Today's featured "WikiHow" was entitled "How to Land a Plane in an Emergency". Naturally, I was drawn to this title and visited the posting hoping that it had been written by famed Cpt. Sully. Not to my surprise, but still disappointing, the article was not written by Cpt. Sully, but by somebody who I will mention later.
The premise of the WikiHow was what to do when the pilot falls unconscious and you are required to land the plane. This seemed strangely "Airplane"-esque, especially since the assumption that the co-pilot taking over was no where to be found. The first instruction was to sit in the pilots' seat, which our author graciously reminded us was on the left side. The second step, take a breather. Now I seem to recall a pilot who took a "prayer breather" during an emergency situation just recently in the news. That man had charges pressed against him...Let me continue to say that these are the first two steps of six. Evidently, you only need six steps to land a plane in an emergency, and the first two require you to assume the position, and breathe.
After you have successfully leveled the plane (step 3), called for help on the radio (step 4), and maintained a safe speed (step 5), you can effectively land the plane (step 6). In case you were confused, the author attached a video.
The video shows a flight simulator computer game. We join our narrator in the cockpit of a 737 on final approach to a small airport in NY. He can't stop complementing his 45 degree bank to line himself up on the runway, and comments that he doesn't use full flaps to land because they cause the plane to go to slow. After landing, he encourages us that this process will take some practice to get good at, but that you should be able to do it someday. What a douche.
So I got to thinking, and I recalled a moment this weekend in Best Buy that struck me. The kids that used to bug me by playing Blink-182 at the Guitar Centers on beautiful guitars and 2,000 dollar amps, have become the kids that play Rebel Yell on Guitar Hero on the big screens at Best Buy as loudly as possible. I received Guitar Hero World Tour for Christmas and for once, had become decent at the game. When I saw these two hipsters playing, I noticed that they were playing on medium, and I thought to myself: "I might be ready to play Guitar Hero in public on hard and show these kids the rock star that I am". Fortunately I snapped out of it, but the emotion is real for so many other people who play the game. Think about it. The kids that are really good at Guitar Hero, Madden, World of Warcraft, Flight Simulator and so many others, really think that they are rock stars, pro-athletes, Mages, Cpt. Sullys, and life affectionados. You can't land a plane in six steps, even if you were a pro, just like you can't play guitar with five colored buttons and a strum bar, or win the super bowl with X,Y,O, and []. You are not an honorary Army Ranger or Special Forces bad ass because you are good at Call of Duty, nor are you by any means qualified to handle a firearm because you are deadly on a 1st person shooter.
At what point did our proficiency at video games translate into our life proficiency? It's always great to see Army recruiting stations because some are loaded with video games with "accurate" war-time situations. The Army knows. You think you're a bad ass because you're good at video games. You think that you can save the world. When you end up in Iraq with limited ammo and no health packets on the ground to instantly replenish your health indicator, you just done gone and fucked yourself.
I hope that Cpt. Sully knows that all he needed was 6 steps, just as I hope that Jimmy Page knows that all he really needed was 5 buttons and a strum bar. I'm just glad that I played Gran Turismo on PS back in '99, because the first day that I drove my minivan instead of my souped up GTO, I knew that reality was a bitch.
For your own, private time...
http://www.wikihow.com/Land-an-Airplane-in-an-Emergency
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Monday, March 9, 2009
Facebooked Part I: I'm Being Stalked, But Everybody Seems Okay With This...
It's a very interesting concept, this Facebook thing. As a sociology student, Facebook provides a cornucopia of avenues for social research and insight into the patterns of human interaction and virtual identity. The best part is, it's all in the same place and accessible to everyone all the time. Though I could dedicate a my life to the study of Facebook, I'll only address it as it individually applies to me.
Recently, I have spent some time thinking about the well known and probably overused term "Facebook Stalking". Users of Facebook say this when they want to justify browsing through some body's profile looking for revealing pictures or try to get a pulse on somebody's life. Generally, the positive thing about Facebook over Myspace is that you have to be friends with the person before you can learn their juicy details and look at their bikini pictures. This has granted users a variable sense of security knowing that only people they allow can "stalk" them.
Of course, now we know who's looking because they ask to add us as friends.
I used to not be selective when I received Facebook friend invites. Generally, they were people at my university and since we were all freshman and sophomores, we were "friending" all the people that we could to keep our fingers on the pulse of the campus community. Granted, this has led to a post-graduation, "who is this" which often tempts me to go through and "de-friend" people, although I currently do not have the balls to do this do to my perceived social consequences of sed act (maybe a later "Facebooked" entry?).
