As the smoke cleared a smoldering shell of a mosque could still be seen intact. But that's all that was left in the formerly great city of Tehran, smoking shells of once-grand buildings. Burnt bodies and twisted hunks of melted steel and glass litter the streets. Millions are dead and it's only the beginning. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad fled the capital just in time and launched a counterstrike on Israel within minutes of the destruction of Tehran. By the day's end all of the world's nuclear powers are choosing sides in the conflict to decide the fate of the most volatile region on the planet. Millions perish from the violence, but millions also perish due to the halting of the global energy trade and diversion of resources from aid and humanitarian causes to the war.


This may be a hypothetical situation, but it feels more and more realistic with each day of tension with Iran. President Ahmadinejad has not only claimed that the holocaust is a myth, but that Israel should be "wiped off the map" because it is a stain on the world. Iran was always a dangerous nation, long before Mahmoud was elected president, but he is a very dangerous man. He's charismatic, radical, very brilliant (was ranked in the top 125 in the national apptitude exam when entering college) and homicidal. Many people have compared him to Hitler, especially for his anti-Semitic views and unparralleled oratory skills. It has also been said that he participated heavily in the 1979-1981 Iran Hostage Crisis, assassinations of Kurdish politicians in Austria, support of or involvement in terrorist activities, and executions of political prisoners in the Evin prison in Tehran. Is this really a man that we should let run wild?


When we went to war with Iraq, I questioned why we weren't invading North Korea instead, or maybe even Iran. Iran is right next to Afghanistan, and it only made sense that we would try to topple and overturn the right-wing government there first since it obviously offered more of a threat than Iraq. If we really do believe in pre-emptive strikes, why not attack the leaders who have not only claimed to have the desire to launch nukes, but also have engaged in activities to obtain nuclear technology against the orders of the international community? The longer we've given them (NK and IRAN), the more prepared they've gotten for our eventual invasion. So not only has the war in Iraq been completely futile, it's also given North Korea and Iran more chances to really endanger the world and to prepare for an inevitable conflict.


The problem is that every time our government steps in, we make things even worse. Afghanistan got worse and the Taliban took over thanks to our destabilization of their government, same thing happened in Central America in the 1980s, as well as in Chile and even Iraq. If we let Iran go unchecked completely, that scenario I wrote about above will happen. But if we invade, we could face other problems. We're already overextended in Iraq and Afghanistan, and if we invaded Iran, we'd weaken our own defenses to the point where we'd be too vulnerable and in danger. This is a very scary time in the world, the technology of the weapons have far outpaced the philosophical development of most nations and we have people with 19th century views and 21st century weapons.


Maybe in 5 years we'll all have forgotten about Kim Jong Il and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and their threat to the world will have been neutralized. But unless we work to bring the masses of those countries to this century, it wont matter if we oust those men from power, because another dictator is waiting in the wings to take his place. Lenin became Stalin who became Malenkov who became Khruschev, etc. Can we really afford another century of a cold war? Only this cold war has violence and it wont end the same way...

First of all, I'd like to wish everyone a happy 4-20 and remember that you should take two puffs and pass the doobie to the left.


I was looking at global GDP numbers yesterday and I noticed something that got my wheels turning: Bill Gates has a net worth of something near to $50,000,000,000...only 60 countries in the world have a GDP that is higher than his personal net worth. Gates is actually a very good man, his charity is the world's most generous and he actually does care for the world a lot more than most billionaires. (Look at Warren Buffet or Larry Ellison if you don't believe me) But there is just something sad to me when there are nations where if you add up the entire population (some of the nations he's richer than have 25,000,000+ people) they cannot even produce half of what this single man has. Hell, in this nation there are over 8,900,000 millionaires, many of whom have hundreds of millions or even billions to their name. On the flip side, there are people who struggle their whole life just to earn 250,000 in a lifetime. A-Rod makes more than that in a double-header. Maybe it's just me, but that's out-of-whack.


I'm not one to talk, growing up rich enough that I was driven to school in a stretch limo for a number of years, but I still have developed a socialist sensibility in my years in public schools, through my travels and living in New Orleans for over three years. The more egalitarian a society is, the more peaceful and cohesive the society is. The distribution of wealth must be relatively equal for a society to be fully functional. Now I am not advocating that everyone have equal shares, they just should have relatively equal shares. In Norway they have a very high tax rate, lots of natural resources and a an almost crime and poverty free society. This is because they are provided with services that are generally equal throughout the nation regardless of wealth. There is so little poverty in Norway that they don't really even have any charities that help homeless or poor people. However, despite the fact that nobody is poor, there are rich people too. Captains of industry are still wealthy, just not at the expense of the people. They pay a ton in taxes, while our rich only pay 40% at most and generally a lot less than that thanks to trickster accountants.


In my ideal society, there would be internal socialism but external capitalism. Meaning that within the borders of my society (a city-state is ideal) there would be 85% taxes and nationalized health care and subsidized housing and food. The society would specialize at a few specific industries, like sugarcane, sunflowers and pineapples while maintaining capitalistic trade with other city-states. All city-states would have a tourist industry and would be energy self-sufficient. All houses would be constructed to adhere to strict environmental regulations and would generate all the power needed by itself. With this, every city-state would develop a niche and a symbiotic trade relationship with many other city-states. If a city-state like Seattle specialized in computer software and aeronautical supplies it would be very wealthy, but Bill Gates would have to redistribute the majority of his vast wealth to the people who helped make him so rich.


