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The song Happy Xmas (War is Over) was released on the 1^st of December 1971 as a single. The song was released and was declared a Christmas standard song. The song over the years has reappeared periodically on the charts but when it was released in the United Kingdom it made it the number four spot.

The reason I picked this song for this assignment was that I was talking to my 24-year Marine Corps veteran son about a song or movie, and he immediately suggested this song. I really didn’t think about it even though I had heard the song before and then as we were talking about this it made the most sense out of all the stuff that I could do. Just for additional reference we come from a musical family with a wide range of musical tastes. He learned this song in guitar class while he was in high school and really had to focus on it to include the meaning of the song. You always appreciate a song more if you know the lyrics and focus on them as well as the notes that are played.

When the song first came out most people did not investigate the true meaning of the song and just enjoyed it for a new Christmas song that was beautifully done. The song is really an antiwar song that is meant to remind the world of what they had done through the year and others would not be able to enjoy the holiday. Lennon and Ono were activists and trying to get an end to the Vietnam war. The words to this song were really meant to be in Lennon’s own words “It says, ‘War is over if you want it. “ “It was still that same message – the idea that we’re just as responsible as the man who pushes the button.” “As long as people imagine that somebody’s doing it to them, and that they have no control, then they have no control.”. This really hits home even to this day but I can imagine during the height of the Vietnam War and threats of Nuclear War on a regular basis. Today we sometimes forget that the world has been far more dangerous than it is today. However, if we continue to think this way and not look at what we as an individual have done then nothing will change.

This song exemplifies how people can see a song that they think is just a plain Christmas song but it turns out to have such a deeper meaning. Everyone is able to interpret art anyway that they want since it is their interpretation that makes it great. Some may never see the meaning of the song that I just pointed out or that Lennon and Oko intended and that is fine, but for me I will never see this song the same way after this. For that and if you are reading this during Christmas just remember “So this is Christmas”.

For this week’s assignment, I needed to talk about stereotyping and generalization. Surprisingly enough, this came up between me and a friend on social media not two weeks ago. As she pointed out I might not understand something because I am a “privileged white male” which pretty much set the tone for a conversation that could have been very productive. Being who I am and all the places that I have visited and lived I feel like I understand a lot more than the average person. Unfortunately, as soon as she said that I knew she did not want to hear me at all. She wanted validation that I would just agree with her, which I do in some respects, but I knew that it would not end well for either of us.

So, for those who don’t know me very well I try to keep my religious and political opinions to myself. I was raised that it is a personal matter, but I do not shy away from the subject at all. I am also open to admitting that I am wrong or getting my mind changed if the information provided to me is accurate and it can be proven. I am not the type of person that believes what I see or hear on the internet from some random person with multiple trusted and verified sources.

So, this conversation came that I started to speak of at the beginning was a random message from an online friend that I have talked to for a few years back and forth. She started with how are you and how is your travels?. Which is normal for us since she is intrigued by my unique lifestyle choice of living in an RV and traveling. After I answered and reciprocated, she then asked me if I am ok with what is going on? I tried not to get into the conversation because I was pretty sure she wanted to talk politics, and I did not but then she made the mistake of saying that as a “privileged white male” that you wouldn’t understand anything anyways. For anyone that wants to have a substantive conversation please never do that. It puts people on the defensive immediately and now I cannot listen to anything that you say because you won’t take my opinion into consideration. This is my mind is saying that all white men are privileged which I don’t agree with. I am not wealthy, and I came from a poor family relatively. Nothing special about my upbringing at all. I worked for everything that I got and did not get a hand up due to being a white male. My firsthand up was given to me by my first boss in the Marine Corps and she gave me that because she saw potential in me not because I was a white male. She was not white either.

I do see this often in the world that we try to lump groups together but if we really look at it we are all people. We all have different priorities, lives, and examples in our lives that shape what we believe over time. I do not look at anyone and think that they are who they are because of what they look like. I think being in the Marine Corps taught me that due to being around people from all over the world.

The Moon Landing conspiracy has been around since the 1970’s but has taken off recently and even had a several movies and television shows released about this very topic. I tried to find the original source of this but could not locate one since it was in the 1970’s. most of the reason that I found for the faking of the moon landing was so we could win the space race against the then Soviet Union who was winning. This just makes you think but the facts do align with this conspiracy.

Most of the people that believe this conspiracy do have some valid points but at closer look they do not hold up to any scrutiny. These include such things as the flag did not waive, no stars visible in the pictures, and the footprints do not match the picture.  These are all easily dismissed as the individuals are not on earth which changes things dramatically. For example, the flag does not waive because there is no wind due to a limited atmosphere on the moon. Furthermore, there is no stars visible due to it being daylight and to get stars to show up it would take a completely different type of photo. Lastly the footprints do not match because the astronauts wore a lunar overshoe to get added traction on the dusty moon and did not use their plain spacesuit shoes.

