oh hell yes

originally written 08.10.2002

reborn – a roland 808 emulator (think rebirth) for linux. http://www.deadvirgins.org.uk/reborn/reborn.html

hollywood+smoking

originally written 08.10.2002

In response to Joe Eszterhas’ august 9th op-ed in the ny times titled hollywood’s responsibility for smoking deaths

Do Hollywood movies glamorize smoking?  Of course they do?  But is this glamorization a product of Hollywood alone?  I would suspect not.  While it would be interesting to study the historical relationships between the tobacco and film industries, assuming that no such explicit relationship exists, Hollywood movies simply perpetuate existing social ideals, not create them.  Unfortunately, one of those social ideals is that smoking is rebellious (sexy, sophisticated, enter your favorite ridiculous adjective here).  Hollywood makes movies that are grounded in popular culture, so of course they are going to mirror societies notions about things such as smoking.  However, I don’t feel that Hollywood is ultimately responsible for the glorificaiton of smoking.  What Hollywood should provide, I think, is a medium to express the ideas and realities of modern life.  If Hollywood can be criticized for anything, it is not that they make movies that glorify smoking, but that they fail to make movies where, as is the case in real life, the token rebel doesn’t smoke or use drugs and the seductress is defined by something other than the overwhelming banality of the cigarette cliche.

Do screenwriters have a responsibility to remove tobacco from scripts? No.  I think it is the screenwriters’ responsibility to make a film that is in some way meaningful.  That said, relying on convention and cliches to make some statement does not seem to meet that responsibility.  If a screenwriter is considering a character who smokes, I think that it is their responsibility to question why the character is smoking.  Is it because the actor smokes, or because the cigarette is a simple way to depict the character as the token badass.  I don’t think that either of these reasons is a particularly good one, and I don’t think that it makes for good cinema.  Still, I can think of cases where the act of smoking goes beyond a stereotype and actually adds something to the film.  I don’t think that these instances are particularly effective in bringing consumers towards tobacco use, and i would hate to see films suffer from their ommision.  The example I can think of off the top of my head is in the movie “The Royal Tenenbaums” where Margot Tenenbaum (Paltrow) is portrayed as a lifelong closet smoker.  For the character, smoking is something forbidden, secret, intimate, and self-destructive and by the end of the film, it is clearly a metaphor for the romantic feelings she harbors for her adoptive brother. I think that the film would have suffered had the smoking aspect been removed.  I think advocating arbitrary censorship is a very bad idea.  I think that urging good screenwriting and looking beyond social cliches and to hjow people actually live their lives is a really good idea.

Is putting a cigarette in the hands of a star ons creen equivalent to aiming a gun at a 12 or 14 year old? Oh hell no.  I strongly object to this sort of argument, and the post-Columbine rhethoric that it uses as an all-too-familiar and all-too-illigitimate critique of Hollywood.  It assumes that a 12 or 14 year old is incapable of making good decisions in their own life.  12 or 14 year old kids aren’t stupid, and they’re not media zombies.  If they are manipulated by the media, it’s only because they don’t have access to the broader context of the media’s message.  With campaigns like the truth, youth now have access to that context, and a better understanding of why cigarrettes might be in so many movies.  I think that they’ll use this information to make the decision not to smoke.  Should movies be more accurate in portraying non-smokers?  Sure.  Can youth, given the right information still make good decisions, even when confronted with the most blatant examples of cinema-tobacco commercialism? Yes.

idea: textbook swap

originally written 08.08.2002

got in a discussion with erin and jason about the ethics of stealing textbooks. i don’t do it, but reading a lot of anarchist propaganda, i’ve come to realize how easy it would be to do so. so, if the deterrent of getting caught isn’t there, why shouldn’t i steal? well, jason and erin argue that there are negative side effects to stealing, e.g. student workers losing their jobs because of lack of profits. but, one person stealing books, they agree, will not cause any negative impact. the problem comes, they say, if everyone were to steal books. the reality, however, is that for one reason or another, not everyone is stealing books. if it every became a problem, then it would no longer be ethical (as i will argue below), for someone to steal as many books, or to steal them at all. such assumptions miss the point however – right now, there is enough excess in the textbook industry to support some degree of theft with few (no?) negative repercussions, particularly to those who are least able to handle the impact of such repercussions.

