[Post]Modern College Life

My Old Cell Phone Number

2012-01-01T15:25:00.000-05:00

I was the first in my family to get a cell phone and as soon as I got it (in 2003), I gave the number to everyone, wrote it in every form, wrote it down everywhere and said it to everyone. I never thought I'd have to get rid of it. When the time came to move to Europe for a year, I had the option of paying a nominal fee to maintain my cell phone number for a year, or ditching it. I decided that I'd ditch it.

For the most part, I've liked not having a cell phone in Italy. I actually do have one, but I never use it. It's pay-as-I-go. In America, I was all over the text messaging and whatsuch, and I realize now what an interruption that is on a daily basis.

Anyway, tonight I received a text from my old cell phone number. I was, quite honestly, shocked. I didn't know what was going on. Figuring it was some kind of joke or mistake, I made a joke back via text. During the following text exchange (I text via Google Voice now), I finally figured out what went wrong...

+[MYOLDNUMBER]: Who is this 1:51 PM

Me: Allow me to re-introduce myself: My name is HOV. H to the O-V. I used to move snowflakes by the O.Z. 2:39 PM

+ [MYOLDNUMBER]: Who is this this u jay-z bitter 2:40 PM

Me: I'm not a biter, I'm a writer for myself and others. 2:45 PM

+ [MYOLDNUMBER]: What's ur name maybe I could report u 2:46 PM

Me: What's my name? Snoop Doggy Dogg. 2:50 PM

+ [MYOLDNUMBER]: My daddy is bruce lee 2:51 PM

Me: Do you think your wu-tang sword can defeat me? 2:54 PM

+ [MYOLDNUMBER]: Shaboy. Shapoopy 2:55 PM

+ [MYOLDNUMBER]: Osama bin laden 2:56 PM

Me: In-slum-national, underground, thunder pounds when I stomp the ground, like a million elephants and silverback orangutans - you can't stop a train. 3:01 PM

+ [MYOLDNUMBER]: Who is this 3:05 PM

Me: Hey man. I just realized some old stuff of mine was getting forwarded to your number. It used to be my old cell number. Sorry. I turned all that shit off. 3:06 PM

+ [MYOLDNUMBER]: Well please delete my number nowplease and thank u 3:08 PM

Me: Yeah I just deleted everything I think. You're welcome. Sorry again! Happy new year! 3:09 PM

+ [MYOLDNUMBER]: I don't no u so I'm not going to say nothing back to u so bye and don't text m back thank u very much 3:10 PM

So what I finally figured out was that I still had my Google Voice number (which is a physical USA phone number) forwarding notifications to my old cell phone number. I'd deleted my cell phone number, but apparently someone else had gotten it through T-Mobile. I remember trying to fiddle with Gvoice before, but it won't let me delete the cell phone number. It says I need one "real" phone number to keep my account active (which I use for texting and receiving voicemail), so I can't delete the number. And I can't use a European number.

I was glad that the new recipient of my phone number had a sense of humor and played along... but I was kind of disappointed that they wouldn't wish me a happy new year. (This exchange took place on 1/1/2012.) But, I mean, I was the one who was sending information to that number without knowing it, so yeah, we're just random strangers. But, c'mon. Happy new year!

Guest post on Hack Library School

2011-12-14T05:38:00.003-05:00

As I mentioned briefly in a post on my Italy blog, I was able to write a guest post for a great blog, Hack Library School, which is aimed at library students and the transition from library school into the world of working as an information professional.

My post is about my efforts in starting to bring the Florence library and study center into the digital realm. You can read it here:

http://hacklibschool.wordpress.com/2011/12/08/fsuflorence/

And here’s a teaser for anyone who’s deciding whether or not to click the link:

I’m in a unique position. In the second year of my MLIS program at Florida State University, I’ve been granted the opportunity to work and study abroad in Florence, Italy. I’m now using the practical knowledge I’ve learned so far in library studies to supervise FSU’s Study Center Library in the heart of one of the world’s most-visited cities. So what’s the catch?

What do you think, Sarah Palin?

2011-12-14T05:34:00.001-05:00

I wrote this and posted it a year ago on a new blog that I thought I'd maintain as a venue for my extended political and philosophical rants. After a year, this has remained as the only post, so I thought I'd shut it down and migrate the one post here, unedited.

The title of this post is something I never want to hear a broadcast journalist, political commentator, or really, anyone on TV ever ask… ever.

Alas, the national media is out to crush my hopes and dreams, since Mrs. Palin was asked to be a political commentator for none other than (come on, you know what’s coming, right?) Fox News. Link check:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/11/palin-fox-news-contributo_n_418809.html

Now, just this morning, I was reviled by the Huffington Post for “covering” the “debut” of Mrs. Obama’s new haircut… at the funeral of Joe Biden’s mother. This is not news, and I don’t want to support an outlet that reports on such triviality. Unfortunately, I still follow HuffPo on Twitter, and soon thereafter, I saw the link to Dave Letterman's cut-down of Palin's new appointment. I hadn’t heard about her upcoming Fox News gig, so I was, frankly, surprised.

I was also surprised when Karl Rove joined the Fox News team. But that made infinitely more sense. He was a great (albeit underhanded… which in the political world, I suppose, still means “great”) political advisor/planner/manipulator, and he had spent some important years advising some of the most important men on the planet (the Bushs).

I think Republicans try to distance themselves from media figures like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, and I know Beck tries to come off as some sort of independent voice among the legions of stupid people in politics. But nobody’s fooling me. It’s all about the money and what sells, and what sells in politics and TV alike is sensationalism. Violence (war coverage), child abductions (Nancy Grace), Patriotism (O’Reilly / Fox News as a whole). Political sex scandals (Mark Sanford), political abuse of power scandals (Blagojevich). These are the things, apparently, that get America talking. But they are also the things that distract Americans from real issues. (As a side note: I do think that abuses of power should be made public and punished, but I don’t think the day-to-day media coverage of the level of the Blagojevich scandal should take place. It gives him celebrity status — a new power that he’s able to abuse — which only serves to corrupt things more.)

And what do you think Sarah Palin will be talking about on Fox News? It won’t be about real matters in foreign policy, because she doesn’t know any. It won’t be about real matters in domestic policy, because she doesn’t know any. I agree that at times, she was harshly criticized during her political campaign for vice president, but then again, she was in contention for VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. This is not a figurehead position. Palin and McCain wanted to turn the Executive Branch into the only branch of government, basically. Most pieces of media criticism during the election coverage focused on just how uninformed Palin was. And everyone was right. She didn’t know Russia from dogshit on her shoe, but she and McCain still got a significant vote from people in this country, and that deeply disturbs me.

When she stepped down as governor of Alaska, I was grateful. I thought she might prolong her celebrity status with a TV show, maybe a talk show like Oprah has. But I should have known that she would still try to be the innocent “new” face of the Republican party. You know, the one that cares about American values and smalltown values and small government power (despite her comments about enhancing the powers of the executive branch) and fuckall else that doesn’t really help to solve the nation’s problems. This is a branch of political ideology that is very deceptive. They talk about all these philosophical values that can’t possibly affect any sort of real-world political/national problems, and then they do whatever they want behind the scenes, and go to all efforts to cover up their tracks for the public when something goes terribly wrong (see: the reign of George W. Bush). (Of course, yes, yes, the democrats cover up their shit, and Obama espouses American values as well, but it seems to me that he’s giving more of an effort to speak in plain, constructive terms on issues and to offer solutions that he actually tries to implement. But maybe that’s just my liberal, ideal self interpreting him.)

Palin’s appointment to Fox News as a political commentator just serves to solidify my certainly biased views against both her and the station. In short, it’s sickening.

Facebook Politics

2011-10-13T05:26:00.001-04:00

I occasionally get sucked into political diatribes on Facebook. Sometimes I take the bait.

---

Michael _______:
I have not been to a public library in years. They are no longer relevant and are a drain on the local tax base. Amazon.com has a much better selection of books.

---

Me:
Michael, I know you're just looking for an argument. I'll begrudgingly take the bait. I'm glad to hear that you are financially well off enough (by pulling yourself up by your bootstraps or whathaveyou) to not have to put up with public libraries. But what about the other people living in Williamsburg? Since you enjoy Wikipedia so much, perhaps you should look at this page: http://bit.ly/qIHhuC — “The per capita income for the city is $18,483. 18.3% of the population and 9.3% of families are below the poverty line.” While you may have the financial stability to buy books from Amazon (which has a bigger selection anyway), what about the nearly 1 in 5 of the people around you who live below the poverty line but still pay taxes that go to providing them access to public libraries? What about their desire to rise above their socio-economic trappings? Would you have them pull themselves up by their own bootstraps without having access to information? Oh, but they have Wikipedia, right? On their laptops and internet connections at home? That they’re able to afford comfortably while they’re living below the poverty line?

You’re also in a very historic area, famous for being near the first colonies in America. Have you thought of the millions of immigrants around the United States who have used public libraries? They read materials in their own language, yes, but many also learn English at their libraries. They meet there with librarians to learn about technology, with book groups to discuss readings, with conversation groups to learn how to speak other languages. Libraries are much more than book repositories — they’re social spaces, they’re information hubs, they’re technology hotspots.

And how about this other Wikipedia factoid: "In various cost-benefit studies libraries continue to provide an exceptional return on the dollar. A 2008 survey discusses comprehensively the prospects for increased funding in the United States, saying in conclusion 'There is sufficient, but latent, support for increased library funding among the voting population.'" — http://bit.ly/q6jLFl

[I'll note here that all this discussion was couched within a thread that was started about Rick Scott's insensitive comments about the study of anthropology.]

The problem with Rick Scott’s statement here about anthropology is that he pretended to know something about higher education, the liberal arts, and how they fit into the economy. The problem with your statement here about libraries is that you don’t know jack shit about libraries because you never go to them.

You write about benefiting the individual American, but when you say that — admit it — you really just mean yourself.

Troy Davis

2011-09-22T06:12:00.000-04:00

Troy Davis was executed last night following 20 years in prison. His case had become famous internationally for the doubt that had been cast on the trial and conviction. The basics are that he was convicted in 1991 of killing an off-duty police officer (the killing took place in 1989), there is no DNA evidence tying him to the crime, there were some eyewitnesses at the trial, and many of these eyewitnesses recanted their testimony following the trial. As is true with most anything, you can get a very detailed description at Wikipedia:

Seven of nine eyewitnesses signed affidavits changing or recanting all or part of their testimony. The limited ability to appeal his conviction, due in part to the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, brought his plight to international attention. Prosecutors argued that it was too late to present the recantations as evidence. Davis maintained his innocence.
—http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troy_Davis_case

And here's a post about events leading up the execution:

Troy Davis Executed After Supreme Court Rejected Appeals
http://gothamist.com/2011/09/21/after_temporary_delay_supreme_court.php

This is certainly not the first execution that has been called into question (see my July post, Incarceration. The death penalty is certainly not an easy topic to consider. I'm even trying to just think about the basic premise of it (without having to read the long Wiki entry). Any kind of analysis done here, now, would not be enough. But the basic premise that society should be protected from random, preventable violence by government is well taken. And to what extent should society have to pay to keep a proven murderer alive for the rest of their life?

Still, the bit against capital punishment, about how it should be determined who lives and dies (and how things get "proven")... that is also well taken. Especially when you have a Supreme Court Justice say something like this:

I have yet to see a death case among the dozens coming to the Supreme Court on eve-of-execution stay applications in which the defendant was well represented at trial... People who are well represented at trial do not get the death penalty.
—Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader

If you take that statement to its logical conclusion — that having good representation means paying good money for it, AKA, the rich have significantly different legal outcomees from the poor — it all leads back to social class and capitalism. And that's not even considering racism. This is just one area (in a huge grey cloud) where the clear-cut basic premise of the death penalty gets very murky.

So: how to trust a society that gives the best healthcare and the best resouces to its rich and executes its poor?

The Office in Italy

2011-09-17T16:36:00.000-04:00

In case you don't already know, most of my blogging nowadays is happening over at my Italy blog. I'll be in Florence for a year. But I'll still post here (on rare occasions) for things that are not particularly relevant to my stay in Italy.

Although I have a TV here, I don't watch it. I have been, however, rewatching the entire series of The Office. Well, I have seasons 1-6 and I'm on season 3 now. Sometimes I feel stupid for watching The Office in my apartment in Italy, but then I remember that you can't completely soak something in without breaks. You get overwhelmed. That's why we as humans need sleep. That's why those little slivers of ginger are there next to your sushi. You need to cleanse your palate so you can fully enjoy the next taste.

So when I'm not walking around looking at art and architecture, eating some magnificent food, working, studying, reading, juggling, or playing guitar, I am sometimes watching The Office.

I first saw the show in a quick burst several years ago when a friend lent me and my then-roommates the first two seasons. Rewatching it is nice. You pick on some nuances. It's still funny. It's still emotional.

This exchange comes from an episode that I found to be particularly funny. Darryl asks for a raise, which leads Michael to ask for a raise of his own. This dialogue comes during Michael's negotiations with Darryl, when Darryl realizes that Michael is wearing a women's suit:

Kevin: Who makes it?

Michael: Umm... [opens jacket revealing pinkish/purple coat lining and tag] MISSterious... And it is mysterious because the buttons are on the wrong side. That's the mystery.

Phyllis: It's got shoulder pads. And did you see that lining? Did you see it?

Michael: Would you stop it. Please?

Jim: So none of that tipped you off?

Michael: It's European, OK? it's a European cut.

Pam: Michael, the pants don't have any pockets.

Michael: No, they don't. See? [Michael turns around and rubs his hands on his butt.] Italians don't wear pockets.

Incarceration

2011-07-23T23:42:00.000-04:00

I just read a very long, very good article about the execution of a man in Texas:

Trial By Fire
By: David Grann
September 7, 2009

The basic point of the piece comes in one of its last sentences: "There is a chance, however, that Texas could become the first state to acknowledge officially that, since the advent of the modern judicial system, it had carried out the 'execution of a legally and factually innocent person.'"

Since this was written two years ago, there have been a few updates to the investigations into the case. From the relevant Wikipedian entry: "A four-person panel of the Texas Forensic Science Commission investigating evidence of arson presented in the case acknowledged on July 23, 2010, that state and local arson investigators used "flawed science" in determining the blaze had been deliberately set."

After reading through all this tonight, I found myself looking up some basic information on prisons. (The article presents a stark view of prison life.)

Also from Wikipedia:

As of 2006, it is estimated that at least 9.25 million people are currently imprisoned worldwide. . . .

In absolute terms, the United States currently has the largest inmate population in the world, with more than 2½ million or more than one in a hundred adults in prison and jails. . . .

As a percentage of total population, the United States also has the largest imprisoned population, with 739 people per 100,000 serving time, awaiting trial or otherwise detained.

This is definitely some food for thought. I knew that the United States had a large number of prisoners, but I didn't realize how it compared to other countries. The same Wikipedia page has a small comparative chart:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prison#Population_statistics

Prison population per 100,000 inhabitants

Country - Prison population per 100,000 inhabitants

United States of America - 756
Russian Federation - 611
New Zealand - 186
United Kingdom - 148
...
India - 22

So at first I thought that maybe the USA just had a larger number of people (which wouldn't make logical sense anyway, since it's a measure of a percentage of the population)... but look at that last figure. India is the second most populated country in the world.

We should be constantly questioning whether our penal system is working to create better Americans. I think there is a real danger for everyone to (1) want to find swift justice in heinous crimes (aka, want to quickly find a guilty criminal, to prove that justice can be done in the world by simply taking out the bad seeds) (2) want our prejudices and hunches to turn out to be true so we don't have to be proved wrong (3) lock up the 'criminals' so we're safe (4) bring down other humans so we feel better about ourselves.

Also, as a final aside, the idea that a state governor is in many cases a final arbiter of who is deemed guilty and who is deemed innocent, who is granted life and who is granted death (through their ability to grant a pardon), made me yet again question the competence of Governor Rick Scott, who, incidentally, started out his career by practicing law in Texas before he went on to lead Columbia / HCA, the healthcare company that had "the largest fraud settlement in US history."

Old poem I found on my external hard drive

2011-07-12T12:46:00.001-04:00

I'm trying to organize everything in preparation for a big move. I stumbled across this poem I wrote in November of 2007. (Final revised text: 10/22/2007, 1:44 a.m.)

Enjoy.

Children's Wear

I don't remember clearly, but my mother says
she wrapped my tiny body, low in termperature,
in my soon-to-be favorite, tight-knit blanket,
a bright red and blue affair, a Superman's cape

two years later for an energetic boy fighting crime
with his dogs and hamsters, who alternated between the roles
of trusty sidekicks and maniacal arch villians
bent on total destruction.

My mother doesn't know where that blanket
has gotten off to — perhaps it was a prisoner
of childhood wars, stuffed into a forgotten crevice
by a forgetful sibling after a battle of freeze tag

or hide and seek or monkey in the middle,
and overlooked by a family focused on leaving
the cold behind to set up a new home
in a rented house down south.

A painting by my balding father helps me
to remember next a woolen cap pulled down past my ears:
I'm treading through the soft snow, cheeks ablaze,
my sled floating magically behind me while my cap

devours my smooth skull. My mother says that portrait
reminds her of my grandfather in the winter,
whose bald head could not afford to lose
what loving warmth he had left to spend in his old age.

I wore that cap until it was beyond repair, the crown
of my head weathering a hole into its thinning fibers
like a group of unrelenting gases pushing through
a single spot in the Earth's atmosphere.

---
[Edit: And here's an earlier incarnation of this one:
http://uniqueoriginal.blogspot.com/2007/10/childrens-wear.html.
Forgot I had posted it.]

Stephen Colbert On The American Dream

2011-07-04T10:02:00.000-04:00

Stephen Colbert is motivated by the American Dream:

"And that dream is simple. That anyone, no matter who they are, if they are determined, if they are willing to work hard enough, someday they could grow up to create a legal entity which could then receive unlimited corporate funds, which could be used to influence our elections."
—"The Serious Implications of Stephen Colbert's FEC Stunt," The Atlantic Wire, 14 May 2011

He just formed his own super PAC. If like me you didn't know what a super PAC is or does, the Christian Science Monitor has a good simple rundown here:

In time for Election 2012, a Stephen Colbert super PAC. What is that?

You can read the FEC decision here.

Or you can just watch Colbert's victory speech:

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

Talking Heads — Stop Making Sense

2011-06-20T10:27:00.002-04:00

The Human Ascension - The Bomb Shelter - 6/10/11

2011-06-14T10:09:00.002-04:00

Love foods

2011-06-10T16:43:00.000-04:00

[Actual email]

From: Dave

Love foods - pursuit of aphrodisiacs
May 03, 2011

Love Foods

History is rife with the human pursuit of aphrodisiacs in many forms. Scientific tests have proven that some aromas can cause a greater effect on the body than the actual ingestion of foods. Here are some common foods of love used through the ages.

