Category - Musings and Observations

Classes are pretty demanding. At least, the latter half of this week has been pretty demanding. Before that, I was taking it easy, so I guess that just evens out.

Tuesday was Veterans Day, so we had no classes and I had no work. So I went with some friends to Lake Wauburg in the afternoon. The lake and the surrounding area are reserved for UF students and staff. I had never been there, but I found out that it's a nice getaway. It's far outside of town, and there are cool things to do. I kayaked. It was fun. We had a picnic too.

Wait. Is that really the only thing that's been going on? Not really. I have been busy with classes, as I said. I gave a presentation today for my Indian Ocean class. It was, um, within the time limit? And I have a physics exam on Monday. And a tech writing project due Tuesday. And probably other stuff.

Man, this post is short. Maybe it's the result of a historical trend. November 13ths 2003 and 2005 were similarly unremarkable.

These 100 Very Cool Facts About The Human Body are very cool.

Here are 12 Vintage Cigarette Ads They Would Never Get Away with Now.

From Reason Magazine, a 2.3-megabyte chart explaining the simple process of US immigration: What Part of Legal Immigration Don't You Understand?

This is my 1,000th post. What a milestone. What a crazy, awesome, and crazy awesome milestone. This blog has been a big or semi-big part of my life. I've written 560,791 words (that's including this post) by my own count. I've met some awesome and amazing people (you know who you are). The site helped me land my first job. 1,000 posts is a lot for anyone, and it's taken me five and a half years to reach, so it's a milestone worth observing.

For the occasion, I went back and looked at every post I've ever written. Man, did that take a long time. Looking back, I can see that I haven't changed very much. Sure, my early posts were written differently. They weren't as long, and they tended to rely on quotations and images (especially borrowed images). And I was only starting high school. But it is still me.

September 15, 2003: "Sure, I keep to myself a lot, but I think I should try to be more outgoing."

July 5, 2008: "I need to be more attuned to whether [girls] like me and not rush to date them. So that leaves a few simple steps: ... Actually contribute to a conversation, including talking to her. Be outgoing."

I thought that for my 1,000th entry, I would list some of my favorites from the past. (It's old-school to call blog posts "entries," but it's classy at the same time. Peppering your speech old-fashioned but still technically acceptable terms can make you sound authoritative, like when sports announcers refer to a football team as a "club" or a "squad" or when they call a game a "contest." Yes, I have been watching too much college football on TV, but in the early days of this blog, I used "post" and "entry" pretty much interchangeably. In fact, the permalink for each post still says "permanent link to this entry.")

Anyway, I thought that for my 1,000th entry, I would list some of my favorites from the past. But what really makes a post great? How do you separate the memories from the posts themselves? I don't think it's possible. Many of these posts are my favorites because of the notable events that they describe. And of course, they're in top-ten format, because is there any other way?

Without further ado, here are my top ten favorite posts of all time.

