I remember watching this video a while ago. Something that kind of worries me is that I actually thought this was cool... A lot of people who commented on the YouTube page seem to agree with me as well. Instead of thinking how horrible it was that so many people died in World War II, I instead thought the explosions for the Battle of Berlin and Seige of Leningrad were so COOL. Although with Star Wars music and explosions gifs, it's easy to distance yourself from the realities of war.

Something else kind of interesting is how when we think of history, we usually define it by the wars that happened. First World War? Late 1800s, early 1900s. Yom Kipper War? Must have happened between 1950 and 1980 when Israel and the surrounding Arab countries were having trouble. American Revolution? Early American history. I could go on and on about this. In history classes we too mostly focus on war. The generic high school European history class covers far more about the Hundred Years War and World War II than it does the Renaissance. I know those are three completely different time periods but still.

Something else interesting is how the amount of people killed and how often wars are fought definitely increased throughout time. I knew the 20th century was the bloodiest century we've had so far, but it's pretty crazy when you actually can see a visible representation of how many wars and battles were fought in just 100 years. It makes sense, I mean, since now more than ever it's easier to move weapons and troops across the world, we can make better and more deadly weapons, and a globalized world makes it so we have to deal with other countries more, but still. I guess when I think of a lot of wars, I still have this idea of Europe a long, long time ago when France and England wouldn't stop fighting. While France and England are on good terms now, the rest of the world fights just as bad, if not worse. I wonder if there will be any more European wars, it seems like the last major one was Operation Storm, but I did see some little explosions until about 1999. I think I need to study more about those Slavic nations, they're pretty cool. I'd like to visit Croatia sometime, although my parents still think it's 1995 and tell me about how Clinton bombed them even though he didn't.

This was my stream of conscious blog post, hurray.

I thought this was pretty interesting. Personally, I think that it was none of his employer's business whether he was born male or female, or what's in his pants. In fact, I'm not even really sure what the issue is. I kind of understand why you would rather have a man working that job since it could be awkward if you were a man to have a girl watch you pee, but if he looks like a man, talks like a man, says he's a man, and everyone believes he's a man, does it really matter? It's not like Devoureau would have to strip down and give the guys a demonstrations (if that actually happens, then I retract my previous statement and replace it with "why would you even need to do that?").

Transgendered people exist. There are those who identify with male, female, somewhere in between, or completely androgynous regardless of the genitals they were given at birth. Not allowing someone to get a job because of their biological sex, or being treated differently in general for that matter, just is not right. We as a society only really accept male and female, but since they exist we just need to get used to the idea. Kind of reminds me of the whole homosexuality debate here. Homosexuality is becoming more accepted (or at least tolerated) here in the United States, but it still has a ways to go. Transgendered individuals will probably follow in their footsteps if they aren't already.

This also kind of reminds me of the reading we had to do about the five potential sexes. While it was an interesting article, it wasn't really about gender. Hermaphrodites have sex organs of both sexes, while gender is all in your mind. I think there's some hormone imbalances and other stuff, but if someone cut you up and looked at your organs, they would probably look exactly like a normal male or female, despite if they identify with something else. So those five potential sexes wouldn't solve anything here.

It also kind of reminds me of this website I kind of go to, where you could set your gender to male, female, or unknown. Many people who didn't want to identify as either male or female chose unknown, and they were fine with that. However, the website took this option away on the logic that you are either male or female and nothing in between, which upset a lot of their members. They put the option back, but it was interesting seeing all the responses for why "Unknown" should stay.

I think this is kind of interesting because we're talking about the the income equality in my Econ class and my teacher in one of my Poli Sci classes (he calls himself a Republican, I dunno if this matters or anything), and both of them paint a very different picture. It's kind of interesting.

In my econ class, we did this exercise where we wrote a phrase over and over for 5 minutes, and then compared how many got. There was a definite "income gap" (some people got as low as 20 phrases, some people got over 200 phrases), but it seems like that's way too basic for it to be exactly how the US works. He also showed us how, for example, the income gap was something like 60% hard work, 20% location, 10% inheritance, 5% discrimination, and the rest is something I forget about. Anyways, I dunno, I just thought it was weird how this soc class makes it seem like inheritance is way over 50%, while in my class it was only 10%. Maybe it's because of what people consider inheritance. Someone could say that inheritance is the money you get from your dead family from a will, other people would say that it includes your parents being able to afford good tutors and universities and the connections to help you get a good job.

