June 10, 2009
· Filed under Basic Decency, Culture War, Insanity · Tagged depressing, douchebaggery, good on-goings-on?, morality war, race, real america, real american, republican party, stupidity
This is exactly the kind of person that really pisses me off. In an unfortunate turn of events for my IQ, I came across his MySpace blog while doing a Google search for someone on the far-right with whom to have a rational debate. Not surprisingly, I suppose, such people don’t seem to exist: all of their blog pages seem to be exactly like this.
Does anyone else notice how the self-prolcaimed “patriot” — like many of his brethren — has the flag of the Confederacy in his background? Apparently there are more people than I’d care to believe who are stupid enough to think that one can be both a neo-secessionist and “pro-America”.
According to him and the rest of the far-right, the only way to prevent the “encroachment” of “inferior cultures” is through “intelligent and traditionalist conservative dialogue” (how many contradictions can you fit into one sentence, really?).
In his status updates, he claims that, “Obama = Lenin = Stalin = Hitler… What is that spook doing?” According to Godwin’s Law, he loses. At everything. Unfortunately for thinking people, it seems that it’s not just him who buys into this kind of whackjobbery perpetuated by right-wing pundits — like Limbaugh.
I could go in-depth about the not-at-all subtle differences between the Democratic Party (on the center-left) and Marxist-Leninism (on the far-left), and the differences and outright hatred between Communists and Nazis, but this douche is clearly a gigantic waste of time.
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June 5, 2009
· Filed under Columbia University, Culture War, Insanity · Tagged bullshit issues, columbia, Columbia University, depressing, economics, entirely uncalled for, good on-goings-on?, new york, recession 2008, selling out, wtf
Last year, I walked in to one of my classes about five minutes before class, got settled in, and waited for the professor to call the class to order and start teaching. He did the former, but he didn’t start the latter right away.
Instead, a representative from Kaplan — the standardized test corporation — was allowed to give a brief presentation about how awesome the Kaplan classes are (I think it was for the LSATs) and, while he did that, the TAs handed out Kaplan fliers.
Apparently, this wasn’t an isolated incident, either. A number of people I’ve talked to about this — as well as a reader who e-mailed us about this growing problem — have also experienced this invasion of our classrooms. You see, what I found eminently frustrating about this was not only that I was essentially part of a captive audience and that I had to deal with seeing even more advertising (I get more than enough living in NYC and on the internet, thanks): the money that I paid to take that class was being used to foist a product upon me.
But what was even more outrageous was the use of University employees (the TAs) to participate in the advertising. When I came to Columbia, I never expected the lifetime of debt to which I acquiesced to pay for the distribution of what I am sure the University administration would describe as “vital” “educational” “materials” or some nonsense. In all fairness to the TAs, however, I am sure they never expected to be the pack mules of Kaplan when they took the job. Probably, it wasn’t even in the job description.
While the University administration might try to justify this obscenely obnoxious practice with the claim that they’re trying to keep the University above water by trying to raise more money, that claim is just laughable (for example, it’s been going on since before the economic crisis). While we’re being forced to pay to watch advertising from corporations such as Kaplan and RedBull (as our reader says), the Spec points out that the athletics department is still raking in millions and millions of dollars.
Keeping dorms open on the weekend (Wallach is now closed Friday through Sunday. Apparently it was also too costly to inform students about the change beforehand.) or our classrooms free from annoying advertisements? Apparently that’s just a luxury. But God forbid that we should cut our athletics spending or PrezBo’s ridiculous salary.
June 4, 2009
· Filed under Basic Decency, Culture War, Election 2008, Insanity · Tagged barack obama, biden, depressing, douchebaggery, entirely uncalled for, good on-goings-on?, morality war, wtf
This post originally appeared in the Columbia Spectator’s Commentariat.
Recently, one of my friends sent me a terrifying YouTube video. What was it? A Russia Today news report on what’s going down in the US regarding our copyright laws.
Apparently, the Obama administration is moving to criminalize illegal music downloading. While it may sound like this has already happened, this isn’t the case at all. In fact, while downloading copyrighted music is “illegal”, it has been almost entirely a civil matter. In legal terms, this means that organizations such as the RIAA have been free to go after whomever they catch downloading music, sue them for ridiculous amounts of money, and leave them a crying mess with no money left. Now, it seems that the US government wants to get in on the deal.
