jugbandjames

http://www.newsobserver.com/104/story/412899.html


this seems like good news

Ahhhh....North Carolina

http://www.newsobserver.com/102/story/409912.html


My favorite is: "Objections range from the aesthetic to the bizarre. One woman worried that light from the colored glass would interfere with airplanes and helicopters flying overhead."


Oh wait, this one is good too: "'Those chandeliers belong in Las Vegas,' Wiggs said."

A bicyclist was hit and killed by a bus a couple days ago. Here are some quotes from the spokesman for the bus company in the article about it:

"He[the bus driver]'s just a rock solid fellow," Schissler said. "This has to be a blow to him."

I should fucking hope so, he just killed someone because he wasn't paying attention.


"Obviously, our biggest concern is for the victim's family," said Schissler, who didn't know anything about Alston. "As parents, we understand what it is like to have children and worry about them."

Told the man on the bicycle was 39, he responded, "Even 39-year-olds have parents that worry about them."





As a bicyclist this kind of thing bothers me, especially since it happened a little over a mile from a college campus. The driver was not a victim, he killed someone due to negligence. In North Carolina a bicycle is treated like a normal vehicle. When passing a bicycle the driver is supposed to be able to give the cyclist the full lane. In practice, nobody does this. Hopefully, this guy will end up with some manslaughter charges.


http://www.newsobserver.com/102/story/392773.html

so you can shoot someone who's stealing your car, kill them, and get away with it, but if you give someone drugs and they willingly take them and die, it's murder.

http://www.newsobserver.com/102/story/392417.html


I wonder if a cop gave drugs to someone and they died if that would be murder.

http://www.newsobserver.com/102/story/392420.html

this story is kind of fucked up. It seems like they're trying to justify her mudering this dude by saying he's homeless. I mean, there may be information they're not releasing to the affect that she or someone else was actually in danger and it was self defense, but I don't see why they wouldn't release that information. It appears that the dude was stealing her car, was trying to drive away with it(usually when someone is fleeing from a crime they aren't threatening the people they robbed anymore) and she shot him. Also he was about to pull out into a major road, so it seems like shooting someone in that situation actually puts more people in danger rather than less.

check out the elothtes wiki at http://elothtes.pbwiki.com

http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,69641,00.html

http://elothtes.pbwiki.com/f/The%20Wizbits%20Theme.mp3

This is a good (and dorky) way to waste some time.

I got a cat this weekend. It was sort of a stray. My friend suspects that their neighbor moved and the cat got left behind. It seems pretty comfortable around humans so I suspect it had an owner at some point. It took a dump in my shower the first night but that was because I didn't have a proper kitty litter box. I just had a box with some dirt in it. It would pee in there but apparantly not poop. It likes to play with plastic bags. It also likes to hide. It will find a hiding spot and stay there until I find it. When it eats, it tries to hide the left over food with the towel I have placed under the food dish. I bought it some toys but it prefers the plastic bags. It also likes to attack my plants. It also craves large amounts of attention, like right now I'm trying to type, but it has jumped up in my lap and is rubbing it's face against my hand. Now it's trying to sit on the keyboard.

Hello livejournal, it's been a while. I've missed you.

sadly, no! takes on Daniel Underwood, the ridiculously bad technician writer.

http://www.sadlyno.com/archives/001780.html#trackback

I had an email exchange with an opinion writer at the technician, our school newspaper. Apparantly, the technician doesn't publish letters to the editor that are critical of the newspaper as a whole. Here is the exchange, if you agree with my point, feel free to email viewpoint@technicianonline.com and let them know:

*UPDATE: it seems that my letter to the editor was not published because it went to viewpoint@technicianonline.com instead of forum@technicianonline.com*




