A Generation Even More Behind
by First Lady
As a public educator, I am faced with the inadequacies of our unjust public education system on a daily basis. I witness, all too often, the mechanical teaching of obedience, conformity and test taking skills. I see the frustration on teachers' faces when the "vessels" WON'T open up and let the information in. I hear the familiar statements in the staff lounge: "I know that's going to be on the state test and he's NOT going to get it", "You know, I am responsible for her score on the state test and she doesn't even care. She's too busy playing with her pencil to PAY ATTENTION!"
In the 7 years that I have been teaching and advocating for children with exceptionalities, I have been privileged to work with a few creative, passionate educators who allow for discovery-based learning and the evolution of ideas and critical thinking through discussion. These teachers have inspired and fueled just a few of the deserving youth who have passed through their classrooms on the journey that seems predetermined. A philosophical change is necessary in order for public education to serve the people as people, not as compliant workers. President Bush is determined to push public education in just the opposite direction by enforcing the act entitled "No Child Left Behind" (NCLB).
According to President Bush, the "No Child Left Behind" act was written to ensure that all American children reach proficiency in the areas of reading and math. This is how it works: standards for teachers and instructional assistants (IA's) are raised, which means more schooling, tests and forms for teachers and a required 2 year degree for IA's in certain schools. Educators will need to narrow their focus and teach scripted lessons in reading and math that will lead pupils to the correct answers on state tests. Public schools must administer a standardized test to all students in grades 3,5,8 and 10. The results of this test will be reported on a yearly basis to the federal and state governments, along with the public. The results include statistics on scores, race, gender and impacting disabilities. If all students do not meet the standards, their school is labeled as a "poorly performing" school. The administration is then given a short period of time to enable the entire student body to demonstrate proficiency in the test areas. At this point, parents have alternate choices. They can choose to enroll their child at a high performing school, request a voucher for charter school tuition, receive reimbursement for homeschooling or they can continue to have their child attend the neighborhood school that is failing. If the latter is chosen, students who are failing are entitled to supplemental education in order to secure equal access to curriculum. The supplemental instruction can vary from tutoring and afterschool remedial classes to faith-based community programs. When a school continues to fall into the low performance category, it is subsequently closed and the choices listed above become mandated alternatives. The inevitable product is privatized education for all.
A few areas of fault....
Funding:
States are struggling to maintain the programs that are currently in effect. Oregon could not afford to keep children in school for the full school year Sept. 2002- June 2003. The opportunities outlined in NCLB are simply out of reach for states without full federal funding. At the time NCLB took effect, federal funds were designated to allow schools to meet these requirements, yet much of the monies have since been relinquished. Perhaps states will lower their standards, passing all students, so that they can afford public education.
Social Issues
Western thought has a tendency to look at the problematic symptoms that must be alleviated rather than examining underlying causes that will continue to produce similar outcomes. NCLB would recommend the exchange of the arts, sciences and social studies for a full day of math and scripted phonics lessons in order to boost so-called performance. I suggest that the proponents of NCLB consider poverty, nutrition, housing, unemployment, and preschooling before taking all of the creativity and thought provoking studies out of the schools. Science understands that people, especially children, are unable to concentrate and process information when they are hungry or ill. When housing and employment become family issues, homework help may need to be put on hold. Research continually supports the effectiveness of early childhood intervention for youth who are "at risk," or poor. However, President Bush, is currently advocating that funds allocated for Head Start be available for other programs. [Head Start being a national public preschool program that is responsible for substantial impact on the children who have been so fortunate as to qualify for the services.]
Testing of All Students
This includes students impacted by disabilities as well as English Language Learners who may have just moved to the US. At the time NCLB was written, all students had to pass the state tests. Reauthorization has granted school districts somewhat of a disability allowance of 1% of the school population. That is, now it is okay to leave behind the 1% of children who are most severely impacted by disabilities. They do not have to pass, but they MUST take the test. To some, it would seem cruel and even unusual to judge a persons intellect on their control of a foreign language to which they have not yet been exposed. Perhaps this is what it feels like when a student who is so severely impacted by mental retardation, a brain injury or autism that they are nonverbal or a nonreader, is tested at grade level. However absurd, they must take the test so that we can measure their progress. To the credit of Oregon, a leading state in the testing of students with disabilities, there is an opportunity in certain states for a few students to have appropriate alternative assesments. Either way, the 1% allowance does not account for the other 9%, on average, of students with disabilities. The 10% rule is generally accepted and state governments typically forcast a special education budget that will be allocated to 10% of students. A proficient third grader should be able to tell you that this math does not add up.
