Monday, February 13, 2006

How Many?

The newest little nugget to come out of these important debates about freedom to be an offensive fool and freedom to force your religion on others is this idea that it's all the fault of extremists. That's what is not entirely true, if the images we see on tv are to be believed. I mean, I can only assume that in any society extremists are in the minority. The idea of extremism seems to indicate a certain rarity of presence. It was not just a few people who took part in the protests that turned into embassy burnings. Let's admit that it is a large part of the population in many countries that is taking part in the violence going on in the world. It's not just extremists.

Friday, February 10, 2006

Do You Know Who Phil Straub Is?

Two days ago I saw a very interesting tv show. It was called “Operation: Hollywood” and it is about the influence the Pentagon tries to exert on the production of war movies. As one can imagine, the movies are great advertizing tools-as most manufacturers know. It goes something like this:

CEO: “Sales are down and we don’t have the creativity to build an ad campaign.
What do we do?”
Adman with no imagination: “Hey, let’s get Will Smith to mention our shoes right in
the movie!”
So, we stare at the screen as Bond sells us the newest BMW 2-seater convertable, or the Mitsubishi jeepette (jeppalingur) saves our heros from the mighty T-rex, or What’s-his-face McActionhero lights the coolest cigarette in the world, or the big lipped beautiful Tomb Raider settles down for a Johnny Walker Red Label nightcap. But what we Americans don’t notise as much is when the military is being advertized. Funny, though, we definitely notise when it’s not! “Apocalypse Now” shocked the pants off everyone. “Platoon” raised eyebrows. “Full Metal Jacket” isn’t the kind of movie the military complex in the old US of A would support. But “Saving Private Ryan”, well, there you go. Oh, isn’t it cute the way the army spends loads of money and risks men in order to save one guy who’s down behind enemy lines? How beautiful that the soldiers in “Blackhawk Down” are all model citizens that can do no wrong and they were the primary victims in Somalia. Don’t even get me started on “Behind Enemy Lines” or “Tears of the Sun”. Anyway, the progam I mentioned was very interesting and certainly worth watching and thinking about. Most importantly, I think at least we need to keep ourselves aware of what is going on. It’s okay, in my opinion to go into a movie knowing that what you’re about to see is based loosely on a gossamer thread of reality. It’s even okay to enjoy it for what it is. But we can’t let Phil Straub fool us.

Wednesday, February 08, 2006

Why We Fight

I’ve just seen a preview for the next movie to get my money at the theater (I almost never go to the movies anymore and a movie has to be special to drag me out).  Here’s the link to the preview.

Thanks but no Thanks, Hugh

Hugh Hefner and his company have decided that what the country with the largest Muslim population in the world needs in order to accept the point of view of the West is Playboy magazine.  I don’t know why I didn’t think of that.  Maybe these protests against the cartoons of Muhammed would not have such a strong effect if we send them some pictures of naked women.  Admittedly, Playboy will be probably the tamest skin rag in the country after this move.  Indonesia is not the place I would choose to be the next local publisher of Playboy.  Good going Hugh.  If we can’t tame people with sanctions and disrespect, we’ll do it with photos of naked women!  
I do not think of Playboy as pornography as it features merely naked women.   For the most part, they are not in tastelss poses or anything.  They are paid well and I’ve heard that only the best of the best are allowed a photoshoot.  But I still don’t think it’s the right thing to send to Indonesia.  It would be better to send them some comedy.  Send them well-translated George Carlin or bill Cosby or Emo Philips.  Don’t send them something that you know they oppose!  What an a rump this Hefner guy is!

Tuesday, February 07, 2006

Subjects of Fear

The following are some images of things I feel we all need to fear or at least keep in mind.
Forgetting what's important
Governmental double standards
Total lack of respect
Exploitation of fear
Hypocracy
People willing to murder to force their beliefs on others-because they feel their victims are trying to force their beliefs on others
People willing to murder in order to force their beliefs on others-for money, not because they truly believe in the policies they are forcing

Let's Make Peace

It’s been a few days.  I’m still clinging to my hope that this prejudice I’ve been feeling welling up inside me is just a passing sickness.  I think it’s starting to ebb.  But today I saw the images again of children standing on Danish flags (as though they know what they’re protesting) and women holding protest signs in English in countries where most women are not allowed to go to school and men burning flags and buildings and waving guns.  I want peace.  I want Muslims to know that if they’re not trying to force their ways on me I won’t force mine on them.  I oppose the occupations that are going on in Afghanistan and Iraq.  I think Israel should loosen up its hold on Palestine.  But I’m not willing to look the other way while Muslims who live in dictatorships call for the deaths of an entire nation (or nations) of people just because of the actions of a newspaper and for the freedoms that the people in another country have.  

