You are what you eat.

I don't have a TV. But today at the gym, I had the opportunity to tune into a variety of programs blaring from about 10 TVs in front of the cardio machines. I watched CNN for awhile and FOX, and finally turned my attention to The Wendy Williams show. What the...frig. My headphones were plugged into my iPod, but I could see thats she was discussing John Travolta's...........HAIR. WHAT? His hair? Really middle-age women of America? This is what you want to be informed about? Why would you want to use any brain cells on trying to examine John Travolta's new hair piece?

Is it that it's easier to turn off your brain to anything actually concerning anything of substance or that we honestly get some temporary high in filling our brain with bullshit? Probably a little bit of both.

The ideas, products, media and visuals we consume all form what we are. What are humans but the material they consume and ideas they think? Consuming trash media day in and day out, definitely has to correlate to how you think and evaluate your surroundings. Magazines primarily focused on how to become thin and make men "love" us are all over the shelves. Maybe this has something to do with the fact that girls think love is when their boyfriends buy them expensive things and the way to make them worship you is acting slutty and stupid. That's cool.

I was reading the other day that eating seeds from a fruit is actually more statistically proven to cure cancer than chemotherapy. Besides the fact that this means that we're most definitely completely uninformed about anything that benefits us besides those substances that create profit for corporations, it also makes me think that a big factor in causing cancer could definitely be connected to what we as a society are consuming on a daily basis. Processed, nutritionally deprived foods that are wrecking havoc on our bodies and minds. That probably doesn't have a positive affect on what your ever-recreating body becomes.

It's cool to learn. Being 21 and relatively naive about almost everything, I'm not trying to sound pompous or superior in intellect at all, but let's at least attempt to fill our minds and bodies with things that will empower us rather than enslave us to whatever the hand that feeds us tries to shove down our throats. 

Peace out.

It's about the means, not the end.

Boots on the ground in the Middle East. Is that truly imperative to the safety and well-being of the  American public, or is it a ever-growing sink hole for American taxes dollars and something that we can cut out of our tremendous budget and re-inject into more meaningful arteries, like getting out of debt, education, and health care.

Bring our men and women home.

Just considering.

"Property is robbery," said the great French Anarchist Proudhon. Yes, but without risk and danger to the robber. Monopolizing the accumulated efforts of man, property has robbed him of his birthright, and has turned him loose a pauper and an outcast. Property has not even the time-worn excuse that man does not create enough to satisfy all needs. The A B C student of economics knows that the productivity of labor within the last few decades far exceeds normal demand. But what are normal demands to an abnormal institution? The only demand that property recognizes is its own gluttonous appetite for greater wealth, because wealth means power; the power to subdue, to crush, to exploit, the power to enslave, to outrage, to degrade. America is particularly boastful of her great power, her enormous national wealth. Poor America, of what avail is all her wealth, if the individuals comprising the nation are wretchedly poor? If they live in squalor, in filth, in crime, with hope and joy gone, a homeless, soilless army of human prey.

-Goldman 

The Tallest Man On Earth.

The Dreamer

I'm reading: The Iliad, Politics in China, The Republic, and The Evolution of Cooperation. I guess since these are mostly from government courses you could say they had a lot in common. We'll you'd be right.

Book after book, chapter after chapter I keep reading about people trying to figure out how to work together to make their lives better. How we can organize ourselves in a way to keep us going. Keep humans evolving and progressing and growing. It's really beautiful.

I had to write a paper on my own example of a Prisoner's Dilemma. You can look at that here: SAM'S PD GAME (My Mom and Grandma read this blog.)

Does it pay to be selfish and manipulative or is what is best for everyone, what is best for every one. Quoted from a random source I read off the web the other day: "Species that eat each other do not survive." Letting some exploit the rest, and the environment for short term profits and long term greed is going to kill us all. Working together, becoming smarter, and healthier, and more productive makes humanity better as a whole which brings more ideas, more innovations, more medications, more understanding. That is what makes rational sense, and that is how we should behave. Read: The Evolution of Cooperation if you want to see how working together is beneficial towards everything and why it is the rational choice.

P.S. My baby sister is an amazing human being and I want her to know how much I love her. I want this world to be better for her and all the other people I love.

It's coming.

The perfect storm has been brewed. Protests have broken out in Wisconsin in response to the new state budget:

Huffington Post

The proposal has caused many-thousands of demonstrators to flock to Wisconsin's state house and inside the halls of its capitol building in protest of what they characterize as an assault on state workers.

IT'S HERE.

Stop and smell the roses.

