A suggestion

If anyone out there wants to expand their musical horizons, the blog Mind The Gap gives really good insight into music scenes that are often neglected but still really interesting, and also puts music into a more socioeconomic perspective.

The best way to put it is this blog is kind of like reading The New Yorker, except for music. Even if it's not your style (it's hardly mine), it can still be interesting to see what else is out there.

Moving Furniture Trumps My Life

During the summer I move furniture. It's a lucrative job. I make more money than I would anywhere else. But it has its drawbacks, particularly for the upkeep of this blog. As you can see, my postage has really fallen by the wayside.

When I get home from an eight to 12 hour day at Scott Relocation Services, I'm completely exhausted, and not the kind of exhausted found after staying up too late or going on a long bike ride. My job produces a complete state of mental and physical exhaustion. I don't want to do anything when I get home, even if it's as easy as writing a blog post.

But I'll do my best.

As for now, I really don't feel like writing anything.

Chinese v. American

So I was reading the New Yorker (yes, I am an un-American leftist looney) and I happened upon an article written by a man who was born and raised in America, lived in China for 10 years, then came back. The article, titled "Go West, Scenes from an American Homecoming," essentially compares and contrasts Chinese and American life.

I really hesitated to write about this because the full article isn't free online. You can access it with a digital subscription or in the magazine ($6 anywhere that sells magazines). But I'll do my best to make this interesting without access to the article. Read a preview of it if you want, though it won't help much.

Anywho, I immediately liked the article because it didn't portray the Chinese as the communist drones we tend to think of (and saw in the opening ceremony of The Olympics). Instead, the author used language like, "Everybody [in China] seems to live in the moment," and he portrayed the Chinese moving crew who packed his apartment as incredibly hard and efficient workers, harder workers than the Americans who unpacked it on the other side. (Wait, I thought communism promotes laziness?). To be fair, he was also living in Shanghai, one of the more free places in China.

More interesting still was the comparison between Chinese conversation and American. What the author, Peter Hessler, noticed was the Chinese ask questions, see conversations as a way to gather information and learn. They don't do much in the way of sharing personal experiences, stories or ideas. The Americans, Hessler argues, are more quick to tell a story, share an experience, and they're much lighter on the questions. He said that where the Chinese listen, the Americans wait for their turn to speak.

Best example (I'll type it up, shhh don't tell the New Yorker):

The [American] driver talked non-stop for a hundred and twenty miles, He told stories about his ex-wife, and he described his studies of Biblical Hebrew; he had strong opinions about the Book of Daniel. Nowadays, he lived in a trailer court, but during the nineteen-sixties he had travelled for France, Spain, Greece, and Turkey. "I had a rich uncle who took me there."

"Wow, that must have been nice," I said. "What did your uncle do?"

"That was Uncle Sam."

People in China never talked like that. They didn't like to be the center of attention, and they took little pleasure in narrative. They rarely lingered on interesting details. It wasn't an issue of being quiet; in fact, most Chinese could talk your ear off about things like foodand money and weather, and they loved to ask foreigners questions. But they avoided personal topics . . . Probably it was natural in the culture where people live in such close contact, and where everything revolves around the family or some other group. (Page 53)

This says a lot about the difference between American and Chinese culture. In China, the basic ideal is the common good – everything for the country and everything from the country. America, however, is focused on the individual. We were all taught to be our own person, raise ourselves up, chase the american dream. America, at least modern America, is built on the rugged individualism ideal: life is for the taking, for personal triumph. Whereas in China, life is for the living, and for the betterment of the community.

So it makes sense that Americans like personal stories more. Life is all about personal goals and successes, and our own life story tends to be a favorite; just look at how stacked the biography section is at any bookstore. Everyone likes writing about themselves. We are very selfish creatures here in the U.S. of A. Gotta look out for number one (and turn number one's past experiences into interesting narratives, thus promoting self-worth through glorification.)

The role of the individual in China is diminished (or maybe it's just put into perspective. Some of my friends could use a little of that). The overbearing sense of one-cog-in-the-machine-ism (like that coinage?) makes personal narratives uninteresting.

I don't know whether that's better or worse than what we have here. But I can say one thing: If I were to tell my own life story, I'd tell it to a Chinese person. At least I know they'd listen.

WikiLeaks and the U.S. Gov'ment's reaction

The concept is simple: submit something your boss/government wouldn't want the public to see so the public can see it. That's right, WikiLeaks.org makes whistle blowing fast and easy.

A really interesting component of the site comes with a video of a U.S. Helicopter mistaking some Reuters journalists and others for Iraqi combatants in 2007 (be careful, it's graphic). That's what got WikiLeaks into the headlines and that's how I found out about it.

