new jersey

people from new jersey often complain about their situation in life. they complain that they are shunned as secondary citizens by their neighbors in new york city, they complain that they are unfairly stereotyped as less intelligent than their jcrew clad counterparts, and they complain that people don't give new jersey enough credit, that it isn't the stink hole that people who have never even been there attribute to it.

i never really liked new jersey that much, i don't have some blind hatred for it, my mother's entire side of the family resides around verona and bloomfield so i visit every now and then, but it's not paradise. for the next 3 months i have become a new jersey resident. i live in mercerville, new jersey. it's only been 6 days total, 3 days of working and i'm already starting to hate it. it's really only two things: the people and the scenery.

we'll start with the scenery. maybe it's because i'm unfortunately in mercerville. i think you can judge how civilized a place is by how many starbucks are around you. in new york city there is one just about every 2 blocks. ok maybe not 'civilized' but developed, even in jacksonville, fl there is a starbucks dotted around the place. my house in mercerville is very old, i live above a dentist's office and everything about it screams out old. the electrical outlets are two-pronged, which means i have to find adapter plugs for all my surge protectors, etc that have the additional grounding plug. there is high speed internet in the house but a. the office is locked from the rest of the house and i can't see how it's set up b. there is a wireless router but the guy living there says that the man who set it up forgot the network password? c. i can't get into the office and reset the wireless whachamahoozits.

in my desperate search for internet i have begun to rely on my cell phone for receiving instant messages. it's pretty pathetic and it gives me headaches as it does persay "chat" it text messages me an alert every time I have a response and i follow the hyperlink and i get to my message. yesterday i went crazy. i decided to search for the only civilization that i knew, starbucks. i knew starbucks would most likely have wireless internet, it is a haven, albeit a haven with bad coffee. i drove and drove and drove, at one point i almost ended up in philadelphia accidently and the other i ended up back around work in princeton. no starbucks. was i going crazy? tonight the search continues.

now the people in new jersey are terrible. i'm not sure what is their general attitude problem. i can understand new york, people in new york really just don't give a damn about you and mind their own business. in new jersey everyone wants to be up as close as they can be to you and tell you your business. they are just plain mean. i saw my dad's head about to explode as the realtor for potential studio in princeton gave him attitude. my dad grew up in small towns and has always lived in small town mentality, everyone is nice and no one gives you your business. i knew there was trouble when this realtor strode around with his sweater preppily tied around his shoulders as he sashayed towards spring st. "are you trying to blow your son's chances at getting this apartment?" oh god guy, you're dead, god have mercy on your soul, my dad is not the person to speak to like that.

the house i'm staying at has two parking spaces. after office hours, the family from ghana in the house moves their car to one of the spaces and the dentist has the other one until she pulls out for the day. i came home early yesterday and found both occupied. not knowing the area and it being my second day of driving in nj, i pulled into the street next to the house where the day before i saw a sign indicating it was fine to park on the side. as i turned into the street i noticed a car coming at me, i looked to the side and discovered it was a one way st. not a big deal really as it was a small street behind a grocery store. i did my best to pull to the far right of the easily 3 car width wide street and waved for them to go around me as i couldn't back up into traffic. the first car drove right at my grill and proceeded to give me the MOST angry looks and mouth of to me in his car. you'd think i killed his dog or something.

the next car was driven by a white haired old man. immediately as he saw me he decided to pull directly in front of me insteading of going around me as he had been on track to do. was it senility? no. the first guy did the same thing. only in jersey. when people do that in my town we just drive around them, hoping the driver becomes unlost.

on monday, i met tim and matt in princeton and we went out to watch a movie. it was about 10 pm and there were 2 other people in the theater. we were excited because we had driven all over the place to find this hidden AMC and had just run through the rain to get in (jersey's road system is the dumbest and most... whack thing i've ever seen in my entire life). for most of the movie they talked. this isn't the normal kind of 'loud black people yelling at the movie'or whispering to each other, as i was used to, this was fat white people that decided the theater was their living room and they could talk alongside with the dialogue.

only in jersey. somehow in the middle of their talking i snapped and told them to shut up. the girl turned and looked at us and said 'hey boooys'. she then proceeded to continue talking as her boyfriend shushed her. then he started talking with her again.

here's another anecdote. while i was shopping in wal-mart with my dad to get all the basic things i needed to move into my new home, a funny thing happened. i pushed my cart along the aisles as i searched for pillows. i left my cart parallel to one of the aisles as i searched, i went up to each pillow fluffing them out and seeing which would be the best for me. as i returned to my cart, i discovered someone had stolen one of my bath towels that i had put in my cart. i angrily got another one and checked out. it wasn't until the next day that i found out that someone had stolen the other bath towel too. what the fuck?

if i wasn't going to new york on the weekends i think i may go crazy. no offense to the wonderful people of jersey that i know at columbia, but i will never raise a family in jersey. i couldn't live with myself if i did.

am i the only one who thinks this entire thing is ridiculous?

Being a student at Columbia University gives you the privilege to be a part of the protest or quietly sit as a spectator. During last year's uproar over alleged racism in one of the Fed's cartoon's you could sit back and understand why many were outraged and we could sympathize. This year we have another campus implosion, turning Columbian against Columbian. We have the New York Sun doing play by play on our every move, actively trying to paint our University with a dark secret: anti-Semitism and then we have the New York Times adding their two-cents every now and then.

