A Dog’s Life? May 8, 2009
Posted by pbarno in Uncategorized.2 comments
A Dog’s Life?
Well, here we are, at the end of the TOK blog journey. Oh, what fun times it has been. So it is time to end on this note; a rather peculiar note for me. I chose a Slate.com article called A Dog’s Life. This might not seem weird (well if you consider the actual post un-weird I guess) but it is because I am probably one of the least likely candidates to talk, discuss or even care about dogs; I just don’t like them. None the less, I chose this article for it’s topic that I never really bothered to think about, until now.
So anyway, the article talks about dog years. I never really paid attention to this and thought that 1 human year was 1 dog year or 7 human years was 1 dog, didn’t know and didn’t care. But now it’s quite interesting to see why that number appears.
It is explained in the text that “the official formula, according to the American Veterinary Medical Association, equates the first year of a medium-sized dog’s life to 15 years of a human’s. The dog’s second year equals nine years for a human. And after that, every year feels like five for a dog.” So now that kind of makes senses. Although I don’t see why they don’t just measure dogs in human (I say human and I guess I mean human because I don’t think there is another type of year, seeing that it is us, the humans, that created that measurement) years.
The text also says that “a “dog year” is a measurement that puts the age of a dog in the context of a human lifespan”. Now that I don’t really understand, why do you need to put a dog’s age in the context of a human lifespan? Why must it be converted in to our years? Why can’t we just say, “oh that dog is 3 years old”. I guess because our human mind would automatically assume that it is a baby dog, even though it wouldn’t be, it would be more like a 30 some year old human. So that I can kind of see a point; especially for the laymen, like myself in this regard.
Now, another thing that puzzled me was when the author wrote that the “formula, however, varies depending on the dog’s weight. Bigger dogs tend to have shorter lives, and thus age faster in dog years, while smaller dogs live longer, and thus age slower in dog years.” So now it seems there isn’t a definite formula. So next time someone asks how old your dog is you’ll have to say “based on my calculation he’s in the vicinity of somewhere between an estimate of 19 dog years”. Or you could just say he’s 2 years old. Something I always thought to be exact and precise (well, to a certain degree, excluding all that space-time travel stuff Mr. TOK God Andy Fletcher was talking about and things like not knowing when the person/thing was born/made), that being the age of things, isn’t actually. It’s funny to think all of this is actually subjective; it is humans that make it that way.
Also talking about that quote, about the bigger/shorter life, smaller/ longer life, it makes you wonder about humans. Why shouldn’t humans measure their age in the context of something else, like the idea of a perfect human? We could say fat people will be older and smaller people will be younger. Wouldn’t that be a wonderful world! (read: sarcasm) I wonder if this dog year stuff exists for other animals too. That would be interesting to find out but not now. All of this manipulation of numbers just seems wrong to me; me being the sort of person who like to have one numerical answer at the end of a formula, not having the word “maybe” stuck in the middle of the equation.
But anyway, it’s getting late now and I think I’ve ranted long enough about dog years. The system seems silly to me and they should just measure them in regular years (again, this would mean human years but that’s because we invented this calendar system). So I’ll leave you in the company of your inquisitive thoughts about years and time and space-time travel (not sure how I got to that but I did so I’ll go with it). Until next time (maybe) unless I somehow age to be 200 dogs years (whatever that makes in understandable, human years).
http://www.slate.com/id/2217908/
Six Flavours Of White May 8, 2009
Posted by pbarno in Uncategorized.1 comment so far
The Six Flavors of White Supremacy
So here we are again, another blog for the blog-o-sphere. Seeing that I haven’ had time to watch my traditional and most common source of TOK blog ideas, that being Louis Theroux’s TV documentary show, I have been seeking ideas from Slate.com (it is the most convenient and they always have something to say about something). So this time I chose an article about The Six Flavors of White Supremacy. The article gives a break down of the six white racist groups in the US.
