2007 Blog Awards Ceremony

Its coming to the end of the year and as I look back at all the wonderful times medschool high has given us, I can't help but think about how important blogs were to some of us. With that said, I feel that recognition should be given to the blogs and their writers. So I would like to propose a few categories for awards which will be given on May 11th, 2007 in the first annual Blog Awards. Decisions on who will win these awards are subject to debate and bribes will be accepted. I encourage rigorous discourse about the categories and who should win (please post in comments section). Please keep physical abuse at a minimum and resort to the very effective psychological abuse (for any advice on this form of abuse, see Farah or Abby). So with that being said...there will be 5 awards given out (they will go in order of honor, importance, and prestige)

1. best genre in a blog post (blogs about the class, historical blogs, elvis blogs, pop culture blogs, etc.....)
2. best use of of visuals in a blog post
3. best use of writing in a blog post (don't assume mariam is going to win! though she probably will.....)
4. best blogger
5. And....the most treasured award out there.......The Best Blog Website Award.




remember to all you bloggers out there....this should be a time of rigorous blogging...be innovative, creative, witty, funny and artistic to show your blogging brilliance because awards are still up for grabs!

DSM-V criteria for being a Back Row Mafia member

Recently I noticed a lot of new people are starting to sit in the back row on a regular basis, you know who you are. That’s fine, you are all welcome, however just because someone sits in the back row, that doesn’t make them part of the Back Row Mafia. For you see, to be part of this family you have to do more than just sit with us, you should feel privileged to even be allowed to sit here, trust us, if we wanted to we could make sure you could never sit here again. So some of you might wonder, what does it take to be part of the Back Row Mafia. Very good question indeed. To meet the criteria of a Back Row Mafia member you have to sit in the back row and have at least 5 of the following requirements, one of which must be #4.

1. You have been sitting in the back row at least since 3rd week of Block 1.
2. When you have a question you don’t raise your hand but instead yell out the question really loud (however questions are always about lecture material and no more than 2 questions per lecture).
3. You identify yourself as, or regarded by other to be, “foreign”.
4. You are not a Back Row Baller, nor have you ever supported their blog, been a guest blogger on their blog, told them their blog is the best, or given them hugs.
5. Your favorite movie is at least one of the following; The Godfather, Scarface, Goodfellas, Casino, Once Upon a Time in America, Pulp Fiction, Desperado, or Heat.
6. You can’t stand people who ask lots of pointless and irrelevant questions.
7. Rarely showing up to class on time, must be at least 10 minutes late.
8. You have written at least one blog entry on this blog.
9. Giving Mariam a hard time on a daily basis.

April 24th

92 years ago, on April 24th, 1915, by the orders of the Young Turk government of the Ottoman Empire, 250 Armenians from the intelligentsia were arrested in Istanbul. They were taken out of the city to a prison in the desert; most of them were never seen again. With this act of ridding the Armenian minority of their leaders, the Young Turk campaign to rid Anatolia from their native Armenian population, the Armenian Genocide began. Before 1915, 2 million Armenian lived in Anatolia, after WWI was over the population of Armenians left living in Turkey was only 10,000. Somewhere between 1 and 1.5 million Armenians died at the hands of the Turks, the rest become refugees as they escaped to France, US, and to a strip of Armenia that was Under Russian rule. But aggression against Armenian didn’t stop there. When the Bolsheviks won the revolution, Russia lost control of their small Armenia, which became independent as Democratic Republic of Armenia. Shortly after declaring their independence from Russia, the new Armenia was invaded by the new republic of Turkey and further massacres continued, one of which involved my family, my great-grandfather was a survivor and became a refugee as he made his way to Baku, which at the time was safe since it was under British control. The Democratic Republic did not last, as it lost half of its territory to Turkey, and the rest was occupied by the Red Army, and become annexed to the rest of the USSR as the Soviet Republic of Armenia. It would not be independent again until 1991 when it became the modern Republic of Armenia.