• Alcohol: lowers inhibitions and increases confidence; however, over-indulgence has a sedative effect not conducive to a romantic tryst.

• Asparagus: three courses of asparagus were served to 19th century bridegrooms due to its reputed aphrodisiac powers.

• Banana: due not only to its shape, but also its creamy, lush texture, some studies show its enzyme bromelain enhances male performance.

• Caviar: is high in zinc, which stimulates the formation of testosterone, maintaining male functionality.

Two Questions

2011-06-06T11:38:00.000-04:00

[The following is by far the most surreal exchange I've had in 3.5 years of working at my current job.]

A stranger walks into my office and says, "I have two questions for you."

Stranger: "Have you ever read Ayn Rand?"

Me: "No."

Stranger: "Oh. OK."

Me: "..."

Stranger: "Do you know where the Geography building is?"

Me: "...the Geography Department is on the third floor."

Stranger: "Thank you."

[The Stranger walks out the door, hesitates, spins around and walks right back into the office.]

Stranger: "I think you would like Ayn Rand. Are you realistic?"

Me: "I think I'm pretty realistic, but I've heard about it and..."

Stranger: "There's an essay contest. You write something about Atlas Shrugged and you can get $10,000."

Me: "..."

Stranger: "Atlas Shrugged is about the government being run by machines. I'm from Haiti, you know, and the government there doesn't work."

[As she dotes on the machine aspect of the novel, the Stranger lifts her arms up and starts to pantomime being a robot. I think of mentioning Graham Greene's The Comedians, but before I can say anything...]

Stranger: "I think you should read Ayn Rand. You look like you'd like it. What's your name?"

Me: "Justin."

[The Stranger extends her hand, her irises as dark as her pupils so it looks like she's just come, dilated, from the optometrist's...]

Stranger: "I'm Erica, God bless."

Exeunt.

What Maya Angelou Said

2011-06-01T09:15:00.001-04:00

A few weeks back Jessica and I were watching the old boob tube. Flipping around, we (she) eventually landed on the Oprah Winfrey Network, which was airing an interview with Maya Angelou. I heard a very powerful thing then, though I don't have the quote verbatim. Angelou was saying that no matter what she sees another human doing, she must accept the fact that she herself is capable of doing that.

Whoa.

This is something like total empathy. It's much different from saying "I can understand where that guy was coming from when he embezzled a million dollars from needy orphans." It's saying "I am entirely capable of embezzling a million dollars from needy orphans." In essence, she's saying we're all human — all this depravity, violence, greed, etc. in the world is shared completely by everyone on the planet. She didn't go into much more detail on this, but this small bit is enough on its own. Because it's easy enough to vilify someone — it happens every day. If we vilify someone, it creates a distance between us and them and it comforts us to know that their "evil" is unique to their being and so we're safe. This is a psychological safeguard.

While logging on this morning to compose this post, I noticed a quote on Facebook that someone attributed to the Dalai Lama:

Each one of us is responsible for the whole of humankind. We need to think of each other really as brothers and sisters and to be concerned for each other’s welfare. Rather than working solely to acquire wealth, we need to do something meaningful, something directed seriously towards the welfare of humanity as a whole.
-The Dalai Lama's facebook post today.

A good tie-in, no?

I suppose I started thinking about Angelou's quote again this morning after (1) viewing Blue Velvet this past weekend and (2) reading David Foster Wallace's take on David Lynch in his (DFW's) essay entitled "David Lynch Keeps His Head" (the link is to the Premiere magazine article version; I had read the extended version in Wallace's book A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again).

On viewing Blue Velvet: It was a movie I didn't really connect with emotionally. I felt the cliché-like atmosphere, the campy old timey detective stuff, mixed in with the starkly portrayed sexual depravity and violence to be, in short, disturbing. I didn't feel like the movie said much to me — I felt it was awkwardly paced and trying to hard too be symbolic.

Wallace argues that the disturbing nature of the movie is what makes it so great. Lynch doesn't vilify Frank Booth. He gets the audience to see the sexual depravity through a naive, young man's (Jeffrey's) eyes, and then Lynch shows that this young man is also capable of this depravity and violence. And since Jeffrey is the main "eyes" of the film, this means the audience is implicitly capable of this depravity and violence.

Wallace is particularly focused on his own emotional involvement with Jeffrey's participation in sexual battery and in the scene where Frank Booth sits in the front seat of the car, turns towards the camera (AKA Jeffrey AKA the audience) and says "You're just like me." There is much more analysis in Wallace's essay, if you're interested in that kind of thing.

Wallace argues that the disturbing nature of the film goes against the typical Western narrative of "bad" bubbling up from underneath some dark dank orifice and "good" rising to the occasion to defeat it. He's saying "bad" and "good" work in tandem in the film, even after (spoiler alert) Frank Booth is shot in the head and Jeffrey gets the (good) girl in the end.

So maybe the disturbing stuff I felt during the movie was more of a need to vilify and distance the evil from myself. I felt a similar depravity throughout Funny Games which, I think, was more depraved and more meta and less artistic than Blue Velvet. I wonder what Wallace would have thought of that movie.

In the end, I think it comes down to what you experienced during the art. I'm very interested in the experience of art and what people like and why and why people continue to go see certain types of movies (books/plays/etc.) and not other types of movies (books/plays/etc.). Kanye West, at one time or another, more or less yelled out "Well, did you like the song or not?!" (Which, I think, is [justifiably] every artist's basic response to professional critics.)

You can judge the effectiveness (and maybe even the "goodness") of a piece of art based solely on your emotional/visceral experience. But be reminded that intellectualism is also part of what it means to be human — this is why Maya Angelou must constantly remind herself that she is capable of doing anything that any human does. She must tell herself this because she doesn't naturally feel this (but she knows it).

What I mean is that you might think a movie is trash, which is fine. But then if you read about the movie and see what other people got out of it... it complicates things. And maybe it changes the way you respond to art. And I suppose this is why professional critics exist — to give the intellectual side of the art, however pompous and ineffectual that is (compared to the art itself) in order to deepen the experience of the art.

I'm an artist and a critic myself and I've been wondering for years what role critics play in everything and why criticism is needed. And I didn't know it when I started writing this post, but I think I just figured out a little answer to that.

Homeless Person or Graduate Student?

2011-05-25T09:07:00.000-04:00

Never has any money.

Always complains about never having any money.

Always asks to borrow money.

Yet always keeps a Steel Reserve around for the morning after.

Has no way to secure a steady income.

Has no real job prospects.

Is easily excited by the idea of receiving anything for free.

Is especially excited about offerings of free booze and free food.

Has facial hair growth that is inversely proportional to head hair growth.

Considers showers to be an unnecessary luxury.

Maintains a healthy addiction to cheap tobacco.

Has little knowledge of common etiquette and social customs that are outside of his or her immediate environment.

Offers lengthy conversations about convoluted and entirely incomprehensible topics.

Never gets tired of vulgar jokes.

Relies exclusively on secondhand clothing; is always at least two fashion trends behind the times.

Is attracted like a moth to a light to businesses that are open 24 hours.

Reeks of booze, vomit, urine, and despair.

Work Email Exchange

2011-05-17T16:17:00.000-04:00

Hello,

I was wondering if we could reserve a Bellamy classroom that holds 40 people for a class dance workshop to be held...

Wed, June 8
9:30 – 10:45 a.m.
For: [REDACTED]

I believe all classrooms in Bellamy have laminate / tile floors; that was one request that the instructor had.

Thanks!

Justin

Justin...A couple of questions before I say yes. Will there be music, dancing, etc? If so...a room in say Montgomery Hall would be more appropriate. The class instructors adjacent to the "dance workshop" might not understand and probably would have a very low tolerance for an event of this nature. Now if this is just a seminar on dance...I don't think there would be a problem, but the request for laminate/tile floors makes me suspicious. See if you can find out exactly what the room will be used for.

Michael

Upon further inspection of the matter, the instructor said that there will only be a short demonstration during the class (about 5 minutes) by one dancer, and the floors are needed only so that the dancer’s shoes can properly slide. Music would be kept at a level no louder than (and most likely quieter than) a movie that would be shown in class. The remaining time for the room reservation will be spent lecturing.

Best,

Justin

Justin...I am still a little reluctant to allow the music and dance routine. I seem not to have good experiences with reservations of this type. I usually end with a call from an instructor that the group next door is having a Broadway Play with music, instruments and dance! If it's what you describe...I guess it will be okay.

Michael

Higher Ed & Healthcare

2011-05-13T16:45:00.000-04:00

Two issues that I've become increasingly interested in and vocal about are the state of higher education in America and the state of healthcare in America.

As a 7th-year student of higher ed (through two bachelors programs and smack dab in the middle of my second masters program), I feel I'm an expert on the student side of things. And as an administrative worker at a large public university, I feel like I'm reasonably well-informed on the other side of the fence too (I probably know more about the tenure process than some current faculty do). Speaking from my somewhat narrow experience at this one large public university I've attended and worked at, it seems that I can reasonably generalize that at every level of higher education there are some severe problems that will likely lead to a significant downward spiral in terms of the quality, affordability, and sustainability of higher education in America. (Some are saying the spiral is already happening and that there's no quick fix available.)

I recently read the following Nation article, which presents a number of the problems that higher ed has been having and also gives a good summary of recent (shocking) news of the budget cuts and the extreme measures that some universities have been taking.

Faulty Towers: The Crisis in Higher Education
By: William Deresiewicz

The article was actually emailed out to the department I work in by a fairly prestigious tenured professor, who, by simply sending out the piece, was doing his part to increase awareness of the problems that graduate students and professors face (especially those in the humanities). It is a long read, but well worth the effort (even though it only marginally addresses student loan debt, which is a major issue that can essentially debilitate students who cannot find proper employment, and even many of those who can find proper employment).

Secondly (and not entirely unrelated; both problems are directly related to the upper echelons of society screwing over the lower classes), today a friend of a friend on Facebook posted an excellent essay he wrote on the state of healthcare in America:

Fire, Feces, and Healthcare
By: Reg Darling

I think everyone in America should read this. It artfully presents a view I've formed of American healthcare: How can we reasonably enjoy life and liberty and pursue happiness in America if at any moment all of our financial security could be swept away by one unpredictable disease? I've had enough personal experiences and I've read enough of other people's personal experiences to know that American healthcare can completely debilitate people. For rich politicians to insinuate that universal healthcare is socialism or that it is tantamount to enslaving physicians makes me really concerned that American capitalism, which in many respects has enriched humanity, has ultimately left Americans as greedy opportunists who feel no empathy for their compatriots.

I personally would jump at the chance to pay higher taxes so that anyone in a medical emergency or anyone with a disease whose treatments or medications are now not financially feasible could receive healthcare free of charge. A friend of mine complains that it's not fair if he (as a healthy person who takes care of himself) would have to pay taxes into universal healthcare so that his fellow cheeseburger-loving, pack-a-day smoking Americans, could reap all the benefits of his (my friend's) hard work. I say (like the link above) that it's simply the cost of living in a civilized society. And the healthier the people around you, the healthier you are. It's something that's been scientifically proven in various arenas. (Sorry that I do not have the proper citations here. If you're interested, maybe start with this: Happiness Is 'Infectious'.)

It's all too easy to ignore these problems when they're not directly affecting us. But, in a way, by affecting our fellow Americans on a daily basis, these issues are indirectly affecting us on a daily basis. Food for thought.

Wilco - Live at the Saenger Theater, Mobile, AL, May 3, 2011

2011-05-04T11:20:00.002-04:00

Ashes of American Flags
Bull Black Nova
I am Trying to Break Your Heart
Kamera
At Least That's What You Said
Handshake Drugs
One Wing
A Shot in the Arm
Country Disappeared
Impossible Germany
When You Wake Up Feeling Old
Airline to Heaven
Jesus, etc.
Misunderstood
Spiders (Kidsmoke)

---

The Late Greats
Red-Eyed and Blue
I Got You (At the End of the Century)
Hate it Here
Walken
I'm the Man Who Loves You
[New song, Lady Madonna-esque riff, guitar duel]

So-lil-a-kwee

2011-04-25T12:16:00.000-04:00

To PhD or not to PhD. That is the question. Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of the destitute job market and the debilitating misfortune of student loan repayments, or to take arms against a sea of academic troubles, and by opposing, end them? To DIS, to sleep no more; and by a sleep to say we spend the heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks that term papers are heir to: 'tis a consummation devoutly to be wished. To work full-time, to sleep; to sleep, perchance to dream — ay, there's the rub: for in that half-lidded sleep of dissertation death what academic dreams may come, when we have shuffled off this mortal coil, must give us pause — there's the respect of the profession that makes calamity of so long life.

24/7 Streamin' Eagles

2011-04-06T14:22:00.001-04:00

This is truly what the internet was made for:

http://www.ustream.tv/decoraheagles

Strangest Spam Email

2011-03-28T09:08:00.000-04:00

Received this email. No links or attachments or anything:

-----Original Message-----
From: Mr. Paul [mailto:scheidtk780@gmail.com]
Sent: Saturday, March 26, 2011 8:26 AM
To:
Subject: "Check your Mail Fast"

Hi,
Check your mail Fast It's Urgent.

Thanks
Your Friend
Paul

The internet 13 years ago

2011-03-21T15:21:00.001-04:00

This makes me think I should take some video of me surfing the web at work and release it in 13 years.

Everyone will all be like

"Wow, it's cool how you sped up the video with the music,"

and I'll all be like

"NOT SPED UP, ACTUAL TIME."

And they'll be all like

"Wow, that's a lotta tabs. Why did you sometimes hold down Ctrl+Tab and then switch to Ctrl+Shift+Tab,"

and I'll all be like,

"BECAUSE I WANTED TO SEE THE INTERNET FLY BY REAL FAST FORWARDS. AND THEN BACKWARDS. ZOOM ZOOM ZOOM."

&c.

Google Reverb Effect

2011-02-18T16:07:00.001-05:00

I browse the internet in Google Chrome. I stay signed in my Google account the whole time I'm browsing. So I've noticed a lot of customizations, things that Google has built into its search software to try to help me along to what I'm looking for.

I should have suspected that there would be some kind of holdover effect from search to search, but it was still kind of surprising when I did the following two isolated searches to do some light research for a tweet I was writing. (Click on pics for larger views.)

Search 1: "the hold steady"

Search 2: "twitter"

These searches were done within a minute of each other. You'll notice that the term from the first search has influenced the results of the second separate search, as the band The Hold Steady's Twitter account appears as the #2 link in a Google search for "Twitter." Just to be sure this wasn't an exactly organic result, I opened up Firefox and did a search for "twitter" without logging into my Google account:

I also did a back-to-back search in Firefox of "the hold steady" and "twitter" again, and it didn't influence the results the way it did the first time.

Although the lingering influence in this particular instance is relatively insignificant, I think this method of carrying over information from previous searches can be counter-productive to those who are used to working with Google a lot. I'm sort of a proponent for "pure search" in terms of seeing what everyone else sees when I search for a term. This, of course, doesn't happen for several reasons, one being that Google automatically maps to your geographical location to provide more relevant data, which is nice and convenient about 90% of the time.

Anyway, the bigger problem here is that Google is trying to make search idiot-proof. In doing so, their measures make it slightly more difficult for users who have adapted to Google's searching methods. There are a couple of ways to customize your search experience (by turning off instant search, for example), so hopefully Google will not try too hard to fix something that's not broken.

Radiohead - The King of Limbs (Play by Play)

2011-02-18T09:33:00.002-05:00

Radiohead surprised everyone last Monday (Valentine's Day) by saying that their album would be available in 5 days' time. They really meant 4 days' time. If you've pre-ordered the album, go here to login and download it. If you haven't and don't plan on buying it, enjoy this video:

And here are my impressions upon first hearing the album...

Only 8 tracks?

Bloom? In Bloom? Nirvana? Some scattered frantic beats reminiscent of Amnesiac. When Yorke starts singing, it starts to remind me of his solo disc, The Eraser. I left my cord at home — can't load this album on my iPod. Dammit. [Musical interlude, swells, standard dramatic stuff.] I'm thinking I shouldn't even try to parse words during the first listen. I think he's saying "I'm moving out..." Is this about when he moved out of his parents' house? Bloom?

Not a particularly strong opening track.

Hope the second one grabs me like "Bodysnatchers" did before.

Morning Mr Magpie ... more schizo beats. Did I just drop 50 bucks on The Eraser 2? Gimme at least one bangin' track here, guys. Throw Jonny on a solo or something. I can appreciate their need to not make In Rainbows 2, but, uhh... There's nothing like several seconds of silence at the end of a track... I paid for this silence... but it's not the thoughtful silence at the end of Kid A... it's the annoying silence.

Little By Little shows more promise straight out of the gate. Still got an electronic beat feel, but it's got a bit of ummph to it. And some weird castanets thing going on. And a mechanically droning bassline, and backwards guitar. I can dig it. [Thank god for Blogger's auto-save feature. I just accidentally closed the blog tab! Talk about suspense...] Why have I never noticed that Yorke's singing has been more and more like Enya. Or Mira (for you Tallahassee local band buffs). What's up with that? Primal vowel sounds. No idea what he's saying. Little By Little just went into a weird lurching slump-thump. Yeah, I can bump to this one.

Aaannd Feral sounds pretty much like the first two tracks here in the first minute. If I wanted some looped beats, I'd go to an ecstasy-laden rave at Club Rayn or wherever. Or I'd go listen to Kid A and Amnesiac again. I mean: I get it. Trance-like. Get in the zone. What a fucking waste of a track.

Lotus Flower: Not that art should be judged on how long it takes (otherwise Chinese Democracy would be the best album of all time, amirite?), but I seriously wonder how long it took them to cobble together these beats. I can recognize that Yorke's default now is electronica and I'm sure he rocks back and forth listening to these tracks and fucking chills the fuck out. And, I mean it sounds good. He just did a reverberated delay on his vocals. So. You know, if you're looking to mess around with technology that has been around for quite a number of years, check out the new Radiohead. Ok... it's not that bad. I guess I just need to digest this.

On a side note, I can't remember how long it's been since I've listened to Hail to the Thief. I thought that one was the bee's knees when I first got it. I listened to it quite a bit. Then it kind of fell by the wayside. Kid A has been a good go-to. And I played the hell out of In Rainbows. And then there's the back catalog, I mean... oh, new track started.

Codex has got some light piano. "Videotape"-type piano, but... not as good? Srsly, though, did Radiohead even listen to their older songs? Maybe they just forgot what they recorded before. Codex is like half over now and "Videotape" beats the shit out of it. At this point, I'd rather they take some risks and have it fail than do stuff like this. What if Radiohead did a straight-up pop album? I saw them cover "The Headmaster Ritual" — it'd be great if they went all straight 4/4, synth, bubblegum pop on us. They could do it well, I think... Lemme guess. Another 30 seconds of silence at the end of this track now. Mm-hmm.