Of course, this shouldn’t come as any surprise to us — it wasn’t that long ago that the Obama administration publicly took the side of the RIAA in approving ridiculous monetary awards ($150,000 per song) in civil cases. That’s right, folks. If you downloaded one song from any major artist, the RIAA can sue you for your entire graduate education. Or, they can threaten you by suing you just enough for your family to sell their house and move to a cardboard box.
Oh, and Vice-President Biden hasn’t exactly had a wonderful record on net neutrality, file-sharing, or even online privacy either. According to the afore-linked article, Vice-President Biden has been “anti-encryption” (because, as the article asserts, encryption makes it hard for the FBI to read your e-mail), and supported making it a felony for playing an illegal version of a game. In other words, if Vice-President Biden had had his way, if your younger brother has played your illegally-downloaded version of Starcraft, he won’t get to vote when he turns 18. Awesome, right?
To be fair, I’m still looking into some of these things further. I haven’t be able to find anything to confirm the Russia Today story, so it may have been a hoax or perhaps simply some bad publicity being put out by the Russian government about the US (something that hasn’t been entirely unknown to happen).
If there’s anyone else who has some additional information about what’s going on in the ever-expanding and ever-more-complicated world of copyright law (which also seems to become more and more relevant to the lives of college students everywhere by the day), please let me know so I can check it out.
May 6, 2009
· Filed under Basic Decency, Culture War, Humor, Insanity, Internet, socialism · Tagged "culture", depressing, entirely uncalled for, good on-goings-on?
1. I like vanilla ice-cream, plain pizza, and cheeseburgers; that doesn’t mean I’m a boring person. For some reason, people have come to associate consumption with a person’s personality. Needless to say, this is an absolutely ridiculous assumption to make. The recent (as in, within the past few decades) societal shift towards a fascination with consumption has today translated into a judgement of personality based on what people buy. And, yes, while clothes might tend to indicate a general affiliation with one subculture or another (for example, lots of money spent at Abercrombie & Fitch might indicate that a person is either a gigantic tool or a homosexual) the same cannot be said for other areas of consumption — yet. Making personality assumptions about people based on what they eat goes even beyond this and quite frankly annoying.
Just because you like Indian food or became a vegan and prefer fake bleu cheese that looks more like cement than anything else doesn’t mean that I’m a less interesting person than you are. It just means I’m easy to please.
2. People who like food only because it is exotic are not exotic themselves; rather, they are pretentious and annoying. On university campuses everywhere, people have become afraid to like what they actually like. People who admit to liking things like plain pizza, burgers, or regular Chinese food are frequently looked down upon as boring. People who admit to having enjoyed reading any Western, white, and/or male author are presumed to be lacking in analytical capacity or racist/misogynist/something offensive.
Some people enjoy eating raw fish; some people enjoy eating Ethiopian food; some people like Korean food. If you actually enjoy it, that’s great. I’m very happy for you. But if you’re only eating it because you want people to think that you’re really cool or adventurous or unique and fun — I have something to tell you: you don’t come off as any of those things. People can tell when you’re faking it — usually, your pretension is characterized by excessive talking about how much you love [insert "exotic" food here], how much you’re looking forward to eating [insert "exotic" food here], or how much you love restaurant that serves [insert "exotic" food here].
3. Your cynicism doesn’t make you interesting. The fact that you hate everything doesn’t make you a more interesting person or a more fun person to be around; being a douche to everyone, actually, is a sure-fire way to alienate people. (And, yes, I realize the irony of this statement).
April 17, 2009
· Filed under Humor, Internet · Tagged barack obama, douchebaggery, good on-goings-on?, ronald reagan, taxes
Conservatives voicing their “full-throated” opposition to government spending (which apparently didn’t bother them during the Bush administration) in an attempt to “lick” big government.
Some are going “nuts” for it and they “whipped out” the festivities earlier this week. They want to give Obama a “tongue-lashing”.
Wow.
Oh, and a fun fact? Apparently, taxes for the rich were 10% higher under the Reagan administration.
Moving On for a Bit
March 6, 2009 · Filed under Columbia University, Commentariat · Tagged Announcements, columbia, depressing, good on-goings-on?
Alrighty folks. I’m moving on to the Commentariat full-time for a while. I know I make a lot of promises about updating that I don’t usually follow through on, but I will eventually come back to the Motherland.
I encourage you all to keep up with me there, and keep checking back here, because I might update every once in a while.
Best!
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