On Tuesday night, I was at my friend's house when his mom came with bad news. The pastor had just announced at a meeting that this year would be the last for St. Elizabeth-St. Joseph Catholic School. The school's home page now has nothing but a link to a letter by the the pastor. He explains how the archdiocese can no longer afford to subsidize the school, and with enrollment down 70% since the 2003-04 year, the school will be about $1.3 million in debt when it closes its doors for the last time.

Even though I'm now a cranky atheist who complains about everything, I can't help but get sentimental. I was a student at St. Elizabeth of Hungary (as the school was known until recently) from kindergarten through eighth grade—formative years indeed. Many of my friends, including most of the people I spend time with when I'm home and some others I see less often, were my classmates at St. E's. I contributed to the school's time capsule that was to be opened this year. I spoke at our graduation. And it wasn't that long ago; I started this web site while I was a student there.

I've been trying to dig up some news articles to get some more insight about the closing. The archdiocese has an article that provides some context. A local news station's article (with an unrelated stock photo) interviewed some students' parents, including a Mr. Chaiken, who blamed the closing on the church's previous pastor:

"The previous priest that was here got rid of a long-time, popular principal," Chaiken said. "She was here 25 years or more, everything was running great."

...except that she was using the school's money for her own purposes.

This was a big controversy a few years ago. The then-pastor accused the then-principal of using the school's money for her own purposes, but neither of them would show the public that they were right. Parishioners and parents were left to pick sides based on their own prejudices and suspicions. They tore each other apart. Basically, it was a massive farce all around that could have easily been prevented if everyone hadn't been such an idiot.

Anyway, the pastor turned out to be right, and the principal (who had quit by then) apologized in writing. Apparently some people still have their heads up their asses and think she didn't do anything wrong even though she admitted to it. I wonder how many other parishioners are still living in this fantasy world of Mr. Chaiken's. I suspect that most of them have long since taken their worshiping elsewhere.

As you might imagine, the damage had been done. Over the next few years, more and more parents pulled their kids out of the school. Then the economy went kablooie, accelerating the trend until the school became a shadow of its former self. Now we have the end of St. Elizabeth's. The school has coexisted with the church for 49 years; without it, the church will never be the same.

So, you see, my rosy memories have been tarnished a bit. I was saddened to find out that the financial scandal had become a nail in the school's coffin, but I hope this teaches everyone a lesson: honesty is the best policy. Without openness, there is drama, which can only lead to bad things.

In slightly better news, an environmental project at my university is in the running to win $5,000, and you can help. They're in second place right now. All you have to do is sign up and use your three votes to help put Neutral Gator ahead. Voting ends on Monday.

Pictures of old photos being held up in the locations where they were taken: Looking at the Past. (Via J-Walk Blog)

And finally, a list: 16 Anti-Theft Gadgets and Designs to Deter Thieves. Wait, Nick Cannon writes about this stuff? (Via Wise Bread)

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)

I got back to Gainesville yesterday evening. I missed most of the first half of the Super Bowl, and I was kind of bummed about that, but I don't really know why. It's not like I watch pro football the rest of the year, and I don't even like the commercials. Well, I like to think I don't, but I have a few favorites. I wasn't rooting for either team, but I arbitrarily bet my sister (for no money) that New Orleans would win 23-17. When they were trailing 17-16 at the end of the game and then got a touchdown, I was arbitrarily ecstatic, but then they went for two and got a pick-six, and the rest is history.

Ten years ago today, I joined Where's George?, a site for tracking where your dollar bills go after you spend them. I was heavily active during the first half of the 2000s, but my interest waned after that, and I haven't entered many bills into the system since then. I look fondly on WG as my first online community and the one I've participated in the most. I figured the least I could do would be to drop by and say hello on the forums, so I just did that, and I hope to hear back from some familiar faces... I mean, nicknames.

Speaking of things that happened ten years ago, my old school's time capsule should be opened soon.

In early 2000, when I was in the fifth grade, my teacher asked me to write a message for a time capsule that our class would be making. So I wrote something like "People of the future, we are Mrs. Sgroe's fifth-grade class at St. Elizabeth of Hungary Catholic School in Pompano Beach, Florida..." Then she said that we would be making a contribution to the school's time capsule, so the extra details were unnecessary. She had me rewrite it with a couple of other people.

