Best and Worse

iLike #1 The Miracle of Life
No... not that miracle of life! I'm talking about the window garden that I keep. I decided one day that my room needed something to decorate it and I needed something to do with my time, so I went to Wal-Mart and I got myself a window garden. It's currently filled with African daisies, wax peppers, and some little baby pansies. I planted all of them as cute little seeds and I nurtured them up from there. Sounds pretty gay, right? Well... yeah, it sort of is.

iLike #2: Bagel:30
About halfway through first semester, I discovered something interesting about myself: I love bagels. Bagels, bagels, bagels, and more bagels. I also love cream cheese. So I decided to combine my two loves in one great time of day: Bagel:30 (pronounced "Bagel Thirty). Nothing beats back those late-night cravings like a good old-fashioned bagel (with the obvious exception of Steak 'n' Shake or Taco Bell, but you have to drive to get to those). Bagel:30 refers to a very specific time of day, although it doesn't translate onto a twelve-hour clock. Bagel:30 is a function of the Biological clock.

iLike #3: Resident Assistants
I remember it like it was just yesterday. It was the first day that we moved into our new rooms here on campus. I walked into our neat and tidy room (that was the last time that I have seen my room looking anywhere close to clean), and on each of the desks, our RA had left us a water bottle (college student's best friend), a foam squishy model of Archie the Eagle (the four in our room each eventually met with a dreadful fate: one was decapitated, one was impaled on a butter knife, one got dressed up like a gangsta, and the final one was lost to the endless depths of Tim's desk [shiver]), and a bag of candy so big that several pieces of it are still in my desk waiting to be eaten. That's the wonderful thing about a good RA. On top of lavishing us with gifts, she is there for us when we have drama on the floor (which happens almost daily), and she actually sees us as friends rather than residents. Love her!

iLike #4: The Honors Floor
When I moved into the Emerging Leaders floor, I thought I was going to be moving in with USI's best and brightest, those students who would be the cream of the crop, scholastically motivated, and critically involved. I couldn't have been more wrong. As it turns out, the vast majority of those on this floor are people who applied because there was no more room in the rest of the dorms when they finally got around to registering for housing, so we sort of ended up with a really eclectic group of people. A few of us are actually emerging leaders, but a lot of us are psychotic, dramatic, self-centered, and/or unstable. Lucky for me, the Honors floor is in the other wing of the third floor, so it's just a hop, skip, and a jump, and a few more steps, and I can be in a place where intellectually stimulating conversations are actually possible.

iLike #5: A Pitcher of Water
I remember the dark days before I finally gave in and purchased a Brita filtering pitcher. There was a time in my life that every time I got thirsty, I would have to walk all the way down the hall to the water fountain to fill up my water bottle. The only other alternative would be to drink the Cl-Pb-Fl-Cu solution that comes steaming hot out of our sink, and that was simply not an option. The pitcher filters out all of the nasties and keeps me from having to walk thirty steps to get water. It's all the delicious life-giving water that I can drink, conveniently located within arm's reach. Ahh... sweet American convenience.


iHate #1: Evil Incarnate in Food Services
Seriously, this company sucks. What kind of evil bastard* food syndicate executive would set policies in place that state that every eating establishment on a given college campus would close at like 4:30 on Friday. Now, I know that USI is a commuter campus, blah, blah, blah, but honestly, I get hungry on the weekends every once in a while, and since I only have a dirty cheese-caked microwave to cook with, guess who gets my food business. Anywhere but a Sodexho company. I'm a huge proponent of an on-campus, independent Steak 'n' Shake, Taco Bell, or The Slice for those late night cravings. Hello, Mr. Solution-to-all-of-our-USI-lacks-a-sense-of-community-and-weekend-life-problems. Sodexho is the culprit behind everything that needs improvement at USI. And I'm not even exaggerating.

*bastard here meaning that this person literally does not have a father, and should not be taken as a curse word of any kind.

iHate #2: My Roommate's Television
There are three things in this world that I care absolutely nothing about: politics, sports, and African-American court television. Guess what my roommate watches on TV all the freaking time. POLITICS, SPORTS, AND AFRICAN-AMERICAN COURT TELEVISION! There is nothing more annoying than coming home after a long day of being alive to try to do a little bit of quiet studying or sleeping when the stupid TV is on something stupid. To make it even worse, my roommate has a bad habit of parroting a lot of the stuff that he sees on TV in regular conversation, so the television doesn't stop when you turn it off. I get to hear regurgitations of Barack Obama's speeches, ESPN highlights, and Judge Hatchett's sassiest quips. Lovely.


iHate #3: Nasty Sinks
I can take clothes on the floor. I can take the mysterious smells that come from various places around my room. I can take an unmade bed, and I'll even overlook the fact that some people can't seem to figure out how to wash their 0wn dishes. But when I have to brush my teeth at a sink that is literally covered in someone else's toothpaste, baby lotion, and shaved hair, I get a little bit grossed out. Is it really too much to ask that we wash our toothpaste mess down the sink? There was a brief perioud that I tried to keep my sink sort of clean-looking. When I realized that I would literally have to clean my sink every morning and night before I brushed my teeth if I wanted to brush in a clean sink, I decided to just give it up and stomach the nasty.

iHate #4 Microwave Cooking
You never know how much you love something until you use it. In the dorms, we are lucky in the sense that we have a little kitchenette area in our rooms. However, you'll note that there is a conspicuous absence of anything that you can actually cook things with. The only "cooking" utensil we are allowed to have is a microwave, which really only serves to make things hot and soggy. We're not even allowed to have toasters, much less hot plates, toaster ovens, or George Foremans. I bought a charcoal grill for outside so that we might have a way to cook real food every once in a while, but then I was promptly informed that I could get in trouble with campus security for grilling outside, since we are apparently not allowed to own grills or something stupid like that. It probably doesn't help that the inside of our microwave is completely disgusting because it is apparently not common practice to put a lid or paper towel on top of things that might explode in the microwave.

iHate #5: Quiet hours
If you're like me, you might be looking at this clock here thinking, "10:40... time to get started on whatever plans I may have for this evening." If you're like the Victorian Nazi that wrote the rules for Ruston hall, you're probably thinking, "10:40... well the last of the students is probably crawling into bed around now, since it is a weekday and all." Here in Ruston Hall, we have a quiet hours policy that begins at 10:30 on weeknights. WTHeck?! During the weekends, they really let us live it up, though, and they extend the beginning of quiet hours all the way to midnight. Now what sort of legitimate college student goes to bed at those times? Whoever does should be hunted down and beaten ot they should just shut their yap and stop complaining about noise. For goodness's sake, people, this is college, not Soviet Moscow.

iHate #6: Checking the Mail
Ruston hall's mailboxes have the rare honor of using the world's only combination locks that spin to the left first. This would be terribly confusing to me, except that I only check my mailbox about once every NEVER, so most of the time I don't really have to worry too much about it. It is usually pretty comical whenever I actually do get around to checking my mail. I checked it once in February and I had a bunch of notes and letters from first semester.

