This is different

The UF police department shot a student last week. I was immediately reminded of this, which happened during my first month as a student. As you hopefully don't remember, I took part in the ensuing protests, which I soon realized was an idiotic thing to do. Since then I've been wary of appearing to stand up for crazy jerks or people who just happen to have done crazy, jerky things.

The Sun and the Alligator have provided an overview of last week's incident. To make a long story short, the student had been threatening people and was getting violent, so the police shot him in the head with an assault rifle after other attempts to subdue him failed. I'm not going to pass judgment on this one for fear of coming up on the wrong side of public opinion. I just hope it gets resolved before it can tarnish the value of my yet-to-be-earned degree.

I went in for an eye exam on Monday. I had been scheduled for one over the summer, but I missed it due to my trip to Europe, so I was overdue. The last time I went, the doctor said I was slightly farsighted and wrote me a prescription for glasses in case I felt I would need them. I knew my vision could only get worse, so I wasn't looking forward to this visit.

Imagine my surprise when the doctor said that my farsightedness had corrected itself. Apparently that's possible at my age. Another crisis averted... for now.

For your viewing pleasure, here's the archetypal Academy Award-Winning movie trailer. (Via waxy.org)

I had no idea that our governor was such a jerk. Here's how Charlie Crist deals with atheists. (Via Pharyngula)

Enter a number, and Number Gossip will tell you some fun facts about it. (Via J-Walk Blog)

Kate's visit, part three

It was Tuesday, January 12. (I'm really falling behind here.) I went to work/school, and Kate met up with me for lunch. We had the infamous/not-really-infamous Krishna Lunch, served on the Plaza of the Americas outside my workplace, Peabody Hall. Fortunately, Kate liked the food.

After lunch, Kate sat in on my classes. First, there was Numerical Analysis (<sarcasm>fun!</sarcasm>), and later, Databases. Kate actually works with databases and stuff like that, so as the professor was giving a lecture on the basics of SQL, Kate told me that she could probably give the lecture herself. I wouldn't doubt it.

Tuesday evening was our Esperanto Club meeting in which we would introduce a real Esperanto speaker from an exotic land. I invited 100 people on Facebook, and only one showed up. I blame myself for not promoting the event more, but I didn't promote it very much because I didn't have enough time to reserve a room. So I blame myself for not reserving a room before winter break, although I'm not sure if that was possible, so maybe I shouldn't beat myself up over it. Anyway, the show went on, and we explained to the one guy there how Kate learned and had used Esperanto.

I think it was that night that Kate gave Andy and me a primer on the Russian alphabet. Andy was interested in learning Russian (or maybe just the alphabet, I'm not sure), so we went over the vowels and then the consonants. It took a while—there are a lot of them, and Andy and I were struggling to pronounce some of them. I thought it might be hard to learn a new alphabet, but surprisingly, in the weeks that have followed, I've been able to sort of pronounce Russian words that I see.

On Wednesday, Kate got ready in time to go with me to work and class. Wednesdays are kind of frantic for me this semester, so we grabbed a quick lunch at the KFC Express on campus. Kate didn't really like the food, but I could have guessed as much. I'm glad she tried it, anyway. After that, she sat in on my other classes, Software Engineering and Accounting.

We stayed on campus for dinner because Kate was interested in attending a lecture. We ate at Pollo Tropical at the Reitz Union, and she loved it, which made me happy. (Wikipedia has some bare facts on Pollo Tropical for those of you unfortunate enough not to be graced by its presence within a reasonable distance.) After that, we went to the presentation. A professor from UC Irvine talked about the history of criminal identification technologies, including the rise of fingerprinting and then DNA.

On Thursday, I had my weekly lunch with my sister. We eat at a different place each week, and this week, it was Moe's. She brought along her friend Nathalie, and I, of course, brought Kate. We didn't have much time, but Kate and my sister chatted it up.

Kate had been wanting to take an official tour. She had looked into it and said that there would be one starting at 2:00, so we hurried over to the Welcome Center after lunch. I was going to be late for Numerical Analysis, and I wasn't sure if they gave tours to non-prospective-students, but I thought we should give it a shot. When they asked about her potential relationship to the university, I just told them that she was a junior computer-science major at PBCC looking to transfer, and when asked why I was doing most of the talking for her, I just said her English wasn't very good (even though it is, I hasten to point out). We had to give her contact information, so I wrote a fake address, and we hurriedly parted ways: my class had just started, and her tour had just started.