As a spectator, am I the only one that finds the allegations of anti-Semitism absolutely ridiculous? This is where our story begins. Ding. Turn the page.

Allegations of anti-Semitism. Students who believed they were being intimidated by the professors in the MEALAC department decide to take part in a documentary put together by The David Project. They claim to be trying to present an objective view of academic freedom in the classroom, but all you really hear about are accusations of he did this and he did that. Granted, I wasn't in the classroom, what really happened remains in the confines of the minds of the professors and those in the classroom. [now that I think about it, wouldn't it be easily verified what statements were made? theses classes must have at least 20-30+ people in them, surely more than the alleged victims would be able to remember a story that in context is blatantly offensive]. The story has become a circus. Everybody and their mother has their own opinion about what happened and what should happen in the MEALAC dept. because the Sun and the David Project have turned the situation into a medieval crusade... or a witch hunt. The ad-hoc committee’s report was released today, no anti-Semitism, but the grievance policy is terrible.

Our story continues. I was sitting in image processing reading the Spec's articles and as soon as I finished the articles last sentence I think something in my brain snapped.

"I was disturbed because we wanted so badly to heal the Columbia community and get past this and we think at the very least the people that see that report would be the Columbia students."- Bari Weiss '07"

There had been something that had disturbed me about this entire anti-Semitism "scandal" and I could never really put my finger on it till now.

Heal the Columbia Community... I realize that there are students on this campus that feel like they were hurt somehow. I don't mean the portions of the Jewish community and others who have been following the proceedings and have taken a stance on it in their own detached sort of way, I mean the people that were in the classrooms, the ones that asked a question and had a wake up call answer that they probably didn't expect to be thrown at them. Perhaps I'm being insensitive, but I don't exactly feel like this has rocked Columbia to the foundation of its being.

Every semester I sit at my desk and with my advisors I pick about 5 classes to take. I believe the reason we go to university and take classes is for the purpose of learning. We go to university to get a deeper perspective on issues, to question beliefs that we have held all our lives that have not yet been subject to rigorous intellectual debate.

It struck me while I was reading the newspaper that everyone that has been mentioned as having grievances with MEALAC has been Jewish and in a class pertaining to the Arab world. I had to ask myself, why are you in that class. I believe that everyone's motive was to get an alternative perspective to the world that is adjacent to what they hold dear to their hearts (Israel); they want to know about Arabs and Palestine. I think that is a worthy cause, find the root of all the controversy; why has the hatred and fighting become so ingrained in the modern consciousness of both involved parties. The deviation I believe that occurred with those making the majority of grievances is that while they allowed themselves to listen to an alternative perspective, they did not allow themselves to give any consideration to the opposition view.

The problem with academic freedom is not between the student and the teacher; it is within the student.

I am going out on a limb but it seems logical that while enrolled in Massad's class, some of his students could not accept or at least give consideration to what he was teaching. Prejudice is a difficult barrier to get past. There is an over used adage that says that you can lead a horse to water but you cannot make it drink from it, this couldn't be closer to the truth.

Students in this conflict claim they have been verbally intimidated in the classroom. It would be virtually impossible, especially at a school of prestige at Columbia for a professor to circle the room and pick somebody out for intimidation. Massad did not go around the room and look for a Jewish person to get into heated debate with. Tomy Schoenfeld did not ONLY tell Massad that he had served in the Israeli army to illicit a response of "Well if you served in the military, then why don't you tell us how many Palestinians have you killed?" I don't understand why the context of the question was left out. I don't want to go so far as to say these students brought it upon themselves. That is unfair and wrong, what they did bring upon themselves is a sharp response from most likely an equally sharp question, an answer that was probably meant to make them think about their beliefs.

"Criticizing professors does not violate their academic freedom or stifle debate. It only adds to it. Professors can think and say and write whatever they wish. But they do not have the right to be free from criticism." -Bari Weiss

You're right Bari, they aren't free from criticism. What is appalling though is that sheltered Columbia students think they ARE free from criticism, that they came voice dissenting opinions and expect professors to baby them and say, "You know what, I’ve studied this for 2 decades and lived directly in the heart of the conflict, you know... you have a good point". This entire issue is blown greatly out of proportion. I wish Lee Bollinger spent more time doing other things than writing me emails so I feel like I'm not being alienated.

america doesn't care pt. 2

president george w. bush has decided that the state of the union... or the economy is not strong. he realizes that while he was accusing john kerry of proposing to spend a lot of money, he himself was actually spending a lot of it.

how shameful does this become when the things that the president used to get re-elected (see education) he very quickly has proposed to cut. department of education "he would kill 48 of its programs worth $4.3 billion and cut two others.". sure you could say, oh hogwash, these are programs that were useless and just wasting money anyways. that'd be completely legitimate, except that if you look at the 48 programs most of them are pretty legitimate sounding to me.

oh...
adult education state grants
teacher quality enhancement program
supported employment
projects with industry
vocational rehan
some scholarships
elementary and secondary school counseling
literacy programs for prisoners
women's educational equity
arts in education
civic education
interest subsidy grants
foreign language assistance
dropout prevention program
drug free school grants
interest subsidy grants
tech prep state grants
there's more and more and more and more and more

tell me mr. bush, you went to my town in front of a large crowd and talked about how community colleges were a pillar. how our economy requires people to get 21st century education for 21st century jobs. touted grants and scholarships, touted tons of things that are just proposed to be cut.