Winding Down

Here's a super current events story for you: the school year is almost over! In one and a half weeks, we will all be happily at home rolling in our 12-18 shiny brand new credit-hours. In a week and a half, I don't have to look at my roommates every day. In a week and a half, I can use a real kitchen instead of a microwave, and I'll be allowed to use the charcoal grill that I bought specifically for the purpose of cooking food at college only to be foiled once again by silly rules apparently prohibiting us from having our own cooking devices for fear that we immature 18-19-20 year-olds will burn down all of campus with them. In a week and a half, I can make noise after 10:30 on a weeknight without getting yelled at by an RA (although my parents yelling at me won't be a huge improvement).

Anyway, it's been a great year and all, but I am really looking forward to this summer. I won't get much of a break, though. My last final (a comprehensive test over how many pieces of pizza and cinnamon rolls I can eat in two hours) is May 8, and I will be home just under a week before I pack my bags and head to North Carolina for five and a half weeks to work at a Young Life camp there, making sure high school kids don't kill themselves or cry too much on a ropes course. Then, I'll be home for a few weeks before running off to Minnesota for another week of Young Life camp, this time as a leader for the students at North Posey High School. Then I'll be home for another couple of weeks, and guess what! Another Young Life Camp, this time in New York state, once again on the ropes course for three or four weeks.

In the in-between times, I'm going to be learning how to screenprint t-shirts and Michael Patzer and I are going to be building houses for under $8,000 to get our money from the stimulus package (just kidding... I think), so I've got a pretty full summer planned out. It's going to be a good time.

Back in the Theatre

In high school, I was a theatre guy; I was in every single production that happened in the high school since my sophomore year. The auditorium became my second home, where I would go every single day after school regardless of whether or not there was a production going on at that particular time. I loved the wacky, senseless traditions of the theatre: that people say "Break a leg," instead of "Good luck," that we're never allowed to speak the name of that Shakespeare play about the Scottish king, and the secret, sacred ceremony called "The Brotherhood" that no females are allowed to know about. It gave me something to do, gave me the most ecclectic group of friends ever assembled, and I loved everything about it.

When I got to college, though, I stopped. I didn't even know where the theatre here is until halfway through the spring semester. People would occasionally ask me if I missed it, but I was staying busy, so I never really had time to think about missing it. It's actually sort of sad, knowing that I stopped doing something that I loved so much.

This weekend, I went back to see my high school's production of Beauty and the Beast, as well as another high school's production of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Both shows were AMAZING. I made it to Beauty and the Beast just in time to participate in The Brotherhood. It did my heart good to see those folks breaking legs left and right, singing, dancing, and acting all over the stage. I never realized how much I actually do miss it.

Now, of course, the logical thing to do would be simply to get involved with the plays here on campus. I might do that sometime if I get bored with my 18-hour class load next semester, but the plans I have are so much grander. I've tried my hand at acting, and I think I did pretty well, but now I'm going to try my hand at playwriting. That's right, I've decided to pen a play.

I'm still sort of working out the details. I don't have a setting or a plot, characters, or even a good idea of what it's going to be. But rest assured, it's going to be amazing when I get it done. It will be a magnificent, opulent, tremendous, stupendous, gargantuan, bedazzlement (for you Moulin Rouge fans). So watch out for it.

Post-Lent Reflections

Rewind 41 days. It's Fat Tuesday and I was preparing to offer up my Lenten sacrifices. This year for Lent, I decided to go for the gusto and do forty days without my facebook or text messaging. I considered giving up all modes of communication invented since 1900, but the Pony Express went out of business some years back, so that would have pretty much left me out of luck if I needed to communicate anything to anyone more than a mile away.

So facebook was out. It wasn't that difficult; I simply deleted the link to it on my computer and didn't have too much problem staying away from it. I didn't even miss it that much. One of my friends also gave up her facebook for Lent, but she had to have her boyfriend secretly change her password so that she couldn't get it, and she tried several times in vain to hack into it.

Text messaging was a little more difficult, because I didn't actually disable it on my phone, so people would send me text messages all the time, but I couldn't respond to them. Sometimes I cheated a little bit, but only when I really needed to tell someone something, and a call would not be appropriate.

Then, on Easter Sunday (or, if you read my last post, "Holy Sh*t Sunday") I took it all back. I started text messaging again and I logged on to facebook. I spent the next three hours or so just trying to catch up with all the crap that had happened on facebook - 34 friend requests, a bunch of wall posts, 27 messages in the inbox, and about ten thousand different application requests of people throwing sheep at me, sending me flowers, asking me to adopt virtual pets, and biting me. Even focusing only on responding to wall posts, mail, and friend requests, it took me several hours to get back up to speed. It was ridiculous.

I really could do without it with no problem at all. I mean, if it weren't the easiest way to keep in contact with my friends around the country, I would have just done away with the stupid thing a long time ago. I probably sound like an alcoholic when I say things like that ("I could quit anytime I want to... I just don't want to!), but it's true. One thing that the Lenten season threw into perspective for me is the fact that I have so much stuff that society tells me that I need to be cool and well-informed - facebook account, cell phone, television, etc. - when really all I need to be cool is a few little personal skills. Now, doesn't that just warm your heart?

Holy Sh** Week

I hope everyone is enjoying their day off, and I just thought I'd take a quick second to remind everyone of the holiday that we are celebrating.

As many of you know, today is Good Friday... well technically yesterday was Good Friday, since it is 3:37 a.m. on Saturday as I am writing this, which I suppose would technically make this the day that some Christian theologians refer to as "Uneventful Saturday," but since I'm operating on college student time, for all intents and purposes, today is Good Friday. And if you didn't know, Good Friday is the day that Christians and sadists celebrate the death of Jesus Christ, which, although incredibly gruesome and disturbing, is actually a good thing for humanity, because Jesus' blood fulfills all need for atonement of sin, making that old custom of mercilessly hacking up farm animals obsolete. Now, let's think about the implications of that act. Without Jesus, most everyone from PeTA would be going to hell (along with all of the rest of humanity). Without this day in history, the world would be a radically different place. Imagine history without the Holy Roman Empire, without the Crusades, without the Dark Ages, without the Pilgrims, the Reformation, and the Holocaust, without the Salem Witch Trials and the Spanish Inquisition. Granted, most of those things were pretty bad, but all of them had their roots in this day in history (Please don't think I'm trying to blame Jesus for any of these atrocities; most of them were rooted in Christian faith in name only. Obviously Jesus wouldn't condone genocide, stake burning, bloody conquests, fanaticism, and that sort of thing. Sometimes people can take good ideas and twist them into terrible atrocious ones.).

The day before Good Friday is known as Maundy Thursday. 99% of Christians have no idea what happened on Maundy Thursday, which is not surprising since most "Christians" know next to nothing about their faith. A quick trip to visit old Mr. Webster will tell us that the word "Maundy" is defined as "the ceremony of washing the feet of the poor, esp. commemorating Jesus' washing of His disciples' feet on Maundy Thursday"

Then, of course we have Easter Sunday, which is the capstone of Holy week, commemorating the day that a gigantic mutant rabbit annually sprinkles the landscape with plastic eggs filled with candy. Oh, and I guess Jesus rose from the mother-f**king dead, too. It's probably a coincidence that those two things happen on the same day.

