OTM: What, Bob?

I just wasted ten minutes of my life listening to two pompous asses mentally masterbate on air. 

This is an example of the kind of minuscule peek behind the curtain mental workings of nerdom that gives NPR a bad name.

No body cares and it makes absolutely no difference what word these wannabe wordsmiths honing their vocabulary skills to find a term to name people who don't believe in climate change use. 

They spent ten minutes on people who over think problems that aren't problems. 

Thanks NPR.

I enjoy On the Media, but hey sometimes you can't always hit a home run.

They really didn't even get on base this week.

Speaking of baseball, Go Cubs! 

Physical- It happened in a recording booth and over the air. 

Psychological- The emotions for me were: pissed, bored and confused.

Social- I think NPR is an excellent outlet for information. However when they can't find any other content and as a viewer I know they're just filling space, it leaves me feeling dissatisfied. 

Cultural- The language of Bob and his guest we're really pointless for me this week. Again, I really love NPR but sometimes they just don't do it for me. 

Temporal- This happened over the air, which I'm surprised even got aired. They were speaking about climate change because the Pope believes we need to take responsibility for our carbon foot print. 

I know my blog is awfully short this week, I had a hard time finding joy in anything I listened to. 

Who represents me, 2.0?

So next fall will be the first time I will be able to vote.
And in all honestly, I have no desire to do so.

Although, I did like Bernie Sanders in the beginning because Neil Young liked him.
Then I read about him....
Also he's Jewish and good ole 'Murica don't like no Jews running this place.

I do not support any politician running for president nor do I support any politician in general (at least the ones I've come across thus far.)
Every time I read into who's doing what, there's is some sort of undertone that leaks from within and leaves me feeling violated.
We've all heard about the issue with Ben Carson and his remarks about Muslims in office and we've definitely all heard about Trump's such lovely words directed toward minorities and women.

Not even as a woman but as a human being, why would I support such bullshit?

I'm not religious and I don't pretend to be to get people to like me.
However, most politicians use religion to pander to a segment of the population in order to get votes.
And religion has no business in politics anyway.
Yet it remains a large factor in determining someone's favorability in polls.
All of these constitutionalist who pound the bible and use that as a foundation of this country should maybe go back and reread what the actual founders of this country wrote and the real meaning of the Constitution.
Anyone who thinks that the world is 6,000 years old, should not hold any political office because they're stupid. (((*Mike Huckabee & Mitt Romney & Sarah Palin etc..*)))
Like come on, can't they do a basic test of these guy's knowledge??

The point I'm trying to get at is most everything we listen to, watch, and hear about what politicians are saying is a lie.
A big, fat lie.
But since they're politicians, it's not polite for us to say they lie, instead they're obscuring facts and giving out half truths and being misleading, but certainly not lying.
My apologies.
However, if you or I were to do this, we would most definitely be held accountable and guess what, we would be liars.
Lying is a conscious altering of facts in order to gain the upper hand.
On the campaign trail, the presidency and the senate floor, this is just called politics.
And that's OUR fault. We allow them to do that by using the excuse that "...it's just politics."

They tell us what they think we want to hear but rarely exposing the truth of who they actually are.
Personally, I doubt they even know who they are.
Because politics is about telling the sweetest lie, the one we all want to hear and believe.
The voters don't hold them accountable, in fact they keep electing the same miserable class of people. The media sure as hell doesn't and the actual politicians certainly don't hold themselves accountable.

So in the end, why would I want to vote for any of them?
They're all wretched liars whose only goal is to get elected at any cost and then hold the position at any cost.

The cost in the end is our well-being and our country's well-being.
And we certainly don't hold ourselves accountable, we just bitch about it.


Maybe I'm not the only one who's tired of the same old, same old. Perhaps this is why Donald Trump and Ben Carson are leading in the polls- they're not politicians.
And that's the new, sweet lie we all want to hear.

OTM: Memes-the heart of global education

This shit drives me nuts.

All I could think about throughout the length of this On The Media segment is how awful I feel for the Syrian refugees and their families.
The refugees are casualties of politics and war and now also casualties of immigration agendas and fears.

