A neighbour said I was looking really thin, so I borrowed my sister's scales and I'm now 88kg and 183.5cm which, in communist units, is 194lb and just over 6ft. I weigh only 6kg (13lb) more than I did when I was 16 (80kg and 180cm).
Fail: Sick yet again, for the third time this winter. Seriously, my immune system should be better than this. Double Fail: As a precaution, going to be limiting my time with the girlfriend and her friends. No need to get others sick.
Atheists only "bash" unsupported ideas they encounter. It's not like we'll sit around coming up with crazy supernaturalities to then discount.
"Hey, what if there was a belief that Ronald Reagan is actually a god, controlling all from his crystal sphere in Mu? Yeah, that's a stupid belief! Ha ha! I shall now refute it!"
Any idea we encounter that doesn't make sense or cannot be supported is challenged, even if not externally (e.g., sometimes you don't argue with the boss). I don't encounter God-Reagan believers on a regular basis, and as such have no reason to refute them. All supernatural beliefs are created equal and warrant equal suspicion.
Fair enough. I understand entirely why Atheists in America don't tend to address other religions, I'm just saying that they quite often don't, and without a higher intellect, it feels like a more personal Anti-Christian attack rather than an Anti-Logic attack. As I said, this guy was posting something stupid, just not something completely invalid.
Atheists are scared of people who practice Islam, and in the US the Jewish community is like a protected minority, you say something bad about Judaism and you are instantly an anti-Semite racist prick. So the only ones left are the Christian related religions and the Wiccan/Mysticism ones.
Google alerted me to a some unusual activity on one of my accounts; luckily, no important accounts are tied to that email. I ran a WHOIS on the IPs that were accessing my account when I know for a fact that I wasn't. They are all registered to Google. Two of the IPs are listed as "Unavailable."
WUT. Feels like something is up.
EDIT: They're listed as POP3 access from Google and the unavailable IPs. Hard to say if this is normal or not. EDIT2: Definitely not normal. I'll call Google tomorrow and ask why their IPs are accessing my account. EDIT3: Herp derp. Google seems to have detected its own account linking as unusual activity.
Had to de-friend someone because, despite being a good friend and roomate back in college, he has descended so far into Catholic crazy-town that he can not see his own giant logical fallacies. In addition, he posted an infuriating article about how pro-choicers should 'just give it up' and tried to argue that Roe v. Wade backs up pro-life.
I like to keep tabs on the crazy Catholics I know. This one girl from high school keeps inviting me to showings of a movie based on the claim that Roe vs. Wade was pushed through by abortion lobbyists to legalize a multi-million dollar black market "product," and that abortion is now a multi-billion dollar industry that uses pro-choice individuals, woman's rights and woman's studies scholars, and powerful lobbyists to profiteer off of helpless girls.
I have to write a film critique on the movie "Hollywood Shuffle". Normally that would be fine; it's a funny movie that touches on black stereotyping in Hollywood during the 80's. Except. Except. Except that what the teacher pretty much wants is a three page paper saying how true this movie is and how it's applicable even to today's media landscape AND she wants us to extensively use the readings we've used in class, many of which date back to the 50's, 60's, and 70's.
What she wants is a paper that says that "WHITE MEDIA" is as racist as it was in the 80's and earlier.
This is exactly what I feared when enrolled in this class; that I would have to write paper after paper saying that the media is SOOOO racist, which is something I have a hard time believing. Most of the show I watch on TV give black characters and hispanic characters equal screentime with white characters. I brought this up in class, but the only answers I got amounted to the following: *From the "minority" students: Well you don't notice it because you're white.
When I brought up that, actually, I'm Armenian, which would make me even more of a minority than blacks and hispanics, they quickly changed their argument to "Well, there aren't many black characters that are main characters and any big name black actors were exceptions."
When I started rattling off a list of very successful actors/actresses and main characters in tv shows, and they said they were all exceptions, I came back with "How many 'exceptions' do you need before it's no longer an exception?"
"Well, maybe you don't notice it like we do."
"That's right! I don't notice their race! If I see a character and I like them, I don't care what race they are. Race doesn't matter to me!"
"Well, that's your problem. You're blind to race."
That really fucking pissed me off. "WHAT. Isn't that what your ancestors were striving for? For people to be blind to race? And now that there are people who really don't care about race, who are "blind to race", there is a problem with them?"
It was pretty much at that point where the professor killed the discussion.
After class, I went to talk about it with the professor, and she basically said "You are very privileged to live in a time and country where you have such a wide variety of media to draw from." "Since it's the time and the country, I am no more privileged than anyone else in this class, and yet I seem to be the only one in this class who is exposing myself to this huge variety. I'm the only one in this class that, despite it being a journalism class, watches news outlets other than american ones. Who consumes media from countries other than America." "And it's because you actively go after all those different types of media that may be the reason why you don't see the racism in media today." "But many of my friends fell the same way, and I have friends across all different races." "Your friends are probably the same way."
