The Great Truth

I was forced to write a poem for someone in my 12th Grade Theory of Knowledge class. Here's what I came up with: 

The Great Truth

ave ever you wondered on what lies beyond,




This whirling blue orb that we happened upon,
That some foreign agent created all things,
And to this earth all forms of life he did bring.
To answer this question we all must not look,
Between dusty pages of Bible or book,
Or under the microscope, squinting the eye,
No, for this great answer we look toward the sky:
And look high and wide, as far as we can,
And there we see floating, a sort of a man,
Who's also an alien. An interesting thought,
That all of our lives on this earth he has wrought.
He built the tall pyramids; China's great wall; 
And under his hand Vader's Empire didst fall.
So don't this truth doubt, though the truth may seem odd, 
Scientology is king; L. Ron Hubbard is god. 

Written by Abe Clark, December 21

The Art of Insult

Perhaps you can sympathize with this situation: sitting in Physics class one day, I overheard two goons in back of me undertaking a heated discussion of sporting events. The conversation went more or less as follows:

"I'm telling you, golf is a sport."

"No, it's not, there's no teams, and it doesn't even make you sweat."

"Yeah, but, it's really hard; you gotta be really good."

"Yeah, well, okay, then hot-dog eating is a sport."

"You're gay!"

I instinctively rolled my eyes at this last statement. I thought about my best friend, who happens to be gay, and the ambivalence he would show toward hot-dog eating's status as a sport. I thought about my best overweight friend, who happens to be straight, and how he might take offense at having his sexuality questioned because of his eating patterns. But mostly, I thought about the qualities of the insult itself. 

"You're gay." It doesn't mean "you have a fundamental lacking of cranial capacity," or "you have an unfortunate lack of manliness," it means "you find the same gender sexually attractive." However, I don't think sport-guy one really meant to call sport-guy two a homosexual. Rather, he meant to call him any mixture of "dim-witted" and "socially inept." Unfortunately, because sport-guy one lacked the vocabulary necessary to convey this ignominy, he could only rely on the insult "gay."

The tragic thing about sport-guy's insult was that not only did it fail to insult thoroughly, it backfired. The insult exposed sports-guy's lack of vocabulary, and presented him as rather dim-witted himself. Where a simple “that is a logical fallacy” would have sufficed, “you’re gay” was possibly the worst thing sports-guy could have said at the time in terms of debate quality. "You're gay" has practically become the conversational equivalent of "I concede; you win this argument. You are both smarter and less homophobic than I." 

The one thing I will give sports-guy is that the intent was there. Sports guy had decent grounds to insult the other sports-guy, and had the perfect opportunity to ridicule his insipid hot-dog comment. While the execution was terrible, the potential was there. He just needed to learn some better insults. 

A good insult can really turn an argument, or a friendly conversation, in the insulter’s favor. The insultee, likely taken aback by a well-directed and colorful insult, will cease defending his position and instead be forced to defend his honor by coming up with another, better, insult. The convenient thing about a good insult is that even if the insultee comes up with a valid retort, the conversation’s result will be in your favor when the subject changes. For example: 

“I’m telling you, Porkchops would totally make a better national bird than the bald eagle. I mean, how many eagles do we even eat in this country? A porkchop would be much more representative.”  

“That doesn’t even make sense. You aren’t supposed to eat the national bird, and a porkchop isn’t even a...” 

“YOU, sir, are nothing but a barmy berk-brained pootchie-parceled pram-pot!”

“What? Oh, uh, well, you’re a big, fat...stupid...uh...yeah, you’re stupid.” 

Conversational result: Porkchops would make a better national bird. 

I know what you're thinking: maybe when pigs fly.

A good insult can tell your victim a lot about yourself: that you are intimidating, intelligent, person who is able to stand his ground. It can also tell the insultee a little about your cultural background; where you grew up, and what your nationality is. This is because insults are very often cultural. If you are being called a “wanker,” you are most likely standing in someone’s way in Britain. If you are being called a “fascist connard,” stop talking politics in France. And, if you have insulted a group of speech impaired people, well, you can guess how they may choose to insult you. If you are devoid of culture, however, feel free to choose from this list:

Yiddish: Zoln dir vaksn tzibeles fun pupik! (may an onion grow from your navel). 

Soviet Russian: Пусть ваша жизнь станет таким же несчастным, как моя. (May your life become as miserable as mine) 

Minnesotan: Um...your shirt looks nice. 

New York: Stupid frickin' stupid tourist comin’ into MY city an’ leavin’ a three-dollar tip, stupid, stupid, stupid, tourist comin’ inta MY city an’ three dollar tip, stupid tourist three dollar MY city... (source: original research)

Chinese: 

"我喜欢鸡汤面" (far too inappropriate to print) 

Cuban: 

"No single-payer health care system for you!" 

