Kay so I know we turned in our blog reports...

But just in case PTJ is perusing these in his grading or in the event Erin gets nostalgic, allow me to share with you what I got out of our gift swap. Well, first I should probably announce that like 15 of us got together and decided to do like a white elephant style gift swap and that it was an awesome evening that culminated in drawing on the windows to the lounge with dry erase markers (Roland's gift) to create targets for the Nerf gun (Kate's gift), but that even though Colin got a bunch of Play Dough, I still think what I got was the funniest, based entirely on it's address.

And here's why. 

Adieu, blog and bloggers. Although it is entirely possible- probable, perhaps- that I will return to post something or other, I feel this is a suitable departure post. It's been fun. 

A Final Reflection

I am so ill. Much like PTJ teaching class while under the influence of sudafed, I am writing this under significant influence of germs, drugs, sniffles and nyquil. Unsurprisingly, I am not alone. The whole of Letts 6 South seems to have caught this contagen (which was this time not propagated by my roommates boyfriend) and it is both rather unhelpful concerning finals and also rather putting a damper on the holiday mood here.

even our carols aren't quite right...

For instance, the gift swap we organized is supposed to happen on Wednesday, but most people have been too sick to go get anything as a gift. Even I, one of the three original organizers, had to lecture myself for a while on the importance of timeliness before I could pry myself out of bed to go get a present. Although we were originally expecting a wide array of gifts to show up- from the comical to the useless to the cute to the useful- I have to wonder if this mild epidemic won't skew people's priorities.

Of course, it will be fun regardless. Now we all just have to get there.

So the Spamming Begins

What a deliciously juicy question. Why DOES Todorov dedicate The Conquest of America to "the memory of a Mayan woman devoured by dogs"? Why bother dedicating such a book to anyone?

I think, based on the attitude Todorov takes to nearly every character mention in his book, we can assume that he was a man of people and ideas more than a man of things and thoughts. The way he thoughtfully explains (while still sort of condescending towards) Columbus' obsession with nature and ignorance of human interaction clearly illuminates both his own occupation with the human element and his need to tell the story as truthfully to his characters, well, character as he can. I feel as though Todorov would think that the lesser of the two most frequent evils of historical accounts, one being inaccurate facts of people's actions and the other being inaccurate portrayal of people's character, would easily be the first.

So that he wants his readers to keep in mind the human element as they begin his readings is completely unsurprising. Reminding us that the numbers lost from the Native American population were not in fact merely numbers, but were people, individuals, men, children and obviously women, provides potency to his work that may have been lost in the sauce otherwise.

Simulation Stressors

GAAAAAAAAAAH.

Okay, sorry. Professor Jackson, I respectfully understand your need to create work over your holidays in order to avoid your extended family. It is a rational thought process for an adult with few other ways to garner such an out. However, I feel the need to assert that firstly, you are perpetuating America's growing tendency to fall into the vices of over-working, over-stressing, and over-ambitiousness, and secondly, that a vast majority of us students had many other ways to get out of too-intense time with our families, such as needing to cook, or wanting to visit with friends, neighbors or teachers. I would also like to bemoan the fact that nobody I know at home owns a mac, and yet everybody in the world seems to here. It made it extraneously difficult to turn in my portion of our video in a fashion that was compatible to all software differences. I was rather nervous about getting it to play all-together. And what foreshadowing! We had to present it on my laptop because it wouldn't play on Erin's... Oh the stress that accompanies our lovely new technologies!

On a more positive note, I think I've found a proposition that suits China's interests as well as being generally welcomed by at least a majority of groups in our class. It was an idea I was toying with before class, but that listening to everyone's presentations reinforced. I'll talk it over with my group soon, and hopefully you will all hear (and support!) it on Friday, when we continue these shenanigans!

Pre-Turkey Day Ponderings

A lot of people have been home to see their families before this. They've come back dangling hopes for a change of family dynamic, regaling with tales of parents who have moved on; parents with new concerns; new families that don't really need them; who regard them as adults. After so much Todorov, I can't help but think of the young collection of colonies who declared their independence by first moving away and then signing the declaration of independence, and I assumed that moving away and turning 18 would be enough to assert my independence from my family. It was not. And as I hear all these tales of separation from my peers' personal Britain's, I can't help but wonder, if I'm not the colonies in this story, what part am I playing? It seems unfair that I could be as minor a character as a "discoverer" of America in my own story, sent out by my father(land) to explore new territories... and then to return, and report, but to still be the same poor civilian I was when I departed. I suppose I could be an altogether unmentioned territory, such as colonized India, and I'll just have to wait a few hundred years to claim similar prizes as my peers. I suppose I'll just have to finish reading to discover exactly where, or if, I fit in the grand scheme of Todorov-ian history.

