Aiding Africa

My Dad is in Africa a lot. Usually about a third or a quarter of the year, he is in Zambia or Ghana, he's a doctor and he does a lot of clinic work there. I don't really have an article to back this up because it's my idea, but I think that since the government now handles student loans, they should cut medical students a giant break on paying back their loans if they agree to go to a country like Ghana and work for a year or two. This would enable medical students to pay off their loans much quicker,and it would also do worlds of good for developing countries. Right now my dad is in Kintampo, a small town in Ghana with a clinic. There is one other doctor there year-round who works incredibly long shifts and is passionately devoted to helping the people in his community. If upon their graduation, medical school students were given a powerful incentive to go into an outreach program, the benefits could be colossal, and it could change thousands, if not millions of lives. There are programs like this now, doctors without borders for example, but in many cases the appeal of getting a great high paying job immediately, outweighs the appeal of saving lives without a fat paycheck accompanying it.

Guns and Butter

Sounds slightly unappetizing doesn't it? Not exactly an entree I would serve to guests.
I decided to research the history of the economic term "Guns and Butter".
This term was coined when William Jennings Bryan resigned s President Wilson's secretary of state. At the outbreak of WWI Chile was the world's priniple exporter of nitrates for gun powder, Chile stayed neutral during the war and fufilled almost all of America's nitrate needs.
A substantial portion of the United States population was opposed to the war, and Bryan joined the anti-war campaigns. The national defense act of 1916 directed "the Secretary of Agriculture to manufacture nitrates for fertilizers in peace and munitions in war at water power sites designated by the President". This was presented by the news media as "guns and butter." Guns representing arms and buter as consumer goods.

Famous quotations using Guns and Butter include;

Joseph Goebbels -"We can do without butter, but, despite all our love of peace, not without arms. One cannot shoot with butter, but with guns."

Herman Göring -"Guns will make us powerful; butter will only make us fat"

Margaret Thatcher-"The Soviets put guns over butter, but we put almost everything over guns."

Love IS sacred

"Marriage is Sacred", is the main anti-gay marriage argument that I have heard. This infuriates me, especially when people say things like, "marriage is a sacred union, and gay marriage would make a mockery of that..".
In a nation where nearly half of marriages end in divorce, I find it ironic that anyone is making accusations about tarnishing the sanctity of marriage.
I am a firm believer that marriages can work 'til death do us part, and I am in no way condemning the entire institution of marriage.What I am arguing, however, is that if two men, or two women, who love each other getting legally joined, just as any heterosexual couple could be, and acknowledging their love, is a violation of the sacredness of marriage, then what are the millions of marriages that end in ugly divorces? If two people of the same gender getting married is a violation, then the marriages that end in years of hurt for both partners and their children are massacres of the sanctity of marriage. It truly upsets me when the main argument that anti-gay marriage protesters have is that marriage is sacred. Marriage hasn't been treated as sacred by the majority of our population for decades, and if we are going to uphold marriage as a sacred joining of two people in love, it should not matter what gender either partner is, or what their sexual orientation is. What should matter is that they love each other and have promised to respect and treasure their spouse, and treat their own individual union as sacred.

Please Pay Attention!

When speaking to the United Nations, most world leaders are limited to about fifteen minutes.
In his first speech in forty years of leadership, Libya's Gadhafi spoke for one hour and 36 minutes. People began to lose interest in his marathon reprimand, charging the UN with inequality (because it has 5 permament members, the US, China, Russia, Britain and France holding veto power, and apparently 'treating other nations as "second-class, despised" countries.')and failure to prevent dozens of wars. As delegates became distracted or disinterested Gadhafi admonished them with a cry of "Please Pay Attention!". At one point during his speech he held up the U.N charter and made a small tear in its corner to express his disdain for the United Nations' decisons. Although I don't agree with Gadhafi, I find his fervor and lung capacity impressive.

By thew way, despite the impressive length of his speech, Gadhafi did not come even remotely close to Fidel Castro's record speech of 4 hours and 29 minutes.

Oh hey,Obama WAS black before the election!

