AgPerson

The Wall Street Journal has a very funny article about users of systems that profile them, such as TiVo, Netflix, and Amazon.com, all of which I use. Basically, the people don’t like or are suprised that TiVo pegs them in certain holes. Someone put Queer as Folk on their Season Pass list and suddenly TiVo was recording other gay-themed shows. Oh no, TiVo thinks I’m gay! So they start recording Jerry Springer to make TiVo think they’re rednecks.

Oh, good grief. TiVo is a machine and has no idea who you are or what you like. It, like Amazon and Netflix, use what you buy and compare it to what other people buy to forumlate recommendations. The more things you rate, the better the recommendations. All three of these services let you rank anything, and I have ranked a few hundred items on Amazon and several dozen on NetFlix, and I’m not afraid to give a TiVo show a thumbs down or thumbs up. Really, people, TiVo is not judging you! If all you have on your Season Pass list is Queer As Folk, it will try to find things similiar, with the same actors, writers, producers, network, or whatever. Give it more choices, and it will give you better recommendations. Don’t take it personally. TiVo is not judging you.

The architecture of Usdan leads me to believe that it was modified to be in its present form. Specifically, I do not believe that the Boulevard and C-Store were originally as they are. I would guess that what is now the Boulevard originally served some other function, possibly incorporating features of the C-Store, and the area outside of the Boulevard was not in the original building design.

The nice glassed in Boulevard eating area appears to have been added after the fact, along with the C-Store, energy-efficient doors, and the fire sprinkler system. I’m not sure where I could go to see the plans for these buildings (for free), but perhaps the University Archives could help me out here. I might need to become friendly with whomever maintains that collection.

Alwina Bennett wants to turn the former bookstore into a game room. I disagree. I think the very big, nice place would be a great study lounge a la the Technology Library in the new green thing. Combine lots of tables and couches, a bunch of computers, some smaller rooms with white boards, and windows, and you have a nice quiet place to hang out and study. And what’s funny is that that room wasn’t even designed to be a quiet study lounge…more of a gathering and meeting place with study rooms and nooks, but the students quickly took it over and made it what they wanted — a quiet place to study. I think we need a few more nice big clean quiet rooms with plentiful desks, desk lamps, computers, and such. With the atrocity that is the new bookstore, it would be nice if we could at least transform the old bookstore site into something useful, instead of the current empty, debris-filled space that it is.

Speaking of the new green thing, I hear that otherwise bustling offices like Trisk, SSIS, and such are now pretty barren thanks to being hidden somewhere on the second or third floors of our great new building. Meanwhile, the women’s resource center has a pretty prominent location that generally seems empty and devoid of life. Oh, and everyone wants the conference rooms. Another lesson: groups need places to meet! Places with big round (or rectangular) tables, nice chairs, projecting screens, soundproofing…how did we overlook this in all the rest of our designs?

I want to do a profile for the newspaper of the new dorm…hopefully I can find out more about it BEFORE they build it, so we can fix any deficiencies we may find before the thing is, ya know, finished.

Here is a quick, long overdue update before I dash off to class. It concerns the continuing saga of my restfulness.

I decided to do another experiment last night – I was tired at 8pm, so I went to bed then, thinking that maybe I’d sleep my standard 9-12 hours and maybe for once wake up rested. Yeah, that didn’t work. I awoke at midnight, not awake enough to get any work done but not tired enough to fall back asleept. Not until about 4 am, and as a consequence I slept until noon (12 hrs.), woke up tired, and missed another Jerry Cohen class. Sigh, sigh, double sigh.

List of diseases I’ve ruled out, thanks to WebMD: chronic fatigue syndrome, mono. They recommend home tests – basically various exercises at various times before bed – that I really need to try. The problem I have is that I often get sleepy while doing exercise, causing me to stop, instead of getting reinvigorated like everyone else says they do…

One thing that does keep me active and awake is anything that requires both physical and mental activity relating to one task — it looks like carpentry is my thing (and hey, it worked for Jesus). If I can build a cabinet or a set or something every day at around 8pm, I should be set…

Anyway, consequences of sleeping through classes that are held at 1:00pm: dirty looks from the professor, missing papers, falling participation grade. Now, how do I convince Socolow to give me an A when I miss 2/3 of his classes? Sigh. Double sigh.

…pondering…

Eep! Class! Gotta run!