"Fast Food" Chain Education
The narrow focus on specific math and reading scores creates a strict recipe for the transfer of information. Teachers will be forced to leave behind everything that experience has concluded and accept a scripted lesson as a means of communicating with children. NCLB discounts reading for pleasure, whole-language based instruction and creative writing while maintaining that education can be packaged and predicatable, almost franchised, if you will. Uniformity among the next generation... every 1st grade class will be learning to decode consonant-vowel-consonant words beginning with the letter d at the same time. Imagine, all third graders will learn how to multiply 5 times 5 using the same manipulatives on the very same day. Homework...the possibilities! It is clear that having high expectations for all students is not synonomous with having the same expectations for all children, unless, of course, you want a generation that does not know how to question or problem solve but simply compute numerals and read instructions.
Which Organizations Will We Pay toTeach the Children of Poorly Performing Schools?
Faith Based Community Groups- According to a ruling in Clevland in June 2002, parental choice negates the separation of church and state. There is a faith-based group providing supplemental instruction to students under a contract with parents and the school district. It's impact is fairly minor at this point, serving only a few students. However, it has paved the way toward larger portions of public monies spent for private, religious education.
Corporate Sponsored Charter Schools- Charter schools fall victim to corporations offering to sponser the school if the administration agrees to use curriculum developed by the parent company. One example of a corporate school is The Edison Project, a private school management company. Founded by Chris Whittle, of Whittle Publishing Company, it now operates 150 schools across the US. Many of these schools are charter schools under contract with the local school districts. As you would expect, the curriculum is a product of Whittle Publishing Company. The company boasts the use of "corporate managing strategies" to run the Edison schools.
Homeschoolers- I am not discounting homeschooling, only asking that the targets are aware that the homeschool curriculum companies are seriously marketing. Companies like Bill Bennett's K12.com have much to gain in convincing parents to use public school money for homeschool curriculum. There are currently 1.5 million homeschoolers who are managing to afford their instructional expenses. This is apt to change.
No Child Left Behind took effect in January of 2002, giving schools a couple of years to make sure that most employees had a chance to meet the requirements and the kids had plenty of time to think about the testing of the future. You will begin hearing more and more about it as the deadlines arrive and the schools fail. Please do something.
A recent letter to Senator Ron Wyden, submitted by the Superintendent of Lake Oswego Schools, William Korach, Ed.D and School Board Chair of LOSD, Linda Brown, was concluded with the following statement. "NCLB sets up a flawed vision that cannot be attained. The effect is demoralizing, punitive, and misleading. Mandating performance expectations for all students that are impossible to acheive guarantees the impression that all public schools are failing, and provides a disingenuous- and some might say intended- argument for abandoning them."
Call your senators, let them know that this is unacceptable. If you are an Oregon resident, you can call Senator Ron Wyden in Washington at 202-224-5244 or fax a letter to 202-228-2717.
Another Family Found To Be Unaffected by Patriot Act
SUFFOLK, VA - When asked if he felt any constrictions on his personal life due to the USA Patriot Act, Harold Safely seemed a bit offended. "We're not terrorists," he sternly stated, "We proudly support President Bush and the United States in all their actions. The Patriot Act isn't for red blooded Americans who love their country, its for the terrors who fear the freedom we have."
The Safely family lives in a quiet suburb where Harold drives 5.3 miles a day to & from his job at an office where he sells advertising for the local paper, The Suffolk News Herald. Harold's wife, Janice, raised 2 children and now devotes her daytime hours to The Church of the Solid Rock of the Apostolic Faith. Their children, Margaret, age 22, and Peter, age 25, both graduated from Christ College in Lynchburg, VA.
"I didn't even know what the heck the Patriot Act was until I went to a town fair and noticed some hippies totally being aggressive, trying to get people to sign some petition fighting the act. I avoided them the best I could until I got back to my car and found that someone had put a piece of paper [flyer] on my windshield saying that the Patriot Act was 'imposing on my civil rights.' I was like, 'whatever, get a job & wash those dreadlocks!' Margaret recalls her first discovery of what has become a controversial issue since late 2001, when Attn. General John Ashcroft's committee designed the USA Patriot Act, a collection of laws allowing the government to better fight terror post 9/11.
"I don't understand why these people have a problem with it." Peter Safely said, "Unless of course they, too, are terrorists! Which, believe me, if I had seen what they were doing to the kind people at the town fair I wouldn't have waited one moment to alert the police about their suspicious behavior." Peter Safely is now pursuing his masters degree in Education Leadership, which he wants to use to teach back in his home town of Suffolk Virginia.
"These kids these days, their minds are being constantly infected with so many sour sources of hate and greed and paranoia. I just hope to show them that it's okay to trust your government, your president, your priest, and most importantly, yourself."
"Amen," said the Safely family in what seemed like an angelic harmony.
Already Harold & Janice have notified the authorities 5 times since 9/11/01 regarding what they believed was "suspicious behavior" by people they have encountered in their lives. "One day, the gas station attendant at the Exxon stared a little too long at my credit card," Harold recalls, "After that I called the police and have since then been buying my gas at Shell, where Michael & Rose's kid Sam works". I certainly feel a lot more secure over there now, even if the police didn't find anything illegal at that place."