As President Obama pointed out during an interview with David Letterman, "I think it's important to realize I was actually black before the election,",this as a response to ex-President Jimmy Carter's speculation that the recent anti-Obama sentiment was fueled by racism.I agree with Obama,if racism is an issue it has been since he announced his canidacy. The anti-Obama sentiment is typical of any president attempting to bring about change during economic (or any other kind) struggles. I commend Obama for his ability to have a sense of humor in the face of animosity directed at him.

How many people by 2050??

In Thomas Friedman's book Hot, Flat and Crowded, he speculates that there will be more than 9 billion people on our planet by 2050. That is shocking to me. Especially because a majority of that growth will be in areas that are of yet undeveloped, areas which already have incredibly concentrated populations.

The Most Scary Thing I've Seen in a While..

was not Halloween II, although Rob Zombie did go all out and I was fairly horrified. No, even though the thought of Michael Myers busting through my front door with a mask and a knife has been troubling me for the past few days, even scarier still is that before I even hit my forties, the world will be an impacted crowded mess. Well, even more so than it is now. Fantastic, sometime before a massive typhus outbreak wipes out the condensed population of California, I'll be packing up my kids and husband and moving us to the Australian outback, or to Alaska, assuming that our northernmost state is not a god forsaken oil well by then. Needless to say this video didn't quite put me in a positive mood.

All the President's School Children..

As most are aware, President Obama will deliver a speech to be shown to school children tommorow, Tuesday September 8th. What I did not realize about this speech an event which seems to be a positve thing to me, is that many view this speech as Obama trying to brain wash their children.. To me this is kind of ridiculous, that a Presidential speech to elementary school kids would be interpreted as brain washing, or even a negative thing at all. Sure if the children are subliminally asked to join an Obama worshipping cult by puppets I can see how people could be shaken up, and as far as I can tell his speeches will be puppet free. Assuming that Obama sticks to the basic, "Stay in School, Do your best.." it should be a really great thing, and also it will be really exciting for the kids! If we'd had a presidential speech in on TV in one of my elementary school classes, I would have been stoked! I think people need to recognize that this is for the children, and that they need to stop constantly looking for something to be upset about.

Thats Right.. A Pot Blog.

I personally don't get the big deal about legalizing marijuana. To me it seems like a no brainer.. a decision even a stoner could make.. how high are they that they haven't leglized it already? I could keep going but I won't.
I recently read an article discussing marijuana and its rise. Its rise and seeming popularity are exemplified in movies like Pineapple Express, however there are currently serious reprecussions for marijuana posession, as the 872,721 people arrested for marijuana possesion in 2007 could attest to. Many experts have compared marijuana use to alcoholic inbreation, not exactly admirable, but hardly intolerable in society, at least not nearly as bas as the marijuana mania depicted in old films like reefer madness.
Marjuana is a $35.8-billion domestic cash crop. Thats alot of money that the government is letting slide by them without any cut being taken out. In California alone an estmated 3 million people have smoked pot at least once in the past year, that is alot of use and expenditure that the government could be cashing in on. According to one poll, 56% of Californians were in support of legalizing marijuana, and it makes sense! If one considers how heavily the government is able to tax products like cigarettes, with people still smoking muliple packs a day, and then applies that heavy taxation to the billion dollar cash crop that weed has become, that is some serious change the government could be raking in.
Plus keeping marijuana illegal is not keeping people from enjoying it apparently as almost ten percent of California's population is estimated to have smoked at some point in the past year.

That's just some munchies for thought America.

As Dumb as we Wanna be?

Or as dumb as we can be without inconveniencing ourselves?
Either way is no good. As Thomas L. Friedman writes in his book Hot, Flat and Crowded, Americans are the proud owners of the right to be as dumb as we wanna be.
As a nation we are so content with doing the bare minimum to get results, that we have developed a national inclination to take the easy way out, to allow news shows to supply us with opinions as readily as we are supplied with Big Mac's at Mc Donalds, we've become a country populated by people with "drive-through" opinions, mass produced to tell us what to think.
Millions and Millions served, no one particularly fufilled.
People are no longer required to be intelligent or intellectual, or to think for themselves, so they don't. To me it is disquieting that people with the ability to have opinions, don't have anything to say, because they are not required to have anything intelligent to say, they don't get points for knowing what they think, it is as if an opinion and the right to say what you think and feel, was an extra credit assignment, instead of a basic human right.
The real go getters go for it, but the majority are content to slide by.