Monday, November 21, 2005
Things you should know about me but maybe don't
I'm not a terrible volleyball player for spending the past five years hating the sport, my roommate is Jesse Van Hove's art student twin, I'm a half-assed vegetarian (I eat fish), I'm Seattle Pacific University Flag Football B-League Intramural Champion, my dad is moving to his hometown of Walnut Creek, CA in January with my mom to follow later in the spring to pastor his sister's church, I secretly hope my sister Katia and bro-in law Micah move to Seattle area next year (but they won't) while I hope my sister Sara goes to UC-Davis or UC-Berkeley law schools (I know, she's brilliant) so she's close to my parents and I won't feel obligated to visit as much, both my ears are pierced, I am double majoring in two of the following (maybe): philosophy, journalism/communications, sociology, political science, english, I'm really frustrated with the Dolphins and Hurricanes right now but the Seahawks are thriving, Dwayne Wade>Dontrelle Willis>Nick Saban(loss to Browns on Sunday makes me nervous)>Ronnie Brown> Miguel Cabrera (attitude problem)>Kyle Wright in the pantheon of the future of Miami sports, I haven't seen the last two episodes of Lost, Death Cab show receives a 8/10, I had a dream that James and I did something illegal, and I kinda like sports.
Sunday, November 06, 2005
Vegetarianism #3 (also, sucking at Halo but not sleepy is condusive to blogging)
So again, in attempting to reply to all the comments, I found my self with a really big paragraph so I figured I'd post it up here where everyone would actually read it:
Adam, numbers : From Good News for All Creation (Kaufman and Braun, 2002): "Yet worldwide in 1998, 37 percent of all harvested grain was fed to animals being raised for slaughter; in the United States that figure was 66 percent. Meat wastes between 66 and92 percent of grains’ proteins and calories." They have their figures sourced from different journals and books. When writing the posts, I quickly grabbed my figures from a U of Penn website I pulled off google, so that's how i got the water numbers and the 70% compared to the 66%. As for the amount of people starving to death a day, that's the figure I've heard several times in the past year, somewhere in the range of 30 to 40 thousand daily. I just briefly browsed around and got 16 thousand children dying a day of hunger related diseases from bread.org, 1/3 of the world is well fed, 1/3 is under fed, and 1/3 is starving according to the World Health organization, and according to thinkglobal2005.org, 10 million people died in 2003 of starvation, which comes to about 28 thousand a day. Likewise, according to makepovertyhistory.org, 30,000 children die of poverty related causes. So I think I was thinking of poverty, not just starvation, for my 30 - 40 thousand number. But my point remains the same, way way way too many people are dying for us to be so careless with a essential to life resource.
Secondly, Dan - the whale comment about Free Willy was intentional at the end, but good catch.
And since I have nothing else to add, I may as well began to ramble on about my economic justice paper, too. The premise of this paper is that billions around the world live in unjust conditions while David chillaxes ('99, what) with his 20 t-shirts, six pairs of shoes, and lots 'o cable tv up with the affluent west. Basically, I'm saying in this paper that we all have a duty to provide far more aide than we currently now give, and the failure to give such aide is akin to murder. Hopefully, just because I'm a major hypocrite (I've failed to even reach a basic 10% tithe the past 4 working years of my life) on this topic (throwing out the ad hominem on myself before all y'alls drop it on me) doesn't mean the arguments I'm trying to make are invalid. By the way, I don't really feel like searching up a bunch of quotes about how x number of people are living on y number of dollars a day while zee (not zed) number of billionaries have more money than n number of countries. But those numbers do exist, they aren't disputed, and they are staggering. Anywho, listen to me ramble, yo:
Lemme first establish some points crucial to my argument: Every person has a right to a healthy life, which includes a helluva lot of other things (shelter, clothing, etc) . Every person has right to his or her own property and to decide to do with such property as he or she wishes unless it compromises human freedom, dignity, or anything along those lines. The right to life of every human being far outweighs any property rights of any amount of persons. In other words, if I am able to destroy a hundred thousand hummers owned by a hundred thousand different people to save one human life, I have a directy duty to that one person to do so. If I take no action to save that one life, I have committed a moral wrong - something akin to murder. Maybe not murder exactly, but my point here is inaction resulting in a violation of a basic human right in almost equal to action resulting in a violation of a basic human right. Follow me? AKA, not preventing (if able without any harm to self and others) someone from killing someone is almost as bad as shooting someone in the head yourself. Ace? See where I'm headed with this?
