jugbandjames

Thu, 02 Mar 2006 02:06:11 GMT

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

this seems like good news

Tue, 21 Feb 2006 15:44:26 GMT

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."

Wed, 15 Feb 2006 03:02:34 GMT

http://kevan.org/johari?name=jugbandjames

Thu, 26 Jan 2006 14:03:47 GMT

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

Wed, 25 Jan 2006 20:15:14 GMT

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.

it's ok to kill homeless people

Wed, 25 Jan 2006 15:34:20 GMT

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.

Thu, 08 Dec 2005 04:45:51 GMT

Dear Santa...

Dear Santa,

This year I've been busy!

Last Friday I donated bone marrow to mark111 in a life-saving procedure (300 points). In May on a flight to LA, I stole the emergency flight information card (-40 points). Last Thursday I had a shoot-out with rival gang lords on the 5 near LA (-76 points). In October I gave computerblue84 a Dutch Oven (-10 points). In February I gave pkate7 a life-saving blood transfusion (50 points).

Overall, I've been nice (224 points). For Christmas I deserve a Lego set!

Sincerely,
jugbandjames

ELoTH: tES

Sun, 27 Nov 2005 17:49:34 GMT

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.

Mon, 14 Nov 2005 02:49:08 GMT

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.

Sat, 05 Nov 2005 05:33:45 GMT

Sat, 05 Nov 2005 05:30:08 GMT

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

Tue, 20 Sep 2005 15:15:02 GMT

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

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

Tue, 20 Sep 2005 14:30:39 GMT

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

Tue, 20 Sep 2005 13:23:00 GMT

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

Tue, 20 Sep 2005 12:43:14 GMT

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

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

Mon, 12 Sep 2005 17:53:06 GMT

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.

Fri, 02 Sep 2005 11:53:03 GMT

"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.

Mon, 29 Aug 2005 20:10:46 GMT

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)

Wed, 17 Aug 2005 22:57:32 GMT

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.

Wed, 17 Aug 2005 01:31:45 GMT

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

What I did with my sick time

Fri, 12 Aug 2005 00:27:44 GMT

I just beat "zelda: a link to the past" and it was funny that the last line was "And the master sword sleeps again....forever!"

I thought, yea, I'm sure we won't need this master sword again. Let's hide it in the woods somewhere and not tell anyone about it! Smart move. While you're at it, we should also leave the triforce unguarded. And this old boomerang? Let's sell it to a guy living in a cave! Zelda should probably get drunk and stumble around that old creepy wizard's house, 'cause hey,

We've defeated evil, it will never come back.

Mon, 08 Aug 2005 23:01:53 GMT

One of the lymphnodes on my neck is so swollen that it feels like I'm constantly being choked. I went into the health center, since my mom died of a lymphnode related ailment I was justifiably freaked the fuck out. I was met with a huge hassle. Apparantly, in four days I can be treated there for free, but today it cost me 41 bucks, which I don't have. I convinced them it was an emergency, since you know, my neck is swelling shut, so they agreed to charge it to my student account. Normally I would have to pay it up front. I just made the whole process sound much easier than it actually was, but I don't have the energy to be any more descriptive.

So after I finally get to see a doctor, she decides to do a bunch of blood tests.

She gets the test back and says it looks very viral, for some reason I thought she said virile and so I was like "what does that mean, does that means I'm fine?" Then she looked at me kind of funny and said "no, that means you have a virus" I'm sure she was thinking "and this guys in grad school?" For the record, I know what viral means, I was confused because I thought she said virile, as if to say "you're a normally functioning male"

other than a slight irritation in my throat and the choking sensation, I don't feel all that bad. Now I feel kind of shitty, but I think that's only because I know I'm sick. I felt fine before I went into the health center.

She says that it doesn't look like there is anything horribly wrong with me that can be indicated by my blood, which doesn't mean that there's not something horribly wrong with me. In other words, my white blood cell count was fine, and if it wasn't it might indicate that I have something wrong with my lymphnodes. Although, I could still have something wrong with them and have a good white blood cell count. The temporary solution is to wait a week and see if I get any worse. If the lymphnode is still swollen at the end of the week, she'll run more tests, and maybe even a chest x-ray to check out my chest lymphnodes. If I get worse, I'm supposed to go back in.

It's actually pretty normal to have swollen lymphnodes when you're sick, but the thing is, I don't feel sick and this lymphnode is very swollen. Also they're asymmetrically swollen, which is also kind of weird. Basically, they don't know what the fuck is wrong with me and they're hoping it's a virus.

I personally think it's going to turn out like the film "How to Get Ahead in Advertising." But instead of a giant talking boil that takes over my body, it's going to be a lymphnode. Regardless, I hope I don't have cancer, that would suck. I'm in no mood for cancer.

Mon, 08 Aug 2005 16:16:30 GMT

so I woke up this morning at about 5:27am because I heard four steady bangs. I thought, omg, gunshots. But I'd been having this crazy dream and I thought I must be imagining things. My instant reaction was to call the police and report gunshots, but it seemed like a bad idea, since I couldn't tell them where they came from or anything. Then I remembered that the neighbors house has been having construction done on it and so I decided that must have been what the noise was, a banging hammer or something, and because of my crazy dream I had turned it into this elaborate paranoid fantasy. I wondered why they were starting so early as I fell back asleep.

After waking up and getting some coffee, I saw a friend who told me that the crackhouse across the street from me had been busted at about 6am. So it probably was gunshots that I heard, and that prompted police to show up and raid the place. The lesson here is to trust your instincts, if you hear what you think is a gunshot, call 911, because someone could be lying in a pool of blood. I checked the newspaper though, and it doesn't look like there are any recent slayings on my street. So I don't feel too bad about it. I saw a detective inviewing people at the half-way house, obviously trying to figure out what the fuck happened.

Mon, 08 Aug 2005 14:47:54 GMT

http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Ibrahim_Ferrer%2C_Cuban_singer%2C_dies_at_79

this is sad, I really liked this guy.

Mon, 08 Aug 2005 01:59:25 GMT

has anyone ever had their tonsils taken out. if so, how much did it cost?