Changes

I've heard friends complain that other friends change after they've been in a serious relationship for a while. I'm not sure why. Perhaps they believe that their friend is changing to better suit their partner. They've been in the relationship so long that they will undertake anything to perpuate its existence because they don't know what they would do without the other. Again, I don't know. These are mere possibilities.

My perspective is a bit different. If that person is better than you, can make you better, you change, no questions ask. Why hold onto an inferior identity and character when one can improve?

Of course, this is all dependent upon the other person being a good one. Should they not be so good, you change them or get out of there.

Reflections on student newspapers making a bad thing worse

This is what happens when Chris' staff editorial gets shot down during the staff meeting. It gets posted here. Sure the audience is infinitesimally smaller, but, at least, his name is more apparent. Enjoy.

So it happened again. A newspaper dropped the ball. Shoddy editing led to the printing of factual errors. It was not the first time something of the sort has ever happened, and no one but a fool would believe it to be the last time. Mistakes happen to all manner of news organizations, at every conceivable level. It’s not hard to think of cases where national publications were forced to fire reporters and editors and publishing fabrications, and, just last week, our own Gonzaga Bulletin corrected errors in a front page story, and ran a letter to the editor identifying errors in another article. Still, this particular case is of interest because The Daily Illini simply gave up.

In a staff editorial berating the athletic department for not treating students fairly in regard to ticket distribution for a basketball game three egregious errors were made. The next day a correction and apology were run, both very appropriate, and that, short of being a poignant memory of what happens when fact checking is neglected, should have been the end of it. However, another editorial appeared the day after and, claiming those mistakes as merely the most recent in a long series, declared that the appearance of staff editorials on its Opinion page would be ended for “a couple of weeks.”

The editorial board of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s student newspaper, an award-winning production that began in 1874 and distributes over 20 thousand copies a day, failed to meet one of the most basic journalistic standards: getting its facts straight. Rather than resolve to confront the issue the next day with editors operating under the reminder of their recent failure, it preferred to remove itself from the public eye under the cover of re-evaluating the system under which the editorials are chosen, written and edited.

Cocaine addled celebrities run and hide. They have no obligations beyond providing entertainment, though stories of their recoveries or devastating descents back into drug use can still prove amusing for those who read People or Us Weekly. Newspapers, however, have a duty to the public and cannot back down from it.

In the editorial board’s last submission to its opinion pages for the foreseeable future, it called the newspaper editorial “a sacred institution” for offering “insight on issues, events and problems relevant to the community.” Now The Daily Illini has forsaken this status, not through its factual errors but through its refusal to meet the problem the next day.
Avoiding blunders like these are simple to those with the mildest understanding of journalism: make sure the editors do their job. I can sympathize with their failure in this instance. People get tired, focus on the wrong things or, more commonly, assume that the person who checked the story before them knew what they were doing and took care of the big problems.

Mistakes are excusable and remedied by apologies and notes under the heading “Correction.” Giving up is not.

Conflict

Conflict and its appearance in friendship made an interesting appearance in my daily life today. A friend came passed through the room, and I commented upon her bright red arm. I pointed out that there was ice in the freezer, and it would likely speed in the recovery of her sunburn. A second friend said you ought (okay, ought wasn't used, but i like the sound of it) never place ice on a sunburn. Memory gets a little imprecise here, but I believe I granted the point that ice should not straight up be placed on bare skin but maintained that putting some paper towels in between would still do fine. The friend countered that ice was a bad idea, you should only use aloe or cold water to heal a sunburn. We might have reiterated both of these points for a few rounds, but I eventually changed tacs. I had never used ice to heal my numerous sunburns but frequently utilized a cold gel pack. Perhaps we could compromise on that but no. I suggested using a cold gel pack, and she said it was only good for bruises. Finally I said that was what I put on all my sunburns, and the conversation just dropped into an awkward silence at that point and died. The friend with a sunburn had long since left.

I find it funny because, looking back, it seems as though that disagreement could have held much greater consequences than the yelling matches I get into with another friend on whether or not the ends justify the means or the means justify the ends (my position). Do practical disagreements carry more weight than theoretical? It appears so, at least in this case. You could bring up our current war on terror and how its between two opposing ideologies, but I sincerely doubt that the current situation would persist if there weren't certain economic problems behind them. Something to think on.