Later, while I was at work, she said she had gotten lost from the tour group and would meet me at my Databases class. So she met me there, and afterward, we had a little bit of time to grab coffee (well, she grabbed coffee and I helped her drink it). After that, we went to the Gator Freethought meeting. Kate had asked about any student organizations she might be interested in, so I suggested Gator Freethought, which promotes science, skepticism, and critical thinking. The topic of the meeting was logical fallacies, which I thought was kind of interesting, but the discussion was pretty chaotic, so I wasn't sure how much of it Kate could follow.

So that was Thursday.

Back to the present for a moment. Today (well, yesterday, since I'm writing this after midnight) I found out that J.D. Salinger had died.

I first read The Catcher in the Rye in my freshman year of high school. It was influential on me, as I noted at the time:

(As a side note, my writing may seem unusually informal today. That's because I have to read The Catcher in the Rye for English, and it's written in very informal speech. It's a good book, if you really want to know. I was actually reading it today while I was waiting for about five hours for my sister to get off the lousy computer. I was that much into the darn book. I mean it.)

Ha ha. I didn't say "damn."

Anyway, The Catcher in the Rye instantly became one of my favorite books, and it's one of the few that I still reread with any regularity. In fact, I was just thinking of picking it up again the next time I go home, which will probably be soon. After recent re-readings, I've wondered whether I can still identify with Holden Caulfield. I'm older than him now, after all, and I'm in college. Who's to know? I guess I'll have to keep reading to find out.

The Onion has responded to the news in the style of The Catcher in the Rye: Bunch Of Phonies Mourn J.D. Salinger. It actually works well if you think about it.

New year, new beginnings

I finished my New Year's Day by watching the Gators dismantle Cincinnati in the Sugar Bowl. It was the last college game for quarterback Tim Tebow, whom I've mentioned here. People love him. There's even a site called Dear Tim Tebow that's collecting well-wishers' well wishes.

I like Tim Tebow because he's a good football player, but many people also like him due to his religious views and practices. He's very vocal about them, going so far as to cite Bible verses on his eye black. That the NCAA and a state university allow this constitutes an example of what can be called "Christian privilege." Atheist Revolution has more about Tim Tebow and Christian Privilege. It's written from a critical point of view, so the tone may surprise many Gator fans.

And on Saturday, I was fortunate enough to attend the wedding of my high-school friends Yamilee and Austin. Due to a mix-up, not many people actually showed up for the wedding, but the ceremony was very lovely and my sister, a bridesmaid, did a great job on her readings. (Aww.) It was a full Catholic Mass with a large proportion of non-Catholics in the audience, so they were standing when they were supposed to be kneeling and stuff like that.

Some friends I hadn't seen since high school were there, so I got to catch up with them at the reception. Haitian food was served (Yamilee is Haitian), and I tried some of it. Who knew goat could be so delicious? Oh yeah, and then there was dancing and stuff too, which I didn't partake in. I partook in the cake, though. Delicious cake.

From what I understand, Yamilee and Austin moved immediately after the wedding and now live where Austin has a job. Soon, they'll be joining the Peace Corps. So I probably won't see them for a while, but I'd like to if I can. And yeah, this is the first time I've ever been to a friend's wedding (as opposed to a relative's). I'm sure it will be the first of many... or, well, some.

Since then, I've started classes, but I'll catch you up on that later. Right now it's link time.

For your viewing pleasure: a color film of London from 1927. (Via The Presurfer)

Google's autocomplete suggestions give insight on the weird stuff that people search for. Slate held a contest to find the pair of queries that could be best classified as "more intelligent" and "less intelligent" based on Google's suggestions. And now there's Autocomplete Me, a blog devoted to showcasing bizarre suggestions that had presumably actually been used by real people.

Welcome to 2010

Happy New Year, and welcome to the Teens, or whatever we're going to call them. (Wikipedia says "Tens"?) I'd like to call 2010 "twenty ten," but I'll probably be inconsistent, at least until next year, when "twenty eleven" beats "two thousand eleven" in the syllable department.