It makes me sad that anyone would take a meme and seriously apply it to the issues that are taking place in Syria without any other knowledge on the topic.
It's either ignorant or hateful.

I would hope people would realize that memes are not a legitimate form of information.
At its best, memes are great political satire and at its worst they are "truthiness," as Steve Colbert says.
The truth is that lazy people and under informed people use memes as some sort of data in the same way they use Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly and countless others as news and data.
Though these people may be looked upon as dispensers of news, they're all really just like memes-
entertaining, rarely informative and all "truthiness."
But they are very easy to digest and always at hand so it requires no effort to read a pesky newspaper or do some research on your own.

Like eating potato chips instead of a real meal.

...everybody loves potato chips.

And everybody loves memes, all you have to do is find a meme that supports your deepest, darkest thoughts, pop it up on your screen and feel like you've actually accomplished something or made a statement.
Meanwhile you've just dehumanized a race of people who've just been displaced from their war-torn homeland by political savagery.
And you feel like you've just made your own world a little safer by keeping them out of your precious boarders.

Isn't it great to be part of the inter-web and see how we open our hearts to the plights of those in need?
Long live the information age!

For more information and wiser insight, listen to OTM: Debunking Migration Memes.

Learning 2.0: We don't need no education

So I spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about what this week's topic could bring up for me, personally.
I eventually figured it out and this is what I discovered about learning-

We only learn as much as we allow ourselves.
It's really that simple.

I firmly believe that the educational system we're all raised in is actually suppressing the learning experience we receive.
I'm not speaking necessarily about college or universities, rather the grades k-12.
Our present school system only teaches to the middle, ignoring the bottom and the very top students.
The way we're being taught is an assembly line, cookie-cutter style that breads mediocrity.
If we don't perform well on a standardized test, it reflects poorly on us as the students as oppose to the curriculum and the teachers.
As an example, John Oliver, host of the HBO's Last Week Tonight Show, did an entire segment on this very issue. He spoke about a female student that was the star pupil. Her school system calculated her expected state test score from her previous grades and achievements. According to the calculations, out of the 800 points possible, the student was predicted to score an 870.
Obviously this is an impossible task and when she didn't accomplish that score, her whole school's average went down and she was looked upon as a failure.
Another example is when students learn about the Vietnam war. Sure after the whole half hour they spend on this they can maybe tell you the dates of when it took place but a student cannot explain or understand the significance of how the Vietnam war impacted our country and continues to today.
Teachers will passionately defend this kind of teaching because their jobs depend on it or they simply just don't understand the significance themselves.

This is why education is an ongoing process and is put on the shoulders of the individual.
Education or schools serve only as a headline to understand that there are things that individuals should learn about but that is something only the individual can do alone.
Every time I scroll down or listen to CNN, The Rolling Stone, NPR shows, or The Huffington Post, I read about the insanity going on around the planet. And I realize then that education is a never ending process that is my responsibility and not the responsibility of the lower or higher educational institutions.
This grants me the feeling that I'm soaking in what's bleeding out. This is not prompted by a teacher or parent, it's just an urge to be aware.
I believe there's always a learning experience present but it's our choice whether or not we notice that.
Learning can be anything or anywhere.
Learning can range from listening to the radio to something as routine as getting the mail.
I do my best everyday to stay openminded and aware of the opportunities that the universe is always gifting me with.

OTM: EFF those Founding Fathers

Oh my "God..."


The Kim Davis situation is ridiculously simple.
No one is trampling on her ability to practice her religion, not allowing her to believe in her belief system or making her do anything against her will.
It's a question of her doing the job that she was hired to do.


If Kim Davis were my employee, I would be brutally straight forward with her:
she does not have to believe in the certificates she is handing out but she must perform the task that she was hired for and agreed to do.