Movement

One of the more intersting things about picking up a Dance minor on a whim, besides the kudos from those shocked you would do something like that, especially when you have never seen a ballet and the only thing you have bordering on experience in dancing is Dance Dance Revolution, is the variety of classes you take. Well, in terms that all of the Dance related classes (Tai Chi, Sacred Dance and Ballet) I'm taking this semester involve movement, they aren't that different. It's in the theory that such stark and interesting divisions arise. In Tai Chi we're suppposed to feel our chi, feel it rise up from the earth and circulate through a spot three fingers below the navel. That's on Tuesday and Thursday mornings while Sacred Dance is held about ten hours later, and we're supposed to feel God's presence as if God were looking over your shoulder, asking "Can I step in?"

Why do I have to feel these semi-cosmic (or straight up cosmic with regards to God) forces? Can I categorize my motions such that I only feel them in the appropriate settings? What if I start feeling my chi in Sacred Dance and God in Tai Chi? What then? Or maybe I should merely focus on developing an awareness of one in all my activities. Freak. It's irritating when your instructors are working at cross-purposes like this.

Monday and Wednesday Ballet mornings are almost a relief when you only have to concentrate on your form and not worry about feeling these forces beyond yourself. Of course, Ballet is much more quantifiable than the other two, so someone can say, "You suck. I mean really suck. You make a vacuum look like a leaf blower. That's how much you suck,' and you can't really contest them.

Postmodern music (because it obscures the nerdy origins)

I believe I was looking for Dance Dance Revolution tracks at the time. You know, so I could enjoy such songs as Afronova and Burning Heat outside of the intensity of emotion that particular rhythm game leads to the creation of. In the course of this mildly illegal action I came upon OverClocked ReMix a site that promotes and hosts free remixes of video game soundtracks. Most of them are classics, pulled from such gems as Chrono Trigger and Sonic the Hedgehog and the Donkey Kong Country franchise, though more recent games like Zelda 64 and the later members of the Final Fantasy series are represented. The site lacked what I was looking for, but the design was excellent and it looked interesting. So, I bookmarked it.

That was maybe a month ago. A week ago I returned to the site looking for some new music having gone on a free music collecting binge. I didn't think so much of it at the time, but, once the downloads finished (a day later because there was over a gig of music) it hit me, just how nerdy I was. I was downloading video game soundtracks. Not only that, fan takes on them. People who found the original scores and replaced the symphony with guitars or rapped over the top. This had to be some sort of turning point. I can't remember a time I had a problem with the label of nerd. I liked to read. I liked Star Wars to an inane degree. I had glasses. I deserved the title. But this music was something different. If the general populace learned of this, I would be thrown into the lowest levels of nerdery. Kids with pocket protectors could dump my books and give me pink belly with impunity because I was even lower than them.

Still, I have a problem with throwing things out, so the music remained on my computer. A short while later I was reading The Selfish Gene (funny story there. i had been reading a friend's LiveJournal earlier that day and, when my mom asked what it was about, i told her 'a meme.' turns out she knew what those were because she had read Dawkin's most famous work (in that it's the only work i know he has written) and had what might be a first run edition because she had to read it in college. upon her finding of it (it was fifth printing i believe) i was in a goofy good mood. yeah, funny.) and couldn't concentrate on it while playing songs with lyrics. I was tired of John Williams and other film scores, so I, not without some trepidation, put the OverClocked ReMix on and was floored. Sure, there was a slight nostalgia factor, especially in the case of Secret of Mana remixes, a game which actually had me crying at the end (that was a long bleeding time ago), but I hadn't played most of the source games and came to the remixes fresh. They were actually pretty good. Very professional and clean sounding. The remixers had put a lot of effort and care into these bits of sound, and it came through, clear as the water around the Florida Keys.

So that is my story. The discovery of some great art in an unusual place, art not to be dismissed because of its humble, easily dismissable origins.

Leadership

It and variants on it came up a lot on college scholarship applications. What do you think makes a good leader? What is the ideal leader? How do you consider yourself a good leader? A poor one? In many respects, high school tried to prepare me for these. There were leadership conferences and seminars and a whole pile of ways you could act in a position of authority. There was student government, class officers and club positions.

Mostly I wrote trash for those particular essays. They were insipid and mostly regurgitated whatever it was that I had heard in those training sessions. It showed. I don't think I ended up with any scholarships with 'leadership' in the title.

