The Singular Mind

Martin Luther King Jr. Day

Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day, as I’m sure most people know. While it’s seen by many as a day to honor the legacy of this great civil rights proponent, some feel otherwise. In a statement to the Dallas Morning News (as covered by United Press International), the Rev. Peter Johnson, who marched with MLK Jr. and now operates the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Texas, said that he feels the date to honor him should not be his birthday, but the day he was assassinated, and even more, says the fact that it is his birthday is an insult to his legacy. He said, “We have ignored the essence of his life and the horror of his death. We’ve allowed white AmericaAmerica to drift back into a coma.” to escape the guilt of his assassination and we've allowed black

This statement to me is offensive and seems to run counter to the very values MLK Jr. wanted to spread. “Allowed white America to escape the guilt of his assassination”? I apologize if this seems insensitive, but I will not feel guilty for an action taken by a small group of people just because I happen to share their skin color. In this statement, Johnson is guilty of the very thing MLK Jr. fought against: judging someone based on the color of their skin. Being born white, or any other color, should not carry some inherent guilt. In this one circumstance, for example, I was not born when MLK Jr. was alive or was assassinated; as far as I know, none of my ancestors or relatives had anything to do with it; there is no blatant racism within the past several generations of my family, which is all I know about in relation to their views on that subject. No matter what atrocities have been carried out by members of my race or in the name of “white supremacy,” I will not feel guilty because I was accidentally born white.

In the same manner, another article I recently read on the UK Times Online described a surge of anger from a large number of Oprah fans directed towards her for endorsing Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton. The article cites a comment made on her site by a “fan”: “[I] cannot believe that women all over this country are not up in arms over Oprah’s backing of Obama. For the first time in history we actually have a shot at putting a woman in the White House and Oprah backs the black MAN. She’s choosing her race over her gender.”

I’m sorry, but when did the race to decide our next president become about race OR gender? As far as I know, the idea was to decide who you thought could best lead the country, and then vote accordingly, not decide which historic first will occur, the first female president or the first black president. In all this discussion over those two possibilities, people tend to miss the point that the presidential race should be about the issues and the candidates’ stance on them, not their race or gender or looks or even really their personality, although that obviously plays into it.

Another issue brought up by the article is radical feminism, or maybe it would be better termed “anti-maleism.” One of the comments for the article said something like the woman who posted it thought that this country has been run by men long enough, and it was time for it to be led by a woman. Once again, this is an example of reverse-sexism. Just as I harbor no guilt over being born white, I will not feel guilty for being born male. Not all men are chauvinists, and not all men think that the country should be only “run” by males. Especially as Christians, I think we are called to look beyond race or gender for virtually everything like that (I will leave religious services and the like out of the discussion for now).

In conclusion, as a white male, I want to say that being white or male is not evil. Not only are both characteristics something I had no control over at all, but saying I am responsible for the actions of others just because I share their color or gender is tantamount to the same racism/sexism those who would say I am guilty by accident of birth accuse me of committing. I will not apologize for my genes, and I will not try to fix the actions of those of my race or gender who came before me for some kind of penance. What I am willing to do is to stand with other like-minded people and repair the damages cause by those actions, not because of guilt or because I am bullied into doing so by the “victims,” but because it is the right thing to do. I don’t think that the way to honor Martin Luther King Jr. is to attack someone for being white, but to embrace the fact that, whatever color, gender or religion we are, we are all humans sharing this planet and deserving of respect.

-edit-
I found this [CNN readers respond angrily to "race or gender" story] a while after my original post, but it shows that some people feel the way I do. I'm glad that a good portion of America is not as stupid as we're made out to be.
-30-

Labels: Current Events, Politics

posted by Jeremy @ 3:39 PM 1 comments

Gears and Gadgets

The British Army tested a new tank last week that's straight out of a James Bond film (specifically, Die Another Day): it goes invisible.

The tank uses the same technology that Bond's Aston Martin V12 Vanquish utilizes. It has cameras set up on it, and takes the images they capture of its surroundings and projects them onto the tank, effectively camouflaging it. People who were at the tests said that they were amazed at how good it was. The British military is also working on a jacket that will do the same thing. The tank should be operational by 2012, according to their plan.

Something else that was developed recently, but this time by a guy in Florida, is a bracelet that shoots pepper spray, inspired by Spider-man.

You wear the bracelet around your wrist, obviously, and there is a button that rests in your palm for easy access, which means that if you get attacked, you can easily trigger the spray to shoot in the direction of your attacker. The man who invented it said he thought it up after one of friends was attacked. The bracelet, along with replacement cartridges of pepper spray, will be available latter this year for around $30.

