Sarcastic Blog

Not sure how I ended up at this particular blog, but there I was, and man is it funny! Here is how he described the serious national security dealings of Condoleezza Rice:

Then Condi waves, gets on a plane, gets off a plane, waves, eats lunch with a Middle Eastern dictator. They take a picture sitting at 45 degrees, she gets back on a plane and when she gets back to DC, she says "we had a meaningful discussion."

And so many more of those nuggets of sarcasm!

Harking Back to Graduation

J.K. Rowling is speaking at the Harvard graduation!! Luckyyyyyy...And as that article shows, you can never please everyone. Hey Dumbledore said that too! When Hagrid was down about parents sending him hate owl-mail because he was a giant half-breed. Here's a quote from the article that shows that no matter who it is, the keynote speaker at every college graduation will always be either too serious or not serious enough:

"The word from the college, meanwhile, is that some Harvard students are not exactly thrilled at the news, and disappointed that the university chose someone involved in the production of fairy tales rather a world leader or politician.

'[Faust] thinks this is a game?" one student complained. "It's a damn election year! You can't get someone at all related to that shit?'"

I for one thoroughly enjoyed listening to Jodie Foster at our commencement- including the part where she quoted Eminem and had the crowd follow along. And including the part where our inarticulate school president presented her as successfully transitioning from "precocious child star to adult film artist." I knew that was her in that "interpretive dance" video.

PS: I learned the news about JK Rowling from Pottercast, the official Leaky-Cauldron Harry Potter podcast. They actually got to interview her during one of their podcasts recently!

Promises

One of the reasons Clinton-backers are giving for choosing her over Obama is that no one can say whether or not he will actually fullfill all the promises that he makes. He's a great orator, gets listeners riled up with his promises of change, but will he deliver? Who can know, since he has not had commensurate experience. Whereas Clinton (first name Hillary) was in the White House as Bill's right hand. She's experienced, they say, and if anything, she's a great learner: she learns from her mistakes. So when she makes promises, they somehow have more legitimacy. Because her experiences make her more knowledgeable about what's possible and what's too Kucinich.

Ok, I see. I was wondering why experience would make her more trustworthy, after all an experienced politician could make empty promises as well as the non-experienced politician. But it's not a question of who's more capable of lying, but who is more capable of making promises that are fulfillable.

Sometimes it helps to write things out as if I'm talking to someone.

Anyway, I decided I want King Arthur for president. In "The Once and Future King", Merlyn tells him he's going to come back in a few centuries. Could the Second Coming be now?! Long live King Arthur!

Science and Philosophy

I found this article in this week's Science Times, on the extreme improbability of the Big Bang. Basically it says that the chance that our universe came into existence due to a "giant fart" (as my old Sunday School teacher so disparagingly put it) is much much less likely than the chance of finding bodiless brains floating around in space.

I can't help thinking what a random comparison this is- almost like asking why aren't apples oranges and oranges apples? I also find myself thinking about the nature of probabilities- they are, after just probabilities, only saying what is likely to happen. What actually happens is a different matter (this is where I refrain from making a horrible pun concerning matter, you're welcome). Unless you're a cat in a box- then apparently, you're both dead and alive until someone opens the box and finds out that you're actually dead. Or alive. Yep, makes just about as much sense as a unicorn on a bowling ball.

I also find myself thinking about the divide between philosophy and science that happened a few centuries ago. In the beginning, there was the Word, yes, but also, science and philosophy were one- science was a subcategory of philosophy in Ancient Greece up until the 17th or 18th century. But then science (and other fields) became more and more specialized, and they sort of became at odds with each other with respect to their goals, one driven by metaphysical questions of how we know in general, and the other by empirical questions of what we know specifically through our senses.

These days with the rise of quantum mechanics and also brain research, it seems like the domains of philosophy and science are intersecting again, and this is especially noticeable in this article, where reincarnation is being discussed alongside cosmology. Cosmologists are wondering whether they should consider other universes that may be bubbling forth zillions of light years away when doing their calculations, but that doesn't make sense to me. How can you study something scientifically if you can't see it? See meaning detect, of course. The reassuring thing about science is that you can test your results by trying to manipulate things or create things artificially. You push something, it falls, cause and effect. Of course, philosophers would object saying how do you know for sure that that's the cause, maybe there was in intermediary cause that was the real cause...there's all these objections, but the wonder of science is that we are surrounded by results that come from our manipulations that show that we are onto something, at least. Genetically-enhanced food, cloning, robots controlled by mere thought, the list is endless.