However, I think I have a handle on what leadership is all about now. Leaders are simply the ones who make a decision and go through with it, even the most petty things. There have been times when I was with the cross-country team or friends or whatever, and we'd be trying to decide on something. What movie to watch, where to go to eat, what to do next, whatever. People would be willing to throw out all sorts of suggestions, but it would take forever to get anyone to act on them. I guess people are afraid of stepping on the toes of others. They don't want to seem as though they're imposing their preferences and whatnot on others when they can't see any quantitative difference. That's when the leaders appear. They would say, "Let's do this," and we would follow them. They realize that no decision is going to please everyone the same amount and do the best with what they know and are willing to live with whatever consequences, small as they may be in the above mentioned cases. That's all leadership is, the willingness to make a decision and see it carried out. Good leaders are the ones that make the right decision and are ready to make changes as the need arises.

Woodie

I've had two days to think about this and even spent a decent part of work today trying to figure it out. I have nothing, so I'm just streaming here. See what happens.

Woodie was a good dog. The closest she ever came to mean was barking when somebody she didn't know came to the house. As soon as they came inside, though, she'd just rush up and sniff them. She was even decent to other dogs, especially smaller ones, or maybe just afraid. They would sniff each other briefly and then the other dog would chase Woodie in a few circles. I thought it was funny at least. She listened to me too. Not like Molly, but she was going deaf by the time I was taking her on walks when my dad wasn't around to.

Anyway, she was put down on Wednesday. When I came back to Baudette from college she was doing all right. But then she had surgery to remove a tumor or something, and it all went downhill from there. It must have been a malignant tumor because she showed signs of lymphoma, nasty bumps all over and didn't spend anytime in her usual places. Even that wasn't so bad, but the last weekend she got worse still. My parents went on a camping trip, and I had to take care of her, walks and feeding and such. Actually, that was basically it, but she wouldn't get up or eat or anything. She did a little of that when my dad came back and took care of her, but it still wasn't much. Was she in pain? I don't know. I guess my parents were giving her aspirin, and she wasn't whimpering or anything. Still, she wasn't going to last much longer.

It wasn't so bad as when Molly was put down. I knew it was coming this time.

Possession

It seems to me that we humans are so very eager to slap the adjective 'my' on to those things we are involved with. 'Our,' in the sense that it is within the possession of a limited group, is often substituted as it makes the sayer appear less greedy. This struck me most strongly at work today where my partner and I were loading picnic tables on to a trailer. Always when we lowered the ramp, I would unhook the right side and he would take the left, and it seemed to me that were he to work on the right side, I would tell him to stop doing my work, though we did the exact same thing only on opposite sides. I believe he felt the same way because the two of us would do an awkward sort of dance around one another to get at our respective sides if it ended up that we were ready to lower or raise the ramp but on the wrong side.

What's with that? is the first question that comes to mind, and the second question that quickly follows for me Is this right? My example is petty. It really matters nothing, but it's ramifications are much more clear when land claims and other such things are considered. This perspective that influences so very much, from the minute in impact and importance to the international, is strongly influenced by the American culture I have lived my entire life within, and I want to know if it is right. Unfortunately, this observation will have to be the sum of tonight's post. I lack the drive to write any more on the matter now and have other things on my mind. Perhaps I'll give this question the analysis it deserves in a later post.

Thinking about teachers and education and such

I was thinking earlier. You see, that's why I'm making a post. I thought some thoughts and found them to be of some value, something others might enjoy. Thus, I write now.

Anyway, Nietzsche wrote something along the lines of "Teachers are a necessary evil." That's wrong actually. He wrote in German and it was probably closer to "Lehrer sind ein notwendiges Übel (courtesy of FreeTranslation.com seeing as how my German vocabulary isn't extensive enough to come up with that line on my own, and I lack Nietzsche in German (not that I'd know where to look for it))." This is important though because I read an article through Arts & Letters Daily about folk science and how we as humans generally screw up science because of our limited perspective. At some point, the writer brought up heliocentricty and the earth as a globe as things we don't realize on our own. I know that. Those facts were ground into me in most every science book and I ever read and more than a few history books as well. The problem is I've never proven these for myself. I've been told that these are so, but I've never done the calculations, the figuring that proves them. How do I know for certain that these are true, and I'm not being mislead? I guess I don't. I could be living in some boring rip-off of The Truman Show, and everyone wants to know what ludicrous notion I'll swallow next.

