opinion Tag

“Being a patriot doesn’t mean prioritizing service to government above all else. Being a patriot means knowing when to protect your country, knowing when to protect your Constitution, knowing when to protect your countrymen, from the violations of and encroachments of adversaries. And those adversaries don’t have to be foreign countries.” – Edward Snowden     All of Snowden’s actions, up to this point, indicate that he is one of the few people who knows what our government is capable of, and has our best interests in mind. There areRead More

HBO’s Silicon Valley ended it’s debut season with the episode, “Optimal Tip-To-Tip Efficiency.” The guys at Pied Piper started the season with a simple algorithm for a compression company. What any of that means, not even main character Richard Hendricks knew until the very end of the season, and even then he changed the whole face of the company in the show’s final moments. Along the way, he had the help of a hilarious group of techies all incubating under the roof of Aviato founder, Erlich Bachman. Hats off to comedian TJRead More

So, lets talk about this Bowe Bergdahl business. Or rather, I’m going to tell you why you should be mad about it. You don’t have to agree; in fact, if you have a dissenting opinion, please share it below. But in my opinion, this is the situation as it stands.   Our President, Barack Obama, released five high-risk Guantanamo Bay Prisoners in exchange for one American Soldier. At first, that doesn’t look so terrible. So our price is 5:1. That doesn’t mean much if it means that one of ourRead More

…Or, well at the least the first 14 years of it…or is it technically 15?  No matter.  I have painstakingly rummaged through the Oscar Wikipedia page to arbitrarily rank the Top Ten Movies of the 21st Century however the fudge I want!  So if you disagree.  Die in a fire.  I hate you.  🙂 Now without further delay.  Drum-roll please…   10) Argo I went to this puppy the day it came out.  Premiere tickets were sure to get me some action, I thought. But alas, the only action IRead More

Today is perhaps the greatest era of social commentary, even more so than just yesterday. We live in a world where everyone is a publisher and one-to-many-communication is the easiest it has ever been. Of course I am talking about social media. Any single person has the opportunity to express, document, and publish their view on anything – this restaurant, that movie, what your girlfriend did, how pretty your dog is. Lighthearted, flippant posting is great social fun, but challenging hard issue on social media brings a new level of responsibility to theRead More

By now we’ve seen the headlines.  We’ve scrambled to make sense of a horrific act of violence that brought a quiet college town to its knees.  We’ve cursed, we’ve mourned and in the case of us Gauchos, we’ve stood together – wounded but unified – in the wake of unspeakable tragedy. Last Friday, a gunman drove through the UCSB beachside town of Isla Vista slaughtering six and wounding thirteen more before turning the gun on himself.  Hours before the event, he uploaded a video explaining the reasons for his attack. Read More

It happened again. But this time, it was more than just another tragic news story – at least for me. This past weekend’s events hit way too close to home. I’m a UCSB graduate. I’ve partied in the same streets and eaten at the same restaurants where a coward named Elliot Rodger murdered 6 innocent people whom he blamed for his own personal shortcomings. If this had taken place three years ago, I could have been a victim. My friends could have been victims. It’s pretty surreal for a collegeRead More

No one really told us what adulthood would be like when it came time to face the music. If they did, maybe I envisioned it differently, or I just wasn’t paying attention because I was too busy dreaming about my Carrie Bradshaw closet. My friends will be the first to tell you that I believe aging is a gift and I love getting older, but at the same time, being an adult can be really annoying and lame too. But, in order to get where you want to be inRead More

Thanks to Instagram and Facebook, we all have “friends” who we aren’t really friends with but who we think we know anyway.  We choose to frown upon or look up to someone based on photos and status-updates.  That girl who only posts pictures of mayonnaise and her cross-eyed cat?   Clearly she’s going to die alone.  We also think we know celebrities.  “Beyonce’s life must be perfect.”  Or, for The Bachelor critics: “Juan Pablo didn’t tell Nikki he loved her on national television so their relationship is doooooomed!”  We presume.Read More

I’m not a football fan. I have no desire to watch games on TV, and if drug to a live game, I will promptly grab the strongest drink that I pass and enjoy myself in that way. Football, for me, means alcohol and socialization, not watching a game. But, when something like Michael Sam’s media coverage is plastered on my Facebook and Twitter, I have to pay some attention; it’s the price of wanting to stay current. So naturally, I have some opinions. Apparently, Michael Sam was recently compared toRead More

We start off throwing sand at them in the playground, calling them over in Red Rover, and aiming for their faces in dodgeball. Boys… no matter what age we are as ladies, we can’t live with them, and we can’t live without them. Most of the time, ladies (obviously including myself) are complaining about the dude who didn’t call us back. As we bitch to our girlfriends about some guy that should be chasing us, if we’re fortunate enough, we have platonic friendships with the male species that can giveRead More

If you would have asked me ten years ago if I would have done most of my socializing online, I would have given you an emphatic no (and probably would have thrown the nearest drink in your face).  While everyone was busy glitzing up their MySpace profiles, I wagged my finger in the background swearing that social media would never take off.  Well, you can’t be right about everything.  There’s no getting around it, our lives today are inexorably tied to a little social network that you may have heard of. Read More

So like usual I’m thinking about how terrible this Batman/Superman movie is going to be, and something hit me just now that made it even more depressing. Young people that watch this as their first Batman or Superman movie are going to walk away with their perspectives of these characters forever cemented in their minds. There will be children who in 15-20 years will say “Ben Affleck’s portrayal of Batman is the only true Batman”. It’s like we have a chance to stop young Hitler, and we’re just sitting hereRead More

Humans, as a species, are so unbelievably different from one another.  Each of us is unique, so much so that we can never predict how any one person will react in a given situation. Now, some might say that this doesn’t mean anything but I’m starting to think it might.   Life and Death Every living thing on Earth makes decisions based upon instinct.  Humans have evolved to the point that our “instinct” is no longer our sole reasoning to the choices we make.  We are consciously aware that, oneRead More

I recently went on what I can only describe as the most romantic date I have ever been on in my life. The guy, who I’d already hung out with and gotten to know, and whom I already really liked, found a wine bar in a great neighborhood that we both loved. For the record, I love wine, especially red, and I was flattered that he had already taken the time to find a place that catered to my interests. Leading up to the date, my excitement was ridiculous –Read More