Newsweek put forth an interesting story, even if it does suggest huge problems without any real statistics to back them up. The antecdotes are informative and in general I found it a pretty good read.

Young and Depressed: Ten years ago this disease was for adults only. But as teen depression comes out of the closet, it’s getting easier to spot—and sufferers can hope for a brighter future.

The thing about the Firefly 2 hour pilot episode is, it’s really good. I mean, really really good. It establishes characters with a lot of depth, it gets you caring about every member of the crew, it has suspense and action without being excessive…so of course Fox pulled it, decided it wasn’t exciting enough for their network, and instead Firefly began its life with the somewhat disappointing retooled episode The Train Job. It’s a shame, and when they show the pilot as an “origins special” in January or December, I hope people watch it.

The photo gallery script has been broken for some time, so I’m transitioning everything over to my new photo site hosted at Brandeis. Also there: some never-before-seen galleries! Check it out!

Slightly old, but I finally got around to reading the article:
So what we have here is our top intelligence agency endorsing the past success of a peaceful, enforceable disarmament technique that our allies and the United Nations support, while our president and his Cabinet repeatedly belittle it as a sham.

Bush vs. the CIA

Talking to Sally about Buffy helped me to realize why I like some aspects of Judaism.

Willow visits Tara’s gravesite and leaves stones. She leaves stones because it is the Jewish tradition — flowers die. Stones are permanent, or as permanent as something can be.

The basis of so many of the Jewish customs is about being deliberate. About doing things and living life deliberately. I like that.

Deliberate \De*lib”er*ate\, v. i.
To take counsel with one’s self; to weigh the arguments for
and against a proposed course of action; to reflect; to
consider; to hesitate in deciding; — sometimes with on,
upon, about, concerning.

	You are Kermit! Though you’re technically the star, you’re pretty mellow and don’t mind letting others share the spotlight. You are also something of a dreamer.
Take the What Muppet Are You? Quiz!

I have them from time to time. And they come back again and again. And I don’t know the answers. I’ll post them here as they come to me.

BigQ 1: What is wealth? How is it generated?

BigQ 2: What is the definition of human? Will it last?

BigQ 3: Are our thoughts our own? Are the chemicals of the synapses to our benefit or detriment?

• There is no good depression. It’s not sexy. It’s not fun. It’s not the new rock and roll.

And also…

It’s strange to me. I walk around and watch these cute leetle goth children with their shirts about voices in their heads. They have this thinking “Self, we are super cool because we pretend to have voices in our head.” Or even better they think they actually do have voices: “Selves, we are gloriously mentally ill!”

From Hello, I take zoloft. I am so gloriously mentally ill! You will love me, yes?

I’ve done it again. I start reading Everything and I just can’t stop.

This is such a very, very good article.

From seventeen.com (Seventeen Magazine):

In the October issue of seventeen, we named the 50 coolest schools where girls can get the best college experience. From frat parties to professors’ involvement, from campus safety to great shopping, we’ve picked the best of the best. Read on for more information on each school.

Now, from InstaPundit:

“Seventeen” has ranked the 100 “coolest” colleges. Apparently the first 50 were worthy enough to be investigated. I guess they didn’t look too closely at numbers 51-100. I’m proud to say that my alma mater – Wabash College – made the list at number 76. Unfortunately the editors forgot to check and see that Wabash is one of only three colleges exclusively for men still left out there. Has been since 1832. I guess this is further proof that rankings don’t mean too much. Although given their criteria and the enriching experiences that women have had while visiting Wabash – I’m not too surprised.

Well, to be fair, Seventeen says it was looking at the “coolest schools where girls can get the best college experience.” It didn’t say “as a student.”

I’m happy to say that Brandeis was ranked 77 – right below Wabash. Not sure what that means…

Mr. Sullivan, in his article, “The imperialist canard,” demonstrates himself to be rather easily (or, perhaps, conveniently) fooled. There’s a very good reason that, “In the campaign, [Bush] was clearly less interventionist than Gore, asked for less defense spending and urged America to be a ‘humble nation.'”

He was lying.

— Roger Rueff

Salon Letters in response to Andrew Sullivan

87 percent say that while women are ridiculed and criticized for doing something bad, or unfavorable, men earn a ‘cool’ or ‘humorous’ image from … the same behavior.”