One kid in my philosophy class wondered out loud why Good Friday is called "Good Friday," so being the good Christian that I am, I explained to him that it is good for us because it is the day that Jesus paid the price for our sins. He responded with some of the most amazing words that I have ever heard: "I wouldn't have called it 'Good Friday.' I would have called it 'Bad Friday,' and then I would have called Easter 'Holy Sh*t Sunday.'"

Holy Sh*t, indeed.

A confession... on the topic of vampires

Ok I'm tired of hiding it.

I'm reading the Twilight series.

It's not what you think... if you haven't read the books, then you just wouldn't understand. I mean, it's not just some sappy romance between a clumsy girl and a desecration of all classical vampire myths. Well, it is that a little bit. But it's so much more than that; it is a fantastic story with a riveting plot that won't let you stop reading, and although it tells me four times a page that Edward is beautiful, that does not mean that I believe, nor am I the slightest bit in love with him, so don't get the wrong idea here.

It should be illegal to make books that good. The first time that I picked up Twilight, I finished it almost exactly twenty-four hours later, reluctantly stopping to eat, sleep, and do other responsible adult-type stuff. I thirsted for more like Edward thirsted for Bella's blood.

I dated a young lady that had a keychain with a picture of Edward Cullen on it that read, "I [heart] boys who sparkle," It always made me a little bit jealous (not really jealous, like she was going to run off and have a secret affair with a vampire in the Pacific Northwest or something, but just sort of like, "Oh, that sucks because I don't usually sparkle,"), but when I read the book, I suddenly understood everything. I heart boys who sparkle, too! Er... umm... I mean, I heart girls who sparkle... yeah. Alice is totally hot.

Obligatory News-Related Blog

So, I know it's been a while since I have posted any blogs that were at all related to anything other than my personal life, opinions, and sense of humor, so I need to get in a blog to remind everyone how well-informed I am and how much I treasure my citizen-of-the-world status. But it's really tough, because my news ticker is still out of order, so I don't have my link to the wide world of news. I mean, I wouldn't be caught dead reading a newspaper and I think I would actually rather die than sit down with my roommate for a little bit of quality CNN time together (I couldn't watch news on my own because he always has it on, anyway, plus I've successfully managed to go about the last six months or so without turning a television on, and I don't want to break that streak now, since I'm pretty proud of it). He mostly watches the Judge Hatchett show on BET these days anyway.

However, here's something that I have picked up recently in my Cable News gleanings: Michelle Obama's fashion. Even before the election, the news was all about what she (and other female political figures) were going to wear to such-and-such debate or this-and-that cocktail party. Now, President Obama is on his way to Europe or something like that and the most creative thing that the media can think to cover about the whole story is what the first lady is going to wear. What a crock of elephant... well, nevermind. Now, don't get me wrong: as a founding member of the North American Theocratic/Apathetic (NATA) party, I don't particularly care for President Obama (or any non-deity politicians, for that matter), but I really think that the American people probably care about something other than first lady attire. We ought to be caring about things like, you know, making sure that the EU doesn't get fed up with our crap and decide to nuke us to United Kingdom come... not that they would, but I have to admit that if I were a European leader, I would be pretty insulted that the best thing that we could cover of the diplomatic meeting was Mrs. Obama's dress... not to mention all of the other reasons that the rest of the world has for hating us. And those Europeans can only take so much American BS before they pop off. You know what I'm saying?


P.S. I want to apologize for any falsities that I may have presented regarding the diplomatic situations discussed in this blog. I assure you that they are not intentional, but rather are a direct result of the fact that I did absolutely no research or fact checking in preparation for writing this. I simply don't care (this is where the Apathetic part of NATA comes into play). Thanks for understanding.

Abroad... maybe two

I've lived in Southern Indiana all of my life. I was born in Deaconness Hospital in Evansville and I've pretty much always lived in the Evansville area. Being an energetic and restless teenager, you can imagine my excitement when I finally decided -- after much and difficult deliberation -- that I would be attending the University of Southern Indiana. Whooo freakin' hooo.

It was a big move, packing up all of my stuff in the car and driving the eight-mile trek from home to the university. Needless to say, Mum and Pop were pretty hesitant to leave me away at college and drive back to their empty nest. Actually, now that I'm thinking about it, they didn't even come help me move in, probably because they knew it would be an emotional parting.

If you haven't picked up the sarcasm by now, you're probably dead, so you can go ahead and stop reading now. If you're still with me, shoot a quick glance at the pretty pictures (which, by the way, were taken from another website... probably illegally) and then keep reading to find out where they came from.

I think it's about time to get out of Southern Indiana for a while, see the world, you know... do all of that stuff young people are supposed to do.

So I'm working on going to Australia. I'm thinking this is going to be a study abroad trip to the University of Wollongong (think about how sweet those t-shirts are going to be!) during the spring of next year, which means that a year from today, I will be learning to surf in the South Pacific Ocean.

The Australian semester doesn't start until February, so let me tell you my plan that will surely be struck down once my mother gets wind of it. I'm going to sell my car (I won't be using it much) and leave the day after Christmas to head down there. I'll spend New Year's Eve watching fireworks on the Brisbane River with some beautiful Australian girl that I plan on meeting at the airport. Sometime New Year's Day, I'll find Crocodile Dundee, preferably still drunk from the night prior, and buy a motorcycle from him for cheap. Depending on how the evening went, I may take my beautiful Australian girl with me when I ride the motorcycle in a general southwesterly direction. At this point the sun will be setting, and, if shot from the right direction with the right lens, this will make a great photograph, which I will plan on uploading to this blog as soon as I find an internet connection, which may not be for a while.

I'll drive my motorcycle through the night into Outback, take out an order of two Bloomin' Onions, and then keep driving until I get to the Outback. When I get tired, I will lay down a few feet from the road and fall asleep covered in Off bug spray and looking up at the stars. The constellations and the moon will all look different and I'll fall asleep and dream of my toilet back home, which flushes counter-clockwise instead of clockwise.

By the time I get to where I'm going (the Aboriginal village), the sun will most likely be setting on the next day. I'll take my shirt off to show off the traditional body paint that my new Aborigine friends will give me. We will sit around the fire exchanging stories and smoking something hallucinogenic until we all fall over laughing except for the one guy screaming about green dragons in the corner. Of this part of my journey, there will be no pictures, partly because Aborigines don't like it when you take pictures of them, and partly because I don't want any future employers to see me doing drugs.

I'll spend the next month doing much the same thing, but I won't go into details because I actually want people to read my blogs for once rather than looking at them longingly before deciding on something better to do. Eventually, I'll end up studying Psychology at Wollongong, where I will spend a lot of time hiking, surfing, swimming, and introducing the sport of free running to the good people of the Gong. Can't wait.

