Twitter Me This . . .

If you're reading this, chances are you have heard of Twitter, a social networking/messaging site that has the media and celebrities alike ga-ga over their own self-importance. When it began a mere three years ago, I doubt the founders could have imaging its current popularity. But how long will it last? The web-o-sphere has been particularly unkind to social-networking trends, even ones that run for years. Myspace, once an exponentially growing behemoth of the internets, has been slowing down for months now. Facebook (the current trend) has surpassed Myspace in popularity. Things are not going well for the site, who just laid off two-thirds of their international employees, a week after laying off a third of their American staff. Facebook, a marginally more simple site, is still growing, but its popularity will fade and the active users will decline, just like its predecessors. Anyone remember LiveJournal? It's still around. Friendster? Bebo? Tagged is another up-and-comer that will grow and recede like HotorNot. The popularity curve of these kinds of sites isn't as harsh as your average Internet meme, but applies nonetheless. Twitter is the next 'big one' to soon retreat into the depths of our bookmarks folder, somewhere between Myspace and that dramatic prairie dog video link.
Every time I read a story or watch a news clip that mentions Twitter (which, gratefully, isn't very often), I sigh. Loudly and drawn out. When TV news anchors are wowed by something, or using it to draw more attention to themselves or their channel, it reeks of FAD. I'm not postulating that Twitter will go the way of Lolcats and Chuck Norris jokes, but it will not remain important. The only reason I see that it is as popular as it is right now is due to mainstream America's declining attention span. No one has time to read more than a 180 character message anymore, at least not people who aren't preoccupied with the lives of celebrities and those dull enough to condense their thoughts into 180 characters. A well thought-out and interesting article or blog post does not interest these people. They would rather browse a list of tweet's from twits and your occasional twat. It's one-way text messaging that you can send to everyone who might want to read it. We all know how intellectual those conversations are.
Eventually,Twitter will fade into a memory, the nascent idea will mature and grow old surprisingly quick. The one thing I do see having some staying power is the blog, or the weblog, for those who actually know where the alien-species-like name came from. Blogging has been growing steadily for years, and I believe will continue running strong. Those who mock it as a poor-man's form of journalism may actually not be too far off. I don't see the blag as the new face of journalism, but as a new journalism, a form of storytelling for the masses, by the masses. Anyone who has the time to actually sit still and read something like this without wondering what's new on Perez Hilton or TMZ, anyway.

The Uninsured and the Helpless

When I think about having to go to the hospital, I get anxious. Not out of fear of needles, knives or doctors, but out of the consternation that I, like 45 million other Americans, have no health insurance. Sure, I could buy into a plan that barely fits my budget, and hope I don't have to go to an out-of-network hospital, need a non-covered procedure, or just get a claim flat-out denied. There's also the possibility that I get sick, something horrible that doesn't go away. Cancer, for example. Insurance companies are known for trying to cancel the coverage of sick people, occasionally this is due to attempted fraud, but can be because you simply forgot to write down a medication you took a decade ago. Logic would say that is because they aren't going to make money off of them anymore.
In the Micheal Moore (I do not invoke this name lightly) movie 'Sicko,' you meet a person who worked for insurance companies whose sole job was to find ways and reasons to deny people coverage. So, let's assume that I an able to clear these hurdles. I acquire an insurance plan, avoid being denied because I forgot that I had a morphine shot before a minor surgery, and I file a claim for a routine procedure that should be covered by my plan. I should be golden, right? Not quite. The Washington Post reported that during a Senate hearing that the insurance companies routinely under-reimburse their policy holders, to the tune of billions.
But why would an insurance company do such things? Isn't their purpose to hedge against personal illness with a low, monthly payment that shows how much they truly care about the average American? Not at all. An insurance company is a BUSINESS, whose sole motivation is to maximize profits while minimizing liability. As medical costs have soared, so have insurer profits. The doctors, insurers and pharmaceutical companies are all highly overcharging, and reaping all the benefits. It's no big surprise that these bloated corporations pulling in billions every year at the expense of the getting-by masses are almost all completely against any overhaul to the American health care system. Although, not all companies are fighting it, some are aligning with the push because it is politically sensible.
The fight for cheap, public or (gasp) universal health care isn't going to be an easy one, someone somewhere along the line is going to end up losing money. Many someones, I predict. But if the American public wins, the losses in corporations quarterly profits will just have to happen. Times are changing, and so is our health care.
I stumbled onto this, and I'm totally going to get one. Get one yourselves, those of you that are Uninsured as well, and let everyone start seeing the reality of the problem.

