[X] i hate bill o'reilly [X] dean's world [X] pure bs
Sunday, September 04, 2005
i'm back. i've started with a redesign and a new focus with what i'm going to be doing here. nothing is set it stone yet so the site will probably not end up looking like this because it is not done yet and i'm not sure if the content will even be remotely the same. stay tuned.
...and i'm still awake at 9:02:00 AM [+]
Wednesday, May 11, 2005
i have had a lot going on lately. it's been a pretty life altering experience this past week. i'm getting ready to get out and go it alone. i'm starting to freelance a little and if everything works out with the jobs i have lined up i'll be making a lot of money doing it. hopefully i can quit my full time job soon. i'm getting sick of it. if i have any spare time i'm going to make a full CSS site with alternate style sheets like i'm building now for the portal some of my friends and i have created (complete with forums, email, news, and irc). of course this could take a while now that my free time is more limited while i still have to hold on to this job. once i'm up and running, which will probably be this summer, i'll be moving. my apartment now sucks and i need a bigger place to work out of anyway. i've been contemplating a big move, to somewhere far away from here but i'm not sure i can pull it off just yet. i may need a little more stability first, but when have i ever had that? more news to come...
...and i'm still awake at 6:46:00 PM [+]
Tuesday, May 03, 2005
i've been a busy little bee on the web lately. last week i set up an irc server on an old box i had lying around. it's become a great place to chat and share files. this week i registered a domain name and set up a website there. i redid my site the other day, and now tomorrow i have to work on a new site and hopefully after that i will have another one to work on too. i'm glad that things are going better professionally for me, well, except for my real job, that just sucks, but it won't be my real job for long. a few drinks later, a lesson learned the hard way, and i'm off to bed.
...and i'm still awake at 1:08:00 AM [+]
Saturday, April 30, 2005
the war in iraq continues without much talk around the water cooler anymore. it's pretty sad considering we have lost 1500 troops and have endured about 30,000 casualties. not only is it scary to look at those numbers but it is scary to realize what they mean. for all the talk about how the draft will never be reimplemented, it's starting to look like that is the only option other than withdrawal and i can't imagine president bush withdrawing troops. we're stuck in a position now where troops are leaving or will be leaving at a high rate and recruitment is declining at the same time, despite the best efforts of the military.
in domestic news florida is making waves again by refusing to allow a 13 year old an abortion, despite florida law. there seems to be a pattern emerging here. florida, headed by the brother of our corrupt president, seems to think it can remake the rules whenever it feels like it. we have laws for a reason. some of them are dumb i will admit, but blatantly ignoring them deligitimizes the law in general. we have a process for overturning laws and a process for writing new ones. the real issue being raised in florida is the moral issue and i don't think it is by accident. first we have a "right to die" case and now a "right to abortion" case. it sounds like one big political scam to me.
...and i'm still awake at 12:08:00 PM [+]
i know it's been a long time since i posted but i'm going to get back for good again. i've redesigned the site but it's not finished yet. the archives need to be fixed because the setup is crappy right now. the comments need fixing too. also if you're wondering what's up with "cat" in the title and all those "$" symbols, they are meant to symbolize a bash prompt. "cat" is just a command to concatenate a file. this causes the contents of the file to be displayed on the screen. the "$" symbols are just the prompt itself.
be forwarned that i haven't tested any of this on anything other than firefox on linux so if things look screwy it's because i haven't had a chance to test anything out yet.
i'm going to get going to sleep now but i will probably fix some of the problems with the site tomorrow and hopefully post an update.
