AgPerson

It has gotten to the point where I would rather not see or hang around with some of the people on my hall. And these are nice people, but their priorities are so out of sync with mine. The same people who were Simpsons-obsessed and reference-happy and trivia-full and funny are now reduced to a group who spends all of their time in one of three pursuits — throwing things in the hallways, playing computer games, and playing poker. The poker is a constant daily thing, for hours each evening, and they are deadly serious about it. No noise, no superfluous conversation, no outside help or influence or commentary. Break the rule and you get a harsh reprimand. Not much fun to be around. Luckily, the year is almost over, and my so-called mates will be replaced next year by a new set of nice people, with different interests, and we can try again. Meanwhile, I still maintain that Kelson is a completely awesome person. And I’m amazed at the sheer variety of people with whom he can get along. Scary. Perhaps he really is an alien…

Finally, some new pictures. Despite the camera being somewhat broken (the right flapper doesn’t work, meaning no changing of settings) it is still taking nice pictures. Next digital cam I ger will definetally be another Olympus. But this one still has some life in it.

But without further ado:

• A Friday Night in Cable (9 pictures)
  
• Rocky Horror Picture Show (17 Pictures, Rated R)

Today was a musical day. And I know I’m violating copyrights and I have never done this before but I just need to express myself through the songs. Well, one of them. The one that you can’t actually go out and buy anywhere.

So anyway it starts off with a boring LGLS section, then some fencing. Then it gets fun. We have our last official softball game, and it is against BEMCo, the other “loser” team, and it has just started raining…

Luckily there were no injuries and the game itself was quite fun. We did some of our best play of the short-lived season, and this in the rain and mud. And then in the seventh and final inning they somehow blew up back to the stone age. Which was okay, but somewhat saddening. I hit some good hits, made a few good catches, didn’t make any good throws, but it was really fun, most fun game I’ve played, and I wish it all wasn’t over.

I was humming Anthony Stewart Head’s LA In the Rain the whole time.

Tonight I LARPed, or micro-LARPed, or whatever, meaning my first experience with Live Action Role Playing. I was an alien. But they’re always big on keeping a lot of the story secret so that people who haven’t played can play in the future, so that is basically what I’ll say. I was an alien, and it was fun, but it wasn’t really like the big involved three day LARPs, so I dunno. I’d do it again, but I need to find out what a real LARP is before I commit myself to becoming a total nerd.

Oh, yeah. The music for the LARP was something from Forrest Gump, or something.

After the LARP I went into the room of gamers before heading to the library for some late night study time. In the middle of our James Bond knock-off game (which was somewhat fun), it started snowing, and I mean that beautiful snow you see in the movies, not normal snow, which can range from icky to painful. Beautiful snow. And I, in my shorts and t-shirt, went out and basked in in for a minute before hurrying back to the game. The music? Why, Christophe Beck’s amazing Magic Snow Music from the Buffy episode Amends. Here is where I break my rule and post material online. This is the song. It is beautiful, doubly so if you’ve seen the episode. LISTEN!!! I just wish I had it in a better quality rip.

Wait! I left one thing out! A late dinner with JacobW, with an appearance by Edward. Ah, good old-fashion one-on-one conversation. The music? Screaming Infidelities, by Dashboard Confessional. Only because Jacob recently mentioned it on his blog. And I found out tonight that another of his pursuits is mixing techno music. He is so cool. 😛 Oh, and extra congrats on the new Hillel Theater Group board presidency. Go Jacob! 😀

While I doubt any of you reading will understand the unique culture and style of the Everything community (not as a down on you, but just because it is strange to the outsider), these sentiments are slight echoes of things I’ve had to deal with, and very enlightening:

Why noding about your personal life can be a bad idea (idea) by Morgon77
Fri Sep 8 2000 at 17:46:58 UTC

Honesty regarding one’s self can be very good, but only if you can detach yourself from it.

