Thinking about SCOTUS today.

Just a quick thought: I am a big believer of term limits. Not only should the president have term limits, Congress should have them as well; Senators no more than two 6 year terms and Congresspeople no more than four 2 year terms. This should also apply to Supreme Court Justices as well. Keeping the same people in positions of authority for decades at a time can prove to be quite stagnant at time when the country needs to move forward. My thought is the limit should be 16 years, equal to four presidential election cycles. It's enough time to establish yourself on the court but not so much time that you become a liability to the process. If my term limits applied today, Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Clarence Thomas, and Stephen Breyer would be gone and people with a more up to date view of the world would be making the hard choices that need to be made. Instead, we have vapid minds keeping us from moving forward.

Until next time,

-Jay

Jesus has risen... a day early... in the form of ham.

Easter dinner at the fam's today. Ham and tasty veggies. It is finished.

The kids are, in fact, alright

I'm slowly coming to terms with fact that I am 40: My body doesn't heal like it used to. My weight is harder than ever to maintain. My hair is thinning to where I no longer see a point in having it. (I keep my head shaved these days.) 20 year olds are starting to refer to me as "Mister" and "Sir". I rarely get carded at bars anymore. And some of my friends have kids old enough to be attending the same college classes that I'm currently taking. (I often refer to myself as a "born-again college student".) While I hardly consider myself "old" by most standards, I'm not young, either. To use the tired old cliche, I've been around the block a few times.

That being said, I'm finding more and more people my age starting to sound like their and my parents, bitching about "these damn kids today" and it needs to stop.

Yes, some of the concepts and ideas we grew up with are lost on the newest generations. Kids don't "go outside and play" as much as we did. There's less unstructured social interaction for kids these days. Pick up games of football, baseball, and to some extent even basketball are less common. Kids spend a lot of time staring at computer screens and smart phones instead of interacting with the world around them more directly. All these things are true. But while your lamenting on your kid's inability to build snow forts as well as you once did, they're posting videos on YouTube, interacting with people from around the world via social media, creating their own content, writing code, and being creative in way we couldn't have even imagined 25 or 30 years ago. While it may seem that kids are less connected, the truth is they are more connected than they have ever been before, just not in ways you or I grew up with. When we see disconnected kids, what we're actually seeing is a growth in the choices we have in the levels of participation with the world around us. We can be the person at the center of attention, in front of the camera for the world to see, taking in all that our surroundings have to offer. Or, we can be the person with ear buds in their ears, creating our own soundtrack, reading something on our smartphones, disconnecting from the world as it walks on by. That level of choice scares some people. It leaves them wondering whether or not the pretty lights flashing before their eyes are somehow being manipulated at their expense. It seems as if the world is tearing itself apart and the younger generations can't or won't see it, glued to their screens watching cat videos or writing memes, but you would be wrong in underestimating them. War, famine, greed, anger, strife, we are bombarded with these images every day, but they are nothing new. Our ability to see and readily connect with the world as a whole is new, forging an image that the world is a more dangerous place than ever before. In reality, it really isn't. Fear-mongering is a full time business these days, but most of it is utter bullshit. And I think kids today, certainly the college kids I interact with on a daily basis, understand this better than most. They're better connected to the constant flow of information we are now inundated with. And yet, they have an awfully bright outlook on our and their future, even in the face of uncertainty. I think the younger generation can teach us a great deal in how to proceed forward.

It would be wise for us to listen.

Cheers,

-Jay

They should teach people how to properly argue in high school.

I know they teach classes at the college level on how to argue properly, but for those whom college isn't an option, they should have the benefit of understanding the basic structure of an argument and, (in my mind more importantly,) what logical fallacies are and how to avoid them, and this should be a required class for all high school seniors. I was first introduced to logical fallacies when I took second semester English in my first year of my second attempt at college. The professor was adamant about teaching fallacy as we were deep into an election cycle that semester, (Barack Obama's first presidential bid,) and logical fallacies were bandied about on all sides. To me, a base knowledge of fallacious arguments works to combat bad arguments and misinformation. When you hear a logical fallacy being used, especially by a politician or a pundit, it can help guide you to a better understanding of that person's motivations and the level of truth or untruth that person is expounding.