The six include: neo-Nazi, Ku Klux Klan, Christian Identity, racist skinhead, Nordic mysticism and Aryan prison gangs. The article is talking about this because recently, a Department of Homeland Security document classified these groups under the Domestic Extremism Lexicon. After having a look at the document myself you can see a whole bunch of other extremists and many definitions, such as:
(U) anarchist extremism:
(U//FOUO) A movement of groups or individuals who advocate a society devoid of government structure or ownership of individual property. Many embrace some of the radical philosophical components of anticapitalist, antiglobalization, communist, socialist, and other movements. Anarchist extremists advocate changing government and society through revolutionary violence. (also: revolutionary anarchists)
It’s really quite amazing all the definitions that they have in the document, so I’ll leave the link to it here for those of you who have the time or are paranoid about extremists in the US.
But anyway. I find it interesting how the government can give a definite definition to each group. Everything seems to be an absolute in their minds. When you read a document like theirs, language seems so perfect like a mathematical equation; something equals something. But language in the real world isn’t so perfect, far from it. And I think this what the article is trying look at.
The subtitle of the article is “Do you have to pick just one?” In the text, the author goes through the various categories detailing why sets them apart from each other. Some, like the Christian Identity or Odinism or Wotanism stem from a religious belief. The tests says that “white supremacists were drawn to the faith both because it represents an “authentically” white religion—as opposed to Christianity, which has its roots in the Middle East—and because of its emphasis on warrior culture.” This relates back to a blog I did a little while ago about the Westboro Baptist church. What we have here is a church based on strong foundations that the followers believe to be the absolute truth, one where everyone except them is going to hell and the other that whites are supreme beings. It’s always interesting to see how religion can have so many meanings to so many people. For some it is a refuge in the times of hardships, for others it is a way of life, and for others it can even be a means to a goal (like eradicating non-whites from the face of the earth).
The last sentence of the last paragraph was something I found to be quite funny.
Though you can find members of each white supremacy group in every part of the United States, there are some hotspots. Missouri, for example, is a stronghold of Christian Identity adherents while Southern California has a large population of racist skinheads. The vast majority of Klan groups are located in the South and the Midwest. Once they’re out of jail, Aryan prison gangs tend to congregate in areas where meth—their preferred product—is the drug of choice.
Again, you start to wonder if the true reason for the existence of the Aryan Prison Gangs is to be racists, survive in prison or just to sell meth. Along the line of time, things get distorted and sometimes completely changed. I think the religions are one of those things where they started out meaning something but in some cases they slowly lost their meaning until becoming completely different; a metamorphosis of sorts. Also religion is the sort of thing where there are many interpretations, just look at the Bible and all the people who have entirely dissimilar views about it.
Back to what sets them apart though. I see all of these groups very similar in the ways that they work; they all focus around the white supremacist view. So I agree with author when she says that there is a crossover of these sects. I also think that they play on one of people’s biggest emotions, fear. I see it as these groups are fearful that other races and groups will come and slowly eradicate them, not in the sense that they will go and shoot them but rather in the sense that with this ever growing, changing, globalising world, there won’t be such a huge difference between races. Everyone will start to be the same as everyone else. And I guess this is what they don’t like; I guess they’re trying to protect their identity. Although I’m not going to say that the Aryan Prison Gangs are exactly trying to do this by selling meth once they’re on the outside.
On a side note, I wanted to point out a little fun fact I saw in the DHS documents. When they are defining the various groups and so on, they use the pictures of the flags or symbols of the groups coming from wikipedia. So now even the Department of Homeland Security uses wikipedia for its documents. What a world we live in.
So that’s the end of this blog, now to fire this off into the deepest darkest mitts of the internet, where Trojan horses and cyber worms live.
http://video1.washingtontimes.com/video/lexicon.pdf
http://www.slate.com/id/2217713/
Call Me Steve May 8, 2009
Posted by pbarno in Uncategorized.1 comment so far
So here I am again, sitting down at my computer screen about to write another blog. I chose for this entry an article published by slate.com about Chinese people getting English names. The title of the article is The Name’s Du Xiao Hua, But Call Me Steve.
So anyway, the article starts off by talking about what Texas state Rep. Betty said.
