The paper I work for recently switched to a "paywall" on its website, which, in case you haven't followed all the hype about media, means you have to pay to access the articles after you've read a certain number per month. It's like the New York Times has instituted. As you can imagine, there are plenty of people upset that the paper's now charging for something that it previously offered free. There's even one commenter who's like, "I pay for internet! Why should I pay to read what's on it?" And somebody else compared the newspaper website to Netflix and said Netflix charges less, so ergo the paper is charging way too much. Here, therefore, is my rant. To get this out of the way: When you get Internet, you're paying for the conveyance of the information. You're not paying for any of the information itself. Complaining that you already pay for Internet is like complaining that you have to pay for something out of a catalog...

Upon perceiving a full sink: I hate dishes, yes I do! I hate dishes, what say you?

“I like Facebook.” “I like Blogger.” That’s nice. “Facebook’s utility for sharing whole packages of information, be it made of audio-visual elements, simply photos, or even short snippets of thoughts, is unmatched. In addition, the ease with which three or more users may interact over such elements is particularly striking.” “You speak the truth; however, Facebook hardly lends itself to short-form, well-thought-out writing that is meant to be read without distractions; and its standardization prohibits any one person or organization from developing a distinctive, memorable look. Blogger permits this, and furthermore allows any reader to, well, read and comment, which Facebook at this point restricts.” Now we’re getting somewhere. Now to fully explain my point. It seems that Facebook’s “like” button is permeating the whole world of the Internet, and this development disturbs me. Why should everything be simply “liked”? Cannot we have any concurrence or promotion, at least, if not...

I just finished watching "An Inconvenient Truth" for a class assignment. Aside from its dated material now (it was released 4 years ago, which is significant when discussing as much scientific data/conclusions as were in the film), it was... eh. I did not really care for the egotistical-feeling introductory sequence where Gore walked on stage amid clapping and cheers (and between footage of his time as a politician), or for the other sequence showing his defeat in the 2000 presidential race. Neither had anything to do with the matter at hand, since he said at the outset that climate change was not a political matter (though he said later that it was, and I'm pretty sure he meant the two statements in different ways, but still). As for the science... well, I just attended a seminar (part of the class for which I watched the movie) in which almost all of it was covered in more depth and with more up-to-date data (which Al Gore can't help, I suppose). I'm not con...

I kinda got fed up with Facebook last night, finally. It's been coming on for a while now. I read an article a couple months back about Facebook's disturbing side, and the sort of things expressed in the article--a concern about Facebook taking up more of my thoughts and time than Bible study, and the frivolity of most of the website's function--have been my own thoughts on the subject for some time now. Facebook's unique purpose, as I understand it, is to re-initiate contact with long-lost friends or friends who have moved away (or friends who didn't move away with you). And sometimes that works. But what is the main function of Facebook, practically? It's used to keep up with friends you see every other day anyway. And when you're home for the summer--the time in which it ought to serve its greatest purpose, if you intend to stay friends with your college acquaintances--instead of being somewhat useful, it degenerates into a way to waste time (i.e. t...

I wish our local newspaper had a much bigger world-news section. Then maybe I'd be learning a little more about the whole hullabaloo in Iran lately. As it seems a lot of Iranians are unhappy (to say the least!) with the elections, the Iranian government has been cracking down on information transmission... the Internet, and foreign journalists, too . (Thanks to my cousin for the link.) Eyewitnesses are reporting that fully-credentialed foreign journalists are similarly being detained all over Tehran today. The deputy head of the Ministry of Guidance just told me on the phone that other journalists have also been beaten, and that the official permissions no longer work. Also, foreign journalist visas are not being extended, so all of those people who were allowed in to cover the elections are now being forced out in the messy aftermath. Nobody is going to believe that the election wasn't rigged. Not when the government is responding like this.... Mild rant: I just want to yell...

So, apparently the students on staff at Cedarville University's student newspaper won't stand for the PR department looking over their shoulder . "...the PR department’s excessive attempt to censor Cedars necessarily violates our operating model, and the Cedars staff has thus decided to cease publication," the students write. "Review by the public relations department undermines our ability to think critically and engage culture. We grieve the loss of free expression and healthy discourse once found in your newspaper, traits that ought to characterize all vibrant institutions of higher learning." ( More over at World Blog. ) Sure, it's a private institution, and sure, it's a bunch of students who are still learning the ropes. But this is much farther than most (if not all) colleges take their privilege of reviewing the student newspaper. Especially since it's the PR department that's doing this. It smacks a lot of prior restraint (which i...

