Brad's Place

     Due to ease of use and being able to do more with the blog, I am switching my blog over to http://bradstaggs.blogspot.com/. I hope you will join me there...

     If you happen to be one of the 33,987 residents of the country of Liechtenstein, then be warned... the Swiss are coming for you!

     The Swiss claim that while on a "routine training exercise", a company of 170 Swiss soldiers got lost and ended up in neighboring Liechtenstein. The soldiers wandered over 2 Km (which I believe equals 18 feet or so, but who knows with metrics) into Liechtenstein before they realized their mistake (probably due to the cow with "Welcome to Liechtenstein" painted on its side) and turned back.

     Interior Ministry spokesman Markus Amman said nobody in Liechtenstein had even noticed the soldiers, who were carrying assault rifles but no ammunition. "It's not like they stormed over here with attack helicopters or something," he said.

     Firstly, if they had stormed over in attack helicopters, the Swiss would likely have missed Liechtenstein completely! I've seen their cute little helicopters and they are not attack worthy. They look more like the Island Hoppers chopper that T.C. owned on Magnum P.I. Not to mention the fact that the entire country of Liechtenstein is smaller than Washington D.C.!

     Secondly, while Liechtenstein has no official military, I'm sure that Prince Alois - Hereditary Prince of Liechtenstein, Count of Rietberg and royalty voted "most likely to look like Dracula in old age" - can afford to put some nerf rifles and toy tanks on his border since he's worth roughly $4 Billion.

     Thirdly, this is not the first time that the Swiss have tried this "we got lost" manuever. Recently, some Swiss soldiers got lost in Serbia and blew through three checkpoints along the Administrative Boundary Line (ABL) between Serbia and Kosovo. They claim that it was a mistake and that they didn't know they were "on vacation and got lost". Obviously, the large signs and crossing guards meant nothing to them. They were stopped when a brave Ministry of Interior Police... uh, man... jumped in front of their van in order to make them stop. That policeman may have siingle-handedly thwarted the opening salvo in the Swiss war!

     I think that this is a combined effort on the part of the Swiss to test defenses in an attempt to take over the world a small piece at a time. They have no shame. They give us chocolate, great knives and women's scantily-clad ski teams in an effort to lull us into a false sense of security. "Oh, look at the cute little neutral country! Aren't they precious?" Then they attack with as many as 170-200 soldiers at a time. All of our Swiss Army knives are usless against their Swiss Army protective armor (you should see the can opener that comes out of that!) and we are forced to kick-start our Pennsylvania chocolate production in order to keep up with international demand. The United Nations creates sanctions against the Swiss and we eventually end up with more American Soldiers stationed at our tiny forward operating base in Liechtenstein than there are residents of the country.

     Oh yes, I see this as just the beginning. I will remain vigilant on the Swiss watch (no pun intended) in order to make sure that they are kept in their place. Maybe we need more cows along the borders...

     I would, literally, die in order to protect our freedoms, freedom of speech being one of the chief among them. I believe that if somebody wants to say something, they should have the freedom to say it as long as they are ready to accept the consequences for what they say.

     Then along comes a man named Julio Cesar Pino.

     Pino is an associate professor of History at Kent State specializing in Latin American history. He asks his students to view the Cuban revolution in a favorable light and claims that Castro's rise to power "brought justice" to Cuba. But again, he has the right to say that.

     What I have a problem with is awebsite allegedly belonging to Mr. Pino, Global War. Mr. Pino converted to Islam in 2000 and has become an insane proponent of the killing of people in the name of his twisted version of Islam. On his website, the current headline is ""Are You Prepared for Jihad?" COME, O, BROTHERS! 2007: THE YEAR OF ISLAMIC VICTORY!" You got it, a history professor at Kent State University in Ohio says this on his website: "We are a jihadist news service, and provide battle dispatches, training manuals, and jihad videos to our brothers worldwide. All we want is to get Allah’s pleasure. We will write ‘Jihad’ across our foreheads, and the stars. The angels will carry our message throughout the world."