I guess that's what labs like dissection and those that allow you to calculate acceleration due to gravity are for. They give us the opportunity to see that these are real. The problem with those, though, is that the students know what is supposed to happen, what results the teacher wants to see, and we, at least my friends and I in high school, fudged like mad. We accepted the established results even though our own results differed.

To quote another notable dead white man, Newton said (more likely wrote but whatever), "If I've seen farther than others its because I've stood on the shoulders of giants." The only way we can make significant progress is by building on the previous works of others. If everyone had to start off from the beginning, observing nature and working out gravity and whatever else, we as humans would not be at the level we are today. Then again, if one of these giants people are scrambling up today made some fundamental mistake, a whole lot of time would be lost in the development of a different approach to that particular field.

My history professor last semester backs Newton up against Nietzsche. He said something that I remember as, "You don't just give some chemistry set to a kid and say, 'Have fun!'" If I remember right, this is taken more than a bit out of context. He was drawing a comparison on whether ethics and morality should be taught to children when he delivered that line. Still works. Teachers are very necessary, both to overall progress and to safety.

Then again, I am more than likely reading Nietzsche a bit shallowly here and could be blasted off this planet by someone with a better background than I in his writings.

What was this post about? The fun one can have in comparing quotes, I guess. I should do this again sometime.

Mona Lisa

In my last post I made an example of La Joconde. Turns out my reflections on our history is worth a post. I took French for four years in high school, and, as I imagine most classes do, we went to France the summer after I graduated. It was one of those true whirlwind trips. No more than a night in any place and plenty of time on the bus. Not enough time to really visit any one place, which, very much unfortunately, was the case with the Louvre as well. If I remember correctly, we had two hours there. Most of that time I spent amongst the Greek, maybe Roman, sculptures, but, come on, it's the Lourvre. There are a few things you have to see, so I wandered a little bit. Managed to walk past the Winged Victory of Samothrace. Couldn't find David. The Mona Lisa was different. I find it easily enough, but couldn't get within twenty yards of it because of the mass of humanity surrounding it. Not that I actually wanted to see the picture. I was more interested in the security and all the preventive measures against light and environmental damage. Still, the crowd kept me from even seeing that much.

The people so eager to see this piece fascinated me though. What is the big deal about seeing it? The picture itself is not much bigger than a sheet of paper. You could probably get a better view of the picture from out in the hallway where ceiling to floor length banners of the painting were hung, yet people were still desperate to get in on it themselves. They held digital cameras above their heads to try for a shot, no doubt vastly inferior to those they could find in some gift shop or even online.

Curious behavior.

Ideal of art

Here's a problem that has been running through my mind since I started my first college literature course. Should art aspire towards ambiguity or certainty? Is Paradise Lost, where such basic questions as whether Eve was a positive or negative character were debated over in Literature I, or To Kill a Mockingbird, "Walk a mile in their shoes before judging them?" sounds pretty clear to me, to be lauded? Not that certainty is all that certain anymore, not when you can make Fight Club into an adult Calvin and Hobbes, but there are times when the creator's intent is bleeding clear as in 1984.

Why is Mona Lisa the most famous painting in the world? Well besides the intriguing mathematical principles da Vinci used, all I ever hear about is the smile, enigmatic and different to every person who views it. Ambiguity wins here.

But then again, when did ambiguity ever lead to something besides a great thesis or theory? The world's greatest and longest standing religions? All have nice numbered lists with elements that are nigh impossible to take in any other direction at the center of their faith. The Ten Commandments? The Five Pillars of Faith? The Four Noble Truths? The Eightfold Path? The Golden Rule? Not much wiggle room in those.

It's kind of cheating though to bring these in. They have their artistic and literary elements, but, centrally, they're not about those. Wait a minute though. This just occured to me. What is art but one's perception of reality, and what is religion if not what reality is and how we should exist within it? How does this relate? I'm not sure, but it sounds pretty cool to me.

How about this then? You want to change the world? Give it something distinct and clear. Want to be remembered? Give people the ability to choose the perception they find in your own. Neither can be placed higher than the other (unless, I guess, if you're going to argue against the existence of an ultimate truth that a religion can lay claim to). Art can introduce nuance to religion, but you can't very well live by it while you can live by a religion. They both have their places and must be recognized for what they are.

