Mistakes were made, eh?

Check this madness out: Worse than Watergate

This is also quite interesting: So, what really are the CIA's motives?

Ladies and gentlement, what we have here is the finest scandal to hit the White House in decades. This is the stuff of Tom Clancy novels... questionable wars, weapons of mass destruction, female spies, traitors, mysterious machinations inside the CIA... wow.

TA newsletter? I didnt get one yet. Sid, great essay. Christ its cold here. Thankfully, I havent been studying too hard. However, I have been able to look and read a lot about things interesting to me. How much better would it be to read quietly in every class instead of doing things? I think I would learn so much more. Okay I have to go... my sock is being ripped off by my dog, he wants to go for a walk. Did I mention that its cold? Oh, and quick question: What are people's favorite poets?

Later, Adam L

Hey Yall

I am happy to note that most of our TASP fugitives are being caught - it makes me happy to know that our police force is functioning. Did u guys get the TA newsletter? It made me happy even though there wasnt much news of us in there, because some day there will be! Its kinda exciting. Now that I'm done being ditzy, on to other matters.
Sid, excellent essay. I wont criticize much because the others have said more than i could anyway. And, I couldnt possibly question the facts- i know very little about the subject. I must say though, that your optimistic ideals come through, which is a good idea for a college essay - they want to know you. Gosh i sound like a brochure - forgive me!
In my life, very little is happening. I met the new Pakistani ambassador today because Mrs. Gillespie is Pakistani, and the ambassador (or is it ambassadress? I think not) is a friend of her friend. Volleyball is driving me insane because, being the sportswoman(not) that i am, I am on the B team, and therefore quite extraneous. I tried out for the talent show yesterday... my voice cracked six billion times in 3 minutes, but i didnt let it show on my face, thank God.
Most exciting thing I am anticipating is the London Theatre Trip - Nov. 6 through 10! My dad insisted that I go, which is really exciting. There's no school at that time, so I wont feel guilty, and i get to take in 4 plays! And see the Globe Theatre. Sorry for my over-enthusiasm, but i've never been to London without my folks. I'll tell you guys how that goes eventually.
I feel extremely unproductive these days - i do schoolwork, more schoolwork, and nothing much creative. The problem is that my life revolves completely around school, so that even the funner things I do just end up keeping me there longer. Ah well, I'll get over it.
Love,
Toes.

message from the beyond (aka Italy)

the ghost of Keegan called this afternoon to tell me that heaven had a blackout. he also complained about the fact that although the whole world hears about it when a few cities in america lose power, I had no idea that the entire nation (of the beyond) in which he lives (so to speak) was electricityless. he also told me that his irish hat continues to form international bonds, not to mention acquiring international HTD's (hat-transmitted diseases, naturally). he also has the plague. (diagnosed as a cold, but in Italy you never can tell.) he asked me to transmit all this news to the world of the living, as well as the information that he'll join the blogger as soon as his celestial power is back on.
I apologize for my non-capitalization - I've been writing an awful lot lately and it seems that coherence comes in a limited supply. how many fugitives do we have left now?

gah!

the injurious effect of her ignorance me altera, me pone colerico. i cant write anything menacing about the librarian who hates menowbecause she islurking and reading whatis on my screen.

Sid, your essay is deliciously Stephensonian

Brendan here.

I firmly believe that the internet has the potential to completely upset the current, shall we say, hierarchy paradigm. But it won't happen, at least not in the way you envision (and here you'll have to pardon me, because I didn't take notes - and really should have. That was a great essay). Why? Internet service providers.

When you have something like eight (Harper's statistic, not mine) total companies controling access to the internet you only have freedom of information, and the oganizational ability it brings, as long as you are allowed. Yes, there is the nerd movement to create a redundant internet, run anarchisticly, but this has enjoyed as much success as the attempt to create a socialist power grid, based around individuals using alternative energy sources. Of course, a good hacker can do whatever he wants on the internet, but the point (I think) is that the internet could allow joe sixpack a hand in his own governance. The internet is hardly (totally) decentralized in function (DNS servers, anyone) although it seems that way in use. Neither are seti@home or beowulf clusters, since they must communicate with central servers. I notice, however, that you talk about at "decentralized, interconnected, symmetrical [you mean redundant?] web," not the internet as it exists right now. You might want to incorporate this destinction. Then again, it might only matter to a tech nerd (and, of course, I could be way off the mark).

Another nit pick: open source is socialism. A truely resiliant, open internet providing unrestricted access would be anarchy. It'd have to be, for the reasons oh-so-briefly touched upon above (yes, I know this opens up the whole self-regulation problem. Open source survived, I'm sure it's manageable).

Also, you never address the problem of being heard. Sure, weblogs provide unadulturated, widely accessable communication, but that does no good if six billion, or even only six million other people have them. Leaders would inevitably arise. Of course, these leaders would be easily overthrown should they nastify, due to the decentralized structure, so I guess it's not a problem.

Over all, I like it. It could be more concise - you take a while to get to the point - but I like your ideas. Just cut out some of the more common-knowledge stuff. I'd also add more concrete examples: several times you posit scenarios, but provide no (or scant) evidence that they have any basis in reality. Wikipedia might be useful to incorporate: a truely self sustaining socialist/anarchist...enh, I'm sure you know it.

Anyway, me likey. Good job, and good writing.

By the way, I should have a livejournal code, if anyone wants it. Preferably someone who has a more interesting life than I do. Like this person, for example, True Porn Clerk Stories. I just learned her blog was on NPR. Phooey. It was cooler when only the nerds knew about it, as is the case with many things. But check it out, it's great stuff.

-Brendan

*cross my fingers that I didn't mutipost again...*

I'm alive!

I hereby affirm that I am alive and well, maxin' out in Elizabeth "Shitsburg" PA. Contrary to popular belief, I did NOT commit suicide over my inability to form lasting relationships with women - in fact, I have been happily thrifting with my sistahs on a regular basis, thank you very much. This does not mean, however, that you should not feel obligated to send me flowers due to my untimely demise. You know my address. Anyway, I figured I would finally sign up for this muldoon - sorry it took so long, but I rarely check my emails, and didn't realize that there was a blog until Alex informed me that Sid has been circulating rumors that I am an international fugitive. How sexy! Would that involve something along the lines of me wearing a vinyl catsuit? Anyway, I just thought I should let you guys know that I'm still alive.

Now it's time for me to proselytize. Some of you have already been exposed to my ardent obsession with the singer/performance artist Miss Diamanda Galas. Well guess what? She's coming out with 2 new double CDs on November 24, and you all need to buy them! "Defixiones, Will and Testament" is a song cycle that represents the voices of those "forgotten and erased" in the Armenian, Assyrian, and Anatolian Greek genocides of 1914-1923. It includes music set to the texts of Belgian/French poet Henri Michaux and Armenian soldier/poet Siamanto. "La Serpenta Canta" is a lighter, slightly more accessible song cycle of blues/free jazz/country which includes Diamanda's crazed renditions of Hank Williams "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry" and Screamin' Jay Hawkins "I Put a Spell on You," Both CD's are a must-have for anyone who is into world music, blues, goth, or just crazy-ass avant-garde vocal work that may induce brain hemorrhaging. More info about the CDs, as well as a crapload of documents about both the Hellenic genocides and the AIDS crisis/conspiracy (if you will), can be found at www.diamandagalas.com . Check it out!

*Sigh* Sorry, I just had to do that, because if you guys can't foster an interest in this stuff, then nobody will! Well, I'm gonna go read now. Will post later! Ciao.

Much love,
Jordan "Grosshandler" Greenwald
catch me on AIM! my sn: sickmuse22

Sid's essay

First of all, I would like to say grrr to aol, which won't let me post.
Second of all, I would like to say, wow, Sid, I had no idea that you were such an amazingly sophisticated writer. I think this essay is very near done. I think it could be improved by: firming up the structure a little, particularly toward the end, and clarifying your overall point; by removing some of the questionably relevant analogies to why a larger bunch of internet is more useful than a smaller; by defining some of the terms and things you allude to more specifically, such as memes (we know, but the Telluride people might not); and of course by editing out the typos. But you know that. Congrats. I think maybe you could extend your conclusion a little and muse about the implications some more--what's the effect of this decentralization of knowledge going to be on political system? religion? education? news coverage? clear channel's monopoly? government power? But I guess you have to stop somewhere--or this becomes your dissertation!

my House application free-for-all essay

This is the absurdly long (over 3000 word) essay I wrote for my House topical essay. If you guys could skim it over and offer commentary or criticism on it, I'd appreciate it, and I hope you find it "really really really interesting." Mind you, there are some unfinished sentences and such, which I'll smooth over later. Please, tear my ideas to pieces.

