Entries tagged “politics”

#computers Merry Gift-X-Change Day 25 December 1998

I think what is most intimidating about Linux is that there is so much you can learn about using it. I mean, after a few days, it's easy to master Windows 95/98 or even most of NT. But with Linux, you keep learning all these things you can do. This happens when you have an OS that keeps being updated constantly.

A friend of mine emailed me with a well thought out email that seems to reflect a lot of what Yishan said. So we decided that we are going to start advocating a techno-democracy where Congress will be held in a dance club and ... no wait... a techno-democracy where people use technology to be a part of the government. We would have Representatives create bills and then for several of the bills we would hold a national referrendum. This is all possible thanks to lengthy encryption/verification systems. And it's true to the nature of democracy. You know - majority rules.

Looks like my favorite OEM, Micron is hiring the Borg-chick from Star Trek.

I have a new respect for my UIUC peers thanks to this article in Popular Science (December 1998). A consortium consisting of 20 Chicago suburb school districts (a good portion of UIUC are alumnus of these schools) decided to be included as it's own country in TIMSS tests that are given to countries to figure out where they rank against the rest of the world. The Consortium was fifth in the world for Mathematics and second for Science. I feel very good about this fact. The consortium uses different standards that sound remarkably like the standards Minnesota school use. At least for mathematics. They seem to be a lot better in teaching science. Check this magazine article out it's on page 92, very neat so far.

On a sad note, I have no sound on my computer.

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#minneapolis War 16 December 1998

War. I have an aversion to war and this war. It would be nice if we could do something besides a war, like a tactical mission. Take over it's power centers without loosing too many people. The war will do. I do not believe this war has anything to do with the impeachment. The war would have happened anyway. I believe that we are going to war for the right reasons: so the weapons aren't in the hands of the bad people. In our case the bad people is Iraq. They are a threat to us. It's foolish to think that no country will have nuclear weapons. It isn't, however, foolish to think that the countries that do have them will not use them. If going to war means lowering the chance of a nuclear conflict, then let us go to war.

I wish people would shut up about Ramadan. It doesn't matter that the war may go into Ramadan. Ramadan is a month long fasting for Muslims. It teaches them to give up things or restraint. Basically you go the day without water and food, and at night you can eat and drink (although not in excess to make up for the lack of food, this would defeat the purpose). If Iraqi soldiers are mostly Muslim we may think that we are fighting a bunch of thirsty, hungry people. I have been told, however, that Islam is an understanding religion. It is absurd to risk your life in order to follow a rule so strictly, so exceptions can be made. I, however, do not really think the religious details mean that much. We are going to war. We will fight whenever we feel like. The fact that it is Ramadan, may make it easier for us. That's too bad. What if we went to war against a primarily Jewish state like New York... err Israel. Would we have ethical questions about fighting on Shabaat? I mean, the Jews can't use technology during Shabaat.

So, now that we are plunged into war, we should make it fast. We need not lose lives or inanimate resources over Iraq and its transgressions. After the war, we will install whatever government we please. The best idea would be to create a satellite government in Iraq. That, however, is unlikely. We should be conquerers, not destroyers.

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#desi Trekkies should be placed on an island. 11 December 1998

Christians in India protest religious persecution. Hindus blame bad Christian karma.

The people who created Unix and C were awarded by the White House. I think that's neat. People should do things that result in their recieving of a reward. Unix and C are integral operating system and programing language respectively. Most of the Internet relies on Unix servers and everybody uses C to write programs. I can't wait till all the letters become as important as the letter C. Let us all give praise to the letter C.

Apparantly theatres in New Dehli and Mumbai (Bombay) were sacked by the ultra-nationalist Shiv Sena for showing a movie, Fire, about lesbians. India is a Hindu state. No matter how much religion is seperate from Government, it's very plagued with religion. For this reason what some people view as not expressing Hindu ideals will be supressed. So any of you who thought that Hinduism was this all accepting religion and that anybody can be a Hindu, I suggest you reevaluate your assumptions. There are many Hindus that hold onto very prudent ideals. They may be few, but they are willing to ruin

... the lesbian population of India can come out of the closet.