War on Drugs: EPIC FAIL

Talk about the legalization of marijuana is picking up, due to many factors. Cash-strapped states like California are considering it, and the more liberal Massachusetts. With the recent dramatic crackdown on the tobacco industry, people will still need an outlet for their stress, frustration and spare cash. But legalization is topic for another post. This is about the demise of the 'War on Drugs.'
Even the White House has realized that the 'War on Drugs' is going even worse than any of our other failed wars, with such a minimal impact on the availability and cost of drugs (particularly weed) as to be completely irrelevant. They don't even want to keep the title anymore. Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times has written a wonderful op-ed about the idea the drugs have effectively 'Won the War.' Forty years, over a trillion dollars, an incarceration rate 5 times the world average, a 1200% increase in drug-related arrests in 30 years, and I can still make a couple calls and have a bag of weed in a few hours. And I don't know any dealers.
And what about the rampant corruption within the law-enforcement system? How do you police illegal substances when you can't even trust the police? Recent stories hint at the continuing problem that much of which could be alleviated by a different approach to narcotics. Many other problems could see solutions with legalization, including a reverse in the flow of cash to stop drugs and an increase in education and treatment. Now, these may seem like crazy ideas, but I'm not the only one spreading them around. A lot of reasonable people are sick of the wasting of their tax dollars particularly on a substance that has never caused a single direct fatality. The 'why not' approach seems to be gaining some headway, since the far-right is too busy screaming about Obama, dead abortion doctors and jokes made at the expense of the Palins'. I would like to see an end to all major operations in this useless war within my lifetime.

Heeey, you're not the bus driver!

As if cephalopods weren't creepy enough with their boneless, slimy, ink-squirting, shape-shifting, and sometimes monstrously proportioned bodies, scientists have recently discovered that they can also hear. It may be used for detected predators, prey, or possibly just for picking up reggae stations from Jamaica. Whatever they use it for, I am still worried. If octopi and squid are as intelligent as they seem, and they can change shape and color at will, with the ability to hear it is only a matter of time before they venture on land and begin infiltrating our society.
I don't think they would do much at first but listen, since it appears they have the ability. Mimic octupi can copy the attributes of many other animals, so it would only be a matter of time before they master our languages. They will have stumbling blocks, of course. They don't last long outside of water, but they have the ability to evolve. They can hide in water anywhere, so they can made due for now.
Oh, sure, they can look all cute and harmless in an aquarium, catching bits of dead fish and squeezing through tiny holes, but what if those holes were your vents and those bits of fish your eyeballs? They're crafty animals, I wouldn't put anything past them.
Next time you get on a city bus or go down to your local butcher and the driver or proprietor don't quite look the same, watch out, or you could get a face full of ink and the next thing you know you're hogtied at the bottom of an aquarium, an eight-limbed creature glaring at you from above. Don't say you haven't been warned.