I am not convinced that large nations could ever work. As the borders expand, the people lose their unfluence and more inequality spreads. In Europe, the nations with the fewest problems are also the smaller and less populated ones. Overpopulation is always a problem, but overextension of the government's resources is another one. If an office in Washington DC is trying to make decisions that affect people in Lanai, how is that logical? They are 4500 miles apart, yet they are still forced to adhere to the rules set by the government. Not only that, but they also send their hard earned money to Washington to see it evaporate without coming back to them. Shouldn't our taxes go towards our own society? If Bill Gates paid 35,000,000,000 in taxes to the Seattle area, imagine how much that would benefit the schools, police, hospitals, roads, etc. And Bill would still have more money by himself than more than 100 countries worldwide. Do we really need to have that much money? Does anyone really need to be so much more wealthy than everyone else? I'd love to see what this country would be like if we fragmented into hundreds of smaller city-states with highly socialistic taxes. Maybe we'd see our crime rates fall towards Scandanavian rates...but then again, maybe Americans are just more violent and greedy than everyone else.

Before I say anything else I wanted to express my happiness in the resigning of White House Press Secretary and Chief Spin Doctor Scott McClellan. This guy was a dick, plain and simple. He's been the voice of this horrible administration since the beginning of the war and I'm ecstatic to see him go.


Today there was an hour long interview with this Army Chaplain who claimed that within the trenches there are no Athiests. That Jesus is the only savior to those who are good of heart, and Muslims are violent and their religion promotes violence. My religious views are radical, but I definitely feel that Islam, Christianity and Judiasm should all basically be the same religion. They are all based from the same old book and have the exact same forefathers. But organized religion is not the same as what the religions were intended to be. Islam has become synonimous with oppression and tyranny just as Christianity was during the middle ages. Judiasm may not be oppressive on the same scale as Islam or Christianity, but go to the West Bank and tell me that Jews aren't oppressing others.


Jesus may be a symbol for things good and pure, but Christianity is corrupt and full of atrocities in its history. Anyone ever hear of the Spanish Inquisition? I seem to recall some highly religious Christians committing atrocities against Jews and other non-Christians simply because they didn’t accept Jesus as the savior. Christians have this clouded view of the violent world they’ve helped to create, as most conflicts in Western history have been a result of religion. Believing in some magical ghost who floats around everyone and somehow answers prayers of 6,000,000,000 people is not the key to happiness. Being a good person, dedicating one’s life to improving the lives of others without forcing religious views upon them and leaving the world a better place than when you entered it are the key, and people who preach religion and Jesus and the Bible just aren’t helping this world. Religion stifles progress: The world is flat, the sun revolves around the Earth, the planet is only 6,000 years old, and we are all descended from the Caucasian couple Adam and Eve. Maybe it’s just me, but anyone who argues with science and preaches intolerance of other religions and homosexuals is not a benefit to society. If we listened to religion, we'd still be in the dark ages, killing each other over intrepretations of the bible (oh wait, they already do that...look at Northern Ireland if you don't believe me) and we'd certainly not have the technology we have today.


What really bothers me about religion is how people preach it as the answer when all it really does stifle those answers. How did the world begin? Religious people believe in a creation myth created by people who lived over 2000 years ago in a primitive world. Why are we here? God put us here to entertain himself...How did we become human? We were born that way when the Earth was spontaneously created with fully developed life, we're made of mud and women are made of ribs. People actually read the bible and think it's supposed to be literal. IT IS NOT LITERAL! It is a book of myths. Do you actually think that Moses lived to be 150? Umm, we have medical technology now and they didn't then, our oldest recorded human lived to be just over 120. Rational, intelligent people cannot believe in the bible literally, it's just fiction. Imagine if in 1500 years everyone on the planet followed "Aesop's Fables" as if it was the Bible. It's the same thing. There is this Evangelical man on the radio right now and he says that we should look at the world in a biblical view. This scares me because at least 30,000,000 people in this nation think this way, and that number is probably closer to 150,000,000.


Theocracies are highly dangerous societies. Internally they are oppressive and tyrannical, and externally they are confrontational and warlike. Bush always talks about god, he even claims that god speaks to him, and he manages his foreign and domestic policy based on these views. America is becoming a Christian Theocracy, we are oppressing Muslims and anyone who doesn't fit into the Evangelical world view. The worst part of this is on Fox News: they claim a war against Christian values, they even have a mini-series about that. Is it me, or have I given up on saying "I'm not Christian" when people wish me a happy Easter, Christmas or even New Year (Christian calendar is not the same as the Jewish, Muslim, Chinese, Aztec...) because almost everyone in this country is Christian? Organized Religion does nothing to benefit mankind, as it tries to stifle any medical research or other scientific progress.


When I envision the future, I see a world where we take the good parts of all world religions (including Animist and Voodoo religions) and everyone uses the knowledge to form their own relevant personal belief system. Organized religion is corrupt by nature. Religion should also be a living entity, continually growing and adapting to society, not the other way around. Instead of using religion to slow progress, it should be used to aid in modernizing the world. Shouldn't Christians want to spread the knowledge to extend life through stem-cell research? To me it's a no-brainer...but then again, religious people are also no-brainers to me.

With two of the Duke Lacrosse players arrested in that stripper rape scandal, I decided that I should put in my two cents about this. This is a scandal by all definitions, but I wasn't shocked to hear about it coming from a school like Duke. Afterall, I went to Exeter and saw examples of this kind of attitude on our lacrosse team as well. Both of these athletes were rich white boys who went to expensive prep schools and then to Duke, the top school in the South, but that doesn't make them immune from being sleazy. Some of the guys I played football or hockey with were also Lacrosse players, and a lot of those guys were pure sleaze. It didn't matter that they were rich white boys from one of the top schools in the nation, they were sleazy guys no matter what. One of the guys called himself "The Virgin Surgeon" and another of the guys used to go down to the liquor store to purchase "Barely Legal" and other raunchy publications. One of the guys on the team was a 19 year old postgrad dating a 14 year old freshman girl, and forget about the way these guys talked about women when amongst teammates. It's not just Lacrosse players, it's just jocks in general. There is this prevalent attitude amongst athletes that women are not much more than sex toys and objects for us to ogle.


