News on the march

Yesterday I went to my friend Kim's graduation party. Actually it's more like my friend Mark's sister Kim's graduation party. I hadn't seen Mark in a while, so it was good to see him. He's grown out his hair and lost weight, so everyone's saying that he looks like me. I do like to think that I served as the inspiration for his hairstyle since it does look exactly like mine. He's growing sideburns as well. Maybe I'm starting a trend!

Ever since I'd upgraded Ubuntu to version 8.04, I've encountered a problem with a certain font in Firefox. When the default sans-serif font (DejaVu Sans) is in a justified paragraph, the lowercase letter "f" overlaps with the letters around it, making words like "office" annoying to read. It's only for justified paragraphs, and only with that font. I should have realized sooner that the solution is to change Firefox's default sans-serif font. Bitstream Vera Sans is practically identical, except that it doesn't suffer that problem. Just thought I'd throw that out there for anyone else who may be experiencing the problem.

News out of Eugene, Oregon: On Friday, a peaceful demonstration against pesticides turned ugly when a protester was subdued and tasered. It started when a University of Oregon student wearing an exterminator suit was spraying water at his surroundings and asking people if they'd like to be sprayed with poison. A plainclothes police officer who was driving by told him to stay off the street, so walked out of the street to sit down. As he was sitting, police officers allegedly dragged him away by his hair. They tasered him at least twice. Two others were arrested for trying to stop the police officers' actions. The young man and one of the others have concussions. The reasons for his arrest are ambiguous.

Now, Crazy People for Wild Places, a student group at the university, is trying to get the protesters' charges dropped. My friend Luke is friends with some of the protesters who were present. He calls the actions "politically motivated" and "uncalled for," and he's helping to get the word out by starting a web site for the CPWP.

In my opinion, this all really boils down to one issue: Is saying that you're spraying poison the same as yelling fire in a crowded theater, or should the context matter? After all, my parents always said, "It's not what you say, it's how you say it." This young man was dressed as an exterminator at an anti-pesticide rally. It would seem to me that poison would be the last thing he'd want to be spraying on a city street, and my gut reaction is that the police took their ever-expanding authority too far. Power corrupts, my friends. This I have learned. Even if they police are legally right, I believe they're morally wrong.

Once again, here's the link for Crazy People for Wild Places, and if you're in the greater Eugene area, check out the list of their upcoming events and media appearances.

[Update Tue Jun 3, 2008 19:50 UTC -5: Here's a video that features eyewitness testimonies and footage of the incidents.]

Okay, now this is pretty ridiculous. You all know Digg, right? It's a social bookmarking site. You bookmark a site with Digg, and other Digg users can comment on the page and vote it up and so on and so on. Okay, so Wikileaks posted a copy of Kappa Sigma Fraternity's secret book of secret rituals, and one person Dugg it. But it was enough for Kappa Sigma's lawyers to send Digg a takedown notice because they were linking to a page that was linking to the copyrighted material.

Incidentally, I know a guy who joined that fraternity. He wanted to show me what they did to his dorm room right after he was initiated. They completely trashed it -- mattress on the floor, flour in the dresser drawers, papers everywhere, posters torn down, tiny objects on the floor that you'd have to pick up individually because they'd break the vacuum, etc. -- and left him to clean it up himself. They also marked the place with "ΚΣ" and the initials of the secret motto. It was about 3 in the morning when he showed me, and he was drunk and still working on cleaning everything up then.

On to lighter topics: How about Office Space recut as a thriller? Watch the fake trailer. There are a lot of crappy recut trailers, but this one's pretty good. I promise.

And finally, some Intricate and Realistic Lego Creations. My favorite is the Lego portrait of The Beatles from the Sgt. Pepper album. It's very well done. I wonder where they got the idea...