Last night I had dinner at Olive Garden with Nick, Mike, TJ, and some of their other friends, and then I went to my friend Michelle's new apartment to ring in the new decade. I had hardly seen her since our high school days, so it was nice to catch up a little bit. There were only a few other people there, most of them also from high school, so that was nice too.

You know how you always count down to the new year, and then it doesn't feel any different? Well, this time, it did feel a little different for me. I felt a little older, a little more mature. Even though I'm twenty years old, this is the fourth decade I've lived in. How curious. I was going to say the fourth consecutive decade, but that's implied. Hopefully.

Speaking of which, some radio stations are finally going to have to make a tough decision that they've been putting off for a while. I'm talking about the ones that play your favorite hits from the '80s, '90s, and today. I remember hearing that phrase during the '90s and wondering what they would do in the 2000s. Turns out that they decided to keep the phrase, repurposing "today" to mean the 2000s. But now that we're in the Te(e)ns, are they going to say that "today" encompasses more than ten years?

I haven't really done anything today. I'll probably just chill at home and watch the Sugar Bowl.

January 1 is a day when important things happen, including new laws going into effect. Starting today, blasphemy is illegal in Ireland. Yes, blasphemy, a victimless "crime" for which people are increasingly rarely prosecuted in most industrialized nations.

In protest against this senseless law that fortunately doesn't apply to me, I was going to add some arguably blasphemous images to this post. I've decided not to because (a) I don't want to make it seem like I'm picking only on some religions, and (b) I would fear for my and my family's safety due to the past actions of idiot extremists of a certain religion. I feel like a coward. Hopefully someday I will have more courage.

Props, then, to the much braver folks behind blasphemy.ie, an Irish web site that has illegally posted some arguably blasphemous quotations, including this one from George Carlin:

Religion easily has the greatest bullshit story ever told. Think about it.

Religion has actually convinced people that there’s an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever 'til the end of time! But He loves you.

He loves you, and He needs money! He always needs money! He’s all-powerful, all-perfect, all-knowing, and all-wise, somehow just can’t handle money! Religion takes in billions of dollars, they pay no taxes, and they always need a little more. Now, talk about a good bullshit story. Holy Shit!

Here are all 25 blasphemous quotes. (Via Pharyngula)

Speaking of dangerous laws, many great works of literature and film should have entered the public domain in the United States today. Under the copyright law that existed in 1953, all works published during that year—including The Crucible, Fahrenheit 451, Disney's Peter Pan, the first issue of Playboy, and the first James Bond book—should have entered the public domain by January 1, 2010. Instead, newer laws have locked them up until 2049.

Duke Law's Center for the Study of the Public Domain has more info: What Could Have Been Entering the Public Domain on January 1, 2010? You may also be interested in reading about Why the Public Domain Matters.

Interestingly, Wikipedia says that the first issue of Playboy was undated, so it may already be in the public domain. That's currently the case for works that were published in the US without a copyright notice between 1923 and 1977. Does anyone want to look into the matter further?

Christmas 2009

So I guess they actually did spend twelve days celebrating Christmas back in the old days. That must have been fun. We've had three, pretty much. It started on Wednesday night when my grandparents came over and we had surf 'n' turf for dinner. We don't have steak a lot, and I'd only had lobster once before, but I can't remember where. It wasn't too long ago. The archives don't help, but they remind me that the dinner was quite bovine and homarine.

Also on Wednesday, my dad found an 1897 Liberty Head nickel in some change and gave it to me. I'd grade it as Very Good to Fine or thereabouts. Coin collecting is an expensive hobby unless you can scavenge through a lot of change.

After dinner, my sister and I watched The Nightmare Before Christmas, which we had taped (omg you guys still use vhs vcr video casette tapes? what the heck) from a recent airing on the Disney Channel. Surprisingly, there were only three commercial breaks, and the credits were left intact. In fact, I don't think anything was cut out from the film either. It was a Christmas miracle.

For Christmas Eve, we did the whole church thing and then went home and opened a few gifts. My dad got new cell phones for everybody. I'm evaluating mine and will let you know what I think about it later. Then we had another feast for dinner. It consisted of finger foods like wings, shrimp, and chips 'n' dips. What says "Merry Christmas" better than seven-layer dip? Maybe the desserts, but that's it.