For more info, there is an excellent article about the Armenian Genocide on the United Human Rights Council website, the address is: http://www.unitedhumanrights.org/Genocide/armenian_genocide.htm

Mission Accomplished

My fellow blog readers, earlier this morning, April 23, 2007, we the Back Row Gangstas made a preemptive strike at the Back Row Ballers blog. Let me assure you that the strike was 100% successful. The cause for this attack was necessary and I believe fully justified. With the threat posed but the ballers blog growing over the past two weeks, an action was imperative. We the back row gangstas could no longer sit and wait as the threat grew and materialized, something had to be done before things really got out of hand. True, there we had no direct evidence against the ballers, but we did not want to wait for direct evidence to come in the form of a mushroom cloud type blog. We had to make sure that we are safe, so we decided to make this preemptive strike!

The opportunity presented itself this morning, when Mariam (a key back row baller) was foolish enough to forget to sign out of her blogger account after she asked to use one of our laptops to check her blog. After we noticed that she was still signed in, we got the go ahead from the Boss to go ahead and commence with Operation Blogvasion. We were in and out in matter of 10 minutes, but the damage was immense. By the time we were done, we added pictures of Borat, his sister, a hilarious picture of Ahmadinejhad, Mariams home, and a even a connection to Armenia, we also changed some things. However even though the operation was a success, we did fail shortly after when we couldn’t stop laughing, this resulted in raised suspicions, and shortly after the ballers checked their blog and discovered the wide spread damage. Shock and awe is the only way to describe their reaction. A relation is expected, but our freedom and our way of blog must be preserved at any cost. To pull out now would be failure on our part, what we need is success. To those of you who didn’t see the pictures we posted out their blog site, here are some of them.

Asking too many questions should be outlawed!

Have you ever heard the expression “time is money”? What do I mean by this? Well, as most of you agree, we are bombarded with a load full of information everyday in lectures. There is no way we can have enough time to learn every single thing about neuroscience and behavioral science. Just not practical. So, the professors give us notes, which (should) contain exactly what we will be tested on the exam. Sometimes, the professors run out of time, and have to hurry through the lecture, or simply say “read it on your own” and therefore we don’t get to hear the professor explain what the material mean. Where am I going with this? Well, to put it simply, we need to be respectful of each other, and we need to respect the time given to us in lecture. This means, we really need to restrict what kinds of questions are asked in class (perhaps even restrict who gets to ask questions but that may be pushing it). The only questions that should be raised in class should have to do with something specifically mentioned in the notes. Everything else, ask on your own damn time! Give us the respect of learning what will ACTUALLY be on the exam. If you want to broaden your knowledge, that is perfectly fine and naturally and I respect you for it because we all want to know more about our future profession (yet who really has the time right now?) but please don’t waste our god damn lecture time, and ask during breaks or after class, or even easier, look it up on wikipedia for petes sake. Come on people, is that really so much to ask? Oh and one more thing, the worst, is when someone raises a hand and doesn’t even ask a freaking question, but instead makes a comment or brings an example or something, oh very nice, your so smart, thank you for your input, woopediefreakingdoodaaa! What you expect me to give you a pat on the back for your immense storage of trivial information? Well then, my hat is off to you sir, would like to come over for a cup of tea? Here let me massage your massive brain! You know that would have been fine and dandy if this was some king of group discussion, but this is not a group discussion, this is a time limited lecture and how much we get out of it depends on how much the professor tells us, not on how much trivial facts that we hear from you.

Hi my name is Ashot and I'm an Gearaholic.

Recently most of my free time has been spent playing Gears of War. For those who don’t know, this is a shooter type game for the Xbox360 system. The game is really fun, and addicting, I know it’s addicting because whenever I am not playing the game, I am either thinking about it, imagining myself playing the game, thinking of the levels I beat, I’m addicted man. The best part of this game is that you have the options to hide behind walls, doors, fences, boxes, anything that gives you cover. While under cover you can then shoot and then go back to cover when they start to shoot back. You even have the choice to blind shoot, where you just shoot without peeking out, hence you don’t really have good accuracy, but you are still able to shoot. The enemy is the Locus Horde, an alien species that wants to kill all humans. Well who can blame them; we took over their planet, and so is natural that they would be a little pissed off. But that’s not important, what is important is that the planet is ours now, and they must be destroyed. Best part of the weapons in this game, is that one machine gun has a chainsaw on it, and when you get close to the enemy, you can use the chainsaw to rip them in half, which is really awesome to see, blood gets splattered everywhere. My journey through Gears of War has been a long and hard one. When I first started the game I had to pick a level of difficulty. Normally I pick the easiest difficulty when I first play a game, but this time, I wanted to go hardcore. Fortunately there just happened to be a difficulty level called hardcore, it wasn’t the easy level and it wasn’t the hardest, it was right in the middle, and I went hardcore. It was harder than I thought it would be. The bastards would attack nonstop and I would have to do major hiding and blindshooting in order to stay alive, but I died a lot. It just wasn’t faie goddmanit. But I had great perseverance. I was determined to annihilate every last one of those mothertruckers. Eventually I got better and now I don’t die as much as I used to. Man, I don’t know where this blog is really going, but like I said, I must be addicted, I even started a blog about Gears of War, I think I need to call a help hot-line. Then I would know that the pos