     He says of a female suicide bomber who killed 41 people "Now she lies on the Golden Couch of Paradise." All I can hope for is that the couch she is lying on is covered in razor-sharp spikes that she is forcibly pushed onto each minute of eternity. Pino then had the nerve to complain that he was "harassed" and received "death threats" when once complained that the Jews were engaged in genocide against the Palestinians even though he clearly believes in and espouses the virtues of mass murder.

     Some have said that his blog should not be an issue. He is a history teacher who has been published (1997 - Family and Favela: the Reproduction of Poverty in Rio de Janeiro - Greenwood Press) and has a Ph.d in History from the University of California at Los Angeles. He has been recognized as Faculty member who made a difference" in undergraduate teaching by University Teaching Council in 2002 and 2003. He has been in "Who's Who in America" in 2005.

     However, in a curious twist, the Islamic Community Net posted this headline recently: "URGENT WARNING TO MUJAHIDEEN: AVOID JULIO PINO". The article calls Pino "a likely government informant" and warns allies not to "fall for Pino's trap". It seems that a website called "A Small Dose of Reality" claims that the FBI is running a Nuslim sting operation using Mr. Pino as bait via his website.

     "Much like the sting operations run to uncover and prosecute pedaphiles, Pino's website attracts and indentifies muslim extremists." the suthor claims. "Facing prosecution for his HATE activities, Pino was turned and is now being used against his own kind.  All hits on his website are monitored by the FBI who refuse to identify exactly how many are investigated and to what extent.  The FBI says that there have already been more than six successful prosecutions and that there are dozens of ongoing investigations as a result of this operation."

     Some people are not convinced, however. I don't know the man at all, but if it is proven that he is the one spouting this insanity on his website, I have this to remind people of:  18 US Code Section 2381: "Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States."

     In what is certainly a sign of our political times, Sen. John McCain announced he is running for President... much to the surprise of absolutely nobody in the audience at the Late Show with David Letterman. That's right, once again, a candidate for the highest office in the land was announced on a late-night entertainment show possibly wedged between jokes about Britney Spears and K-Fed.

     If you will remember, during the previous Presidential primary, Sen. John Edwards announced his candadicy on The Daily Show with John Stewart, a move that worked out very well for him.

     Candidates are trying so hard to "reach out" to middle America that they miss the whole point of why they are politicians in the first place. They work for us, the voters, and if they were doing their jobs, they wouldn't have to go to the lengths they do to prove to middle America that they are "just one of you". I'm sorry, but I live in close proximity to Washington D.C. Once they become part of the political establishment, they stop being "one of us". Washington is one of the most insulated places on the planet where politicians don't have to actually deal with "the people" if they don't want to.

     McCain defended his decision to announce during the Late Show by saying that he will be issueing a "formal announcement" in April. Does that meant that this really isn't an announcement and it doesn't mean anything? Is he finally realizing that because of his own McCain-Feingold Campaign Reform Act, he has to be very careful when he officially announces? Wouldn't want to cut off any possible funding now, would we?

     All that the McCain-Feingold Act does is to allow more control over campaign finance by the two major parties. A small, third-party candidate now finds it virtually impossible to raise the neccessary funds to run against the big boys. Tom Vilsack has already, three months into the race, had to drop out due to lack of funding.

     I have no problem with anybody announcing their run for office in any medium they wish. The great Dave Barry announced his campaign through his blog site at the Miami Herald. I announced my run for President here at this blog. I believe that Mr. Barry and I will be starting a trend that will be the next level of politics. Nobody will ever meet us as politicians, they will judge us solely on the blogs we write. If blogs had been around in 1960, Nixon might have beat Kennedy.

    On March 17th, the anti-war protest group International Answer will be holding a protest in Washington D.C. wherein they are planning to march from the Vietnam Memorial to the Pentagon in order to demand an immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. I have no problem with this as the group has the Constitutional right to assemble peacefully.

