W-H-Y should religion be an issue regarding public policy??

American politics can get REALLY silly when the debate focuses on how religious/faithful a candidate can be. This story "For Romney, Social Issues Pose New Test" will be on the front page of Sunday's NY Times:

Mr. Romney has tried at every stage of the race for the Republican presidential nomination to focus on the economy, and he did so again on Saturday, when he appeared here at the Values Voter Summit, a gathering of social conservative activists.

But he also felt compelled to reiterate that he was in sync with social conservatives as he ran through his positions on abortion, marriage, judicial appointments and religious values. And as other speakers condemned homosexuality and raised questions about whether a Mormon is a true Christian, Mr. Romney emphasized that tolerance and civility were conservative values.

(...)

Beyond Mr. Romney’s substantive positions, his faith is re-emerging as a concern among some evangelicals. On Saturday, a conservative activist speaking after Mr. Romney, Bryan Fischer, said without naming Mr. Romney that the next president had to be a man of “genuine” Christian faith. On Friday, a backer of Mr. Perry described Mr. Romney’s faith as a cult.

Mr. Perry later said he disagreed with that characterization, and some evangelical leaders said they were less concerned about Mr. Romney’s being a Mormon than about his stand on the issues.

This is one of the 100s of reasons (OK i may be exaggerating) that I choose to remain an atheist and I'm thankful that I never attended church service or religious schools in my life, not even when I was a little kid. And if Republicans seriously get into these silly arguments over faith and heavily seek the concerns of blue-nosed religious fundamentalists in public policy such as in education, reproductive freedom, gay rights, etc., then I'm never going to vote Republican in my life as long as this horrendous, disturbing connection with Republicans and creationists/homophobes/anti-rationalists continues.

Furthermore, Republicans just cannot STAND anyone who doesn't represent the Judeo-Christian ideal, whether in attacking the Mormon Mitt Romney for not being Christian enough or smearing Barack Obama as a Muslim. Given the rise in anti-Muslim sentiment in the US post-9/11, the Muslim smear obviously was a dog-whistle appeal to the more bigoted Americans just like Ronald Reagan speaking about states' rights in Philadelphia, Mississippi (a town where in 1964 three civil rights workers were murdered) in 1980 was. This fear of the occult (the religious buzzword for the unknown, outside the realm of faith) drives all the lies and idiocy from the right when it comes to religion in American public policy. That's why you'll encounter "where is separation of church and state?" or "America is a Christian nation" all the time in conservative commentators, speeches, etc.

In fact, when Christine O'Donnell ran for Vice Pres. Joe Biden's former US Senate seat in Delaware (won by Democratic candidate Chris Coons thankfully), she risked getting laughter in mockery for claiming that SoC&S is not in the Constitution. Well, what's so hard about "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof"? Basically: RELIGION IS AN INDIVIDUAL CHOICE, THE GOVERNMENT CAN'T FORCE ONE FAITH ON THE PEOPLE OR PROHIBIT ONE? DO YOU GET IT, FUNDAMENTALISTS? Although the constitution obliges the government to defend one's right to observe a faith, the government is not obliged to uphold the values of the faith itself. Thus, when will the supreme court ever break apart the faith-based initiatives division of the White House? Furthermore, the question liberals/secularists need to challenge conservatives should be: where in the Constitution indicates that the nation shall be governed under Christian values? That should stump those strict constructionists who insist that original intent of the founders should guide federal laws.

And yes, as an atheist I have voted for Christians for political office. I vote for candidates based on their political positions and experience, not trivial personal traits like how religious or non religious they are. HOWEVER, if a candidate repeatedly puts on the God/faith peacock feathers in campaigns or backs causes championed by the Religious Right, the candidate loses my vote. I remember reading the 2010 California voter guide and seeing one of the third-party right-wing candidates (either of the American Independent or Constitution Parties) boasting about God in the campaign statement.

All that paranoia and howling for nothing

I swung by the Parents Television Council website today and found the PTC's latest review of Worst Cable Show of the Week being the Comedy Central series Jon Benjamin Has a Van. I've never heard of that show; it's amazing how much about TV I can learn from those professional prudes!

The author begins with this complaint about how Hollywood abuses children

Movies, television, and other sectors of the entertainment industry keep up a non-stop barrage of graphic, ultra-violent, sexual, and profane programming…and send it out over the publicly-owned airwaves and via cable and satellite systems, where even the youngest children can be exposed to it. And in the case of cable and satellite, the industry even FORCES subscribers to pay for such content, even if they never watch it. Apparently, those in the entertainment industry believe that, despite the proliferation of technology today, parents are capable of being, and ought to spend, at their children’s side every second, monitoring every single thing they see. This in spite of the industry’s own deliberate program of pushing clearly adult programming at kids, and their own measures taken to ensure that they are not bound by even commonsense restrictions.

This big ol' word salad precedes PTC's admission that the show is aired at 10:30PM Eastern time (an hour earlier in the central/mountain zones, and even earlier in the west coast on satellite). And the PTC didn't even acknowledge that the show is rated TV-14-L - unsuitable for children under 14 due to language, in plain English.

Does PTC not realize that under the current cable TV bundling system EVERYONE pays for SOMETHING they don't watch/like at all? PTC laid out its own example of its like-minded viewers who pay for offensive programs on Comedy Central if they subscribe to cable. I'll lay out some other examples:

• Liberals subsidizing Fox News Channel or the religious networks (those networks often have a right-wing bent too).
• Conservatives subsidizing MSNBC
• Childless adults subsidizing the Disney Channel, Nickelodeon, and Cartoon Network
• Jewish, Muslim, any non-Christian subscriber subsidizing EWTN, Trinity Broadcasting Network, any religious cable channel

And since when has Comedy Central been aimed towards children and families? If so then why does the network rate most of its shows TV-14 or TV-MA (mature audiences) anyway? I acknowledge for sure there are TV shows and movies and video games out there that kids shouldn't be exposed to. But to insinuate that the entertainment industry wants to market rated-R films straight at kids is just ridiculous and overblown. As for parents "monitoring every single thing" that kids see then what are the V-chip and cable channel blocks for then?

If PTC really wants to combat bad stuff being marketed towards children why don't they join First Lady Michelle Obama's "Let's Move" campaign for healthier eating? Why is PTC all up in arms about violence and sex in TV shows that kids shouldn't even be watching in the first place yet remain silent about McDonald's and Burger King and fast food restaurants marketing junk food to kids and contributing to the obesity epidemic? In fact, in 2005, the PTC criticized the Carl's Jr. fast food chain over PARIS HILTON - yep the slutty blonde spoiled trust fund girl - appearing in a sexual manner in ads. But when has the PTC ever criticized Carl's Jr for its kids meals? PTC does the same ol' thing for the other fast food companies for advertising on offensive programming (y'know, 10PM crime dramas and all that stuff that 7-year-olds shouldn't be watching because they should be in bed) but never attacks those companies for doing DIRECT harm to kids through fatty meals! McDonald's, Burger King, and other junk food companies and agribusiness, all of which have benefitted from massive corporate welfare, has caused more harm to American children than any stupid TV show or violent video game or corny pop song ever has.

By the way I wonder how many people who take PTC's advice regularly feed their kids processed/junk food? I'm not being stereotypical of people who agree with the PTC views, but I'm just asking.