As more schools joined Facebook (you used to have to have a school e-mail to join...) and then eventually, the general public was allowed to join (enter pre-pubescent Myspacers with mirror self-portraits) Facebook became a walk down memory lane. People would search by their old high schools and find a slew of people scattered across the country. Through a social chain of events, people you knew in grade school suddenly became your Facebook friends.
When professors in college started using Facebook as a means of communication, this was generally okay. Students have a hard time envisioning that their profs might have social lives, and Facebook helped to reiterate, and sometimes disprove that fact (popular teachers are obviously more cyber-relevant).
I was suddenly stunned when a former high school teacher asked me to be his Facebook friend. I wasn't necessarily stunned that it was THIS particular teacher, although that in-it-of-itself was intriguing. What startled me was that this older gentleman was using Facebook to friend former students and even more creepy, current ones. What is a high school teacher going to do with the ability to "Facebook stalk" the overtly attractive and readily-illegally seductive girls at this private high school in Orange County? Does this strike anybody as being inappropriate? I'm not suggesting that teachers who friend students are predatory. But in high school, this seems a little too potentially hazardous, and maybe some of this is because I know this man can be a little "too close for comfort" sometimes.
I denied this man's friendship. I don't want to be on his Facebook page when he gets subpoenaed. More importantly, I don't want to be part of any potential indulgence in a social fantasy as created and manipulated by Facebook. For this reason, I have closed my doors to mass Facebook immigration. Somewhere Facebooker's have to draw the same line. Who am I going to allow access to my photos and info? Though parents are cool online, and some college profs, high school teachers with a primary friend list of students doesn't seem like a safe move.
Unfortunately, we're comfortable being stalked to some degree now. More disastrously, we're comfortable volunteering information to friends we hardly know anymore and or we haven't spoken to since youth. The more that Facebook becomes popular, the more prone it becomes to become predatory (like Myspace) for older people to "stalk" younger people through the elimination of social boundaries through online globalization. Perhaps the only redeemable element is that on Facebook, we choose our friends and the public does not have access to our info and pictures. If this eventually changes, than Facebook becomes a place for 13 year olds to create 18 year old virtual identities and post submissive self-portraits for clandestine social consumption.
Who’s looking at your info? Your vacation pictures? Your relationships? I think the reality is that we don’t know. But the worse reality is that we don’t care…
Recently, I have spent some time thinking about the well known and probably overused term "Facebook Stalking". Users of Facebook say this when they want to justify browsing through some body's profile looking for revealing pictures or try to get a pulse on somebody's life. Generally, the positive thing about Facebook over Myspace is that you have to be friends with the person before you can learn their juicy details and look at their bikini pictures. This has granted users a variable sense of security knowing that only people they allow can "stalk" them.
Of course, now we know who's looking because they ask to add us as friends.
I used to not be selective when I received Facebook friend invites. Generally, they were people at my university and since we were all freshman and sophomores, we were "friending" all the people that we could to keep our fingers on the pulse of the campus community. Granted, this has led to a post-graduation, "who is this" which often tempts me to go through and "de-friend" people, although I currently do not have the balls to do this do to my perceived social consequences of sed act (maybe a later "Facebooked" entry?).
As more schools joined Facebook (you used to have to have a school e-mail to join...) and then eventually, the general public was allowed to join (enter pre-pubescent Myspacers with mirror self-portraits) Facebook became a walk down memory lane. People would search by their old high schools and find a slew of people scattered across the country. Through a social chain of events, people you knew in grade school suddenly became your Facebook friends.
When professors in college started using Facebook as a means of communication, this was generally okay. Students have a hard time envisioning that their profs might have social lives, and Facebook helped to reiterate, and sometimes disprove that fact (popular teachers are obviously more cyber-relevant).
I was suddenly stunned when a former high school teacher asked me to be his Facebook friend. I wasn't necessarily stunned that it was THIS particular teacher, although that in-it-of-itself was intriguing. What startled me was that this older gentleman was using Facebook to friend former students and even more creepy, current ones. What is a high school teacher going to do with the ability to "Facebook stalk" the overtly attractive and readily-illegally seductive girls at this private high school in Orange County? Does this strike anybody as being inappropriate? I'm not suggesting that teachers who friend students are predatory. But in high school, this seems a little too potentially hazardous, and maybe some of this is because I know this man can be a little "too close for comfort" sometimes.
I denied this man's friendship. I don't want to be on his Facebook page when he gets subpoenaed. More importantly, I don't want to be part of any potential indulgence in a social fantasy as created and manipulated by Facebook. For this reason, I have closed my doors to mass Facebook immigration. Somewhere Facebooker's have to draw the same line. Who am I going to allow access to my photos and info? Though parents are cool online, and some college profs, high school teachers with a primary friend list of students doesn't seem like a safe move.
