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?

Pointing fingers while the house burns down

In today’s entry of The Lede, John Holusha pointed out that the Florida ‘controlled fire that was out of control’ is not surprising at all. Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd was quoted to say “It happens every year.” While state officials claimed that a sudden change in weather caused the fire to spiral out of control, it seems clear that it was more of a careless or lazy mistake. Fog was expected in this type of weather, and in addition to the smoke resulting from the burning of downed timber, created a the thick haze that caused a 70 car pileup and 4 deaths.

It seems to me that this event was the result of human error, as the burning of the timber could be rescheduled for another date because of the weather, but I also believe that the current priority should be to control the fire and to clear up the highway as soon as possible. However, the state has put its priority in “start[ing] an investigation to figure out who is to blame for the epic pile-up.” And the brushfire? “The brush fire is still burning and may continue to do so for weeks, Florida officials said.”

Come on, shouldn’t we be more concerned about the forest fire spreading? While the fire is still going, fog will mix with the smoke and cause terrible visibility. Shouldn’t the state government be more concerned about that type of condition and try to put out the fire as soon as possible? Why are we so concerned about who is the blame before the issue is even resolved? It’s almost like your house is on fire and the whole family is standing in the middle of it debating who knocked the candle over.

Sometimes, the inefficiency and stupidity of the government is beyond me.

The troublemaker, whistleblower, renegade or simply a traitor?

Philip Agee, an ex-CIA operator turned anti-CIA activist, died last night and stirred up a number of responses and comments about him.

“Reuters headlined him as a “whistle-blower” while The Associated Press preferred “renegade,” and Redstate, a right-wing blog, was the most unsparing: “A Traitor Dies In Exile.”” – The Lede

While it is undeniable that Agee’s work (the book he published) was controversial and somewhat unethical, it does force us to reflect on what America is doing. While I disagree of his method of exposing current CIA agent’s names and work, as it led to the death of a number of people, it is the type of operations that he brought to light that I believe requires reflection.

“1960 in Ecuador where his primary mission was to force a diplomatic break between Ecuador and Cuba, no matter what the cost to Ecuador's shaky stability, using bribery, intimidation, bugging, and forgery.”

“1965 Agee explains how he visited senior Uruguayan military and police officers at a Montevideo police headquarters. He realized that the screaming he heard from a nearby cell was the torturing of an Uruguayan, a name he had given to the police as someone to watch.”

Credit goes to Wikipedia – Philip Agee

Considering the current events regarding the Guantanamo Prison, CIA possibly torturing prisoners of war to get information, it does make us think how far we can go to ‘serve our country’. There is no question that some of these prisoners hold crucial information that might save American troop’s lives over at Iraq, but at the same time, these people are human beings after all, and the Geneva Convention was set up for a reason. In addition, there’s always a chance that they don’t, and are innocent.

I don’t believe that there is a clean line between right and wrong here, and that the grey area is huge and extremely fuzzy. We don’t even have to look at the current war to see this; I had a similar debate watching the TV series ‘24’, where the Hero, Jack Bauer, had to torture a suspect in order to save hundreds of thousands. How do we, and can we justify this? When and where do we cross the line? Is there a different set of rules we should abide by towards captured prisoners, as we are at war with them? Should the same rules apply to suspected terrorists who have been detained here on American soil? How should we act as Americans, who have been the victim of terrorism? As Christians, who believe that we are all children of God?

Mom! I’m on the internet! … And I’m pissing off some Foreign Minister!

YouTube has always been a popular destination for a lot of web-users since its creation, and has been a place where one could express their hobbies, interests, or other interesting aspects of daily life. YouTube has also been a conduit to fame for some: the Star Wars kid, the angry German boy, the lip syncing Chinese guys… all used YouTube or similar methods on their road to fame.

In many ways, the development of YouTube (and other video sites, such as GoogleVideo) had been similar to the blogging community: One would create a clip or article, post it on the internet for the world to view, and hope that it will rise in popularity. While most of these clips, like their blog counterparts, will ‘only be viewed by the author and their mothers,’ some will receive a substantial amount of viewers (sometimes up to millions) and receive recognition. Up until now, YouTube has been a place where people uploaded their roommate’s snoring video (Guilty!); and the ‘famous’ videos have always been funny clips, such as those listed earlier. But recently YouTube has evolved from roommate-snoring-clips to a place where videos actually have political impact. It was amazing enough to see the Republican debates broadcasted on YouTube, but having a Foreign Minister comment and take offence to a YouTube clip takes it to a whole different level.