When I was playing American Legion baseball we had a party just like the Duke one. We had 40 players (in Redwood City we had two legion teams: a varsity (the Blues, the team I was on that season) and the JV Reds) there and one of the sleazier guys on the team suggested that we call for strippers and buy a bunch of alcohol to celebrate winning this big tourney in Mesa Arizona for the second straight year. Now I LOVE strippers...nothing is more fun than having a silicone barbie doll shaking her stuff on my lap, but there's a huge difference between a lap dance and having 40 guys and 2 strippers.


Basically it all boils down to the concept of mob mentality. Team sports tend to enhance the mob mentality of the players and all it usually takes to get a team to do something horrible is a "team leader" with the proper motivation. No person in their right mind would EVER send an email like the one that one player sent. Not all of the players are guilty, but if all 44 players were at the party, then they are all guilty of being sleazy. If you're a varsity athlete on a ranked team, why bother paying for strippers? It's not like it's hard to find a group of slutty girls to get drunk enough to give lap dances...hell, the LAX team did that at my High School. There's just something I've never understood about the whole ordering a stripper to a party full of guys. It's not fun for me to be surrounded by a bunch of testosterone-laden guys getting all horny over some skank who has no intention of hooking up with any of them. Every time I'm at a party that's mostly guys and a stripper is ordered, I just go somewhere else, simply because I know that things like this Duke incident happen all the time. The only reason why this is such major news is because of the added racial tensions and the fact that it happened at Duke. If it was a white girl at some random school in rural kentucky, we'd never hear about it.


The worst part of this scandal is that these kind of guys are the ones who always get away with similar things. They assault women all the time, but most assaults go unreported. Is it any wonder that there would be a gang-rape case like this in a world where hyper-masculinity and aggression are desired traits? I'm actually surprised that this case was so unusual, when I heard the story I just thought "So? Not like it doesn't happen at a couple schools every year"...I guess you should feel bad for the "Stripper" even if she was asking for it by being intoxicated and by returning to the party after an apology. That's the other thing about these kinds of guys that pisses me off...women will fall for their bullshit when it is obvious that they are jerks. If you know you're in danger from 40 testosterone charged jocks who want you to get naked for them, it's your own fault for going back to the party. I feel bad for the hooker, but seriously, it's all about natural selection: If someone is dumb enough to put themselves in a position of danger, then they deserve everything that happens to them.


No matter if these players were guilty of the rape, they were guilty of being sleazy and of slandering the name of Duke and of LAX players worldwide. They deserved to have their season cancelled for letting such an event take place, and the coach deserved to be sacked for losing control of his team. Think Bear Bryant's players would have been arrested for gang-raping a stripper? Even Mike Kryzewski controls his players better than that. I hope these players are guilty and get what they deserve: 20 years of sodomy in a state prison...at least they'll be getting laid, right?

There is a debate that rages on these days about whether people should be punished or treated for their shortcomings. In the Catholic world, punishment is central, people must pay for their sins before they are absolved. This idea has integrated itself in our legal system and within societal beliefs. Whenever there is a problem with a criminal element, there is always a debate on whether the people responsible should be punished and how. But is punishment really an effective way to treat and prevent crime? My short answer is "No"...but y'all know that I don't really understand the meaning of "short answer".


Murder, rape and child abuse are all considered to be crimes that deserve harsh punishment, but does punishment accomplish anything other than revenge? In my mind, sending someone to the death chamber for murder doesn't really do much other than shrink the population. It doesn't bring back the deceased, it doesn't really help the victims (friends and family of the deceased) of the crime to feel better for losing their loved one, and it certainly doesn't prevent future murders. Thousands of people have been executed for murder in the history of man, and yet we still have daily murders in this country. California has more people on Death Row than any other state, yet the homicide cops in LA and SF are constantly overwhelmed. This shows the futility of using punishment to deter activities. The real cause of murder is generally circumstantial: sometimes it's all about gang activity and that's partially a result of poor state planning and a lack of a welfare state and partially about a lack of proper supervision during childhood; sometimes it's about jealousy of others who have more, whether that's money, women or power, jealousy is always a possible motive for murder; and sometimes it's just about a socio/psychopath who cannot help but kill. To me, all of these could easily be treated if caught in time.


It's the same for drug use, this nation has incarcerated more people for drug-related "crimes" than anything else. People go to jail just simply because they found the most lucrative way to earn money in the ghetto. In the ghetto of New Orleans, a middle-school dropout can become a player if he's got the right business sense as a crack-dealer. But even if he's just selling crack to support his kids, he will be sent to prison for a long time. That's not even taking into account whether or not he does the drug, or who he sells it to. Addicts will get their drug wherever they can, and the harder it is made for them to purchase, the more likely they will find violent ways of obtaining their fix. For those who are drug users, it seems just plain retarded to send someone to jail because they have a chemical addiction. They don't get cured behind bars, they find ways to keep their addiction going while in the can, and when they get out, they find a dealer right away and get right back on the same path.


We have more money than any other nation, yet we still have crime rates that compare more to the third world than to the European Union. One of the main reasons for this is the fact that we still have the Puritan sense of "you've done wrong, now we must punish you". I'm just sick of hearing people say "He broke the law, so he's a criminal" when all he did was sell $1000 worth of marijuana to pay the rent. Hopefully one day American voters will realize that treatment is the only way to prevent the major problems in society. That's not just drug treatment, but psychological treatment for troubled kids, marriage counselling for unhappy couples and lessons on how to raise kids for bad parents. There is no way we will eliminate all crime from the planet in our lifetime, but at least we can do something about the overcrowded prison system and the billions of dollars we waste every year on incarceration of non-violent people.

