And not because it's too heavy and she's a woman. This razor sharp feminist is sure to turn heads, provided that they're in attendance, so come see Camille Paglia speak on Wednesday, October 15th! Find out that there is more to feminism, academia, and intellectualism than you currently conceive, at 7:00 PM in The Commons: Skylight Room. There's a 95% chance that Camille Paglia will blow your mind, and that statistic means nothing. But come anyway because October 15th might be your only chance to see, hear, and speak to this notorious author, teacher, and social critic.
Just so there's no confusion, what I'm basically advertising is the idea that the variety of banana that has been overgrown and abundantly available to all will probably get raped in the ear. Will this effect the banana market? Most definitely. Will we ever eat bananas again? Most definitely.
Oh yeah. Don't like a wealth of information? Stab your ears and run down the stairs while closing your eyes. I've just recently discovered Pandora Radio and can hereby tell you, audience, that if you don't now use this service that you, audience, are The Dumb™. click-a tha link-a provided by my Title. It's only about 1.21 Gigawatts better than Last.FM. I'm still feeling it out, only using it while tinkering on the web (like now I'm listening to The Velvet Underground on my David Bowie station). I think I'll make a Devo station next. Ah. As I added that image The Psychedelic Furs came on. Damn I love this site; it's reading my mind. And what's great is that I tell the service what it is that I like and what I don't like, it just suggest what you might also enjoy and you help it to help you. Awesome. Not only this but it will explain to you why it is that it suggested the next song/artist. Pandora Radio also provides the user with a friends list as to use other peoples playlists. The streaming is pretty smooth and the advertisements are altogether ignorable. If I could get this in my car, I'd be set.
And what's more, I love to "randomize" my music since I listen to so much of it. The rearrangement of song order can create better enjoyment of music but only if it somehow makes sense to the person hearing it. It's the dilemma of the DJ: what comes next and what goes with what? Most "randomizations" leave my musical taste dulled but I revel in the occasions of several songs piecing together perfectly. And I don't have to do anything on Pandora but rate the music! Sometimes I have to change the pitch and/or speed of the song to meet my taste (I prefer Message In A Bottle to be played quickly) with other players, but with Pandora a perfectly good live recording of that song comes up. Know what? It happens to have been performed at a much more catchy pace. If I didn't know better I might even buy some of this music (even the stuff I own).
Damnit, don't you wish you could eat books and consume their beefy knowledge? Of course you do. But you know what book I'd skip to save room for dessert? The Argument. While I might use this book as a referencing source a good many times, it is for the topics of discussion: social/political/consumer power through media (Internet). I'm sure there are better books for such topic(s), books that read better and contain more qualitative information. As mentioned before, I don't much give a damn about party politics insofar as I enjoy the freak show. The revelations shared by this book are old news to pseudo-wonks and moderately well informed Internet users. And it reads like an Al Franken book: long winded and boringly useless.
I'd rather have a man scream at me about his fears and concerns over our doomed futures. At least that's exciting. At least I'm engaged. Truly, iSpyis heavy handed and maddening in all sorts of always-- but it's informative. I appreciate the attempt of a wake-up call, a thing many do not enjoy receiving, I just wish the optimistic drive of hope featured in the end were more sprinkled throughout. Give us hope or we might not continue.
Unfortunately, I don't have much in the way of alternative suggestions. Postman would be covered in courses before this one and Paglia is too incredibly dense for a whole class to manage. I think it might be best, in all, to cut the books back to 3 or 4 (rather than 5) and assign more assignments of lesser value than the two giant papers, one project, and semester-long blogging. It would encourage more to actually read and participate with more.
I'm fairly below any sort of radar. I like that. You cannot Google me with success, though it seems quite a few of my "googlegangers" are well off. Good lord is that a terrible word or what: googlegangers? The Lipo (Lee-Poe) clan that I am descendant from are also quite affluent as well as strongly family oriented. This brings to mind the few stories of older relatives reaching out in search of long lost members wherever they may be. Our name is a Polish name which is apparently a sort of Bush, though we've found Lipos of Italian and (I believe) Dutch heritage but they did not seem to be our Lipos. They also didn't seem eager to know us. Odd.
Fuck 'em. Though, while on the subject of Googling ones self, it's a tough decision as to which of your names to Google. Jim, Jay, James, or Jimmy Lipo? I only really go by James or Jay these days but when I was younger I would hear Jim and Jimmy. However, I don't think Google even existed when I went by the latter. Turns out that Google doesn't know who I am and I even use their blogging site. Talk about surveillance!
Wonkette.com is a political haven for the likes of me, though I don't venture there. I do not dare hit the pipe of the megablogs like Gawker, BoingBoing, or PornBot. They're too much! I've got enough to do without adding another time sink to indulge what morbid curiosity I have with politics. Though when I do talk to about the dirty topic I talk as though I might just read these hallowed pages of brain crack-- clever little elbow-jabs all over the place, so much so that I feel like I'm being beaten with wit. My mental-ass does not deserve such appreciable abuse.
