Philematology

Another strange word for an even stranger field of study, can you imagine being scientist of kissing? Some guys will  read this and nod their heads, liking the thought of doing 'research' on cute girls for science. “Kiss” is from the Old English cyssan from the proto-Germanic kussijanan or kuss/coss, which is probably based on the sound kissing can make. But kissing varies from era to place to culture. For example, In Greece and Rome, kissing was very common between parents kissed their children, lovers and martial partners kissed, and kissing was often a greeting. Kissing at the conclusion of a wedding ceremony can be traced to ancient Roman tradition where a kiss was used to sign contract. The Romans created three categories of kissing: Osculum, a kiss on the cheek, Basium, a kiss on the lips, and Savolium, a deep kiss. Other countries like India, kissing is strongly established. The Indian Karma Sutra lists over 30 types of kisses, such as “fighting of the tongue. In Africa and other 'uncivilized' countries, lovers and spouses never kissed one another. Japan, on the other hand, mothers often kissed their infants and that was mostly it. A medieval manuscript warns Japanese men against deep kissing during the female orgasm because a woman might accidentally bite off part of her lover’s tongue. Kissing to me, is rather normal, it's how I express my love for my boyfriend, my siblings, and friends. Now I was curious about the science of kissing. Lips are 100 times more sensitive than the tips of the fingers, which even genitals cannot even compete with. This surprises me because this implies that a person can have an orgasm from kissing! Approximately two-thirds of people tip their head to the right when they kiss, which I admit I do too. Plus, for all the health fitness freaks out there, passionate kissing burns 6.4 calories a minute. So I want to lose a couple pounds, I can just kiss passionately for a few hours. Also, kissing is apparently good for the teeth. The anticipation of a kiss, much like when you see some really delicious food, increases the flow of saliva to the mouth, giving the teeth a plaque-dispersing bath. However, the only let down from kissing is the  diseases and bacteria. For example, herpes can be transmitted through kissing and in one case, a women contracts HIV from a man, who had gum disease (blood in his mouth). The human mouth is full of bacteria. When two people kiss, they exchange between 10 million and 1 billion bacteria, which is more than most animal bites. I cringe at the thought of all that down side to a pleasant pastime.

Children are Property

Treating women as property is now frowned upon in the United State, but what about children? This idea that people own their child stems from not allowing people to tell them how to raise them, which then comes from not allowing people to tell you what to do. What how does this leave teenagers, who are far ahead of their peers? For example, let's take jobs. Before the age of 18, you cannot work for more than 20 hours at any given job, of which you can only get with the permission from your parents. This poses as a much problem to teenagers wanting to be emancipated. Without a job, they cannot prove themselves able to take care of their own lives. Another way, which involves custody battles, a minor can be told that they cannot talk to a judge until they are over the age of 14, or their parents files paperwork allowing them to. This greatly allows ownership of a child if they cannot tell people who they want to live with and can end up in rare cases of emancipation. I, myself, am treated by property of my parents. At the age of sixteen, I was still under a parenting plan, in which my parents agreed, and I have no voice in this case ever. I went up to the courthouse and asked who do I talk to in order to speak to the judge on my case. I was told that I was not allowed to talk to him/her without my parents signing and filing the paperwork. In my young mind, how was this fair to teenagers whose parent's sole role in their lives seemed to be taking it away. I spent years suffering because I never got a voice. I never got to say what I wanted, who I wanted to live and who I didn't want to see. People hear my story of my life, and look at me in wonder. How could I turn out the way I did with the crap I have to deal with on a daily basis. Survival. That was the only thing that kept me firmly in its grasp. Parents should not own their children. They are to help them, not own and repress them. Think of all the adults who should not have kids and yet they do. Should they be allowed to own their children, to make them slaves to their whims, or to abuse them like they are nothing but dirt? No. It is wrong. This should stop.

American Dream

Nowadays, I've noticed that people aren't like they were about 200 years ago. Land was everything. Land was wealth, and people worked their hands to the bone for it. Even when wage slave came around, they dreamed of raising enough to get a farm or even their own shop. However, some dreams aren't easy to reach. When the suburban dream came around, people still expected the husbands to work in the city, while wives tended to children. Back then, 2.5 children was the average for the dream. Preferably, it was an older boy and a younger girl. Looking at today, I find it hard to believe. I heard about a homeless women who has FIFTEEN KIDS! She is suing the more money to support her children. What is the most twisted thing is that the father of ten of the children is in prison and she hasn't even bothered to marry him. Reality has slipped away from Americans. It's truly sad when the basic dream for your child is for them to graduate high school, and nothing else. I'm not saying that some people don't expect their children to attend college and become a doctor, but the reality is that we have suck so low that we cannot believe that. I mean, my parents want me to graduate and attend college, but they have done nothing to really support that. It has fallen on my shoulders, where I have total and no control over it. I never got a childhood because my mother keep giving birth to children right after another. This is so that I had to take care of my younger siblings before I was even out of diapers. I want more out of my life and I'm willing to put pride aside to get it. I'm not going to cut throats or anything, but I want to stand on my own two feet. I want to be proud and yet grateful of the life I build for me and my family without being a leech.

