So, while I do a bit of philosophizing, feast upon this performance by The Who, which I truly believe to be the best live rock and roll performance ever. Not only because it's awesome, but because Mick Jagger wouldn't release the footage for years, as The Who completely blew the Stones off stage. Ah, jealousy.
Tuesday, June 12, 2012
The Greatest Live Performance in History
This is part of my blogathon for SSA Week. Donate, and suggest topics for me, here!
So, while I do a bit of philosophizing, feast upon this performance by The Who, which I truly believe to be the best live rock and roll performance ever. Not only because it's awesome, but because Mick Jagger wouldn't release the footage for years, as The Who completely blew the Stones off stage. Ah, jealousy.
So, while I do a bit of philosophizing, feast upon this performance by The Who, which I truly believe to be the best live rock and roll performance ever. Not only because it's awesome, but because Mick Jagger wouldn't release the footage for years, as The Who completely blew the Stones off stage. Ah, jealousy.
An Update on Bradley Manning
This is part of my blogathon for SSA Week. Donate, and suggest topics for me, here!
For those of you who read my work over at In Our Words, you might remember that a couple of months ago I wrote a novel on the case of Private Bradley Manning, a US Army soldier who was arrested when it was discovered that they had leaked data to an information broker of sorts, which included footage of US soldiers killing innocents and claiming they were terrorists as well as thousands of cables detailing diplomatic operations. I argued that the way they have been treated is unconscionable and horrifying, especially given the crime supposedly committed.
Since I wrote that piece, Manning has been moved out of the prison where he was held in isolation and apparently, been treated better, probably as a result of the UN Rapporteur on Torture reporting that the US' treatment of Manning, as well as their efforts to obstruct his investigation, constituted violations of UN regulations.
Now, Private Manning is on the verge of going before a full military trial. However, there are possible bright spots, namely that the military and Obama administration are actually allowing Manning's defense team to have full access to government documents relating to the case, an act of fair play that seems odd for our government.
So, Manning is not out of the woods, but there is a slight chance that justice may be served in this case. We cannot forget the injustice of this case, nor what it represents: that our government, despite trying to argue otherwise, is more and more trying to become less transparent. If we want to live in a free and open society, we have to fight against such authoritarian moves, or we're acquiescing to, for lack of a better term, letting the bad guys win.
For those of you who read my work over at In Our Words, you might remember that a couple of months ago I wrote a novel on the case of Private Bradley Manning, a US Army soldier who was arrested when it was discovered that they had leaked data to an information broker of sorts, which included footage of US soldiers killing innocents and claiming they were terrorists as well as thousands of cables detailing diplomatic operations. I argued that the way they have been treated is unconscionable and horrifying, especially given the crime supposedly committed.
Since I wrote that piece, Manning has been moved out of the prison where he was held in isolation and apparently, been treated better, probably as a result of the UN Rapporteur on Torture reporting that the US' treatment of Manning, as well as their efforts to obstruct his investigation, constituted violations of UN regulations.
Now, Private Manning is on the verge of going before a full military trial. However, there are possible bright spots, namely that the military and Obama administration are actually allowing Manning's defense team to have full access to government documents relating to the case, an act of fair play that seems odd for our government.
So, Manning is not out of the woods, but there is a slight chance that justice may be served in this case. We cannot forget the injustice of this case, nor what it represents: that our government, despite trying to argue otherwise, is more and more trying to become less transparent. If we want to live in a free and open society, we have to fight against such authoritarian moves, or we're acquiescing to, for lack of a better term, letting the bad guys win.
Why The High School Movement is Awesome
This post is a suggestion from August Brunsman, the awesome and adorable Executive Director of the Secular Student Alliance. Don't forget to donate and suggest topics for me here!
I tended in high school to generally be a pretty terrible person. I was dealing with lots of shit, most down to my brain being cut open twice (that's a whole other story. Maybe later...), but I just was not very nice. Had there been an SSA in my awful bourgie Cincinnati suburbs white peoplesville school, I may not have been so terrible.
See, a few weeks ago, Kate Donovan of the Northwestern SSA, JT Eberhard of Clan Badass, Arthur Wawrzyczek who is DAFT's vice president, and I made our way an hour northwest of Chicago to a place called Dundee-Crown High School in Carpentersville for an activism fair being put on by a teacher there named Bruce Taylor, who is the advisor for their branch of the Youth Labor Committee (!!). This was my first sign that this school was magic.