so, is stealing textbooks unethical? what i argue is that the cost of education, particularly in ohio, is unfairly high. efforts to lobby the state for more funding have thus far been inneffective. though such efforts should not be abandoned, one must ask the question, is there a means to mitigate the unfair social system of funding of higher education. the answer is yes – in one case, stealing textbooks. essentially, stealing textbooks, to a very small degree, provides a redistribution of educational costs from the student, to society at large, and, arguably to those who are most able to pay for it. if i steal a textbook, this reduces the total profit that the company makes (and if it is done within the threshold of excess, it had no other implications). compare this with a more systematic reduction of total education costs. for the state to increase funding, they would have to raise additional revenue. this would most likely be done through taxes. a fair tax would tax those most able to absorb it the most – that is large businesses who make a lot of profit. seeing as the textbook industry seems to be flourishing in columbus, arguably this industry would see some reduction of profit, even with a more systematic lowering of educational costs. the bottom line, is that the end result of theft and systematic change are the same. the argument is not whether one is a better method of achieving desireable results than the other, but why any possible steps to exact positive change are not taken.

what i argue is that it is the results of the theft that dictate ethics, not the act itself. i think that traditional values of property protection, being held over that of general welfare and mutual benefit create an unfair stigma against certain paths of action, even if their end result is beneficial. to reenforce this, let’s consider other ways that i (and other individuals) could reduce the costs of education, within the narrow contexts of the textbook market. i could, as i have done in my history class, check out the textbook from the library. the bookstore is still loosing profit, and as erin argued with theft, i am still taking advantage of people as she would see it – those people who chose not to also try to check out the book from the library. is there any reason why this approach is more or less ethical than theft? as i see it, the answer is no – the results are the same.

let’s look at another example. a loosely organized textbook swap where instead of selling back their textbooks, students simply give their unneeded books to other students. even if one student does this, the textbook industry is still losing the same amount of money as if that student had stolen a textbook (asssuming that there is a surplus of used textbooks, which i think is generally a fair assumption). is this textbook swap, therefore, unethical? furthermore, consider a larger-scale textbook swap between many students. given the logistical difficulties and the potential consequences for theft, it can be argued that more students would participate in the textbook swap. the implications of a large textbook swap are significant reductions in the cost of education for students, as well as significant reductions in the profits for the textbook industry. it could be argued that if students swapped books on a large scale, it could impact the industry enough to result in the loss of student jobs. in this case, given that a huge number of students could participate with no consequence, in terms of side-effects for innocent textbook industry employees, the textbook swap is more unethical than theft (which could only be sustained by a smaller number of participants). of course even students layed off as a result of a large-scale textbook swap would still benefit from the ability to get textbooks for free.

so, my argument is that the ethics of a given course of action are dictated by the net total result alone. the fact that the debate is clouded to the extent that a textbook swap is not seen as ethical or unethical as textbook theft reenforces another point i tried to make in my discussion with erin/jason – that social structures can limit one’s perspectives for exacting positive social change on a small scale. by looking beyond what is socially and legally accepted, one can expand the opportunities for undoing injustice and improving the general welfare.

a model for a textbook swap:kiss – keep it simple stupid, a phrase that my grandfather, an professor of engineering, once related to me. at the end of each school term, a small group of people collects textbooks from students asking the students to provide the group with the course associated with the textbook to ease processing. at the beginning of the next term, students can collect textbooks. ask for a simple printout of their course schedule to verify that they are actually taking the course, and to prevent rampant abuse. otherwise, require no other stipulations. this entire process could easily be administrated by one of the numerous student service organizations that are on every single college campus in the entire world

a more complicated model: some would argue that the above system allows for too much abuse. people could sell back textbooks after they borrow them for a profit. i’m not sure if this is that great of a problem. by selling back books, they reduce the general availabilty of books and undermine the system. this means that the potential for that individual to further gain free textbooks is reduced. even if they make a few bucks selling back a swapped book, they will lose in the long run when they have to pay for books because the swapping system has failed. however, to prevent against this sort of thing, it would be easy enough to write software to keep a database of books and users and to simply check books out and in after every term, making phone calls to track down those who haven’t returned their books and blacklisting those who won’t return the book. alternately, textbooks for current college courses could be put in a special section of the college library that allows for term-length checkout rather than the normal checkout period.

i learned the truth at seventeen …

originally written 08.06.2002

“if a music industry executive claims I should agree with their agenda because it will make me more money, I put my hand on my wallet and check it after they leave, just to make sure nothing’s missing.”