I'm hoping there's some really good artwork with the package that gets mailed to me. Because I'm on Give Up The Ghost and I'm kind of ready to strike this album from Radiohead's discography. Can we pretend it didn't happen? Can we go back to when you guys said you wouldn't make albums anymore because it's a single-track download culture now? Because then you could have just released Little By Little and be done with it.

I'm also slightly embarrassed that this material is entirely workplace-friendly. When I play hip-hop at the office, I feel like a fucking badass. When I play this... I could play Give Up The Ghost at a nursing home and it might go over well. But somehow I expect that there will be above-average reviews for this album. The world needs Radiohead, and every new review is a chance to grab a new person and show them that Radiohead has a wonderful catalog, despite having a few missteps. (15 MisSteps? lulz.) I think this track is wrapping up, though, so I get to start a new paragraph.

Separator is at least named in an In Rainbows vein. (You know, like "Reckoner," which is a great song name, I think.) Let's see how it comes out........ Ok. I guess I need drugs for this... "Every woman... does a goblin?" What is he saying here? I can't understand it. I feel like a cranky old man. Like, for example, this percussion loop. I could easily create this in less than five minutes. Where's Phil Selway? I'm thinking if anyone quits, it's him.

I expected more.

Academically Adrift

2011-02-09T12:20:00.000-05:00

Commenting on links in Facebook can be invigorating, but can then feel like a wasted effort that will soon fade away into the wave after wave of information posted there... So I'll post it here!

A Lack of Rigor Leaves Students 'Adrift' In College

It's clear to me, after 7 years of higher ed, three of which involved working full time administratively assisting graduate students, that college is not for everyone. Graduate school is not for everyone.

But America doesn't understand this. Parents don't understand this.

College is so many things all at once — as much as it's a classroom education, it's (usually) moving out of your parents' house, moving out of your hometown, setting your own schedules, buying and making your own meals, making new friends, exposing yourself to new activities. If the drive to learn how to think, how to process information, how to manipulate information, and how to see through information manipulation — if that drive is weaker in a person than the drive to alter physical states with drugs and alcohol, to try out new foods, music, clothes, parties, attitudes, images, etc., etc., then college is nothing more than a four-year or longer postponement of entering the 9-to-5 grind.

There are so many other factors involved — sense of entitlement, sordid state of financial practices (predatory student loans! healthcare!), sordid state of payment for graduate students (overworked! underpaid!) — that I'd be very, very surprised if more than half the student population DID learn how to think, reason, and write. (I'd venture to say that every instructor I've had took for granted that every student in the class could write properly. Wasn't a problem for me. Was for others.)

Proposed Florida State Park Cuts

2011-02-07T12:26:00.000-05:00

Office of Governor Rick Scott
State of Florida
The Capitol
400 S. Monroe St.
Tallahassee, FL 32399-0001

7 February 2011

Dear Governor Rick Scott,

I recently read in the Orlando Sentinel (online) that “Fifty-three state parks, including three in Martin and St Lucie counties, could be closed” in response to your plans for cutting the state budget. I know the state is facing a lot of financial turmoil, but I urge you to reconsider where these budget cuts will be taken from.

My favorite places in Tallahassee are parks. I’ve lived here for seven and a half years, and I’ve had the opportunity to explore many of the parks around here, from the enormous places — Tom Brown Park and Maclay Gardens — to the tucked away places — Lafayette Park, Winthrop Park. I assume these are not among the state parks targeted for cuts, but their presence in the city has been invigorating for me and I assume that other Florida state parks are equally invigorating to the Floridians who frequent them. I can still remember the feeling I had when I got out of my car after driving down to Ochlockonee River State Park to visit it for the first time. I was surprised, utterly taken aback, by the silence of the place. There were no car sounds to be heard, and no one else was at that park on that Saturday afternoon. But as my fiancée and I stepped out of the car, we were rendered breathless by the awesome power of nature. This quaint anecdote goes to show (to me at least, hopefully to you as well) that even if it is only a few people who visit a park in a given year, that park can still have a great impact on the local culture, on society’s psyche.

These days we are battered nonstop by technologies that bring us further from nature. I have a cell phone and iPod that beep at me daily with dozens messages. I am glued to a computer screen at my job for 40 hours a week. However, in the evenings and on the weekends, I am able to experience a complete detachment from hyper-civilization by walking through these parks, these places of natural beauty. As the Florida State Parks website says, “More than eight centuries ago, Native Americans inhabited the area around Lake Jackson, just north of Tallahassee,” and, on the weekends, I can go there and see the same things they did — see their burial mounds and experience much of the same natural settings that they did. That, to me, is more amazing than our technology. Preservation is important to us as a way for people to understand their place on the planet, and city, state, and national parks contribute to this process in an irreplaceable way.

Upon reading this news of proposed park closures, I wondered whether these spaces would eventually be opened to commercial development. This would be one of the worst ideas. Before Tallahassee, I lived in Melbourne, FL from 1990–2003, and I witnessed a great amount of natural landscapes there torn down and paved over to make way for strip malls. These were areas that weren’t protected as parks. Dirt paths in woods that I would bicycle through where I can now purchase eyeglasses and medical supplies.

So I have a simple request. I respectfully request that you and your administration visit every single state park on the budget’s chopping block. And get out of the car. And walk around. And take note of the wildlife. And breathe the air (free of exhaust fumes). And feel the breeze. And hear the cicadas. And see the children having a birthday party. And then imagine it all being turned into a McDonald’s.

Sincerely,

Justin de la Cruz, M.A., B.S., B.A.
Floridian
Taxpayer
Parkgoer
Florida State University Administrative Support Assistant, Department of History
Florida State University Graduate Student, School of Library & Information Studies

Juice v. Petty

2011-02-07T09:02:00.002-05:00

I heard this Juice Newton song over the weekend. Is it just me, or...

Juice Newton — Queen of Hearts (1981)
(if you get an advertisement, skip to ~1:22 in the song)

Tom Petty / Heartbreakers — Runnin' Down a Dream (1989)
(~0:43 in the song)

Arrested Development Week 1

2011-01-26T16:32:00.000-05:00

The week before Christmas 2010 I was the only person in my workplace. Everyone else had taken time off, so my goal was to watch as much Arrested Development as I could (via Netflix streaming).

I'd never seen it before.

I only made it through Season 1.

But I snapped some awkward screenshots along the way.

Here they are.

Google search vs page place discrepancy

2011-01-26T11:51:00.001-05:00

There's a wrong listing of a phone number that appears on the Google Search page, but appears correctly when you click over to the Google business Place page. Any ideas on how to correct this, or will it auto-correct when Google gets newer search caches?

The result is that someone in my department is getting all these calls intended for the university's student health center. (Other Google Place pages for FSU institutions are also listing this phone number incorrectly, presumably also on the Search pages.)

(Note: I've edited the Place page, sending a note that the phone number on the search page should be changed. Does that go to a Goog Admin?)

Pics and links (click pics to see them bigger):

Search Page

Place page

Today I

2011-01-25T16:53:00.000-05:00

Wrote a five-page paper.

Printed out a book for someone.

Scanned a book for myself.

Got a little bit older.

And a little bit blinder.

(I'm waiting on a new pair of eyeglasses.)

Twitter Town Hall

2011-01-21T09:08:00.001-05:00

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Scott#Twitter_Town_Hall

On Thursday, January 20, 2011, Scott held what was called a Twitter Town Hall, where the governor responded to questions from his constituents via the popular social media service Twitter. Questioners were told to direct their inquiries to Scott's Twitter account, @FLGovScott, and to use the hashtag #flgov. Scott would then retweet (re-post) the question and send a response. Scott responded to 22 questions during the Twitter Town Hall, but near the end of the session, he retweeted a question from Twitter user @PrettyTwister — "So what, are you gunna fire everyone and hire Walmart employees? Yeah, thats great... you jackass." — without answering it. This was an apparent mistake on the governor's part, since he ended the Twitter Town Hall five minutes later and deleted this re-posting from his Twitter page.

Tallahassee Hidden Spots Part 1

2011-01-18T16:36:00.002-05:00

Occasionally, I spend good amounts of time writing comments, emails, and other communications online that don't end up anywhere else. But just now I figured, if I'm going to do all this work, I might as well slap it into a quick blog post.

I've always wanted to blog stuff about Tallahassee's Hidden Spots. Too many times, I hear from people moving here from bigger cities complaining that TLH is pretty boring. I'll admit that it's no NYC in terms of nonstop things available, but if you start poking in different directions, you'll see that Tallahassee starts to give way into a deeper world of arts, parks, restaurants, and just plain old weird places.

Anyway, I found this blog today and wrote up a comment with suggestions on places that Tallahassee has to offer. So here's the short list (predicated on the notion that I will do a more robust list at a later [probably much, much later] date):

Ochlockonee River State Park – A bit of a drive, but worth it. Near Sopchoppy, beautiful.

St. George Island – A longer drive, but still worth it. Pristine white beaches.

Lake Talquin State Park – Big lake, but this is the best spot to view it from what I’ve seen so far.

Hamaknockers BBQ – Best BBQ I’ve had around these parts.

Silver Lake – There’s also a chain of lakes out here linked by dirt roads. Good for stargazing because there’s no light pollution out there.

Lake Jackson Indian Mounds

Samrat – Good Indian food.

Five years ago I would have added Sunland (an abandoned children’s hospital), Vinyl Fever (THE record shop), and Rice Bowl (an awesome Thai / Chinese / Japanese restaurant) but all those places have gone away.

Twitter-esque blog post update en masse

2011-01-11T21:56:00.003-05:00

I won a trip to Italy! Did I say that on here yet? (The dates are Aug 2011 - Aug 2012; this link is to an old posting.)

I got an iPod Touch! Did I say that on here yet? Jessica done bought it for me for Christmas 2010! The inscription reads:

[REDACTED, IN CASE I NEED TO STATE THE INSCRIPTION IN THE FUTURE IN ORDER TO IDENTIFY THE IPOD IN CASE OF ANY FUTURE THIEVERY. NICE TRY, GUYS]

I need a haircut! Did I say that...

I'm reading Gretchen Rubin's The Happiness Project! (Too lazy to link now.)

I'm sitting in one of my online classes.

The professor described the scientific method, replete with flow charts and custom highlighting.

I am trying to blog more in the new year.

I am going to try to revamp my website before August 2011. (Web 3.0 FTW!)

I started counting calories on my iPod Touch (I will spell that out every time; I do not like the word blend / elision "iTouch") via the My Fitness Pal app... (Too lazy to link, still.)

...which shows that JUST ABOUT EVERYTHING is fun when done on a touch screen.

My class just finished...

...which means I now get to go to Steak N Shake.

Cell Phone Snippets From Paula, The Massage Therapist, Blackdog Cafe, Tallahassee, FL

2010-12-19T19:04:00.003-05:00

-Hi, it's Paula. The message therapist... PAULA. The MASSAGE THERAPIST... Hi, sweetie, how ya doin? I'm just seeing who's in town and who's out and I'm seeing if you need a massage. I know I've worked on you before.

-I'm going to tell you something I don't tell just anyone. I've got the immaculate conception. That's why they want me dead.

-Hi sweetie, how ya doin? I just got robbed and beat up, so I'm out of money right now and I don't want to ask for anything, but if you give me $2 for gas I can make it out there. If you give me $2 for gas I can make it out there.

-It started in June when a black man killed a white man in Frenchtown and Jesus asked me to come live in his house, and he's Mayan, and so am I. I'm Mayan-Indian.

-Hi sweetie, Daddy says I still need help, but there's just a lot of shit going on right now and I just called to say that I miss you and I love you and I want to see you again. Call me back.

-The devil called my momma and said, "Tell that girl not to go to Frenchtown because that's my turf," but so that's where I went anyway.

-Jesus Christ got me a six-bedroom house.

-I just need some clients. If you know anyone who needs a massage, I can cure anything. I cured leg cancer in three days.

-Sex is spiritual.

-We all have our shit. I'm still human, momma. I still hurt. I laugh, I dance, I play.

-I get all the saints, the apostles... I don't care. Ain't my fuckin problem! I'm not here to save the world, I'm here to save myself.

-I am suing the state of Florida, and maybe even this whole goddamn country. CSI is in our house, and I don't just tell this to anyone.

-The only reason I didn't go to church this morning --- and I'm not religious --- is that I needed rest.

-So I went to go get him injuncted, and get him arrested or whoever's associated with him, and Jesus took the whole package... the next time he comes near me, I can call the sheriff and have him taken away.

-I've had people come up to me in a gas station and punch me in the side of the fuckin face so hard, and I don't even know them! I can't go into a gas station to get a Mt. Dew. I'll just make sure I have sharp objects on me at all times.

-I don't need anything. I'm at the Blackdog. They gave me a free cup of coffee. I'm not hungry or cold. I have everything I need. I have a car, a place to stay, a house, a couple houses. I just don't have gas.

-I told the sheriff, "If he comes near me again, I'm gonna kill him." And he said "Good. We come out here all the time when all these guys come out and hit you."

-They think I'm crazy, but the gods must be crazy.

-The less fear I show the more power I have.

-I'm reading something about Paul McCartney.

-[Reading from the comics section of the sunday paper] "Sir Isaac Newton developed the laws of motion... an object staying still..."

-Well, go pay all your bills and --- or, fuck all your debts, and just go have some fun. That's what Jesus wants.

Plagiarism is the highest form of flattery... right?

2010-12-13T08:54:00.005-05:00

One day when I was in the trenches of the FSView, editing hell out of some Word documents that my writers submitted, I nudged my mouse a bit. I was reading through a review for a movie that had just been released, and when I nudged my mouse the cursor on my screen absentmindedly hovered over a bit of text. As I read ahead in the review, out of the corner of my eye, I could see a little yellow box pop up near my cursor.

That's queer, I thought.

What was even more queer was that the little box was a url. To Roger Ebert's website. In two clicks I was reading one of his recent reviews (for the same movie) and I happened to read the same sentence there that I had just read in that Word document. Hmm.

A mediocre newspaper lost an above-average writer that day due to plagiarism. The writer said in defense that she normally looks at other reviews to get ideas, but she ends up changing the words before she "writes" her reviews. Naturally, I began suspecting all of her past reviews of "sharecropping," (I just made that up. Mad copyrights on that!) but I couldn't find another instance of intense borrowing. To be honest, I think I was okay with her continuing to write (so sue me, we were really hurting for writers), but she just stopped submitting things.

---

One day, years later, while I was sitting at work at my current job, in the front office of the History Department of Florida State University, a professor came in and started telling this story while holding up this paper he had:

"So I get this paper from a student. The front page is full of the instructions he wrote to someone else on how to write the paper. The rest of the paper is plagiarized. And some of the paper is plagiarized from my own work on the subject." [Lots of paraphrasing here; it's been a while.]

I'd heard about cheating before, but this was simply stupefying. I could not believe it.

A few months later at the same job, I came across The Chronicle's piece on "shadow scholars," people who work at companies that write academic papers for students. You know, "for reference use only." It's a good read.

---

Finally, this morning, whilst checking my social media, I found a tip from someone pointing me to this blog post. Now, I didn't know the person sending me the link, and I didn't know the person who posted on this blog, and I didn't know what it was all about. When I finished reading the post, it took me a second to figure out that I, too, may have been plagiarized.

ding-ding-ding-ding-ding

The above really weird recommendation blog post from Andy "Short Stack bassist" Clemmensen is a huge ripoff. (The Google cache is here. The original post is MIA as of right now.)

The first 1.5 sentences are from the first part of the final paragraph of my Kanye review. And the middle third of the second paragraph is all mine as well.

Does it really take less time and effort to rip people's words from different reviews? You (or, more likely, some intern somewhere) really can't slog together 277 words for your bullshit column?

Give me a fucking break, Short Stack.

---

Update 12/13/2010. 9:44 AM EST:

Feel free to harangue world-renowned bassist Andy Clemmensen on Twitter!

http://twitter.com/andyclemmensen

http://twitter.com/justindlc/status/14327449760301056

Library, censorship, wtf

2010-11-18T20:14:00.003-05:00

[Note: Despite the questionable subject matter of this post, the links are entirely legitimate. And, outside of some strong language, are entirely safe for work.]

One time in my university's library I was doing research and writing up stuff at one of their many publicly available computers (and this was before they started making everyone scan in with their student IDs to get into the library). During a paragraph I was writing on 19th century copyright practices or some such brilliance, I happened to take a stretch and noticed what the guy no further than a foot from me was looking at on his computer.

pr0n

He was just searching and scrolling away. Pictures, videos, whatever. Don't exactly remember. So I did my civic duty: saved and closed my documents, got up, and tattled on the dude to the nearest library worker.

Years pass.

Now, this fall, I've been spending most Thursday evenings in my local public library. I work until 5 pm, I head to the library, I have an online class at 6 pm, and Jessica volunteers at the library (teaching people how to do basic things with computers) from 6:30–8:30 pm.

There have been the occasional disturbances: a guy listening to music too loudly on his phone; kids running around screaming. These are usually tamped down in a timely manner by the library workers. But last night, in the library, while I was online, in class, listening to presentations from my fellow students (thankfully after I had done my own presentation), a young man walked up to another young man at my table and greeted him with:

"Yo, cousin, I just got off the phone. I was on the computer when they called. The deal is, you get three days free. You can fuck any bitch you want. Then they set you up with an agency, and if you still like it, and you still wanna do it, it's like $300 to $3000 per scene!"

The first guy, let's call him "Asspiring [sic] Male Pr0n Star" (AMPS) then proceeds to hand the other young man (let's call him "Earbuds"; he spent the previous hour sitting at the table, looking around, rocking out his earbuds, bobbing his head, and nothing else) his cell phone. AMPS asks Earbuds to call the last number in his phone. He then tells 'Buds to talk to the girl on the 800 number.

AMPS: Tell her you're [AMPS' actual name, REDACTED].

Earbuds: (Each time when speaking, removing cell phone from ear, bringing microphone end of cell phone close to mouth.) I'm [REDACTED].

AMPS: Hey, ask her what her name is.

Earbuds: Hey, what's your name? ... (to AMPS): [unintelligble]

AMPS: Hey, hey. Ask her if she's a porn star.

Earbuds: Are you a porn star? (shakes head at AMPS while listening to answer)

It was like some kind of stage play scene. A guy in the corridors telling a man onstage how to woo a lady.

After the phone call was terminated, over the course of the next hour, AMPS continues to encourage Earbuds to do "it" too. Despite being in a public library, AMPS has no qualms with talking about this subject matter at an audible level. He even once turned around, faced the open library, and said at a louder volume, "Who here wanna be a male porn star?!"

So during this time I'm reacting in various ways. I'm:

-Trying to pay attention in class.

