- Hollow, meaningless change intended to placate the people? Check. No actual change in the power structure and how your repressive nation operates on a daily basis? Check. Yes, it’s business as usual in Myanmar, where a supposedly civilian government took office on Wednesday but little actual change took place because the military, which has ruled for a half-century, maintained its grip on power. There was plenty of pomp and circumstance was Thein Sein, a retired military officer who leads the military-backed majority party in a newly elected Parliament, was sworn in as president. Sein formally replaced the military junta that has been headed by Senior Gen. Than Shwe for the past two decades, but the chances of actual change in the day-to-day existence of an oppressed people is somewhere between zero and -10 percent. Gen. Shwe will remain in power behind the scenes and have the right to override civilian rule by decree, so lots of luck trying to push through any real changes. Ultimately, a nation that has been under military rule since 1962 and ruled by the current junta since 1988 continues to be ruled by that same system. The country may now be called Myanmar instead of Burma, but its governmental system can still be classified as stifling and unfriendly to the basic rights of its citizens. Even when a military-backed party was routed in an election in 1990, the army refused to give up power. Opposition Daw Aung San Suu Kyi was freed last November after spending nearly 15 of the past 21 years under house arrest, but her party, the National League for Democracy, chose not to take part in the parliamentary election held just before her release. The NLD has no representation in the new Parliament and is little more than a lone voice shouting futilely in the desert at this point. But like the rest of us, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and her supporters can get a good laugh out of the supposed culmination of a “roadmap to democracy” that included a constitutional referendum in 2008 and the election last year. No one outside of those already in power viewed that roadmap as anything other than a plan to keep the current system in place while pacifying those demanding change. Evidence of this can be seen in a quick glance at the new constitution, which reserves 25 percent of the seats in Parliament for serving military officers. The military and the military-backed party control about 84 percent of the seats overall, so any chance of passing anti-military legislation is about as high as Drew Carey’s chances of winning a bodybuilding competition. All government ministers and senior judges currently in place were appointed by Gen. Shwe as well, so put another nail in the coffin of potential change. Simply put, Myanmar, different day, same sh*t…………
- Rejection by a member of the opposite sex hurts at any age, but the pain could extend beyond emotional anguish, according to a study led by researcher Edward Smith, a cognitive neuroscientist at Columbia University in New York. Smith and his team discovered that the experience and the memory of getting dumped by a loved one trigger brain regions linked with physical sensations of pain. Because terms like "hurt" and "pain" have long been used across cultures to describe both physical and mental suffering, researchers decided to examine whether the sensations were activating the same parts of the brain. Smith saw a definite link between the two and theorized that vulnerability from rejection “might be why this link evolved between rejection and pain, to make us want to avoid rejection." There is not a large body of evidence suggesting a tie between emotional and physical suffering from rejection and the two phenomena triggering similar pain areas in the brain. Smith saw deficiencies in those studies because they attempted to elicit feelings of rejection in test subjects by telling them they had been excluded from a game or activity, disappointments that would not produce severe feelings of rejection. "We wanted something bigger," Smith said. To recruit participants for their study, Smith and his colleagues put out fliers in Manhattan and placed online ads on Facebook and Craigslist looking for people who had been through an unwanted breakup in the last six months. Forty volunteers responded and their brains were scanned through functional magnetic resonance imaging as they split time between looking at photos of their ex and photos of a friend. During this time, participants were asked to focus on experiences they shared with the people in the pictures. Researchers also place probes on participants’ forearms that could get painfully hot and compared the pain from the emotional trauma to that of the physical suffering. A comparison of the scans from the two types of pain being experienced showed that parts of the brain linked with physical pain also lit up when individuals were remembering bad breakups. "Rejection literally hurts," Smith said. Using their findings, the researchers are now examining possible techniques for easing such mental suffering, including methods that therapists already use. "For instance, one piece of advice when thinking about rejection is to view experiences with an ex-partner as an outside person from a distance," Smith said. "We want to see if this really does help at the level of the brain." Not that everyone reading this doesn’t already subscribe to the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, but the study’s findings can also be found on the journal’s website as well for those looking to infuse a little scientific knowledge into their day…………
- What is the world coming to when a person can't fire up their video game console, pop in their favorite game and slap around some b*tches and ho’s? Why must there always be a group of uptight squares who insist that such games send a bad message to children and should be banned? The latest uproar over a supposedly over-the-top, violent game is taking place over a new Duke Nukem video game to hit the market in June. Plano, Tex.