     However, I am calling for support to several veteran's groups who are going to gather at the Vietnam Memorial on March 17th in order to protect it from vandalism. The Military Order of the Purple Heart and Rolling Thunder will be among the groups who will be gathering to protect the wall on that day.

     Last month, during a "peaceful protest" in downtown Washington D.C., the steps to the capital were spray-painted in an act of vadalism. The groups want to gather in order to keep the same thing from happening to the Vietnam Wall.

     The website for International Answer indicates that the group will gather at Constitution Gardens which is near the Vietnam Memorial. They will turn all amplifiers away from the Memorial in an attempt to not disturb family members visiting the Memorial. They will "march on Constitution Ave. and then to Virginia on the way to the Pentagon".

     But the promises to be thoughtful of those visiting the Memorial are not enough for Captain Larry Bailey of the group Gathering of Eagles. "And having seen what Jane Fonda's group did last month on the Capitol steps, spray-painting the capital," Bailey says, "we got to thinking, 'What if they did this to the Vietnam Wall?'"

     I would ask anybody who will be in the Washington D.C. area on March 17th to please join these men and women. We don't want to confront or stop any peaceful protest, we just want to make sure that nothing happens to a piece of so many people's lives. I wish that I could be there, but being in uniform keeps me from being where I want sometimes.

     On behalf of current Soldiers, I thank you and thank all of the men and women who fight for veterans. And I want to say "you're welcome" to the International Answer group. Freedom of speech and assembly is pretty cool, isn't it?

     Boy, I wish I had a government job at which I could be the morality monitor for millions of people who would probably hate my guts if they ever met me. Maybe I could work at the FCC! Or become a Democratic congressman!

     Dennis Kucinich (pronounced Coo-coo-nich), Democratic Congressman from the state of Ohio and Chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on Domestic Policy, made a surprise appearance at the National Conference for Media Reform held in January in Memphis, Tennessee. He announced that he will be heading a new House subcommittee which will focus on issues surrounding the Federal Communications Commission, or FCC.

     Does this mean that he would be investigating the years of fraud, waste and abuse committed by the FCC? How about the unconstitutional media control put in place by the governmental body? No, Kucinich said that his committee would be holding "hearings to push media reform right at the center of Washington." He went on to say "We know the media has become the servant of a very narrow corporate agenda" and added "we are now in a position to move a progressive agenda to where it is visible."

     Being able to flip through over a hundred channels from the comfort of your couch incorporates a very narrow corporate agenda? These are not the days of three networks battling each other for all the viewers. We have choice. More than ever. And each individual should have the right to choose what they do or don't want to watch. We don't need a television babysitter, the American public votes by watching or not watching a particular show. I almost NEVER agree with what they are watching, but that is my choice. Or I could choose... gasp... to not watch anything at all!

     FCC Commissioner Michael Copps was also at the conference and said these words which I am not making up: Broadcasters should be taken to task due to "too little news, too much baloney passed off as news. Too little quality entertainment, too many people eating bugs on rality TV. Too little local and regional music, too much brain-numbing national play-lists." That's right, ladies and gentlemen, because a suit in Washington who was appointed by the President, not voted into office, thinks that what he sees on television today is not up to his standards, we MUST do something about it! Define "quality entertainment". Define "brain-numbing national play-lists". To whom? While I may agree that I don't like reality TV shows at all and I think that most radio is crap, all I have to do is turn the channel.

     Kucinich's committee is also going to try to reinvigorate the "Fairness Doctrine" which was eliminated in 1987. The Fairness Doctrine required broadcast licensees to present controversial issues of public importance, and to present such issues in what was deemed an honest, equal and balanced manner. This doctrine was created in 1934, at the same time as the FCC, because there were so few radio and then television stations that the public had no choice in who they listened to or watched.

