I have had way too much coffee, and I have something to say.

It wasn't even real coffee, either. It was that fake coffee from that vending machine in the math/psych building -- y'know, fifty cents for a paper cup of dark watery caffeine that smells vaguely reminiscent of coffee and chocolate.

That kind of coffee.

So, needless to say, I am wide awake.


In addition to being wide awake, I have something that I want to say; something that I feel is at least vaguely valuable to the rest of humankind -- and I have every intention of sharing it with you.


That said, I will warn you now: If you're a Social Science major, you're probably not going to want to read this. Go ahead and get off the internets and play solitaire for a bit. You won't enjoy this at all.


I will admit that I am not the most objective individual when it comes to the social sciences -- I'm whole-heartedly convinced that (a) they're a load of crap and (b) necromancy is right up there with sociology and anthropology. So, perhaps I am a little, what's the word? I'll go with "prejudiced". Nonetheless, I still don't like them. I have a whole bunch of theories about why they're destroying the country -- some of which don't involve zombies -- but I'll get to those later.


At any rate, I decided, at some point, that I needed to kill off some of my General Foundational Requirements™. I needed something easy, something that wouldn't be too torturous -- something that wouldn't totally suck.

Naturally, my first four choices for GFR's for the winter semester were filled up, so I started wandering around the course catalog. Everyone always talks about how easy American Studies 100 is. There were two things I didn't take into account: (a) they all took it during the regular semester, which is three times as long, and (b) they were all Social Science majors.


So, I sit down on the first day of class, expecting something just short of a history class. Right? Seems natural, wouldn't it?


Well, with the sheer amount of exposition I've given you, no, I guess it wouldn't.

So, I was horribly crushed to find out that I was stuck in wussy-touchy-feely-land and not a real history class.



We've read half of Ben Franklin's autobiography, and then we're about halfway through Malcolm X's autobiography.

Now, Benjamin Franklin talks about being at least somewhat virtuous -- when picking a mistress, you should go for an old woman because the sin is less, and she'll be so grateful -- and being a vegetarian and abstaining from ale and being reasonable and so on and so forth.

Malcolm X's autobiography, so far, has detailed how he destroyed some poor girl's life, spent most of his time high, and became a criminal.


Guess which one's been a national bestseller. Go ahead. Guess.



So, this week was pretty much devoted to why race is a social construct.

/* Yeah, for those of you who haven't heard about this, race (and gender, for that matter) aren't actually real, but were secretly made up by one group of people to... something something I kinda stopped listening around that point. Sorry. */

It got me thinking, about how everyone's always like, "There should be an open dialogue". Well, if you think about it, there can't be an open dialogue, because the Social Scientists have already decided the answers. There can only be an "open dialogue" if the dialogue reinforces their answer. And they get really pissed if you don't come to their conculsion or agree with them.

And if you try to talk or argue, they say the exact same thing, with different words.

And everything is inherently the fault of society. I mean, if you dump your girlfriend for another girl, it's society's fault if your ex-girlfriend takes it really hard. (See Malcolm X's Autobiography, Ch. 4, pg. 72).



So, uh, remind me again how the Social Sciences are supposed to represent "progress"?