It’s interesting to see this evolution of YouTube. While I’m not going to go into the details of the video in question, the video is basically a slideshow that lists a number of facts about Australia’s dying wildlife and claims that the Australians are being racist against the Japanese about their whaling policy, and are no better themselves. While this seems to be yet another homemade opinion piece, it might have gotten more attention because of some graphic images and some references to the Cronulla riots, which was a number of ethnically motivated mob confrontations. Still, I found it somewhat unusual for the Australian Foreign Minister to come forth and exhibit his displeasure. This comes to show how much influence a high-traffic website has on the general public, and how much our culture is changing, or rather, adapting, to this new ‘internet generation’. This evolution reflects my comments in my initial blog, where I mentioned that these developing communities on the Internet (such as blogs and YouTube) are really changing our culture at a rapid pace.

Remember what I said?

Remember what I said about blogs are just like any other type of mass media? Case in point: The Lede's post today was on Britney Spears, and the first line in the post was:

"Sigh. Another Friday, another Spears meltdown story all over the tube and the tabs. So duty calls: blog we must."

No you don't, we really don't need to know about Britney's daily dysfunctions. Like you said, we already have enough of that from the 'tubes and tabs'. Please give us something more intelligent or useful. Like the next article, a piece of unemployment.

The recent report on unemployment numbers have set off many alarms and The Lede does a very good job of analyzing some key issues. It’s no question that the US economy is slowing down, with unemployment and inflation both going up. While the situation isn’t pretty, I’m reluctant to jump on the ‘Recession!’ bandwagon like The Lede did. While the US dollar is getting weaker, the housing market collapsing, the Iraq War, and the growing national debt isn’t helping the economy, I still think it is recoverable right now. This puts a lot of pressure on the future presidential candidates; with the upcoming primaries/caucus, I believe the American people should really put an emphasis on the candidate’s economic policies. (I can’t vote in the US) Delay another 4 years with a President that cannot fix the US economy, and it may just cross the point of no return and plunge the country into a recession.

First impressions of the web-blogging scene

After a weekend of browsing though plenty of blogs, I’ve decided to follow these two blogs: “State of the Day”, a blog with four contributors that discusses politics from a liberal perspective, and “The Lede”, a NY Times blog that looks are current events from a different angle, often a rather sarcastic point of view.

Browsing through all these other blogs did give me a good idea of the web-blogging culture and situation, and here are some key observations I’ve noticed:

1. Blogs are just like any other type of mass media.

Sure, the top 3 blogs are a gadgets related blog, a self-help/tips and tricks blog and an editorial blog, but guess what’s after those? Perez Hilton’s “Celebrity gossip juicy celebrity rumors Hollywood gossip blog”. Sheesh. As if I haven’t gotten enough from TV’s gossip shows, CNN’s month long coverage on Anna Nichole Smith, and all those stacks of magazines on who’s dating who and who’s gained another 5 pounds.

2. The internet is changing culture – fast.

Alex William wrote an interesting piece on our changing culture. Joshua Stein also wrote a blog in reflection of William’s article, and this quote summarizes both pieces pretty well:

“In a culture that prizes risk and outsize reward — where professional heroes are college dropouts with billion-dollar Web sites — some doctors and lawyers feel they have slipped a notch in social status, drifting toward the safe-and-staid realm of dentists and accountants. It’s not just because the professions have changed, but also because the standards of what makes a prestigious career have changed.”

URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/06/fashion/06professions.html?ref=style; http://gawker.com/5002023/bloggers-are-the-new-doctors-and-lawyers

3. What happened to privacy?

Although some blogs are opinion driven, some are ‘tips and tricks’ driven, there are still many blogs by individuals on the internet that seem to be a daily diary. Whatever happened to diaries being a private refuge for private thoughts and self reflection? How and why did it turn into a public entry, open to the entire world, and heavens, open to comments by anyone?

With everyone so concerned about privacy nowadays, the internet seems to be moving another direction. Another recent internet phenomenon – social networking sites, or more specifically, Facebook and MySpace, is another example. Messages sent to other people are visible to hundreds, if not thousands or more people; sure, there are ‘privacy’ settings that limit exposure, but they are rarely more limited than ‘networks’ – meaning that everyone in your college/university, and everyone in your location (be it city or country) has access to those messages. And information isn’t limited to just messages; photos of the person, birthdays, addresses and emails, events intended to attend… a lot of them are open to semi-public view.