A few days past

As virtually everyone on earth now knows, Michael Jackson died a few days ago. Ever since it happened their has been a fervor for his music as well as information about the man. It seems like for the most part he has been celebrated for his massive impact on a generation of music. I’ve even seen websites comparing him against Elvis as the greatest singular artist of all time. Pretty lofty praise.

What I’m left to wonder about is whether he should be viewed so positively in his death. It wasn’t too long ago that MJ was involved in a pretty massive court case about whether or not he was a child molestor. In the end, no real verdict was turned out because he paid out 15 million dollars to have the whole thing come to end. Everyone else is the world is left to wonder whether or not he did do what he was charged or if he simply wanted to court case to end. For most people it seems that innocent until proven guilty is only in the courts because I have yet to meet a person who seems to think he was innocent.

So, that leaves the question, does this man deserve our praise? He obviously did some great things with his music but that does really balance off the negatives he did too a small number of people?

There’s no right answer to this, I’m just curious to what people think.

Twittering is fun

First, Twittering as a word is fun to say. One of the more entertaining parts of the explosion of the internet has been the “bastardization” of the English language. I put it in quotes because only former English majors seem to care about the arrival of hundreds of goofy new internet words. Personally, I find most of them to be hilarious and often they save me time which is always a plus. LOLZ.

The posts people put up on Twitter are often pretty entertaining. It’s fun to hear about things like “Went to a job interview and also had diahorrea. Details to follow.” because you don’t need details. That is the story. The highlight of Twitter to me is the sidebar that tells of “trending topics.” These are things most Twitter-ers are talking about. Lately, the Iran election had been wailing on everything pretty soundly until Michael Jackson wanted to give St. Peter a real test.

Tangent! St Peter’s job sucks.

Anyways, on today’s listing was both of those things but also Princess Protection Program. What is Princess Protection Program? Princess Protection Program (henceforth known as 3P) is a Disney movie where a princess from a small country that does not really exist nearly gets assassinated. She ends up moving in with some normal teenager in America. Can you say misadventures? She’s not used to doing things like washing dishes so as you can imagine hilarity is on the menu! She also teaches her new American roomie how to do things like walk with a book on her head and which one is the salad fork. In the end, they both come out better people and the assassin goes to jail because he is a huge douche bag.

So, let’s think about the 3 things we’ve got on the list.

1. Extreme political instability in a country that is very much our enemy and basically hates us.

2. Death of one of the biggest music icons of all time.

3. 3P.

This is why Twitter is awesome. These three things would never come together in any other way except on a website where people belch up 140 character pieces of information the moment they come into their head and display them for the world to see. I would not have it any other way.

Maybe old people were right all along…

I’m pretty positive we’ve all heard it before. “Kids these days.” If you listen to adults it’s quite clear that kids have been in a perpetual decline ever since they were originally created some millions of years ago.

“When Ug was kid, no write on cave wall with charcoal!” That statement was probably followed by the parents eating the child.

Anyways, adults have, for as long as I can remember, lamented that children are worse “these days” then when they were children themselves. I find myself agreeing with this more and more as I get old though it’s not so much that they act any more poorly or do worse things. It just seems like no one taught them how to say thank you! Part of being a teenager is doing dumb things and getting into trouble. You’re learning about social boundries and what is acceptable and what isn’t. You are inevitably going to screw it up from time to time and that’s OK. Learn the lesson from the mistake and move on with life a little bit wiser.

Thank you, on the other hand, seems to have been lost along the way somehow and I don’t understand why. When someone holds a door for you, say thanks. They just went out of their way, however infintesamly, to do something nice for a stranger. They deserve some recognition from you for doing this. SO DO IT. It’s not hard, you just blurt out the word and keep on rolling through your day. The regularlity with which I hold the door for students and they don’t say a thing blows my mind.

No teenagers read this but people who are reaching the age when they are going to have kids (or all ready do) do read this. Impress upon your children the importance of saying thanks. It may seem like a minor thing but it really does make the world a slightly better place.

Getting over it…

…and by it, I mean myself.

