The Idle Meanderings of an Amateur Writer

A new direction

2010-03-27T21:42:00.000-07:00

Howdy folks! I'm shutting this blog down. I've moved my blog on over to http://www.grathwohl.me! I finally bought myself some webspace (3.95/mo @ www.justhost.com!!!) and decided to host my blog over there along with other things. I'm going to be getting around adding my pictures there, resume, and other stuff I choose.

formspring.me

2010-01-19T09:32:00.001-08:00

Ask me anything http://formspring.me/grathwohl

The King of Pop has passed...

2009-06-25T21:59:00.000-07:00

No other single person or band in the world except The Beatles have been able to sell out stadiums for concerts minutes after the tickets went on sale.

Michael Jackson was a great man. World renowned musician, humanitarian, philanthropist, inspiration. Throughout his life he was never left out of the spotlight due to his talent and, unfortunately, his odd tastes in his personal life. What cannot be denied is that the man, the legend, had such a broad influence on music that is rivaled by only just a few. His influence crosses genres, tastes, national, ethnic, and racial boundaries. He was truly The King of Pop. And sadly, our King is now dead. Will there be anyone to rise up and satisfactorily take his place?

Anyone who has heard Michael Jackson's music, any of it, likes at least one song of his. This is an irrefutable fact. The man's music is just that good. World wide. WORLD. WIDE.

Whether you judge him based on his personal life or not, slandering and libeling him is just not right. The man was happy and at peace writing and performing music. The public inevitably dug too deep into him and drove him insane from the perpetual spotlight in his face. It broke his heart that the people that once adored and praised him had turned around, sneered at him, and fed him to the proverbial lions' den. He was preparing for a comeback tour but it proved just too much for him by wanting to put on the perfect set of shows. Maybe Michael died of a broken heart? Perhaps, perhaps not. Either way, this is a sad day in music across the whole world.

The end of an era is here and the state of music is in question. Good night, sweet prince. May you dance your way into the green fields of peace and happiness.

P.S. The icing on this crappy cake is that Creed is getting back together for a new album and tour.

Something old...

2009-04-08T04:13:00.000-07:00

So, I was cleaning out my old LJ account when I stumbled upon probably my only good post I made on there. It's a bit idealistic and my changing has changed a bit but I think it's stilla good write. Enjoy!

Truly unifying the world in a peaceful way is possible, we just have to take the examples set out in history and combine them with modern government. (Reposted from my Facebook)

Disclaimer: If you do not understand that this is only a theory I came up with based off of history, government, failing foreign relations and aid and will cover a lot of controversial territory. However, I do appreciate ideas and criticisms, just keep your replies civil in tone.

Touching on the failing foreign relations and aid, I'm going to reference war-torn nations like Darfur, Ethiopia and pretty much the entire Middle East. These nations have been entrenched in civil wars resulting in genocide, ethnic cleansing, killing in the name of a religion, and many other factors. These nations have been warring for decades if not centuries. The original reasons for some of the fighting is long forgotten, other times it's because a group of militants is wanting to seize power any way he/she can. The foreign aid we send to these kinds of countries often does not go to the people who truly need the help, ends up helping the wrong people, or just disappears. Why try to help nations like these that can't or won't willingly accept help from other nations? Even if it is the responsibility of the strong to protect the weak, if our efforts are futile why should we waste our precious resources in that futility? I say we just let them kill each other off and see who the victor is. After wars like that are done, only then can we sweep in and help out. People that believe talking and negotiations is the only way to true, lasting peace are naive. While that is my preferred method to reach peace, some nations won't bow down to that and need a push with a threat of all out war.

By taking the methods of how the Roman Empire (pre-Christianity) conquered a chunk of the known world at its time, we could create a largely peaceful world government. We, being the strongest nation, have the power, allies, and governmental structure to do so. The countries we conquer would lose nothing of their ethnic, religious, and regional uniqueness. We would simply move in, cultures would assimilate on both sides and a common language set. If a country did not want to peacefully join, one would hope just the threat of war would throw them into peace negotiations. This would bolster both the ruling government and the nation's trade and economic infrastructure. It would be win/win for both.

The democratic structure of the United States is pure genius when you analyze how it's broken down. It could truly work on a worldwide scale. Each nation would in essence be like what states are now with laws, elections, and governmental structure. There would be a vast senate in what would be he federal/national arm of the government so there would be equal representation for each nation. There would be no more United Nations because how they work well, they don't. The Electoral College would be wiped from the board for elections and a new, better system would be put in place to accommodate such a large voting body. The separation of powers between branches of government would remain intact and so would the checks and balances, but with improvements again to accommodate such a vast body.

