The green background reminded me of Hamas to be honest. Ugh, I can't wait until he loses this November. His speech was just *awful.*
John McCain looking a little too excited at a Diamondbacks game. Should he be eating peanuts like that? It almost looks fake.
Go get em' tiger. Look at that zeal!
Apparently my website was mentioned at some university. I found this peculiar and I wondered what they talked about. How was it brought up?
Oftentimes I get the short end of these discussions. I see blog posts from linguists talking about it but they don't quite hint too much at how it is viewed in their circle. I'm very curious. How does the site play into the English language or online dialog?
In any case I do offer any input if anyone from there needs it. I'm not shy at all. I kind of enjoy stepping out of the role of site administrator and simply talking about the site from another perspective.
I can has a clue?
As an example, Daily Kos is definitely Obama land. So much so that the Clinton supporters recently declared a "strike" on the site and all twelve of them left in a huff. MyDD has culminated into Hillary Clinton land where grand delusions of winning run high.
Digg is interesting in that it was a total Ron Paul stronghold and the front page often had several Ron Paul stories. Today, it is much more docile and the majority of support seems to be behind Obama at this time. So much for the Ron Paul revolution. Didn't realize it took a string of losses to stem a revolution.
YouTube was also Ron Paul land but recently has shifted to Obama Country. Both candidates seem to have found favor there though early on.
I wonder why Ron Paul and Obama both had that early net appeal even before their candidacies really took off in the mainstream media world. One theory I have is how fast information flows online and the tendency for group mentality to take place in large groups. It appears that as information is gathered there is a filtering affect that occurs. Clinton had a strong disadvantage online as the "Establishment Candidate" and I believe that turned a lot of users off. They wanted a fresh face. Early information favored Obama and as far as the internet was concerned for the most part, he was the candidate of choice.
What happens now is that the other candidates not favored receive bad press and information is filtered by the community at large. It is, in essence, a snowball effect. The more good information about a favored candidate, the more they will filter out good information on opposing candidates. An early advantage could mean everything and could tilt a particular community for overwhelmingly supporting a particular candidate.
This of course bars any major news that may slam a candidate. The Wright story has made Digg though many users there took a sympathetic stance towards Obama despite the overall negative light by the mainstream media. There are also straggling support for other candidates and some stories, if extraordinarily good, may leak through and paint a previously unfavored candidate in better light.
On YouTube Hillary Clinton videos tend to get slammed with negative ratings. The infamous Hillary4U&Me video was lambasted for its canned feel and unimaginative lyrics. Her recent "lie" is getting wide coverage and several videos regarding it have gone viral.
This is only a quick look at a few communities. I'm not too immersed in other communities but I'm wondering if anyone out there knows which way their own forum or website community leans election wise.
The concept of sin is one of the most unjust concepts of Christianity. The idea is that the things you've done, regardless of who they harm or not, are wrong simply on the basis that God dislikes them. In the documentary "Jesus Camp" one girl succinctly described the bias of the concepts of sin when she says, "Sometimes I dance for the flesh." She then lowers her eyes and mutters that she has to be weary of that.
Why?
It would appear that God doesn't wish you to dance unless it is for him. Though there doesn't seem to be much biblical basis for this (outside of over interpreting things to cherry pick such a concept) it is a meme that is spread pretty heavily within socially conservative Christians.
On a broader scope sin is all-encompassing of human nature and nobody can escape it. A Bible verse speaks volumes when it says, "For all have fallen short of the glory of God." Christians place a yoke of sin on every human and blanket all shortcomings and problems in a world as stemming from this sinful nature.
Where is the evidence that sins causes world problems? If one looks around the evidence, to a Christian at least, would be all around. The world has problems. There are wars, famine, death, and disease. Even the mortality of humans is drenched in dogma as a by-product of sin. A verse says, "For the wages of sin is death."
The Clinton campaign keeps insinuating that the Obama wins in all the states but Illinois don't really count. If it is a caucus they say it doesn't count because it is a caucus. If it is a primary in a southern state it is because it was a large African-American population.
Very stupid.
So I started this to protest. I'm going to gather images of Obama supporters in those states that don't count and show everyone who Senator Clinton is truly discrediting.
I'm no political scientist. Nor do I have exactly the best election expertise. However, the day before Super Tuesday I predicted well enough that I'm going to try and project who I think will win what in the coming primaries and caucuses.
So, here is where we stand currently:
Obama has taken more states, clearly, and about the same amount of delegates. Every news source is saying February is shaping up to be Obama territory. So here is how I think Feb 9th will play out.
(Obama is baby blue, Clinton is pink):
Feb 10:
Feb 12:
So that is how I think it'll look by the end of February. This is where it gets a bit tough. Do the wins in February propel Obama to make a clean sweep of the rest of the states? Does Clinton maintain some strength and continue to dominate. It's hard to say. The rest of these predictions go on momentum from Obama and Clinton continuing to be somewhat of a resistance to a complete sweep:
March 4:
March 8:
March 11:
March 22:
So, in a nutshell, I predict Obama will ultimately win the nomination (given current momentum) and Clinton will continue to put up a fight. I think Obama can easily win in the general election and I think you are going to see a major redrawing of the political map.