Hinduism for everyone else by making it appear to be this very strict religion. They are also appealing to many people in power. The movie is being reviewed by a censorship board. One day India, one day you will rise out of your depravity. You'll no longer be the backwards country with nuclear weapons and a strong religious right that thrusts its wills over the nation. On that day, the five or six lesbians that make up the lesbian population of India can come out of the closet. Maybe I can have a crack team of lesbian soldiers (Fish Speakers) militarize India.

I'd like to say that I do not approve of most of the things that go on in my country of ancestral origin. Many Hindus have been celebrating the sixth anniversary of the razing of a historic mosque. This razing has led to heated religious strife among Muslims and Hindus. I find this religious intolerance extremely backward and digsusting.

My speech went horribly. I am done with classes. Finals are next week. You can look at the Calendar. I have two papers I need getting done by this weekend.

I saw Star Trek: Insurrection and got just what I expected. A movie that had neat looking ships and fights. It was campy too. I think I enjoyed it because I made so much fun of Star Trek and the trekkies. I really hate Star Trekkies. I mean they think all these things in Star Trek are so cool, like Data and his neat little misunderstanding of being human. There were points where people laughed at the dumbest things, I mean come on. Riker was really trying to get it on with Troi. It is a good laugh though, and a lot of stuff blows up.

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#learning InSoc - we make life easier 5 December 1998

"They're after me!"

I read more of Insoc.org. The guy is really really cool. His music is awesome. He's good at the computer stuff he does. His propaganda is hillarious. I also agree with his opinions on drugs. I wish more musicians were this cool.

So I was reading this astrological reading...

VIRGO (Aug. 24-Sept. 23): If you want something enough you will eventually get it. Your heart tells you that is true even if your head says it is illogical. Of course, if the something you want is something you were destined to have, it could arrive any time - like today, for instance.

This tells me nothing new. The first sentence is something that a lot of people believe, but their is no real way to prove. The second sentence probably applies to everybody. There are some things that just aren't feasable that we may want. If I'm destined to have something, yes of course I could have it at any time.

I really love this journal thing. It's an excuse to not talk to people individually. Why bother? Most people are bound to not give a care about one or two (at least) of the things I talk about. Why risk having one of your ideas ignored? So I have this journal system. I can post any damn idea I have that I feel needs to be shared. If someone's interested and they read it, they can talk to me about it more. If they aren't interested they just skip over it and I don't feel like an idea of mine has been ignored or not understood.

I think I know why I dislike my roommate. He's inconsiderate. I'm currently working on my final paper for speech and he's currently watching Street Fighter videos with a friend. He could have asked. It's blatantly obvious that I'm working on a paper. I'm not going to make a situation awkward and ask him to not watch this. It is his room too, I just wish he's be a bit considerate.

Ugh, I was a bit foolish to eat a Chicken Cordon Bleu for dinner. Not only do I remove the ham inside it, but the cheese that's in it doesn't agree with me. It's a pity that the insides of me are so much like my brother (lactose intollerant). One day they'll synthetically make food that tastes good.

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#books (no title) 14 November 1998

I'm reading some news off the AP wire. Xis Vwj is pronounced "See Voo." In one light, that's pretty cool. On the otherhand, who the hell is responsible for translating Hmong (I think) to English?

This if from the AFP:

WASHINGTON, Nov 9 (AFP) - Inspired by the victory in the Minnesota governor's race of former pro wrestler Jesse Ventura, another veteran of the sport, Hulk Hogan, plans to run for president in 2000, Time magazine says.
"When Jesse won, I said to my wife, 'I'm 10 times more popular than him,'" Hogan told Time.
"People know Hulk Hogan like they know McDonald's and Chevrolet."
The weekly said Hogan planned to approach billionaire Ross Perot, CNN founder Ted Turner and talk show queen Oprah Winfrey as possible running mates.
Asked of a possible political contest against Ventura, Hogan said, "I'd like to get him into the ring and basically stomp on him."

This is what I feared might happen in the last paragraph of my essay. Luckily, Hulk Hogan, although popular, is not nearly as charismatic as Jesse the Body.

