Sunday, May 22, 2005


I Wish I Was A Little Bit Taller…..-cc

So, I’ll just say it now, I am not a huge sports person. Now that’s not necessarily to say that I don’t enjoy some sports.

For example, I love football and for Monday nights I will always be thankful. I like hockey. Actually let me clarify that, I like going to hockey games. There’s something about the cheap beer and men kicking each others asses that really gets me going. It’s kind of like watching gladiators.

As for basketball and baseball……I guess I just really need to be at the game……under the influence, to really get involved.

That being said, I want to state clearly and for the record that I am not a sports hater. I am merely just a person that cannot define life or death with all things involving balls, or pucks.
And especially when being good at handling one of those balls or pucks, means that you are entitled to a better lifestyle than say…..me…?

I am absolutely amazed at the amount of money that goes into paying professional athletes every year. And sure there are the die hard sports fans who will argue that these guys work hard for the money, but honestly to me, their just like work horses that are just dragging people along for a ride.
They are a distraction from life and all the crap around it, and for that I applaud them. They give people something to look forward to, something to care about, be competitive about, and talk about.

But should they really be making that much money?

I was talking to the roommate of a friend of mine and he says that as long as there are corporations out there big enough to sign the checks, than no one is getting hurt.

Now, I understand that concept, hell I even slightly agree with it, but does it really make it right? Instead of just saying, “Fuck It, that’s just how it is” shouldn’t we be saying, “share the wealth”?

With the economy being in the shape that it is right now, couldn’t we divert some of that superfluous money into things that are more deserving than say a……fifth car that someone will never drive….or a giant indoor ski slope?

But anyways, back to sports. Recently, just for laughs, I went online just to see how much the NBA players make in contrast with the WNBA players. I always wondered how weird it must be to be a female basketball player and to know that if you were just born with a penis, you would be a multimillionaire.

What I found was that although the WNBA has half of the amount of teams and players, the average salary is less than the lowest paid athlete in the NBA.

For example, one of the highest paid NBA players makes about $30 million a year. That is more than the entire salary cap for the WNBA times about 30.

Even the lowest paid NBA athlete makes more than the entire salary cap for the WNBA. Now I know that money comes from revenue, and I don’t know anyone who rushes out to buy tickets to WNBA games, or even watches them at home for free, but Wow, that’s really nuts.

Imagine destroying your body for a sport, racking up injuries and medical bills. How are you supposed to pay them on a salary average of $40K a year? Even the WNBA’s highest player only makes about $87 K.

Kinda sucks huh? Make you wonder why some women haven’t tried to have sex changes and play in the NBA. $30 million might be worth it to some people.

Well, Im sure that all these women aren’t completely at a loss. They can always have endorsement deals and advertising dollars coming in to dry their tears with, but man, if I loved basketball that much, I would be pissed.

Saturday, May 21, 2005

To Clone or Not to Clone….That is the Question-cc

As of the last few days, the United States has once again been pushed back in the ranks of countries leading the world in technology in medicine. Hwang Woo-Suk of Seoul University in South Korea successfully cloned an embryonic cell from the DNA of a sick patient, the second successful clone in two years.

And here we are in the United States scurrying around with our priorities completely out of wack.

Sick people? disease you say? Screw em’, we need oil and gas for our SUV’s!!!!!

At some point you really have to start to wonder what is happening to our government when even staunch anti-abortion politicians are disagreeing with President Bush’s crusade on banning stem cell research.

Utah republican Orrin Hatch has been stepping up along with numerous other republicans for years in order to push along bills and funding for such research that could help aid Americans with Parkinson’s disease and diabetes.

But once again we hit a wall of arguments from pro-life supporters who believe that by using embryonic cells (THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN THROWN AWAY ANYWAY) we are ending a life.

I just don’t get it.

Honestly, I think that the President and many other opponents know what the benefits of such research would be and would probably support it if they hadn’t buried themselves under piles and piles of “Moral” speeches about the value of “unborn life”.

This isn’t unborn life we are talking about here. These are cells that still need to be implanted manually into a body in order to become a life. If you remove the human element completely, they would never have a chance anyway, so how are we destroying life?

I think that this is an issue that few too many people are focusing on right now. And although I am tempted to side a bit more with the idea of using the cells for research, I can understand why some people are concerned.

If you open the door for cloning, what could possibly slip in underfoot and go unnoticed? Could it be possible for a country to create an army of dispensable cloned soldiers on a mission to kill, kill, kill? Or could people start determining the kind of child they want prior to conception themselves?