10. "To blog or not to blog?" (July 25, 2003)
    Few readers remember that The World of Stuff wasn't originally a blog but a bunch of random pages with a common home page where I kept track of updates. In one of these early entries, I proposed the much-quoted question, "To blog or not to blog?" (with the equally memorable answer "I mean, come on, who's going to want to read about a 14-year-old kid?"). Of course, I decided to blog, and it didn't turn out to be a bad idea.
9. "Election Day" (November 7, 2006)
   In 2006, Florida Senate minority leader Ron Klein was running for the US House of Representatives, and former President Bill Clinton campaigned for him at my high school. I was glad just to be able to write about being there, but in this post, I included some of the pictures I took. They really are worth a thousand words each. My favorite is the one of Clinton saluting the cheering audience as the band plays behind him and Klein beams off to the side. Klein went on to unseat the 13-term incumbent.
8. "Constraint in writing, fun in spring" (April 14, 2006)
   I wanted to see if I could write a post without using the letter "e." I came up with this post almost 500 words long. Besides lacking the most common letter in the English language, it was completely typical. I wrote about what was going on with my life as well as including some links and the usual "One year ago, two years ago" flashbacks I was doing at the time.
7. "[sic]" (February 25, 2006)
   In junior high school, I had a number of teachers who were prone to slips of the tongue. They often went unnoticed, but I wrote them down as I heard them because some of them were really funny and bizarre. When I got into high school, I expected the same thing of my new teachers, but there were no verbal goofs to be heard. After sitting on my old list of "teacherisms" for a while, I decided to post some of the best ones. They're still funny.
6. "Some more details" (November 30, 2004)
   Not all of these posts are my favorites in a good way. In my sophomore year of high school, Mr. Laguerre, a new teacher, died unexpectedly. Mr. Firestone, my psychology teacher, had become friends with him during his short time at Pompano High, so he decided to spend his next class explaining the psychology of death. He talked about his mother's failed battle with cancer, and many of my classmates broke down in tears as they shared stories of their own family members and friends who had died. It was so terribly sad and therapeutic at the same time. Just before graduating, I won a scholarship in Mr. Laguerre's honor.
5. "Things work out" (September 16, 2005)
   This might be my most referenced post of all time. At the beginning of my junior year of high school, I felt ready to start dating. I asked a girl named Nacole if she would go to a football game with me. The game was canceled due to Hurricane Katrina, so she changed the venue to her house and then to a hotel. My nervous feelings got worse when she announced her love for someone else and dated the guy. Finally, I approached her about the apparent misunderstanding. It turned out she hadn't considered our thing to be an actual date. Fortunately, it didn't hurt our friendship, and I still talk to her every so often. As first (non-)dating experiences go, it was pretty memorable and taught me some valuable lessons. We never went on the date.
4. "Day One (and Day Two)" (August 25, 2007)
   I thought my first few days of college would be like day one and day two of high school, but they weren't. When I started high school, I was nervous and just plain confused. But when I started college last year, I was more enthusiastic, and I managed to learn a lot in a short time. After less than a week on campus, I had prepared some advice based on my observations. I still recommend them to my friends who are starting college. I ended the post with my mailing address and a shameless plea for support that ended up receiving one generous reply.
3. "Where was I?" (March 22, 2008)
   My first year of college was an annus horribilis when it came to dating. After two rejections in the fall, I asked an acquaintance out to dinner and was excited that she said yes. But we had to reschedule, to my frustration and embarrassment (I had already postponed a visit to my family). As the date finally drew near, she asked if she could bring a friend. She... wait for it... didn't know it was a date! And when I told her it was, she said she wasn't interested in dating. I caved and let her bring her friend to dinner. It went smoothly. Later we went to see Kimya Dawson and friends put on a great show. So even though I was sorely disappointed, the night went rather well. It was another learning experience as well as the closest I've ever been to being on a date.
2. "The interview" (March 15, 2006)
   Another painful memory that has to be shared. During my junior year of high school, the school contacted me about participating in Boys State, a prestigious summer leadership program in the state capital. After much preparation, I went to the advisor's office to be interviewed by members of the American Legion, who immediately rejected me for not being religious enough. Having only recently come out of the atheist closet, I felt helpless, humiliated, and miserable. The only consolation came from my teacher, Mr. Miller, whose few words I will never forget. I wrote to Americans United for Separation of Church and State but received no reply. My readers in the school administration evidently didn't care either; they let the practice continue.
1. May 2007
   My final month of high school was jam-packed with so many unique experiences that it would be impossible to pick just one. First, I helped lead my school to an unexpected second place finish in the countywide high school programming competition, and the programming team landed a spot on the school's morning announcements. The school put on a carnival for the senior class. I helped give a disastrous speech for some BS technology thing. At the senior class awards, I won a scholarship while two of my friends sneaked out to streak at a football game. On the second to last day of school, there was a food fight in the cafeteria. At the senior breakfast, I was named class salutatorian. I danced with a hot girl at prom and then delivered a speech at graduation. So many things happened one after the other, but I captured them in as much detail as possible, knowing that nothing like this would ever happen again. And the memories are all there.

One of my favorite parts of blogging is sharing cool links that I find. Over the years, I've posted untold numbers of links, so I thought I'd present my favorites, excluding the ones that are now broken. (Honorable mention goes to season one of the BBC series Look Around You, which I linked to on July 5, 2006. Several of the links to individual episodes have died, but the rest are still riotously funny.)