WTF?? How did I only make 2nd Lieutenant?...First of all, there is no hierarchy here. Second of all, after all that we've been through, I am completely embarrassed and am at a loss of words. Thirdly, if you are gonna make me something, then make me a undercover Israeli Agent, or Correspondent to the KGB...something of meaning...Otherwise, I demand that this list be removed at once...

South African Beached Whale

Oh great South African beached whale
Why do thee cry?
You think you’re beached now
But you don’t have to die
Tomorrow might be a higher tide
Why not for now to relax and lie
Oh great beached whale
Here comes a crazy Thai
Welcome Thai man what makes your drive?
A crazy grin was his reply
Have you met my friend the South African beached whale?
He says he lost his tie
My tie I let him borrow
When he pointed a gun at me oh my
Oh great South African beached whale
Why did thee die?

A poem about plants

What is that makes me think of plants
That green light reflecting to retire
It’s deliciousness I crave as ants
But then no longer it will be to admire

It is life that I think of when I think of vegetation
That fresh smell that smells of vitality
Eating the plant will end its animation
I will not grieve because it will live on in my individuality

The Uzbek that changed the world.

What you are about to read is a truly inspirational story...it is not about me, unfortunately, but it is about a man from the third greatest -stan country, namely, Uzbekistan...

Last night, for boxing fanatics worldwide, an event occurred which changed the world.

Their is a man who is 7'o", weighs 320 lbs., is extremely hideous and a monster in every aspect of his life. His name is Nikolay Valuev and he became known as the Russian giant. He was unstoppable, his record reached 47-0...think about it, he has achieved 47 victories and has never lost...an absolutely extraordinary streak. He was approaching the record of 49-0 claimed by Rocky Marciano (who retired undefeated), a truly unfathomable feat.

A few weeks ago, he killed a man who was sparring with him by a simple head butt and that is no joke. His strategy was to use his size and knock his opponents out in the 2nd or 3rd round - some would never come back to boxing. He was unstoppable, he was indestructible, he was the biggest heavyweight (in both size and weight) of all time to claim the WBA (World Boxing Association) title and was the Titanic of the boxing world...

...
...
...

...But then came a man, an Uzbek that would change the boxing world...

...Chagaev was a man who was not afraid, who perhaps did not have the size but had the heart of a giant. He was unknown to most and understandably all odds were against him...but you see, this was an Uzbek, and this is his story.

His height - 6'1, his weight - 225...he was 11 inches shorter and 90 pounds lighter than Valuev! He seemed from a distance just a small stone compared to the size and monstrosity of Valuev! But this was a man who believed in himself, in his dream of becoming the heavyweight champion of the world, and would not be held back by the masses who told him he had no chance.

And on a fateful night, on April 14th 2007, Chagaev, the Uzbek, the David, the unimaginable underdog got an opportunity to face Ruslan, the Russian, the Goliath...and by an incredible display of skill, effort, luck and perseverance, he conquered his fear, proved the world wrong and achieved his dream...he slew the giant!

Yes, you read it here first, an Uzbek holds the title.

HAHA!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuY2_Z17wRE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=br4vmwM8yYw

The Halo Effect

I had a decent day, the night was nearing to a close, and after finishing up PBL (which stands for problem-based-learning for the non-medically inclined readers), I jumped into my car and was about to head home…when…I got a phone call…

…I looked at my ultra-slim phone and put the speaker up close to my ear…I inquired, “Hello.”

…”Halo,” was the response.

I replied, “Is this my uncle! I know you are one funny man, very nice! Halo’ to you to!”