-based game maker Gearbox is set to release the first Duke Nukem game in 12 years and after waiting more than a decade for it, gamers are pumped…….but the Dallas Area Rape Crisis Center is not. The center objects to the game on the account that it serves to perpetuate a culture of violence against women. " We're never going to be able to stop it, as long as these kinds of games, are put in the hands of the public," said Dallas Area Rape Crisis Center Executive Director Jana Barker. First and foremost, it’s important to state that any group or organization seeking to prevent rape and assist victims of a truly horrible crime should be supported and commended. Rape is right behind murder as the worst act one human can do to another and anything that actually perpetuates such an act is definitely to be condemned. The thing is……'Duke Nukem Forever' doesn’t perpetuate anything other than losers with no friends and no social life sitting on their couch, glued to their Wii, Xbox or PlayStation, gaming online with other likeminded losers. Just because players can log on and play as a character who roughs up women doesn’t mean they will seek to replicate those feats in real life. Millions of people play “Call of Duty” every day and I don’t see anyone forming their own battalion, arming themselves with automatic weapons, grenade launchers and surface-to-air missiles and seeking to storm the next town and take it over. Barker doesn’t even have a full grasp of what the game is all about because like the general public, she has only seen a trailer for the game. Normally, groups that campaign against violent video games do so to keep them out of the hands of children, but Barker believes the game is not suitable for anybody. Specifically, she objects to a feature of the game called "Capture The Babe" mode, where users have to kidnap and slap women. "Is this how you want your mother, your sister, your daughter to be treated. Is this the message you want to bring to people that this is how you treat women?" Barker asked. Well, if my mother, sister or daughter ever becomes a fictional character in a video game, then sure, go for it. That’s the beautiful thing about video games; their characters aren’t real and feel no pain. Arguing that these games cause people - especially adults - to change their behavior patterns is a huge, huge reach with no real basis in reality. That hasn’t stopped Barker from calling for a boycott of the game. "If you really believe in violence against women and stopping it and changing our society's view towards women, you have to do it," she said. Unfortunately for her, all her crusade is likely to do is create more publicity for the game and drive up sales even further…………
- Chalk this up as the 5,117th reason why most of us could never, ever play hockey. For anyone who has ever been cut severely enough to need stitches, the experience is invariably painful enough that you do everything in your power to make sure you never go through it again. If getting four or five stitches between you fell and cracked your head on the side of the porch at your house is that painful, how bad would it be to receive more than 40 stitches to close a nasty cut above your right eye after being hit by the skate blade of another player during an NHL game? The unfortunate soul on the receiving end of that blow would be Boston Bruins forward Shawn Thornton, who received that gaping hole in his face above his right eye after he was hit by Chicago Blackhawks forward Fernando Pisani’s skate in the second period of Boston's 3-0 win Tuesday night at TD Garden. "I'm fine," Thornton said after the game. "I guess I was lucky. It could have been worse. It could have been on the eye. No headache, no concussion, no nothing. It was just throbbing a little bit from getting stitches, but nothing bad." The collision occurred while Thornton was on the forecheck early in the second period. Thornton and Pisani collided behind the Chicago net and within a few seconds Thornton was back on his feet, skating toward his team’s bench and dripping a trail of blood behind him. Referee Don Van Massenhoven assisted him off the ice but as the two skated past the Blackhawks' bench, a Chicago player shouted something at Thornton and despite bleeding heavily from a cut that would have most of us on the verge of passing out, he tried to charge whoever was talking smack to him and had to be held back before exiting the ice. "Something was said," Thornton said. "Obviously I can't swear when I talk to [the media]. There was some stuff said that I'm not happy about. I'm going to find out who it was and I will deal with it in my own way. Those guys on their team chirp a lot. I don't know if it is right when someone's face is half across the other side of their face, but it's a tough game and people have to live with their actions. If you guys ever find out who it is, don't be afraid to send me a Christmas card." After all of that, Thornton went to the training room and was stitched up and in the locker room talking to the media after the game. He also plans to be back on the ice for the Bruins’ next game, proving once again that hockey players are as tough as they come……….
- America overdosed on the drug that is Charlie Sheen two weeks or so ago, but that hasn’t stopped Sheen from continuing to ride his crazy train wherever it may take him and to continue making up asinine names and terms for himself and his act as he goes. Now that he’s debuted a horrifically bad online talk show, managed to get himself fired from a lucrative gig with CBS and gone on every radio and TV talk show that will have him, what’s next for a man who is clearly milking his insane act for as long as possible? If you guessed hitting the studio with one of the most motley crews ever to record together, then you’re a winner. Despite being a relative newcomer to Twitter, Sheen (or someone in his crew) clearly understands how to use the popular micro-blogging sites various features because earlier this week, Sheen linked a photo on his Twitter.com page, Twitter.com/charliesheen, showing him with rapper Snoop Dogg and former Korn guitarist Rob Patterson, working in a studio. Sheen did not reveal the nature of the project nor hint at if or when the collaboration would be released. Instead, he tweeted, "Warlock [a name Sheen has been referring to himself by for the last few weeks] meets his makers-music makers that is Snoop Dogg and Rob Patterson. Get ready to rock the Sheenius within!" Oh good, he’s still making up dork-ish-sounding names for himself and coining moronic new phrases built around his name, sweet. Charlie, I hate to be the one to burst your “Sheenius” bubble, but the rest of us jumped off your bandwagon long ago, right around the time you aired your epically awful U-Stream talk show with you, your skanks, er, goddesses and your crew rambling on about nothing at all for nearly an hour. Suckering Snoop Dogg into a publicity stunt, er, recording session with you is impressive and all, but clearly what you’re doing is one big show and with a collective attention span rivaling that of an ADD-addled fruit fly, America has moved on……….
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