  Hell, when I took my ballroom dancing class, most of the "students" were over 30 years old.  It didn't really change anything.  People were there to learn, and that was all that I really cared about.  It was a nice change from high school, when people were there just because they had to be.

It's not real. ... Or is it?

I'm fairly certain that most people out there have seen or heard of one of the big political stories going on at the moment, but just to cover all possibilities, here's the story: (clicky-clicky).

Todd Akin, a US Representative from Missouri, made several statements regarding pregnancy rates from rape.  Among his comments were "... It's really rare", and "If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down".  This outraged me the first time I read about it, and it continues to do so.  "Legitimate" rape?  I'm sorry, I didn't know there was any other kind of rape.  Rape, by its very definition, is an act that is forced upon someone.  I don't know what he was thinking when he said that.  He's gone on to claim that he "misspoke", but as far as I know, he hasn't offered any explanation beyond that.  It seems pretty clear to me that if he misspoke, there should be immediate clarification.  The picture that I'm getting isn't one of clarification - it's of damage control.  A lot of people are calling for him to drop out of the Senate seat race that he's (currently) a part of, but he doesn't seem to consider that a possibility.

So, with the backstory out of the way, -should- he be forced to drop out of the Senate race?  My opinion is no.  Did he make a completely stupid, asinine comment?  Absolutely.  Should he be publicly "raked over the coals", as it were, in order to even START making amends for that?  Absolutely.  Does it in any way make him ineligible for holding a Senate seat?  Not in the slightest.  Really, all it does is put the voters into a different situation.  Assume that you're steadfastly Republican (which Mr. Akin is).  Is your political affiliation strong enough to push you to vote for him anyway, even after that kind of comment?  Or would you be displeased enough by it to change your mind, either voting for the Democrat, another candidate, or not at all?  Let's not forget, it wasn't too long ago that we had a US President in office who misspoke regularly.  I've seen 366-page calendars of "Bushisms" more than I'd ever cared to.  Former President Bush's qualifications (or lack thereof) to run the country are a different topic, though.

Essentially, I think that if Rep. Akin chooses to remain in the Senate race, then more power to him.  The final decision lies, as it always has, in the hands of the voters.  If the public is as outraged as they say, then their votes will speak for themselves.

I doubt this post saved any lives, and I apologize for that.  In an attempt to remedy that, I'll share this nugget of wisdom: studies have shown that 10 out of 10 people who drink water die.  Take from that what you will.

'Till next time, everyone.

Books are movies with all the deleted scenes.

This has the potential to spiral into a pages-long post for me, due partially to the fact that I have an entire ROOM of my house dedicated to books.  For the sake of the people who may read this post, though, I'll try to keep it to a manageable length.  ... The operative word in that sentence being "try", mind you.

I grew up reading books.  This is something that I unmistakably inherited from my mother - she has piles and bookcases and stacks and leaning towers of books that she'll almost certainly never read.  But they're there, and available, just in case she wants to peruse them.  My dad reads, too, though not anywhere near the level that my mom and I do.  I still remember the days that my elementary school had book fairs.  Most kids in my class would get a handful of books.  I would get several bags full of books.  It was never much of an effort on my part - I was, for the most part, interested in reading whatever I could, and my parents were only too happy to support that.  The books I got could only last me so long, though, even with multiple read-throughs, and so eventually I branched into my sisters' books too.  I--

Crap, I'm already going off into random territory.  This is what happens when I have -too- much to write about, I suppose.  Back to the topic at hand - favorite books.  This is a bit hard for me to narrow down, because whenever I think about the books I like, it leads me to think about similar books that I like, and then to think about completely different books that I like... and then it's half an hour later and I've been staring off into space, or something equally creepy.  I'll try to prevent that from happening too much here.

The first author that comes to mind is R.A. Salvatore.  I've read a lot of his books, but I'm especially fond of his Forgotten Realms series of books, particularly the ones involving two of my favorite characters created: Drizzt Do'Urden and Artemis Entreri.  I was completely clueless about these books until I started working at a bookstore in 2002.  In July of 2003, the first book in another series centered on Drizzt and his friends (the sixth series, if I'm counting correctly, though I didn't know that then) was released.  The title of it was "The Thousand Orcs", and just from looking at the cover, I knew: I really, really wanted to read this book.

I hadn't yet discovered my fascination with dark elves, but to me, this was the coolest book cover ever.

I read this book, and it was pretty good - but I felt like I was missing something... something essential to really get the most out of it.  That's when I discovered the extensive backlog of books that I'd missed out on.  Fortunately, there were two things working in my favor at that point.  First, almost all of the older books had been collected into single-book compilations at that point, and they were readily available for me to purchase.  Second, working at the bookstore got me a 33% discount on books (which I miss to this day).  Several months later, I was caught up, and hooked.  I have been ever since - these books speak to the part of me that's always wanted to be a D&D player, and they let me live out adventures that (possibly?) could have happened.  Drizzt was easily my favorite character in the series for years, and it's only recently that he's been replaced by Artemis, which... well, I'm not going to get into the reasoning behind it.  But the point is that R.A. Salvatore writes some pretty decent fantasy, and I enjoy them greatly.

Next up on my list is a series of books called The Night Angel Trilogy by Brent Weeks.  My discovery of this series was an interesting experience.  I'd hit a lull a little over a year ago where I didn't have anything new to read, and so I'd been researching popular fantasy books online to see if anything sounded good.  The first book in the series, The Way of Shadows, came up a couple of times, and I added it to my list and moved on.  A couple of months later, I was coming home from Los Angeles, and I stopped at a bookstore in LAX to see what they had.  Boom, the book was there, and I bought it to read on the flights home.  ... Occasionally, if I really enjoy what I'm doing (reading, gaming, whatever), I'll get completely absorbed into it and do it until I'm interrupted.  That's exactly what happened with this book.  I read it for the entirety of my first flight, gave it a break during my layover, and finished it on the second flight.  688 pages, gone in a day.  It took me several weeks after my return, but I finally tracked down and purchased the second and third books in the series (Shadow's Edge and Beyond the Shadows, respectively).  These were devoured in short order, and then I was only left with the sad feeling of being finished with something that was supremely satisfying (much like eating a piece of delicious cake).  The story is fairly basic, at least in the beginning - scared guild rat wants to train under master wetboy (-not- assassin), trials and stuff happen, etc.  But somewhere within the story, you come to realize that you actually care about the characters, and what's going through their heads.  There are a lot of twists to the story, some foreshadowed and some not.  But I found the story, as a whole, to be pretty fantastic and well worth reading.  I've re-read the entire series at least twice this year alone.  I only wish there was more to it, after the end of the third book.

Third on my list is The Coldfire Trilogy, by C.S. Friedman.  More fantasy here (anyone see a trend?), and it's mostly your typical fantasy fare, with one notable exception.  The main anti-hero character is twisted, cruel, typically selfish, and completely badass.  To be fairly honest, without that character, I likely would have lost interest in the series halfway through the first book.  But his presence, and the constant question of "what is this guy going to do when (insert situation here)", kept me going.  I don't re-read this series often, honestly, just because the story isn't as gripping when you know everything that happens - but I really enjoyed it while I was reading it, so there we go.

Before we get to my next thought, I need to interject a series that I only recently started, and (sadly) probably wouldn't have thought to include if I didn't have several volumes of it sitting next to me.  I was a supporter of the Kickstarter drive for a webcomic called The Order of the Stick, and part of my reward was getting a reprinted copy of most of the books.  I would assume that most people reading this are familiar with the strip, and read it - if for some reason you're not (or you don't), go here and start reading it.  But only a few, mind you.  Come back and finish my post before you get sucked too deeply into the strip.  Everything about the comic fulfills the D&D itch that I mentioned in my R.A. Salvatore paragraph... only moreso.  My only complaint, really, is that the story drags on in several places.  Having the books is nice, but having to wait for comic updates is agonizing sometimes.