Later, we gathered in the school auditorium/cafeteria to seal the time capsule. But first, the principal opened the previous time capsule, which had been sealed in 1990. I don't think it was actually buried; I think it was just kept in a closet in the office or something like that. But it was probably for the better as the box contained some interesting finds: a Statue of Liberty foam hat, a Madonna poster from when she looked like Marilyn Monroe, some newspapers with articles about the cold winter of 1989-90, and a hand-designed t-shirt saying "We love the '80s, the '80s were the best!"

Oddly enough, I have no recollection of what anyone put in the new time capsule except for a picture of my class and the handwritten message. I guess the artifacts from the '90s were too banal for me to bother to remember. So when the faculty and students at St. Elizabeth-St. Joseph School, as it's now called, open that box in the office, it'll be a surprise for me and most everyone else.

(Well, I hope they still have the time capsule. The faculty suffered a large shake-up during the past decade, and it wouldn't surprise me if the new folks took their predecessors' old boxes of junk to the curb. That would suck.)

Wired writer Evan Ratliff tried to vanish. Here's an interesting article about his experiences forging a new identity and staying on the run from readers looking out for him.

My classes are all okay so far because I haven't done too much in them yet. Two of my four classes are taught by professors whose classes I've had before. Neither of them are really great, but I'd rather have a mediocre professor than one who might be terrible. I am risk-averse.

I'm not sure why, but I wasn't allotted any textbook money from the great State of Florida this semester, so I had to fend for myself. Buying my books from the university bookstore would have set me back $500, even if I got as many of them used as possible. Fortunately, I found much better deals online with Book Burro.

The books I did get were so cheap because they're all international editions. Apparently textbook companies sell identical copies of their books for lower prices in South and Southeast Asia. They all have warnings on them saying they're not authorized for sale outside those regions. For example:

If you purchased this book within the United States or Canada you should be aware that it has been wrongfully imported without the approval of the Publisher or the Author. [emphasis added]

"Wrongfully," in the eyes of the publisher, but not illegally. The first-sale doctrine prevents from publishers from dictating how their books can be sold after they are sold for the first time. This is why secondhand bookstores exist. The publishers would shut them all down in an instant if they could, but they can't, and the rest of us are better off for it.

Tomorrow Katja will be coming to Gainesville. I've been looking forward to this day for a while now, so I'm pretty excited. I've made a list of some things that we can do here in town, but it seems that she'll want to do a lot of relaxing. I'm good for that, too. It makes things less hectic for me. But who knows when I'll have time to blog next? Hopefully soon, but not too soon.

Peter over at Greatplay.net explains Why 2012 Will Not Be The End of the World.

Quizipedia is a fill-in-the-blank game with sentences taken from Wikipedia articles. (Via J-Walk Blog)

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.

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?

