Monthly Archive for November, 2003

I’m not taking any chances next semester. I want a courseload that is interesting, exciting, fascinating, and all the other -ings. I’m taking courses with professors I like, in things that I’ve heard are good. I want to get back into the academic side in a big way, and this is how I’m going to do it:

• SPAN 10a-1 Beginning Spanish
  For students who have had no previous study of Spanish. A systematic presentation of the basic grammar and vocabulary of the language within the context of Hispanic culture, with focus on all five language skills: listening, speaking, reading, writing, and sociocultural awareness.
  Reasoning: I need a language, I’ve tried German twice and failed, and now it’s time for something new, different, and, since I live in an area where Spanish is a dominant language, practical.
• SOC 181a Quantitative Methods of Social Inquiry
  Introduces students to causal logic and quantitative reasoning and research. Emphasis is on conceptual understanding, not mathematical derivations, with hands-on applications using desktop computers. No statistical or mathematical background is necessary.
  Reasoning: I need to fulfill the quantitative reasoning requirement, I don’t want every class to be reading-intensive, and this one is supposed to be fairly easy and fun.
• PHIL 22a Philosophy of Law
  Examines the nature of criminal responsibility, causation in the law, negligence and liability, omission and the duty to rescue, and the nature and limits of law. Also, is the law more or less like chess or poker, cooking recipes, or the Ten Commandments?
  Reasoning: Teuber rocks and I loved Intro. Philosophy with him, and this class won’t be offered again while I’m at Brandeis.
• LGLS 150a Cyberlaw
  Examines how legal practices expand and restrain the digital revolution, how legal authority itself is challenged by the Internet, forcing new strategies of response, and how social/political forces shape legal policy on copyright, privacy, harassment, libel, and free speech.
  Reasoning: This class’s syllabus is similar to what I did at UCI, in a class that I loved, the guest professor has lots of hands-on experience with internet legal bodies, and this class fulfills like three requirements at once. Score!
• JOUR 125b Journalism of Crisis
  Analyzes the practice of journalism during times of crisis. Topics include the process of news gathering in a breaking news environment, the framing of news as it occurs, and the often conflicting agendas of the journalist and the actor involved in a crisis.
  Reasoning: Socolow cares so much about his subject that his enthusiasm can be contagious, and I like journalism. However, if I end up finding a summer program that fulfills all the rest of my journalism requirements, I might drop this one in favor of finishing another requirement. We’ll see…I’d really like to take another Socolow class, but then again, I’d also like to take Jerry Cohen’s violence class.

“You have a dollar bill? Take it out, look at the back. The seal, the pyramid, it’s unfinished. With the eye of God looking over it and the words annuit coeptis. “He, God, favors our undertaking.” The seal is meant to be unfinished, because this country is meant to be unfinished. We are meant to keep doing better, we’re meant to keep discussing and debating.”

Steven Aftergood is the director of the Federation of American Scientists’ Project on Government Secrecy, and basically what he does all day is look through government documents and web sites, request information under the Freedom of Information Act, and other such acts of what we in this modern age for some reason call unpatriotic activites, or acts of civil disobedience. Basically, he protests government’s love of secrecy by getting as much information online as possible. Government agencies have the nasty habit of classifying previously open documents or yanking things from publically accessible locations that they consider sensitive for whatever reason. Anything that is remotely controversial or potentially the least bit embarassing is removed, as is a lot of other stuff for no readily apparent reason. Aftergood (great last name) simply republishes things that were in the public domain and mysteriously disappeared, with the intention, not of comparmising government secrecy or hurting America, but of making sure that as much information is available for review by the citizenry as possible. His views mirror mine — that information is like oxygen, crucial for life, and that the more information we have, the more informed we can be, and the better decisions we can make:

“What’s important is not access to one particular document or another,” he said. “What’s important is the deliberative process and the health of American democracy when you impede access. Mundane information is the oxygen that permits public participation in political life.”

Here’s a Wash Post article and here’s his website.

Apparently the problem resulted from several factors. While the random crashing every day or two has remained unresolved, it may have had to do with the hard drive, which eventually crashed. It was simple coincidence, or at least a seperate set of circumstances, that caused the crashing every few minutes with the new hard drive. The new Debian install’s hotplug and discover components conflicted with the motherboard’s USB controller. Disabiling those two modules and just putting in the correct modules for mouse, etc. manually fixed the problem. Hooray!!!

Wow, Jonah of Assyria is real?!?!