See, as most of us know (or are currently going through), high school sucks. It's a place where artifice rules, where if you don't win the popularity lottery, your life will be miserable. Some of us fought against this, and managed to survive it (in my case, thanks to lots of books, old movies, and my father's scotch). However, from all appearances, Dundee-Crown has none of that. When we got there and set up the SSA table, I was blown away first of all by how diverse the school is. Being in Chicago's suburbs, which are notoriously whitewashed and soul-crushing, I expected that to be the case here, but, though I have no demographic information to back this up, it looked to me like, gender and race wise, there was damned near equal representation. Also, I expected the kids to view the activism fair as a chore, something Mean Mr. Taylor (who by the way every year for this gets Noam Chomsky on the line for a conference call with students. I know, right?) was making them do. But no: attracted to our table by the magic and singing skills of JT, who was trading magic tricks if the students would wear SSA swag, knew their shit. They were down with politics, economics, all that good shit.
Which leads me to my final point about D-C's awesomeness: within the first hour we were there, two students came up to the table and asked what we were all about. After hearing from us and asking more questions, they asked immediately if they could form a high school group at Dundee-Crown. We obviously said yes, JT gave them his card, and told them to e-mail him when they got a faculty advisor.
Three hours later, they were back with a prospective faculty advisor.
Fuck yeah, right?
Many other awesome things happened that day, but it was this that still stands out in my mind as the best part of the day. Not because I was representing the SSA, but because it took these students THREE HOURS to find a faculty member when it seems at most other schools JT deals with the students are forced to fight against the administration tooth and nail to just start a group.
Dundee-Crown is DEFINITELY out of the ordinary, in that it is a warm, nurturing public school; I'm pretty sure still it's the only one. It's the kind of environment where an SSA affiliate can thrive, in an atmosphere of open intellectual discourse. For the schools who try to pick fights with JT, though, I think that the SSA can be a huge influence on making those schools better places for students and faculty alike. In a time of life that emphasizes sticking with the herd, not acting out, and generally forming you into nice little productive automatons, a group dedicated to free thought might be the most radical outlet possible.
Forward the Secular Student Alliance. Liberate ALL the high schools!
I tended in high school to generally be a pretty terrible person. I was dealing with lots of shit, most down to my brain being cut open twice (that's a whole other story. Maybe later...), but I just was not very nice. Had there been an SSA in my awful bourgie Cincinnati suburbs white peoplesville school, I may not have been so terrible.
See, a few weeks ago, Kate Donovan of the Northwestern SSA, JT Eberhard of Clan Badass, Arthur Wawrzyczek who is DAFT's vice president, and I made our way an hour northwest of Chicago to a place called Dundee-Crown High School in Carpentersville for an activism fair being put on by a teacher there named Bruce Taylor, who is the advisor for their branch of the Youth Labor Committee (!!). This was my first sign that this school was magic.
See, as most of us know (or are currently going through), high school sucks. It's a place where artifice rules, where if you don't win the popularity lottery, your life will be miserable. Some of us fought against this, and managed to survive it (in my case, thanks to lots of books, old movies, and my father's scotch). However, from all appearances, Dundee-Crown has none of that. When we got there and set up the SSA table, I was blown away first of all by how diverse the school is. Being in Chicago's suburbs, which are notoriously whitewashed and soul-crushing, I expected that to be the case here, but, though I have no demographic information to back this up, it looked to me like, gender and race wise, there was damned near equal representation. Also, I expected the kids to view the activism fair as a chore, something Mean Mr. Taylor (who by the way every year for this gets Noam Chomsky on the line for a conference call with students. I know, right?) was making them do. But no: attracted to our table by the magic and singing skills of JT, who was trading magic tricks if the students would wear SSA swag, knew their shit. They were down with politics, economics, all that good shit.
Which leads me to my final point about D-C's awesomeness: within the first hour we were there, two students came up to the table and asked what we were all about. After hearing from us and asking more questions, they asked immediately if they could form a high school group at Dundee-Crown. We obviously said yes, JT gave them his card, and told them to e-mail him when they got a faculty advisor.
Three hours later, they were back with a prospective faculty advisor.
Fuck yeah, right?
Many other awesome things happened that day, but it was this that still stands out in my mind as the best part of the day. Not because I was representing the SSA, but because it took these students THREE HOURS to find a faculty member when it seems at most other schools JT deals with the students are forced to fight against the administration tooth and nail to just start a group.
Dundee-Crown is DEFINITELY out of the ordinary, in that it is a warm, nurturing public school; I'm pretty sure still it's the only one. It's the kind of environment where an SSA affiliate can thrive, in an atmosphere of open intellectual discourse. For the schools who try to pick fights with JT, though, I think that the SSA can be a huge influence on making those schools better places for students and faculty alike. In a time of life that emphasizes sticking with the herd, not acting out, and generally forming you into nice little productive automatons, a group dedicated to free thought might be the most radical outlet possible.