In Addition...

Holy guacamole Erin, congratulations on this picture. I can't think of a way it could be more ironic.

Okay so as much as football uses stereotypes in their symbols (I believe, Vikings-Fan-Sam, that I recently fondant-painted a face sort of like this but of a stereotype of a viking instead of a Native American onto a cake for you...) the placement of these flags is both sad and hysterical. After all of that discussion about "survivance" in the museum, I can't help but think this is not what they were imagining when they wrote about re-making and pushing for continuation of their culture. Of course the more acceptable version of Native Americans is portrayed within the museum, as a representation of a society and a culture. But I might venture to say that the more accepted version of Native Americans by present day American society is full of stereotypes such as the one above, and we need only a Halloween store to see that exemplified. You would have a lot of difficulty finding a, say, Puritan costume, but there are "Indian" costumes galore with various stereotypical portrayals included. 

Columbus: Innocent Bimbo or Cunning Killer?

Columbus is not innocent. He was desperate, prideful, and strapped for cash, and is directly responsible for the maltreatment of a number of Native Americans. However, we cannot blame him for all that followed him. It was presumptuous and prideful to declare himself "discoverer" of the Americas, especially since he was obviously after Leif Erikson and potentially countless other explorers, but it was not this "discovery" that led to the massacres and unfair treatment of the Native Americans. It was a combination of factors including a lack of geographical knowledge of the time, the societal and colonial views of Europe, and the religious and priorital views of the elite societies of Europe. The ignorance and apparent racism of the time were obvious factors as well.

The only way I could've seen the interaction resulting in less suffering and diaspora is if he hadn't "discovered" the Americas for a number of centuries. It would have set back our intellectual standings and impaired the geography and map-making of the time, but if the Europeans had arrived at a time not so focused on "fixing" everyone and colonizing and converting the world, then perhaps things could have gone differently, but I, for one, cannot blame Columbus for doing his job, badly. (On a related but contrary note, however, I do not think we should celebrate Columbus Day. Just because we refuse to blame him doesn't mean we should celebrate him.)

REFLECTING ON NEW BLOG INFO

Hey guys! More new blogging news. I added the tag function (it's in the upper right hand corner, see?). You'll notice that Kate and Dhea have bundles of posts in their parentheses, and Gabe and I only have one each. This is because Kate and Dhea have been dutifully tagging themselves for a while now, and they were automatically added to the Labels list, whereas I had to insert tags for Gabe and myself in order to get us on the roster. Anyway, all you really need to know is this- continue to Label yourself in your posts, (by writing your name, preferably the same way every time, in the Labels: __________ box above and to the right of the Publish Post button), and at some point you may want to go through and check that you've labeled yourself going all the way back to August.

Label away!
Fiona

To Make This Very Clear

Just because we are attending this university does not mean we are rich. The assumptions made during class this week concerning the students financial security were presumptuous, and from some that I heard talking about them, hurtful. There are ways going to college can create financial insecurity even if one can manage to make up the difference between financial aid and tuition. For instance, this year is the last that my parents can help me pay to go to American. If I need any  help after this, it will mean either transferring to a cheaper college, taking out loans under my own name (I've been building up credit just in case), or asking my parents for help, thus sentencing one of my siblings down the road to state or community college. Others I know went through hell and high water to get here, and will be battling the odds to stay every year.

I'm not saying the generalization that we are all reasonably financially secure is not a logical one. Just that assuming that is the case for everyone is an over-generalization.

Holy Guacamole, Batman! What A Weekend!

Yes, this is a solid portion of Letts 6 South. And yes, we were on the front of the Washington Post.

A mere day before John Stewart and Stephen Colbert  donned the cover of the Washington Post, it was festively represented by numerous members of UC World Politics! Albeit a little disappointing, (there was very little foreign candy) the outing was worthwhile and memorable, such as walking into Japan's embassy even though they weren't participating because they opened the gate for us and being yelled at to get out after ominously walking up to the door. 