For a lot of years I made a really annoying mistake. Not recognizing that music was a thing of opinion. People would tell me how much they liked Britney Spears or the Backstreet Boys and I would let them know in a less than kind fashion that their taste of music was terrible. People would often then ask who I liked and I would fire of a litany of bands that I liked that they had never heard of and as a result, couldn’t really comment about. Kind of an unfair game, I know.

Not too long ago came a point when I realized that doing this was a pretty jerky thing to do and I stopped. I also became extremelly aware of how much many other people do this. I spent the latter half of the year trying to impress upon some of my kids that just because you don’t like a particular band does not make them bad. Music is music and it reaches out to different people in different ways. Just because goth metal isn’t your thing does not mean there is no musical value to it. You just might not be ready to hear what is good about it. Remember that next time someone tells you how much they like the new Kanye West/Justin Timberlake/Rihanna or whoever you hate’s song.

Creating some accidental conservatives

If you were somehow not in the know, I am an economics and US history at a high school. It’s a pretty enjoyable job and I feel very fortunate to do what I do but it has the interesting side effect of letting me view the next generation a little earlier than lots of other folks. By being around the next generation every day you start to get a general idea of what it’s going to look like and as I’ve been grading finals over the past few days I’ve noticed an interesting trend in how they answer a specific question on my final that has led me to believe the next generation of students might be a touch on the conservative side.

First, I want to explain what I mean by conservative. There are two types of conservatives, finacial and social. Social conservatives are people who are conservative about social issues such as abortion(against), gay marriage(against) and gun rights(more guns the better). These people are generally idiots. For example, how can you be against abortion because it’s murder but then pro-guns which are made for the primary purpose of murdering stuff. This requires some serious levels of stupid in my opinion.

On the other hand are financial conservatives. These are people who want less government spending/involvement and low taxes. They tend to be a little less risky with their money and believe they could do smarter things with their money than the government. I have no problem with these people though I do disagree with them. It’s this type of conservative that I’m talking about in this post.

I have a question on my final that is something along the lines of “If you could chose to invest your money in the stock market or put it into a savings account, which would you pick and why?” Now, last year probably 90% of the students answered stock market and that while it may be riskier the gains generally work out in the end. This year, the answer has completely flipped around. Students overwhelmingly picked savings account viewing the stock market as too risky and the potential to end up losing money is too high. As a note, one of things I have impressed upon the students is that savings accounts aren’t for long term savings like retirement. Inflation generally negates any interest you earn in a savings account actually causing you to money in the long run. (If you’re interest rate is 2% and inflation is 3%, the average inflation rate, you just lost money).

I think this year as the students have watched their parents lose jobs and struggle to pay their bills they have been scared conservative. Parents who were relying on 401Ks to retire won’t be retiring any time soon and some have dealt with foreclosures and lost homes over the past 10 months of school. Events like this are going to have an effect on your psyche even as a young person. I’m curious to see if these things change as the students grow up and (hopefully) get to see the economy improve and go through a boom period again. In the meantime, no stocks for these kids!

On thing I’ve learned is…

Growing up as me was a pretty fantastic experience because I know today that I’m basically a crazy person. I don’t mean dangerous type crazy where I’m going to be hitting up a bell tower with a high powered rifle I bought illegally on craigslist but more of just I have a tendency to think a bit differently than other folks. For example, I’m terrified of babies.

Now look, I recognize that a baby isn’t dangerous to me or my well being. It’s not like the baby is waiting for me to pick it up at which point it will reveal it is actually a demon and eat my soul or make me listen to Nickelback CDs or something equally as terrible. In fact, if anything it’s the exact opposite in that I’m afraid I am going to injure them. Have you ever picked up a baby? Their head swings around like a bowling ball at the end of a chain! It’s like the skin is the only thing holding it on! How did this make the cut as far as evolution goes? I feel like back in the stone age if a sabre toothed tiger showed up to eat your family the last thing you need to be worrying about is supporting your baby’s head properly!

Man – “Oh no it’s a sabre tooth tiger, family run!”

Woman – “Make sure you hold the baby’s head up, we don’t want him getting baby whiplash!”

Man – “What, devil woman? I’ve go-”

Tiger – “Nom nom nom. Mmm, veal. Whoa, I can talk!”

The moral of the story is Baby’s neck = You and your entire family dead.

You should officially be afraid of babies now.