The Unspecialized

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Friday "Christianity is a religion of peace." However, others say he's just being politically correct and attempting to appease the West.

It would be really nice if Google stopped putting Bicycle ads on my site. I understand, Specialized is a brand of bike and those characters exist within "The Unspecialized" which is on absolutely every page on this site.

What is the point of Sicko? If you could sum up it's purpose in a single sentence, what would it be? This is the most important question to ask before any reflection, criticism or report can be made. Yet, the point Sicko, is easy to miss.

Sicko is not about comparing the health care policies of Canada, England, France and Cuba with that of the United States. Sicko is not about how America and Americans are bad. The point of Sicko isn't even that for profit health care is a bad and wasteful model.

Everyone knows that the media has changed and continues to change. Everyone also knows about the buzzwords, user-contributed, blogosphere, decentralized news, 24-hour news cycle and the cable news networks (well, relatively new). Most people also know that when cable news began a change happened. Since cable news networks weren't using the public's airwaves they were not held to any civic responsibility standards in their determination of what constituted news. The consequence of this change and all of the changes that followed, such as user contributed news and blogs, has created a new model for news, which is, news equals attention grabbing content (perhaps it would be more accurate to say “heightened an existing aspect already present in news”). But it's our attention. We have the right to pay it to whomever we wish, which means we ought to consciously cultivate our news sensibilities and be very careful whenever we pass on news and stories.

Ever since I graduated college, I have done my best not to make jokes at the expense of people's religions, it's waaaaaay too easy, plus it's usually hurtful to the religious person (though they'd never show it) and it's also counter productive to the cause of rationality. That being said, I have never been able to get over the humorous things done and said by the devout. In order to pontificate and try to be “consistent” and whatever else their moral selves try to be, they can be far more debasing and heretical than I could ever be...and I've tried.

With this in mind, I was fortunate enough to watch an episode of Frontline the other day (the segment can be found here). The episode was about a comic book called “The 99” which features Muslim heroes, 99 of them, and, as I understand it, the 99 is a reference to the 99 attributes of Allah, which, it seems, matters a lot to Muslims.

Being noncommittal and stalling

I seem to have a serious problem committing to things. Any reservation that I might have seems to put itself in the way of a goal. I might become reluctant to pursue a goal and come up with distractions or I might devote solid time of 10% energy trudging on when I'm tired or otherwise occupied mentally. Or I might spend time coming up with an organization scheme just so that I can utterly ignore it and forget about it. When I think about it, I can only see myself as a person of extremely weak will. I suppose this is what makes me a patient person.

5 tips to become more productive, or, why I get nothing done.

• Read blogs and manuals on becoming more productive. The best ones are usually in the form of “10 tips”, “Top five”, or “33 ways to.” Rarely do they all have the same advice, so make sure to read as many as possible. Anytime one may mention something like effort or discipline or “real personal change” ignore it, the author is required to mention this in passing in order to be considered “knowledgeable” and thus get hits on their site.

• Check out the other articles on the productivity/motivation blog. Once you're done reading the “10 tips” entry it will be clear that your lack of productivity is routed in some other personal issues or mental habits. You won't be able to be productive until you read about romance, goals and hygiene, you may even need a new career in order to become productive, best not to count that out too!

   If there's one thing I hate, it's flip-flopping, and flip-flopping flip-floppers. Nothing is more bothersome than a politician or a person who changes his or her mind. When it comes to an issue, people need to make up their minds and stick to their first opinion. Now a days the stakes are far too high to rethink a problem. Everyone knows that rethinking a solution just proves that you are wrong. And if a person is wrong once, that person must always be wrong. /irony.

   So, why is the charge of flip-flopping so ubiquitous? Why does it seem to be lobbed at most every politician by most every other politician? Why do people consider it a dirty word that they would rather not have associated with themselves? Certainly consistency, courage and convictions are important aspects of a public persona, but so are intelligence, open mindedness and humility. To strive not to be a flip-flopper is to strive against all of the latter.