Oh, the Joys of Facebook

If you have seen the movie,"The Social Network," then you know about the long and dramatic feud between Facebook creator Mark Zuckerburg and a set of twins named Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss over who's idea Facebook really was.

Apparently, this years-long battle is still going on, and it may take the Supreme Court to finally settle it. They're rediculously also challenging a San Franciso federal appeals court ruling that gave them a nice $65 million cash-and-stock settlement they reached with Facebook in 2008 [1].

I'm going to be blunt. I don't care who's idea it was to create a social network website like Facebook first, I care about who made it. In other words, Winklevoss twins? Shove off of Zuckerburg, please. He made it before you two did, and that's a fact you have to accept.

I'm on Facebook right now as I write this. I gotta tell you, I love this website. I'm on it everyday, either on my computer, on my phone, or on my iPod. It's a part of my life and for the most part, part of my 420 or so friend's on the website's lives. I communicate with people on Facebook as much or more as I do with people on my phone, and that's a lot of communication! It's a part of my life, a part of people around the world's lives-- It has a 500+ million strong social network, where the users spend over 700 billion minutes per month [2]! Like I said, I don't care who's idea it was who made it, all I want to do is thank Mr. Zuckerburg FOR making it.

-Luke


[1] Source: Fox News Article
[2] Source: Facebook Statistics Page

McDonald's, Hollywood, & Coca-Cola

Have you ever heard of the term "Eurocentric?" The term is commonly used in the historical community, meaning "everything about it revolves around Europe." Modern historians, also called Revisionists, started to bring out the rest of the world's histories and contributions to technological and idealogical advancements in the 1960's rather than use the widespread and widely accepted Eurocentric ways of teaching history. History is now most commonly taught in the Revisionist's views, as it should be.

The way that many Americans think today is Americentric, which of course, means "everything about it revolves around America." To many Americans, the world is mainly only about the US and its interests abroad. No where else, except maybe Europe or Japan on a good day (hopefully you've caught onto my sarcasm). Their thoughts are about the last proposterous thing that some talk show host said or about how "stupid" the War on Terror is (or the reverse, how incredibly superb it is).

Here's a humorous representation that the teacher in my freshman World Geography class showed us a couple of years ago, and it pretty much sums up how a lot of Americans see the world:

The way many Americans see the world. Click to see larger.

The thing that took me a while to realize and something I would bet that you did not notice (and if you're an American reading this, it is ironic) is that Africa is not even represented on the map. It represents the ignorance of the American people when it comes to the terrible living conditions and wars that are present on the African continent constantly, and how Americans do close to nothing to help them while basking in their underappreciated riches.

Some Americans are great people. I don't want to say that all Americans are lazy and oblivious to any affairs other than what is going on inside their own house, but in general the American public needs to wake up. Being the superpower of the world doesn't mean we should be able to forget or ignore the hurts of the people worldwide, but should entitle us to do our best to help as much as possible.

I'm just a lowly 16-year-old writing a blog during his summer vacation, mostly just to have something to keep him busy. I don't know if my opinions will go very far, but hey, at least you know at least one American can sort of think in the right direction!

-Luke