Until tomorrow...

-Jay

I *heart* documentaries

If you get a chance and have Netflix, I recommend watching Side by Side, a documentary about the history of digital technology in film as it begins to erode the dominance of celluloid film. It was produced and narrated by Keanu Reeves, who acts as an interviewer throughout the movie. I was impressed by his knowledge and his ability to draw out the narrative by asking those he was conversing with, (George Lucas, Martin Scorsese, the Wachowskis, et al,) and asking the right questions.

It's definitely worth watching even if you have only a passing interest in the subject matter, which is a quality I find in most of the very best documentaries.

Cheers.

-Jay

I'm sure I have all kinds of witty or intelligent things to say

...but I don't right now. My car broke down in downtown Milwaukee and I'm stuck here for a few hours. I got to check out the Milwaukee Public Museum and the Public Market. Fun stuff and good company. Not a total loss.

Happier days ahead!

- Jay 

It's Spring Break and nary a fruity rum drink with a tiny umbrella sticking out of it

It's certainly something I could probably go and get somewhere. Jolly Bob's makes fruity rum drinks, and I'm sure they would put an umbrella in it if I asked for one. But it wouldn't be the same, would it? Twenty seven degrees outside and snowy is not what I consider to conducive to the consumption of fruity rum drinks. This is vodka and Irish whiskey weather for me. Spring is coming, despite the throng of naysayers' theories of  "winter-straight-to-summer", and I am ready for it to arrive. Not that I hate winter by any stretch, I love the cold. I just want to get moving again. Winter here slows things down tremendously. I have a garden to plant, spring cleaning to do, a semester of college to put behind me, a summer job to start.

But for right now, I just want a fruity rum drink with a tiny umbrella in it and a sunny, beach side hang out to enjoy it in.

Cheers!

-Jay

I'm a hypocritical, judgmental bastard!

Here I was, going off yesterday about the subjectivity of "Best Of" lists and concentrated my scorn upon food and restaurant lists specifically. And yet, today I'm headed to the world famous Mustard Museum, (home of Poupon U.) for the 2013 World Wide Mustard Competition as a judge. I get to spend three hours today and next Sunday trying out literally hundreds of different mustards from around the world and be the judgmental prick that I am. Should be good fun.

It's Sunday. Get off of the computer and go do something!

-Jay

Top 5 ways of starting a silly, pointless argument

Actually, all of the "Top 5 ways of starting a silly, pointless argument" are the same thing: "Best Of" or "Top 5 through 6 million" lists that newspapers, magazines, and blogs love to trot out for what I can only assume is an exercise in masochism. My personal favorite kind of list involves food, a category that is subjective to the point of absurdity. This is compounded further when these lists come up in big cities like New York or Chicago, cities that have literally thousands of restaurants and could conceivably have any number of restaurants taking the top spot in any culinary category. But even in smaller cities, like here in Madison, "Best Of" lists represent popularity, which is not necessarily indicative of quality, (the definition of quality itself can be argued endlessly.) I think it once again speaks to the power that opinion has on our society. Everybody has their favorite place to go for whatever, but why do people feel the need to get drawn into fits of pointless bickering about what are ultimately matters of personal taste?

More to come...tomorrow.

-Jay

I don't know why I get my hopes up

Whenever I discover, or rediscover a new social media website, I always go into it with the hope that the running conversations on that site will somehow be different. My hope is to someday find a website whose comments aren't dominated by mindless bickering about shit that really doesn't matter, propagated by the anonymity of the internet. I would love to find intelligent, witty conversations that don't devolve into petty squabbling about semantics or name-calling for the sake of defending one's ideology.

A man can dream, can't he?

See you tomorrow.

-Jay

Your opinion doesn't matter

Sort of.