This isn't a grand scheme for the U.S.'s world domination through war. There can be no truly lasting peace with a nation unified through fighting. There has to be reason and peaceful methods tried first before force is used. If those peaceful methods are futile, war is the only way. You can't repeatedly sanction a nation into peace or do the equivalent of shaking a stick at it to bring peace. Action would be the only effective answer.

I am not proposing a utopia. I firmly believe that it is impossible for humans to live in a true utopia. I am proposing a unifying governmental structure to bring about a lasting peace between nations that will bolster international trade and economies. If a state (calling them that for this system) has the resources to build infrastructure and have the things it needs, there is no reason for it to fight against or commit violent acts against other states. Especially those nations providing it with those resources. There would be no "foreign" dependencies because each state would be a part of the name nation and sharing resources.

The United States hasn't had a civil war in well over a hundred years. This, I believe, can largely come from the fact that we moved from an agriculture-based society to an industry-based society. We beat out the dissidents who thought to break the country apart through force as it was the only way.

One of the biggest flaws in a system like this is unavoidable in any political system and to complain about it is completely and utterly unintelligent. The issue of leaders. I believe that having a singular leader for a system like this would be a downfall and would create the downfall of it very quickly. The biggest reason Rome fell was because a single, crazy, warmongering leader was put in place. Had that not happened, we just might all be speaking Latin and not English.

The Executive Branch would consist of not just the cabinet of the group of leaders, but an odd numbered group of people. A sort of council but not a legislative body.

The Judicial Branch would be nearly the same as the Judicial Branch of the U.S.

The Legislative Branch would work the same our the U.S.'s as well.

This kind of setup would trickle down to states as well. We would see essentially the same setup we already have now but on a global scale.

Right now I don't think this could work. The world nor the politicians of the world are not ready for this. They are too centered on themselves and their own personal welfare rather than thinking about unity on a global scale. Peace on this scale is not attainable with the current state of affairs and I'm guessing probably won't be in the next 50-60 years. Though when the world is ready for it, this would be an effective way to go about it or at least a decent model.

Minor Tweaks, Twitter, and upcoming articles

2009-04-01T03:25:00.000-07:00

So, it's been a while since I posted. I've been pretty depressed about various things lately and just been very uninspired to really write much of anything. I've been ever so slowly digging myself out of the hole I'm in but it's tough. I do have a draft setup right now with a bunch of links and I'm still digging for more accurate and unbiased sources. The subject is a very seemingly taboo subject - police-related fatalities of the unjustified variety. It's a subject I find interesting and intriguing since there's a lot of seemingly hidden buddy-buddy things going on with the police as of late and a lot of unjustified killings going on. The numbers in Las Vegas alone have nearly quadrupled in the last 3 years. There's more to come but I'm still working on it.

Moving on...

I've changed a couple things on my sidebar. Namely, I've finally started using my Twitter account. I've had it since August 2007 and have barely used it since. It's kind of funny, most people I know either haven't heard of Twitter or only heard about it within the last few months. It makes me feel like a huge nerd for knowing about it for so long and having an account with something that most people using it have only been using it for a short while. So, if you want to follow me on Twitter just hit the button and send a notification to me so I can allow you to receive my updates. I have it secured because it's still a form of social networking and I don't want people knowing that I'm posting an update while I'm taking a poo or something. I also don't want Twitter spam. Click here to go to my Twitter page, too.

I also switched the IM button to Pidgin's since I've been using that over Trillian since the current free Trillian sucks and doesn't connect to Facebook chat. Pidgin is an free, open source multi-protocol IM client. I use it to connect to AIM, MSN, Yahoo!, GTalk, Facebook, ICQ, and MySpace IM. Yeah, that's a lot of chat protocols but I've made friends over the years that only use one and not a bunch. I'm considering changing my AIM name simply because I've had it since about 1999 and it's due for a change (ShenLong1983 haha!) to something a bit more...professional or closer to the me of now. However, I'm at a loss as to what to change it to beyond my name.