Then of course, was the rally. I cannot begin to explain the rally again (as I have already essentially replayed it for my mother, father, and boyfriend) but I will tell you that it was an experience I will never forget and that was well worth waking up at (or rather, staying up to watch a batman marathon until) 6 am and nearly losing my mind in a crowd of claustrophobia-inducing 215,000 people (according to CBS).

The Problem With the Lines We Draw...

A vast majority of the responses to this blog addressed the issue of national security imposing itself on civil liberties. This is a natural response. It is a trained response. It is what we have all been taught to ask, because that is how the system works. A security measure is proposed, some men in suits weigh it's imposition on civil liberties and pass it or don't on whether the loss of liberties seem worse it. But there is another factor falling under the radar...

or maybe rather flying over it...

Rather infrequently do policy makers ever make too much of a stink over whether the safety measures will actually ensure anyone's safety. They assume that if it's in the effort of safety, then it will, in fact, save lives. The truth is we are allocating our funds and resources to the wrong places. We need to draw our eyes away from the easy-to-object-to impositions on civil liberties, and turn them to the statistics. Terrorist attacks on American citizens have killed approximately less than 3000 people in the last 15 years, though some numbers are variable. That's about 200 people a year. Flu deaths (not even bird or swine... just flu) are estimated to kill 30,000 to 40,000 in a good year. Even if 3000 was a low number, that is still a DRAMATIC yet largely ignored gap. And the leading cause of death in the U.S. according to the CDC was Heart Disease in 2002, killing 576,301 citizens, as opposed to 9/11's 2,749 casualties. Instead of fueling things like data mining with millions of dollars, we could be subsidizing more vaccines or research into medicine. But terrorism is dramatic and receives a lot of media (just as the terrorists want it to) and thus it gets a disproportionate amount of attention.I'm not saying that terrorism isn't a threat, but that we need to prioritize our threats, and take security actions based on how well they will ACTUALLY SECURE US, not just based on how much they infringe on our individual rights. 

The Risk of Too Closely Comparing Fiction to Reality

Besides being a lot of fun, Diplomatic Risk is also a simulation of certain aspects of world politics. In what ways are the dynamics of the game similar to actual world politics? In what ways are they different?


Although Diplomatic Risk was a lot of fun, (a LOT of fun. Like, A LOT of fun. Did I mention the hours I spent plotting with various groups as to how to pull a group win? Because there were hours.) it was not particularly realistic. Yes, countries world-wide do have goals, but they are not often as clean cut as the ones provided to us, and to further complicate things there are not just five groups to collaborate and converse with, but approximately 192. 

Although, even in the game there was more to winning than lucky rolling.

Just about the only other realistic facet of the operation was the way we won- through eliminating the competition, pooling our resources, and evaluating carefully who we could benefit from and how. Although no one wins in the real world of diplomacy for good, the occasions which can be measured in win or loss often win as ours did, where multiple parties benefit from certain actions, and other are completely crushed. >:D

Simulation Stress and Risky Anticipation

I have to say, PTJ, that I notice some extreme differences in requiring the other class to represent Ford, a down-home-American manufacturer, and requiring us to try to demand respect as General Motors, a name that has suffered enormous amounts of (rather deserved) slander thanks to the recent bailouts and government intervention. Although my instinct was to try to use advertising techniques to propagate our points, there's not much I could do with a company whose commercials currently reek of paying penance. Instead of being able to immediately get to our points as a company with a recognizable voice, we had to establish our ethos separate from this scandal, and attempt to lead the masses from there.

That said, I think my group (special shout out to Scott and Alyssa here for research) did a great job pushing aside all the commercial garbage to find some useful data. I think we did really well, and I'm relieved to be done.  On a slightly different note, I can't wait for Risk!

I am so excited for Risk tomorrow

The fact that PTJ is changing it up kind of frightens me, but otherwise I'm really excited.

Speaking of excited, guess what I was really unexcited for? That fire alarm at 4 a.m.! Not that it woke me, since I was working on my mildly god-forsaken world politics paper at the time in order to get it in to Erin by 8a.m. (which I felt was necessary mostly so I knew I wasn't doing the whole thing wrong), but still! It was really cold out, and we were outside for like half an hour- despite Christian's rallying for a charge at the R.H.A.s- and I really needed to finish my paper and sleep for a while.
It was kind of amusing at first, I guess. About 3.5 seconds after the alarm started screaming, anyone who was up heard a really loud chorus of "F*CK!" and "what the f*ck!?" and "nooooooooooooooooo!" from all over our floor. I probably should've thought to quickly change before leaving but it had been so warm that day that I figured the dress I'd been wearing all day would be fine...(for future notice, this assumption was false. Always grab a hoodie. Or pull a Jamie, and just bring your whole comforter.)

