Google TV and the Logitech Revue

I love technology, but I'm nowhere near the status of a super-geek or uber fanboy.  I have never waited in line for several hours (or overnight) to pick up the latest technical gadget.  I do not subscribe to any tech magazines, and it isn't often that I drop any serious sort of money on the latest and greatest gizmo.

That said, I was recently introduced to the notion of Google TV and the Logitech Revue (one of the ways to get Google TV) and I knew I had to have it/them.  My parents and significant other both feel that I use the word "need" far too freely when it comes to my wishes, however I really have so few frivolous wishes these days that I feel the need was quite justified.

What is it in a nutshell?  Read a review for the Logitech Revue here.  Google TV you can learn all about here.  If, however, you are not the sort of person to click on links in blogs, let me give it to you in a nutshell.

The Revue is a box you attach to your TV and cable box and it comes with a wireless keyboard.  Once configured, it allows you to control your TV and cable with the keyboard and gives you full access to the glory that is Google TV.  The box itself costs a one time fee of $100.

Google TV, which is a free service, essentially turns your TV into a giant chromebook...but it's so much more.  A search feature allows you to search for anything and everything.  Search the web.  Search youtube. Search Amazon movies.  Search for shows within your own cable programming.  Everything.  A customizable home screen allows you to have quick access to your favorite channels, sites, etc.  A "What's On" feature allows you to browse by Channel or Genre to see what is currently playing on your Cable (like a Guide channel, only I find it much easier to navigate.)

I find the experience so far to be quite pleasurable and rather intuitive.  The keyboard though smaller than a typical keyboard is the perfect size for typing--at least for me.  The web seems as fast as my connection would typically allow and the content on the webpages I've visited thus far has seemed easy to interact with.  As I type, I'm typing this on my TV.

The best part, in my opinion, is that with Google you have the whole range of Google Apps.  Indeed, I can take care of my e-mail, create handouts for work, and much more.  As my students use a web-based portal for most of their work, I could even do all my grading from the comfort of my couch.  Amazeballs.

No, I'm not being paid by Google.  I just love this new product that much that I could not help but blog about it.  If you should have the chance to pick one up, I highly recommend it.  It is so choice.

Ending Unemployment

There has been quite a to-do about our budget lately.  Everyone thinks we need to cut more spending, and perhaps we do, but at the same time, cutting spending is doing nothing for our unemployment rate.  Quite the opposite, cutting spending almost guarnatees an increase in unemployment.  An increase in unemplyoment means a decrease in tax revenues and a decrease in consumer spending--both of which lead to more job cuts, more decreases...really, it seems like a vicious cylce.  But there may be a solution...

Before I go any further, let me point out that I am by no means a master of economics.  These are my own personal musings, based on very limited knowledge and research, and really constitute more of a hobby than anything else.  That said, consider this scenario.  What if instead of cutting spending, the US Government spent the money to hire every unemployed Ameircan (roughly 13.9 million from the information I googled.)  The average salary in the United States in 2009 (what I happened to Google) was slighly over $40,000.  I can't imagine it has changed much, so let us use $40,000 for this discussion.  To hire all those people at that salary would cost $556 billion a year.  That sounds like quite a bit, but let us consider for a moment the fact that the average unemployment benefit  is roughly $300 a week, so to pay unemployment to all those people is currently costing $216.84 billion a year.  If you also take into account the fact that people spend roughly 30% of their pay on various taxes (both state and federal) you would realize that taxes would reclaim $166.8 billion of the $556 billion.  If you were to subtract the "savings" from unemployment and taxes, you would find the cost to end unemployment would be roughly $172.36 billion a year or $14.36 billion a month.

Where could we possibly come up with $14.63 billion a month?  It is fair to say that the wars we are fighting are costing over $10 billion a month.  Also, the so called "Bush tax cuts" cost roughly $3.083 billion a month.  If we eliminated the two, we would nearly have enough to end unemployment.

But wait!  $40,000 is more than generous to someone who is currently unemployed.  I'm sure they could just as well get by with $30,000, right?  If you did the same math,  you would find that ending unemployment by hiring everyone at $30,000 a year would cost (less taxes and unemployment "savings") a total of $75.06 billion a year or $6.255 billon a month.  We could keep the "Bush tax cuts" in place, still fight some war and pay for that plan.