what's the best part.
america doesn't care. america elected him because they thought he was the real deal. he was pedro, he offered them their wildest dreams, and a statue of santa anna.

now the fairy tale is over and who's going to care. tommorow's conservative talking points.
-bush did what he had to do.
-bush is decisive, he saw our economy was in trouble and he made necessary cuts despite everyone's wearyness to do so.
-bush is realistic.

what is realistic though? fine i won't blame bush completely for sending the economy down the shithole. dennis schmelzer can post-election ass kiss all he wants to give reasons for economic craptasticness. what i will blame him for is for spending so much when he knew he couldn't do it. he wants to join hands and bring the nation back to fiscal responsibility?

what about spending so much money on everything? republicans touted how much of an increase education had when he was elected. war in iraq... yea that costs a lot. tax cuts... yea that costs a lot too. we forget that although the government is taking less out of our pockets, now the government has less money to do things. things that cushy americans loved. too bad. fiscal responsibility though... who cares about that when you can talk about social security blowing a godzilla sized hole in kansas come 2042.

in a week we'll all forget that Bush wanted to cut so many programs that are ridiculous. he wants to improve everything. he wants to improve airline security. OBVIOUSLY cut funding to FAA. loves veterans. OBVIOUSLY cut their veterans business development corporation. Loves small businesses. OBVIOUSLY cut their microloan program. environmentalists. well he never liked them, that's why water quality funds are proposed to be cut, epa protection for inuit villages... he loves mexicans. OBVIOUSLY cut migrant worker training programs. cut international labor affairs bereau, cut office of disability employment?

sure these may seem frivalous until you realize that real americans fall into these categories.

and nobody will care. ms. betty crocker white america will sit at home watching her soap operas and making her brownies smiling, knowing that her bush did what needed to be done. who cares that what needs to be done now could have been avoided. you can't be credited for achievement went it is to counter-act a failure. that puts you at even, skewed to the unhappy side. yet, for once, america only wants to hear the good parts. dumb asses.

america doesn't care pt. 1

Thursday, February 17, 2005 - 06:27 AM EST (37 views)

every day i read something new that has come to light out of the secrecy that is the bush administration. and the more we see and the longer we wait to observe the reactions, the clearer it becomes that the bush administration will never be held accountable for anything.

haliburton pulls out of iran. iran is part of the axis of evil. haliburton subsidiary makes big new deal with iran. this may not directly correlate with the administration, but this is exactly the kind of thing that the american media reading public eat up and ignore. it's bait and switch. 'oh haliburton is ethical, they are getting out of iran because that place is a bastion of unamerican-ness and a harvesting ground for terrorists'. nobody cares about anything past that.

with the latest on the story about jeff gannon, as reported by keith olbermann, what is that, the 4th 'reporter' that we have discovered in the past few months that has been funded by the bush administration. nobody cares about this because they have more important things on their mind, things that are made incredibly one-sided as you have seemingly smart people with the credentials advocating 'bush is great, listen to the man' at every turn.

they will never be held accountable. of course they won't. although you may observe bush pushing privatization of social security now and calling everyone a sissy face that doesn't agree with him, first it's not going to work and democrats are going to be viewed as an obstruction to the democratic process. second, bush won't be able to privatize anything because it doesn't withstand the scrutiny of the democrats and those in the republican party. this doesn't matter because whatever is pushed through congress will ultimately be the doing of the bush administration (in the eyes of the public). right now bush has said that he is thinking about raising the payroll tax of those who make more than $90,000.

doesn't anyone remember him calling john kerry silly for wanting to increase any sort of taxes in order to be fiscally responsible? now bush says it's something to think about. bush won't be seen as a stubborn asshole who uses everything to his political advantage, he will be seen as somebody who accepts a wide variety of possibilities for every situation. the truth is that he lambasts opposition views, but if his policy does not work, he will stubbornly adobt the opposition view and take credit for it.

it's happened before and it will happen again. bush will probably go down in history as some sort of saviour of america. and he will not have earned it, he will have stolen it.

politics is a stupid game. you can't ever prove your right unless you have the political leverage. if you have the political leverage, then you can be right, wrong, lie, cheat, steal, completely make things up, obstruct liberty, control various aspects of the 'objective' media and you always come out on top.

and the best part is the american system that perpetuates this will never be fixed. unless people start caring then it's not going to happen. and america won't ever start caring because politics happen once every 4 years. the rest of the time we spend trying to figure out what to buy next and how to get the money to buy it.

why is john kerry reaching across the aisle for bipartisan effort? sissy. democrats need to stand up and say, fuck you, you guys are dead ass wrong, you manipulate the system to the point of not following within the confines of constitutional freedom. you cannot work for bipartisanship when there is no such thing. bipartisanship is a facade that only serves to make it seem as if the republicans care what everyone thinks. obviously they don't.

welcome to american politics. it's been in the shitter for a long long time.
for further lessons in ridiculousness turn to brit hume on fox news who claims that FDR supported privatization of social security. way to go fox. twist and turn a dead man's words. that's almost sick.

hero or zero?

it must be difficult for george w. bush, to think that as a two term president he is still unsure what his lasting legacy will be. will he be a real american hero or will everything catch up with him and show his administration to be the most screwed up to date?