Having been in the internet atmosphere for several years now, and having experienced the sudden silence that seems to fall in bbs rooms whenever anything personal or idealogically beautiful goes from my brain to the screen, I have to say that true, open honesty about anything on the net is an open invitation to have your heart torn out.

Because the internet is merely words on a screen, many people are incapable of regarding what they see in the same context as, say, people’s feelings. You become a part of the entertainment, rather than a living soul.

Is this expression worth the risk? Personally, I think so, and have never held back from self expression. But I’ve also learned to stop caring or attatching too much importance to what other people think. That’s far too dangerous anywhere in life, but especially on the ‘net.

http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=739462

Read and learn is more like it.

Friends, let me introduce you to the latest phenomenon to sweep the Internet — Television Without Pity (www.televisionwithoutpity.com), or TWoP as it is known by legions of fans. Television Without Pity (motto: spare the snark, spoil the networks) is a Web site that recaps just about every minute of the most popular shows on television. With a sarcasm-loving staff of recappers, most in their mid 20s and early 30s, the site has a core audience of young adults who have a smirking love/hate relationship with television. As site co-creator Sarah Bunting describes it, “TWoP is for people who are watching TV and hating themselves for it.”

But, in typical fashion, my dad cannot grasp why anyone could find that site appealing. And I love him for it! 🙂

This will be printed in this week’s Justice, but since they don’t yet have their new site online, I figured I might as well post it here. (Yeah, I know, I could put it in my essays page, and I will later, but this way it gets more exposure)

If the Supreme Court changes the rules, Brandeis must follow suit.
by Daniel Silverman

In 1995 the US Supreme Court ruled that public school students who take part in athletics may be randomly screened for drugs by the school district. The case centered on the town of Vernonia, Oregon, whose public high school was witness to what authorities called a “substantial drug problem,” a problem that athletes were allegedly at the center of.

Fast forward seven years, and move from the football field to the choir room — that is where we are today. It seems very likely after hearing arguments on March 19th that the Supreme Court will substantially broaden its previous ruling, allowing school districts to randomly screen any student who “voluntarily” takes part in any extracurricular activity, such as student government, band, theater, quiz bowl, or even the Future Homemakers of America.

Public schools must, “[try] to train and raise these young people to be responsible adults,” Justice Antonin Scalia was quoted as saying in the New York Times. Part of responsibility is understanding government and the limits thereof. The Supreme Court has previously ruled that any federally mandated drug tests violate a citizen’s fourth amendment right against unreasonable searches. Doesn’t that rule apply in this case? Not according to Scalia, who does not find the provision to hold when applied to minors, i.e. “non-citizens.”

“So long as you have a bunch of druggies who are orderly in class, the school can take no action. That’s what you want us to rule?” Scalia asked the ACLU attorney pointedly. The American system of justice is based on a notion of trust. That is why we do not live in a totalitarian police state, that is why we are given privacy. The government must trust us to know what is best for ourselves, and must only intervene when the danger is to the greater society. So my answer, Justice Scalia, is yes.

If the Supreme Court rules, as it is predicted to do, that any student who takes part in an extracurricular activity may be subjected to drug tests, then the Brandeis admissions policy must be changed. If a student chooses to fight this gross infringement of rights by refusing to take part in extracurricular activities, she should be given no lesser status in terms of admissions then a student who is president of five high school clubs.

Justice Kennedy posed to the ACLU lawyer a hypothetical question of whether a school district could have two schools, one a “druggie school” with no testing and another clean school where testing takes place. “No parent would send a child to [the druggie school],” he said, “except maybe your client,” referring to the high school senior, now a Dartmouth student, who brought the suit.

It is very nice and productive when the Supreme Court publicly disparages a teenager who tries to bring a constitutional issue to light. It shows just what our highest court thinks of young people, and it shows, perhaps, how low our country has sunk in terms of civil liberties.

