So I’m goin’ out to Sargent Camp for a couple days tomorrow. Sargent is a camp up in New Hampshire (that’s the wilderness frontier as far as East Coasters are concerned), which should be cool cuz I can play football and do all that good stuff. ‘Cept I hear it’s mostly girls. And Michael says mostly not good-looking girls. Which makes things worse, cuz Michael enjoys getting plastered, and you always have to knock a point down when the giver of the rating is drunk. “She was an 8 when I met her, a 6 when I sobered up, and a 5 the next morning,” says Alex from down the hall famously.I just came back from meeting one of the scariest people I’ve ever seen. Amnesty International was doing a speech from a guy who was innocent and had been freed from Death Row after 21 years there. I mean, I can understand, because he was in a nuthouse for 21 years, but he was off the deep-end. He had the wierd cackle, the shifty eyes, the distrust of any authority and especially politicians, all of it. Disturbing. When asked about “The Hurricane” and “Green Mile”, he said that “the guards were too nice.” Eery. He did have some good points about the death penalty - everyone acknowledges that there are some innocents who get killed on death row. That’s not acceptable. Further, (though he didn’t bring it up) minorities are far more likely to get the Death Penalty for the same crime, even if that pattern is not because of any specific racism, but simple unconsciousness acts piled one on another.

Is his name Barry Bonds or Jesus Christ? So far in the world series, Bonds has been the plate 22 times. He’s been walked on 10 occasions. He’s homered three times, including one that went 485 feet, he has two doubles and a single. For those keeping track, that’s a batting average of .500, an on-base percentage of .722 and a “Home Run Average” of .250. Against what is supposedly the best team in the AL. Holy Jesus. Watch this man swing a bat; we need to see it in slow-mo to know what’s happening, heh.

So here’s what I’ve been really hung up on recently: There’s no way in hell that college is worth 38,000 by itself. Now I know that it will pay off and all that. But that’s only because people recognize the degree as meaning something. I could learn everything I’ve learned so far for free at the public library (and I don’t say that just because they say it in Good Will Hunting, though it’s a good point). For one, my teachers are at best as good, but certainly not better, than my high school teachers. Most know more about their subject, but some couldn’t teach a jalapeno to be spicy if their life depended on it. Why don’t professors spend more time learning to teach?

I just feel like I’m paying (well, not paying, but there are a lot of people here paying the full 38k) to subsidize research in the science labs just so I can have a diploma with my name on it, and thus get a job. I don’t feel like I’m any more capable of doing, for instance, international business with a degree than I would be if I spent four years interning and studying finance at the library, and possibly languages at the languages institutes. For instance, I could go down the street to Boston Language Institute and take a class with 4-12 other people, at most, in Chinese, and learn more than I will in a semester at BU. It would cost 1980$. When you calculate the cost here of tuition, at 28000, over 8 classes, the costs is 3500 a class. My Chinese class has 25 people. For $3500, me and three friends could get private lessons, organized to exactly what we want to learn, at my house. Am I getting ripped off?

The whole way college is set up right now is retarded, in my opinion. If you’re going to college simply to learn, to study classics or History, college now works fine. But if you’re going to college primarily to learn job skills, every college setup should incorporate internships. When I graduate, I should have at least 3 years of work in my field under my belt. Lecture classes should be tossed entirely - perhaps guest lecturers could travel the college circuit, but classes taught in lectures simply aren’t as effective, no matter whether Joe Schmoe or Muhammad himself were teaching the class. Am I the only one who’s wondering how my college work is preparing me to do what I want to do in life, or even if it’s giving me any skills I couldn’t learn for cheaper otherwise?

Does anyone think the whole principle of grading at college is somewhat ridiculous? Here’s an idea: You get a letter of recommendation from members of your department when you graduate. You get personal writeups while you’re there about what you need to work on and what you are good at and should focus on. This system would be better for employers and for us. Maybe you could be graded on assignments and papers, and how you do on those would be incorporated into your end-of-class letter.

The idea of midterms/finals is a sign of laziness. Shouldn’t my professor know me enough by the end of my $3500 expenditure on his class that he can tell whether I know the material, and further, exactly what material I understand? Shouldn’t he be, for instance, having us write papers that incorporate what we’ve learned, or give oral presentations, or something. I can tell you for a fact that I could cram for any final, any time, and do at least decently well on it, whether I knew the material or not. I can’t say the same about papers or presentations or even simply professor’s feelings toward me. Those show knowledge. Finals show how well Mountain Dew works in keeping some awake (not for me, heh; I have a strict policy of never letting school get in the way of sleep or a good meal, though, so it’s no problem - I’ve yet to see the sunrise since I got here, and I have a million-dollar view of the sun rising over the boston skyline and harbor. Actually, I did see it once cuz I woke up when my roommate’s alarm went off at 7:00 - great view, but not as good as sleep).