I also apologize for subjecting you to such a grossly long post.

Manifesto of an Informed Age

We live in what has been dubbed the “Information Age,” surrounded by media during virtually all our waking hours. Yet this Information Age has been one not of knowledge, but of trivia, an age in which meaning and reality have been obscured by image and artifice, an age of viewers and listeners and subscribers helpless against the torrent of stimuli washing in through the television and radio and newspaper. The citizen of the Information Age is adrift, passive and voiceless and drowning in useless information foisted by media barons and corporate conglomerates.

But there is an new alternative media, taking over where the mass media fears to tread.

The weblog is a medium of recent birth, allowing for any person or group to run a web page of news stories and commentary on the day’s events, or offer an online journal of personal reflections. Once an obscure underground form of media and current events commentary generally operated as a hobby by news junkies, the weblog has become a remarkably influential medium, with major news media and columnists responding to posts made by webloggers and politicians such as Howard Dean starting weblogs as a means of garnering support. Even the Democratic National Committee has begun a weblog, entitled Kicking Ass.

The concept of freely available information being distributed without checks or balances is directly antithetical to the corporate structures that dominate the music media industry, and the rapid uncontrolled spread of music downloading has terrified and angered the executives who lead the recording industry. The current lawsuits for copyright violations against individual users are a clear acknowledgement that peer-based file-sharing networks pose a threat that cannot be contained except by legal action – and yet file-sharing continues and evolves in form, extending to other media such as movies and changing in form as to be impossible to shut down.
Clearly, there some sort of change afoot, a major trend that more and more people are beginning to notice each day. The basic structures of modern societal discourse, in media, politics, and economics, are being transformed by the new information technology, in a way that emphasizes the active engagement of the individual. What is coming about is not a revolution in the way society works, but a fundamental evolution. We are seeing a transition from the passive Information Age, with the citizenry intellectually oppressed by modern, subtle propaganda, to an activist Informed Age, with the individual citizen fully established in and empowered by a transglobal network of information and communications.

structures of power, structures of deceit

It is undeniable that in the course of human history, great power has been wielded by a very few. The masses, the majority have ceded responsibility into the hands of a specific minority of influential leaders, whether self-appointed or given responsibility and power through a social contract.
The necessity of placing societal power and responsibility into the hands of a specific minority of leaders has been well discussed in studies of society and government, beginning with the classical Greek philosophies of government, such as Plato’s ideal Republic ruled by a philosopher-king, and evolving to the Lockean concept of the social contract that a government has with the people it serves. The people give up a certain degree of freedom to assure that vital needs are met and rights protected.
Even apart from ideal theories of government, power and influence have tended to be concentrated in the hands of a small majority. It is simply absurd to say that Joe Six-Pack from Minneapolis has the same ability to influence world events as do Dick Cheney or Bill Gates.
From where does this power emerge? Karl Marx attributed it to economic forces, and this has consistently been a popular argument for the source of power and influence: control over resources and production is control over the course of history. From this emerged Communism, advocating seizure of the means of production by the workers, and thence transferring power from the hands of a bourgeois elite to the true majority.
I don’t think it’s altogether presumptuous to claim that Communism in practice has consistently failed to fully achieve its noble ideals. Indeed, Communist revolutions have often devolved into brutal, miserable authoritarian regimes that once again concentrate power in the hands of a powerful few, which seems to be the very antithesis of what Communism stands for.

information capital

The source of power and influence comes not primarily from controlling economic systems, but in control of “information capital.” Information capital is somewhat of a misnomer, implying that power rests in holding facts almost quantitatively – that whoever knows the most bits of trivia is the most influential. Rather, information capital encompasses not only mere data, but structures and processes of knowledge – how to assimilate, analyze, manipulate, and present raw information.
Throughout history, those individuals and institutions who have been in positions of power or influence have been the best informed and with the greatest access to knowledge, as well as the most capable of manipulating, presenting, and controlling knowledge in order to maintain power. As such, leaders have sought to retain influence by controlling information capital, limiting its free flow between people.
Intimately connected to information capital is economic capital and economic power: the wealthiest and most influential in terms of immediately affecting the course of societal and political change (such as corporate executives and many politicians, but excluding such wealthy yet generally non-influential people such as actors and athletes) tend to be the ones with degrees from Harvard and Yale and Princeton and the London School of Economics. The great centers of learning in a consumer capitalist society have always charged a premium to gain access to the elite knowledge of academia, requiring a complex and expensive initiation for the exclusive information available in universities.
From the unequal distribution of information capital have emerged distinct power structures characterized by a very specific stratification: the hierarchy, the basic organizational layout of Western society today. Heading the hierarchical power structure is the small elite that controls information flow, and as we trace the structure of the hierarchy, the information capital held by each node shrinks even as the number of nodes increases.
From the basic hierarchical power structure emerge the institutions that have defined modern society: the corporation, the bureaucracy, and the nation-state, among others. These hierarchies have thus far effectively dominated societal discourse, using the established structures of power to maintain the disparity of information capital between the leaders and the citizen at the bottom of the hierarchy.
Propaganda is the ultimate expression of inequality in information capital: the knowledgeable elite utilizes manipulative techniques to present distorted and false knowledge to the uninformed, who, without information capital, lack the necessary critical methodology to effectively filter and analyze the pseudo-knowledge presented to them.
As such, it is clear that hierarchies are founded on a “need-to-know” basis, with the individual agent given only the minimum sufficient knowledge to complete assigned tasks. Indeed, excessive independence of lower-level agents in a hierarchical structure pose a direct threat to the integrity of the chain of command.

It is key to note that although means by which hierarchies operate have changed, the structural features of hierarchies have remained relatively constant since their first establishment. From this structural constancy emerges the major weakness of hierarchical control structures – their scalability is limited. By nature, hierarchies are inflexible, centralized systems that take time to adapt to changing circumstances – major systematic changes must be implemented at the highest level and filtered down through the command structure. Lower-level agents must have decisions checked by higher-level agents prior to execution. This is not a problem for small-scale hierarchies, which are a highly efficient system for management
But when a hierarchy grows to include millions, even billions of people, the inefficiency grows rapidly; the top-level executive agents simply cannot manage on such a vast scale and inter-level communications are not fast enough for

The hierarchy is a slowly dying institution.

evolution of a new structure

In the past, the hiearchy has always been able to maintain control over information capital by relying on certain ineffeciencies in the information infrastructure – the means by which information capital is produced, distributed, and collected. Th