Otherwise someone might steal ur comfurtz!

Here's A Shocker-

This blog, much like every other one I've ever posted as a reflection, is essentially going to be a rant about why my eyes are sliding shut and how good I've gotten at typing while nodding off. Actually, wait, I changed my mind. I'd really rather not dwell on my crappy weekend, but I will say that it was the weekend from Hell. I skipped all possibilities of sleeping last night (a bad move after spending a restless Saturday night on a couch) in order to write an 8 page history of my family, and will probably find myself in similar circumstances this evening as I attempt to reconcile the differences between what I have done and what needs doing. Amidst all this stressful and anxiety causing sleeplessness my caffeine addiction is at an all time low. I cannot even recall how many cups of coffee I've had in the past 12 hours, and if I learned anything from Alcohol Edu, it was probably (read: not really at all anything, but...) that when you lose count of your drinks, you're in trouble. The shaking at 5 am probably also should've been a good hint. Throw into this mix that between the couch-sleeping and the bus-riding my usually agitated back is trying to tear itself gruesomely away from the rest of my body and you get one happy, go-lucky and obviously optimistic Fiona. After all, don't all the best weeks in the history of ever start out like this?! Perhaps there's a glimmer of hope here somewhere. :D

Yeah, in fact I think I see one now!

In other news, I'm trying to not sleep now so that I can normalize my sleep schedule (don't even bother suggesting a nap- I don't nap, I coma.) and will probably bring some work on a trip with me soon to search for a Halloween costume. Out of curiosity, has anybody picked one yet? I usually make my costumes and am really disappointed I can't, especially this year. I feel as though the average "slutty", "stank-ass" costumes wouldn't go over so well trick or treating at the Embassies... So what are you being?

Aislinn's practicing to be a Wicked Step-Baby

French Embassy Talk...

In other news, on the note of the French embassy and Sarkozy and generation gaps in the French identity:

Here are the lyrics, roughly, first in French and then English. 

Ma France à moi elle parle fort, elle vit à bout de rêves,

Elle vit en groupe, parle de bled et déteste les règles,

Elle sèche les cours, le plus souvent pour ne rien foutre,

Elle joue au foot sous le soleil souvent du Coca dans la gourde,

C'est le hip-hop qui la fait danser sur les pistes,

Parfois elle kiffe un peu d'rock, ouais, si la mélodie est triste,

Elle fume des clopes et un peu d'shit, mais jamais de drogues dures,

Héroïne, cocaïne et crack égal ordures,

Souvent en guerre contre les administrations,

Leur BEP mécanique ne permettront pas d'être patron,

Alors elle se démène et vend de la merde à des bourges,

Mais la merde sa ramène à la mère un peu de bouffe, ouais.

Parce que la famille c'est l'amour et que l'amour se fait rare

Elle se bat tant bien que mal pour les mettre à l'écart,

Elle a des valeurs, des principes et des codes,

Elle se couche à l'heure du coq, car elle passe toutes ses nuits au phone.

Elle parait faignante mais dans le fond, elle perd pas d' temps,

Certains la craignent car les médias s'acharnent à faire d'elle un cancre,

Et si ma France à moi se valorise c'est bien sûr pour mieux régner,

Elle s'intériorise et s'interdit se saigner. Non...

{Refrain: x2}

C'est pas ma France à moi cette France profonde

Celle qui nous fout la honte et aimerait que l'on plonge

Ma France à moi ne vit pas dans l' mensonge

Avec le coeur et la rage, à la lumière, pas dans l'ombre

Ma France à moi elle parle en SMS, travaille par MSN,

Se réconcilie en mail et se rencontre en MMS,

Elle se déplace en skate, en scoot ou en bolide,

Basile Boli est un mythe et Zinedine son synonyme.

Elle, y faut pas croire qu'on la déteste mais elle nous ment,

Car nos parents travaillent depuis 20 ans pour le même montant,

Elle nous a donné des ailes mais le ciel est V.I.P.,

Peu importe ce qu'ils disent elle sait gérer une entreprise.

Elle vit à l'heure Américaine, KFC, MTV Base

Foot Locker, Mac Do et 50 Cent.

