What a World

Actual headline for a story on the BBC: "Sex attacks blamed on bat demon."
Nice.

On the Bright Side

So life's been kind of up and down recently (admittedly more down than up for the last week or so), but it's important to keep looking around for the good in life. To this end, I have noted a couple of breakthroughs in the last few days that are worthy of mention. First, Wake Forest won a basketball game. Against an ACC school. That beat us in football. Happy. Second, somehow delegates managed to get North Korea to agree to disarm its nuclear weapons program. To be sure, this does not mean that the story is over; it is unlikely any change will come any time soon and there is almost certainly going to be many roadblocks along the way. But at least there was a handshake. Same goes for a global summit on global warming, which apparantly has also reached a deal. Who knows if anything positive will actually come from any of this, but when life's tough, it's good to at least see some positive signs and these are issues that have been charactized by gridlock for years. I for one am encouraged.

For All the Nappers Out There

Click here.

Alarm Clocks

I had to write a speech for my rhetoric class arguing something absurd and imitating the style of Gorgias' Encomium of Helen. The result I now submit for your approval. Do let me know if you are convinced and have a plan of action to implement change.

Mankind has always struggled to find the balance between the desire for technological advances and the need to control the power those advances bring. The debate continued just last week on our very own campus, when embryologist Keith Campbell referenced his experience cloning Dolly the sheep while talking on the theme “What Can We Do and Should We Do It?” Since it is man’s responsibility to control the power at his disposal and wield it for the common good, it is necessary to constantly examine whether or not the “advances” of the past do indeed further human progress or instead unnecessarily limit our potential. And so it is with this mindset that I examine a long accepted piece of our modern world in order to pronounce its uses unworthy in light of its cumbersome drawbacks. The answer to the question, “Can we control exactly when we shall wake up each morning?” is most definitely yes, but for too long we have left the question “Should we?” woefully unexamined.
I stand before you now, alert and awake, thanks to the precisely-timed cacophony that issued forth from my alarm clock this morning. I can imagine many of you arose under similar circumstances; we all know the routine. We each find ourselves most every morning asleep in our beds, resting, dreaming and sorting out our thoughts from the previous day. At a predetermined hour, our pleasant slumber is suddenly and unceremoniously interrupted by some form of loud noise. Some of us are met by the sound of the radio, others by songs from iPods or other music players, and yet others by that infernal “beep beep beep” that I believe we all know well. There are only two possible responses: either we accept the automaton’s challenge and rise to meet day or we lash out in anger, slapping the snooze and silencing its sound, at least for a short while. Eventually, we rise at the time we decided upon the night before.
But is this all a good thing? It seems that throughout history man’s greatest suffering has been the result of attempts to impose artificial arrangements over the natural order of things. Is not the current healthcare crisis a product of obesity stemming from unnatural ingredients and cooking methods in food, as well as an unnatural tendency by many adults to avoid exercise? Was not the scourge felt by many under communist and other authoritarian economic systems the result of an attempt to impose unnatural controls over the free-market economies which naturally propagate when governments cease their meddling? Similarly, alarm clocks, which wake us up each morning before biological and situational circumstances would dictate, impose an unnatural order which causes us to settle for less than our maximum potential. Alarm clocks are the fetters which bind us to an unnatural time schedule which stifles our creativity, unfairly favors certain corporate interests, destroys our natural friendships, and leaves us hopelessly addicted to an unforgiving cycle.
Computers have revolutionized every part of the modern life. The effect on the workplace has been especially pronounced. In bygone times most of the world farmed, worked in factories, or did menial number-crunching jobs that were necessary for the working of society as a whole. But the rise of computers that process data millions of times faster than humans and machines that construct items faster and with more precision has negated the need for such jobs. The simple, repetitive jobs of yesterday are no more; in their place are vocations that require one to use improvisation and most importantly, creativity. Friedman argues in his best-selling book, The World is Flat that the jobs of tomorrow will go to the individuals who can use their creativity to come up with new ideas to solve problems and invent new products for consumers. So in order to compete in the new world, we must maximize our creativity. And when is the human mind at its most creative and most fertile? In the early morning hours, just before waking, when we have our most vivid dreams. If you are like me, the only dreams which you remember are the bizarre, wacky, and sometimes silly dreams you have right as you are about to rise. For most of us, these dreams represent the rare moments when we are truly able to “think outside the box.” But alarm clocks carelessly interrupt these moments of inspiration, thrusting our minds back into the mundane world of our morning routines, where we squander our precious ideas thinking about the coming day and what we shall eat for breakfast. Thanks to the alarm clock, we shall never again recapture these epiphanies, for even if we hit the snooze button we cannot return to our dreams. Who knows what untold fortune mankind might have achieved by now, what new ideas might have come to light, had only we not awoken too quickly from our slumber!
Alarm clocks not only rob us of new ideas, they force us to forsake a natural idea that we have revered, especially in this country, for centuries: fairness. Fairness is one of our founding principles, especially in regard to matters of finance. It was in the name of economic fairness that the Founding Fathers declared independence from Britain and taxation without representation. Though the abuse is more subtle than the Stamp Act, alarm clocks betray the interests of equity just as much by favoring certain corporate interests. For after we wake up we must find some artificial means of perpetuating our consciousness. And to what means do we turn to achieve this end? We turn to coffee, or tea, or Mountain Dew, or some other type of sugary or caffeinated beverage. We may or may not take pleasure in the consumption of these drinks, but we almost always justify their use by saying we need them to wake up, or, if consumed later in the day, to stay awake. Thanks to the alarm clock, we have enslaved ourselves to a host of energy drinks and caffeine supplements. And who benefits from this bondage? The corporate owners of these products most certainly stand to gain. This comes at the expense of the makers of other products which are prized for the pleasure they bring us more than their utility in keeping us awake. Alarm clocks unfairly favor the makers of these products by forcing us to go to bed and rise on an unnatural timetable.
The previous assessments of the perils of the alarm clock affect society as a whole, but the most tragic effect of alarm clocks affects is especially pronounced for the people in this room. What, after all, is more meaningful in life than the bond of friendship? Whether romantic or platonic, there is nothing more natural or more pleasurable than the companionship of a true friend. Perhaps the most basic form of friendship is the type shared by living companions, for we must by necessity, at least to some degree, make friends with our roommates; the amount of time we are compelled to spend together dictates at least cordial dealings. But alas, alarm clocks strive to rob us of even this basic virtue. Those in attendance surely know the inevitable conflict that arises when one roommate must wake up before another. The alarm clock’s infernal racket is not constrained to the hearing of the intended target alone, but rather all who live together are disturbed by its sound. Whether the resentment is stated or kept quiet, the result is always the same. Alarm clocks drive a wedge in our relationships; they turn us against each other.
Perhaps now you are ready to see the alarm clock for what it truly is. Take a moment and suspend your understanding of the alarm clock as merely a machine and consider the scenario in a different manner. Merriam-Webster’s Medical Dictionary defines a drug as, “something…that causes addiction, habituation, or a marked change in consciousness.” Is it not clear that this is a perfect description of the effects of alarm clocks? Alarms force us to wake up early, markedly changing our consciousness, and therefore causing us to nap during the day to compensate for lost rest. This, inevitably, makes it much more difficult to fall asleep at a proper time the ensuing night, making the alarm clock that much more necessary the next morning. It is a vicious cycle that can only be described as habituation and addiction. We find that we need the alarm clock, like an addict needs a narcotic, and inevitably we up the dosage by hitting the snooze so we can get our fix over and over again. That the Surgeon General wastes his time putting warnings on tobacco, which is almost ubiquitously understood to be addictive, while neglecting to label alarm clocks is a true shame that reveals just how strong a hold the addiction has on us all.
So you see, by hooking us on a vicious cycle, turning companions against one another, compromising our sense of fairness and equity, and robbing us of our natural creativity, alarm clocks enslave us all. All this in the name of controlling when we rise in the morning? Surely now you must concede that, rather than empowering mankind, alarm clocks simply oppose our nature and hamper our progress. That we must throw off the shackles of the alarm clock should now be sufficiently clear. How we shall go about ridding ourselves of these fetters I leave to your discretion.