We have the ability to satisfy so much essential need in the world, but instead, we satisfy our own superficial material needs and desires. Example: "To satisfy the world's sanitation and food requirements would cost only US $13 billion- what the people of the United States and the European Union spend on perfume each year. " (http://library.thinkquest.org/C002291/high/present/stats.htm) Dude, I have three bottles of axe sitting on my dresser right now. Who the hell needs three? People are dying, but I like smelling good. What my actions say is, it is more important for me to smell good for a couple months than it is for a fellow human to have food for a month or whatever the h-bomb $25-30 will getcha. This is a grave moral wrong committed by a helluva lot of people (you and me included) that is akin to murder. People die, I spend hundreds of dollars a year on vanity. Now I'm going to stop writing and you're going to stop reading, and we're both going to go do something else and forget about this injustice and inequality we daily contribute to because, quite honestly, it is very uncomfortable, depressing, and guilt inducing. I'll hopefully have the stones to return to this later, and hopefully, maybe I can grow up and help someone or something. And I don't know, maybe you and I both can start thinking about how maybe we shouldn't go out to eat, maybe we shouldn't pick up the new broken social scene album, or buy that dwayne wade poster, or that dwayne wade jersey, or that dwayne wade shirt, or more make up, or more perfume, or more shoes, or, and this one is directed right at stewart, more man-thongs (or any sort of thongs). Anyways, I've become incredibly cliche so i'm going to run and hide in the bathroom stall where the poster of hilary duff watches me poop until I feel original again. Love.
Adam, numbers : From Good News for All Creation (Kaufman and Braun, 2002): "Yet worldwide in 1998, 37 percent of all harvested grain was fed to animals being raised for slaughter; in the United States that figure was 66 percent. Meat wastes between 66 and92 percent of grains’ proteins and calories." They have their figures sourced from different journals and books. When writing the posts, I quickly grabbed my figures from a U of Penn website I pulled off google, so that's how i got the water numbers and the 70% compared to the 66%. As for the amount of people starving to death a day, that's the figure I've heard several times in the past year, somewhere in the range of 30 to 40 thousand daily. I just briefly browsed around and got 16 thousand children dying a day of hunger related diseases from bread.org, 1/3 of the world is well fed, 1/3 is under fed, and 1/3 is starving according to the World Health organization, and according to thinkglobal2005.org, 10 million people died in 2003 of starvation, which comes to about 28 thousand a day. Likewise, according to makepovertyhistory.org, 30,000 children die of poverty related causes. So I think I was thinking of poverty, not just starvation, for my 30 - 40 thousand number. But my point remains the same, way way way too many people are dying for us to be so careless with a essential to life resource.
Secondly, Dan - the whale comment about Free Willy was intentional at the end, but good catch.
