Even in death, Britney Spears dominates the media’s attention

No, Britney Spears isn’t dead yet, but I did make you click on this article, did I not?

Spears managed to receive two blog posts today, one regarding how AP has started to work on her obituary last month, in anticipation of her death. According to AP entertainment editor Jesse Washington, "We are not wishing it, but if Britney passed away, it’s easily one of the biggest stories in a long time."

The second article states how Britney Spears has told family and friends she intends to marry her paparazzo lover Adnan Ghalib in a Scientology marriage ceremony, and continues to discuss her instable state, her latest problems with K-Fed and her children, and so on.

I hope this disgusts you as much as it disgusts me. I was pretty disappointed in myself when I clicked these blogs (although my excuse is that I try to read through all my subscribed posts), or when I picked up and flipped through a magazine titled ‘BRITNEY’S BREAKDOWN’ last weekend at Meijers. (No, I did not buy it) But this is the power of social pressure and the desire to conform. Knowing that Britney Spears will come up in some dinner conversation or casual chit-chat, I had to arm myself with some information. The mainstream media managed to tell us ‘what’s interesting’, and we follow those suggestions even though we all know how pathetically useless it is to know what Britney Spears’ latest problem is. Not unlike Nazi or GDP propaganda, where people knew the information they were given was wrong, but acted like they believed it; here, we know the unimportance of this type of news, but we pretend to care simply because other people around us seem to, or are pretending to do so. It’s scary how much power the media wields over us.

In a sad but true line, the author commented that “[Britney] certainly puts Iraq to shame.” Why…

New from Apple: the iRack

Oh, how true this is.



It's amazing how comics can sometime capture so much in such a simple clip. (Or image)

When in doubt, buy more guns.

On AMERICABlog today, AJ Rossmiller offers a critical response to the recent “inconsistency and hypocrisy of US policy in the Middle East”. Apparently, the Bush administration has agreed to supply Saudi Arabia with 20 billion dollars worth of weaponry, “to thank the Saudis for supporting the latest, feeble U.S. peace efforts in the Middle East”.

One must wonder why President Bush would do such a thing. Saudi Arabia is not currently in conflict with any major states, and supplying them with high tech weapons will just unbalance the power situation in the Middle East. On top of that, Saudi Arabia is currently reaping in tons of profits from the rising oil prices, and with that boosting their economy, it would seem perfectly feasible that they can arm and defend themselves without external aid. Like the original article suggested, it seems that something larger is at stake and we just don’t know about it.

One has to question Bush’s motives as well: just a few days ago I questioned why he armed the Sunnis to the teeth, and suggested that once American forces leave Iraq a civil war will probably break out. And now he’s supplying Saudi Arabia with 20 BILLION dollars worth of weapons, which will defiantly upset the balance of power in that region. While I understand a nation’s need for security, I don’t think this is as simple. I really do hope that there is more than ‘American hypocrisy’ behind this, and that Bush is not supplying the Saudis because they were ‘old friends’ like AJ suggested.

Does religion conflict with democracy?

Ted claimed in his blog today that religion and democracy cannot coexist. He makes a point saying that the candidates spend too much time preparing to answer questions related to their faith which are unhelpful to governing the country, and that they should focus on more ‘important’ issues. While this blogpost is written in an extremely anti-religion worldview, it was the type of words he used to describe religion that captured my interest. More specifically, he claims that religion “oversimplifies issues”, and has ‘a fixed truth’ - these words were also used today in class to describe the Nazi and GDP’s propaganda methods. While the associations of totalitarianism governments as quasi-religious cults are plentiful in textbooks, this is the first time I’ve seen such a comparison in the public media.

Regarding his comments about how religion and democracy has contradictory points, I have a few problems with his argument:

“The essence of our system is that we, the people, get to choose our values...So everything must be open to question, to debate, and therefore to change. In a democracy, there should be no fixed truth except that everyone has the right to offer a new view -- and to change his or her mind... A claim to absolute truth -- any absolute truth -- stops that process [of democracy].”

With this quote he claims that religions have a set of “fixed truths”, and “that "there is a fixed truth" leads inevitably to the claim that "I have that fixed truth," and these truths ultimately end up being about personal behaviors that ought to be matters of free choice.” While I understand that religions have a set of rules that their followers are expected to follow, I do not think that the truths and rules are strict, or ‘totalitarianism’ enough to hinder the proper function of democracy. For example, if Christianity had a set layout of how leaders of the church should arrange their homes, like the Nazis did, then I would agree that it would hamper democracy.