Excellent Point

I'm not big into Facebook, but I like to explore the copious number of groups out there. One such group found me the other day. It's called "Oatmeal Raisin?..." The ... is actually an expletive that I've deleted due to fear of an FCC fine. The basic point of the group is to voice the concerns of citizens who hate looking at a delicious chocolate chip cookie and biting into it only to realize that it is, in fact, an oatmeal raisin cookie. The physical resemblance between the two cookies is astounding, but the disparity of taste and texture is even more pronounced. Clearly the Divine likes to mess around with us sometimes.
For those of you not familiar with Facebook, there's a place in the group's page called the Wall where people can write their comments. One comment caught my eye and I thought I'd pass it along. Ladies and gentlemen, the future of our country:

this should be a plank issue for the republicans to run off of. "no illegal immigration, or those damned oatmeal raisin cookies either! both immigrants and raisins hide amidst the favourable majority, trying to blend in and look all nice. but then, when the truth comes out, and the immigrant/raisin is revealed, etc." cause then the liberals would be all "but i like oatmeal. it's healthy. its organic. etc."

Note the amazing punctuating and the blatant disregard of capitalization rules. But the most remarkable aspect of the post is the writer's ability to promote xenophobia while using the British spelling of "favourite." This man, who is from Winston-Salem, by the way, clearly knows how to think outside the box. I read in our campus newspaper last fall that Facebook was raising political awareness among the nation's youth; here, I believe, we find the proof. Don't you feel good about the voter/elected official of tomorrow?

Landry View

If any of you happen to live in a place which requires you to do your laundry in a community facility, I suggest you check out laundryview.com. It tells you which of your washers and dryers are available at any given time, as well as gives a rough estimate of how much longer it will take for each machine to finish. Plus, it shows you an animated picture of your room with the machines in use shaking in a realistic way. Something about a jiggling machine just tickles my fancy. Check it out.