The Phandentium Times

Teen pregnancy is considered an ever growing problem in the United States. There seems to be quite a bit of compulsory education about this in the 21st century. Recently I have been looking into what they teach about teen pregnancy, some of the claims they make got me thinking.

Sure teen pregnancy is something that every teenager should be aware of, but why is the government involved in this too? Well, let me explain what I am trying to get at here. I believe that there is a bigger purpose to this education; something that we aren’t thinking about. Does the United States government really care about our health and well-being? I think not. For example, the government lets the food industry get away with not labeling their food as genetically modified. I would have to argue that they care more about money than our health.

Anyway, look at some of the statistics they teach. They say that if a teenager gets pregnant, the odds say they will not finish high school and they will live in poverty for most of their life. The odds are that the child born from a teen parent will have a higher risk of bad health, life in poverty and becoming a teen parent. What does this mean? It brings me to what I am trying to explain here. Teen pregnancy creates dysfunctional workers (both the parent and child) that will not be able to function in society as well as most others. They say that the United States has more teen pregnancies than any other developed nation. Meaning there is an increasing number of dysfunctional workers.

I believe that education programs give compulsory knowledge to scare people into not having sex at a younger age. Don’t get me wrong, I would have to say that education is a good thing, especially for teen pregnancy. It’s just that I believe that the education schools and organizations provide don’t really help the problem. Not to say that the people teaching the information provided are the ones who came up with all of these claims, they just think they are helping.

Some of the information and statistics they provide can be an exaggeration. For example, I was told that approximately 50% of all surveyed people under the age of eighteen choose abstinence. This is wrong, 50% of the surveyed people under the age of eighteen don’t have sex. When they survey teenagers, it will ask if they have ever had sex. I know this because I have been surveyed before. So basically, this takes advantage of those who just haven’t had the chance to have sex yet. What am I saying? I’m saying that if they are going to teach us what the statistics say, then at least don’t stretch the truth. At least they don’t make claims as ridiculous as those in drug education.

In short, I am saying that teen pregnancy prevention is a failed attempt to make sure that society can still function as a whole everywhere. People are educated about teen pregnancy not to help others, but to allow society to function. Education is a good idea, but the education provided is just a bunch of absurd scare tactics.

Today (March 11, 2008), Google successfully acquired the advertising company known as DoubleClick. An offer was made around April of 2007, however it was only approved just recently. This was not covered by the news due to the fact that the original proposal for an acquisition was already heavily covered. This is just one step towards an internet monopoly. Google has been doing a good job with this so far, but what does this mean for us? Well, Google keeps eliminating competition as time goes on. Corporations such as Microsoft and Yahoo! can barely even compete with Google’s extremely famous search engine and advertising services. Google holds majority of the search engine market, the rest is way too spread out for competition.

Once competition is eliminated, there is no need to improve anymore. That’s how a normal monopoly works. This doesn’t seem to be the case from my perspective. Google continues to improve and create new things which can be considered innovating. Technically speaking, competition against Google is possible. But if Google stops improving and stays the same, possible competition could crop up at any time.

However, being a monopoly draws in a hefty amount of money. With that money, it can silence the endorsements of competition and buy out those who compete. Though Google seems to somewhat implicate the support of free speech, there still seems to be a little bit of controversy. This mostly circles around the removal of results upon request from China’s government.

Google has acquired quite a few services/businesses for the past seven years. When I look at the ever expanding Google, one word rings through my head, Standard Oil.

I currently go to a school which doesn’t necessarily follow the traditional high-school methods. It’s actually a public charter school where basically we pretty much work on our own time and learn at our own pace. As long as we are being productive, we are all good.

Today, a few students and I had the chance to visit a regular public school.  We drove over there and I am in a little bit of a shock. Maybe it’s the fact that I go to a different kind of school, maybe not. But there is definitely something fishy to it. The place was sort of a bland gray, with some drawings on walls which somewhat defined school pride. Students move from class to class according to a loud tone that goes off every hour or so. This probably sounds like a normal school correct (disregarding the bland gray color)?

Maybe this sounds a little different now that you’re reading it. When I took that single step into this school, one word rushed through my head like cold water, “communism.” It does sort of sound like a communist state doesn’t it? People moving accordingly, short periods of time to consume food and re-energize to continue the accord movement, a general well-rounded order, at the same time everybody loves the ongoings and takes pride. They don’t question at all. What happens when you disobey? Well, then it gets serious. I know for a fact that in every school, if you are insubordinate, than you will be punished. It may be a little lenient with some teachers or schools, but in the majority there will be “justice.”

The schools themselves have become a system of control. Education rates have been going down every year in order to dumb us down. We learn to respect and do what authorities tell us. Sometimes we have to wear uniforms. It’s there to put you in your place. Note that schools with high amounts of insubordination end up with majority of students graduating (or dropping out) and living in poverty. It’s become a system to teach us how to function in society as a whole.