Elle, c'est des p'tits mecs qui jouent au basket à pas d'heure,

Qui rêve d'être Tony Parker sur le parquet des Spurs,

Elle, c'est des p'tites femmes qui se débrouillent entre l'amour,

les cours et les embrouilles,

Qui écoutent du Raï, Rnb et du Zouk.

Ma France à moi se mélange, ouais, c'est un arc en ciel,

Elle te dérange, je le sais, car elle ne te veut pas pour modèle.

{au Refrain, x2}

Ma France à moi elle a des halls et des chambres où elle s'enferme,

Elle est drôle et Jamel Debbouze pourrait être son frère,

Elle repeint les mures et les trains parce qu'ils sont ternes

Elle se plait à foutre la merde car on la pousse à ne rien faire.

Elle a besoin de sport et de danse pour évacuer,

Elle va au bout de ses folies au risque de se tuer,

Mais ma France à moi elle vit, au moins elle l'ouvre, au moins elle rie,

Et refuse de se soumettre à cette France qui voudrait qu'on bouge.

Ma France à moi, c'est pas la leur, celle qui vote extrême,

Celle qui bannit les jeunes, anti-rap sur la FM,

Celle qui s' croit au Texas, celle qui à peur de nos bandes,

Celle qui vénère Sarko, intolérante et gênante.

Celle qui regarde Julie Lescaut et regrette le temps des Choristes,

Qui laisse crever les pauvres, et met ses propres parents à l'hospice,

Non, ma France à moi c'est pas la leur qui fête le Beaujolais,

Et qui prétend s'être fait baiser par l'arrivée des immigrés,

Celle qui pue le racisme mais qui fait semblant d'être ouverte,

Cette France hypocrite qui est peut être sous ma fenêtre,

Celle qui pense qui pense que la police a toujours bien fait son travail,

Celle qui se gratte les couilles à table en regardant Laurent Gerra,

Non, c'est pas ma France à moi, cette France profonde...

Alors peut être qu'on dérange mais nos valeurs vaincront...

Et si on est des citoyens, alors aux armes la jeunesse,

Ma France à moi leur tiendra tête, jusqu'à ce qu'ils nous respectent.

My France she talks loud, she saw at the end of dreams,
She lives in groups, talking about corn and hates rules,
She skipped classes, usually for nothing, fuck,
She plays soccer in the sun, often Coke in the bottle,
This hip-hop dance on the tracks,
Sometimes she gets a little rock, yeah, if the melody is sad,
She smokes and smokes a little shit, but never hard drugs,
Heroin, cocaine and crack are garbage
Often in war against the government,
Their mechanical BEP will not be boss
While she struggles and sells shit to bournemouth,
But the shit get her mother some food, yeah.
Because the family is love and that love is scarce.
She fought as best they can to put them away,
She has values, principles and codes,
She goes to bed at the cock, because she spends all her nights on the phone.
It seems lazy but in reality, it loses no time
Some fear it because the media are struggling to make her a dunce,
And if My France is taken of her worth and conquered,
It is internalized and agrees to bleed. No ...

(Refrain: x2)
Is not My France, that France profonde
The one we give a damn shame for and that would be plunged
My France does not live in the lie
With heart and rage in the light, not in the shadow

My France she speaks in SMS, works with MSN,
It reconciles mail and occurs in MMS
She traveled by skateboard, or scooter by meteor
Basile Boli is a myth and Zinedine synonym.
She will not believe we should hate her but she lies to us,
Because our parents have worked for 20 years for the same amount,
She gave us wings, but the sky is VIP
No matter what they say she can manage a business.
She lives at American, KFC, MTV Base
Foot Locker, MacDonalds and 50 Cent.
It is baby boys who play basketball in no time,
Who dreams of being Tony Parker on the floor Spurs
It is the women who are not doing tites between love,
courses and muddles,
Who listen to Rai, Rnb and Zouk.
My France is mixed, yeah, it's a rainbow,
It bothers you, I know, because she does not want you to model.

