Yeah, they've really done it now. Well, they did it a long time ago, and now it's come back to haunt them.
The news that Pat Tillman's death was caused by friendly fire, not by heroic and larger-than-life deeds, kind of makes one look at the war in Iraq and question it all. I'm not saying whether I'm for or against it. I think there were good reasons for going in, good reasons for the "war on terror," and such, but some bad decisions have been made. I haven't been keeping up with it as much as some people, so I don't have a very well developed opinion on it.
I do know one thing, however: Dishonesty sucks. It especially sucks when you lie about the "heroics" of two soldiers in the war who did basically the exact opposite of what their stories tell. Pat Tillman was apparently being hailed by enemy fire, and was killed gloriously in battle. Right. The truth, however, is that he was killed by friendly fire in a tense war zone. To me, it doesn't make the story any more heroic or any more shameful. In fact, I think whoever killed him should be ashamed. Tillman was just doing his job. But, of course, he's a famous NFL player, who quit professional football to go serve in the Army. Noble, indeed. Such a death wouldn't suit him, and wouldn't be good publicity... let's make something up, they said. A better story, something heroic. Yeah. Let's lie to the American public, they said. Huh.
Secondly... maybe you all remember the whole Jessica Lynch thing. Bigger, better, more bloated even than Pat Tillman's story. An All-American blonde girl from West Virginia fighting against amazing odds, going down shooting, emptying her entire clip, and finally getting captured in order to save those fighting beside her. An amazing story. One for the history books. All made up. In fact, she never fired a single shot. Lynch herself, in the U.S. News article, says she doesn't even know why they made up the story.
I remember when I first read the Jessica Lynch story. It was amazing. It was unbelieveable. So unbelieveable, in fact, that I didn't believe it. Then I noticed that every time I read the story in the newspaper or heard it on the radio, it got bigger and better, and more fantastic as it got told more and more. Suddenly, Jessica Lynch was no longer a soldier in the Army, she was the Army. She could have killed all those terrorists herself. I also heard she was offered a book deal to tell her story. I remember that she did write that book. She wrote it on the true story of what really happened. That story was not the one that was in the news. Oops.
Marketing for a war is what this is. It's really sad that it completely backfired. I personally don't like being lied to. I don't think very many people do. Next time there's a heroic war story, please tell me. But don't make one up just to satisfy me.
Yep. Jack Thompson does it again. He's a video game hater. This article:
calls him an "Anti-video game advocate," but truly, he's just a video game hater. There's nothing else to say about it. Apparently some folks over at the gaming blog Kotaku have said some nasty things about him that he found "threatening," so he decided to sue them. That's how things work these days, I guess. If you don't like what someone says about you, sue them.
Thompson's vendetta against video games has been fueled by the recent Virginia Tech incident, among other recent happenings. I think Thompson would probably use any act of violence as "evidence" that video games are bad. All violence these days is caused by video games, I guess.
The article in question (Kotaku) debunks Thompson's arguments that school shootings are caused by such video game playing. Thompson cites several "evidences" that video games were played by these shooters in preparation for their violent acts, which are all false. A favorite Thompson argument is that all of the shootings in the past decade have played violent video games before. This one is truly shocking... seeing as it is most likely that all of the students shot (though perhaps not the females) have also played violent video games before. In fact, if you take a poll of teenage boys in America, most of them have probably played a game before that is deemed by Thompson to be violent.
Secondly... I think it's pretty clear from everything that has been discovered about Cho Seung Hui that the kid was utterly out of his mind. He was mentally unstable. He was insane. I'm pretty sure video games can't do that to you. Thompson... you lose.
Oh boy, not again.
So, basically it's the argument against federal funding of abstinence education. They say it doesn't work, and kids are having premarital sex anyway. Right, so just because telling your child not to do something doesn't make him not do it, you stop trying? I don't know any parent in their right mind that would do that. Now, I think the problem here is the parents, of course... because kids will do dumb things. The answer, however, is to tell them not to do dumb things. Just because they continue to do dumb things doesn't mean we stop it.
