Soli Deo Gloria!

i love the word ’sexy.’ sexy this…sexy that.

i don’t use the term ’sexy’ to mean ‘hot.’ i use it as a variation of the term ‘cool,’ but it means so much more than that. i can’t explain it, but i’m sure everyone understands what i’m saying.

somehow, jason and i came up with the term ’sexytime’ while playing starcraft. and now jason, nima, and i sometimes say ’sexytime out’ instead of later. pretty geeky, huh?

AND NOW FOR MY SEXY IDEA

so if you read my previous blog entry, you could tell that i was frustrated with doing research and with academia and with being stupid…so while watching msnbc i thought up a sexy idea. this is not an original idea, but i think if someone really pushed it forward, it could be a big hit.

why not make news/scholarly bits sexy?

late night shows, the daily show, the colbert report, snl, etc. do this, but i am thinking BIGGER and SMARTER and not just funny but INFORMATIONAL. i am talking about mixing political news and academic bits.

from reading/watching the news, we get a lot of superficial political mumbo jumbo. journalists just don’t understand what they’re reporting on well enough to get beyond that. they just follow trends or movements in politics. they just follow political rhetoric.

they’re not trained counterinsurgency experts when they report on iraq or afghanistan. they’re not trained experts on politics and the inner workings of washington. they’re not trained in international relations. they’re not trained in national security strategy. journalists report on so much, but they only understand what they’re reporting on on a superficial level.

this in turn causes the public to understand everything on a superficial level. also, politicians are self-interested actors who want to get re-elected, so their rhetoric plays to their party’s or the public’s passions. also, politicians are often not experts in international relations, public policy, etc. either. they have advisers but themselves are businessmen, lawyers, doctors, etc.

basically, the system is not for informed information. everything is very superficial. newspapers like the washington post and the new york times do have some value, but still…they’re not what i want. my presidency professor only watches evening news to see public opinion. he just wants to see what’s being broadcast in the news.

basically, you have to read scholarly journals or blogs from scholars to really understand things. that is a shame b/c a lot of that is really long and difficult to understand. it’s just not made for normal people with normal jobs.

Keep It S(exy) Stupid

how about having experts on topics report on those topics? how about getting past the partisan BS?

i think a great idea would be to have a website with comedic sketches of current events and academic theories. these sketches and news/articles could be reported in easy-to-understand analogies.

this is one i heard on msnbc by a scholar from a think tank. i have added my own flavor to it.

Iran: we need nuclear energy.
U.S.: no you don’t.
Iran: yes, we do.
U.S.: you have oil.
Iran: it’s hot here in the summer. we need to power our fans.
U.S.: you have oil.

my roommate informed me that iran does not have refineries to refine its oil, so it ends up importing a lot for energy use…but still, stuff like that could explain things so well.

also, about the recent NIE report that iran stopped actively pursuing nuclear weapons in 2003. iran is still making everything they need to put together a nuclear weapon down the road. they’re still enriching uranium. they could just have gotten afraid b/c of our invasion of iraq and decided to wait out bush. but who knows…i just don’t like how news is skewed to ppl’s passions.

this whole skewing to ppl’s passions can really tie down the president, although the president also uses it to his advantage. dirty bush/cheney/atkinson…but i digress.

my idea would be more INFORMATIONAL than current news and easier to understand and funnier. basically, it’d be sexier.

BTW. i love the words ’superbad’ and ‘mclovin’ as well.