This made me cry

Please watch.

Do something.

Fuzzy Math

EDIT:Where I used the word "rebate" I should have used the word "credit". This doesn't really change the math at all. It means the government would take in 980 billion fewer dollars in taxes (out of 2.66 trillion in revenue).

My dad thought it was ridiculous that people were repeating McCain's $5 Million line, and taking it out of context, so I decided to watch the original interview.
In the original interview, McCain said that he wants to give each family a $7,000 tax rebate per child, and wants to give each family a $5,000 tax rebate to spend on health care. That sounded like a lot of money to me, so I checked the census and did some quick math. These measures would cost about 980 BILLION dollars. Definitely a lot of money, but without knowing how much the budget is, that number still didn't mean a whole lot, so I checked into the budget a bit, and the total estimated receipts for 2008 are 2.66 Trillion. Bush couldn't manage to balance the budget without McCain's proposed measures, so how is McCain going to find another trillion dollars to give away?


Watching Lieberman's speech, and he had a long section about "If McCain were just a typical Republican, he never would have..." and listed a bunch of the better things that McCain has helped accomplish by working with Democrats in Congress. Sounds to me like a slam on the Republicans, but boy did I get a lot of applause...did I miss something?

History

Hopefully I'll get around to posting something original soon, sorry it's been so long.

Radical Preaching on the "Other" Side

I'm sure most of you have heard about Hagee and his endorsement of McCain and wonder why the media isn't raising a stink about that like they are about Rev. Wright. Here's a video of Hagee being hateful again. This right here would be enough of a reason to vote against McCain (If I were ever tempted). McCain is proud of Hagee's endorsement. If you haven't heard anything about Hagee yet, do a little research and find out what he says about gays, Muslims, and Catholics, as well as New Orleans.

ha

Hillary is all excited because she brought in 10 million dollars, and is planning on pouring that money into Indiana, where she might be able to pick up a delegate or two. Before she brought in this 10 million dollars, she was 10 million dollars in debt. She should quit while she's caught up, or she's going to end the game and be 20 million in the hole.

Slow media

Thanks to Kester Bruin for pointing this out on his blog. Really cool concept~

wow

Some amazing artwork here.
Mind-boggling stuff.

According to Pew Research, Daily Show viewers are actually better informed than people who watch cable news. Fifty percent of Daily Show viewers could name the Sunni branch of Islam, compared to only 41 percent of CNN viewers. A similar gap came about for identifying Scooter Libby (44% to 36%) and identifying Vladimir Putin (52% to 41%). CNN ended up in the middle of the pack; the worst performers were viewers of FOX (surprise), local TV news and network morning shows.

Ed.

Random Acquaintances

So last weekend I was in Chicago to take some testing that is required by the state of Illinois if I'm going to teach here, and I'm here right now, waiting for my train back to Michigan. (Unfortunately I can't get a wifi connection, so I'll have to wait to post this until I get home.) Both weekends I had the privilege of meeting some new people. Let me back up to the fall of 2005 so I can make all the connections for you. As most of you know I studied in Latin America with the Latin American Studies Program the fall semester of 2005. I have stayed in touch not only with some of my fellow students, but with some of the staff as well. Last year, I went to a Catholic mission in Guatemala (which I had been introduced to by LASP) to volunteer for four months. While I was there, I got to meet some of that semester's LASPers who worked with the same Catholic mission, and then I headed across the lake to hang out with the whole group for a day. I've kept in touch with one of those students as well. Her name is Amy, and she's student teaching in Chicago, and was generous enough to let me stay with her last weekend. One of her roommates (Lindsey) is someone else that I met in Guatemala. Her other two roommates are alumni of John Brown University. Amy knew I needed to come back this weekend, but Amy and Lindsey were both going to be gone. The other two roommates (Rachel and Jill) were gracious enough to let me stay with them anyway. I found out this weekend that Rachel and Jill both knew Heidi, someone I know from LASP and hung out with quite a bit in Costa Rica. Small world.

Friday night I went out to dinner with Rachel and Jill (keep in mind I barely know them), their friend Jamie who was in from Ohio, visiting her boyfriend, and her boyfriend Jonathan. I do enjoy meeting people. We had a great time.

