Author Archives: Raizen

Wanted: Honest Feminists

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I recently attended a meeting about women’s services on campus, which was made interesting by the fact that there was only one female student in attendance. As the meeting went on, my BS detector went off the charts. The speaker, apparently, was what is called today a “feminist.”

What is a feminist? An advocate of women’s rights. Sounds like a noble cause, right? If that’s what it was about, then feminism today would be taken much more seriously.

But it’s not. And the reason for this is because many feminists today are actually a liability to the cause.

Above, I mentioned what’s called a “BS detector.” I think most of us knows what that means, but for those of us who don’t, to have a BS detector means to have an ability, either through intuition or conscious thought, to sense that there’s something fallacious.

For instance, you’ve probably heard the statistic that women make seven-tenths of what a man makes for doing the same job.  It has an element of truthiness to it, considering that women have historically been treated unfairly. In many cases, the statistic is accepted by the hearer without further inquiry. It’s even been stated by president Barack Obama during a State of the Union address.

There’s a problem, though. The statistic is false.

If one were to look into the matter, the ratio would actually be closer to 9:10. The truer statistic does indicate that that there’s still a problem, but it’s nowhere near as dramatic as the 7:10 figure that we’ve been hearing.

When you hear that “women make seven-tenths for doing the same job as men”, your BS detector should go off. Perhaps you’ve picked up on some weasel words. Which job, specifically, do women do that nets them seven-tenths of a man’s pay? When was this study conducted? By whom? Did the study control for factors such as maternity leave and that women’s less career-oriented nature would lend them an inclination to settle for a lower salary?

By Tkjd2007 at Wikimedia.org, public domain

By Tkjd2007 at Wikimedia.org, public domain

Perhaps your BS detector did go off, but you ignored it. As children, we are good at detecting things such as hypocrisy, but as we grow up, we train ourselves to ignore our BS detectors. While this is done with the intention of being more civil, it also enables certain people to walk all over us.

During the meeting, the speaker did mention the statistic. A brief glance around the room revealed that just about everyone present knew just what was going on. Did anyone call her on it? It would seem like no one wanted to. There was a guy next to me who raised his hand, but he was ignored.

Generally, men don’t want to fight back against the tide of radical feminism, because it would be so easy to paint such a person as the bad guy. Because of this, the speaker, even though she was surrounded by college-aged men, could say just about anything she wanted with impunity. The group mechanics were certainly awkward.

It seems to me that feminism still struggles to be taken seriously. Why? What’s so bad about the cause of making women of equal value to men?

Fast fact
Women have been of equal value to men all along. Throughout human history.

So, what’s the problem? They haven’t been treated that way. Would it be bad to advocate that they be treated fairly? Certainly not. So then, what major obstacles stand in the way of feminists being taken seriously?

The one I’m focusing on today is that feminism has honesty problems.

A lack of honesty is an issue, even if the cause is a good one. When a person tells a lie to advance a cause, that person takes the risk that that the hearer won’t look too much into it. While dishonest people have long had their way, the risk is even greater in the information age, when a person has instant access to research for verification.

One day, I came home from work and found that my roommates were talking to a door-to-door salesman, and they were sold to his alternative electrical energy supply company. The only thing preventing them from sealing the deal was that the electric bill was in my name, so they needed my approval. After talking with the salesman, I went inside to perform a web search to see what others were saying about his company. The company’s reputation was very bad, with even former employees coming out and pointing out that the company has nearly no organic growth. Armed with this new information, I went and shut the door on the salesman’s face. Problem solved, with the help of the internet.

Another point I want to focus on is that feminists generally just don’t like men, and that’s another obstacle to them being taken seriously. Feminists generally see the male-female relationship as being adversarial in nature, and because of this, it’s unusual to see them in a healthy relationship. Those who fetch coffee for those pushing a feminist agenda often end up developing the same grim outlook. As a result, relationships suffer where there otherwise wouldn’t have been a problem.

The key to a healthy relationship is compromise. Men and women get together understanding that there are differences beyond that women have breasts and a vulva, while men have something else. Men and women have brains that are 97% similar. That remaining 3% makes a big difference. For men and women to get along, they need to be accepting of one-another’s differences, otherwise, there could be problems.

Feminists have a tendency to teach women to accept no compromise. This results in some very difficult relationships. This is made even worse in an age when there are men who try to be more like women and women try to be more like men. Because so many people are trying to be something they’re not, relationships suffer.

The antidote for this is to understand one’s identity, and understand that characteristics such as one’s gender gives someone something to offer society, and knowing that personal success can be achieved by offering what you have to offer, instead of wishing that you could offer the exact same thing as someone with different attributes.

There are differences between men and women, and these enable both genders to offer things to a relationship that the other cannot. Even if the wife were the money-maker and the husband was a stay at home dad, the presence of primary sexual characteristics will still indicate mutually exclusive capacities. Because of this, there is no man that can do all the exact same things a woman can do, and there are no women that can do all the exact same things a man can do. If they could, gender distinctions wouldn’t exist.

Some would say that it’s not fair that women are generally physically weaker than men, and some would say that it’s not fair that the continuity of their genes requires the assistance of a woman. Just because something is different from what you would have personally preferred doesn’t mean that life is unfair. Besides, life is unfair. It has been for a long time.