... Wow, this post is getting pretty lengthy.  I'll try to wrap it up over the next few paragraphs.  There are several books and series that I enjoy, but I'll just list them out with little blurbs of info.

- Killobyte, by Piers Anthony.  Real people in a VR game world.  Silliness, gaming fun, a "save the girl" mission, with a dash of adult-themed situations.  Throw in an angsty teenage hacker to cause conflict, and stir.

- The Thief, by Megan Whalen Turner.  The story of a thief who gets sent on a secret mission for a king that he doesn't claim allegiance to, trying to retrieve an ancient relic.  It's a pretty simple read, but I really enjoyed it.  I recently discovered that it was the first in a series of four books.  I had no idea about that until several days ago.  The other three books are now near the top of my "need to read" list.

- Catspaw, by Joan D. Vinge.  Actually the second book in a trilogy (but the first one I read), it follows a young halfbreed crippled psion as he tries to fix himself (and not get killed in the process).  More of a sci-fi/fantasy blend than most of my other books, and more of the adult themes than the others as well.

- Wizard's First Rule, by Terry Goodkind.  Oh, the Sword of Truth series.  The first four books in the series were good - and I'd even call the first two (WFR, and Stone of Tears) great.  But after the first four books, the series went downhill, and in a bad way.  The eighth book, Naked Empire, made me physically ill to read.  Not many books can claim that.  But, I digress.  Wizard's First Rule is about a woods guide named Richard, who decides to help a strange woman in a white dress, and gets himself caught up in an epic battle against an evil tyrant.  The characters are fairly well-developed, but the story is the main attraction here.  Fighting, and wizardly wisdom, and love, and some red leather-clad blonde-haired women.  No, really, that last part is pretty important to the series as a whole.  I'm not sure how many chapters in this first book alone focus on them, but it's a lot.  Anyway.  I recommend the first four books, but tread carefully after those.  I won't be held responsible for any brain damage incurred by later entries.

- The Harry Potter series.  Enough said.

Finally, I'll wrap it up with the novel Battle Royale.  All of this excitement and fandom about The Hunger Games, and all the controversy about how edgy and dark it is?  This book did all that, and more, twelve years before Hunger Games even came out.  After an economic crisis, Japan becomes a totalitarian state, and every year a randomly selected class of junior high students are selected to participate in "The Program".  They're placed in an isolated area and fight to the death, until only one of them is left alive.  Some of the students want to group together and find a way out.  Some want to kill everyone.  This makes Hunger Games look tame in comparison.  It was popular enough to spawn two movies and a manga series, and it's still popular today (partially thanks to Hunger Games, no doubt).

Actually, on the subject of manga - I don't read it anywhere near as much as I once did, but I really enjoy Prince of Tennis, Rurouni Kenshin, Maison Ikkoku, Hot Gimmick, and several other series that I won't mention for fear of damaging my public image further.

Whew, this took longer than I thought it would.  Hopefully you find something potentially interesting my list - and if you have any questions about any of them, or (somehow) want to know more stuff I like, just comment below.  Thanks for reading!

Crime and Punishment, with Sex Offenders

I've been struggling a bit to find a suitable topic for this post, mostly because I don't follow the news as closely as I once did.  But while crawling the web tonight, looking for something notable that I could write about (and that interested me), I came across an article that gave me pause.  In short, I think it'll do.  You can see the article for yourself here.

For those not wishing to click through and read the article, I'll summarize.  In June of 2008, two men of an appropriate age engaged in consensual sex.  One of them, named Nick, is HIV-positive.  Despite being aware of his condition, he didn't disclose it to his partner, named Adam, basing the decision around his being on medication and using proper protection.  Three months later, Nick was arrested and charged with criminal transmission of HIV - which, in Iowa (where the incident took place), is a charge comparable to manslaughter, robbery, and kidnapping.  Nick entered a plea of guilty, on the advice of his attorney, even though Adam eventually tested negative for HIV.  The result?  Nick was incarcerated for nine months with a bond of $250,000, and was eventually sentenced to 25 years in prison.  He appealed his sentence to the judge, and is now out of prison - although on supervised probation.  He's also had to register as a sex offender, and will have to do so for the rest of his life.

So, was this an appropriate punishment for the crime that took place?  ... Parts of it, I can (mostly) agree with, but I don't agree with most of it.  The only thing that Nick was guilty of was not disclosing his condition to Adam before they engaged in their sexual encounter.  This isn't even remotely okay - if you have a condition, it's your responsibility to inform the other person about it beforehand - both as a responsible human being, and as someone who (assumedly) cares about the person you're doing things with.  Do I believe Nick was at fault for that?  Absolutely.  I don't, however, agree with him being charged with "criminal transmission of HIV".  As stated earlier - no such transmission took place.  How can you rightfully charge someone with something that didn't actually happen?  It's not even like one of the highly-publicized court cases where the jury decided someone was not guilty - there's irrefutable proof that the crime didn't occur.  Does Nick's plea of guilty supercede hard, factual evidence?  This really confuses me, and makes me wonder why we don't have some sort of "common sense clause" to prevent that sort of thing (or, if we do, why it wasn't used).

So, Nick was charged with what he was charged with.  First off, $250,000 bond?  Really?  I mean, for someone who's well-known and, you know, actually has that kind of money, then sure.  But Nick seems like your everyday kind of guy, and most people I know don't have a spare quarter of a million dollars to post for bond.  Why set a bond at all, if it's going to be something so ridiculous?  And as far as the sentencing goes - 25 years in prison seems like a pretty harsh sentence for this kind of thing.  Did Nick screw up?  Absolutely. I don't think he should spend a quarter (or more) of his life in prison because of it (again, especially because of the lack of transmission).  The nine months he spent incarcerated before the trial seems like it was enough, to me.  I don't see the point of the prison sentence.

Now, the bit about registering as a sex offender is where I start getting into my personal gray area.  First off, I want to think out loud (or, in text, as you will) about the concept of a sex offender registration.  What's the purpose of it?  The obvious answer is to identify people who are potentially dangerous and/or of a higher risk to break the law concerning sexual activities.  One of the notable facts about the sex offender registry, however, is that it doesn't differentiate (on the surface) between the different crimes committed.  Looking up an individual on the website does give you details about what they were convicted of, and when - but it requires you to search out that individual person.  On the surface, people like Nick are lumped in with people who have been convicted of child molestation, rape, and the like.  Is this wrong?  ... That's hard to say.  I believe there are changes that could help the system, such as a more visible initial differential between the different crimes, or for lesser crimes, a time-limited registration.  I'm a big believer in second chances for people, and after what he went through with Adam, I would have to believe that Nick isn't likely to fail to disclose his condition again.  Despite this, he'll still have to be a registered sex offender for the foreseeable future, and he'll be more limited in his opportunities because of that.  I know that there's no perfect solution out there for this kind of thing, but it seems wrong to lump all offenders together on a single list, regardless of the nature of their crime.

That's about all I've got for this topic.  Pendleton will be here tomorrow with her topic, and as always, feel free to leave any comments or thoughts below (and on the other entries in our blog).  Thanks for reading.

After all, death discriminates against no one.