Janice recalls once when she was on the telephone trying to obtain technical support for the family computer, "The man on the other end had some funny voice and I couldn't understand what he was saying most of the time. He kept telling me to delete files and upload software, and finally I realized that there was no way of knowing what this man was doing to our computer, so I asked to speak to his supervisor. Once I got him on the phone I asked for the support man's name and called the police to inform them that potential terror could be occurring at the Dell technical support offices. I just hope they got the guy before he ruined anyone else's computer."
Although no arrests have been made from any of the Safely's suspicions, they still believe they're doing the right thing. Quoting President Bush in his State of the Union Address, Peter said, "Americans are a free people, who know that freedom is the right of every person and the future of every nation. The liberty we prize is not America's gift to the world, it is God's gift to humanity."
Harold looked proudly at his son after reciting those lines, "That's my boy, an intelligent, smart, and bright child that the Lord has blessed us with."
"This Patriot Act has done nothing but good, if you've got nothing to hide, then why should you worry about it? It's only causing unnecessary stress and that is never good for anyone!" Janice said.
As for the Patriot Act, this reporter will continue to search for anyone who is not a terror suspect yet still feels for some reason that it affects their daily lives.
"...George W. Bush's war was always about more than the weapons that have yet to be found. The son of the President who had trouble with the Vision Thing offered a vision so broad it bent the horizon: this was nothing less than a 'Battle for the future of the Muslim world,' an expression of American idealism in all its arrogant generosity." - TIME magazine, December 29, 2003 / January 5, 2004 pg. 36
Is it up to the Christian world (ie: America) to once again try and fix the affairs of the Muslim world? If so, when will it be the Muslim's turn to save America from its unsustainable economic policies? Praise Allah that the pendulum will swing.
I can no longer participate in these consumer driven holidays.
This is not rebelling against family, or love.
This is taking a stand against the destructive desires of our capitalist masters.
I will no longer give them bonus checks, in the form of mindless consumer
consumption. Consumption is destroying the world.
Their products and clever marketing are the main reasons my aunt is dying of cancer.
The lifestyle we can afford is only what is allowed and predetermined by
the capitalist.
No more! I will serve them no more!
I will invent my own identity, my own way of expression, my own life.
I will use my life in a way created by me; I will educate people and advocate a truer way of life to destroy their institutions, their strangle-hold on the world.
We will create a meaningful life that comes from the people, for the people.
No one is free, unless we are all free.
A Man was walking down a deserted Mexican beach at sunset. As he walked
along, he began to see another man in the distance. As he drew nearer,
he noticed that the local native kept leaning down, picking something up
and throwing it out into the water. Time and again he kept hurling
things out into the ocean.
As our friend approached even closer, he noticed that the man was
picking up starfish that had been washed up on the beach and, one at a
time, he was throwing them back into the water.
Our friend was puzzled. He approached the man and said, "Good evening,
friend. I was wondering what you are doing."
"I'm throwing these starfish back into the ocean. You see, it's low tide
right now and all of these starfish have been washed up onto the shore.
If I don't throw them back into the sea, they'll die up here from lack
of oxygen."
"I understand," our friend replied, "but there must be thousands of
starfish on this beach. You can't possibly get to all of them. There are
simply too many. And don't you realize this is probably happening on
hundreds of beaches all up and down this coast? Can't you see that you
can't possibly make a difference?"
The local native smiled, bent down and picked up yet another starfish,
and as he threw it back into the sea, he replied, "Well, it made a
difference to that one!"
Looking to television to quell active children, sedate the senses after the long days at your desk and riding a tsunami-sized wave of channel surfing might be making you more like a zombie than you think.
Looking to television to quell active children, sedate the senses after the long days at your desk and riding a tsunami-sized wave of channel surfing might be making you more like a zombie than you think.
Consider the physical effects of television watching. Your brain waves fall close to the alpha variety, which are the kind we experience during sleep. That means when you watch TV, your body and mind enter a catatonic-like state. There is reasoning behind this: the specific physical state TV watching induces is perfect for all those visual messages 'they' want to implant into your life mental experience. You're relaxed and paying your utmost attention to the material being broadcast, which means you've let your guard down as to what you ingest on TV. And that could be anything.
'But that's the point!', you say, and I hear you loud and clear. Humans are image factories- they like to identify with the images they are partial to. Do you try to act like Jim Carrey after you watch one of his movies? Do you get excited and aggressive when you watch the football game? It's quite easy to get emotionally involved in dramatic programs, especially since your state of mind prioritizes feedback from the tube. Working with only two of our five senses, TV certainly is effective in evoking emotional responses from us. Television also mirrors and exaggerates the false truths of the reality we place ourselves in. That's what it's for. If it wasn't we'd be watching people watching TV on TV, recognizing problems and seeing how lazy TV-watching really is, and where's the fun in that?!