Oh frustration. There's a wifi network here somewhere, but apparently I'm some distance from it, because I can't hold a connection for anything, and when I do get one I can't connect to the internet.

Teaching

As many of you know, I'm possibly going to become a teacher. I've applied with two alternative certification programs: Chicago Teaching Fellows, and Oakland Teaching Fellows. Today I had an all day interview event with Chicago Teaching Fellows. After an introduction, we were split into groups of 8-12 people. (I think there were supposed to be 10-12 people in a group, but there were 4 people in my group who didn't show, so we had only 8. The first activity in this group was for each person to give a 5 minute lesson to the rest of the group in the subject of their choice, and to the age level of their choice.

Let me back up....there were somewhere around 90 people interviewing, ranging in age from about 22 to 65. This was the third interview event, so if there were about 100 people at each interview event, that means about half of us will be offered positions. My group was all in their twenties, and 3 of the 8 of us are interested in teaching Spanish.

Anyway, while one person was teaching a lesson, the rest of us had to pretend that we were students in the age group that the person was teaching to. Let me tell you, it's hard to pretend that you're a second or fourth grader.

The sample teaching was followed by a writing session: we had 20 minutes to write a memo to our hypothetical principal regarding a parent's complaints about us as teachers not living up to promises we had made to make the year a success. After that we had 20 minutes of group discussion about how we would handle a specific hardship we might face as teachers. I felt like I was pretty evenly matched with the others in my group, but I'm not sure how all of the other group sessions went. I should hear back sometime in the next month or so.

In a couple of weeks I'm going out to Oakland California to do the same thing all over again. Fun times. Hopefully I get at least one job offer out of this. If I get two, I'm not sure which one I would choose. Chicago is near family and some friends, and I know no one in California, but Oakland is near the ocean (and bays), not too far from the mountains, and warm. Being in a warm climate only 3 hours away from great skiing sounds really appealing to me, even if that job pays a little less.

Both of the programs have a summer training institute, but both of them are paid by a stipend at the end of the training. The tentative dates from CTF are June 9-July 23. The stipend for CTF is only $1000 before taxes, but the OTF stipend is $2000 minus taxes. Either way I won't have a lot of income for the summer. Hopefully I can find some cheap housing, and hopefully I can find some sort of work to fill the rest of the summer. Chicago Public Schools doesn't start until after Labor Day, so that leaves almost 6 weeks in between the end of the training and the beginning of the school year. At the end of the first year, I would have a full Illinois teaching Certification, and would be only 2 or 3 classes away from a Master's degree. During the school year, I would have to go to class 2 nights a week, and the tuition (it's through a local university) is 10-15k. But I can get an Americorp award of $4725/year for the first two years, and Chicago Public Schools will deduct the rest from my payroll for 4 years, interest free. Not a bad deal.

If I get one of these teaching jobs, I think I might start a blog called “Confessions of a First Year Teacher” or something like that to share my experiences and reflect on them. Something for you to look forward to. Maybe it would become a book someday. That sounds like a good book, doesn't it?

"In the past five years, the actions and policies of the U.S. government have eroded most of the initial gratefulness Iraqi people had for getting rid of Saddam Hussein. Excessive violence, domination of Iraqi political and economic structures, and the U.S.'s failure to rebuild the physical, social, and medical infrastructures of Iraqi society feed into the increasing anger and violent resistance that have emerged."
Peggy Gish
read the blog here

Wow.

I want one.
Too bad it costs more than my laptop and it's not available (yet) in a CDMA version.
Here's hoping Alltel picks it up and cuts the price in half.

war

The responsibility for war rests not only with those who directly
cause war, but also with those who do not do everything in their
power to prevent it.

- Pope John Paul II
Catholic Relief Services: the Beginning Years by Eileen Egan (NY: Catholic Relief Services, 1988), pp. 155-156

please take action

Please go to this site:
http://www.godhatesfags.com/contact.html
and give them a piece of your mind.
If you're not familiar with what they do, browse the site for a few minutes and I think you'll be sufficiently upset.

