An article in the New York Times shows the shocking truth about what life after Saddam is really like and it certainly doesn’t look pretty. Less than 140 of the 2,300 planned construction projects are currently being worked on and less than 20,000 local workers are employed at these construction sites.
There also seems to be a huge problem with energy. There are blackouts at night, and it is cutting in on people’s sleep. Interviews with people in Harethiya, in Baghdad, have shown that the electricity shortages have “created a nation of insomniacs, sweltering in their apartments through oppressive nights.”
The new government will inherit a new currency, a renewed banking system and, in measures that were pushed hard by a conservative Republican administration, low taxes and tariffs and a law permitting unhindered foreign investment in non-oil sectors of the economy.
There is also much more. Sewage also seems to be a problem and the economy doesn’t look like its going for a good start either. A country that is probably trillions of dollars in debt should not have low taxes, or at least I think so (I haven’t taken any economics or Poli Sci classes yet).
I just finished “I, Robot” by Isaac Asimov. The new movie inspired me to go read the book, originally written as 1950, but, as far as I can tell, the movie doesn’t follow any of the short stories at all. It has all the characters and the company, but I don’t remember anybody being thrown out a window. A lot of the book doesn’t even take place on earth, only the first and the last few stories.
Each story has a different problem with a different robot. In one, there is a robot with a modified first rule that was ordered to “lose itself” and the engineers need to find it because people’s lives are at stake. In another, a small girl’s parents decide that a robot is not the best thing to raise her.
All the robots are based on a set of three rules. These rules keep a robot obedient and safe for humans to be around. Without these rules, there would be nothing to stop a robot from becoming just like a human.
Asimov portrays this futuristic society very well. In this society, there are no countries, they joined together to form regions. There are groups that protest robots and even the threat of some anti-robot legislation.
It seems that cellphones are now used to create an alibi for people. The story shows of people doing naughty things, like cheat on their girlfriends, with their cellphones, but it doesn’t say much about the moral issues this could bring up. In fact, it seems to almost encourage use of these groups by giving away the URL of the website, sms.ac.
A quick search for “alibi” on sms.ac turns up three of these clubs. Two are called “The Alibi and Excuse Club”, one in Pakistan and one in the United States. The other one is in the United Kingdom and is called “Our Quick Alibi Club“. The one in the United States has ~3400 while the others only have two people. I can’t see how the groups with two can work more than once, but maybe the article can get ‘em some publicity.
New regulations on travel to Cuba make it even harder for people to travel to the country. The new regulations, pushed by Cuban-American Republicans as well as the President were set in place to hasten the downfall of Fidel Castro.
Under these new rules, that go into effect next Wednesday, limit Cuban-Americans to one trip, to visit relatives, every three years, up from one trip every year. It also makes it nearly impossible for non-relatives and most other people to visit. The spending limits are significantly lower as well. U.S. Residents may only spend $50 a day, along with $50 for transportation. Those who are found in violation of any of this may be fined $4000.
A new school, a new season, a new direction. Recently, my weblog has lost its focus and started wondering off into the direction of more of a diary, not my original intent. So, I come to you with a newly designed, recently refocused weblog. I also moved it and added a lot of new categories.
Everything is mostly done, except for some search templates and the individual entry templates. If you are wondering where the old entries are, they have been moved to a category title “X-Generation”. There are some worthwhile entries in there and if you feel they should be moved, please drop me a comment and I will try to get back to it as soon as possible.
Two more days of school. No work, for another three months. Well actually, that’s only partially true. There is no more school work, but my entire summer is filled with volunteer work.
The really sad part about it is that I have to leave all my friends. I’m leaving the school in my area to go to a charter school, “High Tech International”. I have chosen kind of an interesting approach to telling people, and it seems that it has not worked so far. I haven’t actually told anybody, but I sign it in everybody’s yearbook, along with my contact information. So far, only two people have sent me email, but I’ve gotten promises from at least two more people.
I’m really sad about leaving all my friends. I’m sure I’ll find some interesting people at my new school. I’m sure it won’t be that bad. I can still hang out with people.
If I gave you the link to this site, please bookmark it. I will be updating it more than I email people.
