Comic Con is a no go

So as many of you know, last year beat me up pretty bad. And I just recently have gotten back on my feet. I am playing catch up at the moment and there is a lot to catch up on.

Money wise, I am in debt up to my eyeballs. Okay, not quite, but I have a lot of work to do. And this economy has not been helpful by any stretch. Between unemployment and being what is commonly referred to as under employed, coupled with the inability to find a part time job, well, there is a lot of work to do. Between school, bad debt and the house, I am roughly $120,000 in the hole. And the funny thing is that I really have come to hate being a home owner.

Then there is the weight. I started to gain weight when I was going through the divorce last year. I was stressed beyond all belief, working two jobs, my ex was still living in the house, in school full time and trying desperately to hold it together for the kid. And then I lost my job. And shortly there after there was the lump and the cancer scare. Frankly brownies are my drug of choice and boy did I partake.

So I tried so hard to find a way to pay for Comic Con, but I refuse to go deeper into debt. I love my son, and I loved Comic Con last year, but I have to be realistic. All my savings was shot while being unemployed. So, I canceled.

But there is an upside to all of this. I am planning on flying out to LA for Christmas. If I go out for a bit and have Anakin meet me for a couple days, it can be an amazing holiday. I can see my sister. I can see my mysterious Todd who says the oddest things and who I have never met in person. I can take the kid to Disneyland. And, I can cross an item off my life to do list, spend the day at the beach (even living on a lake my life has been so structured I have never been able to take a full day off to do that).

Plus, with my rockin new job, I have a killer amount of vacation, there is an inhouse gym that is better than some of the gyms around here that are actually paid memberships, and the cafeteria serves healthy food including a fresh fruit bar for breakfast. So though it is a downer now, I can’t help but feel that taking myself off the hook now will make my life easier in the long run.

Granted, when I am watching the twitter feed from friends at Comic Con, I might be beside myself.

Oh well, this is far from the last Comic Con ever and Anakin is still going to go to Gen Con and possibly Origins this year, so he can get his con fix this summer.
Blurg.

Honestly, I want to live in a place where this could happen. How much better would life be if this could occur every so often.

“>

“I don’t trust Obama”. “He lied to us”. “Why hasn’t he done x, y, and z yet?”. I am getting so tired of the complaining. First, Obama has gotten a lot done in an incredibly short amount of time. Second, what the hell what everyone expecting?

Politicians make campaign promises all the time. This is because people demand that they say what they are going do specifically for them. Though this makes sense to a point, the underlying premise is faulty.

There are several errors in thinking with the campaign promises. One is that a politician has enough power to actually do the things they promise. A good example is how often Mayors speak of improving education. For the most part, Mayors have no say over education. Even when the school system is in receivership they do not have direct control over that area. They can influence, but to make any fast and lasting change, they would need to have power they simply do not have. But yet, this is a consistently something is demanded from the voting public at large.

Another issue is simply that politicians might not be aware of all the facts before they take office. A good example of this was when Bill Clinton took office. During his campaigning he promised many new programs and expansions of others. Once he took office though, he was able to see the full extent of the financial situation; those promises fell to the wayside. It was his intent, but they simply could not be done. Aside from those in that current position, no one else will truly know all the information needed to do that job. To assume that anyone can predict what they will be able to do before knowing fully what they are working with seems silly. We wouldn’t expect a chef, even a world class chef, to set a menu without knowing what ingredients are available.

I don’t expect politicians to necessarily keep their promises, but I do expect them to follow in the direction best suited for myself and others following the similar intent of those promises. To expect more just doesn’t make sense.

There has been debate as to whether healthcare professionals have the right to refuse certain treatments based on their own moral standards. What is driving this debate is abortion and whether a doctor should be obligated to perform one even when their religious beliefs are against it. The problem with this is that it is starting to spill into other areas including birth control pills and certain vaccines like Gardisal. At first, it makes sense to allow this but it is better to step back and first ask, do we want to be ruled by ethics or morals?

