Political Correctness and a life update

For the record, I find political correctness to be really annoying and pretentious. The newest example of why it is pointless that I have stumbled across was on a handout for a high school Spanish class. It was about what to expect from a 'world language' learning process. Now what was wrong with the phrase 'foreign language?' When you learn a language that is not your own, does the word 'foreign' not apply? What does changing that word to 'world' do for us? It gives us a vague, meaningless phrase. As if someone could learn a non-worldly language?

Now, I understand that there are lots of people that have serious xenophobic issues and I have little doubt that all of us have our stereotyping racist/sexist/classist/etc. tendencies. But changing the terminology is not going to magically change our prejudices. In fact, I think it allows them to continue to exist, because we use this meaningless language, instead of recognizing that when we see something foreign we have a strong tendency to label it as bad. Why not instead continue calling foreign languages foreign, but make a serious campaign to realize that something can be foreign and very enjoyable. And even if it's foreign and we don't enjoy it, we don't have to label it as bad. We can just recognize that it is not for us. Perhaps, I'm asking too much, but too much or not, I just don't see how changing the terminology because we are afraid of certain people's prejudices associated with that word, is going to help the situation.

In personal notes, Sunday night, I felt really comfortable at Chipotle for the first time. It just seemed like I knew a lot better what I was doing and didn't have to think as hard to remember stuff. I'm sure I'll feel more and more loose as the stuff becomes habit. I think it's a bit of a social shock, too, that I'm getting used to. I'm right back in the middle of college culture working there. It's really fun in a lot of ways. Sometimes it can be frustrating, though, because, my schedule and life don't really fit a lot of 'college life' anymore. I closed last night, which also went well. I'm closing again tonite and Thursday night. I'm going to be tired by the end of this.

To cap it all off, lori and I are leaving at 5am on Friday morning to go hike around on South Manitou Island. Fortunately, lori will be able to go to bed early on Thursday night, and she'll drive most of the 4 hours up to Leland. I'll basically just crawl out of bed at 4:55 am, throw something resembling clothing on and then crawl into the back of the Vibe to sleep for at least a good part of the trip.

I'm actually really excited about SMI. We're going to be hiking about 2 miles from where we get dropped off by the ferry, then setting up camp and day hiking. That means, we don't have to try to pack super light and we can cover a lot of ground in a day, and hike later, since camp will be already set up and waiting for us. From all appearances, it looks like the island is amazingly beautiful. Look for pictures on my Picasa site (picasaweb.google.com/bioethicsman) sometime early next week.