Better yet, hack the site if you can, and protest their "protests" whenever they happen to be in your area.

Thanks.

superdelegates: wait! (please sign!)

Please click here to sign the petition to ask the superdelegates to allow this to be a democratic process. Thanks.

why

Why are you so hard to get a hold of?
It makes my day every time we talk.

Dear Mr. Obama

As future president of the United States, there are many things you will need to do. I was happy to see this paragraph in "The Caucus" blog today:

Mr. Obama gained some points with ecology-minded folks, as well. Michael Cooper of The New York Times writes that he called for “a decade-long investment in a $150 billion plan to create five million so-called “green-collar” jobs to develop energy sources that are friendly to the environment. He also called for a National Infrastructure Reinvestment Bank, a $60 billion program, which he said would create two million jobs for rebuilding highways, bridges and airports.”

Both of there plans are great...but why didn't you push for them now? We're wasting all of this money on the economic stimulus package that won't be nearly as effective as either of these programs. A third option that would be great for this country (and your campaign) would be to greatly increase the amount of public transportation available. This would create a lot of jobs, reduce our dependence on foreign energy, and take better care of our environment.

story time

I don't usually tell stories here, but for some reason I thought I'd share one today.

I believe I was in 8th grade (it may have been 7th, I think my brain has tried to repress this memory, and such has left some details blurry). At this point in my life I was still very awkward around girls (I'm glad that has changed some, if only a little). My cousin Michelle is about the same age as me, and lived next door. There were a few others in the neighborhood that were our age, and we happened to be hanging out with a kid named Nick that night. I'm not quite sure why, because Nick and I rarely got along, but there we were, out snowmobiling around the neighborhood. Nick went to the same junior high as us, but had transferred from another nearby, and thus knew several people that I did not. This night a girl named Anne from his previous school had joined us. We had two snowmobiles, Michelle and Nick were on one, and Anne and I were on the other. We stopped in the middle of a field for a while to chat about whatever it is that mixed company 8th graders talk about. When we decided to get moving again, I went to start my snowmobile. I gave the cord a good solid pull...and jacked Anne in the face with my elbow. I felt so awful, embarrassed and awkward all at once. (Did I mention I had a crush on this girl? I guess not, but you should have guessed...I was an 8th grade boy with hormones raging, lucky enough to have this attractive girl holding on to me in order to stay on the snowmobile...)

you should probably watch this

On that note, I'm becoming more and more sad that Edwards dropped out, the more I learn about him the more I like him. Here's to hoping that Obama picks him as his running mate.

teaching

I'm considering teaching. This video is inspiring. Thank you Steve Mahr for introducing me to this.

great

If you're not using Gmail (Google's e-mail) yet, I would highly encourage you to switch. Not only is the amount of storage virtually limitless, but one can send and receive large attachments. What may make the biggest difference though is their spam filters, which I have found to be 99.99% effective. It is incredibly rare that any spam makes it into my inbox or that real mail gets filtered out (years of using yahoo and hotmail still have me paranoid that I'm going to miss something important, so I feel the need to check my spam box regularly.)
On top of it being the best e-mail option there is, it is very well integrated with Google Calendar, Picasa, and Google Docs. In firefox you can even get an extension that integrates Google reader. Oh, and did I mention Google Chat/Google Talk?
And it's Google, so of course the search capabilities are phenomenal. I've never spent more than 30 seconds looking for an old e-mail.
Do yourself a favor and switch today. Stop wasting time sorting through spam and searching for old messages.
(They also support POP3 and IMAP for those needed that feature.)

gross

Exxon Mobil made record profits in 2007: $40.6bn, Shell made record profits of $27.56bn.

Disgusting.

Polls

Barack Obama is trailing in the polls, but I think the polls are quite flawed, and this election will likely show that more than any other. Obama is very popular among the younger crowd, the crowd that is far less likely to have a "home" telephone. (That is how most polls are conducted, isn't it?) Therefore, the older generations get their voice, and we get underrepresented. And really, how many of these polls are actually representative? It seems it would be hard to get a representative sample, especially with how many people wouldn't bother to take the time.

