Philanthropy

By: Unknown

I tell people I want to be rich. I don't hesitate to state this if someone asks. People think I'm merely greedy, but it's something more.

I want to help people. Not just single individuals, but on a large scale. I want to give millions, or perhaps billions, anonymously to charities. I want to be able to walk up to a downtrodden homeless person (not one of those panhandlers, mind you) or read a story in the newspaper about a family who has fallen on hard times and can't afford a necessary... something, and send them a cool million anonymously.

I say anonymously because I don't want to fall into the trap that most wealthy people fall into, in which they give solely to increase their public image, like Bill Gates, or Ross Perot, or Ted Turner. No, I want to give with no one knowing, and leave it to my final request to reveal my donations (can't go without some kind of acknowledgment, now can I?)

I read Leonard Pitts' column today (here, at the Miami Herald's website, or in today's News & Record), and it made me think: "What if someone could effect large scale change in Africa?" Obviously, no one, not even the wealthiest person, could pay enough to fix Africa entirely. And the U.S. alone couldn't even do it, because poverty is not something we can fix with military aid alone. Of course, I'm of the firm belief that democracy itself makes great strides toward ending poverty wherever it is effected as the means of government, so the first step would be changing the African governments to a republican setup. But what if someone set a trend after that? I want to be able to donate tens of billions of dollars to African nations (anonymously, of course. You know the schpiel), but will anybody else?

I think they would. I think we just need that seed, but it would have to be arranged correctly. For example, if I wanted to get other wealthy people donating to these causes, I would have to donate my lot of money anonymously, then "accidentally" be revealed. Because, you see, this will worry the heck out of the bigwigs. They'll be left with only one option as they now face the disappointment, which is a mild way to say it, of the general public, and they'll, by and large, be forced to save their image by donating.

Incidentally, the need and, ultimately, responsibility for America to effect changes to democratic government in other countries is why I support the war in Iraq, and why I'll support any war for this cause that doesn't require a draft to support (a draft, as I've said before, should only be used when we must defend our very way of life, as in World War I and II).

God bless America, for we are in a position to really help the world. And God bless Bush, for standing up to criticism and actually helping.

~Michael Akerman,
...by the way, there's a new, though rather unimportant, post below this one...

Rhetorically Useless

By: Unknown

Entering college, it seems that these universities are largely wasting my time. I mean that, at least at State, the information provided is consistently either limited and repetitive or terribly hard to access. For instance, orientation was merely a repetition of everything they had already sent us: all the papers, forms, and pamphlets that we already had.

The information that I actually need, it seems, is carefully hidden, or written in the most difficult jargon possible. Finding out more about foreign language requirements (which Ragsdale (surprise) did a poor job of informing me of exactly what was required) led me, finally, to a Google search on ncsu.edu (yay, Google!). Incidentally, I have my foreign language fulfilled, which both removes a weight from my shoulders and further complicates my already cramped schedule, wherein my mom wants more credit hours.

Aside from ill-designed websites (which is ironic for a university with a design school), setting up remote access to the NCSU computer lab network was astoundingly easy, though harder than it should have been. I'm now set up with a Secure Shell direct access to my Eos/Unity account, a virtual hard drive image that direct connects to Eos/Unity through WolfCall, FTP access to my account, and the ability to remotely run the Unity programs on my home computer. Additionally, every student at State gets 50 Mb of storage or webspace, which means I could theoretically set up PHP and MySQL files on that storage and run really cool programs on the blog (like good message boards).

This laptop is terribly slow, even at basic typing, while Norton's running, so I'm ending it here.

~Michael Akerman

It's Gettin' Hot in Here, So Try to Attack Bush

By: Unknown

A week or so ago, I saw Fahrenheit 9/11 with Smith, because neither of us had seen it yet, and it's easier to argue in person. I went fully expecting it would infuriate and enrage me, or at least make me argue vehemently with Smith.

To be honest, I was quite surprised. The movie is rather well done, with solid filmography and good, though bizarre, audio work. In fact, it was the funniest movie I've seen in a long time. If you go to see the film, you have to understand how Michael Moore's wit works, which is hard to describe. In fact, it works much like my wit, dry and irreverent. He attacks Bush with an unceasing barrage of sharp mockings and hilarious film edits that are obviously and hilariously exaggerated to put Bush in a worse light than is possible. Really, Moore plays expertly to his primary audience.