The school I go to is a trade school, which means that the majors are highly technical in nature. Among them are architectural, HVAC, and electronic engineering majors. A vast majority of the students are male. Why would that be?

Perhaps it’s due to the popular perception that these are male jobs. Those who are particularly blunt seem to like to say that women haven’t built our buildings or paved our roads. I wouldn’t mind seeing women line up to shut them up. But it seems like that’s mostly not happening.

Perhaps it’s because there are so many men going to schools like this that make women feel uncomfortable with attending. Women that attend would be so far outnumbered that they’d feel out of place. There may also be a sexual element. Men like sex, and some get grabby about it. Those who act this way give the rest of my gender a bad rep.

But perhaps the biggest determining factor when women decide against trade schools is that they just don’t want to be architects or automotive repair women for a living. It’s not as though women don’t see such jobs as rewarding and fulfilling, because they do. However, these jobs tend to be physically demanding, and that’s where women usually being physically weaker comes in. It can make them less effective at the job that they do, which from a results-oriented standpoint, could be used to justify paying them less to do the same job.

If someone would have to try much harder to be just as effective, it would seem more practical to find a job that’s more suited to their abilities. Having said that, if someone really wants to do something, that extra bit of effort can result in a fulfilling career. And if women were to pave roads and build buildings, there would be a number of chauvinists with less to say.

If a feminist is a person who sees women as having equal value with men, then I’m a feminist. However, feminism seems instead to be some far-left movement that teaches women to resent men. That there are so many dishonest feminists also seriously hurts their movement, in ways that they don’t realize.

Because of this, there is a demand for honest feminists.

My experience with a pen hack

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It seems like if you have a favorite pen, people are more likely to want to borrow it. And it’s times like that that you may feel inclined to ask, “How is it that you’re in college, and don’t have a pen on you?”

My favorite pen is a G2 gel pen with a Montblanc ink cartridge. It wasn’t my idea, I had heard about it from CrazyRussianHacker. It’s one of the hacks from this video:

And the result is a pen that’s writes really well, but is relatively inexpensive. I say relatively, because even though it takes an easy-to-find G2 pen, the ink cartridge may probably set someone back about $7 or so.

But it writes great. Gel ink often does write well, but can sometimes skip, often at the beginning of a stroke. And when you want your notes to look fine, you sometimes might feel like going over your notes again to make them more readable. The Montblanc rollerball refills usually don’t have this problem.

There is a trade-off, though. Montblanc rollerball ink is a very thin liquid that can bleed through pages, which can make it difficult to take notes on the other side of a sheet of paper. Still, the ink writes well on contact with the paper, allowing one to write for a while with little fatigue.

If you give it a try, you could end up becoming a bit of a pen snob. Personally, I don’t really want to go back to those cheap grey BIC pens that don’t write that well, and are a bit tiring to write with because you often have to press them against the paper kind of hard to get them to write a nice, solid stroke.

But maybe other people are noticing that my pen writes really well, because they seem to want to borrow it. Which isn’t a bad thing, but with a situation like that, there’s a possibility that you might not get it back, such as when it’s borrowed by a number of people who want to use a sign-in sheet. In such cases, your expensive ink cartridge could end up with a new home.

Out of curiosity, I checked Montblanc’s page to see how much one can spend on one of their rollerball pens. You can too, but I suggest you be sitting down for this. Here’s a link.

If one of those pens can set a person back hundreds of dollars, then those ink cartridges seem much more like a bargain. Even if it’s just one of the cartridges, you feel like taking measures to discourage pen theft. One such tip I’ve heard came from one of those sites that make lists, and this makes me feel a little hesitant to share it because sites that share lists are notorious for stealing from other websites, and I’d rather credit the person who originally came up with the tip.

But I think the most effective tip for discouraging pen theft is to keep your pens safe, and have some decoys for someone to take. This means that those cheap BIC pens can still serve a purpose. If someone wants to borrow a pen, let them borrow the BIC. Wouldn’t it look awkward if they specifically requested your G2 with the Montblanc cartridge? “I thought you were desperate, not picky.”

If it’s a nice pen you want, you can either buy it, or buy the cartridge and put it into a pen it fits into. But if you’re going to mooch other people’s pens, don’t be disappointed when you get the BIC.

BugCo. BugBox: Cricket convenience, or killer death evil bad? An objective review.

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I have some pet toads. I like feeding them, but I’ve been travelling a considerable distance for store-bought crickets. I did a search for closer pet supply stores, and found one with an interesting product: BugCo.’s BugBox.

It’s a neat little thing. It was actually stored among the merchandise, but it was a small box of 25-30 crickets with a bit of “wafoo” in the box, which is apparently a proprietary cricket feed that keeps them sustained while in their packaging, and pre-gutloaded, making them ready for consumption by reptiles. Yes, the crickets were live.

I decided to give the product a try. The box of 25-30 only set me back $2.99 plus tax, which was okay considering that I was paying 10 cents a cricket at the other place, and those ones were plainly starved. When I would place the loose crickets in the keeper, they’d go for the Fluker’s feed as though they hadn’t eaten for days. On the other hand, the crickets in the BugBox seemed content. I had placed some of the Fluker’s High Calcium Cricket Diet and Fluker’s Cricket Quencher that I had on hand into the BugBox (I didn’t know what “wafoo” was, so I wanted to be sure they were well-fed). The crickets in the BugBox didn’t seem nearly as hungry.

