America's college students are back and resting at home this week, which is a good thing, because during the long months away they seem to have gone completely out of their minds.
Last weekend, The New York Times' Jennifer Medina reported on the latest bizarre demand on campus: "trigger warnings" to let students know if the text [book] they're about to study will expose them to some version of misogyny or homophobia, so they aren't unexpectedly [re-]traumatized by visions of things that can never be unseen -- like, say, every novel written by a white man before 1960 [Hey, by the way, I'm a privileged white male, but never mind that].
The Harvard Commencement Speech
PC on overdrive: Ali G. (Sacha Baron Cohen aka Borat) gives commencement speech at America's most prestigious university in 2004.
All of this has provoked a torrent of eloquent condemnation from pundits and academics, who worry that our elite universities, in the words of an editorial published in Monday’s Washington Post, are being "impoverished by intolerance."
[This] is a reasonable concern, except that it misses the point. It's not the students' fault that they expect to laze around in a world of ideological comfort. It's totally ours.
There's nothing new about the basic tension between speech and sensitivity on campus. When I was at Tufts in the late '80s, at the height of what we called political correctness [PC], we argued fiercely about whether the military belonged on campus [ROTC] or whether certain faculty members were denied tenure because of their politics. But, by and large, we were primed to have the debate, not chill it. More
How we rule the world:Confessions of an Economic Hitman (John Perkins, Y Audiobooks)
Amber Larson, Dhr. Seven, Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly; Elizabeth Aguilera (KPCC Health Reporter), host Larry Mantle, AirTalk (scpr.org); Seth Macfarlane (Family Guy, American Dad)
Drain bramage, schmrain damage, if a man can get a DUI, I want one, too! (cracked.com)
Drunk without a real-friend's protection (see sutra below). Oh, alcohol! (cracked.com)
Women are drinking more despite the risks
Yum, it's liquid ignorance.
Women in the U.S. are consuming more alcohol than they have in decades past, and they face greater health risks for doing so.
For one, a woman's body has fewer enzymes for breaking down alcohol [a poison from the fermentation (i.e., decomposition) process] and less water weight to diffuse its effects. This means women are at greater risk for liver damage and disease.
(Quagmire/Family Guy) "OMG, but you know you love it," your friends will say. And you have to wonder why you keep "dating" the same types of guys. No one has sympathy for a lush.
To self-sabotage! (Yoshikazu Tsuno/AFP)
Researchers also say drinking increases a woman's chances of getting breast cancer, as studies have shown that alcohol can raise estrogen levels. They also say that the way women are drinking today -- binge drinking, foregoing meals -- is cause for medical concern.
Experts say the rise in "risky drinking" is due to increased social acceptability [from shows like "Sex and the City"], gender "equality" [or the illusion of striving for it], culture and even a preference for hard liquor over beer.
WARNING: Potential trigger as Carrie & Co. do another "Ladies' Night"!
Women are also being arrested [and being sent to prison which, after all, is "equality," too] at an increasing rate for driving under the influence.
A recent report by KPCCanalyzing 20 years of California DMV records shows a significant increase in the number of women being arrested for driving under the influence.
The DMV reports that women made up about 24 percent of DUI arrests statewide in 2011, the last year statistics are available. That's an increase over the 11 percent of DUI arrests in 1989.
WARNING: Sexually suggestive with cartoonish alcohol consumption!
What's behind this increase in alcohol consumption among women? Should more be done to educate women [who are already highly educated and at some level well aware of the hazards and pitfalls] about the dangers of alcohol?
I didn't mean for that to happen. - Another drink?
[Or, like other successful campaigns, do emotions have to be brought into play with emotional appeals, better behavioral models and ideas of what's "cool" and acceptable. Are you a mom, do you drink and drive? Are you single, do you have sex with people you would not have otherwise? Are you a student, do you see a future vomiting in a toilet? Yum! Party on!] LISTEN (16:37)
In the Advice to Householders Discourse (Sigalovada Sutra, DN 31), the Buddha explains the "Six Channels for Dissipating Wealth."
These include drinking alcohol (indulging in intoxicants which occasion heedlessness), roaming the streets at all hours, bad diversions, gambling, associating with the foolish, and idleness.
The Buddha goes further to explain why these lead to ruin. Each has six miserable consequences. Alcohol leads to: (1) loss of wealth, (2) increase in quarrels, (3) susceptibility to disease, (4) loss of reputation, (5) indecent exposure, and (6) weakened intellect.
When roaming the streets at all hours (usually due to drinking), we are: unprotected and unguarded, as is our family and property, and we are suspected of crimes, subject to false rumors, and we encounter many troubles.
What's wrong with "unsavory shows"? We remain restless and agitated, wondering: Where is there dancing, singing, music, recitals, and this and that distraction? We never find inner peace or enlightenment -- even though that's what we say we're searching for. (Entertainment is not wrong in and of itself, only that it takes us away from our quest and leads to financial ruin).
Let's go underage drink! If it's good enough for adults...