I suppose I'll follow the trend here and give a bit of background info about myself, and my status, before we get started with my thoughts on this week's topic.  I'm white, and... well, I think that my family is upper-middle class.  I'm really not sure, to be honest, because I have a lot of conflicting things in that respect.  For lack of a better solution, though, I'm just going to go with that.

Anti-discrimination laws are something that I find fairly difficult to discuss, because I find it pretty hard to track the impact that they have (or the extent to which they're followed).  Most of my experience with these laws are going to come from my job, as I've dealt with the hiring (and firing, sometimes) of new employees for the last 6+ years.  I'm not sure if I'll be able to come up with any thoughts outside of that particular box, but I'll try, at least.

Equal opportunity.  I really didn't understand the impact that those two words had until I started doing interviews and hiring people to work.  For anyone unfamiliar, being an "equal opportunity employer" mandates that you don't discriminate for or against applicants based on any non-essential traits that may exist (race, gender, orientation, etc).  What does this mean for employers?  Essentially, it means that you take the necessary steps to ensure you're following those rules and protecting yourself.  My place of employment has a very structured interview guide, and several of the questions on it are ridiculous.  Nonetheless, I use that guide with every single person that I interview.  Why?  Because having that constant is the first step in providing equal opportunity.  If you're asking every applicant the same questions, then there's no favoritism, no "free rides"... the decision is (or should be, anyway) based off of the applicant's answers to the questions. I once had an applicant threaten me with a lawsuit, because I hired another person over them - they claimed that I was discriminating against them, based on their race.  I invited them to do so, and nothing came of it.  In that respect, I would have been able to prove that I was following the law, and within that scope, I think that the laws do a fantastic job of ensuring equal opportunity - when they're followed.  Compliance is something that each individual has to take ownership of, and I feel comfortable in saying that it's not a priority for a lot of people.  I don't see an effective way to change this, however, without instituting some regular review of the hiring processes for every company in existence.  That's not likely to happen.

I've never really run into any issues with employees complaining about not getting opportunities, either - not based on anything discriminatory-wise, anyway.  I've trained a lot of employees, and I've promoted a lot of employees, and there have been members of multiple races within that group.  Again, I think it's entirely possible that there are some people out there who give more opportunities to people based on factors that they shouldn't, and I agree that it's wrong - but I don't see a way we can effectively monitor that sort of thing and stop it (proactively, anyway).

What groups should be protected by anti-discriminatory laws?  All of them.  In my opinion, discrimination is most commonly thought of as white people discriminating against other races.  That may be true in some cases - but not all of them.  The truth of the matter is that everyone has the potential to discriminate against everyone else, whether they're a different race or not.  I was discriminated against in the 11th grade by my Marketing teacher, because I steadfastly refused to join DECA (an international association of marketing enthusiasts, students, whatever).  I was the only member of the class not to join, and so I kept the teacher from hitting the 100% enrollment mark that she so desired - and so I was discriminated against.  My completed assignments were marked down for no reason, I was forced to stay after class just to use the shared printer... that class was absolute hell for me.  Did I deserve to be discriminated against?  Not at all.  Would bringing it to the attention of the authorities (the principal, school board, somebody) have helped?  Maybe, maybe not.  My point is that everyone is susceptible to discrimination, and everyone is capable of discriminating.  It's up to each person to determine how they'll act (or react) in any situation.

I got kind of off-topic with that, and I apologize for that.  My thoughts, basically, are that anti-discrimination is a thing that everyone in the world should embrace and practice.  Do I think it will happen?  No.  I also don't think that laws can be but so effective in making it happen.  I briefly considered whether an extreme law might help  - for example, stranding a diverse group of people on an island for a month, and forcing them to try to work together to survive.  But realistically, I think that would end in bloodshed and tribal wars.  Discrimination is an unfortunate part of the world, and everyone would be better off if it didn't exist.  If you have any fantastic ideas about how to end it, write your local congressman or senator.

Random thought for (hopeful) comments - if I attempted to start a cable TV channel based around white music and entertainment and was denied, would I have a case for discrimination, given that such channels exist for other races?

“In the darkest hours we must believe in ourselves.”

Surprise!  I know that you were all expecting Brandon's post here, but...

... Wait, no, come back!  I promise, he'll have his post up a bit later in the week.  I'm just filling in due to extenuating circumstances (and painkillers).

So, assisted suicide.  I worried for a while about this post, because I (among other people) wasn't sure if there would be much variance between the posts - but since we've opened it up from just the legality of the issue (thank you, Kelsey, for an amazingly awesome intro post), I'm much more confident.

Initially, I'll talk a bit about the legality of assisted suicide.  Virginia is somewhat odd in its handling of assisted suicide - there's been no real decision made on the matter, for the most part.  There's a statute which imposes civil sanctions on anyone involved in suicide, but the act isn't clearly defined as criminal.  There's really not a whole lot to debate, there, besides potentially comparing it to other states' policies.  The majority of the United States treats assisted suicide as an explicitly criminal act... which I don't necessarily agree with. Yes, you're aiding in the death of someone, but if it's in accordance with their wishes and desires, should it really be considered -criminal-?  That's not for me to decide, though, so I'm going to leave the legality bit right there.

My personal feelings, on the other hand, run much deeper (and along many more confusing, twisted paths).  First off, we'll look at "Do Not Resuscitate".  I have absolutely no problem with this concept - at least in terms of illness, or other debilitating diseases.  If someone is dying to an illness, and their body fails, then by all means, let them go.  Our bodies are incredibly resilient, and if they go through enough to shut down, I think it does more harm than good in trying to force them to do even more.  I understand that it's hard for people to look on, armed with the knowledge that they could keep someone they care for from dying... but I also believe that allowing nature to run its course in those instances is a good first step toward healing.  I do want to re-empathize that this references only instances involving diseases and the like - if a fairly healthy person ripped off their oxygen mask, or something, then the line would move a fair bit.  I think that refusal of treatment falls into this definition, as well - it's a patient's right to refuse medical treatment, and if their body naturally gives out as a result... well, that was their decision.

So what about non-immediate dangers?  If someone discovers they only have a year left to live, should assisted suicide be permissible?  On the one hand, having that kind of thing over your head can (I'm assuming) be a fantastic motivator to do the things you've always wanted to, and really live life to its fullest.  But is there a specific timeframe where it's acceptable?  If someone has a year to live, and they have no desire to "live it up", why shouldn't they be able to just end their life then, and save themselves (and potentially their family) from unnecessary bills and expenses?  ... I don't think there's a correct answer here, necessarily, but I do believe that a concerted effort should be made to hold off on any form of suicide for as long as possible.  Technology has the potential to increase quickly enough that what seems impossible right now could be semi-commonplace in a year's time.  Is it likely to happen?  Who knows?  But if you can keep the hope of living on alive, shouldn't that be enough to keep you going?

Reduced quality of life... this one is pretty tough.  Let's take a paraplegic, for example.  A "normal, everyday" person somehow gets hit by a car and will be confined to a wheelchair for the rest of their life.  Is this a situation where assisted suicide would be acceptable?  ... Basing my own personal feelings off the idea above, I'd still have to say no.  Yes, the quality of their life would have changed in a (potentially) negative fashion - however, this doesn't mean that their life would no longer have meaning.  Look at Stephen Hawking.  He started being affected by amyotrophic lateral sclerosis at age 20.  It's common for people to pass away within 10 years of being diagnosed with the disease - he's had it for five times that, and he's still alive.  If he had just given up and chosen to commit suicide after his diagnosis... well, I can't even really imagine how things would be different.  If that's not a compelling case, I don't know what is.