Labels: Current Events, Technology, Things of Interest

posted by Jeremy @ 2:25 PM

Time to ruin a book series for virtually everyone I know ...

So, it is official. J. K. Rowling revealed that in the Harry Potter series, Dumbledore is, in fact, gay.

On a book tour, a kid asked her if Dumbledore ever found "true love," according to the AP story, and she replied that he was gay. He had been in love with the wizard Gellert Grindelwald, who became evil and Dumbledore was forced to battle and defeat.

Apparently, there was a reference in the script of the sixth movie about a girl that Dumbledore had liked in the past, and she told the director to take it out. The article goes on to say that fans pointed out "that he has no close relationship with women and a mysterious, troubled past."

Well, I agree with Rowling: this just gives conservative Christian groups one more reason to dislike the books. While I enjoyed the books, I'm very disappointed in this, and that I heard about it. I guess I'll spread that disappointment to anyone who happens to read this.

Labels: Current Events, Things of Interest

posted by Jeremy @ 1:38 AM 6 comments

Former Pakistani PM attacked in Karachi, more than 100 dead

Late on Thursday, the former Prime Minister of Pakistan, Benazir Bhutto, was attacked with bombs as she was coming back to Karachi, Pakistan's biggest city, after eight years of exile.

She was inside her bullet-proof bus and was not hurt, but recent counts have put the casualties up to 126 killed and between 250 and 300 wounded. Two bombs - a grenade, then a suicide bomb - exploded near Bhutto's vehicle as it was traveling through streets lined with thousands of people celebrating her return.

This is still a developing story, so check news outlets for updated coverage (The Drudge Report's been keeping up to date with it).

Sky News' article.
BBC News' article.
AP Article.

Labels: Current Events, Politics

posted by Jeremy @ 12:34 AM 0 comments

Another Case of Finger Pointing and Blame Shifting

An article put out by the BBC states that a recent study of obesity, the largest ever in the UK, has shown that obesity is a rampant problem, costing billions of pounds in treatment and benefits or indirect costs. They say the problem is getting worse every year and than by 2050, the majority of people, at least in the UK, will be obese. I imagine that state will become reality even sooner in the U.S. All this I agree with.

What I don't agree with is how the article goes on to say that obesity is no longer the fault of the individual, but of society. They say due to "energy-dense, cheap foods, labour-saving devices, motorised transport and sedentary work," people can not help but to gain weight, and that "the notion of obesity simply being a product of personal over-indulgence [has been] abandoned for good." [Editor's note: sorry for the British spellings. They're quotes.]

While I agree that Western society in general is not very conducive to a healthy lifestyle, the stance taken by the article really pushes my buttons. It is yet another example of modern culture's tendency to shift responsibility off the individual and onto something else, be it other people, genes or society as a whole as seen here. Without doing a ton, people can stay healthy if they choose to. Yes, there are certain diseases and conditions that do make it hard or impossible to not gain weight, but the vast majority of people are not afflicted with anything like that. With a little exercise and being conscious about what you eat, you may not look amazing but you won't be obese, either.

I wish that people would learn to just take responsibility for their situations. I'm not talking about just in matters of obesity or health either. All these frivolous lawsuits are examples of this same attitude, that when something happens it is not my fault, it's the fault of whoever made the product for not idiot-proofing it. The attitude that says the fault lies with anyone but you combined with greed is very repelling to me. Thankfully, there has been litigation within the past few years limiting the amount of damages juries are allowed to award, but these lawsuits continue to happen and will keep happening until society as a whole becomes a whole lot smarter, which I don't anticipate happening.

I don't know; maybe all this is just my natural tendency to get incredibly annoyed at stupidity, but I do think this is a problem that doesn't have a conclusive end in sight.

Labels: Current Events

posted by Jeremy @ 7:29 PM 2 comments

An Inconvenient Pandering to Public Ignorance

-Editor's note: First of all, let me apologize for the title of this post. It's just to easy to make these sort of puns, and just too hard to resist, even though it is way overplayed.-

While I was disgusted when I heard that Gore received the Nobel Peace Prize for his activist works to "combat" global warming, I will say that it has caused a reaction that is very encouraging.

Without arguing whether Gore's work should have merited the Peace Prize (assuming it was all correct and true), it is and has been very clear that his documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" is littered with inaccuracies and errors throughout, as well as strong political messages. On Oct. 10, a judge in Britain refused to ban the movie from schools, but ruled that a sheet must be distributed before every screening explaining the inaccuracies and that it is a "political work and promotes only one side of the argument." Now, some scientists are being more vocal in their dissent and warning that Gore is just being alarmist.