Ethics and Morals, though similar, are quite different. Morals are what people develop based on their personal notion of what is right and wrong. This personal notion is greatly influenced by outside perceived authority figures, such as parents, teachers and religious institutions. Human beings are taught what is right and what is wrong according to their authority figures, normally through lessons, rewards and punishments. As a person gets older, those in authority have less power and so the sense of right and wrong can start to change, especially when the person can see the nuance in the issue. This is why a 5 year old child knows that stealing a loaf of bread is morally wrong and yet a teenager might ask the question why the person stole the loaf of bread in the first place. The reason behind it can then influence whether it is then perceived as morally wrong. If the person stole it to feed starving children, the teen might see the moral obligation to feed the starving children and a higher issue than the act of stealing being a moral wrong.

Ethics is different. Ethics looks at what is a right and good life and how to live it. It seems similar but there are some key differences. One is that there is no set definition that someone can back to decide if something is ethical for general living. Though there might be a general framework in some sense, ethics does adapt as aspects of humanity adapt, such as medical breakthroughs and longer life spans (Garlikov, 2008). Many people base their morals on either a religious document or on are socially accepted. Neither of these comes into play as to what is ethical. An example of this would be that two hundred years ago it was socially acceptable to own other people, beat your children and keep lovers while married. Many people claimed to have the society, the Bible and the law on their “moral” side. Even with this, many people found these actions to be unethical for various reasons. This is why Ethics cannot allow these standard touch points to be its basis. Society, interpretations of religious documents and laws change. Ethics cannot change so easily or else it cannot claim any certain truths it might have.

Let’s look at an example. Most people deal with ethics in the abstract but the medical profession deals with it daily. Let’s say that two patients enter the ER. One patient, patient A has accused patient B of rape. The reason they are admitted is because supposedly patient A went over to patient B’s dwelling and shot them and then took a bunch of pills. The first issue to deal with is treatment. Morally some people might take issue with treating patient B because of the accusation of rape. Others might take moral issue with treating patient A because of the attempt to take both lives. Ethically, it’s a no brainer, the first tenant is to do no harm (Caplan and McGee, 2004). This is an emergency the physicians and medical staff are obligated to treat both per the medical society code of ethics.

Now time has passed and both patients are stabilized and are recovering, probably on separate floors of the hospital for security reasons. Now while working on patient B, the physicians become aware that patient B has an STD. Here is another quandary, do they inform patient A? Morally a lot of people would state yes, patient A needs to be tested and treated and therefore should be told. But ethically, the answer is no. The reason is so that patients can trust doctors and in turn feel the freedom to tell them everything. This is crucial for a doctor to diagnose and treat any patient. Even not knowing if a patient is taking a multivitamin can cause issues. Informing patient A breaks the patient confidentiality ethical code. Now does that mean the doctor does nothing concerning this for patient A? Well no, that breaks the first do no harm ethical stance. The doctor can try to get consent to test by discussing various things including that it would be wise simply because of the rape. But to inform that patient B is positive for an STD is not an option.
I could continue with this thought experiment, and cover many other ethical dilemmas those in the medical profession face every day. And that is not even touching the large ones ranging from abortion to stem cell research. But I hope this thought experiment helped to highlight the main difference between morals and ethics. Like the difference between the 5 year old and the teenager, there is a maturity difference between morality and ethics. Ethics goal is to predict the consequences to the actions on not only the people involved, but also all those who can be impacted by the action in question, in essence the ripple effect. Because of the much larger scope, ethics will come to different determinations from a personal moral approach on occasion. They are not mutually exclusive by any stretch, but will head down different paths on occasion. This is because ethics will stop and ask questions that a moral standpoint might not ask ranging from what if the accusation proves to be false, what if patient A is mentally ill and therefore not aware of their actions or the consequences from them, etc. Though these might not be true, they need to be considered or else not only will patient A and B’s lives be forever changed, but everyone in their lives will be impacted.