http://www.janisian.com/article-internet_debacle

http://www.janisian.com/article-fallout.html

fuck ohio

originally written 08.06.2002

worst idea ever. the ohio board of regents reduced the overall budget for ohio higher education by $100 million, a cut that will be seen by 9 out of 14 of the states publically funded universities. there are a number of issues invovled with the cut. first, the cut comes unexpected to many university administrators as a “hold harmless” provision should have ensured that funding levels remained at the same level as last year. the other problem is that the funding cuts are being dealt out based on enrollment. that is, institutions with lower enrollments get bigger cuts. for universities like youngstown state, this is horribly unfair. the university is in one of the most economically depressed area of ohio, and it is no suprise that they also face falling enrollment. it seems that the state’s mentality makes a vicious cycle more vicious. schools with low enrollment get larger cuts. they in turn have to raise tuition, cut financial aid, or lower educational opportunities (degrees, research opportunities, sutdent services, etc.). all of these actions, logically, would seem to lead to further decreased enrollment, which, in turn, leads to larger funding cuts. why does ohio have such a large brain drain and low enrollment? it’s because going to school is expensive, and funding high quality education is expensive. those who want the best education value will go elsewhere, those who want to go to school in ohio may not be able to afford it. another issue. in order to increase funding, you have to increase enrollment. but currently, you have reduced funding. that means you need to try to support more students on fewer resources. this seems to be an equation for shitty education.

another thing that i want to address with the issue of school funding is osu’s new budget. one of the ideas that is heralded is a provision where colleges can keep 100% of their revenues from independent research. from what i read in the lantern, this is somehow supposed to increase the availability of classes that are in high demand. i certainly don’t see this relationship. what i see is the scenario layed out in the book “beer and circus”, where, forced to fund themselves, departments and colleges focus more on the breadwinner, reasearch, than on quality undergraduate education.

the bottom line is that be it from increased tuition, or a focus on increased enrollment rather than quality, the student loses in the end. fuck ohio.

quickly realizing that america isn’t based on equality or economic opportunity – it’s based on protection of property and the aforementioned sentiments are only used when it’s convenient to serve the latter. i have no problem with personal property, but i care more about individual respect for property rather than codified protection of it and think the whole notion of personal property is extremely dubious given that so much of the property that has been aquired has been done so through highly unethical means.

so maybe there are a few non-idiots in the administration

originally written 08.02.2002

“A presidential advisor encouraged the nation’s top computer security professionals and hackers Wednesday to try to break computer programs, but said they might need protection from the legal wrath of software makers. “

– D. IAN HOPPER, AP Technology Writer in his article Bush Adviser Encourages Hacking available http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20020731/ap_on_hi_te/computer_security_2.

too bad the dmca has chilled investigation such as this in many cases – just as many security professionals predicted when the dmca was initially opposed

as if i needed yet another example to prove that the current administration does not represent me in any way whatsoever

originally written 07.31.2002

“In the way they’re kind of writing it right now out of the Senate Finance Committee, some people could spend their entire five years on welfare – there’s a five-year work requirement – going to college. Now, that’s not my view of helping people become independent, and it’s certainly not my view of understanding the importance of work and helping people achieve the dignity necessary so they can live a free life, free from government control.”

– george “i’m not geoff hing’s president” w. bush proving that he’s an idiot who spent his college days drinking at the frat house and is completely out of touch with the scores of college students who actually do something meaningful with what relatively few educational opportunities they’ve been granted

there’s some criticism of bush’s opposition to a blatantly communist and disgustingly radical amendment to welfare policy that would “permit only 10 percent of welfare recipients in any state to meet the work requirement by attending college” here and here. as if the ridiculousness of his reasoning and obvious personal bias aren’t indictment enough. here’s an idea – how about old gw gives his drunk ass daughter’s college fund to someone who’s willing to do something with the opportunity rather than wallow in privilege. that would be great.

hot in the city tonight

originally written 07.31.2002

it’s hot in the city tonight, but not in the fun way of the song that was on claire’s mix cd when all the kids in the house danced around and acted silly and just chilled out and had fun. it’s hot in the city in the way where you just feel like you’re swimming through the air – a slow crawl stroke making little progress toward land. maybe the swimming analogy is because of the humidity. i don’t know. it’s not so much the heat itself, it’s how it makes me feel – slow and dumb. or maybe that’s just the fatigue. i made it through my classes ok, and hacked together a bunch of stuff at work, finally finishing the documentation for the tools that i had written to make the new hires’ job a little easier. but, as soon as i got home, fatigue hit me like a sledgehammer, and i’ve been sort of sulking around the house since about 8 pm. it’s almost 10 now which means i should be able to go to sleep soon without fscking up my sleep cycle too much – not that it really matters – poor time alocation has made me into a bit of an insomniac lately anyway.

