i'm a list kind of mood this week it seems

Intereting news stories of late:

Study Sees Rise in Narcissism Among Students
I heard about this on NPR yesterday and then saw a longer article on CNN.com and I laughed heartily. This has been a discussion in several of my psychology classes, the whole "self-esteem" thing. I thought it was a bunch of crap as a kid, but I figured that's because it didn't explode onto the scene until I was in about sixth or seventh grade. Everyone knew that there was winners and losers in sports and whatnot, and it didn't necessarily make you a worse person to come in second or to try really hard and not even place at all. But then suddenly everyone was getting participation ribbons or trophies and being told they were special. Well, surprise surprise, the kids who have grown up with that since preschool believed it and are using MySpace and YouTube to express how awesome they believe they are. I just think that's what you get when you perpetuate a theory of behavior as fact and no one bothers to research it a little more before changing all ciriculum nationwide so three year olds are singing songs about how special they are. My niece is three, she already knows she's special and really, if EVERYONE is telling her this, she's going to grow up to be quite the diva instead of growing out of it in a few years.

It's not that I don't think everyone is a unique and beautiful snowflake as much as I think we need to learn early on that sometimes you win and sometimes you lose, but either way it's always worth the effort.

Al Gore's electricity bill
Alright, here's the thing. The man is flying aroung the world giving his presentation, and I don't think he's doing it on Southwest. It doesn't bother me that his mansion uses more electricty than my place of residence. I fairly implicity trust that he's cut down and made changes in a variety of areas of his life and I think it's retarded to make a big deal about his electricity bill. Our country isn't set up to live green in easily, and maybe we should focus on that. I hope that Hillary Clinton wins just because I feel confident she will put Al Gore in some position of power where he will be able to jump start our economy by both mandating change and allowing for opportunity for a variety of companies to make serious money after making serious developments.

Trading babies for cars
This is simply ridiculous and I wanted to share.