Ava put white roses her dad gave her for Valentine's Day on one of the window sills. I just happened to glance over at them a few moments ago with the naked window behind them allowing the light to stream in all around the flowers. It made me stand still. I just watched the flowers that had already begun to loose the most vibrant part of their life and slightly drooped for a few moments. What a marvelous thing. Each petal, each color from the green base to the offwhite bloom is starkly beautiful. That makes me happy.

Being able to observe growth and color makes me happy. What does it take for humans to be happy?

I'm reading The Republic for my "Classical Quest for Justice" course and Socrates goes into a speech about how he believes societies form. You need this, I need this, I make this, you can make that. Let's get together and make our lives easier by providing for each other. One of the most striking portions I've read so far follows:

"First, let's consider what manner of life men so provided for will lead. Won't they make bread, wine, clothing, and shows? And, when they have built houses, they will work in the summer, for the most part naked and without shoes, and in the winter adequately clothed and shod. For food they will prepare barley meal and wheat flour; they will cook it and knead it. Setting out noble loaves of barely and wheat on some reeds or clean leaves, they will stretch out children. Afterwards they will drink wine and, crowned with wreathes, and not produce children beyond their means, keeping an eye out against poverty or war."

-Translated by Allan Bloom.

Man risen above the primitive state, yet not so elevated that much technological advancement has taken place. What is wrong with this? Well, as Glaucon, who is speaking with Socrates will point out, it's life without embellishment. No abundance, or advanced medicines, or artists, and so on. Obviously any human whose grown in the last few centuries would think this is an abomination to human excellence, but is it? I don't know.

In my "Evolution" course last semester we we're examining different species and my professor was explaining that despite some of their inabilities to rapidly intellectually advance, they still function as perfect models of what they are. But we're capable of higher thinking, so it makes sense that we would seek to advance our growth-enabled brains as much as possible. What does that mean? Have we progressed as the human species in a way that is most compatible with human excellence?

It seems that there is something very beautiful about the state of life Socrates describes in this entry. Could human excellence be something very different from what is contemporarily envisioned? If such simplicity can be the birthplace of happiness for humans, are we missing something while nature scoffs at our "human progress?" I don't know. But it's something to sit and think about. It might change your life.

Let me count the ways.

Despite the fact that it's almost an hour after Valentine's Day, I decided to show you some photos that capture the way I feel about Austin, Texas. My home. Let's start counting.

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

8.

9.

and last but not least 10:

Hope you all had as great of a day as I did.

[All photos besides "10." were taken from BING.COM]

Be my baby.

The Revolutionary Virus.

This will be the best security for maintaining our liberties.  A nation of well-informed men who have been taught to know and prize the rights which God has given them cannot be enslaved.  It is in the religion of ignorance that tyranny begins. 

Benjamin Franklin

Algeria Shuts down Internet in Response to Growing Protest:

What is happening on the other side of the world? The Algerian government has shut down the Internet and deleted Facebook accounts across the country in response to growing protests in the streets. Read more here: Telegraph.co.uk

Is this good? Either a new world order in which citizens who are organizing and unifying are rising in order to create functioning democracies, or these nations where order and functionality were scare already, are about to be thrown into a whirlwind of chaos and disorder while they scramble to formulate new ruling bodies.

It is undoubtably admirable to watch nations like Egypt overthrow decrepit rulers and hope true democracy will form in the light of a setting national order, but this is far too simplistic to be realistic. Democracy does not just happen. I had the chance to briefly discuss this issue with a new friend this weekend who explained his reasoning for thinking dark days were on the horizon. He believed that since the stabilizing (although corrupt) governing body was overthrown, what is going to seize control is unlikely to be anything resembling what was envisioned and what little order existed in these societies is going to evaporate in the void of "the in-between." In between Mubarak and whatever comes next.

The real question is; what exactly happens now?

Me? I'm a creator.

"I came in alone and I'm going to die alone and nothing any of these people do are going to affect that. "

Heard February 10th, 2011. 

Today's News.

Mubarak is OUT. The Egyptian President has finally stepped down from office. More here: The Economist

I'm helping start up this company, please check it out: limediamond 10% discount when you use my promo code: TEXAS

In other news, on my way home from my "Politics of Food in America" course, witnessed a young girl stop, buy a homeless man a cup of coffee and proceed to squat next to him to talk for a moment.

I smiled the rest of the way home.

One more:

Egypt's Revolution: Coming to an Economy Near You.

In the US, net worth, median income, job creation, happiness — all have been flat for a decade (plus). Other measures of prosperity, which I'd argue matter more, haven't just flatlined, they've cratered: polls show that trust, connection, stability, social mobility, are all down. The problem of dumb, empty "growth" is global.

Chinese economic growth?