I finished I, Robot some time ago. It's a childrens novel. Well it seems like one. The future it portrays is interesting and their are portions that are probable. I, personally, think that we will have powerful thinking machines far sooner than actual robots.

I have begun reading Ender's Game. I understand why Adam liked it so much. This summer I worked with gifted (well if not gifted, talented) children in a mathematics program with Molly. You could always single out that even among these there is still the quiet ones and the smart ones and the quiet and smart ones. I also like how it reminds me of my childhood.

When you are picked on as a child, beating the crap out of someone is an option.

I remember one day trying to get a seat on the bus. I guess most of the seats were filled and I had to sit with someone. I politely asked some kid, one year my senior, if I could sit with him. He didn't give me a valid reason why I couldn't. I decided since this kid wasn't exactly someone to fear that I should just elbow him in the stomach and take a seat. My plan worked. It's not that I was violent, it's that I decided that was the best choice for my situation. I sometimes miss my childhood. When you are picked on as a child, beating the crap out of someone is an option. Now that I'm grown up, there are legal issues with beating the crap out of people. People are also more civil towards one another.

Stinky has over six hours of video of the #2 Street Fighter player in the world. He watches it intently. I came back from the library to see him and Stephan watching it as if it were a good movie. I've heard at least two or three people come in here and just get disgusted with Stinky watching it. Stinky attempted to exclaim how cool it was by saying that this was the number 2 player. My friend, Tim, responded with "So?" So remember, if you are doing something that's really silly and stupid assigning a rank doesn't make it better.

Fashion is just one of the many uses of duct tape.

That's right. It would be like me getting a video of SGI's Blue Mountain and IBM's Pacific Blue going through tests set up by the Department of Energy to see which is faster. I doubt they are going to be doing anything that is visually stunning, and justifying it by saying that they are the #1 computers as far as computing speed goes doesn't mean crap.

For fear that my floor may come off, I started duct-taping it. This duct-tape exo-floor should be more durable and less likely to come off. That's right people... I'm still strange. Actually I'm not going to tape my entire floor lest I incur the wrath of some building inspectors.

I'm experiencing another joyous no-Stinky weekend. With Stinky gone, I decided to fix the biggify thing so it prompts you and stores it as a cookie propperly. Previously it was using someone elses code that I slightly modified. Now a more modified code that makes more sense to me. I love programming.

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#uiuc (no title) 12 November 1998

"Kiss me, for I am a magical creature."

I have a problem with this article. Read through it. Look at the last two paragraphs. The problem I have is that those last two paragraphs don't flow at all with the article. I think the press should stick to more fact-based information rather than this human side stuff. My sympathy for the victim and the victim's family has been lowered because of the weak conclusion to the article.

I finished my Ventura article. It's not as organized and documented as I would have liked, but under my current time constraints, it is the best I could do. I've got two nice and long research papers to write by the end of the quarter (which is coming very fast).

Check out this week's poll at PopSci.com. I like what the results show.

Wow... I'm full and it's after midnight. I went to eat at Fat Don's. That's the first time I've eaten so much. Depending on what they serve, I'll go there as a weekly thing.

My friends are missing tonight... hmm where could they be?

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#uiuc (no title) 11 November 1998

"There are some things I wouldn't want to recieve as a gift." "Like what?" "Herpes."

iMacs are inferior... even to the magical Celeron's.

Thanks to Tuesday morning's wind dynamics that I don't quite understand in Allen Hall the doors here keep making noises, as if someone were pushing and pulling on them. I think I fixed it in my room by applying poster tack.

For those of you who want ICQ 99a, you can get it here at least temporarily.

Umm... looks like I fixed the biggify button on the left. There is now a "debiggify." I finally found the phrase that I was missing from my Javascript at cnn.com. Speaking of CNN. CNN's custom news sucks, it gives you less information. I found more things that interest me on the regular cnn page.

Download this Ventura clip. A singing, rocking and rolling governor...

Not much is happening. This week I am a good chemist and no the entire weeks worth of chemistry. Unfortunately that doesn't help me with my pending assignments. Damn! I have math homework... and math class!