Texas state Rep. Betty Brown suggested recently that Asian-Americans should change their names because they’re too difficult to pronounce. During public testimony for a voter-ID bill, she asked political activist Ramey Ko (who happens to be my cousin) why Chinese people don’t adopt names for “identification purposes” that would be “easier for Americans to deal with.” I know I should denounce Brown’s coded use of “American” and point out that Ramey and Ko are both easier to handle than, say, Zbigniew and Brzezinski.
First of all I find it funny how someone should change their name because it’s too hard to pronounce. Of course I can also understand that reasoning too; I usually give up when trying to pronounce Eastern European names (makes is quite hard when there aren’t hardly any vowels). As the author of this article (Huan Hsu) points out, the “easier for Americans to deal with” quote is quite a loaded statement. This comes to the whole what do you define an American as? A person who was legally naturalised, a person who was born in the US, a person whose family has always lived in the US, perhaps even someone from the American continents. But still, I supposed it is a valid point to bring up but then does that mean you should have everyone change their given names and surnames to something understandable and pronounceable in English?
Well, in the article there were a few different points of view. When the author moved to Shanghai, he was expecting to be welcome and not have this “name barrier” sort of problem. He was mistaken because in just about all urban areas of China now, people have English names. The author said that “my company almost didn’t process my paperwork because I left the box for “English name” blank. “You don’t have an English name?” the HR woman gasped. “You should really pick one.”” The author wanted to know why everyone had an English name even if it was something like “Sniper” or “King Kong”. He went and asked Laurie Duthie.
To sort out how English names became necessities in China, I recently spent an afternoon with Laurie Duthie, a UCLA doctoral candidate in anthropology who’s finishing up her dissertation in Shanghai.
With foreign investment came foreigners, and many of Duthie’s research participants told her that they got tired of outsiders butchering their Chinese names, so they adopted English ones.
Increasingly, these bosses are Chinese, yet the English names persist, in part because English tends to be the lingua franca for business technology, and even native Chinese often find it more efficient to type, write, or sign documents in English.
It’s interesting to note how people transform and adapt themselves in order to thrive and progress. The Chinese found it easier to do business in English so they learnt English. Makes you wonder about Darwin’s Natural Selection and Survival of the Fittest theories doesn’t it. This English name thing also goes to show just how big of a business, business itself is in China. The author also says that all “Since 2001, all primary schools have been required to teach English beginning in the third grade (for big cities like Beijing and Shanghai, lessons start in first grade), and parents regularly choose English names for their children.” This shows how important it is to know several languages and the Chinese seem to have grasp that idea (even if it is to just own the market and put everyone else out of business).
There was one thing that particularly stuck out for me in the article. It was when the author talked about the hierarchy system.
Most forms of address in China reinforce pecking orders, such as “Third Uncle” and “Second Daughter” at home or “Old Wang” or “Little Hu” in the village square. Your given name—customarily said in full, surname first—is reserved for use by those with equal or higher social standing, and the default honorific for an elder or superior is “Teacher”—no surprise in a country that reveres education. But an English name, other than separating those with and without such names, frees users from these cultural hierarchies.
I found it interesting how in Chinese, names have your social standing engraved in them. This shows just how the traditional ways from China are still used today; a method that puts great emphasis on education and your social standing. It’s fascinating to also see that some Chinese people choose English names so that everyone sees them as equal. It’s quite remarkable how the most basic and simple of words, your own name, can have so many implications in your own culture as well as others.
Given the nationalism I’ve witnessed in China, I was a bit surprised at how readily Chinese adopted Western names.
But Duthie’s participants insisted that taking an English name isn’t kowtowing, nor is it simply utilitarian. Rather, it’s essential to being Chinese and achieving Chinese goals. Whereas in the past patriotism was expressed by self-sacrifice, it is now expressed through economic activity.
The change in how patriotism is expressed is, I guess, another example of the growing changes in our globalised world. Patriotism is usually (or at least in my mind) attributed with having the most national name, chanting slogans in the street, hating on other cultures et cetera. This has changed in China; the Chinese now instead of isolating themselves, take advantage of the other cultures and nations that exist in the world today to enhance their own national ideals and goals. As the saying goes, the eng justifies the means, even if the means includes changing your name.
