Other projects.

As you probably know, a few months ago I created a Facebook group titled "I judge you when you use poor grammar." It now has over 116,000 members.

My big project right now is getting t-shirts made for the group. I've hired a graphic designer and bought a domain name, and we're in the final stages of getting the shirts ready. This is a big reason that I haven't posted much lately.

Keep checking back for updates. When the shirts are ready, which will probably be next week, I'll link to them from the blog.

Cheers!

News.

First, I apologize for the delay in new posts. A lot has been happening this week, but I'll shape up soon.

Next, I need to tell the good news. I found out that I was accepted to law school yesterday. I've only heard from one school so far, University of Alabama, so I'm going to wait on the others before I make a decision. Alabama did inform me in style though -- the head of admissions called me. I said "I thought I'd get a letter!" and he replied, "Well, we call people when we can." I thought that was great.

Tonight is for celebrating; tomorrow is for posting.

Cheers!

"We want everyone to know how sorry we are, and that we are willing to do anything to make things right."

I've been meaning to write about this:

Clemson University and the NAACP said Tuesday they are investigating an off-campus party held during the Martin Luther King Jr. weekend that some considered offensive because white students drank malt liquor and at least one partygoer wore black face.

Pictures from the party were posted online, and Clemson officials learned of the January 14 party this past weekend. The school is probing whether students were harassed or whether there was underage drinking. (AP via CNN)

The pictures were posted on Facebook, and almost immediately there was an uproar from students who saw them. The main issue here is: were the students dressing as an exaggerated stereotype of an entire race, or were they just sticking to a theme (ghetto/rapper)?

If they had stuck to the rapper theme, with jewelry, baggy clothes, etc. -- which is the predominate style for white and black rappers -- then the party would be difficult to condemn. A theme party where guests dress as rappers wouldn't be different from one where the theme is Bikers or CEOs and Secretaries. However, the fact that it was during Martin Luther King weekend, as well as the kid who dressed in black face, took it over the edge. Black face has been widely condemned as offensive, and the kid who did it knew it was offensive.

It's unfortunate that this happened at all, especially at a school like Clemson where racial tensions are already pretty high. It's also another example of people unwisely falling for the false sense of security that Facebook conveys. Unless you're ready for the world to see it, don't put it on the internet.

Idea:

Buy a stack of postcards, put postage on them and address them to a member of the military serving overseas. Take the stack and several pens out somewhere, get people to write supportive messages on the postcards and drop them in the mail.

I did this a couple weeks ago for a friend in Iraq, and he just received the postcards. It works especially well if you hand them out in a bar -- the messages will be much more varied and entertaining. It only costs a couple dollars, it was fun to do and it will be meaningful for anyone serving away from home.

Now go and do your good deed.

"Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."

My senior seminar (the last class I have to take to graduate with my political science degree) is on food and government food policy. We're reading The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan now, which is an interesting and often alarming description of the foods we eat, why we eat them, and how they're made.

Pollan has an article in the NYT today:

"...if you’re concerned about your health, you should probably avoid food products that make health claims. Why? Because a health claim on a food product is a good indication that it’s not really food, and food is what you want to eat." (NYT)

The article is really long, but that's the main idea. Eat fruit and vegetables, some meat, and stay away from processed "foods." If you look carefully, a lot of things in the supermarket are even labeled like they're non-food products. What we commonly call "American cheese" is labeled "cheese food" or "cheese product." I'd rather not eat "product."

"I judge you when you use poor grammar:" almost 110,000 strong.

This is incredible. I created this group on a whim, and it caught on quickly. I'm working on designing some t-shirts for the group, so keep checking back for updates. I'll link to the shirts when they're ready.

Keep fighting the good fight!

(Explanation for those of you not on Facebook: Facebook is a social networking site, similar to MySpace, except that Facebook was originally just for college students. I created a group a few months ago titled "I Judge You When You Use Poor Grammar," and the membership has been increasing wildly ever since. We're now on the verge of 110,000 members.)

Why hasn't the DA brought child pornography charges against the Dakota Fanning movie?

Because it's not child pornography, according to Torie Bosch at Slate.

Kerry's out.

No, really?

It would have been fun to have him in the race, just for kicks. Oh well.

"We were very disappointed to hear that Microsoft was taking that approach..."

Microsoft tried to hire a blogger to change Wikipedia entries so they'd be more flattering to them. Is it an ethical issue?