…The man replied, “Halo.”

I continued, “Am I being stalked or something…this is kinda getting scary…”

…”Halo.”

...Then it hit me, it was the main man, the big burrito, my brother-from-another-mother, the mac daddy…Ashot.

…Hey buddy, what’s up, how is everything…did you hear of what happened in Armenia today, they got a new prime minister just a few days ago?”

He replied, “Halo.”

I was scared, I thought Ashot had finally lost it, having just taken a behavioral exam, I diagnosed him with selective mutism…it is a disorder characterized by “silent, whisper or single-syllable words during the stressful situation” … I immediately turned around my car and raced to his apartment.

Thirteen minutes later, I entered Ashot’s residence and noticed something unusual…he also had a tic disorder…that is rapid and repetitive muscle contractions resulting in movements or vocalizations…that is Ashot was uncontrollably wielding a controller and didn’t even notice my presence…he was accompanied by Elvis who eyed Ashot with extreme contempt.

…I grasped the controller away from Ashot…he did not yield…he yelled, “Showdown, You, Me…Halo!”

Yes, Ashot seemed disturbed, I accepted the challenge, not knowing what I was getting into…

…My time playing Halo was a blur, I do not remember what happened, but I too dealt with great amounts of stress…I also remember waking the neighbors up…and pushing Elvis off the couch (my apologies)…

….Three hours later, I learned a lot about gamming, about combat and about Ashot…mainly, this was a man with great dignity but little integrity, he would sacrifice his complete dominance by letting you win and leading you on…only later to completely destroy you …

…moreover, he was very humble about his skill, wouldn’t say much, would come around and shot you from behind when you least expect it…

…I remember during one episode, he murdered my character, and then as I was lying, bleeding on the ground, Ashot came at me with a chain saw and sawed off my head. As if that was unnecessarily cruel, Ashot turned to me and looked at me silently into my eyes…then looked away without uttering a single word…it was an expression I will never forget…completely blank but rejoiced in some form of great accomplishment…

Unnecessary…yes…Disturbing...perhaps...Priceless…indeed.

I should be studying, but I'm bloging...

Hello my people! Surely you have noticed there is a newcomer to the blogosphere family, I am pleased to have onboard the blogship that is this enterprise, the one and only, the great and powerful The Roman! Perhaps you have already read his first entry on this blog, I have declared it a success! Well done comrade, indeed you are all powerful blogster, just like I have predicted! I am glad you have chosen wisely and picked the best possible blog to join, because the other blog is a huge failure, a disgrace to blogkind, but they try, and they will always fail to me! To us! The greatest blogsters ever! Oh damn, I should be studying, but I am wasting time, writing this silly blog, but can you blame me?? People! Can you blame me? I strive to become the ultimate blogger! I believe I have achieved a great status among bloggers, and with Romans help, this will become a truly great blog page, and that will leave all the other blogs behind. We have already crushed the back row ballers blog page, ha! You thought you won the blog war, but you only won the first battle. It is we who won the war! Your glory was nice while it lasted, but like the Persian empire, your unity rotted from within, and you ultimately fell to the bottom, become now, our blog is number one, our blog has reached the highest average hit per day, ever dreamed, we have won! Now, I must retire to my lair, and rest, for tomorrow, is another blog day.

A little sweet, a little sour, a little sweet-and-sour.

Ashot, excellent comment in class...really, I enjoyed it tremendously. Just be careful when you walk by computer-techie Joe....he wasn't as enthusiased. Don't worry, I got your back.

However, now moving on to more serious issues...

I have had numerous people (these will remain nameless due to HIPPA conduct guidlines as I believe many of these people have ADHD or borderline conduct disorder) walk up to me in class and ask me if what I posted was serious or just meant for humor's sake. Well, I really am shocked that so many seemingly bright people would actually think such things and thus I have to state once and for all...that I am EXTREMELY SERIOUS! NO JOKES HERE!

Ok, really I have been bothered for quite some time about something...I don't know the best way to say this or how to format it...so I'm just gonna do it like this.