Reflections

Although the title of this blog sounds like it could be Evansville's next phone dating service, this piece is, in fact a short collection of reflections on the past however-many-months-it-has-been-since-September. If you play your cards right, you might even convince me to push my reflections back all the way to August.

Ok you've got me convinced. I guess the story really begins way back in May of last year. Well, while we're being honest about things, the story really begins in January of 1990 (you might even be able to say that it started nine months before that, or six years before that, when my parents were married, or in 1977 when they met, but we won't push it all the way back to '62 when they were born because that would be just too much), but the only part that matters for this assignment started in May.

By May, I had decided after a long and difficult decision-making process that USI was the college for me. That process nearly ended up at Indiana Wesleyan University instead of here (I actually had already been offered and accepted an on-campus job there when I made my decision), but it's too long of a story to tell without having to publish an abstract or summary to go with this blog.

The summer went by slowly, with the biggest highlight being the... interesting... three weeks that I spent in Michigan volunteering my toilet-cleaning skills at a Young Life camp. Then came a bunch of sitting around the house, and finally it was time to move in. I don't think that it is an understatement to say that Welcome Week was the shizzle-fizzle-bang-bang. It was everything good about college life jammed into one week, and the whole thing was completely homework free. In case you were wondering, I don't count intoxicated partying among the good things about college, so don't jump to any conclusions about me. I don't do that stuff.

Eventually, though, my romantic affair with welcome week came to a halt and my old mistress, mundanity, caught up with me. School had started and I found that it was a lot like high school, except I had more free time and the intensity of the weird people I met and the weird stuff that happened to me was cranked way, way up. I guess when some people go off to college, they feel like they no longer have to keep the fact that they are complete psychopaths under wraps, like they are just suddenly allowed to be as screwed up, lazy, suicidal, stupid, or crazy as they wanted to be in the interest of "self-expression." Now, I'm all for self-expression, but there are times when you just need to sort of try to be human for a while, you know?

I kicked off the year the right way by inadvertently getting involved in two relationships (one was platonic, the other was what some would call romantic), which turned out to be two of the biggest mistakes of my life. Coincidentally, both of those people's names started with the letter "J," and I hope they don't read this because I think they would immediately know who they are and would probably not be too happy with me. To my friends whose names start with "J:" it's nothing against you personally; it's just that you weren't right for me. At all.

Anyway, the rest of the year was pretty straightforward. I spent some time vacillating between having no idea what I wanted to do with my life and knowing that I didn't want to stay in Comm. Studies, before finally deciding, quite happily, on Psychology for a major. I pretty much did all of the typical college stuff (no... not that college stuff): got up, went to class, did homework, hung out with friends, made midnight trips to Wal-Mart, cooked out, hung out of windows, et cetera. That college stuff. I had a fleeting Storgic romance that ended as peacefully as it had begun (thankfully, not one of the biggest mistakes of my life), and from that made a great friend.

I took Geology lab at 9:00 am and a bunch of classes in the major that I don't want to be in (Comm. Studies), which collectively make me want to hurt cute animals or chop up pillows with a knife or something, but this semester only sucks two days a week, so I'm holding in there.

All in all, pretty good year. Lived. Learned. Laughed. Loved (platonically, of course). College.

Shoot... I think this is going to need an abstract...

Epitaph for a ticker (Welcome to my stream of consciousness)

Sometimes I wonder if it is cheating to use papers that I have written for other classes as blog posts for HONS. I can just about self-justify it by telling myself how interesting the papers were for me to write, imagining how relevant the subject matter may be to an HONS class setting, and, of course, reminding myself of the excellent marks that I received the first time I turned the papers in for credit. However, based on the last 1500-word essay that I posted (from CMST 107, for which I received an A+), I have come to the conclusion that nobody wants to read my extra-long prefabricated posts... or at least I know that I wouldn't.

As I think about it more, I also seem to recall something about how at least one of our blog posts each week is supposed to be about a current news event. This has become a lot more difficult since my news ticker (may God rest its soul) has apparently stopped ticking news, and, being the heartless utilitarian that I am, I promptly and unceremoniously tossed the thing into my virtual recycle bin, my own little digital Island of Misfit Toys. I dug it up just to check to see if it was working again (it was under the electronic jigsaw puzzle with the missing piece and my double-amputee Habbo avatar) and the last story that is posted to it is from February 21, annoyingly still telling me that The Love Guru won some awards for sucking at the Razzis; it is a story that I didn't care about the first several times that I saw it.

It must be some dark side of the economic crash: the guy who was in charge of ticking my ticker was either downsized or killed in a mugging. I'm going to miss that guy... or possibly that lady. He or she was a wonderful man or woman, full of vivacious energy, well-versed in computer sciences, and able to type large words without looking down at the keyboard. He or she always made me laugh with his or her comical headlines, and was constantly pulling practical jokes on me (generally it was disguising sports news which I care nothing about under a headline that appeared to be much more interesting than it really was).

I can't stop myself from thinking, "What if?" What if there had been no mugger to steal his or her wallet and accidentally pull the trigger on the revolver in an escape to get away from the scene of the crime, inadvertently hitting he or she in the lower femoral artery with a nine millimeter bullet? What if the mugger had not lost his silicon valley job and retirement to the plummeting economy? What if the mugger's house had not been foreclosed on because he had insisted on buying beyond his means to try to provide what he thought was a good life for his family? What if the tall woman at the bank had not approved the loan to the mugger that allowed him to buy that new Lexus but eventually led to his downfall? What if the banker had not drank so much coffee that morning? What if the legislation prohibiting risky loans had not been repealed? What then?

Maybe then my ticker technician would still be with us today and I wouldn't have to keep reading about the gosh-darn Razzies until kingdom come. Think about it.

Gone But Not Forgotten (or Here But Not Remembered)

In one of Plato’s dialogues, Meno, Plato presents his view of the origin of human knowledge. He believes that all knowledge is contained within each eternal soul, and knowledge comes simply by recalling the knowledge that is already there. This is a view that was held by many philosophers after Plato, all the way down to Descartes , Liebnez, and even more recent thinkers. I seek to argue that this theory, which is referred to as the recollection theory of knowledge is not reasonable or true and that the common arguments and examples used as evidence of a priori (“that which is prior to the first”) knowledge are not valid. Then, I will present an alternate theory of knowledge to fill the void left by the recollection theory.

Plato believed and taught that knowledge is not something new to be discovered, nor is it something which must be taught. Rather, knowledge is something that resides already within us and needs only to be discovered and remembered in order for that which is traditionally called “learning” to take place. The first example (to my knowledge) that was used as a proof for the recollection theory of knowledge was provided in Plato’s dialogue Meno, in which Socrates coaxes an uneducated slave boy into knowledge of geometry, using only a series of questions to elicit the knowledge that he already knows. The argument that stems from Socrates’ demonstration with Meno’s slave is as follows:
1.) The boy does not know how to double the area of the square before starting,
2.) He is not explicitly taught any new knowledge about the process of doubling the area of a square.
3.) He successfully finds out how to double the area of the square.
4.) Therefore, he must have an innate knowledge of geometry.