I just finished Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury. I had never read Bradbury before and found his writing a little dificult at first, but as the story progressed, I grew to enjoy how he works in emotion with his writing. It’s actually a very cool style of writing that I don’t think I have ever seen before. Emotion is incorporated via repetition and listing certain things. Like if Guy was getting chased by a helicopter, it would say the helicopter is getting closer multiple times to get the effect across.
The plot was very cool, along with all the characters, the Mechanical Hound, and the T.V. like things. I would recommend this book to almost anybody, I don’t think it would offend many people, the whole basis of the society was to keep peace and order by destroying all media that could upset some group.
On Thursday, I went with the school band up to Disneyland for a “workshop”. I payed $60 to spend 4+ hours on a bus, wait an hour to get a ticket, and go on four rides. That’s not the greatest use of money, especially when a soda costs in excess of two dollars.
The workshop, however, was pretty cool. Not the playing part, I personally think we sounded horrible, expecially on the recordings. Behind the scenes is at disneyland was probably the coolest part. We saw all the wharehouses and buildings that you can’t see from the actual park.
I was angry that none of my friends came, so I had to spend the day with a group of kids from the grade below me, but the anger quickly went away as I got on Indiana Jones for a second time. Overall, the day was fun, but not worth the $60 I paid for it.
Earlier in the week, I posted about a play where the characters were radicals and their parents were all communists. That led me to ask why communism was popular in the 40s and 50s. Now I can comfortably say I have an answer.
After the stock market crashed in 1929, the great depression followed. This was not the only ‘depression’ in the nations history, but it was the worst. There were, in fact, six depressions around that time, you can read about some of them. So the great depression showed people a new side of life, with no sign of a program similar to welfare in sight. It was also proof that an unregulated capitalism could lead to bad things. People were looking for a stable system, and what would be better than one that everybody was equal in, ruled by one power hungry person. A dictatorship looked like the only form of government that could actually get anything done, and improve their way of life.
Sadly, it did not turn out that way. The rich turned out super rich, but the poor were dirt poor. After the great depression, communism continued. One senator from Wisconsin decided to try to do something about it in the 50s. I guess it worked because now there is a lot of conservative propaganda about communism and such, even still.
In this entry, I was sort of afraid to say that it was “popular” in the 30s-50s, but it did gain popularity. Now there are a lot more ‘communists’ than there were back then. Wow, how people interpret the 1st ammendment really changes over time.
I watched the Fahrenheit 911 trailer last night and, from what I’ve seen, this movie looks better than his others. I have seen Bowling for Columbine and Canadian Bacon, a lesser known Michael Moore movie. Canadian Bacon is about a United States president who feels he needs to be known for something. He decides to spread these rumors about Canada and make them look like they’re about to attack the northern United States. It has John Candy so you know it has to be good. Anyways, Fahrenheit comes out on June 25, so get out to your local theater and watch this fine film.
Trailer
Last night, I say a very interesting play. It was very political and I’m sure most of the jokes went right over my head. It was paired with another play, called “Mothers Against”. Together, “Mothers Against” and “Daughters of the Revolution” gave both sides of the same gubernatorial election. “Daughters of the Revolution” gave the left side of the race. The thing was that this one was not actually about the gubernatorial candidate, but instead a man that was connected with the campaign manager.
The show starts out when the main character, Michael, comes home to find his friends dressed up in circa 60s peace movement attire reading a script written directly off his FBI file. This continues on for a few minutes, naming all the protests he attended in college as well as all the underground revolutionary movements he was in. It doesn’t stop there, it turned out there was a plot Michael was affiliated with in 1972 to kidnap a prominent Republican politician’s daughter and demand the release of an african american militant. There was only one meeting to plan for this attack and there were only eight people attending the movement. One of the attendees was the democratic candidate’s campaign manager. If the snitch reveals this terrifying plot during the campaign, the election is lost and the right will definitely pass “Proposition 92″, requiring all voters to pledge allegiance to democracy. This play is as action packed as a political play of this sort of topic can get. Every new scene brought a new twist to the plot and the end was as shocking as the plot itself.
I would definitely recommend this play to anybody who is into politics. Most of the history relates to the time between MacCarthy and the Vietnam War, but it was not totally in depth. My little brother could grasp the concept and he is in 6th grade so it must not be that bad.