Our awesome WordServe communications coordinator has been encouraging me to blog on a somewhat regular schedule (read: more than once a month). I’ve been thinking about it for weeks, but I never seem to quite find the right time to sit down and type. When I do find the time, I can’t ever remember anything worth typing! I really had the best post all worked out in my mind the other day, but alas, I didn’t make it to the keyboard in time and now it is gone forever!
In my wrestling to figure out a method to post on a regular basis, I’ve reverted to what I’m best at: stealing. Why reinvent the wheel? When I was on my last tour of duty in school, one of my fellow classmates was Bryan. Bryan is a fantastic pastor from Ohio. He was one of the deepest thinkers in our class, and we all benefited from being around him. (My only hangup with him is that he couldn’t keep his mouth shut about college football, and he’s an Ohio State fan. He especially liked to bash the SEC, and the year we were together was the year that Florida beat OSU for the football and basketball championships, but I digress.) Anyway, Bryan is the best example of a faithful blogger I’ve ever known. You can check his blog out here.
One of his regular practices was to write a weekly post called “Ten Things I Think I Think…” In those ten things, Bryan might talk about a class we were in, a discussion he had had, a football game he had watched, what CD he was listening to, or anything else that was running through his mind. I’m not near as deep as Bryan so I figured that for me starting with three things that I think I think may not hurt my brain quite as much. So, with apologies to Bryan for the blatant theft, I’ll be doing my best to post on a more regular basis. Hopefully, about twice a month (maybe more but I’m not promising), I’ll share three things I’ve been thinking about. Don’t go getting excited; I think about really lame stuff.
Here we go for this week:
Number 1: I think 24 hour cable news may be one of the greatest detriments to society. (Wait, Nolan, tell us how you really feel.) This video reminded me. The fact that news channels now have to fill space up means that they think anything they can come up with is news. While state-run television is not the answer to fix this, it seems more and more that this is what we have. You have news channels that reflect the ideology of the ruling party and the opposition party, and the two are more concerned with digging their heals in the ground than really presenting a “fair and balanced” picture of what is happening in the world. What happened that the first question we ask now is “Whose fault is this?” or “How is the president’s job related to this?”
When the news only came on once a day, it forced the networks to do a good job. They had to sift through what they were going to present, make sure it was accurate, and they prioritized the things that people really needed to know. Now it has become about news-tainment, filling up time, and making advertising dollars. Once upon a time, I thought that CNN still had a shred of decency. Early in the morning while I’d eat my cereal, I’d watch and try and catch up on the world. Those days are gone now. I can’t even stomach it for ten minutes. I don’t care if I can follow CNN on Facebook. I just want to know what’s happening in the world. I watch SportsCenter in the morning now and get my news from the BBC website.
Number 2: I love Auburn, but I’m not ready to bet the farm on them. Seeing their new coach, Gene “You’ll Never See Me Smile” Chizik do well is really great (especially since he was 5-19 in his previous stint as a head coach), and I love the fact that for the first time in my lifetime (maybe a bit of an exageration) someone is concerned about us as an offensive team. I also really love that Chizik seems to be a really good leader. He doesn’t care about getting credit for himself. When things go well, he is dishing out praise to his assistant coaches, to the players, to the fans, etc. When something goes wrong, it is his fault. I also like the fact that they’re good again just one year after they were terrible. It proves that coaching and leadership make a big difference. Chizik and company have unified a group of kids who went 5-7 last year, who only scored 208 points all year (they have 207 already this year through 5 games), and who didn’t know what coaches were coming and going. Now, they’re rocking along at number 17.
All that said, I’m still not booking my room for the national championship game. The Tigers have a long way to go and the hardest part of their schedule is by far in front of them. This weekend at Arkansas will be tough, but Ole Miss, LSU, Georgia, and Alabama all provide many opportunities to stumble and fall. The year won’t end as badly as last year, but I’m not so sure it will be quite as fantastic as some are thinking.
Number 3: Public education vs. public health care. I don’t really follow politics (probably because the news channels stink, see number 1), and mentioning this isn’t really an invitation to debate politics, political parties, or even health care. I more just relaying a really interesting idea that my mother mentioned in passing last week. I don’t know where she heard it but it did at least make me stop and think about the whole idea of public health care a little differently.
The gist of the article she read suggested that at some point in our nation’s history someone thought it was a good idea to require that all children be educated. They didn’t just decide to provide schools; they thought it was wise to require children to go to them. The author wondered if there were incredibly huge debates or arguments from people that opposed the idea. (I bet there was.) Looking back from our vantage point, there aren’t many people around today that would say requiring people to get basic education is a bad thing or that we should stop that.
The article Mom mentioned wondered if health care might be thought of the same way someday. At some point will we look back and wonder why this was such a big deal? At some point will people be so glad that someone thought it was a wise thing to require that everyone have basic health care? Maybe. Maybe not.
This post is way too long. I’ll shorten my thoughts down in the future!