     In August 1987, the FCC itself abolished the doctrine by a 4-0 vote, in its Syracuse Peace Council decision. The FCC insisted that the doctrine had grown to inhibit rather than enhance debate and suggested that, due to the many media voices in the marketplace at the time, the doctrine was perceived to be unconstitutional. I personally think that vote should expand to include the FCC itself, a governmental body that has far outlasted it's time.

     The FCC was created at a time when there were very few choices, if any, for radio and television. The government decided that they would be the ones who controlled the frequencies on which these stations were carried, doleing out licenses for broadcasting as long as you fell in step with their rules. They control what is seen on television and who can get a license to broadcast. At the time of it's creation, no accompanying governmental body was created to watch over news print because there were so many newspapers in any town that the people had a choice. If they found one to be not to their liking, they could simply read another one.

     To this day, their is no government watchdog on newspapers and I'm not calling for one. If something is printed which isn't true, the person, persons, or organization hurt by the article has many means of redress and this is what keeps papers (for the most part) honest. People are also very quick to tell the newspaper that they will stop their subscriptions. Newspapers are run by free market standards.

     But television and radio is run by government standards. It doesn't matter what the people want, the government will tell television carriers what they have to program. There must be X number of hours of educational programming in a day or you will be fined. An accidental bad word or "costume slip" during a live sporting event? It's obviously the fault of the network, not the person who did it.

     The FCC is no longer needed in this country to tell us what we have to watch and when we have to watch it. Vote with your televisions. We have been doing it for decades. Why do you think a radio station changes from Top 40 in 80's to Alternative in the early 90's to Country in the late 90's and is now back to classic rock? Because they follow what the people want to hear.

     How many television or radio stations are available in your hometown? Can you choose between every kind of programming you could ever want to see from your couch? Now, how many newspapers are there? Which gives you more choice? Get the government out of my choices.

     I like going to a few websites which point out the hypocricy of politicians, media types and people in general. One such site is NewsBusters which is, yes, very right wing, but still manages to pull the insanity out of the news.

     I had hoped that the site, owned by the Media Research Council (MRC), could see when both sides were being idiots and leave people to their own devices, letting people choose for themselves what they wanted to believe and think. I now know that is not true. Brent Bozell, the President of the MRC, has shown his true colors on the subject of censorship.

     The controversy sorrounds an upcoming special on the Discovery Channel titled "The Lost Tomb of Jesus" which is produced by none other than James "Terminator and Titanic" Cameron. The special is about the discovery of the possible "real burial site" of Jesus. However, that is not the whole story. According to the special, Jesus' bones were still there in an ossuary along with the ossuaries of Mary Magdelene, Jesus' mother Mary, and Jesus' son. If this were true, several tenets about Christianity would have to be re-thought. For instance, if they are the bones of Jesus, he didn't transcend. If they are the bones of a son, Jesus was married and had children.

     The Discovery Channel has broadcast television specials like this before. I have a few of them from Discovery and the History Channel on DVD. But this one has caught the ire of the religious right like nothing since the DaVinci Code. Bozell, in an editorial on NewsBusters, says "The Discovery Channel, like most of the national TV elite, display a dramatic bias in target selection when it comes to religion. There are no controversies over the historical claims of Islam, Judiasm, or any other religious faith. But Christianity is another story."

     This is an outright lie. I have several specials on disc which relate to the origins of Islam and Judiasm as well as Christianity. What Mr. Bozell is not telling you is that since we are a "Christian nation", most people don't know enough about Islam and Judiasm to realize what they are being told during the special. How many people realize that the Koran actually mentions the virgin Mary more times than the Bible does? The origins of all three major religions are the same. They have the same first five books with little variance. And those variances come in the form of human editing from ancient text.

     But Mr. Bozell takes his form of zealot thinking to a new level. He says "If the Discovery Channel fails to cancel this slanderous 'documentary', it will have to explain why it is intentionally misleading the public... To slander Christianity at the start of the lenten season is unconscionable."