I don't really understand why anyone would have an intensely personal blog online... the journal-style ones, in which the author bares his soul for the world to see. What point or purpose could there be to dumping one's least developed thoughts and one's most ethereal dreams into a little box made of HTML? And then clicking the little "publish" button, like one's blog were a valuable autobiographical resource for some famous or controversial person? I sometimes think that the plethora of personal, journal-like blogs devalues the nature of a blog. Therefore, I keep most musing between the pages of my real-life, tangible journal, of paper and ink.

We're in a recession... worldwide... and the government decides it's time for a spending spree??!!?? On top of the last one, the bank bailout?? They're basically ruining any chance I have in the future of establishing a secure economic foundation.... of getting a good job, saving up enough to buy a house, etc. And it's not just Americans... we'll have to borrow the funds. From where? Other countries, I guess... who are just as indebted as we are, or almost. Then where else? Switzerland? They haven't got that much money... So it's going to be printed. Yay, more valueless money floating around... lessening the value of the "money" we (and countries that rely on U.S. currency) still have. This is why the gold standard ought to have been maintained. It would have kept such spendthrift politicians in check. What is this world going to do....

It's an unnecessary addition to the English language, and smart writers (not to mention the concise and comprehensible ones!) should excise it from their vocabulary. "Explain" does the same job quite nicely, thank you very much. (This word appeared twice in my media ethics textbook!! And it hurts my sense of English every time I see it!)

...I started my eleventh journal Saturday. ...Facebook chat hates me. ...It is freezing here in this library. ..."All good gifts around us are sent from heaven above." ...I am seriously considering dropping the honors program, if a certain policy changes. ...I need a new laptop sometime. ...Black Friday should be abolished as a result of the trampling deaths of shoppers. 'Nuff said.

And now for your sporadic update on the life of the ReaderSis! 1. I just went on midterm break last week... it was busy, but lovely. I love visiting my family. :-) I also love playing guitar for my church, so I did that over break too. (As part of the praise team... there are very few guitar players at church that will just look at the songs on Sunday and play them with minimal practice.) Those two things are probably what I miss most about being home. 2. I also got my hair cut over midterm break! And I love it! See, my hair has some natural curl... not too much, but just enough that I can sport a layered look and it actually looks good. I've gotten several compliments on my new haircut. And I don't have to do much with my hair in the morning. 'Swonderful. 3. I'm working on a paper now, about the bailout that Congress passed three weeks ago. It's fairly interesting. And as a result of some of my research, I'm now much more aware of the state of intern...

I don't usually read forwards. But this one directed me straight to a Snopes link (which usually will debunk a forward) so I went ahead and looked. A Tale of Two Houses Al Gore's Energy Use Now who's the conservationist...? But anyway. Yeah, he gets some energy from "green" sources. Fine. OK, he buys "carbon offsets" to do restitution for his high energy use. Well and good. But, it's completely illogical to justify high energy use by saying one is using some "green" energy with it! Why not just use the green energy in the first place? Why not use as little energy as you can, so you can spread it around, green or not? I don't think I can adequately explain this... but it just doesn't make sense to use a lot of energy when you could use less. And I'm sure, since he's already paying for this much energy, he could afford to make some changes of the sort.

Poor, poor science teacher. He has to work just so hard to get his uneducated, narrow-minded pupils to accept the fact of evolution and its undeniable proofs. All right, enough with the sarcasm. My issue (today) with the NYT is its perpetuation of evolution-as-biology when it really is basically some sort of hypothetical branch of science based on the theories of some few scientists from the mid-1800s (which even their proponents would now hardly affirm). This article betrays a couple misunderstandings which I had hoped could not have reached such "educated" folks as those who dwell in the heart of NYC. Misunderstanding number one is the idea that evolution and natural selection are one and the same. Natural selection, properly understood, is also known as "survival of the fittest": traits that are already present are naturally weeded out according to how well or how badly they help the possessing species live long and propagate (prosper, if you will). Notic...