Tales of Bible Thumping

The Road to Hell . . .
I've had a few experiences this past week relating to religious parenting of varying degrees. I was lucky enough to have parents that respect my intelligence enough to not constantly question my lifestyle and lack of 'spirituality.' Some of my friends, however, weren't so lucky.
I went to dinner with my family last week, because my grandparents were in town. It was a nice, uneventful dinner, the only 'incident' occurred behind my back. But, I can handle my mother asking my girlfriend if she can get me to go back to church, since the idea is laughable even to her. This kind of covert soul-saving is much more subtle and easy to shrug off than some of the things I have seen recently. One of my longtime friends just had his first child, and him and his wife have chosen to raise their child without religion. Neither of his parents are religious, and hers don't seem like it, but apparently there are some underlying roots in Christianity. When his father-in-law found out that my friend was not keen on having his baby blessed, be flipped out, accusing him of 'keeping God from his child' and of 'taking his daughter away from the church.' Even after explaining his personal wishes to let the child decide on his own if he wants to be religious or not without forcing it on him, her dad still raised hell about it, causing the mother-in-law to plead for them to have it done, just to shut him up. You cannot bully someone into following your wishes, no matter your intentions. This kind of outright disrespect would not stand in my family, but I have no children yet, so I don't have a basis of experience. Still, I have known this person for nearly sixteen years, and I know him to be a good person, with just some bad habits. His lack of religion not being one of them. He never really believed that unbaptized babies go to hell. He has common sense.
The Toll to Get to Heaven . . .
The second experience is a tale of guilt-vampires and Calvinist hypocrisy, culminating in free food and the need to drink. My roommate, who also happens to be my girlfriend's uncle (long story), is the kind of guy who grew up rebellious due to overly-religious parenting; impelling him to commit acts that would get a child locked away these days. His dubious past notwithstanding, he turned out to be a pretty good guy, who takes care of his children and leads a quiet, sex-filled life. His parents just happened to be in town this week, and I was invited to the 'big' family dinner since I'm dating one of the grand-daughters. Free food from Mimi's Cafe was all I needed to be goaded into it. Over the years, I have heard plenty of stories and complaints filled with rolled-eyes and shaken heads from the brothers about their father and stepmother, and I was slightly nervous to be attending. The evil-stepmother was not in attendance, who is apparently the source of much of the problems, so papa turned out to be relatively harmless and uninterested in me over the course of the dinner. The real fireworks came today. Whilst I was slaving away at work, the parents showed up unannounced at our place and used the following four hours to dissect my roommate's life and explain to him why he was living such a terrible life and how he could fix it. The kicker? He could improve his life easiest by leaving his kids and moving across the country to work and earn a decent living, which is, apparently, the only way you can be a good person. If you have lots of money, you can get away with anything, it seems, even being a terrible parent. You will earn respect and gain contacts for 'network marketing,' ad you can participate in the occasional animal sacrifice on your lawn, but only if you're wealthy. This kind of thinking, especially from uber-religious people, reeks of hypocrisy and seems to me to be a sign of really fucked up priorities. If that is what it takes to get into heaven, I'd much rather join the eternal barbecue in hell, and retain my respect for myself.

Want peace? Get rid of religion.

In a wholly un-shocking look at some facts, numbers and statistics, countries that have a higher percentage of atheists tend to be more peaceful. Numbers can be twisted to tell you just about anything, but it is hard to argue with these. The most peaceful country, New Zealand, is considered quite secular. The U. S. of A.? We're 83rd. More murders, prisoners, foreign wars and internal conflicts per capita than eighty-two other countries. And many people pride themselves on living in a 'Christian nation,' which isn't even entirely true. It's Judeo-Christian nation.
Countries with better health-care, lifespan and infant mortality rates are also less religious than we are. Is this a trend we can reverse? Fundamentalist Christianity and Evangelicalism want to drag us, kicking and screaming if necessary, back to the middle-ages where intolerance, ignorance and hatred ruled, to bring us right alongside backwards Islam nations that still build houses out of mud and sticks they are so poor.
Christianity is having a hard time absorbing Calvinism and Capitalism into it's world view, since money makes the world run but is also the root (love of money) of all evil. Power and money in the name of God is an enticing idea, but it corrupts far too easily, just as I too easily digress.
Instead of trying to incorporate modernity into religion and vice versa, we need to drive the wedge of secular society in-between them. Science, business, and government do not mix with religion, as should be abundantly clear by now. The powerful religious leaders do not want that wedge to be there, because it means that they will lose power over society as a whole. This is a good thing, and it is the only way that our country is going to survive as a power and remain competitive in the future, not to mention becoming a more peaceful place. The only way for our society to begin healing its festering wounds is to remove religion as a prominent player in creating social norms.
I know most of this seems like rambling, but I think that I'm on to something here.

Daily Douchebaggery

I am somewhat surprised to announce that I must slightly lower the level of douchebaggery accounted for by one person, a most unlikely candidate. Dick Cheney. Mind you, this is only a slight lowering of a level that has reached astronomical heights.
Ol' Dick has announced that he supports gay marriage, but ONLY if states decide on it individually. And he also managed to work in a comment about his daughter's homosexuality is something that he has had to 'live with for a long time.' Very classy. Supporting equality in marriage for everyone, which New Hampshire has just done, needs to be a nationwide decision, and shown that it is backed by the constitution. When individual states vote and come up with different laws, exceptions and rules for homosexual unions, problems will inevitably arise as couples move and travel around the country. Yet, tricky Dick at least nodding in favor of such a thing is another step in the right direction.
This does not excuse him from any previous acts of douchebaggery, any future or unknown acts either. He is still probably evil incarnate, but even evil might get it right sometimes. Although, most of the time they don't. Still in support of 'traditional marriage?' Here's America's Best Christian to explain it for you.