     Slanderous?! What he is saying is that any television program which presents a viewpoint opposing his purely Christian viewpoint is slanderous. He talks about the bible as if every single word is to be taken as gospel (no pun intended) and can never be questioned. Who is going to bring about the charges of slander? The Vatican? This is the same man who said that the DaVinci Code was an evil book and movie which was being used to turn people away from Jesus. I agree. And Harry Potter is a book which brings young children to satan and teaches them to be witches... not to mention that silly bible thing which teaches people to be intolerant of others and to stone their children when they misbehave. Did I go too far? Welcome to the world of interpretation.

     When Al Gore's fictional 'documentary' was being shown in theaters, even though NewsBusters opposed it, they never called for the head of Al Gore, shouting about his slanderous views toward real science and how he was misleading the public. They looked on almost humerously, shaking their heads and laughing. But by God, don't you dare make any program that calls our faith into question!

     And to argue that airing the special during the lenten season is a non-argument. Not everybody, believe it or not, believes in lent or follows the traditions thereof. I was raised in the Christian church and had never heard of lent until I had Catholic friends. That is like saying that we cannot have any freedom to discuss religion during Easter or Christmas unless those discussions follow the lockstep walk of a particular sect of Christianity.

     We live in a FREE society. We live in a country where, yes, you do have the right to voice your opinion and decry what you think is wrong but you do NOT get to decide for me what I should think is wrong. If you don't want to watch the Discovery Channel special, then don't watch it. Nobody is forcing you or any of those who believe the way you do to watch the program. But if I want to watch it and decide for myself how realistic and truthful I think it is, then I will watch it. Claiming that the Discovery Channel owes anything to the American viewing public for a program it airs is like saying the McDonald's owes money to people who got fat by eating their food. Nobody forced anybody.

     I haven't seen the special that is being discussed yet. I will at some point simply because all of these claims facinate me in the same way the fantical claims of people who see the virgin Mary or Jesus in their grilled cheese sandwich facinate me. I can't say whether I agree or disagree with the viewpoint presented in the special nor will I simply because I haven't seen it. But I can make a bet that Brent Bozell hasn't either.

     How many of us can remember back to the 60's when the people who made up the left, or liberal, side of the political spectrum were considered "tolerant" and the right, or conservatives, were considered the closed-minded idiots?

     Welcome to the new world, my children.

     We now live in a world where the mouthpieces of the left (Rosie O'Donnell, Arianna Huffington, The Dixie Chicks, Michael Moore, Al Gore, etc) and the mouthpieces of the right (Bill O'Reilly, the entire Fox News Network, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, etc) have become equally intolerant and hateful toward anything and anybody who doesn't fall into lockstep with their ideas. If this trend continues, how are we as a nation and a people ever going to come together on any ideas when these are the people we hold high?

     A prime example of intolerance was displayed on Friday by San Francisco Gate columnist Mark Morford in an article entitled "Behold, The Lost Americans: Who are the 13 percent of us who've never heard of global warming? And how can they be stopped?" If this article mentioned something about educating this missing 13 percent about both sides of global warming and then allowing them to make up their own minds, that would be fine. That would be educating the public to a possible problem which still has a lot of questions to be answered on both sides and what they could possibly do to fix the human errors which have occured.

     However, the article was nothing more than a rant against people who mind their own business and live their own lives rather than sticking their foul little noses into other's business. Following are just a few of the literary spins that Morford uses to make fun of anybody who doesn't think the way he does: "...some of them live right next door to you and breathe the same air and steal your parking spaces and often don't shower for six days at a stretch." "They are, in short, the deeply uninformed. The inexplicably ignorant. The wondrously numb, the disconnected, the way, way out of touch. And they are, apparently, legion." "I am not speaking of, say, those armies of happy blank-eyed red-state 'Merkins who only read NASCAR-themed Harlequin romance novels and only drink Hooters-branded energy drinks (real products, both) and who like to bury their gay sex fantasies under mountains of happy homophobic sing-along God-fearin' megachurch denial." "Nor am I speaking of your average Bush-lovin' bobbleheads who appear to get their worldly information by way of licking the stuff found on the bottom of the rocks in front of Fox News HQ and then tripping for three days while watching "The O'Reilly Factor" from the bathtub. Everyone knows about them. And no one really takes them seriously anymore."

