Posts Tagged ‘ culture ’

Irrational Beliefs

The other day I read this article in the New York Times about people who believe untrue things despite strong evidence to the contrary.  In addition to this, people read chain emails and scam pages on social networking sites and believe them without asking questions about the veracity of the claims.

I recently received an email from a family member that you may be familiar with.  I found out, through a simple web search, that the content of the email is completely FALSE. Here is one of the many sites that discuss the lack of truth in this email.  In addition to being untruthful, the wording in this email is offensive to any self-respecting person who believes in things like “all men are created equal”.

Here is a copy of this email with my commentary in red (I changed some font sizes and some trivial line breaks):

Fw: Handling Arabs I get the feeling that the word “Arabs” here is used condescendingly – maybe that’s not the word, but with negative connotations Fwd: Fw: Budweiser, Pepsi and other vendors

In God We Trust What does any of this have to do with god?

You have probably read this before, but it’s well worth reading again. The second part is new so please read the whole thing and then pass it on.

The Budweiser Story
(not a joke)

This is TRUE!  And I’m supposed to believe you because you claim to tell the truth?  Wait, hold on, I just looked outside and discovered that grass is really purple!  It’s TRUE!  So now you have to believe me!  Logical?

How Budweiser handled those who laughed at those who died on the 11th of September, 2001…

Thought you might like to know what happened in a little town north of Bakersfield, California

After you finish reading this, please forward this story on to others so that our nation and people around the world will know about those who laughed when they found out about the tragic events in New York , Pennsylvania , and the Pentagon.  First of all, there are BIG grammatical errors here that any third grader could fix.  There should be no space before the commas – only after them.  One of the first and most obvious signs of spam/phishing emails is bad spelling and grammar.  Perhaps the same standards should apply here?

On September 11th, A Budweiser employee was making a delivery to a convenience store in a California town
named McFarland.. He knew of the tragedy that had occurred in New York when he entered the business to find the two Arabs (Once again, with the Arab comment.  What, exactly, does this writer mean by “Arab” anyway?  Are they just trying to describe a skin color?  Would it be ok if we went back to using off-color remarks to describe Irish-Americans, African-Americans, etc? Why can’t we all be just plain American anyway?) , who owned the business, whooping and hollering to show their approval and support of this treacherous attack. The Budweiser employee went to his truck, called his boss and told him of the very upsetting event! He didn’t feel he could be in that store with those horrible people. His boss asked him, ‘Do you think you could go in there long enough to pull every Budweiser product and item our beverage company sells there? We’ll never deliver to them again.’ Please see the Snopes article linked to above for proof that none of this story is true.

The employee walked in, proceeded to pull every single product his beverage company provided and left with an incredible grin on his face. He told them never to bother to call for a delivery again. Budweiser happens to be the beer of choice for that community. (According to who?  What’s your evidence?  And just because people share a skin color or type of dress that means they should all also like the same beer?  This is awful, if you ask me.)

Just letting you know how Kern County handled this situation. (No you’re not.  You’re irresponsibly spreading lies with offensive racial comments strewn throughout.  Take your prejudicial racist lies and get the hell out of my FREE country, please!)

And Now The Rest Of The Story: What’s up with the unnecessary capitalization, anyway?

It seems that the Bud driver and the Pepsi man are neighbors. Bud called Pepsi and told him. Pepsi called his boss who told him to pull all Pepsi products as well!!! That would include Frito Lay, etc. Furthermore, word spread and all vendors followed suit! At last report, on June 26, 2009, Fareed Katib closed the store and filed bankruptcy! BS!

Good old American Passive-Aggressive A$$ Whoopin!  Last thing I knew, it was an insult to be called passive-aggressive, because being that way implies you’re too chicken to actually face your opponent (or perceived opponent).  And this isn’t even a sentence.  Didn’t you learn what fragments are?  And why are you afraid to swear, but you aren’t afraid to make racially charged accusations?

Pass this along, America needs to know that we’re all working together!  Apparently we’re not.  You’re a racist asshole.

If you can read this. Thank a teacher…  I had great teachers.  Too bad people with your political leaning keep taking away their pay and benefits while increasing their class sizes and making them less effective.  Again “If you can read this.” is not a sentence.  It’s a good beginning to a sentence, but I think you need to go back to your teachers and complain that they didn’t teach you English very well.