There have been arguments against a man-caused global warming since the idea first began being put forth in a mainstream manner, but because of the amount of sensationalism many scientists will not speak out about the flaws in this theory for fears of not getting grants. Hopefully this will galvanize a greater response to the issue from other dissenting scientists.

On a side note, I find it laughable that Gore is the champion of the fight against global warming. I'm sure you all remember earlier this year when Gore's electricity bill leaked onto the net. Apparently he believes that it's OK to use as much greenhouse gases as you want, as long as you balance it out with money and activism. Now, in order to help Gore put his actions where his mouth is (quite literally), instead of just money, PETA has challenged him to go vegetarian. Raise your hand if you think this is just one more thing Gore will not do. I bet that instead (if he even pays any attention to this at all), he'll sponsor a lab trying to grow synthetic meat or something.

Labels: Current Events

posted by Jeremy @ 2:01 PM 3 comments

Attack of Brood XIII!

This year is the year for the cicadas to come out of the ground after their 17 year growth cycle. There will be literally billions of them swarming the northern Midwest for pretty much all of June.

The AP article I read about it is pretty interesting; you should check it out. It talks about all the noise they make, and has "horror stories" from the last time a brood emerged in 2004. It's going to be pretty crazy in the areas where they come up.

Labels: Current Events, Things of Interest

posted by Jeremy @ 6:36 PM 0 comments

Digital Revolt

Today was an interesting day in the world of Web 2.0. It seems the encryption key for HD-DVDs was discovered, and posted online. The key would allow someone to crack the copy protection on an HD-DVD. A user posted it to Digg, where it garnered more than 15,000 hits. Digg then received a cease and desist notice from the "owners of the intellectual property," as described by Jay Adelson on the Digg blog, so they took down the story and supposedly kicked off the user who posted it. The result: a full-scale online rebellion.

Digg users flooded the site with stories and topics either with the code in the title or body, or just abusing Digg for their actions. Earlier, at least the first four pages were completely filled with items about the code. As I was looking at the site myself, I got a notice that Digg was down for a little while, so I only saw the first page, but it was full of topics on the code. It was amazing the ways they worked the code into their topic. Some of my favorites were topics that supposedly offered coupon codes for sites like GoDaddy or that said they got a strange error code on their computer (I bet you can guess what the code in each topic was). There were some that put the code in links in their topic, like to their "MySpace page," or just linked to graphics with the code in it. There was also one with "the truth behind 9/11."

The rebellion apparently has spread to sites like Yahoo! and Wikipedia as well. Wikipedia has locked all the entries on HD-DVD, HD, and other related subjects, and has deleted any reference made to the code or the events of tonight, as well as the code itself when it has appeared in any other entries (for example, there was apparently something about an "HD Mooninite" in the Aqua Teen Hunger Force entry, but it was deleted before I saw it).

Digg's founder, Kevin Rose, posted a statement on Digg's blog later saying that while they took down the posting to keep Digg from getting shut down or service interrupted, it was obvious that Digg's users would rather Digg fight and possibly fail than cower in front of a bigger company. So Digg will no longer delete posts containing or about the code, which makes me wonder what the service interruption is about. The title of his post: 09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63-56-88-c0 (which is the code, if you don't know). I think I like Kevin.

I feel that this is far from over, but I think Internet users have won a victory tonight, at least in part. And Digg has probably gotten a ton of hits (and as such, advertising dollars) off of this, which means that, at least in the short run, they've won a bit as well.

Ok, Digg is back up after about 20 minutes. The first 5 pages are all about the code, with some stories scattered through the next couple pages too.


The HD-DVD Key as a hexadecimal avatar for one of the users on Digg.

Labels: Current Events, Humor, Technology, Things of Interest

posted by Jeremy @ 1:05 AM 1 comments

Haha, ladies, it's science

A new study has shown that nagging actually has pretty much the exact opposite effect than intended. People tend to ignore or respond in opposite ways to instructions that seem like they could be a threat to their autonomy. So even using a signifigant person's name and telling the people that they wanted them to work hard made people do worse in simple trials, as opposed to saying that person wanted them to have fun.

At the end of the article, it has 2 quotes from a married couple who thought of the study:

"Not surprisingly perhaps, Chartrand and Fitzsimons, as wife and husband, also take home some slightly differing messages from their experiments.

Chartrand believes her husband 'should now be better equipped to suppress his reactant tendencies.' Fitzsimons, however, believes the results 'suggest that reactance to significant others is so automatic that I can't possibly be expected to control it if I don't even know it's happening.'"

