Human's the social species.

So anyone who tells you that the final stretch of a semester in graduate school is easy, well that person is lying to you I should be working now but I am taking a break between projects so you get a blog post.

Tonight's post I actually got the idea from the 7/6c episode of Bones on TNT, and yes I am not making any money off of this. Anyway toward the end of the Episode Bones and Booth are talking about the human condition and about how we are in fact always alone as a species. I disagree with this as we will see in a few minutes but I also want to credit another source of the idea for this it is this post by a friend of mine's blog, the main blog can be found here. Toward the end of the post he says this:

Maybe I'm crazy for thinking everyone just wants you to step in line and shut up.

[...]

Meanwhile, I'm going to make this world better than the way it was when I was born. You can either stand up and follow me, or you can stay in line. Your call.

Now most of the rest of his post has nothing really to do with what I want to say here. They question I want to ask is why do humans seem to care so much about what other people think? Why do we care about fashion and other aspects that cause us to "fit in"?

This is where I want to refer back to the Bones episode. Yes each of us is our own person but we are shaped by those around us in fact we care more about their opinion than we do what we think of ourselves most of the time. When my friend argues that he wants people to follow him he is, probably unknowingly, saying that he does not want to be alone. None of us do! We are a social species we evolved that necessity. When we were evolving and living in the wild we did not have the physical ability to defend for ourselves we are very vulnerable. Look at yourself in the mirror sometime you don't have any killer claws, no extremely sharp teeth and for our size we are extremely weak.

So what does all this have to do with fashion? Well if in the wild everyone was moving out to a new location to look for food you would probably follow because everyone else was going not knowing that you are really going to use them as a form of protection. So the extension to fashion is that since everyone else is doing it we don't want to be left out from what the masses are doing in order to allow for "protection" of ourselves, after all we wouldn't want to be "eaten".

So next time someone tells you that each person is an individual think long and hard. Do you think the way you think because it just popped in there or did what people say/teach you cause you to think the way you did. All of our experiences change the way we think and our actions. And every person is effected by everyone they meet whether it is for good or for bad.

Please feel free to rip me a new one for my blindless conjecture, yes I have no supporting evidence and normally I am big on this but I will admit that I am just making conjecture here, or you can agree with me. I welcome all.

Books yay Books!

So while my normal saturday's revolve around college football today was a little different. I started out helping teach a class for Super Saturday's at Texas Tech but then I spent about 3 hours at the Lubbock Friends of the Library book sale. When I first heard about it I figured there would be a few books for a relativly low price. What I found was the entire basement of the Lubbock Library, at 1306 9th Street, full of books in which most hardcovers were $1 and soft covers $.50. This started yesterday for members and today for nonmembers. I recommend this because all of the books are donated, there are a ton, and all of the money goes to the Friends of the Library who sponser great things through the year like helping to improve literacy and numerous other activities. I enjoyed it as you can see here but as with all book stores/sales there are some things you wonder about. So if you are in Lubbock, TX I recommend checking it out tomorrow although I don't know how many books will be left. Their next event is February 13 and 14 when they are putting the books they have left on sale at 1/2 price.

A down an dirty news coverage can be found here.

Obama shouldn’t be silencing opposition

I want to start by apologizing for not posting recently studying and writing has been getting in the way of that, I should be studying now but I don't want to so I'm not.

This post won't be about science like normal and while I said don't want to talk about politics in here well sometime you can't escape it. I came across this story while reading the paper this morning. Now maybe I am a masochist but whatever it I always read the opinion portion of the paper and that is when I came across this. So I read the headline and decided to go ahead and read it.

The article started to annoy me right from the start:

Among the many volatile threads common in the current administration, there is one that is especially troubling. That is the repetition of the attacks our president and his media representatives have repeatedly made against any voice that dares counter his own.

We saw this when they set up a White House Web site for citizens to report any suspicious or contrary information about health insurance during the summer. We saw it when they unleashed havoc on Fox News for daring to criticize President Barack Obama. And we saw it when the administration decided to let loose another attack. This time it battled Edmunds.com over its criticism of the cash for clunkers program.

Ok the White House did not set up a way to report people who were lying, and there were plenty of lies, during the summer they just wanted to know about misconceptions about the health debate so they could correct them in speeches etc. Next how did they unleash "havoc on Fox News"? All they did was refuse to be interviewed by Fox News I would too if they were calling me these type of things:



But you know what I'll give you a chance lets see how you summarize the Obama vs Edmunds argument:

To sum up the squabble quickly, Edmunds claims the administration failed to deliver the facts about each “clunker,” costing taxpayers $24,000, and although it boosted third-quarter sales, the fourth quarter, which is traditionally the worst season for car dealerships, will report abysmal numbers at best.

This administration reports, in contrast, the excitement of an inventive vehicle program drew in purchases that previously would not have happened. What they fail to say is this is highly unlikely for those who did not qualify, which is a greater percentage than one would initially think and during the CFC program, prices on vehicles actually rose.

Really that is it they disagree on what is going to happen in the future? And how is this silencing the opposition? Last time I checked we were allowed to say what we want and we were allowed to disagree in none of the things that you quoted did the Obama administration stop anyone from saying anything. You can speak your mind and guess what he is a citizen of the U.S. so he can...speak his mind too heaven forbid it disagrees with what you think.

I will let you read the rest of the article if you want but he pretty much goes on to say that Obama is wrong and that he doesn't let us use free speech but there is one last thing I want to discuss from the article:

The First Amendment states American citizens have liberty in the areas of the free exercise of religion, of speech, of the press, of assembly and to redress grievances before government. This is a statement that ought to take primacy in the lives of our leaders.

Guess what Obama is an American citizen and has the right to say what he thinks as well but even more so find me one instance where Obama has stopped any of these. Where the Tea party protesters allowed to protest? Yup. Are people still allowed to practice whatever religion they want? Sure. Do people call Obama a Nazi/Hitler? Yup. Has it ever been stopped? Nope. So you and he disagree on political issues, what did I expect living in West Texas, but that doesn't mean that you are being oppressed in what you can do/say.