-Trying to analyze the characters in conversation in front of me to see if they will be a threat to my well-being.

-Trying to determine if they are making up this conversation (I had my headphones on — maybe they were messing with me?).

-Pulling my laptop a little closer when AMPS starts saying that he just "needs to find a computer. Somebody must have a laptop around here." because the library blocks "adult websites" and he needs to follow up on his online application.

Sooner or later, Earbuds got to thinking. He asked AMPS who he had heard this stuff from:

AMPS: I heard it from myself, cousin. I found the website. I went to www.ask.com — you know, they tell you anything you want to know there. So I put in "How do I become a male porn star." And they got all the websites right there, cousin. They got gay porn, you know, girls looking for girls, and I found this website, [REDACTED]. Just go there, fill out the application, you put your phone number and they give you a call. They told me they got two locations in Tallahassee.

AMPS went on to say something about him having to put $2.97 on his debit card to get the gig. Then he talked about how he spent $100 on Extenze, how he got a month's supply, and how if it doesn't work you get your money back and you get to keep the pills... but it does work and "your dick grow half an inch a day! Girls be running from you when they see that." (I struggled with the logic here: I'm guessing "you" want to take Extenze so "your dick grow" so you can impress girls; however, it works so well that "your dick grow" too much, and you scare the girls off. Yet, this is still a good thing, I guess, because AMPS was still pimping Extenze. Hmm...)

"Pop some Viagra and Extenze, that makes your shit stand up straight like the Statue of Liberty!" (AMPS extenze [sic] his left arm straight up to the ceiling, like he's holding a torch.)

You know, one time one of his friends had to go to the hospital because of it.

So I kept thinking that a library worker would walk by and "SHUSH!" them, but it never happened. Then, after an hour, moving just as quickly as when he first (*cough*) came in, AMPS was headed for the door, with Earbuds trailing close behind.

Riddle

2010-11-15T15:03:00.000-05:00

A plane holding multiple men and their sons crashes alone in the woods on the border of the USA and Canada. One of the surviving sons with two coins (one of which is NOT a nickel) totaling 30 cents in his pockets is rushed to the hospital and the surgeon refuses to operate, saying, "I can't operate on my own son!" What two coins are you paying the surgeon to get the surgeon to explain the meaning of the comment and also to get the surgeon to answer that if this plane crashed in the woods without anyone around, would it make a noise where you bury the survivors?

Living in a house in the woods

2010-09-26T14:42:00.004-04:00

What better way to spend a rainy Sunday afternoon than listening to Wilco and blogging? I put Sky Blue Sky on the old compact disc player while I was cleaning up earlier this afternoon, but I've moved into the dreamy terrain of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot as the rain flutters through the leaves out here and as I try to organize some thoughts on living in the woods.

Oh, I didn't mention that we're living out in the woods? Well, we are. And that's the view to my immediate right in the front office space here. You see, over the summer someone at work wondered if there was anyone available to housesit from August to December. Conveniently, the lease on our (overpriced?) duplex was ending in August, so Jessica and I jumped at the opportunity to housesit: save some money, take care of some dogs, live in the woods.

So now we're about 30 minutes outside of Tallahassee (yes, I am allowed to use driving time as a measure of distance). It's not too bad, though, because at least the roads are paved out here and there are maybe a dozen houses on this street. It was difficult getting adjusted at first: the nights are real quiet, it gets real dark (paved roads, but alas no streetlights), and it's standard operating procedure out here to let your dogs roam around. Which inevitably means midnight barking / howling sessions. Oh yeah, and for some reason the owners of this house are big fans of large windows, but not big fans of curtains. Suffice to say, waking up to dogs going crazy at 2 a.m. and looking out from huge, curtainless windows at the tiny patch of visible woods that are illuminated by a couple of lamp posts is not something I was used to. Scenes from a dozen horror movies flashed through my head.

I'm better now.

A 30-minute drive means waking up a little after 6 a.m. for my 8 a.m. job and getting home a little bit before 6 p.m. It means planning ahead for errands (because driving 2 hours a day is not my idea of a good time), rushing home to sign on to my 6 p.m. online classes (Tuesdays & Thursdays), and generally just long-ass days. The toll all of that takes is washed out by the peace that comes with living out here. There aren't any damn college kids out here blasting their Young Jeezy. There aren't any traffic sounds, car engines starting up, car doors slamming, sirens going off. Pretty much just the dogs and the wind and the thunder when it comes.

Jessica pointed out that the woods are cooler: no buildings and pavement holding in heat, no cars and buses spewing exhaust. It's getting cooler now, but a few weeks ago there was a noticeable difference of a few degrees between here and the city. Of course, these environs also hold more wildlife than the city. We've had a handful of deer sightings; one morning on my drive to work I saw 6 deer in the neighbor's front lawn. But the insects are more intense here too: dusk is our favorite time of day, but the mosquitoes and other things buzzing around get pretty intense. Good thing there's a screen porch that's extremely book-reading friendly.

The setup here is pretty sweet: there are "his" and "her" offices on opposite sides of the house, so it's easy for Jessica and me to extricate ourselves (at times) so we can do our own thangs (her: writing, reading, fashioning outfits, dancing; me: writing, songwriting, sitting around). There are strong ceiling fans and overhead lights and lamps in every room. Big desks. It's great.

At the moment we're in charge of 9 animals. We moved here with Jessica's two pet rats (Sadie & Lolly: I can't spell their full Christian names, so you'll have to go here if you're interested in that) and our little ginger cat, Simon (Anthony Purrkins; a.k.a. Simey, Mr Whiskers, Chairman Meow, Agent Orange, et al.). The house came with two dogs, Doolin & Bear, mixed breeds, one large and black, the other somewhat squat and black. Then, one of the neighbors here asked us if we could drop in and feed their four dogs when they went out of town. We agreed because who doesn't love dogs and helping people out? Plus they helped us out with Doolin & Bear when we had to go away one weekend. Plus one of their dogs is named Lolita. (Awesome.)

Simon has had the roughest time. Jessica thinks he sees and hears and smells things all around and that's why he scurries about and meows constantly. I just think he's needy. Either way, when he's not passed out on the top of the couch, he's scratching cardboard, running about, or meowing. He has settled in a bit, though:

And that, in a nutshell, is what it's like living in the woods. Oh yeah and they have a stickshift car they asked me to drive around and I don't know stickshift but I can drive it well enough sometimes and there's poor tv reception out here and no cable so we signed up for Netflix and we're hooked on it and I got an iPod Touch but I just returned it so I could buy the "new" iPod Touch, &c.

Albums I Kept On Repeat

2010-09-16T08:50:00.002-04:00

I think music's saved my life many a times (a bit of an exaggeration, but not much), and I know I'm not the only one. So here's a list of albums that I couldn't stop playing on repeat. It's like they picked me rather than the other way around.

I also wrote a whole column about this for the FSView, but their online archives are trashed. And I don't feel like writing about these albums, because I know I would start writing and wouldn't be able to stop. So I'll let you fill in the blanks. (Roughly chronological order.)

Enema of the State — Blink 182
Losing Streak — Less Than Jake
Weezer (1994) — Weezer
Antics — Interpol
Yankee Hotel Foxtrot — Wilco
Separation Sunday — The Hold Steady
Achilles Heel — Pedro the Lion
The College Dropout — Kanye West

I might have missed a couple. Does this list say anything about me? Yeah, probably.

Request from MTV

2010-09-09T11:33:00.002-04:00

Hello!

I am reaching out to you on behalf of MTV after reviewing the following page:
http://myweb.fsu.edu/lcd03/likes.html

I have a few questions and would like to get in touch with someone regarding the information on your site. Can you let me know who is responsible for adding resources and updates to your site? Thank you for your time!

I look forward to hearing back from you.

Thanks,
--Anna

Content Specialist

Hello,

I am solely responsible for the information on my site. I update the site
myself.

Justin

Hi Justin,

Thanks so much for getting back to me! I think your page is great. MTV has recently updated our site and thought it might be a great addition for your page. I have provided link details below for you to review. I hope you find value in adding our site. Please let me know if you have any questions. Thank you for your time, I really appreciate it!

New Movies by MTV
“New Movies” can be the hyperlink to: [REDACTED]

Thanks,
--Anna

Content Specialist

Anna,

Let's make a deal. You make me MTV's next Twitter Jockey and I'll do it without pay, and I'll post a link to your MTV New Movies site on my webpage. I've worked in music journalism for years; I'm a social media guru; and I have undeniably fierce wit and stunning good looks. If you don't believe me, check out my Twitter feed and a picture of me with The Hold Steady's Craig Finn (guess which one is me, lulz):

http://twitter.com/justindlc
http://justindelacruz.com/images/me-and-finn.jpg

Best,

Justin

Re: Employee question about Distance Learning fee

2010-08-27T09:06:00.001-04:00

Dear Mr. de la Cruz,

Thank you for your note and congratulations on completing your MA in Interdisciplinary Humanities.

There are numerous additional costs associated with online courses and we are required to recoup those costs over and above tuition. Thus, we pay the full tuition costs of your graduate degree as we did with your prior Masters degree but it will be your responsibility to cover costs beyond tuition. Although you will have to share some of the costs, they are quite small compared to the benefits you have already received and continue to receive.

I wish you the best with your new endeavor. Larry Abele

Employee question about Distance Learning fee

2010-08-27T08:43:00.002-04:00

[FSU President] Dr. [Eric] Barron,

I know you must be very busy in this first week of classes, but I wondered if you could address an issue I have, or perhaps point me to someone who could help me. Since this is a somewhat urgent matter, I am copying [FSU Provost] Dr. [Larry] Abele in case he can better address this.

I am a USPS employee and I have benefited enormously from FSU's employee tuition scholarship. I completed an M.A. in Interdisciplinary Humanities while working at FSU through this program, and I didn't have to pay a cent for tuition, for which I was grateful. However, starting this fall 2010 semester, I have begun studies toward an M.S. in Library Science and I ran into a rather substantial fee yesterday when I went to submit my employee tuition scholarship form: the fee for Distance Learning (for online classes). This fee works out to about $88 per enrolled credit hour, and virtually every course in my current program of study is online. (Only one or two occasional courses per semester are offered "face to face.") So this, in my viewpoint, seems to privilege one employee student over another - as a student in Humanities, I did not pay anything for tuition; as a student in Library Science, I will pay $88 per credit hour.

I was just wondering why this particular Distance Learning fee is not covered by the university for its employees. Every other fee associated with tuition is covered. I'm also unsure of the nature of the fee - Who receives the money from this fee and what does it go towards? From what I can tell, online courses should be saving FSU money: they do not require physical classrooms, nor do they require any of the accommodations that go along with physical classrooms (chairs, desks, markerboards, computers, electronic locks on doors, et al.). The software used for online classes is built into the Blackboard suite, which is available for every class on campus and shouldn't cost the university extra for online classes.

I mentioned that this was an urgent matter because I now owe $528 in tuition within one week for my two classes this semester, and I was unprepared for that fee. Additionally, employees are discouraged from receiving both the employee tuition scholarship and federal loans - we must choose one or the other. So I'm sort of at a loss as to what to do at this point, unless I can take [sic; should have been 'talk'] to someone about postponing payments for this Distance Learning fee.

Thank you very much for your time in reading this.

Sincerely,

Justin de la Cruz

I Need Book Recommendations

2010-08-24T18:49:00.002-04:00

I'm in a popular fiction class, and I need to pick one book out of each of the following categories to read. Help me out!

Book Genre
(timeframe it was published)

Historical Fiction
(Before 1981)

Westerns
(1981-1999)

Mystery / Detective Fiction
(After 1999)

Adventure
(Before 1981)

Romances
(1981-1999)

Science Fiction
(After 1999)

Fantasy
(Before 1981)

Horror
(1981-1999)

Christian Reading
(After 2000)

Comics
Any 3 (preferably one from each time period)

Tabloids
Any 2 current ones

---

I'm already thinking about "Ragtime," "Blood Meridian" or "Lonesome Dove," and "Sin City" (reading now already!) or "Watchmen" (read already)...

Excerpt from Terry Gross' book, "All I Did Was Ask"

2010-08-21T22:46:00.003-04:00

Michael Caine: There was an old theater producer who said, "Use the disadvantage. Always use the disadvantage." So I used that. A lot of things worked for me like that in my life.

Terry Gross: What else?

Michael Caine: Well, I was rehearsing a play, and there was a scene that went on before me, then I had to come in the door. They rehearsed the scene, and one of the actors had thrown a chair at the other one. It landed right in front of the door where I came in. I Opened the door and then rather lamely, I said to the producer who was sitting out in the stalls, "Well, look, I can't get in. There's a chair in my way." He said, "Well, use the difficulty." So I said, "What do you mean, use the difficulty?" He said, "Well, if it's a drama, pick it up and smash it. If it's a comedy, fall over it." This was a line for me for life: Always use the difficulty.

Woody Guthrie, Joe Strummer

2010-07-23T00:05:00.002-04:00

Standard operating procedures

2010-07-15T14:53:00.004-04:00

Lately I've been very sore about the standard programs that standard computers and accessories are standardly packaged with. I've always had issues with Windows Media Player, and the version that came with Windows 7 doesn't make it very clear how to rip audio from a CD, a process — like it or not — that is a very standard procedure among computer users today.

Don't get me started on Apples / iTunes. I know this is a great program and it's very easy to do things with it, etc. etc. But it does operate how Apple wants you to operate it, and when you want to transfer music files among friends or among non-Apple products, or do things with your music outside of iTunes, it can be a hassle.

Now, I'm talking about simple things beyond music, too. My computer at work (which is less than two years old) has two disc trays, one of which can burn CDs & DVDs. But when I went to do something as simple as playing a DVD in the computer, Windows Media Player could not do it because it didn't have the right codecs (or some shit).

Why not?

I'd run across software problems like this before, and now my standard solution is to simply download a light program that can do what I want easily instead of fiddling with updates and drivers and whatever else makes software and hardware communicate.

Enter one of my favorite sites, http://portableapps.com/. Don't ask me how portable applications like these work. All I know is that I can download a very light program — Media Player Classic, VLC Media Player, GIMP, InfraRecorder — to do basically anything I want to do on a computer. And I don't even have to install a program on the hard drive.

I understand that there's a push and pull in terms of making programs flexible and options-filled while still making them user friendly. But I also know that the average computer user doesn't want to read anything, and that the above-average computer user is simply someone who's willing to Google their computer problems and then read the links.

So, I guess I'm talking to the programmers out there who make you click "Actions > Manage Tracks..." on InfraRecorder before you can rip audio from your CD. Why not put it on your elegant home menu page?

(Img created in GIMP)

Geez.

Bodies

2010-07-15T08:42:00.004-04:00

Photo by: Joshua Trujillo / seattlepi.com
No More 'Bodies' Exhibit in Seattle?
A while back, a small version of the Bodies exhibit came to Tallahassee and I went to see it. It was okay. After a while, it just felt like they were synthetic. I had to keep reminding myself that they were real body parts, but I suppose they're all injected with chemicals and stuff anyway. Might as well be fake.

The controversy is legitimate, I suppose. I mean, my one friend says "If I'm dead, I don't care what people do to my body." Religious beliefs are another thing, but if these people in Bodies are unknown (if their relatives don't know they're in it; if they're too poor to afford proper burials), then, technically, but perhaps immorally, the pros of science, education, and art received from the audiences should outweigh the cons of desecration... maybe.

This argument against (the Bodies exhibit), though, is the kind of argument that leads to a slippery slope (e.g., arguments over abortion, stem cell research)... Hypothetically, suppose a person died from a rare disease or some other scenario where desecrating the body (for scientific research) could prove beneficial for many living people, but this person's family objected. Or, this person didn't have a family but strongly believed in a religion that was against bodily desecration after death and everyone knew this person believed that...

[This post is a comment I left in Google Buzz.]

Reading for Class

2010-07-09T10:16:00.002-04:00

I'm reading academic articles for my "U.S. Music History I" class (~1650~1900). Now, I have just enough music theory that I could sit here for a few minutes and figure out this passage. But what's the point, anyway?

Besides his often repeated scheme of following major by minor, he frequently reiterates a passage by an abrupt step to the submediant. Sometimes he does this by substituting, for the tonic triad of his major key, a tonic four-two chord, with the seventh flattened and with the bass resolving it on to the root of the tonic of the major submediant key. He does this in his last work, a duet for tenor and bass, dated February 27, 1813. In this, having reached the submediant B major from D, he stays for sixteen measures in related keys, and then modulates back to his tonic by following the dominant seventh of B with the mediant seventh of D (that is, by merely altering the note A-sharp to A-natural), following this with the dominant seventh of D, and going thence to the tonic.

We're assigned about four articles every day. They're not all this technical, but they're all pretty stuffy and boring.

Blog 3.0

2010-07-08T14:07:00.005-04:00

It's been a while since my last blog redesign.

Yesterday, Jess was working on updating the template to her blog. I remembered Blogger releasing some new templates and a way to edit them better, but I hadn't checked it out.

Until today.

Obviously.

You all can tell by now that the blog has been updated (unless you're reading from Google Reader... woot), but I'm posting this for historical purposes, more or less. I guess. I don't know. I'm kind of bored.

I know it's kind of corny, but the birds remind me a bit of Wilco's Sky Blue Sky. And that album inspired one of the last pieces I wrote for the FSView.

Fantastic Contraption

2010-06-30T09:43:00.011-04:00

One night not too long ago, my friend Matt asked everyone what they would have liked to study in college. You know, if you had to go back, and you couldn't pick the same major. I said mechanical engineering. I don't know. I figured I could have learned something hands-on, where you can plan things, implement things, change things, and see the results. Then, he said if I had time to kill sometime, I should look up this game, Fantastic Contraption.

The first time I found the game, I poked around for a minute or two, then moved onto something else. But when Jessi mentioned that she had been having fun with the game, I decided to give it another shot.

Whoa. This stuff is intense.

Quick rundown:

Okay, so for each Fantastic Contraption map you have this piece, right? It's usually a ball, but sometimes it's a square or rectangle. It resides in (or near) a rectangular patch of light blue. Here are some different looking starting pieces:

Your mission, should you chose to accept it, is to use a combination of spinning wheels and rods to move the starting piece from the blue rectangular patch to the pink rectangular patch on the map. Here are your tools:

*Yellow wheels spin clockwise, and you will use these a damn lot (since many of the pink patches are to the right of the blue patches).

*Pink wheels spin counterclockwise, and you will use these... not so much.

*Blue wheels do not actively turn either way, but they will rotate with the flow of things if there's motion involved. (Wheels must have a rod attached to their center notch in order to spin...)

*Water rods (blue) are joints that can pass through other wheels and rods and starting pieces, but not through the environment, which includes the green land and the orange balls and other obstacles used on some maps. They're also more flexible, allowing pieces connected to them to jostle around a little bit. Although they can pass through things, they still weigh something.

