Tag: culture

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“Education” vs “Training”…

So, I finally watched “Jesus Camp” this weekend with Mom and Brooke, the latter of which had already seen it and subsequently shown it to the high school Sunday school class at church (heh…). The movie, for those that don’t know, is a documentary beginning in the spring in the general area of Lee’s Summit, MO (near Kansas City, of course) as kids there (ranging from ages 6-12) prepare to go off to summer camp in North Dakota; the kids then go to the camp, and then return. The camp is run by a Pentecostal minister that is preaching to them for the week. It’s close to 1.5 hrs long. Essentially, the movie is about how the evangelical movement in America is affecting the young children involved.

The neat thing about the movie is that it’s told solely from the perspective of the kids and the camp director, along with a sort of “counterpoint” presented through an evangelical radio host (that later interviews the camp director). The film makers say nothing in the movie, but allow the kids, parents and other figures to do all the talking. The people in the film speak for themselves, leaving little room for interpretation by the viewer.

Well, the thing is…because of this fact, you know that these people really believe what they’re saying, and it provides some cause for concern. The camp director is interviewed frequently throughout the film talking about “training” these kids. She constantly refers to it as “training,” and mentions multiple times how “people in other religions” start “training” their kids from the age of 3 to do everything and anything for their beliefs, including strapping a bomb to themselves. She literally talks about how “we Christians” need to start “training” our kids in a similar way.

Now, as my Mom so perceptively noticed, many of the kids depicted in this movie seemed to be brainwashed. Not playing with toys at the age of 9. Not playing video games. Not watching MTV. They were instead going up to a few old African American guys in the park asking if they knew “where they were going after they die.” They said heaven. The 9 year old girl said “are you sure?” They said “yes.” As she walked away with her mullet-donned accomplice (seriously…watch that video…), she says “I think they’re Muslim.”

I guess it’s concerning because, as the camp director says, these are the next generation of voters in our country. I know (or hope?) that this is an isolated group of evangelicals and that this is not how most of them go about things, but I have to wonder if their childhood isn’t being corrupted for something Jesus didn’t intend?

Perhaps I’d feel differently if they were talking about “education” rather than “training.” That word really has the connotation of preparing for a battle or war.

I don’t think I like where this is going.

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Internet Culture War

So, there’s a blurb on Slashdot mentioning this article that talks about class divisions between users of MySpace and Facebook. It kinda talks about the history of each, especially how Facebook used to be exclusively for college students and, because of this, seems to be almost more “elitist” in its constituents. For example, Facebook users hated the idea of high school students joining their ranks late last year, and even with the infusion of “younger blood,” the site still seems to contain more educated users, while MySpace users tend to be even younger and less-educated.

One of the more interesting points in the article (about mid-way down) discusses the U.S. military, and more specifically how they banned the use of MySpace, but allow the use of Facebook. This is particularly interesting because officers tend to have Facebook accounts, while lower ranked soldiers have MySpace accounts upon military entry.

So yeah, the article talks about methodology and data recovery to a minor extent, and personally I think some of the “data” may be suspect, but it still brings up an interesting point or two… On a related note, I loathe MySpace… I hate going to MySpace pages and seeing terrible web design, horrible pictures in the background that make a given page nearly impossible for me to read, and I think it’s too easy for people to be able to access someone’s page. Now, on the other hand, I think it’s quite useful for getting your music “out there,” but a better-designed web page would be more useful…

Are different socio-economic classes using each site? Perhaps… I’m not sure this site represents anything definitive, but it does bring up a few interesting points and things to think about. I really don’t use MySpace, so I can’t attest to it… Facebook, however, is very clean and easy to use. I’d almost go so far as to say “elegant.” So, my bias toward Facebook is moreso about useability and access restrictions, rather than “the people that use it” (I’d like to think). Then again, as I scanned through some user groups around the time of the last election (Fall 2006), there were a lot of poorly educated high school students making up all kinds of “science” about stem cells…let alone frequently misspelling things…

Thoughts?