Another thing he mentioned was income mobility. He said pretty much the exact opposite of what Sam said here... Like how income mobility in the US is actually really high. I don't have the stats so it's hard to say either way, though. However, I do know that my boyfriend's dad came from a working class family in the south, only finished high school and maybe some trade school, and now he and his family is living in one of the richest areas of his state with a huge house and trips to Cancun every spring break. That's pretty hardcore income mobility. But I am familiar with science and statistics and how you can't trust personal anecdotes like that. But still, I dunno.

My political science teacher, since it wasn't his job to teach this stuff, just said a brief comment. He said that the middle class did not pay the most taxes, the rich payed the most taxes. However he did add that if you averaged the amount to their income then the middle class would pay more. I wonder about the lower/working class.

It's a pretty interesting thing, I wish I knew more about it.

I'm actually surprised to hear to hear this, as I was under the impression that religious fundamentalism was on the rise. I know that most religious people aren't fundamentalist and that these guys are generally a load minority, but well, they're pretty loud. In the 90's and 2000's things like making it optional to teach evolution in Kansas I think it was public schools happened, and that doesn't seem to be going away anytime soon. I also know a decent amount of people who take the Bible very seriously, maybe even more than people who aren't religious. These people are not the university type though, which is something I think makes a big difference. While there are a lot of religions here at Penn State, universities such as these seem to attract the more liberal, secular crowd. These kids probably did not receive a creationist Christian homeschool education, and if those kids did go to college, I would think they would rather go to a Christian university instead of "the number one party school in the country" (which is outdated, by the way, I don't know why people continue to quote that).

I went on a bit of a tangent there, though. Anyways, I do think religion will become less and less important, but I find it hard to believe it will disappear completely. Religion offers comfort in things that we can't figure out on our own, those being what happens when we die, the reason we exist, and our purpose in life. While I personally don't need religion to help me figure these out, I've actually seen people who said that their life would have no meaning if their religion was wrong.

Which kind of reminds me of something. I think the rising in fundamentalism is a reactionary movement towards secularism and how science can give us answers that religion used to give. These people are scared because they're afraid everything they believe is wrong, so they go deeper and deeper into it, hoping that maybe the more conservative and literal they are with their religion, the more likely the secular things will go away. I've seen Christians who believe in "Creation Science" who spout "scientific" explanations to creationism, Noah's flood, etc. and how "science" is a conspiracy against God. They're usually completely wrong, but it's interesting how they search out things to rationalize their beliefs like that. It's just desperate and kind of sad. It's just annoying when they quote Kent Hovind, though. He's annoying.

I remember seeing this video a few weeks ago, it's still favorited on my YouTube account even. Anyways, it's a very moving video and Zach Walls is a very good speaker. I wouldn't be surprised if he was on a debate team at high high school or university.

Anyways, this video brings to light how stupid this whole debate is. So... WHY are we so against this again? I have not heard one argument that makes sense legally. The most I ever get is how it's "gross" (many things are gross but they're still legal), how it "hurts the family" (have not seen one proof of this), and how because the United States is a Christian nation and our country was founded on Christian values (simply untrue, it is annoying how common these misconceptions are even when they are in the very first amendment of the Constitution). No matter how much I search, I cannot find one good reason why gay people cannot get married and take care of children.

His family seems no different than other families. While I have to admit my own uncomfortableness with the idea of two men raising a young child unrelated to them without a woman around, the amount of background checks and classes they go through deters anyone who wishes the children harm from adopting them. In the video we watched in class on Wednesday, the part where the one guy said that all straight people had to do was get a child was fuck really struck a cord because it's absolutely true. Adoption takes so much work to make sure the adoptive family is good enough for their adoptive child, but when most heterosexual couples want a child, all they have to do is have a night in the bedroom. I'm sure far more children get abused when born like this, since there's a higher chance of the kid being an unwanted accident, or one of the parents could be mentally ill. I had a friend who's mom was kind of crazy, she liked painting in the middle of the night and never slept when she didn't take her pills.

Anyways, to say more, the reason why people are disgusted by LGBT families is very much a sociological phenomenon. Kids aren't born hating groups of people like that, so it is definitely something they picked up from their parents, the media, or their culture as they grew up.