It also shows clearly why Brandeis University, if we are to take back our mantle as advocate for social justice, must fight this turn of events, starting with our admissions policy. Sure a position seen by some as “pro-drugs” might be considered unpopular, but when have we ever let that stop us?

Except at the New York Times. Goody!

“Everything is relative,” said Dr. Donald Jasinksi, a professor of medicine at the Johns Hopkins medical school and director of the Center for Chemical Dependence at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center. “Does it destroy as many lives as alcohol? No. Does it kill as many people as cigarettes? No. Does it have as many deaths associated with it as aspirin overdose? No.”

However, the article also mentions one important fact that I had no knowledge of before:

While a majority of people seem to be able to quit, there appears to be a small segment of the population — some 10 to 14 percent — that can become strongly dependent on the drug.

Hmm. Good to know. Would have been nice to know it earlier. I really wish I could find a good source of NON-BIASED marijuana information, discussing the goods and bads, long and short term effects, without biasing those findings based on ANY political agenda. But I’m probably just not looking hard enough.

http://college3.nytimes.com/guests/articles/2002/01/29/897572.xml

I went to post an entry, got about five pages into it and had a computer crash, rewrote the whole thing in eight segments, and then upgraded the desktop to Mac OS X 10.1.4, which then killed that machine, and I guess MySQL didn’t actually write the entries to disk, or something odd…Anyone know how to recover MySQL data that might not have made it into the DB? Anyway, more to come when I re-write my re-write, again. Soon.

Well, as far as days go all is fine, but in terms of computers…

Okay, the deal is that by Tuesday I have to have the new myBrandeis look up. But just recently we found a bunch of bugs in the Netscape 4 rendering of the page, which means lots of overtime for me. So how does one do this sort of thing? Why, from a computer, of course! So I have three, count ’em, three computers. A PC for testing the design in Windows on Netscape, IE, and Opera, my Mac desktop, and my Mac laptop. Well, now I have one. The PC. The laptop mysteriously died, and Apple is making me send it back, again, for the third time, to check it out.

The C-Store is out of all water but Brandeis water, which is terrible, and the water in the pipes here is even worse, so I did something I’ve never done before, I bought a Coke. And then I spilled said Coke all over my desktop’s keyboard. And now nothing works there…

So my desktop is temporarily fried, my laptop is quite dead, and this PC is not the ideal working environment, not to mention that the loudness of the keyboard keeps my roommate awake, and isn’t very nice. So I guess I’ll go to bed now, and tomorrow perhaps spend the day in the Feldberg computer cluster trying to get this darn site finished. Sigh.

Okay, I just watched the trailers for Star Wars: Episode II on Apple’s site and, although a lot of the dialogue is spotty, I have much higher hopes for this movie then the last one. And no Jar-Jar to be seen anywhere, which is a major plus! I just remember back in the interviews for the video release when George Lucas pontificated about computer graphics as one tool that can only supplement a good story, not substitute for one. And then I look at ep 2, and gee if there are not CG effects in every single scene. He just can’t resist every opportunity to make pretty computer stuff, and I really hope that it doesn’t happen at the cost of the story, as it did in the last movie.

Read no further if you don’t want to hear what my take is on the end of this season’s Buffy. You could consider it spoilers, if I knew what it was, but I don’t. But I think I’m right.

1) The Legion of Dim is doing something big. I don’t know what, but it will be incredibly impossibly hackneyed as ever, and the gang will have to stop them from gaining world domination.
2) Tara will get caught in the crossfire. Yes, I am predicting that my favoriteist character is going to die tragically, and I have a feeling its really going to annoy me.
3) Willow, in retaliation, will go back to her magicky ways and launch a counter-offensive, and I have had a spoiler on how it goes down, and I’ll just say it’ll be quite cool, but very painful for the LoD.
4) However, there will have to be grave consequences for Willow coming back on magic. This I’m not sure about. Are they going to continue to go with the pointless addiction storyline? Or retcon a better explanation? I dunno, but I think Will will end up in the hospital one way or another.
5) The Xanya things confuses me – will Anya become a vengence demon again? I don’t think so, but she will try to inflict some terrible vengence on Xander, then she’ll end up hurting him just as he’s apologizing and confessing his true love and she’ll be all sad. He won’t die, but she’ll find it hard to forgive herself, at least until next season.