The film is upbeat and interesting... until we get to the Iraq war. Here Moore becomes simply detestable. Aside from the poor directorial decision on the length of the war segment, which was unbearably long, Moore, in trying to cast Bush down yet more, attacks American soldiers as much as the war and Bush. Choosing the worst possible clips of the most ignorant soldiers, Moore shows true horrors that should never have come to pass. However, he shows few, if any, clips of the achievements of the American soldiers. This gross misrepresentation leaves the audience (more on them in a second) with a distinct feeling that our soldiers are undisciplined, ignorant hicks who learned to fight by shootin' venison. This treatment of our soldiers is juxtaposed by clips of one or two soldiers who are against the war. These few soldiers are, of course, given plenty of screen time to decry the war.

On a less concrete note, I don't get the name. It's obviously a spoof on Fahrenheit 451, but the movie has very little connection to corrupt government and censorship. Then there's the use of 9/11, which is discussed for maybe 15 minutes. The film, perhaps should have been titled Fahrenheit Iraq.

Speaking of corrupt government, Moore does attempt to make a case for it, but it comes off more like he's attempting comedy than seriously lambasting the government. The claim Moore brings up time and again to prove his warped idea of the government, aside from Bush's relative slowness, which I won't precisely argue against, but I don't precisely agree with, is the fact that for many government jobs, Bush called on people he or his family knew personally. Apparently to socialists this is a bad thing.

If you were in a position where every decision you made affected at the very least hundreds of people, who would you call on, a stranger, or someone whom you trusted to look out for America's best interests. I'd choose the latter.

Overall, though, Moore's film is good. I would recommend seeing it once, not to be informed about the true state of America, which the film surely avoids, but to be informed about the film itself.

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Haha! Propaganda!

While I was pleasantly surprised by Moore's film, I'm still disappointed with the American audience. It's astounding how many people actually believe this is a documentary that is factual in every statement, and take Moore's word as the gospel truth. Fahrenheit would more correctly be called propaganda. I'm also ashamed at how many people base their reactions to "facts" on Moore's applied connotation. If Moore emphasizes the correct words in any statement, the audience is appalled or pleased. It's a power I would love to wield, of course. A large portion of America is putty in Moore's hand.

Let me give you an example. For a large part of the film, Moore follows the mother of a military family. From a poor town, this woman had told all of her children that the army was a good option for them, since they wouldn't be able to get financial aid (apparently, they were really, really stupid, or simply didn't realize that it's easier for poor people to get financial aid). Of course, one of her sons was sent to war in Iraq (why do poor families always have, like, twelve kids?), and was promptly killed (convenient for Moore, eh ;-)?). Moore asks the woman if she's angry that Bush sent her son off to die in war. The audience then exhibits the emotion desired, sadness for the woman. Luckily I was in an intelligent audience, and several audience members and I snorted and chuckled. Yes, yes, it's very sad that people die. However, the soldier was a volunteer, and the mother pushed him to join the army. No, Bush did not send him to war. It would be more proper to say that the mother did. Welcome to America. We have a volunteer army.

Incidentally, Moore talks for a time about how most soldiers are from poor towns. It seems to me this is a large problem. With such a high-tech arsenal, we need well-educated people running our weaponry. As far as I can tell, the problem is, first, antiquated methods. There is no need for marching maneuvers, or the intimidating nature of boot camp. Perhaps we're not aware, but we have no "grunt" infantry who need to be broken into a unified machine anymore. Second, the astoundingly low pay for soldiers: we really ought to raise the defense budget (abolish the Dept.s of Agriculture and Education. We'll have plenty of money then) and raise pay for soldiers.

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Drafting a Law

Real quick, before I conclude, there's been some talk lately about a new draft for Iraq; not among Congressmen, as far as I know. Just among depressing doomsayers. People think that I would support this because I'm conservative, but drafts piss me off so much. I'm fine with "unnecessary" wars to liberate people, if we use a volunteer army. However, the moment a draft becomes necessary, the war should end. A draft should only be used in matters of utmost urgency, such as defending our country. The last time a draft was necessary was World War II. Vietnam's draft was poorly conceived and against basic human rights.