it has been possible for hierarchies to use information infrastructure to further their own ends, as the information infrastructure was definable and mappable, with distinct nodes in which information capital was concentrated, in governments, corporations, universities and libraries. Communication systems were centralized and controllable, such as mail and telephones, and the media was passive and censorable, such as newspapers and the epitome of passive media, the television. This information infrastructure closely paralleled the hierarchies of power, forming the foundation of the hiearchical ideology in society.
But at the same time, the course of information infrastructure development was not under the direct control of hierarhical power structures. Knowledge, in itself, is a powerfully self-propagating entity – perhaps even independently of human will, if one suscribes to the controversial science of memetics. human tendency to create tools that facilitate the transfer of information. Language itself is one such tool; writing is another. Tools have evolved to promote the spread of information, with development of information technology such as the printing press, the radio, the television, and so forth. Paralleling this has been evolution in communications technology – postal services, telegraph, telephone. Thus far, these evolutions in information infrastructure have always been managable
Nevertheless, a clear trend can be seen in the course of history: information has been becoming increasingly democratized, in fits and spurts, over the millenia. Only comparatively recently, virtually all knowledge was held under the control of powerful ideological state apparatus – centralized religious institutions. Even the wealthiest and most powerful in political terms were often illiterate, allowing religious institutions to have enormous ideological influence over people and events. Information capital was heavily concentrated in organizations such as monasteries, and information infrastructure was poorly developed, with communication of knowledge a laborious and difficult task.
But with development of information technology such as the printing press, the monopolistic control over information capital was broken, and
the pace of this evolution has been rapidly increasing over the past few decades, and is approaching a critical evolutionary threshold for society.
information technology has evolved to a point where the convergence of knowledge and communications is producing a new unity of knowledge, one in which the collective information capital of citizens will achieve parity with the information capital held by traditional hierarchical structures such as nation-states and corporations
the emerging new information infrastructure is not one that is physical in the traditional sense, nor limited by the capacity of the single human mind to contain and communicate knowledge. It is one accessible instanteously furthermore, this unity of knowledge is emerging from an information infrastructure entirely different from traditional hieararchical control structures: a decentralized, interconnected, symmetrical web.
this evolution in information infrastructure is occurring independently of traditional concentrations of power itself, and rather than complementing hierarchical control structures, is beginning to produce societal structures directly opposed to hierarchical control structures. this is a fundamental, bottom-up shift in society that is beginning to undermine the foundations of hierarchies, and will eventually replace the outdated hierarchy with a societal structure at once ancient and wholly modern – the networked community .
the decentralized information infrastructure has already dramatically altered the dynamic of social movements. For example, the recent movement against the American invasion of Iraq was organized almost entirely through the Internet, with such incredibly disparate organizations such as neo-Stalinist groups and churches cooperating to mobilize the massive world protests on the eve of the conflict.
So-called “smart mobs”are another example of a decentralized information infrastructure’s power – using the short text-messaging service of cellular phones to rapidly organize and orchestrate groups for social action, often gathering dozens, even hundreds, within the space of a few minutes.
The Mexican indigenous people’s movement in Chiapas, the Zapatistas, also leveraged the power of a decentralized form of organization and the global decentralized information infrastructure – although not directly connected to the information infrastructure, they mobilized a powerful coalition of activist non-governmental organizations
netroots – the organization of sociopolitical movements through information technology
- howard dean meetups
- draft clark
this ability of decentralized information infrastructure to produce change has already been referred to by RAND analysts as “social netwar”

the open-source society
The implications of information infrastructure change on so great a scale are staggering. It will see the end of such vast monolithic opressive hierarchies as multinational corporations and nation-states, bringing about a new and equal global community that is as close to the ideal of a particiaptory democracy as is possible in in a world of six billion.
Yet at the same time, this new society will not be a democracy in the classical sense of the word – it would be more apt to describe it as an “open-source society.”
The concept of open-source comes from the world of computer programming, in which computer programs are constructed by writing code, which determines the tasks that a given program carries out according to user input. The source code refers to the often-lengthy code document that ,when appropriately translator by a compiler, becomes a self-running program.
Typically, the source code for a program is a well-guarded secret, as any self-respecting programmer could use the source to compile his or her own version of the program, or integrate the source code into another project. The concept of open-source turns this secrecy on its head – rather than keeping the source a protected secret known only to the individual programmers working on a project, the source code is made freely available via the Internet, downloadable, compilable, and changable by anyone who cares to do so. Any programmer can release his or her own version of an open-source program, or use the source code in other projects.
The most famous open-source project to date has been the operating system Linux, which is an open-source variant of the older operating system Unix. There are hundreds of versions of Linux available for a wide variety of computers; a version of Linux has been been made for Apple’s iPod MP3 music players. Linux is widely recognized as a fast, stable, and secure operating system for computers, and even many corporations have switched to Linux for running network servers and other such critical applications.
Linux finds its particular strength in its open-source availability – the collaborative work of hundreds of thousands of programmers have created a uniquely flexible and capable operating system that is becoming a fast-growing standard for information technology applications. This stands in direct contrast to Microsoft’s Windows operating system, which dominates by controlling over 90% of the market. Microsoft has been famously secretive about revealing the programming details of its operating system, as any follower of the antitrust suits is aware, and Windows is quite possibly the most-attacked operating system available, constantly infected by viruses and exploited for its security holes by malicious hackers. Even government agencies have been virtually shut down by viral attacks such as the recent W32.Blaster worm – to the point where the State Department was unable to issue visas, and airports were closed because air-traffic control computers were under attack.
The same ideals of collaborative progress that drive the open-source movement in programming are the ones that are driving the emerging open-source society. This global community of the future will be one in which all members are informed and empowered citizens, constantly aware and critical. The strength of this new decentralized society is found in interlinked diversity and even disagreement, evolving through active dialogue, rather than demanding ideological conformity as in authoritarian hierarchies. Every member will be able to contribute to the construction of a better, more socially and ecologically responsible society aware of its evolution.

junk DNA
A common criticism of the decentralized, open-source concept of society is that the Internet is “90% garbage” – and as such, it is a disorganized, clumsy, and unruly mess that is ultimately insignificant in its impact on society. This is a patently false assertion that ignores the power and efficiency that decentralized networks have already shown in the real world. For unlike hierarchies with their highly limited scalability, decentralized networks gain effeciency as size increases, and become highly inefficient on a small scale – witness the directionlessness of a classroom without a teacher in the average high school.
The efficiency of large-scale decentralized networks for data processing has lready been proven in use of enormous “supercomputing clusters,” in which large numbers (from tens to thousands) of ordinary desktop PCs, even outdated models, are interconnected to form a massively parallel-processing supercomputer capable of completing immense calculations far faster than the single-unit supercomputers of the 1970s and 1980s. This has been further expanded online in vast “distributed computing” projects such as SETI@home and Folding@home – the first aiming to search interstellar radio signals for signs of extraterrestrial life, and the latter a project of the National Institutes of Health examining the complex chemical problem of protein folding. These distributed computing projects send raw data out over the Internet to be processed on computers at homes and offices, and thens returns the processed data to the institution. Already an impressive degree of progress has been made thanks to the efforts of hundreds of thousands of volunteers donating extra computing cycles.
The same principles of decentralization and interconnection hold true in biology – the evolution of ecosystems has not been controlled by some central commanding figure, but has come about through cooperation and competition of a diverse array of species within a system to form a dynamiclly adapting network. This also applies on even the genetic level – genes themselves have cooperated and coevolved to form today’s lifeforms. This is where the “90% garbage” argument can be fully refuted – a large portion of the genome contributes little to the upkeep of an organism, instead consisting of so-called “selfish” genes that seem to serve little purpose in the grand scheme of an lifeform. In any sufficiently complex evolving system, there will also be a large amount of material that does not directly contribute to the system itself, but is a necessary byproduct of the evolutionary process. As such, useless, false, and even malicious information on the Internet is to be expected, and does not constitute a major hole in this argument.

what the future holds
The opening of this essay mentioned the online medium of weblogs, and their growing influence in societal discourse and as an alternative to the mass media of the Information Age. Intriguingly, science fiction writer Orson Scott Card anticipated the weblog in his novel Ender’s Game – and in this novel, two extraordinarily gifted teenage siblings used their own weblogs to provoke online dissent, and through this were able to topple a world government.
This will be the power of the informed citizen in the new interconnected society – to change the world through expression of a single idea.

hi, i'm actually existent

You might have thought I was no longer substantiated. But you were wrong! Bwah ha ha. I managed to join the blogger! AOL was preventing me, but then I used internet explorer. OK. Now I have to go write CBTA essays. Later.

great poem

http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~benjamin/316kfall/316ktexts/owendulce.html

it's called 'dulce et decorum est' by wilfred owen. i think it is beautiful. i fell in love with it last year. sorry i didn't read it at the poetry reading (i really wanted to, but sometimes circumstance overshadows want).

i'm sure some of you have read it before but it's a great poem no matter when you read it. i'm sure you all can see how this poem may or may parallel to today's situation in the u.s. (actually, ironically enough, it relates a little more to people outside the u.s. but ultimately because of what is happening in the u.s.).

another good poem of similar theme is 'the man he killed' by thomas hardy, but it relates more to themes of 'the things they carried' (haruko!). ok guys,

.loomoo.