The involvement of doctors is a bit more clear-cut for me.  One of the most basic cornerstones for physicians through the years has been the Hippocratic Oath (though it's become less widely used).  I believed that people operating under the Hippocratic Oath were sworn to preserve life however and wherever they were able - however, I think that my viewpoint has changed after reading multiple translations of the Oath.  The original version includes these lines:

I will give no deadly medicine to any one if asked, nor suggest any such counsel; and similarly I will not give a woman apessary to cause an abortion.


But I will preserve the purity of my life and my arts.

The classic translation of the Oath changes the lines to the following:

I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody if asked for it, nor will I make a suggestion to this effect. In purity and holiness I will guard my life and my art.


And, finally, the more modern translation reads as follows:

If it is given to me to save a life, all thanks. But it may also be within my power to take a life; this awesome responsibility must be faced with great humbleness and awareness of my own frailty. Above all, I must not play at God.

I will remember that I do not treat a fever chart, a cancerous growth, but a sick human being, whose illness may affect the person's family and economic stability. My responsibility includes these related problems, if I am to care adequately for the sick.


The modern translation seems to provide some form of direction for the issue - it's an unfortunate truth that hospital care in our country is rather expensive, and a prolonged stay will almost certainly strain most people's monetary situations.  At some point, you have to weigh what's potentially best for one person against what's potentially best for others.  Am I advocating doctor-assisted suicide?  ... Not intentionally.  But I do think that they have a place in helping people make decisions about their health and life.  That's their job, after all.

I think I've rambled on enough - I'm going to wrap up with a personal thought.  In most cases, I'm personally completely against suicide as an option (if you can even call it that) for people.  Suicide can seem like a quick fix for life's problems, but the reality is that the person usually just passes their problems on to other people - generally, the ones who care about them.  I've been in situations where friends, family members, and even the people I've cared most about have contemplated (and attempted... and, once, successfully committed) suicide.  The sense of loss that accompanies suicide is tremendous, and not something that I would wish upon anyone.  I only describe myself as against the idea in "most" cases because absolutes are rarely correct - but I'm pretty close.  The other posts so far have been pretty interesting, and I'm looking forward to reading the others as they come.

As always. thanks for reading, and feel free to post any questions, thoughts, or flames below.

I Grew Up Without Cable TV.

... But I watched a lot of TV growing up.  I don't watch as much anymore, so it's a bit hard for me to identify my favorite TV shows, simply due to the fact that there aren't many that I watch on a regular basis.  I suppose, by default, the ones I do watch regularly would be my "favorites", so... I suppose I'll just talk about them, and whatever else may come to mind along those lines.  Ready?  Let's go.

My first show really has to be The Big Bang Theory.  I'm really not one to enjoy most sitcoms, but this show combines a lot of things that I either enjoy, or at least find fascinating.  There are a lot of references to science (and to a lesser extent, math), and video games (though there have been more than a few inaccuracies that kind of drive me insane), and relationships between socially awkward people and "normal" people.  I like most of the characters on the show, but I feel a particular affinity for Sheldon.  Sheldon is quite literal, deeply mired in his everyday routines, and supremely stubborn... but underneath all of that (deep, deep underneath) he's a genuinely good person.  I find the interactions between the different characters amusing (generally speaking), and the writing is good enough to keep me coming back.  The show's gotten away from its nerdy roots lately, which is unfortunate, but I still enjoy watching it.  One thing of note, though - there is conclusive proof that this show can be a powerful aphrodisiac.  Watch with care.

Next on my list (and coming as a bit of surprise to me) is Hell's Kitchen.  I'm really not that "into" cooking - I can do it passably well, but I have no real passion or drive to be a world-class chef in my life.  Also, I generally don't like reality shows - I used to watch Survivor, but that eventually bored me out of my mind.  Why Hell's Kitchen, then?  Two words - Gordon Ramsay.  If any of you have no idea who he is, go Google him and skim his Wikipedia page (it's the third search result).  ... I find him really fascinating and just kind of all-around awesome.  He's so passionate about what he does, and it just... it really shows.  Plus, I admit that I get more entertainment than I probably should out of him completely ripping apart the chefs (contestants?) when they make mistakes.  I'm a bit hard-pressed to really explain why I enjoy the show, but if I had to take a guess, I'd say it's mostly because of him.

I'm hesitant to include this next show on my list, because I've only seen a single episode of it -- but what the hell, I'm gonna go for it.  I just recently tried out a new series on HBO called The Newsroom, and I thought the first episode was pretty entertaining and interesting.  It deals with a semi-over-the-hill news anchor who's disliked within his station, and his interactions and experiences with a new staff that want to make the news prominent and trustworthy again.  I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this show, given my lack of experience with it, but the first ten minutes of it had me more than a little intrigued.  It's set very firmly within the framework of real life (the first episode revolves around the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico), but... I don't know.  I enjoyed that first episode, and I have the next three saved on my DVR, waiting to be watched.

My next-to-last pick is Avatar: The Last Airbender.  It took a while for this series to grow on me - my first experience with it was in the middle of the first season, in the middle of an episode that didn't seem to make any sense.  It was airing on Nickelodeon, and I dismissed it as "another kid's show" pretty much immediately.  Somehow, I got started on watching it, though, and now it's one of my favorite animated shows out there.  The show strikes a really good balance between silliness and seriousness (though it tends to lean more toward the former in the first half of the series, and the latter in the back half), and the characters are genuinely interesting and likable.  The show was popular enough to spawn a live-action adaptation of the first season (which was absolutely terrible), multiple games (most of which were absolutely terrible), a graphic novel epilogue (which was been pretty good so far), and a spiritual sequel (which was alright, though not as good as the original).  Not bad for an original series from Nick.

The last entry that comes to mind off the top of my head is Married... With Children.  This is an older series that I grew up watching (... not that I'd recommend letting children watch it.  I was a special case), and it has a lot of the same basic plot devices as any other sitcom.  The main characters are a supremely dysfunctional family of losers that fight and argue with each other, and ultimately always work things out as a family.  There's more than a little bit of adult humor within the show, but it's never done in a way that's distasteful or unnecessary (... not in my opinion, at least).  The quality of each episode can vary decently, even within each season, but this is a show where I'm almost guaranteed to laugh while watching it.

Quick mentions:
Firefly - still haven't seen it.  Watched the first ten minutes of the first episode.  Will watch one day.
Power Rangers - specifically, the original series, and the latest one (Samurai).  Because I'm a sucker for both samurai-related things and giant dinosaurs beating the hell out of stuff.
Super Mario Bros. Super Show and Legend of Zelda - these were really awful animated shows from 1989 that I enjoy because of their base material.  Also, the latter show gave us the (classic?) line "Well excuuuuuuuuuse me, princess".
80's/90's cartoons - Thundercats, Silverhawks, Wing Commander, Mega Man, Teknoman, Garfield and Friends, Beetlejuice, X-Men.... I could still watch any of these and enjoy them.  Well, mostly.

I've never seen Seinfeld.  People seem to gape at me when I tell them that.  I'm not sure why.

Modern With a Hint of Religious Cynicism

My views on this week's topic are pretty modern.  Part of this comes from my own personal history with religion - as others have mentioned, my post on that is back at the beginning of our blog, and it'd likely help establish context if you don't already have it.  Part of it comes from the circumstances that I find myself in, particularly in my personal life.  These days, I find people who are seriously traditionalist about their religion to be people that I have little to no interest in spending time around.  This was actually a more recent development - one of my better friends growing up was Mormon, in a very traditional Mormon family.  He could never do anything on Sundays, and his mother had some extremely strict ideas about what was appropriate and what wasn't.  Despite this, I enjoyed spending time around him, and he's still my friend to this day.  Notably, his family has eased up on their traditionalist viewpoint a lot - they've taken on much more of a modern viewpoint, and that's likely part of why things haven't changed between us.  I actually asked my friend and his brother earlier tonight whether they supported WBC, and they looked at me like I was stupid. His brother even said "Hell, no".