Sky bingo

Sun beams are cool. The clouds are beginning to break on an overcast day and you see yellow rays coming through, standing out against the otherwise gray of the sky. Unfortunately, they're cliche. Angels descend from the heavens, people do something particularly heroic, or a war ends or the storm is over and the survivors are highlighted by God's spotlight. Not so special as they could be.

I discovered something a bit more interesting a few days ago. Discovered is a strong word. I sincerely doubt I was the first to see them and I'd be disappointed in myself for never noticing them before. However, this is the I was actually aware of them. They're the inverse of a sun beam, the shadows cast by clouds that pass in front of the sun. Instead of a happy splash of yellow, it's a bit of dark against sky. They're a bit tricky to see because they don't expand out as far as sun beams but still cool.

Another reason to watch the skies. You may need sunglasses though. Preferably, darly tinted black. That's how I saw my first.

The Moment

I saw the very quirky and fun French film Amelie a little while back. The scene that has most stayed with me besides discovering the secret of the man on all the photo booth pictures? The mean grocer trying to grab the bathroom handle that Amelie switched earlier in the day. So much of the movie, to me and some fine people at Metaphilm, thought this movie was about "the moment." Enjoying it. Living in it. Sucking the marrow out of life. All that. The grocer, the name of whom I'm not inspired enough to look up, goes through the motions, doesn't appreciate every moment, thus he is tricked so fully. A reminder to appreciate the moments I guess.

Not much of a post. Okay, go watch Amelie. It's different and French and Audrey Tatou has a charming smile. There, more substance. Enjoy it.

The bumper sticker my friend saw

I don't remember where I heard about this one. Possibly it was a friend's LiveJournal post, or it might have been brought up in some conversation. Not that it matters. It's the content I care about here. The bumper sticker said something along the lines of "Tolerance is for those who lack convictions." I heard about it months ago, and it's stuck with me. Not often at the center of my thoughts but always at the fringes. And now I direct my thoughts towards it. Enjoy the ruminations.

I remember my friend treating the sentiment with some disdain, but I'm not so sure I agree. Of course, it is only six words long and more than open to some interpretation so we may see it in different ways, but I find myself agreeing with it in my own way. If you truly and wholly believe something, say "All killing is wrong," can you be tolerant to murder and capital punishment and abortion and the meat industry? I can't see how. To not burn and rave against what you absolutely know and feel is wrong.

I guess the problem is when we mix up people with ideas. Should we fight those ideals we know wholly and totally to be wrong? Yes. Do we fight the people who hold them? No. This gets into another belief I hold. I try very hard to never think, "I wish that person were dead." Death is the end. After that no can ever do any good. Rather, I wish that person would grow into someone better, more charitable or empathetic or whatever. You fight the person, you lose the opportunity to change them. Fight the idea.

Of course, this all hinges on your belief being a true conviction. If you have analyzed the arguments on all sides of the issue, discussioned the matter with both those who disagree and agree, spent time on personal reflection and meditation, know with your reason and feel in your heart and soul that your position is the right one, that is a conviction. Anything less than an absolute belief leaves room for one to be wrong, and open-mindedness is still necessary to find the truth then. I'm getting into rough waters here considering my feelings on my inability to be certain of anything, but that'll have to be ignored for now.

Disregard the previous if you don't believe in absolutes or if you find my reasoning poor.

Talking and conversing

It's amazing how little it's possible to think while you talk to someone. There are all these trite sayings and phrases hard-wired into my mind, stuff I've picked up from friends and family and TV and sytheses of them. When I talk to someone, I listen for some cue and drop the appropriate line in return. Throw in all the common place pleasantries from "Hey" to "How are you?" to "Later" and you have a minute or two of small talk, a meaningless exchange that does nothing more than express that you were willing to spend a few minutes of your time with someone if not any brain waves.

That's talk. What I desire is conversation, where you actually think about your questions and answers and statements. Pauses? No problem if you're thinking about what to say next. Geez, I even find an uncomfortable silence better where you're actively trying to think of something to say better than simple talk.

Life is short. Talk ought to be worth our time. Our topics may not always be on the weightiest matters, but the effort we put into them can make them so much better.

