Low: Trump for President and the Birthers Movement

(Photo: if you would vote for this man, I am afraid of you)

If Donald Trump even gets nominated to become the President of the United States, I would have to leave the country on principle. The list of principle-based fleeing now includes: if Michael Bay makes "Armageddon 2"; if Paris Hilton has a second surge of popularity due to another dubiously released sex tape; or if Sarah Palin isn't permanently off of television by 2018. Word is we'll have 3D TVs in most homes by then...no way I could psychologically survive that. But now Trump gets added to the list as the rumors start about his legitimacy as a Republican presidential candidate. Currently, he's seeking the support and endorsement of the "birthers" movement. What is the birthers movement you might ask? Well, it's a group of people currently digging through Obama's birth certificate legitimacy, claiming that he wasn't actually born in Hawaii and is somehow an illegitimate U.S. President. Yes, this is what it's come to. It's too funny to be angering, and there's no way it can do anything but help Obama while hurting the Republican Party, as Clarence Page of the Chicago Tribune pointed out. Currently I'm fairly capable of remaining pretty close to neutral in political situations. If it can work for Switzerland for almost two centuries, why the hell can't I do it? But if Trump ever puts together a campaign and even sniffs the presidency, something I can't imagine actually happening, Republicans may just force me to cast my first vote after all.

High: One Physicists Bold Predictions for the Future

According to the recent predictions of physicist Michio Kaku, we're not that far off from all kinds of crazy things that will make Droids and iPads look like children's' toys in the near future. Kaku may or may not have completely jumped the shark, but the fact that some of this stuff is even in discussion by someone who knows a lot more about the universe than me is simply incredible, not to mention more than a little frightening. Picture personal robots, shape-shifting furniture (really) and being able to bring back versions of unique species like raptors and Marlon Brando . Imagine the internet showing up in your contact lenses and programs that automatically provide subtitles for people speaking a language you don't know. Imagine American travelers finding new ways to piss people off all over the world besides simply not speaking the language. Will any of this stuff happen exactly as Kaku projects? Probably not, but the reality is that a variation of a lot this stuff will probably be happening sometime in our lifetime - not to mention plenty of other stuff that even Kaku's imagination wouldn't be able to grasp. It does obviously bring up plenty of moral issues that will have to be weighed, or at least ogled from a distance as technology marches forward anyway, but it also brings about incredible possibilities for the next century. Unfortunately, it seems there will always be a manifestation of Justin Bieber or Snooki in society in one form or another, but you can't have everything in life.

Low: 2011 is just a number, just ask Brigitte Gabriel

Brigitte Gabriel’s organization ACT, a supposedly non-partisan and non-religious organization, plans on having an “open a Koran” day at a library near you. Though this may at first sound like an idea to promote intellectual growth and healthy relations with present-day Muslims, it’s actually the complete opposite. Gabriel’s group plans to show in detail the way that the Koran suppresses and mistreats women, with the clear goal to appeal to hard-line Christians and Tea Party members as they look for ammunition to continue their pointless verbal chess game with Islam. Forget the debate as to whether or not Gabriel's standpoint is immoral, irreligious or even (uh oh) blasphemous. I'm more upset with it just being a lame argument at this point, all while bringing up a far more important question for Christians. Do Christians really want others to start digging through the Bible and biblical history to find inhumanity and atrocities against women? My guess is probably not. You can read some detailed examples of why that is the case right here. But the biggest issue is that we’re once again letting the social norms of writers from hundreds and thousands of years ago determine the social customs of today. And this isn’t even a religious issue; it’s a common sense one. Writing from 50 years ago often doesn’t translate to the societal norms of today, yet we still have enthusiastic zealots leading the ignorant and dimwitted around by the hand, pointing to religious works (of any religion) that clearly have more spiritual meanings for today than literal ones. As someone who has grown up under the expansive wings of Christianity, it’s not a wise play to have historical pissing contests when we have a, uh, dubious (at best) history of human compassion. But, if we’re determined to fulfill the ending of the brilliant satire Dr. Strangelove, well, then so be it. Low of the week: The Tea Party and associates like Brigitte Gabriel party wayyy to hard for me….I definitely got off 22 exits ago.

