Boourns for Politics
::start rant::I am tired of the following:
1.) Political blogs.
About 80% of the blogs that I surf are based upon some political platform. Conservative, Liberal, the Right, the Left. blah blah blah. 99% are American. Same shit, different blog. NONE of these blogs have anything original to say, it's all the same prejudice and bias and ignorance in subtly different forms. A few may be faintly amusing, but I use 'faintly' and 'amusing' in a very cautious way. Just more thoughtless sheep forcing their blindly accepted hegemony down the collective blogosphere's throat.
Not to mention the uproar over Terri Schiavo. For the life of me I can't conceive of how this has blown to these proportions. Mentions of her and the controversy surrounding her case are EVERYWHERE. It's inescapable, especially on blogs. Yes, there are some moral and ethical issues at stake here - NONE of which are new. These cases occur so often, in such similar forms, and have been politically existent for many years. Why all this hoopla now?
Furtheremore, how come Schiavo's case has received this excess of media attention whereas the Minnesota School Shooting where 9 people were killed has received close to nothing?! Is this old news? Are school shootings now passé? Or is this less important because it took place in a non-white native reserve community?
I'm tired of the fact that these questions are even somewhat relevant. It's sad, it's frustrating, and it's so damn pervasive.
2.) Academic Politics.
So my Thesis Poster Conference (clicky) was on Thursday. It involves making a 40" by 56" inch poster that summarizes your thesis, and as the above pic shows, all the thesis students have their posters on display in the courtyard of the Science Building for faculty and students to peruse for a few hours. I had to stand by my poster for this time and answer any questions from people while also having to give a 10-15 minute presentation of my thesis to two faculty evaluators.
I had found out the day before that my two evaluators were notoriously hard markers. Wonderful, but that's not all: one of the evaluators, let's call him Dr. X, thoroughly dislikes my thesis supervisor and has even attacked her personal life during a meeting. So I basically knew I was going to get a hard time from him. Oh was I mistaken. I got a really hard time from him. He basically reamed me out for 35 minutes, telling me my results were weak, and my conclusions were faulty based on the statistics. He teaches stats, so he spent a good amount of time telling me how bad my stats were. heh. Such a nice fellow!
It was rude, mean-spirited, and completely unnecessary. I'm an undergraduate for fucks sake! Of course I didn't do an analysis of covariance - I don't fucking KNOW how to do one! Yes, it was far from a perfect experiment, but the fact that we managed to pull off some significant results definitely speaks to the relevancy of the manipulation. I was attacked for purely political reasons, and I'm tired of it.
3. (last one, I promise) Relationship Politics.
In friendships and other relationships there can exist those certain unwritten rules - they differ from relationship to relationship, but they're always there. The best relationships involve either very few of these rules, or rules that are explicitly discussed. When there are too many of these rules, the workings of the friendship or other relationships can become far too confusing and frustrating. There are things you want to say or talk about, but you can't because it violates one of those stupid damn rules.
Most of the time I can deal with these minor frustrations, but lately it just seems like it's all piling on top of eachother and driving me up the proverbial wall in the process.
Bah
::end rant::
Listening to: Bohemian Like You - Dandy Warholls
posted by Joanna @ 7:51 PM
14 Comments:
seriously you need to syndicate. i finally find a blog i like and there's no feed?! you can turn on the atom feed in blogger options or use a service like feedburner
lemme know when you do, so i can stay current on your updates.
unless of course this weirds you out. no pressure.
I wrote a post similar to yours. I as well am painfully aware of the bias and overall ignorance of political blogs. I usually want to comment, but just feel it would be useless. People will believe what they want to believe.
Hey Joanna! :)
It's good to have a rant sometimes, and I agree with what you've said. The whole political blogs thing also annoys me, and the fact that everyone needs to tell me their view on Terri Schiavo aswell.
thank you for the comments, rabsteen and shannon. It's always nice to hear :) Shannon: I appreciate the offer, but I think some plans are already underway. heh. Rabsteen: I have no idea what a feed means, I'm quite computer illiterate. I wouldn't know how to use a serveice or anything.
