The Incredible Avengers

Marvel's Avengers is what every summer blockbuster aspires to be — the perfect popcorn epic.

— Xenocrates

This is, by all means, the new gold standard in summer blockbuster entertainment.

If you've read my blog, you know I don't stop to review movies unless they have some kind of cultural significance. The last time I did that was to expose why people instinctively gravitate towards an obnoxious waste of film such as Transformers 3 that does away with story telling for big, loud, expensive, set pieces. However, Avengers is not such a movie. It is a genre defining epic that does the impossible: tell an outlandish, implausible tale with spectacular cohesion and believability. This is the movie Transformers 3 should have been and here's why:

Debunking Conspiracy Theories

For conspiracy theorists, truth is less about fact and more about what they want to believe.

— Xenocrates

I believe that extra terrestrials probably exist. I just don't believe any of them have ever been here. I believe that 9/11 was an inside job — inside Al Quaeda, that is. I believe the global warming hoax is... well... a hoax. I believe J.F.K. was assassinated by an American — just not one working for the CIA. I believe NASA's moon landings were faked for the HBO specials in 2001, but not in 1969. I believe that the world will end in 2012 for somebody, but the rest of us will be fine. Conspiracy Theories are utter nonsense, and I am about to demonstrate why.

The Anatomy of Racism (Part 4 of 4)

While every racist is a fool, not every fool is racist.

— Xenocrates

We must learn to differentiate between actual acts of racism and otherwise acts of ignorance. They are not the same. Otherwise, cries for justice like this can be successfully undermined by racists as race baiting.

If you back track some 60 years into American history, it would be fair to say that most white folks were at the very least, racially prejudiced, if not outright racist. As the decades rolled by, their ignorance waned as all their collective consciousnesses were raised. As a result, the average white adult today does not think the same way. But because the hurt has penetrated several generations of American minorities, it has created a hypersensitive society that has forgotten what racism actually is, thereby spawning an endless generation of boys crying wolf.

The Anatomy of Racism (Part 3 of 4)

Racism isn't dead — it is hiding in the open.

— Xenocrates

Barack Obama's presidency has exposed just how racist white America really is.

In 2008, a black man was finally elected president of the most powerful country in the world. At the time, many people (myself included) naively asserted that this will finally put a nail in the coffin of all the negative stereotypes that have been held about black people for good. Boy, were we wrong. It's not for fault in Obama. No. Rather, his presence has exposed the raw, visceral, racist underbelly of white America that had been lurking in silence for so long. In this post, I will potently demonstrate the unpleasant reality that racism is by no means dead.

The Anatomy of Racism (Part 2 of 4)

The history of Africa is the story of God's most cruel joke on mankind.

— Xenocrates

Workers on a diamond field in Africa. These diamonds will go onto the fingers and around the necks of rich white Caucasians. So how exactly did the home of black people become the treasure vault of white people?

Racism affects everyone. However, there is probably no group that knows the sting of racism better than black Africans and their descendants living in the first world diaspora. Why does it seem that black people are targeted by other races? They have been enslaved at least five times in world history (more than any other human phenotype) and have been victims of the longest running human violation in history. Why is this the case? I discuss the answer to this rather tantalizing question in this post. It seems that nature is far more cruel than we know.

The Anatomy of Racism (Part 1 of 4)

If racism was taught, then who taught the first child to be racist?

— Xenocrates

We have come a long way since the civil rights uproar in the 1960's. Up until then, white folks were not afraid of openly and publicly denouncing black people as genetically inferior humans. It's intriguing to consider then that since the 1960's, the only thing that has changed is how society perceives racism. It seriously questions the notion that racism is taught. In this post, I will attempt to demonstrate that the propensity for racism is intrinsic to human nature. That is why even after society has successfully demonized this behaviour, it will never truly go away.

Why Women Should (but probably won't) rule the world (2 of 2)

The successful female is genetically hazardous to her own species.

— Xenocrates

Here's an interesting question: Who runs the cameras that filmed this?

As we were discussing in the previous post, Sasha Fierce, aka Beyoncé Knowles seems to have some pretty misplaced conceptions about who runs the world. So we decided to ask the question (hypothetically), why can't women run the world? We covered the first five of what I believe to be the top ten of those reasons. In this post, I cover the top five. If you thought the previous post on this issue was a doozy, then hang on to your stockings. This one really bites.