Category - In the News

It's been a week since my 1,000th post, but all is not quiet. I just like to rest on my laurels.

I went home for the weekend. My friends Nick and Cristi were having a Halloween party on Friday night, and I couldn't figure out what I should be. At the eleventh hour, I had an idea.

In seventh grade, Nick and I (and our friend Sean) dressed as (three of) the Beatles. We had light brown suits and black turtlenecks, which (I think) were supposed to be reminiscent of the Beatles' Shea Stadium garb. We had cheesy wigs too. It was pretty funny.

So I dug through my old stuff and found the original coat and shirt (not the wig, alas, but my hair was long enough that I wouldn't need it). It was a blast from the past... from the past. Oh, and the party was cool too. I spent the rest of the weekend mainly hanging out with Mike, Nick, and TJ. I wish I could have stayed longer, but Thanksgiving is just around the corner.

Okay, who isn't sick of hearing about the election? Election Day is today, and I voted today. Yay democracy.

No, I didn't vote early. I made the time to do it today, and there was hardly a wait at all... probably because everyone else voted early. It was smart of Obama to push early voting; clearly he knows that some of his strongest supporters are college students who are usually too lazy to go to the polls. (At least, that's what I think the rationale was. A friend told me today that Obama was tacitly telling people to vote twice. What the heck?)

Obama has been leading by a significant margin in all the national polls, so it looks like he's going to win. If he does, I will be happy.

Deletionpedia is an archive of articles that have been deleted from Wikipedia.

Grapes with an EULA (that is, an End-User License Agreement, like the one you agree to when you install some software).

Do you hate prunes? I Hate Prunes.

There are three of us working in the IT Support room in the Dean of Students Office. One is me, one is my friend Mark, and the other is Laila, the graphic designer. Her name is pronounced like Lila, but it hasn't stopped the song "Layla" from getting into my head whenever I go to work.

We're halfway through the fall semester. More than halfway, I guess. But in any case, it's been a while, and I don't think I've yet met anyone I really fancy. (This term is British but appropriate.) It makes me wonder how people move somewhere and boom, they're dating someone. Just like that. Boom. Like a cannon. I guess it's because they go out and do things, and I don't. I have resolved to fix this problem. I wanted to go out on Friday night, but everyone is going to the homecoming pep rally, which I have already elected not to go to. I don't want to pay money to see a band I don't like that much and a comedian I've never heard of.

"omg jordan," you say, spelling my name wrong, "u dont like steve miler band????" To which I reply, you don't like Jon Reep or whoever he is? Game, set, match. UCF's homecoming will have bands (as in, multiple bands) that college students (and I) like, and it's free. FSU had Stephen Colbert at their homecoming a few years ago. Who doesn't like Stephen Colbert? Answer: no one. I would pay dozens of dollars to see him.

Anyway, I solemnly resolve to go out and do something, preferably with some people, once a week or at some other interval. Or something like that. I guess I should just ask my friends or acquaintances where they go and ask to tag along. Except this week, when everyone will be going to the lame pep rally that's probably already sold out.

I listen to music with Rhythmbox, and it rox my sox. One relatively recent update added the ability to play tracks without any silence in between, but I was still getting a gap. I finally found the solution, which I'll post here in case other people don't find it obvious. You have to go to the Preferences, click the Playback tab, and select "Use crossfading backend." Set the crossfade duration to 0.0 seconds and check the option to crossfade between songs on the same album. Restart the program, and you're good to go. This makes listening to many albums (including Abbey Road and The Dark Side of the Moon, two of my favorites) much more enjoyable. (As an added bonus or annoyance, tracks fade out or fade in when you pause or unpause them, respectively! I choose to view this as a fun feature.)

This probably would have been useful a few months ago: Stormpulse provides information about, and maps of, active hurricanes.

Here's the answer to the question everyone has been asking: Is Barack Obama Muslin?

Yeah, more political stuff. Here's a video debunking some lies from John McCain's campaign ads.