.christopher.a.rodriguez.
on 27 september 2 003
@1503 est

...oh ps: sorry (if sorry is prudent) about that extremely long post on race, i didn't know it was so long when until i saw it published.

the race idea

after reading about the 'non-diverse' (?) schools around the nation i guess i consider myself pretty fortunate to live in miami. i admit i'm not the most traveled person in the world (in fact, i'm extremely far from it); however, i can distinguish a colombian accent from a venezuelen one (though it's hard to distinguish a venezuelen one from a cuban one ... one one one one ... that's one of those words that loses it's meaning when repeated.) -- ok adhd boy ... back on topic -- ah yes, race.

miami is one of those places where no matter where you go your in one of those 'little someplaces'; that is to say, la petit haiti, la pequeña habana ... even if you are not in an area that is officially labelled that way such as little israel or litttle china. these places for some reason are highly inhabitted by these particular ethnic groups but because they don't have a majority of commercial buildings of their respective ethnicities they haven't been officially distinguished with these names.

my school in particular is (as most schools in miami) predominately hispanic, despite it is a magnet school which are meant to attract white suburbanite families' kids. there is a plethora of venezualen, argentinian, and colombian immigrant. cuban immigrants are not really foound in my school unless they are second generation such as me and a few of my friends. but i know, from friends at other schools (and family-members that attend other schools) that cubans are the largest hispanic ethicity in other schools.

after that simple fact (of hispanic majority) it's rather hard to tell which ethnic group is next largest. i know a pakistani-cuban-american (pakistani father, cuban mother, born in the u.s.). i know a russian-dominican-american (same deal). these are only two examples of 'muts' i can tell you about. needless to say, it is not uncommon to see an interracial couple holding hands on the street (my older brother -- despite a bit of contention from my parents and grandparents -- is currently seriously dating a black woman -- actually she is white-jamaican, but her skin color reflects more the black side).

the thing is that race remains a stuggle even in a melting pot.

the problem (i'd imagine) in places where hispanics (for instance) are outnumbered would probably be a resistance to retain their culture and just to give up their hispanic roots and -- for the purpose of fitting in -- to just practice white culture. therefore, whites in these places can easily say that they make friends with all the non-whites in their area for two simple reasons: (1) there aren't many non-whites in their area, and (2) the non-whites in the area might as well be white because they willingly try to act white in order to fit in.

the problem in places such as my home is quite the opposite. there are no minorities. many of the whites go to private schools or schools located in homogeneously white areas of the suburbs. many of the blacks attend schools in areas such as richmond heights, a place notorious for housing a homogeneously black middle-class population. (the native americans are a groups largely unheard of unless you're talking about the micossouki indian gaming and casino place that is way out west). hispanics attend public schools. my experience with asians in the public (non-magnet) school system is that they all know eachother and (very often) only eachother. they are a group discernable by the fact that they all wear red ecko shirts and have 'nice' little japanese cars that you can hear a mile away because of the bass.

therefore, miami can be characterised as a series of homogeneous ethnic groups that see very little of eachother. their commonplace: magnet schools (at the educational level at least ... i'm not sure what the commonplace is after that). i can say i am fortunate to be a student at a magnet school in a so-called melting pot. however, whether the rest of miami has this 'luck'(?) i am not sure and am rather apprehensive that they do not.

i can say that i try to make the most of the experience but the 'miami paradigm' (that is to say, the phenomenon that occurs in which homogeneous groups avoid eachother) is entirely a lipid if my school is water. i would say it is more of a phospholipid. that is to say it is half hydrophilic and hydrophobic: half able to be dissolved into the idea environs and half unable. (bio people get me, right?).

what i'm trying to say is that the 'miami paradigm' is staill a bit of a problem in my school. it takes a little effort to go around and hover around at the little cliques that have formed here and there (taking a leadership position give me the excuse to do so). these little cliques are rare and are not homogeneous by race or ethnicity but by homogeneous musical taste or other fashions (which all may be affected by race or ethnicity).

ok. thats all for my ramblings on race (or is it ... for today, yes ... but yo just wait ... buah ha ha ha ha). lol. later dudes. love y'all.

.christopher.a.rodríguez.
on 27 september 2 003
@ 1436

some liberal sites

www.thenation.com and theprogressive.org are worth looking at if you want to see some liberals bitch and whine with sound arguments.

Be outraged. Be very outraged

Crony-palooza

This is absolutely unbelievable; the Bushies aren't even trying to hide these links and the major media hasn't even noticed.

I wonder why I haven't moved to Canada yet.

Black Box Voting

This one company, named Diebold, which is making the electronic voting machines that are replacing older mechanical voting machines in Maryland, I believe, shut down a activist site that was questioning the security and safety of these voting machines. The partially resurrected version of the site can be found at the above link.

mi escuela

my school is like 60% black, 10% hispanic, 15% white, and 10 % asian, i love it. oh, and like 200% ghetto, haha...

Googling people

I was randomly googling TASPers, and I came across this online:

'About five years ago I visited my alma mater (Harpur College, of SUNY-Binghamton -- the liberal arts jewel of the New York State University system) and learned from a professor friend that Jordan Greenwald had committed suicide.

Why? He was apparently extremely depressed and saddened by his inability to form lasting relationships with women. Ultimately, to put it simply, he died of a broken heart or perhaps of a heart that never really opened up. I believe that Jordan Greenwald was out of place in, and out of touch with, our culture, and that ultimately this led to his untimely death. To quote the Indigo Girls, "He never did marry, or see a B grade movie."'

Enlightenment.Com - Psycho-Spiritual Content Generating Community Infrastructure

I also discovered that Ashley is a porn star of some repute, apparently with quite an impressive bustline, according to the many drooling fan pages.

What's the name of that song we played on the last night (maybe by The Cure?) that goes something like: girls who like boys who like boys who like girls...?

My school is like Alex's- its racial makeup is maybe 92% white, 6% Native American, 1% Asian, and 1% black- extremely undiverse racially. Because there are so few minorities, there really isn't much segregation (any person who only made friends with other minorities would be very lonely indeed), but there is a kind of clumping. For example, an Asian person would probably know the most of the other Asian kids in school and would be friends with some of them, but most of their friends wouldn't be Asian. There's pretty bad discrimination against Native Americans, but not so much against other races, if my view from the outside is accurate.

I think race is an example of human beings' propensity to pick out patterns and make generalizations. People from the same area historically TEND to share some physical characteristics and people from the same area also TEND to share customs- this is the entire basis of our idea of race. It leads to stereotyping and ignores individuality because generalizations are never completely true, but it's hard to get past it because some generalizations can have some element of or basis in truth.

so you know -- i pulled an alina the other day. i was running outside my school and i fell on the sidewalk, banged my head, and scraped up my elbow. now i have a nice ugly scab like hers. plus my entire body is sore. no fun.
-- alex

so you know -- i pulled an alina the other day. i was running outside my school and i fell on the sidewalk, banged my head, and scraped up my elbow. now i have a nice ugly scab like hers. plus my entire body is sore. no fun.

Its interesting u should ask that question Alex, I'm doin a college essay on racism. I dunno if i believe it to be a completely societal concept, but it definitely is customized by society. For instance, back home there's a difference between Yorubas and Hausas, even tho they're both living in the same country (nigeria). They are indeed only tribes, but i can tell the physical difference between them, and tribalism is so much like racism that its hard not to think of it in those terms. However, to the same nigerians that think like this, malaysians and koreans are all "asian". I find that i was guilty of that until i moved to an international school and became accustomed to the physical differences between japanese and korean people. I still think race is important, but not as its perceived by most people. Race is often connected to culture, and culture is very important. However, I would willingly have everyone in the world intermarry until we're all a nice olive color somewhere in between black and white, and then it wont matter anymore- your passport will only be useful for travel instead of branding u as inferior. I guess I'm rambling, but what i'm basically saying (i think) is that race is and isnt a social construct. There is certainly a physical difference between myself and my tunisian/kuwati friend sitting next to me. BUT, its not as important as we make it sound. I'm not american, so i have only a minimal understanding of the whole minority thing, but i do know this; till tomorrow, most nigerians still find intercultural marriages slightly awkward, even within nigerians. I see their point, but i also figure that if a guy (white, black, green or orange) decides he loves me enough to put up with my shit for the rest of our joint lives, and can prove it by going through the ordeal that is a Yoruba traditional wedding (its actually quite fun if u understand it, but i doubt someone who wasnt yoruba would), then i dont give a flying fuck if he's from antartica. As long as i dont have to live there.
Sorry if that made little sense, its a part of my college essay shining thru (thats not a comfortin thot is it?).
Love,
Toes.

quotes?

i think somewhere at TASp i heard a quote from someone about how owning your own books is the worlds greatest pleasure. if someone could clarify that exact quotes and who said it i would be much obliged. Thank you and love everyone,
Alina

the mobile war-machine {cornell tasp 2003}

the mobile war-machine {cornell tasp 2003}

Race

Race is indeed a social construct, but it is a construct with merit. Anglea is right when she says that we live in a racially conscious society. We need to recognize this fact, and the fact that race plays an enourmously large role in how people are judged. The question then becomes, so we reify society's judgmental views on race by recognizing it? For the time being at least, I think we do, because of the fact that people's lives are so affected by it. What I'm saying in non-PC terms is that minorities are still poor. Whether this has to do with subconsious (or in some cases conscious) repression by dominant society is almost irrelevent. It exists, so it must be recognized.

she's a flight risk

Some of you might have heard of this blog; it's a fascinating story.