(Au Refrain, x2)

My France has halls and rooms where she retreats,
She is funny and Jamel Debbouze could be her brother,
She repainted the mature and trains because they are dull
She likes to fuck shit because it pushes her to do nothing.
She needs to sport and dance to evacuate,
She goes after her folly to risk killing herself,
My France but she saw at least it opens, at least she laughs,
And refuses to submit to this France who wants us to move.
My France is not their own, one who votes extreme
The one that banishes the young, anti-rap on FM
The one that 's believes Texas, one that is afraid of our bands,
One who worships Sarko, intolerant and annoying.
He who looks Julie Lescaut and regrets the time Choristes
Who let the poor die, and puts his own parents at the hospital,
No, My France is not theirs, which celebrates the Beaujolais
And who claims to have been screwed by the arrival of immigrants,
The racism that stinks but pretends to be open,
This France hypocrite who may be under my window,
He who thinks who thinks that the police have always done a good job,
The one who scratches his balls at the table watching Laurent Gerra
That's not my France to me, the deepest France ...
So maybe we will vanquish our values but disturbing ...
What if we are citizens, while the arms Youth
My France held their head until they respect us.

Interessant, non?




I'm sorry about the highlighting, I can't make it go away. Wah.

wree you arawe taht the hamun mnid can raed lkie tihs as lnog as the frsit and lsat leettrs are the smae?

It's due largely to the way the brain is wired to receive information. It only actually works with words that we recognize as wholes and that we see frequently enough though, imposing limitations on what (for a while) was thought to be a rule of the human mind. For instance:

TEHRE

It says there. Did you get it?

FLOOSIH

foolish, right?

ATCCUUURPNE

Anybody get acupuncture?

A vast majority of people will get the first one,  a solid majority the second, and very few get the third. If you got acupuncture, actually, I'm willing to bet you're either interested in acupuncture, dyslexic, or do those scramble things in the newspaper sometimes. Speaking of those things, if you only got acupuncture by trolling through it like those newspaper words, it doesn't count. You're supposed to just be able to understand it instantly. 

Which is sort of how international politics work. (Finally, right?!) There are things that, even when they look sort of wrong, we read correctly because we're used to adjusting for and to the things around us. Not until they look REALLY wrong do we sort of go, 'hrm, how can i fix this'. There are social norms in the global society; don't kill other people's people, don't kill civilians, try to maintain a presentable image, etc. These expectations are often disappointed, and in those instances we have a tendency to ignore it if we can, to "read it" as if it were normal, and hence they aren't really very well upheld. So while we do have social norms and expectations on the global level, they don't really actually serve to limit nations actions until the word gets too big and we are forced to acknowledge its wrong-ness.

speaking of wrong-ness...

Unfortunately, letting it escalate in this manner leads to situations that are exceedingly difficult to repair. (i.e. the well used examples of Stalin, Lenin, and Walt Disney. Perhaps if someone had called them on their extensive power beforehand, we would have avoided the great purge, the red terror, and the inability to get children's movies songs out of our heads.) It's not that we entirely choose to ignore them for our own self interest. We're just prone to ignoring the little anbroalmtieis (abnormalities, anyone?) and assuming they'll fix themselves. 

That is all, lest I tangent more.

In the Words of Gabe, I am Literally Hours Away from Being Certifiably Insane

My head hurts. I literally cannot separate my thoughts, which is going to make it very difficult to write this coherently, which I am only doing to procrastinate writing my article, which I will only work on to procrastinate writing what should be a really fun and interesting paper, if only I were sane. My mom would blame this on dyslexia, not insanity, but I would beg to differ because even dyslexics can keep their LIVES straight, if not our B's and D's.

pretty much what my brain looks like right now.

At this point, I would love to explain to you that I'm confused and ultimately becoming insane because of reasons A, B, and C, but that would require systematic analysis the like of which I am not currently capable. Instead, allow me to pull a little stream of consciousness here; French, boyfriends, careers, lack of talent and interest and exorbitant amounts of interest in all the wrong things, and god almighty my back not dancing is giving me minor heart attacks i need something, le pain, stupid people stupid boys stupid me, I repeat my mistakes with disappointing frequency, i can't even type or text, is it possible to get more dyslexic as you get flustered? i'm really getting sort of sick of having soup for brains, gosh i feel sorry for you fools reading this, technology isn't working for me at all right now, i really need a hug, I miss my best friends, I miss drama, I miss dancing, God I miss dancing, sorry you guys swear I wouldn't be like this if I could dance instead, but I guess I'm stuck whining on blogs for the rest of my life, awesome so that's what going insane looks like, thank God for music. 

