Splashing Mud

Do violent video games cause their players to be violent? Some studies say yes, some say no. Those who want to protect children tend to believe the studies showing such inclinations while those who make money off of these types of games like to believe the opposite. Texas A&M International University's Dr. Christopher J. Ferguson,a criminal psychologist, was recently interviewed by a video gaming website (guess which studies they like) in regard to violent video games and their effect on children.

Dr. Ferguson's take on the studies is that 90-95% of the research is very bad and that he's seen conclusions that the research just doesn't support. Said he, "The way that we study questions, the way that we support our hypotheses are not very scientific, quite frankly. And social science is kind of an oxymoron, to some extent." Hmm, sounds like he's talking himself and the vast majority of social scientists out of their jobs. So according to Dr. Ferguson if all, or at least most, of the studies are not to be trusted, then what do we base our conclusions on?

It really boils down to this: are we affected--even in the most minute degree--by anything and/or everything that touches our lives? If we walk down the street and a passing car splashes mud on us, have we not been affected? Whether it's one spot of mud or we get soaking wet, yes, it affects us. We may not care that we got one drop on the side of our foot (our response to what has touched us) but we have been touched! Everything that touches our lives has the potential to change who we are (someone who's completely clean or someone who has mud on them). How much "touching" and how we react to it are the two elements that make the difference.

Many people will say, "I play tons of violent video games and I'm not going to go out and repeat the Columbine High School massacre." My response is you may have a high tolerance for mud and you may make the conscientious decision to not let it affect you in that manner, but obviously there were people who let the mud (wherever its origin) affect them and they did enact the massacre. Do any of us know exactly where our breaking point is? Do we keep piling on the mud until it crushes us? Why would we purposely throw mud on ourselves in the first place?

The question isn't: do violent video games (or music or movies or whatever) affect us. That answer is an emphatic yes! The question is: how much does it affect us? The answer is different for each one of us, but it should engender another question: why are we going around splashing all this mud?

Land of the Free and the Home of the Cowards?

Eric Holder, the newly confirmed U.S. Attorney General, made this statement yesterday: "... in things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards." Wow! He must have a lot of clout to get away with calling us a nation of cowards. Where's the public outrage? Why isn't the media jumping all over this? Being a high-ranking government official and telling the people you "serve" that they are cowards? Well Mr. Holder, I for one disagree with you and will dedicate this post to a recent racial issue. (I told you there weren't any taboo subjects.) In fact, the racial issue surfaced the same day you made your outlandish statement.

The New York Post published an editorial cartoon with a monkey being shot to death by a police officer. It was an obvious reference to a recent story about a pet chimpanzee who was shot to death this week after attacking a house guest in Connecticut. What was not so obvious--or at least what the controversy is about--was whom or what the chimpanzee represented. The Post Editor in Chief said it "broadly mocks Washington". The Reverend Al Sharpton condemned it as a racist insult about President Barack Obama. (I'm not a gambler, but if I were, I would love to play cards with Sharpton because you always know what card he's going to play.)

This is a country that allows freedom of speech to mock the president and those holding that position have been, for as long as I know, the brunt of political cartoons. The question isn't whether this particular cartoon was inappropriate, disrespectful or disgusting (unfortunately too many of them are). The question is do we treat one president different than all the others simply because he's half black? If we really are color blind to race then the answer is a resounding NO! And lest we forget, the last president was compared to monkeys quite a bit. Do any of you recall Rev. Sharpton coming to President Bush's defense for any of those comparisons? Same political office, same rules--let's not be cowardly about it.

Oh well, at least Michelle is proud of us now.

What's In A "Natural" Name

In honor of Valentine's Day this past weekend I thought it fitting to quote some words from Juliette:

What's in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call'd,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title.

Many companies know well the power of names. Reportedly Detroit automakers spend hundreds of millions of dollars on focus groups and market research to come up with car names. If an automaker named their new car "dud" how many buyers would they have? Remember how Golden Crisp cereal used to be called Super Sugar Crisp? But in today's world who wants a cereal with super amounts of sugar?