On Mon, September 19, 2005 4:28 pm, jseller@ncsu.edu wrote:
>
>
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: "Is stupid the new chic?"
> Date: Mon, 19 Sep 2005 16:28:47 -0400 (EDT)
> From: jseller@ncsu.edu
> To: viewpoint@technicianonline.com
>
>
>
> The technician needs to stop publishing opinion articles that use the
> straw-man rhetorical technique. This technique is a favorite of "writers"
> like Daniel Underwood and was most recently used by T. Greg Doucette in
> his article "Is stupid the new chic?" In case these writers are
> unwittingly using straw-man arguments, here are some examples from
> wikipedia of how one forms a straw-man argument:
> 1. Present the opponent's argument in weakened form, refute it, and
> pretend that the original has been refuted.
> 2. Present a misrepresentation of the opponent's position, refute it, and
> pretend that the opponent's actual position has been refuted.
> 3. Present someone who defends a position poorly as the quintessential
> defender, refute that person's arguments, and pretend that every upholder
> of that position, and thus the position itself, has been defeated.
> 4. Invent a fictitious persona with actions or beliefs that are
> criticised, and pretend that the person represents a group that the
> speaker is critical of.
> This applies to both "Is stupid the new chic?" and Underwood's articles
> "Abortion Photographs Depict A Grisly Reality" and "Campus kooks insult
> american courage and sacrifice" as well as others.
> The opinion section ought to be a platform for intelligent student
> discussion. Articles like these function as a platform from which some
> students can deride other student opinions, often without allowing them a
> chance to defend their opinions. Articles should not be published
> criticizing the unpublished opinions of other students. If Daniel
> Underwood or T. Greg Doucette can write an intelligent article detailing
> their opinion, then fine, publish it. If they want to respond to another
> published opinion, that's also fine. But if they are attempting to
> represent the opinions of other students so that they can criticize them,
> that is wrong. Allow those students to represent their own opinions in the
> technician opinion section (campus forum doesn't count), and then allow
> your writers to take a position against them. This way your readers can
> see all opinions, as presented by the people who hold these opinions, and
> decide for themselves. Anything less is unprofessional and a disservice to
> the student population.
>
> -James Sellers
> MA in Linguistics
>
>
>
>


Mr. Sellers,

I wanted to send a quick email to thank you for your response to my
column. I recognize you have an apparent distaste for it, but I
appreciate the feedback just the same.

While I have no intention of speaking for Underwood, I am curious as to
what portion of my column you regard as a strawman? I'm very familiar
with the logical fallacies and use them quite regularly when I want to
have fun with somebody in a verbal debate; I didn't think this particular
written piece qualified.

Just curious, feel free to elaborate if you're interested. And thanks again!

-Greg


Doucette,

This portion would qualify:
"Apparently one guy mistook me for a kindred spirit, deciding to strike up
a bull session to teach me the many evils of George W. Bush, Enemy of the
State. I was regaled with horrific tales of terrorist "abuse" in
Guantanamo, given a play-by-play of all the "lies" Bush personally
concocted to arm-twist helpless Congressmen into authorizing war in Iraq,
and so on and so on. At some point, the litany shifted to Karl and
Katrina, the GOP coup taking place right before my eyes.

The only problem with the "government response as partisan plot" line of
argument is that it makes absolutely no sense. The Republican Party was
already dismantling Democratic control in Louisiana for years, taking
two-thirds of the state Senate, six members of the state's nine-member
Congressional delegation and casting its electoral votes to the Republican
candidate in both 2000 and 2004. Republicans not only had little more to
gain by a Democrat exodus, but the mass influx into Baton Rouge threatens
one of those Republican Congressman while a similar surge into Houston
will produce solid Democratic control of that region in Texas -- facts
already noted by some Democrats hoping to boost morale (apparently Dr.
Dean doesn't have anyone at the DNC to coordinate talking points)."

What you're giving here is your interpretation of his opinion, which you
then easily refute. It is probably a weak version of his actual argument.
If the person's opinion is worth you taking up newspaper space refuting,
then isn't it also worth publishing in the newspaper so that he can speak
for himself? I know a lot of the people involved with radical rush week
and I haven't heard one of them say that the federal government's response
to Katrina was part of some intentional partisan plot. Usually, people
describe it as being badly handled because of priorities that don't focus
on helping poor people during catastrophes. Which leads me to believe that
you haven't given an accurate representation of his opinion. Who knows,
maybe you did, but that's sort of my point too. We don't have access to
his opinion as he would present it, so we can't say, thus he is only a
straw-man.

You then go on say that this person is representative of some "new
standard for civic discourse in America." So now this random person you
had a conversation with, whom your readers have no real access to, is
representative of some larger movement. He is certainly a poor apologist
for whatever movement he could be associated with, further contributing to
his straw-man status.

The main reason I consider this a straw-man argument is because the reader
has no access to this person's real opinion. You're criticizing an
unpublished opinion that the reader can't reference. The only access your
reader has to it is your interpretation of it, which is suspect at best.

I don't mean this as an attack on you, I've noticed a few articles
recently, mostly political, that have used this weak argument, yours just
happened to be the last straw, so to speak. In particular, the people
involved in radical rush week have been set up as straw-men several times.
If people are so interested in writing about them and their opinions, then
why not publish articles written by some of them stating those opinions?
Then your readers would have direct access to the original argument and
you could criticize it without being burdened with the task of
representing it for them. Sticking them in campus forum doesn't count.