Finally, part of this comes from my doubts about taking -any- text as the absolute rule for... well, anything.  Who's to say that this one version of the bible is any more or less historically accurate than another?  Who's to say that any of them are?  One might remember that I mentioned the book Blankets, by Craig Thompson, in my religion post.  (If you haven't read that book yet, you should.)  There's a part near the end of the book where the main character begins to question sections of the bible that have either been altered, or had extra passages added to them, in order to deliver a more positive, uplifting message (as opposed to the original message, which basically said "Screw up and you're damned", or something similar... I'm going off of memory, here).  This awakened a likely-eternal skepticism in me about the validity of -any- parts of the Bible.  How are we to know what the original thing said, and what's been added or modified over the countless years?  We know what we're told, and that's just not good enough for me.

No, my viewpoint is pretty modern.  It's pretty simple.  I've established to myself, generally speaking, what's "right", and what's "good".  I try to be those things and/or do those things as often as I can, even when it's hard (ESPECIALLY when it's hard).  I try to live my life more focused on making the people I know happier than making myself happy... and generally, when I can make other people happy, it makes me happy anyway.  I try not to judge people (... not -too- much, at least), and I don't generally condemn people if their viewpoint is different than mine (unless they're just plain wrong).  Things like that.  It's worked well for me so far.  I can't imagine anyone really taking offense to it, though I'm sure some people out there would.  I don't mind the idea of traditionalist thinking, but in the instance of religion, I don't think the roots are strong enough to be an effective foundation.

Hopefully everyone enjoyed this week.  We'll have a new topic announcement tomorrow!

"Modern art" is stupid.

So, art.

I took exactly one art class while at school, and that was only because it was mandatory.  It was a long time ago, so I don't remember a lot of the exact details, but one thing in particular stood out to me.  I hate looking at art as some kind of competition.  When we were given a specific thing to create, I couldn't help but compare my finished product to the others, and art is one of the very few things where I almost completely lack any sort of self-confidence.  There was always something better about other people's works than mine.  That still exists, to this day... but we might visit that a bit later in the post.

The only project that I remember from that art class is one where we were studying Egyptian death masks.  The subject itself was interesting to me, and the project was to create our own masks out of clay.  There was no "right" or "wrong" way to make a mask (beyond the obvious, anyway).  I really enjoyed that assignment, because I didn't have to worry about... well, anything, other than how I wanted it to look.  The end result was multi-colored (where most other masks were monochromatic), and I even used a bit of extra clay to make tear-like-things below the eyes. Why?  I don't know, I wanted to at the time, and it didn't matter.  I got an A on the assignment.

Art, to me, is pretty simple.  Art is entertainment.  Art is an expression of emotions.  The saying "A picture is worth a thousand words" is so, so true, as long as the person who made the picture put their heart into it.  I know several people who can draw things several million times better than I could ever hope to.  Despite this, when I put a real amount of time into drawing something (which is usually, at most, once a week, for the weekly schedule decoration), I take a fairly large amount of pride in it.  Yes, other people could do it better, and yes, it's not great, but I like what I did.  Will my work(s) ever be displayed in a museum?  Hell no.  Are they still something that I consider "art"?  Absolutely.

I used to do a lot of animated stick figure stuff.  I still have a fair number of them saved in various places online.  Stick figures are absolutely not what anyone would instinctively think of as "art"... but again, I put a lot of time and effort into each of those, and I'm proud of them.  Does art have to be fancy, with advanced techniques and massive amounts of detail, to be acceptable?  I don't think so.  I actually prefer simple art.  Sometimes things don't need to be perfect to be pleasing.

This was kind of a random post, but I hope that I've gotten at least a few of my thoughts across.  In my opinion, art is very simply a means of expressing creativity and emotion that both the creator and others can find enjoyable.  It's nice when art makes sense, but it isn't always necessarily a requirement.  ... Except for modern art.  Modern art is stupid.

Stalemate

This week's topic isn't one that I'd ever really put a lot of thought into.  As of beginning to write this, I don't think I'm leaning toward either side of the topic -too- much, though I'd initially have to give my preference to "nature", or the natural predisposition of people.  Let's explore my thinking together, shall we?

I don't believe that either of the two ideas is completely dominant - rather, it seems like you might be steered toward certain choices by either side.  If you take a peace-loving teenager in North Korea and conscript them into military service, will they change in the process?  ... Possibly, but it seems more likely to me that if the person truly loves peace, they'll hold onto that ideal even through conflicting circumstances.  I don't think that it's necessarily an absolute idea for either side of the argument, though - there are plenty of instances where a well-meaning person was influenced strongly by events outside of their control, and it changed the very core of who they were.

Foreshadowing, using a shadow.  I cannot overstate how much I like this picture.

Let's delve into some more personal examples.  Readers of the blog should have a basic idea of the circumstances surrounding my childhood (and casual or first-time readers should go back and read all of the old entries from all of our posters), so I won't spend a lot of time talking about those.  But I think it would be fair to say that I grew up in an environment ruled by the concept of "no rules".  (Yes, I'm aware that statement is paradoxical.  No, I'm not going to change it.)  One of the most common things to observe in my environment, from as early as I can remember to... well, to present-day, was media based around violence.  Did this constant exposure to violence shape me as a person?  ... Well, it's hard to say.  I definitely have a high tolerance for the presence of violence in media, but I'm definitely not predisposed toward violence as a person.  I try to avoid it, if at all possible (though there are times where I think fondly about it... usually concerning specific people/circumstances).  I think that I'm a clear example of nature winning out over nurture.

On the other hand, however, you have my oldest sister.  She was quite intelligent from an early age onward, and she never got into the same activities that I (and, to a lesser extent, my other sister) did - she greatly preferred 4-H and NJHS/NHS as her activities of choice.  Once she got into high school, though, she changed.  She got into a lot of questionable situations, had her first daughter, started attending (and then immediately dropped out of) college, and it's been kind of a downhill slide ever since.  These days, despite still being reasonably intelligent (with no common sense whatsoever), she's living in a bad situation with no positive prospect that doesn't involve some sort of extreme, stressful change.  Was her genetic disposition flawed from the beginning, to have her life turn a 180 like that?  Or did the environment she was in during her teenage years influence her so strongly that she led herself down a different path than the one she would have chosen otherwise?  Obviously, it's impossible for me to say for sure, but I'm leaning toward the latter.

I could probably come up with more examples, but I don't think that doing so would truly be worthwhile.  At this point, as ideas, I don't really think that either nature or nurture can be considered stronger than the other.  I think it just depends on a multitude of factors... or, sometimes, maybe even on one seemingly insignificant detail.  Who can really say for sure?

Mosquito Bites, and Other Annoyances

This post has the potential to be fairly lengthy, but for the sake of maintaining interest (and, also, to follow in the precedent set by our previous two bloggers), I'll try to keep it at a manageable length.  ... What -is- a manageable length, anyway?  Whatever, I'm going to write until it doesn't flow easily.