We try to eat healthy and so we are always on the lookout for healthy cereals. We recently bought one that's "organic". In fact, right after the company's name on the box (which has "nature" in it) the topmost word is organic. It's kind of funny to read the list of ingredients because every ingredient is preceded by the word organic (with the exception of sea salt). I guess they're trying to make a point. But they're also trying to use naming conventions to hide a dirty little secret.

The first ingredient, and therefore the single most used, is "Organic rolled oats". Good for them. But the second most used ingredient is "organic evaporated cane juice". Hmm, what could that be? I don't think they're referring to Aunt Bessie's walking cane, but are trying to hide the word sugar from sugar cane! And what happens when you evaporate sugar cane juice? I'm pretty sure you get granulated sugar. Oh, sorry, in this case you get organic granulated sugar. The second largest ingredient is sugar! How healthy does that sound now? Maybe they should have called it Golden Organic cereal.

Marketing professionals love words like natural and organic because we literally eat them up. But we need to see thru the view they are trying to give us. Last time I checked, poison ivy is both natural and organic, but you wouldn't catch me eating it. There are a lot of things that are natural and/or organic that are very bad for us: anthrax, arsenic, botulism, cholera, cyanide, hemlock, radioactivity, ricin, strychnine, etc. On the other hand there are unnatural things that help us to be healthy, such as synthesized medicines. Just because something is natural/unnatural, organic/inorganic, etc., doesn't make it inherently good or bad.

So the next time a company tries to get you to "buy" something by marketing it as natural, organic, etc., just remember what's in a name and stop romanticizing those words. "Henceforth I never will be Romeo."

We All Do It

Did you notice the Associated Press story today that reminded us what week this is? It's the “Freedom to Marry Week.” Heck, it's Thursday and it took them most of the week to remind us? It's even the 12th annual. Huh, who knew? I've never even heard of it before. Have you? Who declares what week it is anyway; the same people who make you pay them to name a star after you?

The article touched on California's Proposition 8 and mentioned that the state's Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on March 5, 2009. Here's another instance of those who disagree with the voters trying to get the wrong branch of government to change the law in their favor. This time the argument can't be that it's against the state constitution since the voters made it part of the constitution. And at least for once someone printed an article that didn't mention the standard line about “narrow-minded hateful bigots who want to discriminate by taking away others’ rights”.

The end of the article points to a national grass-roots organization called Marriage Equality USA. Equality is always a good word to use for your organization since it implies that those who disagree with you don't believe in equality. For that matter, freedom is also one of those words, as in Freedom to Marry Week. But “free for all” is not equivalent to a free-for-all. That's why civilized societies always have restrictions in their laws. We have the right to “free” speech in this country, but we still put restrictions on it: slander, libel, perjury, conspiracy, etc.

Therefore it stands to reason that a civilized society would have restrictions on marriage. The article quotes a Matt Flanders, 37, of Brooklyn as saying, “I should be able to marry the person I love.” So is he, or those who favor his views, calling for marriage to include polygamy? Those who engage in it state that they do love all those other people. What if someone in his 50's asserts he is in love with a 10 year old? Would Flanders et al. fight for the right of a “dirty old man” to marry an innocent child? Can anyone remember hearing a gay rights activist call for incestuous marriages? And this whole line of reasoning by this side of the debate begs the question, “Why stop at 'person' I love?” Why do you want to restrict marriage to just 'people'? Come on, let's be equal here!

It’s easy to vilify those who believe differently than we do and say they are against equality, freedom or that they're un-American. But the fact of the matter is that people on both sides of this issue believe in restrictions on marriage, which have nothing to do with hatred, bigotry, discrimination or taking away rights. What it does have to do with is where each feels those restrictions should be. You see when it comes to restrictions on marriage, we all do it.