The BugBox has a perforated pattern on the side designated as a “Pencil Punch Out” and next to it were the simple instructions to “Place in Vivarium”, which suggests to me that once the opening was made, the crickets would dispense themselves. I decided to give it a try.

It didn’t take a couple toads long to find out what was going on, and they went right up to the opening of the box. One of them (named Big Buf) would eat the crickets just as they came out of the container. Another one (named Herbert) was hiding somewhere in the vivarium, so with Big Buf eating them as they were coming out, there was little chance that Herbert would get any. So I opened a side of the box and shaked some crickets out. As crickets often do when dispensed in such a manner, some of them looked for hiding spots, so they’d probably come out again at a later point, effectively dispensing themselves at a time of their choice.

I actually expected to find some dead crickets in the BugBox when I opened it to check after the live ones were out. I had found an exoskeleton, which was apparently the result of shedding, which is something that crickets do. Aside from that, I didn’t see any sign of crickets having died in the packaging.

I decided to try to find out just what “wafoo” was, but after a Google search, I didn’t find an explanation. I’d like to know what it is, considering that what goes into the feeder crickets I take home in turn goes into my toads. If I were to know about it’s nutritional content, that would be okay.

What I found was that not everyone had the same experience with the BugBox that I did. Some complained that crickets were starving and/or eating each other. This was odd, was there wafoo in the box, or not? Some complained that some of the crickets died in the box. Personally, I think this may be a sign of carelessness on the part of the retailer rather than a fault with the product itself, which some reviewers apparently could have likened to some sort of buggy-Auschwitz. Sometimes, in spite of efforts to ensure otherwise, feeder crickets do die. This is true whether they come in the BugBox or are purchased in bulk. Yes, crickets can die in the BugBox, and it’s much more likely to occur when sitting on a store shelf for a while.

As far as the dichotomy mentioned in the title is concerned, the BugBox is certainly a cricket convenience. I’d think that pet supply clerks would prefer it, considering how time-consuming and poorly-rewarding it would be to spend a significant amount of time counting crickets into small plastic bags with bits of egg carton. I know that if I had a degree in English, Psychology or Philosophy, I’d want to do something different for a living. With the BugBox, the clerk can spend more time with the kittens and puppies, and I can pick up some crickets without worrying about whether the shipment of fresh crickets actually didn’t come in, or the clerk is just making an excuse because she doesn’t want to count them again.

That is, when the BugBox is in stock.

Score: 8/10

I wouldn’t mind giving the BugBox a score of 9/10, but there is something that bothers me about it just a little. I still don’t know what exactly wafoo is, or what it’s nutritional value may be. Other than that, it’s an excellent product, but I’d be a little concerned about buying it from pet supply stores that aren’t so negligent.

Pros:

  • Seriously convenient
  • Crickets are already fed
  • A bargain at $3 for 25-30 crickets, though the price may vary
  • In-box design gives crickets plenty of room without standing on each other, and there’s a plastic window to view them.

Cons:

  • Wafoo is still a mystery substance
  • Careless retailers may result in dead crickets, though to be fair, it does still happen.

#YesMenToo

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I would like to say first that it’s not my intention of taking on the #YesAllWomen hashtag. Women do deal with some serious challenges. It’s not my intent to take a shot at that. However, there are certain things that men must deal with, and I would like to bring some attention to that.

Recently, there was a mass-murder in Santa Barbara, California. The perpetrator targeted women specifically, apparently upset that he didn’t have sex. He certainly had a warped view of things. For one thing, he apparently had an unrealistic perspective of the male-female relationship, coupled with a sense of entitlement.

He also spent hours a day playing World of Warcraft, so he was complaining about not getting something he wanted, while apparently doing little to actually obtain it. This kind of sense of entitlement isn’t anything that’s new, though it’s unusual in that it’s taken to this extreme. I could go on about how this indicates the kind of wrong thinking that’s apparently gaining momentum in America. However, that’s a different topic.

There are certain things that men do have to deal with.

For one thing, there is the perpetuation of the idea that sex is something that men must always be preoccupied with. Men feed into this notion too, and the popular idea is that if a man doesn’t have a stronger libido, then he must be less of a man somehow. You’ve probably heard that men think about sex once every thirty seconds. This is statistically inaccurate, but you’ll find it hard to find the man who admits that he doesn’t obsess over sex that much. If men were that preoccupied with sex, how would most of us function in society?

As I see it, sexual desire is a universal human trait, and can be healthy, depending on how it’s expressed. However, the notion that men must obsess over sex every waking moment of our lives doesn’t do men any favors. I do have aspirations, and I prefer to be remembered for what I strive for and differences that I make than how much I think about sex.

It’s assumed that when men gather together, we talk primarily about women and our sexual exploits, and there is an assumption that, if left to our own devices, we’d spend hours a day looking at pornography on the internet. This doesn’t paint of picture of our gender as being productive and intellectually engaged, but neither does the notion that men are constantly sexually-obsessed.

I would also like to point out that, often, men are judged by physical appearance instead of what else we have to offer. The popular notion is that men focus on function over form, and while this is generally true, it’s because of this that this is frequently overlooked.