"...she's a flight risk."

This is an Esquire reporter's story on Isabella V. -- apparently he actually met her.

Esquire:Feature Story:The Search for Isabella V.

race (and not the marathon kind)

i just watched a really interesting documentary on pbs about race and culture and all that jazz, and i wanted to ask you guys your views. i know i've talked to some of you about diversity in your schools or how racially you view your world, but i was wondering again: how racially do you view your world? and your school and your community, how diverse are they? and if they are diverse, are they integrated?

i can tell you right now, my community is not integrated. as most of you know, or should know, i live in small little suburban new york metro area, 400 kids in my high school (actually maybe about 430 now). we have, oh, i dunno, 3 asian kids, if even, 5 black kids, and 3 hispanic kids. that's about it. so i don't really have much opportunity to "comingle" if you will.

but is race just a fallacy anyway? isn't it just a social construct? i mean, to the nazis, the jews were a seperate race, but to the africans, jews, germans, french, irish, and anglos were all one race -- white. to us, the chinese are one race, or even oriental people, but there are differences, as you all know, between chinese, japanese, korean, vitenamese people, etc. And even within china, the differences between different groups -- the tibetans, who aren't even really chinese, the dominant han group, etc. so what is race really? what does it all really mean, and is it really real?

anyway, that's what i was thinking about. i miss you all, and try to catch the next episode, cornell IIers -- it's about race and indigenous cultures!! ooh...

PARADIGM DICHOTOMY!!!!!!!!!!

much love and missing --

alex

This is freakin' creepy.

Check this page from Tom Tomorrow's website:

Kitschification of 9/11

There's something almost sickly funny about those postcards... in the way that makes you want to vomit.

twenty-two down, some odd number to go

I resent invitations to everyone who wasn't in, and hopefully signing up shouldn't be too confusing. Blaen and Janice have now joined.

[phone's been ringing a lot here lately, don't know why]

The remaining international fugitives:

1. ashley


2. jordan


3. greg


4. alexis


5. rima


6. seyram


7. haruko


8. isa


9. hannah


10. keegan


11. brandon

And of course, the dubious ringleaders of the conspiracy, Dara and Xian.

[edit: miscount. I'm freakin' stupid, and I apologize.]

For Sid in particular

I talked to Blaen, and she said her invitation email had expired. So I would say yes, by all means resend invites to all those who haven't joined up yet.

Also, I don't know if this is the same for everyone, but when I go to motherfluxor.blogspot.com, I only see an old template and Sid's first two posts. It may be worth sending everyone an email saying that the blog is now at www.sanchodesign.com/tasp .

And to Eddie- great to hear from you! I was worried you had fallen off a mountain or something.

Hows everyone doing?

Well now we have all spent just about the same time out of tasp as we did at tasp. Just occured to me.

I have these people's things, and maybe more:


-Linda

One Purple Pillow

- Keegan

Book
FYOR hat

- Someone's

Green Sleeping bag

I will be happy to keep these things. However, I know other people might be happier.

Once again, Have a great time.

Goodness Gracious!

Man, I must be off the computer ball or something because it seriously took me a few days to figure out how to post messages on this thing! A big what's goin' on to everyone! Anyway, I'd like to give my two cents about the ivy admissions situation. I think that the ivy league schools have pretty much gotten out of control when it comes to selectivity. I know a hell of a lot of people at my school who have applied to ivies with all of the technical merits to get in (they were not only good students, but involed in a lot of activities, generally cool people etc.) and didn't get into certain ivy league schools. You might get into Harvard, but not Stanford. Maybe Princeton, but not Brown. The whole thing seems kind of shady to me. Your acceptance might boil down to whether the admissions officer reads your essays early in the morning or late at night. Crazy merde.

the mobile war-machine {cornell tasp 2003}

the mobile war-machine {cornell tasp 2003}

Recount!

Considering there's only half of us signed up on this thing, I think I'll resend invitations to everyone who hasn't signed up yet. Any objections?

Ah, Western neocolonization and confusion...

This is an interesting op-ed from the Times that my dad had me read.

Dalai Lama Lite (you might need to register, though.)

Makes you stop and think, alright.

okay, so.

I got email from Hannah a couple weeks ago, which I neglected to reply to until today. Shame on me. But yeah, she still exists, and she says Janice is doing fine - I told her to join the blog, so hopefully she'll pass it on.

I talked to Keegan on the phone last week, and he told me about this squadron of military underwater-mine-hunting dolphins that he read about in his military paper. So, yeah, he seems fine too.

I think in general these people are out there, just haven't been participating in our mass communications with the same fanaticism as everyone else. Has anybody tried contacting the rest of them individually? because that seems to work. I've been meaning to call Haruko anyway, so I'll try her tomorrow.

I think Tosin said she's been communicating with Dara? Can you pester her about joining blogger, Toes?

My recent Interlochen experience has just about decided me against applying to Ivies. It seems that maybe I really am the kind of person who needs individual attention and reaching-out-to and all that. But I'm still experiencing some famous-college sweatshirt angst - you know, going to a place that people will know when you wear it. I don't know. I'm horribly, horribly procrastinating on applications altogether, so it doesn't really matter right now.

Just to clear things up - who-all is applying to the House? I think I am. Maybe. Probably. Maybe.

Letter from the president of Stanford to the US News and World Report College Rankings. He can get kind of pretentious, but he makes good points.

Ramblings of a distracted mind

So its sunday, and i have postweekend depression. I dint get half of what i wanted to do done, and now i feel like I'm flunkin English. Or the IB diploma. But i'm really just being melodramatic, cuz Kim said its quite impossible that i fail. Altho thats only cuz he hero worships my grades (not me, altho i wish he did :P, but my grades).
I think I should make sth clear, cuz some people have been confused - I am NOT at boarding school. Rather, I'm living with a friend's house for the school year because my family is no longer officially in morocco. The gillespies are some of the world's nicest people, and I'm seriously blessed to be here, even tho its weird cuz i used to visit this house and hang out in Mariam's room, which is mine for this year because she is a freshman at MSU.
And thats that about me. I havent had much time to think these days, although i should be, considering i just wrote a paper comparing aspects of Madame Bovary and Death in Venice, and am working on a 4000 word SA comparing Hamlet's Claudius to Othello's Iago as fitting antagonists. That doesnt even make sense to me right now. Did i say i was stressed recently?
Ah well, hopefully I'll survive, cuz i need to see TASPers again in a year!

this is amazing insight.

I was looking around on the Agonist, checking back on news stories, and I found a link to this blog, which is just freakin' genius. This chap has great sources and fabulous analysis of today's politics.

Talking Points Memo

Left of center, surely, but with healthy skepticism.

Lost and found

Rachel can be found at her livejournal -- check out the sidebar to the right for links. I occasionally see her online.

Adam joined the blog a few days ago.

Jordan I talked to on AIM a few days ago with David, I think. I believe he can be found there.

Everyone else seems to have vanished into the mists, which is depressing. I think this calls for hiring a private investigator.

There are also two other rather shady fugitives from interconnectivity: a certain Mr. Christian Stayer, and a Ms. Dara Weinberg (although it is not known whether these are aliases).

MIA people

David Bowie's new album Reality is out! And you all should buy it or pirate it. Because David Bowie rocks my socks off. He's so dreamy and British!

Congratulations, Rafie! Crazy soccer people.