Perhaps some of you have seen the movie, 'Forrest Gump.' I know I have and it is great...really, you owe it to yourself. In any case, there is a saying that goes something like, "Life is like a box of chocolates, You never know what you gonna get." Well, I know Forrest wasn't very bright or educated and his IQ was as low as my last block's average, but was he up to something with what he said? I mean, sometimes I wonder, is life really like that, like a box full of chocolates, some of which have liquor-filled interiors and others are truffle-like, still others full of a white texturious cream. Anyways, this implies that life is sweet, you know, all chocolates taste good (unless you are allergic), but is life really like that?

Or is life like a sack of potates, that is, you know exactly what you are gonna get, a uncooked, pealed, plain and wholesome sack and if you reach in you get a potato that needs some washing, but is relatively plain....

Or is life more like a car full of gypsies, that is, in this case, you can't expect much, but you know that you better act fast cause as soon as they get out, you are in major trouble...so perhaps, life full of running and trepedation from fear...

Or is life more like calling on Ashot to speak in class...that is, in this case you really don't know what you are gonna get...you know it won't be a serious question or constructive comment of any kind...but better yet, it will be something hilariously witty and will leave you laughing endlessly...thus, is it more like a cruel joke...

Or is life really like, well a box full of chocolates?

Nazi crimes against the Soviet Slavs (last WWII blog)

I will keep this last blog about Nazi war crimes short because I simply ran out of patience, and this subject is just plain depressing and its time to get back to lighter subjects. The other Slavs, which includes the Russians, the Ukrainians, and the Byelorussians, were massacred and butchered by the Nazis, during their invasion of the USSR, as much as the Poles were during the invasion of Poland. In fact, more Soviet civilians died during operation Barbarossa, then Polish people during invasion of Poland. The civilian causalities during the invasion of Poland were 150,000 (this doesn’t include the approximate 2 millions ethnic Poles that later would), the civilian causalities of Soviet citiziens during the war is generally agreed to be as high as 20 million. Another 10 millions died were soldiers. But 20 millions innocent civilians! Obviously not all of them were massacred in outright, most of them died during Nazi bombing raid, caught in cross battle fire, and so on. But most historians agree that the war in itself could only account for half of that number that perished, what about the other half? Well about a third of them were Jews, the rest, approximately 7 million, were Russians, Ukrainians, and Byelorussians. They were rounded up, either executed right away, or taken to concentration or slave labor camps where they would eventually perish as well. That is seven million innocent civilians that were murdered, not because of bombings, or cross fire, or other causes of war, but outright murder and extermination. I believe the sacrifice that the Soviet Union people made during WWII is underappreciated. The soviets sacrificed 20 million of their people, and liberated their own country, then went on to liberate all of Eastern Europe, most of the rest of Europe and half of Germany, and captured Berlin, and won the war, and nobody really appreciates what they have done to save the world. It wasn’t the US that won the war in Europe, it was all USSR.

Nazi crimes against ethnic Poles

The Polish people were also massacred by the Nazis during WWII. Like the Jews, the Roma, the Slavic peoples were seen as inferior to the German race. Since Poles are ethnically Slaves, they were considered by the Nazis to be subhuman, and the plan was to kill as much of them as possible, in order to make room for the Germanic people who were then to settle in the newly emptied Poland.

Some three million non-Jewish Polish citizens perished during the course of the war, over two million of whom were ethnic Poles (the remainder being mostly Ukrainians and Belarusians). The vast majority of those killed were civilians, mostly killed by the actions of Nazi Germany. From the start, the war against Poland was intended as a fulfillment of the plan described by Adolf Hitler in his book Mein Kampf. The main objective of the plan was that all of Eastern Europe to become part of the greater Germany, and the Slavs were to be exterminated to make living space for the pure German race.

The intelligentsia was annihilated, the mentally ill patients were wiped out, and the rest were put into concentration camps and slave labor camps. Poles were prisoners in nearly every camp of the extensive concentration camp system in German-occupied Poland and the Reich. The Polish scholar Franciszek Piper, the chief historian of Auschwitz, estimates that 140,000 to 150,000 Poles were brought to that camp between 1940 and 1945, and that 70,000 to 75,000 died there as victims of executions, of human experimentation, and of starvation and disease. Between 1943 until 1944, the Konzentrationslager Warschau worked as a death camp to exterminate the Polish population of Warsaw. The Gentile population of Poland was a target of the łapanka policy, in which the forces of SS, Wehrmacht and police rounded up civilians on the street. Between 1942 and 1944, there were approximately 400 victims of łapanka in Warsaw daily.