~Michael Akerman,
...hurry up and post something, Smith!...

Just a Quick Post

By: Unknown

First off, I'll be changing my blog "soon" (which, of course, means sometime between now and the heat death of the universe). I hope to build all the changes without rolling them through until I'm done, then introducing them all at once. I'm especially focused on the carpet and drape scheme, by which I mean, background colors and frame arrangements.

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Now, the subject of this post:

I went to see Harry Potter 3 today (very good, by the way) and it got me thinking (again) about time travel. Incidentally, I posted this on the Halo Revolution forums.

"Time travel is interesting, you know. If you assume a continuum, then you cannot affect anything through time travel. For instance, let's assume that you attempted to go back to the 1940s and save Hitler's life. Well, if that we're the case, in a continuum where the past constantly leads into the current present, Hitler would already be alive, as you had spared him in the past. So, paradoxically, you would have no motivation to save Hitler, since he had already been spared. If you had no motivation, you would not go back and save him, so, following the normal course of events, Hitler would have died. Now, of course, you have your motivation back. So you head to the past and save him; however, he was already saved before you time traveled, so, logically, you wouldn't expend the effort to time travel and save him. The only logical answer, of course, is that you were motivated by some other factor to travel through time to save him, thereby creating the present where he is saved. Of course, in our case, this is not the case, so the only thing that could have happened is some time traveler accidentally killed Hitler in the 1940s, leading, through the normal course of time, to our present."

This also leads to the conclusion that time doesn't exist. Following normal scientific principles:

The past cannot alter the present.
The future cannot be altered, as it doesn't yet exist.
The present cannot be observed or measured, as it is an abstract, infintessimally small span of time.
If neither the past, present, or future can be affected in any means, and the current time period at any time, the present, cannot be observed, measured, quantified, or otherwise known to be, time cannot exist.

Therefore, time is merely an abstraction: a method to attempt to give order to things by simplifying measurement of planetary rotation.

~Michael,
...more to come, probably, about something Harry Potter brought up...

Ruminations

By: Unknown

First off: GOD! I hate those freaking Extra gum commercials. I wish whoever is creating them would either be fired or die.

---

::coughs:: Anyways...

---

As one grows older, one begins to ruminate more. It's simply a fact of life. More time is devoted to thinking about life. I'm not sure I would say less is spent living it; I think it's just that life becomes automatic enough that one can devote concentration to thinking.

It's odd for me, because I've always felt that I was old. I can't remember when I didn't think a lot. Of course, in elementary school I pondered concrete subjects and scientific fundamentals much more often than the abstract, truly important subjects.

Which leads one to the conclusion that I must understand these abstract topics better now. On the contrary, I simply have firmer theories about them. No one truly understands those issues that are really important; we simply decide what we believe, look for supportive reasons, and, hopefully, maintain the ability to see these issues from other perspectives and change our opinion if these alternate viewpoints have better reasons than our original beliefs.

Which is why debating (arguing, as my mom calls it) is a great thing. Remember, it's always easier to see your own beliefs clearly, especially if they are deeply rooted. When debating, assuming there is no forced assignment of positions on topics (that really defeats the purpose), the opposing viewpoint has reasoned their position much better than you ever could.

I was about to forget what I was going to talk about. At any rate, I've written myself into a corner, and I have no segway to what I was going to talk about after writing about all that aging stuff, so...

TRANSITIONING...

When I was a kid, everyone wanted to grow up. Everyone wanted the freedom, the knowledge, the power, the respect, and, according to Freud, sex. In retrospect, it's obvious to any halfwit that these are grandiose pipe dreams. Most wonder how children could be so deluded. I wondered the same thing. When I say wondered, I mean that at that age, I did not look forward to growing up. Because frankly, it didn't make any sense. If every year of childhood carried more responsibility, why would that pattern break? Don't get me wrong: I'm not pessimistic in nature. I'm merely rational. It's fine deluding yourself, as long as you are deluding yourself on purpose. If you are obviously wrong, but don't notice, it is simply foolish.