it is no wonder that he is so insistently pushing social security reform. iraq had no wmd's. i'll give bush the benefit of the doubt and say saddam was sneaky and moved them elsewhere, even with the leway i give him, he still has an unsolved war on his hands, one that is only going to get worse. (link)

if he is to be remembered as a great president, he will need to turn iraq into a functioning middle eastern democracy, whether it wants to or not, or fix social security, whether it needs to be fixed or not. according to msnbc (link) the president basically is telling untruths and is pushing overly hard. why wouldn't he? he has to be remembered for something other than being a screw up.

i read an interesting article in my new bathroom reading material book, "best american political writing of 2004". is an article by bruce reed from march 2004 in the washington monthly. "bush's war against wonks". the topic? how the bush administration fervently pushes politics before policy, there is little focus on policy. karl rove is in it to win, what you tell the american people to win is one thing, the best way to do it, or if it was even a good idea in the first place doesn't matter. think about it, last four years... hasn't that been true?

my conclusion. bush doesn't want history books to show him as a two term failure who won on an empty promise populist type deal. he wants to come out on top, be the man who forever fixed social security.

in other news, it seems bank of america has decided that oursourcing to india is the way to go and they set up a subsidiary there and are beginning to shift jobs there. more than likely my mom's out of a job. bush is right, we are creating jobs, just not american ones.

torture, partisanship, and good people.

I've been watching the Senate confirmation hearings for attorney general nominee Alberto Gonzalez all morning. As with everyone there will be the good and there will be the bad. Thankfully for America, Gonzalez as possible leader for the Department of Justice he seems to have a lot of care for the law and seems on the exterior to be as independent a council as the current Bush administration is going to appoint. His disagreement with a lot of leading senators is grounded in law and not what seems to be a malicious dodging of the truth, they are fundamental differences of belief. He honestly seems to be a good man who is perhaps going to put a halt to the shadowy four years that Ashcroft left as his legacy.

I believe the most telling voice today was that of Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. He like the Bush administration and Gonzalez believe that terrorists such as Al-Qaida are not covered by the provisions of the Geneva Convention. Bush, the dept. of justice, and Gonzalez are welcome to that belief because there has been a lot of examination into the issue and there are guidelines by which the geneva conventions should be applied. Lindsey despite his interpretation of the law concerning the Geneva convention retrospectively believes that Secretary Powell was right in saying we should apply the provisions of the Geneva convention to everyone.

Why? For reasons of protection for our own soldiers, we do not want our soldiers to be captured and tortured for information. so it is a military tradition, one that is written into their interrogation manual that military personnel are strictly forbidden to torture people. We believe we should take a moral highground so as to be respected in the world and have the same courtesy shown to us. I can see however how the Bush administration would feel like terrorists should not be shown this courtesy as they would not respect moral high grounds as they have been beheading people left and right, but why should we compromise American values as a means to an end, if we are conducting "operation enduring freedom" or whatever convoluted name we gave it, how are we to lead by example if we are suspending our morality in the face of an unknown and unforgiving enemy.

It irks me that the Bush administration came out and accused Senator Kerry of denigrating the troops during the Presidential debate. The Republicans jumped all over Kerry, Guiliani jumped all over him, then what has happened? It is easier to accuse first. Bush spokesmen have called the troops incompetent over the missing weapons issue, so did Guiliani and most recently with the leak of the torture memo to the Washington press, once again, torture was not a confusion created by a Gonzalez/Dept. of Justice memo that created a hazy view of torture [torture is defined in that memo as the equivalent of death or deadly harm to bodily organs], but it was the product of a few bad apples in the military, the bad people of the Abu Ghraib night shift. The military is very strict, I've seen my friends that have gone through training and officer's school, the marines, the navy, etc. There is a strict guiding principle that they instill in you, I'm sure that they all learned the basic tenets that is in the military manual that tells you that you WILL NOT torture as we discussed above. Where is the accountability in this administration. I will not be so quick as to blame Gonzalez as I do not think he was intentionally setting a precedent for the President allowing torture nor was President Bush, but accountability must be served to some one other than prison guards.

These questions of torture, they are discussable. That is why there is a confirmation hearing today where Gonzalez can explain things and show the Senate committee why he is an appropriate candidate for a job that desperately needs to be filled. I think everyone there is convinced that he is an honest man that will do a much better job than Mr. Ashcroft. Other questions to me are pretty simple, I think that it is partisanship that is creating the block to getting things done.

Besides torture and Gonzalez, what is the biggest issue right now facing American politics and society. Well besides the recount in Ohio (which is purely for the sake of making sure people's votes count, because every way you look at it Kerry lost), is Social Security.

Democrats say that social security needs to be reformed but it is alright and will be strong until at least the year 2060 or so.

Republicans have a fire in their pants and say if we do not fix social security right now the sky will fall and we retirees will have a crisis on their hands.

Which is it? This is something that is seemingly very black and white, either we do or we don't have enough money. Either or structure is able to self sustain itself indefinately or it is not. How could something that we have all of the facts on be so polarized? Our nation is in debt, a lot of debt. Democrats have been pushing that social security is a fixable problem but is not an issue for another 50+ years, our real problem is prescription drug costs from Medicare and Medicaid that is a definite immediate problem that threatens to push us further into debt. These things that people are putting on the table seem to me to be empirically verifiable truths. Either we need to take care of social security now or we don't. Either we need to fix a more immediate problem like prescription drug costs and Medicare or we don't. There shouldn't be a polarized problem like this. If the Bush administration wants to be remembered for something other than creating a disaster of a war in Iraq than he should do what's best for America. If he wants to be the big hero and fix social security at the expense of screwing America and sidestepping more immediate problems than he needs to be far more realistic and humble. But if that's not the case then by all means, Bush should keep on pushing social security reform (with discussion of course because social security privatization is the DUMBEST idea ever, especially everyone is speculating that because of weakening of the American dollar 2005 will be economically flat, and we will sink to new lows in 2006). BUT whatever the case, this issue should be black and white. Either we need to fix it or we don't. Which is it? Politicization must stop if the American people are going to succeed. The weakening of the dollar is scarier than most think.