Cubist: 

Relativist: 

"You're an ass, even objectively." 

Relative: 

"No more blog posts until you find a job, or you're out of the basement, mister." 

Dadaist: 

Picking a cultural insult can be a very good choice of insult, because not only does it intimidate, it tells the victim a little bit about yourself. This is why insults can be a very good way to meet new people. Try it with blind dates, classmate peers, crushes, and long-lost relatives, as a way to break the ice and learn a little about each other. If you don't have any specific culture of insults, don't be ashamed to borrow one from the list above. Doing so will allow you to appear worldly and cultured. Impress people with your appreciation for world culture by using these at job interviews, business meetings, and oral exams. 

"Your hair looks like an inverted snail's shell."
"How enlightening! Welcome aboard!" 

If insults are an art, then one of the greatest artists of all time was former Prime Minister of England Winston Churchill, with his infamous insults directed at Lady Astor. Astor had told him he was drunk, to which Churchill replied "Yes, and you, Madam, are ugly. But tomorrow, I shall be sober, and you will still be ugly." Another artist of insults was our own President Theodore Roosevelt, who gave my personal favorite when he grumbled that President William McKinley “has no more backbone than a chocolate éclair.” William Shakespeare, thought of by many teenagers as a boring and dull writer, was actually a master of the insult, crafting brilliant personal affronts: “they lie deadly that tell you you have good faces,” violent insults: “go hang yourself, you naughty mocking uncle,” and: “it shall to the Barber’s with your beard!” Whichever category of insult that falls into. 

So next time I'm sitting in Physics class, I hope to hear the following: 

"Cheerleading isn't a sport" 

"I mean, it can be...if the chicks are hot enough, huh huh huh huh huh."

"You, sir; the only difference between you and an aircraft carrier full of festering beetles' carcasses in the aircraft carrier in which the aforementioned deceased insects float." 

"Guess it's not a sport." 

written by Abe Clark, Dec 16, 2012

Energy and the Presidential Debates

I've greatly enjoyed watching the reactions to the debates. It's a great time of year, when all Americans can sit down in front of their television and shout at it. For the most part, people’s reactions have focused on Romney’s describing his “binders full of women” during a question about women’s rights in the workplace. (In short, the argument was that Romney could support women in the workplace because he’d hired them before and made sure that they could get home to take care of their children and cook and do other woman’s work while still working. I'm sure that's what the women were worried about.)

This was not, however, the part of the debate that concerned me. I saw, near the beginning, a question on energy, in which both candidates held their ground considerably well. They both talked about how they wanted to increase jobs in the oil and coal sectors, with Obama touting how he had opened up more public lands to drilling than Bush. But he's also invested in green energy! Historians surveying the postapocalyptic wasteland of two hundred years in the future shall surely say of Obama:

Romney, meanwhile, criticized Obama's inability to let the sector expand indefinitely, turning the heat up on Obama’s rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline. Romney's mix-of-energy policy includes both kinds- oil and coal!

Obama replied by pointing out that Romney, during his governorship, publicly declared that a coal plant “killed” and helped to shut it down, which shut down coal jobs. As a man who criticizes his opponent's departure from facts, Obama should probably be encouraging when Romney does resort to truths. 


This happened during the first debate, too. Romney twice pressed Obama on his funding of green energy companies, which Obama did not even attempt to defend.

These discussions of energy were entirely backwards. Neither one mentioned the issue of global warming, perhaps the most pressing issue to our society currently. Neither one defended the closing of coal plants by pointing out that just the direct pollution from coal plants, without even mentioning the long-term effects of global warming, kill thirteen thousand people per year[1]. Romney has rejected the environmental moderation he championed during his time as governor. Obama continues to pretend that “clean coal” is not a complete fabrication of the coal industry.

We ought to have a president who is proud of shutting down coal plants. We ought to have a president who defends the public’s right to public lands, who will stifle the oil drilling industry. We ought to have a president who will stand in front of the Keystone XL pipeline every step of the way, who will note with a smile that oil production is down in America, and who will not replace coal with the slightly-better natural gas.