In college I was a history minor. Not because it actually served a professional purpose, because it doesn't, but because history is important to the enrichment of intellectual people. To me, I learned more from my travels and history museums/classes than anywhere else and my education would be incomplete without being able to study history at the source. Just reading about Europe in a history book is one thing, but setting foot in Dresden and seeing the bombed out shells of buildings gives it a sense of realism. History can seem so disconnected from the present, but EVERYTHING has its roots in a past event. Studying history can also have negative consequences however, like the racist anti-Japanese sentiment because of 12-7-41, or the anti-German feelings many Americans (especially Jews) have because of the Nazi regime. History cannot be used as an excuse for hatred.


Here are some little known historical facts that I really find interesting, but are not usually taught in standard classes. George W Bush is actually not only the son of a president, but the great.(etc.)..grandson of Franklin Pierce, president during the tumultuous 1850s, which makes him the only president to have a president on both sides of his family. The Mayflower had sails made of Hemp, which was farmed by Jefferson and Washington and was also the material on which the US Constitution and Declaration of Independence were printed. The reason why I bring up Hemp is to show how Americans (much more than Europeans) have a tendency to forget the past. Hell, most Americans forget that they were invading immigrants that stole the land from the Mexicans and Native Americans...


In 1994 the World Trade Center was attacked by Muslim terrorists, but just 7 years later the American people had totally forgotten about that attack. In fact, Americans just plain forgot that terrorism existed, despite the fact that there's been a major terrorist attack against the US by Jihadists every decade since the 70s. We act as if political corruption is a new thing, but that's been around forever. We act as if this is the first time we've noticed the fact that we're running out of oil...despite the fact that the late 70s had Americans waiting in lines and only being allowed to fuel up on specified days/times. We live so much in the present that we totally forget the past. It's that way with parents too, they forget what it was like to be a child, to go through puberty or to be in middle school. I see this when I coach with the way the kids are treated by some adults who forget what it was like when they were that age.


I dwell on the past way too much, I'm always reflecting on old decisions and actions and analyzing them as I do with European history. I do this just as a nation should, to learn from my past to see what worked and what didn't. I can gauge what is going to happen based on an aggregate of the past. I do this in relationships, when I see something that was a problem in a previous relationship, I pay extra attention to it. Unfortunately, W doesn't understand this concept. Regime changes have NEVER worked. Ask the Chileans who died under our "puppet" Pinochet...any time we try to install a leader, that person (always a man) ends up as our enemy. Look at the main enemies of the state over the past 5 years: Hussein (someone we supported in the 80s) and Bin Laden (trained by OUR military intel)...so we're obviously not good judges of character. I believe this is because we don't respect history enough, and as the cliche goes "Those who forget history are bound to repeat it." Next time you're somewhere new, go to a history museum, you'll be amazed at the different perspective you will get. I will never be satisfied with my knowledge of the past, because the more of the past I know, the less scary the future becomes.


Well, I'm off pretty soon for a three day weekend. I get to leave work early to volunteer with the Boys & Girls Club at a little bowling party, so that'll be a lot of fun. Happy Passover to the Jews and Easter to the Christians!

The presidential elections coming up in 2008 are going to be scary. We as Americans will have to choose between a Democrat and a Republican that we know will not live up to their promises. But this is not because we don't have an abundance of great leaders in this country, it's just that we have a highly flawed political system. In the 2004 election we had to choose between Bush (I don't really think I need to say more about that...) and a loaded, WASPy John Kerry. My favorite current political system is the one which Germany has been using since the fall of the Berlin Wall. In our system, we have to always choose the lesser of two evils and if we want our vote to "count" we must vote either Republican or Democrat. I find both parties to be repulsive and each has its fatal flaws. This country will continue to lose ground to the EU and Asia (hell, Dubai and the UAE might overtake us at this rate) if we don't fix our flawed system.


In Germany the parliament is split into two sections, a lower house and an upper house. In the elections for the upper house, it is done the same way we do the Senate here in the US, but the lower house is where the German system shines. People don't vote for candidates for congress like we do, but rather for a specific party instead. So if you support the Green Party, you can vote for the party, and if it gets a minimum of 5% of the votes in the national election, the party is guaranteed 5% of the seats regardless of whether or not that party won in any specific district. This makes it so people can feel comfortable voting for a party that might not win the majority and not just waste their vote like I do when I vote for the Libertarian party here in the US.

By having only two parties, it ensures that only those who conform to the polarized parties can get any support in an election. California is a great example of this, while we generally vote about 7% for the third parties in any given election, we have only Democrats and Republicans representing us. That means that those of us who actually research our candidates based on their views and qualifications are at a disadvantage to the masses who just vote for the name they recognize most, which is ALWAYS a Democrat or Republican. So while I am looking at the issues that really matter, most voters are focused on a hot-button election issue that will not come up during the tenure of that elected official. Either that, or they follow the person who claims that they will lower taxes. Californians would be very well served if they had members of congress to be advocates for their beliefs, and when there are only two choices, most of us go unfulfilled.


Election turnout in the US is always below 60%. People feel that their votes don't count, and they are (for the most part) correct. I may help elect a Democrat in my congressional district because I don't want a Republican to win, but what if I find the Democrats to be just as bad as the Republicans? I will have to vote for the lesser of two evils, and that's just not right. We complain about our fractured system, and then we do nothing to change it. We let congress Gerrymander districts to ensure partisan dominance in most districts, and we never vote for anyone who doesn't fit the norm. We wonder why we have so few choices for higher offices like President and Governor, that's because to be an elected official these days, one mustn't have real opinions that differ from the party which that person is affiliated with. As long as we live in this two-party system, we will find ourselves dissatisfied with our government. Afterall, how can you be happy with your choice when you only had two options: a giant douche and a turd sandwich? We can learn a lesson from Germany, the more parties that have a chance to gain power, the more of a say the people will have.