And to side with Mother Nature for a second, I can see how cloning to cure disease may offset the natural order of things in life. Maybe we are not all supposed to live till 100. That leads to other problems, such as overpopulation, destruction of forests and the depletion of natural resources.

I almost think that we have natural disasters as a way for the earth to shake off a little extra weight from time to time. I know that sounds bad and all, but realistically, it’s possible.

There are many scary notions to the idea of cloning, but if you think about it in terms of evolution, there have been many scientific advances in the last thousand years that one could have never anticipated, but we couldn’t live with out now.

We’ll just have to wait and see what kind of smart decision our paid lawmakers
can come up with, all the while crossing our fingers that our country won’t become the international version of the slow kid on the short bus.

Monday, May 16, 2005

I Swear!!! The Dog Ate My Homework! -cc

Remember that one class in high school that you couldn’t stand and without fail would always forget or purposely not do the homework? For me it was Algebra. I don’t know what it was, the Susan Powter look-alike teacher, or just the idea of sitting around trying to figure out why x= AB cause honestly we all know you will never need to know that stuff, despite what your parents said.

I just couldn’t get into it. So it was punishment upon punishment to have to drag the Algebra book home with me under the context of “homework” as if the class work was not torture enough.

And often times I would skip it altogether and have to feign illness or go to great lengths creating a remarkable story for why I didn’t complete the assignment. Usually neither worked. But regardless of my spite for the class, the work, and my teachers hair, I always went to school knowing that I was going to lose credit for the assignment and I would have to own up to it. I would face the consequences of my actions on test day when I would stare blankly on the paper in front of me and wonder why I just couldn’t have done the damn homework assignments.

So here I am today at 24 years old and am facing a whole new slew of challenges through education. I still hate Algebra, in fact I hate anything involving math, but I have a whole new respect for the light workload that I had in high school.

In college, the teachers could care less if you don’t do the work, its your money going down the toilet. And now I even find myself to be a bit of a homework nerd. I learned from my shoddy work ethic in high school that if you don’t do the work, you won’t pass the class and with classes running about $1500 bucks a pop, that’s not a decision I’m willing to make.

Recently I stumbled upon a article about Marya Yates School in Matteson Illinois. Apparently some genius teacher thought it would be a good idea to get rid of homework altogether. Her excuse: Children simply don’t have the time and will get better grades if they drop off all those zeros for missed work.

You think I’m kidding right? Wrong, I wish I was!

Look it up, I swear to you. There is honestly a junior high that has eliminated homework so kids can have more free time.

The real evil at work here?

You got it! The current administration that believes that standardized testing scores are more important than say… teaching children about art and music, and how to be creative.

No no, we have enough of those creative types. What we need is a solid work force that will be happy working for minimum wage right?

So what I’m wondering is, what happens to these kids when they go to high school, or even college. How will they cope with the work load?

I spoke to Dan Cahill, an employee and former writer for Chicago Sun-Times, teacher at Columbia College, and a parent about the situation at Marya Yates School.

“I think that that is absolutely asinine and ridiculous. Education at that level should be directing students towards self re-enforcement by providing them with the tools they need to be successful students on their own.”

And I couldn’t agree more. Even now as I sit and slave away on whatever assignment I have thrown my way, I am tempted to give up halfway through, but my experiments with procrastination and punishment have taught me to do the latter. But then again, maybe I’ll be proven wrong. I mean anyone can be hopeful at the idea of thousands of non-creative, video game expert, and overweight children being pushed out into the real world right? Aahhh....our future.....sounds good huh?

Saturday, May 07, 2005

A Family Divided-CC interview

Imagine coming home from school or work one day and finding your parents sobbing in the kitchen clutching photos of family a world away. Imagine the frustration you would feel at knowing that you came to this country in hopes of gaining opportunity, while leaving behind everyone and everything you know.

Now imagine that one day, your new land of opportunity, a land that you had become a proud citizen of had decided to invade your homeland for reasons you could never understand. For reasons that are insignificant to you because the only thing that matters to you there is your family and their safety.

Every day, as the United States and countries around the world bounce from one conflict to the next, families are torn apart in the fray. For the thousands of Muslim Americans who emigrated here from Iraq, they cannot do anything but sit back and watch, and pray, as chaos and death envelops their homeland and families.