We ought to have a president who understands that short-term job numbers are not worth a serious risk to society. The current voting priorities of America are irrational and absurd. Environment should be the number-one priority in this election, but it seems all we can do is hope for 2016.

written by Noah Shavit-Lonstein, Oct. 27, 2012

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[1] http://washingtonindependent.com/97196/study-predicts-13200-deaths-from-coal-pollutants-this-year

Link-Bait Journalism

No doubt, you have read many articles from various outlets complaining about the depreciating quality of news and journalism. It seems that one of the most commonly reported topics on journalism outlets is the poor quality of other journalistic outlets. Everyone with a pen, or a keyboard, seems to find themselves qualified to rant and rave about the quality of journalism: "Opinion pieces are being sold as facts! The most common news source in America is 'this thing I read somewhere online!' Smurfs go skiing on the trend graphs for newspaper readership!" Blah Blah Blah. These complaints are often scathingly ironic, (see: people who get all their news from The Daily Show complaining about Fox News), and are usually perpetuated by people with no journalistic credibility. The one thing about these complaints that is most interesting, however, is that they are true. 

Despite how ironic it is that a blog written by teenagers should be complaining about the quality of modern journalism, we cannot help but point out this fact: journalism today is decreasingly an issue of delivering news and explaining concepts and increasingly an attempt to create a constant stream of sometimes meaningless headlines shooting into our information devices like ticker tape. In short, news is turning into Twitter. 

Most readers may assume that this is leading into a stern talking-to of some major television news outlet, possibly one that rhymes with "socks chews." While we will most likely get to FOX and its mentally incapacitated cousin, CNN, in the future, we would instead like to talk about a broader trend in journalism that is prevalent among all outlets: link-bait journalism. In order to benefit from the the twitter-izing of news, many news organizations have begun to create headlines that inflate the sensational qualities of the articles they precede. A great example of this is an article from "Newsweek" that caused quite a controversy: 

Still better than "President Abducted By Gay UFO."

While the article was actually about how the President said he supports gay marriage, and not about him being gay himself (studies show it is possible to support gay causes without being gay), that vital information is trivial when compared to the importance of selling millions of magazines. Another great source for your everyday misleading-sensational-contentless-headline-needs is Time magazine, who has published so many link-bait headlines, we needed a table to display them all:

Subject of Article:	Headline Used:
Larger Online Colleges	"College Is Dead. Long Live College!"
Computers becoming increasingly intelligent	"2045: The Year Man Becomes Immortal!"
Why Israeli people care about peace, in addition to other things like health care and education	"Why Israel doesn’t care about peace"
Jennifer Aniston’s new haircut and its popularity	"Earth-Shattering News!"

This is only a tiny fraction of the number of misleading headlines and titles used by Time. In fact, nearly every headline used by Time magazine is overly sensational in some way, as this has become the rule, not the exception, for popular magazines. We had a lot of fun imagining what Time might come up with next.

Subject of Article:	Possible Headline:
Statistics on readership of  humor site Cracked.com	"America’s Growing Crack Addiction"
Essay on underrated Hitchcock film Murder! (1930)	"Why We Need More  Murder"
Video of Rick Astley’s “Never  Gonna Give You Up”	"America Declares War On China"
Time Magazine writer bored, desperate for money to fuel  his/her drug addiction	"Earth Shattering News!"

Reading link-bait journalism can have an upsetting effect on me as a reader. I have found that after reading an article in Time or Newsweek, I am often disappointed at the lack of carnage that will ensue from the event described. Midway through the article, I find myself thinking: "Oh, so mankind is not doomed to an eternal war of bloody hellfire, like the title said. It's just a new video game. Dang." I guess I would rather see mankind perish than be disappointed by a headline. Either that or Newsweek makes me a horrible person.      

I'm not saying that magazines need to have boring, bland headlines that turn people away. I do have to hand it to Time. They're incredibly creative in their headline-authoring, and interesting headlines are a necessary trait for good publications. Time is using its artistic licence, after all, which is a god-given right among writers. I'm just saying they should have content-related headlines that pull readers in to the actual story, not to what readers think the story will be about. I hope that after reading this, my readers won't overreact and think: "Oh god, do I have to start reading The Economist, now? Do I have to get a real newspaper and read the entire thing, everyday? Why don't I just go back to college and study comparative classical literature while I'm at it?" No, not at all. I just think it would be worthwhile to read the articles in the magazines before telling everyone to get to their bomb shelters because China is about to nuke the crap out of the eastern seaboard.

Honey, get the green tea and math textbook, we're being invaded!

But really, this decrease in journalistic integrity is no fault of the readers. It really just comes down to the quality of the journalism itself, and that can be easily rectified by the news organizations. Rather than spend time and energy devising headlines that cover up a news organization's lack of good journalism, they should spend their energies writing good articles. Interesting, informative, enlightening, even revolutionary. These are adjectives that used to define good articles, and are still possible to achieve in writing today. But turning uninteresting, non-stories into apocalyptical fear-mongering is the antithesis of good journalism, and it hinges on tabloid material.

Still better than "Obama is the first gay President."

Written by Abe Clark, Oct 21, 2012.