God.
Just... ugh.
I watch the Today Show every morning, every damned morning for about as long as I can remember. And it has at least one segment every morning that makes me slap my forehead. I'm used to it.
But this morning, they have this fucking ridiculous segment about re-naming things associated with women so that they can be for men- "murse," "mewelry," etc.
ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?
God forbid men wear something that's for women, like a purse or jewelry. That would make them effeminate, and that would mean they're gay. Because, you know, the worst thing you could ever do is emulate female behavior. Everybody knows that women are weak.
What the fuck is wrong with people? Why the fuck would any woman, in her right mind, agree to do that segment? Why would anyone acknowledge that dumb waste of time? A murse? A man-purse? Since, you know, purses are for women. Oh, fuck you. Fuck you all. Fuck anyone who thinks this should be a thing. Taking something that is associated with women and changing the language "so it can be for men" makes me actually want to strangle someone. I'm really fucking glad that we're almost one hundred years from when women got the vote, but we are still changing our language so big, strong men don't have to be using the same things as dirty, dirty women.
A bunch of mouches. You know, man-douches.
Monday, January 30, 2012
Monday, January 16, 2012
Primaries Make Me Believe the End is Near
Well, there is another presidential debate on the tube, and all I have to say about that is Jay-sus Christ (would not be amused).
I mean, seriously. I know this is on Fox News, so my standards should be appropriately lowered, but come on. This is stupid. This has reached a point of blatant, proud ignorance that I cannot even fathom. I would need to drink Drano to get to this level.
It's shocking, really, that we have an entire faction of people in this country who buy into this crap. Really? You think we should lower taxes? What kind of fucking economics class did you take, candidates? I missed the part where cutting taxes to nothing does something positive for the system. Guess what- taxes pay for things. They don't just pay for grandma's healthcare, they also pay for such abominations as roads, schools, national parks, state parks, mass transit, universities, libraries, and regulatory services that keep us good and dandy like the Food and Drug Administration or the Internal Revenue Service (yes, the IRS is a good thing). This is insane. This isn't even capitalism. (This is not Sparta, either.)
Let's talk about capitalism. You see, capitalism isn't "evil." It isn't "good," either. It's a system that looks one way on paper and another way when you add humans. Capitalism, at its core, is a system motivated by companies and economics. Is that a negative? I don't think so. Ideally, a company cares first about its customers, second about its employees, and third about its profits. Why? Because it works. See, when you care about your customers, they buy your products. When they buy your products, you have the wealth to take care of your employees. When you take care of your employees, they have the opportunity to be customers somewhere else, where they spend money and, indirectly, pay money towards the incomes of people who will be your customers. When you disregard your employees and don't take care of them, they cannot afford to spend money. If they can't do that, other people cannot earn money. If there's no surplus money in peoples' pockets, they don't spend it at your company.
This model makes sense to me. It seems to be capitalism, in that we have a constant exchange of money- a back-and-forth flow of wealth, if you will. However, this is not the model we currently use.
What we have is not capitalism. It's a kind of "corporate socialism," in that when companies fail to care for their employees and customers, those companies' leaders are assured economic survival by the government. Even in the cases of companies not directly given money to stay afloat, they still benefit from laws (or lack thereof) that address "golden parachutes" and legal liability for the failure of a company. As long as this system persists, these corporations have no real motivation to care about the welfare of their employees and the rights of their customers.
But I digress. I'm not an economics person by training, and perhaps I'm being a bit of an idealist. All I mean by this is that these candidates are incorrect when they claim to support capitalism. What they support is not capitalism, because it is an unsustainable system to promote the wealth of the few and ignore the welfare of the many. What they support is a system in which the government supports corporations and their leaders without regard to the customers and employees those corporations have scorned. That is more socialist than anything Barack Obama has done, but it isn't in the interests of the citizens. This is why I call it corporate socialism, and I am terrified of it.
I mean, seriously. I know this is on Fox News, so my standards should be appropriately lowered, but come on. This is stupid. This has reached a point of blatant, proud ignorance that I cannot even fathom. I would need to drink Drano to get to this level.
