If you think you can get through life without thinking, you've already failed.

Take pictures, help the economy.

Today we were discussing textbooks, and headings, captions, pictures, bold face, yada yada, and what looked exciting. The point was brought up that wow, someone didn't even notice until they were in high school that pictures, captions, and text all went together, even making it less confusing. Amazing.
Of course though, the textbook companies want to make the book look appealing so that teachers will buy them. Pictures, graphs, weirdo highlighty stuff, you name it, teachers want to confuse their students. Of course, but what do the textbook companies want? The answer- they want money. So make the textbooks look pretty with pictures, and get money. Why buy the textbooks? So that the textbook companies won?t go out of business (Remember, I am just stating a conversation) Textbook companies don?t want to go out of business.
After this highly amusing though weirdly useless conversation, I started thinking. If the textbook companies go out of business, that is bad for the economy. Therefore, pictures are good for the economy. So that?s what I learned today: Pictures in textbooks, those annoying, distracting pictures, are good for the economy.

America, the obese.

Fashion magazines are now trying to put "normal sized" women as models into their glossy photoed pages. They state that girls are getting depressed and insecure when they pour over the magazine pages obsessively, then turn around to the mirrors projecting views of their own obese selves. So now the magazines have turned pollitically correct, not wanting to make obese people depressed by showing super-skinny models for the victims to compare themselves to. There are now pictures of normal sized people, and some obese people, in magazines, so that the readers know what normal people look like, thus raising self-esteem and self-image.
I think that this says something weird about our country, and our magazines, which are now telling us it is okay, maybe even normal to be obese. This is a terrebly fine line between encouragement of obeseness and encouragement of self-image, and I'm squinting at it with a hand lens. Just now that magazines are worried about too-thin teens and self-image, they are telling people it's okay to be themselves. Not when "themselves" means fat, lazy people ruining the percentage of productive youth in America. There is a big difference between naturally fat people and obese french-fry guzzling people who got that way. If you are naturally fat, you really can't do much about that. But if you got fat, you can get un-fat. You can change your diet, and excersize more. America has this distinctive way of not helping people solve their problems productively, but either tell them to get something better, or to not feel bad about it. (This is why I like IKEA, but that's a different story)

Magazines should not tell people that it is okay to be fat, because it is dangerous, but tell them how or if they can get un-fat naturally and healthily.

Lamenting the passing of Mr. Common Sense

This was in the newspaper today, and I thought it was pretty good.


"I recently had an old friend pass away: Mr. Common Sense.
Mr. Sense had been with us for many years. No one knows for sure how old he was, since his birth records had been lost a long time ago in a bureaucratic red tape.
He will be remembered for teaching such valuable lessons as "kindness is self-rewarding", "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" and "life isn't fair." His health began to deteriorate when well-intentioned but overbearing regulations were set in place; like a 6-year-old boy charged with sexual harassment for kissing a 6-year-old girl; a teacher fired for reprimanding an unruly student, causing the student mental stress; or get parental consent to administer a aspirin to a student, but do not inform the parents when the student is pregnant or wants an abortion.
He lost his will to live as the Ten Commandments became contraband, churches became businesses and criminals received better treatment than their victims.
He was preceded in death by his parents, Truth and Trust; his wife, Descretion; his daughter, Responsibility; and his son, Reason. He is survived by two stepbrothers, My Rights and Ima Whiner.
Many people don't realize that he is gone.

Wm. J. Kuntz"

Ethics and Harry Potter

We were talking about ethics today, and someone pronounced it was "unethical for reporters to write an article on someplace that they have not been". These reporters were fired. So I started thinkng, and came to the conclusion that it would be unethical to write an article on something that you haven't read, either.

So about all you people out there proclaiming Harry Potter is unethical, you better have read the book. You should be fired, because if anyone else has noticed, most people flaming HP don't have their facts straight. At all.

TV Marathons--Such irony!

The irony of the name for an intense running race (26.2 miles, I believe) attatched to a couch potato (that's another story, the one of the potato farmers trying to get "couch potato" out of the dictionary and have it replaced with "couch slouch"; and a story for another day) causing anti-intellegence, possibly obesity-promoting, lazily unactive activity (the irony, to even call it an "activity") of a TV marathon is amazing. How did the name for an annihilatingly extreme distance race for ultra-runners (compared to me, at least) get pinned to a series of tv shows (a thouroughly unproductive activity, and I hope you'll agree)? I suppose because of the length, but I still consider it highly ironic that the name for an active race for healthy people can be the same as an "activity" that can cause inactiveness and health problems.

Even Nationstates provides ways for teachers to oppress their students...

Check this out:

"Special Features for Teachers

To facilitate its use in classes, NationStates allows educators to establish a special class region, within which students' nations reside. This region is isolated from the rest of the game world, so students cannot communicate with or be approached by other players.

Nations in a class region:

• Are automatically added to the United Nations, without needing to supply an email address. (Normally, each nation that wishes to enter the UN must supply a unique e-mail address. Additionally, checks are performed to prevent players from operating more than one UN member nation. These do not apply to class members.)
• Will not receive daily issues that could be considered adult in nature.
• Cannot receive telegrams from or send telegrams to nations outside the region.
• Cannot leave the region."

To check out Nationstates, click on the link on the right of the page which clearly stated, "Nationstates"