Sunrise

I watched the sunrise this morning. In and of itself, that's nothing spectacular. My hometown's at a latitude far enough north that the sun sometimes first appeared midway through first period in high school. This, however, was the first time I woke up early expressly for that purpose. I'm not really sure what drove me to do it. A weekend or two ago I had planned on doing so by staying up all night, a way to celebrate the end of the work and the beginning of a few days off. Mostly, I figure, it's something I never bothered to appreciate before.

The colors aren't as intense as those at sunset. They were much subtler, more pale and washed out. Actually, the colors were pretty similar to those at the earliest stages of sunset, before the brilliant reds and purples start to form. There's this little band between the pale blue of the sky and the yellow tint that precedes the sun's rising. If you focus on it, you miss, but look at something else, how the horizon loses all distinction and is nothing more than a black mass, and you catch this vibration between the two of them.

Actually, I didn't see the sunrise. There were tall trees on the horizon that would have blocked me from seeing it proper, but I was missing half the show looking only to the east. Colors were shifting all over. Above, the sky was moving towards sky blue, pale but distinct from a band that ran along the horizon. At the east it was wheat gold but became berry blue and purple and red in the west.

Cool.

Dreams

Truly watched Waking Life a few nights ago. The first time I ever saw it was on an airplane. On someone else's laptop. No sound because they were being polite to the other travellers and using headphones. Fascinating experience watching a dialogue/ monologue intensive movie with such a fascinating, unique visual style, made even more so when they played Y tu mamá también right after. It's an amazing movie, Waking Life, it's not so much people talking to each other as at one another, there are no professional actors, and really no plot in the traditional sense, but it's ultimately an arresting movie. It's one that I didn't want to tune out for a second in fear of missing something cool. I certainly give it a hardy recommendation. Not for Friday Fun, unless you are a complete philosophy nerd, but pretty good for a Thoughtful Thursday.

A number of points were touched upon in Waking Life: evolution, fate, choice, existentialism, collective consciousness, eternity in a moment and, the topic of this post, dreams. Actually, the whole movie is a guy's dream. At one point he meets up with three friends and they discuss the various aspects of dreams. One is all about lucidity, the realization that one is dreaming and then taking control of it. He suggests a number of ways you can figure out that you're in a dream which leads to one of my favorite scenes. This, specifically, is what concerns me. My personal trick for identifying a dream is asking myself what I had for breakfast that morning because my dreams tend to be in media res. If I can't remember waking up, I'm pretty sure I'm in a dream. Not that this would work in Waking Life. The character wakes up multiple times only to realize later that they're "false awakenings." I guess I'm special. To get back to the movie, lucidity is huge. Once people realize they're in a dream they start flying or doing whatever. Me, I let it ride. I like to see what happens next. There have been more than a few occassions where woke up at a really good part and just laid in bed for a while longer still finishing the episode in my mind. What's really cool? I don't feel as though I'm making it all up. I'm just dreaming with my eyes open. Screw my conscious. The unconscious is where it's at.

Okay, not much substance. Just an alternate viewpoint and mild movie review.

Something to consider

For the past three years, I have worked as a natural resources worker at Zippel Bay State Park. Doesn't really tell you much about what I do, does it? For simplicity's sake, if someone asks, I typically call myself an outdoor janitor. I make the park look nice from cleaning out firepits to picking up litter to generally being a great piece of eye candy for the park visitors. This job also includes the rather illustrious duty of tidying up the outhouses, vault toilets, whatever it is that you call them. A week or two back, we installed (not the best word. it's not really a permanent part of the structure. perhaps incorporated would be better) generic plastic garbage cans into them to reduce the amount of trash being thrown down the actual toilet, something we in the park cleaning business frown upon. Today I looked into these garbages for the first time, curious as to what artifical waste people disposed while they were relieving themselves of biological waste. Mostly, I found juice boxes and candy wrappers. You know what this means? While the necessary muscles in the posterior were tightening and relaxing, others were going at it in and around the jaw. Disgusting. At the moment you're most aware of what it's going to turn out as, more food is being taken in. I wonder what Freud and his psychoanalytic development would have to say about that. Forget that last one. I really don't care to know.

For those generous souls who seek to defend or find excuses for what I found, I can think of none. These aren't obvious garbages, they were recently implemented inside a wholly enclosed structure. It's highly unlikely that someone find this trash on the ground and thought to theirself Geez, I better throw this away in one of the outhouses, especially when other, more obvious garbages are a short distance away. Also, it simply seems unlikely to me that someone would keep an empty juice box in their pocket until that moment.