The Norway killer, defining inciting hatred, and hate speech being free speech

Anders Behring Breivik, a 32-year-old Norwegian man, is currently under arrest for and has pled not guilty to a mass murder in Norway. First, he bombed a government building in the capital Oslo, killing 8 and injuring 30. Although the bombed building housed the Norway prime minister, the head of state was not present at the time. He later shot 69 teenagers to death at a Labor Party youth camp at Utoya island. Some originally predicted (and I admittedly guessed too before knowing all the facts) that a radical Muslim initiated the attacks. Later, it turned out that the perpetrator was influenced by anti-Muslim extremist views and opposition to multiculturalism.

Many European Union countries make it a crime to express views that might incite violence or hatred against a certain group of people. Specifically, section 135a of the Norwegian penal code Straffeloven specifies (translated by Google with some mods by me):

Any person who willfully or with gross negligence expresses discriminatory or hateful speech, may be punished by fines or imprisonment for up to 3 years...A discriminatory or hateful expression means threatening or insulting anyone, or promoting hatred, persecution or contempt against anyone because of their
a) race or national or ethnic origin,
b) religion or belief, or
c) homosexuality, sexual lifestyle or orientation.

In contrast, in the United States, the First Amendment to the Constitution prohibits "abridging the freedom of speech." As a result, US courts have often ruled in defence of people who have expressed racist or anti-religious views. According to the American Civil Liberties Union: "The First Amendment to the United States Constitution protects speech no matter how offensive its content." Which is why it's not a crime in itself to express racist views, notably when comedian and Seinfeld star Michael Richards, at a 2006 stand-up event, yelled the N-word and other bigoted expressions in response to a black audience member heckling him. Nor the non-stop bigotry and hatred spewed on talk radio by Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, etc. However, when such hatred escalates into violence, criminal charges are undoubtedly justified. The question is, does hate speech inherently incite violence and thus should not be protected free speech?

In 1952, the US Supreme Court ruled in Beauharnais v. Illinois in favor of a state law banning defamation of a race or class of people, following the tradition that libel is not free speech. That law banned expressions asserting "depravity, criminality, unchastity, or lack of virtue of a class of citizens, of any race, color, creed or religion" which "exposes the citizens of any race, color, creed or religion to contempt, derision, or obloquy." However, authority of the case fell apart in later years, according to Justia.com:

Beauharnais has little continuing vitality as precedent. Its holding, premised in part on the categorical exclusion of defama-tory statements from First Amendment protection, has been substantially undercut by subsequent developments, not the least of which are the Court’s subjection of defamation law to First Amendment challenge and its ringing endorsement of “uninhibited, robust, and wide-open” debate on public issues in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan.

Had that case stood, free speech laws in the US would've almost been at the same level as those in the EU.

In Virginia v. Black (2003), the USSC upheld a Virginia law that prohibited cross-burning because that practice "because burning a cross is a particularly virulent form of intimidation," according to the decision. So far, it can be concluded that free speech does not include explicit, direct intimidation or harrassment of another specific person or deliberately expressing libelous statements about a person.

Breivik's manifesto heavily cited Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller, two American authors known for their radically anti-Muslim points of view. The document also reproduced a publication by the conservative Free Congress Foundation, Political Correctness: A Short History of an Ideology. Basically, according to the right wing, PC is a liberal ideology that stifles speech to ensure that the least people in the audience is offended. So now, the new PC might be to ensure that crazies like Breivik won't get inspired to commit violent acts.

America had a similar albeit smaller experience like Breivik: In January 2011, Jared Lee Loughner shot six people to death and wounded Rep. Gabrielle Giffords; Giffords returned to Congress today and cast a vote for debt ceiling/budget legislation. While it had been initially speculated that right-wing talk radio was to blame, it turned out that Loughner was really a mentally ill drug addict obsessed with conspiracy theories. So should conspiracy theories be protected free speech, or because they might incite insane people to violence those theories should not?

If someone cites influence of radical speakers as the reason for committing assassination or a hate crime, does the blame lay more or entirely with the speaker or the perpetrator? How should we approach controversial viewpoints given the Loughner and Breivik incidents: do those viewpoints inherently incite violence, or do dumb people incite violence? This is sort of like the "guns don't kill people, people do" motto.

Hey PTC, thanks for stating the obvious

The Associated Press reports:

NEW YORK -- Mainstream online video destinations don't do enough to keep explicit content from kids, the Parents Television Council said in a report released Wednesday.

The advocacy group, which monitors decency issues, evaluated the child appropriateness of four online video portals: Hulu, Comcast's Fancast, AOL's Slashcontrol and AT&T's U-verse. None received a better grade than a D.

The study looked at home pages and 602 videos over a three-week period. The council found that standards are more lenient online than on broadcast television, that content ratings were vague and that content that may be unsuitable for children under 14 could be watched by young children.

The president of the Parents Television Council, Tim Winter, said the report proved that the four websites "are failing to protect kids on the Web."

"The content ratings and parental control devices (media corporations) tout as a solution to indecent material on television are not being applied to similarly indecent material on their websites," Winter said.

Well, one wonders...are those sites aimed towards children in the first place?

AOL disputed some of the report's findings. A spokeswoman for the company said that parental controls can be put in place for Slashcontrol and that it's a site with a primarily adult audience.

"Slashcontrol is not a kids and teens site and is not promoted to kids and teens," AOL said in a statement.

The report is called Untangling the Web of Internet Video. It's 25 pages long, and if you're really curious how much sleaze is in those TV shows that those evil, evil media conglomerates are splashing prominently online in the grand conspiracy to corrupt American children, check out the charts from page 19.

I browsed through the "Animation and Cartoons" section of Hulu and discover that programmes like A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving are included alongside more adult-oriented content like Archer and Japanese anime series Naruto Shippuden. While the AP quoted AOL stating that Slashcontrol is not targeted towards children, it is possible to access Kids' WB programming through Slashcontrol; Kids WB has its own site KidsWB.com through which users can watch full episodes of WB-distributed kids shows too.

It's been common knowledge throughout the past decade at least that the Internet ain't a safe place for children to navigate unattended. PTC just enforces this message through super-detailed studies with such exposing details. I mean wow, I didn't know that a teenager could see 15 instances of partial nudity and 25 instances of erotic dancing/strip clubs watching raunchy shows on Slashcontrol (page 19)! PTC must've been hunting real hard to find 'em! Why PTC won't specify which shows contained all that sex and drugs and violence and cussing, I start questioning.

Parents, shouldn't it be very clear that a site that's displaying Glee and Jimmy Kimmel Live on its homepage (Hulu in this case, I'm looking at it right now) is not family-friendly territory?