Inconsiderate people.  This is something that I run into, more often than not, at work, and it annoys the hell out of me.  First and foremost on this point are the people who won't get off their phone while I'm trying to help them.  Some people (most people, really) will at least pull the phone away to talk to me, albeit briefly, and some even apologize after they get off the phone.  But there are some people who will stay on their phone and carry on a conversation the entire time they're in the store, and that's just fucking rude.  Particularly if there are other people waiting in line, have the decency to either tell the person "I'll call you back", or step away and carry your conversation on in a place where you won't be holding up (or annoying) other people.  I had a woman stay on her phone earlier today, actually, and she got annoyed at me while I was trying to ring her up.  Why did she get annoyed?  Because I had to ask her things at least twice, because she wasn't listening to me the first time.  Some questions aren't vital - I don't think I offered her a bag for her purchase, and I'm fairly certain I didn't ask her if she found everything alright.  But I do need to know how you want to pay for things, and if you write "See ID" on the back of your credit card, you shouldn't get angry at someone asking for your ID.  ... But, yeah, inconsiderate people piss me off.

Next on the immediate train of thought are the annoying people that want to take up your time talking about... well, anything.  Now, don't get me wrong, if I'm talking to someone that I appreciate and/or have a good rapport with, and the topic is interesting, I'll talk (... well, listen moreso than talk, typically) for ages.  But if you're just spouting random stuff about things that I have no interest in whatsoever, and especially if you're doing it while I'm busy?  We're going to have problems.  No, I don't want to hear about your new strategy for Magic: The Gathering.  No, I don't want to see a YouTube clip of something that you might find amusing.  No, I don't want to talk about how hard it is to find a job and why you'd be perfect to work at Gamestop (though, for some people, those stories are a source of amusement).  I honestly don't think it's -that- hard to tell whether someone's genuinely interested in things that you're saying, or whether they're just acknowledging you for the sake of not being outright rude.  I just wish that more people would take the hint. Most recent case in point?  The cashier in the food court at Target wasted five minutes of my break (... Hey, when you only have half an hour to eat and chill out, every minute is sacred, okay?) with some monologue about... you know what?  I don't even know.  That's how uninterested I was - I didn't even retain a shred of what he was talking about.  But he held up his own line to have that conversation with me.  Why?  I don't know.  I just wanted to eat.

... Both of my things so far are about other people.  I'm not sure whether I'm surprised by that or not, and whether or that's a bad (or telling) thing.  I'm gonna try to get on a different level, though - dishonesty, in general, really bugs me.  Going hand in hand with that would be unethical behavior.  When the two of them combine... ... I want to punch something.  Hell, sometimes I want to punch things even if it's one or the other.  Dishonesty, to me, shows a complete lack of respect for the person you're talking to, and that's frustrating.  I've been the recipient of dishonesty a fair bit over the past year-ish, and it's mostly come from people that I am (was?) close to.  This, as you would expect, makes it worse.  It wouldn't be as impactful if I didn't find out about it, but I always do, one way or another.  I don't understand why you would blatantly lie to something about... well, anything.  Not in a personal sense, anyway.  Some people classify "withholding information" as being better than lying.  I don't agree.  In a way, I think it's almost worse, because it really just seems like lying that you're trying to justify to make yourself feel better.  You might do it with good intentions, but I feel that if there's something that you feel -should- be shared, you should just do it.

Inconsistency in food.  Yeah, I know, that's kind of a 180, huh?  Pizza is something that I eat more of than I should (though I've gotten a lot better about that lately!).  One of the most common things for me to do, if I'm home and don't feeling like either cooking or going out, is to order Domino's.  There are some nights where the order is fantastic, and everything tastes delicious... and there are some nights where it doesn't taste nearly as good.  I understand that this is a fairly minor problem, and that it's to be expected, almost, but it still bugs me when I'm expecting one flavor profile and I get something different.

I've got more that I can write about, but I think I've hit my limit of "easy stuff", so I'm gonna wrap it up here.  Happy rest of the Breather Week, everyone, and welcome, Laura.

Off With Their Heads.

This week's topic isn't one that I'd previously put a lot of thought into, but as I'm formulating the basic outline for this entry, I'm starting to pull my viewpoint together.  Here we go.

I think that, depending on the severity of the crime, I favor punishment over rehabilitation.  It depends on the severity of the crime committed, and my thought process lends itself toward punishing both the lesser and greater offenses, while rehabilitating the people in the middle.  Let's examine a more petty crime that could be committed - first-offense shoplifting, for example.  If a person goes into a store and steals... well, let's keep it along my "typical" lines, and say that they steal a video game.  I honestly don't think there's an effective way to rehabilitate someone on why they shouldn't steal.  In this instance, I think that the most effective tool at preventing a repeat offense would be to impose a harsh punishment on the offender - most likely in the form of restitution, or a fine, or something along those lines.  The argument could be made that putting a financial strain on someone, in that situation, might actually lead to more theft, in order to cover the financial burden, and that's debatable - but I would hope that having first-hand knowledge of the potential punishment would create hesitation in the person's mind about ever doing it again.

Let's go a bit more severe, in terms of the crime committed - possibly a drunken driver.  This person gets intoxicated at a bar, and while driving home, causes a collision that kills someone.  What to do, in this case?  This is one of the instances where I believe I'd favor rehabilitation over punishment - one could make the argument that the person has already been punished, just by having to live with the knowledge that they were responsible for the death of another person.  I believe that rehabilitating the person in this scenario would prove more beneficial to both that person - it could be possible that the person had something important to contribute to society, and just needed help in battling their problems along the way.  I'd question, also, what kind of punishment would be suitable for this situation.  The most logical punishment would seem to be preventing the person from ever driving again, or, at least, restricting it in some fashion.  But would those restrictions be enforceable, or cost-effective?  The most common thing that I've heard of is an in-car breathalyzer that won't allow the car to start if the user is impaired by alcohol.  But it's not a fail-proof system, and the lower-end cost of such a system seems to be about a thousand dollars a year - that's a hefty bill for anyone to support, whether it be the government or the person needing it.  Rehabilitation seems like it'd have better long-term results, for less cost.

Finally, let's look at a fairly heinous crime - something like a premeditated killing spree.  Let's assume that a person walks into a public area and starts shooting everyone in sight.  There's a lot of death and panicking, and eventually the police arrive and manage to subdue the person before they can do anything like shoot themselves.  Is rehabilitation potentially worthwhile, in this case?  The case could be made that, depending on the person (and their psyche), they have a problem that could be "fixed".  My main concern with this logic, however, is that I don't think there's really a way you can ensure that any sort of rehabilitation would be long-lasting.  If the person just snapped one day, how can you ever really be sure that they won't snap again?  Is a potential repeat of such a terrible incident worth the belief in someone's potential to change?  How can you ever really be sure of the effectiveness of rehabilitation, anyway?  Do we really have the ability to know how much of a hold it has on people, or how much of it might be falsified?

The same thing happens every single time Mario is let loose, despite his rehabilitation...

I'm all for giving people second chances, but some acts are just so heinous and abhorrent that I feel it's more important to prevent the person from being able to commit such an act again.  In a case such as the one I described above, I'd lean most toward life (or, at least, a very long) incarceration of the person who committed the act.  I don't know that I'd have anything against trying to rehabilitate the person, but if that decision was made, it should be done during the course of their punishment, not as a replacement for such.

So, generally speaking, I think that punishments work better as motivating factors than rehabilitation does, generally speaking.  I do believe that rehabilitation has its place in the system, but that it needs to happen in conjunction with punishments, in most instances.  I'm looking forward to reading the rest of the viewpoints for this week.

Error 500.

I'm fairly inexperienced with online education, in terms of personal experience, so this post will involve my (limited) first-hand experience with the online education system, followed by thoughts and such.