Failure

How do you feel about failure? Is it important to experience? What happens if we are kept from experiencing it? Will we ever learn?

“There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.” That quote is attributed to Colin Powell, someone who publicly supported our current U.S. president during the election. Another person who would be president, Robert Francis Kennedy, said, “Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.”

We have a great challenge facing us in this country right now: fixing the economy. Should government act like parents who won't allow their “little angels” to fail and continue to enable bad behavior? Does a democracy that believes in capitalism do that? Or is it a socialist government that acts that way? Yes, failure is tough to get through, but if we learn from it we'll come out ahead on the other side. If we never learn we'll continue to repeat history, making the same mistakes over and over again as long as someone is there to enable us.

And if mommy and daddy government is willing to enable bad behavior--once, twice, three times--when does it stop? The first bailout was over 700 billion dollars. The current plan is in the neighborhood of $800 billion. And now Timothy Franz Geithner, the current United States Secretary of the Treasury, has proposed another $1.5 trillion (that's trillion with a “T”) bailout. All told, that's over $3,000,000,000,000!

That figure equates to every penny the government takes in for a year and a half. But we can't shut down the government for a year and a half (as interesting of an idea as that may be) in order to repay that debt. So let's look at it another way, the way many of us pay for things we want: by saving up before we spend, spend, spend.

We are currently living in the year AD 2009. Since there is no AD 0, that means that since our current reckoning of time 2,008 years have passed. So if we tried during all that time to save up enough money to cover the $3T bill, it would have required putting aside $1,494,023,904.38 (~$1.5 billion) per year or $124,501,992.03 (~$124.5 million) per month or $28,731,228.93 (~$28.7 million) per week or $4,090,414.52 (~$4 million) every day! So how long will it take us to pay all that back, especially with interest involved? And that's only if mommy and daddy stop enabling after three times. But let's look on the bright side of not worrying about the consequences of covering up errors. Once the details of Secretary Geithner's plan come out maybe it will include no penalties if we fail to pay our taxes.

Truth

In my last post I mentioned that questions are a way at arriving at the truth. That begs the question: What is truth? I know people who believe that everyone has their own truth. You have your truth, I have my truth, everybody has a truth, truth, Old McDonald had a truth, ee-eye, ee-eye, oh boy! Personal perceptions, opinions and desires--those things that are proprietary to the individual--cannot be truth if they disagree with things as they were, are, and will be.

For example, Mr. X can observe that a paper floats off a 100-story building. He can then conclude that “his truth” is that if he jumps off that building solely in his normal paper-thin pajamas, he too will float to the ground. It doesn't matter how adamant Mr. X is about “his truth,” if he jumps off that building the real truth of gravity will plummet him to the earth. His perception, opinion or desire doesn't make truth bow to his wishes.

Here's where those who love to argue the point will state that if he jumps off with a hang glider he too will float. But that only introduces another actual truth into the equation: that of aerodynamics. Other changes in the parameters of the argument will fall under the same fate: the introduction of another truth to overcome the actuality of gravity. We must stop rationalizing away the truth simply because we don't like it. All we'll end up doing when we fight against the truth is hurt ourselves and, more often than not, hurt others as well.

Questions

When someone asks you questions do you feel like your being questioned, as in interrogated? Sometimes we've been conditioned to think negatively about questions: questions on a test at school, questions about who took the last cookie, etc. But questions shouldn't be looked at as bad, even if they can be uncomfortable at times; they're a way at arriving at the truth: How well do you know the subject matter? Who needs to be taught to ask for permission first?

I will be asking a lot of questions in this blog. I won't be asking with the intent to interrogate or intimidate, but with the desire to help us all think through the issue at hand. Hopefully we'll arrive at the right conclusion, however there will be times when we'll just have to sit and ponder the questions for the time being until we have more and/or better information.

