My ePortfolio, final edition

http://apseport.weebly.com/

The price of gas is going to go up, so deal with it.

Every time I hear a political debate pop up, the price of gas always seems to come up sooner or later.  For some reason people think that it's the president's fault that oil is a scarce resource and that its supply is quickly running out.  Now just to set the record clear to anyone who doesn't know even the most basic principles of economics; when the is a shortage of a good, i.e. more demand than there is supply, price will go up.  So because we are consuming oil at an ever increasing pace and since it take a couple thousand years for the planet to make just a little bit, we seem to be running out and this is driving prices up through the roof.  We just have to deal with it and get on with our lives, and if it's really that much of an issue trade in your big sedan/ SUV/ minivan for a nice, small, fuel efficient car.  Pretty much everyone else in the world is doing it, can't hurt to give it a shot.

And while we're on the price of things, lets take a nice little tangent and talk about the economy.  Simply put, two years of trying to fix things will not take care of a mess that was eight years in the making.  Not that I think that trying to increase our budget when we are already a couple trillion dollars in debt is a good idea.  But the economy is going to take a while to get back on its feet, and messing around with it is not going to help.  Right now we need stability.  Any and all confidence in the US economy has evaporated along with our country's credit worthiness, and only if the government sees sustained stability will the confidence that the US markets once had ever come back.  Unless foreign investors think that US businesses are a good bet will they ever be willing to give firms the money the need to get back on their feet.  At the end of the day, being impatient won' change anything.  We need to wait.  It's that simple.

To arm or not to arm, that is the question.

By now, I’d assume that all of you are intelligent people who take an interest in what’s going on in the world.  Thus, I also assume that you all know about the rebellion that’s going on in Libya.  And that big question that going through the President’s mind right now, is whether or not to arm the Libyan rebels.  At first sight, it sounds like a pretty darn good idea, after all these are common people who are fighting against an oppressive regime.  Sound familiar?  We, along with virtually ever other country that has been a colony or oppressed at some point in history by authoritarian governments, have pretty much done the same thing.   And since when has the US not jumped in to save ailing countries in their pursuit of democracy? 

And the downside, we may also be secretly supplying guns and whatnots to Al Qaeda.  Oh and because the French are doing it.  Supplying guns that is, so get your mind out of the gutter.  Though in retrospect they probably are doing it too, otherwise they wouldn’t be French.  Anyway and the UN says we can’t do it.  Yup, the UN says we can’t help downtrodden and oppressed people fight against their oppressors.  But we can authorize an air campaign, which in fact is exactly what it sounds like.  And fear of another Osama Bin Laden is preventing the US from taking any concrete action, despite the fact the lawmakers are pressing harder and harder for some form of involvement.  In fact despite the fact that the White House made a decision on military policy in Libya, no one seems to know what it is.  Guess we can do little more than site back and wait.

Our love of the absurd and the ridiculously idiotic

By now many of you would have heard of Fx's Archer and if you haven't you owe it to yourself to watch this ridiculously idiotic but incredibly hilarious sexual spy comedy that parodies everything cool about James Bond but somehow seems totally awesome nonetheless.

As you can see, we have the super spy ( guy in the middle)  the hot other spy ( the girl with the gun)  and various other bumbling characters who make this show a complete riot.  In a nutshell Archer' activities include shooting people, banging women, screwing up missions, screwing women, shooting people who get in his way, having sex with more women and having his ass saved by his colleague Lana (mixed racial girl with gun in the picture), and then making sexually inappropriate remarks about her large hands.

Anyway, my question is, why do we love this utter idiocy.  It's nothing new, people have been ripping on Bond for years.  So why do people watch it every week?  Why does stupidity sell?  Is it because we love living vicariously through these utterly absurd characters or simply for the sake of meaningless laughs?

Auto-tune, it's a WMD.

In case some of you guys don't know what auto tune is, it's a software that "corrects" any inconsistencies in a vocalist's pitch.  So if you're singing a song in a studio and you make a tiny error that's not a big deal, but you wanna make your song perfect without having to sing it all over again you use auto tune.  Unless that it you are a modern pop/rap/hip-hip/any-type-of-music-bought-on-a-large-scale.  And if you lot are wondering why I'm only bringing this up now, considering that auto tune has been around for nearly a decade now just click this link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CD2LRROpph0.  It literally drove me to the brink of madness and only the sound of AC/DC's riffs and Elton Johns voice could bring me back.

Now I honestly think that if a singer can't sing without a computer, then he/she shouldn't be singing in the first place.  And while I think that the use of auto tune here and there, in tiny tiny portions is okay, and sometimes the song is better off for it.  But in recent times it has gone totally out of hand.  I don't think that anyone my age or younger actually knows what a real singer sounds like and if asked to name one they will probably name someone like, well I wouldn't know.

Anyway what I'm trying to say is that, where is the line?  In music produced out of a computer rather than with the artists hands "real" music.  Is a computer a legitimate instrument?  And is there any talent involved in letting your voice be changed by a program?

Free speech for all even if someone gets hurt.

A particular Kansas church has garnered some notoriety for its hateful protests at military funerals.  And during the past week, the Supreme Court ruled that these hateful protests at military funerals were protected by the First Amendment by an eight to one majority.  My question to you all is; is it okay to hurt someone just so you can be heard, and is it legally justifiable?  I am neither condoning the actions of the protesters nor bashing the Supreme court’s decision, in fact I believe that the court got it right. 

The simple fact is that once we start stopping people from saying whatever they want where does it go from there.  I realize that I am beginning to sound like some ridiculous radical whose only voice in the world is on internet blogs.  Oh the irony.  But as someone who has witnessed countless debates and read of dozens of case on the issue of censorship, I must ask; who are we to decide what others get to say?  Who are we to decide what others think?  Where is the line between protection and control.  I do not claim to hold all the answers, but I do think that ,despite what any decent person would think, these hateful, despicable and horrid protests must be allowed to continue.  

Mr. Watterson please come out of retirement.

"Weekends don't count unless you spend them doing something completely pointless."


This is a quote form Calvin and Hobbes, now I couldn't find the strip but I'll try again later and hopefully post it next week.  But I thought this little quote was perfect for this weekend considering that its State Paddy's Day.  But this also reminded me of something a friend of mine said " If you have too much work to do, the only logical thing to do is not to do any work at all."  


And while this quote will make us all laugh and think of the times we had mountains of work and all we did was sit around and do nothing I want to say that it has some deep and highly philosophical meaning behind it but there isn't any and that's what is so great about it.  It's has no real point to it, and that's exactly what it's trying to convey.  And I realize I am now getting to be a bit repetative so I'll leave you all with just that.