Next post, I will elaborate more about modern education systems in the United States.

Windows XP has been a very popular operating system over the years. Many people prefer Windows XP over it’s successor Vista. It remains one of the most popular operating systems in it’s time and a lot of software is compatible with it.

Well, around last week a friend of mine had to re-install Windows XP. He had a legitimate license, so we went ahead and torrented a copy of Windows XP. It’s legal after all right? After another friend of mine installed drivers and necessary software, he decided to get Windows activated. Doesn’t seem like much of a hassle right?

Well, it turns out the torrentted copy of Windows installed itself with it’s own serial and we all forgot about it. We open up the Windows Activation window and try to change the serial, alas it does not work. After a bit of thought, I attempt to activate Windows over the phone using the current serial. I went past the automated sequence and got to a representative.

They ask a bit of information about the installation-ID generated on the computer. I gave them the huge installation-ID and they proceeded with asking questions about the installation disk. I lie and tell them exactly what they would want to hear. They then gave me the activation key and Windows was activated. This also seems to work on other Microsoft products as well, such as Microsoft Office.

What does this mean? It means that Microsoft has yet another hole which they were unable to cover. After all the time they spend in order to prevent piracy, it seems that there’s still ways around it. They really need to put a lot of consideration and testing into everything and not just put things out there. I’ll be emailed Microsoft about this issue, and I hope to get a response soon.

We’ve come to the point where the internet is so advanced that the potential for anything is almost limitless. When I looked into Psych Desktop I thought, “there is a lot of potential in this application, it really puts a good light on web applications.” Psych Desktop is an open source web desktop which has been in development for about a year and a half. The application is made by none other than psychcf, the guy who hosts my website.

Psych Desktop is well coded, though there are a few bugs and whatnot. Though it isn’t the best of web desktops, it certainly has a lot of nice features. The main theme of this desktop looks like a cross between Unix and Windows XP. There are some key things that it misses; like the lack of a complete terminal and better integration with objects outside of the desktop. There are also a few problems regarding using your own account within Psych Desktop.

An interesting application indeed

However, it keeps a decent array of tools such as a text/html editor, a web browser/email client, an rss reader, a customizable interface and much more. Considering that there hasn’t been extremely extensive development on this application (unlike others) it is really well put together. The one thing that I liked the most about Psych Desktop is the fact that it adjusts to any size you want it to be. So for instance, if I want to make the window containing Psych Desktop shorter, it has no problem with that and it will self-adjust so you can still complete tasks within the desktop without the hassle of scrolling unlike some other desktops.

Hopefully, there will be further development with this application. I really want to see more in it, there is a lot of potential and I can see this one day being a well-known web 2.0 application.

External Links:

http://www.psychdesktop.net/

Recently I came across an old game I bought quite awhile back. It’s called Shogo - Mobile Armor Division (sometimes abbreviated Shogo - MAD). This game is of “first person shooter” genre and was releasd around 1998 close to the same time Half-Life was released. It never received a community base as big as games such as Quake. There was a pretty dedicated community running for awhile, but it eventually died down. Today, there is hardly an active community and few people play on the extremely minimal amount of servers.

This game was developed by the same people who brought us games like F.E.A.R. and The Matrix Online. The game itself was really well made and I am surprised that there is not a lot of support out for it. In early 2006, I used to get together with a bunch of friends and play Shogo during times like lunch during school. Multiplayer is quite fun, though not like some of the modern FPS games we play these days. It’s available for both Linux and Windows. You can find some screen shots here.

Shogo is quite unique, in this game you can play in a mecha-like war machine as well as fight on foot. I particularly like it because of the very unique weapons and good game play. The online gameplay is arena-esque, though there are quite a few default multiplayer maps which are quite large. The way multiplayer is played is quite unique and not like other games.

You may ask why I am talking about this game. Well, I like the game itself, and I don’t want to see such a good game die an undeserving death. I want to try and get a few people active into this game and hopefully give it somewhat of a pulse again if possible. If you wish to inquire more information about *cough* this game, then feel free to contact me.

We slowly but surely progress through the new year. But what’s in store for the Economy in the United States? As it’s predicted, 2008 will be a good continuation of this decade and will shine a light on the standpoint of the next decade. There should be good growth and a stronger international market.

Oil seems to be a huge problem. It goes down, then it goes back up. If you didn’t know by now, oil finally reached $100 /barrel on the first trading day. The market seemed to have come off of it’s low prices when the Federal Reserve suggested that it might cut interest rates further (Reuters). Countless companies and businesses are highly dependent on oil. As prices increase, companies pay more. Meaning that they may have to raise the price of their product.