I've taken a grand total of one online class in my educational history.  It seemed like a fantastic idea at the time - I could work on stuff for the class in my bits of free time, at my own pace, with no class to slow me down.  One of my biggest problems in high school was that I learned at a much quicker pace than most of the other people - as they discussed the same things over and over, I grew bored, and things went downhill from there.  But in the online setting, I thought, I could proceed at my own pace, and things would be awesome.

What happened?  I'm sure just about anyone can guess.  I procrastinated, and forgot about the class, and ended up pulling an all-nighter the night before everything was due just to complete the assignments.  I had to race through them, speed-reading to try and grasp the concepts that I'd need for the quizzes and such.  I passed the class with an A (don't ask me how), but that entire experience did a great job of showing me that I wasn't ready for online classes.  By their very nature, they require a lot of self-motivation and efficient time management, and those were two areas in which I was lacking.

Granted, that was years ago - I know that I've gotten a lot better with both time management and self-motivation (well... maybe not so much, with the latter).  But would online classes be a good idea for me?  I don't know.  I'm really not sure whether I learn better from reading or from interpersonal interactions.  One of the key components of any online course is the lack of interaction with other people, so that restricts people who require that sort of thing pretty severely.  As Kelsey mentioned earlier in the week, the (potential) lack of feedback can be both infuriating and crippling.  I don't mind doing something "wrong", as long as I can have my mistake(s) explained to me, so that I won't make them again.  This isn't something that you'll always get with online courses - it really feels like you're expected to somehow know what you did wrong and fix it yourself.  This seems terribly inefficient and... well, stupid.

But for my concerns, I can't dismiss the idea of online classes entirely as a plausible option for myself, or other people.  I'm getting ready to start taking classes again, and I have absolutely no idea how that's going to work out.  Taking online classes would make my schedule a lot more flexible, as long as I motivated myself to set aside an appropriate amount of time for my schoolwork.  It's about 13 miles from my house to where I'd be taking classes, about 11 miles from there to where I'd (likely) be working, and about 23 miles from there back to my house.  On any given day that I both had classes and worked, online classes would cut a third of my commute distance off.  Assuming a minimum of three class days a week, that would quickly prove beneficial.

I really don't know for sure if online classes would work for me.  I do think that they're geared towards a very specific type of student, as has been discussed, and I think that they'll become more and more common as time goes on.  For the sake of our future, though, I hope they don't become the only option available.

Sensitivity Level: Maximum

The level of concern that individual people maintain about the existence of violence rarely ceases to amaze me.  I'm in a position where I can observe other people's thoughts and beliefs on a near-daily basis, and the disparity in people's opinions and thoughts can be jarring, at times.  Much like Kelsey's post earlier in the week, my entry is going to focus primarily on video games, because... well, because that's what I know best.

One of the most common things I hear from parents is that they don't want their child to play a game with violence in it.  This kind of request is, by far, the hardest for me to deal with, simply because it's almost impossible to fulfill while making everyone involved happy.  I've lost count of the number of times that I've wanted to enter into a discussion with the parent, if for no other reason than to explain to them that their view on the subject is too broad, and needs specific definition.  The below picture is one of the best examples that I can give anyone.

You don't -actually- get extra lives for killing stuff.  Usually.

Violence is something that exists, in some shape or form, in the vast majority of entertainment-based media that is available today.  From Call of Duty (where you kill people to save the world), to Star Wars (where you kill people to save the galaxy), to Mario (where you kill turtles and other things to save a girl that may or may not be into you) - there's violence everywhere.  You could draw the distinction between games like those and non-lethal violence (say, Pokemon, where the worst that happens is that your Pokemon faints) - but is that really enough of a difference to be consequential?  My basic thoughts on the matter are that violence is something that exists within our everyday life, and I don't think trying to keep people completely sheltered from it is a good idea.

So wait, John, you say.  Are you advocating that people let their kids play whatever they want, do whatever they want, and run rampant, because they're going to be exposed to violence anyway?  No, not at all.  I believe that it's the responsibility of parents and guardians to teach children the difference between real life and a fantasy world (of any kind).  I can speak, personally, from the viewpoint of someone who was raised without any restrictions on the content of things I was exposed to.  One of my earliest memories is of watching the movie Basic Instinct (which is rated R, and very much deservedly so) with my family when I was young.  The experience of watching people get killed didn't desensitize me to the concept - if anything, it helped to ingrain the idea that reckless violence was a terrible thing that I should never do.  Playing "Cowboys and Indians" with my sister when I was little didn't teach me that I should become a genocidal maniac.  ... I don't think it taught me anything, actually, which still doesn't hurt my point.  I don't believe that media on its own is powerful enough to directly influence most of the population.  I believe that the environment people are in, combined with personal experiences, do most of that.  I've seen a lot of parents smack their kids around in the store (or, in some cases, right after they leave the store), and that seems a lot more likely to influence behaviors and thinking than games, in my opinion.

At my previous work location, I had a customer who would come in regularly (at least once a week) with her son to find a game to play.  I spent enough time at that location that I watched the kid grow from a young child to a preteen.  The mom was fantastic about asking questions about the different games - more specifically, about the content within.  One of the concessions that she made early on was to allow him to get the game Halo.  This is typically one of the first barriers that comes down for parents, mostly because in Halo, you're killing aliens.  Which is, apparently, much more acceptable than killing humans.  ... Seems a bit   speciesest to me, but I digress.  Playing Halo didn't change the kid into some monstrous killing machine - he seemed to really enjoy the experience of it, particularly since he could do it with his mom.  Some time later, the two of them got one of the Call of Duty games, hoping for a similar experience.  The kid brought it back that night, and I couldn't help but smile at his reasoning for doing so.

"You have to kill people in this, and that just really makes me sad, because I don't think they're bad people."

This kid, who couldn't have been more than ten years old, was able to recognize that he wasn't emotionally ready to play a war game involving humans.  To me, this is the best indication that the kid is being raised properly (in the area of our discussion, at least).  He hadn't become desensitized to violence - if anything, he seemed to be more aware to the content in the games, and how it affected him.  I've helped a few other kids like this since him, but sadly, they're not as prevalent as I'd hope.

This has turned into a fairly long post, so I'm gonna start wrapping it up - but before I do, I feel the need to point out two other mediums that are violence-heavy, yet more socially acceptable.  I grew up on cartoons, and nearly every single one of them involved violence of some sort.  Even things like Looney Tunes and Tom and Jerry feature violence more often than not (heck, one side of the Looney Tunes focuses on a coyote trying, eternally, to kill a bird).  But because they're cartoons, I think, there's less worry there about it influencing kids to do things in real life.  I mean, when's the last time you saw someone try to drop an anvil on a bird?

Poor Wile E. Coyote.  He can't win.

Finally, there's been an entertainment medium around for a long time that's naturally violence-heavy.  It's marketed to all ages, and often deals with issues that are rooted in everyday life.  I'm referring to comic books, of course.  The first issue of Action Comics was published in 1938, and it featured the debut of a character named Superman.  A year later, a different publication debuted the character that would eventually be known as Batman.  More and more comic book heroes have shown up through the years, and they've always served as role models, of sorts, for kids.  But they all have to combat the villains with... violence.  Some heroes are more deeply rooted in it than others (I'm looking at you here, Batman), but it exists in nearly every comic out there - after all, one of the key elements to a good story is conflict.  But there's a lightheartedness around comic book violence that somehow removes it from being too influential to kids - I've never heard of someone being desensitized to violence from reading too many comic books.