Unfortunately, we're comfortable being stalked to some degree now. More disastrously, we're comfortable volunteering information to friends we hardly know anymore and or we haven't spoken to since youth. The more that Facebook becomes popular, the more prone it becomes to become predatory (like Myspace) for older people to "stalk" younger people through the elimination of social boundaries through online globalization. Perhaps the only redeemable element is that on Facebook, we choose our friends and the public does not have access to our info and pictures. If this eventually changes, than Facebook becomes a place for 13 year olds to create 18 year old virtual identities and post submissive self-portraits for clandestine social consumption.
Who’s looking at your info? Your vacation pictures? Your relationships? I think the reality is that we don’t know. But the worse reality is that we don’t care…
Friday, March 6, 2009
OC Gym Culture: Home of the Broski
I've recently joined a gym. So far this has been a great decision, but it has reminded me about the types of people that go to the gym. I knew upfront that there would be beefcakes when I decided to join, but my most interesting observation has centered around another gym goer.
Music has a great way of setting the mood. Gym music is generally designed around this concept blending modern top 40 with pounding rhythm of the gym cacophony. I had forgotten my iPod yesterday and was subject to the mercy of the gym XM channel. All of a sudden a true gem of alternative rock came over the ambient speakers. "Stacy's mom has got it goin on..." What a great tune. I looked around the upstairs cardio area and realized that I was surrounded by a bunch of "Stacy's moms". Yes, the real housewives of Orange County, at the corporate LA Fitness at four o'clock on a Thursday afternoon. After all, no mother with any real responsibility could afford to gym it up at 4 in the afternoon. One OCmom was on the elliptical and clearly "workin it". The best thing about an OCmom is that when a young, firm high school girl walked by them to use a treadmill, they didn't follow her with judging eyes, dreaming of the days when they too were nubile. No. These moms still believe that they are as they once were.
I can't decide which is a more disturbing image. The OCmom that treats the gym like a second, forbidden, and exotic sexual partner. Or the beefcake that looks like Jude Law and his Latin friend who drink a creamy pink liquid while they groan in each others faces and check themselves out in the wall of mirrors by the weights. These guys watch with judging eyes as guys like myself (who can generally hold my own at the gym) work with weights a fraction as heavy as their own in a college underarmour shirt and my high, running style shorts. I pay them no mind. If i wanted to look like a roided Jude Law, I'd adjust the hair on my balding head too, drink creamy pink liquid and constantly scan for chicks to walk by before starting my reps.
I would say that the gym-goers fortunetly have a "do your own thing man" attitude. Generally we're good natured. I wonder if other people are preturbed by bra-less moms and beefcakes, although I'm starting to think that the two compliment eachother beautifully. Cougars and broskis getting ready for the weekend charge into irresponsibility and an overindulgence in the virtual identity making guys like myself gratefull that I don't subscribe to this particular form of bullshit.
Music has a great way of setting the mood. Gym music is generally designed around this concept blending modern top 40 with pounding rhythm of the gym cacophony. I had forgotten my iPod yesterday and was subject to the mercy of the gym XM channel. All of a sudden a true gem of alternative rock came over the ambient speakers. "Stacy's mom has got it goin on..." What a great tune. I looked around the upstairs cardio area and realized that I was surrounded by a bunch of "Stacy's moms". Yes, the real housewives of Orange County, at the corporate LA Fitness at four o'clock on a Thursday afternoon. After all, no mother with any real responsibility could afford to gym it up at 4 in the afternoon. One OCmom was on the elliptical and clearly "workin it". The best thing about an OCmom is that when a young, firm high school girl walked by them to use a treadmill, they didn't follow her with judging eyes, dreaming of the days when they too were nubile. No. These moms still believe that they are as they once were.
I can't decide which is a more disturbing image. The OCmom that treats the gym like a second, forbidden, and exotic sexual partner. Or the beefcake that looks like Jude Law and his Latin friend who drink a creamy pink liquid while they groan in each others faces and check themselves out in the wall of mirrors by the weights. These guys watch with judging eyes as guys like myself (who can generally hold my own at the gym) work with weights a fraction as heavy as their own in a college underarmour shirt and my high, running style shorts. I pay them no mind. If i wanted to look like a roided Jude Law, I'd adjust the hair on my balding head too, drink creamy pink liquid and constantly scan for chicks to walk by before starting my reps.
I would say that the gym-goers fortunetly have a "do your own thing man" attitude. Generally we're good natured. I wonder if other people are preturbed by bra-less moms and beefcakes, although I'm starting to think that the two compliment eachother beautifully. Cougars and broskis getting ready for the weekend charge into irresponsibility and an overindulgence in the virtual identity making guys like myself gratefull that I don't subscribe to this particular form of bullshit.
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