Sometimes, men with certain physical characteristics are favored for female attraction over those without them. This girl I knew in high school (that I was interested in) had a poster of Brendan Fraser in her bedroom. He would be the guy known for playing the role of Tarzan and George of the Jungle, among other things. Women would generally prefer to have a poster like that in their bedrooms (though their spouses might object to it). As a skinny teenager with acne, there was little more I could do than accept the fact that I was in competition with other members of the male gender for the sexual attention of women, even as the media instilled in young women unrealistic expectations of male characteristics.

Some women prefer certain characteristics in men, and many of these are physical characteristics. What could I do to get the attention of women other than attempt to live up to their expectations?

It’s expected of men to be in competition with other men, and women seem more attracted to men who butt heads with other men. How far would a man get complaining that we still live in an age where men compete with other men? After all, women are usually more drawn to men that they feel can protect them, and a man that just complains is probably complaining about a game that he’s losing.

Sometimes a person looks for certain characteristics in a potential suitor. Sometimes a person prefers some characteristics over others, some of them physical. This is often called an indication of a person’s tastes.

Do I mean to say that women are unfair to men? Sometimes, they are. People sometimes have a double-standard toward other people. For example, there is a problem with domestic violence against men. Little about it is done, because men are typically viewed as being on the administering end of the domestic violence problem, and when someone behaves violently against men, it’s expected of him to be macho and “take it.”

Some men have a conviction against committing acts of violence against women, and when such a man is the recipient of spousal abuse, there is little he could do about it. And because he’s a man, he can expect little sympathy from either women or men.

The American legal system has an overwhelming bias favoring women in domestic disputes. This is also the case when it comes to sexual crimes; it’s typically assumed that the man is at fault. This problem is magnified by the fact that, when it comes to sexual crimes, people are prone to assuming the worst in other people, and thus a mere allegation is sufficient to heavily damage some people’s lives. Because of this, some people attempt to get revenge on other people by accusing them of committing a sexual crime. And when the person issuing the allegation is a woman, a man who is on the receiving end of it is in for the battle of his life.

There are other challenges that men face, but these are a few of the big ones. Many view it as being “the way things are”, and because of this, many cope with life facing these conditions. There are certain things that men have to deal with, and deal with them, we do.

Why I care about Benghazi, and you should too

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The American left likes to imagine that Joe and Jane Q. Public does not actually care about the attack at Benghazi on September 11, 2012. However, I do, and so should you. And I’ll tell you why.

Because, quite simply, how they handled the attack says something about the Democratic party’s life culture.

Obviously, the Democrat’s life culture is not that great to begin with. They are typically opposed to traditional values that strengthen families, which in turn strengthen societies. What’s more, they are also predisposed to a failure to acknowledge an unborn child as a human life, thereby indirectly denying that the child can partake in the outstanding human potential. But now, if the allegations are correct, they’re willing to throw 4 freshly-killed Americans, including an ambassador, under the bus for better PR in an election year.

Would those be the kind of people you want running your schools, managing your health care, regulating any business you plan on beginning, writing the laws to be enforced by abusive law officers, and telling you how to live your life?

Obviously, the answer should be a loud, resounding “NO.”

The fact is, Americans overwhelmingly vote Republican when it is obvious to them that there is instability on a global scale. This is because Republicans are generally viewed as more hawkish, stronger in terms of military strength. People will vote for someone like that if they view such qualities as beneficial for their security. What’s more, Republicans are known for possessing a strong sense of justice. Obviously, it’s easier to justify “policing the world” if it means that evil-doers don’t get what they want.

This being the case, it would seem like a more practical choice for the Democratic party to portray the Benghazi attack as an isolated incident, not an indication of dangerous world conditions. While this would be expected on their part, they took it further by suggesting that the incident was an escalation of a protest that turned violent due to a YouTube video deemed offensive to Muslims, and responded by having the video producer put in jail. This in spite of the evidence that the attack on Benghazi was a pre-planned attack!

This adds another frightening aspect to the Benghazi matter: the Democratic party would be willing to throw an American citizen that was exercising his protected free speech under the bus along with those four fresh corpses! If the Democratic party was willing to sacrifice four Americans abroad including a diplomat for their own image, what chance would an ordinary citizen stand? And yet, they’ve already done that!

Let’s get real here: the world is a dangerous place. Ideally, the people who are in charge should be striving to protect citizens, not to keep them ignorant of what’s going on in the world, and certainly not sacrificing them to maintain that ignorance.

How are Democrats handling this? By calling it a conspiracy theory. They don’t want you or anyone else to look into it! What’s apparent is that their value of American life plummets when those lives jeopardize their political careers.

If the Benghazi matter wasn’t so potentially damaging to the Democratic image, Democrats themselves wouldn’t be so afraid that it will be thoroughly investigated. But they are. Because of this, I’m even more interested in what an investigation will find.

Until now, what the Benghazi incident has revealed about Democratic values has been very interesting, and I suspect that there will be more to come.

Hey commercial writers, running out of ideas? Why not steal from the internet?

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The Meow Mix commercial (2014):

The original (2008, with at least 43,751,676 views):

It’s really nothing new that media takes inspiration from preexisting sources. For a long time, movies, plays, novels, and other forms of media have been taking inspiration from folklore and stories of heroism, among other things. Lately, there have been complaints that movies have been unimaginative, often with recurring superhero stories. But the thing is, it’s not something new, and with such movies making big bucks, it’s not likely that films will stray far from conventions.

