arresting michael phelps?

Even though the Beijing Olympics are long gone, Michael Phelps has permeated my day.  First, on the way to work after going to the DMV, I talked to my mom about the pot-smoking phenom.  Then, after lunch, his name came up again and I couldn’t help but get involved.

Apparently a South Carolina sheriff wants to file charges on Phelps for the tabloid photo that has surfaced from a University of South Carolina house party in November.  My main question is this:  is a photo showing a person with a marijuana pipe (albeit a rather massive pipe) to their mouth the equivalent of a smoking gun?  Now I realize that this may be a ludicrous statement, akin to Bill Clinton’s “I didn’t inhale” statement.  I believe cops would be stupid to believe that there aren’t hundreds of pictures of college students throughout the country on Facebook and MySpace smoking pot.  Why don’t we go arrest all of them too?

Now I wouldn’t have a problem if a cop walked into the party and saw, with his own two eyes, Michael Phelps taking a major bong hit.  But with this whole photo thing, don’t we have bigger fish to fry?  For all the money that goes into legal processes and jailing these so-called “offenders,” we could be keeping people from drinking and driving and killing other people, to name just a few worthy endeavors.

But no, a South Carolina sheriff wants to get his two minutes of fame by arresting arguably the most well known and accomplished athelete in the last decade.  And all because of a British tabloid photo.  Worthless.

 

weird fashion fads

Often times I wonder how our discussions end up at certain topics, and today was no exception.  While eating lunch, a former post-doc from our lab who is in his early 30s began talking about some of the interesting fashion fads that were big while he was in middle school.  The younger ones of us ended up laughing hysterically at his favorite fad, tight-rolling the bottom of pants.  Take the below picture for example.

Amazingly, or maybe not, a few other guys in our lab actually subscribed to this ridiculous trend as well.  And of course, this led to other crazy, short-lived fashion trends.  A number of distinctly 90s fads came to mind, and throughout the day, we continued to recount others.  Namely for hair fashion were the bowl cut and the butt cut, as well as rolled/folded socks.  Baggy pants and sagging also made the honorable mentions list.

A few of the guys in their late-20s ended up going nuts over the obsession with silk clothing, most importantly silk shirts and boxers.  And a way out there trend also included water beds.  We amazingly had a 20 minute discussion about water beds and how crazy it must have been to actually buy one.  Issue number one for me would be the actual possibility of sea-sickness in your own bed.  Steve mentioned his uncle who actually had a water bed and how he changed the water every three months.  It must have been hilarious seeing a garden hose running through the house up to the bed to refill it.  But really, why the need to refill?

Basically, this is exhibit A for the fact that not all talk in a chemistry lab is either chemistry or, based on the previous posts, serious.  Many more like this one to come.

 

the united states and afghanistan

Like I’ve mentioned previously, Aleks and I tend to have interesting conversation.  Today, she sent me a link to an episode of a show that she and her husband watch on PBS on Friday nights.  So logically, I took 30 minutes out of my day at work to watch the video clip.  The video is a discussion about our newly-inaugurated president Barack Obama and his approach to Afghanistan, and one of the guests is a historian who has recently written a book about the use of bombing tactics by our military during the twentieth century, while the second guest is a former military officer who now advocates peace and limited military force.

more about “Bill Moyers Journal . Watch & Listen …“, posted with vodpod

I couldn’t help but agree with what the guests were saying.  It makes complete sense that without political stability in the country, it is impossible to secure the nation, yet our military tactics have led us to attempt securing prior to efforts to stabilize the political realm in Afghanistan.  I praised Obama throughout his entire campaign for his new approach to politics, but I feel he still lacks the courage to lean on diplomacy.

Another striking comment came regarding the 9/11 terrorist attacks.  I, like the rest of the country, have been convinced that 9/11 was an act of war; however, it makes more sense to look at the attacks as a major crime committed by a group, warranting a world-wide manhunt to arrest and prosecute the planners and executors of the crime.  President Bush, on the other hand, turned these acts into a war on terrorism, starting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Increasingly, we are seeing less hope in this “war on terror,” and I would say our enemy has not been defined.

Finally, I was most interested in the discussion regarding Osama bin Laden and our attempts to find and kill him.  Since the beginning, I’ve been thinking that killing bin Laden, unlike the thoughts of our previous and current president, would not have the intended effect.  Without bin Laden, terrorists will still exist, and someone new will take the helm.  Motivation will only grow to join these radical groups, and we will end up back in a Vietnam-type war with no enemy.

I hope more than anything that the word “diplomacy” stages a comeback among news networks and with politicians involved in these decisions.  Maybe then we may truly defeat our enemy.

 

beginning with a bang

More often than not, I tend to converse with a third year Polish student in the lab named Aleks.  Her point of view is refreshing and intriguing, considering her undergraduate education was in Poland and her relatively recent impressive grasp of the English language.  She has no problems being forthright and honest, and we tend to have relatively similar views on many different issues.

Yesterday, after reading an article discussing how babies learn a language, I became engrossed with the thought of maybe someday teaching my children not only English, but maybe a second language such as Spanish, which I know enough to get by.  Since Aleks’ native language is Polish and learned German and English while in college, I wondered which language she would teach her children when they were growing up.

She brought up an interesting point about her husband, also Polish and also speaks English and Italian, that although he would like to write for a magazine or newspaper here in the U.S., he says he is unable to express himself in English the way he can in Polish.  Knowing her husband, I know that he speaks English well with few troubles, so there obviously exists a large gap between the ability to speak a language and write in that language.

With this in mind, she says she hopes that her children learn to speak Polish but have the ability to write in English.  I too hope that while my children grow up speaking English, they also learn another language such as Spanish, which by that time, will most likely be incredibly appropriate with the number of Spanish speakers in the U.S.