It's shocking, really, that we have an entire faction of people in this country who buy into this crap. Really? You think we should lower taxes? What kind of fucking economics class did you take, candidates? I missed the part where cutting taxes to nothing does something positive for the system. Guess what- taxes pay for things. They don't just pay for grandma's healthcare, they also pay for such abominations as roads, schools, national parks, state parks, mass transit, universities, libraries, and regulatory services that keep us good and dandy like the Food and Drug Administration or the Internal Revenue Service (yes, the IRS is a good thing). This is insane. This isn't even capitalism. (This is not Sparta, either.)
Let's talk about capitalism. You see, capitalism isn't "evil." It isn't "good," either. It's a system that looks one way on paper and another way when you add humans. Capitalism, at its core, is a system motivated by companies and economics. Is that a negative? I don't think so. Ideally, a company cares first about its customers, second about its employees, and third about its profits. Why? Because it works. See, when you care about your customers, they buy your products. When they buy your products, you have the wealth to take care of your employees. When you take care of your employees, they have the opportunity to be customers somewhere else, where they spend money and, indirectly, pay money towards the incomes of people who will be your customers. When you disregard your employees and don't take care of them, they cannot afford to spend money. If they can't do that, other people cannot earn money. If there's no surplus money in peoples' pockets, they don't spend it at your company.
This model makes sense to me. It seems to be capitalism, in that we have a constant exchange of money- a back-and-forth flow of wealth, if you will. However, this is not the model we currently use.
What we have is not capitalism. It's a kind of "corporate socialism," in that when companies fail to care for their employees and customers, those companies' leaders are assured economic survival by the government. Even in the cases of companies not directly given money to stay afloat, they still benefit from laws (or lack thereof) that address "golden parachutes" and legal liability for the failure of a company. As long as this system persists, these corporations have no real motivation to care about the welfare of their employees and the rights of their customers.
But I digress. I'm not an economics person by training, and perhaps I'm being a bit of an idealist. All I mean by this is that these candidates are incorrect when they claim to support capitalism. What they support is not capitalism, because it is an unsustainable system to promote the wealth of the few and ignore the welfare of the many. What they support is a system in which the government supports corporations and their leaders without regard to the customers and employees those corporations have scorned. That is more socialist than anything Barack Obama has done, but it isn't in the interests of the citizens. This is why I call it corporate socialism, and I am terrified of it.
Friday, January 13, 2012
In Memoriam
Well, it has been a bit since I last posted. I've started my next semester of school, and it did not start out the way one would have hoped.
I study anthropology (the biological side, not so much the cultural side), and in particular I like osteology and forensic anthropology. The person who inspired this passion, Dr. Karen Ramey Burns, passed away quite unexpectedly last weekend, two days before I was to take forensic anthropology from her. To say it was a shock would be an understatement of astronomical proportions- here was the woman who inspired the focus of my studies, suddenly taken from the world far too soon.
The head of the anthropology department himself informed us of this tragedy, and for that I am grateful. It was a far kinder way to deliver such horrible news than, say, a mass email. Given this, though, it was still an awful day for me and for everyone else who had known her or been inspired by her.
She helped to launch forensic anthropology to its current position in the scientific world, proving its importance by helping to identify victims of genocide, natural disasters, and acts of terrorism. She was one of the leaders in the attempt to uncover Amelia Earhart's fate. She identified remains after the attacks on the World Trade Center and in the wake of Hurricane Katrina's destruction. Dr. Burns helped to found an NGO in Colombia with the purpose of assisting families of victims in Colombia's current guerrilla war. She worked in Bosnia, Haiti, and Guatemala, to name a few.
Dr. Burns didn't do any of this to become famous; a person in this kind of field never does. She did what she did because she cared about people, both the dead and the living they left behind. It takes a strong person to be able to deal with these kinds of remains, and Dr. Burns was one of the strongest individuals I have ever encountered.
I only regret that I only had a year of her time. I sincerely wish I could have had the opportunity to know her better. In such a small amount of time, I was so inspired by everything she had to say. It entirely altered my view of the world, and my view of the dead. Her attitude towards physical anthropology changed my mind about what I wanted to do with my life. I have always had it in my mind that I want to help people, but Karen Ramey Burns made me want to help people who no longer had a way to help themselves. Her attitude made me want to help bring some closure to the families of those people.
