Youth for Western Civilization

So I was recently accepted to Vanderbilt University. I recently attended a multicultural accepted students recruitment weekend and absolutely fell in love with it. However, last week I encountered some startling news. Vanderbilt has recently approved a new student group, entitled Youth for Western Civilization. The group's motto is to preserve Western culture. In Clint's terms, it's a white pride group. Which, technically is not a bad idea. However, I believe this group has become an excuse for racism. According to one article, the group "sponsored a ‘Koran desecration contest,’ jokingly threatened to distribute small-pox infected blankets to Native American students, posted 'Gays spread AIDS' fliers, and called Latino students and faculty members ‘savages". Now that's not right.

Clint and I discussed this... in depth, and well basically in my opinion, white pride groups should be allowed. if there are Indian pride groups and black pride groups and all sorts of other pride groups, why can't there be a white pride group? The problem with this, is that, in all honesty white pride groups come off as racist because...well white people have historically been blamed for being racist (while all other racist people have somehow been overlooked) and the majority of them actually are racist. I also....I know I'm beginning to rant, but hey this stuff is interesting...started to think about the definition of white culture. We all know about black culture which isn't dependent on religion at all, and I for one know of a whole lot of Indian culture that isn't dependent on  religion. What is white culture? I'm sure it exists, but somehow I feel like it's never promoted in any way. Interesting question, in my opinion. Honestly, in conclusion, I feel like white culture is always demoted in the efforts to "equalize" other races/cultures/religions. Stuff like affirmative action in current times, or random lawsuits for supposed "racism" are all signs of reverse discrimination in my opinion.  The word racism is definitley taken advantage of nowadays. And yet it's hard to picture people protesting for "white rights...". hmmmmmmm....

Genetically Modified Foods

GMO's are definitley intriguing. They seem to be the perfect solution to the world's problems, yet a lot of people completely disagree with the concept of GMO's.

In my opinion, if we can make plants retain more water, produce bigger fruits, etc, why not?

Several people have a problem with destroying the "natural qualities" of the plant. I'm pretty sure they're not going to have that problem when food shortages become a problem.

We've abused too many of our resources before, only to realize the problems now. Water and Coal are just a few. Do we really want to mess with food too? Why can't we realize the problem in advance and fix it?

I was wondering what some of the costs of GMO's were, so I looked it up. The article below gives a whole list. Besides the safety issues, the others seem like bogus to me.

What do you think?

http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/elsi/gmfood.shtml

5 ways People try the save the World that Don't Work?

http://www.cracked.com/article_17084_5-ways-people-are-trying-save-world-that-dont-work.html

Please read this article.

I found this article both interesting and amusing. I don't know how accurate he/she is, but I definitley do not agree with him when it comes to recycling.

According to the author, recycling is bad because it requires more labor to do? But isn't that a good thing? We always need more jobs. Furthermore, he says that recycling is not necessary because we're increasing the amount of trees on the planet? I'm glad the number of trees has increased, even though I don't know if that's true, but I don't think that's a reason not to recycle. It's always helpful to have more paper, that way we don't have cut down all those trees we plant to make up for the trees we cut down earlier.

As for the organic food, I don't know what to think. What do you think?

Westboro Baptist Church

I'd say one of the biggest challenges of all time has always been acceptance. People just cannot accept it when people believe differently from them.

One of the biggest examples of this is the Westboro Baptist Church.

This church is the proud founder of the two sites: godhatesfags.com and godhatesamerica.com

They stand outside of soldier's funerals, picketting and celebrating the deaths because they believe those who die, deserve it because their sin.

They believe because our nation allows homosexuals, stuff like Hurricane Katrina and 9/11 happen.

this youtube video is probably the most enraging thing I have ever seen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9dD9v2cIMU

All I have to say is it's very important to accept the beliefs of others. Respect for other cultures is just a must. You don't have to believe what they believe, but you have no right to abuse them for their beliefs.

Water, Water, Water

Although I love taking long,warm, steamy showers every so often(usually every day), it's something that I confess I should not do. After this week and the other lectures I've heard on water from Mr. Reardon, I'm slowly beginning to realize the benefits of being efficient with water use. First off, water is essential to life. Secondly, water is either slowly going away, or it's quality is undrinkable. So it is obvious we need to start changing the way we use water. We've been taking our resources for granted, and now we're going to have to change our methods fast before ultimate doom(not to be to dramatic).

Besides the fact that we will ruin the world if we keep using water inefficiently the way we are right now, using water efficiently is also smart financially. One of the LEED schools my group and I looked at during our research had saved $11,500 dollars on water costs annually since they became LEED certified. Moreover, they only had 37 LEED points, which is about half of the maximum points. So, in conclusion, becoming green is probably a good idea and just a tad bit necessary for our survival.