December 22, 2005
WOU Jukebox
There's a really cool service available from Western Oregon University to listen to streaming music from one of the school's servers. There's a surprisingly large amount of very different music available and it sure makes work shifts go a lot more smoothly. It's easy to search for groups or songs and the list of music includes not only popular rock music but also classical, opera, jazz, and other genre's and categories. Very cool tool. Thought I'd put it up here so folks can know about it.
(DISCLAIMER: I'm a student at WOU and I also am a student worker for their University Computing Services division. I mention this in my capacity as a student, not a student worker.)
Posted by morr at 05:53 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Yay for Grades! (I can't believe I just typed that)
Got my grades back. Did better than I expected, honestly. Two B's, a B+ and an A-. Not too bad for a term where I thought I got my ass kicked.
Hopefully I can manage next term too. I've still got about a year of school left before I'm done, so I'm hoping to crank out as many required credits as possible as quickly as possible without driving myself insane. Wish me luck.
Posted by morr at 05:39 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
If they aren't going to follow the law, then why are we so worried about the law?
The Senate and the House are struggling over a compromise in the extension of the Patriot Act. What concerns me is that in light of the domestic spying scandal we're still worried about making a fair law.
The situation in our country has now publicly become one in which the Executive branch has declared war on a nebulous entity with no fronts, no battles, and no obvious conditions for "victory". On top of this the administration uses this "war" as justification for actions which are outside the purview of law.
It seems apparent that the Bush administration will do as it feels it should regardless of the legality of its actions or the context of those actions with regards to civil liberties. The "We have to fight terrorists!" battle cry has been ringing more and more hollow for years since 9/11 and now it seems to have been filled with nothing more than partisan agendas and blatantly illegal acts.
If the Bush administration is willing to go so far outside the law to achieve its own desires then why should we hope that they will act inside the law formed by the modified Patriot Act when/if it passes the Congress? What evidence do we have that the Bush administration gives one good god damn about the legality of its actions? I sincerely doubt that the status of the Patriot Act will in any way change the thought processes or actions of our current Executive Branch.
Domestic spying without judicial oversight is in direct violation of the Constitution and a great many other pieces of American legislation. The fact that Bush has the unmitigated gall to claim that his actions were taken legally is an affront to democracy and patriotic Americans throughout the nation. The further fact that he has never deigned to state exactly how his actions were legally supportable adds credence to this type of pessimism and makes any further protestations of legality hollow by default.
It saddens me that not only do we live in a country where the President can get away with such actions, but that we live in a country where the President can get away with such actions without a hint of impeachment where previously a President was nearly impeached for getting a blow job and lying about it. What the hell America? What the hell?
Posted by morr at 05:13 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
New rings around Uranus. Go ahead and giggle, you'll hurt yourself holding it in.
Today NASA has found, with the help of the Hubble telescope, that there is a second, much larger, ring system around Uranus.
I'm a pretty big space geek in the general sense so I'm always excited when we learn new things about space in general. I'm always ecstatic when we learn new things about our Solar System as this is the first chunk of space we need to deal with before any of my, um, wilder dreams have a chance of becoming a reality.
To find that Uranus has a relatively young ring system is interesting for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that it means that our Solar System is still being directly affected and modified. Sometimes I, and I think most people, tend to take the nine planets that we memorized in grade school and stick them into an absolute position. In other words, we know how things are. It's always gratifying to realize that there's a whole lot we're totally oblivious to even this close to home. It always makes me excited for what we'll find out next and when it will be good enough to make us get off our assess as a collective species and start getting some god damned work done out there.
Posted by morr at 05:01 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Criticism v Journalism - Objectivity is not only impossible, it's not always desireable either.
Today over on Websnark Eric Burns has posted a really good essay concerning objectivity in criticism and by extension objectivity in general. I recommend you go read the essay and attending comments before going any further.
What this made me think about was the growing trend in our culture to look for "fact" even when there isn't any. The media is becoming more and more an exchange of opinions. Especially in national media coverage. Less and less are the facts mattering and more and more objectivity is being abandoned for subjective beliefs. In many aspects of life this is all good and well, but when an agency purports to be objective and then does this the effect is very damaging.
The opposite is occurring too. Critics get angry at one another because they aren't being "objective" enough. My friends get angry at me for saying that the bands they like aren't any good because "That's just your subjective opinion!" to which I am forced to reply "Yeah, and it's just your subjective opinion that they're any good. So?" as if somehow the fact that it's an opinion disqualifies it from having meaning.