Psst... go here and look at that number!

I've been busy with my new webmaster job. I started it on Monday, and it's been pretty nice. It's pretty easy so far, and I like it. If I ever get stuck on something, I can talk to my friend Mark, who works there as well. He's already been showing me the ropes quite a bit.

I've also been busy promoting my Esperanto club's first event, which I mentioned in my last post. That's taking a lot of my time. We had an executive meeting last night where we went over the presentation and some ways to promote it. My ultimate goal is for us to be featured in the main student newspaper before our event. That way we could get the word out to tens of thousands of people.

I hardly get any Ask Jordon questions anymore.

diana: why i am lefty?

This one comes from an IP address in Pakistan. But anyway, I have a whole book about this subject since I did a psychology paper on it in high school. It's The Left-Hander Syndrome by Stanley Coren, and it's quite revealing about why people are left-handed. I forget now, but I think he said it had in part to do with early brain trauma like a stressful birth. That's the book where he advances his controversial finding that left-handers die nine years earlier on average than their right-handed counterparts.

All political links today. Less than a month till the election, though.

A while back I blogged about Change Congress, the new initiative started by Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig (founder of Creative Commons). Change Congress aims to have politicians, candidates, and other citizens state their support (or lack of support) for four key issues that they believe would help improve fairness and end corruption. They've sent a letter to every Senator and Representative as well as every Congressional challenger too. You can see their progress on their iPledge campaign page. Change Congress is looking to improve their low response rate by having citizens pester their members of Congress. Click "Pester Now" next to the name of your member of Congress to find contact information, a phone script, and a form letter.

News coverage about things that don't matter: Presidential Physiques of the Modern Age.

I've saved the best for last. John McCain Gets BarackRoll'd.

My last few posts have been pretty weighty. Let's get back into the normal swing of normal things.

Ah, college. It is pretty nice. Except for, you know, the classes and stuff. But it's good to have good friends. Adam, my roommate from last year, invited me over to his dorm for dinner tonight. But the place isn't really a dorm in the traditional sense. It's an apartment-style dorm, and it's pretty comparable to student apartments you'd find off campus (that is to say, sweeeet). He lives there with Cameron, who was one of our suitemates last year. They also invited Evan, who was also one of our suitemates, so it was like a little reunion. Fajitas and TV with old pals. Ain't nothing like it.

It was good to catch up with Adam. Turns out he still reads this blog. I think he didn't read it over the summer, but tonight he brought up the themes of some of my recent posts. I believe that would make him a World of Stuff fan. You don't have to have read all 993 posts to be a fan (although it doesn't hurt).

What else? Oh yeah. I start my new job tomorrow, the one I was interviewed for a few weeks ago. I'm the new webmaster for the Dean of Students Office. Actually, my friend Mark, who works there and told me about the job, showed me the ropes last week, so I got a bit of a head start by making some small updates. But tomorrow, it is official. I won't have as much free time, but I'll be gaining knowledge and experience (and I'll have a cool job). Plus, I probably won't have to work at strange times. I know some people who have to work at night while going to school. I don't know how they manage.

Also, my new Esperanto club is getting off the ground. We're going to have a presentation entitled "Esperanto: The Solution to the World Language Problem." It'll be an introduction to Esperanto explaining why people use it and such. If you happen to be in the area of Gainesville, Florida, it'll be on Thursday, October 16, at 8:00 P.M., in room 110 of Rinker Hall at the University of Florida. If you have a Facebook account, RSVP on our event page. Everyone is welcome.

Surprise? Surveillance of Skype Messages Found in China. Yet another reason not to trust Skype or any other non-free software.

Also in the news: Military Hit with 2nd Suit Over Religious Freedom. They can't seem to wrap their heads around the idea that they shouldn't be pushing religion on people.

Finally, a blog: Cake Wrecks, for "when professional cakes go horribly, hilariously wrong."

This morning, someone with glossy flyers came out of nowhere and started talking at me about all manner of topics. It's that time of year again!