even the house seems fatigued. maybe it’s just empty. claire’s gone, shad just moved out, though i’ve still seen him a lot lately, he’s one of the few people i feel completely comfortable around these days, i just found out that paul’s gone to maine for 10 days. the rest of the house seems to be under some general malaise. adam slides quietly around the house in his normal unsettlingly serene way. matt just quit his job. katelynn’s cool, but to me she seems like the kind of person who’s got shit together but isn’t happy. strong enough to function but still struggling under some invisible burden. i’m alright i guess. not great, not poor. the jobs good, i’m doing well in school – there’s just no magic in this summer. my room seems boring and bare now that shad’s moved out, and the living room, which katelynn seems to tidy with a disturbing frequency, seems lifeless and sterile when relieved of it’s clutter.

so the reason i’m exhausted is from altogether shitty time alocation. i’m already playing catch-up and the new classes have just started. last night i went up to cleveland to see the weakerthans play a show at the grog shop. i drove up with chad, shad, and katelynn along for the ride, and had a pretty good time. we ate at soul vegetarian which is a few doors down from the venue in coventry and gorged myself on the feux-country fried steak sandwich and chili-cheese-fries. i was farting through the entire show, and embarrasingly trying to hide my indigestion in class today, but it was worth it. the two opening bands were altogether lame. one of them was cleveland’s own brandston, who i thought i had liked from their recordings, but were pretty uninspiring in person. it’s not that they were horrible, just horribly mediocre. the nail in the coffin was a cover of the pumpkin’s “today”, performed in a wholly un-ironic fashion. how dull. the weakerthans were awesome though. engaging and straightforward they sounded every bit as good as the records. they played letter of resignation which is my favorite track as well as some neat new steel guitar twinged countryish tracks. the singer (the one who used to be in propaghandi) has such a distinctive voice – it’s nasal and high, plaintive, but definitely genuine. the music is what emo music should be – emotional and personal without being histrionic. it’s weird how a lot of bands like the weakerthans are able to evoke emotions from me in a way that so-called emo music doesn’t. i still really like bands like, say, recover, it’s just that i don’t always need music that evokes ntensity and passion – sometimes meloncholy or pensiveness is in order too. but yeah, the weakerthans were awesome. totally unimposing but at the same time completely captivating. musically clever, lyrically beautiful, it was well worth sitting through the first two lame bands to see them play.

on the way home, everyone else dozed off, but we listened to all three of the dismemberment plan records that i own and i somehow managed to stay awake long enough not to drive us into a ditch. we made it back to columbus around 5:30 am, just eight hours until i had to be sitting in my material science class

i went to another good show recently as well. went over to the legion to see silencio and fire down below. erin came, which was cool because she never goes to the legion, and so did shad and yon. it wasn’t a big show by any means, but it was a good time. silencio is my favorite band in columbus right now. jazz meets technical metal meets hardcore meets math rock maybe. i dunno. it’s technical as all hell but still rocking. it makes me want to quit playing guitar. fire down below was a new-school hardcore band from philly with two vocalists. they played to maybe a dozen people. fewer if you subtract the kids who live at the legion. still, they didn’t seem to hold back and played with an intensity and a sincerity that really impressed me. it was awesome, and by the end of their set, my ears were wringing and i was soaked in sweat. the other thing that was so cool about the show is that i got to hang out with erin in my element – didn’t feel like i was compromising or missing out on anything.

a funny thing happened en route from the 7-11 to that legion show. erin noticed that someone had left her keys in the trunk of her car. erin, being the do-gooder that she is tried to locate the owner, but none of the kids on the street knew anything about the car. so, she pocketed the keys and we went to the show. yon proposed that we just leave a note later. after the show, i wrote up a note that said “dear chump, you left your keys in the trunk so we took them for safe keeping. call ***-**** (ask for geoff) and we’ll give ’em back”. erin thought the chump part was being an asshole, so i crossed it out and replaced it with “victim of misfortune”. i thought of just opening the car up and pounding on the horn, but even in showman mode i’m not that bold. i just took the keys home and left a note for my housemates in case the owner of the keys called while i was out. apparently she called the next day, and despite the rudeness of my windshield note was really grateful that we had found the keys. katelynn said that the girl told her that she was chronically leaving her keys lying around. it’s really strange. girl leaves her keys in the door, we generally leave the house unlocked, and nothing catastrophic happens. nothing gets stolen, and no one gets raped. so much for the ghetto. after the recent serial rapist scare, i’m starting to think that south campus is worlds safer than north campus.

but yeah, it’s getting to the point where i can’t even write coherently in my journal anymore. at least it’s cooling down. i’m going to take a few more swigs of my cheap kroger cranberry juice coctail, brush my teeth, and go to bed.