What other field of knowledge has such a list? Someday, would we know enough about this so-called "God" to actually be able to manipulate him? Highly, highly doubt it. But that's a totally different situation, right? He's not supposed to be tangible, therefore rendering him un-manipulatable. Right...totally different situations.

Angie in Dreamland

I dreamt that my dad stabbed in the heart. The psychiatrists would have a field day with this one.

In case you've wondered what it feels like to walk around with a stabbed heart, it's like your throat is closing up, gives you a bit of trouble breathing. And can you believe it, those damn doctors, they put me on the waiting list for surgery!

I hate waiting.

What a Moron

I can't believe this guy is allowed to write for anyone, let alone the Times. Gee, where to start. First off, I think it's ironic that he realized how ugly British women were upon returning to the UK after four years in Philadelphia because a recent survey carried out by Travel & Leisure mag shows Philly to be the least attractive city. Whatever the credibility of this survey is, I think he just said what he said for the sake of humor. It would have been more honest to say that compared to girls in LA, British women are more unkempt. But then again, 90% of the world's population is probably less "kempt" than girls in LA. I am all for taking artistic licenses (see past blog posts for examples), but not if it's done to injure others. They should be taken strictly for the sake of self-effacement, if effacement has anything to do with it.

In fact, he does go on to say that he had just returned from a two-month residence in LA and NY. This nugget of info only serves to weaken the worthiness of his opinion even further. He is clearly comparing British girls to girls from the two most appearance-conscious capitals (okay, not capitals, but why is it that state capitals are usually the least known city in the state, generally set in the middle of nowhere?) in the country. So when he polls his "friends" (I'm sure they're really his friends, after all, who wouldn't want to be friends with a guy who's shallower than a kiddy pool?), of course he's going to find out that they spend hundreds of dollars on beauty every month and go to "bikini boot camp" (???) Personally, I spend probably $20 on appearance a month, and please shoot me if you ever catch sight of me at bikini boot camp. Here's a charming generalization taken from the article:

As with many societal ills, I blame the parents. British mothers do not instruct their daughters the way American mothers do. In the US, beauty treatments appear to be a large part of their growing-up experience. A trip to the beauty salon is a group event for girls, an opportunity for a gossip and a catchup.

Charming and utterly false. I know that there are girls out there who like to turn trips to the loo into a group event, but most mothers I knew did not take a gaggle of girls to the beauty parlor on a regular basis. Tips are given at home, passed from mother to daughter, friend to friend, and sure, some girls like to make a day trip to the spa or salon with their girlfriends every once in a while, but it does not make up a large part of our childhood. When I think of my childhood, I think of playing four-square and chinese jumprope, or reading, not trips to the salon for "gossip" and "catchup". Usually I find myself wishing my hair-stylist would shut up- the few times I actually went to a salon for a haircut. I don't understand why any guy would want a girl who spends an average of $700 on "upkeep" every month! A girl who blows that much dough on appearance is most likely self-involved, spoiled, and shallow. Right. As with the hydrophobic tails of cell membrane lipids, "like likes like". See this is why assholes don't die out. Assholes like other assholes, as long as they spend at least $700 on appearance every month.

Finally, I just hate it in general when guys talk about what a butterface this girl is and how they'd do that girl but they wouldn't do that girl even under threat of de-cockification. Please, man. You talk as if any of those girls would do you in a heartbeat. The author goes on to make some negative and shamefully false generalizations about American girls, just so he doesn't get assassinated by the women of Britain, a sorry call for redemption that was crushed even as it took off on its pedicured feet.

I just read the rest of the article, and as it turns out, he does complain that American girls are actually too involved with their appearance, and that this obsession can appear "unattractive" and "unpleasant". So now, we're too conscious about our looks? I now have cause to hate him more. If ever there was a man that was hard to please and more hypocritical than Father Michael, ex-Roman Catholic priest and child molester, it is this guy.

"Nobody's perfect," he begins his ending paragraph. Well, ass-in-a-box, then why do you demand such supreme perfection from women, British or American? Ass, ass, ass! No wonder he's single- with any luck, and with the release of this article, he'll be single for life. If he's lucky, he'll end up spending the rest of his sad lonely days with his fat manager like that burnt-out rocker on Love, Actually. And what was it that the rocker said during the radio interview scene? Here it is:

"When I was young, I was greedy and foolish, and now I'm left with no one. Wrinkled and alone."

Great movie, by the way. I watched it twice in a row during Christmas- the second time with the commentary on. And by the way, the cast is full of beautiful British women.