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Of Generation Gaps and Twitter…

So, before yesterday, I’d never heard of Twitter…I had to learn about it from an NPR podcast I listened to… It’s apparently a new social networking phenomenon (a la Facebook or MySpace…) that tells the world what you’re doing at any given time. You can post, IM or use a cell phone with text messaging to post a short blurb giving everyone an update, and then you can subscribe to these updates by various means… For example, I could subscribe to your Twitter account and anytime you’d update it, my cell phone would vibrate and I’d receive a text message letting me know what’s up. You can write any message you want, from “looking at websites” to “eating a ham sandwich”…

According to the Wikipedia article, Twitter has been around since October of 2006… NPR and the New York Times, amongst others, have done articles about it… Hundreds of thousands of people all over the world use it, apparently…and this leads me to my point:

Why did it take until May for me to hear about it?

I guess it means I’ve reached something of a turning point… Up until now, I’ve kept up with technology and websites relatively well – Truman students knew about Facebook before it was even available for them to join, and well before news organizations jumped on it as a “phenomenon”… And I keep up with geeky things like that pretty regularly looking at sites like Slashdot and Engadget… So do we all eventually reach a point when our knowledge of the world becomes antiquated? You hear stories from parents beginning with “when I was your age…” all the time, and at some point, all of our parents probably realized that they were knowing less and less about the generation(s) that were coming after them… My generation is just barely involved in the whole “social networking” thing, but the high school students at church are all over MySpace – I simply have no interest in it. Back in college, I’d hear about stuff from friends in classes and new sites to visit, but we don’t really talk about such things in grad school…I’d assume that “real world jobs” would be similar…

I guess I just wasn’t planning on hitting this realization just before turning 25… I figured it’d happen after I had kids, and after they got a bit older and started getting into their own interests… I wasn’t thinking that I’d reach a point where I can visually see the generation just behind mine gradually distancing itself from mine…if only in this one sector of our lives…

I’m sure I’m just over-reacting, but with the world moving faster and faster and more information becoming available over the internet, it makes you wonder if the number of years between each generational shift is decreasing… For example, I’ve never thought that my sister and I (separated by 3 years) were in different generations, but maybe we are…

Has anyone else heard of or used Twitter, or is it just me?

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"Staying The Course"

So, the response to the tragedy at Virginia Tech leaves me rather annoyed… More specifically, a few things: all the “today we’re all Hokies” Profile pictures on Facebook last week, and the wearing of VT’s colors last Friday.

It just seems like the American public, rather than expressing sympathies and making a difference, they jumped into a “me too” response (where, rather than doing something about it, they just change a profile picture or wear a different color that day). [Note: I’m over-generalizing with that last part, and I certainly realize that not everyone is guilty, but it is a somewhat disturbing trend amongst many…] Sure, it was a terrible event that few will forget in the near future, but what really resulted from it? What have we learned from it? What will change to make sure it never happens again?

That’s the part that gets me. Let’s think about Hurricane Katrina. This was another tragic event that occurred in August of 2005. Last week on NPR, they were in New Orleans talking about how things have been shaping up recently. There are still people in trailers, there is crime all over the place, and most of the promised FEMA funds haven’t arrived. Katrina was in the news for weeks, and lots of people went down to help, and lots of donations were sent. While many religious and campus organizations still spend their spring breaks down there, believe you me, the response is “attenuated”… What about the tsunami in Southeast Asia? Lots of people were left homeless and lots of money was sent initially. What about now? When was the last time you heard a report about that? What about the 140 people that died in Iraq the day after the VT shootings that went mostly unnoticed?

I guess I’m just trying to make sense of it all… It seems silly to me that we make ourselves feel better by trying to make ourselves a part of someone else’s tragedy, when we would all be better served by making a difference in our own lives and our own relationships to make sure the same mistakes aren’t made.

A week later, the VT tragedy is only barely in the news. They’ve [read: news organizations] all moved on already. They were so important last week – why not this week? What has changed?