Now, I've been using the Windows 7 Public Beta Microsoft released back in Mid-January and I have to say, I'm fairly impressed. I'll be writing a nice article about it soon with all of my thoughts and screenshots. I'm thinking of adding video using fraps to capture the screen and my voice to show off some of the features that I've found particularly useful to improve the overall user experience. And I'll talk about some of the things that I don't like so much and some problems I've had along the way.

Until next time!

How I See Obama's Victory and How It Will Affect America

2008-11-11T13:14:00.001-08:00

After some thinking, listening, watching, reading and what have you about what I and many others did on November 4th, I felt compelled to write my thoughts once again.

President-elect Obama represents a lot of things. He brings about feelings of hope, feelings of elation, feelings of reassurance, notions of unity, and a myriad of other great things.

With the election of Obama, my hope and faith in the American public and government has been slightly rejuvenated. Especially with the Democrats gaining a filibuster-proof House and Senate. I can't really explain why but I have the highest expectations out of the incoming presidential administration. I really want to stray away form using the word "change" since it's been way over-used this year but I really see America going a new, different, and positive direction under the leadership of Obama.

In the last eight years we've seen tremendous acts of violence, wars, economic downturns (and heading towards a depression), unemployment skyrocketing, education getting the axe across the nation, and seeing a black man elected to the highest position one can hold in this country. Whether you see his victory as a great achievement of race or you see it as the American people coming together and saying "enough is enough," doesn't matter because this man has brought the biggest and best thing this country needed: hope.

Hope really brings a mixed set of emotions to the table when you think about it. For me, it brings happiness, sadness, disappointment, joy, anger, and surprise (in a good way). Call me a cynic, but even with the highest hopes there's always room for failure.

I really don't see the failure because I'm really positive about this guy. Unlike past and present candidates, he seems like the genuine article. Obama is probably the most inspirational and best public speaker I've seen in a very long time. His ability to instill this hope into people has not been seen from a politician in decades.

I truly believe in the policies he'll work to get put into motion. Naysay socialism all you like, but what this country needs a little bit more of is some socialism to help repair the nation. Screw spending billions of dollars on a never-ending war. Screw spending billions of dollars on weapons and military. I'd like to see most, if not all, of that money going towards social progress in America. Making the schools better and more caught up technologically, ensuring everyone access to proper medical care whether they pay for it from a private insurer or are given it through a national program, making it easier for people to become citizens of this country instead of measures preventing them from doing so, helping rural areas gain access to broadband Internet, making public transit a thing to be proud and easy to access for all, breaking down the control corporations have over our country, and whatever else I can't think of off the top of my head.

I know Obama hasn't mentioned much of some of those above but his policies will pave the way for them. We've seen that the trickle down economics just don't work and benefit only the top 5% or so of the country. Isn't most of this country sitting smack dab in the middle class or working poor? That doesn't help this country at all.

Whether redistributing the wealth means actually giving people money or giving more access to jobs/opportunity will be an economic boon for the entire country, not just the top 5% who don't put nearly as much into the economy and government as the bottom 95%. There is absolutely no reason people at the top can't give a helping hand to the people crawling and scraping just to get by. Wait, they didn't earn it or work for it so they don't deserve it? Sure, they didn't but don't they deserve an equal opportunity to get off the ground and take care of themselves or their family? Wait, that's downright un-Capitalistic! That's socialist! Glory be to socialism if having more policies that are remotely socialist in our government and daily lives.

I've never understood the stigma of socialism being mixed into our country. It's not bad. Look at social security, look at welfare, look at food stamps, look at medicare/medicaid, look at WIC, and other social programs. Yes, they have people that are exploiting them but on a larger and more important scale they benefit a lot of people who would otherwise be destitute. Some of them could use some heavy reform, I won't ignore that, but on a large scale they're very effective and good for the people who are on them. The stigma that anyone on those programs is a lazy, free-loading slob that has no place in normal society is downright wrong and unfair. Many families work very hard and benefit a lot from these programs and without them they would be in a very bad spot in life, especially their children.

So, I really think that Obama's policies and the doorways they will open will benefit everyone in our country, bottom to top. However, if he or his policies fail it will the another note in the history books. I really don't see them failing though.

Addendum: It's been pointed out to me that for the good ol' United States of America to even stay in the United Nations, we'd have to maintain socialist programs like social security, welfare, and workers' unions. Also, Wal-Mart's business tactics can get us kicked out of the UN because they do not allow workers to form unions.