What is of particular interest is how blatantly traditional media has been stealing from the internet, with such attempts becoming increasingly brazen. It may not be new that new stories take inspiration from old ones. We see recurring themes in storytelling throughout history, and very little written by men is actually completely original. These days, writing something completely original has become difficult to the point that many writers admit to taking inspiration, and they typically aren’t blamed for it.

However, it’s when it get particularly blatant that eyebrows are raised. When it’s content that’s on the internet that large companies are taking inspiration from, can they be as blatant as they wish without consequence? The “stalking cat” video above was apparently filmed and posted by one guy in Japan, and even if he were to tell Del Monte Foods to cease and desist, what would he have behind his request? It would be a battle between a huge corporation with enormous resources and teams of lawyers versus a guy, his camera, and his cat.

Those huge corporations seem to be figuring something out, and that’s that the internet is filled with content that’s very difficult to trace, and even if traced, it’s difficult for the producer to defend their own content. Internet users even steal from each other. There’s a producer of animated gifs who saw people enter his work as their own submissions in online art contests. When he came forward as the producer of that art, and told the online community to stop posting his work as their own, people actually sided with the art thieves! As a result, the artist felt less inclined to produce more content.

Inspiration isn’t necessarily theft. But there are times when it’s especially blatant. I wouldn’t be surprised to be seeing it more often, but with the participation of large companies, who spend plenty of money on creative writers, it is particularly surprising.

Why I don’t like “The Big Bang Theory”

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A while ago, I was introduced to a TV show that I hadn’t heard of before. This show is called “The Big Bang Theory”. I can’t put my finger on one thing I don’t like about this show. That’s because there are a lot of things about this show that irk me. Here are just a few:

1) BBT makes a sad attempt to sound smart.
Just to make sure the point gets across that the main characters of BBT are smart people, one of them will occasionally say something that sounds scientific. Whether they get it right or wrong is not the point. The needless inclusion of any subject material (such as science) into a television show can have the effect of making the viewer feel involved, regardless of the technical level of the material shared. The result is the viewers of BBT feeling smarter, even though what they’ve just watched is about as intellectually stimulating as “The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog”. What’s worse, BBT actually seems to try to feed a pretentious feeling of intellectual elation. I have little other explanation for why it’s viewers keep coming back.

Intellectually speaking, BBT is like junk food. Delicious? Taste is subjective, but it remains that it adds nothing of value. If you want to actually be smarter, watch some real scientific shows, like Nova.

Can’t tell the difference? Neither can the writers of The Big Bang Theory.

2) This show gives people the wrong idea of what nerds are really about.
I could probably be considered a nerd. I don’t know for sure. What I do know is that I know some nerds, and BBT gets almost nothing right.

First, let’s get some terms out there:
Nerd: Someone who loses himself in a hobby or craft, often to the neglect of grooming, family, or career.
Scientist: An educated individual who discerns natural laws as a profession. Using knowledge of natural laws to design things is a separate discipline called “engineering”.

What BBT gets wrong is that it portrays it’s nerds as being scientists. As BBT would explain it, almost anyone who is smart is really into science, comic books, television, the internet, and makes nifty holographic projections in their basement. While nerds can be considered really smart, most of them treat their minds as databases for piles of useless information. Most of them specialize in video games, old reruns, board games, and things that the rest of us generally won’t find a use for. A nerd is often inconsequential because he subdues himself with things intended for recreation. While he could help you set up a wireless network, nerds aren’t the ones making world-changing discoveries.

On the other hand, many scientists are well-off enough to be unaware that BBT exists, though I can imagine that many of them secretly dread that something like it does. That’s because scientists are heavily involved with their trades. Scientists are the ones that went to school for the better part of a decade, and are working on uncovering the mysteries of the universe while remaining within a budget and dealing with pressure from deadlines. Scientists work hard, because someone else could end up beating them to making their big discovery, and claim credit for the whole thing. Any time a scientist can spend outside the office or laboratory would probably be spent sleeping or hiking. They likely won’t be the ones with encyclopedic knowledge of anime.

3) The laugh track.
This is probably the single most often-repeated complaint I hear about this show. Because of this, I may not be saying anything new, but I’m still going to express myself on this matter.

I remember Doug Funnie saying something like, “If your jokes are so funny, you wouldn’t have to laugh at them.” The recipient of this statement was Roger Klotz, but it could just as well be repeated to Chuck Lorre. Most people can think for themselves. We each have a differing sense of humor. If we think something is funny, we’ll laugh. We don’t need the show we are watching telling us what is funny, and what is not. We each have our own favorite comedies because each comedy is different. Our favorite comedies are decided by our sense of humor. Our sense of humor is not dictated to us by our comedies.

BBT’s laugh track serves the purpose of telling it’s poor audience when to laugh, because without it, they would be lost. Suppose one of it’s characters makes a nerd reference that is kind of nostalgic. Are we supposed to laugh? Apparently so, because there goes the laugh track.

I’m impressed that it’s the year 2012, and sitcom writers are still using the laugh track. I think it’s a cop-out. If there’s 10 seconds of the laugh track going while the characters are pausing and waiting for it to let up, that’s 10 seconds that the writers didn’t have to write for.