I honestly think he'll be good for the country.
After all, the central theme of his candidacy seems to be:
Yes we can.
I find that inspiring, empowering, and good. It's a central part of what I believe can make America great again.
Today I got into a slightly confrontational argument with a small group of Christians in the cafeteria today at dinner. They were talking to one person who looked down and a bit beat by their words, and I heard the whispers of Hell and the words, "When you read the Bible don't read it with your mind. Open up to it."
I asked him why he left church (he indicated earlier that he used to go) and he said he just fell out of it. I confided in him that I myself have left church years ago and it was the best decision of my life. Through glares of a Christian woman I explained to him that ultimately it is his decision what path he takes and that he must take responsibility for his own actions and beliefs.
Then the woman turned her attention towards me and started berating me about my own beliefs. At first she didn't know I was an atheist but a Christian friend of mine introduced me to her and he couldn't bring himself to say, "he is an atheist."
So I said, "Yes, hi, I'm the prominent atheist on center." Which is the truth. I'm one of the most outspoken atheists at this Job Corps center. She seemed taken aback. She became visibly angry and berated me. A few gems were her telling me: 1.) That I should keep my beliefs to myself and 2.) That I have no hope because I don't believe in Heaven and Hell.
Is that how atheism is viewed? That I should shut up and wallow in misery? She seemed confused that I didn't feel I had no hope. I feel quite the opposite. How can this be? How can someone that believes in no gods feel any hope?
Never mind the hollowness in believing in a god simply to have hope. I'm sure thousands believed in Zeus, Ra, and countless other gods for hope. I don't see how the Christian God is any different in this aspect. Am I, an atheist, liable to feel hopeless due to my lack of belief?
The answer is a resounding no. I do not feel hopeless. Quite the contrary, in fact, and I think that confuses many people of faith. To them, hope is looking forward to dying so you can go to Heaven. I don't see how that is hopeful at all.
As a Bad Religion song states, "What good is something if you can't have it until you die?" I think this explains my view pretty well regarding faith-based hope and I think it serves well as a reminder of how empty such promises are.
My hope lies in humanity, in the expanding of knowledge. My hope lies in us continuing to learn and grow as time goes on as we have been doing. Times in the Dark Ages and before were barbaric, cruel, and immoral. We've advanced quite admirably; when was the last time you attended a witch burning or a gruesome gladiator battle to the death?
I find religious hope troubling. It takes the ball completely out of our hands and thrusts it into the hands of a malevolent deity bent up on control. The only hope for humans is to hope they end up in Heaven upon death? Perhaps I go to far to say this, but I can't imagine I am, isn't this demeaning to the life we have?
I tried explaining it. I don't think she could grasp what I was saying. She knew nothing more than that her faith in God and in Heaven were what drove her to live. She couldn't see my motives for living. I find something very sad about that and wonder how despair doesn't set in with such beliefs.
She seemed to think it was arrogant to think man handled his morals and hope himself. I find it empowering and the true key to happiness.
In any case, I hope I left the man they were targeting for conversion with some food for thought. I didn't pitch to him that atheism was the true path, nor did I even ask him if he believed in God or not. I simply told him to empower himself and to think for himself.
I also realized something. The greatest tool against religion is to ask, "why?"
Martin Luther King Jr.'s views have been reduced to such a level that the average high school student could not surmise what his political stances were beyond that he fought for civil rights and encouraged non-violent action. The holiday given in his honor has been a disgrace to his vision and has been used as an excuse to pacify the continuing struggle that he often described.
While he was heralded as a great civil rights activist, his greater calling is often ignored. King's vision extended beyond simply dreaming of black and white kids holding hands in harmony, indeed, they went much deeper into what King viewed as the systemic cause of such social injustice.
That systemic cause he saw was greed, militarism, and the stranglehold of a materialistic society ignoring the impoverished and downtrodden. Poverty, to King, was not simply a problem for poor ghetto bound blacks, it was a societal problem that had to be attacked by every American.
King said, "we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society." To him, materialism fueled inexorable injustice and that true empowerment of the poor came when we started compassionately giving them opportunity to rise up.
We are not there yet.
The question hangs on to us: what would Dr. King fight for today? What causes would he take up? Though we can't ask him directly we can look at what he has said in the past to gain inspiration for the new wave of social injustice taking hold under our very noses.
One can look at the current debate surrounding universal health care. A Harvard study says in 2001 56% of all bankruptcy in the US is caused by surmounting medical costs due to illness and injury. Out of them, 72% had health insurance and were working.
There is something very wrong when half of bankruptcies are caused by health care costs. There is something very wrong when the rhetoric is, "We don't want to care for the slacking poor." There is something wrong when the richest nation in the entire world says it can't afford to give health care to every single one of its citizens.
Out