Dan: you're absolutely right. People will definitely believe what they want, it's useless trying to convince them otherwise.
Hi Ian :) Thanks for commenting, and yes, ranting can be quite therapeutic!
Oh my goodness. I can't thank you enough for posting your rant! I remember when I started writing my blog I was tempted to talk about what I had seen in the news, but I'd been in enough forums and chat rooms to see where this can lead. I'm not saying what I do end up putting in there isn't a tad bit political (I admit I use my own morals and principles to monitor my own comments). However I did try hard not to go down the route of "omg I can't believe what - - - said in - - - today" but it seems it's not such an effort anymore. :D
I agree with the discrepancies over news content and as a media/culture student it really struck me how aware people are of how this is done day after day... and so frustrating that so little seems to be done/can be done to prevent it. The real question I find that keeps cropping up in my mind is the idea of a 'global coverage' of media, when physically, do you really think that's possible? I'm slowly becoming quite critical of the ideology of globalisation via corporations and centralised governments, or political movements... but I'm so new to this, I'm still looking to develop my views and ideas before I ever set them down in detailed papers. :)
Well done once again on a really great post!
You seriously haven't been taught how to analyse co-variance?
Boggle.
Now, what *I* think about Terri Schaivo...
I think all blogger blogs have an atom feed at
www.worldofjo.blogspot.com/atom.xml
If it isn't there, then Jo needs to spend a couple minutes looking through the blogger options until she finds the enable atom feed checkbox. Seriously, it's as easy as checking a box.
What I also hate is people who don't think Blog are anything but people writing about their cat dying, or how many times they had a cup of coffee. A friend wrote a great rant http://www.pocketlint.org/mt/archives/2005/04/you_dont_blog_s_1.html which I think sums it all up.
Great post and I happen to agree with you.
What *were* the mnemonic effects of a uridine monophosphate diet on enriched and impoverished rats...?
Thank you, Chorna! And yes, I have also been quite wary of the globalization movement in recent years. It's something that we have to be continually aware of in order to be critical about what we consume.
Blog feed is now linked beneath the blogexplosion icon, btw :)
Hi Mike! I know full well that academic politics is something I will have to continually negotiate. It's unfortunate, as you said, but that's the reality of my chosen field. At least for the next 4 years I'm getting paid to deal with it!
frankybride: I'm glad you asked! Impoverished environmental conditions have been shown to induce memory deficits that mimic those due to aging. We therefore found that long term dietary supplementation with UMP prevented memory loss that is typically seen in impoverished animals. UMP may serve as a new therapeutic tool for conditions of memory loss, such as Alzheimer's Disease.
Joanna, did you happen to see the South Park episode last week? (Maybe shows are on a different schedule in other countries...?)
Anyway, Kenny was in a coma and Cartman went to the Supreme Court and said that he was his BFF and therefore should be allowed to pull Kenny's plug. There was a huge national scandal with TV crews all over the town and the hospital room. At the end the kids all found Kenny's living will and all it said was that he never wanted to be shown in a coma on live TV.
It blows me away that they can do shows that are in such "bad taste" and yet they are so hilarious. Anyway, great post! :)
My blog isn't political at all.
I see the Headline of the up n coming blog marked "Politics" I go find something to do for 30 seconds lol
We get enough sad news and politics on TV ,why oh why have to read it again ?
Nice blog btw :-)
As I sit here thinking about things and how fortunate we are I think of family. Work is hard sure but it's all for an end. I pay too much tax but it is to support those less fortunate I hope. (Otherwise I'll go crazy...) So here we are thanking our stars that we have good food, good friends and good family around to keep us content. We miss you and are proud of you.
We are very well established here now but feel quite blessed to have family around.
Hope all is well with you Jo-Bird
Keep up the good work!
got to love drunken blog comments left by family members ;)
Thanks Uncle-Bob - I definitely have to get out to Calgary to see you all sometime soon!
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