…so here it is. I’m busying scanning pictures, and I’ll have to post a couple here pretty soon. While I do that I’m also searching for old compact discs that are impossible to find. Either I owned the CD at one point and was dumb/poor enough to sell it, or I’d only downloaded it and have since lost it. Here are a few, and if you have them, I will gladly accept a copy:

Sinai – Live in Room 104
Sinai – One More Night With the Frogs
Dogwood – Through Thick and Thin
Value Pac – Incognito
Brownie Points – Waiting For Something More
F.o.N. – Awkward Silence (song from mp3.com)

I may have to accept that I will never come to hear these treasured songs again. Even now in the age of technology and piracy they are still nearly impossible to come by. How sad it is.

I just experienced some of the best 18 minutes I can remember. In this video the theatrics of the Arab-Israeli conflict are shown very clearly. From fake injuries to directed conflicts, the video shows just how reliable video out Palestine can be.

It’s a video (who doesn’t like videos?!), and it will show you that not everything is how it may seem. So do yourself a favor and grab a beverage, recline your chair, and spend the next 18 minutes being enlightened.

Pallywood Video

On Monday Treasure Hunters will end, and Prison Break will start. This marks the end of the many reality shows we’ve watched this summer, and the return of regular primetime programming. Here’s a recap of all the shows we’ve watched:

Last Comic Standing 4
I’d watched bits and pieces of previous seasons, but I never got into it enough to watch the entire season. For whatever reason we watched it from start to finish this year. Josh Blue won the whole thing, and I was cheering for him the entire time. I have to admit, Ty Barnett was really good. Josh was really funny at times (Gabriel, stop calling me!), but there were sometimes when I think he was just up there grabbing stuff off the top of his head. Ty had great material everytime he went out. But props to Josh for being naturally funny!

America’s Got Talent
We watched the first episode, and it was painful. I think we then skipped the next couple episodes, and started watching again in the semi-finals. The girl that won, Bianca Ryan, was beyond annoying. Her singing sounded like an annoying whine, and just becaue you can fluctuate pitch does not mean it always sounds good. This is what escapes me about professional singers. Just because you can do something difficult with your voice doesn’t automatically make it sound good.

The more I think about this show the more annoyed I get. Hasselhoff just wanted everyone to like them, Brandy had retarded hair every night, and Piers Morgan, though correct a lot, was a jerk.

Treasure Hunters
By far my favorite reality show of the summer! I’ve never watched much Amazing Race, but this show makes me want to. Take Amazing Race and throw in tons of puzzle solving, and you’ve got an exciting show. This one isn’t over until Monday, so I’ll finish this when the finale airs. Update: The Geniuses won, but I wanted Air Force to win.

Others
We’ve also have been watching Windfall (not a reality show, but it does have Luke Perry). It’s about a group of people that win the lotto and they each get $20 million. It started off as an interesting premise, but slowly turned into "we’ve all got problems and are retarded!" If this show sticks around past the summer, I don’t expect it to stick on our viewing schedule.

We also watched bits of several other shows. We watched the last couple episodes of Hell’s Kitchen, and it was fun. We were also watching a show called How To Get The Guy, and it followed around four different women in their quest to date and find the right guy. It was very authentic, especially for a tv show, but it was on a couple times and then disappeared.

Prison Break begins this Monday night, don’t miss it!

Let me be clear about the purpose of this post. It is not to debate the recent Israel/Hezbollah clash. I’ve already made my opinion on that clear. Today though I ran across an article on CNN that is a perfect example of why critical thinking is so important. An excerpt from this article:

"The conflict began July 12, when Hezbollah abducted two Israeli soldiers and killed three others in a cross-border raid into northern Israel. Israel responded with a massive bombardment of Lebanon and a push into the country’s south to root out Hezbollah, which retaliated by firing about 4,000 rockets into northern Israel."

Instead of just telling you what I see, I want to hear from everyone else. What do you see, and what are the implications?

Update: So here is my take on this paragraph. The main flaw I see deals not with the facts, but with the sequence of events. The implication is that it puts Hezbollah in a good light, and makes Israel the bad guy.

The first sentence is entirely factual, but in sentence two there is a big problem. The way it is worded makes it sound like after Hezbollah’s initial action, Israel then bombed and invaded Lebanon. This is true, but is this all that happened? Here’s the kicker: Hezbollah then retaliated against Israel’s bombardment and invasion. Notice the order of events. Minor action by Hezbollah, huge reaction by Israel, and then retaliation by Hezbollah. The problem is that Israel didn’t go into Lebanon until weeks after July 12, and all the while Hezbollah was firing their 4,000 rockets. A more accurate second sentence might read "The cross-border raid was followed by weeks of rocket fire from both sides, and the eventual push by Israel into Southern Lebanon."

The implications from this statement are huge. It makes it sound like after Hezbollah’s first raid they just sat around for weeks! All the while evil Israel was attacking and invading. Finally, poor and helpless Hezbollah’s hand was forced and they fired their rockets. This makes Hezbollah sound passive, like they didn’t want this conflict, which couldn’t be farther from the truth.

Is the paragraph riddled with lies? No, but it is quite misleading, especially if you’ve not followed the conflict closely. The ability to discern something as minor as the sequence of events has a major effect on the understanding of the conflict and who is at fault.

