Microsoft Word's grammar check rules aren't very well(-)defined. posted by Stentor Danielson at 18:28 -- link --
Today's Edityorial. posted by Stentor Danielson at 04:37 -- link --
2.5.02
"Cyber Essays is a completely free service that provides students with papers on a specified topic. Although we support education and feel it is a priceless commodity, we also feel it cannot be attained by teachers giving the same assignments year after year that only force the student to lose sleep - not to make him or her think. Cyber Essays is here to challenge the lazy teacher into helping her students and give assignments from which the students can learn. Mark Twain once said, "Never let schooling get in the way of your education." This is even more true today."
They're improving the quality of education by blatantly giving away pre-written term papers? I really don't follow that logic. How will teachers be chastised into teaching better if their students cheat? And why does it matter that a teacher uses the same assignment year after year -- it's not like the same students are doing those assignments over and over.
And no, I wasn't trying to use their service. I was checking the date that Lenin took power, and the first relevant result Google brought up was one of their papers. Which seems odd, as you'd think they'd block their stuff from being searched so that teachers couldn't discover that their students had cheated that easily. posted by Stentor Danielson at 23:15 -- link --
The problem with Fables of the Reconstruction is that "Can't Get There from Here" stands out from the other songs so much -- in style and overall quality -- that I have to stop whatever I'm doing when I listen to it and air-guitar. My brain gets used to one level of music, and incorporates it into the background of the situation. Along comes this high-energy song to tear me out of that for 4:10. Then it lets me go, and I have to slink back to what I was doing before while "Green Grow the Rushes" taunts me. posted by Stentor Danielson at 22:17 -- link --
Unfair to Indians, again "Even the courts can't seem to find a way to assure Native Americans that billions of dollars in land-use fees owed them will ever be distributed. The money is due them for grazing, timber cutting and the extraction of oil, gas and other minerals on their land. The mess stems from bureaucratic intransigence of historic proportions by the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the U.S. Department of the Interior, which oversees it, reaching back almost to the creation of the bureau, an agency whose early years were marred by corruption."
I think the Supreme Court needs to issue an order banning all outside use of Native American trust land until the government can figure out how to pay the tribes for it. Maybe that would make them take notice and actually do something, since I'm sure the companies that would be affected are big campaign donors. posted by Stentor Danielson at 21:23 -- link --
Haikurama! posted by Stentor Danielson at 19:59 -- link --
1.5.02
WRC-Haiku:
You're so beautiful, Should be guarded by monkeys. You're so beautiful.
Yum yum Bumblebee, I love Bumblebee Tuna. Just the girls: "yum yum ..."
Boy needs therapy Crazy in the coconut Also made false teeth.
Cigs and choc'late milk Just a few of my cravings Little bit harmful.
I want my dru-ugs Can't keep me under arrest I want my dru-ugs.
Memo to myself: Put hand inside puppet head Put your hand inside.
Here, have a pickle Protect your home from radon KISS 108 -- what? posted by Stentor Danielson at 23:00 -- link --
Belated welcome to everyone from Ctrl+Alt+FODA-SE!!!. Looks like what started as an offhand comment about one post turned into something rather interesting. Now I need to find a reliable translator so I can have an opinion of C-A-F more sophisticated than "lookit this post in all caps in another language, hur hur." I can get a vague gist of some parts because it's similar to Spanish. I recall Isaac Asimov writing one time that it's next to impossible to know Spanish and Portuguese at the same time if you're not a native speaker of either. So maybe I'll wait until after I take my Spanish final, lest I start writing an essay about Jorge Luis Borges in Portuguese (or after my dissertation is done, if Prof. Turner sucks me into doing my research as part of his Southern Yucatan project). posted by Stentor Danielson at 22:34 -- link --
I got a porn spam in my hotmail account that said it was from "Barry F." Maybe I'm just to heterosexual to get it, but "Barry" doesn't strike me as a particularly sexy name. posted by Stentor Danielson at 14:44 -- link --
30.4.02
Wow. Those Portuguese people are crazy. You know, I can't read a word of it, but I think I understand. posted by Stentor Danielson at 23:55 -- link --
Niyazov Takes Students Back To "Middle Ages" "Turkmenistan's president, Saparmurat Niazov, has announced wide-ranging reforms of the higher education system in his latest attempt to rid the country of its Soviet past and rebuild it in his own image.
"Let's get rid of useless subjects," the president said, setting out clearly defined options for the teaching of chemistry, physics, biology, psychology and ecology. Either abolish them, he told teachers, as they are no longer needed, or, "introduce concrete elements into the teaching of such subjects".
The leader considers Rukhnama - a book he wrote setting out his views and beliefs - a suitable moral code for the nation. "In social disciplines, only the history of Turkmenistan and Rukhnama will be taught," he said. " All the inhabitants of Turkmenistan, from the humble to the great, must read and know Rukhnama; people benefit from it.""
The article has a pretty obvious slant to it (you may notice I'm a big proponent of balance in news stories even when one side is ludicrous), but some of the stuff he's proposing is really incredible. The thing about his book blows my mind. posted by Stentor Danielson at 22:45 -- link --
There's been a really interesting discussion going on in response to this post. I'm going to paste it here, so that (1) it isn't lost when and if Yaccs dies like all other comment systems, and (2) the discussion can continue despite the post in question falling off the page:
That's been my understanding of magick as well. It makes more sense if you look to it for a change in yourself, not in the world.