And since I have nothing else to add, I may as well began to ramble on about my economic justice paper, too. The premise of this paper is that billions around the world live in unjust conditions while David chillaxes ('99, what) with his 20 t-shirts, six pairs of shoes, and lots 'o cable tv up with the affluent west. Basically, I'm saying in this paper that we all have a duty to provide far more aide than we currently now give, and the failure to give such aide is akin to murder. Hopefully, just because I'm a major hypocrite (I've failed to even reach a basic 10% tithe the past 4 working years of my life) on this topic (throwing out the ad hominem on myself before all y'alls drop it on me) doesn't mean the arguments I'm trying to make are invalid. By the way, I don't really feel like searching up a bunch of quotes about how x number of people are living on y number of dollars a day while zee (not zed) number of billionaries have more money than n number of countries. But those numbers do exist, they aren't disputed, and they are staggering. Anywho, listen to me ramble, yo:
Lemme first establish some points crucial to my argument: Every person has a right to a healthy life, which includes a helluva lot of other things (shelter, clothing, etc) . Every person has right to his or her own property and to decide to do with such property as he or she wishes unless it compromises human freedom, dignity, or anything along those lines. The right to life of every human being far outweighs any property rights of any amount of persons. In other words, if I am able to destroy a hundred thousand hummers owned by a hundred thousand different people to save one human life, I have a directy duty to that one person to do so. If I take no action to save that one life, I have committed a moral wrong - something akin to murder. Maybe not murder exactly, but my point here is inaction resulting in a violation of a basic human right in almost equal to action resulting in a violation of a basic human right. Follow me? AKA, not preventing (if able without any harm to self and others) someone from killing someone is almost as bad as shooting someone in the head yourself. Ace? See where I'm headed with this?
We have the ability to satisfy so much essential need in the world, but instead, we satisfy our own superficial material needs and desires. Example: "To satisfy the world's sanitation and food requirements would cost only US $13 billion- what the people of the United States and the European Union spend on perfume each year. " (http://library.thinkquest.org/C002291/high/present/stats.htm) Dude, I have three bottles of axe sitting on my dresser right now. Who the hell needs three? People are dying, but I like smelling good. What my actions say is, it is more important for me to smell good for a couple months than it is for a fellow human to have food for a month or whatever the h-bomb $25-30 will getcha. This is a grave moral wrong committed by a helluva lot of people (you and me included) that is akin to murder. People die, I spend hundreds of dollars a year on vanity. Now I'm going to stop writing and you're going to stop reading, and we're both going to go do something else and forget about this injustice and inequality we daily contribute to because, quite honestly, it is very uncomfortable, depressing, and guilt inducing. I'll hopefully have the stones to return to this later, and hopefully, maybe I can grow up and help someone or something. And I don't know, maybe you and I both can start thinking about how maybe we shouldn't go out to eat, maybe we shouldn't pick up the new broken social scene album, or buy that dwayne wade poster, or that dwayne wade jersey, or that dwayne wade shirt, or more make up, or more perfume, or more shoes, or, and this one is directed right at stewart, more man-thongs (or any sort of thongs). Anyways, I've become incredibly cliche so i'm going to run and hide in the bathroom stall where the poster of hilary duff watches me poop until I feel original again. Love.
Saturday, November 05, 2005
Vegetarianism continued
I originally started this as a comment for the blog before this, but it got long, so I figured I through this as a post and add the social aspect to my vegetarianism:
Okay, so I think most of you missed my point about why I eat fish. I don't believe fish are fully concious, and don't truly suffer. If you reread my post, you'll notice that I mention conciousness as necessary for moral standing. Without conciousness, an organism lacks the ability to fully suffer. Thus, I eat fish, or plants for that matter. Secondly, James, I would very very strongly disagree with your statement that a purpose of animal is to be food. I strongly believe, and I can give you tons of scripture to back this up, that creation was not created for us, but for God. Cows, dogs, monkeys, chickens, and Free Willy do not all exist for our enjoyment and to satisfy our tastes but for God's enjoyment and glorification. However, I also believe that, if necessary for our survival, God gives us his blessing to eat his animals. But it is not necessary for our survival. We eat meat solely to satisfy a taste. Thirdly, Adam, Free Willy was a dolphin (orcas are actually dolphins, not whales), not a fish. So I wouldn't eat Free Willy either, cuz he's pretty concious. Plus, you totally see him suffer in the movie: like when he gets really popular and everyone's banging on the windows under water? dude, poor whale.