And today, it's Christmas. The cell phone was my Big Present of the Year, but I also got some clothes and other things that are nice to have. Plus, I have more gifts coming in the mail from friends and family, so maybe we can stretch this Christmas out a little further. In a few hours, we'll have dinner, which is the same as our Thanksgiving dinner because it's too good to have just once a year.

And now, a special Christmas edition of Ask Jordon!

Shannon: Why exactly are you an atheist?

I didn't ignore you, Shannon! I got this question months ago and have been working on a response. The result is a new page, Why I Am an Atheist. You can also find if you click on... can anyone guess? Yes, Articles! Good job.

I don't have any Christmas-related links, so you'll have to settle for these secular links that are destroying Christmas.

A song whose lyrics consist of sampled movie and TV quotes: The Golden Age of Video. (Via waxy.org)

Here's another video with movie quotes: specifically, movie titles as spoken in the movies themselves. (Via waxy.org)

Exams are exciting

Busy times again. Yesterday was the last day of classes. Some professors decide to have their final exams on the last day instead of during exam week, so I had two exams yesterday. I had studied a lot for them the day before, so they weren't too hard. I already know that I got an A in Statistics, which I thought would be impossible.

It kind of puzzles me that I'm still having to take classes like Statistics that really have nothing to do with my major. I tell people who go to other universities the kinds of classes I'm taking, and they're also puzzled, which in turn makes me mad. I don't want anyone to think I'm getting a bad education. I think I've touched on this theme before, but I'm too lazy to find the link.

The professor of my Data Structures and Algorithms class (the most important class I'm taking) says they don't have time to teach us computer science and computer engineering majors everything, especially when it comes to programming languages. He suggests that we go off and learn some languages on our own. It's not a bad idea, but I'd like to learn more than one language in school.

Isn't it obvious why there's no time? It's because the university, or whoever tells them what they have to teach, insists that students have well-rounded college education. The Dutch sisters I met on the train from Venice to Zagreb this summer were puzzled by that idea. I could see their point. If I wanted to have a well-rounded education, I would have gone to high school. Oh, wait, I already did!

Sure, it would reflect well on me to learn programming languages by myself (as I actually have). And sure, it's not the worst thing in the world to write essays about the spice trade on the Indian Ocean during the Middle Ages and early modern period (as I also have). But I daresay that time spent doing the latter when I should be concentrating on the former is not time well spent. And they wonder why they can't teach us enough of what we need to know...

Anyway, I have an exam on Saturday and my last one on Tuesday. I'm not sure exactly when I'll be going home yet.

Joshua reports on abuse of authority and endorsement of religion at California public school. He's started a letter-writing campaign to stop the injustice. I've been too busy to write a letter, but I hope to get to that soon if it's still necessary.

And here's A Flowchart to Determine What Religion You Should Follow. (Via Pharyngula)

Hallowhatever

I'm kind of ambivalent about Halloween. On one hand, I like candy, but on the other hand, I don't like wearing costumes.

I never really have good ideas for costumes, anyway. Off the top of my head, I can remember that I've been a ghost, a nerd, a doctor, a Beatle, Fred Astaire, myself, and a dinosaur. I could explain some of those, but I don't really want to. The best costume was probably the dinosaur one from when I was little, but you can only pull that off at a certain age (especially because the costume was tiny).

I've always had pretty lame costume ideas, and then there was a time when I thought I was too old for trick-or-treating. For a few years, I would sit at home on Halloween night and hand out candy or just chill. One year, someone (possibly another kid who lived in my house??) started a rumor that I read a dictionary instead of trick-or-treating. Actually, I was watching a football game on TV, but I guess the truth was stranger than fiction. Better yet, that story made an appearance a few years in a row. So, yeah, I was a pretty happy child on Halloween.

I couldn't think of anything to be this year, but I figure it really doesn't matter as much as I get older. College students just wear costumes to make their wild Halloween parties more fun. I'm going to a non-wild party, so I feel I can get away with not wearing a costume. It's also a football party, this being a big game day, so I guess I could say I'm going as a football fan? In that case, I'm being myself for Halloween again.

After all, this isn't the first time I've watched a football game on Halloween. Really.