This guy just blew threw everything my Chinese Politics Prof taught me:

Click here: Is China's Economic Growth Real?

"Why do media commentators think that the currency peg is such a brilliant move? Ultimately the goal of production is consumption; exports can only be paid for with imports."

Stay. Just a little bit longer.

It seems normal for humans to be overwhelmed by their lives from time to time. I go through moments, hours, days, or weeks where I feel almost completely in control and unstoppable and then suddenly CRASH. Yesterday regardless of positive things that were happening all around me I couldn't seem to experience them for what they were; good. And enjoyable. The thought of the seemingly endless work I had ahead and sleepless nights made me want to curl up in a ball and cry like a little girl.

I was defeated.


After a long conversation with my mother, she explained that she didn't believe this feeling ever ceased. She felt incompetent at age forty when she began teaching in a public school, bought her first house at age 50 without a husband, age 52 when she realized we wouldn't have enough money to send me to college and the list goes on.

Most of us seem to constantly experience moments where we feel incapable and not smart, strong, or extraordinary enough to accomplish what we dream of.


"I can't do this. I could never do that."

Being overwhelmed made me feel like abandoning the project that had not even materialized, quitting school, and surrendering. Malea, one of my closest friends, observed this mentality and simply stopped, looked at me, and said, "We're going to try because trying and failing is better than accepting and doing nothing." And she was right.

It seems like those who actually succeed at anything, push through that momentary deterrence—sometimes fail, yet keep going and keep believing in themselves and their capabilities.

Did the Greats never fail or feel inadequate? I very much doubt that.

Life is a battle, and those who accept mediocracy become just that. You are the only person you can always count on to believe in yourself and abilities. Be who you are and work at what you love, create the person you want to be and don't ever stop. Build a sturdy foundation and take it one step, one day at a time, but keep marching on.

Chaos without the State?

They want you stupid and poor.

Read me:

The Education Bubble

& Here

& Here

Debt Growth

Let's use the Internet to unify, educate, organize and RISE.

Honestly.

Take a second and give this article a read:

"At the heart of it all are young people, obviously; students; westernised; secularised. They use social media - as the mainstream media has now woken up to - but this obsession with reporting "they use twitter" is missing the point of what they use it for.  

In so far as there are common threads to be found in these different situation, here's 20 things I have spotted:

1. At the heart if it all is a new sociological type: the graduate with no future 

2. ...with access to social media, such as Facebook, Twitter and eg Yfrog so they can express themselves in a variety of situations ranging from parliamentary democracy to tyrrany. 

3. Therefore truth moves faster than lies, and propaganda becomes flammable."

-BBC News: Why it's Kicking

...the moon Mr. O'Reilly?

"Tide goes in, tide goes out. You can't explain that."

Everlasting Light

These People.

The People.

I love talking to people. People are so beautiful and different. For the majority of my life I've been so self-conscious of what I said, how I said it, and how it was received that I was hardly ever simply myself. Maybe it's the thought of graduating or the bigger dreams that have materialized recently but I just could not be bothered with the mask anymore. This is me, take it or leave it. The beautiful part is, I am proud to show you who I am. I feel aligned, as if I'm finally living and working towards a life that is in accordance with how I envision the world. It doesn't need to suit you or please you, but I want to create a ripple and shine light on anyone in need of some warmth. I come bearing gifts.

The begininning of Plato's Republic begins with Socrates and his elderly host. Socrates asks the man questions about death, and when the old man says the most comforting thing in old age is having good character, Socrates asks if being rich had more to do with his peace than it was being credited. This may be true, it may be easy to see a bowl full of cherries while I write on my Mac laptop laying on my cozy bed in Austin, Texas, but you've got to work with what you've got. And in my case it happens to be a lot. So let me share with you.

Where did our love go?

Momentary Clarity

I get in modes where I can speak and feel the most clearly. It usually happens after an experience during the day made me feel momentarily "real" or alive or focused or whatever you want to call it.


It's been below freezing for the last few days after a period of hot weather which reached all the way up to the low 80's. The sudden drop was shocking. It was painful to walk anywhere even the mile to class and I wanted as little exposure to the outside as possible.


When I got home today I realized our house was around the same temperature as outdoors and fiddled with the thermostat a few times before coming to the conclusion that it was definitely broken. As I sat under three blankets in Ava's bed with warm tea and my hands barely able to work my computer, resentment seized my thoughts. I was honestly in a near state of panic, as I anticipated trying to study and sleep in the icy apartment.


After standing in the kitchen with Ava until the stove sufficiently heated the room to the point where I could feel my toes, the thought occurred to me, "people live without heat."


What?

Read more »