With baseball season and the Enron trial both going on, I decided to compare the headlines of both in today's blog. Barry Bonds has dominated headlines despite the fact that he has yet to hit a homer. Now, he may be innocent of all of these charges, but it's not very likely, so for the sake of this blog I will assume that the allegations are true. His cream and clear have become synonimous with cheating and fraud, and his "alleged" steroid use has stained baseball's image with a dark streak that may never fade. So how are Barry Bonds and Ken Lay/Jeff Skilling/Bernie Ebbers/Jack Abramoff all alike? They are all men who were already the "cream of the crop", yet they all saw another level of production and were willing to do anything to achieve that. These are all men who were millionaires long before they began their scandalous behaviour, they all had fame in their respective industries and were widely respected amongst their peers.


Jack Abramoff is going to be in jail for quite a while, and he deserves to be locked away, but why/how am I comparing him to Barry Bonds? Because despite the fact that Barry was already one of the most dominant players of his era, he'd already shattered the confidence and ego of many pitchers and didn't need that extra push to attain what most others could only dream of. The arrogant greed that Abramoff personifies, can easily be attached to Bonds.


Lay/Ebbers/Skilling are all brilliant men. Ebbers wasn't highly educated, but achieved success with a shrewd business mind. He was already a multi-millionaire when he was named CEO of MCI in the mid-80s and had earned the respect of everyone within the telecom industry. But Ebbers wasn't satisfied with just being worth hundreds of millions and ended up opening the floodgates for corporate fraud. Eventually he was convicted to 25 years in prison, all for stealing money after he was already exceedingly rich. Sound familiar Bonds?


Lay and Skilling stood atop Enron, the poster child for corporate fraud and like Ebbers, were already millionaires when they started profiting off of other people's losses. Lay and Skilling, like Bonds, have not been 100% convicted, but have been so by the media and the American people. In every one of these cases, we have a man who is a role model to many and at the top of his industry, yet this man always wants more. It's a level of greed that is just unsatiable. These are men who had ambitions to not only be the best, but to shatter the paths of those who came before them.


Bonds, Giambi, Sheffield were steroid users, but what really hurts them is the fact that everything they did to get to their level of greatness before they took that cheating step will be forgotten. Their legacies will not be the home runs (or the millions of dollars made for investors in Lay, Ebbers and Skilling's case) but rather the fraud they committed. Greed isn't always about money, it's about pride too...because when you're already in the top 1%, you have no need for more unless you are basking in the pride of the moment.

In the McCarthyism era people were under pressure from the government to adhere to a specific political opinion. We as Americans were required to abhor Communism and anyone who supported (or even felt any kind of intellectual curiosity about) Communism was automatically an enemy of the state. If there was evidence of an interest in any topic related to Karl Marx or other Communist philosophers, that person became an enemy of the state and was likely ostracized from their community or professional society. As our society becomes more and more paranoid about terrorism, it will be a pretty easy path to return back to McCarthyistic blackballing politics. Only now, our enemy is not Communism and Karl Marx, but Islam and Mexicans.


Subversive speech and writings are key to any functioning free society. If people cannot speak out against the government for fear of prosecution, freedom becomes a myth. When there are only two political parties that follow strict voting rules where nobody from the Republican part dares side with a Democrat, democracy becomes a myth. Why bother having 435 members of congress when we could have 4 republicans and 3 democrats for a fraction of the cost? It's not like it would change the way they vote or how much a citizen's vote matters. I have subversive opinions and intellectual curiosity about topics that don't fit into our American ideal opinion.


The reason why I'm writing about all this should probably be pretty obvious, I have a major objection to the government spying on communications. The only time when this should happen is when a warrant is applied for and given by a court of law, otherwise we are living in a society that is just a few baby steps from becoming authoritarian. The government already controls what drugs we take, what words we can say on TV and Radio and where we can build a home. Imagine if we continued to tighten free speech to the point where questioning the government's authority became a crime...is it really that far off with a highly conservative legislative, executive and judicial majority? Remember that even though we live in a supposedly democratic society (forget the fact that 300,000,000 Americans rely on 548 rich people to make decisions in their best interests), we are still under the control of a faceless entity that is not fond of strong individuality. Democracies can collapse very quickly, and America is showing many of the same signs that every other collapsing empire has shown during its twilight years. We've overextended ourselves and have forgotten that while we have the most robust economy in the world, we do not have the population to sustain our dominance without focusing within. Instead, we launch wars on Terror, Drugs and immigration in addition to Islam and Science.


Germany was a fine democracy (The Weimar Republic) before the Nazis were ELECTED to power by the public...think we as Americans wouldn't elect a government like that? We already elect those who curb free speech, ban abortion and tighten restrictions on personal freedoms. Italy also elected the Fascist party that joined Hitler in the Axis Powers. Democracies can be elected out, but they can also fade into authoritarianism. If anyone has read "Brave New World", it becomes clear that Huxley wasn't just high on LSD when he wrote that, he really had an insight as to where we as Western nations were headed. Classes are becoming more divided again, rich are getting obscenely rich and the poor are getting more destitute. So back to spying...imagine if the government decided that it was illegal to have socialist sentiments and to badmouth the government, how quickly would I be discovered? In today's electronic age where so much of what we communicate to others is floating around in cyberspace, we need to ensure our own security. Terrorism is just an excuse used by the government to scare us into going along with their agenda. No government wants its people to be free, so it's up to us to protect our own freedoms. Bush is not Pol Pot or Pinochet, but President Boehner or Frist might be...we mustn't be overconfident in the strength of our liberty.


