REC if you like cookies. That was my disguise for self promotion. I haz no shame!

 I grew up in Austin, Texas, a very liberal city. However, though I wasn’t raised in a conservative area, I grew up missing out on a lot of things that I  figure to be normal to any other middle classed suburbanite.
  
I grew up without a father,  an assimilated half breed (yay I'm mixed), with a working class mom. Stereotypically one could imagine that because my mom had to work so many hours to put food on the table and keep the electricity on (though at times we played camping when the power bill was overdue) that she didn‘t have time to encourage me to get a better education or help me with my homework.

On the contrary, it is because of my Mom’s tenacious nature that I went to college, let alone gained half the understanding of the world around me. She made me apply myself in academics from early on, She always supported me no matter what my dream was, and she encouraged my creativity that was often regarded as weird. I guess we often cite our parents as contributing factors to what makes us who we are, because our history essentially starts with them.
   
Even though I grew up a shy, imaginative boy, my mom’s frame of reference had some dark undertones. Having a gun placed to her head at 8 during a grocery store robbery, being sexually harassed in the seventies, being abandoned at 12, falling into depression after my father left…Things like that always made her over protective, which I suppose is a mother’s right. So, the one thing she beat into my head at an early age was to “always be aware of your surroundings.” This was because she knew the dark side to human nature. So as I have grown into  a young adult, I’ve found myself facing a constant struggle between optimism and that cynical pessimism that the world is not a good place. I’ve experienced racism towards myself for not being a full blood or being mistaken for another race, prejudice, and assault. If I had it my way, I wouldn't have a race. Although, I’ve also experienced love, hope, and overall good vibes.

If I was to focus on what my climate of opinion is, I’d have to say due to being educated, I’m very liberal, yet not very extreme. I’m also very tolerant of others' beliefs and open to argument and debate. Problem is, I don’t see good debates anymore. Mud slinging and false propaganda make it hard to debate in a cordial manner. It is very strange to me that the best debates I’ve seen are in classrooms, but not the outside world (in my opinion) where so much bias and prejudice play into things.

Emotion is a big part of who I am. I’ve never felt incredibly intelligent, even though people say I am, I’ve never felt I’ve really belonged at a college university, but I‘ve been stirred so much by lectures on war, social movements, and the changes the world goes through. I was told that the measurement of intelligence is not always about how one performs on tests. We have emotional intelligence that amplifies our traits such as protective instincts and our abilities to empathize (that's me yo).

I do realize that being human, I’m prone to bias. You have to take a stance on some issues and there’s no middle ground. Like abortion for example. everyone has a side to that issue, but nobody really knows what is right, but they know what they feel and still hold true to their beliefs.   

-Owl

P.S. If you want to know more about me ask! On here or on Spring form yo. 

 http://www.formspring.me/MikeyAwesome
 
P.P.S. this post is so different from my previous one
   

I dunno if it's all the stress from finals or that I just genuinely feel alone must of the time. I've been cycling through friends like crazy, trying to spend time with everyone, because I keep thinking that I need to get out, get some air. But after going out and returning home, I feel so tired again.

After classes I waste my life by sleeping for hours. I get up to eat, and then sleep until I need to go to class the following day. I hate it. Maybe I'm not eating enough? I only really get one good meal a day due to my meal plan being empty. So I been stuck eating crappy ramen or going put with friends. Perhaps, I just don't have the extra energy to spend.

My gf won't return my calls cause she's busy or doesn't feel like talking or is tired from work. We only really talk once a week and it's been this way all semester due to distance. However, lately it's getting longer and longer between each call. I just want to go home to be with her. Live in happier times...But, what if she doesn't love me anymore? What if I've been gone too long? Why do I feel like our relationship is doomed to failure? I think I'm just being insecure, but is it merited since we haven't communicated in 10 fucking days?
 
 I don't like feeling this way. I think I'm seasonally depressed. I can't take this right now. I have so much work to do, and if I slip up now, I won't graduate. I just need to survive two more weeks and I'm done. yet my motivation is severely lacking. I dunno how I managed to get this far...