More broad-brush sweeping by the PTC

I have pointed out in previous posts that the Parents Television Council, an organization that advocates cable channel choice, has based its campaign on broad-brush generalizations of cable channels simply because the channel has one offensive show (usually on a late 10PM or later slot):
- In 2008, the PTC recommended "every parent who receives BBC America to look into blocking the channel" because BBC America showed the British drama Skins, which was rated TV-MA and shown at 9PM or later slots generally. However, PTC never addressed other program[me]s on the BBC America network (of course these all being UK-produced shows) that would not be seen as corrupting to youth such as Top Gear, Cash in the Attic, and World News America.
- PTC is no fan of FX's original late primetime shows. Go do a Google search for the following shows: Nip/Tuck, The Shield, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Rescue Me, or Louie on the PTC website parentstv.org by adding "site:parentstv.org" (sans the quotations) on a search engine. PTC has plenty of bad things to say about those shows with its usual "your subscription to basic cable helps pay for these smutty shows" line. However, in 2008 and this year FX showed the 2006 film Invincible during primetime...and PTC turned a blind eye (I don't know if it's on purpose in an anti-FX agenda or something) despite having awarded Invincible with its Seal of Approval when the film originally was released to theatres. In 2008 the day before Invincible, FX showed Radio during primetime; PTC awarded that film with the Seal of Approval but never pointed out that FX broadcast Radio.
- This year, PTC seems to be hoping that TBS sinks down under, as it warned families that they would soon be subsidizing Conan O'Brien's next show on TBS with their basic cable subscriptions and named the new TBS animated sitcom Neighbors from Hell the worst cable content of the week last month. I have seen instances where PTC has listed TBS reruns of the sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond in Email alerts. But things change, and so do attitudes.

Now, PTC founder Brent Bozell's latest column "Art in America" provides a sneak peek of the PTC's next "Worst Cable Content" column.

The Bravo cable network has a new reality show called “Work of Art,” a competition dedicated to finding the next great American artist.

The half-dozen contestants, 20-something aspiring artists all, enter the famous Phillips de Pury art auction house. Mr. de Pury himself ushers them into the special room where they are presented with a collection of paintings by Andres Serrano, the man who came to fame in 1989 with the ghastly photograph, sponsored by the National Endowment of the Arts, depicting a crucifix dunked in a jar of urine. They are hugely impressed. The final painting they are shown is just that — the original "Piss Christ." They are in awe, quietly expressing their amazement at the talent. And then the door opens and in steps the master. The students freeze, eyes bright, mouths agape. The curator announces, "the great, great Serrano!" One girl instinctively bows reverently.

[...]

And now the contestants are given their assignment: Create a body of art as shocking as that of Serrano. The judges will select the four contestants who will proceed to the next round. More giggles and laughter. Each artist is given a $100 voucher with which to buy supplies.

[...]

...a girl, handsomely endowed, takes a batch of pictures of herself wearing only panties. "High art" is how she describes her product. The curator examines her semi-naked pictures, with emphasis on her naked breasts, and deems the display to be "gorgeous." But what the judges would later describe as "brilliant" is her special touch: setting these pictures next to a black felt-tip pen so the gallery audience could scrawl on them whatever graffiti or obscenities they inspire.

[...]

There is no outcry because our popular culture is thoroughly rotten.

Wow. Way to provide a generalized bad first impression. Because I can't exactly trust Bozell's opinion column as an unbiased reliable source. The Wikipedia article of the show summarizes other episodes. Three episodes aired before the one that Bozell decries as reflecting America's rotten pop culture:

Episode 1: Self-Reflexive

Air date: June 9, 2010

* Challenge: Create a portrait of one of your fellow artists.

Episode 2: The Shape of Things to Come

Air date: June 16, 2010

* Challenge: Create a sculptural piece from items selected from an electronics graveyard.

Episode 3: Judging a Book By Its Cover

Air date: June 23, 2010

* Challenge: Design a book cover for one of six classic novels, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Dracula, Frankenstein, Pride and Prejudice, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and The Time Machine.

So I guess a competition to design book covers for classic novels and create a sculpture from electronic waste threaten traditional values as much as the smutty fourth episode titled "A Shock to the System" (from June 30) that Bozell overanalyzed for all his readers to see. The challenged in the episode that aired the week after that one, "Art That Moves You", is summarized as "[c]reate a work of art based on your Audi experience". By the way, if you still need proof beyond the open-editing Wikipedia, here's the official Bravo show site.

In its "About Us" page Bravo describes itself as "the first television service dedicated to film and the performing arts when it launched in December 1980". During the '80s and '90s, Bravo used to have classic films, jazz music, and stage plays as its main lineup of programs. That was before NBC Universal bought the channel in 2002 and converted it to the fashion/hip/urban/reality show channel it is today. IMHO I see Work of Art as a small attempt for Bravo to return to its roots, but apparently what one man calls art is another's garbage, and just one risque episode gives Bravo a bad name once again.

Obligatory "I'm back" post

What blocked me from blogging was: Twitter, too much Facebook, a clogged DVR, school, and concerns about way too much other stuff besides this website.

In brief:

• I finished my 2nd semester at SJSU with yet another great GPA (3.686) and average 3.867.
• A couple weeks ago, I enrolled in all but one of my classes for the fall semester. Right now I'm taking Physics 4A (Mechanics) at San Jose City College so that I can take PHYS 51 (Electricity & Magnetism) next semester. Problem is? All sections at SJSU for that class are full and so I'm waitlisted there right now and might take that class at junior college (in which case it's called Phys 4B).
• I just began watching That '70s Show again thanks to KICU. Apparently the last season's opening titles used a "circle" format rather than the car.
• The Steve Wilkos Show has new episodes this week after a monthlong (?) hiatus.
• President Obama just nominated Solicitor General Elena Kagan to the US Supreme Court, and the Senate held confirmation hearings on the last week of June. Obama's second nominee to Supreme Court, and second woman overall. Kagan has no judicial experience but as Solicitor General has argued many cases to Supreme Court on behalf of the US government.
  
• A jury in Los Angeles found former Bay Area Rapid Transit police officer Johannes Mehserle guilty of involuntary manslaughter in his fatal shooting of Oscar Grant at the Fruitvale BART Station in Oakland. Although involuntary manslaughter carries just a 2-4 year sentence to state prison, because the jury found that Mehserle personally used a gun to kill Grant, that adds 3-10 years, and thus up to 14 years behind bars. The community in Oakland has believed that Mehserle should've been convicted of 2nd degree murder (15 to life), and thus there was a lot of disappointment.
• I still haven't found a job since November besides one day working at a polling place during the June 8 primary election. Oh well, I think a lot of people have it worse.
• Michael Jackson died on June 25, 2009. Just 11 days before the 1st anniversary of Jackson's death, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Michael Pastor ruled that Dr. Conrad Murray, the doctor who prescribed drugs to Jackson days before he died, may keep his medical license! Grr!
  

Religion's biggest blunders of the year

Yesterday was Christmas Day, a day celebrated by Christians as the birth of Jesus Christ.

I respect their right to celebrate that. If you were wondering if I'm religious in any way, well I've been godless my entire life. Except for weddings or maybe some classical music concerts, I've never gone to church and have much much less, in fact never, attended formal religious services ever in my life. Despite what others may say, I'm proud not to rely on a supernatural power out there for happiness.

That being said, I'd like to celebrate such a profoundly religious holiday my own way: by exposing the biggest religious blunders of the year. I'm not just targeting Christianity; instead to show how dumb and irrational religion can be, I'll include any ideology that includes belief in a supernatural higher power(s).

Gwen Tompkins, "Arrest For Wearing Pants Galvanizes Women in Sudan". Morning Edition (National Public Radio): October 13, 2009. Sudanese woman Lubna Ahmed Hussein was charged for wearing "clothing causing harassment to public sentiment"...for wearing pants! Seriously, Islamic law does prohibit women from wearing pants, even in an era where pants are acceptable business wear for women in the American workplace.