Surely those of you who are against so-called "entitlement programs" are now fuming at the idea of the government hiring all of the unemployed.  Perhaps you are asking "hire them for what?"  All fine questions, but I have an even better plan.  What if instead of simply paying these unemployed people $30,000 a year for however long the progam ran we encouraged private businesses to hire these people.  How you ask?  We offer to pay $10,000 a year for each person hired--in essence, we offer to pay $10,000 of their salary.  If we could find a private job for each person through this incentive program, it would cost $139 billion a year or $11.583 billion a month.  If you factored in the "savings" in a salary range of $30-40k a year, the incentive program would actually turn a profit of $16.912-20.387 billion a month.  For those of us too lazy to do the math, that would translate to savings of $202.94-224.64 billion a year or $2.0924-2.2464 trillion over 10 years.

So, to recap, we could afford to put every unemployed American to work for less than we are spending each month fighting wars overseas.  We could create an incentive program and pay companies $10k a year to hire every unemployed person and it would actually (through tax generated and savings in unemployment) create a surplus which is as much as the government is currently looking to cut from our spending.

Now, I need to address the taxes and the unemployment as I have been muddling state costs and federal costs.  This is true.  However, think of it this way.  If the states saw increased revenue in taxes and decreased cost in paying for unemployment, those savings just as easily translate to the federal government.  The federal government could simplmy adjust the amount of aide given to those states so it all balances out on the federal side of the equation--that means they could cut spending and the math would still all work out as I described above.

There are considerable benefits to my plans.  The idea of ending unemployment is ladden with benefits.  It would lead to increased spending as well as increased tax revenue.  This would increae profits for corporations which could surely have a positive impact on our ailing stock market.  An end to unemployment could also decrease crime which could have other untold savings.  The incentive program I descibred could encourage the corporations that are currently sitting on record profits to invest in hiring--something they are hestitant to do in this uncertain economy--which would mean the jobs being created are private sector jobs.

Again, I know very little about economics, and as you can see, I gathered most of my "information" from Google.  I also know that the chance of a plan like this getting bipartisan support from a budget slash happy government is a pipe dream at best.  That said, I challenge anyone that reads this to come up with a better plan to get our economy back on track.

"Gay panic" is not a defense.

In this long overdue post, I once again break my online silence by being stirred to words.  For those of you that are reading this, if any of you aren't aware, a 15 year old boy named Larry King was shot in school by one of his classmates, Brandon McInerny, for being gay.  While prosecutors are trying to show McInerny for what he really is--a violent, homophobic, white supremacist--the defense claims that McInerny was merely pushed too far by the unwanted advances of King.  It is the typical "gay panic defense" which has come to the aide of many gay bashers and murderers over the years.

The fact that the "gay panic defense" is even an admissible play in a court of law, the fact that lawyers will use it, judges will permit it, and jurors will consider it implies that it is acceptable to murder a homosexual for hitting on you if you are heterosexual.  Granted, there are many judges that will not permit such a defense.  For instance, Judge Voigt barred the defense counsel from using the gay panic defense in the murder of Matthew Shepard, instead allowing them the option of "temporary insanity."  This implies that when a homosexual hits on a heterosexual it can make them legally crazy enough to justify homicide.  Either way, the end result is the same--an unwanted advance by a homosexual towards a heterosexual deserves death.


Consider for a moment, if the same standard were applies to all cases of unwanted advances.  There would hardly be a living soul left on this planet, because who hasn't been turned down or turned someone down--for whatever reason--at least once?  This reminds me of a story, two stories, but they are really the same story.

When I was in high school, there was a girl who fell madly in love with me.  Out of no intentional disrespect to the girl, I must emphasize the madness.  She stalked me, chased me, obsessed over me beyond the levels of appropriate comfort.  It wouldn't be another couple years before I made my grand exodus from the closet, but suffice to say I was window shopping by that point.  Did I murder this girl?  Heavens no.  I was, ultimately, very unkind to her in my final rejection after all manner of niceties had failed.  Should she be reading this now, consider this my formal apology, as I don't feel I ever did say sorry for being quite so harsh.  (We did, however, have a friendship after all was said and done.)  Suffice to say, however, I did not kill her.

My senior year, when my flame burned perhaps its brightest ever, a freshmen girl laid eyes upon me and also fell madly in love with me.  I must again emphasize the madness as it was much like before.  There were the mysterious notes appearing a variety of unusual places, the groups of friends talking to me on her behalf, and so on.  This time, however, as I thought everyone within a good shouting distance was well versed in the knowledge of my homosexuality, the madness seemed a bit more mad.  This girl received a very nice letter from me which explained the situation, but there was also a touch of cruelty.  She, and the situation, were lampooned by our school improv team.  I did feel somewhat bad afterwards, and would hereby apologize, but apparently she knew the score from the get go and thought she was going to change me and I must interject maybe I wasn't born a gay, but I was certainly born again gay when I saw Miss Carol Channing live on stage for the very first time as a young child and there is nothing that the therapist my parents sent me to, heaps of denial, self-destructive behavior, or even some hyper-sexual teen tramp could do to change that.  Despite all that, I did not kill her. 


Would I have been justified in killing these girls?  Could I argue that the forceful attempts to persuade me to play for the "right team" that therefore called my sexuality, my identity into question were enough to drive me into a justifiable, homicidal rage? Is a homosexuality identity something to sacred that it warrants violent defense from unwanted heterosexuals?  Or am I to understand the homosexual identity is something so terrible and the heterosexual identity so sacred that for the former to threaten the latter is a capital offense?


If the most flamboyant, homosexual boy walks up to the most masculine, heterosexual boy and plants a big kiss on his cheek or grabs his ass, it is clearly sexual harassment--much if the roles were a boy and a girl, a girl and a girl, a girl and a boy, or even two gay boys--but murder should never be a legally permissible response, and as long as it is, US Society condones and encourages the murder of homosexuals for making unwanted advances towards heterosexuals.

The S in GSA

The S in GSA

Supporting people that are different than you is SO GAY!  Guys that stand up for women’s rights are such girls.  The white men and women that marched with King and the NAACP were so black, and standing up for the handicapped is a crippling experience.  But nothing is more socially crippling on our campus than being a heterosexual student, teacher, or administrator that supports the Gay-Straight Alliance, because that is just plain GAY.  At least that is the perception of many students on our campus, for there are students that support the GSA in spirit but would never attend a meeting for fear of social repercussion.  There are straight students and staff that support the GSA and are labeled queer as a result.  Ironically, most people don’t realize that the momentous strides in rights for the LGBT community that have occurred in the last forty years have only been possible by the ever increasing support from heterosexual allies.  Indeed, if it were not for the S in the GSA, the GSA would not and could not exist.

In the novel To Kill a Mockingbird, the narrator Scout famously gets into a fight whit her cousin Francis when he called her father Atticus a “nigger-lover.”  Though fiction, the moment speaks a truth that permeated our nation—to support the black community during their struggle for equality was to be as detestable as they were.  Klansmen and your run of the mill racists had no problem turning their considerable and violent wrath upon the whites that dared support blacks as if they were black themselves.  One of the most familiar and infamous cases was dramatized in the film Mississippi Burning which was based on the murders of three young civil rights activists—two of them white.  The violence committed against those young men speaks to the fluidity and indiscriminate nature of prejudice.  To be different is offensive enough, but to be tolerant of difference is equally if not more offensive.  To be supportive of the other makes you a traitor to your own.

If it were not for “traitorous” white men, no minority group in the United States would have any of the rights it has today, and every last vestige of power and privilege would remain solely in the hands of white, heterosexual men.  Consider for a moment the fact that it was not until 1920—144 years after the American Revolution—that women in the United States were given the power to vote.  Until there were enough men that agreed to share the power of the vote with women, all the laws that governed women, that granted them rights, that denied them privileges were decided upon primarily by men—several states granted women the right to vote before the 1920 passage of women’s suffrage and that the first US congresswoman was elected in 1917.  This bit of history shows us that the have-nots will only gain power when those that have either concede a portion of their power willingly or it is taken by force.  While the latter is possible when those that have not outnumber those that have such as the struggle between the “wretched poor” and the aristocrats made famous in the novel Les Miserables, when a minority has not, they rely upon the kindness and support of those that have.  And so it has been that one downtrodden sub-group of our great nation after another has slowly received a trickle down of rights, recognition, power, and privilege over the many years of our existence.

Homosexuals are a curious minority, because they are both a minority within the majority and a minority with minorities.  The percentage of people that are homosexual has been widely debated as comprising anywhere between three and ten percent of our population.  On the one hand, the higher end of the estimate speaks to a population that is numerically significant—more so than some ethnic subgroups—yet at the same time, the number belies the true power of the LGBT community because it does not take into consideration the most significant setback of the community—the LGBT community has no cultural, historical, or geographic shared identity beyond the one it has attempted to create for itself.  The LGBT community is an invisible minority that has become visible in our recent history on as a result of their own struggle and their coming together out of a desire to belong and a yearning for the safety of numbers.  LGBT communities have a common bond that extends only so far as their sexualities and the prejudice they have all faced on account.  At the same time, there are divisions of race, gender, and socio-economic status even with the LGBT community and a lack of family support—especially as so many who are LGBT are still shunned by their own families.

The LGBT are an invisible minority, because unlike race or gender, an individual’s sexual orientation is not readily visible to the average onlooker.  While there are some that may seem “obvious” the attempts to assess a person’s sexual orientation by their appearance—and the need to do so by the societal need to label those around us—oftentimes still leads to mistaken labeling of heterosexuals as homosexual and shock and disbelief that some women that are so feminine and guys that are so masculine are indeed queer.  Ironically, it is oftentimes the LGBT that make themselves the most visible that are the greatest targets of violence and receive the most ire from their adversaries who say “They wouldn’t be so bad if they would just keep it to themselves.”  Yet in order for a minority to gain rights, they need to first come together as a community, and in order for the LGBT community to form, the invisible had to become visible. 

It is the invisibility of the LGBT community and the inability to recognize all homosexuals by sight alone that acts as a deterrent to many potential allies.  It was one thing to be a white person supporting the black community, because at the end of the day, you were still obviously white.  However, a straight person that speaks out on behalf of the gay community inevitability calls into questions his or her own sexuality.  Due to the fact that the LGBT come in all shapes and sizes and some even enter a heterosexual marriage and have children before they come out, there is little that can be done to convince a source outside of your head about your orientation one way or the other.  It is even more of a conundrum if you consider the fact that there are many people who are still struggling to figure out their identity themselves.

Thankfully, over the years there have been enough supporters of the LGBT community to make significant strides in civil rights.  In the past forty years, we’ve seen homosexuality removed from the list of mental illnesses by the American Psychiatric Association, anti-sodomy laws stricken down by the Supreme Court, a variety of hate crime and anti-discrimination legislation passed, openly gay individuals elected or appointed to local, state, and national offices as well as various levels of our judiciary, and domestic partnerships and same-sex marriage rights passed in a number of states.  None of these accomplishments would have been possible without overwhelming support from the heterosexual community.  While some of the achievements were advanced by so-called “activist judges,” even they are an extension of heterosexual support for the LGBT community.  Without its straight allies, the Gay-Straight alliance on our campus would not even be allowed to exist, as it was the passage of California Assembly Bill 537 in 2000 which added actual or perceived sexual orientation to the nondiscrimination policy for schools.  It was this law that gave students the legal right to form Gay-Straight Alliances on public school campuses, and in many cases, it was necessary.

Though many advances in civil rights and social justice have occurred over the past few decades, the GSA on our campus still has its work cut out for it.  “That’s so gay” is still the most common slur on our campus, and when seeking an insult, most boys call each other fags.  There are students that do not feel safe on our campus.  There are students that are bullied, harassed, or intimidated over their actual and perceived sexual orientation.  These students cannot protect themselves alone; they rely on the strength of their straight allies to make the campus a safe place for everyone.  Sadly, it is these allies that also come under fire for stepping up to defend their friends.  Many of them are called gay and are subjected to the same bullying, harassment, and intimidation as the students that are actually LGBT. 

There is nothing gay about taking a stand for equality.  Standing up to protect the rights of the LGBT no more makes you queer than supporting the NAACP makes you black.  To suggest otherwise is utter foolishness.  The people that come out as LGBT during their high school experience, that become a visible part of an oppressed minority are brave; the allies that subject themselves to the same harassment and intimidation in order to support them are heroes.  Anyone that is so vested in their own bigotry and so insecure with their own identity that they feel the need to label everyone around them and attack anyone that is different—or people that support and accept their difference—is a coward.

I am grateful for my allies.  It has been with their help that our nation has slowly become and continues to become a more tolerant place for all our citizens.  With each advance in civil rights and social justice, another battle looms on the horizon, and it is with the help of our allies that those on the side of equality will emerge victorious.  Every day, the tide shifts further towards the left, and the number of those that have that concern themselves with those that have not swells.  I feel sorry for the unenlightened bigots that still stand in the way of social progress, because at the end of the day, they are the true minorities.

mr alger what does cock taste like?

The saga continues...

So today, a student accessed another student's account and posted "mr alger what does cock taste like?"  However, this time the posting happened on the 10th grade Echo page as opposed to the 9th grade, so I didn't have the opportunity to respond.  The teacher in charge, sadly, deleted the comment before I was able to send him my response.  Nevertheless, I would have said:

It tastes like chicken, only more masculine and gamy.  My favorite preparation is authentic Coq au Vin.  Try it.  You might like it.

Bon appetit!
Mr. Alger

In this case, the student was caught and has been suspended.  I look forward to speaking with him upon his return.  Naturally, I cannot truly answer his original question without crossing the line into the seriously indecorous, but I am nevertheless curious about the root of his curiosity.  I was wondering the exact same thing when I was his age.

mr alger is a fuckin fagget

One of the classes I teach involves an online classroom tool called Echo.  On this website I can post agendas and assignments.  There is a place for journals as well as a discussion forum, and there is a place for shared resources and ideas.  It is this shared space that is oftentimes used, to my dismay, for mindless banter.  However, this past Wednesday, one student accessed another students account and posted "mr alger is a fuckin fagget" (sic).  Normally I would merely delete inappropriate threads in our shared space, but I felt this posting warranted a response.  I posted the following:

Actually, the word I believe you mean is "faggot," and yes, I am gay. You will find it hard to intimidate or shake someone that is fully comfortable with his own identity.

Meanwhile, anonymous poster, you are clearly afraid of both me and yourself. Perhaps you have a deep fear of an identity that lies within, in which case, I feel deeply sorry for you. Perhaps you have a legitimate concern but lack the maturity to express it--again, I feel sorry for you. 

One day, perhaps you will have the strength and courage that I have, and perhaps on that day, you will be a man (or a woman), until that time, you are but a scared little boy (or girl) and I believe we all feel sorry for you.

Respectfully,
Mr. Alger

Ps- "Mr." should be capitalized and should be followed by a period. "Alger" should be capitalized, and f**king has a "g" on the end. Additionally, all sentences should end with a period. I'm less upset about what you wrote and more upset with the abysmal way in which you wrote it.

I hope my reply taught the poster a lesson--at the very least a lesson in spelling, grammar, and punctuation.  I hope it also served as an inspiration to any of my students that face harassment over their own identities.  It was met with a rather enthusiastic show of support from my students, and I even got a supportive e-mail from a parent.

Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Don't Decide

What gives already?  On the one hand, we have the President and the Defense Secretary calling for the end of DADT, while we have the head-honcho of the Marines and the Chaplains say to keep it in place.  Meanwhile, leaked reports of a survey of military personnel as well as widely available civilian polls show that the majority of people are in favor getting rid of DADT.

We nearly did.  Then the Obama administration messed it up.  Yes, Obama, I blame you.  I hold you personally responsible not only for killing the repeal effort but for every service member to be discharged from here on out. Some people try to come to Obama's defense and claim that it is his defense department and not him we should blame, but I say BS.  Obama was the one that wanted Congress to repeal DADT and insisted that the appeals court issue an immediate stay on the federal judge's overturning of DADT while surveys were conducted and meetings were held.

Meanwhile, what happened?  Obama lost control of Congress!  Sure, he's not personally responsible, but on the other hand, his bullheaded tactics were like political torpedoes to the democratic party and he admits that he sunk quite a few of their ships--and with them, hopes for congress to repeal DADT.

We have two hopes now.  Hope one is that the appeals court will uphold the ruling that struck down DADT as there is no good reason why it should remain in place when just about everyone (that doesn't have a religious vendetta against homosexuals) is opposed to it.  Hope two is that Obama does what he should have done from the get-go--sign an executive order striking down DADT (Or if that's not legal at least an order halting dismissals until the matter can be otherwise resolved.)

DADT ruins lives.  I guarantee you that a LGBT soldier is more afraid of being discharged than heterosexual soldiers are afraid their neighbor might be queer.  I can certainly say that our LGBT soldiers show more bravery every day of their lives than their commander and chief has ever shown in standing up for their rights.  And I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that bigotry will never make our Armed Forces stronger.