So this op-ed summary caught my eye in this morning's NYT e-mail: "If Leona Helmsley’s $8 billion charitable bequest to dogs were only a matter of wasting her own money, no one would need to care. But she is wasting ours too. " For obvious reasons. I was thinking, "OK I knew there was some eccentric lady who left a fortune to some dogs, but is this what it sounds like? Is some dumb government agency footing the bill for a dog museum or something?" And it's nothing of the sort! It's simply that the NYT is jealous of her fortune (and doesn't think she's spending it well--but that's a different story), and the 45% of it that would be taken in taxes if it hadn't been "donated" to a "charitable" cause. According to the NYT, "The charitable deduction constitutes a subsidy from the federal government... her $8 billion donation for dogs is really a gift of $4.4 billion from her and $3.6 billion from you and me."...

Come on now, what insane interior designer decided to furnish all the library's women's bathrooms in BLUE?

Two days in a row, the New York Times has published an uncalled-for slant in their e-mail news updates. Yesterday, some dumb reviewer panned the new VeggieTales Pirates-who-don't-do-anything movie, starting with an insinuation that "...borrowing the signature word from the title of someone else’s very popular trilogy and hoping people will turn up at your film thinking that Johnny Depp is providing the voices" is a main marketing point. Doesn't this guy know that the Pirates predate anything having to do with the cinematic Jack Sparrow?? And knowing the usual quality of the VeggieTales movies, I sincerely doubt that this one's quality is merely on par with that of Saturday morning cartoons.... I mean, I've seen the cartoons they show these days! Phhht. Awful stuff, and boring. VeggieTales is certainly not that, not even as an adult (my parents enjoy them, as I still do). Then today, there's an article about five homeschooled children ( the emphas...

Remember awhile back when somebody or other (I'd guess a Constitutional scholar of some sort) suggested that it would be narrowly Constitutional for Bill Clinton to be elected the Vice-President in 2008, even though he's served two terms already as President? Or any former two-term President, for that matter - even though an untimely incapacity/death of the President would put him in a position of a third-term President, even though Amendment 22 of the Constitution forbids electing a President to a third term: "No person shall be electd to the office of the President more than twice..." Of course, it says nothing about electing a former two-term President to the office of Vice President, and then the President going postal. Third-term President by finagling. Could some guy actually sneak this by the Supreme Court, do you think? Nope. Re-read your Amendments to the Constitution, specifically the end of Amendment 12: "But no person constitutionally ineligible t...

OK, I hate bureaucracy. Mom and I spent a ton of time filling out this FAFSA thing, and the little guidebook - actually eighty pages or something - didn't mention a few things: 1. It takes at least a full day to get your PIN. Up to three. And you don't have to wait till you're ready to fill out the FAFSA to get one. SO GET ONE EARLY! 2. One of your parents had better get a PIN while you're at it, because chances are one will have to "sign" the FAFSA, and using the PIN is the fastest way. 3. PINs don't work if some of your info, or your parent's, is incorrect in either the FAFSA or your PIN application. As in, READ YOUR FAFSA PRINTOUT CAREFULLY in those parts to make sure you didn't mistype a DOB or something. 4. Live chat actually helps with the above problem, should you have made a typo and not caught it in time! So that's what kept me up till about ten-thirty (maybe eleven) whatever night it was that we filled it out....

Now this is another reason I'm not German. What is Germany thinking?? The German homeschool association wrote up the complete story of how young Melissa was taken into state custody - for being homeschooled. In summer 2004, Melissa was told that she would have to repeat the 7th grade at the Christian Ernst Gymnasium (a high school where one can obtain the Abitur, the highest German high school diploma) due to her bad grades in math and latin. The situation in the class played no small part in creating this state of affairs - the high noise levels and cancelled classes prevented her from receiving the educational assistance she needed during school hours. AND she had good grades in everything else!! But that didn't matter to the judge... neither did fairness: On the afternoon of the 1st of February, the judge of the Family Court, representatives of the Youth Welfare Office, along with fifteen police officers, marched up to the Busekros home, to haul Melissa off to the Child Psy...