Jonathan Turley, "Four Irish Bishops Resign in Wake of Abuse Report". December 26, 2009. Ireland's Catholic Church has had a big public relations snafu this year over its failure to report priests who abused children. It was so bad that two bishops resigned from the Church on...Christmas Eve! Way to please God!

Jonathan Turley, "Blasphemy Blog: Egyptian Court Upholds Four-Year Sentence of Blogger for Criticizing Islam". December 24, 2009. Yet another wacky story of Islamic law - known in Arabic as sharia - not giving a flying bug about something called basic human dignity. If I were writing this from Egypt (or just about any country in the Arab World) I'd get thrown in the slammer the next hour.

Jonathan Turley, "American Taliban: Family Group Calls for Laws to be Strenghtened That Criminalize Sex Outside of Marriage". December 12, 2009. Turley used "Taliban" in his headline for a reason: This kind of BS law, proposed by the Minnesota Family Council, translates to sharia! (Ironically, American conservatives claim that Muslims want to bring sharia to the US, but the same conservatives cheer on the Christians who want to pass laws like this that violate human rights.) Turley wrote an editorial in 2004 tackling this issue too and pointing out why such a law theoretically would violate the Constitution; it upholds a religious ideal! Specifically, the commandment "Thou shalt not commit adultery". Some may argue that it's not really religious to prosecute adultery, given that a victim does exist in the spouse whose partner cheated.

I take doubt in that argument though. Is it really practical to prosecute all those "man cheated on wife" cases? Given that's such a common activity among humans, it'd jam an already bulky caseload on judges throughout America. Furthermore, prison overcrowding would be worsened, especially in California.

Then comes those who are pushing public schools to teach abstinence education, promoting the idea that waiting until marriage to have sex is the healthiest choice in life. Even though the US government has spent billions in that kind of program, studies have shown that such education is very futile. In another expression, codifying abstinence in this sense would really make things worse. From 1920-1933, the 18th Amendment of the US Constitution put Prohibition in effect. This banned consumption and sale of all alcoholic beverages. Sadly though, it didn't put America back on a moral track as the Prohibition proponents hoped. Instead, organized crime went on the rise, as gangs found that they could make big profits off of the "prohibited liquid". A Cato Institute study from 1991, "Alcohol Prohibition Was a Failure" finds:

Not only did the number of serious crimes increase, but crime became organized. Criminal groups organize around the steady source of income provided by laws against victimless crimes such as consuming alcohol or drugs, gambling, and prostitution. In the process of providing goods and services, those criminal organizations resort to real crimes in defense of sales territories, brand names, and labor contracts. That is true of extensive crime syndicates (the Mafia) as well as street gangs, a criminal element that first surfaced during Prohibition.

So if premarital sex were banned, teens whose hormones were raging would just go underground to evade the law, like prostitutes often do. The Minnesota Family Council's proposed law just makes the sin look all the more satisfying.

PZ Myers, "Shame on Italy". Pharyngula (Scienceblogs.com): December 25, 2009. "The Italian National Research Council is sponsoring the publication of a creationist book, titled Evolutionism: The Decline of an Hypothesis." Yep, the government is seriously helping write a book that promotes pseudoscience. I ain't surprised given that Italy's a heavily Catholic country. It's bad enough that creationists have hijacked the American public schools; we don't need other countries sinking to our level.

Jonathan Turley, "Blasphemy (American Style): Obama Administration Supports Resolution on Limiting Free Speech to Bar Criticism of Religion". October 6, 2009. Yep, the Free World is passive about restricting the right to criticize religion.

PZ Myers, "Ireland has a blasphemy law". July 13, 2009. Ireland passed a law saying that anyone caught offending a significant number of religious people will be fined 25,000 Euros, which translates to approximately 36,000 US dollars. Oxford University professor Richard Dawkins considered this law to be medieval. I agree with Myers and Dawkins; isn't Ireland much better than those silly Islamic nations that whiplash people for speaking out against Islam?

PZ Myers, "What did she expect? That Jesus would stop by and give her a turnip?". December 5, 2009. "Poor, uneducated, obese, and religious". December 9, 2009. Both cases involve people who relied on faith, not medicine, to recover from illness. Sadly, epic fail.

PZ Myers, "The pope is an evil quack". March 18, 2009. Why? Because he lied to Africans about condoms and HIV! Way to express human dignity the Catholic way.

PTC responds to last night's Gossip Girl

Tim Winter, president of the Parents Television Council, responded to last night's controversial episode of The CW's Gossip Girl:

LOS ANGELES (November 10, 2009) – The Parents Television Council® issued a statement in reaction to the teen-targeted “Gossip Girl” episode that aired on Nov. 9. The CW Network’s own promotions indicated that major characters would be featured in a sexual threesome. “Gossip Girl” airs at 9 pm ET/PT and 8 pm CT/MT.

“Though there was no explicit sex scene on last night’s episode, the CW Network’s behavior was grossly irresponsible by adding a story line where a sexual threesome was to be celebrated as some sort of ‘rite of passage’ for teenagers. The network inserted this story line into a program that they themselves deem to be appropriate for 14-year-old children based on its content rating,” said PTC President Tim Winter.

“CW has stated that last night’s episode is not the end of the story, teasing next week’s ‘Gossip Girl’ episode as continuing the ‘threesome’ storyline. And the network’s claim that it isn’t trying to reach impressionable teenagers falls flat given that their own press release from September 2009 touts the fact that ‘Gossip Girl’ won in the ratings among women ages 12-34, and that when ‘Gossip Girl’ is paired with ‘One Tree Hill,’ these shows during the 8-10 pm block have finished first with females 12-34 and female teens.

“Advertisements for ‘Gossip Girl’ have heavily featured themes and wording that only move minors to view the program, such as ‘Every Parent’s Nightmare.’ Such marketing tactics clearly appeal to teens, not adult women. Also, ‘Gossip Girl’ creator Josh Schwartz has boasted, ‘I can honestly say that I don’t check the ratings after the show airs,’ because he knows that a vast majority of his viewers – tech-savvy teens – are watching the program online.

“Advertisers and CW affiliates still need to be on guard. CW affiliates have told the PTC that the network did not afford them an opportunity to pre-screen the program. We urge each affiliate to evaluate the content within the scope of their broadcast license that was loaned to them in return for serving the public interest.”

I searched on Google and cannot find any other source than this press release that quotes Schwartz as saying that he does not look up his show's ratings. And apparently, the PTC thinks that 14-year-olds are still not mature enough to hear about threesomes on TV. Winter also misrepresented the plot of this episode: The characters are in college (which he does not acknowledge at all in this release nor on the earlier one demanding that CW stations pre-empt last night's ep), so that supposed "rite of passage" might not technically take place (at least in the fictional world of Gossip Girl) during the characters' teenage years.

But as far as 14-year-olds and such edgy shows as Gossip Girl indicate, it just shows another one of PTC's silly strawman arguments that kids still need their innocence until they get out of high school...perhaps the reason why they recommend that children under 18 not be allowed to watch it at all? (Most episodes have been rated TV-14, which means basically my previous statement only replace 18 with 14, and a few I believe were rated TV-PG-DLS or whatever if the content was light. TV-PG is for parental guidance suggested.)

