Warning: Imported from old college This post was moved from an older website hosted on a college server. These have been unedited and contain many mistakes. But, whatever. On Accommodation: Accommodation, the trait of being agreeable. For example, if a friend says something that you disagree with, but in order to not press the issue, you either don’t care or you just be agreeable. When do we stop accommodating each other? For example, when I was in Scott Carpenter Middle School in Denver, there was always a particular group of students who were brutes. I have nothing wrong with students both, male or female displaying feats of strength, but many of those people had no respect for other people. Yeah, they tended to annoy me. I remember one particular student, aside from his gay-bashing (which also annoyed me), would always slam doors. He would walk through the halls of Scott (as we, Astros, called it), and just act like a brute. For example, when we would pull paints out for our Art class, this young pre-adolescent would always pull the paints out slam them on the table and then slam shut the cabinet doors. This guy in elementary school would purposefully wake up people when they fell asleep during story time (a favorite pasttime), and cause quite a ruckus. He was just oblivious to the rest of the world. It was just weird. Man… I would have enjoyed to have had an art partner who was not as brutish as this guy. So, here’s the question: when do I stop being accommodating? My sister and I discussed this one night, in early September during her junior year when she was experiencing some trouble with puerile people. I told her that in order to combat injustices like these particular people, you must adopt the sixth grade mentality. This particular mentality says that (1) you will not retaliate because you (sink to that person’s level) and (2) you become proactive, you engage them, you break down their barriers. I told her that once you do that, then you have a way to foster their friendship, and work from within. But, when do we say that enough is enough? When do we say that this particular person’s behaviour is unacceptable and should stop? Can we really stop this person from being that way by confronting them? Of course, arguments can be said that we make people stop their behaviour when they are about to hurt somebody. Nevertheless, what about those people that just annoy you? It would be great if we all were able to vote on people. When a president annoys us, we vote him out of office. President Bush is completely oblivious to the impacts of his actions. Would a policy of accommodation be better than a policy of confrontation? The risk of making the situation worse is enough to not pursue the policy of confrontation. Accommodation works because it gives opportunities to effect change. Of course, there are some things that require confrontation, but when it comes down to our annoyances, it is better to accommodate, and then later on be assertive. So take a breath, count to ten, relax, and just remember that courtesy is better than a duel at high noon. Website Fixes/Updates: Added Prof. Amy Kind’s webpage to Links and News; a useful resource for Philosophy students and is full of fun links such as Star Trek Philosophy. Moved Disneyland gallery to Family & Friends, still under construction. Better pictures for the How to Beat Prof. Pitney This week’s adventures/updates: I received the Political Education Fellowship! All the hard work finally paid off. Whew! John Salazar and Ken Salazar of Colorado, here I come! If Representative Scott McInnis does step down early, then I will be working on the special election, but if not, I will divide my time between the two campaigns and maybe moonlight at my umpire job, or maybe intern somewhere for some extra cash. I deferred my application for theAthenaeum Fellowship and hopefully can get the job my junior year. The reason I deferred the application was because Prof. Roth will be working in the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. Side note: Finally, this was long overdue! Prof. Roth is not an anti-semite. If you have ever met Prof. Roth, he is the farthest from being an anti-semit. I guess in 1998, the ZOA lead a crusade against Roth and denied him directorship of the Holocaust museum when it first opened. Prof. Roth even apologized for his op-ed in the LA Times. I almost cried reading thisarticle. I could picture the sadness on that man’s face as he left one of the greatest callings of his life. As a result, I will have to study abroad or attend the Washington program the second semester of my sophomore year. AAAAGGGH! Professor Miller’s crazy research paper (I’m studying water transfers in the San Joaquin Valley) is due the 29th of April, I am afraid that I will need the night before to finish the paper, but I have a vague feeling that my roommates are going to sincerely hurt me and cause me great pain in my birthday. Probably because we duct taped Eric to a lawn chair to pond him and handcuffed David Lu to pond him. For some odd reason, nobody ever gets Paul. Yes, I’ve said it: the 28th is my birthday, but you’ll never catch me… <from last week, but worth note again> Before I go any further….. Spider-Man 2 Trailer…trailer…trailer Alright, congratulations to the LHS Speech and Debate team for dominating Nat’l Quals this year. Congrats to my sister who qualled in Congress (like her bro), and took 1st alternate to nat’s in LD (like her bro, in CX not LD). Congrats to the dirty team known as Sanford/Jeffries, best of luck at Nats. Congratulations to my previous speech coash, Mr. Greg Davis for another successful year for the LHS Speech & Debate team. Okay, I need to study Chinese, I leave you with some random things I found interesting in my adventures: Grade Inflation- discuss impacts later The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime- extremely interesting article, I actually did more research on this issue. This is an amazing paper. Top ten downloaded papers on policy issues- Amazing stuff. Good for financial gain and really great academic works.