In Professor R. Bytwerk’s Bending Spines, he states that “Christianity and other major religions are worldviews. The Christian assertion is that… no part of creation is outside the reach of its creator. … Christians generally agree, in principle at least, that Christianity applies to all of life, not only its edges.” (pg 12) I would accept this view on religion much easier than Ted’s view. I believe that religion is a worldview, and can provide a basis of how a political candidate will view and understand the world. Although history has shown us that many candidates often do not follow up or act upon their religious convictions, I still believe that it can provide us with an idea of the person’s morals, ethics and beliefs.

So can religion and democracy coexist? I believe so. Although religion can affect a person’s opinion on the world, it does not have the power to completely dominate a person’s actions. However, I do agree with one of Ted’s points, that they should not focus too much on it and neglect other important issues.

You can play with my balls or my Wii. Your choice.

Credit goes to ripten for the image.

Gym teacher Don Prorok has recently convinced his school to approve of purchasing seven Wii consoles for his gym class, citing that “after playing his brother’s Wii and realizing the potential it has to get kids moving.”

While the author of the blog (and its readers) quickly jumped on board saying that kids should be outdoors more and experience ‘real physical’ sports, they also realized how much technology is changing the way we live, and we cannot avoid the change.

I’m sure that this would not be an isolated incident, and that more schools will attempt to use game consoles such as the Wii to promote more physical activity for students. One reader commented that it would be beneficial to introduce new sports to students via the Wii, games such as ping pong, bowling etc, and then alternate between the real sport and the Wii version. I agree with this reader’s statement, as it was Wii bowling that rekindled my interest in real bowling. However, many readers are still rather conservative about the change (possibly because the blog was written for a more conservative site), saying that children should not have an excuse to play computer games, and should always experience ‘real’ sports.

There is no denying that technology is changing our lifestyle, and in this case with the debate between ‘real’ and Wii sports, we need to carefully balance and compromise. Convincing children to play computer games will no doubt be easier than convincing them to play outdoors, but if they were to be allowed to only play the Wii, negative effects are sure to follow. The challenge now will be for schools to decide how and when to integrate the technology, and find a way to incorporate real physical sports and activities with it.

Iraq’s recovery from Bush’s errors

In an emotional piece from State of the Day’s contributor CREATURE, he claims that the political climate has finally shown come improvement, with no small part due to reversing President Bush’s de-Baathification policy. In 2003, the US occupation forces banned the Baath party (main party during Saddam-Era) in Iraq. This led to a lack of experienced people in the government. However, the Iraqi parliament passed a law today allowing low-ranking members of the Baath party to reenter the political arena, and in CREATURE’s opinion, is finally a positive move that may stabilize the Iraqi political system.

Meanwhile, doubts about Iraq’s stability are still evident, as the US has been arming the Sunnis to the teeth. Many believe that the moment the US withdraws from Iraq, a bloody civil war will break out. This does make one reflect on a comment Eleanor Clift expressed during her speech at the January Series: “There pretty much isn’t any way to twist the Iraq War into a victory; history would probably look at this just like Vietnam”.

The limits of patriotism

In a ridiculously bizarre turn of events today, telecommunication companies cut off the FBI’s wiretaps used to listen in on suspected terrorists. If you remember the 5 year old debate, the Patriot Act was passed in late 2001 and enabled the FBI and other counter-terrorism agencies to listen in on private citizen’s phone and internet conversations in the name of ‘protection of the country.’ While the public was in an outrage and demanded their privacy be respected, the phone companies complied because of their “patriotism”.

Now we know how far their patriotism lies – right up to the point which their bills get paid. AMERICABlog summarizes their stance pretty well:

“So to the big phone companies, the rule of law doesn't matter. Promises to protect your privacy don't matter. But if you don't show them the money, suddenly all their "we had to illegally spy on you to defend national security" talk goes out the window. National security isn't so important to the big phone companies when money is involved.”

So should we be more angry at the phone companies, who are hypocritical to the extreme in that they’re were willing to ignore our privacy but will take all that back when their bills aren’t paid; or the Government, who decided that terrorism is big enough a threat that we needed to invite the people’s privacy, but not important enough to even pay their bills on time?