Beyond that, Dr. Burns inspired me because her life flew in the face of the attitude that a woman can have a career or a family, but not both. I was already raised by a woman who disproved that theory, and I've never bought into that kind of bullshit thinking. Here was a woman who had managed an impressive career in a difficult field while raising a family. It inspired me further, with the idea that a woman could have a family while traveling the world to do work she believed in wholeheartedly.
To lose such a person is awful. Putting aside my own admiration for her, I thought of her children, and grandchildren. I thought of all the families she helped, all the students she taught, all the people she inspired. It breaks my heart to think of how fortunate I was to get to spend any time with such an inspiring mentor, and how much so many other people will be missing from their own lives because they never had the opportunity I had.
I imagine that such a glowing memorial of a person I hardly knew seems silly. Maybe I seem obsessed. I'm alright with that, because I know that these are genuine sentiments. When I entered school at University of Utah, I didn't know what I want to do. Dr. Burns changed my life, and now I know what I want to do. I've met plenty of people in the past that I respected and admired, but few that have truly changed my outlook on life. The world has lost one of the greatest people to ever grace its surface.
I study anthropology (the biological side, not so much the cultural side), and in particular I like osteology and forensic anthropology. The person who inspired this passion, Dr. Karen Ramey Burns, passed away quite unexpectedly last weekend, two days before I was to take forensic anthropology from her. To say it was a shock would be an understatement of astronomical proportions- here was the woman who inspired the focus of my studies, suddenly taken from the world far too soon.
The head of the anthropology department himself informed us of this tragedy, and for that I am grateful. It was a far kinder way to deliver such horrible news than, say, a mass email. Given this, though, it was still an awful day for me and for everyone else who had known her or been inspired by her.
She helped to launch forensic anthropology to its current position in the scientific world, proving its importance by helping to identify victims of genocide, natural disasters, and acts of terrorism. She was one of the leaders in the attempt to uncover Amelia Earhart's fate. She identified remains after the attacks on the World Trade Center and in the wake of Hurricane Katrina's destruction. Dr. Burns helped to found an NGO in Colombia with the purpose of assisting families of victims in Colombia's current guerrilla war. She worked in Bosnia, Haiti, and Guatemala, to name a few.
Dr. Burns didn't do any of this to become famous; a person in this kind of field never does. She did what she did because she cared about people, both the dead and the living they left behind. It takes a strong person to be able to deal with these kinds of remains, and Dr. Burns was one of the strongest individuals I have ever encountered.
I only regret that I only had a year of her time. I sincerely wish I could have had the opportunity to know her better. In such a small amount of time, I was so inspired by everything she had to say. It entirely altered my view of the world, and my view of the dead. Her attitude towards physical anthropology changed my mind about what I wanted to do with my life. I have always had it in my mind that I want to help people, but Karen Ramey Burns made me want to help people who no longer had a way to help themselves. Her attitude made me want to help bring some closure to the families of those people.
Beyond that, Dr. Burns inspired me because her life flew in the face of the attitude that a woman can have a career or a family, but not both. I was already raised by a woman who disproved that theory, and I've never bought into that kind of bullshit thinking. Here was a woman who had managed an impressive career in a difficult field while raising a family. It inspired me further, with the idea that a woman could have a family while traveling the world to do work she believed in wholeheartedly.
To lose such a person is awful. Putting aside my own admiration for her, I thought of her children, and grandchildren. I thought of all the families she helped, all the students she taught, all the people she inspired. It breaks my heart to think of how fortunate I was to get to spend any time with such an inspiring mentor, and how much so many other people will be missing from their own lives because they never had the opportunity I had.
I imagine that such a glowing memorial of a person I hardly knew seems silly. Maybe I seem obsessed. I'm alright with that, because I know that these are genuine sentiments. When I entered school at University of Utah, I didn't know what I want to do. Dr. Burns changed my life, and now I know what I want to do. I've met plenty of people in the past that I respected and admired, but few that have truly changed my outlook on life. The world has lost one of the greatest people to ever grace its surface.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)