A university is a microcosm of society. And just like in the actual cosm, school politics have been flaring up over the past few weeks. Student Government elections are next week, and it's once again down to the classic battle of the Greek party vs. the non-Greek party. The former is the Gator Party, while the latter is the Orange and Blue Party. Here at UF, it's the same as it is with many universities: the Greeks dominate student politics.

Earlier this year, a UF sorority member (who wished to be anonymous for her safety) had this to say:

Apparently, in recent years, stickers that say "I Voted" have been banned, but now they just give out "SG" stickers instead. Can you see why the Gator Party might oppose online voting? In fact, they oppose it vehemently. They know what will happen if it becomes easier for students to vote. Turnout increases dramatically. If Greeks are a minority of students, and they're all already voting, they won't be the majority of voters for very long.

Last year, I voted against the Gator Party, and I plan to do the same this time. While the Gator Party's platform includes wastes of money like putting crossing guards at crosswalks that I've crossed safely for a year and putting a video rental store in the student union, Orange and Blue's platform is shorter and actually has details of their plans. And I like what I see: online voting, eliminating wastes of money, socially responsible investing, getting student pep rally acts that people have heard of (unlike last year's Frank Caliendo and Lynyrd Skynyrd or this year's Jon Reep and Steve Miller Band). Already this fall, as the minority party, they've blocked a regulation that would have limited the legal consumption of alcohol by students anywhere and pushed to make the day before Thanksgiving a holiday. Not bad.

More importantly, we need to shake things up in Student Government. If the people in charge are working harder to stay in charge than to respond to students' needs and wants, they need to be kicked out. Fortunately, my dorm went for the non-Greek party last year, and our representative is now trying to hang on to his seat, one of the few that Orange and Blue has. Incidentally, I'm acquaintances with his Gator Party opponent, so it would be weird if I saw Mr. Gator Party and was like, "Hey, I'm not voting for you." But if he tries to convince me to vote for him, I'll have to tell him how I feel.

Oh yes, even the links are getting political. From Chicken Girl: Sarah Palin's Greatest Hits.

Another one: Celebrities tell you to vote.

Okay, this isn't political, but it's cool. Have you ever wondered what a search query would have been like in the past? Like, what if you could search for "osama bin laden terrorist threat" before 9/11? For Google's 10th birthday, they've brought back their oldest surviving search index, from January 2001, for a limited time only. You can search the web as it was in 2001. Each search result includes a link to the Internet Archive's earliest archived version of that page for 2001, in the likely event that the page has been moved, deleted, or changed.

When I started this blog, I wasn't too comfortable talking about politics. Consider my coverage of the 2004 presidential election (1 2 3 4). Pretty even-handed, it was, even though I had my opinions. But over the course of 991 posts, I've become more comfortable in my own skin. If you haven't been able to tell, I'm a lefty to the core. (I'm also a lefty to the hand, but that's neither here nor there.) Dennis Kucinich was my dream candidate, but I am left supporting Barack Obama.

It's hard to be 100% excited about a candidate you don't support 100%, but he's much better than the alternative. Yes, this dichotomous thinking isn't helpful for real democracy, but it is realistic. For what it's worth, I think it's a shame that Obama and McCain are still on the ballot in Texas. They both missed the filing deadline, so Libertarian candidate Bob Barr sued. The Texas Supreme Court decided without an explanation that Obama and McCain should remain on the ballot. This stuff makes my blood boil. It's bad enough that people think there are only two parties to choose from, but when the government gets in on the act, it threatens democracy.

Besides Obama and McCain, four candidates are on the ballots in enough states to win the presidency. So how come the news channels aren't going on and on about Bob Barr, Chuck Baldwin, Cynthia McKinney, and Ralph Nader? It's a vicious cycle, I guess. The newsmedia don't think people are interested in these candidates, so they don't tell people about them. The people aren't interested because they don't know. I think these candidates should be included in the presidential debates, but you know who organizes those debates? The Democrats and Republicans. The two-party system has been very good to them, so they will try to maintain it for as long as they can.