Forward the Secular Student Alliance. Liberate ALL the high schools!
All right, here we go.
Oh hai. Sorry about that.
I am Andrew Tripp, philosophy and art history major, the President of the DePaul Alliance for Free Thought, renowned scoundrel, and I want you to give me your money.
No, don't go! I promise, it's for a really good cause.
See, the Secular Student Alliance, the umbrella organization of which my group is a member, is trying to raise $100,000 over SSA Week, so that they can continue kicking ass, taking names, and generally being awesome.
So why am I here, you ask? Because, along with my very good friend and president of the Secular Alliance at the University of Chicago, Chana, I am going to be blogging for the next twelve hours straight. I will be posting every half hour to hour depending on what I am writing about; some posts will be about SSA stuff, or other general news stories, which take less time to do, but some will be full-blown philosophical analyses that I might need a bit more time to complete. Whatever. I don't follow your rules. Nyyyyuuuuuuuuh.
So, that's what you can expect. But, I need your help. In order to make sure my blogging remains high quality, and also so that I'm not just doing this for my own ego, I need you to go and donate to the SSA. For a measly $10, you can suggest a topic for me to write about; I will take and complete all requests, in some form hopefully at least somewhat resembling what you asked for. The sillier, the better; I will abide by the same guidelines Chana laid out in the post I linked to above. Silly photos, art historical analysis of puppy photos, whatever. Come at me.
I am Andrew Tripp, philosophy and art history major, the President of the DePaul Alliance for Free Thought, renowned scoundrel, and I want you to give me your money.
No, don't go! I promise, it's for a really good cause.
See, the Secular Student Alliance, the umbrella organization of which my group is a member, is trying to raise $100,000 over SSA Week, so that they can continue kicking ass, taking names, and generally being awesome.
So why am I here, you ask? Because, along with my very good friend and president of the Secular Alliance at the University of Chicago, Chana, I am going to be blogging for the next twelve hours straight. I will be posting every half hour to hour depending on what I am writing about; some posts will be about SSA stuff, or other general news stories, which take less time to do, but some will be full-blown philosophical analyses that I might need a bit more time to complete. Whatever. I don't follow your rules. Nyyyyuuuuuuuuh.
So, that's what you can expect. But, I need your help. In order to make sure my blogging remains high quality, and also so that I'm not just doing this for my own ego, I need you to go and donate to the SSA. For a measly $10, you can suggest a topic for me to write about; I will take and complete all requests, in some form hopefully at least somewhat resembling what you asked for. The sillier, the better; I will abide by the same guidelines Chana laid out in the post I linked to above. Silly photos, art historical analysis of puppy photos, whatever. Come at me.
Hi There!
Hello one and all and welcome to Blogathon for SSA Week! A proper intro post will be coming shortly as soon as I've had some caffeine and cooled down a bit.
Until then, PUPPIES!
Until then, PUPPIES!
Thursday, June 7, 2012
The Official Considered Exclamations SSA Week Page!
Want to contribute directly to my goal of raising $100 for the SSA? Go here!
I will repost this as I blog on the 12th. August Brunsman, the SSA's director, has already made the first contribution; go show him up!
I will repost this as I blog on the 12th. August Brunsman, the SSA's director, has already made the first contribution; go show him up!
Wednesday, June 6, 2012
BLOGATHON
Hello all.
This is my announcement that, in support of SSA Week, on June 12th I will be blogging for 12 hours straight, starting at 10 in the morning and ending at 10 in the evening.
Why, you ask? Because the Secular Student Alliance is a fucking phenomenal organization that I love with all of my heart. Since my adventures with DAFT began, they have always been there with support and guidance and friendship, and I consider myself incredibly lucky to know and work with them.
There's an added bonus to this: if you donate to the SSA and mention me, I will write a blog post on the topic of your choice.
So, there it is. Look out, the secularists are coming for your malleable minds.
This is my announcement that, in support of SSA Week, on June 12th I will be blogging for 12 hours straight, starting at 10 in the morning and ending at 10 in the evening.
Why, you ask? Because the Secular Student Alliance is a fucking phenomenal organization that I love with all of my heart. Since my adventures with DAFT began, they have always been there with support and guidance and friendship, and I consider myself incredibly lucky to know and work with them.
There's an added bonus to this: if you donate to the SSA and mention me, I will write a blog post on the topic of your choice.
So, there it is. Look out, the secularists are coming for your malleable minds.
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