I could go on for days on this subject, as nothing is more important in society than liberty. Without the freedom to speak to whomever I choose (no matter if they are Mohammed Rasheed Ibn al Bakr from Afghanistan, or Cameron Loughlin from San Francisco) about whatever I want (Allah, the stupidity of President Bush) I might as well not live. Life without freedom is death.

Why is gay marriage an important election topic? That's something that really bothers me. The people who are most against gay marriage aren't exactly in places where it would even really occur en masse. San Franciscans, Bostonians and Los Angelinos generally support gay marriage, and those are the cities where homosexual relationships are most common and most in the open. Why does South Dakota even care if there's a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage when there probably aren't enough openly gay men to even sustain a marriage in that state. Seriously, there's probably less than 100 openly gay men in the whole state. So why is this a campaign issue while education is nowhere to be found? It's simply because it's an easy issue to get behind without alienating a large election base. It's easy to rally conservative Christians when blaming problems on a hidden minority. But let's look at this objectively, what are the main reasons for banning homosexual marriage?


The sanctity of marriage is the #1 most common reason given for the banning of all gay marriage, but how pure is marriage anyway? It's not like heterosexual marriage works...half of all marriages end in divorce, and many of the ones that don't probably should. Spouses cheat on each other, and not all married couples have kids. Gayness is not something you can inherit, it's something built within your psyche and gay men raising a child will not turn that kid gay. People also seem to think that if someone is gay, they cannot control themselves around any males...if that was true for gay men, wouldn't it be the same for those of us who like women? If a gay couple cannot be trusted with an adopted teenage son, how on earth can a straight man be trusted with a teenage girl? I'll tell you why, homosexuals are not pedophiles; pedophiles are pedophiles, and they're the only ones who prey on kids...no matter if they're gay or straight.


So let me get in the shoes of a homophobic hick for a second...gay marriage actually seems like a good idea to me, it's just like ghettoizing them. If gay guys get married, they are "registered" as being gay, therefore it's easier for us to know who is gay and who is straight. If they are married, they are more likely to remain committed to their partner, so that helps keep STDs in check. They can't have kids of their own, so if gayness is somehow genetically passed along, it might be weeded out if gays aren't forced to be closeted while they live out a facade of a straight life.


Basically the issues that politicians use to get elected aren't the real issues they actually discuss in Washington, but they are the most talked about within society. Education, support for the arts, the environment and a broken legal system aren't the issues that drive voters, even though they are more important in daily life. What difference does it make to me if Seigfried and Roy exchange vows and rings? None whatsoever, but it does for them. I don't know if I'll ever get married, since I've never even been able to stay with a girlfriend for more than 3 months, but I just don't see how letting my gay friends marry their committed lover will detract from my marriage if it ever happens. Marriage should be about love and nothing else. Well, maybe tax benefits...but certainly not about excluding people simply because they were born with a same-sex attraction. Maybe it's because I grew up near San Francisco, maybe it's because everyone's favorite teacher at Nueva was a gay man (who died of AIDS), maybe it's because I lived in New Orleans, or maybe it's because I'm not a biggot, but I just don't see any reason to deny gays the right to marry just because of our own insecurities. But then again, I am probably just too open minded and liberal to live in the Christian States of America...

LEGALIZE IT




So I heard an interesting fact on the news yesterday that got me thinking. In San Diego there are a pretty high number of stabbings, and they just did a study on what might be the cause of the high stabbing numbers. The conclusion they came up with didn't surprise anyone with a fully functional brain, but it definitely raised some issues in my mind. According to the study, the leading cause of the 500+ stabbings that occurred in San Diego last year was the combination of Testosterone and Alcohol, or as I call it Testosterohol. What bothers me about this is the fact that Alcohol is directly attributed to violence, poor decisions, addiction, liver disease and death. If you drink alcohol, one of those previous 5 outcomes is very likely. But it's legal, and therefore acceptable within most social groups. This ties into my natural vs positive law debate, as the only reason why alcohol is more accepted is because it's legal and the only reason why Marijuana is considered bad is because it's illegal. Anyone who makes a claim that marijuana is worse than alcohol is not only misinformed, they are flat-out ignorant.


The prohibition of alcohol proved to be one of the most disasterous actions ever taken by our government. Organized violent crime skyrocketed, people like Al Capone and John Dillinger became hugely powerful due to their connections to bootlegging. Obviously the prohibition did nothing to combat the desire to consume alcohol, and there were speakeasies and moonshiners in pretty much every city/town in the nation. Marijuana was made illegal as the alcohol prohibition was coming to an end, and since it was not as widely used among American citizens, the propaganda had a much bigger effect on public opinion of the natural herb. But when the FACTs are examined, it is obvious that marijuana is almost harmless and alcohol is highly dangerous. Marijuana has caused people to visit the emergency room, but only 0.1% of all visits are related to the herb. Compare that to alcohol, which has caused more death than all drugs (other than tobacco) combined, (http://www.drugwarfacts.org/causes.htm) as well as more deaths per year than murder, car crashes and suicide combined. And that doesn't even take into account that at least 50% of those deaths are directly alcohol related.


Jimmy Carter once said "Penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual that the use of the drug itself." Too bad he didn't get reelected in 1980 instead of having Reagan accelerate the drug war even more with his right-wing Christian views. Carter understood that incarcerating someone for selling something that does more good than harm for the user is wrong. But in my opinion, anyone who is selling drugs is just being a Capitalist. Shouldn't republicans support legalization? If all drugs were legalized we'd save billions of dollars a year in futile policing of drug use and sale, and if we taxed them like cigarettes...fuggedaboudit. Say the average pothead spends $300 a month on their weed, if you taxed it just 10% (I'd tax it 50%) that would be $360 a year in tax revenue per person that we are spending instead. If only 1 million people did that (the number of users is closer to 10 million) that would be $360,000,000 we could spend on drug education in order to INFORM people about the benefits and harms of each drug.


