I feel so impotent. And I would care, if I felt having kids would help.
Maybe I'm just super-cynical/spend too much time listening to "international" news instead of more locally based stuff...
But now I know why Americans are so stupid sometimes. The average american watches almost four hours of TV a night (I think the number at the moment is "three hours and 46 minutes" or something). Now, probably the majority of people are watching sitcoms or reality TV or whatever, but what if they try to be a "more informed person" or something and watch slightly more informing stuff?
I was in the living room tonight as my dad was tubing-out, watching a show on the Israelis kidnapping some Nazi guy from Argentina and getting a slap on the wrist from the UN- and tying this into current events by having a lot of people who had been involved at the time saying "in the light of the current world, blahblah yea, this is a justifiable action."
So, this started getting my ire up, and I asked him to change the channel. He was in one of his better moods, and so was willing to do so. Next show that comes up: "Katrina: Answering the Nation's Call" or something like that, about all the heroes who went in to save people about Katrina. Then the next show to come up? One on the History channel, about Pompeii and Pliney the Elder. Oh, this sounds good, right? Wrong! The show is talking about how Pliny the Elder, a prominent scientist (well, natural philosopher, but scientist was what they were calling him) of the time didn't know enough to avoid a volcano, sailing straight into it, but his uneducated slaves were telling him he should leave; he inhaled a bunch of ash and died while they sailed away.
GREAT. JUST GREAT.
To be fair: no, I don't think Nazis should have just been accommodated. No, I don't think it's a bad thing to give people who risk their lives for others the respect they deserve. Yes, Pliny did just hang out near an exploding Vesuvius. BUT. I also don't think we should just give governments of the world - who have the resources - to just do whatever the heck they feel like doing. And I don't think we should hide behind "oh, look at our heroes!" in order to pretend that there aren't some serious issues with how Katrina's aftermath is being dealt with. And the Romans had zero experience with any volcanoes before Vesuvius other than some piddly ones that just let off a bit of steam every now and then; people are scientists because they're curious, and yes, sometimes curiosity does kill the cat.
We wonder why science education in this country is going down the drain? Because everybody looks down on scientists. We barely give them any funding, we train kids to treat teachers like crap, we don't pay teachers anything, kids who do well in science in schools have other students going "ooh, you're so smart" and then avoiding them like the plague (and potentially, y'know, stealing their books), adults are told that science is against the bible, and obviously since scientists admit not knowing everything yet, but the bible-thumpers are emphatic that they know the complete truth, who do we go with? When you can get a name much more easily by being an actor, when you can make your millions much faster by being a lawyer and helping people sue anyone who tries to make an advance that just happens to have some flaw like maybe you have an allergy to a chemical used in The Cure For Cancer... why wouldn't anyone want to do science anymore??? ...Who are we kidding?
A small contingent of people standing outside flinging their arms around going "we need more kids to be interested in science!" are not going to have any effect on a United States that is otherwise fast going down the toilet of quick fame and riches without losing your grip on the remote and beer bottle. There's a reason all of our stem cell researches are moving to Singapore and all our physicists are moving to Switzerland. There's a reason more than half our grad students in the sciences are from overseas. There's plenty of reasons.
War is never justified. Never. Ohnoes, they're killing women and children! They're killing civilians! I'm willing to bet 70% of those soldiers don't actually want to be there, either. They were too poor to really have any other way to feed their family than offering their body up (funny; people get mad when women want to do that). They fell prey to the propaganda that showed all the brothers they would never know otherwise; blood-brothers. Because they were lonely in a world that nobody feels anything in. Because their father, mother, wife, guilted them into it, do it for the children, do it for me, do it for your country.
You want to do something for the children, for your country even if your country doesn't know any better? Stop setting the world on fire. Stop starting every single war you possible can, stop alienating every possible other country, because we all need to work together at this point. Stop dumping all your waste into the ocean that has to last us until we can evacuate this planet that every generation flushes a little more down the toilet - oh, but we're barely bothering with our space program anymore either, so maybe we're going to run out of time first, because nobody cares about anything than getting their SUV and their 60" plasma television and telling Johnny that yes, it's ok to hurt the other guys that you're playing soccer against; if he cringes, he'll just cry to his momma who will tell him that it's ok, because at least he gets As in science, but we know better, we know that the Real World is more about brutality than brilliance.