But, they say, it's just "normal behavior." Since when does "normal behavior" constitute "good behavior?" Being selfish and dishonest is certainly normal behavior for a human being, but that doesn't make it a good thing. Premarital sex, usually with several partners, doesn't lead to anything good. Just because all the kids are out there doing it doesn't make it good. Maybe federal funding for it isn't the answer, but parents definitely need to teach their kids better.
Wow. With the discovery of "kryptonite" a couple days ago, I thought the world had found the most amazing thing ever. I was wrong. This is amazing. Here we have a new planet that is the most Earth-like and most likely to have life on it that we have every found.
Wow. Apparently it's got a climate similar to Earth, which makes water possible, and thus life. Also, it orbits a "red dwarf" star... hmm... wait a second... we just discovered kryptonite... so... could this be...?
Bah, I've been meaning to write this one for a while now... I've been putting it off, because I didn't think it was right for this blog. But, now I've changed what my blog is, because I didn't have enough of those completely random off the wall things to say, or time to write them down. So, now, it's more of a strange and interesting news blog.
Oh, yeah, and Sheryl Crow decided to go loonie.
But the whole thing just really cracks me up. One, no one can agree whether global warming is a problem or how big of a problem it is. Those that say it is point to scientific evidence and the "scientific consensus" that it's a problem. Those that say it isn't also point to scientific evidence and the "scientific evidence" that it isn't as big of a problem as the other side thinks. Yes, both sides seem to say that scientists are in favor of their side. Unfortunately... scientists are just as divided as anyone in this country is, and the scientific community has never given any consistent statement on the subject. Individual scientists have said things, but "scientists" in general have never stated one way or the other. So... who do we believe?
Personally, I'd like to believe the fact that although the whole global warming thing is popular now, it's still been really cold in many places. Now, some will try to justify it by saying, "Oh, the cold is an effect of Global Warming." Yeah. Well, it's a really dumb name for the phenomenon then, if Warm now produces Cold. Please. Either get your arguments straight or change the name.
Secondly... whether it's really and a threat or not, it seems to be "cool" right now to be on the bandwagon. Hollywood stars are all in it, popular music is in it, along with all the other famous people... so we want to be in with them, right? Well, do we? Would we really want to be in with someone who says things like Sheryl Crow did...?
She thinks we should only be allowed one square of toilet paper per sitting, and only more than one in those rare times that require it... Hmm. At the risk of either sounding dumb or using too much profanity, I'll not go into my toilet habits. I'll just mention that it usually takes more than one square for me, unless I want to get my hand all dirty. I can't imagine what kind of superhuman can only use one. You must have one of those toilets with the little water stream that comes out of it. Yeah, some of us are not that fortunate.
Crow also has stated that "the science is out there" about Global Warming... yeah, you mean all those bits and pieces that Al Gore picked out for his movie, while ignoring the other side's evidence? Yeah, it's out there. So is the rest of it. It seems no one wants to study both sides of an issue anymore. They only look at the part they like. But that's a blog post for another day.
As for this, from Crow: "Although my ideas are in the earliest stages of development, they are, in my mind, worth investigating."
If it makes sense in your mind, then your mind is a very interesting place.
After all these years of searching, it's been found. Yes, real kryptonite:
They found it in a mine in Serbia. Strangely enough, it matched the descrption and chemical composition of kryptonite given in the Superman comic books and "Superman Returns" movie. Now, this is a composition of real-life elements, all packed together to make a rock. When it was first devised, it was either random or it was carefully put together to be something outrageous no one would ever find. Unfortunately, it's been found now.
The article states that there's no flourine in it, whereas in the comic book canon descrption it does... so it's not quite right, but it's pretty close. That's good enough for me. Now I won't have to worry about Superman coming up and bothering me all the time.