If you are reading it in English…. THANK A SOLDIER!!!  Whose soldier?  I think we need to thank British soldiers for fighting to keep their independence from France, otherwise they would have been speaking French long before anyone settled in America.  Perhaps we should just thank our forefathers for their ability to settle, survive, and become independent of Great Britain.  And maybe we should apologize for them in the same breath for what they did for hundreds of years to people who were different – Native Americans, African Americans that were stolen from their homes and relocated against their will to be slaves to rich, powerful (and by powerful, I mean they had better weapons) white men.  Why do you scream “THANK A SOLDIER!!!”?  Seriously?

If you do not send this you have no soul !!!!  First, there should be no space between “soul” and the exclamation points.  Secondly, who is to say that any of us have souls?  Why force your religious beliefs into this racist fairy tale?

This email only shows me that people are very easy to mislead and that they nearly never check the truthfulness of things people say to them.  Like the New York Times article linked to above states, if this isn’t corrected – if people don’t start actually caring about the truthfulness of claims, we are in for a bad, bad, future.

Please learn to be critical of things – even skeptical.  The truth should always be more important than anything.


2010
08/28
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New Berlin Mayor’s Characterization of Citizens as Bigots Should Have Been Snobs

It’s too bad. There are so many closed-minded people. In New Berlin, WI, plans for a low-income housing unit have been underway. When this was announced to residents, they sent the mayor emails asking him to reconsider for various reasons, including an increase in crime, an increase in property taxes, and home/property devaluation. For an overview of this controversy (including a copy of the offending email), please visit this story at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s website. These may be sincere, valid concerns. But they also may be thinly veiled racism, since minorities are disproportionately represented in low-income communities.

New Berlin is an upper middle class suburb where the population is 95% white (see http://www.neighborhoodlink.com/zip/53151 for the demographic information). In addition, the average home value is $164,200 and the average annual household income is $79,346. The emails sent to the mayor discuss how the people who live in New Berlin chose to do so because they wanted to be in a nice neighborhood away from crime and with “quality people”.

I can, in a way, understand these concerns. Nobody wants to hear gunshots and sirens all the time. And people want to believe that their homes and children are safe. Unfortunately, those kind of beliefs are often based on assumptions and the safety itself is just an illusion. Think of all the news stories about suburban kids using and selling recreational drugs (often the sum of excess free time and excess disposable income – the reasons the parents live in the ‘burbs to begin with) and how the parents always seem so surprised.

Let’s look at this another way. Let’s say you live in New Berlin (or a place like it) and have a teenager who has worked at a local retail store or fast food restaurant (common teen jobs) and is graduating from High School. Maybe your kid goes away to college and decides s/he wants to come back home to work and create a life. In general, entry-level jobs do not support living in this kind of a suburb – much less the kinds of entry level jobs recent college graduates are getting in this economy. So maybe your kid gets a job in town, but has to live 15-20 miles away, where housing is actually affordable and s/he can get a roommate. Then this person has to pay more in gas every day for a commute which could be unnecessary but for a community’s desire to maintain an image. This person has to pay a higher sales-tax rate (because in Milwaukee County, the sales tax is 5.6% versus the 5.1% in New Berlin), provided s/he shops near home. This person has to travel further to see family and enjoy many things in the hometown community. Wouldn’t you, as the parent, want your kid to be able to afford to live nearby? Wouldn’t you want your kids friends (even the ones who decided college wasn’t the way to go) to be able to stick around? What if your kid chose a worthwhile line of work with low pay (working for a non-profit or religious institution – or just teaching!)? Would you want these people to be included in your community or eliminated because the city is trying to maintain an image? Or would you want your community to consistently be infused with new people trying desperately to escape the city? Can it even be called a community if your children are economically forced out as young adults?

I think that dismissing an project that could really help enrich the community through racial, economic, and educational diversity is a mistake that no community can afford to make. The people that wrote the emails linked to above were acting in a selfishly snobby way. Racist? Maybe. But selfish and snobby? Definitely. That’s what the mayor should have called them out for. And the plan should go forward – at least until someone can come up with a valid, unselfish and un-snobby reason it shouldn’t.

2010
06/02
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Bacteria, Oil, Viruses, Crackpots, and the Great America

Can spending time outdoors make you a calmer, smarter person? What about classrooms – should they include time outside? According to this article on Science Daily’s website, yes. They say that there’s a bacteria that there is a bacteria commonly found in soil that people often breathe in or ingest, and that when this bacteria was tested on lab rats, it produced rats that were able to act faster than others and show fewer signs of anxiety. Who knew?