'Fun?', you say. 'TV is supposed to be fun. It's supposed to tell me the bad news and then quickly bring to me back to my favorite program. Bad news happens all the time, big deal.' If it bleeds it leads, right? Think back to your television watching experiences. When you watch the news, how long does each segment spend on the important issues? Maybe 3-5 minutes? Hardly enough time to sell all sides. But which 'side' is the news show taking? Should you agree with their stance? And who decides what are the most important issues that get broadcasted, anyway? Where did the material come from? Who wrote it? How credible is it? (gasp!) Who is paying for this material to be broadcasted? The power of the press is limited only to the depths of the owner's pocketbook, and whatever they pay for gets shown.
'So this material', you ask- 'are you saying that when I watch TV, I slip into a voluntary sedentary state and ingest images that become part of my life exprience?' Yep. Not only that, but you're being appropriated and manipulated to 'feel' what you see, too. We're barraged with images on cable news networks of war, for example. As far as TV-watching goes, what's the difference between actors playing war and real war coverage? Oh, now don't cringe. I know that's a hard one. Most people don't want to take the Pepsi challenge of real and fake war on TV. However the fact is that television violence breeds disinformation about its purveyors, hence establishing paradigms that in turn cultivate and create trends of thinking in a culture glued to the tube. It builds tolerance to violence. What does that mean? A news show broadcasts a murder, and they say that their suspect is a black male. First they show the body or the crime scene (fear- basing). Then they show the survivors. Then they show the sherriff who says, 'It was a black man...'. Then after the segment the newscasters reiterate that the suspect is a black man, and to be on the lookout for this particular black man. Eew! Change the channel. Sure. Block it out. Black men aren't all violent. Oh, look- 'Cops' is on! Even better. In the first sequence the cops apprehend a black man. Oh, good justice is done there. In the second segment some meth parents are nailed at their home with oblivious and innocent children meandering about. Wait, hold on. Is that justice? I just watched 3 people get arrested in ten minutes. Notice how they always show the most action-packed scenes? Of course they do, or else no one would watch it! Someone once said that every broadcast is a moral act. So, that means when you watch the bombing of Bagdhad, or the cops on 'Cops' make arrests, it's really a series of decisions and programming and technical events controlled by the people who film these events, who then send it to run on the stations, who edit it and make the content 'watchable', and who in turn were paid to obtain this information to give it to you. They are moral actions. Is the showing of a suicide bombing a good or a bad moral act? What about only showing it in thirty seconds (to make room for other important topics or even ads)? How does it get shown (flashy, quick, or long and informative)? Is capitalizing on it moral? Is incessant advertising a moral act? Questions...
'Oh, stop it. You're making me think too hard', you say. 'I want my quality programming! If I have that, I won't see any of these travesties you're shoving down my throat!' Then perhaps you shouldn't listen to me.
Yet the question remains: is this the 'quality programming' we've to come to expect? And just what committee is deciding that what's shown is in the 'public interest'? Most people believe the fabricated realities that TV perpetuates. It's an escape world. You say, 'well, the news shows are real'. Yes they are, but they're still just TV shows. They affect you no more or less than a dramatic procession on a regular TV show. They have writers, producers, actors and specific alloted time slots. And inbetween these shows are the ceaseless ads. Here's a question: what do you think the difference is between being bombarded with ads on TV, and letting a solicitor into your living room to sell products to the inhabitants of your house? Each daily time frame caters to its own special target audience. An example would be the demographics which participate in certain programming. They know that children watch cartoons on Saturday morning, so inbetween them are ads for kids' products. It's like letting in salespeople into your living room to solicit to your kids. These advertisers spend billions examining our television watching and spending habits in order to keep the revenue flowing. Of course, the number one product of all of these is... you guessed it! TV sets! The advertisers know they have made you and your kids ever so need that product. Yes, you do because corporations know that they can make lots of money by taking your image, altering it in creative ways and selling it right back to you on the tube. Thanks to those advertisers, you now have had specific fears and anxieties placed into your mind about the way you live your life... compared to the beautiful people on TV who don't have these problems. You'll be just like those hipsters drinking Bud Light on the billboards, and you'll have all the recognition the Gap studs and hotties emanate on the commercials. Except up to a certain age, children cannot distinguish the TV-reality from the actual one, and the influence of the unity machine is maximised.
If you watched TV a lot as a child, then this definetely happened to you.
'But I watch PBS and public-access TV! Surely you're not going to tell me that those are dangerous to watch!' No, not really, but whether you watch a nature show on PBS or Animal Planet, you're still not experiencing those parts of nature. They sent camera crews out there to do that for you! All you have to do is sit back, relax and watch the Crocodile Hunter explain croc eating habits. All you have to do is sit back and watch exotic birds and animals in their native lands. You might be learning about nature, but TV magically replaces that direct experience with indirect image implantation for you. Pictures of cats and plants instead of real cats and plants. This fits in perfectly with our obsession to allow technology dominate our means of communication, education and daily life. The Native Americans didn't learn how to hunt game from watching Animal Planet, they were out in nature examining it first-hand. But you can watch how Native Americans hunt game on TV. Don't have enough drama in your life? TV'll get that going for you. Think nature is boring? Fire up the Animal Planet! Are you a hapless hopeless romantic? Daytime TV to the rescue!
