Prison

While I'm sure a lot of the rappers were truly guilty of whatever crimes they were accused of, I acknowledge that the police may very well be racist, at least in certain areas. I think the assassination of Mac Dre was interesting and I wonder if it was due to racism, people disagreeing with his content or personal disagreements. I think the segregation does set up racial tensions for when jail mates are released and I've seen these tensions unfold on my soccer team before. The necessity of prison is clear but I think that the US overdoes it, especially in terms of fairly unimportant drugs such as weed. I think that private business interests in prison are clearly an issue. Rather than encouraging the reform of criminals via psychological therapy, it motivates the prison employees, guards and private companies (immortal technique & rad kass) to keep inmates returning into "slavery". I actually found this extremely interesting!!! This was the best documentary so far this year!

Attention Spans

Yesterday, a couple of my friends came over to film a birthday video for their good friend. They know I play piano and we're quite interested in the songs I could play from my piano sheet music. However, it seemed like they only wanted to listen for short segments at a time and then go onto the next song. Furthermore, they started loudly talking and didn't even seem to be paying attention to the song they had requested me to play. Maybe that's because our generation is accustomed to having so much beauty around us (i.e. music on the radio) that we are accustomed to putting it on the back burner and tuning (👀see what I did there) in to other things. Amateur musician frustration...

Sofie's Music

I enjoyed listening to "I Turn My Camera On" for a plethora of reasons. Primarily, I enjoyed not having to listen to repetitive, unneccessarily explicit rap. Add the fact that the song picks a creative topic and expresse in a unique fashion and I have sufficient grounds. I think the beginning of the song sounds a little bit like the beginning of the baseline of "Eye of the Tiger" but I'm probably wrong. The guy's voice is a little strange but in a mysterious, enticing manner!

What My Classmates Played?

I found a great deal of the songs that were played in class appalling. I think that a good majority of the kids were playing the songs just to say that they played the most explicit song they could find on their iPhone in school. One of the kids chose to play Tyler the Creator for what seemed like 30 minutes and it was awful to have to hear. I found it sad that everybody chose to play rap/hip-hop but I guess that's how things worked out. I was hoping that somebody would mix it up and I guess Anton did when he played his guitar tunes. Overall, it was fairly disappointing to listen to a conglomerate of cussing and talk of "smacking hoes", shooting people up and you get the idea hopefully. I wish that my classmates were listening to slightly more refined music although I concede that the song I played hides some questionable lyrics behind guitar playing as well.

You Need Me, I Don't Need You

The piece of music that I chose to showcase was a version of Ed Sheeran performing his non-radio, live version of his song "You Need Me, I Don't Need You". A good amount of people were grateful that I did not play it for the full 11 minutes. In my opinion, this song is either a complete hit or miss; if one enjoys it, then it's 11 glorious minutes; if one dislikes it, then it's one long hour of listening. I was hoping the kids in my class would like it because it was a crossover of rap, singing and guitar. I find it extremely impressive and I think that Ed Sheeran is hugely talented but my taste in music is apparently different from my peers. The video is posted below.

The Story of the British Dog Being Caught by the Taliban

I want to keep this blog short due to the length of the last one so here's a short opinion on the recently trending story of the Taliban holding a British dog hostage. The story has gone rampant in the news but people may be failing to see the heavily biased style of reporting the story from simply one perspective. The dog is claimed to look sad and have received a demeaning haircut in some articles. This is all based on one video with the dog on a chain-link metal leash surrounded by a group of armed extremists. I personally doubt that the style of leash affects the dog particularly and the haircut could be seen more as a gift as cruelty considering that the surroundings are most likely fairly hot. The tail and ears did seem to be drooping at the beginning when the dog is mostly still but once he began to walk, it seemed like he lightened up. This is all conjecture on my end as well. However, even if the critics are right, the dog definitely doesn't seem to be starving and I fail to see how his captivity is any more inhumane than forcing the dog to live a dangerous life of servitude hunting down extremists. The most neutral report of the situation I could find was from NPR and I posted the link to it below.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/02/06/272490481/taliban-release-video-of-captured-american-military-dog

The Difference Between Trust and Respect

I've been raised by two parents who have very opposite views on how an individual deserves to be treated based on the minimal knowledge that you have of them while first getting to know them.

My mom believes that you should always respect and trust people (or institutions) when you first encounter them. Of course a decent amount of signals are included in this idealistic perspective to avoid naivety, say, not simply investing in a company because the person says it's a good investment. My mother would instead research the company herself and then determine the credibility of the person/statement as he is asking for a leap of faith and my mom is not willing, intelligently, to run that risk.

My dad believes that you should neither respect nor trust an individual until they demonstrate their competence. I suppose that my father's undergraduate/graduate students have suffered due to his suspicious demeanor but there are clear benefits as well. First of all, by making people earn your respect, they feel that you genuinely appreciate them because they are aware of what it looks like when you don't and they may feel accomplished as a result. Making people garner your trust ensures that you weed out danger. You understand to which level you can trust the individual and thereby avoid placing yourself in a vulnerable position.

The drawback is that people tend to treat you in a more compassionate/friendly manner if you choose to open up your vulnerabilities first. Therefore, social adeptness could be defined in this category as appropriately walking the line of giving/withholding respect and trust. My personal suggestion in getting people to trust you is to slowly open up about small things and then escalate. The same tends to happen for the person receiving your openness and along the way, you can evaluate whether the person is worth trusting. Since most people want to be on good terms with one another, they will continue to trust each other more as they get to know each other better and voila, a friendship happens.