Readers of the Independent Florida Alligator may have noticed my name in the newspaper this week. I had a letter to the editor published on Thursday in which I pulled out and picked apart a previous editorial's passing claim that the words "one nation under God" cannot be considered broadly offensive because they're found in the Pledge of Allegiance. No follow-ups to my letter have been published, but the online version has attracted its share of vitriolically tangential double posts from pseudonymous capslockers.

I was pleased to see that my letter had been published and that some of my friends (and my boss) took notice of it. I had sent in an unsolicited column and at least one other letter to the editor in the past, both to no avail, so I didn't have high hopes that this one would be printed. But I knew I had to write it anyway. If I don't stand up for my rights, who will?

Finally, good things to know: 9 Ways Marketing Weasels Will Try to Manipulate You. (Via Get Rich Slowly)

Summer again

Well, hello there. I'm home, and there hasn't been much to report.

Friday night, my last night in Hume Hall, was pretty quiet. I basically spent it with my friend Andrea, who was as bored as I was. She made some food for us, but I got hungry later, as people are wont to do. That's when I found out that all of the dining halls, convenience stores, and restaurants on campus had closed early. We went to McDonald's, where there was a touch-screen game system presumably for the kids as they munch on their Happy Meals. After eating, we took a whack at a trivia game that was too hard for us, let alone some little McNugget-gobbling brats. It took us about a million tries to beat the high score, and we were very proud.

On Saturday, my dad came and helped me moved out. We spent the night at my aunt's house, and then on Sunday, we took the long way home. I got home Sunday night and, well, here I am.

I've been working online, and that's been pretty okay. As a webmaster, I do most of my work on the Internet, so it's been basically like going to work, except I don't have to walk there. That would be a long walk.

Also, I just found out today that I got all A's and B's in my classes. Awesome. Let's celebrate with an edition of Ask Jordon:

Carlos: When are you coming out of beta? Flickr already did.

Well, my friend Luke, since this design looks so modern and Web 2.0 (is that still modern?), and because it's always subject to change, I thought a "beta?" badge would be appropriate next to the logo until I have it the way I like it. The only thing I'm yet concerned about is the line spacing. Do you guys think there needs to be more space between the lines here? I'll have to check it out on Windows and see what looks okay.

Tomorrow is the National Day of Reason, which coincides with that National Day of Prayer thing. Americans United for Separation of Church and State explains why the National Day of Prayer is a bad idea.

Here are lots of crazy McDonald's menu items from around the world. Find out where you can get McSpaghetti.

Earth Hour was March 28. Here are some photos of cities around the world in the dark.

A sweet end

End-of-year things have been going on. Last Monday, I presided over the last Esperanto Club meeting of the year. Not a lot of people showed up, but I guess that can be expected since people had to study for exams and do more important end-of-year things. We had elections, but no one was challenged, so they were kind of pointless. Still, you've got to respect the democratic process.

Last Thursday, Get Carded had its year-end dinner at Bento Cafe, a hip Asian place. This year, they'd been awarding points to people for volunteering a certain number of hours at events. The member with the most points at the end of the year would get a gift card for the restaurant of their choice. I was the frontrunner all year, so Michael and Jehan, the guys in charge, already asked me what restaurant I wanted a gift card for. And on Thursday night, I was awarded Volunteer of the Year (defending my title from last year) with a gift card good for Chili's, Macaroni Grill, and a couple of other places whose names I can't be bothered to remember because I'm too lazy to take the gift card out of my wallet even though I could have taken it out and checked in the time it's taken me to write this.

Saturday night was a Gator Freethought party. I was only able to go to a few of their meetings this year due to scheduling conflicts, so I thought I'd make up for it by going to a party at the former president's house. It was fun; there were games, political debates, and s'mores. I wish I had gone to more of those parties.

Oh, and exams. My first exam was yesterday, a whole week after classes ended. I think I did well. My other two were today. In fact, the exams I expected to be harder were easier and the one I expected to be easier was harder. Is that ironic? It might be Alanis Morissette ironic, but I don't think it's really ironic.

For my discrete math class, we got to choose our own grade distribution (according to certain guidelines), so I took advantage of that by writing a program that would find the best grade distribution for me. I gave it a few possible values for my final exam grade and went for one of the distributions that weighed my final somewhat heavily but not as heavily as possible. It made getting an A pretty easy without the risk of getting a very bad grade if I somehow bombed the final. I shared my program with my classmates, and at least some of them used it, which was cool.