As I noted earlier, Time magazine television critic James Poniewoznik has a rebuttal to PTC's archaic ideology that is so much more compassionate and rhetorically respectful than the PTC's political agenda-driven language. This is from his blog where he responded to PTC criticizing the TV-14 rating of AMC's Mad Men as too light:

Now, the thing is, I actually think the PTC has several points. Yeah, I probably would not screen the show for an average 14-year-old...But would I show Mad Men to a mature 14-year-old? One who was, say, already reading the kind of adult literary fiction that Mad Men mirrors? Yes.

And as I said earlier:

In America, there are teenagers whose parents want to keep pure and innocent until age 18, I won't deny that. Just as there are Gossip Girl type teens who are well-cultured and know the dangers of the world around them and whose parents are willing to discuss the birds n' the bees. This criticism isn't surprising given that PTC feels that there have been cases in broadcast TV also where TV-14 has been too weak.

2009: Year of the heckler?

Tonight is the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards. The most talked-about moment of the awards show was when rapper Kanye West interrupted country-pop singer Taylor Swift's acceptance speech for her video "You Belong With Me".

MTV Shows

Kanye West has had a reputation for angry outbursts before at MTV award shows, notably in last year's European Music Awards and in the 2004 American Music Awards and 2006 MTV EMA's too. Blogger Pete Cashmore at Mashable asks whether this was probably a staged stunt, as happened three months earlier at the MTV Movie Awards when Sacha Baron Cohen "mooned" Eminem in the stands. Well since Taylor Swift and her mother were clearly upset by this mess, and West was evicted from the show, and Beyonce (won Best Video for "Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It)" even offered Swift another chance to speak, I hope it was staged, or else I will hate Kanye West even more than when he did the terrible auto-tuned album 808s & Heartbreak. Even other VMA nominees and winners have spoken out against West. Finally, he did the mandatory thing: apologize.

From all this, and maybe some raunchy Russell Brand jokes I missed because I don't have cable but heard about the Kanye incident from my friends, I wonder if the Parents Television Council is gonna raise a fuss over the awards, as they did last year.

This all reminds me of past incidents this summer where there were openly disruptive hecklers.

For example, as various members of Congress held town hall meetings to address President Barack Obama's proposed health care reform, conservatives have disrupted the speaking Congress members loudly and raucously because they feel that the reform is "socialism" and an oppressive "government takeover of health care". Here are some NBC Nightly News reports about that nonsense:

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In August, the Senate held confirmation hearings for then-Judge Sonia Sotomayor. An abortion protestor hollered while Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) interviewed Sotomayor. Others followed. Of course, once again by conservatives concerned over the apparent liberalism of Sotomayor. But she was confirmed anyway.

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And most recently before the Video Music Awards, Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) yelled, "You lie!" at President Obama when he accurately stated that health care reform will not serve illegal immigrants.

Obama's press conference: The orchestra-pit theory in action

Consider Roger Ailes's famous question: "If you have two guys on a stage and one guy says, 'I have a solution to the Middle East problem,' and the other guy falls in the orchestra pit, who do you think is going to be on the evening news?"

Now, the news media has demonstrated this clearly by emphasizing the very last question from Wednesday's televised primetime news conference, when reporter Lynn Sweet of the Chicago Sun-Times asked the President about the Cambridge police wrongly arresting Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates. Obama suggested the police "acted stupidly". That was just one question in a news conference where most of the 10 questions were about health care reform. Guess what really made headlines? Watch the videos below and see for yourself.

NBC's Today, July 23

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Compare this to how much time was spent to cover the health care aspects:

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On the satirical Daily Show, Jon Stewart hosts a properly proportional segment:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
White House M.D.
www.thedailyshow.com
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Sotomayor confirmation hearings began today

So far today the Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Judge Sonia Sotomayor have been just the Senate Judiciary Committee members' commentary and Sotomayor's speech. Her speech was so deep, articulate, and moving, with her narrative of how her Puerto Rican immigrant mother worked hard with her and her brother despite their low income. As for the senators, Republicans pressed Sotomayor with the usual "activist judge"/alleged racism, while Democrats had all sorts of hopeful and praising things to say. Heck, even South Carolina Republican Lindsay Graham decided to be nice for once.

There were also some celebrity guest appearances at today's session. When the newly elected Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) - yes, the former Saturday Night Live/Air America Radio star Al Franken, in case you've been living in a cave all year - began his remarks, Norma McCorvey (the Jane Roe of the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court case) hollered along with another protestor. Then, when another Democrat, Dianne Feinstein of my home state California, began speaking, another protestor yelled: "Her record--What about the unborn. Abortion is murder! Stop the genocide of unborn Latinos!" Then, SJC chair Patrick Leahy (D-VT) actually had to remind the audience to remain silent for the rest of the session. I actually saw the Feinstein incident live on PBS (locally on the digital KQED World channel). Because I always wake up late during the summer, I missed most of the earlier senators remarks. The hearings started at 10AM Eastern, which is 7AM in the Pacific Time Zone. Unfortunately, 10AM is my average wake-up time when there's nothing to do during the day. I think I need to move to the East Coast if I want to keep my sleep schedule and political informacy.

But later during the afternoon on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer (KQED broadcasts it live from Washington, that's why it's on at 3PM PT), I got to hear a condensed version of the session, but not Franken. You can watch Franken getting interrupted on the Washington Post website.

Tomorrow, I'll wake up early to watch Round 2 of the hearings.

These folks make the Parents Television Council look like Greek scholars

I've blogged about the Parents Television Council before. That organization has a reputation for its tough moral stance on TV and for "FCC complaint fraud", that is, recruiting "meat puppet" applicants to file multiple complaints about a certain indecent TV show. Targets have included the predictable usual suspects, exposed private parts (NYPD Blue in 2003, Super Bowl XXXVIII Halftime Show in 2004, and Survivor: Gabon in 2008 - I'm not kidding, click the link and you know what's happening) and obscene words (Billboard Music Awards in 2002 and 2003, NYPD Blue and Golden Globe Awards in 2003, Live 8 in 2005, a lot more examples - darn it TV is PROFANE!)

And? PTC has been known for raising a ruckus about otherwise harmless instances on TV, such as recent Family Guy and Two and a Half Men episodes.

But? On Broadcasting & Cable I just came upon THIS rather giggly story:

According to reports, the Little People of America has filed an official complaint with the FCC over the use of the term "midget" on TV.

"[P]eople with dwarfism find the word "midget" highly offensive," the group said last April when it complained about the use of the term on NBC's Celebrity Apprentice.

An FCC spokesperson was not available for comment at press time, but to regulate the term's use on broadcast TV, the commission would likely have to classify it as indecent or hate speech, over which it has regulatory.

So this organization, now the powerful, million-member, complaint-stuffing PTC, had to raise a "sensitivity" ruckus? When was the last time PTC went up in arms about "political" rather than "moral" or "language" correctness? I know that FCC targets words like the one that begins with F and rhymes with a bird species and another that begins with S and contains the sound of "it", but I've never heard of FCC targeting ethnic/racial/etc. slurs like "midget" or the one that begins with N and rhymes with a character from Winnie the Pooh.

If PTC has never brought up things like this, they're the scholars of the new millennium.