'Sounds controlling', you say. Wow, you have been paying attention. What better way to reach millions of people simultaneously than through TV? What if you had that power? Think about it. What would you say? Sell?
Television is fondly referred to as Auntie in the UK. Ever think about why?
It isn't enough that people are aware of the effects of television watching- they must become responsible for the kind of mental environments TV implants in their self-image. People voluntarily do this when they watch television because they're already in a vulnerable state. If people were more aware of how advertisers create askew views of culture, then people would resist appropriating themselves to fit those ideals and be more aware of their own individuality. They would also be more prone to acknowledge the prevalence of corporate media's disinformation, advertising's fabricated utopian gloss, and be more adept to separating those appropriated TV-watching experiences from how real-life affect their lives.
'But I can turn off the TV anytime'.
Can you?
Email to: theaxeeffect.com 6/8/03
For those of you not familiar with The Axe Effect, it is a new fragrance spray for men that's supposed to be the greatest thing in the world. However, their ad campaign isn't so great. What made the grade of trash advertising was, in particular, their "Coping With All The Ladies" booklet. The booklet was a cartoony view of how to deal with being inundated with females when the product is applied. Proned to advertise in male-geared media like Maxim magazine and company, they perpetuate status-quo mentalities embedded in the latent content of their ads. What does that mean? I found in taking a critical look at their campaign: misogyny, sexism, sexual disinformation and female intellectual intolerance. In our opinion, this is a bad example to set. I emailed The Axe Effect and asked them why, why, why, and you even get to read their response, too.
Snoochie Booches,
Progenitor
Dear Axe Effect,
Your publication "coping with the ladies" contains terse and virulent means of commercialist media influence, and can only be used as more evidence of sexual misunderstanding and tolerance of misogyny. Quite frankly, I was angered at reading that booklet because, not only does it retain the same vicarious libido- enhancing "advice" as is broadcasted in alcoholic- beverage media, for example, but it also portrays women as submissive, intellectually impartial and passive. I was abhorrently disgusted when I read "how to slip out without waking her up", and its description of the female intellectual mind: "wake her by accident and you may forced to discuss her cat calendar or her love of unicorns". I highly doubt that the majority of women would agree that playing the role of a sexually/ intellectually passive- aggressive female, implanted by patriarchal paradigms for media profit have enlightened them as such that this is an "acceptable" role for women. Indeed, your male protagonists carry themselves out with a D- average for being actual, sensitive and feeling humans. Instead, you are perpetuating commercial status- quo mentalities about relationships and roles of men and women in modern society. So thank you for contributing to the avalanche of misguided sexual people all over the country who will use your product in ‘tha name’ of humping hot chicks and getting away scot- free!
Axe Effect’s Response, 6/9/03
Date: Mon, 9 Jun 2003 14:15:23 -0300
From: "comments.axe"
Subject: RE: mysogyny and sexuality
To: OMMITTED FOR PRESERVATION OF ANONIMITY
Hi xxxxx,
Thank you for taking the time to contact us about our AXE “Coping with all the Ladies” Handbook. The handbook was created to provide young men with a fun and humorous look at “the dating game.” The content of our handbook is simply meant to bring the AXE Effect to life in a lighthearted way.
We recognize that the AXE “Coping with all the Ladies” Handbook does not appeal to everyone. However, the guys who use AXE recognize the tongue-in-check humor behind the booklet and understand that it’s certainly not meant to be offensive or taken literally.
You can be assured that your comments are appreciated and will be seriously considered.
Thank You,
AXE Consumer Services
_____________________________
For those of you not familiar with The Axe Effect, it is a new fragrance spray for men that's supposed to be the greatest thing in the world. However, their ad campaign isn't so great.
Philip Morris, your mega-corporate 'not-just-a-tobacco-company', has announced its development of a new cigarette, which the company claims emits
90% less secondhand smoke than other regular cigarettes.
Oh, yes, it's finally, FINALLY here!
This new "low-smoke" product, called Accord, is to be market tested on a limited number of smokers in the US and in Japan, so if you're serious about smoking smokeless cigs, then you'd better get in line.
But wait, 'cause it gets better. Accord-brand cigarettes must be used with a special battery-activated
lighter which lights the cigarette each time a drag is inhaled and captures only the smoke and ashes from the cigarette.
Gee, the boys at Philip Morris certainly are trying to make the world safer from their products, aren't they?
That's right. Philip Morris claims that the only smoke emitted is from the smoker’s exhalations. So really, the smoker is still smoking smoke, but there isn't any more smoke than what the smoker smokes. And, guess what else? The special lighter is approximately the size of a pager, and is likely be sold for about $50. This special lighter does not set the tobacco on fire, like your Bic does. Rather, it heats up the cig inside the lighter, while you hold this thing up to your mouth and take a puff, so say bye-bye to monkey sex. But it's money well spent, because your trusty mega-conglomo buddies at Philip Morris have invested 5 years and an estimated $200 million dollars on development.