What else should be black and white? The Bush administration after the 2000 election said that they were going to fix the election process. Being in Florida, we saw first hand how mishandled the election was and I hoped that 2004 would be clean. 2004 was clean in a sense, the sense that any kind of conspiracy theory craziness that there was mishandling of ballots is rendered irrelevant when you view the margin of victory. My question to the Bush administration is what do they have to hide? They pledged to fix elections. Katherine Harris our director of elections in Florida had 4 years to fix things, 6 months before the 2004 election there were still problems, many precincts didn't have updated polling processes and what did Harris say? "we don't have enough money". NOT ENOUGH MONEY? NOTHING IS DIFFERENT?! Black leaders pushed her to open more early voting precincts near black neighborhoods instead of being an hour across town. Her answer? "not enough money, no time". Absolutely ridiculous. We are one of the largest cities in Florida, not enough money for us but enough to open 3 early voting precincts in a tiny town south of us? Of course, after pressed and pressed she caved and opened a few more. I guess the money came from somewhere. Or maybe she was trying to avoid public embarassment.

So back to my question, what does the Bush administration have to hide? We the American public want the most accurate election results possible, we moved to electronic voting machines, why was the source code to the machines not made open source? Wouldn't it be in the best interest of everyone to allow every programmer out there who was interested to put their time in (and you know they would have) and make sure the code was as perfect as humanly possible? Why wasn't it open source? why wasn't the code at least open for the public to examine. It would have eliminated a lot of conspiracy theories and mistrust of the administration of they showed a little more good faith. Sure there might have been difficulties getting Diebold who is privatized to expose their code, but that's be serious, that code would not have been that difficult to write, they aren't going to sell it to anyone else, for something as important as the election of our United States President wouldn't the administration have put every effort into making sure there was a very low likelyhood of failure. How many instances were reported around the country from voting machines. Ones that crashed, ones that outputted the wrong vote, that is irresponsible and absolutely unacceptable to me, and it should be to everyone else.

Final thoughts. Watching the confirmation hearing gave me faith in politics, bipartisan politics. There are incredibly ridiculous people in the Senate. I like Ted Kennedy, he's incredibly sharp, but his motives are far to the right and obviously propounded by agenda of strengthening the Democratic party. Then there are Republicans like congressman JD Hayworth and John Cornyn who's actions in Congress and the Senate today have been a silly act of Republican ass kissing. But through all of it, there are people you can tell who actually care about moving politics forward and not beating up opponents on the other end of the aisle. Republican senator Lindsey Graham is a prime example. If he was running for President i'd give him serious consideration. Senator Feingold and Senator Schumer, all good people. There is far too much talk about fielding Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama in 2008. To me, that is plain stupid. There are plenty of ranking Democrats in the Senate who are worthy prospects that in my opinion are far better than jumping on the Hilary/Obama bandwagon (as much as I love them both). Also, Judge Gonzalez is a fair man who tries his best to interpret the law and follow it to a T. His problem might be not being able to see outside of this box and see implications of following it so tight for the sake of appeasing GW Bush, but I don't see any reason why he should not be confirmed. Blaming him for Abu Ghraib is ridiculous.

low key

that's exactly how i want this winter break to be, extremely low key. i'm a few weeks from 21. to some people 21 one means a whole new world opening up to them, a world where bars and clubs can be hit up with glee, a birthday party of 21 shots in 24 hours, to me it's a signal that i really need to focus.

i think i've really been spreading myself thin for the past god knows how many years. spread thin among friends, spread thin with the things i like to do, spread thin with what i want to do with myself after school. i think i'll start off the new semester thusly:

return to nyc with long bastard ass indie kid disheveled hair. write more. climb more. swim more. goto concerts again more. meet more rockstars. try not to go out with 10 girls at the same time. immerse myself in the new york culture that seems to have been hidden to me in the past few years that i am starting to see glimpses of now, if only materialistically. there are a lot of cool people out there, there is a lot of cool stuff out there, i like cool stuff. wasn't that profound?

all of this before new years... i don't like to make resolutions, resolutions are meant to be broken, especially if they are as contrived as the new years' ones are. i can see it now, there is going to be a huge influx of people into dodge gym the first two weeks of school, you will never see the again, that is of course, until next year.

i wish people would paint things for me, i had forgotten how much i like art. not your typical museum art, but art that is created out of sheer impulse of the momment, i made an amazing collage for sydney before break, it was.... (redundancy is cool) amazing.

i might just be the most random person ever or maybe i just have undiagnosed ADD. then again i don't believe in add, i just believe there is always something more interesting somewhere else some time else (some time else sounds cool, i'm going to start using that more).

and to finish off the journal, these are my favorite websites of the past few days.