Who have we NOT heard from? Has anyone heard quite recently from Blaine, Seyram, Keegan, Brandon, Haruko, Rachel, Isa, Adam, Jordan, Janice, Hannah, Greg, or anyone else I may have forgotten?

bloggyness

yay! i finally made it on this motherblogging frickin' blog thing. I promise to try yo talk with y'all(yes i lived in Texas 10 years) via this blogger thingie. Quick rafie update: i scored a goa Friday night in a 3-1 victory over Tosa West, who is ranked 7th in the state. Saturday morning we won one game vs Wisconsin Lutheran 1-0 and tied a team called Grafton 0-0. These games were part of a tournament that we won, yay! yay! go Riverside! anyways, i have to go pretend i am doing my calc or euro hist homework, i love you all.

Problem solved, I believe.

I think Blogger is sending out the posts in HTML emails, and some of you have turned off the option in group preferences that has the listserv send HTML email to you. If you've got text only selected, HTML email is junked, as you've all seen.

For the time being, I've turned off the email feed until people adjust their settings according.

The same thing happened to my email as did to Alex's- there was one message like 7 times over that just displayed "message in undisplayable format." However, if you get the email in digest form, it really isn't THAT much of a pain in the ass (Alex). So I don't think it's that annoying, but something isn't working and it's more widespread than for just Alex's email.

Re-emailing

Alex -- I just checked my inbox, and all the posts are there. Full text. It's working just fine. Something's messed up with your email, dude.

If anyone has issues with the email remailings, just tell me, and I can kill them (the email feed, that is).

greetings from pi

i've been sitting here at the computer for 10 minutes already, unable to think of anything significant to write. maybe after late nights physics labs ex bfs and waitressing so much i've lost my soul...
i've almost forgotten the loving, good karma intellectualism that was TASP.
ah, life.
i send out my love
always,
tina

ummmm...

so i don't know much about the internet, but i know that when i'm getting 10 blank emails that are, I believe, attempted forwardings of blog posts, i get kinda peeved. so...whatever you did, brendon and sid, to try to get yahoo to send the blog posts to everyone, it didn't work. in fact, i'm just getting blank emails clogging up my inbox, and it's kind of annoying. sorry. nice try, though.

as for other news: i saw matchstick men tonight, and it was pretty good. it made OCD out to be funnier than it is in real life, but movies have a way of doing that. other than that, i liked it. and even though i'm not a big nicholas cage fan, he was actually pretty good. other than that, i realized that my friends (at least some of them), are actually very unaccepting. it's sort of the curse of suburbia, i think: suburbanites tend to think that they're really cool, open, and accepting, but, if they were ever actually exposed to anything, they'd turn high, mighty, and reactionary in a second. most of them, not all.

i hope everyone has a great weekend, and i hope that no one was seriously damaged by the hurricane (nikki? alina? alexis? was anyone else in its path?).

-- alex

Hey Taspers!
I just wanted to say hi. And i'm goin mad because of my E.E. If anyone (hint hint IB diploma candidates) has any advice at all about writing a four thousand word essay, please send it, before I "lay down and die".
On a more pleasant note, I'm gettin along famously with the Gillespies, and a bunch of teachers now love me more. Which may be useful for when i begin to bawl in school. And I went to the track time trials today and did pretty well for a self-proclaimed non-runner. And I'm blabbing, cuz I have nothing much to tell you, i just feel like saying something to you all.
I know: I'll scan and post my baby, house and senior pix as soon as i can get to it - it may take awhile considering the craziness that is my life, but I promise you'll see them again b4 u see me. Unless u surprise me in Morocco b4 graduation.
*Love*

With great pleasure, I present to you the 2002 Cornell TASP's blog. These guys have kept it up for a year- this proves even more conclusively that we don't have to lose touch.

Ecological Design

My sister wrote this article, and my aunt is the manager of Achitecture Week, the magazine that published it. Besides that, it mentions some pretty cool new ideas in ecologically sound architecture and planning.

flood the zone fridays

Although a few of you have respect for the President, this is just too ingenious to pass up:

Flood the Zone Fridays

Use Bush's own Internet activism tools against him, in a deliciously ironic twist of fate. Just follow the happy instructions on the link above.

Or if you support Bush, just follow the instructions on Bush's website to send out pro-Bush love.

oopsy-daisy [hindsight]

In retrospect, I realize that, had I realized we could have hosted this blog on Dustin's server, we could have used the extremely spiffy (and free!) blog program Movable Type, which is rather more flexible than Blogger, and has built-in comments.

But the inconvenience of switching wouldn't be worth it at this point. I'll use Movable Type in my next project.

state senators

Suzi Oppenheimer is actually really cool; I met her while with my school's environmental club in Albany for Earth Day Lobby Day. Good lefty Democrat, and quite excited about the environment. I think she's actually related to the noted nuclear physicist.
Certainly a lot better than my state senator, Nicholas Spano (R), who's a greasy, nasty fuck of a politico.

just so y'all know...

first of all, props to the southerner for teaching me to use y'all, despite my new york accent. second, props to david and sid and dustin for settting this up. i like the blog format way better than i thought i would, and way better than yahoo. i think it's working way better.

as for some local news from croton-on-hudson, new york: actually, there isn't much to report. i got a letter from the new york state senate today. suzi oppenheimer (whoever she is, some state senator) wanted to congratulate me on going to TASP. she was a bit late, but it's the thought that counts. oh and my english teacher posted the cast list today for the play we're doing, the man who came to dinner. it's a fun one. and i'm sheridon whiteside, the lead! i have a HELL of a lot of lines, and i'm in almost every scene, it's craaazy stuff. but i'll deal. somehow i'll find time to do my auto-biography for school, college and national merit apps, the play, be editor of the literary magazine, take piano lessons, music theory, and teach some little kids how to speak some french. oh yeah, plus five aps.

hmm reading over that list now, i'm very intimidated. how do all of you overachievers like me deal with so much crap? i'm not really sure how i do...sometimes i don't, and it's not good...

-- alex

On the drag...

Does anyone happen to have a picture of me dolled up in Linda's clothes and made up by Nikki, Tosin, and co. from Rocky Horror night? I'd really love to see myself properly and freak the fuck out of my friends.

Ivies. And Hedwig?! And pictures.

John Cameron Mitchell, Sid? John Cameron MITCHELL?!?! Because I want to make sure that my heart failure wasn't in vain.

My school is ludricrously competitive. I am tired of applications. Stupid prompts for college essays ("Tell us about your interests, goals, and experiences and how they will make you an asset to College X. What makes you stand out?") suck the life and soul out of writing.

Tosin, you are not a crazy, pompous fool who should just go hide under a bed. If you must hide under a bed, let it be my bed so you can sing me to sleep. : ) Seriously, absolutely go for it and don't let anyone convince you that you shouldn't. You have an absolutely beautiful voice and a phenomenal stage presence.

Now, then, TASP pictures. I have some online. It's just a matter of uploading some more, which doesn't look likely anytime soon, but at least I have these. Go to: http://reasonablyremarkable.blogspot.com for some lovely ones!

Not so bizarre.

Just kinda slow on my end, I guess.

Silly me.

I completely understand the Ivy League school thing, and I'm jumping through hoops with the rest of us. I really wish i could opt out of it sometimes, but i cant for various reasons of which financial aid is one. But whatever. I wish i was steadily workin on my apps, but instead I am stressing over an extended essay that has barely been started, and so on. But this weekend i hope to rectify at least one of my academic probs. whatever.
I need you guy's moral support right now - no, not for anything serious. I just want to sing "hero" by Mariah Carey for talent show. A capella. And i need people to tell me I'm not a crazy, pompous fool who should just go hide under a bed. Or that i am. Anything to stay my madness.
By the way think the blog looks better every second. Thanx Sid and David. And Dustin.
P.S. what's the name of the song about killing a man you guys were all singin on the last night of tasp? I want to download it and play it for Kim.

Bizarre.

The weblog doesn't seem to register post deletions (I tossed some test ones I made). That's odd.

Jim, I'm a doctor, not a bricklayer!

His brain... is gone.
- Dr. McCoy, "Spock's Brain."

Just testing.

Hallo

Hello to all! I signed up. How is everyone?? Im doing wonderful.

collegiality

First off, the blog seems to be behaving badly, which is a pain in the butt, because I can't figure out why. This post is just as much to figure out if it's working right than to talk stuff.