But this change of name is the last thing I want to mention in my blog. As the author mentions, having different names is viewed differently in different cultures.
In the United States, people tend to view names and identities as absolute things—which explains why I agonized over deciding on an English name—but in China, identities are more amorphous. My friend Sophie flits amongst her Chinese name, English name, MSN screen name, nicknames she uses with her friends, and diminutives that her parents call her. “They’re all me,” she says.
In the Chinese culture having multiple names is common and not considered absolutes. This differs much from western culture where we see a name as an absolute. I know that I wouldn’t want any other name, for better or for worse, this is my name. To some people, the name is what defines the person; to others it is just an interchangeable tag to describe the person. In most western societies, your name is your name. Some people call their children after themselves, like having a name like “Juan the 6th”. It is this sense of tradition that I feel also tends to make our names absolute. It just isn’t done in some societies to change one’s name so quickly and freely. I feel like my name is my identity. (This is reinforced seeing that I am basically the only one in the whole of Costa Rica who has my name).
So there it is; the end of my blog. Tune in later for the next exhilarating episode.
PS: The use of the word exhilarating has been over played.
Hsu, Huan. “The Name’s Du Xiao Hua, But Call Me Steve.” Slate. 27 April 2009. 7 May 2009.
< http://www.slate.com/id/2217001/pagenum/all/#p2>
Evil Meat May 1, 2009
Posted by pbarno in Uncategorized.1 comment so far
So, after being inspired by a TOK God aka Andy Fletcher, I’ve decided to write a TOK journal (that and the fact that the due date is rapidly approaching). So anyway, I went to the website slate.com for some ideas. I found a title to an article which seemed quite interesting, so I read it and found it was interesting. The article is called “The Kindest Cut” and it talks about which meats are more and which are less harmful to our planet.
From the very beginning of the article we can see where the direction is headed. The author starts out with a bold statement saying that “meat is not sweet, ecologically speaking. According to an extensive U.N. report from 2006, the livestock industry not only uses more land than any other human activity; it’s also one of the largest contributors to water pollution and a bigger source of greenhouse-gas emissions than all the world’s trains, planes, and automobiles combined.”
This I found to be an interesting figure. All the meant we eat is actually worse than all of the man-made contraptions. I kind of find this hard to believe. I think this for several reasons. First of all what the article is saying here is just an analysis of numbers and statistics. These can be basically manipulated to tell you whatever you want them to tell you. You can’t be sure how the data was collected; if they collected everything or just a sample and then made predictions about the rest. It is here that we see how our reasoning can be manipulated to believe certain things; we see things like a UN report and that meat pollutes the world more than trains and planes and cars all put together and we think that it must be true. Ah, there’s that elusive word: true. True is hard to define, hard to explain and after the Inter-TOK conference I doubt it exists. What the author has done here is give us evidence that she sees fit to support her ideas about evil meat. We are not given the positive effects of eating meat or the things that are actually more harmful than meat. The author makes it out in such a way that she makes us think meat is horrible for the world (or at least according to how I see it).
Second (also an idea from the Inter-TOK conference) why would there be these animals on the planet in the first place. As we have been able to see (or at least as I believe) the universe is really very well designed; it is just about perfect. It is thought to be set up in such a way that everything works together, like how there is carbon, water and so on that exist on earth, the vital necessities for life. Or like matter and anti-matter or even how protons have the same charge as electrons, except for their signs. (Note: all this things are not givens, they have a lot of good evidence to lead to believing it yet there is still room that it is all wrong, although highly unlikely). So, also, at the end of the seminar we have two strong conclusions about the beginning of the universe, a superior being who observed the creation or the multiverse where our universe is one of many other universes (this are the two ideas that are the most common although some others do exist). So with both of these ideas there is someone or something out there that is overlooking our universe. This leads back to the meat thing because I don’t think that all of these animals can be blamed for global warming. They are here for a reason; they exist along side us. Although it could be seen that we have taken advantage of these creatures for our own personal use, that being food. But that would just be to survive; survival of the fittest and natural selection come into play here.