Personally speaking, I wouldn't want to win the lottery... It would be cool to have a lot of money to do whatever with, but getting so much at once wouldn't be smart. I'm afraid of relying too much on the money and easily burning through it. Last year I had a sociology class in high school where we talked a little about this. My teacher mentioned the case of this guy who won the lottery and moved to a new neighborhood with a bunch of other rich people, but since he was so unlike them he couldn't stand it and he killed himself. There was also a case about a guy who won the lottery but then his family turned against him to try and get the money from him. I forget what exactly they did, but I think his brother tried to kill him or something.

I guess you could say I would be afraid of people treating me differently if I was suddenly super rich. Even if I did have a bunch of money I'd try to be modest (so I wouldn't buy a beautiful New York City apartment or a mansion in a rich neighborhood), I'm sure people who knew me before the money would treat me a little differently and it'd probably be harder to fit in with other people...

This actually kind of reminds me of the Great Gatsby. One thing about the book was "New Money" people interacting with "Old Money" people. The Old Money people hated the New Money people because they didn't have the class like the Old Money people did. I forget which characters were which, though. I know Gatsby was New Money, at least, and he threw all these extravagant parties. I kind of imagined him as an eccentric old man but I guess he was supposed to be kind of youngish. Like maybe his 30's. Anyways, I won't spoil the book for anyone who might be reading these (although there's already a good chance you already read it in high school and hated it), I'll stop with the Great Gatsby references.

I saw this video a few months ago and I thought it was really cool. First of all, I really like how he said that studying things you don't care about is a bad thing... It should be obvious, but I'm still glad. I'm more of a Liberal Arts type of person, and while I might not be into English or Philosophy, my areas of interest still get a bad rep. I'm sorry, I just don't like math very much, and I was never a fan of chemistry! Anyways, that point aside, I think he makes a lot of great points.

Both our public schools and universities are way behind the times... I'm still pretty new to this whole university thing so I can't say much about that (and I've enjoyed what I've seen so far), but seeing as how I've spent twelve (thirteen if counting kindergarten) years of my life in public schools, I think it's fair for me to comment on these.

Public schools, as he said, are very much a part of the industrialized revolution. From the bells to the periods to what we are taught, it for the most part prepares us for a life of working in the factories. But since hardly anybody works in factories anymore, that's very outdated... Since we have moved past the industrialized revolution, we must fix our schools to fix that.

I was reading about for-profit universities the other day and one "con" of them that I found was that because they treated education as a "product", they did not educate their students as well as a normal university would. I agree with this. Human minds aren't something we can just run on an assembly line, that we can cut corners to produce the greatest profit, they're human beings and every one is different. Doesn't fit the factory or profit model very well, you know?

The ADHD map was really interesting for me. I was diagnosed with ADD when I was in about 5th grade. I don't know if it's real or not, but still... He made some very interesting points. The point he made about the arts and ADD medication reminded me of a story I heard in my THEA 100 class (which, if any of you non-graduate TAs are reading this, I highly recommend you to take if you have not done so already). There was this girl, I don't remember her name, but she could not sit still in her classes. This was very early on so something such as ADHD was rather unheard of. They took the girl to a psychologist, and instead of treating her, he suggested they enroll her into a dance school. She did and she did wonderfully, and she turned out to be a famous dancer on Broadway. If this happened in modern day times, they would have just prescribed her some ADD meds and this would have never happened.

When I was on ADD medicine, it really did "numb" me from everything, minus paying attention in school. It really stunts any sort of creative or "divergent" thoughts. How you get less and less "divergent" as you age is also worrying... I hope my education isn't doing that to me. I think his idea of a group orientated, "divergent" education is really interesting, and I'd love to be a part of that someday. It probably won't ever happen, but it'd be neat.

While I knew that polygamous families with one woman and many men existed, I've only really learned about polygamous families with one man and many woman so far. I knew that polyandrous women usually married all of another family's sons, though.

It's kind of interesting, although this is something I could never do myself. Still, it seems to work for them, and that's fine, I guess. The reason why this seems to work for them is due to how different marriage is to their culture than it is to ours. In our culture, marriage is highly integrated with love. Usually marriages aren't made for the reason to get rich, or keep your bloodline going, or to keep the land in good shape. Marriage is more of a personal issue than a family issue, since in marriages here the family has very little say in who their children date and marry. It was definitely like that at one time, but those ideas have long since left. In this culture, marriage is far more of a business transaction, it seems. The aspect of marriage is very much up to the family and definitely a group decision. The concept of love seems to have little if anything to do with marriage, and taking care of the land and family is the most important thing. Because of this, polygamy (or arranged marriages) make a little more sense.