This is an equal rights matter not a religious argument.
I'm sure there are Jewish people working at Albertsons or Kroger or any chain grocer that sells bacon. When I purchase bacon from a Jewish cashier, it does not make them less Jewish.
They could care less if I die of a heart attack.
When I purchase a latte from a Mormon person who works at Starbucks, they are still Mormon and I haven't affected their belief in the church.
Kim Davis would have you believe that she has to give up her religious integrity in order to carry out her job. Whether somebody is married to the same-sex or not does not reflect on her or her belief system.
She is simply rubber stamping a certificate that is endorsed by the state, just like selling bacon or coffee.

Kim Davis is not a persecuted Christian being fed to the lions but a grand standing attention seeking wannabe martyr with nothing to say, much less listen to.
She is only upstaged by the talking from both sides of their face, political hucksters Cruz and Huckabee who shamelessly ride on her back of vapid martyrdom trying to look morally superior and presidential. Whorish is the word that comes to my mind instead of presidential.
And the media sucks at the teat of controversy, all media outlets such as CNN, MSNBC, Fox and NPR.. This is not really a story but it fuels controversy and that makes ratings. And ratings have become news.
This was a story about a woman who refused to the job she was hired to do.
I would have fired her and found someone who didn't have trouble signing a certificate.

Facebook Campaign

Page Name- Jeff Ham Art

Page link- https://www.facebook.com/artjeffham

Mission- As the administrator of my friend's business Facebook page that I created, my mission is to get his name and work out and into the public eye. Along with recognition, I would also like to have a place buyers/collectors can go to and view his work and get a feel for the type of art he does. Also, if clients had an issue or question or would like to speak with Jeff, they could contact one of us through the Facebook page.

Market Personas- 

Stephen is a 64 year old man. He is a retired cardiologist that lives in Scottsdale, Arizona. Stephen has always loved art and until his recent divorce, he wasn't free to purchase pieces that he admired. Stephen's home is arrayed with a range of different contemporary artist's work. Each room possessing a different theme. Now that Stephen is newly divorced, he's interested in fresh, new work.

Blake is a 22 year old college student that grew up around different art studios. Her dad worked as a commercial illustrator from the time she was a little girl until now. Since going to college for fine art with an emphasis on sculpting, she has expanded her art horizons. Blake's way of understanding art is  observe artist while they're working. She also looks up art on the internet to discover new artists.

Joni is a 29 year old that just graduated from Stanford University. Her and her fiancee, Neil, (30) are aspiring lawyers on the up and coming. Joni and Neil are establishing their names in the New York City market. They recently bought their first place together and are looking to furnish their New York City apartment with contemporary artwork.

URL- facebook.com/artjeffham

OTM: Ashley Madison-Cheaters getting cheated

Ashley Madison is a website that is available for people that want to have an affair. Ashley Madison has been in the news lately because the website was hacked and the hackers are demanding users to pay them in order to keep their profile private and away from their partner.
There are even sites that you can go to and type your partners name in and find out whether or not they're registered with Ashley Madison.

First off, if you're going to cheat on your partner so be it, that's not my issue.
My issue is that these cheaters are actually being cheated out by the actual website.

8% of the "females" on this site are real women..
The other 92% are robots.
You are cheating on your wife/husband with a computer.
They found out that the number of actual human women were staggering low when the IP address for thousands of the accounts were the exact same along with the email addresses as well.

60-70% of the revenue was just men paying to talk to bots.
Nice.

I'm all for people experimenting and living their lives the way they want to. I don't condone cheating but the circumstances are never specified.
According to OTM, Ashley Madison is actually more of a fantasy site.

There are things called "purpose bots."
Ashley Madison offered a "guaranteed affair" for the price of $250.
The bots engage with the high rollers and then pass them along to affiliates.
As listeners, we don't know who or what the affiliates are.

Men that access the site after monitoring porn sites are given off to a "porn bot."
These lovely bots talk dirty to the guys and send "adult content" to the user.

Again guys, these are computers..

People are being exposed for being on this website and their partners are divorcing them because of an affair WITH A ROBOT..
Makes sense.

Depending on where you came from and how much you make, different types of bots were programmed to talk to you.

Instead of Ashley Madison making a profit off of affairs, it's actually making money from just pure fantasies.