That said, I will be voting for Obama. I happen to agree with him on most issues, and I feel that he can undo the damage that Bush has done for us at home and abroad. While I can understand the frustration that supporters of third parties experience, I don't think it's appropriate for them to refer to Obama and McCain collectively as "McBama" or what have you. Barack Obama and John McCain would be very different presidents, and I am convinced that Obama is the best candidate out of those who are running.

Interestingly enough, I have a connection to Barack Obama. My mom's cousin's ex-boyfriend's friend (or something) went to school with him. My mom's cousin even hung out with "Barry" at least once. That's like five degrees of separation between me and him. I wonder if he knows Kevin Bacon.

Michael Moore is making his latest movie, Slacker Uprising, available on the Internet for free (in the US and Canada). The movie chronicles his campaign to encourage young people to vote (against George W. Bush) in the 2004 election. It's definitely worth watching.

Here are 10 Creatures People Didn’t Think Existed. Then people found out they existed after all.

See historic aerial photographs of (some parts of) the United States at Historic Aerials. The interface is kind of hard to navigate, but it was interesting to see part of my neighborhood as it looked in 1940 (i.e., it wasn't there). You can compare different photos of the same place too.

Last week, my friend Mark tipped me off to a job opening at the Dean of Students Office. They were looking for a webmaster. Mark had been filling in for the job in addition to doing his own job there, so he was pretty busy. I thought I'd send my resume.

My interview with the Interim Dean of Students was today. To be honest, I had been pretty nervous. In my tech writing and speaking class, we're starting to go over resume and job interview skills, so it was pretty timely. I read up on the stuff we're going to cover about job interviews, so I had that stuff in mind today as I went in. Actually, the interview went more smoothly than I could have imagined, and I was hired on the spot!

I look forward to maintaining the Dean of Students Office web site with Mark, who's the database guy, and the graphic designer. Of course, it'll also be great to get to know the friendly faces at the DSO and to learn about some of the inner workings of the university. I also should mention now that opinions expressed herein are not those of my employer but are pretty awesome.

(Frequently asked question: How much does this job pay? I am pretty sure I know, but I don't want to tell you before I find out for dang sure. As with most discussions of salaries, this would be a faux pas.)

Here are some links to hold you over till next time.

From 2004: Top 10 Secrets They Don't Want You to Know About the [U.S. Presidential Candidate] Debates.

Ever wish there was a phone number you could call that could broadcast your voice from a megaphone overlooking a fjord and a village in Norway? Well, now there is: Telemegaphone Dale.

In Germany, 3,000-year-old skeletons found in a cave have had their DNA matched with several living members of the local population. Some families just never move.

I am sick. It started yesterday when I woke up with a throat thing. Now I don't have much of an appetite. Luckily, I am not sneezing my brains out as I usually do all the time.

I have a temperature. I have the air conditioner on as hot as it will go, but it still feels pretty cool in here. Now I'm wearing heavy clothing. Also, my tongue is burned because I couldn't wait for my soup to cool down last night.

My roommate has been gone for the weekend, but I've instructed him to stay away longer. In fact, we both think that he got me sick, but I wouldn't want to be hanging around a sick person anyway. You could be a disease vector.

I am into music, and I often imagine what it would be like if I were to have a musical career. What freedoms would I associate with my songs? I know that I would use a Creative Commons license because they help build fan bases and provide free publicity. Brad Sucks is one of the best examples. As I mentioned in my last post, he released his first album under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license, whose requirements are pretty self-explanatory. You can do anything with the songs, as long as you provide proper attribution, use them noncommercially, and provide any derivative works under the same license.

Actually, it seems that he has now re-licensed his first album under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license, which brings me to my point. I believe that the noncommercial clause is unnecessarily restrictive. I would want people to make commercial use of my work. The share-alike provision ensures that no one can have a monopoly over it. You would be able to remix and sell my music, but someone else would be able to remix and sell your remix. Meanwhile, I get the credit for having an awesome song that so many people want to remix. I thus get featured on TV and have lots of sold out concerts. Result: money.