Oh, good. That makes me feel tons and tons better.
And it should, because you probably lead a busy lifestyle, and taking those smoke breaks are absolutely essential to your sanity. But there's also another thing to be aware of. This announcement of the new Accord cigarette and other similar cigarette products points to the radical so-called 'reform' occurring in cigarette manufacturing and suggests the need for more aggressive regulatory authority in order to effectively oversee the tobacco industry. And what does that mean? It means that Philip Morris wants to make smokers like you feel more 'rest assured' that these new and exciting tobacco products are safer for your health than regualr ones. But really, they have only reduced the danger of smoking tobacco to the smoker, and 'lessened' the threat of second-hand smoke to others. The whole point is to manufacture a cigarette that has lower nitrosamines (night-tross-a-means), which is the main cancerous chemical compound in cigarettes. Its chemical formula is: RN2NNO, which breaks down to:
Radon- the heaviest noble gas. You know, the gas which creeps out of your basement? It's got a half life of about 1600 years.
Nitrogen- When mixed with oxygen and subjected to electric sparks, it forms nitric oxide (NO) and then the dioxide (NO2).
Oxygen- Oxygen is very reactive and oxides of most elements are known. It is essential for respiration of all plants and animals (unless they're smoking) and for most types of combustion.
Compainies Brown & Williamson and RJR are currently developing cigarettes like Accord, which use this special lower-nitrosamine tobacco. The tobacco is cured with a special process that inhibits the formation of nitrosamines. This is in no way supposed to promote safer or more glamorous smoking, since smoking one of these gems looks a little ridiculous because you must insert the cigarette into the electric lighter in order to smoke it. Picture a gorgeous model doing this. Or a tracheostomy patient for that matter.
So, if you want to participate in this new and wondrous marvel of modern technological advance in nicotine, you'll have to fork over fifty bucks and forego a weekend's (or a night's bar-hoppping) to purchase the special lighter, which 'eats' the ashes away. You also might not look your sexiest whilst smoking these, either, but hey- at least you can feel better about smoking near your children!
Kindest regards, smokers!
Progenitor
Naturalistic Evolution is the belief system that the universe began by itself, with God creating the first one-celled organisms, which, with God's guidance evolved into the human of today.
The development of the human outside of any kind of natural non-manufactured environment forces it to become more dependent on technology. Humans tend to develop new kinds of technology to further something they like to call 'convenience' and 'modernity'. Their technology allows them to create the different kinds of modern lifestyles humans prefer outside, or rather inside from nature. This is their motivation to move away from outside contact. For example, modern automobiles provide the maximum convenience when humans want to travel to most places. Humans don't seem to realize that their 'convenience' only occurs inside the vehicle, where they are shielded from the environmentally hazardous wastes and noise expelled by the machine on the outside. Convenience is a large part of modernity, and the humans believe it is essential for them to experience such convenience at the cost of the environment. They even seem to accept this practice at the financial, mortal and ethical cost of their fellow human, with behavior such as introducing corporate dependency into third-world countries.
Humans also prefer to replace real-life experience with fabricated experience. One example is the way they replace naturalistic experience with artificial experience of nature. Television is the human's most celebrated way of replacing and projectiong these naturalistic themes and images back into their lives. The projection of environmental images for educational purposes, like on public access or specialized channel stations is one way humans do this. Said means of 'educational activity' is oxymoronic to its purpose, since TV-watching is sedentary at best. This would make sense, since it also fulfills the human's dependence on light, of which television sets provide artificially, and with maximum convenience.
Living according to this principle, the growth of dependency on technology for survival will increase the humans' need to further separate themselves from its natural environment, the Earth. However, following the naturalistic method, humans will also develop closer relationships to this technology via God's supervision. This would imply that this process is accepted by God, since was by His hand the process developed in the first place.
Progenitor
YOU DO NOT look like those people in the personal ads.
Those people in the television ads ARE NOT the characters they play on TV in real life.
Women in fashion ads ARE PAID to look the way they do. Otherwise they would not be paid to look the way they do. They would simply be normal, JUST LIKE YOU AND ME.
Dancing M&M pieces in ads on TV will not transport you back to the 60's, no matter what age you are when you tear open a bag of M&M's.
Black is an image
White is an image
Success is an image
Sexy is an image
Pleasure is what is desired
Convenience is what is desired
Comfortability is desired in our images of ourselves
And,
These images are sold back to us everyday on mass scales. TV says, if one is black, then either look black or look like another commercialized culture. And no matter what image one decides to be, one doesn't necessarily look anything more like a human because it is the image one wantsto be seen as which is in the forefront of how that person thinks. Then, that person and others see them as that image, somehow intensifying their personal worth or likeability. The majority of people are willing to do this. Every person needs some kind of identity to construct, and the advertising machine attempts to do this for them. But, are the value systems which set these examples as dialectic as they seem? From what TV teaches, is it speculative to assert that black children grow up thinking that the only career choice they have in this world is sports, given that this is a dominant paradigm on TV? Or for white people to think that black people can and will hurt society from old, begrudged racism? It is good for everybody to think it's better to have actual, real Mexicans working at Taco Bell because it somehow magically makes the food more authentic?