On The Media related the two by saying Ashley Madison and the stupid app Farm Ville are the same exact thing in many ways.
A couple being you're creating this alternative universe that you're engaging in imaginary activities while using and paying for imaginary objects.

Physical- This happens everywhere. Obviously in the world of Internet though.
Psychological- I think a lot of different emotions come up when talking about such an iffy topic. My feelings toward the Ashley Madison controversy are really slim to none. However, partner's of these people that are involved with the website... I'm 100% they feel a little differently.
Social- I think in today's society there are so many rules. I hate it. I think automatically many people that hear and write about Ashley Madison are happy that these people have their information out there and have been exposed. I, on the other hand, disagree. How can someone know someone else's life? They don't. I don't know the circumstances that entice a partner to cheat on their partner. And I never will know.  But I do know that circumstances arise and it is what it is. The "rules" of what is right and wrong are such bullshit.
Cultural- Oh the morals.. The morals of people differ from every single person to the next. Again, I don't know why a person is a member of Ashley Madison. Does this disrupt my life and make me lose sleep? No. I'm faithful to my honey and wouldn't think about joining something like Ashley Madison because I have no desire to. I don't believe this is the same for every person. So I do not judge. Morals of one single person does not mean shit to the next.
Temporal- The hack just happened in the last couple months I believe. So the wounds are still fresh.

Hey if you want to cheat on your partner, so be it.
No judgment from me.
And if you specifically would love to cheat on your spouse with a robot, well my friend ashleymadison.com is where it's at.

On The Media: Ashley Madison

Racism 2.0

Racism-

(n) The belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races.

My whole life has been based in a whole other world from St. George, Utah. I grew up on the south side of Chicago which is one of the most criminally dangerous areas in the country. 

An example being, when the Chicago White Sox won the world series in 2005, there was a shoot out between the police and the residents of the area. 

However, I wouldn't ever change any experience about my life if I had the opportunity. 

Since coming to St. George, I, personally, have been turned down from serving a table because of my tattoos. And that's just the beginning of it for me. 

I can only imagine the loads of shit that any sort of racially diverse person gets. 

I often times go to The Huffington Post for information and so again today, I did.

I researched "racism" on their site and multiple posts and links came up to a wide range of different views on the issue. 

Of course Donald Trump was the first thing that popped up but the one post that really caught my eye was a story about a black family reunion that went wrong.

The story starts out talking about the Allen family reunion that took place at Rollins Lake in Nevada County, Sacramento.

It then goes on and talks about a white family showing up at the lot adjacent to where the family reunion was taking place.

Racial slurs were heard by the members of the Allen family  and one woman says, "when you're African American, you have to do that [ignore the slurs] in order to move forward."

The slurs went on and escalated to the point of the other family yelling, "I didn't come here to sleep next to any fucking niggers."

As the weekend went on, shovels were thrown at the Allen's camper and threats were made that if the Allen family didn't leave, they would be killed.

The Allen family went on to say that maybe they were a bit naive to think that they could go into an area that's not necessarily known for diversity and thinking nothing would happen.

This is where I would like to point out how insane the world we live in is. 

Why can't anyone of any race go anywhere they wish without getting shit?

And this is why it's hard for me living here.

I know it's this way a lot of places in the U.S. Some incredibly worse than others.

The aspect that no one is understanding to my knowledge, is that if we don't address this issue, absolutely nothing will change. 

I would like to use St. George as an example again.

Today is class we discussed some of the issues I'm writing about.

A couple students pointed out that they don't see issues so it's really something that they don't need to worry about or are a part of the problem because they haven't personally experienced it.

This pisses me off and is a crystal clear example of a group of people that don't want to acknowledge there even being a problem. 

My friend Terrance said today that he rather not speak about it, meaning racism.

I don't want anyone, let alone my good friends, to ever feel like them not speaking is better.

Sadly, specifically in this community, but many others in America, large amounts of people feel the same was Terrance does including the woman in the above story.

Speaking out and acknowledging one of the biggest issues for our country is important.

I can only hope the world my children and my children's children live in so much less shitty than this one. 