Alright now that I've sort of gotten some of that out. This week has been almost as much of a mess as the above paragraph (if you can call that a paragraph) but I do seem to recall some particularly interesting world politics related notes. Firstly, I really need to learn a bit of control in that class. As I'm sure you can tell if you didn't know already, I have a tendency to essentially shout everything I think about a topic the moment I'm asked about it and often when I'm not. It's not something I do intentionally, but I realize that it is both not conducive to a group-learning environment and that it's probably quite obnoxious. I will work really hard over the next few weeks to get a handle on exactly how to conduct my opinions in discussions. 

Freud would say the novelty of being listened to was getting to me.

Although this weeks discussions were a little frustrating due to their sort of unsolvable nature, I really enjoyed the ability to contrast all the things we've learned so far in a familiar context. The State Department and French Embassy were both really interesting, (although I'm pretty sure the French embassy being followed by my French class might be why I'm occasionally thinking en francais....) but for very different reasons. The State Department really helped sort of put things in perspective- taking the theories we've been learning in class and hearing them applied to actual occasions in foreign politics. The French Embassy was (besides probably part of the reason I'm dying right now) highly interesting on a cultural and political level. 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/12/08/500-muslim-soldiers-tombs_n_149267.html

because clearly, the French don't believe in racism.

I'm going to go blow my brains out and move onto some other work. 

The Only Tyrant I Accept in this World is Voice

I am utterly terrible at science. I almost failed out of chemistry sophomore year, and barely scraped through physics and bio. You may be wondering, as the excellent-grade-getting, intelligent, high achievers you are, why I would reveal to you such an obvious deficiency. The answer is that I'm about to do something rather science-y, and felt that I should establish before doing so that this is pretty much all the Scientific Process I know, and that you, no matter how much you love science or scientific evaluational theory, should probably not try to talk to me about it. You will probably be disappointed. 

But onto the one part of science that made sense to me: necessary definitions. It has always made sense to me that in order to analyze something (in science, sure, but really in anything) you need to define the parameters of exactly what you're exploring. So my first question when responding to this blog question is, what constitutes for an uneducated voter?

If I've practiced with this, am I still "uneducated"? It said educational on the box...

For instance. Let's work under the assumption for a moment that an

"Uneducated Voter is a person who literally has no notion of their options, and bases their vote on chance, how much they like their name, who gave them a button outside the door, eenie meenie miney mo, etc."

If you disagree or worked under a different assumption, okay. That's cool. This is just the one I'd like to start with. I suggest that if someone has literally no idea who or what they're voting for, they shouldn't, and probably won't vote, but that there should be no structure prohibiting them if they should so choose to. So if I'm from Atlantic City (I am) and there are 18 year olds in my Junior year gym class (there were) who registered to vote when they got their license (they did) but only know there's a presidential election that night because there are posters on the school walls cancelling clubs for it, they probably shouldn't vote. But the fact is, they didn't vote. Who, if they know nothing about the issue and care nothing about any of the candidates, would wait for 2 hours to play eenie meenie miney moe behind a silly curtain?

Pin the Tail on the Donkey! I mean... voting....

BUT (this must be important, check out how capitalized those letters are) IF those students had chosen to vote that night, they should be able to, because that capability is part of being an American Citizen. 

Let's switch definitions for a moment. What if an Uneducated Voter included misguided, mis-educated, vaguely interested masses that instead of being catered to by politicians are instead to whom most political parties aim their fiercest propaganda? 

These people (although many people would discourage me) are the people I would encourage to vote. They at least know the voters names and some characteristic of them, and the reason I would encourage them to vote has a couple layers. First, people who vote typically are more conscious of the new person in power. Let's say, like in a popular youtube video during the presidential campaigns that was removed because of its controversy, you think when Obama comes to power he's going to pay off your mortgage and for your gas which is why you're voting for him. Well, when he's elected and, oh my, you're still paying off your mortgage and spending inane amounts of money on gas, you're going to be angry! You're going to have developed, mostly on accident, a very basic political opinion, and him disappointing you like that might lead you to be better informed next time. Also, no matter how misled a persons opinions are, if they have them, they deserve to have them heard. "The only tyrant I accept in this world is the voice from within" is a quote from Gandhi during his crusade to free India from injustice and oppression, and I can't help but think, given that we've been granted these liberties, that we should use them and let everyone else do the same. As long as one person has a voice, it can be heard, and that is the beauty of the United States. 

And to those who would argue that people from definition A should be restricted from voting or that people from definition B are as "stupid" as A, I say cynicism is cheap!