...and i'm still awake at 1:16:00 AM [+]
Sunday, March 20, 2005
ever since i first learned about campus watch (a vile organization that maintains a sort of blacklist of professors who don't agree with their hawkish views in the middle east) i have become more fearful of the encroachment of anti-intellectuals on university campuses. it may seem harsh to brand conservatives anti-intellectuals but most do fit into that mold, after all, central to conservatism in the united states is faith, which is the most anti-intellectual concept that exists. there is also an opposition to progression, or at least of progressives. combine that with a hawkish outlook of the world, which in itself is anti-intellectual as much as idealism is intellectual.
things today are no better than they were then. in fact conservatives have begun to complain more vociferously about their supposed unfair treatment on campus. it's actually been a little odd to witness considering where all this noise is coming from. aren't conservatives anti-intellectuals who never trusted higher learning in the first place and don't give a damn what card they've been played, because they'll make the best use of it!? not anymore. these new conservatives are just as bad as old liberals. russel jacoby of the nation, writes:
...the new conservative critics seem driven by an ethos that they have adopted from liberalism: affirmative action and a sense of victimhood, which they officially detest.
i've been saying this for years now but it seems political correctness lives, but it lives with conservatives now. censorship and affirmative action are now a part of the conservative platform. i'm glad for it because i was never fond of political correctness, and i was never fond of censorship (god i hate you lieberman).
the so-called studies of social science professors that have been carried out to "prove" the left's indoctrination of university students have been so utterly flawed and misinterpreted that it is almost laughable. jacoby elaborates:
A key statement ran: "On my campus, some professors use the classroom to present their personal political views." And the possible responses ran from "Strongly agree" and "Somewhat agree" to "Somewhat disagree" and "Strongly disagree." Of the 658 students polled, 10 percent answered "Strongly agree" and 36 percent "Somewhat agree," which yields the almost 50 percent figure that appeared in headlines claiming half of American students are subject to political indoctrination.
this is hardly damning and in fact is actually pretty vague. more than anything else though, this study is alarming in just the fact that anyone would attempt to prove such a thing. are the anti-intellectuals actually trying to appropriate their most antithetical institutions? why? don't they already have the governement and the media in their pockets? in fact they own more of the campus then conservative like to let on. it goes without saying:
Conservatives seem little interested in exploring the political orientation of engineering professors or biogeneticists. The more important the field, in terms of money, resources and political clout, the less conservatives seem exercised by it. At many universities the medical and science buildings, to say nothing of the business faculties or the sports complexes, tower over the humanities. I teach at UCLA. The history professors are housed in cramped quarters of a decaying Modernist structure. Our classiest facility is a conference room that could pass as generic space in any downtown motel. The English professors inhabit what appears to be an aging elementary school outfitted with minuscule offices. A hop away is a different world. The UCLA Anderson School of Management boasts its own spanking-new buildings, plush seminar rooms, spacious lecture halls with luxurious seats, an "executive dining room" and--gold in California--reserved parking facilities. Conservatives seem unconcerned about the political orientation of the business professors. Shouldn't half be Democrats and at least a few be Trotskyists?
i can attest to the same situation at the university i attended. while the arts and humanities buildings crumbled, new business buildings, arena's, and even on campus shops were built. by my last year there they had renovated an old chemistry building (they had just built a new chemistry building) for the humanities. they always seemed to be given the least resources out of any other department. all of my other classes had fancy techonology in the rooms and as a part of the curriculum, but my humanities classrooms were rooms straight out of my elementary years.
the jacoby essay ends with a poingnant conclusion that any conservative would be hard-pressed to debate:
"Curricula and reading lists," says principle number four of Horowitz's academic bill of rights, "should reflect the uncertainty and unsettled character of all human knowledge" and provide "students with dissenting sources and viewpoints where appropriate."
"Where appropriate" is the kicker, but the consequences for teachers are clear enough from perusing the "abuses" that Students for Academic Freedom lists or that Horowitz plays up in his columns. For instance, Horowitz lambastes a course called Modern Industrial Societies, which uses as its sole text a 500-page leftist anthology, Modernity: An Introduction to Modern Societies. This is a benign book published by a mainstream press, yet under the academic bill of rights the professor could be hauled before authorities to explain such a flagrant violation. If not fired, he or she could be commanded to assign a 500-page anthology published by the Free Enterprise Institute. Another "abuse" occurred in an introductory class, Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution, where military approaches were derided. A student complained that "the only studying of conflict resolution that we did was to enforce the idea that non-violent means were the only legitimate sources of self-defense." This was "indoctrination," not education. Presumably the professor of "peace studies" should be ordered to give equal time to "war studies." By this principle, should the United States Army War College be required to teach pacifism?