I'm noticing a bit of a double standard in myself, though. If this family was one man and three women, I doubt I'd feel as apathetic about it. I'd probably worry about how they're going to raise all of those children, and if any of the women are abused or forced to do things they don't want to. I guess in this family it's harder to have so many children seeing as how there's only one woman, but still. I guess everybody's a little bit sexist.

The point about China is interesting. I wonder if that would actually happen. Has China had a history of polygamy, and if so, how far back? If their culture is too far into one man-one woman, then it would probably be very difficult to go one woman - many men. Looking up Chinese polygamy, it seems like it was made illegal in 1951. As the PROC is a communist society, they have very particular rules about marriage. Polygamy to them is seen as a characteristic of the bourgeoisie, so it's definitely not the most honorable thing to do there. Since China is opening up however, this could go two ways. Opening up would get rid of their communist culture and make it so they don't have to worry about being a good proletariat, or, on the other hand, they'll be opened up to Western culture and its disgust of polygamy. I dunno!

I could probably make up my own list about Christians, but since I see multiple people doing this for me, I think I can abstain.

The "you're a redneck if..." jokes were mentioned earlier. There's a huge difference between the redneck jokes and jokes like these. The redneck jokes are largely made by rednecks for rednecks. They're usually tongue-in-cheek, self-mocking, and all in good fun. The most risque topic I've seen come up in those is incest.

As for these Muslim jokes, they are clearly not made by Muslims, for Muslims. This isn't because Muslims can't joke about themselves (yes, I have seen people say this) (yes, I do know that some don't like to make self-deprecating jokes, but the same can be said about a lot of other people in the world), since just last night I found a Muslim comedian with a comedy tour called "Allah Made Me Funny." The guy was making fun of Muslims, the guy was Muslim, and the majority of audience members were Muslim (although it's hard to tell for anyone but women) and having a good time. These jokes, on the other hand, seem to be based around fear mongering stereotypes that all Muslims are terrorists or all-around horrible people. I'm willing to bet that whoever wrote this has never met a single Muslim in their life and gets all their information from Fox News "entertainment" shows like Bill O'Reily and Glenn Beck.

Basically, there's a big difference between poking fun at incest and poking fun at mass murderers. The icing on the cake is number 10, "Your cousin is president of the United States. You may be a Muslim." Believing that the President is a Muslim is soooo 2008. Although I would hope for my own sanity that this forwarded email joke list is old. While how long ago this was made is no excuse for its content, I could maybe excuse it a little if this was written in 2003 or something. I don't know, I'm kind of just ranting here. Sorry for making you read this, I hope you get payed enough or this helps you with your future career or whatever.

I could probably make up my own list about Christians, but since I see multiple people doing this for me, I think I can abstain.

The "you're a redneck if..." jokes were mentioned earlier. There's a huge difference between the redneck jokes and jokes like these. The redneck jokes are largely made by rednecks for rednecks. They're usually tongue-in-cheek, self-mocking, and all in good fun. The most risque topic I've seen come up in those is incest.

As for these Muslim jokes, they are clearly not made by Muslims, for Muslims. This isn't because Muslims can't joke about themselves (yes, I have seen people say this) (yes, I do know that some don't like to make self-deprecating jokes, but the same can be said about a lot of other people in the world), since just last night I found a Muslim comedian with a comedy tour called "Allah Made Me Funny." The guy was making fun of Muslims, the guy was Muslim, and the majority of audience members were Muslim (although it's hard to tell for anyone but women) and having a good time. These jokes, on the other hand, seem to be based around fear mongering stereotypes that all Muslims are terrorists or all-around horrible people. I'm willing to bet that whoever wrote this has never met a single Muslim in their life and gets all their information from Fox News "entertainment" shows like Bill O'Reily and Glenn Beck.

Basically, there's a big difference between poking fun at incest and poking fun at mass murderers. The icing on the cake is number 10, "Your cousin is president of the United States. You may be a Muslim." Believing that the President is a Muslim is soooo 2008. Although I would hope for my own sanity that this forwarded email joke list is old. While how long ago this was made is no excuse for its content, I could maybe excuse it a little if this was written in 2003 or something. I don't know, I'm kind of just ranting here. Sorry for making you read this, I hope you get payed enough or this helps you with your future career or whatever.