But back to the article for I feel I stray a little far from the topic at hand. I also found how the author was able to play on our emotions and reasoning to get her point across. She talks about for example how “still, as the most widely eaten meat in America, chicken farming has a major impact on the environment. The poultry-broiler industry consumed some 240 billion megajoules of energy in 2005, or the equivalent of 42 million barrels of crude oil. That’s more than the entire country of Sri Lanka consumed the same year—all to keep us well-stocked with wings and drumsticks.” She somehow compares eating chicken to energy consumed in Sri Lanka. I see this as a way to make us feel bad about the people in Sri Lanka who don’t use much powered compared to the amount we use just to produce chicken. She puts it in terms that we can handle more easily yet in doing so is try to push her ideas about it. What I think (it might be wrong) is that she is an angry vegan who is trying to make other people feel bad about eating meat by saying that they are the ones causing global warming and that if every one was a vegan (as she makes reference to in the text like here “Red meat is so resource-intensive, in fact, that if we all cut our consumption of it by one-quarter, the reduction in greenhouse gases would be the same as shifting to a 100 percent locally sourced diet”) we could reduce our negative impact on the world.
Elephant-Snake!!! March 19, 2009
Posted by pbarno in Uncategorized.1 comment so far
Good evening to all of you souls out there. I’ve been keeping myself busy tonight (read: thought it would be a good idea to add a quick blog entry for tomorrow’s deadline) by skimming through our praised website, Slate.com. As always there is something to talk about on the site (the day there isn’t, pigs will surely fly). So anyway, I found an article called “Irony Board How many ways can Senate Republicans show intellectual hypocrisy?” I was going to not read it but then I saw this nifty picture of the elephant/snake so I thought it must be good (yes I know that is a fallacy, appeal to emotion and what not but I like the picture).
So the article is basically about how the Senate Republicans in the US are extremely hypocritical. The article has multiple pieces of evidence to “give overwhelming evidence” (seeing that “prove” is the new taboo word or something) that the Republicans are out to get the Democrats; that everything Republicans do is righteous whilst what the Democrats do is pure evil even if they do basically the same exact thing. This in itself is a good TOK-ish topic- the hypocrisy that stems from hate of the other entity, as the opening of the article states, “Let’s stipulate: You hate our nominees, and we hate yours. Our nominees are all godless baby killers and terrorist lovers. Yours are all God-crazed rights suppressors and misogynists. Fine.” But there was something else that I found interesting; here you have this article show the wrong doings of one group of people yet doesn’t mention any of their own mistakes. What we have here is a fairly biased article that makes you see what the journalist sees, nothing else. I’m not saying this is a bad thing since that’s how you make persuasive arguments but I think that that is hypocrisy in itself. A bit like meta-fiction but instead it is meta-hypocrisy.
Anyway, I’ll leave you in company of this sweet picture and post this bad boy so I can hit the sack ASAP.
Global Motherf*ckers March 15, 2009
Posted by pbarno in Uncategorized.2 comments
Just a quick post before I head off to bed. After a having a look at Slate.com (most of you already know it thanks to the strong endorsement by our TOK teacher) I found an interesting article called Global Motherf*ckers. The article talks about how many of the insults from around the world are based on the incest between a mother and her child. I also leave you with a strange picture that is found on the webpage depicting some sort of Chinese “grass-mud horse” (if you can imagine what that even looks like).
Uri Jackson? March 15, 2009
Posted by pbarno in Uncategorized.1 comment so far
So again it is the time for TOK Blogs, what joy. For my inspiration this blog I decided to (much like my TOK teacher goes to slate.com, newyorker.com or the bbc (product placement intended)) go to my local TOK-ish resource, that being of course my good friend Louis Theroux (disclaimer: I don’t actually know him). I made time and was able to watch the TV show/documentary live-ish. This week it was about Michael Jackson.