And good lord is such a vicious beating eternal? Wonkette never ends, as it is a conglomerate of clever political bloggers whom are paid and unified under one amazing roof. The site is geared toward DC-Metro politico-junkies, an area of thought, culture, and geographical position where one could accidentally hob-nob with a lying liar from The Hill or someone that knows them (at the very least). DC is a buzz with what juices politics all over the country and the globe and a lot of that bubbles over to feed the average wonk that does other things with their time, like me. To imagine being sucked into their avid discussions and gossip is to be doomed to the abyss. BRAIN CRACK. Know why? Because all this doesn't actually amount to anything. Damnit!
"How has your political identity developed? What beliefs do you have, and what events or people have shaped them?"
My political identity has formed just as every other view, thought, or personality trait has over the years. Early on I thought that political views were solely represented by mast heads like Presidents (read: when I was a fucking child). As I became an adolescent, my views became adolescent; I looked to quantify things and pit them against one another in extreme dichotomies. Democratic V. Republican Steel Cage DeathMatch, FIGHT. Alas, once I was lost in thought over how cool Bill Clinton was. Then I thought he was overrated but powerful. Then I read Howard Zinn and realized that not only he, but the other politicians I thought were keen were in fact assholes too. I still miss the simplicity of loving Teddy Roosevelt.
These days? I just view it as one big show. I make jokes about cabals and smoke filled rooms where decisions are made months in advance but I also wouldn't be surprised. Politicians are lying assholes? Go on! No way. I once met a girl who seemed bright, though young. When she told me that-- "yes, large scale politicians are all corrupt assholes but local politicians are A-OK; I've worked with them"-- I just laughed. I believe in our power as a mass of people but I simply see us as too marginalized, too divided, and too apathetic.
A reflective look on where we go on the Internet and why we got there. Why do I first look at amateur porn and other softcore varieties before I move onto the dirtiest of the dirty (thanks a lot Max Hardcore, now I can't wash my eyes hard enough). In truth, it's not the easiest thing to hop around to unrelated spaces of the Internet from one page to another. Main pages are often utilized as to not meander around, blindly clicking hyperlinks. Truly, the most populous of non sequitur links must be the advertisement. Gross. Who clicks on those?
There are domains (quite literally) and realms on the Internet where mostly one sort of intellectual ownership presides. Even where the land dictates open sharing, it's often through a few single sources and users return immediately to the main page(s). On web forums it's just the same; I may start at the forum, click a link in a thread, and perhaps another within that linked area but I'd normally return back to the forum shortly. Hell, we all have our favorite places to go on the internet. Firefox provides users with a graphical toolbar for all my multi-tabbed/windowed needs (I prefer windows with no limit on the amount of windows). I can go to Pandora Radio, DotA Allstars, Penny Arcade, The Evolution Control Committee, my e-mail, and/or The Rogan Board within a series of clicks-- all at the same time. But can I connect myself from one site to the other via links provided by those pages? Why bother? You can go and provide those links to those domains as to interconnect them in some way but it'd be much easier to simply save the URL.
But how do we find these places to begin with. Aha, here's where Internet exploration comes to fruition. Surely, if I hear of these things from other sources in my daily life then I can Google them. However, in the case of my infrequently visited Rogan Board, I stumbled upon a wealth of information by chance! I was investigating information on DMT when I found a video of Joe Rogan talking about the drug for 10 minutes! From there I saw videos of Joe's infamous and short-lived Joe Show (10 webisodes, I don't know why he stopped doing it. It's not like he canceled himself) and decided I join his internet community. From this place I've seen quite a lot. When the discussions are good there is much of worth to be said and read with links, references, and resources flying around like ricocheted bullets in the Old West. It's a place of many links like BoingBoing and Wonkette but there's more discussion and no one's paid to talk about it.
What do you do with the unknown? Discover it. When do you discover it? When you're feeling a little adventurous. Happy Hunting.
"You’ll be healthier if you lighten up. Our research has shown that those who score high on a multidimensional sense of humor scale have lower levels of depression and higher levels of purpose than those who score low in humor."
I'm not trying to presuppose that the humor scale is intent on relaying any sort of reliable information. I just see a glaring problem with the idea of telling the audience what the socially appropriate/beneficial response before they are measured. It's bad testing. Anyone who carries a doctorate would/should know this yet I digress-- even if all the items of measurement influence a biased positive answer.
But, as you can see, Columbo is perfectly depicted here for two reasons: (1) he's rubbing his brow in the classic facepalm.jpg fashion due to the massive failure of this scale, (2) he's iconic for the use of humor to diffuse a tense situation. It's not that I don't agree with what this scale is saying in terms of what humor, joy, and socially inherent behaviors (like laughter) are good for; I just don't agree with the validity of what this is trying to advertise. It's a bit misleading. It wreaks of silly girl magazines and hair-brained scheming.
I scored 54/64 which apparently means:"you use humor sometimes, but perhaps you could learn to let yourself go and enjoy more variety." Hm. The thing is that I think people generally need to be sad every so often. It's a requirement of life and existence. You can't simply go around doing whatever you want, happy all the time; where would you know from happy if you're never sad? Sadness rectifies human perception and that means it is necessary for our lives. It's about understanding, not happiness. If you are depressed or stressed then it is a responsibility that falls on you to understand and resolve the issue(s). Happiness comes from this. Joy comes from this. Sadness begets happiness which begets sadness. This isn't philosophical, it's factual.