I started to work on this stupid, useless project of the Hindu Mandir registry/address book type thing (again). I doubt anybody will make propper use of it, I'll see. If I do anything tonight it will be a new project for Med Rx using this.

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#friends The Wire 10 November 1998

"There is a fine, cocaine-like powder covering the grass outside my suburban home. And I'm ever so pleased about it."

I've recently been reading news directly from the "Wire." I remember learning about how the news over the "Wire" looks in my technology education class. Basically it tends to be in all caps, but not always. Anything that isn't a common word is spelled in parenthesis as it sounds and a few other things that make it easy for radio announcers to read on the radio without messing up. The thing that through me off guard was a UPI article which at the end had an email address: "emkay(at)msn.com." CNN does this often, since a lot of their articles are directly from AP or UPI.

I was going to make some joke about Jesse "the Body" as our Governor and Andre the Giant being this genius with rhymes... but, umm... hmm... Kay did it. Except, I think she's serious.

CJ noted that I do not have many links or personal information. So I have a plan. I'll remove the humor section and integrate it with a links section. I'll also make the abstract include more personal information. After Thanksgiving, I plan to scan all the pictures I have at home and add a tiny picture gallery. Sound good?

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#desi Diwali, Intel, Snow 8 November 1998

"Rabbi, isn't that your car?"

I'm very confused... Diwali was being celebrated at UI Friday and will be today (Saturday). It's being celebrated at St. Olaf according to Katie. It's also being celebrated at UW recently. Diwali was a few weeks ago... very odd that it's being celebrated now.

Intel's new demand on the computer industry is cool. I'd say it's more comparable with the SGI O₂s than the iMac (as far as looks). I think there is a more important issue at hand though. Getting rid of old ISA technology, getting rid of 1.44MB floppy drives and getting rid of stupid ports and replacing them with USB ports.

I think the media and as many non-Minnesotans as possible should make fun of Jesse Ventura (for their own reasons, not because I say so). The reason is this. If Jesse is ineffective, nobody's hopes will be down. People will just expect that. If Jesse does succeed then people can be surprised. I was going to continue on this train of thought, then I thought, that it may end up filling the journal systems quota. So I wrote a more organized 'entry' and will stick it in the words section eventually. I am only half way done.

It snowed tonight. I think we beat Minnesota.

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#family Dave changed Fort Max 5 November 1998

"Moving the journal over here was a great idea. I just hope the users don't mind that we reuse old graphics, woman."

I've started reading CNN, more often. I'm sure you will notice the side effects. And also relating to the page... I've placed the journal on the opening screen and I doubled the length of data that gets displayed. I updated the Calendar, the Friends page and fixes the random problems with how links open.

I heard the KQRS apology regarding the comments made regarding the Hmong. The result is that they have given in to Citizens Against Racism. There will be no more Talk with Tak, featuring Tak the person from Grand Forks with an accent that's surprisingly Oriental sounding. I guess not stating his race does not matter. I think KQ should make up a new character with an accent that can't quite be traced. :) I'm interested in what others think of Talk with Tak or what you think would define something as being racist.

Jesse the Body was on KQ. He also made the front page of the Daily Illini (not the feature article, but the front page nonetheless). Most of my news that I throw at you is usually computer stuff, so here's something from Maximum PC that mentions "the wrestler."

McJorgenson sent me this link.

Apple has a new deal where you can Rent-to-Own an iMac for $30 a month. Sure, it sounds like a good deal. Only a little bit more than unlimited Internet access... except you realize that this is for 67 months. After the first year or two you'll feel like your machine is really out-dated. Then you realize that you are paying $30 for the next 43 months for an outdated computer that, from many peoples view points, wasn't very good computer brand new.

Matt Sundberg graduated from High School today. Slacker.

Anybody who uses the mega-gigantic dryers in Allen Hall should not leave their laundry in their for more than 10-15 minutes. It's really annoying, because if you don't use those and have a decent ammount of laundry, you have to run your load a few times.