References:

Garlikov, R. (2008) The Point of Studying Ethics. Retrieved from
http://www.garlikov.com/philosophy/ethpoint.htm

Caplan, A. and G. McGee. (2004). An Introduction to Bioethics. BioEthics. Retrieved from
http://www.bioethics.net/articles.php?viewCat=3&articleId=1

As I am sure many of you noticed, I have redone the website. All the previous content was dumped. I have no idea if I will put back it, or just let it disperse into the universe. Anyhoo, if you have any recommendations or anything let me know.

Oh and I have locked down comments to where I have to approve a comment from you the first time, since the influx of spam has been just plain silly.

Have a good one.

People have been going nuts about how they “trusted” someone lately and were disappointed. The bond holders trusted GM, Madoff and the recent crop of knockoffs that are coming up, personal financial advisors and even the banks who claim that regulation isn’t necessary and that we should just trust them. What astounds me is that anyone can claim to be ticked at someone or a company for “failing them” when they made the mistake of trusting them in the first place. Trusting someone does nothing to guarantee their behavior. What people need to do is to look to see if their behavior is ethical. Though other aspects like knowledge and experience come into play, but ethics is huge. If they behave ethically, then consider trusting.

The correlation between ethics and trust is hard to pin down. It does not necessarily have a one to one relationship. Nor does one directly cause the other. But each does bring an element to another and needs to be addressed because of it.
Ethics does not immediately bring trust. A company can act incredibly ethically and yet not foster trust because they might be laying off a lot of people or even because of the product they make, like Nuclear Power Plants. The management of a Nuclear Power Plant might publish its quarterly maintenance report, might have policies and procedures in place to ensure safety, and have an open communication policy with the press and the public. Even though the company has acted above and beyond what is expected from a company but that doesn’t mean people will trust the company. And that would be purely because of the product they make, or the by-product of what they make. So acting ethically doesn’t always lead to developing trust.

That said, in many instances it can. In a scenario where a two people disagree on how to raise a child in the aspect of discipline, person A might still trust person B with person A’s child simply because person A knows that though Person B might prefer time outs over taking away items from the child, ultimately, Person B will act ethically in the discipline process towards Person A’s child.

There is also the difference in trust do to ethical and non-ethical behavior in the corporate culture. A company that is seen as behaving ethically will have more slack when things start to go wrong in the economy. An example of this would be Goldman Sachs. Where companies like Citigroup were doing bizarre subprime mortgage back securities credit swaps, Goldman Sachs was investing in more stable securities. When A.I.G. started to falter, many companies were being negatively impacted by it. The government came in and stabilized A.I.G. slightly, but it caused a wave of companies to appear on short sellers radar. Companies whose balance sheet was in good order started to see their stock plummet and their investors panic. But where Citigroup in essence went bankrupt and needed the government to step in, Goldman Sachs had a private investor come in and buy preferred stock. By doing this, Warren Buffett quickly stabilized Goldman Sachs stock price and short sellers moved on (Money & Co, 2008). Warren Buffett was willing to do this because he had seen Goldman Sachs investment strategy and their balance sheet and new they were an ethical company that behaved above board. Citigroup, who purposely built off shore subsidiaries to hide questionable investments, had no one willing to step in other than the government. Though many people think Nationalization is off the table as a national strategy to the economic mess, Citigroup will eventually need to be fully nationalized just so the healthy and legal pieces can be split off and sold and those that are though still legal, but amazingly unethical, can be stopped and allowed to die.

There is also when trust is used in order to cover up unethical behavior. A perfect example of this might be Enron. Employees trusted that the upper management knew what they were doing and that they were ultimately conducting business ethically. So when they were asked to look the other way on a specific minor issue (Simon and Peterson, 2000), they did since they thought overall the company was on the up and up. Trust allowed for employees and ultimately, their accounting firm, Arthur Anderson (Tuck, 2002), to do things that when looking back, was unethical behaviors in itself. Not only did Enron destroy itself, but it brought down the second largest accounting firm in the nation, emptied employees’ retirement portfolios and stole from millions of people.