• January 1 - The World of Stuff gets a redesign.
• January 5 - I go to Miami Metrozoo.
• January 8 - I celebrate my university's football team winning the national championship.
• January 9 - I go apartment hunting for my next year at school.
• January 31 - My friend Evan and I play in a talent show.
• February 1 - I introduce a text-message service for the Gainesville bus system. (I don't think it's working right now.)
• February 7 - I announce that I'll be going to Europe with some friends in the summer.
• February 24 - I vote in the spring Student Government elections.
• March 7 - I go to a Florida Panthers hockey game with friends.
• March 20 - I vote against allowing discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in Gainesville.
• March 21 - I take panoramic photos around campus and upload one of them to Wikipedia.
• March 27 - The xkcd blog links to a page on The World of Stuff.
• March 28 - I go tubing on the Ichetucknee with friends from my dorm.
• April 2 - I volunteer at Lifeapalooza, Get Carded's year-end event.
• April 4 - My friend Evan and I spend an evening in Jacksonville.
• April 6 - TWoS turns six years old.
• April 12 - My first date, like, ever.
• April 14 - A second date, seeing comedian Demetri Martin perform on campus.
• April 19 - I buy a netbook for our trip to Europe.
• April 23 - I'm named Get Carded's Volunteer of the Year again.
• April 25 - I go to Gator Freethought's year-end party.
• April 30 - A third and last date.
• May 2 - I move out of Hume Hall for good.
• May 26 - Andy, Mark, Dan, and I leave for our European adventure.
• May 27-June 3 - Andy and I stay with Andy's relatives in London.
• June 3-9 - Andy and I stay in and around Paris, first in a hostel in town, then in the suburbs with an Esperanto-speaking friend of his, and finally back in the city with a Esperanto-speaking host.
• June 10-11 - After arriving in Spain, Andy and I spend a day and night in Vitoria-Gasteiz, the capital of the Basque Country.
• June 11-14 - I stay outside Madrid. Andy joins me, but leaves on the 13th to go to a funeral at home.
• June 14-18 - I stay with my old friend Laura in Seville.
• June 18 - After some confusion, including a chance encounter with Mark and Dan, I meet Andy in Madrid, and we head to Barcelona.
• June 18-25 - Andy and I stay in Barcelona, first with some Esperanto-speaking hosts, and then with our friend George and his family.
• June 25-26 - On the way to Italy, Andy and I stay in a small town in the South of France.
• June 26 - Andy and I make a brief stop in the tiny country of Monaco.
• June 26-27 - Andy and I stay in Pisa, Italy, and check out the Leaning Tower.
• June 27-30 - Andy and I stay in Rome. I also venture into Vatican City, where I have another chance encounter with Mark.
• June 30-July 3 - Andy and I explore beautiful Venice, Italy.
• July 4-7 - While Andy is in Switzerland with Mark and Dan, I stay in Croatia and visit relatives I hadn't even known about before.
• July 8-10 - Andy and I stay with Andy's cousin in Vienna.
• July 10-18 - Andy and I attend the Summer Esperanto Study near Bratislava, Slovakia, where I turn 20, have my first kiss, and go on excursions to Bratislava and Vienna.
• July 18-25 - Andy and I go to the International Youth Congress of Esperanto in Liberec, Czech Republic. During that time, I go on an excursion to Prague.
• July 25-26 - As Andy flies from Prague to London, I stay with Esperantist Chuck Smith and his girlfriend Judith in Dresden, Germany.
• July 26-28 - I stay with Chuck and Judith at their home in Berlin.
• July 28-30 - I visit Amsterdam.
• July 30-31 - After arriving back in London, I stay with Andy and George at George's Drury Lane dorm owned by the London School of Economics.
• July 31 - Andy and I meet up with Mark and Dan, and together we fly home.
• August 22 - I move in to my new apartment in Gainesville with Andy and my previous roommate, Ryan.
• August 25 - I have a band practice with my friend Evan and one of his friends, but nothing else comes of it.
• September 15 - I listen to two of the Beatles' remastered albums for the first time.
• September 15 - Andy and I kick off a new year for our Esperanto club by explaining how we spent our summer.
• September 23 - I watch my childhood friend Reid make his TV debut.
• October 5 - I meet our new roommate who has just moved in to the apartment.
• October 6 - I give a presentation and talk to a reporter at Florida Free Culture's Mind Mashup event.
• October 15-16 - I go with my friend Andrea and some of her friends to Howl-O-Scream at Busch Gardens, and then we spend the night at her house.
• October 29 - I have a letter to the editor published in a student newspaper.
• October 31 - I spend Halloween with Andrea and some of her other friends.
• November 2 - I have to reinstall Ubuntu after an upgrade goes awry.
• November 8 - I post a semi-original video, The World of Stuff's first in almost three years.
• November 25-26 - I spend Thanksgiving at my grandparents' house.
• December 5 - I watch the Gators lose the SEC Championship Game.
• December 22 - I announce my plans to go on a road trip up the East Coast with some friends next summer.
• December 24 - I get a new cell phone for Christmas.
• December 25 - Christmas.
• December 27 - My sister and I join our friend Kevin in meeting Laura in Miami Beach.

I don't have to tell you that the 2000s have been a pretty terrible decade politically, economically, culturally... But it's significant for me because it's the first one I remember from beginning to end. Yes, I remember January 1, 2000. It was a Saturday. The ball dropped, and the world didn't end. Later, the Snorlax episode of Pokémon was on. I remember that, okay?

I read somewhere that people tend to reminisce about the decade that's two decades before the current one. It makes sense. In the '70s, they romanticized the '50s; in the '90s, we dug the groovy '70s (ask my sister about that one); and in the 2000s, we loved the '80s. I can feel a wave of '90s nostalgia coming on as my generation comes of age. I don't need to wonder what people will remember about the 2000s, but I do wonder whether they'll think of it fondly.