So those are my predictions. If I’m remotely closs, maybe I’ll have to go into entertainment writing. Won’t that be a sad day…

The numbers are a bit hard to grok, but it looks like the Brandeis campus is worth something around US$ 130,000,000.

I got back here Sunday evening. When I flew in at seven the sun was still up, and I was able to see Boston from the air during the day for the first time. It was cool, would have been cooler if I’d had a window seat. To get on the plane and jump four hours (three time zones plus daylight savings) I had to wake up very early, but I went to bed really late. I got a max of 4 hours of sleep, then I slept on the first leg of the plane flight, but for no more then 2 hours. I got to school and wasn’t tired, I finally went to sleep at 4AM and woke up in time for class at ten. I got tired again in the afternoon but, after lying down for a bit on my bed and watching the conclusion of The Prime Gig I had come back to life and was able to finish the day. I went to bed Monday night at two, and slept in until two the next afternoon, missing two classes, being somewhat upset, but oddly feeling refreshed. This is not good, my sleeping schedule is very confused.

So tonight…err…last night, I decided to do better. But at midnight I wasn’t tired and I was getting a lot done on myBrandeis. At one, then at two I was not tired. So around this time I decided to turn off all the lights and meditate on my bed. Just as I was centering my leg cramped. Alas, it was not to be. I sprung up, and meditation ended quite abruptly.

At this point I had a strange longing to hear Anthony Stewart Head sing That Town In the Rain. Pulling out my iPod I called up the song, and, to the depressing words of Los Angeles in Spring I looked out the window and realized that the rain was in fact real, here, and now. So I went for a walk.

I wandered. No place in mind, just started walking. Eventually I ended up at the new student center, still under construction. A bit later, on the other side, I ended up…well, I’ll leave out this next bit for legal reasons.

The new student center cannot be seen from the inside because it is a dangerous construction area that is fenced off. Luckily, there are blueprints on public display occasionally. So lets just say that I looked at the blueprints. Yeah…

So I checked out all four floors of the blueprints and I realized that the place is incredibly cool, and I can’t wait for it to open. The soft rain outside was a perfect complement to my calm, peaceful mood as I toured the blueprints and checked out the various rooms. The theater looks awesome, with big ceilings for the drop curtains or whatever they’re called and a complete tech booth in the back. There is plenty of office space, but I was unable to locate anything that resembled a bathroom.

Leaving behind the very cool blueprints, I trudged back to my room, to find out that the time was 3:15 and I still wasn’t tired!!!. What does one do? I’d already watched an episode of Farscape, so no more TV was needed…

Brandeis must love my log sheets for my Web Services work. Three hours: 3:15AM – 6:15AM. Heh. But I got some stuff cleaned up and am getting more ready to launch the new site design, so all is good. 🙂

At the most basic level, being plugged-in means becoming invested in the creation of the show, rather than simply a passive recipient. (It might also mean becoming an obsessed nerd, but then, powerful medicines always have side effects.)
http://slate.msn.com/?id=2063235

“As we leave the moon at Taurus-Littrow, we leave as we came and, God willing, as we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind. God speed the crew of Apollo 17.” – Gene Cernan

Why is no one interesting in space travel any more? What is all this about “practicality?” Politics? We last visited in 1972, right when we were getting good at it. It saddens me.