However, a closer inspection of Socrates’ method of “eliciting recollection” in the boy reveals that one of his steps of teaching arguably violates the rule prohibiting explicit teaching. At one point, after the boy fails a few times, Socrates draws three more squares that are identical to the first square to make a square that is quadruple the area of the original, then proceeds to connect the mid-points of each side of the large square, bisecting each of the four smaller squares to make one square that is half of the area of the four combined squares, or double the area of the original square (Plato 85b). This is an idea that the boy was not likely to have come to on his own; neither would he have sprung upon this idea as a result of any series of non-explicit questions. Socrates’ teaching strategy here was about as explicit as it possibly could have been (he literally took the stick into his own hand and showed the boy how to do it). It is at this point that the original argument for innate knowledge falls apart. In the enumerated argument above, this violates premise two, that the boy is taught nothing explicitly, and the argument is no longer sound. This slave boy did not know this geometric truth (essentially the Pythagorean Theorem) until he was shown explicitly and experientially one of its uses.

It is doubtful that even Pythagoras himself came up with this theory without first finding some sort of empirical data upon which to base it. To say that modern science, mathematics, and basic truth have existed in the human mind since the beginning of humanity, and have been lying around docile just waiting for someone to ask the right questions to discover them is foolish. The science of genetics, could not have been founded on anything other than Mendel’s experiment; otherwise it would have been speculation rather than science. Likewise, Darwin’s theory of evolution did not come from innate knowledge awakened by the question, “Where did we come from?” but rather from his observations and careful studies of real organisms on an island. The anticipatory thought that preceded these sciences could be said to be the result of experientially inspired questions and critical thought based in reason. Even ancient mathematical truths, which Plato would attribute to the truth and universality of his forms, are made true rather by the fact that they are backed up by empirical fact (5+7=12 not because we know the form, but because we have seen that five apples added to seven apples makes twelve apples). That which we know is based on what we have learned to be true through experience or empirical data.

One other problem that I find with Plato’s argument is that he assumes that innate knowledge is the only explanation that can be given for the boy’s ability to double the area of the square. A more reasonable and simple alternative would be that the boy was able to demonstrate proficiency in geometry because of his human ability to reason and figure things out for his own. By Occam’s razor, the more reasonable conclusion is that he did not have to appeal to some innate knowledge in some dark corner of his soul; he only had to appeal to the human powers of deduction and induction, using what he could see with his eyes, definitions (which he knows from being explicitly taught language), and a perceptive assessment of the direction that Socrates’ questions were pointing to come into his own correct understanding of the driving geometric truths (forms, if you will) behind the problem.

Knowledge is a product of experience. Every single aspect of what is recognized as truth holds, as its origin, some experiential basis. Even if we were to believe that human knowledge was inherent in the soul, what would be to keep that knowledge from being inherently false? How are we to know that the knowledge in our soul is anywhere close to true? Reason tells us that there is no way of knowing that, so we must rely on our experience and our senses to be our source of truth.

Now, it would be quite easy for an opponent to ask the question, “How do we know that our senses can be trusted as a source of truth?” The question raises a good point; anyone who has ever seen an optical illusion or magic show can tell you that our senses often cannot be trusted, and they can quite easily be manipulated and tricked. This certainly makes it difficult to say that sensory experience is a source of absolute truth. To this I have no reply. There is indeed no way of knowing when our senses tell us the truth and when they lie. We assume things like “The sky is blue,” because that is what our senses tell us, but what if we have been tricked since our birth into believing that the sky is blue, when it is really some shade of burgundy, or what if one person’s perception of blue differs from another’s, and it just so happens that we call the same object “blue” while seeing entirely different hues? We cannot know.

So now the question becomes, “What can we trust?” We clearly cannot trust our senses as a source of knowledge, and we cannot, of course trust the “innate knowledge,” unless we know first that it exists (which is not provable), and where it came from (which is not findable). This is a dilemma that would certainly seem to throw a wrench in the cogs of our search for the source of knowledge. At this point, we could return to Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am,” statement and simply settle to leave the extent of our knowledge to be that of existence and nothing more, which is not exactly a happy day for epistemology. Rather, I would like to present an idea that is perhaps not quite so intellectually satisfying as one may wish, but will [I hope] at least provide us with a practical compromise as to the knowledge that we can trust.

We know that, regardless of whether or not we hold innate knowledge (right or wrong), the only way in which any new information enters our body is through the senses (Locke’s “Doors of Perception”) and sometimes through the creative churnings of the mind. News of any action which we do or which affects us enters the body through the senses. The only truth that matters then is truth that, when applied to the world, remains true as far as the senses can tell. This is, of course, an idea which is based entirely on utility. If it is true to the senses and it is practical in the world, and if the utilization of a piece of knowledge returns sensory information that is consistent with whatever hypothesis may stem from that knowledge, then the knowledge is true as far as man is concerned or can be concerned.

As an example, I would return once again to Pythagoras. Suppose that Pythagoras wants to build a bridge out of a single piece of felled timber to span the width of a river. Pythagoras finds a large tree, measures the distance from the base of the tree to the spot at which he is standing, measures the angle at which he must look up to see the top of the tree, and uses his mathematics to calculate that the tree is, in fact, tall enough to span the gap. He has some workers cut it down and lay it across the stream. If he then measures the tree, his calculations were correct, and he sees that the tree is tall enough to span the gap, then the knowledge that he used as a calculator must be practically true.

We can know what our senses are telling us. We may not know whether they are telling us the truth or not, but as long as they continue to tell us what is consistent with the knowledge that we use, it makes no difference. Truth is that which unifies our senses and our reason, allowing us to perceive what we think we should perceive. Beyond that, we cannot know for certain what is true and what is not true.

Back2Grind

Hey everybody! Welcome back to school. I hope you all enjoyed your spring break, but I'm sure it was tough on you being away from your studies. The good news is that we're all back and we can get back to learning. You know that your education is one of the most important things that you can get in your life. Just know that you had better enjoy yourselves for the next eight weeks, because after that, we have to take a break from our learning for a few months. Enjoy it while you can! Welcome back to the grind!

A beautiful spring day

I don't think it needs to be stated that today is, in fact, the advent of our spring break. While I don't have any grande or illustrious plans for break, the wonder and beauty of the event of spring is certainly not lost on me. Spring is my favorite season of the year. I used to be quite fond of winter, but then I came to college and had to walk several miles through the cold each day, and that particular season quickly lost its appeal. Spring, on the other hand is the perfect season. The world gradually shakes off the cold that has covered the last few months, bringing us into the perfect temperature and weather. Everything begins to grow again (including the window garden that I planted in honor of the season), and people with Seasonal Affective Disorder finally stop complaining all the time.

Everyone enjoy your spring break, have fun, and don't do anything that will likely result in your death. Peace!