Really, I loved childhood. I knew I had freedom, and having fun was socially acceptable. I also knew that, eventually, I wouldn't be allowed to really play pretend anymore. It's sad that American Puritan morals demand formality and rationality at all times from adults (which is why we regard comic book and fantasy nerds who dress up in character as weird). Come to think of it, I still play pretend. I'm really very childlike. I just play with a new, socially accepted medium. I'm a gamer, which is an interesting compromise, since playing pretend physically is considered delusional, but when separated from the imaginary world by an obvious, non-mental barrier, it's generally acceptable.

Anyways, I never looked forward to fundamental shifts in age as a child. Not birthdays, of course. People don't treat you any differently after a birthday. Rather, graduations from one grade to another never struck me as something "good." It's merely a responsibility, like paying taxes. I still don't think graduations are something to celebrate, really. Maybe I'm just able to take them in stride because I understand the ramifications of graduating, while most have that odd mix of wonder and fear of the unknown. They find themselves in this predicament because they don't seek enough information, but I can't do anything about that. I can only suggest to others and lead by example.

Maggie asked me once why I never seem bothered by things. I think most people forget that everything is temporary. There are very few things that can truly affect your life in any noticeable way. As long as you're generally plugging along in the right direction, mistakes are nothing to sweat. People always expect the fallout to be worse than possible. Most expect that they will suffer social distancing of some kind, as others view their mistake as a fundamental personal failing. Yet they forget all the times this never happened ever, in the history of the world. No, one must only worry about general negative trends. Oddly, these are generally more damaging because they don't worry about these. Possibly because they are less immediately noticeable, alcoholism, marijuana and other drug use, wanton sex, and other hooliganism is often overlooked by society until it has festered to a fundamental, stable failing. Compounding this, these activities are praised.

At a certain point, one can hold an internal dialogue that rivals any interpersonal dialogue. I believe I can do this, and that, I suppose, is what I just did. But now I'm tired, and I could continue this post relatively indefinitely if I didn't stop somewhere. So, I'm stopping here.

~Michael Akerman,
..."See you, space cowboy!" -Cowboy Bebop

Linkies, my blinkies!

By: Unknown

[EDIT] I forgot one. Alton Brown, most awesomized chef ever, has a blog. Go to www.altonbrown.com and click on Rants and Raves at the top. [/EDIT]

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Ahem! I'll get right to the point. My brother's copying me right now. He set up a blog here. I have a feeling it will be much more social/personally oriented than mine.

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I've been messing with news aggregators recently. I finally found one that supports the blog's Atom feed. You can get it here, for a 14 day trial. It's called NewzCrawler, by the way. It's neat, but I don't keep up with it enough, so it gets overloaded.

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A Sad Day... Sort Of

President Ronald Reagan died today at the age of 93, peacefully in his house. I must say, that would be the way I want to die. I suppose it's not terribly sad, since he was that old and he had such a debilitating disease as Alzheimer's, but it is entirely appropriate to honor him. Thus...



Frankly, I don't think I'd want to live with Alzheimer's, but I am cerebrocentric. 93 is quite a respectable age to die at, too. Nice and old.

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Ceremonial Saditude

It boggles the mind.

Frankly, I have something to say to those people who prepare for an event for years, then cry when it comes:

You are an idiot.

And you know who you are.

For instance, at graduation (and immediately before), all these people started acting bummed out, some reaching the point of crying. Honestly, you knew this day was coming. You looked forward to it since junior year, at least. It could only be stupidity, or foolishness at least, that prevented you from understanding the ramifications of the event before the point of the actual ceremony.

The same goes double for weddings. The weddee has no reason to cry, ever, unless the other weddee has forced them to do this. The only person who ever has reason to be emotional at a ceremony like this are the parents and grandparents of the participant, and always because of pride.

And frankly, weddings and graduations are nothing to be proud of. I'm going to confidently guess that 96% of people graduate high school and 95% get married at some point. These events are to be expected. There are certain events that relatives may feel extreme pride at, generally ceremonies that were extremely hard to come by (i.e., Eagle Scout banquets), events that are rather uncommon (graduating from medical or law school, or otherwise getting an upper level degree (MD, PhD)), or events that represent the continuation of a family tradition that the relative helped effect (again, at my Eagle ceremony, my grandparents have 3 Eagle Scout sons, and now I am continuing as an Eagle grandson).