*Wood rods (brown) are joints that hold firm and weigh a good amount.

Example

The following are screenshots from a map called "Awash."

The blue section doesn't always necessarily contain the piece in question. The blue patch is simply the only area where you may place wheels or joints. Like this:

So you build your Fantastic little creature, and then you set it off to carry / propel / encourage your starting piece to make its journey across the map, like so:

You don't have to get anything except the piece in question into the pink patch. The piece does not have to be connected to anything, and nothing else has to pass through the pink patch. Once your piece hits the pink, you get a victory cloud:

What seems fairly simple and easy in the first few maps soon proves very difficult. ("Awash" was one of the hardest maps for me. My first successful design blocked all the orange balls and had a little car that drove the piece across the top of them.) You develop one way of approaching things, and then you realize a certain map won't allow you to work that way. One of the greatest parts of the game is self-discovery, so if it seems like an appealing game to you now, I'd encourage you to stop reading and to start playing. Seriously. It sort of ruins it when you see a simple solution that you could have come to after a bit of work. I know. I've done it.

The other great part to the game is that you can save your contraptions to share with others. Games are fun and all, but bragging rights are excellent.

It took a few days of intensive play for me to pass all the levels, and then I gave it a break. And then I decided to go back and try to use as few moving pieces as possible. So for all of you who are not keen on playing yourself, now I'm going to list all my solutions, along with the number of pieces I used and whether the idea for the solution was stolen from other players' contraptions (which you can view for each map after you've beaten that map). Oh, and I'll list a few tips / surprises / discoveries I had whilst playing.

Discoveries

*Gravity is an important factor.

*Weight is a crucial factor. Always factor your starting piece's weight into the design of a contraption from the start.

*At least a rudimentary knowledge of catapult design is essential.

*The game has a few prominent glitches (none of which I employ in my solutions here). One minor glitch is when pieces unexpectedly pass through other pieces (such as water rods through the environment) when they really shouldn't.

*You can attach spinning wheels directly onto some of your starting pieces without rods, which can cut down on your total number of pieces dramatically.

*Break down the map into separate elements (that may or may not require separate contraptions).

*One way to get as few pieces as possible is to make your contraption normally and then cut away the fat (redundant pieces).

Okay, on to my final designs. I'm quite proud of them. (I'm less proud of the ones where I stole the idea.) (I suppose now I could devise arbitrary challenges, like "no wheels," or "no wood" or "the piece must pass through ____ once before finishing the map." ... the fun never ends!)

(The only thing is that you have to wait through some ads to watch each solution, so if you only want to see one or two, I'd suggest checking out 15 or 19.)

---

1) Rolling Away (0 pieces)
http://fantasticcontraption.com/?designId=10877243

2) Reach Up (1 piece)
http://fantasticcontraption.com/?designId=10877242

3) Mind The Gap (2 pieces)
http://fantasticcontraption.com/?designId=10877188

4) Junkyard (3 pieces)
http://fantasticcontraption.com/?designId=10879481

5) The Wall (4 pieces)
http://fantasticcontraption.com/?designId=10879501

6) On a Roll (2 pieces)
http://fantasticcontraption.com/?designId=10879517

7) Full-up (4 pieces)
http://fantasticcontraption.com/?designId=10879569

8) Higher (3 pieces)
http://fantasticcontraption.com/?designId=10879609

9) Around the Bend (1 piece; stolen idea; mine was 4)
http://fantasticcontraption.com/?designId=10879626

10) Up The Hump (3 pieces)
http://fantasticcontraption.com/?designId=10880210

11) Mission to Mars (1 piece)
http://fantasticcontraption.com/?designId=10880251

12) Up The Stairs (3 pieces; stolen idea; mine got to 5)
http://fantasticcontraption.com/?designId=10880517

13) Big Ball (5 pieces; room for improvement)
http://fantasticcontraption.com/?designId=10907606

14) Four Balls (3 pieces; stolen idea)
http://fantasticcontraption.com/?designId=10913586

15) Down Under (2 pieces!)
http://fantasticcontraption.com/?designId=10913696

16) Awash (12 pieces; I've seen it done in 3)
http://fantasticcontraption.com/?designId=10920997

17) Handling (5 pieces)
http://fantasticcontraption.com/?designId=10921075

18) Tube (4 pieces; stolen idea)
http://fantasticcontraption.com/?designId=10921095

19) Back and Forth (11 pieces!)
http://fantasticcontraption.com/?designId=10931546

20) Unpossible (16 pieces!)
http://fantasticcontraption.com/?designId=10932305

21) U-Turn (10 pieces!)
http://fantasticcontraption.com/?designId=10931472

---

Well, I guess that's it...

What?

Fantastic Contraption 2?!

*sigh*

Death Metal

2010-06-30T07:57:00.002-04:00

Death Metal Puppy (Wasn't able to embed. Probably the best one.)

Finch's Landing

2010-06-26T21:43:00.004-04:00

Summers have become synonymous with reading for me. I think it was a combination of factors:

I was a rather attentive student growing up, so my schooltime months (early August to early June in Florida) were crowded with school-related readings, assignments, and extracuricular activities. Since I didn't get a job until the summer before my senior year of high school, those summer months were a great time to squeeze in some serious reading.

Summers in Florida are mostly unbearably hot and I'm a quick and steady sweater.

As many of people of my previous generation (parents, authors, co-workers) are quick to point out, kids don't spend nearly as much time outdoors nowadays, as compared to the good old days. What with the (perceived) rise of child abductions and (real) rise of indoors technologies (the Internet, video games, iPods, etc.), there are hardly any kids knocking about neighborhoods these days. (So even those kids without those technologies will not have other kids to play with outdoors, and so on.)

Another reason that summer equals reading for me is that American society has partly encouraged this association. Summer's for lazing about in a hammock and reading a novel.

There's a particular Calvin and Hobbes strip (that I couldn't dig up on the Internet; I should catalog all of them and quote them like scriptures) where Calvin's talking about how it's summer and how his dad likes to get a good hardback and sit out under a tree to read it. (I don't remember the punchline. I think Calvin says his dad likes to buy the book with cash so they can't trace his purchases...)

There's another comic strip reference that will allow me to transition nicely into what is supposed to be the meat of this post. I haven't read much Bloom County, but one time I bought a short "Best Of" collection in the bargain bin at Barnes & Noble. Opus (the main character of the strip, a penguin) loves To Kill A Mockingbird and rereads it every summer, and I think in this particular strip, he is addressing the book's author, Harper Lee. Maybe appealing to her to write again. (I don't remember. I'll have to seek out that strip, which is also unlocatable online.)

I saw the movie when I was younger and I've always heard good things about the book, but I never got around to reading it. So when I stopped into our local Goodwill used bookstore a couple months ago and saw a paperback copy available for $0.99, I couldn't pass it up.

I spent most of May and June this summer in a class on Ernest Hemingway, reading some of his short stories and novels for the first time. I was glad to have read them, but it started to cast a real gloom over things. A couple days after the class ended, I went looking for something to read. I have dozens of books I haven't read yet, but for some reason I was drawn to Mockingbird, and I must say that it's a damn fine followup to the doom-and-gloom depression that comes with overexposure to Hemingway.

It took me a few pages to get into the rhythm of (Nelle) Harper Lee's narrative, but when I got there, I was there for the long haul. One of the pull quotes in the front of the paperback (from a review in the Minneapolis Tribune) says "The reader will find . . . a desire, on finishing it, to start again on page one." Damn tootin'. When I got to the end and realized it left off at the incident where the story began, I went back and reread the first page, and had to stop myself from going on.

To Kill A Mockingbird is a refreshing tale of humanity as seen through the eyes of one Jean Louise "Scout" Finch, told simultaneously from her vantage points of (1) looking back on the incidents of her childhood (in consultation/collaboration with her older brother, Jem) when "enough years had gone by to enable [her/them] to look back on them" and (2) as a young girl (of 7~8 years old) during the times of those incidents. This is a clever device that allows the reader access to the unabashed innocence and ignorance of childhood mixed with an older type of wisdom that comes through at certain parts in the narrative. (Hmm... much like Calvin and Hobbes, now that I think about it.)

Scout, Jem, and Dill banging about the neighborhood — deathly afraid at times, surprisingly courageously otherwise — made me (in my third year of "adult life," with my first "real job" out of college) yearn for childhood again, and regret not spending more time outdoors as a kid, putting on plays, scaring each other, etc. (Though I did my share of bike riding, I suppose.)

But the larger theme of the book — treating people equally, placing yourself in other people's shoes — had just as big an impact on me. I'll admit, for example, that I was especially touched after the trial, when Atticus received all that food from the neighborhood. I hate to be idealist (Atticus has a great speach on his "idealism"), but it seems to me that if everyone read this book (and taught this book, if they couldn't properly comprehend it), a lot of people (but not everyone) would think a little bit more about what they do, and maybe even change some things they do in regards to their behavior and actions towards other human beings.

The irony in my belief, then, is that the book has been met with a great deal of opposition.

"The book's racial slurs, profanity, and frank discussion of rape have led people to challenge its appropriateness in libraries and classrooms across the United States." (Wiki)

Wikipedia tells me it's been opposed in the '60s for its discussion of rape, and for Mayella Ewell's attraction to Tom Robinson; in the '70s for not being harsh enough on the racism present throughout. But, I'd have to agree with Ms. Lee's written defense of such accusations, excerpted here in a letter she wrote in 1966:

Recently I have received echoes down this way of the Hanover County School Board’s activities, and what I’ve heard makes me wonder if any of its members can read.

Surely it is plain to the simplest intelligence that “To Kill a Mockingbird” spells out in words of seldom more than two syllables a code of honor and conduct, Christian in its ethic, that is the heritage of all Southerners. To hear that the novel is “immoral” has made me count the years between now and 1984, for I have yet to come across a better example of doublethink.

I feel, however, that the problem is one of illiteracy, not Marxism. Therefore I enclose a small contribution to the Beadle Bumble Fund that I hope will be used to enroll the Hanover County School Board in any first grade of its choice.

I don't know much what else to say, except that if you haven't read it, this book is definitely worth the time. It's an easy read, and it's constructed in such a way that if you need to remember a detail from earlier, the narrator subtly reintroduces the detail in case you'd forgotten (but never in an annoyingly obvious way). I suppose I'll close with one of my favorite comments in the book. After the trial, as the kids try to get past the bullshit the adults in town set out, Dill (who is apparently modeled after a young Truman Capote, Harper Lee's childhood acquaintance) comes out with...

"I think I'll be a clown when I get grown," said Dill.

Jem and I stopped in our tracks.

"Yes sir, a clown," he said. "There ain't one thing in this world I can do about folks except laugh, so I'm gonna join the circus and laugh my head off."

"You got it backwards, Dill," said Jem. "Clowns are sad, it's folks that laugh at them."

"Well I'm gonna be a new kind of clown. I'm gonna stand in the middle of the ring and laugh at the folks. Just looka yonder," he pointed. "Every one of 'em oughta be ridin' broomsticks. Aunt Rachel already does."

National Guard troops for the oil spill

2010-06-25T08:33:00.001-04:00

[Sent to Charlie.Crist@MyFlorida.com]

Governor Crist,

I recently read that Florida is only deploying 37 of the 2,500 National Guard troops available to us for help in cleaning up the gulf oil spill. I’d imagine there are sometimes problems with having too many people on the shores (in the affected areas), but it seems like this would be a good resource for the cleanup effort. Is there a way we could deploy more troops? Is there a good reason we’re not deploying more troops?

Source: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/17390/121436

Thank you.

Sincerely,

Justin de la Cruz

Modernity

2010-06-24T10:50:00.003-04:00

Just the facts:

1) The Bible has its own "Like" page.
http://www.facebook.com/?ref=logo#!/TheBible

2) FACEBOOK has its own "Like" page.
http://www.facebook.com/#!/facebook?ref=ts

3) The latter > the former.

RSS Feeds

2010-06-15T12:01:00.002-04:00

The Tallahassee Democrat has a pretty good explanation of RSS feeds.

Basically, if you'd like to retrieve all of the new information that's being published by your favorite websites, RSS or Atom feeds are the way to go. Most sites generate these feeds, so all you have to do is find a way to harness them.

My preferred way is using Google Reader. It's a simple tool that allows you to read all kinds of internet updates in one window. You just sign up (or sign in with your Google Account if you have one) and start adding your favorite sites with the "Add a subscription" button. You can also click on the "Browse for stuff" link on the left, and then on the "Search" tab of that window.

If you use Firefox as your web browser, you can use an add-on called Live Bookmarks to have the information display right from your browser window.

If you use Google Chrome, I'd recommend checking out these extensions to achieve a similar effect to FF's Live Bookmarks:

RSS Subscription
RSS Live Links

If you use Internet Explorer, I'd say it's about time to start using Firefox.

Mistaken Identity

2010-06-14T22:00:00.002-04:00

9:53 me Hi. Don't suppose if you'd know if FSU libraries has a way to access Harper's electronic archives?

9:53 me They have archives on harpers.org from their magazine's history.

9:53 me Available to subscribers.

9:53 fsulibraries Just a second.

9:54 fsulibraries Harper's Magazine?

9:54 me yeah

9:54 me (there are e-texts available from 1993- via the library catalog search)

9:54 me (i'm looking for much older stuff)

9:55 fsulibraries We have e-texts from 1867...look under Hapers Bazaar.

9:55 me that is a different publication

9:55 me that's a fashion mag

Best of the blog

2010-06-04T14:10:00.002-04:00

I've been blogging since February 18, 2004.

I just clicked through to every post.

Most of it is junk. A lot of photos are dead (because I starting hosting stuff on my student webspace, which got migrated elsewhere a year ago), a lot of links are broken, a lot of complaints and references are unable to be gotten by anyone but me, and a lot of it is just plain rubbish.

But I've always wanted to do a "Best of" for this blog, so here it is. I'll list my top 15 picks from the past six years, and then I'll post another 35 that I think are at least readable.

Here's The Best:

I never thought it'd come to this... (Dec 2004: Stats)

Stream of Consciousness Post (May 2005)

Do you ever yearn? (Sept 2005: Extended Seinfeld intro)

Eating Contest. (Nov 2005: OMG, never again)

Having Fun at FSU (Feb 2008: Psych experiment)

Why Write? (May 2008)

For the record. (June 2008)

Cross Country (July 2008: Short fiction)

Ladies Room Code Brown. (Jan 2009: Truth)

SAP. (Feb 2009: Cat)

Make 'em Laugh. (March 2009)

This Is Capitalism. (April 2009: Dav Fos Wal)

Vinyl Fever... (Dec 2009: <3 :*()

Anniversary Edition (April 2010: <3)

Great site! (May 2010)

Here's The Rest:

Chuck Yeager (Feb 2004)

Time. (Sept 2004)

A Meaningful Life, or a lack thereof? (Sept 2004)

NYC (Oct 2004)

Punctuation: A Lost Art (Dec 2004)

The Simpsons: A Linguistic Analysis (Dec 2004)

Grades

Sellout. (Dec 2004)

Back in town today... (Jan 2005: thefacebook.com...)

A Psychology Major. (Jan 2005: Undergraduate summary)

Sickness. (Jan 2005)

Portraits of Laughter and Joy. (April 2005)

Snapshot. (May 2005)

Labels. (June 2005: Working at Target)

The End of the Affair (July 2005: Weezer)

uh.. (August 2005: Warning Label)

CLASSES. (Sept 2005)

Much Music. (Sept 2005)

Checklist. (Sept 2005: Comments longer than post)

. [sigh] (Oct 2005)

She weren't even... (Jan 2006: Gpit tour)

.. / -.- (Feb 2006)

Suddenly, (Aug 2006)

Self-Written Horoscope (Nov 2006)

Not in my 50 years... (Dec 2007)

Things To Hate. (March 2008)

The literary Lebowski. (Sept 2008)

Blogging about blogging... (Nov 2008)

Responses to Wilco's... (April 2009)

Historical Prejudice. (May 2009)

Ideas for Academic Success (June 2009)

T-Pain for President. (July 2009)

2009 in Tweets (Dec 2009)

82nd Annual Academy Awards (March 2010)

Monty Hall (April 2010)

On the FSView

2010-05-28T15:19:00.003-04:00

My first professionalish writing gig was in college. I had wanted to write for my high school paper, but I never got around to it. After almost two years in college, I decided to respond to an ad in FSU's college newspaper, The FSView & Florida Flambeau, even though I didn't really read the newspaper. (Full Disclosure: I didn't read it after I started writing for it, either. Only when I started editing the section, and then I only ever read the stories I had to edit.)

The recruitment ad, placed by Matthew Gilmour, called for Arts & Entertainment writers, and I was going to nearly every concert I could at that time, so I sent in a sample review for The Feature's Exhibit A (a fine album) and was on my way.

My two-year stint at the 'View was pretty wild. There were a lot of great album releases and concerts to cover; we won a national award for editorial content; and the paper made news for itself when it became the first college newspaper purchased by a major corporation (Gannett Company, Inc.). This was possible because the FSView was an independent paper.

< "Brief Historical Account" >

The original FSU paper, the Florida Flambeau, was a hardhitting, political, sometimes investigative-reporting type affair. Eventually, it upset The Order when it ran a negative piece about Greek Life (fraternities / sororities). As a result, the FSView was started up by Greek Sympathizers and soon got all the Greek advertising revenue. The 'View soon went deep into the red, and the Flambeau made a deal to acquire it.

Thereafter, the 'View and the Flambeau were "one," serving the FSU campus at large, but being financially independent from university money. Which, you think, would allow them some liberties in terms of, uhh, reporting / being critical of University Affairs, but no such liberties were achieved. When I was there, the two-page spread of Entertainment (read: bars / nightclubs) ads reigned supreme, sometimes knocking my section down to one page of editorial content and two pages of ads.

Read more history here, or on Wikipedia (an entry that I wrote and got approved by the Wiki Powers That Be).

< / "Brief Historical Account" >

Moving on.

Despite all the turmoil, I thoroughly enjoyed my time at the paper and I learned a fair amount. One of the best lessons I learned is that reaching out to your co-workers (asking them how your job impacts their job and vice versa) is quite helpful if you care about doing your job right. (Note: a lot of people there, from lowly writers all the way up to the newspaper owner did not in fact care about doing their jobs right.)

Anyway, when I left the paper, I had over 100 articles posted online. About a year later, they decided to overhaul their website, and, unsurprisingly, this wiped out their online records. Luckily, I took care to get every printed issue from my time there before I left. But the downside now is that without a massive scanning project on my part, there is no way to share these articles with the general public.

Except one.

That was never published.

Here is my response to a brutally dimwitted op-ed that my then editor-in-chief ran one week:

Op-Ed: FSU Football

That's all for now, folks.

Updated Website!