So, I read all about NBC getting the package and all. They apparently made the tough decision to show it on the air. I was not able to see it at that time, and now it sounds like I never will. This is unfortunate, because I was really looking forward to seeing what this crazy kid had to say for himself. Many people, however, were not, and say NBC made the wrong decision to show it. Apparently, a guy pointing a gun at the camera is too graphic for some people to handle... like they haven't been watching the majority of popular TV shows and movies recently...
But, of course, it had to come down to the students at VTech to tell the press to go away. No one seemed to realize that all the publicity was hurting those involved and slowing the healing process. Maybe it's just me, but it helps to put a horrendous incident out of your mind by not talking about it so much. Everyone says NBC was wrong in showing the tape, but no one, besides VTech students, cared that this was getting way too much press.
But the question becomes: Was it wrong to show it? As I said, I wanted to see it. It sounded like the majority of people in this country would want to see it, too, due to all of the talk of "Why in the world would someone do this?" The guy sends a tape, and a manifesto, of exactly why he did it, and spells it all out for you, and answers your questions, but you don't want to watch it.
*blink*
What? I thought you wanted to know why this would happen... I still hear people on the radio and TV asking why he did it, since he was such a quiet and reserved kid. The New York Times ran a piece that said he never really talked at all, even to his family, and people around him went to great lengths to try to get him to say anything. Now, he speaks! He finally talks! And yet... we don't want to listen. Who are you people??
Now, I'm not condoning what he did. Killing 30 people is bad, period. But this kid was trying to send us a message. I say hear him out.
I've made a decision. Since my "return," I've been seriously neglecting my blog, though I really wanted to make one to get into the blogging community. It's really geeky, I know. But that's the way I am. So, I've signed up with Technorati and all, and maybe that will be an incentive for me to write up more stuff. I've really (seriously) got nothing better to do with my free time, so I might as well write stuff. So, yeah.
So I'm sure everybody's heard about the whole Virginia Tech thing... if you haven't, you probably live in a small hole in the ground. If that was so, I really want to know how you're reading this...
But I digress. I read all about the guy who did it, a South Korean who was insane as well as the shy, loner type. Because he was the shy, loner type, no one knew he was insane. When he was in junior high school, they laughed at him and made fun of him, because of his ethnicity and the way he talked. It seems that this pushed him over the edge, and he went on a vendetta against Americans. I don't want to justify what he did, but the kids making fun of him are no more justified in what they did than he is.
This is the most interesting point to me. Kids don't seem to realize that they need to be careful who they pick on. The shy, loner in the corner could become a psychotic killer because of you. I remember back when the Columbine shootings were all over the news, and they made a profile of the type of person that would shoot up or bomb a school. They said it was more likely the quiet, calculating, nerdy type that no one likes, that sits in the back of the room. It's really unfortunate, but I kind of lean in that direction... So be careful... heh heh heh... just joking. You know, it's wrong to joke about these types of things... I could get arrested...
But anyway... Be nice, kids. You don't want to get shot.
Yeah, it's Easter again. Strange that a Christian holiday would be named after a Pagan goddess... and it would involve a bunny who hides eggs. Why in the world would a bunny be hiding eggs anyway? Why wouldn't you have something like a chicken or even a duck hiding them? Some type of bird hiding eggs for me to find would be far more interesting and make more sense. A rabbit, as far as I know, doesn't have much of a connection at all to anything having to do with eggs.
This brings us to the Cadbury bunny, who gives out those delicious, unhealthy, cream-filled eggs every easter. This is one strange bunny, let me tell you. Not only is it a bunny that gives out eggs, but it SOUNDS like a chicken. Yes, it buck-bucks just like a chicken does. This means that the Cadbury people are not only prolonging a strange tradition, but are trying to justify it by saying it's a bunny having an identity crisis.
Bah, I'd rather just go to church.