So quit crying, you pansies. Unless you find yourself surprised by something monumental (winning an Oscar) or this is an astounding personal success (being born a poor black crack addicted baby in the ghetto in Iraq and graduating with a PhD from Harvard) that took a lot of extreme effort (as in, 100% of your effort, since there's no such thing as "giving 110%"), keep your emotions under control. Everybody else can.

~Michael,
...rant completed...

Masks, Facades, a Social Front. Reasons, Charity, and What They Want.

By: Unknown

Today I thunk about a lot.
I thunk a lot of things.
Of people, places, souls, and graces,
Actions, lies, and dreams.

I thought about why people act,
Why they do the things they do.
I pondered how after the fact
They justify it, too.

I wondered why in company,
People aren't the same:
Of how they act so differently
When others say their name.

I decided that the mysteries
Were difficult and obscure.
Yet I must state what I believe
And in you them inure.

---

Heh. That was fun.

Anyways, I've been thinking a lot today about how people have facades they use in company. I've been wondering what drives us to make these social masks.

The masks appear to be most prevalent in the company of people we respect and desire the appreciation of. This leads me to believe that the masks are simply a device to allow greater social acceptance, especially of powerful people, and thus would be evolutionarily advantageous.

Simple enough, but this leads to some quandries. If this is the case, then do more females than males have social masks? And shouldn't the most powerful person be entirely true to himself?

I can't answer the first question without careful study, but I have seen more men exhibiting the phenomenon than women, but that could be because women are better at it. Men usually exhibit a weaker social masking response than women, however. The second is obviously not true, but its harder to say why. Perhaps its simply that no one knows who the most powerful person is, so no one can afford to drop their masks.

This causes me to question whether everyone has social masks, and to what degree social masking differs. I try to be as transparent as I can possibly afford to be, but some people seem to cover themselves in every situation, often losing themselves in the process.

Two examples come to mind:

Maggie is constantly portraying herself as somewhat aloof, unforgiving, and apathetic. She tries to place herself outside of society. However, from when I knew her in middle school and my limited interaction with her outside of school, I can attest that she is not usually like that outside of school. Maggie is pleasant to be around outside of school, and seems vaguely apologetic for something. Her avoidance of appearing to enjoy things indicates to me that she is avoiding something by redirecting her anger at convenient targets. I cannot venture to guess what she is avoiding, because I'm not her.

Perhaps a better example is Angela, mostly because it has been much easier to observe. Angela has two very different responses to certain situations. In academic environments, Angela is quite obviously intelligent, collected, and articulate. Frankly, if I had only known her in a collected academic manner, I would not be able to picture her partying or joking like she does. As soon as the formal situation ends, she makes a quite seamless transition to what I like to call "Gel" (purely because I've heard that as her nickname sometime before, but I can't recall precisely when). She waves off school nonchalantly and picks up a very offhand attitude. She acts much like those whom you wouldn't expect in advanced classes. This is an interesting adaptation that, I deduce, probably started in sixth grade when she ran for class government. She ran with good, honest political aspirations, but obviously understood the necessity of appealing to popular notions (on the "Bo Knows" ticket I believe), and so developed a second persona which she used around her constituents. This soon became second nature to her, as she continued running for school offices and needed the votes.

I should note that the social masking responses generally take place unconsciously. Most people don't realize when they are "two-faced," so to speak, and it's not really any fault of theirs but ignorance, which is quite forgiveable.

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The Problem with Liberals

Heh... fun title. Anyways, I was going to write a long post about this, with examples, but for the past couple of weeks that this post sat unfinished, I never particularly wanted to. And I still don't.

So, I'll post a shortened version.

Many liberals, though they would have you disbelieve it, run entirely on emotion. People get angry when you say "knee-jerk" liberals, but for the vast majority of liberals, it's true. Don't get me wrong: I know some very logical, reasonable liberals (like Smith). However, most have few true reasons for their "policy" opinions, other than calling Conservatives heartless.

Most liberal opinions are based on a simple principle: they feel guilty about something, and try to make the government fix it. This is why they so adamantly oppose intelligent resource use by companies, become outraged by any racial statement, and try to force people to accept homosexuals. They simply feel guilty about what they, or even their family members, have done, and they stand by these opinions in the face of any logic, unyielding.

It's frankly ridiculous.

~Michael,
...I can't believe this post sat unfinished for so long...

Must... post...