     Isn't it amazing to find the one entity on this planet who can read people so well that he knows what category to place everybody in? I wish I had that castle high on Telegraph Hill beside Coit Tower from which I could make assertions out of hat.

     Mr. Morford happens to be talking about people like my Father who may not know much, if anything, about global warming, but he understands about trying to make a day-to-day living for his family. Morford calls the myth of global warming "the most dire issue facing the planet today". Does everybody agree with that? Ask the people of America who are simply trying to put the proverbial bread on their collective tables everyday. They don't have the view from on high, either.

     My Father pays attention to the weather, the market prices, and sports scores. He's not stupid in any way, he just has his own life to live. He doesn't believe that he has any right to tell others how to live theirs.

     When I was being taught journalistic ethics, I was told that journalists should be able to keep a distance in order to present all sides of a story. This, of course, has been completely distorted by newspapers and television journalists throughout the history of media. Pulitzer himself was one of the busiest yellow-journalists in the business. However, Morford calls Bush a "...monkey-like Republican presidents deny its existence and spit on science and mock the simply insurmountable pile of evidence in the name of oil profits and flagrant cronyism." I'm sorry, but when did calling the President "monkey-like" invoke good journalism? And what, exactly, IS monkey-like?

     Many people will yell about the writer's first amendment rights, the same rights that allow me to take him to task on this paltry little blog. I agree whole-heartedly with a person's first amendment rights. I, more than many, believe in ALL of the constitutional rights afforded to us as Americans. And as long as Morford never does a news piece involving global warming, President Bush, conservatives, liberals, or the world in general, I have no problem with him expressing his opinion. But how are we supposed to believe any kind of journalistic integrity when the man writes things like "The United States is, by far, the world's worst contributor to the root causes of global warming, and yet we are the least concerned about it... It's enough to make you look at George W. Bush and want to slap him across the face with the razor-sharp paw of a dead polar bear."

     You see, as is always the case, George Bush is to be blamed for decades of abuse of the environment by companies and individuals who were born and dead long before he became President. Deep down, every issue involving the environment becomes a political threat against whoever is in charge at the time. We did not sign the Kyoto Treaty because it was bad world legislation. No country who signed it can afford to enact it's protocals without going broke.

     Morford continues: "Sure, the overall lack of concern is understandable. After all, the vicious GOP spin machine has been working like a rabid dog for the last six years to demonize science and mock environmentalists and sneer at the Kyoto protocol and force eminent scientists to bury their dire findings lest Dick Cheney visit them in the night with a box of rat poison and a shotgun sneer." The GOP spin machine?! As opposed to the liberal spin machine?! Do NOT try to say that only one side uses spin while the other is silky white and clean as a hospital operating room table in a private hospital! Spin machines are hard at work on BOTH sides of the issues trying to pull the uninformed and young into their way of thinking.

     And finally: "Maybe our 13 percent blindness rate is simply the brutal upshot, the logical conclusion of all the endless stripping of school textbooks of fact and perspective, of the push for silly literalist Christian dogma at the expense of true awareness, of the systemic neoconservative drive to get Americans to stop asking questions and stop thinking for themselves and to hate and mistrust the media (except, of course, Fox News), and wouldn't you be better off just enjoying your Wal-Mart candy corn and your "Everybody Loves Raymond" DVDs and just turn off your brain because it's all just far too complicated and messy and suspicious anyway, so really, why care at all?"