- Threadless t-shirts. everyone is an amazing piece of art work. the community driven creation of shirts is just a brilliant idea. thanks to amy for steering. http://www.threadless.com/?streetteam=isuperwang

-Medium Shoes. i'm going to find a pair of these www.mediumfootwear.com

-Royal magazine. absurdly awesome, Wired was the only magazine i used to care to read, it fulfilled everything dorky about me. now there is this for artsy fartsy me. www.theroyalmagazine.com

-SHoP architecture. interesting ex-CU:architecture students' firm. www.shoparc.com

PS.....
still doing research to write an article about 'liberal' bias in the media. topic focus; if it doesn't exist, why do so many people claim it does + conceptions of liberalism.

long journal on everything

merry christmas everyone, it just occurred to me that this journal is going to be read by very few people, but... i guess that's ok, because what is a journal in the end? it is something for myself. and now that i think about it it's probably going to be quite long because there are a few things on my mind.

the boring part comes first.

this past semester was the most difficult few months of my academic career. it was the first time where i've seriously thought that i wasn't going to pass a class. not just one class, but three were up in the air. the most serious of which, was posted to ssl this morning and... thankfully i somehow recovered from my record breaking lowest score on the first midterm of 16/100 ( i was EXTREMELY tired) to get by, but as of Christmas another two loom like spectres waiting to say, Stephen, you tried hard but... you just weren't good enough. Let's hope that doesn't happen. Suzie was crying on the side of lerner a few days ago, she 'failed' her japanese final, 'failing' meaning... she could possibly get a B. it impresses me a lot that people can still pull of straight A's. it was pretty easy in highschool, at least i thought so, I made 2 B's in highschool, one was a class I took over the summer that I didn't want to argue about and the other was taking Spanish 3 my first year of highschool. Now... SEAS has shed new light, I wish i had the leasure of getting mad at getting a B, now I hope to at least get a B, i've seen quite a few C's the last 3 years and they aren't going to stop coming. i think i'm a-ok though.

what's next...
finals finished on tuesday for me. we went out everynight until thursday. to tell you all the truth i've never been happier. i don't want to say that i like the friends i've made in college better than the ones from home, my dad says that the HS ones are the ones that will be there forever, but the truth is, they are the ones that are the most foreign to me now. For the first time in 5 semesters of Columbia, I think i've found friends that I can call good friends, friends that I can actually picture being there 10-15+ years down the road. Friends that will be standing there in dresses and tuxes if I ever walk down the aisle with big smiles on their faces, they are the best men and bridesmaids. but wouldn't you know it, matt is leaving for Madrid next semester, and as depressing as it is to see him go, i know it's going to be absolutely fucking amazing for him. I envy the cc kids that can take 12 credits abroad and just take in the sights and sounds of a completely different culture and worldview.

i'm glad the distance of dormitories didn't crush things this year, you know who is sticking with you when you don't recess into just being another facebook friend as soon as the year is over, you go home, you live somewhere new, and they discover a whole new group of people that they think are way cooler than you ever were.

but anyways, the weekend was amazing. i may have seen almost every girl i've ever been interested in at CU/barnard (well not all of them) and i just let them all... go. i knew they were there though, even if the semester of working my ass off did basically crush and spirit and energy i could put forth toward anything with the women. the semester parting of the matt, tim, and stephen squad was capped off, in what more bizarre finish than a mecca. a mecca that only in its absence of Neal patrick harris and other way more weird things, could have been the multiracial adventure known as harold and kumar goto white castle. we stumbled into a cab at 4 in the morning to white castle, dragging matt and tejal and then we feasted. as matt and tejal argued with the employees over the validity of not serving them english muffin egg sandwiches until 6am, tim and i began our quest, the Crave case.

within the hour, tim and i destroyed 30 hamburgers. this was after our earlier dinner of Deluxe's hamburgers with our crew + tim's brother and his accompanying hot girlfriend. may god strike me down, she was 16, nevermind, i'm shameless, she was hot.

more substantive:
i'd like to do some research over break and retype this part, because i think it is without a doubt worth looking into. michael moore and al franken find it absolutely ludicrous that people peg the mainstream media is having a incredibly blatant liberal bias.

to me, the gut reaction is, liberal bias? the only liberal bias that exists in the media is the fact that there are lots of letters and words on pages of newspapers and print ads.

i love wired magazine, i respect the readers who send letters to the editor, this one stood out when i was reading it today,

the September issue is an insult. I get plenty of left-wing propaganda free from the major media; I won't pay [you] to deliver more into my household. When resubscription time arrives, don't bother sending the bill- I won't be renewing. - Milton Woodham, Colorado Springs, Colorado.

If al franken, michael moore, and myself ALL think that the comment that the media is liberally biased is without a second thought, without a doubt completely and unquestionably stupid, then why is the statement so prevalent. sure we could make the case that GOP leaders force feed those talking points into people so much that people repeat it like a parrot. i am inclined to disagree, there must be something more to this. Why would so many people take offense to things in the major media and label it as liberally biased if it really was not so? that just seems to prevalent and common to be some kind of right-wing conspiracy. it has occurred to me recently that perhaps what i consider liberal is left from my conception of what the center to me is, the center being far left of normal americans. if this is so, then I think that there is a problem with America, at least in what or ideals as citizens of this nation are, the things we hold most important to us, the drive that keeps us going from day to day, there must be a cog in the gears.