4) Bazinga!
Take it easy, Sheldon.

5) The opening theme.
Actually, this is my favorite part because it has nothing to do with the show.

And that’s how I feel about The Big Bang Theory. I’m not trying to change how anyone feels about this show, I thought I’d get my own opinion out there. How do you feel about BBT? Let me know.

5 Things I Learned While Being Poor

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I’ve spent nearly the entirety of my adult life with little to no money to my name. Most of the time, I barely made enough to get by. Any month that I didn’t have to worry about how I’d carefully ration out food to make the rent was a good month. Some may assume that being poor is like fighting: even if you win, there’s no prize, and you still limp away with injuries that linger for months. However, your experience is not a total loss if you come away learning an important lesson. With fighting, that lesson is to avoid doing so if you can. Being poor is much the same way, but I have managed to come away learning a few things. Things like…

#5. I’ve become better with money than banks.
A few years ago, I got my hands on my first debit card. It was sweet. It meant that I didn’t have to trek to the bank every time I had to make a withdrawal. A while later, I lost track of my spending and overdrew my account while buying lunch at work. I didn’t get my card declined, so the transaction proceeded while, myself being unaware, that five dollar salad had an extra forty dollars tacked onto it. It gets worse, I did the same thing for the next few days until I finally got a notice in the mail that my account was overdrawn. My total number of fees came out to $160. It was a disaster.

I responded by doing my budget. It was early enough in the month that I was still able to establish a strict regime designed to allow me to make the rent. I didn’t eat very well, but I managed to get by, and kept a closer eye on my checking account. I made a mistake, but I was still able to recover.

Conversely, about a month ago, JPMorgan posted a loss of about 2 billion dollars on “egregious mistakes” while trading, and expected to lose another 1 billion within the next couple quarters. Two billion is a pretty high number, I have difficulty comprehending anything in that quantity. I know that if I had that kind of money, I’d have no problems paying my utility bills for a while. In spite of the enormity of these losses, there was no shake-up in JPMorgan’s leadership, and there was no cause for their customers to be alarmed.

When you’re poor, the stakes are much higher. You can lose 1/10,000,000th of the money that JPMorgan lost, and it will impact your life for the foreseeable future, and face the possibility of not having anything to eat, or a place to live. How do I combat this? By being better with money than JPMorgan. Banks have a lot to learn from kitchen table economics. While the people who gamble with other people’s money can give in to recklessness, the general population practices more care with their money because they pretty much have to. For us, the consequences of mismanaging our money is far more dire.

#4. There are a million different ways to serve mac and cheese.
Some would have you believe that macaroni and cheese is a poor man’s food. And they would be right. I got sick of eating macaroni years ago. Once I got my income tax refund, I went to the supermarket, intent on taking home some healthy food. But when I got there, I still found myself gravitating towards the prepared foods aisle. When it came to anything that wasn’t macaroni, I had lost my imagination. And guess what I took home with me. That’s right, macaroni and cheese.

That’s when I realized something: I had developed Stockholm Syndrome. Towards a food item. I had somehow become a willing prisoner of inexpensive, high-sodium food that was easy to prepare.

You’d probably imagine that having the same thing to eat every single day would get boring, but it didn’t. What makes macaroni and cheese so great is that there’s many different ways to serve it to keep things exciting. Want some omega 3s? Mix some tuna in there. Throw some peas in there, too. That’s what’s called “hobo’s delight”.

Want something spicy in there? Sprinkle some crushed red peppers on top. Want it more vinegary? Get some Tabasco Sauce. If you like it tangy, mix in some olives. Green or black, it’s up to you. If you want it cheesier, allow a couple slices of real cheese to melt into the sauce. I’ve even served it on matzo crackers. Macaroni and cheese is truly the food where your imagination is the limit. Granted, most of the nutritional value will come from whatever you add to it, just keep that in mind when preparing it to make your macaroni really serve you. I thought I really hated macaroni, but I keep coming back. It’s cheap, easy to prepare, and only as exciting as you are.

#3. You don’t have to pay for entertainment.
Quick, what is the most valuable thing you own for entertainment? You may have answered your television set, a video game system, your own musical instrument, or what-have-you. But the most important thing you own for entertainment when you’re poor is also your most practical item; your computer.

Look at your computer for what it can do. You don’t need a DVD player, because most modern laptops come with one built in. You don’t need a video game system, because the internet gives you access to many thousands of freeware games. You don’t need a TV set, because you can simply watch YouTube, and many sites like Hulu allow you to watch shows on your own schedule, with fewer commercials than traditional broadcasting. Your computer can play music, and you can even make your own with music-making software. It’s too bad that you can’t record yourself and become an internet celebrity, except you actually can use most current laptops to record video. Have an opinion? Start your own website. If hosting fees are too high (which they can only be if you’re poor) and you don’t mind slightly limited options, you can just start a blog on a social networking site or find a free web host, which isn’t that hard. And I’m just going to stop right there. It goes on and on.

If I had more money, I’d buy more video games. But I don’t, and I can count the number of games I’ve purchased in the last six months on one finger (Cave Story 3D). But do I really have to purchase tons of expensive games? The thing about Cave Story is that I didn’t really have to pay for it anyway, it’s a PC freeware game, and enhancing the presentation only served to take away from the charm.