I. Wish. I. Could. Do. SOMETHING.
But now I know why Americans are so stupid sometimes. The average american watches almost four hours of TV a night (I think the number at the moment is "three hours and 46 minutes" or something). Now, probably the majority of people are watching sitcoms or reality TV or whatever, but what if they try to be a "more informed person" or something and watch slightly more informing stuff?
I was in the living room tonight as my dad was tubing-out, watching a show on the Israelis kidnapping some Nazi guy from Argentina and getting a slap on the wrist from the UN- and tying this into current events by having a lot of people who had been involved at the time saying "in the light of the current world, blahblah yea, this is a justifiable action."
So, this started getting my ire up, and I asked him to change the channel. He was in one of his better moods, and so was willing to do so. Next show that comes up: "Katrina: Answering the Nation's Call" or something like that, about all the heroes who went in to save people about Katrina. Then the next show to come up? One on the History channel, about Pompeii and Pliney the Elder. Oh, this sounds good, right? Wrong! The show is talking about how Pliny the Elder, a prominent scientist (well, natural philosopher, but scientist was what they were calling him) of the time didn't know enough to avoid a volcano, sailing straight into it, but his uneducated slaves were telling him he should leave; he inhaled a bunch of ash and died while they sailed away.
GREAT. JUST GREAT.
To be fair: no, I don't think Nazis should have just been accommodated. No, I don't think it's a bad thing to give people who risk their lives for others the respect they deserve. Yes, Pliny did just hang out near an exploding Vesuvius. BUT. I also don't think we should just give governments of the world - who have the resources - to just do whatever the heck they feel like doing. And I don't think we should hide behind "oh, look at our heroes!" in order to pretend that there aren't some serious issues with how Katrina's aftermath is being dealt with. And the Romans had zero experience with any volcanoes before Vesuvius other than some piddly ones that just let off a bit of steam every now and then; people are scientists because they're curious, and yes, sometimes curiosity does kill the cat.
We wonder why science education in this country is going down the drain? Because everybody looks down on scientists. We barely give them any funding, we train kids to treat teachers like crap, we don't pay teachers anything, kids who do well in science in schools have other students going "ooh, you're so smart" and then avoiding them like the plague (and potentially, y'know, stealing their books), adults are told that science is against the bible, and obviously since scientists admit not knowing everything yet, but the bible-thumpers are emphatic that they know the complete truth, who do we go with? When you can get a name much more easily by being an actor, when you can make your millions much faster by being a lawyer and helping people sue anyone who tries to make an advance that just happens to have some flaw like maybe you have an allergy to a chemical used in The Cure For Cancer... why wouldn't anyone want to do science anymore??? ...Who are we kidding?
A small contingent of people standing outside flinging their arms around going "we need more kids to be interested in science!" are not going to have any effect on a United States that is otherwise fast going down the toilet of quick fame and riches without losing your grip on the remote and beer bottle. There's a reason all of our stem cell researches are moving to Singapore and all our physicists are moving to Switzerland. There's a reason more than half our grad students in the sciences are from overseas. There's plenty of reasons.
War is never justified. Never. Ohnoes, they're killing women and children! They're killing civilians! I'm willing to bet 70% of those soldiers don't actually want to be there, either. They were too poor to really have any other way to feed their family than offering their body up (funny; people get mad when women want to do that). They fell prey to the propaganda that showed all the brothers they would never know otherwise; blood-brothers. Because they were lonely in a world that nobody feels anything in. Because their father, mother, wife, guilted them into it, do it for the children, do it for me, do it for your country.
You want to do something for the children, for your country even if your country doesn't know any better? Stop setting the world on fire. Stop starting every single war you possible can, stop alienating every possible other country, because we all need to work together at this point. Stop dumping all your waste into the ocean that has to last us until we can evacuate this planet that every generation flushes a little more down the toilet - oh, but we're barely bothering with our space program anymore either, so maybe we're going to run out of time first, because nobody cares about anything than getting their SUV and their 60" plasma television and telling Johnny that yes, it's ok to hurt the other guys that you're playing soccer against; if he cringes, he'll just cry to his momma who will tell him that it's ok, because at least he gets As in science, but we know better, we know that the Real World is more about brutality than brilliance.
I. Wish. I. Could. Do. SOMETHING.