The opponents of legalization claim that drug use would go up if they were legalized. But in many cases, the people who experiment with drugs do so because they are taboo and therefore more exciting. Take a look at this website to see the numbers of users in the Netherlands (where weed is basically legal, sold in most cities in "Coffeeshops")(http://www.ukcia.org/research/DutchPolicyAndCrimeStatistics.html). The rates of use are lower than in the UK or US, and the rates of violent crime and incarceration are vastly lower. Anyone who claims that those rates are lower because Holland is a small country is just ignoring the fact that the only countries (with 1,000,000 or more residents) more densly populated than the Netherlands are Taiwan, Singapore, Bengladesh and South Korea. There are other factors that contribute to the low crime in the Netherlands: socialized medicine, highly protective welfare system, generally homogenous populations (though not in Amsterdam) and wealth.


But one can't help but realize that a large number of urban crimes in the US are directly related to the PROHIBITION of drugs. If Cocaine was legal, it would be sold by a mega-corporation like Phillip Morris or Kraft and that would completely eliminate turf wars and battles for control of the supply route. Drug dealers kill each other because it's the nature of an illegal business. How rich and powerful would Capone have gotten without prohibition and bootlegging? Any time something is illegal, there will always be a black market as long as the desire is out there. When it comes to personal use of substances, however harmful or harmless, the decision should be ours to make. If the government prohibits something naturally occuring in nature, why do they allow us to consume processed sugar treats? My addiction to candy is far more harmful to my health than pot, but could you imagine the government banning all sugar? If you like the idea of prohibiting anything harmful, watch "Demolition Man" and tell me if you'd want to live in that kind of society. I'd much rather be allowed to make my own choices. Legalize it, don't critize it!

Back in utopian suburbia in the 1950s, parents knew everything about their kids. They knew all of their friends, who they had a crush on, their life's dreams, and all of their interests. Unfortunately, the "me generation" ruined all of that, placing more emphasis on the self and less on the family. These days, the #1 babysitter isn't the high school girl next door, it's the TV. Parents will go out to some special even and leave their kids with a $20 bill for pizza and the remote control. This may seem okay, kids can take care of himself once they're in adolescence, but that doesn't mean that they should be.


I coached the La Jolla rec center's under-12 flag football team, and I had about 14 kids on my team. However, I only met about 10 of the kids' parents. The kids who had the most actively involved parents were clearly superior socially, and they were also far better at taking and following directions. One of my kids was a 12 year old who came from a family with an 80 year old father, his 35 year old mother (trophy wife) and 40 year old half-sister. I met his father once, during the first week of the season, and never saw his mother. Tyler (the kid) was a really cool kid, he and I even had the same taste in music (he already was into stoner music, rap and classic rock), but this kid was definitely going down the wrong path and it was all the fault of his parents. Every game we played I would have to wait with Tyler afterwards while he waited for someone to pick him up...I never actually waited long enough to see them because I'd usually go after 30 or so minutes. These games were on Saturday morning and lasted less than an hour, his mother didn't have a job, yet I never once saw her at a game or practice. Now to get to my point...One week, Tyler was really excited about a rap concert he was going to by himself (12 year olds going to rap concerts without supervision is bad enough) and started to tell me about the last one. "There were these guys next to us smoking weed, and I kept breathing in the smoke and I started to feel high" Now that's in my words, but he told me how cool it was to get a contact high. I think weed is great, and should be legalized (safer than alcohol), but no 12 year old should ever be exposed to it like that. The only way a 12 year old should learn about weed is either in a classroom, or from his parents.


Oblivious is the key word to describe most parents of teenagers. Natalee Holloway's mother claimed that she was a "good-girl", but in reality, she was a party slut who got plastered at a bar (having guys take body shots off her stomach...something I've never gotten to do and I'm almost 25 and have partied a lot) and ended up leaving by herself with three guys. No goody two-shoes would even have been wearing a miniskirt while drinking in a bar. Hell, my parents have never even seen or heard any of my girlfriends. We're given too much privacy as adolescents, and that ends up causing us to drift away from our parents to the point where they are no longer our role models or most trusted advisors.


Celebrities have replaced parents as role models. Back in those idealistic 50s, most little boys wanted to be just like their dad, but now they'd rather be like the guys in Entourage. Girls are worse. Paris Hilton is the role model of millions of girls, and she's the epitome of what this blog is about...parental abandonment. She's a slut, spoiled to no end, ignorant of how others live, and irresponsible. A credit card and trust is not a substitute for a nurturing relationship. I'm amazed at how many people become parents without a love for children. If you don't love kids, why have your own? Most people who don't have that innate desire to be a parent end up being absentee parents. Their kids suffer for it, because they are never able to develop the proper skills to succeed in society.


The season for my last basketball team ended a month ago, but that team was another perfect example of this. One of my kids was anti-social, never wanted to improve at anything and didn't really follow directions. I never met either of his parents, and I coached him 3 days a week for 2 months. His parents have to know that he's going to do a lot of drugs, because he will. I knew enough kids when I was his age (14) who were just like him, and all of them ended up with drug problems. He doesn't just feel abandoned by his parents, he feels animosity and anger towards them for not loving him enough. Even if they really do love him, it's amazing how much just showing up for a basketball or baseball game/practice can do for a kids' feelings about his parents. Kids notice how much of an interest their parents take in their lives, and they will test limits to see what gets them involved. For some, that means they will get into trouble because that's the only way their parents notice them, for others they will try to excel. That drive, however, is innate only in a select few, the rest need the positive influence of their genetic role model. Because once you have kids, that should be your main goal in life, to be the most positive role model your kids can have.