Yeah, the media hypes whatever first-person shooters and zombie games happen to be all the rage right this minute, but let’s get real: you don’t really need any of that.

#2. Car ownership is actually for suckers.
I can’t afford to get myself a car. And if I could, I’d instead be eating a little better (if I can overcome my macaroni addiction). So, I don’t have a car. When people hear this, they are quite surprised, saying things like, “You don’t have a car? How do you get around? Your life must be difficult.” And it is, but I don’t really need a car. If I had one, it wouldn’t really help me that much.

Here’s why: I live near the city. All of my needs are met within walking distance, and I could carry nearly anything home in a backpack. I have three supermarkets within walking distance, and there are numerous thrift and convenience stores. Once every few months, I go to the mall. When I do, I just take the bus. When you live in or near the city, owning a car is for suckers. You save a lot more money just by walking from one place to another.

And considering the expenses that come with car ownership, I’d really rather pass. Not only do I get monthly payments to the dealership to worry about, I’d have to worry about the rising costs of gas, and mandatory insurance? Considering that the 200 dollars I have to myself every month is earmarked for food, I pretty much have no choice. I don’t have a car, and for now, that’s just fine.

#1. Your survival is in the hands of dicks, and there’s nothing you can do about it.
When you’re poor, the words “survival” and “livelihood” are interchangeable. You already know that when you miss work for two days in a week, you have to make some major sacrifices. You’re only one missed paycheck away from your life changing for the worse. And nearly everything is conspiring to make it happen.

Nearly any boss and any company you work for is primarily concerned for the success of the company. You don’t really have a skill-set, so you’re easy to replace. The key to keeping your job is to become valuable to the company, which is done by working harder (which is something many younger people seem to have a problem with). This may not seem so bad, but you’ll realize pretty quick that any employer doesn’t care what happens to you, either outside of work or in the long run.

One boss I’ve worked for demonstrated this to a terrifying extreme: when he did layoffs, he would invariably list the reason for termination as “misconduct”, which legally dissolves any obligation the company would have to pay out unemployment. He was taken to court at least twice over this, but he shows no signs of stopping. It gets even worse, this places the former employee’s status as “do not rehire”, and their work history is effectively branded in a way that makes it much less likely that they’ll be hired anywhere else. A company can effectively ruin someone’s career and life, and the only mistake they ever had to make was trusting the company with it.

And it’s even worse when you have a job that involves contact with the general public. The justification for your “layoff” can easily come from any customer complaint, whether real or manufactured by the company itself. Criminal? Yes. Fraudulent? Yes. But you’re almost never in any position to fight back. And if you try, you won’t get anywhere. That’s the system for you.

Get a life? Give me a break.

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How many times have you heard this one? You’re playing a video game, and someone tells you to “get a life”, whatever that means. When they say it, they’re making a value judgement towards what you happen to be doing as a diversion, as though you don’t do anything different with your life. Putting aside that someone can make that same crass assessment towards any medium with which a person can choose to preoccupy themselves, the assumption is that you don’t accomplish much of anything else, and this person knows what you do with every given moment of your time.

When I was a kid, I went to school for eight hours a day, and chores were waiting for me when I got home… from my part-time job. Therefore, free time was precious to me, and I earned the right to not be judged for watching TV, listening to the radio, watching a movie, or (dare I say) playing a video game. If I got my homework done, first.

It’s funniest when I get this from a stranger in an online game. Once they’ve lost an online match, they’ll default to the go-to ad hominem when you’re dealing with gamers: “get a life”. The assumption being, I live in my mother’s basement with little or no work and I’m only good at this game because I’ve been playing it for 16 hours a day. Therefore, I need an intervention so that I don’t have to play on the same server you play on and beat you at your favorite game. Of course, they’re playing the same game, so they’re not saving face.

Most of the time, when someone tells you to “get a life”, the life they have in mind is to immerse one’s self in whatever media that they find preferable. Usually, it’s books. Works of fiction involve escapism through immersion into the fantasy world portrayed in the narrative. Which makes it different from video games, how? And some will try to tell you that books are somehow less violent. Have they heard of The Hunger Games? It’s a bestseller.

And yes, some mothers will complain that their children started displaying bad attitudes after playing violent video games. News Flash: video games have had ratings for about two decades. It’s every parent’s job to monitor what media gets into their home. The responsibility for your child’s upbringing, including the media that they are exposed to, falls on you. Not the media. Don’t complain when it’s your own fault.

Here’s the thing: video games aren’t exactly new media. They’ve been around for at least four decades in one form or another. Over three-quarters of American homes have a video game system in them. In the world I grew up in, video games were harder to find, and interest in them came with it some sort of stigma. Nowadays, distance from interactive entertainment places one’s self at risk for social isolation. If you’re the kid who doesn’t like video games, you’re weird. If your parents don’t let you play them, you’re unfortunate (and often invited to other people’s homes to experience what you’ve been missing).

Me? I sometimes play games as a diversion. The only thing that prevents me from calling it a hobby is the same thing that prevents me from saying the same thing about books and movies: enough people do it, that it’s not unusual. It’s nothing noteworthy anymore. I can probably call soldering my hobby. Even though I don’t devote as much time to it, not a lot of people do it. But video games are played by enough people that it doesn’t necessarily need to be declared as a hobby. It’s almost to the point that someone could ask a stranger which video games they play; you probably won’t be told that they don’t play video games.