In any endeavor where the Truth (note the capitalized "T" for grandiose metaphysical concept) is claimed to be expounded then objectivity is an ideal to strive for. I don't believe that it can ever be achieved by an individual since we're all the products of our unique experiences, but it is still something to attempt to achieve. However when the goal of an endeavor is simply to say "Here's what I think. Here's why. I think they are good and convincing reasons." then objectivity is not only not the ideal to pursue, but claims of objectivity hurt your argument.
To claim to be objective when espousing subjective beliefs is not only a conflict of reason, but also opens up every single one of your arguments to dismissal because they can not be trusted to be facts even when stated as such and even if they really are facts.
When it comes to subjective discussion the only place for objectivity is in the analysis of the arguments. In other words if you feel that someone's supportive arguments for their thesis are weak you must deal with those arguments in a rather objective way. You can't just say "Nuhuh! Because anyone who says that is stupid!" There has to be a logical, reasonable, and founded reason that you disagree with a point or think an argument is invalid. It is only within this scope that objectivity has place in subjective discussion.
The over-emphasis on objectivity in our culture is both heartening and dismaying. It is heartening because it is good to see people striving to find the fundamental facts of issues. It is good to see people wanting to move aside the bullshit and find the Truth buried under it. However, it is dismaying when people claim that anything not objective is not only "True" but that it can not be "True". It is completely possible for a subjective position to end up being totally in line with an objective truth.
The key thing to remember is that the subjective argument is not claiming to be the objective truth. This does not mean that only objective facts can be true, but only that only objective facts can be objective facts. This sounds a bit silly to say, but it's the basic state of things.
In summary, objectivity is good when one is dealing with an objective subject. "It is raining." is a totally objective statement and an objective analysis of it (sticking your head out the door to see if it is, in fact, raining) is perfectly in place here. However the statement "The world is more beautiful when it's raining" can not be checked by a similarly objective method. And saying that the statement is "false" because it is not objective is a huge mistake. Unfortunately, this type of mistake is becoming more and more common in our society.
Posted by morr at 04:37 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 19, 2005
School v. "real life"
Just got Grades back. Two B's, one B+, and one A-. I'm a pretty happy guy right now. Just a few more terms to go and I'm all done with two degrees. Man, I hope I can make it through. Every term making myself go to class and do homework gets harder.
The issue isn't that I don't enjoy learning or that the subject matter isn't interesting. It's just that sometimes... well sometimes I just don't care what Heidegger had to say on the subject of modern technology (which is a whole different rant in itself). I just want to sleep in and play WoW. Of course, this makes me not too different from most college students I guess, but sometimes I really miss the days when I could just get up, go to work, come home, and be DONE.
I took two years off between High School and College and I'm really glad I did. I got to go out and experience a lot of life that I think I would have missed if I'd have gone straight to school. Granted some of those experiences were less than positive, but life's not just made up of happy goodness so I really don't mind too much in retrospect.
The downside to that time off is that I got to realize that the "real world" isn't really as tough as everyone makes it out to be. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that the "work a day world" is easy or anything. But people do tend to make it sound like when you get out of college you're going to have to beat people with a stick to get through life and it's just not so.
So anyhow, in some ways I miss the definate boundries between the different facets of life that the "real world" gives. School's great in a lot of ways but one thing that can get annoying to me is that every little aspect of college life bleeds into all others.
My work schedule is dictated by my class schedule which is dictated by how long I've been in school and what classes I've passed. In turn my social relationships are dictated by the combination of these two schedules as well as how much homework my profs have assigned and my friends schedules are ruled the same way. It just makes things pretty damned complicated. In the "real world" you tend to only have work dictating your schedule. Depending on age you may have kids and some people have church responsibilities to factor in, but still, those things are mostly independant of eachother and you get to choose exactly how you prioritize and arrainge those responsibilities. The fact that most people don't realize this (or at least don't act like they realize it) is largely irrelevant.
Anyhow, this is one long ramble because I was up until 3am with insomnia last night and had to be at work early this morning. So yeah.
Posted by morr at 11:14 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 15, 2005
This here be a blog...
Ok, I've found my WOU blog. Not that I expect it to turn into the wonder of the blogging world, but I'm a bit excited. I never had much luck with the Livejournal I briefly employed so hopefully this will pay off better. I'm allowed to work on my blog at work since I work for the University that hosts it as a student worker so I should find more time to get stuff entered.
Wish me luck!
Posted by morr at 10:40 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack