What's wrong with you American kids?

     I was just surfing the internets just now and I came across this show called "16 and Pregnant" (*blaargh*). I remembered this 18 year old kid I used to work with last year at Subway (the sandwich shop). He seemed like a really typical high school kid. He was easygoing and seemed fairly intelligent. But I don't know if I can say that now. Recently, about a couple months ago, I saw on facetube that he had posted a status update saying, "trying to be a super husband and super dad." or something in that vein. For a second there I thought it was a mistaken identity on my part. Not that I have too many super dads and husbands in my friends list, but there had to be some mistake. This was that simple, wannabe gangsta kid who used to talk to me about my tattoo and went with me to see a movie once. I generally assume that if you agree to hang out with another guy on a weekend, you are like me; aka, lonely and not very social. I found it very hard to believe this kid had gotten married and had had a kid already (not necessarily in that order).

     My only 'permanent' American friend, Stelton, and I have discussions about various American issues and generally he gets very entertained by my extreme (and funny) views on most things. He and I have agreed on this issue that teen pregnancy and kids having kids in America is partially responsible for the dismal education levels and the unusual behavior of kids here compared to kids in other countries. This kid who got a kid, is the typical example of what high school students here do. And in my opinion, shows like "16 and pregnant" help them think its normal. I haven't seen the show and I would rather have my brains removed through my nose before I am made to watch it. But the title is quite self-explanatory isn't it?
   
     Now I will admit, I don't know how it is to have a girlfriend in high school; in fact, I don't really know how it is to have a girlfriend in any point in your life (by which I mean I have never had one). For one, I am not really good with any people for that matter, let alone girls. But that aside. It doesn't take a leap of imagination for me to put myself in that situation. I am almost 22 now. And the thought of having a kid even at this age is repulsive. I have no intention or inclination of starting a family for at least the better part of the next decade! When I was 16, I wanted to go out, hang out with friends, watch movies and drink the minuscule amounts of alcohol that we could stand at that age. And that's what teenage is about. Its not all legal and acceptable. But that's pretty normal. This, right here, is ridiculous! You can barely read and write or blow your nose without your parents help (paraphrasing my dad here) and you want to start a family? In fact, at 22, I know that I am highly highly ineligible to raise a child. And worse, you are letting a child grow up in an environment where his parents haven't even completed high school! This results in a generation of young people who grow up and elect George Bush twice!

     Now, I only want to talk about the social aspect of this. I have strong opinions (when do I not have strong opinions?) about the religious and political aspect of it too, but I don't want to discuss politics here (Ron Paul 2012! No I am just kidding I don't like any current or former candidates, except maybe Obama). Also discussing politics and religion now will make this long blog even longer (maybe around 20 full size sheets). I just want to ask the teens in America, 'what is wrong with you?' If you think that having a girlfriend and 'falling in love' at 16 is all there is to life, as a person who has lived just 6 more years than you, I can tell you there is much more! Love and romance and family is so overrated and depicted in movies and TV that people are taking it way too seriously! Love hasn't and will probably never 'happen' to me (I am too cynical and misanthropic for that crock of shit!). And I am glad about that. There's many many other great things and emotions. You will want to experience and enjoy  them while you are still young. Why would you want to be tied up with a child and its responsibilities? And if you truly care about your offspring, why would you let him live his formative years in a situation, where his parents themselves are still are figuring out their own lives and future? Act like teenagers do in most other places. Figure out your own life first before bringing another life into the world and accepting the responsibility to raise it!

Humor, Cars and Oversensitivity

     Most people who have any sort of interest in cars will have watched Top Gear. I have been following it since the past few years, and have realized that the previous sentence is actually quite meaningless. Because although technically its a motoring show, and does require you to have some appreciation and knowledge of cars, many episodes are actually more comedy than car. There have been and still continue to be some incredibly hilarious moments which will have you in splits. These often have little to do with cars and over the years have taken precedence over actual straight-faced reviews weighing the pros and cons of an automobile. And I for one don't mind at all. I barely watch Top Gear to know which car is good and which is bad, and even if I did, I am not in a position where I'll buy cars because Clarkson liked them. If I actually need an unbiased opinion about a car, I'll read Motortrend. Or wikipedia. The point of watching the show is now mostly to get some good laughs and see some great road trips.
     As with any comedy, people don't take kindly to being joked about. Jeremy Clarkson has been criticized numerous times about being racially insensitive, 'crass' and downright offensive. I completely agree. And thats what makes the show so funny. Generally, when he quite directly calls Americans stupid (who outside of America doesn't right?) or calls ginger people nasty or says a Mexican built car will be feckless, flatulent and lazy like its people, I used to think I find it funny because I am not really (born) American or ginger or Mexican. But it seems this is not the case. In December 2011, the guys went to India for a special. Here's what the media said:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2088297/BBC-refuses-apologise-tasteless-Top-Gear-India-special.html
Now I think I can speak knowledgeably in this case because I am Indian and I have watched all episodes of Top Gear (new format). Clarkson's humor has been time and again proven to be at others' expense. As I said before, the offensiveness is what makes it funny. The damn Indian High Commission or whatever, really needs to get a sense of humor. I agree with the BBC:

The BBC insists the jokes were at the expense of Clarkson and his fellow presenters, James May and Richard Hammond, rather than India or its people. 

It said in a statement: 'Our film showed the charm, the beauty, the wealth, the poverty and the idiosyncrasies of India, but there's a vast difference between showing a country, warts and all, and insulting it.

If you actually watch the episode, you will see that this is true. I don't see how Clarkson talking to the locals in his boxers could be offensive to Indian culture. I mean get your balls out of the knot! If we respected all your sensitivities, we would have a really unfunny world. Like Indian movies don't have people taking their pants off! And if foreigners get the runs when they come to India, the jokes on them isn't it? What exactly do these people not get offended by? And even if it was poking fun at Indians, so what? Learn to laugh at yourself for once! Saying that India has poverty and disease rampant is not offensive, its a fact. Maybe if your country was actually doing really great, and outsiders still said those things then you had a right to be offended!
     I was once watching a youtube interview of Kunal Nayyar (the Indian actor who plays Raj in The Big Bang Theory) and I saw comments saying, 'how can he say that India has cows and monkeys on the streets?'. Well? Doesn't it? I don't know where the hell this guy lives but where I lived there were buffaloes on the street all the time! This oversensitiveness is what prevents these guys from enjoying really good jokes. And come on, Indians are secretly the most racist people in the world! I know how racist I can be! I just don't take it seriously and don't discriminate based on it. But when somebody makes a joke about you, you get all bent out of shape about it? Next someone will get upset because Americans find our food spicy! I know that's because they have the taste buds of a cow which finds grass tasty! These people have mashed potatoes and broccoli for dinner; what do you expect will happen when they eat food with ground up chili in it? People of India, learn to laugh a bit and know that there's always a way to turn the insult around on someone.

How I Met Forensic Anthropology :)

     A friend of mine recently posted a link on my Facetube page regarding this crash course certifying one as a 'forensic consultant' and supposedly qualifying one to appear as an expert witness; an 'honor' generally granted to actual (degree holding) scientists specializing in ballistics, forensic anthropology, DNA fingerprinting, etc. I am quite sure everyone is familiar with forensic science (thanks to CSI, Bones, Dexter, and numerous other crime dramas). And yes, I also watch the aforementioned shows, except CSI (I can't really think of a reason why, I just don't). I follow Bones and Dexter very closely and I really like Dexter, although that love has waned since the 5th and 6th season. But I still admire the shows style and construction.
     I take great pride in the fact that unlike most people I did not first get introduced to these shows through television. The privilege was denied to me after my father noticed I spent too much time watching Cartoon Network as a child and he unsubscribed to cable TV. Now basic television in America is orders of magnitude superior to basic TV in India. In India, the only channel really free is Doordarshan, a government run network, which has programming that is probably one of the reasons for all the crying and miserable children in the rural parts of India (right after poverty, starvation, disease and corruption). Finally abandoning trying to view their dismal attempts at creating educational and entertainment shows, I gave up watching TV and occasionally entertained myself with the couple of VHS tapes of Tom and Jerry cartoons my dad had recorded some long time ago (I still love those despite the fact that I now realize how blatantly racist some of them are, but hey Top Gear is racist too and not too many thousands of people complain about that).
     Anyways, so when I came to America, I discovered internet TV, starting with the Simpsons, but didn't really watch any other shows until I took this class on Forensic Anthropology in my second year here. There I heard about shows called Bones and CSI and Dexter. The point of the class was to actually show that these shows are quite inaccurate. Forensic evidence is not in fact collected, analyzed and confirmed in the span of a few days, and the city, even an American city does not have the funds to hire a dozen forensic specialists. Apparently the entire Los Angeles county has one forensic anthropologist in its employ (or I think she's the medical examiner or something). Anyways this forensic anthropologist or medical examiner is,unfortunately, also the one who teaches the advanced forensics course at ASU (which is why I have never seen it being offered in the past 2-3 years despite my persistent search). I am quite sure that badly decomposed or mutilated corpses don't show up on a daily basis as portrayed in TV shows, and cases, for the most part, are either open and shut or forever open (the latter is possibly quite frequent).
     However, to talk about what I mentioned in the first few lines of this post, I think that this "forensic crash course" is just another way of exploiting people's rising interest in this stuff because of TV. I took a 4 month, 200-level college course in forensic anthropology and I was simultaneously learning molecular biology and the very details of the genome. I am also learning osteology right now. And I learned the basics of forensic science, eg. how to distinguish a point blank gunshot wound from one fired at very close range and when a captive bolt gun has been used (a gunshot wound and a captive bolt gun wound can look similar but there's a sure sign to tell one from the other). Despite the fact that I can thoroughly impress someone who doesn't have much knowledge of this stuff, I am pretty certain that if I am taken to an actual crime scene, I would know as much as an officer on his first day on the job or perhaps even less. Maybe a person can learn all that in 1 day, but trust me he will not be anywhere close to an expert. Its just a fun thing you can do and give someone a wad of money for a pretty meaningless certificate.
     Nevertheless, forensic science is very interesting, if you are not repulsed by the thought of dissecting decomposing corpses (a body is decomposed almost to the bone in about 2 weeks after death and it starts just a few hours after death unlike the chicken you forgot on the counter the previous evening). There are 100s of species of flies/maggots that infest a body within a few days starting at a few hours. Bodies even explode in a few days if they freely decompose (you might remember this scene from Bones). Needless to say TV heavily censors crime scene depiction. If you are the kind of person who looks up real crime scene photos on the internet (well firstly, there's something probably very wrong with you), you know what I am talking about. I am very certain that about 90% of the audience of crime dramas would promptly vomit if they see an actual corpse (let alone the smell; that would probably make me nauseous too since I have never been granted that pleasure). The point is forensics sounds interesting but I certainly cannot believe that any person could qualify to work in it.

Understanding Evolution

     One of the reasons I recently changed my major to Anthropology is because of my love for the theory of...or rather the fact of Evolution. In America, there is tremendous debate over this for years. Whereas most of the scientific community has opted out of the debate and moved on to do their work based on evolution, leaving the imbeciles to stumble in their self-inflicted darkness by themselves, it is one of the things about the general American public I find unbelievably stupid. I mean there's several things that the rest of the world points out as dumb about Americans, but in my opinion this is by far the dumbest. The impractical piousness of Americans is responsible for the most part. I am not going to waste my time either, arguing as to why a 2000 year old book, written by people who thought rain was god's tears, cannot be considered an argument against evolution. I instead wish to write about how fascinating the idea of evolution is and more importantly why I see it a realistic view of several philosophical questions that people have. Most people think they have understood evolution and even accept it completely. But often I find that what you think is Darwinian evolution, is in fact the disproved theory of Lamarckian evolution.
      Most people think that evolution suggests that the first living beings slowly morphed into more modern beings because they used the 'adaptations' they developed to survive. That's a very simplistic explanation of it; probably one taught to school children because it is difficult for 12-13 year olds to grasp the concept. Also people often have a correct idea about evolution but never really realize the time period over which it took place and the number of tiny factors that affected it. People often find it hard to grasp evolution because they cannot imagine how a unicellular micro-organism could have eventually become the cornucopia of life forms we see today. I myself misunderstood evolution for a long time. I just thought of an easily understandable way to explain it.
     Penicillin was a wonder drug when Fleming discovered it in the 1920s. But today most pathogens are resistant to it. I think antibiotic resistance is a good proxy for the mechanism of evolution. Since it came out penicillin destroyed countless pathogens. This is comparable to natural selection albeit very slightly less catastrophic on the macro scale. On the gazillion bacteria that penicillin killed, a few were actually 'freak' bacteria that might have naturally died if they had not been subjected to penicillin. But the freaks survived because they used a different pathway for their life processes. Hence penicillin could not disrupt and kill them. E. coli reproduces by mitosis twice every hour. At this rate one freak bacteria could give rise to millions more in the course of a day or so. Now think about how it took penicillin almost half a century to start becoming noticeably ineffective. Thats how slow evolution is. When people argue that, "If humans evolved from apes how come we don't see a chimp giving birth to a human baby?"; its a clear indication that they don't know the first thing about evolution.
     I think some people's reticence about accepting evolution is that, it implies there is no point to life except survival and reproduction. Although that used to be the case, and for some people it still is the norm, thats where anthropology provides some comfort to the rest. When man first started flourishing, it was because of his deviation from his very basic instincts. Social groups, tribes, shared intentionality and innovation is what has gotten us where we are today. Chimps and dolphins are surprisingly smart. They even have some semblance of a social structure. But that innovative drive that is so strong in man is lacking. And that is it. We don't need ancient books to tell us how to live any more. We don't need to sit in temples or churches to find out the meaning and point of life. Its there in your mind. You just need to accept its there.

"Socialization"

     First off, I must acknowledge that I didn't post since a week (not that anyone's waiting). Something came up that will be detailed in another blog soon. But this blog is generic. Its based on my curiosity as an anthropology student about the whole idea of social interaction and socialization. I admit though I just got the idea from a quote I posted from The Big Bang Theory. I always wonder about that show though. I really found the older seasons somewhat relatable. Not that I am implying I am a genius of any kind (but you are free to think so if you wish :P). By the way, spell-check didn't know relatable was a word. It underlined it leading me to Google it to make sure. Although I rely a lot on spell-check (so much, that sometimes while writing by hand I expect my misspellings to be underlined automatically in red!), it feels good to teach spell-check a word. Hah!

     Anyways so coming back to Big Bang Theory, I think the older seasons were really brilliant and some dialogues really express the same concerns or doubts I sometimes have. This particular idea, I got from the pilot episode of the series. I put it as my Facetube status but here it is again:

Sheldon: Chat? But we dont chat! At least not offline.
Leonard: Its not difficult...you just listen to what she says, and then you say something appropriate in response.
Sheldon: (pauses)...to what end?

     I feel like Sheldon has questioned the very basis of social interaction here. I don't know if the writers of the show intended it or merely were trying to write something consistent with what the character would say, but that is a big question. To what end is social interaction? In my archaeology class I learned how humans have managed such a large leap from animals on the basis of verbal and written communication. Its a fascinating thing if you think about it. Of course, we also touched on the subject that other animals like dolphins have their language. Of course, this fact is based on humans studying their 'language' and deeming it so. I think I disagree. Dolphins, or any other animals for that matter, communicate but they don't really have a language. I mean it certainly nowhere close to the complexity of human language. This is all fine, I can go on blabbering about how human language is so much more advanced. But you all probably know that stuff.

     What I want to write about is where communication stands today. And to go back to Sheldon's question, to what purpose is it today? Aren't we a paradox today? We are basically programmed as social animals and most of us will probably go into deep depression without social contact. But then again the enormous advent of social networks proves that we don't actually want to interact in person. Yes, time, distance and busy lives are a major factor. Not to mention via social networks we can interact with so people who we may never have met. But then again, besides those reasons, having several more friends online doesn't really satisfy any set purpose. Communication and social life evolved mainly because man was too weak to deal with the elements and predators all by himself. But today the bulk of socialization remains primarily as a relic of psychological evolution. We don't as much need to as we feel the need to interact. And so we go for the apparent most effective way. I think that is proven by the fact that everyone around will be so busy in social networking via their smart phone even while standing in a crowded room, unresponsive to actual interaction from people standing right in front of them. Of course, I am exaggerating albeit not too much.

     The other end of the scale in context is people are unresponsive to actual social interaction because of personal music players. I admit, I can barely go without my iPod especially when cycling to college. But I have a habit of unplugging my headphones even if I see someone I know, or if I even barely anticipate a conversation. I haven't seen people do it as readily as I do. Often they'd rather keep listening and ignore someone trying to ask them something. I find that insufferable!

     And since we are on one of the hundreds of things I find insufferable, let me end with one more on the list. But first I should admit I am not really knowledgeable on the entire concept of twitter. Although I understand it enough to decide I hate it (hey I barely know anything about facebook but I check it everyday while simultaneously hating it). The idea of broadcasting one's daily activities and one posting drab details of one's perfectly normal life, I think is an enormously dumb idea. I should point out that my blog is not the same thing (disclaimer alert); although some personal references are unavoidable, I try to make this blog an intellectual discussion (well as much as I can). Same thing with some videoblogs on Youbook (:P). I found out some time ago that there's something called a 'haul video'. Apparently that's some random girl with too much time and money on her hands, showing off the useless overpriced shit she just bought! I mean seriously? You are so dying to show off your things to other people that just showing them off to your million like-minded friends is not enough and you have to share it with the internets? And that includes girl's generic vlogs. The girls do realize that if their vlog is popular people are not really listening to you speak right? I saw a bunch of such vlogs on Youtube (I mean Youbook). Comments include, "I like to just mute the video and look at your breasts!" C'mon! Although I should say browsing through youtube comments is hilarious! As my parting note, I suggest you do that just to see the number of dumb people in the world!
Later.