It feels like a bad dream. Someone wake me up.

-Owl

Hey guys. This post is kind of a downer so it won't hurt my feelings if you don't read it yo. However, as a history major it's hard not t write about it.

I have come to learn over the years an awful knowledge. Being a history major, I pursued to understand the world and why it is the way it is today. I realized after much time and consideration, that human history seldom changes. The fear of history repeating itself is quite valid. 

The worse atrocity of man was The Holocaust. Hitler's final solution. It is not a subject limited to the murder of Jews alone. 6 million Jews were estimated dead. 12-13 million people make the total. The Holocaust is not more than another act of genocide by an insane aggressor. It is a moment in time, that is unfathomable. Persecutions and genocides have occurred around the world since the beginning of human memory. Christians have been crucified in martyrdom, ethnic cleansings have occurred in various hot spots in the Sudan and Burma.

However, The Holocaust has something that has never been repeated. Industrialization. the amount of time and thinking involved to carry out the execution was mind boggling. Experiments were started in the very beginning on how to kill masses of people in the most efficient way. During WWII Nazi Germans were efficient. They started by killing the undesired. German people with physical abnormalities, and mental disorders, such as down syndrome and schizophrenia.

They were killed by carbon monoxide poisoning. After many tests, various gases were found to be most efficient. The reason, people were not all shot was because bullets were too cost effective. Another problem the Nazis encountered was body disposal. In the beginning bodies were buried. however massive grave sites were too time consuming. The planners of The Holocaust decided to burn the bodies. Questions were asked.

"How do we burn so many bodies?"  
"We can't waste fuel bunring so many."
"Use the fat of the first batch of burned bodies to keep the fires burning."

Every detail, every horror that was the Nazi murder machine was smoothed out with a fine toothed comb. Scientists then took the opportunity to experiment on the slave labor of those unfortunate enough to be in the camps. Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, political prisoners, and anyone else Hitler deemed a "culture destroyer." The mad scientists (pun not intended) found answers to their grim questions...

How long can a human survive in ice water? Is there a difference between male and female?
How long can a new baby survive without food?
How long can a human survive without air?

These questions were answered as victims were tested by the hundreds of thousands to accumulate data. The Nazi scientist archives have left the scientific world in an emotionally taxing situation regarding ethics. The data created has the potential to save lives and has been used to help people in hospitals around the world. Today we have an idea how long it takes for brain damage to occur in a drowning victim. We know this because it has been tested. A friend of mine who is in the science department says "you use the data, but you don't give credit to the scientist, which is the worse thing you can do to a scientist anyways."

As news of The Holocaust reached the rest of the world, America remained indifferent. The government even requested that information about the murder camps be suppressed. The only reason FDR finally agreed to help those imprisoned was to put down the outrage of Jewish Americans. The War Victims Rescue Board was merely a political move. America had its reasons to not intervene. To be blunt the government feared Germany dumping it's immigrants on American soil. For years, the prisoners of the concentration camps, the victims of The Holocaust waited for American soldiers to come and liberate them. By the time it came, millions were lost. Millions that could have been saved.

Towards the end of the war over 40, 000 people were being killed a day in some of the concentration camps. If one takes a second and tries to comprehend that, it's equivalent to a small city suddenly being wiped out. It's unbelievable, but it happened. Today, we will never truly know the total killed by The Nazis due to The holocaust. We don't have the numbers of those taken off the trains and shot. Most of those who witnessed such acts didn't even survive. Other stats count victims of The Nazis as casualties of war, and not The Holocaust. The number of dead in my opinion is underestimated.

What shocked the world was that this crime against humanity was done by a country thought to be civilized. It was the 20th century, this cruelty doesn't happen anymore or so we thought. There are those in this world that believe that man is inherently good. That the world is a beautiful place and worth fighting for.....The Holocaust was not an example of this. 

In the aftermath, the nations of the world promised never again. These horrors would not be allowed to be repeated. So what about the genocides around the world today. Do we care? Have we done our part to make a difference? Even to those trying to make things better, is it enough? History repeats itself. So then, does anything change?

-Owl