Close to a year ago, the price of oil was around $50/barrel. Prices reaching this high didn’t seem possible. However it did reach a bigger number over a good period of time. It has been considerably high, if you compare the lower prices of late last year to the early stages of 2007. Though we have reached the third digit, it won’t necessarily impact the American people until oil reaches even a greater price. It won’t be long until we reach that number.

Many years ago, oil was extremely cheap and efficient, there was no need to invest in alternative energy just yet. We did not see things such as global warming, price increases, bad dependencies. Today, we have to deal with such a problem. As prices increase, there may be a greater demand for clean renewable energy.

This may sound a little extreme, but I’d say that the increase in price may help us with the fight against global warming.

Refrences:

Reuters Wed Jan 2, 2008. “US STOCKS-Market opens 2008 lower on oil, weak factory data” Available here.

Monsters and Critics News Jan 3, 2008. “Oil reaches 100 dollars a barrel: new record” Available here.

MSNBC Jan 4, 2008. “Oil prices fall back from $100 barrel” Available here.

We are now as close as we can get to the year 2008. Tonight, most of us will be out celebrating the new year. Though, I hope you do consider what happens during a new years celebration. There will be a higher ratio of drunks driving tonight, so make sure you watch out. Watch out for law enforcement too, you may find that most of the cops will be out on the streets watching everybody.

As we progress into the new year, always consider what’s going to happen. Nothing is really going to dramatically change over a few days, you will see progressions happen later on through the year when you don’t really think about it as a new year anymore. Some changes may happen, but they wont be big.

There will be plenty of surprises in 2008. There have been predictions for ups and downs in the market. Oil is always a mystery. I personally think it’s going to go back up to $100/barrel sometime next year. If you plan on buying stocks, don’t just go by what the estimates will be, make sure you do some extensive research before buying.

Theres always the whole thing about the war in Iraq. Personally, I’d say that the United States wont withdraw their troops. But they will slowly come back one by one. There’s also the promising presidential elections in the United States coming up. Soon enough, Presidet George Bush will finally be gone. But that wont be until the beginning of 2009.

Today’s the day where we join our hands together, sing in joyous harmony and . . . shop. Today’s that special time of of year where many major stores and shops lower their prices dramatically in order to get rid of unnecessary items that will most likely not be sold in the future. Most of the items sold are just Christmas items that weren’t sold before Christmas time. This stuff can go up to 90% off. Stores usually make little or no money off these items sold, but it’s generally it’s better than just throwing the items away.

During clearance day, there are also items sold that are not directly related to the holidays. These items are better left as presents. In most cases, people won’t buy these items after the holidays due to the fact that they are either too expensive, or not very popular.

However, people tend to buy items more often when prices lower. In a clearance day, items are tagged with different rates, there really isn’t a fixed rate as to how much the price lowers. So the shops may be making enough money to get by when selling non-Christmas items.

Shops like Wal-Mart already have prices lower than normal retail stores. When prices lower even further, it makes it more difficult to actually make money. Therefore, the rates will differ than that of other stores. Stores such as these may also gain popularity due to the lower prices.

It’s that time of the year again, the holidays. As all of us well know, everyone and their dog is out right now crowding the shopping centers and stores getting those last minute presents for those whom they didn’t think was importan– forgot. Anyway, as you go about shopping in those malls and what is it that you see? Why, none other than the news. The paparazzi seems to cover most everything these days. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but you cannot always trust what the media is telling you. At one point, you may sit down to dinner watching a news channel and say, “Well, that’s pretty interesting.” That changes entirely when they talk about something you know about. All of a sudden it changes from “interesting” to “What the hell? They don’t know what they are talking about.” Yet most still decide to watch their “trusted” news channel oblivious to most media criticism.

Basically, what I’m saying is that people in general should not trust the news media. Take only an abstract of what you see when you watch. At often times, the news wont cover stories that should be covered. Something that questions our government or military is often never talked about. The same goes for schools too. Have you ever noticed that almost no High School history class will discuss the Vietnam War, Hiroshima & Nagasaki, and/or the Korean War?

Why exactly am I saying this? Neither CNN, Fox News, ABC News, or the New York Times covered a story that is considered one of the most noteworthy stories regarding the war in Iraq. You can find the story here. U.S. solders staged mutiny, they refused orders fearing that they may commit annihilation as revenge for the past IED attack. The IED attack staged was covered by most news channels, I don’t blame them. I did a quick search to make sure they did, it’s possible they could have over exaggerated about it; but I never looked into it. What I’m trying to say is, expand your news sources, mainstream media cannot tell you everything. If it doesn’t look good for the government or the military, it won’t be shown. I don’t want to turn this into a battle against right wingers and the media, so I’ll end it here.