Finals!!

Aghhh finals! They hath arriveth! That means zombie hall mates walking slowly down the hall in the wee hours of the night with giant cups of coffee in hand, that means piles of papers and trash building up slowly in the study lounge because every moment cleaning is a moment that could be spent studying, that means Wawa business revenue going way, way, way up and peaking just in the hours of 2-4 a.m. in the morning. It is a crazy alterna-world where people who have spent the precious year building up some level of social skill quickly revert back to their true nerd, hermit form. Aghhh finals? Ahhh, finals!

Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand

Saw the article in the Washington Post today, saw it again in the New York Times, and this frankly upsets me to no small degree. I have to say that the Bush Administration has just lost all credibility with this one - going as far as to plant military analysts in in order to shine a good light on what is clearly a war that went wrong long, long ago? Yeah, good luck with that one fellows, how much are these analysts being paid again?
This situation along with the situation at Guantanamo Bay outline the hypocrisy of the Bush Administration's policies that have made the United States lose its credibility in the international world - after all, how can we justify fighting for democracy in Iraq and uprooting hundreds of thousands of people in the process when our own democratic system seems to be so, so flawed right now? The worst part of this though, is that the international community holds us in disdain when in fact international cooperation is what we need most right now in order to effectively fight terrorism. When our President tries to bend the rules, seems like we all lose.

Tokyo Powerpoint

A Brief Wonderous Review of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

If you haven't heard of this book yet, you need to get on this stuff NOW. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is touching, tragic, and, most importantly, laugh-out-loud nerdy. Oscar De Leon, aka Oscar Wao (a bastardization of Oscar Wilde) is a and I quote, "fat nerd from the ghettos." As if a book about such an apparent anomaly of a human stereotype could not be good? Pffttt, throw in a super feminist sister, a super hot mama, boyish pheromones, otaku-ness, a prostitute-lover, Star Trek references, and a fast-talking narrator that isn't afraid to ask how does a boy like Oscar end up so fucked up and we get tears, hilarity, and more than a little bit of humanity. =)

Notes on Fair Use (Warning: this may be a copyright infringement)

When I first began to read the article about a company that sells bundles of notes taken from a professor's class and books, my immediate thought was that that was wrong, it was clearly a copyright infringement. But then, the article drew attention to the fact that if doing so was a copyright infringement, then a student taking down notes in class and long-standing companies such as CliffNotes would also be in murky water - things that don't seem like copyright infringement to me necessarily. So that's when I realized that what I felt was really wrong with buying notes from a company was that it was an ethical infringement more so than a copyright infringement. But, ethics aside and sticking the the lay of the law, I would say that selling notes taken from a professor's class is not a copyright infringement. However, I am no law expert and this whole issue of "fair use" seems to me to be a very gray area. I propose this instead, how about we avoid this whole (very) gray and messy situation by letting professors who want their work "protected" have all potential students sign a waiver saying that they will not sell their notes for profit. That way, there were be a legally binding contract between the professor and the student so both know what they are getting into.

Just...tired

I can't seem to get fully "awake" these past few weeks. Really, I feel like I walk around and go to class in zombie mode half the time - eyes half-open, barely conscious. True, the late nights doing all the many essays that seem to pile up toward the end of the year hasn't been helping, but I think the real culprit is what I call the "end-of-the-year blues." That's what it is, I foresee the end of the year coming ever closer, and my motivation to do work drops coordinately. Meanwhile, my amount of work is increasing exponentially. In the past two weeks, I think these two things peaked in the opposite directions at the same time (no I'm not high, if I could draw you a little graph, you would understand, bah!) ... aaaannnddd so, I'm dead. Har, har! No.
It's actually not funny at all, I have straight A-'s in ALL my classes. Before you groan and start hating on me, let me explain! Granted, A-'s are not BAD, but they are the dead man's land of grades, really. You're just barely close enough to an A but you're not there yet and there is a long, long way to fall, yet the only way you could possibly bring your grade up is to get...well, an A (which obviously has been a problem for me since I only have an A-). Now the pressure's on me to get ridiculously high scores on ALL my final exams so I can bring my grade up. Otherwise, my grade will drop - all or nothing is where I am at. To be honest, sometimes I'd prefer to have a B or C just so I can have more leeway to bring my grade up or to just give up. Ughhh....

Censorship

I just read the two articles on the censorship of the word "abortion" in a government-funded database and its subsequent removal and could not agree more with the removal of the censorship. Not like this should matter, but I'll say right now that I am personally anti-abortion - I myself would never get an abortion but either way though, I have to say that I am adamantly against the censorship of the keyword "abortion." After all, what can possibly be achieved by denying people who are thinking about a possible abortion, access to information on said abortion? As Melissa Just says in the first article and I quote, "Even if you were trying to make an argument to someone that abortion is a bad idea for them -- whether it's a health risk, or you're concerned about their mental well being, you wouldn't be able to find articles about your claim," she notes. "It's shutting off both the pro and the con access." I think everybody has the right to get access to objective, scientific information about abortion and let them come to their decisions - that is their right. Furthermore, if we had let this one slide, what next? Censorship of any terms that may possibly contradict the Bush Administration's agenda? All for the sake of federal funding? It is a slippery slope my friends and before you know it, we'll be no better than, say, Nroth Korea.