I say women, just quit nagging.

Labels: Current Events, Humor, Things of Interest

posted by Jeremy @ 10:27 PM 0 comments

So somone finally catches a sea monster/alien...and then eats it

Some Russian fisherman caught this weird looking green shark-like creature that was squeaking and acting weird, and they thought it was an alien, so they filmed it on a camera phone. Then they decided that it wasn't scary or dangerous, so they cooked and ate it, dissappointing scientists everywhere. They said it was the most delicious meal they ever had.

Apparently scientists don't think it was an alien, but one said it was the most interesting thing he'd ever seen in his life, and the picture they had of it was very interesting as well. I want to watch the video but it's on Fark.com, which is blocked by WebSense.

Article

Labels: Current Events, Things of Interest

posted by Jeremy @ 5:40 PM 2 comments

Anna Nicole Smith dies in hospital

Anna Nicole Smith collapsed in a hotel room in Florida Thursday and was found around 1:38 p.m. She was given CPR and taken to Memorial Regional Hospital in Hollywood at 2:10 p.m., where she died.

Article.

I now sort of know what older people mean when they talk about all the famous people of their day dying. I've never cared about anything to do with her, but her entire career and the big scandal junk and everything else to do with her happened during my lifetime, within my memory, so it's just sort of a weird feeling. Hm.

Labels: Current Events

posted by Jeremy @ 3:47 PM 0 comments

Brilliant Advertising

Labels: Current Events, Things of Interest

posted by Jeremy @ 4:37 PM 0 comments

Harry Potter date announced

I'm dedicated to bringing the most important news from around the world to my few readers, and so, with no further ado, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" is set to be published on July 21. Woohoo.

Article

Labels: Current Events, Things of Interest

posted by Jeremy @ 11:17 AM 2 comments

eBay Auction: EVERY NES game ever made

A guy from South Carolina has put up for sale quite a package. Not only are you buying all 670 NES game ever made, all in good condition, you're getting the following:

the NES Nintendo System Console (in the box), 4 Controllers, 2 Turbo controllers, NES Advantage Controller (Joystick and Button console in box), Zapper Gun, Power Pad, Power Glove, ROB the Robot (with accessories), 4 Player wired controller (with Turbo) allows up to 4 players, 4 Player Wireless Satellite and Reciever, Grey Joystick controller, Game Genie and the Code Book, RF Switch and AC Power Cord.

There's a picture of all the games stacked up on the auction page (which is quite a sight), and the guy has a 100% feedback rating, so it looks like the sale is legit. But get this: the bid is up to $220,936. That's right, someone's going to pay almost a quarter of a million dollars for a bunch of video games. That seems a bit much for me, but hey, whatever floats their boat.

Labels: Current Events, Technology, Things of Interest

posted by Jeremy @ 4:03 PM 0 comments

Profit losses at Sony

Due to slow sales on the PS3, Sony's profits have dropped in the third quarter. I have to ask: what did they think would happen?

There are several reasons for this, which I had talked about with friends when the PS3 originally came out and that are mentioned in the article. For one, there's the price. It's double the price of the Wii, and still more expensive than the best Xbox 360. And even at that high price, they priced it under the cost of production to try to sell more. They wouldn't have had such a huge cost of production if they hadn't tried to jump start Blu-Ray discs. It took almost a decade to fully switch from VHS to DVD; why would they think that it would only take a couple years to convert to Blu-Ray, especially when HD DVDs are competing against it? On top of the high cost for the console itself, the games are ridiculously expensive as well, even for a next-generation console, once again due to their choice to go with Blu-Ray. Bad idea, Sony.

I'm sure the UMD fiasco of the PSP had something to do with it as well. The only thing the article says about PSP is that its sales have dropped as well, but several months ago many stores such as Target and Wal-Mart began drastically cutting back on, if not eliminating, their stock of UMD movies. The UMD had several things wrong with it that limited sales. Since its storage capacity was so much smaller, most of the bonus features found on DVDs had to be taken out, and to keep Sony DVD sales up, they didn't put in a TV-playback feature, so you had to always watch on the PSP. The only way to watch on a television was to buy a third-party converter, which to install required you to remove the faceplate, among other things. All those issues combined with affordable portable DVD players with TV output combined to destroy any possibility of profitable sales of UMD movies.

In the end, Sony's made some bad choices with their games systems. We'll see what happens as the novelty of the next-gen consoles wear off and they settle in for the long haul. Maybe Sony can redeem the PS3 with some excellent games, but when facing competition like Halo 3 coming this spring and all the original games coming for the Wii that will draw all the casual gamers, it will be a tough sale.