Very little, and that’s the problem. Much like Katrina, the tsunami, Iraq and Columbine, we shouldn’t be surprised when this happens again.

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“Staying The Course”

So, the response to the tragedy at Virginia Tech leaves me rather annoyed… More specifically, a few things: all the “today we’re all Hokies” Profile pictures on Facebook last week, and the wearing of VT’s colors last Friday.

It just seems like the American public, rather than expressing sympathies and making a difference, they jumped into a “me too” response (where, rather than doing something about it, they just change a profile picture or wear a different color that day). [Note: I’m over-generalizing with that last part, and I certainly realize that not everyone is guilty, but it is a somewhat disturbing trend amongst many…] Sure, it was a terrible event that few will forget in the near future, but what really resulted from it? What have we learned from it? What will change to make sure it never happens again?

That’s the part that gets me. Let’s think about Hurricane Katrina. This was another tragic event that occurred in August of 2005. Last week on NPR, they were in New Orleans talking about how things have been shaping up recently. There are still people in trailers, there is crime all over the place, and most of the promised FEMA funds haven’t arrived. Katrina was in the news for weeks, and lots of people went down to help, and lots of donations were sent. While many religious and campus organizations still spend their spring breaks down there, believe you me, the response is “attenuated”… What about the tsunami in Southeast Asia? Lots of people were left homeless and lots of money was sent initially. What about now? When was the last time you heard a report about that? What about the 140 people that died in Iraq the day after the VT shootings that went mostly unnoticed?

I guess I’m just trying to make sense of it all… It seems silly to me that we make ourselves feel better by trying to make ourselves a part of someone else’s tragedy, when we would all be better served by making a difference in our own lives and our own relationships to make sure the same mistakes aren’t made.

A week later, the VT tragedy is only barely in the news. They’ve [read: news organizations] all moved on already. They were so important last week – why not this week? What has changed?

Very little, and that’s the problem. Much like Katrina, the tsunami, Iraq and Columbine, we shouldn’t be surprised when this happens again.

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Ridiculous…

Yeah, so I woke up from my nap to this article in Newsweek that polled Americans about a variety of things, one of which was evolution. 91% of Americans believe in God, which isn’t terribly surprising, however 34% of college graduates believe in the Biblical account of creation. When asked “‘Is evolution well-supported by evidence and widely accepted within the scientific community?”, 48% of Americans said no.

As I’m sure my views on this are pretty clear, I won’t go into an extended rant. Let me just say, however, that this is very disturbing. It’s disturbing primarily because 48% of people believe in a lie (yes, the vast majority of credible scientists believe in natural selection) and also that 34% of college graduates believe that women were created when a rib was taken from Adam, and that it’s more likely that we came from mud rather than monkeys. I’ll quote a comment off Slashdot, because I think he said it pretty well:

“America continues to worry about losing its edge in the high-tech industry. But that couldn’t possibly be related to poor science education, could it?

“Note: I’m referring specifically to the 48% who believe that evolution is not well-supported by scientific evidence and that it is not widely accepted within the scientific community. Well, and the people who think the universe is less than 10,000 years old, despite all the evidence to the contrary. You can believe in God and have an understanding of science, just like you can have morals without being religious. But thinking that evolution isn’t supported by evidence, or isn’t widely accepted by scientists, is just plain ignorance.”

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Oh no! A bomb!

Mooninite

Seriously. Please, Boston. Tell me how exactly a Lite-Brite image of the Mooninites depicted above in any way says “bomb threat” to you.

I’m all ears…

(By the way, for those of you who know not what “Aqua Teen Hunger Force,” i.e. Mom and Dad, it’s a cartoon on Cartoon Network that features a talking milk shake, french fries and meat ball. Yes. Very scary.)

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Disturbing-ness…

“Has any human being always been there? As any scientist always been there? Who’s always been there? God! Who should you always trust first, God or the scientist? God!”

