While I came home with every intention of working on my project right at 10 pm and putting finishing touches on it tonight, I was, alas, entrapped in this television show that one of the ladies in my apartment was watching and now I have something to blog about, but no real progress on that whole project thing. Either way, I guess it's beneficial for this course, so it's only a little bit bad.

The show was a special investigation done by ABC Primetime News entitled Basic Instincts: What Would You Do? It’s a Candid Camera type show, but with socially taboo or unacceptable situations, not comedic situations. The whole idea is even if people are morally against certain issues in society, most of the time they won’t speak out against them in specific social situations. Here are the examples that I saw from tonight’s show (I guess it is a limited series).

I was reading some random articles when I came across an interesting one which combines technology and Kim Jong-Il, psycho dictator extraordinaire. Apparently, in order to get Kim’s attention/annoy him, the U.S. government is imposing trade sanctions on Kim’s favorite luxury items. These items include, Rolex watches, plasma TVs, certain cars and motorcycles and, of course, iPods. Since the rest of North Korea can’t really afford these things, the sanctions are really targeted directly at Kim. This is the first time the U.S. has imposed sanctions specifically just to annoy a particular leader. Aside from pissing Kim off, they also hope it will curtail his giving of expensive gifts to his supporters, which is one of his tools of control.

I just have a couple of things I've noticed in the reading that I want to expand upon briefly. First, is Siva's description of Diogenes, the Greek dude who he calls the first cynic, and says masturbated in the marketplace. He describes this man saying, "He engaged powerful people in playful debate, often exposing their hypocrisy" (25). Who does this sound like in our contemporary society? Why, none other than Sacha Baron Cohen. Through his many characters, including Ali G and Borat, he seems to be carrying on this cynical tradition (by Siva's definition). Every subsequent sentence describing the guy then sounds like it could be describing Ali G, and come on, if you heard that any celebrity had masturbated in the marketplace these days, wouldn't mind immediately jump to Baron Cohen. Hell, he sort of did it in the Borat movie. I just thought this was an interesting parallel.