PEDe-stress

I don't think we ever really appreciate how good we really have it here at USI. We've got the lowest tuition in the state, the nicest residences in the history of college, great programs, new buildings, state-of-the-art technologies, and of course a metric buttload of awesome PE classes to take. Last semester I took a rock-climbing course, getting college credit for a sport that I love, while getting a lot of good practice and coaching, exercise, and a semester's worth of essentially free membership to the climbing gym. That's a sweet deal.

This semester, I enrolled in yoga, even though I already have all of the PE credits that I need. I did it partially as a joke, and partially because I think it is cool, but mostly because it is a lot of fun. I can honestly say that yoga class is one of my favorites. It gives me a chance to get in exercise (which I rarely do on my own) and gives me a shot at de-stressing when the weeks get long and I get fed up with some of my classes. As an added bonus, I get to learn yoga, which is great for providing entertainment at parties. Usually after class, I grab the first couple of people that I see and show them all of the wacky stuff that we did in class. One of my most commonly heard phrases is, "Guess what we did in yoga today!"

I guess the moral of the story is just that sometimes we need to kick back and take some fun classes or do some exercise or just enjoy the time that you have. Kick back and relax or get some exercise, or just do anything but schoolwork all the time. Your brain will thank you, and your schoolwork may even improve a little bit if you relax a little bit.

Namaste.

Lost in Transl8shun

It is no secret that over the last few decades, the world of communications has been revolutionized by the advent of several new and innovative technologies (which I will herein collectively refer to as “NewComm”). Those technologies – most notably cellular phones, e-mail, text messaging, and social networking websites – have turned the communications arena into a fast-paced, nonstop, instant access, and sleepless world. Businesses have restructured to accommodate the new technologies, and individuals have allowed their entire lifestyles to change. These technologies have allowed us to successfully and boldly go where communication could not go before, but that luxury comes with a price. Because of our growing dependence on electronic communication, people are losing their ability to communicate effectively and traditional communication skills are fading away. Although NewComm tools provide us with an easy, fun, and versatile way to communicate, there are also several serious drawbacks to their use, and we need to be exceedingly careful in how we use them.

It’s easy to see why NewComm technologies have become so popular. We live in a culture that is obsessed with speed – getting as much stuff done in one day as possible. NewComms provide us with a quick way to communicate. E-mails and text messaging allow us to quickly and reliably send messages to anyone anywhere. Facebook, Myspace, and other social networking websites put all of our friends in one place at our fingertips, and contacting them is just a few clicks away. NewComms give us an efficient and cost-effective way to speechify at each other at any time that we please.

Another strength of NewComms is that they are extremely versatile. As communications technology advances, people are finding it increasingly easier to engage in communications in times and situations that they would have previously found it at least difficult, if not impossible to communicate in (Snowden 113). For instance, many students are finding that it’s quite easy to use text messaging services in class, to continue or initiate conversations that are normally not permitted in a classroom setting. I can’t even count the number of times that I have seen students checking their e-mails or facebooks during class trips to the computer lab. Traditional communication etiquette states that it is poor manners to call someone on telephone after a certain hour of the night, for fear of waking up the whole family, but thanks to cell phones, it’s now perfectly acceptable to make a call at any hour of the night and get a hold of exactly the individual that you are trying to contact, without having to talk to an angry mother.

Some technologies (namely e-mails and text messages) provide the added bonus of being able to keep the messages that are sent to you in an electronically stored format. This allows you to refer back to messages at a later time (like having a built-in stenographer) or to keep particularly sappy or meaningful messages as keepsakes (Snowden 113).

With these and many other apparent “pros,” it’s easy to see why so many people are so enamored with NewComm technologies. Unfortunately, many people allow their enjoyment of these technologies, particularly text messaging and online social networking, to turn into a full-blown addiction that borders on a diagnosable condition (Snowden 113). I personally know many people who spend hours each day sending and receiving text messages (as many as a few thousand per day) or browsing through facebook or Myspace. I have talked to people who literally believe that they are incapable of living without a cell phone, and the number of people who are willing to interrupt a face to face conversation with a phone call or text message is quickly becoming a rude majority.

Along with addiction to communications technology, heavy users face many other problems that result from their NewComm dependence. Classical communications skills are deteriorating as formal modes of communication lose popularity and less emphasis is culturally placed on the importance of clarity, spelling, and grammar. People are becoming more and more dependent and used to using the crippled and simplified language that is commonly used in text messaging and e-mails (txt), making it impossible to pick up on nonverbal messages and linguistic subtleties that exist in real, face-to-face communication. Using simplified text forms of communication, we are unable to perceive the impact and emotions that come with the message, and are therefore incapable of really getting to know the people we are interacting with. (Hanson 92).

Each developed language in the world has four basic skills that are required for truly effective communication: listening, speaking, reading, and writing (Vethanayagam). When we use digital text communication, both listening and speaking are out of the picture, and unless we take very great care when composing and interpreting the messages being sent, reading and writing can take a big hit as well. So, without speaking or listening, or even functional versions of reading and writing, what sort of language are we left with? We are left with a broken language that has shed much of the meaning and emotion that is apparent in traditional communication. Digital text messages (in e-mail or text message form) provide for us an easy way to give ourselves the illusion of having communicated well, when in reality all we are doing is confusing the messages and frustrating the communicators (Duffy). Snowden speaks of the language of text messaging as a language that “… requires the disruption and manipulation of conventions of grammar and syntax” (Snowden 114).

In addition to replacing the traditional rules of spelling and grammar with a short-handed chicken-scratch sort of pop culture language, our text-message culture is losing touch with the true meanings of many of its words and phrases, and likewise replacing them with condensed or butchered versions. It is this sort of language that John Powers refers to as “lazy English,” the use of euphemisms, idioms, and words even when we don’t know their true meaning (A Loss for Words). For instance, the common phrase, “The proof is in the pudding,” is a botched, nonsensical variation of the proverb, “The proof of the pudding is in the eating” (A Loss for Words). Our culture is losing touch with its communication values. Admittedly, one would be hard pressed to draw the line connecting text messaging to the deterioration of English proverbs, but the fact remains that our language as a whole is slowly falling into a state where definition is giving way to efficiency; our entire language is becoming a shorthand shadow of itself.

Some consider the dialect that is spoken in text messages (a language called “txting”) to pose a direct threat to the educational futures of students, citing examples in which schoolchildren have turned in entire essays written in txt shorthand (Carrington 170). In response to the question, “What did you do over summer break?” the following essay was turned in by a thirteen-year-old female student in Scotland:
“My smmr hols wr CWOT. B4, we used 2go2 NY 2C my bro, his GF & thr 3 :- kids FTF. ILNY, it’s a gr8 plc.”

She was trying to say, “My summer holidays were a complete waste of time. Before, we used to go to New York to see my brother, his girlfriend, and their three screaming kids face-to-face. I love New York, it’s a great place” (Carrington 161). It’s easy to see why teachers would consider this language to be a threat to the education of their students. For starters, unless you are knee-deep in the muck of popular culture, that sort of essay is going to look like a bunch of garbled letters, or at least like some sort of code. It would be completely illegible to a teacher that is used to traditional English writing, which makes it quite difficult to grade, especially if there is a grade for grammar and mechanics. Some have linked the language of txting to a “literary crisis” in individuals and educational institutions (Carrington 171).