It comes down to allowing equal access for all. I've used Creative Commons-licensed music extensively in all of my videos, and I would feel great if I could allow people to use my work in the same way that I've used others'. I would really be flattered if someone covered my song, remixed it, translated it, used it in a movie, published the lyrics in a book, or transcribed it for the guitar. And if people could do that for every song without explicit permission from the copyright holders, everyone would be better off.

Of course, I have not taken my musicianship to the next level, but if ever I do, I'll know exactly how I want things.

Oh, those dolphins: A wild dolphin in Australia is teaching others how to walk on their tails. Apparently, it was taken into captivity due to illness about 20 years ago and learned the trick there.

Wikipedia has a list of United States Presidents by genealogical relationship. In short: a lot of them were related to each other. I wonder if you'd get similar results for any other 42 white Americans.

In this video, Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig responds to John McCain's planned technology policy.

The fall semester is starting nicely... well, as nicely as school can go. The freshmen are getting advice, clubs are starting to meet, I've been practicing the closed-mouth yawn, and fraternities and sororities are recruiting. Well, you know, they were. They do it early, and then... it's this whole process.

A distinguished professor came to speak in the common room in my dorm the other day, but I was so not there. I remembered his name from last year's freshman orientation. I could have sworn I mentioned him in my original post, but I guess it didn't. At the orientation, he gave a talk to us where he said we would have a horrible college experience and fail all our classes. He was... acerbic. Not a fun guy at all. I can't imagine what "advice" he gave the people on my floor this time.

I don't really see the point of fraternities and sororities. They almost seem to exist for the purpose of making money. You're basically paying lots of money to have friends and do stuff. I can do that for free. I read The Ritual of Kappa Sigma on Wikileaks. The quasi-religious rituals were pretty ridiculous, the anti-atheist discrimination disgusting. Then there's the hazing and the dangerous partying. But probably the biggest problem I have with these groups is that they dominate campus politics. Whenever one of my friends joins a fraternity or sorority, a little piece of me dies. At least two of them have done so this fall. But I recognize that they probably have good reasons for joining, and it's their decision to make. I'm not just saying that because they both read this blog. (Okay, maybe I am, but it really is their business and not mine.)

One of the aforementioned friends, Adam, recently reminded me that I should write for the Independent Florida Alligator, the most popular student newspaper at UF. Today, they were having an open house, so I went off campus to stop by. The place looked pretty familiar, which means I've probably passed by and looked in the window before. They work out of a pretty small space with issues from throughout their 100-year history hanging up all over the place.

I was directed to the sports editor, who I guess is also in charge of editorial columns (or "eddies"). Having no little experience writing for a newspaper (I remember in mid-sentence that I submitted an article or two to the online-only, now defunct Pompano Pulse), I received some advice on what it takes to write an editorial column. Basically, I would just have to write about things that everyone can react to. On this blog, I basically write about two things: things I do and things I think. A column would be all about the things I think based on the things I have done. Can I write like that? Can I reach out to lots of college students? Can I do it on a weekly basis? Can I keep to 600 words? Can I write extremely short paragraphs?

Maybe.

I'm supposed to send the guy some samples, but I'm not sure if I have any blog posts that would fit the bill (my last post notwithstanding). I'm not used to writing where money is at stake. The Alligator is a business. They need writers that the students can connect with because then they get a greater circulation and sell more ads. Could I have fun writing in an environment that's all about the deadline and the bottom line? I'm not sure.

In a world where movie trailer voice-overs were boring... one man redefined an industry. Now, Don LaFontaine, the man who lent his deep, gravelly voice to thousands of movie trailers, has died at 68. Here's an interview with him. (From the archives: I linked to a video featuring LaFontaine and other prominent voice-over artists on August 28, 2005.)