Actually, opinion is often something that I think is quite frequently misunderstood. In the age of information we're currently living in, opinion has been upon a higher pedestal than it ever has before. The internet is often used as validation for one's own worldview and/or ideology, (this blog and others like are a perfect example,) and we have an expectation of respect for our opinions whether one agrees with them or not. However, we often mistake our subjective (brussel sprouts are disgusting) or normative (I think homosexuality is wrong) analyses with positive analysis (scientific observation with empirical data). When I say that I think brussel sprouts are disgusting, (and I do) or that homosexuality is wrong, (which I don't think, but I'm using it as an example,) there is no argument against this. It is a fact; I hate brussel sprouts. You may have a differing opinion, but my opinion as it applies to me is still a fact. But, when someone says, "I think homosexuality is unnatural." now we're dealing what would normally be a positive analysis, but has no basis in fact. And yet, it is treated as such by the person expounding upon that opinion and there is an expectation of respect for that view. To me, opinions that are presented as positive analyses should be exposed for what they are, ignorance disguised as fact. Such ignorance is not worthy of respect.

That all I have for today, and that's a fact.

-Jay

Steubenville, Ohio needs a bath

It's finally starting to calm down a bit here on the internet. The vitriol, the hyperbole, the anger is finally starting to subside as folks move on with their busy lives, ready to amp things up again when the next crisis occurs. In the wake of any massive wave of anger, such as the latest one involving the Steubenville, Ohio rape case, the more level headed and thoughtful of us begin weighing in. However, after considering not only the facts of the case itself, but the varied reactions to the case do we begin the process of composing our thoughts to be added to the glut of opinions floating about within the digital sphere. Unfortunately, as with anything on the internet, even the most heinous of acts has a limited shelf life in this fifteen-second-attention-span world we live in and the best of thoughts on "what do we do to fix this?" are lost in the ether, only to be read by like-minded people who also waited for the huff and self-righteous indignation to die down enough to try and get a word in.

That being said, it is obvious to me that we are dealing with not an insignificant amount of dysfunction when talking about Steubenville. You have a dead steel town whose only source of pride is a good high school football program. Players on these teams are, for a short time, treated as near-royalty, only to be relegated to a future of dead-end jobs and little choice. In that brief window, young men are nearly bullet proof. They're placed upon the highest of pedestals and anyone attempting to bring them back to earth are treated with disdain and contempt by the entire community. Talking about rape is still, even in 2013, a social taboo in most of America. We are still a culture of  "look at what she was wearing, of course she was asking for it". We don't teach young men that "no is no" in any and all circumstances. It's not taught in sex ed and there's no national conversation addressing it beyond the sphere of crime and punishment. The mainstream media, in all its dysfunctional glory, works only to exacerbate the problem further by glorifying the most atrocious of cases, dragging out the most lurid of details in the hope of drawing a larger viewership and selling more advertising dollars, rather than doing what the media is supposed to be doing: providing useful information.

There's plenty more that could be said here, but people smarter and more eloquent than I have already said it. We will learn nothing from this and it will happen again. There are those who have complained that the reporting and subsequent trial of this case has and/or will tear the town of Steubenville apart. I can only hope so. Places like Steubenville, Ohio need to die for good. They have no place in modern-day America. They are relics of a bygone era. They are our past, not our future.

That all for now. Tomorrow is another day.

-Jay    

Every moment can potentially be a beginning

Including this one.

I often have many stray thoughts swirling about in my head. I've always felt that I need an outlet for the random thoughts that keep me up some nights, but so many failed blogs I have created litter the internet. I think it is due to the fact that I always feel as though a blog should have a specific theme and cater to a specific audience. I'm not going to try and bullshit myself and pretend this is some kind of online diary. I'm doing this to share my ideas, feelings, thoughts, and observations with others. I'm going to try and post every day, even if it means that a post is a single, Twitter-length sentence. Random thoughts rampage through my head on a daily basis, and they should rampage through your head, too! Who knows, I may even allow other writers to contribute. We'll see.

That's all for now.

-Jay