PTC's selection of facts

So out of pure curiosity during this boring Monday morning right after Dead Celebrity Weekend (Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jackson, Billy Mays), I decided to visit the Parents Television Council website, of the organisation that dares take a tough moral stance against all the curse words, sex scenes, shootings, and fights on TV. As of now, their biggest, latest pet peeve is over the "Bruno incident" from the 2009 MTV Movie Awards. PTC President Tim Winter considered that "a perfect example of why consumers should be able to choose and pay for only the cable networks they want, rather than being forced to pay for unwanted bundles of programming." He asserted that every cable consumer pays $0.80 a month for MTV, meaning that MTV makes $1 billion a year out of all cable subscribers.

So a flamboyantly gay movie character mooning a vulgar, homophobic rapper is enough to cry out about the abuse of consumers' money? That's not it! PTC named the Movie Awards the "worst cable show of the week" given the following examples in a "wall-to-wall trash-fest specifically targeted at young viewers":
- The Lonely Island medley performed by "once-respectable artists" LeAnn Rimes, Chris Isaak, and Forrest Whitaker. The Lonely Island is a comedy rap trio comprised of Saturday Night Live cast member Andy Samberg (who hosted the Movie Awards) and writers Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone. They make those "digital shorts" for SNL that later go up on YouTube, uncensored. I don't have cable, which is the reason I've seen this medley for the first time online, and unlike on SNL, Rimes, Isaak, and Whitaker all performed Lonely Island songs in a singing rather than rapping style, even accompanied by a choir and orchestra. The online version is edited the same way as aired, as evidenced by PTC's transcript, which showed that only the F-word in the song "Mother Lover" (originally by Justin Timberlake and Andy Samberg) was bleeped. However, the songs "Jizz in My Pants" and "Dick in a Box" were all uncensored even though NBC bleeped those words out on its original SNL broadcasts; common practice of broadcast networks like NBC is zero tolerance for words like "Dick" and stuff like that...even at 12 midnight!

And then: "The expletives just keep on rolling with the introduction of the “WTF Award.” Presenter Hayden Panitierre explains, “I know most of you are wondering, what the [bleeped “f***”] is the WTF Award? For those of you living in a cave, WTF means, ‘What the [bleeped “f***”].’”" (Amy Poehler won that award for a scene from her film Baby Mama in which she tries to perform a pregnancy test over a sink. Poehler's pre-taped thank-you message to the awards show also had a lot of bleeped words.) This just shows PTC's bleep-phobia. Also: "The musical performances were also filled with profanities. Eminem’s rendition of “Crack a Bottle” kept the censor’s thumb on the mute button with lyrics like, “Kiss my butt. Lick the fumunda cheese from under my [bleeped “n*ts”]… It’s a must I redeem my name n haters get mushed. [bleeped “b*tches”] lust. Man they love me when I lay in the cut.”" Yikes. MTV really wants to annoy parents or corrupt our youth!

But hold up. Apparently, PTC is making this look worse than they really seem. I watched Eminem's performance at the awards show, and it turns out you'd either have to be a super-skilled lip reader or look up the lyrics yourself to know what was muted out...and why can't the PTC distinguish between "bleep" and "mute" for crying out loud? Such prudes. The entire Movie Awards ceremony as seen on TV is available on MTV.com. Although PTC asserts that the "musical performances" are peppered with rancid language, the other major performer, Kings of Leon, had no cuss words at all in its performance of "Use Somebody". And then there's a comedic song "Cool Guys Don't Look at Explosions" by Samberg and Neil Diamond. That song uses only one use of "hell" and no other profanities.

PTC's press release notes that the show was rated "TV-14-DLSV", meaning (according to the official TV Parental Guidelines) unsuitable for children under 14, with pointed advisories regarding suggestive dialogue, crude language, sexual situations, and violent scenes. So what did it expect, total and cordial decency? Rather, PTC tests its shock value on certain parents: "MTV believes this content to be appropriate for a 14-year-old". That's the same argument it put forth when it asked its members/others to file FCC complaints against an episode of Family Guy back in March.

And did PTC even bother to care about which movies won at the awards ceremony? Based on Wikipedia's article about this year's awards I decided to see what PTC thought about the winners. Here's what PTC thought about Twilight, which won "Best Film" this year: "Twilight emphasizes chaste romance, loyalty and devotion between those in love, and an understanding of the need for acceptance of family and those who are different. Essentially a traditional Gothic romance updated for the 21st century, Twilight may not be to every parent’s taste; but its lack of sex and foul language and its (mostly) restrained violence make it an inoffensive choice for the romantically-minded teenager." (PTC also publishes Rod Gustafson's "Parenting and the Media" column; Gustafson differs in opinion though.) Robert Pattinson won "Best Male Breakthrough Performance" for his role in Twilight as well, and Twilight also won awards in "Best Kiss" and "Best Fight". And Ashley Tisdale won the Female counterpart of that award for her role in High School Musical 3: Senior Year, a PTC Seal of Approval winner. Heath Ledger wins posthumously for "Best Villain" in The Dark Knight, which PTC would rather rate closer to an R than the MPAA's "PG-13". And yet ANOTHER PTC Seal of Approval bearer gets high honors at the Movie Awards: Miley Cyrus's song "The Climb" from Hannah Montana: The Movie won "Best Song" at the awards, knocking out "Decode" by Paramore (Twilight), "Jai Ho" by A.R. Rahman (Slumdog Millionaire), and "The Wrestler" by Bruce Springsteen (title track of a film). Shouldn't PTC have acknowledged those facts as well? No, there's this "cable choice" thing to push, and deceptively hiding potentially "cheerable" items will advance PTC's agenda.

I have pointed out other instances where PTC has cherry-picked facts to suit its pro-cable choice, anti-MTV/BET/FX/any cable channel that dares show TV-MA rated programming even after 10 p.m. agenda. For example, PTC has been silent regarding BET's syndication of Smart Guy, a show that it twice named among the best shows of the year. In April 2008, PTC released a report criticizing BET for playing rap music videos out of concern over misogynistic and other negative messages. It also refuses to point out that Seal of Approval-awarded movies have been shown on FX before alongside those 10pm-and-later TV-MA dramas that oh-so-frequently are the object of PTC's grievances. And I'm browsing PTC's "Worst Cable Content" archives and spot yet another one: MTV's DJ & the Fro, a revival of Beavis and Butt-Head that has the titular character humorously commenting on YouTube videos (B&BH did the same for music videos back in the 90s; it was a target of rather silly moral controversy as well because one five-year-old boy killed his two-year-old sister with fire, and his mother blamed B&BH's "pyromania".) PTC's scathing criticism on the show graphically quotes everything the PTC deems sleazy, and asserts: "It is worth mentioning that this show is on every weekday at 5:00 p.m. ET, just early enough for school-kids to tune in before Mom and Dad get home. If this show is the voice of the new generation (as it purports to be), then society is in trouble." (italics & underline theirs) So now MTV is out to get kids to burn their siblings to death again in the 2010s (it's 2009 for crying out loud!) Well not so fast: MTV rates the show TV-14, so I guess that parents who believe their teenage children should be sheltered from all things evil till college should be the only ones concerned here.