More interesting still is the U.S. Government's resistance to releasing the video, and it's resistance to WikiLeaks (I'll talk about that later). Shortly after the killing, Reuters filed a Freedom of Information Act suit to access the video, which the government has resisted to this day. They didn't even investigate the

killings until requested by Reuters.

That poses the question: what should the government keep from us? If you ask me, I will always always always say "absolutely nothing." A democracy can't fully function without all its components in the know and passing judgement (hence newspapers, read one!). That's how a democracy should work, but then again, what we have in the U.S. isn't a true democracy.

Anyway, the government shouldn't keep stuff like this from us. It's important. The people who actually fight wars aren't the suits in Washington playing games with Reuters. The people who fight wars are the (mostly poor, mostly young, mostly with nowhere else to turn) common citizens. To keep them sheltered from what happens in war is vile, manipulative, and propagandizing in the worst sense of the word.

Furthermore, the government tried to ban WikiLeak in 2008. Ironically, their plan was posted on WikiLeaks about a month ago.

The government report included this in their reasoning:

“Several foreign countries including China, Israel, North Korea, Russia, Vietnam, and Zimbabwe have denounced or blocked access to the Wikileaks.org website.”

Excuse me? China? Russia? North Korea? Did we not go to war with North Korea to "protect man's basic human right to democracy and freedom"? Did we not spend the better half of the 20th century in an arms race with the "commie bastards" in Russia to, again, "protect democracy and freedom"?

If our government is seriously trying to use the fact that communist countries block access to to this site as a justification for why we should, I'm throwing my hands in the air and promptly moving to Canada.

This goes so contrary to to the ideals of democracy and freedom. It's horrifying. What else have they kept from us? It also raises questions as to whether or not we went to war with Russia (kinda) and North Korea. Was it really to "protect democracy"? Or was it to ensure Russia wouldn't get too powerful and threaten our handle on the world. I'm leaning towards the latter. Maybe it was something else. I mean, hell, there's no way we can know if the government never told us.

In any case, what the government did is disheartening at best. WikiLeaks, however, is not.

Help A Brotha Out

I am by no means a good writer. That's partly why I started this blog. I want to get some experience under my belt; hone and develope my skills.

Lately I've been more complacent. I haven't been revising or even rereading what I write. I'm not going to improve that way.

So I ask you, readers, to tear me apart. If you see something wrong, something that looks out of place, awkward, stupid, grammatically incorrect, tell me. Leave me a comment. In fact, send me an e-mail if you'd like – billshaner91@gmail.com. Make it scathing. I need you to keep me in line when I get complacent.

I've also implemented a little reaction meter gadget at the bottom of each post. If it sucks but you don't feel like saying why, just click "needs work" and I'll reread and revise. It wont show me who clicks what, don't worry.

I'm thinking about making writing a profession. So for my own sake, tell me if my writing sucks now before it's too late. You'll only help me in the end. And don't hold back. Any criticism is good criticism, as long as it pertains to my writing. Fire away.

With that in mind, I'm keeping the tone of this blog very conversational and colloquial, so telling me the words I use aren't big enough or my writing lacks formality goes against what I'm trying to do here.

Help me out, gang.

Quitchabitchin'

Do you have a friend, maybe multiple friends, that turn their life into an emotional roller coaster ride when in reality it's more like an emotional bike ride?

People who are overly self-involved attempt to make their life meaningful. And a good way to do that is to make one's life into a story. A story with a dramatic, climactic plot line; an overarching theme or motif; and most importantly, dramatic happenings to be addressed and overcome by the protagonist. The protagonist then betters him or herself with the experience. At least according to Kurt Vonnegut (link courtesy of Shoot An Apple Off My Head's stumbling).

People's lives are not stories, he argues, not roller coaster rides, but rather bike rides on a flat street with the occasional hill to tackle and hill to ride down. In general, humans coast on a relatively flat plane, with no story-line, no cataclysm. So it goes.

"What is the right mixture?" A professor's take on life

If you have a free hour, I'd highly suggest watching this video. It's based on the basic notion that you should do what makes you happy. But, even then, this professor argues there's more to it. I'm a fan.

Ch-ch-check it ouut.

If anything, this proves that StumbleUpon is fantastic.

Darth Google

Check this out

Thoughts: Sure, Google is trying to harvest information, but that's the aim of any advertising company. Advertising brings in the dollars, so why wouldn't they try to collect as much information about the people they advertise to? It allows for better targetting. Better targetting, more cash money.

This video tries to portray Google as evil. There's no good or evil about this, it's business. Google's not evil, it's just successful.

If you don't want your information harvested, don't go on the internet. It's not just Google, any online advertising industry will do this–it just so happens that Google's been the best at it.

So, what the hell, I'm gunna use its programs. Chrome is the best browser out there, google docs is great, blogger's not bad. As far as I'm concerned, if Google wants to take over the internet, so be it. I'd rather it be Google than MSN or Yahoo.