-James Sellers


Here is an email I wrote to the Opinion Section editor:

Jason Eder,

I've read two opinion articles in the last week and a half that have been
critical of the people involved in radical rush week ('Campus kooks insult
american courage and sacrifice" and "Is stupid the new chic?"). If their
opinions are so compelling that they have motivated a response from two of
your opinion writers, why not publish the opinions of the radical rush
week participants? A summary of their opinons as represented by someone who
disagrees with them to begin with is not a reliable representation. It is
also unfair to allow your writers to use the student paper as a platform
from which they can attack the ideas of other students without allowing
the people who would defend those ideas an equal voice in the paper. If I
am wrong, and there has been a fair defense of their ideas published in
the paper, then please refer me to it. I know for a fact that they have
submitted an article defending themselves against Daniel Underwood. I was
told that it was not published because it exceeded 400 words, yet the
article they were responding to exceeded 700 words. I understand that the
opinions published in this section are not necessarily the opinions of the
technician, but it seems to me that if the technician is going to publish
opinions that are directly critical of opinions that other students hold,
the technician should allow those students the opportunity to defend
themselves in an equal format. Thank you for reading my rant.

-James Sellers

this is ridiculous:
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/tm_objectid=16147117%26method=full%26siteid=94762%26headline=exclusive--58--up-in-flames-name_page.html

Drew sent me this in an email, it's pretty funny.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jzawodn/41530029/

I've moved into my new apartment. I really like it, but I still have boxes everywhere and I don't know what to do with half of my shit. Classes are going allright, although I have my ENG 669 class, it's research methods and bibliographies, it's designed to help you make the transition from undergraduate writing to graduate level writing, which is cool, except it's targeted at lit majors and not linguists. So I end up having to do a bunch of useless shit like finding the first edition of a poem, or the first book in english written on witch craft. What's worse is that when I alter the assignments so that they make sense for a linguist to be doing them, the professor gives me an F for the assignment. It's really bullshit, I guess I'm just gonna have to jump through the hoops with this class. All my other classes are fine though. Intro to linguistics is a little tedious since I already know a lot of the material. Lexicography is a cool class, but is taught in a somewhat disorganized fashion, which seems counterintuitive. I never really know what we're going to discuss in class though, and the discussions seem to wander through all these tangents. Sociophonetics is awesome, but it's also pretty hard. I have to be exposed to a lot of the material several times before it starts sinking in. I get to use some neat equipment though, which makes me feel all warm and scientific inside. I dropped bowling. I kept forgetting to go to it. It was at an akward time. All my classes start at either 4:30pm or 6:pm and go until around 9pm. Bowling started at 11:20am. So I would often find myself on the way to the library or working on the assignment due for the classes later that day and realize "oh shit, I'm supposed to be in bowling right now." I'm not so disorganized that I forget to go to classes, but it's bowling, so it wasn't very high on my priority list.

in other news, it looks like we've got this tropical storm coming towards us--Ophelia. People are making a big deal out of it, what with hurricane Katrina and all, but I think it's just people wanting to think their lives are exciting. But they're not exciting. It's a pretty small storm and it will probably make landfall 100 miles from any heavily populated areas.

I've been going to the farmer's market and cooking a lot. I found this awesome honey made by "the flying cow bee farm." They also make soap and candles from the beeswax, which I bought. They don't use any pesticides and go out of their way to not kill any bees in the harvesting of the honey and wax. Plus, they gave me all this free shit. So if you're at the farmer's market check them out. They're out there periodically during the week and all day Saturday.

I can't think of anything else to update, I've been putting off working for too long, plus I have to return a book to the library. So I'm gonna get to work.

"Gov. Kathleen Blanco called people who committed such crimes "hoodlums" and issued a warning to lawbreakers: Hundreds of National Guard troops hardened on the battlefield in Iraq have landed in New Orleans.

"They have M-16s and they're locked and loaded," she said. "These troops know how to shoot and kill, and they are more than willing to do so, and I expect they will.""

so we're sending the national guard into kill people that are looting stores, mostly for necessities.

heh, considering that they basically left all the poor people for dead when they evacuated NO for the hurricane, it's nice to see them fighting back:
http://www.nola.com/newslogs/breakingtp/index.ssf?/mtlogs/nola_Times-Picayune/archives/2005_08.html#074893

(scroll down to the entry titled "looting" if you're not using IE)

Today was the first day of classes, and though I only had one class, I'm exhausted from running errands all day. I spent about 2 hours buying books at the bookstore. On top of that I had to have a blood sample taken at the health center, which I hate.

I like my lexicography class though. It's interesting but it also seems pretty challenging. I have to write a 20 page glossary by the end of the semester, which doesn't seem like that much at first glance, but if you think about having to research in depth pronunciation trends, meanings, etymology, etc. for 20 pages worth of words then it starts seeming a lot tougher.

I'm pretty tierd so I'm gonna go read and fall asleep.

final fantasy 3 is such an awesome game. Download a snes emulator and then download the ff3 rom.