The College system should be overhauled. I have the feeling these problems are even worse at liberal arts universities. I understand there are people who go to college simply to learn, as my grandmother did a few years ago. Most students aren’t like that. We don’t want to be constricted by an ivory tower.

On another note, I got that Atari last week. Since they’re made in 1978 (I made the guys at the videogame meeting thing left when I said it looked like a Playstation2 with wood paneling), I haven’t got mine to work yet. The guy I got it from lives a few miles away though, and he said I could swap it if I can’t get it to work. Frogger! Space Invaders! For Buddha’s sake, PACMAN! And the people at this meeting had *a lot* of videogames - Byerly woulda been a lightweight among these guys. One of the guys was married, and his room filled with games is also the guest room. When his mom visited for the baptism of his kid, she put her suitcase down and said, “You still haven’t cleaned your room and you alphabetize your videogames. Hmm.” Good times.

The Supreme Court debated the law which my Senior Paper was based on last week. Eldred, the top IP Lawyer in the nation and probably a nice guy considering he emailed me back right away when I had questions, was fighting against the extensions of copyright law by Congress (he says they’re unconstitutional). I said in my paper that there’s nothing in Supreme Court precedent that would suggest that they would overturn the CTEA here during this case. Eldred may have the Court convinced with the following argument. Basically, Congress passed a law that says copyright now last for Life of the Author + 70 years, up from the Life + 50 that existed since ‘76, and way up from the 14 years that was in the law that Jefferson helped pass in 1790. They also made in retroactive, so items that were in the public domain (like Shakespeare, for instance - no one “owns” him) and were also created between 1907 and 1927 revert to their old copyright holder. Now, Eldred says that since the Constitution says copyright must be “used for the Progress of Useful Arts” and be “for limited times”, this law in unconsitutional because the incentive to create is not changed by the new law. That is, there will be no more works created when the law in Life + 70 than Life + 50 - they’re functionally equivalent to “Forever”, because 99.8% of works created in 1927 are unavailable for purchase today. It’ll be interesting to see how he does. Ok, off to the parties…

CureMusic

“Bionic” by The Beatnuts ft/ Al-Tariq
This is off the new Beatnuts CD and features Al-Tariq, who is a sick rapper that used to do work with Biggie back in the day. Tight 30 second rap a bit through. I wrote a dope rap cuz Paulina asked for one the other day about Mexico, I’ll have to drop it when I come back. “What’s Your Flava?” by Craig David is decent, but I don’t like the direction he’s going if the album (drops Nov 19) turns out like this. It’s lost the two-step and become just mediocre wannabe-Usher R&B. Why aren’t Artful Dodger doing more production on this one?“A Cappella of Beatles’ Beautiful People” by ?
This is listed as being by Black Eyed Peas ft/ Macy Gray & Mos Def (there is a real song like this, and it is tight), but I’m sure this is someone else. 6 minute long a cappella. Wicked cool. “Caught in the Middle” by The Doves is the new track from the best Brit-rock band not named Oasis or Ash. Good stuff.

Two bigger-name bloggers, Steven Den Beste and Steven Leeds, have been having a high profile debate about how one can judge another’s culture. After reading both their “well-put” opinions, I’ve come to the following, somewhat disturbing, conclusion:It is impossible to logically deduce the “right” or “wrong” of moral behavior

I was talking with Chatfield about this last week. Say, for instance, that we say that Saudi Arabia’s moral system is inherently worse because they subjugate women. Most of us would eventually come to the conclusion that because the reason we live (the “metaphilosophy”, I call it) is “to maximize utility.” That is, if sum happiness is greater under one system, we can conclude that that system is inherently better. Assuming this one axiom, we can conclude that our system of allowing women freedom is better than subjugating women.

However, the problem with that is that every logically deduced axiom can only prove axioms within its own metasystem. For instance, say the Saudis argued that the metaphilosophy is not to be happy, but to serve the will of the Prophet. Measuring in “Prophet utility” rather than our definition of utility, it could be logically deduced that the Saudi’s system of morality is better than ours! Because no logical system can be both complete and accurate (see Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem to see why mathematics can’t solve every problem), this conclusion is required:

It is necessary to accept certain propositions on faith or instinct; this DOES NOT imply that they are “true”

This is not an argument for the existence of God. All it says, I think, is that logic can’t PROVE anything. It can push us inexorably toward a conclusion. Or maybe that logic can’t imply *some* premises in a closed systems? I’m not sure. This is one of these subjects that you can’t come to a conclusion about in an afternoon, I guess. Anyway, if anyone comes to a conclusion on anything related to this, or happens to understand Godel’s implications more than I do, gimme an email: cure@bu.edu.