Thaddeus Stevens: A Man Who Defended the Oppressed

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Pennsylvania politics is a sad arena. Recently, governor Tom Corbett announced that public education would be cut in an effort to make the budget. Among the beneficiaries of his budget includes energy companies, which have no problem making money nowadays (he has stock in them, by the way). Cutting public education would be a disastrous move; just what the future doesn’t need is more people with fewer skills, the ends of which would be a wider gap between classes.

Education is good, I say. And in light of this, it’s time for a short history lesson. Today, we’re profiling Thaddeus Stevens.

Thaddeus Stevens was also a Republican in the state of Pennsylvania, and lead Abraham Lincoln’s Republican party. In fact, he was such a noble individual, that any honest Republican today would take a good look at his behavior and the principles governing their own party, and wonder just where everything went wrong.

Thaddeus Stevens ran for the Pennsylvania House of Representatives on the Anti-Mason ticket, and was elected. Stevens possessed a dislike for Masons, who were known for their secretive nature, and for excluding on the basis of physical characteristics. Rather than place education on the chopping block, Stevens was most proud of his efforts to institute free public education. In the 1830s, education was not free, and could only be afforded by the wealthy. When a free school bill was introduced into the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, he was an ardent supporter. An effort to repeal the bill resulted in a petition that gathered 32,000 signatures, and the Pennsylvania Assembly felt pressured to repeal the bill. To Thaddeus, this was a sensitive issue. Recalling his own childhood in which he lived in poverty, and the efforts of his own mother who came to the conclusion that education was his only chance at life, he gave the following moving speech before the Pennsylvania Assembly:

“I know how large a portion of the community can scarcely feel any sympathy with, or understand the necessities of the poor; the rich appreciate the exquisite feelings which they enjoy, when they see their children receiving the boon of education, and rising in intellectual superiority above the clogs which hereditary poverty had cast upon them…

“When I reflect how apt hereditary wealth, hereditary influence, and perhaps as a consequence, hereditary pride, are to close the avenues and steel the heart against the wants and rights of the poor, I am induced to thank my Creator for having, from early life, bestowed upon me the blessing of poverty.”

The result was the Assembly voting in favor of public education by a margin of 2 to 1. Pennsylvania would provide statewide free public education an entire generation before the same was offered in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and the entire South.

Stevens was known for his radical Republicanism during the Civil War. In August 1861, he supported the Confiscation Act, the first law attacking slavery. Stevens defended and supported Indians, Seventh Day Adventists, Mormons, Jews, Chinese, and women. However, defending blacks took up most of his time. He was actively involved in the Underground Railroad, assisting as many as 16 fugitive slaves a week. Stevens even called for a complete dismantling of the confederate social structure, though his efforts were thwarted by the assassination of Lincoln.

Stevens also led the Republicans in a battle against banks, warning that a debt-based monetary system would bankrupt the people. And he called it right. After the assassination of Lincoln, the Republicans lost the battle, and a national banking monopoly later emerged.

Lincoln was succeeded by the Vice President, the openly-racist Andrew Johnson, whose 1867 message to Congress stated that blacks possess less “capacity for government than any other race of people. No independent government of any form has ever been successful in their hands. On the contrary, wherever they have been left to their own devices, they have shown a constant tendency to relapse into barbarism.” Stevens despised Johnson, and attempted to have him impeached. This measured failed by a single vote, but reduced Johnson to a mere figurehead until his acquittal by the Senate in 1868, when he was replaced by Ulysses Grant.

When Stevens died in 1968, he requested to be buried at the Shreiner-Concord Cemetery, with a headstone written by himself as follows: “I repose in this quiet and secluded spot, not from any natural preference for solitude, but finding other cemeteries limited as to race, by charter rules, I have chosen this that I might illustrate in my death the principles which I advocated though a long life, equality of man before his Creator.”

Stevens’ legislative legacy is the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the Constitution, which collectively serve as the basis for all civil rights legislation. In Stevens’ will, he left $50,000 to establish a school for the refuge and education of the disadvantaged. Stevens requested, “They shall be carefully educated in the various branches of English education and all industrial trades and pursuits. No preference shall be shown on account of race or color in their admission or treatment. Neither poor Germans, Irish or Mahometan, nor any others on account of race or religion of their parents, shall be excluded. They shall be fed at the same table.” The living legacy of this request is the Thaddeus Stevens College of Technology, located in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Low-income students may qualify for the Thaddeus Stevens Legacy Grant, which is designed to provide an education at no cost.

Incidentally, Governor Tom Corbett gave a speech at the 2012 commencement at Stevens Tech. I’m not sure whether he had rotten tomatoes thrown at him, though I could hardly imagine that a few in attendance, particularly the staff, were not at least considering it.

Thaddeus Stevens dreamed of a socially just world, where unearned privilege did not exist. He believed that being different and having a different perspective can enrich society. He believed that differences among people should not be feared or oppressed, but celebrated. He is truly someone from which today’s Republican party can learn a lot, as they don’t even tangentially resemble their former glory.

To learn more about Thaddeus Stevens, check out his Wikipedia page. Also, check out his bio on the Thaddeus Stevens College of Technology page.