I think I veered off-topic a few times in my post, but my basic point is that violence, by itself, is so ingrained into almost everything we do that I don't believe it holds enough power to influence people.  I think that the prevalence of violence almost serves to dilute it as an influence for most people - and, as stated, I think that the environment people are in plays a much larger role in shaping who they become.  There may be some level of desensitization that occurs from near-constant exposure to violence, but I don't think that it can reach a harmful level by itself.  In my opinion, there have to be some other external factors.

Thanks for reading through this - hopefully it wasn't too random.  Please feel free (nay, encouraged) to leave any relevant comments - feedback, questions, it's all welcomed.  We'll have a new topic announcement tomorrow, and I'll post for you all again next week.

Hybrid Theory

I've always had a fairly open mind when it comes to music.  I've never really focused in on any one genre, and there aren't many artists/bands that I regularly follow.  My only real dislike is country music, and that stems more from overexposure at my first job than anything else - there have been several country songs since then that I've enjoyed, at one point or another.  My original thought was to do this post kind of like a timeline, touching on what I listened to and enjoyed through recent years, but I think I'm going to go with a more traditional list instead, and just give some background information for each entry.  This should be fun, and with any luck, I'll rediscover some music that I like, and had forgotten about.  Ready?  Let's go.

First on my list of favorites is Eminem.  ... I know, it's a potentially debatable lead, but that's what I'm going with.  I get a lot of double-takes on the rare occasion that I talk about my music tastes to people, because... well, I guess, because I don't look like the kind of person who'd listen to rap?  An interesting point, though, is that I don't generally listen to a lot of rap in general - just Eminem.  There are a few non-Eminem songs that I've heard and enjoy, but rap as a genre isn't my thing, so much.  ... An interesting nugget of information is that I had absolutely no idea who Eminem even was until 2001.  Even then, I didn't listen to him or anything until late 2002.  My sister (or my brother-in-law, not sure which) bought his then-newest album, The Eminem Show, and they let me listen to it... and somehow, for some reason, it resonated with me.  I had previously dismissed rap as, essentially, people saying nothing but "I kill people, have lots of money and women, and I'm more badass than you".  Granted, my exposure to rap at that point was fairly limited, but it all sounded alike to me.  Eminem sounded... different.  I could listen to his songs and actually understand what he was saying - more than that, I could relate to a lot of it.  Sure, there were some songs like that on The Eminem Show, but that wasn't the entirety of the album.  There were also songs like Cleanin' Out My Closet, Sing For The Moment, and Hailie's Song (which features Eminem actually trying to sing, instead of rap, and mocking himself for the attempt).  For whatever reason, after this album, I was hooked.  I haven't listened to all of his old stuff, but that's something I intend to do when I have a few free days with no plans.  I did buy his most recent album (Recovery), even though someone had burned me a copy of it, because I wanted to support him.  Of the 17 songs on the album, I'm not crazy about two of them.  I think that's the best like/dislike ratio I have for any particular album, though I won't swear to that.  One of the items on my bucket list is to see him in concert.  ... I'd like to meet him, but I have no idea what I'd even say.  Maybe just "thank you", for everything he's provided the music industry with.  I'm really not sure how that'd go.  For whatever reason, however it happened, Eminem's at the top of my "favorite music" list.

Number two on my list of favorite music-related things is Linkin Park.  I debated for a while about whether to put them first, but they've become a bit less prominent in my listening tastes lately, and so Eminem beat them out for first mention.  As stated above, it's rare that I'll follow any particular group, but  they're the major exception to that rule.  I've purchased every album they've ever released, and they were the highlight of one concert I attended (out of two, total).  I feel like it became almost "uncool" to like Linkin Park at some point, because... well, I really don't know why, exactly.  I know that a lot of their fans were unhappy with their latest album release (A Thousand Suns), but for the most part, I really enjoyed it.  It was different, yes, but change isn't always a bad thing -- one of the songs on the album contains the line "... 'Cause once you got the theory of how the thing works, everybody wants the next thing to be just like the first...".  I've liked that line from the first time I heard it, because I think it's absolutely true.  Change, in the music industry, seems to be something that's criticized first and thought about afterwards.  I don't have a lot of experience in different examples of this happening to other groups, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was common.  If I scroll long enough through my list, I can almost always find a Linkin Park song to fit my current mood, and that's why they get second mention in my list.

Realistically, I think I need to make a mention of Nine Inch Nails here, because they're one of only two other bands that I can claim to have followed for any real length of time.  I went through a "phase" of liking the group in the early 2000's, and it lasted for several years.  Every Friday, when I worked at a bookstore, I'd be in the stockroom for several hours doing shipment, and every Friday, I would blast NIN for as long as it took my to finish unpacking everything.  The (conservative) staff complained for a while, but eventually just took it in stride.  I haven't followed them for a while (are they still even doing music?), but they were a big enough part of my music history that I feel they're owed a mention.  The one song of theirs that has always been one of my favorites is "We're In This Together".  ... I couldn't honestly tell you why.  It doesn't seem like anything special, really.  Potentially less screaming and craziness than other NIN songs, but... I dunno.  That one's a bit hard to explain.

I'm not going to devote a lot of room to the final group that I followed for a noteworthy length of time; partially because they're a group that likely no one has ever heard of, and partially because they're not a major part of my listening habits any longer (and I'm not trying to reverse that).  I didn't really have a "emo goth" phase (unless you count the one night I let people dress me up and take me out to a club, which... I don't), but I did listen to a band called The Cruxshadows for a long time.  Their songs were interesting to me, because a lot of them served semi-inspirational purposes, and also revolved around different topics that I found interesting (Troy, Egyptian gods, etc).  I bought (and still own) most of their CD's, but I stopped listening to them, and I haven't followed them for a while.  Still, they were a semi-significant part of my musical history, so I don't think I could do them the disservice of not even mentioning them.

Honorable mention for groups goes to Paramore and Rise Against.  I haven't purchased an album for either of the two, but there are a good number of songs that I enjoy by both groups.  I'm not going to go into a whole lot of detail about either of them (mostly because I know Paramore will be discussed, extensively, in later posts), but they both deserve to be mentioned for awesomeness.  Kelsey gets a public nod here, also, for getting me into Paramore.

To wrap this entry up, I'll focus on a couple of composers that I particularly like.  The first of these is Koji Kondo.  He's best known for composing the soundtracks of two series - Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda.  I'd label the Mario theme as one of the most easily recognized video game themes in existence, and we have him to thank for that.  Not long after Zelda: Ocarina of Time came out in 1998, the soundtrack was released, and it quickly found a semi-permanent home in my CD player (... ah, CD players...).  The music was so well-done, so perfectly placed, that I could close my eyes and see the game world around me as I listened to the music.  He's done plenty of other work besides these two series, but I feel that these are his most notable accomplishments (to me, at least).

The second composer is Yasunori Mitsuda, who's done... well, a hell of a lot of soundtracks, but most importantly to me, the soundtrack for Chrono Trigger.  Anyone who knows anything about me knows my relationship with that game, and the soundtrack is a large part of it.  The music from Chrono Trigger is one of the best soundtracks that I've heard, and it's one that never gets old for me.  ... I really don't know what to say beyond that.

I think that's enough for this post.  It's interesting that my top three choices were rock/rap... I suppose I do have a slight lean in that direction.  There's more variety in my music, but I do feel it's notable that my list turned out how it did... so, this post helped me figure out something about my own tastes in music.  Isn't that awesome?  I'm really eager to see what the other posters will share for this week.  Thanks for reading.