TASP has let me evade a lot of the college application hell, since applying for the House forces me to start (and finish!) the process a lot earlier, and getting in should theoretically be a wash, and I'm having a bit of fun writing the essays for the app, since I'm writing about this crackpot theory of history (some of y'all know this) about how the decentralization of information capital is transforming the basic structures of Western society. I'll post this essay up here for skewering soon, as well as my other essays. I know you guys can help.

And I'm looking forward to Cornell; it's cheap for me thanks to New York State and the Telluride Association, and there better be some of you lovelies there so I'll have happy people to live with.

More so, I'm looking forward to November 2nd -- the day after my Cornell app has been mailed out (for which I think I shall recycle one of my TASP application essays). For the first time in my high school career, I can really relax and feel better about my future and self.

Kwazy Kollege Krap

yes, applying to ivy-league colleges is jumping through a hell of a lot of hoops. hell, so is being a national merit scholarship semi-finalist! it's a whole lot more paperwork for a little bit of prestige and a tiny bit of money that you might not even get. and you have to ask yourself, is it all worth it? if it's not for you, then don't do it. i know david has opted to take a non-ivy route, and i commend him for it. but i love yale; i love the school. what choice do i have but to jump through the hoops?

yes things may change -- slowly. more schools are going early action as opposed to early decision. that's something. but as for the 7 aps....i'm taking 5 this year. yes, it's a lot. but no, i wouldn't be happy if i weren't crazy and stressed out. i think that it's up to an individual student, along with a guidance councillor (THAT'S the place that most high schools are lacking -- i think that's the problem) to figure out what is best for them. for example: i am the editor in chief of my literary magazine. it is a hell of a lot of work and crap, but i love it, and that's why i do it. i'm not involved in EVERY club, and i think that's not the way to go. the way to go (and i think, at least, i hope, that ivy league admissions officers would agree here) is to get involved in the things you care about the most, but get deeply involved.

what else can i say? be who you can be, and colleges damn well better like you for it. don't worry so much; well, let me rephrase -- worry about the things that should be worried about. college maybe, a little, but more importantly friends, relationships, and who you are. worry about the stuff of life, and realize that it's the little things that make it great. college will pass, and you'll be happy, because you are all the kind of people who will make college what you want it to be, regardless of where you go. so don't fret so much, and live a little more!

i love you all.

-- alex

What do you guys think about the insane ordeal most people who go to ivy-type schools have to go through to get to those schools? (I know a lot of us are jumping through these hoops right now.) More and more people are applying to college every year and admissions to top schools are getting more selective. I just wonder if there will be a breaking point sometime. Some kids are getting their childhoods taken away, filled with school and structured extracurriculars with no time for just playing. At the other end of the spectrum, many more people are graduating from high school barely able to read and write. There's got to be some way to close this gap, for 99% of students to come somewhere between illiterate and psychotic.

Do you think too many kids will go crazy and some admissions officers will say "enough is enough" and somehow stop the madness of people taking 7 APs and 500 extracurriculars a year?

Will the number of schools of ivy-quality schools increase dramatically, thereby accomodating the increasing numbers of college students and making admissions less crazy?

Will kids somehow miraculously start getting uniformly well-educated by the public school system?

Will it just go on like it is now?

What does everyone think?

Elise

Local news

As you can see, the TASP weblog is now hosted remotely from the ad-supported blogspot.com service, and is on Dustin's server. Alarmingly large props to him.

The design has changed again, and it'll probably stay this way without any major changes. Link suggestions would be grand, as well as clever menu categories. I shall ask Dustin if we can implement a serverside php/asp/perl/some other scripting language script for adding comments to the bottom of posts.

Also, you guys have to get properly blogging here -- posting the links of interesting web pages/news stories/etc. If you get the Google toolbar or BlogThis, found at the Blogger homepage (look down a few articles on the news page), you can put a link with one click and add commentary as you so desire.

Also -- not even half the TASP has joined the blog yet! More people need to be convinced to sign up.

'Ello!

Welp, here I am, newly inspired and chagrined by David's email (which I just got, because checking my email is not a habit with me), listening to Unity and thinking about TASP.

Personally, I like boards. There's something about the simplicity of a tree file structure that makes me happy, but yeah, the Yahoo board was very ungainly. But please save it for pictures. I just figured out how to hook my DV camcorder up.

That's all for now. Just wanted to say hi.

"hi!"

Brendan

TASP

TASP

Some people look a little bit familiar here, no?

On second thought, no. I've never seen these weirdos in my life before.

I wouldn't want to encounter them in a dark alley -- they seem pretty dangerous.

Degrees of separation, eh?

Surreal news from yesterday.

I help run the very new Gay-Straight Alliance in my school (which now actually boasts gay members, something sorely lacking the prior year of existence), and we had our first meeting yesterday.

I discovered that one of the students who showed up, a junior girl, apparently spent her Sundays in Washington Square Park playing pickup wiffleball with a bunch of guys who were entertainingly crappy at the game.

Among these fellows was a certain someone whom we all know of and love.

You'll never guess.

Give up?

John Cameron Mitchell.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. This girl knows -- and is friends with -- none other than the man who played Hedwig herself on stage and screen, in our favorite cult rock musical.

It only gets better -- the GSA is planning to screen Hedwig and the Angry Inch (which interlibrary loan can find on DVD), and the man himself may come to talk with us, answer questions, and otherwise be dangerously cool.

Nearby TASPers should feel free to drop by; I'll update y'all on the situation as it comes to pass.

But you have to admit that it's really, really freakin' cool.

whee

so, hooray. blog. one more site to add to my Compulsive Checking List. that's okay, though, I'm all for it. annnd.... I have to do homework. more later. I love you guys.

Hello

So I've joined the blog, finally. I miss you guys. Sorry to sneak that in, I cant help it. I keep telling Kim how i need you all... everybody, in no particular order. I'm addicted to TASP, and I hope I can remember that when i sit on my bed and procrastinate. Instead of using that to waste time, I can be doing the most constructive thing of all (pun intended) helping to build and keep up the TASP community that was so strong. Is so strong. I love you guys and miss you guys and wish i could think of something interesting to tell you. I'm trying to read a new book every week, and altho so far none of them are off the book list, I will get to those books in good time.
I read She's Come Undone lately, if that gives you guys any fodder. If you have anything to say about Dolores Price, I'm willing to listen. And eagerly reply.
I love you again. And Miss you, and want to stay in touch with you forever - that means telling you when i have grandkids and emailing you all their pictures.

hey y'all (i sent this as email, but david said i should post it, so i am)

hey y'all --

david was right. i've been really bad about keeping contact. i keep saying i'm going to call people, or email, and then i don't. and i am really busy, but i still feel really bad about it all the time.

i actually had a dream about it the other night; it was really weird. i was walking some where, i don't remember where, and all my friend started showing up. and they were all crowding around me and talking to me, and i saw david in the crowd. so i went to go talk to him, and he looked really distraught. he said something about erin being pregnant or something, and it was really important, but i got pulled away by all my other friends and all these people and i lost him in the crowd.

now i think it's obvious what this means, and i don't intend to let all you guys get lost in the crowd. so i'm going to try hard to keep up with you, and i hope you'll try hard to keep up with me, too, despite all the crap i have to do, and should be doing right now.

so...quick update. things are busy, but ok. this year has been pretty good so far, and i'm optimistic. i actually have a lot of shit that i should be doing right now, but...oh well. otherwise, in the news...Cornell IIers will be interested to know that some of the indigenous peoples of canada are suing over fisheries in british columbia. here's the article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/14/international/americas/14CANA.html

oh, and the WTO talks collapsed when developing nations walked out. woohoo!

as for my life...i saw two good movies that i'd never seen this weekend. one was the godfather (i know, i can't believe that i'd never seen it before). if you haven't seen it, it was great, but i'm assuming you have. i also saw new york stories, three short films by three famous directors -- scorcese, coppola, and woody allen. it was lots of fun and very good, though the coppola film was disappointing, i think. i didn't really get it, and i don't think it was as good as either of the other two, which were very good. woody allen's film was called oedipus wrecks. HAHAH!

other than that, life's ok. i'm getting back into the swing of things at home, where i've found that i acutally miss friends more than i do when i'm away because they're so close but i still don't see them enough. but i'll deal. and college, which i'm not even thinking about yet. kinda dangerous, but i'll deal there too.

so how's everyone else?? tell me everything. and if i promised to call and haven't yet (that goes for most people i'm emailing right now), i promise i'll make time from my busy, busy life for good old taspers.