Christianese

I happened to overhear some Christian radio the other day, and the host said "I hope you all have a spiritually profitable weekend." I about puked. The thought of using the words profitable and spirituality together does not sit well with me. Maybe I'm over-reacting, but I don't think spirituality is a capitalist venture, and I feel very uncomfortable using such words when describing it.

Today I was driving and realized that one of the churches in my hometown named their building addition The R.O.C.K. (Reaching Others for Christ's Kingdom). I don't know about you, but I wouldn't like being referred to as an "other". It has this negative connotation to it, like "we're better than you, you need us", not exactly the kind of thing any of us should be saying.

Grammar

Here's how anal I am about grammar:
One of my roommates was sitting in the apartment, talking to one of his many female friends. I was sitting there checking my e-mail, and happened to overhear most of their conversation. I was thinking that she was pretty cute, and my first impression of her was quite favorable. And then she said "real" when she should have said "really". Sadly, my view of her changed quickly. I feel rather judgmental.

pay attention

Chris Dodd got at least 3628 votes today in the Michigan primary. He's not in the race anymore. Were people just not paying attention, or were they trying to make a statement of some sort? I don't see a point in voting for someone who is not running for president.

You don't have to think like I do

-just be open minded. That's all I ask. If you can't think for yourself and actually converse with others' viewpoints, please keep your mouth shut.

I tailgated someone today

-on purpose. It pissed him off. I was glad.
See, he had a bumper sticker that said "Still voting democrat? You're stuck on stupid. (Rush Limbaugh)"
Mr. Limbaugh, you have the right to free speech. I don't support taking that away from you. However, I don't appreciate being called stupid, and you and your listeners should know that I don't take that lightly. Next time I see someone with one of your bumper stickers, I might do more than just tailgate. I might give him/her a piece of my mind-tell him that I don't appreciate being called stupid and he/she should be a little more respectful of other's beliefs.
If you put a provocative bumper sticker like that on your car, you shouldn't be surprised if someone gets in your face.

hot

-photo by Kevin Moloney
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2008/01/06/travel/20080106_WHY_slideshow_13.html

Waiting All of My Life for You

Will you like to watch the sunrise?
Will you have blue or brown eyes?
What are the dreams you long to share
I hope you like Stevie Wonder
Are you afraid of thunder?
I close my eyes and say a prayer you’re out there somewhere

I’ve been waiting all of my life for you
I’ve been wishing on every shining star
I’ve been watching out of my window
Wondering where you are
Wondering where you are

My heart’s my only treasure
Been saving it for your pleasure
Can’t wait to give my heart to you
We’ll walk this road together
That leads us to forever
I close my eyes and say a prayer you’re out there somewhere

I’ve been waiting all of my life for you
I’ve been wishing on every shining star
I’ve been watching out of my window
Wondering where you are
Wondering where you are

Too many nights alone
And this house won’t be a home
Until I’m with you

And I’ve been waiting all of my life for you
I’ve been wishing on every shining star

I’ve been waiting all of my life for you
I’ve been wishing on every shining star
I’ve been watching out of my window
Wondering where you are
Wondering where you are
Wondering where you are
Wondering where you are
I’m wondering where you are
Wondering where you are
I’m wondering where you are
Wondering where you are
-Tyrone Wells

gimp

I've started using a program called "The GIMP". As far as I know, it does everything that Photoshop does, but it's free. This program does so much...I still have a ton to learn. Lots of fun though...

elections

The Iowa caucuses are tomorrow, and the Michigan primaries are only 12 days away. While I think this whole primary/caucus system we have is a little messed up, I hope you're still going to vote. Michigan moved it's primary forward against the wishes of the Democratic and Republican parties, and so the ballot I get in 12 days won't have a few of the candidates on it. I won't be able to vote for Obama, and I think Edwards might have pulled his name as well. However, I still plan on voting. I like Kucinich (although I don't know as much about him as the 3 front-runners), and even though it might not look like he stands much of a chance, I would love to see him win in Michigan, and see how that throws a wrench in the race.
Get out and vote...no matter where you live, because this country (and hence, the world) is in crappy shape, and someone needs to do something about it.