Here are my top ten favorite links from the last 1,000 posts.

10. Internet '96 (July 29, 2006)
    Remember what the Internet looked like twelve years ago? Neither do I. Luckily, one netizen (does anyone say that anymore? did anyone ever say that?) provides snarky commentary on how major companies' sites looked in the early, amateurish days of the World Wide Web.
9. New and Improved Stereotypes (January 1, 2008)
   A collection of made-up stereotypes, complete with illustrations.
8. Mr. Roger Lord Mortimer's Neighborhood (March 26, 2006)
   A rich guy rips off Mister Rogers' Neighborhood... sort of. Hilarity ensues. This was the second YouTube video I ever featured.
7. Redefined: A Cappella Nintendo Medley (April 16, 2005)
   An a cappella group called Redefined sings and acts to a medley of old Nintendo theme songs. Very funny and impressive, considering that the Super Mario Bros. theme song is very hard to sing (and is accordingly one of the most butchered melodies in the history of music). Be sure to watch as well as listen. These guys are great!
6. 5 Men and a Limo (August 28, 2005)
   Do you ever wonder what those gravel-voiced movie announcers do in their spare time? Here's a video featuring five of America's top voice-over artists in one car, including the late, great Don LaFontaine.
5. Spamusement! (July 21, 2004)
   Poorly-drawn (but all the funnier) cartoons inspired by actual spam subject lines. The site is apparently no longer updated, but there are over 300 cartoons and active forums.
4. "Office Space" Recut (June 2, 2008)
   How about Office Space recut as a thriller? There are a lot of crappy recut trailers, but this one's pretty good. I promise. (In fact, it's amazing.)
3. Minesweeper: The Movie (March 10, 2008)
   Continuing the long tradition of movies based on video games, it's a movie based on everyone's favorite game to play when they're bored. Seriously, I played me a lot of Minesweeper in the spring, prompting my roommate to take notice and show me this video.
2. Back to the Future: The Enchantment Under the Sea Dance Revisited (August 9, 2006)
   What would it look like if the dance scenes from Back to the Future and Back to the Future Part II were synchronized? They actually fit together really well.
1. Dinosaur Comics (December 13, 2005)
   A webcomic that features the same panels every day, but with different dialogue. It's an example of constrained writing, but it hardly seems constrained at all. In fact, it's more like the author's random musings as projected through the main character, T-Rex. I've been reading Dinosaur Comics for three years now, and it's seriously hilarious. It's #1 because it's the cool link that keeps on giving.

Of course, this blog would be nothing without you, the readers. Whether you're a friend or a stranger, I enjoy interacting with you. Many of you have been reading for a long time. And of course, any subjective top ten list like the ones I just posted is subject to debate. (Am I absolutely insane for not including Post X?!) So comb through the archives and share your favorite posts and links with everyone. That is, if you have any favorites. If you don't, that's cool too. I'll just be over here celebrating.

Man, a thousand posts. Crazy.

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!

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.

My friend Briana has a friend (friend, ex-boyfriend, something, whatever) who's a Marine serving in Iraq. She writes him all the time, and now she's looking for pen pals for everyone in his unit. She asked me to write to the only woman. I thought it was a good idea. Life isn't exactly rosy over there. They live in squalid conditions. It's dangerous. They probably don't get many letters. And the woman is surrounded by 30 guys. Poor her.

I thought about what to write. "Thanks for spreading freedom and democracy?" That's not why they're there. "Thanks for being in Iraq so I don't have to"? Sounds pretty selfish. I don't even know this person, anyway. I wish she didn't have to be there either.

Some people don't even want to write to the troops, Briana told me. Though the occupation of Iraq isn't popular, it's not their fault that they're there. I thought about it some more. It kind of is their fault. I mean, I wish they didn't have to be there, but they brought it upon themselves by joining the military. When you join, you have to expect that you might be needed for war or war-like actions. We haven't been hanging around in Germany and Japan for 63 years just for giggles.