2010-05-28T14:58:00.002-04:00

For the past couple of weeks, I've been working on updating my personal website. It's been a fun thing and I've gotten into the feverishly detailed state of mind that comes with semi-intricate web development.

www.justindelacruz.com

I soon realized that I had a lot to say about myself (surprise, surprise), so, rather than cluttering up my website pages with tons of prose, I've decided to post longer blog posts here and then simply link to the them from the site. So that's why you'll soon see my thoughts on writing, music, maybe some other things on this blog.

Let me know if you have any suggestions for what to put on my site. I'm planning on adding pages for "my favorite things" (movies, music, books, websites), "miscellany," and other things, maybe.

On Writing

2010-05-28T14:54:00.003-04:00

Growing up, I didn't write anything outside of school. But my first writing success was having a blunt story of mine ("The Underground Kingdom," a scan of which will be produced as soon as I find the story from my closet) featured at a young writer's festival when I was in 5th grade. It was the tale of a kidnapped princess, a king who has lost his wits, and an underdog hero. At the end of the story, I even wrote "MORAL: Never underestimate the small guy" or some equally Mother Goose-type thing.

In middle school, I was blessed with my first great English teacher, Mrs. Julia Bradford (Roach) Roach (she had married a man with the same last name as hers, but, which she stressed, a man to whom she — and she had taken care to research this — was not related). We wrote a short story every week in order to incorporate new vocabulary words into our writing. I forget most of what I wrote. One was about a space alien / starship. I remember that an acquaintance of mine at the time, Artus Nemati, wrote a powerful series of short stories about dirt. (Or was it dust?)

Mrs. Roach had drilled us on participles, gerunds, and other high-level grammar that is all but left out of the classroom nowadays. I beefed up on this stuff when I began to study Latin in high school. But I honed my analytical writing in the classroom of Mr. William "Carter" Hammond, my high school's resident AP English (Lang/Lit) teacher, where, for every Friday during the my junior and senior years, for precisely 55 minutes, my pen furiously hit paper in an attempt to express my views on the imagery in "Blackberry Picking or the symbolism in "The Destructors" in a concise-but-non-formulaic in-class essay.

Later, I came to blame this exercise for my hyperdeveloped ability to write quickly and expertly underfire — in college, papers would 90% of the time be left off until the night before (even 18-pagers, if you can believe it) — but I soon came to the conclusion that I was simply putting off work as a defensive mechanism so that later, no matter what the grade, I could say to myself, "Well, I didn't have a lot of time to polish that one."

In college, I began blogging and I also began writing music journalism, first for FSU's student paper, and later, after graduation, for musicOMH.com. It's a neat process to sit down with new music and try to say something about it that isn't vague, hackneyed, or reductive. It's also very challenging.

In grad school I discovered my love of the personal essay. It's an amorphous, fractured beast that allows for all kinds of tangential asides and non sequiturs (when done right, of course) and doesn't necessarily articulate a well-formulated worldview or moral or lesson in the way an argumentative essay, op-ed piece, or research article does. I'd tried my clumsy hand at short fiction before (and had attempted NaNoWriMo on two separate occasions), but I found it much easier for me to write out personal essays than to write fiction.

See, instead of writing thinly veiled autobiography-as-fiction, I could start from the essential truthiness granted to the personal essay form and start to smudge the truth from that side. That is to say: because of a need to craft the presentation of information into an entertaining prose and/or linear narrative (via omission, conflation, and minor fibbing), all essayists are essentially liars, but certainly not as big of liars as fiction writers are.

See more on the "Writing" page of my website...

Great site!

2010-05-14T15:14:00.006-04:00

Matt [Wendus],

Just saw your site and thought I'd tell you how great it is. It takes a lot of courage to attack people on a website, and I'm glad there are still cynical dudes around who uphold some form of justice on the internet. Who are music critics to criticize music?

Who, indeed.

An album takes a whole lot of work, and just because it doesn't add to any sort of artistic realm (or make any sort of artistic statement, or hold any sort of aesthetic value) in the eyes of the reviewer doesn't mean it should be denigrated publicly. Bad albums have feelings too, man. Anyway, since you're out of the game of doing actual music reviews (Pitchfork reject your application one too many times?), I thought I'd offer up my harsh reviews for your site's consideration.

Actually, I'm pretty much out of the game of music reviewing, too (the stress of evaluating something fairly, without resorting to ad hominem attacks, was just too much for me), but feel free to check out my wares and see if any of them are hateful enough for you to hate on. You can find a full list on my website --- www.justindelacruz.com --- along with more than enough personal information to serve as fodder for your review of my reviews. (You might start with how noncompliant my website is re: W3 standards. I know, I know. I'm working on it. Sorry, but not everyone has the time to set up a shitty Wordpress template. And I know "uniqueoriginal" might be a little too indie-ironic for you [not to mention the bubbles picture, for crissake!], but not everyone can pick a flaccid tongue-in-chic ripoff website name, either.)

So where was I? Lost my train of thought there (something to consider if you decide to rip one of my reviews).

Oh.

I was going to say that if you need any more personal details about me so you can more effectively rip my writing, please feel free to ask.

Do you need to actually listen to the albums I reviewed, too, or are my narcissistic tendencies, meta ironies, and bad puns enough to make up the bulk of your rip?

Thank you kindly,

Justin DLC

Update/Edit:

Fri, May 14, 2010 5:20:07 PM
From: Matthew Wendus < ripfork@gmail.com >
To: Justin de la Cruz < justindlc@yahoo.com >
Re: Great site!

I think you're best left unknown.

-Matt W.

Political Quiz

2010-05-07T09:35:00.003-04:00

Yesterday, Jessi called me out for listing "Moderate" as my political view on Facebook. I had listed that because I do not entirely align myself with either of the two national parties in the U.S., but I agree with her sentiment that it's fairly obvious that I lean in one direction more than the other.

So I'm going to start fighting political apathy and say that (according to this website, at least) I'm a non-interventionist / cultural liberal / left social libertarian.

My Political Views
I am a left social libertarian
Left: 5.65, Libertarian: 4.95

My Foreign Policy Views
Score: -8.44

My Culture War Stance
Score: -9.16

Political Spectrum Quiz

Far from moderate, indeed.

Of course, this quiz is not the sole determiner of my political views. I also find myself agreeing with many aspects of social progressivism. But, I suppose I'll have to keep reading around to pin down what sort of political and social views I agree with the most.

My Search History

2010-04-28T20:21:00.002-04:00

Wednesdays in April around 11 a.m., watch out! I'm on fire.

(A summary of my all-time searches courtesy Google Web History. [It keeps track of your searches if you're logged into your Google account. I just saw that it has an option to keep track of all the websites you visit if you so wish to keep track of that < I do not >.])

Tallahassee Democrat - Whoops

2010-04-28T17:01:00.001-04:00

To all:

The Agency for Enterprise Information Technology (AEIT) has received reports from several agencies that some agency computers have been infected as a result of visiting the Tallahassee Democrat website. Our office has contacted the Tallahassee Democrat regarding these reports. The Tallahassee Democrat is aware of the situation and the newspaper is working with corporate headquarters to find and fix the problem. The parent company contracts with external parties to provide advertisements to fill in space on the website and Democrat staff believe one of these advertisements is the problem source.

It is important to note that the end user does not need to click on the affected add to become infected, but opening the page may result in the Trojan being downloaded to the computer. We also have received information that some anti-virus software is not preventing infection.

AEIT is working with SUNCOM network staff to temporarily block this website from agency access.

Please do not access the Tallahassee Democrat website until this issue is resolved.

Mike Russo, PMP®, CISSP, CFE, CGEIT™
State Chief Information Security Officer
Office of Information Security
Agency for Enterprise Information Technology
State of Florida
850) 922-7502
mike.russo@aeit.myflorida.com

Monty Hall

2010-04-28T11:27:00.003-04:00

Alright, ladies and gents. This is the end all be all of the infamous Monty Hall problem, which I encountered a number of years back and which keeps rearing its ugly head in the company of friends, some of whom argue about its explanation re: mathematical probability v. "standard logic."

[Somewhat related detour first:] A while back, I ran across a friend's post of Lockhart's Lament --- one mathematician / educator's criticism of America's standards and practices of math education. It's a compelling document, but if you're interested in arguing about the different sides of that, see the sequel to that column.

Anyway, a co-worker today was talking about teaching math to her daughters (who are home schooled) and so I searched out this document for her. I found it on Dr. Keith Devlin's great column on maa.org, Devlin's Angle. After poking around a bit, I stumbled across his entry for the infamous Monty Hall Problem, a very good read if you have about 10 minutes or so. He gives a great description and a few great explanations of the problem (as well as a great suggestion about human psychology), but if you don't have 10 minutes or so (or don't want to click through), I'll quote a concise section of it here.

---

Suppose the doors are labeled A, B, and C. Let's assume the contestant initially picks door A. The probability that the prize is behind door A is 1/3. That means that the probability it is behind one of the other two doors (B or C) is 2/3. Monty now opens one of the doors B and C to reveal that there is no prize there. Let's suppose he opens door C. Notice that he can always do this because he knows where the prize is located. (This piece of information is crucial, and is the key to the entire puzzle.) The contestant now has two relevant pieces of information:

1. The probability that the prize is behind door B or C (i.e., not behind door A) is 2/3.

2. The prize is not behind door C.

Combining these two pieces of information yields the conclusion that the probability that the prize is behind door B is 2/3.

Hence the contestant would be wise to switch from the original choice of door A (probability of winning 1/3) to door B (probability 2/3).

---

If that still doesn't work for you (and you still don't want to read the full column with multiple explanations), you can head over to this site (which only appears to work in Internet Explorer) to test out the problem yourself --- you can click through the problem yourself, or have the computer run the test 10, 100, or 1000 times to see how it works out.

This is what I got:

Google 3D Maps

2010-04-26T16:28:00.003-04:00

Blog post:

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/04/earthly-pleasures-come-to-maps.html

Instructional Video:

Tallahassee =

Yep.

Bieberville on Twitter

2010-04-23T14:29:00.004-04:00

This stuff scares me.

It's not a secret that Justin Bieber is a tween superstar. But ever since they changed the Twitter homepage to scroll through seemingly random tweets as I log in, I've seen a Bieber devotee posting their love every time I go to the site. I had to click through to a user named "DaBieberVille," and their feed started to scare me.

Then I saw something interesting... the above tweet, posted from the web, which looked like a picture. I didn't know you could do that! I clicked the tweet, and it popped up here. So... someone made an ASCII type post that only makes sense when you view it in a Twitter feed?

Now that's dedication.

Also, check out the bottommost tweet on this screen capture:

"Retweet if you're █████████████████████ 100% Belieber (If you don't retweet, you're not one)"

I have no idea what that thick bar is doing in that tweet. Is it some foreign characters that won't render properly on my computer? Or are you supposed to fill in the blank?

I think the generation gaps are getting smaller... I'm 24, and these 13-yr-olds are stumping me on this Twitter shit.

Update:

Saw this today on the Twitter homepage (@TheJonasSource). Lazy, or resourceful?

These Gnarly Beasts

2010-04-23T10:32:00.004-04:00

An online music collective that I formed in February has finally released its debut album. You can download it here:

http://thesegnarlybeasts.bandcamp.com/

I wrote a blog post about it on the group's Tumblr page here:

http://thesegnarlybeasts.tumblr.com/post/543218398/these-gnarly-beasts

Feel free to stream, download, share with friends, and comment. You can email the group: thesegnarlybeasts [at] gmail [dot] com.

Enjoy!

A Supposedly Fun Trick I'll Try Again Sometime

2010-04-23T09:42:00.002-04:00

The internet is very quick at changing, so this little ditty might not last for long.

I went to Google "Wind wind etc. etc." --- a sentence from one of David Foster Wallace's essays. One of the links that showed up was the full essay, hosted on the New York Times website. When I clicked on the link, it took me to the full essay.

But I usually compulsively open a new browser window and feed a link in directly before sharing it on Facebook or Google Reader. To see if anything changes.

Which. Well, if you go to this link directly, it will ask you to log into NYT:

http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/w/wallace-fun.html

BUT, if you click over from the Google search returns page, it should let you view the page without logging in:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=active&q=%22wind+wind+etc.+etc.%22&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=

Furthermore, though, you could simply hit the "Cached" button on the Google link and see Google's downloaded version of the page, complete with highlighting of your search terms:

http://74.125.45.132/search?q=cache:eKyib1pynXAJ:www.nytimes.com/books/first/w/wallace-fun.html+%22wind+wind+etc.+etc.%22&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

Because, I don't know if everyone knows this, but Google downloads the internet. This was the main part of their search idea that has allowed them to return search results very quickly. I don't know how long Google caches stay intact (or if they move them around their server space), but in case the internet ever disappears, there will probably be a copy of at least half of it at Google.

New Facebook "Like" Violates Your Personal Space.

2010-04-22T10:25:00.004-04:00

For in-depth coverage of the new "Like" campaign Facebook has launched, check this:

Protect Your Privacy Opt Out of Facebook’s New Instant Personalization – Yes You Have to Opt Out

A wonderful blog post that I would have to recreate here if I had not seen it. Instead, I will summarize:

Facebook is trying to connect its users to all kinds of websites.

Every Facebook user is automatically signed up to "partner" with these sites.

To opt out, you must change a privacy setting AND you must block certain applications through Facebook.

From the above blog post:

So to recap to completely opt out you need to

1) Go to your to your privacy settings ->Applications and Websites and uncheck box at the bottom. (Here's the link: http://www.facebook.com/settings/?tab=privacy§ion=applications)

2) Then click on the links to Yelp, Pandora and MicrosoftDocs.om on Facebook and click on “Block Application” (Here's the link to these pages: http://www.facebook.com/help/?faq=17105)

These Gnarly Beasts! Live!

2010-04-20T20:34:00.005-04:00

ADB just posted these videos from a birthday party we played.

Boo!

Alien Lover, Baby

Our full album will be available this Friday, April 23 on our Bandcamp page. While you wait, there are singles on there now!

http://thesegnarlybeasts.bandcamp.com/

Also while you wait, check out our mumblings and musings on our Tumblr page!

http://thesegnarlybeasts.tumblr.com/

These Gnarly Beasts - Future Love / Alien Lover, Baby

2010-04-19T09:26:00.002-04:00

Our final single before the full blown release. Jessi sings about science and cells and love in the future. Andrew sings of foreign love. Enjoy!

Future Love / Alien Lover, Baby

Anniversary Edition

2010-04-08T09:36:00.003-04:00

Today, Jessica "JeJe Anne" Reath and I celebrate four years — a presidential term, an undergraduate degree — together.

I don't consider myself a mushy person (and I don't think most people who know me would) but I do believe in honesty — a necessary ingredient in any serious human interaction and one that Jessi and I have planted and nurtured and grown together.

The truth is that, as I think anyone in a longterm relationship can testify to, it hasn't all been a trip to the Fireworks, Candy, and Puppy Dog Store. But I've learned just as much (if not more) from Jessi during this time of my life than I did in any class or in any book that I read, and I continue to learn from her and from our relationship on a daily basis and I love her dearly for it.

The "proof" as they say, is in the pudding (I wanted to make a pun on "picture proof" here, but I couldn't work out a good enough way of doing it):

Jessi is a wonderful, honest, supportive, strong, bold, caring, beautiful partner, and these scanty words do not do her justice.

Here's to four more years.

And more.

I love you.

These Gnarly Beasts - Summer of Love, 1692 / Remix

2010-04-02T08:38:00.003-04:00

Here's our second single offering:

Summer of Love, 1692 / Summer of Love (Punk Rock Scientist Remix)

Check it out! Our first single is still up, and we'll have one more small release before we lay out the 16-track beast.

These Gnarly Beasts - Boo! / Evil Glitch

2010-03-26T10:44:00.002-04:00

I assembled a music collective online in February to participate in FAWM. We called ourselves These Gnarly Beasts, and our first single release is now officially out via Bandcamp:

Boo! / Evil Glitch (Single)

Take a listen and let us know what you think. Pass it along to your friends if you like it!

Awkward Photo Award

2010-03-25T14:33:00.000-04:00

From our latest newsletter at work. The photo caption says he "...symbolically passes the torch of leadership..." That looks like a pretty literal torch pass to me.

Passages from the Iraqi Constitution

2010-03-19T17:00:00.005-04:00

"The current constitution was approved by a referendum that took place on 15 October 2005." [Wiki]

Article 30:

First: The State shall guarantee to the individual and the family - especially children and women – social and health security, the basic requirements for living a free and decent life, and shall secure for them suitable income and appropriate housing.

Second: The State shall guarantee social and health security to Iraqis in cases of old age, sickness, employment disability, homelessness, orphanhood, or unemployment, shall work to protect them from ignorance, fear and poverty, and shall provide them housing and special programs of care and rehabilitation, and this shall be regulated by law.

Article 31:

First: Every citizen has the right to health care. The State shall maintain public health and provide the means of prevention and treatment by building different types of hospitals and health institutions.

Second: Individuals and entities have the right to build hospitals, clinics, or private health care centers under the supervision of the State, and this shall be regulated by law.

(Source)

82nd Annual Academy Awards

2010-03-10T08:38:00.007-05:00

In the classic David versus Goliath scenario, a lower budget film about a bomb squad in Iraq beat out one of the most expensive and highest grossing films of all time. To sweeten the defeat, it should be mentioned that the two filmmakers vying for top honors in the 82nd Annual Academy Awards were once married.

Yes, director Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker managed to trump James Cameron's domineering blue beast, Avatar, for awards in Best Director and Best Picture Sunday night in Hollywood. The two categories are hardly ever split between different films (about three-quarters of all films that have won Best Picture have also won Best Director), a fact that was highlighted by Tom Hank's brief, anticlimactic announcement of the winner in the Best Picture category immediately after Bigelow had been escorted, visibly shaken, off the stage after winning the Oscar for Best Director.

Bigelow was the first woman to receive the directing award from the Academy. This should not come as much of a surprise: the story about the "battle of the exes" made for good copy, and the Academy took every chance it could to remind the audience during the awards ceremony that Bigelow could be the first woman to win, and fellow director nominee Lee Daniels (nominated for Push) could be the first African American to win.

Cameron's epic Avatar was nominated nine times, but only took home three statues - for Art Direction, Cinematography, and Visual Effects. Compare this to his haul in 1997 with Titanic: there were 14 nominations for that film, and it received 11 (including the coveted directing and best picture awards). But there's still some comfort left for Cameron: his last two major motion pictures have each broken the record for highest-grossing film, bringing in billions of dollars - though some people like to put an asterisk next to Avatar for charging higher prices for its 3-D showings.

The Academy does relish underdogs and surprises from time to time. The category for Actress In A Leading Role is a good representation of this: revered actresses Dame Helen Mirren and Meryl Streep were pitted against rising stars Gabourey Sidibe and Carey Mulligan. Squarely in the center of all that was the prolific Sandra Bullock, whose film The Blind Side was surprisingly nominated for only her role and for Best Picture. The heartwarming tale of mentorship in sports has been seen many times before, but Bullock managed to win the Academy over in her role as the firm-yet-loving Leigh Anne Tuohy.