Everything that's wrong with Evergreen Valley High School

Well, an hour ago I got home from the EVHS football team's embarrassing Homecoming Game loss to Independence High School, 22-21. That came after the EV Cougars were leading 21-14 with about 10 seconds left in the 4th quarter, when suddenly defense slipped up in the rainy weather and allowed an Independence player to score a touchdown (6 points) and a 2-point conversion, thus concluding the game at that. At the same time, we learned that the Juniors got 1st place at homecoming and Seniors 2nd (and of course, Sophomores 3rd and Freshmen 4th). And the Associated Student Body (ASB for short) invested lots of valuable money and had its president testify before the District in its September board meeting for a permit for halftime fireworks tonight. Wow. In a time when the economy is sucking so bad it's under Great Depression status and public schools from Puget Sound to the Rio Grande to the Florida Keys are strapped in cash and raped in the behind by President Bush's incompetent No Child Left Behind Act, it is simply a disgrace for a school that was recently ranked silver by US News & World Report magazine as among the best American high schools and having led the whole damn district in API (Academic Performance Index) to look like this in what's supposed to be the happiest time of the year.

So when I got home, I laid back on my futon and watched a DVR'ed episode of The Steve Wilkos Show, whose title host is a former US Marine, Chicago Police Officer, and security director for The Jerry Springer Show. No, I'm not joking, Wilkos is the bald-headed guy you've seen on Springer since the mid-90s or so. The episode I recorded, "Tragic Tale of 2 Sisters", was from Thursday, about an 18-year-old woman who wanted Wilkos to help her 11-year-old sister stop having sex with teen boys (I'm not joking, it IS the plot of the episode). Steve Wilkos later talks with the sister & parents, who are divorced. Soon it's revealed that the father once sexually molested the older daughter, so Steve didn't let the father see the younger daughter. Meanwhile, Steve also punishes the mother for not looking out for and loving her younger, whoring daughter. In the end, the father is evicted from the stage (in Steve's popular "GET OFF MY STAGE!!!" cry) and Steve gets the mother and children counseling.

Now I'm here all angry about how low my school is sinking. Here's a rough list of everything that is wrong, wrong, incorrect, inaccurate, stupid, messed up, FUBAR, abominable, unbelievable, and silly about Evergreen Valley High School:
1. During the part of the 05-06 academic year when private colleges are asking for letters of recommendation and such, counselors were borderline deadbeat--Steve Wilkos might've beaten them up severely.
2. EVHS has acknowledged repeatedly its over-crowding controversy, but its solution--the off-campus Biotech Academy for 11th/12th graders--was killed late in 2006, thus resuming the bottleneck. This year, the overcrowding got so bad that some students were denied certain classes merely with the excuse that there wasn't enough space. One friend of mine passed the AP Calculus AB exam but was denied Calculus BC for that very reason, yet two FRESHMEN who took a shallow summer calculus I course at community college got in. And while she was repeatedly refused a seat in Calc BC, another student (a leadership student who got a 2 on the exam, a failing score) and another random student were granted space! This is affirmative action and disorganization gone WRONG. I've heard of seniors who were forced to repeat English 3 despite passing it with at least a B just because "oh, there ain't enough space". Yet I know that this year there are students in English 4 who got C/D grades in English 3.
3. EVHS made a terrible mistake by neglecting meritocracy in considering attendance priority. That's why it's more likely that a dirty ghetto kid from the borderline Mt. Pleasant/EV attendance area gets enrolled and eventually wastes our taxpayers' money by repeating Algebra 1 until eleventh grade. At the same time, a rich, hardworking student from, lessay the Silver Creek/EV attendance borderline is rejected because of..."overcrowding". Had EV used meritocracy on its borderline attendance areas, then we'd be chasing after Cupertino and Palo Alto high schools.
4. The ASB has gotten away with childish/just plain silly homecoming and battle themes.
5. An incident in November 2007 where a great mob of students hurled Skittles at each other and at staff members illustrated the students' dissatisfaction that the administration was going all North Korea on extracurricular activities. It took that much pressure for the principal to back off.
6. EVHS knowingly hired registered sex offenders in its arts programs! In November 2006, the drama teacher was arrested for sexual misconduct. Ditto with a former band teacher a couple years later. That teacher willfully allowed a registered sex offender to volunteer at the Band Boosters!!!!!!!!
7. Racism and imbalance is rampant in EVHS's course catalogue. Why can EV provide special ed yet not have foreign language classes beyond Spanish, French, and Vietnamese? Shouldn't we save our API and reputation and harbor off the special ed to Silver Creek/Mt. Pleasant for the sake of our achieving students? Also, EVHS refuses to hire a competent AP Computer Science teacher--the one right now is lying about his 67% pass rate by a HUGE margin, to be honest.
8. Gov. Ahnuld Arnold Schwarzenegger's struggle with the state budget was somehow a tolerable excuse for the school library not to be open before 6th period, but it's almost Election Day now and this still applies. Testimony from many many district parents/students/teachers was not enough either to persuade the district to finalise hours/budget for libraries!
9. I'm still angry at EV for not telling in advance that there'd be only ONE APCS section this year--so I couldn't get in AP English Language, which I planned to be a "backup" in case I didn't get APCS. When I appealed to the APLang teacher, she just gave me a "fuck you" (no, not really) and explained that I should've done the summer stuff. Still--both me and EV are equally guilty of arrogance.
10. EV has no problem with the Gay/Straight Alliance flamboyantly posting pro-gay propaganda throughout campus during "Gay Pride Week" or whatever that is. If a pro-Proposition 8 group were to come up on campus, the ICC would evict them, and if that group were ever to practice their First Amendment rights by posting their opinions in appropriate places, the Thought Police of EV would tear 'em down within minutes. Obviously, EV holds an agenda to brainwash all students with a perverted, blind message of "tolerance for all regardless or whatever" without critical thinking.

Sadly, these are only a few problems. I've got to go to sleep now. More will come later.

Goodbye SAT, hello ACT!

Well I did worse on the SAT than my previous time - a 1950 in Oct. 2008, compared to a 1990 back in May. I got the same score on the writing section (690) as last time but 20 points down on math (710 --> 690) and reading (590 --> 570). How could this happen, when I've gotten a 770 on the SAT Math level 2 subject test??!? Oh well it could be because of those pesky free-response questions or my inability to read the fine print. As for the reading section, often the reading passage questions tend to be so deceptive that only Valerie Plame could solve them...I kid you not, just ask anyone who's studied hard for the SAT (and eventually got a good or bad score).

Thus I have officially parted ways with the SAT starting today and will begin preparation for the much better and supposedly easier & more honest ACT. I picked up ACT registration materials at a college night held by my local school district and after finding my disappointing SAT score online I looked through the overview, and the ACT I think I can handle better. The ACT website (ACT.org) provides outline of the test, which goes in this order:
1. English (75 questions, 45 minutes) - questions cover both grammar and rhetoric. None of those pesky SAT "fill-in-the-blank" vocabulary questions! :D
2. Mathematics (60 questions, 1 hour) - covers most of everything from pre-Algebra to Trigonometry, similar to the SAT Subject Test in Math Level 2, again which I got a 770 score (on the 800 SAT scale)
3. Reading (40 questions, 35 minutes) - five passages organised into specific topics (i.e. humanities, sciences, literature) and multiple-choice questions. The ACT's description of this section makes it similar to the SAT reading passages section or any other reading comprehension test in general. But I hope that there are no "SAT Trick Questions" here with ambiguous answer choices
4. Science (40 questions, 35 minutes)- Unlike the SAT Subject Tests in Science, which test on the facts, the ACT Science section is more like a "scientific" version of section 3, with the main task to interpret graphs and other data based on basic scientific knowledge and reasoning.
5. Writing (optional) (1 essay, 30 minutes) - the optional and very last section of the SAT. It's a good thing that this is 5 minutes longer than the SAT essay, so I get more time to develop my ideas, something that 25 minutes hasn't given me an opportunity to do. Scholars have criticized the SAT essay section for not being reflective enough on real writing prompts that teachers normally assign.