Television's pseudo-realities make us experience amneisa of the real.
If the majority of people look, shop, eat and consume just like what the unity machine tells them, then they will continue to do so, and they will do it until they are convinced they live in TV's false utopia of a global culture. However the creators of these brainchildren present things to make their agenda less ominous, like television news shows, which seem to inform us, but instead replace individualized experience and knowledge of the world around us. That is a TV news show's real agenda.
1. TV projects fantasy worlds, which inspires physical inactivity. Perhaps it is the low-powered x-rays which help this physical sedation?
2. In this state, it is much easier for people to succumb to any ideolgical systems, value systems and images immersed in latent content projected, and therefore become more easily convinced that their needs must be satisfied.
3. People are fed disinformation on a mass scale via TV. Disinformation is untrue information intentionally spread in order to disorder any truth. Information that comes from TV is sent to millions of people at one time. This, in turn, means that this TV-information becomes standardized knowledge, or in other words, everybody knows that black people are only good at sports because this is what TV tell us about black people.
In practicing these systems, habits begin to form. This is expropriation of knowledge.
4. People start believing these cultural myths when this expropriation of knowledge occurs. Television fantasy worlds actually take people's value systems, cultural beliefs and so forth through the power of its sovereignity as a mass disseminatior. This includes everything from the logical and academic systems to the outright trivial and philistine content on TV, however it is the logical and academic systems of information and knowledge that seems dialectic enough to take for its value. This is simply not so.
This is a stimulating article from the Project For A New American Century's website about US Dominance for Peace.
A reaction to a National Geographic Magazine article on surveillance and control.
"Watching You", by David Shenk.
National Geographic Magazine, NOVEMBER 2003.
note: I read the article in the magazine form. Here is the link to an excerpt of the same article online.
_Progenitor
At a time when rhetoric about national security in America is as mentioned as the word 'the', National Geographic Magazine publishes an article about the new modern global craze for surveillance. Indeed, preventing crime should be a service best left to the experts, putting up the cameras. This article explains in a simplistic, seemingly neutral stance that the cameras are already up, and we have already been, and are being watched.
For the most part I enjoyed reading this article, not only because it mentioned the Panopticon (one of my favorite analogies for surveillance control), but also because I took pleasure in scoffing every time the author referenced the 9/11 terrorist attacks (7 times in as many pages). In a story about how the many, varied ways we as a global society are becoming more obsessed with watching ourselves technologically, it didn't address issues about how this specific observationalist behaviour shapes people's outlook on public spaces, privacy and power of corporations to observe anyone within a surveillance camera's range. Rather, the overall momentum of the article was certainly to inform the average literate American, but it also unquestioningly emphasized fear's omnipresence as a light-hearted caveat to balance the wonder factor. Of course, this is a non-profit, status quo publication (with quite a bit of mega-corporate sponsorship ads inside, btw) which does its duty to feverishly inform the masses of global studies. It even printed an avid reader's letter from Eugene, Oregon. Where the hell is Eugene? Good thing this is not college. Even though Nat'l Geographic is a non-profit mag, I believe it is catering to the value system currently in place about the world we live in, and are viewed living in. But I'll get to that soon enough.
The author's stance was since the wake of a post-9/11 America, we have got ourselves up in a hussy-fuss with national and regional security. The terrorists shot us in the back, so to speak, and now we're scared. We're trying harder and harder to subvert crime, criminals and now terrorists with technology. Yet the author, a Mr. David Shenk, fails to investigate how such scrutinizing surveillance is a mindfuck. I mentioned beforehand that Shenk touched on the concept of the panopticon, the famous prision structure which transcends all observable control to the guard tower. All the cells are in a donut-shaped structure, and in the center of the hole is the shaded-windowed guard tower. It is built this way so every inmate in every cell knows they could be observed at any time: a mindfuck. The point of this prision design was to exert distanced control over the prisoners and place them in a reality of psychological warfare against what they percieve as the threat of surveillance through involuntary submission of their privacy. Or, the way your employer can monitor every call, email or internet transmission is waving your right to privacy in exchange for the security of your job, for example.
But surveillance is a mutated double-standard. We currently live in the age of surveillance for things like entertainment, establishing fear/tolerance issues we shouldn't be having makes it a triple-standard. Reality-TV shows are surveillance-turned prime time, and somehow convince us that watching beautiful people get tangled in situational webs of mistrust by the show's producers and psychiatrists (often the same mental health doctors which aid the producers in exploiting their contestants, then stroke these contestant's damaged egos in exit interviews) is positive programming, but contradict the notion that surreptitous surveillance is not good. Somehow, irony acts as blinders to truth and as an excuse to tolerate them. That's a mindfuck. Once again these shows, akin to the article, make us at once fascinated with these technological abilities to observe the once unobservable, whether for profit or for securitry, yet also feed us the line that we are involuntary to their control to watch whatever we do. In other words, new technological advencements in surveillance will definetely make the streets safer whether or not this was post 9/11 America, but their banal presence empowers a faceless entity which, if confronted would exclaim, "Pay no attention to the man behind that curtain!"