To quote Aristotle in Shakespeare’s Richard II, “For God’s sake, let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the death of kings.” History is filled with where trust was misused to cover up unethical behavior. A current example of this is Bernie Madoff. This story shows why trust is never enough. Madoff was charismatic and seen as brilliant, but he was able to con thousands of people out of billions. This happened because people were only basing their decisions on the concept of trust. No one asked how he did it. It was deemed propertiary so this was enough for his customers. Now common sense says you diversify your investments yet almost everyone who invested with him put all their money with him. This was because he was supposedly earning 20% interest annually on his investments. There are so many issues with this story that it borders on being overwhelming. What stuns most of all is that no one asked if how he was “earning” the 20% annual interest was ethical. If that one question had been asked he would have at least show what industries he was in and what aspects of that industry he was focused on. It would be hard to then follow the industry and not see the eventual ups and downs. More questions would be raised and this could have been uncovered much sooner.

When people act ethically, trust normally follows. But when trust comes first, it can lead to the misuse of that trust. There might be some correlation between ethics and trust, but it is not one that can be firmly depended on. Both trust and ethics are concepts that people need to work on daily. Otherwise both can be destroyed.

References:

(2002). Arthur Anderson. Tuck School of Dartmouth. Retrieved from
http://mba.tuck.dartmouth.edu/pdf/2001-1-0026.pdf

Bews, N. and G. J. Rossouw. (2002). A Role for Business Ethics in Facilitating Trustworthiness.

Journal of Business Ethics (V.39 N.4). Retrieved from http://www.springerlink.com/content/h631h1057l283484/

Brown, K. and J. Lublin. (2002, March). “Andersen’s Quest for Respectability Yields a Superb
Case of Image Goofs.” The WallStreet Journal. Retrieved from http://online.wsj.com/public/page/news-accounting-industry.html?hat_input=arthur+anderson

Lingfitt, F. (2008, Sept.). Bad Mortgages Taking Down Good Loans, Too. NPR. Retrieved from
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=94921465

Money & Co. (2008, Sept.). Buffett boosts Goldman Sachs with $5 billion investment. LA Times.
Retrieved from http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/money_co/2008/09/warren-buffett.html

Shakespeare, W. (1587). Richard II. Complete Works of Shakespeare. Massachusetts Institute of
Technology. Retrieved from http://shakespeare.mit.edu/richardii/index.html (I love this site)

Simons, T. and R. Peterson. (2000). Task Conflict and Relationship Conflict in Top Management
Teams: The Pivotal Role of Intragroup Trust. Journal of Applied Psychology (Vol. 85, No. 1, p. 102-111). Retrieved from http://www.sfu.ca/~jga16/web4/simons_peterson_2000.pdf

Zarroli, J. (2008, Dec.). Hedge Fund Maven Madoff Falls Hard. All Things Considered. NPR. Retrieved from http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=98204357

So, they are rebooting Buffy. Though I can follow the logic, it is poorly constructed logic, and it will fail. In order to argue why it will fail, lets look at why they are doing it.

To me, it seems pretty obvious, Twilight, True Blood, and Star Trek and sci-fi romance book sales. These three help to set up the rationale as to why a reboot of Buffy “should” work.

Currently there is a sequel in process for the popular teen sci-fi drama, Twilight. This plot line deals with forbidden love between a handsome male vampire and a lovely female mortal. There is danger and fight sequences and a lot of swooning. Oh dear God the swooning. So, there is a market with the under 18 (and there mothers) market.

True Blood has a more cynical twist on vampire/mortal love story, and has a chick who can, for the most part, hold her own. True Blood’s audience appears to be growing and proves that a strong female can bring a market too.