Now for my huge social justice reasons for not eating meat besides fish: something like 35% of the world's and 70% of America's grain goes to feeding livestock. Thirty to forty thousand people starve to death every day. The grain consumed by such animals a year could go to feed 800 million people a year. Likewise, it's also wasteful of water: the amount of water needed to produce a pound of meat is fifty times that necessary to produce a pound of wheat. This is a gross mismanangement of a needed resource. Secondly, meat consumption is a primary reason for environmental devastation. It greatly contributes to deforestation: "the primary reason for the destruction of rainforests in countries like Costa Rica, Colombia, Brazil, Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia, is to provide grazing land for cattle, virtually all of which goes not to the poor in these third world nations, but rather is exported to wealthy countries like the United States" (Mohr).
Anyways, I'm out to 1 AM Thai, later.
Okay, so I think most of you missed my point about why I eat fish. I don't believe fish are fully concious, and don't truly suffer. If you reread my post, you'll notice that I mention conciousness as necessary for moral standing. Without conciousness, an organism lacks the ability to fully suffer. Thus, I eat fish, or plants for that matter. Secondly, James, I would very very strongly disagree with your statement that a purpose of animal is to be food. I strongly believe, and I can give you tons of scripture to back this up, that creation was not created for us, but for God. Cows, dogs, monkeys, chickens, and Free Willy do not all exist for our enjoyment and to satisfy our tastes but for God's enjoyment and glorification. However, I also believe that, if necessary for our survival, God gives us his blessing to eat his animals. But it is not necessary for our survival. We eat meat solely to satisfy a taste. Thirdly, Adam, Free Willy was a dolphin (orcas are actually dolphins, not whales), not a fish. So I wouldn't eat Free Willy either, cuz he's pretty concious. Plus, you totally see him suffer in the movie: like when he gets really popular and everyone's banging on the windows under water? dude, poor whale.
Now for my huge social justice reasons for not eating meat besides fish: something like 35% of the world's and 70% of America's grain goes to feeding livestock. Thirty to forty thousand people starve to death every day. The grain consumed by such animals a year could go to feed 800 million people a year. Likewise, it's also wasteful of water: the amount of water needed to produce a pound of meat is fifty times that necessary to produce a pound of wheat. This is a gross mismanangement of a needed resource. Secondly, meat consumption is a primary reason for environmental devastation. It greatly contributes to deforestation: "the primary reason for the destruction of rainforests in countries like Costa Rica, Colombia, Brazil, Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia, is to provide grazing land for cattle, virtually all of which goes not to the poor in these third world nations, but rather is exported to wealthy countries like the United States" (Mohr).
Anyways, I'm out to 1 AM Thai, later.
Thursday, November 03, 2005
I hate white people
"So at SPU, in the autumn quarter of your freshman year, you have to take a University Seminar. They have USem's (as the cool kids call them) on all sorts of things, and mine is on ethical contreversies. The first issue we studied in the class was animal rights, and the one were just kicking up is abortion. I had never really given much thought to animal rights before, though I was always all for protecting the environment. But after some soul searching and really deep thought on morality a couple weeks, I decided I couldn't justify myself eating the flesh of conscious animals anymore. So for the past three and the half weeks, I have not eaten any meat with the exception of fish.
What's your reasoning behind this?, you ask inquisitively. The answer is multi-fold, I respond vehemently. And yes, this is just an excuse to say vehemous."
Hey look, kids, its a draft I wrote on October 17th! Eerie times.... Anyways, I guess I haven't really discussed my relatively new found vegetarianism. Basically, I've come to the conclusion that something has moral standing if it can suffer. Something can suffer if it has conciousness. Cows, pigs, chickens, and monkeys, among other things, have conciousness. Therefore, cows, pigs, chickens and monkeys have moral standing. Thus, they have a right to life. I, too, have conciousness, and have a right to life. However, meat is not a non-basic need for me, as I can live a healthy and nutritional life without it. Therefore, I do not eat cows, pigs, chickens, human babies, monkeys, and other things with conciousness. There are, of course, other social justice reasons to go along with this, but I don't really feel like talking about those reasons yet.