After that exam, which was my last, my roommate moved out, and I'm now left in a half-empty room till Saturday. But all is not lost. I planned a date with my new friend. We hadn't met for a while due to various things (mainly exams) getting in the way, but things worked out tonight. We went to Chop Stix, a pan-Asian place, for dinner, and it was delightful. I'd like to see her again before I go home, and I might.

And, well, that's basically it. I guess it's time to put this year to bed. I'll be moving out on Saturday, and I'll probably get home Sunday.

If world leaders were on Facebook, they would probably have a Facebook group for world leaders.

The Benny Hillifier makes any video sillier by substituting the audio with that sax tune from The Benny Hill Show.

You know you need to put your comic strip to bed when you reuse artwork and/or jokes from decades ago. Recently, Blondie and The Family Circus have been caught doing just that. (Via J-Walk Blog)

More things that have nothing to do with each other

Last time on The World of Stuff: I was looking for a way to notify readers of new blog posts by e-mail. In an update to the post, I mentioned a WordPress plugin called Subscribe2. At first I thought it wouldn't meet my needs, but I've figured out how to make it work. The plugin automatically generates the subscription/unsubscription form on a WordPress page. This is what I didn't like. But then I realized I could just copy the form manually and put it on the sidebar.

Subscribe2 is probably better than RSS-to-e-mail (or RSS-to-email) services because it can send out e-mails right after every post is posted. Plus, there's no third party involved to collect addresses and send out notifications. Just me with your e-mail addresses, and you can trust me. The only minor downside is that I'll get an e-mail for every post I write. That's not too much of a problem because I can just have Thunderbird delete them automatically. [Update Wed Dec 31, 2008 11:48 UTC -5: By default, a single message is sent with the recipients in the Bcc: field, and the admin's address in the To: field. If you set the number of recipients per e-mail to 1, each recipient's address will be in the To: field, and you won't get a copy of the notifications.] So anyway, you'll be able to subscribe by e-mail soon. Yay.

I've been to the movies twice since I've been home for the break. I saw Yes Man last week. It was actually pretty good — vintage Jim Carrey — and might be characterized by some as "cute." And yesterday I saw Valkyrie, the true story of Tom Cruise as a one-eyed Nazi who tries to kill Adolf Hitler. I had never heard of the actual story, but if it's anything like the movie, it's pretty interesting. Despite that you know the ending (because Hitler wasn't assassinated), there's still a good deal of suspense. Oh, and Terence Stamp is in both movies. Not that I knew who he was before IMDbing them.

I've had another what-the-heck moment. Actually, it happened a few months ago. There's a Norman Rockwell calendar on the fridge, featuring one picture each month from the prolific artist. Several of his earlier works are included, each with copyright notices like "Copyright 1917" or "Copyright 1921" along with the name of the alleged copyright holder. What's wrong with this picture? Nothing published before 1923 is still copyrighted in the United States. Plus, Bridgeman v. Corel sets down that faithful photographs of two-dimensional works that are in the public domain are themselves in the public domain. The copyright holder of Norman Rockwell's post-1922 works is claiming exclusive rights to art that belongs to everyone.

(Something I learned while I was looking that up: Only works created by humans are eligible for copyright. So paintings by animals and the computer-generated gobbledygook in spam e-mails are in the public domain. All right!)

Anyway, this isn't the first time that a company has tried to exercise control over works that are probably in the public domain. I mentioned seemingly recently the case of "Happy Birthday to You," which makes Time Warner millions each year. And remember that "This Land" video of Bush and Kerry from 2004 and how JibJab, the creators of the video, got sued by the copyright holder of "This Land Is Your Land"? In defending JibJab, the venerable Electronic Frontier Foundation discovered that the song has been in the public domain for decades, yet JibJab still had to pay up, I think.

Is there any whistleblowing blog that calls out corporations for claiming copyright over public domain works? I would like to see one if there is. But hopefully there aren't enough cases to warrant creating a whole blog.

'Tis the season: Patron Who Complained About Indiana Library Nativity Faces Retaliation. What was it doing there anyway?