Low: Why segways might be ruining the world

When I first heard about segways, I loved them. It made me feel like we might actually progress to the level of the Jetsons sometime in my lifetime after all. Suddenly I was imaging personal trips to the moon, or robots that would do my laundry and listen into conference calls, all while I lie in bed with bowls of Honey Bunches of Oats and binge on episodes of Californication. Is it possibly telling that the first thing I could imagine in a futuristic society is more opportunity to skip out on doing even the slightest bit of work? That could just be because I loosely consider myself a writer, and people who know anything about writers should know that we can’t really do anything, to paraphrase a Seinfeld quote that also works for comedians. Even now, as I see people zoom around city streets with their ridiculous, Mohawk-style helmets, they look incredibly practical – particularly for sight-seeing. But then that all changed one sunny afternoon on the way to Ralph’s, on a day that will forever live in infamy in my mind. Whipping by me on this particular day was a behemoth of a man, roughly my age, whose considerable girth was causing a significant strain on the poor plastic that was holding him up as he zoomed by. The image was as obvious as that lame parable about the apple landing on Newton's head. With the proliferation of segways, even people in the city that normally walk on a regular basis might be turning in their New Balance walking shoes for loafers not designed for distances of more than a quarter-mile. And how long until Sketchers comes out with a shoe that claims to sculpt your ass and legs, all from the comfort of standing on a segway? But then again, efficiency has become the God of the new age, and we’re forever throwing away bits of humanity to get us faster from point A to point B. Once you've seen a guy at a urinal on a segway, you might start changing your mind too.

High: Oh, St. Paddy's Day

Not that Americans need an excuse to spend a day drinking and doing crazy shit like dressing their dogs up like leprechauns, but boy do they have one on March 17th every year. Happy St. Paddy's Day, and here's to hearing Dropkick Murphys' "Shipping Off to Boston" less than 10 times on the day. (You should probably bet the over....)

Low: Miscarriages are murder, apparently

(Note: Even Dubbya, who may or may not be a comic genius, had to shake his head when he heard about this one)

Now hear this. Just when I thought I had heard it all, that the coffers of political irresponsibility had finally been emptied, Georgia simply does it again. State Representative Bobby Franklin came forward with a bill that would come down hard on not only abortions, but miscarriages as well. How hard, you might ask? Hammurabi hard. You know, the 3,500 year-old Babylonian code that wasn’t officially shot down until the 1940s, when a skinny Indian man (dot, not feather) with a walking stick said something like: “nah, that whole eye for an eye business is just crazy….do you even hear yourselves?” The 10-page bill proposes that women could be found guilty of “prenatal murder” and potentially put to death for both abortions and miscarriages. Read that again if you have to. In all honesty, the bill reminds me of that strange kid in fourth grade who says random, over-the-top things every now and again just to get people to look his way for a few seconds. Franklin also previously proposed a bill to ditch driver’s licenses. For a topic that obviously is a pretty dark and serious one, I also can laugh knowing that a bill like that would never sniff getting passed. But the true scary thing is that he’s not the only one in the country proposing such laws, as Nebraska and South Dakota have seen proposals that would allow “justifiable homicide” for anyone who wants to clip an abortion provider. The government as a whole, despite the occasional idiot local cop or governor with lengthy “escort” bills, actually runs fairly well. It’s easy to criticize something that we’ve come to expect the stars from, and we expect them cheaply and quickly. But every once in a while you look up at a real story and just hang your head, knowing that a fairly prominent member of the government could put forth such a bill with a straight face.

High and low: Almost 80% of five-year-olds use the internet

Even before the average child’s fifth birthday, they’re already cruising the internet daily – nearly 80% in the U.S. according to a recent study. The benefit, obviously, is that kids will grow up having more information at their fingertips than any generation previously, and it won’t be close. In the right hands, the internet can be an invaluable educational tool. In the wrong hands, you get people who start believing that aliens are the villains behind hurricanes, third world pestilence, and renewing Jerseylicious for a third season (it hits TV later this year). I don’t know about you, but the internet creeps me out daily, and I’m a reasonably grown up 26-year-old. The key idea here being the malleability of the word reasonably. But the internet is the one place where you can find out that peanuts are one of the ingredients of dynamite, and that Kim Kardashian has allegedly had surgery on her cheeks, nose, eyes, ass and chest. We’ll save the way that the bionic woman is ruining the image of female sexuality for another day, but for now it’s easy to see quite a few drawbacks for young kids shooting through the internet. True, there are ways to block your child’s access to certain sites online, but how long do you think it will really take them to circumvent those

restrictions? I’m not sure about anyone else, but it took me about four days to figure out that I could surpass my daily allotment of Sonic the Hedgehog growing up, as long as I played at three in the morning. But instead of busting my thumbs to beat Dr. Eggman in the dark on mute, kids will be finding photos like the guy floating on the right side of this post. Sure, restrictions have gotten more sophisticated, but so will children. The other problem is that kids obviously don’t know what the word allegedly means. Actually, I’m occasionally convinced that most adults don’t, but kids are especially susceptible to being misled by people more than willing to do exactly that. I’ve successfully told five-year-olds that I did in fact at one time work as an elf in Santa’s workshop. Just imagine what they’ll believe with the backing of the internet…