I'm going to at this momment do a quick survey of the major headlines from some prominent internet websites.

msnbc.com
• Christmas in Iraq: Soldiers, celebrities help spread cheer among U.S. troops
• WP: U.S. lacked postwar plan, strategist says
• Tanker blast in Baghdad wounds 12 Iraqis
• Lawyer: Aziz won't testify against Saddam
• Bush calls service members to thank them
• Ukraine braces for presidential runoff | Video
• Saturn moon probe descends toward Titan

cnn.com
• Space probe on way to Saturn moon
• Tanker truck suicide bomb hits Baghdad | premium content Video
• Russian military tests top-of-the-line missile
• Aziz won't testify against Saddam | The face of Iraq
• Five killed by Vietnam War shell
• Abducted children returned to mother
• Fast-food worker rescues drive-thru customer
• Airman saves woman, son from river

nytimes.com
• Bitter Divisions Rife in Ukraine as Voting Nears
• Remembering the Dead and the Horror of Mosul
• Program Coaxes Hospitals to See Treatments Under Their Noses
• Spitzer, in a Shift, Will Yield Inquiries to U.S. Regulators

since it's christmas, i think we should look at the headlines on a different day since they will probably try to be cheery right now. i believe right now that the cause for accusation of left wing bias and the disbelief is created because Americans do not reside in the center. there are people like me who are very liberal, and there are many very conservatives folks out there, I think their conceptions of a mutual center is still too far to the right and vice versa.

in my eyes, conservative america has pinned the stories and themes that make newspapers sell, that bring large tv audiences as liberal bias. newspapers reach out to stories like the poor family that can't eat and can't have christmas gifts because of poverty, of AIDS victims that are suffering, this is not the newspaper presenting liberal bias, it's writing news that sells. i don't know where i'm going with this, but America has put too much faith in the validity of what institutions and people present them with as true. we live in an age where we are truly the fast food age, we want our information and we want it fast. we don't goto the library to read books written by experts of the age, we double click a firefox icon, a stylized blue 'e' and instantly we get a filtered version of exactly what someone wanted to give us, and guess what, we accept it. we don't want to look at the second search result, we want what's at the top of the page, and in our rush and haste, what's at the top is the only thing that counts, everything else is lost as a excess heap of 1's and 0's.

the end.

more racism?

On Thursday I was sitting in a classroom on the second floor of Mudd when someone walked by saying 'that fucking asshole' really loud. My solid state professor didn't even flinch and we continued with our final. Turns out it was Sasha talking to Christ Cheng.

Anyways, they were quoting from a piece written in the Columbia Asian Journal known as Tablet. The article in reference was titled 'Yellow boy starts a ruckus" or something like that. While I was eating lunch Sasha told me to look the article over... apparently it is starting the same racist sentiment amongst some people on campus in the same way the Fed cartoon did last year. I'd really like to know what people found so racist about this article... because if anything it was a commentary (albeit it didn't really do any interesting analysis) on how racism is still prevalent and can come from anyone given the right stimulus. The irony was the racism stemmed as a retaliation to other perceived racism.

Just wondering if anyone read it and what they thought. If this sparks another 'we are being silenced' protest, I'm going to have to protest the protest, because it's in my view illegitimate.

edit:
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i just reread "A yellowboy starts a ruckus" by peter kang. i knew there was something disturbing about this when i first read it, but it was so subtle in my quick reading that i completely missed it.

he begins the story with a kid asking another korean on the subway if he was Asian or Chinese.

ok whatever, and then Kang decides to shift to acknowledgement of his fellow Korean subway rider's puzzled look. He states it would have been bolder to call himself "american". this is a legitimate statement but one that i think has been taken out of context over the years, especially when people are asking about your ethnicity purely based on physical appearance, you know what they are asking.

In Kang's story what sets the korean kid off is when the black child asks 1. why he isn't chinese because he has "chinky" eyes and 2. if he has a small penis.

Like Mike said, there are a billion ways to go about dealing with this and the recounted action was absolutely not it.

Let me ask you something" he said to the boy, "I could never figure it out. What's the difference between a black person and a monkey?" This is the part when the entire train goes apeshit and tries to beat the fuck out of the korean guy.

What Kang was trying to do with his article was show that everyone can be racist when prompted. No shit. The stereotyping of asians as squinty eyes, small penises, "ain't never seen a chink like that, they usually quiet and don't speak english much". Kang tries to make himself seem like he is a third party objective arbitrator, "Was he racist? Who was more so? I couldn't quite figure it out".

The fact of the matter is, if you read this article and get the subleties, it is incredibly biased in favor of the Korean guy's racist remarks simply because it was retaliation. After a quote comparing Black people to monkey's a flashing light went off in my head saying that he should address that somewhere, because a statement like that is ABSOLUTELY ridiculous, especially given that it was in response to a little kid. What really hit me is that 1. the black people in this story are portrayed as a bunch of urban thug ass kids and ignorant and racist (maybe showing that racism is prevalent even in blacks) but all of the korean kids comments are addressed not through Kang, but through the responses of these 'ignorant' blacks.

What was actually addressed by the author? I was glad the Korean guy wasn't passive and wasn't afraid to reply when called a "chink". In fact, I was annoyed just because the little kid was so damn ignorant. What do they teach these kids at school anyways? No wonder rich white people always opt for taxis"

Mike has a problem with that last sentence. I have a bigger problem with the weight that Kang places on ignorant blacks. The blame is completely shifted to racism that is perpetuated by ignorance, where is the chastising of the korean guy, the older, wiser, nicely dressed intern whatchamahoosit, who should have known a lot better than to make his retaliatory remarks? where was it? instead Kang pats him on the back for standing up to a little kid who called him squinty eyed and small penised.