I thought about what would motivate someone to join the military. Nothing came to mind immediately. I think it's rarely because they want to kill people. I have friends who are going to join the Army and the Marines, and another who just joined the Navy. It seems that they want to be part of an institution that they think is honorable, and for some of them, it might be the only viable career choice after finishing school. I know one of them would love to kill lots of people, but he's the exception that proves the rule. (It's not you, Evan.)

Even so, people aspiring to join the Marines should know that they'll be trained to kill without remorse. So, do they deserve my sympathy? I grappled with that question for a little while. It is tough. I could give this woman the benefit of the doubt and say that maybe she was hoping just to hang out in Okinawa and pick up some Japanese. I think few people look with excitement on being sent to Iraq. And even if she did, she might regret it now. Anyway, what's done is done; she's already there. She probably needs some love right now. Marines are people too. That's good enough for me.

I wrote a letter this morning. It's hard to start contact with a pen pal, especially if you don't know anything about her and she's not even expecting a letter from you. In fact, it was easier for me to think of things not to say:

• "What made you want to be a Marine? Do you regret it now?"
• "Have you ever killed anyone?"
• "What are some things you're not allowed to tell me?"
• "Do you miss home? How much? A lot?"

I don't want to depress this person. Instead, I wrote about myself and how I got her name and address. I asked her where she was from and what she was interested in. Now, I will spend a few weeks waiting for a reply. And even though my first letter hasn't yet been picked up from the mail slot downstairs, I've already learned things from this correspondence.

Here's a coincidental link. It's an interactive map showing US military presence worldwide from 1950 to 2007.

One of those demonstration videos: Capturing 3D Surfaces Simply With a Flash Camera.

These are pretty weird: 20 of the World’s Weirdest Endangered Species.

Toward the end of my senior year of high school, all of my teachers knew about my blog. They all happened to mention it to me out of nowhere. I had told a few of them about the site when it was relevant, but I didn't expect the word to get out as much as it did.

I've just learned that this blog was being cited at my high school's faculty meetings since at least my junior year. They apparently found it useful to get an unwitting student's perspective on their policies and the school in general. That's what Ms. Phillips, an assistant principal, assured Mr. Bell, the principal, when he found out that I had said something about his well-known propensity to talk a lot. Don't get mad, it's good information.

It's kind of odd to go back and look at all the stuff they've read about me. They read that I dismissed the new principal's motto as a platitude. In the same post, I said, "It's sometimes fun to see what policies are enforced at the beginning of the school year; usually, the dress code is on the administration's collective mind for a few weeks, and then they forget that you're showing too much skin, young lady." I also described the new tardy policy as "draconian."

Oh my God. Did I inspire them to enforce the rules more strictly? My peers would have been so mad at me if they had known.

During my junior year, one of my teachers puzzledly said to me, "Cruel Joke Soup for the Gloomy Soul"? And Mr. Gordon, the principal during my senior year, sent me an e-mail praising me for my "very fair and accurate assessment" of his reaction to the infamous food fight. But there must have been more than that. The teachers and administrators must have read my rants about their lame field trips and propoganda campaigns. I pointed out their glaring lack of knowledge of teenage slang and blamed them for things they didn't do (incidentally, a fellow student was responsible for that). There are hundreds of other examples. I was full of criticism.

Oh my God. Maybe that's why I wasn't valedictorian??

??????? !!!!

Is it too late to go anonymous? This is only my 988th post.

Oh well. Time for some Ask Jordon.

Tallie Hoe: So if I'm Christian, and I know that the Bible doesn't teach that there is a burning hell, does that make me not a Chrstian?

I don't know. It's all very confusing about who is a Christian and who is not. Everyone has a different definition. "He says he's a Christian but he's actually not. She says she's not a Christian but she actually is." Or maybe... "I'm a Christian, he's a Christian, she's a Christian, we're all Christians, hey!" To answer your question: don't worry about it. Just go out and help some people.

Here's the rarely told story of the Chicago Tribune's "Dewey Defeats Truman" issue.

The timeless bestseller A Million Random Digits with 100,000 Normal Deviates is back in print, and it can be yours from Amazon for only $81. You can preview a few pages from the book to make sure that you like it. Be sure to read the reviews too.