job skills

i just got some unsolicited e-mail that actually interested me. apparently ohio has some program that offers up to $8,000 in technical training for individuals with income less than $13,290. i’ve never really been into the whole certification game, but if i can get free training, i won’t have to stress the test so much ant it might be worthwile. even if i don’t get the ccna certification, the skills might still be worthwhile.

art class

not just the superchunk song, but also my little pipe dream. i’m bored to death of cis classes and want to do something a little more creative – don’t get me wrong, programming could be considered art – but i’m more interested in using it as a tool for a more multimedia approach than as an artform in and of itself. so, i’m trying to get in to the art 551 new media robotics class. should be interesting since i don’t have any of the prereqs, but the class looks amazingly rad. i guess i could go out and mess around with this myself, but taking a class a) makes me feel better about prioritizing it with other things in my life, and b) gives me access to a lot of hardware and supply resources from the university which is awesome. we’ll see how it goes

whirlwind

is how i’d describe my life of late. just finished with finals yesterday, and luckily they were two of the downright easiest exams i’ve ever taken. i didn’t study as much as i would have liked to, but at least the terms were short so it meant i had less time to forget already learned material. what really didn’t help was my friend alicia’s visit. alicia and i were friends in high school and played together in a punk band called fallout before i went away to be a nerd in columbus, and she went to study art at tyler in philadelpha. alicia’s in a new band called x’s x’s. this summer they’re touring, and although they could’t get a show in columbus, they stopped at the sweet life to spend the night en route between pittsburgh and chicago. i hardly ever get to see alicia, just here or there when i come home, or sometimes at a show, which is a shame, because she’s really one of my last connections to the high school period in my life. everyone else who i was friend with back then just seemed to have very different priorities in life and interests, and in the end, when i went away, it just didn’t make sense to try to preserve those ties. but alicia’s rad, and i think that being in a band with people is a lot like being in a relationship with people, so it’s good to stay in touch. besides, alicia does a lot of the stuff that i wish i would do if my priorities were different or i wasn’t a big ol’ wuss, e.g. touring all the way across the country and even into canada. it was a little weird to meet her band mates, and i fealt a little like an outsider when i would venture into their conversations, but they seemed to be cool kids, and the band got along better than most bands setting out on a tour. alicia also gave me a sweet tofu recipe which i made for the critical mass picnic and seemed to go over really well. despite the possible scholastic advantages, hanging out with old friends and living vicariously through them for a few hours is a good time.

columbus isn’t so bad after all

was my thought yesterday, as, in my post exam euphoria, i managed to have a really great afternoon/evening. i rushed home to cook up some x’s x’s breakfast, then i ran into shad and we hooked up with the rest of the critical mass kids. it was a fairly sizeable ride, at least 20 kids, and sally, johnny, chad, brian, and a bunch of other regulars were there. it was the first time i had done critical mass in months, so it was a good time. afterwards, we rode all the way up to the park of roses in clintonville and had a bit of a cookout. someone brought a grill, jami brought her new puppy which i’ll even confess was adoreable. we played kickball and my team got trounced, but still had a good time. what i realized is how much happier i am when i can feel like part of a community rather than just a clique or a small group of friends. it’s nice to go out and do something with people you haven’t seen in a while – catch up, hang out, ride bikes, whatever. it was one of the best time’s i’ve had in a while. i guess it just goes to show it’s not so much where you are, but what you do. i can’t imagine having a better time, even in a cooler city.

went to a couple of parties later that night with shad. went to brian’s, a kid shad knows, and i met at critical mass and just chilled. they had a keg and it was kind of noisy, but definitely not wanabee frat-boy asshole scene that seems dominant at 90% of columbus parties. still, it was a little weird because i’m horrible at socialization, and didn’t really know people at the party. furthermore, unlike in scotland, it seems like everybody at a columbus party knows someone else, so you can’t really strike up a conversation with strangers and meet new people. also a problem is that everyone i would know at a columbus party, i only know because they’re ultra socialites who know tons of other people, so they’re doing the whole social butterfly thing and can’t save me from my akwardness. oh well. it wasn’t a bad time. it’s good to get out every once in a while.

decided to try to write a shit-talking columbus kid gossip zine as a joke, though i’m soon realizing that i don’t even know enough kids to make it seem realistic. it would be funny as hell. columbus is so small that there’s already tons of gossip going on and there’s nothing like adding fuel to the flames. i think it’s all well intended – i’ve not met anyone who was a real asshole about gossip – one just gets sucked in and the truth gets distorted somewhere along the way