Wikipedia is known as an online encyclopedia that almost anyone can edit, although some parties (PR firms, campaigns) are barred from changing entries. By hiring a blogger to change the entries, Microsoft was working around the Wikipedia restrictions.

But the real question is: why would they risk a scandal just to change a Wikipedia entry, which doesn't even get that much exposure? Those entries are only seen by people who purposely set out to find them, which wouldn't be their target audience anyway.

About all those single American women:

Remember that statistic that came out a few days ago, about women and marriage? A study by the NY Times said that 51% of American adult women were living without a spouse, and "family advocacy" groups told us that was a lamentable statistic. As I wrote about here, I didn't see anything negative in that conclusion, and now some analysis is coming out to support my stance:

Statistics show that college educated women are more likely to marry than non college educated women — although they marry, on average, two years later. The popular image might have been true even 20 years ago — though generally speaking, most women probably didn’t boil the bunny rabbit the way Ms. Close’s character did in 1987. In the past, less educated women often “married up.” In “Working Girl,” Melanie Griffith triumphs. Now, marriage has become more one of equals; when more highly educated men marry, it tends to be more highly educated women. Today, Harrison Ford and Sigourney Weaver would live happily ever after.

Women with more education also are becoming less likely to divorce, or inclined to divorce, than those with less education. They are even less likely to be widowed all in all, less likely to end up alone.

“Educated women used to have a difficult time,” said David Popenoe, co-director of the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University. “Now they’re the most desired.” In Princeton, where he lives, men used to marry “way down the line,” Mr. Popenoe said. No more. (NYT)

The article closes with another positive finding:

All this leads to a happiness gap, too. According to the Marriage Project, the percentage of spouses who rate their marriage as “very happy” has dropped among those without a college education, while it has risen or held steady among those better educated.

Body parts everywhere.

I woke up to CNN saying that today is supposed to be the worst day of the year: Blue Monday. The weather is bad (63* and rain all day here in Charleston), leftover Christmas credit card bills are piling up, and most people have broken their New Year's resolutions.

Then I looked online, and the biggest headline on my home page was: "Body Parts Everywhere."

"Bill, I'm whoever you want me to be."

-- Stephen Colbert on The O'Reilly Factor the other night. The two men were guests on each other's shows on the same night. Some other memorable quotes:

Colbert: "You know what I hate about people who criticize you?"
O'Reilly: "What?"
Colbert: "They...they criticize what you say, but they never give you credit for how loud you say it."
O'Reilly: "That's true. There are not many people as loud as me."
Colbert: "Or how long you say it."

Here's O'Reilly on Colbert's show, and here's Colbert on O'Reilly's.

John Edwards is a college basketball fan!

I'm watching the UNC/GA Tech game, and the camera keeps zooming in on John Edwards in the stands. Is it bad that my opinion of him has gone up since seeing him at the game?

"She's growing up. Get used to it." (NYT)

And what better way to demonstrate your maturity than playing a rape victim in a movie?

Twelve-year old Dakota Fanning plays a young rape victim in the independent film "Hounddog," which premieres at Sundance Film Festival this week. The problem is that the film most likely violates child pornography laws. Even though Fanning herself has been publicly justifying her (her agent's? her parents'?) decision to film the rape scene, the controversy is unending. The movie was filmed near Wilmington, NC, and there's a petition asking the district attorney to prosecute the people involved for participating in producing child pornography.

The NY Times article is quite kind towards the filmmakers, and I was almost convinced by the time I finished reading. However, laws protecting minors don't take effect only when the minor invokes them. The laws exist to protect minors, who are assumed to not be mature enough to give consent (for example, to sleep with an adult or to film a rape scene in a movie). The law makes those activities illegal regardless of the minor's consent.

This could be a precedent for a lot of other films and art, and I hope the issue is given proper consideration.

'I'm in to win."

Hillary Clinton throws her hat in the ring.

When camera phones attack.

Michael Agger at Slate vilifies the camera phone, citing the recording of Saddam Hussein's execution as the peak in recent shameful uses for the phones:

In glorious retrospect, it seems like a terrifically bad idea to give the world a spy camera that looks and functions like a cell phone. Peeping Toms quickly realized the potential for upskirt pics and shower-room souvenirs. Chicago tried to block cell phones from gyms, and a California legislator has proposed a law requiring the cell phone to make a shutter snapping sound or flash a light when a picture is taken. We have trained ourselves to be wary when a cell phone is pointed at us, but the device's relative inconspicuousness still creates problems. In Saudi Arabia, women have been taking pictures of other women unveiled at weddings and e-mailing them to matchmakers, a practice that has caused uproar in a culture in which any sort of image can be cause for loss of honor.