Porn helped create the Modern World

When people think of porn, it tends to vary in responses. Some support it to a massive degree, other cringe that it exists. Personally, I'm all for it. I really don't care what other people do in their free time, as long as it doesn't affect me. However, porn seems to be the lasting motivation in advancement of technology. For example, when VHS came out, it was the hottest item at the time. However, most of the content inside sold in the United States was porn. Up to 50%, which in my book is not really surprising. Germany, which is one of the porn industry centrals, was as high as 80%. From some of my dad's friends, who have been there more recently, have claimed that not much in the sex department has changed. Even Great Britain, with their conservative seeming lifestyle to the Americans, competed with Germany's porn percentage. Hell, if it wasn't for porn, DVD's wouldn't have been able to be afforded by the general public. I mean think of the radical change that being able to modify the content with ease, different camera angles, change the order of the scenes and all the other advancements we enjoy in none pornographic films today. What caused the DVD's to lower to a more affordable cost from $150 per disc to an average of $5? Porn. People love their porn. When Polaroid cameras were starting, an ad came out that basically said that you can take tons of naked pictures without who knows who seeing them. Thinking on this, I wonder how much porn is a controversial issue and yet we have so much to thank it for. Granted, I will support porn because I WANT MY FLYING CAR!

Random Quote of the Day

Looking at my iGoogle page, I noticed a much neglected gadget. This one gives me random quote of the day. Jean Paul Getty had once said “Without the element of uncertainty, the bringing off of even, the greatest business triumph would be dull, routine, and eminently unsatisfying.” Looking at this, I was impressed. If there was no risk in business, it becomes very tedious. If you are always the top dog, you HAVE NOTHING TO DO. Deciding that this man must be interesting, I researched him. This guy was born a business man. He went to college in a time that women could not, and got a political science and economic degrees. He ran his own oil company, and then retired briefly to become a playboy, which did not last long. The call of business was so great that he installed coin box phones in his own home because people would use his telephone to call overseas and long distances frequently. Even when his own grandson was kidnapped, he refused to pay the ransom twice to tell other copycats that they had better not try with the rest of his fourteen grandchildren. Though the trauma of the incident caused his grandson to become a drug addict and die rather horribly. He died of heart failure at the age of 83.

Fugitive Slave Act of 1850

This is my first class related blog! :D

Slavery, in both the past and present, is a very touchy subject. In 1850, tensions between the North and South were beginning to arise to a boiling point. The Southern slave states wanted the Northern states to help them return the slaves, who escaped to the North via methods like the Underground Railroad. The North, who was becoming increasingly anti-slavery, provided slaves more than a few ways to help get away from their masters and live in freedom. Congress decided to aid the Southern states by passing the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 as another part of the Compromise of 1850. This was the help balance the newer compromise legislation that stated that California was to be admitted as a free state, Utah and New Mexico territories would be decided by popular sovereignty, and that the slave trade in Washington D. C. would be abolished. Because this part mostly supported the North, the next was to keep the peace with the South, at the cost of the North. Since both Houses of Congress want to make sure everyone is happy in the end, so that war doesn’t break out; this was what Congress had decided in 1850. The Fugitive Slave Act was mostly justified by the Constitution. It had been stated by the forefathers that a person legally held to be in service of another, they could not escape that service by crossing state or territory boundaries. Thus, they would return to the holder of their service until it was completed. However, the words slave or servant was not mentioned in the Constitution. This argument would be fair legally, if the fact that blacks that were previously emancipated by their masters were allowed to prove that they had been freed in court. This loophole allowed white plantation owners to claim these freed blacks as their slaves. The North did not approve of the institution and dependence of slavery in the South. But, it gets better. The act goes on to declared that anyone, who helps a slave escape being reclaimed, is to be fined, thrown in prison and pay for each inconvenience to the owner of the laborer. This angered many active abolitionists. The real bite of the act was the fact that law enforcers were now to help the owners reclaim their ‘helpers’, even if they weren’t in a slave state. Also, the federal government would pay for the travel expenses to transport the laborer back to their master. How the hell did Congress expect this to keep the peace in any form?