Right now there is this advertising campaign for a new sports drink called Powerade Option that has only 10 calories per serving. This would be fine if they just advertised it as such, a low-calorie watered-down sports drink; but this is simply not the case. The advertising agents for Powerade decided that instead of hyping their own new product, they should compare it to another and (obviously) theirs comes out better no matter how you look at it. The claim they make is that Gatorade has 5 times the calories per serving (10 < 50 is their graphic) and therefore Powerade Option is the superior drink for those who are active and care about their health. But as an athlete, calories are important to sustain energy, hence the calories in Gatorade. Gatorade was invented as a superior version of water that would replenish the calories you lost while exercising without weighing you down; so to me, Powerade Option is 1/5 as effective as Gatorade.


Advertising always makes bold claims which are generally not even true. Whether it is the way video games are advertised using cut scenes to generate hype for a game with far inferior gameplay graphics than what is shown in the commercial, or the way fast food is made to look like it's actually edible. Ever see a Little Caesars or McDonalds commercial and then you get that exact item advertised? I bet you were disappointed, cause the Burger on TV is definitely not the same as the one prepared by the half-wit on the grill.


Advertising preys on the stupid especially. Ever see an infomercial? There was one on the TV at work this morning for "Yoga Booty Ballet" that was just hilarious. The product advertised was a workout video that combined Yoga, Hip-Hop dancing and ballet into a single goofy workout. Three easy payments of $19.95...the "as seen on TV" type products are always priced at $19.95 no matter what because anything under $20 can be an impulse buy for the average American. If a product can be priced higher, they just say $19.95 (with 3 easy payments written in a way so it's not overtly obvious to the viewer). But they always throw in that shipping and handling charge of $5.95, or 30% of that original price just to jack it up without the buyer realizing it because these companies certainly don't have to pay 6 dollars to ship a DVD.


BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE! YOU GET A FREE GIFT!


Maybe it's just me, but isn't the definition of a gift something given to someone voluntarily without charge? Every one of these infomercial style advertisers always have that phrase at some point during the advertisement. Does that really convince someone they should buy that product? Don't they realize that everyone who orders it will get the same "free gift" which is basically just something that's included in the price? The fact that QVC is still in existence is just sad to me.


So that's my rant on advertising, now you understand why I listen to my MP3 CD player in my car, NPR at my desk and watch my TIVO (well, Windows Media Cener) at home. That way I only have to be subjected to advertising when I'm driving (signs everywhere), while at work (the TVs tuned to cable news), while on the internet, while walking around town, while eating, while hanging out with friends (Abercrombie & Fitch, Nike logos...)...okay, so I can't get away from it. Well, a man can dream...

My mind isn't really in the right mood for a top-line blog because I'm just too excited about going to the Padres-Giants game tonight for Opening Day!


One of my biggest problems with this country is the idea of "Political Correctness", or as I refer to it "Political Spinelessness". People are so afraid of offending people that they've created this whole language of generic terminology that usually is inaccurate or just plain dumb. My #1 political correct term that annoys me is "African-American" to refer to black people. I'm sorry, but I've never used that term to refer to the race of my black friends simply because it's inaccurate. When I was in high school I had this huge crush on a girl named Talya Kesselman, who was born and raised in South Africa and moved to the US some time before high school. Now she was more of an African-American than my roommate at Exeter, Will, because she was born in Africa and lived in the US, but Will had never been to the continent and neither did anyone in his immediate family. Now if Will moved to France (a distinct possibility, since he's lived there before), would his race change to African-French?


When I was on Semester at Sea, I took a class in Antrhopology where we had discussions on this very topic. After our first port visit this one (rather dumb) girl said something about how she was surprised how many "African-Americans" she saw in the South of Spain. First off, it shouldn't have been a surprise considering the fact that that part of Spain was controlled by the Moors for centuries, but the main thing that annoyed me was that the only "African-Americans" in Cadiz were the 4 or 5 black students on our program. This got my professor agitated too, saying that the very usage of the term to describe people 3000 miles away from America was an ethnocentric way to describe a people. Many blacks in America aren't African-American, but rather Afro-Caribbean, Afro-Latino or just plain African. But there are also white people from Africa...so everyone with black skin is black, white skin is white, and so on...


What also irks me is the new wording of occupations like Bus Driver (terrestrial transport engineer), Janitor (custodial services specialist) or Sandwich maker (Sandwich artist). These are all crappy jobs and shouldn't have these stupid names just to make the people feel better for having a shitty job.


This is something that I know George Carlin and Bill Maher feel, that the English language is being diluted by all of these PC terms. My mother isn't short, she's vertically challenged; my sister isn't skinny, she's fat-defecient; my friend Mikey isn't balding, he's folically declining; and Cam doesn't have ADHD, he has attention differences. And my gay friends aren't gay at all, they're heterosexually challenged.


See how dumb that is? Imagine if we continue down this path what will happen. Will Tobacco Lawyers become morally-challenged legal advisors? Will convicted felons become persons with legal challeges? So the next time someone refers to another person as African American, ask them if that person has one African and one American parent, because that's pretty much the only way that term is accurate. So I hope that some of you were not too offended, but maybe I hope you were since one of my points is that people are way too offended by words which don't really mean anything. It's one thing to call someone "Nigger", "Faggot" or "Kike" in an effort to insult them, but it's a whole other thing when someone gets offended by someone innocently using a term that some people have deemed politically incorrect. All that should matter is intent...if someone doesn't mean to offend, DON'T GET OFFENDED. Anyway, that's it for me today...