I almost suffered from reminiscence overload while compiling this post, but as if that weren't enough, my dad just went through all the digital photos on his old laptop and had me look at them. They range from 2000, when he first got a Sony Mavica (floppy disks, anyone?), to 2008. I hadn't seen a lot of them before, and others I hadn't seen in a long time, so it was fun to look back.

I'm not just looking back; I'm also looking forward. As cheesy as that sounds, it's true. My high school friend Yamilee (first mentioned here) is getting married on Saturday... I know, that's what I was thinking! January 1 would have made a great wedding anniversary, but hey, it's not my wedding. I will be going, though; my whole family's invited. In fact, my sister is going to be a bridesmaid!

So, that's it for the 2000s. (The media is still waffling about what to call the decade, often referring to it euphemistically as just "this decade" or "the decade," but I've long made up my mind.) 2009 was a good year for me, and I hope 2010 is just as good. See you in the... oh crap, what do we call the next one?

From Time: The '00s: Goodbye (at Last) to the Decade from Hell.

From The Big Picture: The decade in news photographs.

Now, have I really not mentioned Katja here since the summer? It seems that I haven't. This must be corrected.

I met her at an Esperanto event in Slovakia. She's Russian. Rather than communicating in English or Russian (the latter of which I don't know—ФЯ DФ I ИФШ?—eh, no, I don't), we used Esperanto. Her name is Ekaterina, which is Russian for Catherine, and her nickname is Katya. In Esperanto that's spelled Katja, and when speaking English, she goes by Kate.

Since meeting over the summer, we've stayed in touch, still writing to each other in Esperanto. (You may recognize Kate as the author of some recent comments on this here blog.) And as it happens, she had been planning to come to the States, so she's going to drop by when she's here early next year, i.e., in a few weeks. And no, it really isn't just to see me; she had been planning the trip before we met. Even so, it'll be really cool to have someone visit me from so far away.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to having her as a guest here in Gainesville (and at my home in South Florida, since we'll have a three-day weekend).

Stay tuned, because more exciting Europe '09 follow-ups are on the horizon. But first, I'm heading home for winter break. Yeeeaah!

Need to know how to pronounce a famous (or currently newsworthy) person's name? The Name Engine has got you covered. I had been wondering about Ndamukong Suh. And hey, it looks like their whole directory of sound files is accidentally browsable. (Via J-Walk Blog)

A graph: A Graphic History of Newspaper Circulation Over the Last Two Decades. (Via waxy.org)

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)

So I was pretty pleased when my friend Andrea invited me over to watch the game. A few of her other friends came too, and we watched (in HD) while having some pizza and snacks. I actually got there way early and stayed way late (through Saturday Night Live), so there were a lot of good times to be had. Well, I thought so, anyway.

The game itself was good too. The #1 Florida Gators' star quarterback had suffered a concussion in the previous game, and no one knew if he would be able to play in this, the biggest game of the season (at #4 LSU). He was finally cleared to play, and he lead the team to its fifteenth straight win by a score of 13-3. College football = epic drama.

During the game, the announcers offered a trivia question (brought to you by Aflac): when was the last time LSU hosted a game between Top 5 teams? I impressed or creeped out everyone present by knowing not only the year but also the teams, rankings, and score. (1959, #1 LSU def. #3 Ole Miss 7-3.)

I had read it in the newspaper the day before. I swear, they must get all their trivia questions from the college paper because that's not the first time that's happened. Anyway, I happened to come across that fact in an article, and I thought, That's interesting; I'll absorb it with my mind. Maybe it'll come in handy someday!

Anyway, it looks like the fun times will continue because I'm going to Howl-O-Scream at Busch Gardens with Andrea and friends on Thursday night. I haven't been there since I was too short or wimpy to ride the brand-new Montu, and I've never been to a Halloween-type event at a theme park (omg omg omg so awesome how could you not ahve ever been). Friday is Homecoming, a school holiday. Nice.

From Rocketboom: Know Your Meme: FAIL. (Via The Presurfer)

Birds on wires = music notes on a staff? See what some birds sound like when they're turned into notes. It's actually quite nice. (Via waxy.org)