In light of the age-old health care debate, sluggish economies and less-than-stellar consumer spending habits, I found it necessary to bring another personal opinion to the most likely weakening kitchen table.  I’m in no way a political guru, nor do I rush home from work each night to eat a home-cooked meal in front of a CNBC or a Fox News Channel, but I do question Americans’ constant dependence on our government.

As American citizens, we are products of our current situation.  We are all victims of reckless spending, questionable decisions by our leaders, growing populations and most of all. . . unfair living conditions.  Throughout the history of man (humans did exist before 1776), there has always been a guy with more “things” than the chump standing next to him; a caveman with more berries and a douchey lawyer with three too many houses.  When someone in the tribe screws up, we fail to recognize that we all might have to pay the price; when someone discovers fire, we all want to benefit from its warmth.  We’re all so quick to proclaim innocence while being too stubborn to accept consequences of our mere existence.  As children we’re taught that there’s always someone smarter, luckier or stronger so why are we so reluctant to admit this?

We all know why government exists; we’re all lucky to live in a society in which we can rely on our government to step in during catastrophes or provide citizens with laws to help us live somewhat civilly.  This being said, when does persistent dependence on government become too much?  When does government cease to be an intangible support line that’s always in the background and morph into a persistent salesman knocking at our doors?  When one side accuses the government of laxity, the other argues over-sensitivity;  when government attempts to practice fairness, someone finds a way to shed light on only imperfections.  These growing arguments are only being used to build sides and gain votes, all while we completely deny our reality in an already divided country.

No matter what political party you may be partial to, we’ve become too obsessed with telling each other how much government should or shouldn’t run our lives.  We have all grown to expect the government to wait at our hands and feet when something happens that we don’t like.  What happened to survival of the fittest?  What happened to the free market ideals of those wonderful Boston Tea Party vigilantes?  Why do we expect a greater power to bail us out of our mistakes or provide us with services that should ideally be given, but rightfully earned.  Americans have become too lazy.  Gone are the days of persevering through any given circumstance; gone are the days of accepting our dealt cards and playing fairly to finally cash in our earnings.  We expect things now, we live well outside of our means and we attack others for attempting to point out our faults.

Surely one may be at a disadvantage if they have to play guardian to younger siblings while their mother is passed out on the couch from a drug habit, or if one comes from an area where they’re not expected to succeed, but some of the most inspirational stories of success come from those who started with little to nothing while fighting through terrible circumstances.  We need to recognize that there’s always someone who has it easier, someone who benefits from nepotism or someone who clearly cheats their way through life.  I was taught at a young age that, given personal circumstances, I’d have to work harder for respect, fight to be recognized and battle certain categories in which some decide to prematurely place me.  I don’t expect anything to be handed to me; I’ve worked hard and earned my place given any advantage or disadvantage I’ve encountered.

We all have the chance to succeed no matter how much we think we can’t or how much the world tells preaches impossibility.  We all deserve to achieve perfect health, but we must recognize that we have to work in order to benefit from the services we’re so lucky to have available to us in our country.  We should not expect others to hand us resources on their dime, although we should all be willing to give up something in order to receive the conveniences of democracy.  Our laziness and our expectations to be taken care of are greatly hurting us.  We too easily fall into and hide away in segments in which we think society places us, yet demand equality as if these sadly obvious segments contribute equally to our society.

Surely, I may seem biased due to a certain lifestyle I live; perhaps I’ve sounded contradicting.  Maybe I’m not as well-versed as an economist or a politician; perhaps I’m still too young to preach any personal stories of fighting through struggles, but I do know that I don’t demand anything that I don’t deserve.  We need to remedy our irrational expectations of being “bailed out” of hardships by reminding our youth of the value in working hard.  We should not be passing out gold stars for achievements that should be expected of us.  We need to share the stories and struggles of those before us before future generations expect to have live-in government officials to resolve all claims of unfairness.  In short, I’m tired of health care debates and the option of bail-outs.  Americans, it’s time to wake up a recognize that although life isn’t fair, nobody can make us settle for anything we don’t deem worthy enough.  If we don’t like the the direction we’re heading, it’s up to us, as individuals, to work for the life we desire.

~Seves

If you’ve been reading, I thank you for your support.

Gen-Y Blog is not going anywhere.  From now on, I will only be posting original material at my personal blog at JoeSteinkamp.com because it allows me to post what ever I want.

