How terrible...

It seems that athletes may be forced to breathe in smog at the Beijing Olympics!

This entire article discusses the repercussions of Beijing's poor air quality will have on... tourists. Not once does it even deal with the fact that millions of people have to deal with it every day. What's more, in order to accommodate athletes and spectators, China is shutting down factories and businesses. While I'm all for cutting back on pollution, this is of course a band-aid fix and while the article doesn't say (of course), I'm going to assume some workers aren't going to get paid while the factories are shut down. China has messed with the lives of so many citizens just to host the Olympics. Aren't these games supposed to bring the world together? The upside is that more people have (hopefully) taken notice of the human rights violations that go on there because of the Olympics. Let's just hope it doesn't go to waste...

I don't have anything to say except...

NO SHIT!

Oh baby it's a wild web...

In the New York Times Magazine section there is an article about trolling in Internet subculture. At first I was afraid it would be some lame ass article showcasing what trolls were to people who maybe read the news online. Maybe. Which is what it appears to be on the first page, but after that, it goes into a very interesting discussion of ethics in the cybercultural age we are entering.

What these trolls are doing is trying to give themselves power, this is why they give out peoples' private information. This is intellectual capital, the ability to control information, to use it, and to manipulate it.

Obviously these people are trying to make themselves be intimidating on the Internet, because I doubt they are that intimidating face to face. Instead, they are able to become something to be feared because this power they have is entirely constructed through discourse and rhetoric and the control of information. The control they have been denied in the "real world" (if you can even call it that, I say that the cyber world is also the real world, and as this demonstrates has real consequences), but online they have power.

But, even by their own admission, their power only stems from the consent of those they abuse. These trolls have realized something that most people haven't, power dynamics function differently online then they do in the face-to-face, and you have to adapt to be able to survive. I've been the victim of trolls, and I got upset for a bit, but then got over it; so in the end, I won. If more people would realize that, then less people would get hurt. What they're doing is wrong and juvenile, but hey, that's the way of the world. The Internet's a scary place.

Fast Food for Fags

Interestingly enough, fast food giant McDonald's supports Gay Rights. Needless to say, I was stunned. So was the usual religious right, who are now calling for a boycott of McDonald's.

It's not that McDonald's will make you obese and give you heart problems; no, the reason you should hate McDonald's is that Double Cheeseburgers support Double Manlovin' (yeah, I know that was a really really bad pun).

Honestly, even after watching Super Size Me, I still eat at McDonald's occasionally. Sure the food is horrible, but it's cheap, and grease is tasty when you're drunk. My biggest beef with McDonald's is the working conditions (which really is just how working minimum wage is in this country) and the fact to make all that beef contributes to world hunger. Other than that, I don't really have much of a problem with it. I mean, we all knew it was bad for you before Super Size Me, and since the film they have made strides to provide better (but still not good for you) options, and they give you the nutrition facts up front. Sure, you really didn't need Morgan Spurlock to tell you that eating 3 Big Macs a day is bad for you, but since the film you have no excuse, it's up to people's personal decisions now.

So maybe I'll have a Double Cheeseburger once a month from there, just to show a little gay rights support. Well, I'll wait until 2:30 in the morning after a couple of beers....

Eating from home

I was reading the New York Times and I read this article on people in big cities such as San Francisco and New York who make it a point to only eat locally grown food. They even hire people to come in and grow and tend for their organic gardens.

While I think it's awesome to eat locally grown food, I wonder about the legitimacy when it is just another yuppy fad. I suppose it is a matter of ends and means, and perhaps it is not fair for me to say these people don't legitimately care about supporting local farmers and helping out the environment. However, when neologisms such as "locavores" (yes, I'm not kidding, and the N.Y. Times didn't even put it in quotes or bother to define it, it took me a while to figure it out) appear it makes it hard to believe people really care about the environment and are instead just trying to look cool. Mostly because these people are just paying someone else to do it for them: "Oh, I am too busy doing my job that just serves the corporate machine, but yeah, I'm an activist... well I pay someone to be an activist for me, but that's O.K., right?"

On one hand, I get the feeling these people are the same people who bought SUVs a few years ago; on the other, they do live in New York and San Francisco, so that doesn't seem that likely.

I suppose I should just quit my bitching and be happy people are doing something that's good, even if it's for the wrong reasons. I just wish people would care before it's the cool thing to do...

Edit: Apparently locavore is now a word in the dictionary, at least according to QueenMelian. God help us all...

Happiness

Sorry for the hiatus, I didn't mean to disappear for so long, but life sort of just happened...

Anyway, I was reading articles in the blogosphere and I found this article about the correlation between political leanings and happiness.

Turns out that liberals are often sadder than their conservative counterparts, and the main reason for this is that conservatives are able to rationalize inequalities away to just being the result of people's actions and not society as a whole.

This news troubles me, I do agree with it - it often feels like a very very uphill battle - but does this necessarily equate unhappiness? Shouldn't the struggle become a source of happiness because we know we are fighting for equality and justice? I know it's kind of cliché, but I think we should just look at someone like the Dalai Lama, who despite great hardship is happy because he knows what he is doing is the right thing. Also, I find it troubling that such selfishness brings happiness.

My friends and I were talking about this the other night, and my friend remarked how "Liberals only believe in Darwinism in the sciences and conservatives only in society." Interesting indeed.

Good Tidings

Sorry I haven't posted in a while since my last post, I have been very busy in my personal life.

The good news, however, is that I have been accepted to present at an international conference on the erotic in Austria this fall. I am pretty psyched! :D