     Stripping of all fact and perspective from schoolbooks? Really? When I went through school in the time before the white man did anything wrong, Custer was the hero of the Little Bighorn. He fought off hords (we used the word hordes back then) of Indians (we used the word Indians back then) and sacrificed himself for his men. Thanks to the fact that we are doing everything we can to erase revisionist history, we know the truth about what happened at the Little Bighorn. We know that Columbus did not discover America and we know that government programs simply drain the government of money and create worthless jobs... like the FCC. Do I agree with the movement to strip schoolbooks of evolution? Absolutely not! But I do agree with the privatization of schools because our government shouldn't be running them anyway.

     I am a member of the United States Army, very much an arm of the government since the President is our Commander in Chief, and I have never been told not to ask questions or do my own research. As a matter of fact, I did something silly. When I first was told about the evils of global warming, I did not move in lockstep and believe everything which was handed to me. If I did that, I would be a Jehovah's Witness now. I did my own research. Not just about who said what, but where did their research come from? Where did they get their numbers? And you know what I found out? NEITHER side is telling the whole truth. Let me repeat that: NEITHER side is telling the whole truth.

     Does Al Gore and his "award-winning documentary" (Powerpoint slide show) tell you that the numbers he uses are made-up? Nobody can tell what the weather patterns are going to do next year, let alone 20 years from now. Weather is a variable, one that you cannot assign a number to, so the environmental scientists assign a number which will enhance their findings and provide them the worst-case scenario. Michael Crichton's "State of Fear" exposes the flawed science and exaggerations used by the global warming alarmists. Joseph Bast of the Heartland Institute wrote a very well-received paper on the book that is available here.

     But many people will say that this is a work of fiction. Fiction is defined as "the class of literature comprising works of imaginative narration, esp. in prose form" by Dictionary.com. Funny, that's what I call Al Gore's "movie" as well as Mark Morford's article.

     Those of us who make a lifetime out of avoiding meetings can now rejoice: a new research study suggests that people have a harder time thinking of alternative solutions when in a group than when alone.

 

     In this month's issue of the Journal of Consumer Research, scientists will discuss their project which centered around exposing participants to one brand of soft drink and asking them to think of alternative brands. Alone, they came up with significantly more products than when they were grouped with two others.

 

     According to an article on MSNBC.com, team member H. Shanker Krishnan tells Livescience.com "When a group gets together, they can miss out on good options." I completely agree. While in college, I missed out on several good opportunities because I was with a "group", which was defined as "several guys dragging themselves from bar to bar in a pathetic attempt to find that one woman with that look of abject desperation so needed by a group of drunken college nerds."

 

     I have known for years that meetings make a person stupid... possibly even stupider than they were at the beginning of the meeting. In the military, we run on meetings. Meetings are the bread and butter of what we do. Let's listen in on one such meeting that took place in late 2002:

 

     Military Leader who shall remain anonymous: "Alright, I want to hear from each of you at this table... what should we do next year?"

     Military underling #1: "Um... can I skip this round and go next?"

     Military Leader: "No, you spineless welp! I knew I shouldn't have promoted my Sister's son to Colonel. Tell me what you think!"

     Military underling #1: "Well then, um, how about we invade a country?"

     Military Leader: "What country?"

     Military underling #1: "Um... Iraq?"

     Military underling #2: "That's so stupid!"

     Military underling #3: "Yea!"

     Military Leader: "I think it's a darn good idea! Start plans immediately."

     Military underling #2: "Absolutely, Sir! Great idea!"

 

     As you can see, a group mentality in a meeting can create a situation which is not in the best interest of... well... anybody. My suggestion is to stear away from all meetings as much as you can.

 

     And on behalf of all nerds in college bars, please be nice to us when you see the pocket protector peeking up over the top of the sweater vest. We may be mild on the outside, but inside, we're wild! No, really, stop laughing...

     The latest edition of the Guardian East Magazine, the official magazine of KFOR 8 and the National Olympic Team, is out on the streets now! But you don't have to go to one of the dozens of stands which carry the magazine, you can get it right here! My article, edited by the marvelous Nicki Fellenzer, entitled "Word of Mouth: One Soldier's Quest to Live Life to the Fullest While Deployed" is on page 27. Enjoy!