Anyways, another thing I originally wanted to talk about when I started my post, and hence titled it 'I hate white people', is slavery. Duude, slavery is terrible. The human race has done some bullshit bullshit things to eachother, and it really breaks my heart unbelievably. I don't really want to get into this much about the book on Frederick Douglas or anything else I'm reading because its super depressing and I'm not in the mood to feel all heavy and that jazz. However, one thing I'll probably be mentioning later and that I'm writing a term paper on is economic justice. And, yes, half the reason I'm mentioning this now is because I'm giving Bucholtz a chance to start researching and preparing and doing whatever he feels he needs to give him the slightest chance in the storm to come. I'm also disappointed with the lack of abortion arguments. YOU'RE GOING DOWN BOOSH. much love, later
What's your reasoning behind this?, you ask inquisitively. The answer is multi-fold, I respond vehemently. And yes, this is just an excuse to say vehemous."
Hey look, kids, its a draft I wrote on October 17th! Eerie times.... Anyways, I guess I haven't really discussed my relatively new found vegetarianism. Basically, I've come to the conclusion that something has moral standing if it can suffer. Something can suffer if it has conciousness. Cows, pigs, chickens, and monkeys, among other things, have conciousness. Therefore, cows, pigs, chickens and monkeys have moral standing. Thus, they have a right to life. I, too, have conciousness, and have a right to life. However, meat is not a non-basic need for me, as I can live a healthy and nutritional life without it. Therefore, I do not eat cows, pigs, chickens, human babies, monkeys, and other things with conciousness. There are, of course, other social justice reasons to go along with this, but I don't really feel like talking about those reasons yet.
Anyways, another thing I originally wanted to talk about when I started my post, and hence titled it 'I hate white people', is slavery. Duude, slavery is terrible. The human race has done some bullshit bullshit things to eachother, and it really breaks my heart unbelievably. I don't really want to get into this much about the book on Frederick Douglas or anything else I'm reading because its super depressing and I'm not in the mood to feel all heavy and that jazz. However, one thing I'll probably be mentioning later and that I'm writing a term paper on is economic justice. And, yes, half the reason I'm mentioning this now is because I'm giving Bucholtz a chance to start researching and preparing and doing whatever he feels he needs to give him the slightest chance in the storm to come. I'm also disappointed with the lack of abortion arguments. YOU'RE GOING DOWN BOOSH. much love, later
Tuesday, November 01, 2005
Dece
So I'm back blogging, for the sole reason that this preferable to studying for my psychology test on Friday. Speaking of tests, I had two biggies on Monday, which wasn't very nice because some Kira girl was down for the weekend from Friday morning til Monday afternoon. But, considering the context, I laid 'em downizzle. The tests, I mean, not Kira.
But yeah, my life is fitting together killer ace. I'm enjoying my classes, but I still don't really know what I'm going to major in at all. Right now I'm having this huge passion for people, since I'm currently in Psychology and Sociology intro, which both are all about studying people, but with different approaches. Psychology focuses on the individual, where as sociology focuses on societies and cultures in general. Woo-hoo, y'all. Woo-hoo, indeed. Right now in my ethical contreversies class we're hitting up abortion. (My take: fetus not quite a person, abortion not murder, should not be prohibited by the state for a lot of reasons, yet still morally wrong in most circumstances). I'd love to talk more about this issue with any of you (Bucholtz) if you wanna hit me up.
College social life is something special, fo'sho' (but leaves me pretty deprived of sleep), Seattle is a special city and I love being in such a super urban campus with so much to do everywhere, and intramural sports (playing saturday morning football and monday night volleyball) are a real good time. So yeah, life is fun and good, which is nice, and not always true, so it's nice to enjoy it while it lasts while trying to remember what's really important and happening in the world. Life is full of beauty and pain everywhere, and I think it's just as important to remember the pain happening all over the place while immersed in the beauty as it is to remember all the beauty while immersed in the pain. But yeah, I'm talking like I have any idea what I'm talking about, which I really don't, ever.