By: Unknown

Is it just me, or has absolutely nothing important happened recently? You know, other than Kerry being... you know... a member of the risen dead, but that's beside the point.

However, I'm tired of Ed's sniveling whiny post, so I have to occlude it.

Lessee...

Something in an abstract sense.

I've done race...

Ooh!

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Competition

Smith and I started talking today about monopolies (in this case, government-sponsored monopolies, which I actually agree with him on).

Competition is a strange beast. It seems so two-faced, so fickle. People see that a company that owns a huge portion of a market causes other companies to close. This is "bad" to most people. It makes people lose jobs (technically true, but hold on), and seems to "hinder competition" (this is the basis for antitrust laws).

However, this is not truly the case. Monopolies are in fact the children of competition. They can only exist because of strong competition, or government sponsorship. When born of competition, it's because they are merely much, much better than the competitors at providing their product or service. This serves to logic: how else would someone become superior to someone except by being better (aside from the government)? However, here's the rub: people then believe that monopolies can become (or unconditionally do become) extortionary and that they prevent other companies from getting their good products out (the infamous buy-out).

Not the case. The monopoly must maintain the high level of quality and service, and low prices that brought them to the top. A myriad of people wait in the wings for an opportune moment to slip their product in and get a following (welcome to America). In fact, a monopoly can prime the market for innovative new products that wouldn't exist without the firm and broad foundation created by the original monopoly.

Let's take Microsoft as an example (everyone's favorite monopoly). I invite you to ask anyone who was actually around and active with computers during the days of DOS. I assure you, DOS is completely illogical and anti-user (it could be less user-friendly, but then it'd be packaged with a pipe bomb. Ha ha! I made a funny). Windows was the first OS that made computers accessible to the large majority of people. People snatched up Windows as quickly as possible. Then came Mac. Mac sucked. A lot. Windows still entirely conquered the OS market.

Then they began packaging IE in with Windows. IE was, again, user-friendly, readily available, and the most compatible with websites. Netscape complained that they couldn't make a dent in the market. Well, they couldn't... and they shouldn't have. It was slower than IE, less intuitive than IE, and less compatible than IE. The competitors were not blocked by Microsoft. They merely had low-quality products.

Of course, Windows had its issues. It was slow in certain applications, and didn't work too well for hardcore gamers. It was relatively unstable when pushing it hard. All of these problems were merely results of making the OS user-friendly. The self-install programs, automatic setup programs, automatic driver controls, etc. that people needed because they couldn't do these things themselves were not entirely reliable all the time (it's a computer, not God). Drivers were messily installed, programs left scraps behind, drivers weren't run as efficiently as possible. This was fine, for most people. But most people weren't the ones complaining about it. Nerds were.

The nerds began a quasi-phenomenon of Microsoft mockery. They pointed out those things that had never bothered, and still don't bother, most people, and people began to notice. This is when it was complained of as a monopoly with a poor product. And to me, it does have a poor product. But for most, it's the easiest and most effective OS.

Microsoft opened the way for other Windows-like OS's. Mac got a lot better at making their OS, and became the media editing platform. It was a very specific niche, but they have become successful at it. Hardcore gamers and computer users wanted a fast, stable OS that they could modify to their liking. Along came Linux, which was free and fast and reliable, but very very very hard to use (it's getting easier now).

So, Microsoft was not a bad product, nor a bad company. The market needed it, and other companies couldn't match it. But now the market is maturing past the user-friendly stage, and they need more specialization.

Then there's government-sponsored monopolies. Government-sponsored monopolies do not generally start with a good product, a good service, nor a good price. They have no motivation for good products or services, because they are naturally immune to any threat. The consumer cannot choose the better price or quality, and the company is free to raise the former while lowering the latter. For instance, the school cafeteria is this kind of monopoly. The food (obviously) is nothing to write home about, and the prices seem to keep rising, with ever more restrictions. They are free to promise things without carrying them out, and provide low quality food, because they can't lose. I've even considered the possibility of boycott, but this would be pointless. The company would merely be reimbursed by the government.

So, monopolies are a natural and even beneficial result of capitalism, and government-sponsored monopolies are wasteful, almost invariably corrupt children of socialism.

~Michael,
..."anyone who laughs is a Communist" ~Fry, Futurama...