The 52 lbs. package has been spotted in Cach, IL at 9:47 PM today. It should be expected to arrive tomorrow or Monday. The last time I saw something at Cach, IL I got it the next day or the day after. That was of course in MN, but now that I live in IL, it should be here sooner. That's right, I live in IL. I am IL.

I wonder if I've regained control of my will power. Jack's Taco Bell poster finally fell. Jack missed two classes today because he went to sleep at six in the morning.

I took my second math test. It hurt.

I love this song. "Give it to me, baby!"

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#books Votomatic for the people. 3 November 1998

"That's a great plan, we'll just steal some of Yishan's ideas."

A better analysis of my web logs show that page requests has doubled from July to August. August is when the new site went up and people started getting on faster connections. It's increased by over 1000 page requests each month since. Each week of last month has had its page requests increased by about 100 hits too. The top Universities are the U of M, UW, UI, NYU, CalTech, CMU, UPenn. The top hosts are: Laureen, Adam, Yishan, Me, Dan (Hi Dan!), Daniel Lavenda, Mr. Borchert (Hi Dave!), Amy (Hi Amy), MikeJ, some other Borchert computer, possibly Pat's (Hi Pat!). Ten is enough people to list, I think. I said hi to the people whom I didn't think visited my site. The top page to visit is of course the random sentence generator which reloads itself over and over. I bet that skews the traffic. Those who look at the Random Sentence Generator for longer periods of time... well.. oh well. The Journal is 15% of the traffic on this site, and is what people go to most (besides the main page, etc). This was all generated by Analog. Laureen, Adam, you remember a few days ago, and you looked at Yishan's news page, and he called you things like a "geek" or "nerd?" He was right.

I like how the results graph doesn't show the entries that weren't voted for. I'll impliment this change sometime. I'm very busy this week. I've got a test tomorrow night and the night after and an essay due Friday. The Thursday test is horrid Graph Theory.

Holly crap, Caroline is a cool person, more of this model of human should be created for future generations... hmm I'm becoming Bene Gesserit like in my thinking. Yes, we should keep an eye on this line. This update is for you, because you asked for it. I'd have probably updated anyway because of the elections. I just think her web page is really neat, and she was in Newsweek.

We've been having November Rain in Urbana. Very annoying and very cold. However, my Jacket, which bundles me up more than Kenny's has nifty anti-weather mechanisms build into it.

I'm now reading i, robot from some guy named Asimov. There's a small story that takes place in 1998. The development in robotics/computers in the book is far different than what it will be in this universe.

These are links concerning the KQRS Morning Show. They are interesting. They are also biased because the Star and KQ are enemies. [Link 1] [Link 2] [Link 3] [Link 4]

I voted using an IBM Votomatic! I voted mostly all democratic, just because I wasn't up to speed on all the issues of all the candidates in all the races I had to vote for. Ryan (R) beat Poshard (D) for Gubenautical race. Moseley-Braun (D) is behind by 100K votes v. Fitzgerald (R) for the Senatorical race. I also think incumbent, E-wing (R) creamed Prussing 63 to 37 percent. Then there is Minnesota... all I can say is good luck Jesse, who just won.

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#uiuc All saints day... 1 November 1998

Meijer is really annoying. They often change their prices every week, thus causing confusion on how much you are paying. Like I paid almost $8 for a 24 pack of Lipton - almost as bad as a vending machine, but not quite. Yesterday Mike (my neighbor) and I went to Meijer, and since I was there I felt compelled to buy something. So I bought a some Frappuccino, I ended up paying $4.80. WTF. Meijer also doesn't price all their products on the shelves. That's the most annoying thing in the world. Of course, I wasn't doing my part in asking for a price check, but really, $1.20 for some fancy yuppie drink? You've got to be kidding me. I may have to go shop at Target for more stuff.

Mike and I noticed a Perpetual Dawn (sorry, it's a song from Orb) yesterday. It looked like it was 6AM, 7AM and then 7PM at various periods during the day. In otherwords, no day yesterday. No day today either, although I was never outside. It has been cold, but I have to tolerate it. I think Jack starts to smell after some time in the morning, so I keep my window open and my door open to bring fresh air into the room.