Ooo, good story: So I met this girl Andrea from Linden, Washington about a week and half ago. Well, we're hanging out for awhile and it comes out that she has a lot of family from Denver, which is cool because I have a lot of family from Denver, since that's where my mom grew up. Well, it turns out our grandparents go to the same church and her dad and my mom went to the same high school about the same time. The next morning, during chuch listening to a sermon by a pastor who I swear is related to Robbie Kim somehow, it suddenly hit me that during the summer of '04, my mom went down to a funeral in Linden of a man who she went to high school with and whose parents were a very good family friend. Well it turns out that was Andrea's dad who passed away and our families have all these connections together, which was pretty cool. Since then, her and I have gotten to become really good friends which is awesome, and I think it was really cool for her to meet some people who know her dad and all these super inspiring stories about him. My heart goes out to all of the people I've met who have lost a parent, but, for the most part, these friends are some of the strongest, most mature, and inspiring people I've ever met. So thank you, friends, for your impact on me and I want to know I think about all y'alls a lot. When something super hard and difficult happens in your life, you can either let it make you or break you, and I've met a lot of people who've let their circumstances make them instead of break them. Inspiring stuff.
But yeah, my life is fitting together killer ace. I'm enjoying my classes, but I still don't really know what I'm going to major in at all. Right now I'm having this huge passion for people, since I'm currently in Psychology and Sociology intro, which both are all about studying people, but with different approaches. Psychology focuses on the individual, where as sociology focuses on societies and cultures in general. Woo-hoo, y'all. Woo-hoo, indeed. Right now in my ethical contreversies class we're hitting up abortion. (My take: fetus not quite a person, abortion not murder, should not be prohibited by the state for a lot of reasons, yet still morally wrong in most circumstances). I'd love to talk more about this issue with any of you (Bucholtz) if you wanna hit me up.
College social life is something special, fo'sho' (but leaves me pretty deprived of sleep), Seattle is a special city and I love being in such a super urban campus with so much to do everywhere, and intramural sports (playing saturday morning football and monday night volleyball) are a real good time. So yeah, life is fun and good, which is nice, and not always true, so it's nice to enjoy it while it lasts while trying to remember what's really important and happening in the world. Life is full of beauty and pain everywhere, and I think it's just as important to remember the pain happening all over the place while immersed in the beauty as it is to remember all the beauty while immersed in the pain. But yeah, I'm talking like I have any idea what I'm talking about, which I really don't, ever.
Ooo, good story: So I met this girl Andrea from Linden, Washington about a week and half ago. Well, we're hanging out for awhile and it comes out that she has a lot of family from Denver, which is cool because I have a lot of family from Denver, since that's where my mom grew up. Well, it turns out our grandparents go to the same church and her dad and my mom went to the same high school about the same time. The next morning, during chuch listening to a sermon by a pastor who I swear is related to Robbie Kim somehow, it suddenly hit me that during the summer of '04, my mom went down to a funeral in Linden of a man who she went to high school with and whose parents were a very good family friend. Well it turns out that was Andrea's dad who passed away and our families have all these connections together, which was pretty cool. Since then, her and I have gotten to become really good friends which is awesome, and I think it was really cool for her to meet some people who know her dad and all these super inspiring stories about him. My heart goes out to all of the people I've met who have lost a parent, but, for the most part, these friends are some of the strongest, most mature, and inspiring people I've ever met. So thank you, friends, for your impact on me and I want to know I think about all y'alls a lot. When something super hard and difficult happens in your life, you can either let it make you or break you, and I've met a lot of people who've let their circumstances make them instead of break them. Inspiring stuff.
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