How to make money on Ebay - A Simple Guide. Ebay is a mint. No doubt. I’m going to go Goodwilling tomorrow, and do some general Boston exploring. Hope I find something good. Dude, Josh, you are gonna be so jealous. There’s a “New England Classic Gamers” meeting on the 19th that I’m going to in the suburbs, with like 30 or 40 people all bringing their stuff to trade and show off. The guy in charge is gonna get me an Atari and a few games, and I’m gonna trade my Japanese Sega Saturn (worth like 50 or so + games + extra cart, so maybe 80-100 total) for some more stuff. Some of these guys have like, full NES collections, Panesians and all. It’s gonna be wicked sweet. I’ll be a total nerd, though. Ah well, hehe.

Yo, I’m officially a college student. I wrote the paper, “Incompleteness Theorem: Fragments, Interjections and Jazz-Age Status Consciousness in Sinclair Lewis’ Babbitt.” And I got an A-, “very good work.” Now, you and me both know that the whole paper was more or less BS’ed. You’d think that BS gets weeded out the higher you go on the intellectual chain. Turns out they only encourage it more. While of course Lewis means what he means when he writes something a certain way, to link his use of common dialogue elements to the decline of a hurried society seemed ridiculous to me when I wrote it and still when I got it back. But hey, my dignity for an A (I think that should be a line in a rap, huh?).

And speaking of BS, remember how my team won a debate 2 weeks ago where we convinced a panel that it doesn’t pay to pay for college? We won another one this week where we were the Pro side on “Is the US Welfare System Efficient?” Even I didn’t know I could BS with such a straight face. My Econ teacher has referred to me as both “A future Arthur Anderson accountant” and “a future Congressman”. Good times. Next week, I actually get to argue an argument that will be an automatic win - that is, Is Globalization Truly Global?

Are Asian guys really that bad at sports, and further, Are black guys really that dominant? This Slate columnist says no on both counts. I’d say that, in team sports of near any kind, ethnicity and size can always be overcome by other work ethics. DaMarcus Beasley, star of the US soccer team, is like 5′8″, 130. Size isn’t all that matters…in sports, at least.

I bought the freakin’ bombest jacket last weekend. And I bought in on Newbury Street. I feel wicked posh now, heh. It’s a Perry Ellis Portfolio 3/4 length black leather jacket. So so nice and so warm. It’s like, not short like a bomber jacket, and not long like a trenchcoat, but a little longer than a normal jacket. Y’know, it’s like those leather jackets that don’t make you look like you hate everyone and would be acceptable if worn at an MTV event. Anyway, it was “last season’s”, so I got it for 150 instead of 400, which is tight.

Mother Teresa wasn’t so Saintly, by most non-Catholic definitions. She was certainly not a bad person, I’d say, and she did give people dignity in death, but this is a damn convincing argument that she cared more about ministry than about poverty. Of the hundreds of millions of dollars given to her order, why did she never buy medicine for the Kolkata poor, or a modern hospital? Money donated to her ended up going to her Order’s nunneries around the world rather than directly into improving India’s fate, and further, she was vehemently against giving people medicine to extend their life. So instead of living 20 years longer, the poor in Kalkuta died on nice blankets. And if that’s the 2nd miracle that the Vatican need to confirm her as a Saint, they need to look elsewhere.

And yes, Calcutta is now, PC-style, spelt “Kolkata”. And, I’ll no doubt bet, Corea (Korea) is next.

First Coinbird, now it’s Elephants singing Pavarotti. Ah..the internet.

And finally, The New Republic clears it up for the left-of-left by telling the truth: Logically, an Iraq War is not beneficial for oil companies. First, war in Iraq would equal higher energy prices. Second, American oil companies have been pledging an end to sanctions, not further complicated measures in the Far East. It would be most beneficial for oil companies if we let Saddam just sell his oil to them, as he has said he would do if he were allowed. He’d probably buy palaces and weapons with the money, but you know how it goes.

And I’m making my “the war tactic is a bluff” into a solid bet: A $20 bet is on the table for anyone who wants to bet that the US will go to war with Iraq before, say, New Years Day, assuming that Saddam doesn’t fire missiles at Israel or something like that. Email me if you’re interested. Prepare to send me the check on January 1st.

Da Music of 908

“Wylin Out” by Mos Def & Diverse All Music called Diverse the hottest MC from Chicago since Common. Two years ago. Now he’s back on a Mos Def-backed single, produced by midwest genius Prefuse 73. Hot beat, tight rapping from both men. This track is hot. The CD it’s off, “Urban Renewal I” from Chocolate Industries, I’m gonna pick up soon. All the songs I can find on Kazaa from it are sweet.“A Dios Le Pido” by Juanes Juanes, Latin American superstars, might finally make inroads in the US with this track. Really addictive pop-rock, though not as good as “Fotografia”, their track with Nelly Furtado that I talked about a couple months ago, in my opinion. Still very good, though.