the biggest fear i have is exactly what jacoby envisions:
In the name of intellectual diversity and students' rights, many courses could be challenged. A course on Freud would have to include anti-Freudians; a course on religion, atheists; a course on mysticism, the rationalists. The academic bill of rights seeks to impose some limits by restricting diversity to "significant scholarly viewpoints." Yet this is a porous shield. Once the right to decide the content of courses is extended to students, the Holocaust deniers, creationists and conspiracy addicts will come knocking at the door--and indeed they already have.
shouldn't we just accept the fact that the university is for intellectuals and conservatives are in opposition to intellectualism. if they choose not to take part in the intellectualism that goes on at univerisities it is no one's fault but their own creed. after all, is it surprising that intellectuals rule the acedemic world?
...and i'm still awake at 2:14:00 PM [+]
Wednesday, February 23, 2005
my experiences with amanita muscaria (aka fly agaric)
yesterday i took a mushroom called the amanita muscaria. since it was my first time i decided to take a very small amount. my friend and i crushed the dry fly agaric and then mixed it in with melted chocolate. then we froze it. when the mushroom was prepared we lit some incense, turned the music on and started eating.
about a half hour into it i could feel waves of energy coming up from my feet all the way up my legs. i got very excited and started jumping up and down on my bed. then i stopped and sat down with energy all around me. i felt really good. my whole body felt good. my brain was not disoriented at all although i did have a hard time speaking well. this stage lasted for an hour or two.
after that i became very lethargic and dreamy. my eyes kept closing and when they did my imagination would let loose. i was in and out of consciousness at this point. an hour or so after a complete collapse into unconsciousness i was woke up by my friend, who had also fallen asleep. not much happened for the next few hours.
my friend went home and i was getting tired. i put some stuff away and started to turn off all the lights. i went to the bathroom and when i emerged i could see something in the doorway of the other room. it had a somewhat human form. at this point i knew i was definitely seeing things that were not there. i decided i was too tired to hallucinate right now so I ignored it and when to bed. there was a green light emmanating from my bed. i layed down anyway, took one last look into the doorway, where i saw this being staring at me, and closed my eyes. despite all of this i did fall asleep.
the effects were milder than they could have been. in fact, we didn't really do that much because we had never done it before. it was worth it for the pure feeling of happiness in the beginning of our trip. i am going to try it again soon, with an increased dosage to see what happens. i will post the results when that happens.
...and i'm still awake at 9:49:00 AM [+]
Monday, December 06, 2004
my experiment with gnome ended quickly. i'm back to using window maker. i did manage to clean up some of the fonts in window maker (gkrellm actually) but there are still some bugs. i ported my gnome theme over the best i could, so it looks pretty good now. i'll get a screenshot up when i'm being less lazy. now i'm just trying to get the new kismet working. the old conf file does not enable sources correctly with the new kismet and i cannot find any documentation that shows the correct way to set up a cisco card with a ethx:wifix interface. maybe i need a newer kernel and a newer driver first, but the latest mm isn't compiling for me and the last stable release i tried compiled but wouldn't work right with my touchpad. time to try again i suppose.
...and i'm still awake at 10:54:24 AM [+]
Saturday, November 20, 2004
so after all that fuss with window maker, even going to the point of updating a patch for it, and now i'm not even using window maker anymore. i still have it on my system and i'm sure i'll go back and check it out but for now i'm trying out gnome. i haven't used it since 2.2 and i have to say it has improved considerabley. its a little slower because of the massive overhead compared to window maker but i tuned the swappiness a little and it seems to be smoother now. here's a screenshot with a gentoo look:
i'm a little disappointed at the results of the election last week. there is no reason to mourn though. there is no reason to hinge hopes on the possibility that this president cheated again. after all, they let him get away with it four years ago. who actually believes the truth will matter this time? we need to look to the future. we have to take this to another level. we have to show that this election was NOT a last stand. we have to be even more informed now. we have to be more united. we have to be better organized, more funded, and more importantly, more influential. we have to expose every lie and deceit coming from the other side at their ever increasing rate. this is not the end. this is only the beginning.
...and i'm still awake at 1:21:32 PM [+]