And finally, we have a video of a wind turbine exploding during high winds.

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.

Last night, as I was trying to go to bed, my heart was racing. I wasn't sure why.

There could have been a lot of reasons. It might have been the cheeseburger, french fries, cookie, brownie, and Gatorade I had for dinner. It might have been that my roommate was getting sick and I was trying to fight it off. It might have been that somebody took the dry erase board off my door and chucked it at the bike rack outside. Who would do such a thing? I suspected everyone at first. I thought someone might have something against me, but the consensus around here is that it was a random act of drunkenness by a stranger.

It might have been things in the future, too. I was anxious about having to give an impromptu speech in my tech writing/speech class. I would have to choose one of three topics presented to me, and I would have three minutes to come up with a three-minute speech. I was also nervous about teaching people simple phrases in Esperanto, a language I'm not entirely fluent in. (Both of those things are tomorrow, by the way.)

I felt like a wreck. Actually, I just felt really awake. I lay in bed for an hour or two, trying to figure out how to calm my nerves. I got up for a drink of water. I played the guitar a little. Finally, I decided to go out to the common room and hang out there till I got tired. I was chatting it up for about 45 minutes. Since I had class at the asscrack of dawn, I decided I should finally go back to bed. And when I got there, I didn't feel my heart pounding.

Why did it happen?

Incidentally, the class was my physics lab. I didn't think there was anything worse than having physics lab at 7:25 A.M. on Mondays. But when I got back to my room after the lab, I realized that there was. The fire alarm had gone off right after I left.

I think I'm going to write a column for the student newspaper as I said that I might. I'll send them one, and I guess they'll run it if they like it. Another follow-up from my last post: equal time. Fraternities and sororities do good things. They work toward charitable causes and provide strong friendships for their members.

BugMeNot is a convenient site where you can submit (and look up) login information for sites that require free registration (usually newspapers' web sites that make you register before you can read the articles). Even though BugMeNot does not keep logins for Facebook, Facebook censors mentions of BugMeNot on its site.

Here are 10 mispronunciations that make you sound stupid. Of those, I'm only guilty of mispronouncing "jewelry."

Unfortunately, some people suffer from the delusional belief that photographing buildings from a sidewalk is a crime. Here are the details of just one encounter between a photographer and an irate security guard.

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.)

Dear University of Florida Department of Housing and Residence Education,

I'm starting my second year living on campus. During my first year, I was pretty satisfied with your DHNet Internet service. It's amazingly fast and pretty reliable. You helped me out with connecting to the network even though I wasn't using Windows or Mac OS X. That, my friends, is baller.

While I was home for the summer, I discovered the wonders of BitTorrent. This network protocol puts all kinds of useful and enriching media at our fingertips... if our network lets us access it.

Your say on your web site that you block BitTorrent traffic due to copyright and bandwidth concerns. UF is "partially held accountable for every violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) committed on its network and faces sharp penalties for each offense," you say. But that hasn't stopped other universities from challenging the MAFIAA's abusive DMCA letters that target their students.

Banning BitTorrent is not the way. It has a wealth of legitimate uses, including downloading Linux distributions (thanks again for helping me out, by the way). Many people use plain old HTTP to download stuff illegally, but you don't seem to worry about that. Aren't you trying to prevent all DMCA violations? Doesn't seem like it to me.

Now, I'm not advocating that people violate copyright. I make sure that all the files I download are out there because their authors want them to be. I frequent(ed) sites like LegalTorrents and Jamendo, which provide only Creative Commons-licensed material that is free to share. They have some good stuff. If nothing else, you could allow access to their BitTorrent trackers.

In your FAQ, you mention — in passing — that bandwidth is also a concern. With download speeds in the range of megabytes per second, I wonder how much traffic it would take for the network to slow down noticeably for others.

This is not about downloading Hollywood movies; it's about encouraging the development of a culture in which everyone can exchange ideas on an equal footing, even if some of those ideas take up more megabytes than others. Shouldn't one of America's top 50 universities be supporting that ideal?

College students are not little kids. Stop treating us like them. It's amazing how people can behave if you actually trust them.

Love,
Jordon Kalilich, 2EG