I was uncertain as to exactly how to ingest the following pictorial segment of Shenk's piece. Oddly enough, it was at this point I reminded myself of the Microsoft, Toyota, Ford, Shell Oil, Honda, Bank One, GMC, Intel, Rolex, a GE-sponsored television show about fighter pilots, a pharmeceutical ad, Gateway, KIA, Allstate Insurance, State Farm Insurance and Energizer battery ads in this non-profit magazine. The editors printed a large-point type inside a double-page spread of the Menwith Hill surveillance radio towers (for monitoring ordinary telephone and email transmissions in a secret program known as Eschelon) which says, "What (George) Orwell did not prophesy in his novel 1984 was just how pervasive surveillance would be in free societies." To myself, this is either sarcastic juxtapositioning or a bona fide statement, of which it is difficult to determine. If that was meant to be sardonically sarcastic, it fulfills its purpose dutifully and I commend the inventor of the joke. But if that was a serious pov, it's just the line of ironic mindfuck rhetoric that relies on the consumer's ignorance of how America and many other great world powers are these 'free societies' they claim they are to perpetuate this qualm. But the fear-basing doesn't stop in the United States, it covers the earth. Shenk uncovered that Great Britain and several other European countries have implemented such intense surveillance systems, people are calling surveillance the "fifth utility, joining water, gas, electricity, and telephones as an essential public service."
To myself, this sounds like the mindfuck line again. And after a little bit of digging, I found that 67% of the television vein of National Geographic is owned by Fox Cable News Group, under Ruppert Murdoch's empirical News Corporation. A New York Times article here describes a little more of this, and this article from the Atlantic should fill you in about Murdoch. But just because Murdoch's fingers sink even into the glossy National Geographic makes me wary of the latent content. His involvement just proves my point that we should not unequivocally take in the 'news' of the mass media to educate us. Shenk is not a puppet for Murdoch, but he doesn't deviate from Murdochian dissemination of information, which is: information disseminated on a mass scale, information originating from a single source, whic in turn establishes an illusionary, informational symbiosis that creates the status quo. It would make sense to me that Shenk wouldn't mention or even slightly infer that our administration knew the terrorists responsible for the 9/11 attacks were casually videotaped at their respective airports. To do so would not necessarily obscure the value system of appropriate or inappropriate surveillance; it would damage the corporate image and go against the grain of that machine,
and that's how the mindfuck gets you.
My advice? I'm not sure. I've chosen to emancipate myself from television and mass media products (they are products). I've studied Mander, Ang and others about media history. I've always had a sinister feeling from lurching ads, from the hypnotic glow of the tube and from the fantasy worlds they create. None of us live in these worlds they say we can escape to. Honestly? Reading Nat'l Geographic makes me feel the same as when I watch TV- when I read and read and don't take anything away from it except mass information everyone else is getting. Even the photos, as spectacular as they are, are like the fantasy worlds that the TV screen blinks.
Tootles,
PROGENITOR
By Rebecca
There's a new twenty-dollar bill now in circulation. Our government spent a ridiculous sum of money on an ad campaign to 'educate' businesses and the general public on the improved security features of this bill. The official website (www.moneyfactory.com) walks you through each of the changes in security, but leaves out an important detail about the new plastic security thread. It has a microchip embedded in it, 0.4 mm square, about half the size of a grain of sand. Developed by a Japanese corporation, who sold the rights to a Malaysian manufacturing corporation, the RFIC (radio frequency identification chip) costs ten cents to produce, is thin enough to be embedded in paper, has no batteries, and will respond wirelessly when signaled with an id code. It can be placed in banknotes, clothing labels, bullets, humans, etc. An earlier version of this same chip is currently available for your pets.
With this technology, it will be possible to track where our money is spent. Stores will know how much money you have to spend the minute you walk in the door. Your particular bill could be rendered invalid at a keystroke. In light of our government's recent crackdown on freedom (Patriot Act, Ashcroft's Dope War) and the so-called "global war" on terror, the possible uses of this technology to further infringe upon our privacy and rights are frightening. How far will our government go in the name of security for America's dollars, for the American populace? We are currently in more danger from our own government than we are from any outside source.
The next time one of the new bills comes your way, do yourself and the rest of us a favor...nuke 'em. That's right. Place the bill in your microwave for 30-45 seconds to deactivate the chip. For those of you who don't own a microwave, visit the one at your local convenience store. You can make a difference.
You'll never guess what happened when these people
got in in this van on November 28th, the busiest shopping day of the year.
The video is coming soon....
