Individual Justice

There are times in our lives when we must choose between following our morals and leaving things to justice, or acting out of anger and taking matters into our own hands. Sometimes it's just so hard to sit back and let "the system" take care of things (or not), when you yourself feel that the system isn't enough. Socrates said that you should follow your moral convictions above those of the land when they conflict. I don't think that Socrates was advocating martial law; I think that he felt that sometimes one individual can have a clearer understanding than the masses. There are times when I envy a concept like Batman. A normal human being, who took it upon himself to bring to justice criminals who could escape the notice of the authorities. Cast as a vigilante by the authorities, yet he got the job done. One man made a difference in a city of very many. Granted, Batman is a fictional character in a fictional Gotham City, but it's something that could really happen; it's the principle of it. It's so tempting to take the law into your own hands, and enact justice on those who think they can get away with things that harm other people emotionally, if not physically. The law can't really do much in the realm of emotions. But the people that are close to the people affected, we feel their pain, and cry for justice. We long to right wrongs, and see the people on the wrong side get what they deserve. It's hard to leave that in someone else's hands, when we feel that we can get things done so much more quickly and more effectively ourselves. Someone should NEVER have to feel like they need to be constantly looking over their shoulder. No one should live in fear of someone else. People prey on other people because of their own insecurities. It makes them feel powerful, and it makes them feel better about themselves. Power and manipulation are things that go hand-in-hand, power being something that is easy to abuse. People who manipulate and prey on those they feel are weaker than themselves should be held accountable. But what happens when the law does nothing for what goes on in a person's head? Emotions aren't exactly empirical. But the people close-by can see these things. And that's what moves us to anger. It isn't wise to act out of anger. But sometimes you just can't help it. Those who make other people afraid should be made afraid themselves. They should reap what they sow. Morality and justice are such a tangled-web. If only evil was always punished and good was always rewarded. What a simple world this would be. Sadly, this is a broken and corrupt world. One where not everyone gets what they deserves. Sometimes it takes all that we have to hold ourselves back, and hope and pray for the outcome that is deserved. All we can do, is hope that somewhere, sometime, justice will prevail. 

Well, class-scheduling and registration is upon us, so I did what any good student would do, and figured out what classes I needed to take. Turns out that I'm not able to take some of the classes that I want (namely Astronomy and Greek Philosophy, though I've done some study into both of those fields independently) because of scheduling conflicts. I like the schedule that I should come up with (I don't register until Friday, so nothing is set in stone yet), so I suppose that I have no complaints. The only problem that I have right now is that two classes that I have to take this semester are at the same time, so that has to get resolved sometime soon. Otherwise I like my schedule for next semester, mainly because I got to choose what I wanted to take, and even the classes that I have to take are interesting. So far my schedule looks like this: Linguistic Anthropology, which I'm really excited about, because I'm very interested in languages, hence the fact that I've had 3 so far, and have one more on the way; Archaeology Senior Seminar which I'm not sure how this class will go, just that I have to take it and supposedly they are opening up the subject matter because 3 different majors can take this as a senior seminar (the obvious archaeology, classical studies, and history, I believe), so that it's not so focused on just archaeology; Archaeology Field Methods, which is where we dug up trenches right here in our own UE backyard, studying the remains of dormitories built to house the massive influx of soldier-students after the GI Bill was passed after World War II; Engineering for Archaeology Majors, which I'm not too excited about, but it shouldn't be too bad; the 4th language that I'm adding to my repertoire is German, as I'm taking 2 semesters of it in preparation for Grad school; and lst but not least I am continuing to take Greek, and this class will be Greek Poetry. Now that might sound boring to some, but in this class we will read the works of Homer, The Iliad and The Odyssey, in their original language; sounds pretty good to me. Well, that is all for now. I will write more at another time if I can think of anything.

Oh, What to do; and TV Woes

I am very bored. See, in all of my classes I don't have all that much work. I was just figuring today that I only have 3 papers left to write in all of my classes. This means that I have a lot of time on my hands. I get all of the work that is current done, and then I have nothing to do. So then I sit around and am bored. Of course you ask why don't I just do something with my friends? Well, the problem is that everyone else seems to have a lot of work to do. Thus everyone is busy, and I am not. So I end up sitting around wasting time on the computer or what not. I suppose that I could get more involved on campus, but there isn't much to do with that either. I'm not sure what the solution may be. Also, right now I do not have a TV, so I can't even watch movies or the Comedy Central that I so crave. I got my TV for Christmas, but rather than checking out different models and investigating what problems they may have (as I usually would with anything else), I looked in a Circuity City ad a little before Christmas and saw what looked like a good deal. We then bought the TV, and everything seemed fine. My first mistake was to not test it while I was at home. I watched a few minutes of some DVDs on it, but I didn't actually hook it up to get a signal. If I would've done that then, I wouldn't have had all of these problems. When I did get to Evansville, I noticed that the TV would make loud popping noises when bright flashes of light were on the screen, especially during commercials. I didn't think much of it, perhaps it was a faulty cable or something. However I tried a different cable and still the same thing. I got on Circuit City's website and looked at the customer reviews on the product, and it seems that I wasn't the only one that was having these problems. I got a crappy TV. I waited for longer than I should've, and finally took it in to see about fixing the problem. They told me that the TV was now discontinued (go figure) and that they only had the display model. But they looked around and found that a store in Indy had a boxed one that they could get shipped down to Evansville. So we did that, and a few days later when I got this other TV, I brought it home with the help of my friend Nathan (who graciously helped me get the first TV to Circuit City), and when I tried this TV the same thing happened again: more pops. So just a few days ago I took this second TV back (again, thanks to Nathan), and they said that they would have to send it to "the technicians" (they make make it sound so ominous), and that if the technicians couldn't fix it, that I could put the money I paid for towards another TV. So really what this long drawn-out story amounts to is this: research a product before you buy it if it is a piece of technology! You can find reviews on countless websites (lots of reputable ones even), and then you can also see what other people are saying, average consumers like you and me. Only you can prevent crappy technology purchases; don't be the victim. And knowing is half the battle. GI Joe!    

Blogger.com Blows Right Now

So here's the deal. Every time that I try to write a post that is longer than about 2 paragraphs, Blogger can't connect anymore, and I lose my post. It's very frustrating! I even tried doing the same thing in both Internet Explorer and Firefox (I always use Firefox, but sometimes when something doesn't work on one, you try the other), but the same thing happens both ways. So now it's come to this: I figured out that I can post to my blog by writing it in an e-mail and sending it that way. Pretty convenient, but we'll see if it works. After spring break I'm having a hard time being motivated to do anything back here at school. I have homework and reading to do, and I just don't feel like doing it. The thing is, I have to do it, so I sit down and do a little, and then I waste a lot of time messing around on my computer. I actually look for ways to waste time, and so then something that should only take a few hours gets strung out over a whole day. Oh, college, how I loathe thee. So yeah, this is short, but we'll see how the post-by-e-mail goes. I'm hoping it'll work, because then I can post my long, ponderous, thought-provoking philosophical works once again on Blogger.com. I know that you're waiting for it, but you won't have to hold your breath much longer.