Short version, cause my ranting mood is not occurring in all its glory presently:

America exists as a delicate balance of two forces (and I’m taking this from Tocqueville here): equality and liberty. The trick is the even application of equality for all people (socialism) and the safeguarding of fundamental freedoms (libertarianism, capitalism) that we hold dear. Either one by itself is morally wrong – socialism with its restrictions on freedom and unbridled greed with its decimation of the fabric of society (eg, our living environment).

But can we blame the massive corporations for the ills of our markets? I used to say yes, and say it strongly, but now my opinion is changing. Seeing AOL/Time Warner in financial trouble, seeing Microsoft struggle to gain staying power in diverse markets, watching Enron collapse, I realize that corporations are not the pure evil. Yes, what they do for the sake of profit is often morally bankrupt according to my set of morals, but it is certainly not bad according to theirs. Corporations rise and fall based on profit. Based on crushing competition. Based on advantage, mostly short-term, sometimes long-term. We have created these beasts. We, as a society, have made them, and we are responsible for them.

Having to take Microsoft to federal court to stop their stifling of innovation is sad. Why? Because we are applying laws of trusts that were put on the books 100 years ago. We’re trying to shoehorn odd, outdated legislation into new arenas of global business. We, as a society, have to legislate, through our government bodies, to make it clear when consolidation and monopolization is good and when it is bad. I often see it as bad, but not always. I think it makes more sense, if managed correctly, to have only one set of water pipes going to my house, not three, from three different companies. So the water company is a state-run monopoly. We make these decisions all the time, or at least we used to. Now it is the businesses that make the decisions for us, because we have created a system in which they are given the most power over our supposed democracy. But again, is it their fault for embracing any competitive advantage they can? No. It is the system we’ve made.

The reason for my talking about this now is because I’ve been given the opportunity to potentially do some kind of internship for Vivendi/Universal, one of the big media companies for which I have in the past stated my disgust. Could I justify a job with an evil, anti-choice corporation? Is this any way to justify it? I still lead towards “no.” Even believing that corporations and expansion and consolidation and monopolization are tactics that are not in and of themselves bad, can I morally support a company that I consider morally bankrupt? What if I am working in a role that has no relation to the ongoing legal disputes over online music content? What about the fact that most of that war has been fought, and won, by the Big 5, and the independents on the web are dead anyway? Because my logic could be similar to that of MP3.com, which eventually, seeing that it had lost, did what any good business would do – found an exit strategy; sold out to Vivendi, keeping the company alive, even if it meant that its independent (greedy, money-grubbing, corporate) spirit would die off, absorbed into a larger corporation.

When you think about it, any major corporation could by these standards be considered “evil.” Any company that exports labor to cheap lesser-developed nations is doing something morally wrong. But something that is keeping it in business. Everyone who works today must acknowledge that they are but one cog, one tooth in one cog, of one wheel, in one vast machine. And if everyone else can work understanding that some part of their company or a company it works with, owns, supports, subsidizes, lobbies, controls, or does business with, is evil, then why can’t I?

Wow, that episode of 24 was entirely predictable. Sigh.

Most buildings and many outdoor areas at UCSD were wired for 802.11b. FIrst off, UCSD would be San Diego, not, as some television shows would have you believe, Sunnydale. Second, it is a campus I’ve visited a few times, as it was one of my potential college choices. I must say that in some areas they really have it together. Food services is one, as is their well-stocked bookstore. Their first-run movie screenings at $2 a ticket are another cool feature, as well as their bus service. All of these things are on the student union/student activites side of things, so I’m going to have to look into how to best influence those systems when I get back to Brandeis. I think I might want to see how hard it would be to expand the reach of the Student Services Bureau (and see how that organization works in the meantime). Also, Student Events might need some revamping as well. Dunno. Have to see how the existing system works.

Where was I? Oh, yes, wireless. Almost the entire campus was blanketed in an 802.11b (AirPort) wireless networks. Gateways in every building and, I have to assume, myriad signal repeaters, made connecting from the grass, the bookstore, or the cafeteria incredibly easy. And the whole experience was quite cool. Now that I’ve experienced it first-hand I am much more anxious to get such a project going at Brandeis. Cause its really cool. And useful!