Hosted by Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin, the awards were mostly playful. The hosts and presenters gently ribbed Meryl Streep for her total number of nominations - with 16, she is the most nominated actor in history. Ben Stiller appeared in an Avatar costume to announce the category for Best Makeup, admitting that he should have brought his Spock ears instead, since Avatar wasn't even nominated for that category. Star Trek, in fact, did win, for its transformations of Zachary Quinto into Spock, Eric Bana into Nero, and the other alien spectacles. Speaking of alien, did anyone else see that set of interpretative dances by The Legion of Extraordinary Dancers introducing the category for Best Score? Didn't think so.

Live television is a gift, though, and the 82nd Awards weren't without their awkward moments. Best Documentary winners The Cove were doing fine with their acceptance speech, until one member unfurled a sign telling the audience to text the word dolphin to some unexplained number. The camera cut away and didn't return until the guilty parties were being escorted offstage. Later, when tradition called for Sean Penn, the winner of the 2008 award for Best Actor for his role in Milk, to announce this year's winner for Best Actress, he managed to suck the energy out of the announcement by saying that he was not a member of the Academy and by making an obscure reference to the Academy overlooking certain actresses. Right.

The Oscars touted a list of 10 nominees for their highest prize this year - the first time since Casablanca won in 1943 that the Best Picture category has been this large. Since 2009 was not significantly better than any other year for films, it seems like an attempt for the traditionally built awards show to draw attention. It's also a way for the Academy to recognise more films without dishing out more awards - nominees like The Blind Side, District 9, and A Serious Man would have been hard pressed to make it into a list five. And yet another Oscar media soundbyte came in the form of Up's nomination for Best Picture - everyone seemed thrilled about this recognition, though no one in their right mind expected it to win against Avatar, Precious, or The Hurt Locker.

Otherwise, the Awards seemed fairly straightforward. The Academy continued its love of Pixar by awarding Up with the Animated Feature Film award, bringing the company's total number of awards to 22. Both Mo'Nique and Cristoph Waltz seemed like standout winners for their supporting roles in Precious and Inglourious Basterds, respectively. The only other true contest was for Best Actor. Jeff Bridges, nominated a handful of times since 1971's The Last Picture Show, finally took home the golden statue for his portrayal of down-and-out country singer Bad Blake, beating out George Clooney's charming role in Up in the Air, and more serious roles from Morgan Freeman, Jeremy Renner, and Colin Firth.

Sarah Palin sought healthcare in Canada?

2010-03-09T11:01:00.003-05:00

The following is part of a thread on Facebook discussing this article:

Palin: While Growing Up, My Family Would Seek Health Care In Canada

The names involved might throw you off: "Shae" is the first commenter listed here, and the following comments are from the original poster. I didn't want to go in and clean up or edit anything. Hopefully my re-posting of this won't upset anyone involved (if it does, I'll remove it).

Nothing wrong with her statement - and nothing wrong her parents seeking out the best health care available. If you've ever been to Skagway you know that there is practically nothing there - no hospital and, back in the 60's maybe no real doctor. This is a complete non-story, manufactured by people who are obsessed with Palin.

Meanwhile, here's a story of someone facing bankruptcy owing to medical costs. The twist is he's Canadian. From the Toronto Sun:

"Suffering from brain cancer, Kent Pankow was literally forced to go to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. for lifesaving surgery--at a cost to family and friends of $106,000--after the health-care system in Alberta left him hanging in bureaucratic limbo for 16 crucial days, his tumour meanwhile migrating to an unreachable part of the brain, while it dithered over his case file, ultimately deciding he was not surgery worthy.

Now, with the Mayo Clinic having done what the Alberta Cancer Board wouldn't authorize or even explain, but with the tumour unable to be totally removed, the province will now not fund the expensive drug, Avastin, that the Mayo prescribed to keep him alive and keep the remaining tumour from increasing in size--despite the costs of the drug being totally funded by the province for other forms of cancer.

Kent Pankow, as it turns out, has the right disease but he has it in the wrong place.

Had he lung cancer, breast cancer, or colon cancer, then the cost of the drug--$4,555 per treatment, two times a month--would be totally covered by Alberta's version of OHIP [Ontario Health Insurance Plan].

But he doesn't.

And so he is not only a victim of brain cancer, he is also a victim of arbitrary discrimination."

The good news is that President Obama remains committed to bringing U.S. health care into line with Canadian standards. If he succeeds, sick Canadians will eventually be set free from the ruinous temptations of places like the Mayo Clinic.

I am sorry Mr. Pankow is so ill. My mother died of breast cancer that moved into her brain. It is an awful illness, an awful death. But the focus of this thread is Palin and universal health care, not an exceptional case cut and pasted from a news story.

As for Palin, I do not blame her parents for getting care for their children where they could; the point is what Sarah Palin is saying now and how she is trying to obfuscate the health care debate.

Former governor Palin is trying to affect public policy and become president.

She has raised the specter of death panels, eugenics, the mercy killing of her son, rationing, socialized medicine and communism. She is red-baiting and Hitler-baiting, not talking about policy.

She continues to mess with the truth, rearrange history, and reduce serious intellectual debate to populist twaddle.

She is a major public figure who plays fast and loose with the truth and like it or not, when she shoots her mouth off it is news.

Fasten your seat belts. Shae and I talked about the Palin comment via email yesterday and he has brought it to Facebook. Here is what I wrote him. It may be more than you need to know about the history of universal health care in Canada and Sarah Palin's contradictions, but you might find it helpful:

Shae, you are right to point out that the Palins lived in Skagway from the time Sarah was 3 months old until she was 6 or so, when they moved to Eagle River and eventually Wasilla. This means that the family lived in Skagway from 1964 to about 1970.

And yes, Skagway is remote--about a 100 miles from Whitehorse, about a 100 miles from Juneau--the two closest "big" towns. The Juneau trip requires a ferry ride, probably pretty time consuming and iffy, depending on the ferry schedule. The drive up to Whitehorse was probably not easy either and probably pretty much impassable a lot of the winter.

And if my kid burned himself, I'd try to get him to the nearest nurse, doctor, clinic or hospital. Can't blame 'em there.

But let's look at the history of health care in Canada. Canada is a big, spread out country. A lack of doctors and uneven access to care had long been a problem, so in the late 1940s and early 1950s provincial governments began to take matters into their own hands, subsidizing doctors, clinics and hospitals in remote areas. Tommy Douglas, the Premier (similar to governor) of Saskatchewan at the time, was the leader in this effort. Douglas was a prairie populist, indeed a social democrat, who helped found the New Democratic Party (NDP). The NDP is not unlike the Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party that my grandmother helped organize and that gave us Hubert Humphrey, Orville Freeman, Walter Mondale, Paul Wellstone and now, Al Franken, politicians that horrify Shae. But I digress. Under Douglas's leadership Saskatchewan in 1946 passed the Saskatchewan Hospitalization Act, guaranteeing hospital care to most citizens. Alberta followed suit in 1950. The plans were popular and the rest of the country wanted in. The Hospital Insurance and Diagnostic Services Act was passed in 1957 to extend something similar to the whole country. Under this act the federal government would fund 50% of the cost of health services to any province as long as the province agreed to five conditions: public administration, comprehensiveness, universality, portability, and accessibility. It's not socialized medicine (they have that in Great Britain, but not Canada) but it's definitely a federally subsidized plan to provide universal health care. In July of 1960, the Yukon signed onto this plan, helping fund health care in Whitehorse.

And the Palins apparently benefited from that health care in the late 1960s.

Or did they?

The Anchorage Daily News is now reporting that Palin told a different version of the story about her brother's burned foot a while back to the Skagway paper, the Skagway News. That time around she said they took the ferry to Juneau.

So, who knows what's really going on, but it sounds to me like the former governor either benefited from the Canadian system or told yet another fib.

Or both.

I do know for sure that Canadians like Tommy Douglas. Ya, you betcha they like that Tommy. They voted him Greatest Canadian of All Time in a poll organized by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in 2004:

http://www.cbc.ca/greatest/top_ten/nominee/douglas-tommy.html

Here are the links to the Alaskan papers:

http://www.adn.com/2010/03/08/1173743/god-supports-writing-notes-on.html

http://www.skagwaynews.com/051107GovPalinvisit.html

Here's a Canadian government time line that outlines the history of its health care system:

http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/hcs-sss/pubs/system-regime/2005-hcs-sss/time-chron-eng.php

Mundane List

2010-02-26T10:33:00.003-05:00

Websites with free services I use...

On a daily basis:

Facebook
Google
Gmail
Twitter

On a weekly basis:

Blogger
Grooveshark
Tumblr

On a willy-nilly basis:

Flickr
Google Reader
Picasa

Dare I list all the accounts / profiles / urls I've created over the years? That would take a while.

This has been... "Mundane List." (Made even more mundane by the fact that I probably forgot to list some sites I often use.)

Parental Threadjack

2010-02-19T09:19:00.001-05:00

(Click for larger image)

Desktop

2010-02-11T15:18:00.003-05:00

It's "Post A Screenshot Of Your Desktop" Week!

(Okay, I made that up. I just wanted to post a pic of my desktop for some reason... hopefully small enough so you can't make out all my secrets...)

The Internet (dot com)

2010-02-11T14:19:00.003-05:00

Click on pic for larger version:

(Note that this was an original Facebook message I was composing.)

(Google Buzz.)

Manhood for Amateurs

2010-02-01T15:23:00.004-05:00

I recently had the pleasure of allowing Michael Chabon's recent essay collection Manhood for Amateurs: The Pleasures and Regrets of a Husband, Father, and Son to distract me from my academic readings. I can't remember how I came across it, but most likely I was browsing at a bookstore and started reading it. (This has happened more than once before.) I'm glad our library had it.

Chabon is an open geek, expressing his love for comic books and sci-fi television and movies, but he is also a husband and father, and, most of all, a man. He writes poignantly about all of these things in a series of shorter essays that show how he'll never understand females, how his "open and honest" approach to parenthood is often compromised, and how marriages and in-laws can be mixed blessings/curses.

I hadn't read anything by Chabon before, but I found Manhood to be a refreshing read (so much so that I've already checked out his earlier collection of essays, Maps and Legends). Sometimes, Manhood got a bit corny. Sometimes it got a bit artsy. But overall, it came through with a strong, convincing voice, exploring aspects of manhood, childhood, married life, and other things, and looking much closer at these things than people generally care to do. (Sorry for that last beast of a sentence, but time is of an essence.)

A recommended read for anyone.

WSJ on NYT

2010-01-20T10:37:00.002-05:00

International Students.

2010-01-12T10:02:00.002-05:00

So I'm still on the email list for "Global Pathways," the international studies program at FSU, from that one time I thought I'd like to study overseas. (I'd still like to. I just never pursued it.)

I usually just delete these emails, but one part of this last one really stood out to me.

TODAY: Wal-Mart Trip with International Students

Join the Florida State international students on their Wal-Mart trip to get school and housing supplies. This is a unique opportunity to explain American culture and extend hospitality to our international students. For questions or to sign up contact Tessly.

---

Hmm. What to teach of American culture at Wal-Mart? I think the first lesson would be about the corner where all the homeless people stand with signs... (Or maybe the "Taco Bell Diet," since there's a TB in the front of the parking lot...)

Productive and Good.

2010-01-08T21:43:00.003-05:00

Caught up on most work stuff today.
Had a rather successful counseling session this morning.
Pitaria for lunch.
Office brownies for snacks.
Liking the freakish Tallahassee cold.
Dropped a class I thought I wanted and signed up for a great one I didn't know about.
Had a rather spectacular Modern Humanities first class session.
Caught up on most MusicOMH bumpf.
Get to listen to and review an excellent album this weekend.
Had TCBY with a love.
Had coffee and stimulating discussion with a love.
Having some Kashi pizza now.
Have a very funny and loving cat and rat (who get along together).
Downloaded and will soon play Borderlands DLC 2.
Rumors of snow / flurries this weekend.
Finishing up one degree.
Starting another.
Career trajectory mostly chosen (as much as it should be right now).
Beard grown.
Car working, no problems.
Job working, no problems.
Health intact.
No complaints.

???

2010-01-06T16:38:00.001-05:00

Now Reading.

2010-01-05T14:42:00.004-05:00

I'm currently reading a collection of essays entitled The Psychology of Nuclear Conflict. It's part of a recent endeavor of mine to investigate aspects of nuclear war, especially the phenomenon known as nuclear winter.

I'm only on the first essay in this collection, but I've found it to be very enlightening. I'm usually against theories involving guesses as to why we evolved a certain way, but this first essay (Anthony Stevens' "The Archetypes of War") is discussing some Carl Jung and some other things about warfare being in the biology of humans.

Anyway, it's an intriguing read thus far.

Before this, I read Nuclear Winter: The Evidence and the Risks, a book (riddled with typos, by the way — but maybe it was just because I had a library edition) from the UK that sets out some of the early evidence for the possibility of nuclear winter (which was first conceived in 1982 after scientists realized they had been overlooking the theoretical impact of the smoke from nuclear weapons). It was a pretty informative book — very simple and easy to understand. But, naturally, much of it was speculative, since, as they pointed out, the only way to really know what would happen would be to actually experience a nuclear war of enough magnitude to trigger a nuclear winter. (When the book was published in 1985, there were more than 10 times the amount of nuclear weapons in the world it would take to theoretically trigger a nuclear winter.) But the implications of a nuclear war and possible nuclear winter (especially the implication that the end of mankind cannot be ruled out) are staggering. Even if a "minimal" nuclear exchange could have devastating effects on the atmosphere, global climate, flora and fauna, and on mankind.

Food for thought, since I don't see think these topics are being stressed nowadays. (I think my interest of this subject matter arose from a Wired article I read a few months ago.)

Old CDs!

2010-01-05T12:56:00.003-05:00

In one of the best work moments of the new year, a professor came in and dropped off two bags of old CDs he was looking to get rid of. I took a quick look and sorted out some stuff for myself:

Phil Collins — No Jacket Required
Genesis — Invisible Touch
The Corrs — In Blue
The Corrs — Talk On Corners (Special Edition)
Natalie Merchant — Tigerlily
Third Eye Blind — Third Eye Blind (3BE?)
Gin Blossoms — Congratulations I'm Sorry
Tracy Chapman — New Beginning
The Refreshments — Fizzy Fuzzy Big & Buzzy
Dire Straits — Alchemy (2CD Live Set)

I mean, I'm not really super excited about this stuff (except The Refreshments), but it's always good to get free stuff... right?

Agreed.

2010-01-04T08:34:00.001-05:00

It's one of the oldest jokes in the book, but it still got me. (You can click on the pic to read it bigger-like.)

Carlos Miller won his appeal!

2009-12-26T23:06:00.002-05:00

Photographer Carlos Miller started his blog, Photography Is Not A Crime, after he was arrested for what he claims was simply exercising his rights to photograph anything in public. He was arrested for photographing police in a construction zone because they claimed he was standing in the middle of the street and disrupting traffic, and then resisting arrest without violence.

As he describes on his website, public photography is not a crime. Anything visible from the public street can be photographed. This is how Google Maps can give you a convenient street view of everything. This is why Americans can carry cameras around any city without fear.

But if you read enough of his site, you start to understand that Miller has a bit of an ability to instigate. I don't blame him for this. I think that in order for society to progress, authority must continually be challenged. I'm not calling for an all-out revolution. I'm saying that if something doesn't make logical sense, you should question it and see if you can understand it. If you think something should be changed, fight for it. The thing is, here, Carlos is fighting for rights that already exist and are on the books. He's fighting against wrongful arrests. He's fighting against cops who can bring you in just for rubbing them the wrong way.

So just recently, Miller won an appeal to his conviction. His appeal was that the judge in his trial allowed illegal evidence to be submitted. The judge allowed the state to introduce evidence from Miller's blog, which was started after his arrest. Miller was also evidently sentenced by a judge who was biased against him and who had a personal beef with Miller's blog, which should have been legally outside the consideration of his trial and conviction.

In his post, you can see Miller agreeing that he pushes things a little bit when he discusses his second arrest. Miller was serving probation and community service from his first conviction, and while in Miami, he shot another round of pictures of cops. They arrested him and are trying to charge him on resisting arrest without violence. And nothing else. But how can you resist arrest without having a reason for an arrest? Miller states that he could have stopped after photographing the cop who was texting while he was supposed to be supervising events on duty. Instead, Miller went up to the cop and tried to ask him what his name was.

Of course, Miller could have walked away and avoided arrest. That would have been the safe way. The way that most people behave. Most people wouldn't confront a cop if they didn't have to. I certainly wouldn't. I don't want a record, and I don't want to test the laws and the interpretation of the laws. But if you think about it, what is the illegal part of photographing someone in public, and then what is the illegal part of walking up to that same person and trying to talk to them?

Nothing.

And this is why Carlos Miller started his blog and fights his arrests. One of the best quotes I've seen is a comment on the "About" page of his blog:

"Carlos is fighting for rights that most of you don’t even know you have."

Keep up the good fight, Carlos.

The Beatles Remastered

2009-12-22T01:08:00.002-05:00

Listening to the recent remastered mono and stereo mixes of The Beatles' catalog.

Holy shit.

2009 in Tweets

2009-12-21T14:18:00.005-05:00

I read a writer's blog and got inspired to follow suit.

This year saw a lot. For Twitter and me, it started off in a hospital (I was there, but it was for someone else), took a trip to upstate New York, a trip to Chicago, joined me for the 2009 T-Pain Presidential Cam-Pain, and saw me reach my 1,000th tweet. I had planned something special for my 1,000th tweet, but I forgot it was coming and I ending up squandering it.

I have a general ethos that a tweet should be standalone, so not a lot of these need context, and none are retweets, @ replies, or anything else. Just plain, pure, uncut @justindlc.

I don't know how many I'll include, since I'll just look at them all and post the ones I think were great. [Update: I spent way too fecking long on this.] I'll also post my first tweet of the year and my most recent tweet (as of the time of this writing). Maybe I'll think of something cool to tweet on 31 December 2009 at 11:59 p.m. and maybe I'll include that as a TWEET FROM THE FUTURE. [Update: Again, I spent way too fecking long on this and fried my brain. So no tweet from the future.]

I had to spend a lot of time clicking the "more" button on my Twitter page, so you better damn well enjoy this.