The quote above came from a guy speaking to a stadium full of young children, asking the kids questions and having them yell responses back. And yes, they were the responses you expect.

So, Crooks and Liars, an admittedly left-wing blog, highlighted a documentary on HBO called “Friends of God.” Sadly, as I don’t get HBO, I haven’t seen the documentary, but Crooks and Liars linked to a downloadable video (“right-click” and choose “Save Link As…”) of a 7 min section of it that is a bit disturbing to me. I mean, these are things that I knew were going on, but to actually hear and see it is…well…”disturbing” is the only word…

The scary part is, and as this video highlights, what the kids are being taught, and how they’re being taught to think. One kid says he wants to get a Nobel Prize becoming a Biochemist and working for the Institute for Creation Science. Sure, a noble pursuit (hah! so “punny”…), but at the same time, the blindness that I see in the next generation is frightening. Another teenager referred to how “one-sided” public education is, and there is some definite truth to that…but at the same time, if the sides were reversed, would it be any different? Shouldn’t the separation of church and state be protected?

I guess I’ve tried telling myself that “things will change” once the current generation in power ages on, and once my generation and later ones take over…but things like this make me think it’ll be more of the same. And it’s not something I look forward to…

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The “Gap” of grocery stores…

Brooke and I visited Whole Foods for the first time last night… I’ve done my best to avoid this place since we first heard about it, largely because I’m generally against the idea (and fad…) of buying organic food products… Anyway, the prices at Whole Foods weren’t quite as bad as I thought they’d be in all products, but there were some items that were a bit more than expected… For example, wines and most produce weren’t much higher than the Shop ‘n Save variety (except for organic varieties), but cans of vegetables ranged from $1 to $1.50, and I saw organic olive oil for $16… However, as Brooke pointed out, they had a heck of a lot of bulk foods available, and they had stuff that Shop ‘n Save, Dierberg’s and Schnuck’s don’t carry (lentils, for example…multiple varieties of barley…etc.).

Overall, the experience wasn’t terrible, but I still can’t justify the cost increases when averaged out across all products. Are the cans of corn that Whole Foods sells for $1.50 better than the cans we get from Aldi for $0.29? Maybe… But are the cans really $1.21 better than the Aldi cans? Absolutely not! Actually, even beer was $2 more expensive than Shop ‘n Save… As Brooke pointed out, the prices at Whole Foods are comparable with buying name-brand products at Schnucks or Hy-Vee…but since we never do that, it just seemed rather expensive…’cause there’s no off-brand offered…

On another note, many things around the place were deliberately misleading. For example, there was a sign in the produce section saying how Whole Foods supports local farmers. I’m sure to an extent that they do…but find me someone in Missouri growing corn right now…or peas…or oranges… Obviously, all of that produce is coming from somewhere else, likely another continent (i.e. South America). So by the time the food makes it up here, being all organic and not including preservatives, it’ll go bad within a day of getting it to your table, thus increasing the consumer prices because the food that isn’t sold is thrown out within days of arriving…

I especially liked their “educational materials” that can be found near the checkout lanes. I picked up a few pamphlets, on irradiated foods and genetically engineered foods, specifically, the latter of which is particularly intriguing… The pamphlet states that Whole Foods as a company wants to inform their consumers of foods that are from genetically engineered sources (while using wording that makes you think that genetically engineered foods are bad for you). Of course, practically every form of produce they sell is “genetically engineered” through generations upon generations of specific breeding and growing, only selecting seeds from good stocks and not planting seeds from the bad ones. That’s still genetic engineering, folks… They go on within the “food irradiation” literature to discuss the idea of irradiating produce to kill things like E. coli and Salmonella, and how irradiating foods can also destroy some nutrients within the food. Again, the literature states that all they want is to have federal guidelines whereby growers need to disclose whether the food has been irradiated or not, while including language in the pamphlet that really makes you think that irradiation is a bad thing… Maybe when they get sick from eating infected food, they’ll come around…