What else? UCSD has political parties, which is kinda funny. But it does seem like a good way to get more influence. You can vote Action and perhaps elect their whole slate to Associated Students (AS) office, then they are in definite position to make some real reforms in whatever direction it is that you want. But they also have stickers, posters, shirts, etc., meaning that these AS campaigns are being funded, and I wonder by whom. At Deis we have a strict clean-elections policy, with no money spent whatsoever, and limited resources provided to all candidates by the student union. How are they getting T-Shirts? Do they have corporate or community backers who want certain reforms? Dunno, but something to check into further, especially with regard to their union constitution.

Courtesy of the Onion:
Cancer: (June 22—July 22)
There are a million reasons you shouldn’t give up hope of ever finding love. None of them, however, are very good.

3:18 pm EST – Logan Airport
I’m laying on the ground near the unused check-in desk, taking advantage of the only working power outlet I’ve been able to find in order to watch some highlights from Moulin Rouge on my laptop, which was returned from the factory (unrepaired, at my request) just in the nic of time, namely 30 minutes before my bus left.

The new deal is that one goes through the metal detector and, if it doesn’t go off, you’re cool, but if it does, they “wand” you. I’ve determined that 90% of alarms are due to metal in shoes, and about half of those are because the person is wearing a toe ring, the other half is because of metal in the shoe itself. Occasionally the under-wire of a bra upsets it. Sometimes its a hand ring. I can only wonder what happens when people choose to wear rings in other — perhaps less accessible — locations.

9:48 pm EST – Midway Airport
I don’t think I’ve ever seen Chicago in the daytime. I mean, all I’ve ever seen of it is out of the plane windows and the terminal windows, and from a plane cities look pretty much the same, and from the terminal all I see is whizzing cars. Anyway, I’m in the middle of a movie called Magnolia, and its very, very interesting. The use of music is for some reason very effective. I think because the mood of the music is often different then the mood I feel from watching what is onscreen, and that causes me to reevaluate what I am seeing and change my perspective. Its kinda cool, getting music that doesn’t seem to fit, and that reinterpreting the scene so that it matches the music. I’m about half way through the (very long) movie, and I still have no idea what’s going on, but its very interesting. I get the feeling that everything will link up in an interesting way.

12:32 pm EST – Somewhere In the Air
Okay, I’ve just finished Magnolia, and it was fucking awesome. I can’t remember if I ever posted a diatribe on language, and I don’t want to get into it now, because I have more important things, but basically it boils down to: I like to know as many words as possible, and use them when it is warranted. “Foul language” is appropriate, to me, when you want to put emphasis or impact on a statement. I could go into a lot about English syntax and expression, but I won’t, cause I’m not a linguist. Moving on.

Fucking awesome movie. I’m still processing it, and I have to definitely sit through it again before I can offer good coherant thoughts, but wow. The computer battery is going to die any minute, and I’m going to try to sleep, but let me try to describe what I’m feeling right now.

Pain, doubt, fear. Hope. Fate. It was like a Vonnegut book without Kilgorne Trout. It was like a Dennis Miller rant with poignancy. It was like…I don’t know, it was like a diary entry of mine, but with a point. And really long. Really, really long. But I was totally engrossed for the whole three hours. And the music. Wow.

Okay, I’m being incoherent, so I’ll stop while I’m already behind. But its a movie about life, about the past, and about dealing with mistakes. And about finding ones own place in the world. And about being open to all people, because everyone is flawed, and everyone is a special case.

And its about keeping pressure away from kids. There is a time for pressure, and it is not childhood. Pressure and pain and hurt on kids really screws you up as an adult. So don’t do it. Just don’t do it. A parent’s job is to shield their kid. Keep them safe. Please.