Labels: Current Events, Technology, Things of Interest

posted by Jeremy @ 9:52 AM 0 comments

Science brings confections to a new level

A scientist from North Carolina recently developed caffeinated donuts. That's right: now you can get even more caffeine with your breakfast on top of your cup of coffee!

Each donut has about as much caffeine as two cups of coffee, but without the bitter taste. The inventor, Doctor Robert Bohannon, has approached several major donut companies about carrying them, including Krispy Kreme, Dunkin' Donuts and Starbucks. I can't wait.

Labels: Current Events, Technology, Things of Interest

posted by Jeremy @ 12:56 AM 0 comments

Political bloggers may be forced to register as lobbyists

S.1, a lobbying reform bill in the Senate, if passed, would force everyone, including bloggers, to register as a lobbyist and report quarterly to Congress if they comments on government policy or tries to start a "grassroots" campaign and communicates to 500 or more people.

That wouldn't be me, because I don't really talk politics on here and I DEFINITELY don't have a 500-person readership (maybe 5), but it still really annoys me. How could they justify that? People engaging in their First Amendment rights by saying what they think and trying to get people (normal people, not elected representatives) to act on it are now lobbyists? That's ridiculous, and people have called and written about Section 220 (the part of the bill that discusses this) to the Senate, as well they should. That annoys me almost as much as that previous bill trying to take away Net Neutrality that was defeated due to the huge public response, and hopefully this one will meet a similar fate.

Article on Section 220.

Labels: Current Events, Politics

posted by Jeremy @ 9:57 AM 0 comments

If they had to shoot each other, at least it was over something important

70 year-old man shoots friend during argument over the height of James Brown's career - who, by the way, still hasn't been buried.



On an unrelated note, a situation in Dallas has me interested. Pizza Patron, a Dallas-based pizza chain has decided to accept pesos at their locations, and people are mad about it. While I'm interested to see where the fight leads, I think the people complaining are focusing on a non-issue. Their point is that this is America, so they should use dollars (which the stores still accept, obviously), and they think Pizza Patron is catering to illegal immigrants. My view is that since 60% of their customers are Hispanic, it makes business sense to do it, regardless.

Also, plenty of other places in cities in other countries where there is a high concentration of Americans accept American dollars, just because people are prevalent there that have them. We always went to Progresso, Mexico to shop on our mission trips, and while we normally had pesos to spend most of the shops took dollars as well since it is a big tourist town due to its proximity to the border. I don't think the pizza place's decision is really a big deal. Thoughts?

Labels: Current Events

posted by Jeremy @ 10:22 PM 1 comments

To all the tea-drinkers out there...

Tea is healthier than water.
Now scientists are saying that drinking three cups of tea per day is just as good as drinking plenty of water, if not better due to some possible extra health benefits of tea.

But! Milk, the destroyer, will ruin those same health benefits!
By adding milk to your tea, you lose the artery-relaxing effects that tea has. There are proteins in milk that screw it all up. So if you're drinking tea because it's healthy, forgoe the milk.

Next, the Germans who figured out the milk thing are going to study whether green or black tea is more healthy for you. They think the reason studies have been inconclusive in the past is that green tea is normally drunk with milk and black tea isn't.

Labels: Current Events

posted by Jeremy @ 4:10 PM 1 comments

What's going on around the country

Nancy Pelosi became the first female House Speaker Thursday

Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport has decided to battle some Muslim taxi drivers
For the past several months, many of the cabbies at the Minneapolis-St. Paul international airport have been refusing fare to people carrying alcholhol and people with dogs, even if they're disabled. Muslims consider dog saliva unclean and those that refuse fare feel that carrying someone with alcohol is "cooperating in sin." The airport is going to vote on putting in new regulations that would fine cabbies that refused service for those reasons or if the trip is too short.

North Korea is preparing another nuklear test
According to a senior U.S. defense official, North Korea has everything put into place to conduct another test without warning or notice. The intelligence community is divided as to whether they will actually test again or not, with some saying they probably won't and others saying they most likely will within the next 2 to 3 months.

Due to all the pictures of Saddam's hanging that have been broadcast, multiple kids have hung themselves emulating what they saw on TV.

National Guardsmen overrun by gunmen at Mexican border in Arizona

Oil dropped below $56 a barrel due to warmer winter

Obama will probably run for president - probably make an announcement concerning that soon



Sorry I don't have anything more interesting or something other than links to update with; I haven't really felt like or had anything to write about recently that would fit here.

Labels: Current Events

posted by Jeremy @ 9:09 PM 0 comments