Anyone out there who was a bit older than I am might remember an oil spill in 1979. Here Rachel Maddow compares that spill with our current situation. I can’t help but wonder why we haven’t learned or developed more effective ways of dealing with these problems.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Now this is just creepy. A man has demonstrated human infection by a computer virus. While this may sound sci-fi to many of us, there are plenty of scientists devoted to studying the future and future technology. A quick skim of a book by one of the field’s most visible authors, Ray Kurzweil, will familiarize anyone with some more ideas that send chills up spines similarly.

Crackpots? You be the judge. I can understand predicting more economic troubles for America this year – it’s not like people are spending less and saving more on a wide scale. But these claims, including the collapse of the FDIC and martial law, sound incredibly far-fetched. I, personally, will believe it when I see it.

With Memorial Day behind us now, we might be ready to read about something other than our veterans and their contributions to our present state of being. I urge you, however, to read this article, written by a veteran, about what it means to be American and what our veterans fought to secure. It’s more the acknowledgment that we’re all human and we all deserve the same rights, but we seem to keep trying to deny rights to others. I’m guessing it’s all about power. When a group of people has more rights (or freedom) than another, it has a greater amount of power than the smaller group – maybe even power over that group. These things are not what America was meant to be.

2010
06/02
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That Children Issue

When I meet people for the first time and they find out that I was 20 when I got married, the first question they ask is how many children we have. It’s rather funny to me that people automatically assume that a young marriage happens only because of pregnancy, but it’s true. However, that’s not always the case. Jerry and I were madly in love then – and still are! Most often, when I reply to these people that we have no children, they go on to ask if we plan on having any (answer: no, but we’re open to changing our minds) and why not. It appalls me that people would even begin to think that the answers to these questions are any of their business.

We have plenty of reasons not to have children. There are medical conditions that we chance passing on to offspring. There’s the fact that we’re trying to end the cycle of abuse, and we can’t be certain of our ability to do that with children in our home. There’s the desire to give our potential children the best life that we can – stability, hard work, values, diverse interests, etc. There are the standard ideas that we can lessen the environmental impact of the world community by not contributing more Americans to it. There’s the fact that our siblings were born after we both entered double-digit ages, enabling us to experience firsthand the effort involved and the challenges faced in parenthood. There’s the recognition that so many children already exist in this world in abject poverty, parent-less, and disease-ridden. Those children need loving homes and guidance more than we need to continue our genetic makeup. And then there’s the fact that the medication I am on would definitely harm any fetus – and going through the process of pregnancy without my medication would be a harrowing experience at best.

With all these reasons not to have children (in addition to the others that I cannot recall at the moment), we see no need or reason to have children. From our perspective (on the outside, I understand) it seems that people have children for one of a very few reasons. These can be “wanting” them, accidental pregnancy, and meeting social expectations. I’m sure there are more, it’s just so hard to gauge people’s reasoning and even more difficult to ask them how they came to the conclusion that having children was the right choice. I can only imagine that from the parents’ perspective that question would seem as a direct challenge to their decisions.

Without wanting to challenge anyone one about their decisions to become parents, I am constantly seeking a reason to have children. And I don’t mean something like having someone to take care of us in our old-age or finding out what combining our genes would do. I’m seeking something concrete. For example, we just decided NOT to get a Blu-Ray player for a Christmas present this year. We used reason in coming to this decision. We looked at our DVD collection and assessed how often we actually watch the DVD’s that we own. We estimated how often we rent DVD’s vs renting video on demand. It turns out that we probably have absolutely no use for a Blu-Ray player, despite the fact that they are cool and we love new gadgets. That money would be more wisely spent elsewhere – or saved. Now that’s the kind of reasoning I’m looking for in making a decision to have children. Something that follows logic and makes sense. So, please, if you can think of a logical reason to have children, please let us know. Leave a comment, send an email, anything.

In the meantime, please enjoy reading this article explaining some additional reasons for choosing to be child-free.

2009
10/06
CATEGORY
Personal
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Modesty, Flipping Pages Online, Showering into Sickness, and a (hopefully!) Good Read

It’s not often that we acknowledge how much we owe our success to others and sincerely express gratitude.  David Brooks offers up a fine example of America at its best, with grand achievements and modesty to spare.

Sick of reading boring news feeds?  Try Google’s new Fast Flip.  With an interface closer to that of an ebook reader, it makes looking at articles on the computer screen seem more natural.

It seems as though by cleaning yourself every morning under a stream of warm water, you might just be exposing yourself to bacteria that can make you sick.  Good to know, but I think I’ll chalk that one up to improving my immune system!

This graphic novel about a traumatic childhood seems like a touching tale with expressive visuals as accompaniment.  It might be worth taking a look at.

‘Tis all I have for today… make it a lovely one!

2009
09/16
CATEGORY
Technology
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