Of the chosen tweets were:

countless - posts about music
9 - posts about work
7 - posts about school
6 - posts about the internet or technology
3 - posts about license plates
3 - posts about video games
3 - posts based around bacon
3 - posts about my cat or cats in general
2 - posts about Goodwill

---

Having an appendix out would cost an arm and a leg...
11:33 AM Jan 1st from txt

I want to be a hip-hop anthropologist.
3:45 PM Jan 31st from txt

We got a soft orange cat previously named Simon.
2:37 PM Feb 7th from txt

My cashier's name is Algeria.
3:52 PM Feb 7th from txt

Considering the catalogs of both, Kanye's latest is on the level of the Clash's Cut the Crap.
3:04 AM Feb 8th from txt

This older guy in this coffee shop just said: "I want to be the Kenny G. of harmonica." And he was being serious.
7:41 PM Feb 10th from txt

I sort of want to build a robot.
5:12 PM Feb 13th from txt

You're an indoor cat who gets out. You: A. Catch a mouse. B. Prowl the neighborhood. Or C. Lay in the neighbor's yard and sniff the grass.
9:18 PM Mar 5th from txt

Woo! Spring Break! Time to go to . . . the office!
7:15 AM Mar 9th from txt

Chuck Palahniuk is gay?
4:55 PM Mar 16th from txt

Sources for brief class presentation = Wikipedia.
10:38 PM Mar 18th from web

One of the few benefits to arriving to a movie on time or late is not having to sit through Kid Rock's "Warrior" again.
10:12 PM Mar 21st from txt

I'll list Goodwill in the bottom 10 of places where I'd like to work.
7:12 PM Apr 10th from txt

Behind white Honda junker. License plate: SRSLY.
7:47 AM Apr 13th from txt

My five word autobiography: "This isn't hard. Oh, wait."
3:35 PM Apr 23rd from txt

Any chapter titled "From Mein Kampf to Google" is good in my book.
3:44 PM Apr 26th from txt

Cranberry juice and keyboards go together about as well as rocks and blenders do.
8:55 PM Apr 28th from web

Jan 22, 1973: Bro v. Wade was a contentious ruling for bros on broth sides of the brolitical spectrum. Bro-Choicers rejoiced.
3:07 PM May 1st from web

Does each store in the mall pay for its own air conditioning? Because it all opens up to the middle, which is also cooled.
2:47 PM May 2nd from txt

I wish I were a reverse bear, so I could hibernate through this hot, hot summer.
12:59 PM May 11th from txt

Homeless man at bus stop enjoys an 8 AM Steel Reserve, and your trusty narrator's stomach turns upside down and inside out.
7:55 AM May 14th from txt

Someday all of my neat devices will end up at Goodwill... And be ridiculously priced. $35 for N64?!?
11:29 AM May 16th from txt

I'm already weary of taking precautionary antibiotics but getting 'em for free at Publix makes me downright nervous. Pill Pushers, M.D.
2:47 PM May 18th from txt

Just passed four humans walking five dogs. Quite the canine constituency on a constitutional.
6:53 PM May 21st from txt

I want to drive a British car for a month so I can balance out my left arm tan.
3:25 PM May 30th from txt

I'm going over the pros and cons of making and consuming a bacon quesadilla.
4:20 PM May 30th from txt

This training session should be titled "Please do not make small talk with me at the urinals." And I should lead it.
2:00 PM Jun 4th from txt

If you get trapped in the wilderness in the U.S. with like 10 people and everyone decides to eat one person... is that legal?
11:36 PM Jun 4th from txt

Got an Elvis upper lip from the numbing agents they used during my root canal.
9:08 AM Jun 10th from txt

Contra III is hard, Earthbound is super cool, and I just found out why I never touched Shaq Fu.
9:00 PM Jun 11th from web

Every weekday I see an infinitesimal piece of the internet, which, as far as I can tell, stretches out eternally.
8:10 AM Jun 15th from web

Professor: "My student's paper began with a set of instructions from the student to the person writing the paper. The rest was plagiarized."
11:02 AM Jun 15th from web

William Shatner on Conan. Shatner tried to do the Vulcan hand salute and COULD NOT DO IT.
12:29 AM Jun 18th from txt

I'd be concerned if future biographers relied solely on my Facebook, Twitter, and blog posts to chronicle my life.
8:54 AM Jun 18th from web

I would like to second my own nomination of T-Pain as the next president of Florida State University. #tpain4fsuprez
10:13 AM Jun 19th from web

The SNES Itchy and Scratchy game was just as bad as I thought it would be. The garlicbread Tombstone pizza was as good as I thought.
10:05 PM Jun 22nd from txt

Just saw Baconnaise featured on the QVC Shopping Network. Bundled with bacon salt.
7:53 AM Jun 24th from txt

Dr. Phil is not an authority on anything besides being bald.
5:56 PM Jun 24th from txt

Funny or not funny: a penny superglued in the middle of the street? (I fell for it.)
12:27 PM Jun 25th from txt

My brother: R.I.P.Y.T. (Michael Jackson). Me: This is going to burst a lot of people's Bubbles.
8:17 PM Jun 25th from txt

At DC airport. There's a truck labeled "Gate Gourmet" ... What do they serve - TarMac and Cheese?
11:50 AM Jun 30th from txt

Amazing that whatever location you go to (in this case, NY), Wal-Mart has the universal effect of sucking the soul right out of you.
7:36 PM Jul 2nd from txt

Melbourne's like an old shoe. It's comfy, but it sort of smells.
12:27 AM Jul 8th from txt

Twitter me this: They make you scan your shoes for planes, but you're allowed to carry on a lighter.
2:20 PM Jul 8th from txt

Note that it is possible to grab and throw someone holding the hammer in the original Super Smash Bros.
8:09 AM Jul 27th from web

The 2009 T-Pain Killa Cam-Pain is well underway: http://is.gd/1OSla #tpain4fsuprez
9:40 AM Jul 27th from Twitlet

I was on TV! Complete with awkward news anchor banter!!
10:34 PM Aug 5th from txt

Lexus license plate: VIA GOD.
7:59 AM Aug 12th from txt

Twitter does everything. Even makes it easier to follow God: http://twitter.com/god
3:42 PM Aug 12th from web

Graffiti 1: "Omar <3 Kathy." Graffiti 2: "Kathy is a dude."
5:10 PM Aug 19th from txt

You should have to pay $5 every time you ride the elevator only one floor (unless you physically can't use stairs).
9:17 AM Aug 25th from txt

Overheard: "*LOUD GASP* You don't know who McDreamy is?!?"
5:09 PM Aug 25th from txt

Flier: "How affordable is life insurance?" ... I don't know --- can I live without it?
4:40 PM Aug 26th from web

Mondays should really start at 10. And while we're at it, Fridays should end at 3. Nothing gets done during those work hours anyway.
7:42 AM Aug 31st from txt

Text response from my brother when I tried calling him while he was at DragonCon: "Can't talk, Klingon beauty pageant."
5:26 PM Sep 6th from txt

It's a good thing they weren't fighting house cats in the Battle of Bunker Hill. You have to get real close to see the whites of their eyes.
9:20 AM Sep 17th from web

I'm feeling strangely inspired and motivated at work today. I hope I'm not coming down with something.
9:33 AM Sep 24th from web

License plate: H8 N00BZ.
6:36 PM Sep 30th from txt

Many papers I write just seem to serve the purpose of showing that I can write papers. #epiphany
9:18 PM Oct 7th from web

The professor I emailed today signed his response with his initials, which made me question everything he wrote: jk.
9:17 AM Oct 14th from web

Why does everything seem better when I listen to loud music with the car windows down?
5:33 PM Oct 19th from txt

Dammit. I accidentally subscribed to Oprah's magazine. This day is by no means off to a good start.
10:50 AM Oct 20th from web

Little known fact: T-Pain is a direct descendant of revolutionary pamphlet writer Thomas Paine.
8:01 PM Oct 21st from txt

I can upload a picture from my phone to the internet faster than it takes me to fax one page of text.
10:00 AM Oct 22nd from txt

Still amazed at how "salad" can refer to dishes based on either green vegetables or mayonnaise.
12:18 PM Oct 22nd from web

Q: Why wear a white skintight nylon shirt sans bra? A: To distract from your "humble" face.
1:25 PM Oct 28th from txt

A million people support an aspiring pirate (http://bit.ly/Kjf1P) and around a dozen would like to meet a senator (http://bit.ly/3nXo52).
4:12 PM Nov 2nd from web

Independent, double-blind studies have replicated the results of Diggs et al. (1993), showing that Wu-Tang Clan ain't nothing to fuck with.
5:20 PM Nov 12th from txt

The secret about moving walkways is that the walkway doesn't move. Everything else moves around it. #chi09
10:54 PM Nov 13th from txt

So when I mention certain things in my tweets, companies follow me. This is a test. BMW Coca-Cola Fender Hershey's Gorbachev ShamWow Rolex.
9:02 AM Nov 18th from web

Overheard at Neko Case: "The Beatles, they were a recording band. They couldn't do the shit they did on their albums live."
7:47 PM Nov 20th from txt

Wellborn, FL owes me $1.25 in change lost at its crappy rest stop vending machines. I'll be back to collect. I know where you live.
7:10 PM Nov 25th from txt

If in 500 years a transcript of my Twitter feed were the only indication that I'd ever lived, I'd be damn proud of my legacy.
1:57 PM Nov 26th from txt

Denny's T-shirt: No one ever returns bacon.
10:56 AM Nov 29th from txt

T-shirt idea: Guitar Gyro
11:07 AM Nov 29th from txt

Rawr. Somebody obvs didn't get her turkey basted this weekend. Sheesh.
9:12 AM Nov 30th from web

Why did everyone in our class present an academic book or article except for this girl, who's presenting an Alexander Dumas novel?
3:58 PM Dec 3rd from txt

I don't like writing papers. Why am I still in college? I hope all my future employers can use a 15-page discussion of postmodernism.
9:14 PM Dec 6th from web

@samirmathur Im in ur tweetz, steelin ur linkz.
4:12 PM Dec 7th from web in reply to samirmathur

[That was my 1,000th tweet.]

I can never remember which I prefer: "gray / grey," "inalienable / unalienable," "Bert / Ernie."
2:21 AM Dec 10th from web

My boss just gave me the blues on her iPhone. Any time I call her, a bluesy piano plays as the ringtone. Is that how I come off? The blues?
11:40 AM Dec 11th from web

Got out with three Bob Dylans and a Vanderslice for $12. This should not be happening. RIP Vinyl Fever.
5:33 PM Dec 16th from txt

Why is there so much information in the world?
about 19 hours ago from txt

Like a post-apocalyptic movie, a shopping cart is a hot commodity in our work building.
16 minutes ago from txt

Vinyl Fever Breaks (Confessions of a Music Junkie)

2009-12-20T14:40:00.005-05:00

As undergraduates at FSU, my friend Matt and I used to go to Vinyl Fever on average maybe once a month. But many times it was more frequent than that.

Vinyl Fever was a locally owned record shop that sold new and used CDs, new and used vinyls, and some DVDs. It was one of only two stores: the other was in Tampa, and I can't quite remember which came first. (Nor do I care to look around to see if the Tampa branch is still extant now...)

Anyway, after a while, The Feve became something essential to our Tallahassee experience. But after a years (after noticing how many CDs I had towering around me), I stopped visiting the store and I pretty much stopped buying CDs altogether. I still listened to music, and I was still reviewing albums, so I had a steady influx of new music to keep me busy.

Then, one day (according to my Gmail records, it was around Feb 11, 2008), I heard that Vinyl Fever had been bought out by a larger chain. For reasons that I can't fully explain, I was shocked and offended by this. I soon got over my reaction, since I noticed that the same people worked there, and outside of adding miscellaneous merchandise, the store remained essentially the same.

In times of financial need, I would sell some of the... "more questionable" CDs I had accumulated over the years (many as promos coming into the newspaper). The Feve would only give me about $2 per CD (if that), but I saw it as also helping to keep them in business (especially since I wasn't buying CDs anymore). I must have sold them literally 50 CDs (at least) over the years.

But I suppose it wasn't enough. Last week, I heard from a friend that Vinyl Fever was closing forever. For reals. Their website makes it look like such a festive, holiday announcement. Like everything will be okay.

I stopped by on the day I heard the news. The small parking lot was full, and people were parking on the grass. I had to park across the street. Outside, one of the guys who'd been working there for years was on a smoke break. I asked him, "When's closing day?" He took a drag on his cigarette, turned his head away, and mumbled "I don't know. When everything's gone, I guess." (I'm really not trying to embellish the moment here. This was really something.)

Yesterday, Matt and I went back for what I assume will be my last time. (Of course, if they have a concert on closing day, I will most certainly be there. Hell, I'd love to play a concert there on closing day! Somebody make that happen, please.) There were people carrying around shopping baskets with 30 CDs in them. Because of all the people packed in there, it was pretty hot and muggy, despite the cold December air outside. (Okay, I'm sorry. I know there are wars and there's world hunger and suffering. But this store can still mean a lot to me. It's something more than just a shop, since it's a portal to new music. And music means a lot to me. Hence, Q.E.D., don't tease.)

In the pictures bookending this post are the CDs from the excellent haul I had from these last visits to Vinyl Fever. All used music was 50% off the sticker price, so I got these 13 albums for about $35. That's an average of about $2.70 per album. And so far, that investment been worth it.

Here are the albums, starting from the top left in the picture:

Manic Street Preachers — Journal for Plague Lovers: My brother has been a huge Manics fan (props to him for the non-parenthetical part of the title of this post, BTW). He had been raving on about this new album. I just listened to it, and it's pretty great.

An Albatross — Blessphemy...of the Peace Beast Feastgiver and the Bear Warp Kumite: Also recommended from my brother, though I'd heard some of their songs before. Actually, I'll pop this one in the player now while I work on the rest of this post. (Update: Upon listening to this in full, I also deem this to be an excellent buy.)

The Hives — Barely Legal: Swedish punk rock at its dirtiest. This was their 1997 debut (which I didn't know at the time of purchase). It's somewhat grittier than their newer stuff.

The Wallflowers — Red Letter Days: Hadn't heard this one, but I liked other Wallflowers stuff, so I decided to give it a shot.

Bob Dylan — Love and Theft: It's Bob Dylan. C'mon.

Mott the Hoople — Mott: Part of the English rock that inspired the likes of Mick Jones (of The Clash) and, I believe, Steven Morrissey (The Smiths). If it's good enough for those two guys, it's good enough for me. No question.

Bob Dylan — Bob Dylan: It's Bob Dylan. C'mon. I hadn't heard this first one, though I'd heard other early stuff. It's pretty good stuff, man. Raw. Give it a try.

John Vanderslice — Life and Death of an American Fourtracker: I first heard Vanderslice when The Moutain Goats opened for him on tour back in 2004 or so. I've heard him live once or twice more after that. For some reason, I didn't really like Vanderslice live. It's kind of stale and there's a lack of onstage energy. But on record, I think he's great. Nice instrumentation and atmosphere. If you're interested, he has downloads on his website.

Bob Dylan — Time Out of Mind: See entries for Love and Theft and Bob Dylan.

The Popheads — Eat Supermodels: A local band that I've opened for before (while I was in the short-lived Bombardiers). They were good. Furry pants.

The Magic Numbers — The Magic Numbers: A great album that I had downloaded but never purchased. I believe I listened to them from a Samir recommendation. This reminds me that there were a few philosophical/ontological quandaries during my time spent in Vinyl Fever yesterday. I came across albums (Loveless, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea) that I had in MP3s and that I loved and wanted on CD. I came across others (Hearts and Unicorns) that I already had on CD and wanted to buy again just because they were great albums at a killer price. There was one album I wanted to buy again on CD because mine had scratches (Breach). But I had to put things back and not buy duplicate music. For budgetary reasons. Fiscal responsibility, you know. The economy...

Enon — Lost Marbles & Exploded Evidence: I had missed them when they came to Tallahassee and I had always wanted to hear their stuff. Besides, I liked the album cover (always a good reason). I listened to this already, and it's good-not-great. Certainly not a disappointment.

The Features — Some Kind of Salvation: I got the first Features album in the budget section at Vinyl Fever shortly after it had come out. It was great. I wrote a review of it as a sample piece to be considered to write for the FSView. I've been waiting for this follow-up, especially after hearing about how they had label disputes and had gotten booted from Universal Records. This one is released on 429 Records, a new label founded by Kings of Leon.

Well, that about does it. As we were looking through records for what was probably our last time at Vinyl Fever, Matt and I kept finding stuff that we knew the other would be interested in. Most of the time, we also knew whether or not the other person had it in his record collection.

This is important stuff.

R.I.P. VINYL FEVER

You will live forever in our hearts.

And on our shelves.

Self-Promotion.

2009-12-15T15:21:00.003-05:00

TheOnion

As part of #OurAnnualYear, we present the #TopQuotes of All Time. Use the hashtag #TopQuotes to add any we missed.33 minutes ago from TweetDeck
TheOnion

“Please stop quoting me. Not everything I say is some witty quotation.” - Mark Twain #TopQuotes #OurAnnualYear24 minutes ago from TweetDeck
justindlc

"It got boring, so I had to make these little challenges. Hole in one. Lateral water hazard. Three strokes or less." -Tiger Woods #TopQuotes5 minutes ago from web

The Shadow Knows

2009-12-11T22:15:00.005-05:00

R.I.P. Shadow

Put simply, you were the best.

On the Absurdity of the Situation

2009-12-10T02:38:00.004-05:00

Actual Paper Prompt:

Since its first appearance in the XVth century the printing press was an object of defiance on the part of the political and religious European powers. How was the printing press controlled in England and on the continent of Europe during the XVIth and the XVIIth centuries?

I've checked out five books on this subject, one of which is 292 pages long and deals only with the various controls of the printing press only in Britain FROM ONLY 1640–1658.

This paper is supposed to be only 8 pages long.

We never discussed anything related to this in class.

*Let the cherry picking of quotes and cannibalizing of ideas begin!*

Actual Work Email I Just Wrote

2009-12-08T12:29:00.000-05:00

Hi – the down elevator button on the left side of our elevators on the fourth floor of Bellamy does not work. The other buttons seem to work fine, but this one won’t summon an elevator.

Thanks!

The Following Is Why Twitter Is So Great — And If You Still Don't Like It You Can Suck An Egg

2009-12-04T09:20:00.003-05:00

ryanqnorth

OpenOffice doesn't like "Dromiceiomimus" and suggests "Palindromic" as a correction. Um, nobody has ever messed up spelling that bad, OO.

7 minutes ago from web

ryanqnorth

"I don't know how to spell 'palindromic'! What's it start with, a 'D'? Fuck, I'm in way over my head here"

7 minutes ago from web

ryanqnorth

#sorryforsayingfuckontheinternet #andfordoingitagaininmyapology

7 minutes ago from web

ryanqnorth

#sorryforsayingfuckontheinternet has no search results. EVERYONE NEEDS TO CLASS IT UP SOME AND START APOLOGIZING.

6 minutes ago from web

---

(Or maybe it's why Ryan North, creator of Dinosaur Comics, is so great. Either way.)