Then there is Star Trek. This reboot of a tv show has gone over quite well considering. And Trekkers are much more big on things like continuity than Buffy fans. So the fact that the movie brought in the old fans and new ones proves the viability of a tv show with a strong cult following being able to do a reboot.

Then there is the dirty little secret of what is selling in bookstores across the nation. No one wants to talk about it because well, it’s a little weird. But if you don’t believe me, go check out the Chick Lit section and look at the Trades. Now count how many have a title with the word vampire in it. Now add to that those that don’t have the it in the title but the cover has a pic depicting something in relation to vampires. Yep, not prepared for that, were you?

Now one can speculate as to why this is happening. Its been a growing trend since the beginning of this decade and when you think about it, its pretty obvious. When the relationship is Vampire/Mortal love, it is tapping into the Prince Charming complex the majority of women have. When the chick in the book is a vampire, it is a way to feel more in control and not so powerless. This past decade has been nothing but insanity. From the dotcom bust and the Twin Towers collapsing at the beginning of the decade to 2 wars, pics of torture, rising crime rates, and now economic collapse, the feelings of lack of control are natural. So taking comfort in a concept of an all powerful man to protect you from the worst of the worst, or the ability and strength to fight any possible monster that attacks, well, that is escapism at its purest form. And since the concept of a prince or being a princess isn’t even something many women can relate to at all, this is a great substitution.

So Buffy should be a success, right? Nope. And here is why.

The original team that brought the God awful obviously rewritten to death first movie is doing the reboot. Yes, Joss wrote the first one, but given his interpretation of the characters during the show and his consistent writing abilities, it is pretty obvious that others were responsible for that hackney mess.

Second, Star Trek technically ended in the 60s. Yes, there were movies and spin-offs, but those were different from the original tv show. Even the movies with the original cast ended in 1997. Buffy the tv show ended in 2003. There are online petitions to make a movie with the tv show cast still on the web. Not enough time has past to do a reboot. Now I know, what about the Hulk? The Bana version of the Hulk came out in 2003 and in 2008 a brand new Hulk came out. Well, two things, the 2008 Hulk did pretty much bring the first movie into continuity with itself. Second, the 2003 sucked. That is the key difference. Buffy the tv show was a huge success.

Lastly, no one from the tv show is involved at all with the project. “But it’s a reboot, Diane, why do they need to involve anyone there?” JJ Abrams was in consultation with the Rodenberry family the whole time. Hell, the original Spock is in the reboot. Unless you are spoofing the original ala Brady Brunch, it is good to at least talk to people and ask why that character did this or that or was this way. Even if you go in a different direction, have the concept from the shoulders you are standing on before trying to remake something.

I would love to be proven wrong, I really would. I just doubt that I will.

This week has been an odd week as the concept of gay marriage has been brought up over and over.  Normally I state that I support it and that is all, but I keep hearing arguments that are filled with fallacies against gay marriage. So I feel I need state why I so passionately find the argument frankly not only illogical, but actually makes me lose respect for those who use it. 

My biggest ethical dilemmas normally revolve around religion. I was born and raised Catholic. My mother and grandparents are very devoted, with pictures of the pope up and everything. I use to attend church regularly, but I walked away quite literally when I was asked to sign the Ohio “Save Marriage Act” petition back in 2004 in the vestibule before mass. I haven’t been back since. And this issue causes all sorts of issues within the family.

Working in healthcare, I read scientific journals all the time and I see have found the gene on men’s DNA that if not “switched on” makes them gay. I find it amazingly illogical to think anyone would choose to be gay. Why would someone purposely choose to be treated so horribly by society, to be a source of ridicule and to be treated as a lower level human being by so many people? Occam’s razor throws that argument out the window, not to mention all the science. To me it’s like saying I chose to be female and a Latina and therefore I should be sexually harassed and prejudice against because I chose that for myself.