What's wrong with gambling? Isn't it just a pleasant pastime to help Las Vegas' economy? The Buddha explains in detail, but here is the biggest one: associating with "the foolish." Any gambler, any wastrel, any drunkard, any cheater, any swindler, any violent person -- in brief,, any "fool" (bala) -- is one's associate and comp. And with friends like that, who needs enemies?
"Idle hands are the devil's helper," grandma says: Addiction to laying around (with the hangover blues) means we are not inclined to put forth effort to get anything done, instead making excuses: "It’s too cold! It’s too hot! It’s too late! It’s too early! I’m too hungry! I’m too full!" Living like this, we leave many (karmically) profitable things left undone. Wealth is left unacquired, and savings dwindle away.
These are just some of the ways of losing money and losing our health the Buddha explained and warned about 25 centuries ago. More
It is not just football but professional sports worldwide -- futbol (soccer), cricket, baseball...
(Brian Tuohy) The Fix Is In -- professional sports matches are rigged for billions in profit. Our sports are Larceny Games: Sports Gambling, Game Fixing, and the FBI
The Fix Is In (Brian Tuohy)
Brian Tuohy (thefixisin.net) is a frequent contributor to the CBS Sports website (bleacherreport.com), where he chronicles sports scandals and conspiracies as stories break. Tuohy has been interviewed by The New York Times, ESPN, Fox Sports, and The Power Hour radio program.
How much of our lives have we spent watching televised sports, attending games, talking (useless babble) about sports, listening to sports radio, checking websites for updated scores and statistics, then taking in SportsCenter or another highlight show at the end of the day?
How much of our thoughts have been consumed with the big upcoming game? How many nights have we stayed awake wondering how "our team" blew that huge lead? How often have we reminisced about that impossible comeback win as if we had played in the game?
How much money have we emptied from our pockets on tickets, DirectTV packages, bets, jerseys, hats, trading cards, autographs, and overpriced salted junk food and beers over the course of our lifetimes?
Rabid Alex Jones talks with author Brian Tuohy about his latest book,
The Fix Is In: The Showbiz Manipulations of the NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL & NASCAR,
which delves into the dark underbelly of professional sports.
What if all that time, emotion, and money was wasted on a lie?
Gambling, Game Fixing, and the FBI
What if the action on the field isn’t what it appears to be? What if we, and millions others like us, have been duped -- outright lied to -- by those franchises we hold so dear to our hearts, all in the name of greedily making an easy buck?
Well, it has been happening. And although our name might not be “Mark,” we have certainly become marks to those running the carnival known as professional sports.
When a win seems too good to be true -- it is too good to be true. When an impossible turn of events changes the course of a game -- it is an impossibility. When an improbable underdog rises to the top like some sort of Hollywood screenplay -- it is a screenplay.
The leagues, hand-in-hand with the TV networks, which pour billions of dollars into professional sports, have fixed their own games to squeeze every ounce of drama they can out of each season and to ensure we remain committed to our sport and glued to our TVs.
TheFixIsIn.net is dedicated to shining a light into those dark corners and exposing professional sports leagues and their athletes for the money-grubbing hypocrites they are. Some may call these sports conspiracy theories. Brian Tuohy calls them the truth. More
Classic East Coast punk rock from VOID: "Organized Sports"
Icelandic bhumi-devi and pop idolBjork's call for Tibetan freedom at a Shanghai concert unnerves Chinese communist officials (Hannah Johnston/Getty Images/Epoch Times).
The smallest nation with a dog still in this fight is Iceland, who plays Croatia on Friday. Now, Iceland has a very small population, and thus a small pool of professional players to choose from. And yet, they have a chance, however slim, of making it to Brazil. That's more than IRELAND can boast.
Yay, we have Saint Patrick's blessing! We have Saint Patrick's blessing! (theworld.org)
The Irish national [soccer] team has already been eliminated, and most Irish fans are already looking well beyond Rio. But not Eoin Conlon.
Over a drink of yeast-contaminated carbs with a Brazilian co-worker in Dublin recently, Conlon started wondering out loud about throwing his support behind ICELAND.
“And we kind of laughed, saying: ‘Well, that’s as close as Ireland's going to get to Brazil. It's only a letter difference. A “c” for an “r.” We might as well be brothers,’” says Conlon. Conlon and his friend work for a digital agency, so they did what comes naturally. They built a website in support of Iceland's soccer team.
Then, they started a Twitter feed urging Irish soccer fans to back Iceland. The campaign is called County Iceland. Ireland already has 32 counties. So, Conlon says, why not make Iceland the 33rd?
“There are only about 320,000 people in Iceland. So if they were a county in Ireland -- I'm calling them the 33rd county -- it would [be] only the fifth-largest county in Ireland. It's incredible the success they've had. And I hope it continues,” he says.
Conlon says the website is just a bit of fun. All a visitor has to do is click a "support" button. LISTEN
That followed the public [sham]ings of several commencement speakers whose invitations had to be rescinded, including such evildoers as [Bush Era war criminal] former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the International Monetary Fund's [bankster] Christine Lagarde, and [insider] Robert Birgeneau, the former chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley.