Although the U.S government would like to censor what we see in order to minimize the horror and realizations of the true cost of war by its citizens, we have history to remind us that the battles we engage in have a cost that cannot be measured.

And as the insurgencies and rebellions continue in Iraq, we find ourselves again picking at a cultural scab, North Korea, and the question is when the blood will begin to flow.

For Korean born Jessica, Korea is as foreign to her as Iraq. She was born in Korea, but raised here in the United States and exemplifies all aspects of an American born citizen. She has no Korean accent and is even fluent in Spanish. But although she grew up as an American, she has never attempted to acquire citizenship; instead she lives in Chicago as a resident alien. She says that she just hasn’t gotten around to it, but even more so now, she doesn’t want to. And like most twenty-something Americans, she doesn’t even care if she can vote.

But for her Korean mother, becoming a citizen was something to be proud of. Jessica says that her mom still bugs her about taking the citizenship test, but she really doesn’t see the point, especially now in a time where the United States isn’t proving to be the helpful big brother nation that it claims to be. She feels conflicted about it in the same way that I’m sure many younger Americans feel now, especially following an election of a not-so-popular president after record turnout among younger voters.

As for the conflict of North Korea, she says she can feel how her mother feels divided. I asked Jessica about the current issue in North Korea and quizzed her on some general knowledge of Korea itself. The following was our conversation.

Q: So how much do you know about the conflict in North Korea?
A: Um..Well not as much as I should I guess.

Q: What part of Korea is your family originally from?
A: Well my mother is from South Korea but I know that she had family in North Korea, but I think they are all dead. Actually, my parents always told me that all of the Koreans that are in the U.S. now are from South Korea and that North Koreans were not allowed to leave the country, but I’m not sure if that’s
completely true.

Q: Now you’ve said that you are not really actively pursuing American citizenship,is there any reason for that? Do you have plans to go to Korea again?
A: (laughs) NO! No, I just don’t really think about it that much.

Q: So if there is a major conflict in Korea in the next few years, even if it is just
South Korea, how do you think you would be affected, if at all?
A: Um…I don’t really think that I would

Q: What about your mother?
A: Yeah, I guess she would. She’d probably be scared for family that she still has there. I never even thought about that before now though.

Q: Would you ever have any fears of similar racial profiling that a lot of Muslim Americans are facing in the states today?
A: I never really thought of that either. But not really I guess. I mean there are a lot of Asians living in the states so it would be kinda hard I think to single out the Koreans.

After talking with Jessica for a while, I realized that ethnic roots don’t always have a bearing on how informed people are when it comes to conflicts overseas, even if it involves a region from which they are born. But for Jessica’s mother, and the hundreds of thousands of people who have immigrated to this country over the last 100 years, the idea of conflict in their homeland is a sobering notion that we are only as safe as we believe we are.
My Daily Dose-CC

So I know that people are probably sick and tired of hearing the youth of America regurgitate the satirical views of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show as truth, I know I am, but I have to give it to Jon Stewart for keeping his show more real than a lot of top networks programming, even under the context of satire.

I sit in classes day after day at what is probably one of the most liberal institutions I have ever encountered, and I often find myself listening to people spout out often lopsided views on politics. And although my political leanings are a bit more towards the liberal side, I often find myself playing devil’s advocate or even defending some of the more conservative views of fellow students. And the only reason I feel compelled to do so is that people are not very well informed.

It saddens me completely to know that a majority of my fellow students, that will soon be stepping out into the world at large, base a majority of what they believe in off of what they hear in programs such as The Daily show, or even MTV News. Are you fucking kidding me?

Now, I watch the Daily Show, not religiously, but enough to respect Jon Stewarts approach to political satire. And although it bugs me to know that he is the main source of news for some of young America, I am relieved that at least someone can get them involved.

I respect Jon Stewarts approach towards issues, and often times I don’t think he gets enough credit for balancing out the humor on all political parties. For example, he had Zell Miller, a notoriouslly outspoken and conservative former democratic senator, and gave him an opportunity to promote his book, although they both have completely opposite views on almost everything.

Long gone are the days of Walter Cronkite and journalism that would make anyone proud. There still are amazing people out their fighting for stories and to get the truth, but I guess it’s just a lot harder now to sift through all the implanted media run garbage. So when I’m dizzy from the sensory overloading that comes from endless hours of half-rate journalism, I’m glad there are people like Jon Stewart out there, to give me a dose of humor and even me out.