At this point, I really felt like strangling her, but I left it at that, smiled and went to my next class.
SO, in recap, here are the reasons they say I don't see racism: 1. Because I'm white. (False) 2. Because there aren't many minority characters. (False) 3. Because I'm blind to race. (True, but WTF) 4. Because I'm privileged. (True in the scope of the world, but False locally) 5. Because I actively consume a more culturally diverse range of media. (Apparently true) 6. Because my friends are just as race-blind as me.
But you know what, all of those seem to boil down to one core reason: I'm too damned clear-headed and worldly for this class. Fuck this class.
Virgin America lost my bag today on my flight from NYC to SF. That was about 4 hours ago, and I'm waiting for them to call me to update me on what happened to it/where it is. Worst case I have to go out tomorrow and buy a week's worth of clothing so I'll have more then one thing to wear for GDC.
Other then that is was probably the best flight I've been on.
Comments
I weigh only 6kg (13lb) more than I did when I was 16 (80kg and 180cm).
Double Fail: As a precaution, going to be limiting my time with the girlfriend and her friends. No need to get others sick.
"Hey, what if there was a belief that Ronald Reagan is actually a god, controlling all from his crystal sphere in Mu? Yeah, that's a stupid belief! Ha ha! I shall now refute it!"
Any idea we encounter that doesn't make sense or cannot be supported is challenged, even if not externally (e.g., sometimes you don't argue with the boss). I don't encounter God-Reagan believers on a regular basis, and as such have no reason to refute them. All supernatural beliefs are created equal and warrant equal suspicion.
Video is fine though.
Ah, it changed. It was advertising "Quantum Jumping.".
WUT. Feels like something is up.
EDIT: They're listed as POP3 access from Google and the unavailable IPs. Hard to say if this is normal or not.
EDIT2: Definitely not normal. I'll call Google tomorrow and ask why their IPs are accessing my account.
EDIT3: Herp derp. Google seems to have detected its own account linking as unusual activity.
HIGH TEST CRAZY.
Except.
Except that what the teacher pretty much wants is a three page paper saying how true this movie is and how it's applicable even to today's media landscape AND she wants us to extensively use the readings we've used in class, many of which date back to the 50's, 60's, and 70's.
What she wants is a paper that says that "WHITE MEDIA" is as racist as it was in the 80's and earlier.
This is exactly what I feared when enrolled in this class; that I would have to write paper after paper saying that the media is SOOOO racist, which is something I have a hard time believing. Most of the show I watch on TV give black characters and hispanic characters equal screentime with white characters. I brought this up in class, but the only answers I got amounted to the following:
*From the "minority" students: Well you don't notice it because you're white.
When I brought up that, actually, I'm Armenian, which would make me even more of a minority than blacks and hispanics, they quickly changed their argument to "Well, there aren't many black characters that are main characters and any big name black actors were exceptions."
When I started rattling off a list of very successful actors/actresses and main characters in tv shows, and they said they were all exceptions, I came back with "How many 'exceptions' do you need before it's no longer an exception?"
"Well, maybe you don't notice it like we do."
"That's right! I don't notice their race! If I see a character and I like them, I don't care what race they are. Race doesn't matter to me!"
"Well, that's your problem. You're blind to race."
That really fucking pissed me off. "WHAT. Isn't that what your ancestors were striving for? For people to be blind to race? And now that there are people who really don't care about race, who are "blind to race", there is a problem with them?"
It was pretty much at that point where the professor killed the discussion.
After class, I went to talk about it with the professor, and she basically said "You are very privileged to live in a time and country where you have such a wide variety of media to draw from."
"Since it's the time and the country, I am no more privileged than anyone else in this class, and yet I seem to be the only one in this class who is exposing myself to this huge variety. I'm the only one in this class that, despite it being a journalism class, watches news outlets other than american ones. Who consumes media from countries other than America."
"And it's because you actively go after all those different types of media that may be the reason why you don't see the racism in media today."
"But many of my friends fell the same way, and I have friends across all different races."
"Your friends are probably the same way."
At this point, I really felt like strangling her, but I left it at that, smiled and went to my next class.
SO, in recap, here are the reasons they say I don't see racism:
1. Because I'm white. (False)
2. Because there aren't many minority characters. (False)
3. Because I'm blind to race. (True, but WTF)
4. Because I'm privileged. (True in the scope of the world, but False locally)
5. Because I actively consume a more culturally diverse range of media. (Apparently true)
6. Because my friends are just as race-blind as me.
But you know what, all of those seem to boil down to one core reason: I'm too damned clear-headed and worldly for this class. Fuck this class.
Other then that is was probably the best flight I've been on.
Took me 2 hours just to get out of town for work