-- alex

here goes nothing...

well, it seems we have yet another forum for 2003 tapsers to express lots and lots of stuff. so let it be heard, alex has posted!

unfortunately, i have very little to say, and the important things i'm going to say in emails anyway. so...yeah. here i am. life's busy, life's stressful. (well, not so much my life, but it will be soon...my friends lives here are complicated, too, but that's always the case).

be in touch, i hope this works, too.

-- Alex

Wow. When I suggested a blog, I had no idea I'd wake up the next morning to find one up and running. Thanks incredibly much to Sid, and hello to everyone who's seeing this for the first time. Let's hope we've found the right medium.

I give up.

I've spent at least two hours trying to improvise CSS code -- which I only have the barest inkling of -- to fix a rather nice blog layout template I liked. That has not panned out so far.

So I've given up, and left this one of the default templates that's not especially intrusive.

If anyone -- anyone -- is willing to code a nice custom CSS layout for the blog, I promise to genetically enhance his or her babies into invincible superbeings while still in the womb.

I could really use some real webserver space, too -- >cough-dustin-cough<

art talk

so the illustruious question of the purpose of art has erupted and has a few taspers thinking. i feel like i should put my two cents in on this one: a feeling of obligation transcending from both my passion for creating art and a bit of guilt for only reading the political post and not responding to them on behalf of my fear of doing so (sorry about that guys).

art. created by artists right? but what the blue jeans is an artists. let me do as socrated would not want one to do when defining something: i'm an artist. leonardo davinci was an artist. britney spears is an artist (huh!?). you (!) are an artist. if you are reading this, you are human. you are capable of original thought. you are creative (know it or not). you have some thirst that drives you to communicate (like it or not). you do it (consciously or un).

i have said it a million times. it has been said a zillion times in the history of man. it's become a cliche. it is: 'art is life'. this is a universal truth not universally accepted. accepted or not, however, it is truth (though not necessarily fact, but then again: who knows the facts?).

let's define the term 'life'. above, when i listed all the things which are examples of artists ... wait -- i didn't write that an artist is all those things: i wrote an artist is all those people. we all know the difference between the two. a human can percieve the natural world around him and create a synthetic one of his one and in turn perceive the that one. he can analyse the actions of those around him. he has a thirst for knowledge and a propensity to venerate those who transcend the world of knowledge into the world of wisdom. he makes mistakes all that are sooner or (the more often of the two) later in some way amended. bottom line: life is worth experiencing because it is perceived, thought about, and improved upon or worstened. that is to say that life, in this context, is human existence.

there is no doubt that art reflects human existence. a man sees a flower. he basks in the glory of its mystery. where did it come from? why does it exist? what kind of journey is it on? how has it developed? in man's quest for science he uses art as a tool for documenting his observations. documentation, perhaps the lowest form of art, however, an art nonetheless. without this form of art, advancement for humans would be impossible (remember that documentation takes the form of writing as well as drawing as well as song as well as drama).

without it, how would we remember with as great exactness as we do with it the things that we encounter. more importantly, perhaps: how could we communicate it to any other. from documentation (a translation of biased observed -- perhaps temporary -- happenings into a form understandable and permanent, called art, to the creator and to his peers, present and future). without art, namely that of lascaux, how would we know that animals were the things cave men perceived their existence upon? without art, how would we know of classical values held in the philosophy of plato or the comedy of aristophanes. without art, what wisdom would we hold today: i'll make this one easy, the same wisdom held 10 000 years ago: everytime it would have been thought up, it would have died with the person who thought of it who couldn't pass it to his children for them to develop it further for there was no form of communication: no art.

take appointment (please, forgive the lack of accent marks). she sees life and she acts it out randomly and in public. she re-lives her experiences because they meant something to her. in this way she can perfect her own view of that experience: truly see it just as one must re-read a book again and again to truly know what exactly happens off as if it were their second nature. why make an observation known as second nature? so that you don't have to think to hard upon analysing. once you know life like the back of your hand, once you truly see it, details just pop up to support your thesis when analysing it, life. but something even more magical happens. her victims see it too. she, we all know, effectively sonveys the moment with such precision that the unassuming victim has no choice but to stop and stare and think and (in addition to enjoy) to know and to ponder and to conclude and to support.

now, not only is appintment (again, i apologise) in a better state through a better understanding of herself, her world, and their connections ... but she is proving all that by passing the torch. her message will live on in the person who saw it. she lives on in the message. she has inspired. she is in the inspired. the inspired will inspire others now. and live too in those second-generation inspired.

you see. if an understanding of life is faith, art is its religion. art is our way of expressing what we know and what we feel about what we know. mohammed, buddha, jesus: what did they all have in common? their common dream was to spread their understanding, their view, their perspective. they were great artists. they still live today. in islam, in buddhism, in christianity: people go on, worshipping these people with ideas expressed.

this post has become entirely too long. i hope you all were able to make it to the end. that's me and a chip of the iceberg on my view of art. as you can see i can go on and on but i love you all too much to do so. so with that, i leave you, hopefully inspired (as a true artist).

.loves.and.misses.

.christopher.a.rodriguez.
on 14 september 2 003
@ 0010.

flights from miami

yes. today thirty-three tiny aircrafts fled miami today: tiny. they were not 'ginormous' commercial airlines headed for some big tourist attraction, not one of them was. no: they were tiny. they weren't small, two-propeller jets heading for an entirely too close regional service-airport. no: they were tiny.

and: they were made of tissue paper. they weren't painted steam-line grey. they were filled with my love. they weren't plain, but they certainly weren't not-plain. they are flying through your windows at this very moment gently and on a cool, kissing breeze. yours is in your lap. take it with you wherever you go today. and tomorrow. and the next day. and the next ...

i really love and miss you guys and i promise not to let school dominate any of my tasp-away-from-tasp time any more than it has these past two weeks or so.

ok, that is all for now.

.christopher.a.rodríguez.
on 13 september 2 003

Now we've got titles.

Feel free to add a title to your posts now; that option has been duly turned on.

Leave them off if you want to be pretentiously inscrutable and suscipious.

sid.

by the by, if anyone wants administrator access to the blog (so you can futz around with the template for posting, kick people off or invite people in, or so forth), just tell me, and I'll put you on the list.

sid.

So here we are- I officially break the bottle over the side of this boat, christening it the official tasp blog/sea vessel. Lets hope this works!

So why am I posting? Well, first of all, I'm honestly a little drunk, which I hope doesn't offend any of you, though I doubt it will. Second of all, I don't want to be a hypocrite. I didn't want me email to be mean, and I hope it wasn't, but either way, I was urging more posts, so wouldn't I be something of a fuck if I wasn't writing this? I think so. And finally...posting is fun! I miss you guys and the real reason for my email/disatisfaction was because I'm terribly nostalgic about tasp and perhaps even moreso of the days when I could come home every night and read all your lovely words. So people...POST! It's fun! And, now that we are on a far more informal server, there's no reason you shouldn't post just about anything that crosses your mind. So I guess I'll start-

I've been working like a maniac on my novel, writing a few pages every day. It's absorbed my life, I think about nothing (not college, not family/friends, not even Erin, not even Tasp!) when I'm writing it, all I can think about is this little world I've created. I love it dearly and have decided that, if you so desire, I will post in pieces as I edit it up for all your reading enjoyment/displeasure. Only if you want me to...do you want me to? I don't know, it will be sort of scary to do...

Anyway, other than that, I spoke to Greg today, saw a killer movie (american splendor) with my mom. Greg is probably coming over in a few minutes, so I have to go, but after it sinks in a little ill probably post something about said movie. In the meantime, if you can, see it. It's really fabulous. Details will be forthcoming.

I love you all, I miss you all, and I- once again- hope to the God I'm not sure exists that this works out!

David
9.13.03

what this blog is for: your personal news, news of the world, interesting ideas, general commentary, and otherwise illuminating and pseudo-intellectual gamesmanship.

sid.

This is the first post on the Cornell TASP 2003 weblog. Let information be free.

sid.