Monday, February 06, 2006

Dear Muslims

I would like nothing more than to be able to make peace with you. I think that the manner in which some of the western countries (especially my home country, U.S.A.) have dealt with people in your home countries. I understand that you hold Muhammed sacred and I agree that in the western world, there is nothing that is held sacred in the same way. I agree that the newspaper and the artists should apologize for the insult and offence they caused. But I ask you to stop this destructive protest. You are doing nothing but making any prejudice that exists worse. You are turning people like me against you. You say that Islam is a religion of peace and love and then you burn down an embassy building and you burn flags and protest screaming for the death of innocent people in far away lands.
I sit here listening to the BBC program "World Have Your Say". There is a Muslim here saying that Islam is not a religion of "turn the other cheek" but a religion of "and eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth". if that is true, how is burning and killing of an entire nation an equal retaliation for the publishing of some pictures by a single newspaper?
Let's make peace. Let's follow the primary teaching of just about every religion in the world-tolerance.
Sincerely,Eric dos Santos

Saturday, February 04, 2006

My Embryonic Prejudice

I’m pissed off.  
          As anyone who’s read this blog from the beginning can tell, I don’t have any great love of many aspects of Western culture or policy.  But I’ve had just about enough all of a sudden.  I hate to admit it, but I am starting to develop a prejudice that I’ve always disliked in other people.  But I have to start at the beginning.
          Back in September a Danish newspaper published some cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammed.  I know that Islam forbids any images of any of the prophets.  What I don’t know is why it got so many Muslims so damn angry that not only do they boycott Danish goods, they have to burn everything Danish that they can get their grubby hands on-from the Danish flag to the Danish embassy in Damascus!  Okay, I’ll allow that the newspaper should have apologized for offending people with the publications, as they did.  But Denmark (following suit with most other Western countries) has a very strong policy of freedom of expression and that includes such actions as drawing pictures of anyone.  So, even though the artists who drew these pictures have to be too affraid of retribution to put their names on the pictures, the paper practised its freedom of expression by publishing the pictures.  Then, because of the action of ONE company-not the Danish people-people in an entirely different country (now several countries) are marching in the streets with guns and torches to burn the Danish (and Norwegian, for some reason) flag and generally protest the freedoms allowed in Denmark.  
     In response to all this protesting by a people who have made suicide bombings a sacrament akin to First Communion in the Catholic church, world leaders have to waste their time getting together to beg forgiveness of a people who have never forgiven anything in their history.  I’m sorry that I am becoming so prejudiced, but it really does appear that WWIII is coming and it’s being brought to us, not by the Western bastards like George W. and his war-crazy cronies (as I had thought would happen) but by the people who in some ways I still think of as victims of the times.  
     After 9/11 I argued with many of my American friends and some of my family as well that it wasn’t right to just go running off to blow up people in Afghanistan.  I was cinvinced of other ulterior motives behind that.  I was and still am even more opposed to the invasion of Iraq.  But as much as I think we should be working toward peace, I think it’s time the Muslims start doing their part.  We allow them into our Western societies and try to give them the freedoms they are looking for but cannot get in their own dictatorships.  Then they turn around and pursecute US for the thing they came to find!  What the fuck?!  
     I know it’s facist, but is there another solution than tossing them all out back to their military dictatorships and pulling our people out of their countries and living in a separated Earth?  i hate the fact that maybe Israel was right about building that damned wall!  I just want ot see peace.  But I sit here and think of a Korn song which ends with a repeated scream, “Would you get the fuck out of my face...NOW!”  Why do we have to bow down to a group of people in another country?  Oh, I know, it’s because if we don’t our innocent civilians will be in danger everytime they get on a bus or a train or a plane.  
     Okay, Muslims were justified in being angry that Israel was carved out of the Middle East.  But the key word there is WERE.  past is past.  You have to at some point move on and try to survive in the world in which you live.  This is the same as if black Americans are still angry about slavery.  We admit that it was wrong.  They have to move on.  They count themselves Americans, not Africans.  That’s why I call them black and not African American.  If anything they are American Africans because they are more American than African.  Most of them cannot trace their roots back to their original country in Africa.  
     The Jewish people are trying to move on.  I’m sure there is still a lot of prejudice toward Germans among the Jewish population of the world, but they are, for the most part doing their best to move on and work with the germans who are alive now.  Why does it seems that Muslims do not have the capacity to do the same?  What’s the big deal with Israel anyway?  If we’re not forgetting the way things were in the past (as the Muslims who want Israel wiped off the map are doing) maybe the Muslims should remember that before the religion of Islam was founded the whole area of the Middle East that is now Israel and Palestine was Jewish.  So, following their own logic, the Palestinians should pack up and hand over the whole Gaza Strip and the West Bank.  I’m sorry, but that’s the way their logic is.  
     This post is making me more and more angry.  I’ve been seeing images of angry Muslims protesting everything that’s happening in the world except the repression of their own leaders for too long.  Every time a Muslim terrorist blows himself up or flies a plane full of people into a building or places several explosive charges on mass transit vehicles a whole bunch of Muslim leaders come on tv and say, “Islam is a religion of peace and love.  These men will not get into Paradise.”  I really want ot belive that.  But it’s hard when I keep hearing that it’s in the mosques that these terrorists meet and get their incentive.  
     I want Muslims to prove me wrong.  I hate this prejudice that’s developing in me.  It seems so cliché.  I can’t side with the American government and many of the American people in their blatant hatred of the “Muslim World”.  That kind of hatred is not a part of who I want to be.  I want the real world to wake up and see that all these divisions create an environment that does not allow peace.
     Maybe freedom and democracy cannot work with human beings running the show and being ruled over. Maybe we are too fickle for that and what we really need is a dictatorship that rules with an iron fist.  I know that would not make me happy, but at least there wouldn’t be so much damn squabbling.  
     