There are so many ways that this can be disputed that Phil Plait did an entire article in Scientific American. He even linked a webpage that he created to dispute every claim that a show that appeared on Fox made about the fake moon landing.  One of the surprising things that he put in his webpage was the fact that he said that Gallup did a poll in 1999 and it said that only 6% believe that the moon landing was faked. I did try to pull the poll, but it was not available even the link. The show that he was talking about said 20%, which is pretty bad.

I did also find an Ask an Earth and Space Scientist article on ASU’s website which I thought was pretty convenient since I am taking this class at ASU and my daughter is talking to me about attending ASU for their space program. They go into detail about every one of the arguments and dispute them. Here are their answers:

• The first claim is that the flag on the moon appears to be waving. Given that there is no wind on the moon, it is argued that the flag must then have been on Earth and not on the Moon. However, the way the flag was positioned was due to how it was set up. The flag had a vertical pole, which held it upright in a similar way to flagpoles that we see here on Earth. But this pole had a second portion that went horizontally (making a 90 degree angle at the top of the pole), which was meant to hold the flag out. This portion malfunctioned and did not come out all the way. Because the material of the flag was not pulled tight, it had creases in it that made it appear to be waving. 
• A second claim is that pictures from the moon do not have any stars. With no air on the moon, the sky is black and so stars should have been visible. The air in the atmosphere is made up of lots of little particles, and light will bounce off of these particles. This can make it difficult to see the stars. We experience this on Earth, where stars are more difficult to see in cities that have a lot of this light pollution. With no air on the moon, we don’t have any light pollution, and so it should be easy to see the stars. 

The answer to this claim is that you can see stars on the surface of the moon. But you are unable to see them in the photos due to the settings on the camera. The sun generates a bright light on the surface of the moon, and so the camera had to be set to capture images in this very bright setting. The exposure time was set to be fast, and the aperture was set to be more closed, sort of like when you squint your eyes to see better outside on a sunny day. These settings on the camera actually cause the stars to not be recorded. 

If you happen to find a very dark spot on Earth, you could test this for yourself. If you use the same camera settings, you would find that when you took a picture of the landscape, the stars would be visible to the eye, but not present on the captured image.

• A third claim is that there are shadows in the captured images that are not simply black in color. If the only source of light on the moon was the sun, the shadows would be black. This is because there would be no light scattering into those areas of shadow to light them up. However, even though there is no air to scatter light, there are other sources of light on the moon. There may be a hint of light from the Earth. But the other (and main) source of light is the moon itself. Dust on the moon can actually reflect light. As the light from the sun reflected off the astronaut suits and the lunar module, it interacted with the dust on the moon to cause the shadows to appear a color other than pure black.

In conclusion, I do not know why people believe this when you can look at the moon and see the landing site. Some people have complete distrust in the federal government, and it shows. Overall though I think it wanes and waxes on how this topic is viewed, and I don’t believe that it is an opinion held by most.

0730-Woke up played a game on my phone and got into a Reddit rabbit hole on my phone

0830-Opened YouTube to listen to podcasts while I get ready for the day

0845-Opened computer to check school work and start a game

1000-Checked Zillow because I may be getting a job, so I will be staying somewhere permanently.

1100-Played Baldur’s Gate 3 for 5 hours with my son. We just started a new playthrough due to beating the game on Monday.

1700-Opened Facebook messenger to let my friends know that I would meet them at 1800 for dinner and drinks.

1745-l, let them know that I was there and my phone was charging while listening to music.

2000-Got home and turned on Netflix to see if there was anything new on to watch while I did school work.

2100-Found nothing to watch so just put on a podcast and listened in my air pods while I worked on school work.

2300-finished school work for the day turned to Netflix and got into a doom scroll on Instagram after my daughter sent me a video. This lasted way too long and I didn’t realize I was doing this for an hour.

2400-Went to my room and turned on AppleTV to watch something. Got into the show Severance and watched 4 episodes before going to sleep around 0400.

0730-Woke up and checked my phone for any missed messages and responded before getting up and starting my day.

Friday, January 17th 2025

0800: Wake up and checked my phone for missed messages since I turn all notifications off at 2200 daily. I responded to five messages first thing on various apps and texts. Then I opened a mobile game and played it for a few minutes before putting on a true crime podcast from YouTube. Continued to listen to similar podcasts for approximately two hours.

1200: I went to the store and listened to SiriusXM Coffeehouse on the way there and a cult podcast on YouTube while I walked around for the next hour.  

1300: Picked up my Kindle and continued reading the Silo series book Wool for the next two hours.

1700: Opened Amazon app to do a little shopping which I did not end up buying anything.

1800: Turned on my computer to check school and email to make sure that everything is ready to go for this semester since there was an issue with my classes last week. No update yet but I have done everything that I can do so I am not stressing it right now. Went through my classes to see what else I need to have done by Sunday so I can properly manage my time. This took about two hours total.

2200: Turned on my TV to see if anything new was available to stream which the season Finale of Silo was streaming so I watched that. After that I just found random things to watch to see if I could get into anything good which nothing kept my attention, so I just kept searching until I finally turned the TV off at 0330 and tried to sleep.

Note: I try my hardest to stay away from social media which greatly reduced my media consumption. This is my current usage but it used to be way more than this.

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