I didn't think this was a racist article at first, probably wasn't intended to be (just like the fed cartoon wasn't) but ... the subtleties dropped into the writing of Kang shows a lot. Way to be sublety racist when you are making a commentary against it.

some round about interviewing

My mother used to like the church, she also used to like the Reverend Billy Graham a lot. There have been a lot of things over the years that have eroded her connection to both and I find it suprising that more Americans have not had the same feeling of "hey that's not quite right...". Just skimming over a newsweek interview with Billy Graham's son Franklin also a reverend I believe, just shows you how someone who said something incredibly 'not -PC' is trying to maintain his integrity as a credible man and person of the faith, with all the toleration and moral attitude that you may expect from those that are tenets of organized religion.

Here are some quips I found rather... round about answers and contradictory. Does the rest of America not scratch their heads over this, or does religious doctrine and agreement just cause a mass head nod of agreement?

Newsweek:The president seemed to signal that he was OK with civil unions in the last weeks of the campaign. Is your objection to marriage as a word?

grahamThis was an issue that I think in this election where people finally said, “I’ve had it. I don’t want that agenda being forced and pushed and mandated on me.” You can’t legislate morality. A homosexual’s sins are no different than a heterosexual’s sins. If I go out tonight and I sleep with someone who’s not my wife, it’s just as great a sin as gay people [having sex]. Sin is sin.

*keep this answer in your head. interesting, 'the people finally said'. finally said what? civil unions and gay marriage hasn't exactly been pushed on america in all 50 states and is a super hot issue threatening to undermime the morality of america. he says you can't legislate morality, i believe the legislation was EXACTLY to legislate morality, why did we sign into law in probably 200% more states that gay marriage is ILLEGAL. then, he's right a sin is a sin, if you sleep with someone that's not your wife you are performing adultry. sin. must have missed a lesson in making analogies in middle school english, because adultry and gay sex have nothing to do with one another and doesn't even provide a semi coherent illustration of what he's trying to say, which is nothing anyways.

Newsweek:Some people have said that the evangelical community has a disproportionate amount of interest about what goes on people’s sex lives as opposed to spending more time fighting poverty, healing the sick, feeding the hungry and trying to do more that is in line with Jesus’ teachings.

grahamI don’t have an interest in what goes on in other people’s bedrooms. I think it’s a fascination by the media. When I go around with other Christian leaders, we don’t have those conversations, “Hey, Franklin, did you hear who’s sleeping with so-and-so?”

*for someone who just answered the question that he really cares about people sinning and sleeping with people other than their wives and gay sex, it's interesting that he says he has no interest in what's going in the bedrooms of america. he doesn't care about who's sleeping with so and so but apparently he cares about sodomy and gays making out. go figure. maybe i read the answer wrong.

Newsweek:You were quoted a couple years ago as calling Islam an “evil and wicked religion.” Would you care to revisit that comment?

grahamThose comments started a debate in this country. I don’t know what I can add to it. I respect the people of the Islamic faith that have come to this country. I have Muslim friends. But that doesn’t stop me from wanting to help them. That doesn’t stop me from loving them. I certainly don’t believe the way they believe, and they don’t believe the way I believe, either. That doesn’t make me dislike them, and I love them very much. I want to do all I can to help them. In Khartoum, we have been working for years in a mission in the south. I want to demonstrate to those Muslims that my love for them is sincere. I want them to know about God’s son, Jesus Christ. I want them to know but I certainly don’t want to force it on them. I would like some day for Muslims to know what Christians do.

*can you answer this in a more round about manner? no analysis necessary. cool he has muslim friends. he says he doesn't want to convert people but he wants them to know jesus,... which is converting people. ok.


Newsweek:Talk about AIDS if you would. What work do you see that needs doing in that arena?

grahamI’m a pilot. If I am up at altitude and I am sitting inside the airplane and I stick my head out, I’m not going to live very long. God didn’t create me to live at 40,000 feet. I go to the Caymans each year, and I like to scuba dive. If I put my nose just a millimeter under water and I don’t have a breathing apparatus on, I’m not going to live very long because God didn’t make me to live underwater. If we get outside of God’s perimeters, we are at risk. When we use sex outside of how God intended sex to be used, we are at risk. People have to be educated as to what these risks are. What [distributing] condoms says is: “If you use this the risk is now dealt with. So enjoy sex however you want to use it because you’ll be safe.” Wrong, you’re not safe. And the only way you can be safe is to use sex as God intended: between a man and a woman in a married relationship. That’s not a message that the world wants to hear.

*i just think this is rather silly.

Newsweek:Was Brown v. Board of Education a case of activist judges making their own law?

grahamI don’t know; I’m not familiar with it. Look, there’s a lot of good that takes place in this country every day. In spite of all our problems, I am pro-American. I am pro-Republican, I am pro-Democrat and I am even pro-a-few-of-those-Independents-we’ve-got-laying-around. We’ve got a great nation. But I do believe that the majority of people, people of Christian faith, are under attack. No question about it.

* wow. for such a high profile figure... i would have thought he'd be at least somewhat familiar with Brown vs. Board. Billy Graham's son has never been pro-democrat... at least not that i've ever seen, i randomly went to him and his dad when they came to jacksonville in 2000, definately heard a giagantic speech about how we should all vote republican and for Bush. Democrat values, whatever they were/are at the time, demonized. Why are these people the spokesman for a large majority of the population?