My intention for Gen-Y Blog is not being fulfilled because I do not have enough contributers. I have an idea of this place as being a location for people of generation Y to come and find things that interest them. I want it to be nearly a one-stop place for all their information needs. I cannot alone provide this and currently my other contributers are busy with other things.

So as of this moment, I will be offering people to join my team. For more information go to the page – Join Gen-Y Blog Team.

As you may know, I’m a huge supporter of online streaming videos. I love Hulu.com. It’s so convenient and reliable. Previously only NBC and FOX were the big networks using it but now that Disney has signed on that means ABC will be there too. This means that ABC, FOX, and NBC will all have their shows available on Hulu, leaving CBS all by its lonesome.

Source [Download Squad]

Well, Find New Music Week is officially over. Hopefully, it gave you some information on finding music and helped you out. If you haven’t see the other posts yet, this post will summarize all of them and link you to them.

1. Top Artist Charts – This is post is a round up of good sites that offer the top artists in certain genres.
2. Similar Artist Websites – These sites have artist information including artist that are similar to them.
3. Online Tools / Players – These sites are a little different than the one’s listed above. These sites are either specifically for finding similar artists or are online players that will play similar music. These sites are very useful.
4. Songbird with Music Recommendation add-on – This is a quick tutorial on using the wonderful media player, Songbird, with a great add-on that automatically recommends similar artist based on the artist you are playing. It uses Last.fm’s information.
5. Discover Music with Twitter – This is a redirect to an interesting post that shows you how to use Twitter to find new music.

I don’t know if they are copying off me or it’s just perfect timing but Wired.com just wrote an article on using Twitter to find new music.  It seems kind of odd to use a social networking site as a way to discover new music but it makes sense because a lot of sites that have music information on them are linked into Twitter.

Checkout Wired’s article on using Twitter to find music.

AT&T is currently selling refurbished 16GB iPhone 3Gs for $149 and a 2 year contract. That’s not too bad since it is 50% of an Apple product.

 Here’s a quick tutorial on using a great music player, Songbird, to find new music.

If you’ve never heard of Songbird then check out this article I previously wrote on it. 

Get Songbird here. It’s for Mac, Windows, and Linux.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zF_eHsdjy68]

Star Trek has already been released in the UK, France, and Australia. I’m not sure why they released there first but the reviews from there have been great. They’re saying its a great achievement and all other kinds of praise. Sounds good, I can’t wait to see it.

Check out some of the reviews.

Check out the trailers.

Heres another list of websites that could help you find some new music. These aren’t information sites and their ability to use them as them as players and dynamic tools separates them from the others.

• Pandora – is my favorite music website and I’m sure many others. Basically, Pandora is an Internet radio station. It plays music similar to a suggested song or artist. It’s very simple and you can create am account to save your radio stations. Once you use Pandora you’ll never stop.
• Seeqpod – is a great mp3 search engine and mp3 player as well. It allows you to find music and setup a playlist right there. The tool that helps you find new music is the Discovery tool. It automatically finds related music to your search and allows you to add them to your playlist.
• LivePlasma – is a very interesting site. It basically sums up everything. It is specifically made for finding new music by similar artist. It’s a search tool that finds related artists by the one you type in. It’s pretty cool how it shows it graphically like it’s a solar system.
• TasteKid – has the same premise as LivePlasma but just lists them out. It works out quite nicely and provides different suggestions than LivePlasma.

There are many music sites out there that keep track of nearly every artist out there. Obviously as the way of the world, some are better than others. They all have different features but some good ones list similar artists to the one you’re looking at. This is very helpful in finding new music because you find some artist you enjoy and then you find one similar to them. 

Here’s a list of some sites that are good at showing you similar artists:

• Last.fm is a great site for music lovers. It provides artist bio’s, charts, full songs to listen to, and gives you a list of similar artists and so much more. I find Last.fm very helpful in finding new music by finding similar artists to what I already like.
   
• Amazon is obviously a large online department store and isn’t created for music enthusiasts. Rather it allows you to find albums by the artists you want to “purchase” (quotes – meaning you don’t have to buy but window shop). Amazon has a different approach than Last.fm and it could be better. Instead of Amazon suggesting similar artists to the Album you’re looking at, Amazon shows you other album purchases by people who bought the current album you’re looking at. This is helpful because it could result in a new artist that is similar to the album you’re looking at. This also helps for artists that have very different sounding albums.
   
• MTV has most all popular artists on their site. When you go view an artist there are links on the left and one is Related Artists. The Related Artists section gives you MTV’s recommendations for the similar artists. I haven’t found them to be that great but they do give you some different results than other sites.