If you would like to read the article, click here

On the Media: The Fat Jew

The Fat Jew-

I was glad to hear that "The Fat Jew" (Josh Ostrovsky) was finally called out for his lack of talent, comedic skills, or anything resembling substance on NPR's On The Media.

I became aware of The Fat Jew through HBO's 3AM, a half-hour reality show and was shocked to discover that Josh was already well known and had 5.8 million followers on Instagram. I was also taken back that he was featured on HBO, seemingly only because he is savvy at social media and tries to defuse his lack of talent by stealing other people's material and calling himself a "fat Jew."

It was refreshing to hear Maura Quint and other comedians calling him out in public and in public forums like On The Media. 

The show focused on how people in social media can manipulate and steal content via images or written words and use them with no credit to the originators. In Josh's case, stealing them to create the illusion that it is his creative property. 

In the show they use the term aggregator, in this case meaning someone who collects and collates property. 

Though in Ostrovsky's case because he never gave authorship to the creators, he is not collating or collecting for our amusement. He is just simply stealing to attain attention and fame. 

In social media, this problem has been around before Josh Ostrovsky and will continue because social media allows anonymity. We can all steal, paste, and package anything that we find because few people seem to care or even know that they should care. Many who are stolen from never know it has even happened to them or they find out too late to do anything about it.

Our obsession with social media and being known for simply being known continues to spiral out of control. The Fat Jew is just one stupid example that comedians are upset about but no one else seems to care because we want what we want and we move on.

I disagree with the host's claim that the Kardashians don't fall into that category. I feel as if they most certainly do. They're simply known for being rich, they possess no talent to speak of. They are vapid, mind-numbingly boring and suck the oxygen out of the universe leaving a vacuum where my brain used to be. 

It seems to be a dumbing down of our culture as well as the whole planet. 

Social media is everywhere and with so much information at our fingertips, few people seem interested in using it to explore origins of art, commentary or thought.

Social-
Below you'll seem more in depth of how this contributes to society. The roles stealing ideas takes on the social aspect of life is ginormous. We don't want to take accountability for not being able to come up with our own art so we end up stealing other's ideas and saying they're our own for the pleasure of feeling good about ourselves and also how other's see us.

Cultural-
Again I spoke of these headings throughout my blog but I find it sad about low my generation can go when it comes to plagiarizing. We, including myself because I know I'm not above it sometimes, find it so easy to copy and paste someone's work and not credit them one iota. Our "I don't give a shit" attitude toward doing so is so incredibly discounting to the creator.

Temporal-
This is happening as my fingers type these words. I can't think of a time that ripping other people off isn't occurring. I think having such people called out for doing theses acts may be able to shift some sort of cultural attitude. I have no idea.

Physical-
Stealing ideas happens everywhere.
And not just in the good ole 'Murica.
Each little country that inhabits this planet has stolen some sort of idea from another.

Psychological-
I find a lot of times that calling people out for stealing ideas doesn't ever escalate and go anywhere. So I think more people just don't bother sometimes.
BUT, when someone that cares genuinely about their/other creator's work I know that when you get called out it's not pretty.
Coming back to Josh Ostrovsky.
His whole entire career will maybe consists of doing a game show, according to OTM. Getting caught in the act can ruin a career and maybe your life.
I know the emotions run high when a producer of an idea or whatever it might be, finds out that their work has been stolen/ripped off. I know when I write something that I may be semi-proud of and someone else uses it on Facebook or Instagram or whatever it might be, it pisses me off. And I'm a twenty-year-old that currently lives in St. George, Utah. So I can only imagine how infuriating it must be when you're a big deal and that's what you do for a living.

We are the ones who create the Fat Jew, the Kardashians, Paris Hilton and myriad others. Because we mindlessly support the vapid mediocracy and talentless hacks by not questioning authenticity and by simply watching. 

Maybe when we watch these talentless people and see them reap the benefits, it reflects back to us the possibility that maybe we can do that too. 

It looks pretty easy.

Check it out for yourself-

https://www.wnyc.org/radio/#/ondemand/527686

The Fat Jew: Super star or Super Villain?