Big Wide World

i was at work today, on my lunch, when i saw something offensive. now i know what you're thinking, "but lola, you work downtown, aren't there a lot of things that are offensive?", to which i would have to say that you are very correct my friend. but this particularily caught my attention.

there were two guys, dressed in white shirts and black pants (all matchy-matchy like and neutral), and they had backpacks on. and protruding out of these backpacks, on steel rods, about 8 inches up, there were lcd screen - for the sole purpose of..... advertising, you guessed it. it was so annoying. this is apparently a new way to advertise, becoming something termed 'walking billboards'. these kids are hired to put on these walking ads and just walk around downtown, doing nothing, just walking, while these screens run random ads.

isn't it bad enough that these screens are in our elevators, on cars, on the GO, on eggs (yes, eggs), on our phones, mobiles, faxes, well, these days, pretty much everywhere. i'm so annoyed by all of this. its invasive, its forceful, and i will purposefully not buy whatever products i see running off of these walking billboards. join me. otherwise, they will one day patent the inside of your eye lids and put an ad there too. (don't laugh, it could happen).

i went and did the ultimate thing that i thought i would never do. i went out and bought my first mac. scary. i am a hardcore pc user. i get in there and tweak everything. it has to be just perfect, with all the customizations and modifications, and downloads. you have no idea, i'm obsessed when it comes to my computers (i have two wirelessly networked pc and all the other accessories toys that my heart could desire). but, well, pc's are getting tedious. all the problems, the freezes, the lagging, the horror. even i was starting to get sick of it. so, i caved and finally bought a mac. mind you, it did help that mags and jay have one so i got to see it, briefly feel it out, and see what all the hoopla was all about. and, i have to say, with some minor glitches (had to reinstall the os b/c the remote and frontrow weren't working) and getting used to the significantly different operations in the system itself, i am getting used to it. its not that much of a learning curve as i thought it was going to be (probably mostly due to the fact that you're spending most of your time being amazed at how seamless everything is that you forget about the fact that its a little annoying to have the buttons on the opposite side of where you want them). also, the biggest thing for me was the right clicking on the mouse, and once i figured out that you can actually change the setting on the mouse for it to have a right button, i was good to go.

obviously, i have a lot of learning to do still. but the first few days have been much more successful than i ever thought possible. i'm not surprised that so many people are now switching to macs. i did also check out some of the sites designed for pc switchers so that was helpful. overall an A (minus the + b/c of the reinstall).

In order to get my response here, you first have to read Jay's comments HERE.

Jay offers some good points about the fact that these "liquid bombers" were, in all likelihood, successful in their attempts. he suggests that the plot was probably to just cause harm in causing more panic and hysteria (etc) than in actually blowing up a plane. the reasons are spelled out in his post, but basically boil down to the complications, time, and energy involved in actually making such a bomb.

i think jay has some good points. however, jay is (evidently) also much more hopeful in people's competancy and intelligence and i am. his rather well thought out post suggests that these are very smart people and they have manipulated us into hysteria by making it look like they would blow stuff up.

i am not of this view, and knowing me in any way, you will know that i generally think people are stupid. i mean, come on, these are people that believe that if they cause harm and perform evil acts of murder (and murder is murder no matter what cause its for), they will be REWARDED by allah in heaven with virgins beckoning to their whims. does that sound in any way logical?

so, i'm thinking, they are so consuming in figuring out new ways of sneaking stuff on planes to blow them up, that they didn't even get to the point of figuring out that it would be time consuming, complicated, would take a lot of it to cause any serious damage, and actaully work. this stuff is so combustible that they would probably blow just themselves up, or at least give themselves some serious burns.

so, i guess it depends on what you think of the nature of people. are people mostly smart or are they mostly just stupid (especially when you throw in some religious fanaticism)?

i don't really know what to say about this. first of all, i think its more than just a question of was it the chicken or the egg, but also its a question of trusting the statistics, the research, the control group, all of that fun empirical research stuff that i have worked very hard to forget after taking the class in university. basically, i'm still doing research on this in order to figure out if i trust this study.

secondly, even if this is true, and students are not watching 'traditional' news media, and are relying on internet research and jon stewart, i'm thinking... there's still hope. consider it - news, such as (oh i can't believe i just called this news) FOX and CNN and shows such as this (but especially FOX), are hardly news. after all, news has become big business, its monopolized, and hardly unbiased, or smart, or informative (well, the list goes on). they sensationalize, they exploit, and they present the news that is most beneficial and probably approved by their sponsors, CEOs, shareholders etc. when a "reporter" is reporting a story about the government spying on their citizens' telephone conversations, and he says that it's better that the goverment collect our private conversations than collect corpses, i no longer believe that that "reporter" is just presenting a story to inform people. i think that accountability, responsible journalism, intelligence, research, all of those "traditional" journalistic skills and practices are, for the most part, in the mainstream media, well... gone.

so, thank god for shows like jon stewart, because they provide a critique (in an entertaining way of course) to just reconsider the information that is presented. of course jon stewart (brilliant as he is) does not kid himself into believeing that he is by any stretch of the imagination, hard news. he has a satirical show on a comedy network, and he simply stirs the pot a little in order to, hopefully, rattle the group think, and present another way of thinking about events that are changing the world that we live in. and while it is not his responsibility to do so (seeing as how he is not a journalist in a 'traditional' form) thank god that he is there in order to point out the absurdity of main stream media. if reporters only offer one view, the corporate view, then someone has to be there who can present a counter position. don't get me wrong, i know that his show is also a business, but at least they don't try to bullshit you.

so if students are watching jon stewart, amen to them. there's more going on then students who watch jon stewart becoming jaded and not votingw. i refuse to watch 'traditional' news media because, well, i have a lot of my own reasons that i don't really want to get into. and i encourage people (students apparently) to stop watching them and do their own research about news instead of watching sensationalized 30 second clips made to make people as emotional as possible so that they don't critically analize the information that they were just flashed with.

i'd say its a sad state of affairs when the only trustworthy analytical 'news media' is a guy who does a satirical news show on a comedy network. lets consider that a little bit and consider where we're heading. (no offence jon, i love you).