OK. This really is stupid.

By: Anonymous

The path to hell is paved with good intentions, as the saying goes. Most supporters of President Bush's proposal to grant illegal aliens the right to work are now on that path and taking the country with them.

These supporters cannot be entirely to blame as the proposals principles look good on paper and appeal to the basic human emotion of compassion, which as many know, overrides reason. Unfortunately, the plan is lacking. It is full of holes and without an explanation as to how its objectives are to be carried out.

Under the proposal, legal and illegal aliens, for a small fee of course, could obtain the right to work legally for three years. This right can be renewed, but the limits are yet to be determined. This would allow us to document the illegal aliens in the country and have them pay taxes.

Only a limited number of immigrants will be given this privilege. Bush says that an employer must make every attempt to allow a US citizen to be hired first and if none can be found, the job goes to a non-citizen in the program.

This plan allows non-citizens to do our minimum-wage, dirty work. With this new ability to quickly gain a legal job, immigrants will send in applications by the gross. Turning into what workers unions call scabs, it would be fairly easy to threaten your higher paid workers with newly legal immigrants more than willing to work for minimum wage. The company needs only to announce that the job doesn't pay what the workers want and so must have immigrant workers.

Once these newly legal aliens are in the country, the problem of removing them after there work time expires presents itself. After all, the illegal aliens of the present have already proven that they are willing to break the law and risk national security to stay in the country for less than minimum wage and poor working conditions. Bush is proposing that the social security collected be set aside and paid to those in the program after they return to their country. This provides a monetary incentive for their homecoming.

Minimum wage in North Carolina is $5.15 per hour. This is about what an immigrant can expect doing the jobs nobody else wants. Working 40 hours a week, every week, for three years provides about $2,400 for social security. This is hardly enough to make a worker want to return home when they can stay illegally, after gaining easy entrance, and continue working and sending the money back home. Money sent back to Mexico from the United States accounts for Mexico's second largest source of foreign income. If the workers do decide to go back to their homeland, the taxes gained from their work are only given back to them in the form of a pitiful pay-off to leave.

President Bush says that rewarding illegal aliens for breaking the law is not his goal and this plan would not influence the decision for their Green card or citizenship. He also insists that this is not amnesty, but allowing illegal aliens to work legally without the consequences of their previous actions is amnesty. Allowing those who broke the law to work is also a slap in the face to everyone who spent years applying and paying expensive legal fees to obtain a Green card legally.

The country receives little to no taxes while allowing an easy access to our country for immigrants that probably won't leave, causing a strain on the economy. Our country does not stand to gain much with this new proposal, but Bush does. According to the 2000 census, persons of Hispanic or Latino origin make up about 12.5 percent of our countries 284,796,887 population. This means there are about 35,599,610 votes that traditionally go toward Democratic candidates and could now be swayed to vote Bush this fall. There is the true reason.

Thought patterns normal, Captain.

By: Unknown

I believed I've derived three basic types of thought and memory that determine a person's ability in certain fields.

The concrete thought pattern is the historical mind. Facts are easily memorized, and with real examples, or constant exposure to some intellectual stimulus, the workings of a process can be derived. These people are best at history, second best at English (of the core classes).

The abstract thought pattern is the mathematical mind. How processes and ideas work can be comprehended easily, even without real examples. The abstractions and idealisms of math work very well for these people, and science is relatively easy for them.

Then there's what I like to call "philotic" thought patterns, named because it's correlated to the ideas in my theory of energy, which is loosely based on Orson Scott Card's philotic physics in the Ender's Game series. I may post the theory later. This people fall in the middle, but generally to one side. They grasp the abstract workings of systems more easily than concrete thinkers, but can apply these workings easily to the real world, and learn facts and formulae relatively easily. This is a sliding spectrum of ability; for instance, I am about 70% abstract, 30% concrete. This means I am exceptional at science, very good at math, good at english, and bad at history (relative to my base academic skill, which is rather high, so "bad" at history isn't necessarily actually bad at history). If someone was good at English, they would likely be, relative to their base skill, exceptional at English, very good at history, good at science, and bad at math.

Of course, there are always exceptions, and this is only the crude outline of a theory. I just felt like posting something tonight.

~Michael,
...I'm tired of doing stuff. Stuff should stop needing to be done...