The question now becomes, “What can we do?” Obviously, no one wants a “literacy crisis” on their hands, and most reasonable people would agree that it’s generally not a good thing when the language you are using falls apart under your feet. If that were to happen, we would all have to learn to speak German or something, and I personally don’t think I have the salivary glands to handle that. However, the solution is not so simple as getting rid of NewComm technologies, and going back to the “good old days.” NewComms have already been woven too deeply into the fabric of our culture to simply throw them out. But, we must be exceedingly careful in our usage of them. We must monitor ourselves in our communication, to make sure that we communicate with integrity. We must make sure that the messages we send can be well understood by the people that we are sending them to. We must keep a sharp eye on how we use NewComm technologies like social networking sites and chat rooms, and be aware of the dangers associated with them (Carrington 170).

In the end, it’s not enough to whine and complain about the adverse effects that modern communications technologies are having on our society, and it’s not possible to throw them out. As they are now, these technologies are partially responsible for a deterioration in the language that we use, but we as users are just as responsible. We need to be conscious and aware of how we use NewComms in our lives, and make sure that we don’t allow modern computer-mediated technology to take over the good old fashioned kind. Our language is in trouble, and only you can do something to save it.


Works Cited
Carrington, Victoria. "Txting: the end of civilization (again)?" Cambridge Journal of Education 35 (2005): 161-75. Communication and Mass Media Complete. EBSCO Host. David L. Rice Library, Evansville, IN. 27 Feb. 2009 .*
Duffy, Michael. "Why your lazy e-mail habit is bad for business." Advertising Age 26 Nov. 2007: 24-24. Communication and Mass Media Complete. EBSCO Host. David L. Rice Library, Evansville, IN. 27 Feb. 2009 .
Hanson, Jarice. 24/7 How Cell Phones and the Internet Change the Way We Live, Work, and Play. New York: Praeger, 2007. 92.
Powers, John. "A Loss for Words - The Boston Globe." Boston.com. 8 Feb. 2004. The Boston Globe. 27 Feb. 2009 .
Snowden, Collette. "Cstng A pwfr4l spLL: D evOLshn f SMS (Casting a Powerful Spell: The Evolution of SMS)." The Cell Phone Reader: Essays in Social Transformation. Vol. 34. New York: Peter Lang, 2006. 113-15.
Vethanayagam, S. Anand Lenin. "Internet Usage and Its Effect on Reading Skill among the College Students - A Case Study of Coimbatore Region." Language in India 8 (2008): 1-1. Communication and Mass Media Complete. EBSCO Host. David L. Rice Library, Evansville, IN. 27 Feb. 2009 .*

Walking on Sunshine

With Spring just around the corner, it's time to start looking forward to the warmth and sunshine that comes with it. It's also the perfect time to start thinking about solar energy (assuming you're a big nerd with nothing better to do with the lovely weather). The sun has been producing thousands of bagillavolts of energy for anywhere from a few thousand to a few billion years ago (depending on religious preference), and it is easily the largest source of energy in our solar system. The energy that it produces releases no harmful byproducts into Earth's atmosphere, and according to astrologists, the Sun will expand until it engulfs our planet in a fiery belch long before it will run out of energy, so it's easy to see why harnessing solar energy for our own ends is a good decision.

Solar energy can be used for all sorts of things: heating water and homes, cooking, providing energy for all kinds of electrical devices, powering homes and businesses, and, of course, tanning. In order to heat homes, swimming pools, buildings, water, and other things, a process is used called "Solar Thermal Heating," which can be either passive (in which no mechanical equipment is needed, like a greenhouse) or active (which requires a solar energy collector and some circulatory device). Some power plants even use a form of active solar thermal heating to create steam to run a generator, rather than using coal to run the plant.

Perhaps the simplest use of solar power is found in the solar grill. A solar grill is a simple parabolic reflector that focuses solar energy at a central point, where enough energy comes together to make it possible to cook food like you would on a regular grill. These are quite easy to make and very cool to use.

Solar energy can also be harnessed as electrical energy using photovoltaic cells. Depending on the size and number of cells used, this technology can power anything from a handheld calculator or watch to an entire house, office, or even a power plant.

The great thing about solar power is that it is 100% clean and very abundant. Unfortunately, solar power is not a panacea power source; its main downfalls are clouds and the cost of the equipment necessary to harness it. But all in all, the use of solar energy as a source of green energy is a pretty viable alternative to fossil fuels and traditional power sources.

Grad School

If memory serves correctly, we're all poised to talk about graduate school this morning in seminar. And it's about time, too. I was starting to get a little freaked out not knowing what I'm going to be doing four years from now. I talked my old psychology professor just a few days ago about this very subject (since I'm majoring in psychology)just to see what he had to say. In the field of psychology, like the field of medicine, it is extremely important to go to grad school if you would like to be employed someday. Now, money isn't everything to me, but I would like to be employed somewhere someday. Having a job is good.

Anyway, I'm looking at pursuing a PhD in psychology and eventually going into clinical psychology to treat patients with all types of psychological disorders with therapy. Apparently, if I do that, I won't be able to prescribe medicine, so please nobody ask me to prescribe weed or tabs to you because I won't be able to do it. That's about all I know for now. If you're nice, I might provide an update after class today when we learn some more stuff about big kid school.

Joaquin

For those of you who didn't see Joaquin Phoenix's appearance on the Late Show the other day, I highly recommend that you check it out. No one really seems to be for sure what happened, and although I'm not generally into following the lives of celebrities, I think it was absolutely priceless what he did. It must have been some fantastic acting or some fantastic PR campaign or possibly some fantastic mushrooms. Who knows? I love the way David Letterman handles the situation. He gives him the "I'm sorry you couldn't be here tonight," line that just about made me pee in my pants. Whatever the case, Joaquin, I support you in your rap career and I hope that you don't regret what you did on the Late Show when you come down off of whatever that was in a few days.

Vamlumtime

Oh, the Valentine's season! It's a wonderful time when love is in the air and goodwill is felt by all men... except for those who fail to get their special someones Valentine's gifts.

True life story: after I woke up at 3:30 in the afternoon on Valentine's day, I set out on a quest to find daisies for my special someone. I didn't have a whole lot of places to choose from since I was out of town, but I did the reasonable thing and started my quest by hitting up the local Wal-mart. No dice. They had some daisies there, but they looked pretty shoddy and were all smooshed together like floral sardines. So I went up the street to Aldi, which apparently is a great place to find flowers. There, next to the checkout line, I found dozens of bouquets of assorted flowers; each arrangement was marked down to $1.99. Heck yes. I found myself internally laughing at all of the lame boyfriends who were getting their last-minute, cheap-skate, convenience store flowers for their ladies, but then I realized that I was, in fact, doing exactly that.