You're invited to ask a lot of questions too. I won't always explain in detail or explain well enough, so ask for clarifications when needed. If you disagree with my viewpoint, ask questions because maybe I didn't think through the issue well enough and I need to think about it some more or in a different way. I welcome your insights. So ask.

Taboos

“They” say that the two biggest taboos in communication are politics and religion. Well, if you've read my Disclaimer, you already know that those aren't taboo subjects with me. In fact, I can't think of any subject that would be off limits in this blog. Don't get me wrong; there are ways of saying things that are inappropriate--for example, if you leave comments, please be respectful to other readers and don't use expletives--but the subject matter itself shouldn't be a problem. If you feel strongly about a particular issue, go ahead and suggest it. If I feel strongly about it too, I'll probably write about it ... and thanks in advance for recommending it!

Disclaimer

Void where prohibited. Use only as directed. No other warranty expressed or implied. Sound familiar? My favorite disclaimers are the ads where the disclaimer takes more time to explain than the description of the product. Fortunately this won't be one of those cases.

I did not start this blog to write about myself, but to write about issues and ideas. Of course I'll be writing from my vantage point so this blog is from me, but it won't be about me. Although there probably will be times when I write about my own experience(s) to illustrate a point, that's not where I want the focus to be. But since we all have our preferences I do feel it is important for you to know where I'm coming from.

Politically I consider myself to be an extreme moderate. What's an extreme moderate? Probably someone whom liberals find to be too conservative and conservatives find to be too liberal. I embrace ideas from both sides. I believe in taking care of our planet, a traditionally liberal view. In fact I've owned an electric bicycle and car (not a hybrid, but a fully electric car). I also accept that the citizenry should have the right to bear arms, a traditionally conservative stance, though I personally don't want to own a gun. However, if you were to tally where I stand on all the issues, most people would conclude that I accept more views from the right.

My moral code stems from my religious ideals. I understand that there will be those who read this blog who are atheists or agnostics and whose morals stem from philosophical concepts. I hope that we can agree to disagree where needed, but mostly that we will look for areas where we have common ground and that we will always show respect to one another.

But enough about me ... No purchase necessary. May be too intense for some viewers. If condition persists, consult your physician. Objects in mirror may be closer than they appear. Your mileage may vary.

See Thru The View

Blogs--as well as other Internet options--provide us the opportunity to be informed about all sides of an issue. But we must grasp that opportunity! And just because we are presented with an alternative view doesn't mean we've found the correct one. Whatever perspective is offered, we must “see thru the view” given us. So how do we do that?

The first step I've already mentioned: look for more than one side of an issue; don't just concur with the generally accepted or first viewpoint you hear. To put it in words used in the scientific method: investigate to acquire new knowledge. Once you have that new knowledge, study it out. Compare it with what you already know. Cross reference it. Discuss it with trusted associates. (If you are religious, that would include God.)

Now here's the hard part: be willing to change some of your own preconceived notions. Ouch! (I told you that would be the hard part.) It's easy to be proud and not want to accept the fact that we were wrong. Hey, none of us are perfect. We're all wrong from time to time. No biggie! What is a biggie--and what's really foolish--is holding on to fallacy when we know it is!!!

Having said all that, if you think I'm mistaken in something I write in this blog, call me on it. I only ask that you be respectful. I hope you join me as we seek together to “See Thru The View”.

The Beginning

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? is a Latin phrase meaning “Who watches the watchmen?” An extremely important question.

In reference to freedom of the press, the Embassy of the United States in Japan states, “In drafting the amendment, America's Founding Fathers affirmed the fundamental right of citizens to be informed about all sides of an issue without governmental interference” (http://aboutusa.japan.usembassy.gov/e/jusa-media-freedom.html).

The questions then become: Does the press/media inform about all sides of an issue? What happens when the media interferes with the government (i.e., attempts to convince the public to create a government according to their one-sided view)? If our founding fathers created a free press so they could be the watchmen over the government, then ...

Who watches the watchmen?