The worse single event to wipe out the Poles happened during the Warsaw uprising atrocities. During the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, German forces committed many atrocities against Polish civilians, following the order by Hitler to annihilate the city and "turn it into a lake". The most severe of them took place in Wola district where, at the beginning of August 1944, tens of thousands of civilians (men, women, and children) were methodically rounded-up and executed by Einsatzkommando of Sicherheitspolizei operating within the SS-Gruppenführer Heinz Reinefarth group under overall Erich von dem Bach-Zalewski command.

The Porajmos: Hitler’s war against the Gypsy people

The Porajmos is a term used by the Roma (Gypsy) people of Europe to describe what happened to them during the Second World War, when they were targeted for annihilation by the Nazi regime. By the end of the war, the Nazis were able to successfully exterminate as many as 2 million Roma people living in Europe.

Reasons why the Roma were targeted:
Simply put, the Roma were seen as an inferior and dirty race compared to the Germans. In the thousand years that nomadic Roma tribes wandered through Europe, they were subject to persecution and humiliation; they were stigmatized as habitual criminals, social misfits, and vagabonds. The Roma posed a problem for Hitler's racial ideologues. The Gypsy language (Romany) is one of the Indo-Aryan languages, originating in northern India. Nazi anthropologists realized that Roma migrated into Europe from India, and were descendants of the Aryan occupants of the subcontinent. In other words, the Gypsies were no less Aryan than the Germans themselves, thus where is the justification for their annihilation? Their answer came from Nazi racialist Hans Günther who added a socioeconomic component to the theory of racial purity. While he conceded that the Roma were, in fact, descended from Aryans, they were of poorer classes that mingled with the various "inferior" races they encountered during their wanderings, such as Dravidians, Semites, and Turkic peoples. This, he explained, accounted for their extreme poverty and nomadic lifestyle. There fore the Roma posed a threat to Aryan hegemony because of their racial mingling. The Nazis now had their justification to get rid of the Roma along with the other “inferior” peoples of Europe.

How the Nazis did it:
Overall the method of Roman extermination matched the one used for the Jews. On January 3, 1936, the Nuremberg laws, prohibiting marriages between Jews and Aryans, was extended to the Roma as well. The Roma, like Jews, lost their right to vote on March 7, 1936. On December 16, 1942, Himmler ordered that the Roma candidates for extermination should be deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau just like the Jews. Himmler then on November 15, 1943 ordered that the Roma and "part-Roma" were to be put "on the same level as Jews and placed in concentration camps."

According to testimonies of Jewish and Nazi witnesses, the Roma sent to the death camps often suffered even worse than Jews. In some instances, the Nazis were so appalled by the sight of Roma arriving in the transports that they would not even let them in the gates of the camps for selection and simply murdered them by the railway platforms. In one remarkable instance, the victims were so terrified that they would be killed on the spot that they actually stormed the gates of the death camp, demanding to be allowed in. They were allowed to come in; however once inside, they were promptly led to the gas chambers, all the while believing that they would find sanctuary there.

Nazi Crimes Against Humanity

No this is not going to be a blog about the holocaust, at least not regarding the Jewish part of the holocaust. This is not supposed to mean that what happened to the 6 million Jews that were exterminated in Europe is not a terrible calamity in the history of mankind; this is not supposed to belittle that tragedy in any way. The purpose of the next set of blogs is to give some attention to other peoples that were massacred by Nazis; some were targeted for complete annihilation. It came to my attention, that some people seemed to have forgotten (or simply never bothered to learn) just how many different peoples that Hitler wished to see annihilate besides the Jews, and even though the scope and means of the Jewish holocaust cannot be compared to any other Nazi atrocities, the fact is that the Jews were not the only ones that were targeted for annihilation by the Nazi regime. Other crimes were just as serious, and deserve to be understood and remembered as well. I apologize for this serious turn of my bloging, but this must be done, and after I finish this series of blogs, I promise to return to more funny and light hearted topics. I will try to keep these blogs not too long, which will unfortunately not explain everything and due little justice to the memories of the victims, but will serve as a decent introduction to these topics and hopefully will incite some to research some more. Thanks for reading.