This month marks the 25th birthday of GNU, a free operating system that has achieved relatively widespread popularity bundled with the Linux kernel. Now, the Free Software Foundation, which sponsors GNU, has released a short video of British comedian Stephen Fry explaining GNU to you. (The video is in Ogg Theora format.)

If I seem a little sophomoric lately, it's because I'm now in my sophomore year of college. I haven't felt this way in four years.

But seriously, my first day of classes wasn't so bad. Well, the classes weren't, anyway. There are no labs the first week, so I didn't have to wake up at 6:45 for my Monday Morning Physics Lab from Hell. (That's right, I said "hell." HELL!) My first class was physics at 12:50. Right after that, I had programming, and then I was done for the day. Both are continuations from classes I took in the spring. I have the same lecture hall for physics and the same lecturer for programming. The lecturer is cool. After a long weekend (or a summer), he asks the class how they spent their time away. He spent his summer not shaving, and now he has a cool beard.

It rained a lot last week. Like, a lot. I had to do some walking around, and I got pretty wet. My tennis shoes (sneakers) also got pretty wet. I thought they would dry out eventually, but they didn't after a few days. They also stank like whoa. My roommate and I decided that I should toss them in the dryer, but as I was leaving with them, I caught a glimpse inside. Now, I'd never looked at the insides of my tennis shoes before, but I'm pretty sure they weren't supposed to be bright yellow with black spots.

Today I had to get up early for my technical writing class. After putting on my only remaining pair of shoes (a pair of sandals that aren't comfortable for walking long distances), I made my way toward the class.

"Excuse me. Do you know what you have to do to get to heaven?"

I'd had a year of mental preparation for this, but I was surprised that they were just stopping passersby rather than just talking people who were sitting around and doing nothing. Last year, I took the bait to avoid being confrontational and to get a sense of the guy's argument. Since then, I've decided that I'd be more frank in future meetings.

"I don't think heaven is a real place." The bespectacled, well-dressed young man smiled knowingly. "But," I added hastily, "that doesn't mean I think people should go around doing bad things. I think people should do good things for the sake of other people."

"So you don't think people should go around killing each other?" he said with a chuckle.

"No, no." I shared the laugh. "People should be good to each other."

"Do you know what the Bible says about what you have to do to get to heaven?"

"I think so." Last time, I had been quoted to, chapter and verse.

"It only takes a minute, and I could walk with you."

"Sorry, but I'm going to be late to class," I said. "Thanks anyway."

I was early to the tech writing class. It was an honors class for engineering majors, so I wasn't surprised when my former floormates Cameron and Jason showed up. (Also, they had told me they'd be taking the class.) Then class started. The professor was a woman; I've never had a female professor. She went over the basic rules: no cell phones, no tardies — and at that point, someone came in late. Then a co-worker came in to tell her something, and she asked to use someone's cell phone. She had to call the other professor, who had gotten into a car accident on her way to work. After that, she went over the course material with us. This was a tech writing class, but it was also a speaking class. She would be teaching us the speech component, she said. She had a slight lisp.

We did an ice-breaking activity where we each wrote facts about ourselves on a piece of paper and then swapped with other people and initialed by the things that we had in common with them. By that time, the other professor had come in. She said she was still shaken and that the other driver was "an illegal Nicaraguan who didn't have a driver's license." She spent the rest of the class giving us some basic rules of writing. I think I've probably broken about ten of them in this post. We already have an assignment: to write about a scientific topic in a way that a junior high school student (11-14 years old) can understand. It should be about something we already know; researching isn't the point. I wonder what I could write about.

Here's this year's Beloit College Mindset List for the class of 2012, describing the world as it is to incoming college freshmen who were born in 1990.

You've probably seen some of these hilarious exam answers before, but I got some big laffs out of the new ones.

It's hard to believe that students are still harassed at school due to their sexual orientation. At one Florida high school, the perpetrator was the principal. Here are details from the court ruling on this criminal activity.