I also find it odd to say that two people getting married of the same sex would somehow destroy us morally. If marriage is the cornerstone of a moral society, then how is excluding a segment of the population that is exactly like everyone else except that they fall in love with the same sex going to protect not destroy it?

Then there is my favorite, it goes against God. Though I hear some references to Corinthians and Romans, the main argument comes from Genesis and the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. But there are two issues with this. One, if you actually stop and read the story you realize it isn’t about homosexual love, but about rape. The men surrounding the house were not courting the angels or asking them out on a date, they were there to rape them. And yes, they turned down the daughters, but that is because rape isn’t about love or even sex. It is about proving dominance over another being. And what would make a person feel more powerful than to prove dominant over a messenger of God? It astounds me that rape victims don’t point this out. All other arguments claiming the Bible is against gay marriage is actually even weaker than this example. So I don’t really find this argument useful.

Then there is the history part of this argument. This was the same argument that put marriage laws on the books in the first place in this country, except it was to prevent others from marrying, different races. Up until 1967, in over a quarter of the states it was illegal for two people of different races to be wed. This is a personal matter for me because my maternal grandparents are of two different races. They had to leave the state of my grandmother’s birth to get married. The fact that the government is going to back what is in essence a religious belief astounds me.

My mother and grandparents disagree. One of my mother’s favorite sayings concerning this is “ I don’t have any personal issues with gay people, I just don’t think it is right to allow them to marry”. To me that is the same as saying “I don’t have any personal issues with Puerto Ricans, I just don’t think they should be allowed to live here” or “ I don’t have any personal issue with women, I just don’t think they should be allowed in the military”. Those are all personal beliefs. To me they are neither wrong nor right because they are personal. But to apply them to others stops making them personal and instead becomes policy and that is wrong.

So I now no longer go to church because of an ethical decision. And I get to live with the consequences of it every week when I visit my grandparents or my mother. But I can at least look my son in the eye and know I am showing him through example how to look at things ethically, and not just go along with group bias because it is the easy thing to do. And what is funny is that I learned that ethical lesson straight from the stories of Jesus in the Bible.

When you look at the teaching of Jesus they boil down to two things, don’t be a hypocrite (ranging from stone in eye, judge less ye be judged, etc) to do not question authority/think for yourself (best example is the rumble in the temple). Yet consistently all I hear come out of people’s mouths are words they are parroting from religious leaders. I have a problem with anyone doing that simply because I have yet to get any response to the question “why?” other than a variation of “because Pastor, Reverend, Bishop, etc said so”. Now I understand that trusting experts in a field is important, and they are experts. But there is a bit of a problem here with that logic. I have never done a DNA study, so I am dependant on reading results from those performed by experts, but I look for multiple sources. And this means not just reading 3 papers from 3 different scientists all using the same sample set. So why would just blindly follow what is being said by three experts in the same field all reading the same section from the same Bible (there are many variations)? What I find to be astounding is that when I talk to people normally it isn’t even 3, its one person. So if that person told you to jump off a bridge and God would catch you, would you do it or would you question them? Then why wouldn’t you question in other instances?

At the end of the day, if I am wrong I can stand before St. Peter and explain exactly why I believe what I believe, giving evidence from various sources to explain the conclusions I made. Whether that is enough, I actually think it might be given everything else both Jesus and the Saints state within text. Because let’s be honest, there are so many contradictions in the Bible that if you are following one, you might be breaking another. But if you get up and state that you were doing something because your Priest, Bishop or even Pope told you too, never questioning why, well is that enough? Or are you the same as those that were bought by the Council of High Priests to demand Barabbas’s release and yelled “Crucify him!”. Are you the same that allowed any guilt for owning another human being to be wiped away in the pre-civil war era because your Minister stated they were made that color so we can know them as the children of Ham and therefore to be punished?

If I end up in hell based on the decisions I make, I can live with it, but if you end up in hell because of the decisions you allowed others to make for you, can you handle it?