At least the trash isn't going down the toilet.

Calm retorts

Victory for Chris! Well, not in that I changed the man's mind or really made much of a difference, but I do feel better about my own reason and ability to construct a decent argument. Anyway, I called the writer of the editorial I alluded to in my last post. That's an hour of my life that I'm not getting back, but, like I said, I feel better about myself after it. First of all, I didn't let 'Spice of Life' become an end. I followed it up. Second, for the reason stated above. Let me regale you with some anecdotes. I promise you'll feel better about your own debate abilities at the end of this. Note that the italics indicate what I wish I had said.

"There are only 11 rights the federal government has in the Constitution. Everything else is reserved to the states."
"Well, I was taught that the Constitution was intended to be a flexible document that could change with the times."
"Then your teacher was a Communist. You're at a malleable age and need to understand that he's wrong. He's been teaching his ideology."
-Later on, after I reveal that I support big government when he asks if I would be willing to support some lawsuit against the government.
"I'm sorry, but I can't do anything for you then."
But wait, I'm at a malleable age! Please give me a chance!

"After Reconstruction, when public transportation was privately owned and operated, their was harmony between the colors. It wasn't until the federal government started to subsidize buses and stuff that their was segregation."
Later on, while complaining about the liberal media.
"Three companies own all the print media, and there are only three major networks. They're all biased against the president."
It appears that your support for capitalism has failed.

"You know why the government went after Bill Gates? There was no trust. He just wasn't giving the political parties enough money. Now he donates to both parties, and everything's fine."
Later.
"You hear about that Congressman with the money in his freezer? That was from bribes, and that's what you get when you let all those lobbyists into government. People can buy preferential treatment."
"So you're saying Bill Gates wasn't buying enough preferential treatment before or does he donate just enough not to get harassed?"

"Direct election of senators ruined our government. The Senate used to be a gentleman's club. Now it's a pig sty. When they were chosen by state representatives, people cared about those elections."
Doesn't that make the whole system more susceptible to bribery?

After finally getting him to admit that anarchy was the wrong word to use in his article.
"Well that's piss poor reasoning. I'd like to keep this all above that, and you're getting childish."
Yeah, I just wanted you to admit you were wrong about something.

Closing remarks.
"Well, I'm a busy man, so, if you want to phone me again, do your homework first. Do some research and reading. For god's sake don't read The Grand Forks Herald or Minneapolis Star Tribune."
I'll get right to all that non-reading, sir.

I fully admit that these are simplifications, and I may have gotten things wrong in an attempt make myself sound better. Still, the general sentiment is about right, and the closing remarks are about spot on.

Angry editorials

Let me give you all a taste of what has appeared on my hometown's 'Opinion' page.

"This abdication of local government to Central Planning only lacks a firing squad to rival the old Soviet Union. Our three Federal Legislators and our County Attorney forced the abdication upon us. They sold us, our Constitutions and the Rule of Law for what campaign financing, tenure or maybe some freezer cash?

My requests for redress of grievances, guaranteed by our constitution, ignored. My requests to be shown how this usurpation of power could be justified under our recognized Rule of Law, ignored.

Elected officials, who allow tyrants into positions of power, need to be replaced. Until they can show how they are upholding their oaths of office, we are living under the first stage of anarchy. (The second stage is the firing squads.)"

How does one reply to this blanket of venomous criticism and rage? There's no reasoning to refute (okay, is he suggesting that our county attorney was paid to give more work to Central Planning, whatever that is?), a whole bunch of vague assertions (what exactly is Central Planning?) and the grammar is atrocious.

I guess I could always mock some of the more blatantly wrong things we writes of. Soviet Union? Fascist. Abdicating local government to a centralized power? Fascist Tyrants? Fascist NOT freaking anarchist. Constitutions? About positive there's only one in America. Sure it's childish and I would come off as unsufferably arrogant, but it's such a temptation.

More than a few times, I've been told that people like these should be allowed to vent and rage all they want. Others will realize how foolish they sound and not pay them any heed. Really, though, there's no fun in that, and the man, who frequently contributes these pieces of trash, is bringing down our newspaper. Perhaps the best response would be get others interested enough to write enough decent pieces of their own that there's no room for his.