And no matter how much I see this, it always strikes me as weird how completely different religions just have different words for exactly the same things. Weird, but cool. -Amanda Hope
Me too. (Who's surprised?) I've never thought in terms of prayer-as-asking-and-receiving, or at least not as long as I can remember. Prayer for me is trying to connect to... um... to the force/awareness/state of mind that moves you beyond yourself (and more into yourself, really) and puts you closer to where you want to be. That's really garbled, I think, but it's the best way I can explain it. And it's why I dislike putting the name "prayer" on it, generally, because "I'm going to sit down and pray now" seems... wrong. Setting aside a little box of time for something you should try to do at the back of your mind all the time. Sitting in a quiet church and sitting in a field make me feel the same way. -Beth
*feigns surprise*
Agreed. I think that's why I have trouble celebrating particular holidays. I wanted to do something special on Easter that connected with the way I see religion, but I couldn't find anything that satisfied me, because I don't set aside special days to try to connect to the earth. I'm always try to do that. -Amanda Hope
mm. Holidays are family/friends gatherings for me, mainly, although they can also be reminders that "Oh, yeah, I should be thinking about this more." -Beth
I'd like to add that I think Starhawk gave a highly simplified explaination of magick - in some sense, it is precisely how she described it. In other senses, I think it's similar but it runs a lot deeper. Magick - and I think prayer as well - is not entirely subjective all of the time. That is, both *can* produce effects outside of the self.
I agree that people use prayer too often as a crutch. Praying for somethig, then simply relying on God to do all the work, generally is not a way to create any sort of change. -ApL
I've struggled with the question of whether prayer/magick can actually produce outside effects for a while, and I finally came to the conclusion that there's no way to know. Even if prayer or magick actually made something happen I'd still probably think it was just coincidence. You can never tell for sure. The way I got around the issue was by deciding that, for me, anyway, it doesn't matter whether it produces outside effects or not, since it still does in fact produce the desired effect inside my head. -Amanda Hope
I think that for most believers in magic, at least - I can't speak so much for those who pray - that's the ultimate stand they take. There's no way to know whether a success was due in any way to the magic, but in the end it really doesn't matter anyways. There are so many things influencing all events in the world that the actions of one person may or may not be influential, but it's worth a try at least. It may be just the thing that's needed. -ApL
I like that philosophy. Mostly because I'm a control freak, and no matter what situation I'm in I don't like to think that there's *nothing* I can do. -Amanda Hope
But at the same time, I feel like part of prayer is to counteract the frustration of being a control freak (and I'm one too). You say, "OK, God, this is all in your hands now. Here's what I want, but it's up to you to do what you think should be done." It's a comforting middle ground between control and total lack thereof. -Stenny
In a way. I guess it depends whether you see prayer/magick as giving up control or as a last-ditch attempt to exert control. I think magick has more of a tendency towards the latter than prayer does. But I could be misunderstanding either of them. -Amanda Hope
I think you're right, Amanda. There is very little in the way of magick that involves giving up control... it's all about being able to work with the universe to create change - or having power over the universe to create change, depending on how you approach it, what system you use, etc. And I definitely see prayer as both the submission that Stenny is talking about, and as a form of exerting one's personal power - as in the viewthat there is power in numbers, that a prayer is more powerful the larger the number of people praying it. -ApL
More of the world according to the Microsoft Word spellchecker: It recognizes "kolkhoz," but not "sovkhoz." I guess we know what Bill Gates' favorite type of collectivized agriculture is. posted by Stentor Danielson at 13:00 -- link --
I'd really appreciate it if this thing would actually publish my posts. posted by Stentor Danielson at 03:03 -- link --
28.4.02
I came up to the Maroon-News office to get my commentaries and photoshop my comics, so I could put them on my website. My last commentaries and my last comic. I'm going to try to work for The Scarlet at Clark, but I'm trying not to be under any illusions that it will be like The Maroon-News. Maroon-News has defined so much of my life here at Colgate, more so than pretty much anything else I did. It's been hard to get the motivation to finish my thesis -- which should be the big culmination of my college career -- this weekend, because the last Maroon-News issue came out. I feel like I'm done with college now, that everything else is just crap I have to get out of the way between now and graduation.
When I came in the room, I started tidying up like I always do. I was about to take the page budget and ad list off the board, but then I changed my mind. It felt too much like packing up, putting away everything we got out. They can take that stuff down in the fall, when they're ready to start a new year. posted by Stentor Danielson at 23:54 -- link --
Our washing machines at the house only charge 75¢, and have for quite some time. But I always take $1 with me when I go to do laundry. It's like I have this weird paranoia that I'm going to get down there and discover that the price has suddenly changed to $1 (like all the other washers on campus), and I'm going to have to go back to my room to get more money. posted by Stentor Danielson at 15:26 -- link --
This column by George F. Will reminds me of a sort of tendency I've noticed in commentary. It seems like conservative columnists are much more likely to defend conservatism as an overarching ideology, and to attack liberalism as a complete system of belief, than liberal columnists are to do the reverse. Granted, it's not every conservative commentator who does that. But it does seem like on average liberal commentators (as defined by popular opinion, as the commentators themselves don't seem to act as part of any coherent community) focus specifically on particular issues, while conservatives use particular issues as gateways into a broader critique of "liberalism" and defense of "conservatism."
Why? I don't know. Maybe it's a reaction to a time when the roles were reversed, so conservatives are taking up a defensive posture. Maybe liberals can't see the big picture. Maybe conservatives have this need to divide the world into black and white. And maybe being liberal myself has just made me ignore the times when liberals do the same thing (it's easy to overlook stupid rhetoric when it gets you to the right conclusions). posted by Stentor Danielson at 14:29 -- link --
4.5.02
Microsoft Word's grammar check rules aren't very 