And off to ACT prep I go! I will take the test 13 December, the last chance for me to take any SAT/ACT type test for college; deadline is 7 November (3 days after Election Day, to be easier). As I pointed out earlier, there requires extensive tutouring and "gaming the system" just to get above 2000 on the SAT! But the ACT seems more based on the facts rather than unnecessary junk "reasoning", so I hope to have a better chance there.

Symphonic band on strike?

Today was a pretty good end of the week, with an easy calculus quiz on integration by parts, followed by the usual 15-minute break, where I got to wish my friend Rachel a happy 17th birthday. All went well until the next period, which was Symphonic Band. The ensemble rehearsed two pieces out of four to be played this 11 December for the school band concert and had been playing them since the week of Labor Day. Most of the days since then, the band has been practicing around an average level, with certain mistakes or anamolies making the conductor stop the band and advise on corrections, which turn out to be usually simple. "That's all you gotta do," he'd say.

But today, 19 September, the ensemble sunk to a new low. Guess what kind of errors happened today? Trombone players were nearly a measure behind, trumpets played too slow, drums were off-beat, and soon the whole ensemble "falls asleep" and literally slows down to ritardando when they are not supposed to. All when I, a mallet player, am keeping my eyes between the conductor and my score and waiting for my turn on the music, having done a competent job all along. Those parts of today's rehearsal sounded so disorganized and chaotic that Soulja Boy's annoying, ubitiquous "Crank That" song even sounds more musical than a high school symphonic band!

So the conductor stops the band and furiously wants to know what has happened with them. He felt that the players were on "last day of school" mode rather than September & "excited for school/concert" mode. Wow. We're really supposed to be superior to the average dumb high school students. Given how much bull$#!7 I had to suffer today thanks to the other morons who were supposed to be concentrating together as an ensemble - two people even lost some of their musical sheets - I feel compelled to turn up Weezer's new song "Troublemaker".

Don't worry, my fellow Symphonic Bandmembers. I've been through your kind of trouble before when I joined the ensemble last year to make up for a lack of performing arts class for my college entrance requirement (both the University of California and California State University systems require "at least one year" of Performing/visual arts type of class) I made a lot of effort to learn how to grip mallet sticks properly and follow the conducting. A year has passed, and I've become a welcome member of the family. But now we need to sink so low as to THIS crappy level - which as I mentioned earlier sounds even WORSE than the most annoying pop punk/emo/pop rap/bubblegum MTV corporate radio pop/MMMBop/Britney/NSYNC/Backstreet Boys/Simple Plan/Good Charlotte/Soulja Boy/Fall Out Boy/Limp Bizkit songs out there?!?!?!?! Maybe now it's OK for Michael Savage to trash-talk about Muslims and the mentally disabled. I think I'll just quit life and start smoking all the marijuana and drinking all the beer/alcoholic drinks I want and fail all my classes and eventually end up homeless/single/still a virgin after high school and spend the rest of my life in who knows where. College sounds worthless. Finding a job sounds meaningless. Everyone is an idiot. My local school district is a run by a mob of brainless drunken bastards for failing to fix a dying softball field at one school yet fixing other stuff everywhere else. MY school does things even worse by denying the right of one of my best friends to attend Calculus BC after having passed the Calculus AB exam

Back to the main topic. For this weekend, we all need to rethink this stupid situation and redeem ourselves and prove that we are all TRUE students and authentically-trained musicians and wanting to be among the best students out there. A CHANGE IS GONNA COME. If not, I might probably start ditching band class and later put the blame on whoever is causing me the most problems there, Barack Obama might lose the election simply because we weren't willing to accept change for the better, the world will decompose into a violent anarchy...OK sorry enough with the insane doomsday predictions right there. But seriously. You and I ALL NEED TO F\/|
PS: I thank all members of the Wind Ensemble, the highest level of band at school, for their hard work and making class "fun" for my other friend Jamie, who advised me on the state of that ensemble today after 6th period ended today. I guess that means that the WE was actually being cooperative unlike the Symphonic knuckleheads.

Tabloids hit reality

On June 4, I commentated about the US network news' lack of Tiananmen protest retrospective coverage - largely in part from Barack Obama's victory in the US Democratic Party primaries for the 2008 election.

However, I just came upon this BBC News article today that reports on the Beijing News tabloid getting banned from mainland Chinese newsstands after it dared shed light on Democracy by posting a photo from the 1989 Tiananmen protests. So apparantly the free-speech-granted ABC, CBS, Fox News, MSNBC, and NBC didn't say anything about the massacre, but the Communist-censored Beijing News could?! How ironic...in a real world the exact opposite would've happened...apparantly the same darn thing happened to the state-run CCTV too

Back home in the red, white, and blue, during the dog days of summer with about 30-35 days left until school resumes, I've been dividing my days between studying, slacking, the Internet, and the Idiot Box. During the daytime, the local channels show all sorts of "Tabloid talk shows", such as Jerry Springer and Maury. Those types of programs are for me just guilty pleasure but not really my regular taste...they ain't "must see TV" compared to quality, actually "entertaining" stuff like CSI, The Office, or The Simpsons.

On Thursday, local Fox station KTVU re-ran an old Maury episode from May 2008, titled "You're 14 and Having a Baby, Your Wild Ways End Today!" - pretty much all Maury episode titles read like a New York Post or National Enquirer headline (even his occaasional "clean" episode like his "Most Talented Kids" shows...with all the exclamation and question marks) As you might've predicted or known, that episode was among his countless "wild teens" episodes that feature teen girls who engage in sexually devious behavior. One girl featured had a baby at age 11 and repeated the 6th grade twice, and another girl was a sex & drug addict who failed 8th grade twice! Luckily, Maury Povich at least knows how to be morally correct, as he talks to the girls in a serious, concerned tone and invites motivational speakers/counselor type people like D. West, Raphael B. Johnson, and Harvey Walden to fix 'em up. After show, the girls go to "rehabilitation" places like an AIDS treatment facility (for the third-time 6th grade student) or even the Monmouth County Correctional Facility (for the others).

Later that day, I tuned to local PBS station KQED to watch The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. It was the first time in a while I actually saw Lehrer host his own show; in many previous times I watched Newshour other substitute hosts like Ray Suarez or Gwen Ifill. Thursday's edition had a story about a reform school district down in New Orleans that serviced "overage" students...yep the same type of students I saw on Maury earlier that day. The story featured...a 19-year old woman who failed 12th grade twice (mostly due to failing the Science section of Louisiana's high school exit exam...here in California we take only English & Math in our exit exam). If her situation isn't bad enough, wait till you hear in that story about a 16-year-old boy who failed eighth grade twice; the reporter also asserted the existence of overage sixth- and seventh-grade students.

Whether in Communist China or Free-Speech America, "edgy" journalism like tabloids can ocassionally be eye-opener despite being general eye candy. It really depends on what the tabloid is covering, usually smearing public figures such as celebrities or politicians. But sometimes they're willing to cover where the MSM simply is too cowardly to go.