Louis was trying to get to know Michael a bit better; to understand what some people say as the most eccentric man on earth. Anyway, the documentary started off by Louis visiting Michael Jackson’s local English go to guy (even though his name was Uri something and must have come from Poland or somewhere like that). Right from the start, this Uri guy said that he didn’t want Louis to interview Michael because he knew what type of interview it would be. Uri said that it would be biased and that Louis was a sly snake. I always find it funny how people try to protect themselves from journalists or interviews because they say that it will be biased and untruthful. If they have nothing to hide then they shouldn’t have a problem being interviewed critically. This reminds me of other interviews Theroux tried to have where people said the same thing.
Anyway, Louis then tried to learn a bit more about Jackson by interviewing a few relatives and family. He spoke to a man called Majestik Magnificent (or something to that same effect) who was a friend of the family. He was a bit of a strange man (hard to explain how so it would be best to just look at the video or just take my word for it) yet he did get Louis an interview with Joe Jackson for the nominal fee of $5000 and a $500 bonus for Majestik (always about money). Anyway, the interview was a farce, there were a bunch of random people arrive and Louis was forced to interview them first. He ended up by not even having time to talk to Joe.
Later he finally did have time during another interview. There Joe was very resilient and hardly said anything. He only said that whatever Michael’s choice was, pleased him. There was one point in the interview that I found interesting and very TOK-ish; related to language. Louis asked if Joe would be please if Michael settled down with a partner to which Joe said he didn’t understand what partner meant. Louis clarified by saying it means a boyfriend or a girlfriend to which Majestik (who was in the room) was offended because Louis had said that Michael was perhaps into men. In the context it’s understandable to say partner because perhaps Michael Jackson is gay, we don’t know (he does sleep with boys though). Anyway, when asked why it was so offensive to say partner, Joe and Majestik said that they both hated gay people. Here we can see how people take half of the meaning of a word and interpret it to mean something that they find offensive.
Anyway, Louis never got his interview with Michael Jackson, which was what he was aiming for. He’s interview would have apparently been too controversial (not that the ITV documentary by Martin Bashir wasn’t). Louis was angry at the Uri guy because he let Martin Bashir interview Michael Jackson and not himself. It’s always funny (not in the comical (although sometimes it is) sense but more in the strange and bizarre sense) to see how these important, famous people react to interviews and how the journalist is always out to get them. Must get back to work on my other stuff (and stop using double parenthesis (in the middle of sentences)).
A Breathing Earth March 10, 2009
Posted by pbarno in Uncategorized.add a comment
I found this really neat website that I thought merited to be shared. It is: http://breathingearth.net/
Changeling: A Child Exchanged For Another By Fairies March 8, 2009
Posted by pbarno in Uncategorized.1 comment so far
Again I am here, at my new desk about to write about another TOK idea in the form of a blog. As most of you know (well a few of you know) I am quite the movie fanatic. I love independent movies and am always ready to share my advice on what I consider good movies (and no, good movies aren’t usually the ones where everything blows up at the end and the protagonist shoots the baddy whilst swearing). Seeing that it is Oscar time (the Academy Awards, for those who don’t watch movies), well, just past Oscar time, I though it would be a good idea to talk about one of the nominated movies.
Last weekend, for once I had a slight (and when I say slight I mean I made time) amount of free time, I decided to go to the cinema to watch the movie “Changeling”. It seemed to be a good movie with Angelina Jolie and John Malkovich amongst others and its expectations did not disappoint. The movie is basically about a single mother who goes off to work one day only to come back and find that her only son had gone missing. The police did some work and said they found the boy although the mother said that the young child they brought back was not her son. And the movie progresses from there on.
This post is about the movie so I would recommend you watch the movie before reading so that you have an idea about what I’m talking about. But anyway, one thing that really stood out for me in the movie (as I have seen in several other movies, although no names come to mind at this point) is the whole question about sanity. In the movie, when Angelina’s character said that the boy wasn’t her son, everyone though she was mad. So mad in fact, they had her thrown in the loony bin.