Technology can't be blamed for the bad uses that people dream up for it. Camera phones, like any other technology, are ethically neutral. People decide what to use it for, and people should be blamed when bad decisions are made. Although Agger does describe some positive outcomes involving camera phones, he sticks to his argument that we'd be better off without them.

He gets this part right:

One consequence of this is an altered perception of the gravity of our day-to-day routines. We are now more aware of ourselves as observers of "history." When a van catches fire in front of our house, we and our neighbors are now out on the lawn recording. We e-mail this to our friends, who testify to the enormity of the event, and then we all await the next sensation. This impulse can be positive, but it also fuels the increasingly destructive American habit of oversharing. The snapshot speaks with a small voice: I'm alive and I saw this. The cell phone camera picture or video is a shout from the rooftop: Check out this crazy thing that happened to me.

Technology does seem to bring out the narcissist in people.

Sojourner Truth:

"Then that little man in black there, he says women can't have as much rights as men, 'cause Christ wasn't a woman! Where did your Christ come from? Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him."

-- From a speech at the Women's Convention in Akron, Ohio (1851).

The page-view problem.

David Carr:

Here at The Times, the Most E-Mailed list on our Web site has gone from being an in-house curiosity to a measure of salience, as much as getting an article on the front page. The list can be wonderfully idiosyncratic — last Friday, a six-month-old goof on using animal training on husbands (“What Shamu Taught Me About a Happy Marriage”) reappeared alongside Thomas Friedman’s meditation on the president’s plan to send more troops to Iraq.

But at some point, ratings (which print journalists, unlike their television counterparts, have never had to contend with) will start to impinge on news judgment. “You can bemoan the crass decision-making driving by ratings, but you can’t really avoid the fact that page views are increasingly the coin of the realm,” said Jim Warren, co-managing editor of The Chicago Tribune. (NYT)

Print journalists have had to deal with their own "ratings" system in the past: distribution. The more newspapers or magazines sold, the better. However, online newspapers allow editors to keep statistics on which articles get the most views, instead of an issue (of a magazine, or printing of a newspaper) as a whole. It takes pandering to a whole new level, and just might lower the quality of writing at newspapers.

The page-view problem might also change the kind of issues that get the spotlight. Instead of editors having total control over what makes the front page, readers will have more input. The more page views an article gets online, the more likely that it will make the front page of the print issue -- if there's a new development by the next day. People are tired of hearing about the Iraq war? Put Britney on the front page! That'll sell some newspapers.

Uh oh.

Charleston smoking ordinance.

Last Tuesday, the Charleston City Council voted in favor of the Smokefree Ordinance, which would ban smoking from all public buildings (restaurants and bars included). The vote was 9-4, however, the ordinance will be read and voted on two more times before it can become actual legislation.

At first glance, it seems invasive for the government to limit where people can smoke in public places. Personal freedom is worth defending, but when exercising a freedom hurts bystanders, it ceases to be a personal act. Smoking doesn't just harm the smoker; it harms anyone around the smoke. Obviously, the main concern is lung cancer from secondhand smoke.

Putting aside the most troublesome potential effect, there are other concerns -- such as my personal grievance, cigarette burns. I have 3 different scars from accidental cigarette burns by others, and while their sincere apologies are appreciated, they can't do anything about the scars.

The next reading of the ordinance is Tuesday, January 23, at 5:00pm at 180B Lockwood Drive (across from Riley Park). There will be a chance for people to speak, so go and let the City Council hear your argument.

51% of American adult women are living without a spouse.

“For better or worse, women are less dependent on men or the institution of marriage,” Dr. Frey said. “Younger women understand this better, and are preparing to live longer parts of their lives alone or with nonmarried partners. For many older boomer and senior women, the institution of marriage did not hold the promise they might have hoped for, growing up in an ‘Ozzie and Harriet’ era.” (NYT)

Women being less dependent on men and marriage shouldn't be a negative thing. Even if you believe that traditional marriages are ideal, two independent parties who decide to come together would create a stronger marriage than one party who feels dependent on the other or on the institution.

More explanation is available at the link.