Before you write the study off as unvarnished feminist nonsense, consider Martha Stewart, Kathie Lee Gifford, and now Winona. Now think about Robert Downey Jr.

Is he adorable or what?

Justice, Interrupted
Why Winona Ryder will do time for O.J.’s crimes.

Lauren Weinstein of the Privacy Forum on thumbprint security for computers:

“What do you do when somebody’s biometric information is compromised?” he said. “Do you have them go out and get a new thumb? Getting a replacement thumb is expensive and painful.”

College Seeks Security in Thumbs by Wired News

We have an open-ended war on terror, and the “liberals” don’t like that one bit. The “conservatives” say we need to stop terror wherever it is, root it out and destroy it, poison it and gas it, etcetera, etcetera. The liberals like to think that we can have traditional wars with traditional congressional approval and traditional enemies and traditional victories.

As I am ought to do, I take a middle line. I do not in anyway like the “War on Terror” or the implications it brings. I don’t like the lack of goals and objectivies. I wonder if the war will ever end. I dislike the terminology of war when a war has always been traditionally defined as a conflict between two nations. This is not a “war,” and yet it is a war.

It was simple before. We had one enemy, or any common foe. We had the Soviets or the Communists or the Fascists. We had a simple word, and that is who we fought, and we did it by attacking their countries. Well, now we have the Terrorists, and they have no country, and we cannot declare war on a complete people because a few among them are evil. If we were to attack every terrorist country, we would need to attack most nations on earth. America, Britain, of course Ireland. Most of the Middle East, including Israel.

We can no longer think of war as a cut-and-dried affair of nation conflict. Nor can we expect to end terror through “nation building.” The best way to root out evil is through a multinational coalition. This is the perfect time to create renewed power for the United Nations. For us to recognize that there are certain types of “warfare” that are not tolerated, and for every country to decide that we won’t take it anymore — anywhere.

Some leaders in non-western countries see terrorism as a legitimate form of warfare, like guerilla tactics and other methods used by an underdog with no access to expensive materiél. I understand these concerns. But attacking non-combatents, no matter how much you hate their government’s ideology, is simply not tolerable.

Sure the capitalist system may be flawed or even terribly evil, I have days when I believe that too. But I do not choose on those days to demonstrate my dislike of a system by destroying the human beings who work within it. You can say there are no innocents, and it is true that no one is truly innocent, but if we can’t believe at least that children are not to be targets, then what can we believe?

It is so difficult to address international policy because for every point put forward there is a caveat, but there is one thing we must all agree on — attacks against civilians are dishonorable, and are not fit for the rules of war. When someone lays down their weapons and surrenders they are afforded certain human rights. When someone never picks up a gun in the first place they need to be entitled to much greater rights. And no matter how much we hate the terrorists, those we capture must have the same rights as all war criminals, if we are to think of this War on Terror as a real war and not just an idealogical debate.

Which is it, anyway? A real and legitimate attempt to stop terror everywhere, to create standards of combat, to remove some of the most distasteful aspects of conflict from our society? Or is it simply the same military-industrial-governmental “conspiracy” we always see, one that wants oil pipelines through Afghanistan and free trade worldwide? Perhaps we as a people need to decide for ourselves, and perhaps we need to set forth goals and limits, and then we can have a real war, a legitimate war, a (dare I say it) moral war.

A nice picture from when I visited Brandeis over the summer — Sally, iMac, and I at the Apple Store

In the killing fields of Kashmir, set amongst the snow-capped peaks and lush valleys of this disputed territory, he is forever cleaning up the mess: An insurgency that erupted in 1989 has claimed as many as 60,000 lives, and on some days the corpses arrive by the truckload.

Counting the corpses in Kashmir

09-25-02 01:23:44 AM Tairngire

Liberals will always want to change everything for a variety of reasons. Their approach is folly, they would fail in the same way that a sterile mutant would.

Conservatives will always want to keep everything exactly as it is, for a variety of reasons. Their approach is folly, they would fail in the same way a dinosaur would.

The true path doesn’t exist. As much as people believe otherwise, the only way a cell/person/community/nation/planet can survive is by keeping them in balance, always on the knife edge. Too liberal, and things are shaken so much that all the wisdom of the past is lost. Too conservative, and all wisdom that might be gained is ignored. The only way to success is balance. And the only way to balance is to have both sides constantly duking it out for whatever idea they believe is best.

FLAME ON!