The person that authorized her internment was in fact a dirty police officer (which we later find out was illegally and the bad people get what they deserve basically). But I find it hard to see what kind of person can tell if someone else is crazy. For example the police got a psychologist to psycho-analyse Angelina’s character. The shrink was biased because the police told him what the outcome was going to be anyway. Here we can see how easy it is to manipulate people into changing the truth into something completely different. Every time Angelina’s character said or did something it was because she was this or that. They came up with all sorts of previous mental diseases and made them fit to be what she had.
Another point I found interesting in the movie was when Angelina’s character was in the mental hospital. She was in fact completely sane (which was quite hard because after being told you are crazy so many times you start to question and doubt yourself and think that you are indeed actually crazy) and said everything that a sane person would do. The thing is that situation the saner you look; the more insane you’re supposed to be. It’s funny how the truth can so easily be distorted to be the complete opposite.
Anyway, I really liked the movie and enjoyed it a lot. I would definitely recommend it anyone. After being in TOK class for a while you start to look at everything and relate it to TOK, which is what I did with this movie whilst I was watching it. I found it to be quite TOK-ish indeed but found the sanity part the thing that stuck out the most to me. Ok, now on to my other work for tonight. Until next time, this is a desperate TOK Student signing off.
PS: After looking up the definition of the word changeling, I think the movie chose a really good title.
Definition provided by Encarta.
“God Hates You” March 3, 2009
Posted by pbarno in Uncategorized.1 comment so far
Hello out there in the blog-o-sphere. For my TOK blog this time I’ve decided to talk a bout a TV episode from the BBC. Seeing that apparently Latina America counts for something, I have recently received my dearly beloved channel “BBC Entertainment” and have been watching it as much as possible, which is sadly not very often at all. Thank you IB. But on to the topic at hand. Yes.
So, one of my favourite documentary like TV show is called “Louis Theroux’s Weird Weekends”. The presenter goes by the same name and he travel all over the world to expose and discover more about theses sort of strange things. So this week’s (I say this week’s because I only got to seeing it this week, I had previously taped it down) episode was about him going to see “the most hated family in America”.
So the episode is about this fire and brimstone Christian group made up nearly entirely of one family, called the West Boro Baptist Church. They all live in Kansas and they basically preach that being gay is the worst thing ever and that supporting gayness is also just as bad. And they continue to say that anyone who accepts this is going to hell.
They are also well known for protesting at the funerals of dead soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan. They say that the soldiers were struck down by God by fighting for a doomed and depraved nation. Some of the signs say “Fags eat poop” which one of the members said was a fact. Others include “God hates Fags” or “God hates you” for example. Also, the member continued to say that it was one of the 10 Commandments to not be gay, say that though shalt not commit adultery includes the fact that “the streets of this nation are full of married men having fag sex”.
At one point Louis Theroux asks what they really think and they all said that this is what they really think. And we can also see this at the end when he asks one of the daughters if she likes being rejected by society (because that is what they are) and she said it was fine because she knew she wasn’t going to hell.
I just find it amazing how some people can think that they are better than everyone else and state such a statement like “you’re all going to hell and God hates you”. And the sad thing is that they really do believe it. Even though they are hated by most everyone they continue to tell people what they think. I also find it really shameful that they go to dead soldiers’ funeral to say that God punished them because they accept people being gay. In one part of the episode, the whole family take a plane a few hundred miles a way to protest at a funeral. I really wonder if people like this actually know what they are doing. What I see are people who have taken the bible and chosen to interpret it the way they want to, thinking that that is the only way to interpret it.
I also noticed that perhaps some of the eldest, the leaders fo the church realised what they were doing because they would never directly answer a questions asked by Louis or were very nervous and uneasy. I also think it’s crazy to have your own “God hate the USA” song that you make all the young kids learn too. I was quite funny because Louis asked a kid who was about 8 or so what a fag was and he was unable to answer. This church basically mind washes their own to believe whatever the leaders say.
The episode is really good and hopefully I shall be able to bring it to class one day because one blog about it doesn’t do it justice (even though I try my best). There is really a lot to talk about but perhaps we could have a class discussion about it. But anyway. It’s nearly time for Theroux again and I want to be able to actually watch it tonight; so I bid you all farewell
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Picture from: http://randazza.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/westboro.jpg