Yesterday and today I had to attend a training for work, smack in the middle of my summer vacation. Luckily it’s over and I can get back to enjoying my last couple weeks.

I turned off the fancy style buttons because it turned out to be a big pain. It made things slower, only some of the buttons would work, and it was screwing with comment submissions. Thanks to everyone who has registered (pretty much all the regulars). I hope to keep an eye out for fun plugins and additions that can make the website more entertaining. I also want to make a blog section where I can put all the additions I’ve made like official comments, etc, and where I found them.

Since the wife finally registered maybe she’ll start posting replies more often. As for a wife blog, I’m not sure. That might be too dangerous. Speaking of the wife, she’s gone this weekend for a girl scout trip, so I’ll be all alone. I’ve got a ton of pictures I want to scan, so I may hunker down and get that done.

Dodgers lost big today, but it doesn’t matter if a loss is by one run or eleven, it only counts as one. Friday Mr. Penny can turn it back on!

In case you were wondering, to understand this post you need an education level between 6th and 9th grade. That’s according to my Gunning-Fog and Flesch-Kincaid indexes given by my Word Stats plugin.

Today marks the two-year anniversary of this humble site called The Blarg. Thank you to everyone for listening to my rants, making me feel interesting, and joining me in this fun little community of blog friends. Not only does this site give me something to do, but it also keeps me connected to the people I care about.

A two-year anniversary wouldn’t be complete without some new additions! Below are some big and small changes (mostly small) to hopefully enhance your experience here at The Blarg.

• User Login – Whether you know it or not, you’ve always been able to login to The Blarg. Until now though it’s been pretty useless (and it was a major pain). Thanks to some help from Angelo, I know have the login fields nice and prominent on the top right and easy to use. So what does logging in get you? It gets you…
• Official Comments – Now when you’re logged in and post there are two added benefits. One is that you won’t be forced to fill out the Name/Email/Website stuff before you comment. The second is that your comments will show up a little differently than an unregistered user. Your comment will be denoted as "official" and be in a light blue box. All the unregistered users will envy you (and nobody can impersonate you). If you register make sure to setup your profile with your blog and other info.
• Blarg Stats – To the right under blog columns you’ll see something new called "Blarg Stats." Take a look to see a lot of useless stats regarding The Blarg.
• Comment Editing – This one I have been working on for HOURS (and I finally got it to work, mostly. Stupid kses.php). Now when you post a comment you can add some flair to it using bold, italics, underline, etc. Now when I reply I don’t have to type a word in CAPS, and can instead use the more appropriate italics. This still has some bugs in it (smilies don’t work yet) but it’s getting there.

Those are the main things. It’s late and I have training (for work) nice and early, so I need to sleep. If you encounter any issues with the site, please let me know! Thanks.

I’m not big into artsy fartsy movies or analyzing the cinematography and all that mumbo jumbo. I do however love watching movies, so I will tell you how I liked this movie.

This movie is a riot. You’ve got a whole bunch of dysfunctional characters riding around in a broken down VW Bus, and much hilarity ensues. I mainly wanted to see this movie because Steve Carell is great in The Office, but the entire cast of the movie was great. Overall it’s a pretty feel good story with some twists and turns. There were maybe 40-50 people in the theatre at most, and the movie had most of us laughing at some point.

Opens in wide release on Friday. It has some great reviews at Rotten Tomatoes. Check out the trailer to see if this is a movie for you! I highly recommend Little Miss Sunshine.

Time for some controversy!

I get the feeling that the media and institutions of higher education don’t value or perceive the history of "white" people in the same way that they do other cultures. Diversity courses in college are never about people with light skin colors (instead only about how light skin people have harmed dark skin people). It’s almost as if we’ve been here so long that our history doesn’t matter, or even exist.

Not only do I think our past is brushed off as unimportant, but also our culture. Just because we don’t make empanadas, wear headresses, or speak other languages doesn’t mean we lack culture. It only means the media and higher education doesn’t care about our culture.

Before you label me a racist (because after all, saying something positive about "white" people makes you a racist), ask yourself this question: For what purpose are we forced to appreciate "diversity" in schools? Why not put a greater emphasis on the individual and their character traits that really matter. I am much more concerned with work ethic, moral standards, the family unit, and personal responsibility than whether or not you are a minority that eats "ethnic food."

I am not arguing that "white" people are better than anyone else (and if that’s all you’ve gathered so far you’ve missed the point entirely). It’s just as ignorant to lump all white people in a group as it is to lump all brown people in a group. Talk about the hot water you would be in for putting all brown people into the same group and assuming they have the same culture and history!

But you can do that with "white" people. We don’t have a history anyways!

Update: EDSE 435: United States Secondary Schools: Intercultural Education

Update II: A final clarification as my original post might have been a little muddled. I believe there is a double standard. Someone can put "Brown Pride" across their rear window and they are labeled "proud." If I put a "White Pride" sticker up I’m an anti-semite. It’s this sentiment that fueled the original post (much of which was tongue in cheek if you didn’t notice).

I would prefer the whole appreciating and valuing of people based on their skin color STOP completely. A piece on the news the other night was up in arms about the low number of black students at UCLA. Because it was about blacks it means you are "concerned about race relations." If someone complained about the number of white students in any context they’d be labeled a white supremacist (again, a reinforcing that it’s wrong to value "whites’).

Let’s start appreciating qualities that deal with character, something that actually matters.