So yeah, while the food wasn’t quite as expensive as I thought it’d be (although close…), I was more disturbed by the yuppie “our store is better than your store” sentiment Whole Foods left on me. I’m not against educational materials for shoppers. I’m not completely against the idea of organic foods (…though mostly against…). Frankly, we were asked if we needed any help 2 or 3 times while we were walking around, which is more than I can say of my neighborhood Shop ‘n Save, Aldi and Schnucks…however, I can’t say I like the place… If I can save $20 a trip buying food that’s just as good from another store, and instead buy a DVD or donate it to help cure AIDS, I’m all about it…

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The "Gap" of grocery stores…

Brooke and I visited Whole Foods for the first time last night… I’ve done my best to avoid this place since we first heard about it, largely because I’m generally against the idea (and fad…) of buying organic food products… Anyway, the prices at Whole Foods weren’t quite as bad as I thought they’d be in all products, but there were some items that were a bit more than expected… For example, wines and most produce weren’t much higher than the Shop ‘n Save variety (except for organic varieties), but cans of vegetables ranged from $1 to $1.50, and I saw organic olive oil for $16… However, as Brooke pointed out, they had a heck of a lot of bulk foods available, and they had stuff that Shop ‘n Save, Dierberg’s and Schnuck’s don’t carry (lentils, for example…multiple varieties of barley…etc.).

Overall, the experience wasn’t terrible, but I still can’t justify the cost increases when averaged out across all products. Are the cans of corn that Whole Foods sells for $1.50 better than the cans we get from Aldi for $0.29? Maybe… But are the cans really $1.21 better than the Aldi cans? Absolutely not! Actually, even beer was $2 more expensive than Shop ‘n Save… As Brooke pointed out, the prices at Whole Foods are comparable with buying name-brand products at Schnucks or Hy-Vee…but since we never do that, it just seemed rather expensive…’cause there’s no off-brand offered…

On another note, many things around the place were deliberately misleading. For example, there was a sign in the produce section saying how Whole Foods supports local farmers. I’m sure to an extent that they do…but find me someone in Missouri growing corn right now…or peas…or oranges… Obviously, all of that produce is coming from somewhere else, likely another continent (i.e. South America). So by the time the food makes it up here, being all organic and not including preservatives, it’ll go bad within a day of getting it to your table, thus increasing the consumer prices because the food that isn’t sold is thrown out within days of arriving…

I especially liked their “educational materials” that can be found near the checkout lanes. I picked up a few pamphlets, on irradiated foods and genetically engineered foods, specifically, the latter of which is particularly intriguing… The pamphlet states that Whole Foods as a company wants to inform their consumers of foods that are from genetically engineered sources (while using wording that makes you think that genetically engineered foods are bad for you). Of course, practically every form of produce they sell is “genetically engineered” through generations upon generations of specific breeding and growing, only selecting seeds from good stocks and not planting seeds from the bad ones. That’s still genetic engineering, folks… They go on within the “food irradiation” literature to discuss the idea of irradiating produce to kill things like E. coli and Salmonella, and how irradiating foods can also destroy some nutrients within the food. Again, the literature states that all they want is to have federal guidelines whereby growers need to disclose whether the food has been irradiated or not, while including language in the pamphlet that really makes you think that irradiation is a bad thing… Maybe when they get sick from eating infected food, they’ll come around…

So yeah, while the food wasn’t quite as expensive as I thought it’d be (although close…), I was more disturbed by the yuppie “our store is better than your store” sentiment Whole Foods left on me. I’m not against educational materials for shoppers. I’m not completely against the idea of organic foods (…though mostly against…). Frankly, we were asked if we needed any help 2 or 3 times while we were walking around, which is more than I can say of my neighborhood Shop ‘n Save, Aldi and Schnucks…however, I can’t say I like the place… If I can save $20 a trip buying food that’s just as good from another store, and instead buy a DVD or donate it to help cure AIDS, I’m all about it…