     My basic message today is that if you want to live in a place freedoms are protected, you cannot protest those very freedoms.  

Thursday, February 02, 2006

"In Quotes"

I love humor. It saved my life so many times. I was looking for a new quote for the bottom of my blog and found so many great ones that I couldn't just take one. Here are some of the best that I found today:

George Carlin:
When you look at the average American you realize there's nothing nature enjoys more than a good joke. (Napalm and Silly Putty)

Men are from Earth, women are from Earth. Deal with it.

If the reason for climbing Mt. Everest is that it's hard to do, why does everyone go up the easy side? (Napalm and Silly Putty)

I have as much authority as the Pope, I just don't have as many people who believe it.

Ah, to be a bird. To fly the skies, sing my song, and best of all occasionally peck someone’s eyes out. (Napalm and Silly Putty)


Archie Bunker:
Listen Edith, I know you're singing, you know you're singing, but the neighbors may think I'm torturing you.

I got nothin' against mankind. It's people I can't stand.

Entertainment is a thing of the past, today we've got television.


A four-letter Italian word for good-bye...BANG


Drew Carey:
If frogs could fly... well we'd still be in this mess, but wouldn't it be neat? (Drew Carey Show)

Welcome to 'Who's Line Is It Anyway' the show where everything's made up and the points don't matter. That's right the points are just like Canada.
...That's right the points are just like a hat in an orgy.
...The points don't matter just like Jerry Springer's final thought.
...That's right the points are just like the police department in Columbia.
...That's right the points are just like deoderant to a cab driver.
...That's right the points are just like the salad bar at a strip club.
...That's right the points are just like the plot in a lesbian prison movie.
...That's right the points are just like street signs to a cab driver.
...That's right the points are just like the plot in 'Mission Impossible 2'.
...That's right the points are just like when I say 'I Love You' when I'm drunk.
...That's right the points are just like the credits in a porno movie.
(Whose line is it anyway?)



Victor Borge:
Laughter is the closest distance between two people.

I wish to thank my parents for making it all possible...and I wish to thank my children for making it necessary.

Santa Claus has the right idea: visit people once a year.

The Loony Bin

Yup, I'm headed off to the loony bin. Do my Icelandic readers know what that means? A loon is a bird called himbrimi in Icelandic. It makes this very strange and haunting laughing sound that drifts across lakes from far away. This sound led people to associate the birds with crazy people and such people were called loons. Then, the institutions where crazy people were kept were eventually called loony bins because they house so many loons. This is all a lead up to a very bad joke which will be completely explained in this post, by the end.
To begin with, I'm not going to go to work at a 9-5 job after I graduate in the Spring. Instead, I'm going to start working on a Master's Degree in marine biology. This kind of fell into my lap (strangley like just about all of the great things that have happened to me have) without my really putting in lots of effort to find it. I was mulling the idea of more schooling after I finish my BSc and went to my favorite professor for advice. I came up with an idea for a research project based on the changes that would take place in the animal inhabitants of a beach near my house after the two sewer pipes that currently run out onto the sand wre moved to the other side of town. He said that this was not very interesting-unless I were to examin what the sewage is doing in a given group of organisms.
Then he asked, "You want ot get some type of salary while you'r etaking your MSc?"
I said, "Yes."
He said, "And you want to do some kind of classification of species?"
I said, "Yes."
He said, "Well, it just so happens that I have recently received a really good grant from the European Union to research the animal life on the sea bottom on the ridge between Iceland and Greenland. Would you like to take part in that?"
I had to go home and talk to The Wife about it first (we are a team afterall and what I do effects her life), but I was sold on that question! I went back to him the next day and signed p for the project.
So, what will I be doing? I will start off going out on a boat with a small programable submersible (Gavia 2000 AUV) . My mission will be to send the sub down to the bottom where it will take photgraphs and then swim back to the boat. Once it's back in the boat, I will be loading the photographs into the computer for analysis. The analysis that I'll be doing is not going to sound exciting to most people I know, but I's exactly what I want ot be doing. I'm going to be classifying the animals that appear in the images. This is a pretty exciting project because the area being explored is relatively unknown and because the sub is brand spanking new.
So, now back to the joke...The sub is called Gavia 2000. Gavis is the Latin name for the genus which includes the bird the great northern diver. The great northern diver is the British name for what I believe all Americans would recognize as a loon. So, I thought it would be funny to refer to a project that may, in fact, drive me crazy (staring at a computer screen to figure out what the little colored blobs are) as the loony bin. Hey, I said it was a stupid joke. I've always had the philosophy that if I tell enough jokes at least some will be funny. I never know what will be funny to other people. So, I say just about everything that comes to mind and hope for the best!