I took my prize petals and headed on my merry way, stopping at the Taco Bell with the sign that read, "Fine Dine with your Valentine," because nothing says romance like a burrito supreme. After grabbing a bite to eat and a plastic cup to serve as a vase, I went back to a friend's house to arrange my buds. I grabbed the fake roses that I had bought a few days earlier - the cheesiest I could find - with the words, "I love you," embossed on the petals, and set out to arranging them into a single bouquet: trimming, tying, and loving my little flowers to death, being careful to preserve the $4.99 price tag from my fake roses.

It turned out to be quite a nice little bouquet, with a price tag of under ten dollars. And you know what? She loved it. Because what people care about is not what you have the means or initiative to buy them, but the fact that you know what they like and you take the time to deliver it to them in a personal way. Happy Valentine's day... one day late.

Fire!

So the other day, I was pondering the economic crisis, and I was reminded of an interesting question that has been cooking in the back of my mind since sometime last year. What state would our economy be in right now if a year ago, no one would have come on the television freaking out about an economic downturn like it was the end of the world? Now, I'm not trying to say that there was no economic crisis before this happened; I understand that the threat was very real. There was a very legitimate cause for concern in the mortgage crises all over the country and the questionable lending practices that have been going on for the last ten or twenty years. However, I really think that the worst possible thing that we could have done about it was leak that little tidbit to the press, however dishonest that may have been. Once the first hint that we had a crisis on our hands hit the airwaves, people began to do what people do best: panic and act like dumb animals, on a huge scale.

Now we have sunk into an economic rut that pulls us down farther every time we try to get ourselves. Every time the market begins to rebound, we get some quarterly report from some company that no one buys anything from anyway that might be a little down and everyone screams and howls about how the market is going down the toilet. It's disgusting.

Here's something that my dad told me that I'll never forget: "The only recession that matters is when you lose your job." Until that happens, we need to ignore all of the numbers and figures that come across the newsdesk and keep supporting the economy with the buying power that we still have.

And to the thousands who have recently found themselves unemployed, you have my deepest sympathies. Feel free to scream and howl about the economy all you want, but know that at the end of the day, all the screaming and howling in the world isn't going to get your job back. The way to save this economy lies not in news reports, government bailouts, or tax cuts. We need to change the way that we live our lives at a universally personal level. We need to change our spending habits, learn how to balance our finances, learn to live within our means, and get away from this "Me Generation" attitude.

Advocacy Essay

A Memorandum

Dear Mr. President,

As you already know, the current status of the economy of our beloved motherland is quite desperate. I’m sure that in your short tenure as president and the days leading up to your inauguration, all sorts of ideas for repairing the economy have flown across your desk, and I have faith that you are taking every necessary measure to salvage our scuttled economy, but I ask that you allow me to present one more idea that I believe will be go down as one of the strongest actions taken to revive the economy and keep our country marching into the future: reinstate the Civilian Conservation Corps, and other organizations like it. Before we look at what the CCC could do for our economy today, let’s look at the history of the organization.

In the year 1933, the United States was in the middle of the greatest domestic threat it had ever faced: the Great Depression. Banks were dropping like flies, millions were unemployed, the stock market had crashed and wasn’t recovering, America was desperate, and a new president had just been elected with high hopes that he could rescue the nation. Sound familiar? President Franklin Delano Roosevelt acted swiftly to put a new idea into action: the Civilian Conservation Corps. As Roosevelt looked at the country that he had been handed, he saw the millions of young men who were unemployed and looking for work, and the millions of acres of United States soil that needed conservation or development as two great wasted resources. In the CCC, Roosevelt found a way to put both resources to work for their country. He enlisted thousands of young men to join up, organized them into work camps, and put them to work on projects that our country is still reaping the benefits of over seventy years later. The CCC planted trees, built roads, hung power lines, constructed fire towers, and worked to conserve the environment. Each man was paid good wages, and given money to send home, which helped not only the workers and their families, but also the local economies. The workers were taught marketable skills and work ethic, as well as educated in the camps during non-work hours. America saw an entire generation of people that were pulled up from despair by the programs and work of the CCC.

Now let’s look at today. Just like the thirties, our economy is in a bad way. I think you’re probably pretty familiar with the economic similarities of our two times. Also like the Depression era, we are facing the wasting of two great resources: our young people and our environment. I humbly suggest taking a page out of Roosevelt’s book and starting a program similar to Roosevelt’s CCC. The benefits of such a program could be as good as or better than the results that Roosevelt saw during his presidency. It would give young men and women a solid employment opportunity, teach them valuable life skills, utilize our great resources, and get some work done that will profit our country for years to come.

It’s no secret that our country’s unemployment rate is high and rising. The most immediate effect of reinstating the CCC would be immediate employment of young men and women in our country. Nothing could be better for our economy than employing people, and giving them a living wage to reinvest in the economy. The original CCC workers were paid $30 a month, with $25 going back home to their families, jump-starting the economies at home and in the camps, and giving the workers the means to make a way in the world. Quite obviously, the wages would need to be readjusted in a reinstated CCC, since $30 isn’t exactly a living wage these days. I understand that paying wages would be pretty expensive, but I suggest that direct employment would be a superior alternative to billions of dollars worth of company bailouts. With a direct employment program, we find a synthesis of the “give a man a fish,” and the “teach a man to fish” philosophies. This style of program would not only give the workers involved and their families the immediate means to squeak by for another day, but also give them the life skills and job experience required to prosper for an entire lifetime.

One of the most important qualities of the original CCC was that it took a large brood of city-slickers and taught them the work ethic and labor skills that they needed to continue to be productive members of society long after their tenures with the CCC had expired. This gave our country an entire generation of hardworking laborers to form the working-class, backbone of the American labor system. In addition to vocational training, the CCC also provided after-work education to the laborers. In this day and age, a good education is all but required to get most jobs, and unfortunately, many of our young people don’t have the educational opportunities that they need. A revived CCC would offer them not only the vocational training required to do their immediate jobs, but also the education needed to succeed in life and put the United States back on the production track to keep its seat as the world’s leading industrial nation.

Finally, the work of the CCC could be extremely beneficial to our country. If administrated correctly and creatively, the whole operation could easily pay for itself. It’s not inconceivable that it could even become a source of revenue for the United States (of course, the mission of the CCC would have to be retooled from being conservation-driven to profit-driven). A few possible projects for the New Conservation Corps: build offshore and onshore oil-mining operations, invest man-hours in alternative and green energy, restore our nation’s forests, reclaim lands ravaged by bad mining and farming operations, clear swamp land, irrigate fields, build and fix roadways, run power lines, bring disaster relief, and renovate areas of urban decay. Just as the original CCC had done, the New Conservation Corps, could complete projects that will remain and be remembered for years to come.

Reinstating the Civilian Conservation Corps would be one of the best measures that we could possibly take to revive our struggling economy. History shows that the CCC is a popular and effective program that benefits workers, families, and the economy. It is my less-than-expert recommendation that you make the New Conservation Corps one of your first initiatives as new president.

Works Cited

"Brief History." Civilian Conservation Corps Legacy Home Page. 02 Feb. 2009 .