If you step into my hall you can smell the boo-puke left by somebody who didn't know his boo-beer tolerance this Halloween. Drinking to the point that you are going to vomit is stupid. Vomiting in the hallway is stupid. Stupidity doesn't belong in Allen Hall.

I guess my neighbor had a talk with Jack and pointed out that we don't get along. Jack and I had a talk. I hate having talks with Jack. I mean, I don't mind talking to Jack, but addressing issues is really annoying. Mainly because it deals with a lot of judgement. I suppose it's something I should get used to. I guess both of us just get "pissed-off" at each other and need to tell each other when this occurs. I suppose it's a good thing. I went into this whole roommate business negatively to begin with. I will still make fun of Jack and post updates that are demeaning, because Jack is wierd. He admits it. I am also going to have to find a clever way of recording him on my computer, Cooledit is too big. Okay, I just found some shortcuts... :)

Laurel Prussing When asked to indicate which principles she supports concerning education in a survey from Project Votesmart said, "Give children vouchers to choose their parents." Perhaps a typo, I like it anyway. I decided instead of seeing whether I like Ewing or Prussing (for House of Representatives) to screw it. My vote goes to Prussing, because she seems like she'll support the things I like. I'll make up my own arguments for not choosing Ewing. "Ewing is the demon-seed spawn of the devil. His last term in congress brought the devil one step closer to taking away everything in which you believe. This Novermber when you vote, don't vote for evil, vote for non-evil, vote for Laurel Prusssing. Laurel Prussing lets kids choose their parents."

Sounds like India has it's own "religious right," known as the Vidya Bharati, making educational demands. They want to ban certain poems and stories. Schools shouldn't teach the young "graphically about the female body and her emotions."

Our school has this cool thing. Let's say you are going to a web site. If it's busy or down or just hard to connect to, this webcache system (128.174.0.245 or webcache.gw.uiuc.edu) takes up the task of trying to connect to the site for you (I'm assuming that's it's only task, so it's faster). I also think that it just serves you frequently vistied pages. So if you go to Yahoo, and someone else does, it's their right away, and the webcache thing just gives you what it has. That is kick-ass.

Little things

• Today we can celebrate the fall of the Ottoman Empire (1922).
• Jack got a "Yo Quiero Taco Bell" poster Friday and put it up Saturday. It's scary.
• I've cleaned up my new "better-than Adam's loft" desk. There;s a lot of space to work with. Of course that space may change in a week or two.
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#allen hall A Laureenish thing... 19 October 1998

I went to a GLBT issues thing at Allen Hall (which cleverly hid under the facade of a sex discussion with free pizza). Obviously the pizza lured me in, as I don't have time to do anything. It was actually interesting to listen to the people with their voices. GLBTphobia is one of those things that I don't like dealing with because it's one of the flaws of society along with racism and other types of prejudice. It makes me think, "Gee humanity, you can't accept gays? What's wrong with you, we need to make the future now. Nobody cares whether your gay in the future." That's just me. I think humanity needs to advance out of these pidly issues. Stop being homophobic and racist. It's just pointless at the root level. People mentioned that most of this homophobia comes out of fear. At least that is what the speaker said. I was too shy to actually argue with her and say that it's not fear all the time. It may be fear for a lot of the people. It was fear for me when I was younger and didn't really think about homosexuality. For the people who act out, its not necessarily fear, but personality. Humans love to point out the flaws in others. They love making themselves look perfect and the others look flawed. For example: We hate blacks. We don't fear them. We just hate them. They are different, and we are not them. Thus we are better. There maybe an underlying fear at the rootlevel now that I think about it. Why else would people undermine others? If we undermine others in efforts to bring some change in others, that is one thing. If we undermine others just for the sake of undermining... well we don't achieve anything, but maybe we feel a little better? But why? Why weren't we feeling better leaving these groups alone? We fear them because we don't understand them? We're not used to it? Maybe.

I admittedly undermine people all the time. Sometimes it's a joke, sometimes seriously. I don't do this when I'm serious by using a group of some sort as the basis for undermining people. It's usually something they've done. It, however, is the wrong way to go about solving a problem. People get resentful when you make them feel like less of a person. I try to stop. Maybe one day I'll succeed.