Mearsheimer - Rockstar?

Other breaking news in the Nerd World today - John J. Mearsheimer - one of the most eminent political scientists alive today and the author of ground-breaking books such as "The Tragedy of Great Power Politics" and "Taming American Power" came to speak at William and Mary on the now-hallowed day of April 7th, 2008, to speak about his latest book, "The Israel Lobby."

Woot! If you're still awake and reading this then you must 1) be an IR major and 2) just about to pee in your pants with excitement. Yep, as expected, it seemed like all the IR majors at WM (and there are MANY) were at the UC Chesapeake auditorium Monday afternoon to hear Mearsheimer talk. The auditorium was PACKED, with people resorting to sitting on the floor and stairs, people were that excited, and the sight made me prouder of my school than anything else - that this school is so nerdy that a large proportion of its population get more giddy over a professor from the University of Chicago than, say, the Ying-Yang Twins. In fact, I even heard one girl describing Mearsheimer to another (non-IR) friend that he is "sort of a rock star of the IR world." Hail Yeah, it makes sense now - wouldn't you choose Van Halen over the Ying-Yang Twins any day? Rock on man, rock on!

Plugged In

Is WM plugged in enough compared to other so-called elite universities in the nation? WM being the only college that I've attended, I have to say that I have no real basis for comparison, but I sure hope we are because technological skills are going to a necessity in the future, if not already. As the world becomes more globalized, technological skills are going to be a necessity for keeping in touch and communicating with colleagues, suppliers, producers, stock markets, etc. around the world. Does that mean that everybody should know how to program their own web-based application program? No. But it wouldn't be a bad idea. What everybody is calling "Web 2.0" is based heavily on user-created content and those who can create the next big social-networking site or online web video player can become a very rich person indeed. Of course, it is quite very possible that these things will reach their limit and come to pass, but what won't pass anytime soon is the way businesses are run now and days - through technology.

D.C. Cherry Blossoms

I went up to D.C. to visit the cherry blossoms last weekend and it never failed to impress me. There is nothing that signals spring has fully arrived in D.C. more than the arrival of the cherry blossoms. In the past couple of years, the blossoms have been destroyed too early by storms and high winds, but this year it was glorious. It was perfect weather - not too hot, not too cold - so swarms of people had turned out to view the blossoms. You would think havoc would ensue, but it was fine. Sure, you had walk in an 'S' shape half the time to avoid the people stopping in the middle of the path suddenly to take a picture, but you also got to see young couples, families with their little children, tourists and residents chattering in foreign languages, and a happy dog or two. I had a real American melting pot moment there, see all these different people of different ages, sexes, colors, heritages coming together to take in the view of pretty white-pink blossoms on the edges of the Potomac River. Quite fittingly, we ended our tour at the Jefferson Memorial where an enormous statue of the man rose up against the backdrop. I can't help but to imagine that had he actually been watching over the scene today, he would be quite happy indeed.

Caught Downloading Copyrighted Material—Now What?

Lisa over at Lifehacker http://lifehacker.com/371653/caught-downloading-copyrighted-materialnow-what has just been caught downloading copyrighted materials over Bittorrent. Well, kinda. She received a letter saying that she "may" be prosecuted by the copyrighters and that it would be within their right to do so. So the question now is what should Lisa do? Should Lisa go on her merry way and continue downloading copyrighted materials, should she stop and hope nothing happens, should she be punished? Well, I think Lisa should stop downloading immediately, for her own sake, because downloading copyrighted materials without paying for them is illegal and she can very well be prosecuted. But even more than there, there is the principle of it all - people work hard to make songs and movies and it is only right to pay for their work. Of course, there would be those who argue that all the money goes to the big studio honchos and not the little cameraman way down on the ladder, but we forget that there is a trickle down effect - less money for the honchos means less money for the little people. Granted though, on the company's part - it is important for them to make their works easily accessible and fairly priced. For example, I'll admit that I have downloaded some songs before in the past for free, but that was because they were hard to find foreign songs that I couldn't find anywhere else for a reasonable price (sorry, I will not pay $50.00 for a 7 CD compilation to get the one song that I want). I , however, never download popular American songs for free, because I know I can easly buy them off ITunes instead. Sure, I'll be a dollar poorer than if I had downloaded it for free, but it's well worth it for the risk and for, more importantly, my peace of mind.