Then again there's Jack. I'll upload an MP3 to the MP3 server. It's very Jorgenson like. Details will be posted later. (If you do not know what MP3 server to which I refer, you can ask me. I don't want to publicize details.)

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# Republicans have good ideas too. 14 October 1998

Read this. I am going to have to side with the "evil" Republicans on this one. School districts should be allowed to put money where they want it. Local schools cater to different people with different demands. They also are paying specific focus to special education... oh crap. Special education usually means the mentally retarded not the gifted. Well who knows, they might mean gifted.

This is a mistake.

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#uiuc I love UI 2 September 1998

I've decided that I love this University. Not because it is anything special, but because I think that's how the University wants me to feel. No wait what the hell am I saying. No the University of Illinois is a very decent school. I don't know why I like it, but I do for some reason. Maybe the good balance with academics and cultural diversity, etc. I dunno. Probably because it has a large library. A library that gives away good cookies.

Well speaking of, thanks to the Residence Hall Interlibrary system, I have Heretics of Dune.

My class schedule is slowly getting smaller and it looks like school will suck only once in a while instead of twice. The food service in Allen is poor. Today I had snickers ice cream from Edy's that was good. It was bad when the machine didn't work during dinner time. Grr. The food was bad for dinner, I didn't eat much. The hot cocoa machine still does not work. Woe is me.

Unit One is really cool. This week we have Barbara Trent, Oscar award winner of The Panama Deception. I went to a talk yesterday and she talked about all these cool programs she was involved with. She talked about how she fled from the FBI. She talked about how she made movies that exposed the government. Yesterday I watched some of her other movie, Cover Up: Behind The Iran Contra Affair. I watched some of it because it was too cold for me in the main hall. Today I will dress appropriately and watch the Panama Deception and hopefully stay for discussion. The fact that I can do this in my own hall is just so neat. I mean talking about all these cool issues with some person who has a shiny award that sits at the Front Desk of our hall and stuff. Wow, Allen Hall is cool.

My best friend in the whole wide world got her ICQ password today.

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#learning Day 9 No Molly 5 August 1998

Wanna know something neat? Well upsetting too, I guess.

On Thursday night, July 30th, the facility that hosts Merriam-Webster's Web site was burglarized and its servers were stolen. We've managed to restore limited capacity, but we need to obtain new hardware from our suppliers before we can return to full service. We hope to have the entire site active again in a few days. We apologize for the inconvenience and hope you will bear with us as we deal with the situation.

Thank you for your patience.

--The Merriam-Webster Web Team

I wrote a note to my roommate and a letter to my inamorta. Sorry, I'd give a link to that word, but they are using some Dictionary scripts that were made on the fly, and I don't want to use a non Merriam-Webster dictionary.

Mail is coming late again today.

I went to see Saving Private Ryan. If you like to watch serious movies, I recommend it. It's a bit gory, but every movie that you have seen that involves gore has been preparing you for this movie. The violence and cruelty in this movie strengthens may hatred of war. It's not just the destruction of resources, but the humanity. This was a good movie, but not something that I could see another time.

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#persuasion Effective arguments 25 May 1998

I see this happening within my group of friends. What tends to happen, is they will do something. Some type of authority will tell them to stop and their best argument is that what they are doing is some type of alternative to 'typical' behavior, like drinking, etc. You can look at any action in this way and justify a lot of stuff. Let's say somebody annoys me. I could antagonize them and justify this by saying, well it's better than killing them. These types of arguments do not work. For example, Tag is not an alternative to drinking beer. Holding discussions in prohibitted areas is not an alternative to doing drugs. If you want people to give you any credibility, do not always think of your actions as an alternative to something. If someone says you shouldn't play tag, don't just complain how you are "at least not getting drunk." Try to come up with some type of rational argument and say that if anything. The truth is a park ranger would probably rather have you drinking beer somewhere just because his job is to keep the park safe for children (even if there are no children around) not to prevent underage drinking.

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