Mac vs PC: Hardware and Software

2007-07-17T15:17:00.000-07:00

I hate to sound like a Mac fanboy but, you really get what you pay for with computers these days. If you look at similar desktop and laptop PC solutions, you're going to save maybe a couple hundred dollars and have sub-par hardware that doesn't perform as well with the software and possibly uglier. Sometimes you'll end up spending exactly the same amount or more for the same hardware and still have a drop in performance because the software you're going to be using isn't tuned with the hardware like you get in a Mac.

Windows is meant for a broader spectrum of pieces and parts while Macs have their set of hardware and that's it. Mac OS X is pretty much tuned with the hardware it works on whether it's the PowerPC or Intel builds of it.

Macs are top of the line, they're not the bargain basement computers with a couple hundred dollar rebates you see at Best Buy and shit. They won't end up crapping out on you (usually) right out of warranty. They're solid and they look good. They also come with all the bells and whistles.

People put focus way too much on the hardware of their PCs when the driving force behind what makes a computer good or bad is the software running on that computer. I've been a Windows user since before a lot of people knew what the internet was. But as it has been shown, the more hardware that's available, the more road blocks can be ran into. And Windows having to support said hardware creates a road block for itself. It has to deal with drivers from manufacturers who put out crappy, buggy drivers and some who put out good ones. But you'll, more often than not, have to mix the shitty drivers and the good drivers and thus creating system instability at the lower levels of Windows.

Also, did I mention that the operating system upgrades (10.1, 2, etc.) have only costed about $130 each time? These aren't upgrade only disks, it's the full shebang. You get a (mostly) rock-solid UNIX-based OS that looks good, runs fast and smooth on the hardware, and has something for everyone whether you're a newbie to Macs or an advanced user who uses the terminal.

For me, the hardware has had nothing to do with my wonderful experience with OS X so far (although that 2GB of memory helps a lot). It's all been the software. I haven't had to worry about a system tune-up interrupting gameplay and bogging my computer down to hell because the software can't operate with the hardware properly (dual core) to take advantage of its capabilities. I haven't had to worry about nearly anything yet. And the next version of OS X is going to be stepping up hardware interaction in Leopard with not only being dual core but also 64-bit at no extra cost to the operating system unlike Windows where you'll pay an inordinate amount more just to get the 64-bit OS and THEN you have to deal with driver issues all to hell.

Let's face it, computers these days are moving closer and closer to an all-around market. That being not just being younger people who've been using computers since they were kids. Older people use them as well and OEMs are moving to 64-bit and dual core chips yet the software isn't taking advantage of those two main features of the chip. Sure, a 64-bit processor runs 32-bit apps a bit faster and some applications do take advantage of that other core, yet most software is neither multi-threaded or 64-bit. The Windows market will have to shift completely for it to get the 64-bit and dual core support.

The Mac market won't have to shift so much as they've been using multi-core processors for some time now. With the recent addition of the Core 2 Duo, they've added 64-bit the the feature list. Leopard will be a 64-bit OS and I'm assuming there won't be a Leopard 32-bit and a Leopard 64-bit like there are with Windows. And there won't be the pile-up driver issues with this shift to 64-bit (for those with the Core 2 Duos like me). I'm also thinking there won't be a problem with using the 32-bit apps in the 64-bit OS.

The Windows market can learn something from this but Microsoft, OEMs and hardware manufacturers won't start putting out solid 64-bit drivers for their devices because a large chunk of the market is still on 32-bit hardware and software. And instead of being proactive on making the switch, Microsoft trying to get people's money for the 64-bit OS. If the 64-bit OS costs $100 more than the 32-bit version and the driver support is crappy, what would drive a consumer to buy it? I know I wouldn't. I don't want to deal with shoddy driver support and emptying my wallet a little more for an OS that won't even work with my hardware.

You can have the best computer hardware out there and be all smug about it. But if the software you're using is crap and doesn't work well with your hardware, you can keep to your LAN parties and get fat on Cheetos while I laugh at you. I have a great operating system, good software, good hardware, good hardware-software interaction and it looks and works great.

The Mac Gaming Debate

Shut up about this, thanks. While Macs would be great gaming platforms, the majority of Mac users (from what I have seen and assume) aren't really into hardcore gaming. And if they are, a lot of the big titles are actually on Mac. WoW, Quake 4, any Blizzard game, a lot of Lucas Arts games, and a lot more. Look them up. Some of the regular model Apples may not do all the bells and whistles for the best look, but they do play and they play well. I'm getting 10 more frames per second in WoW on my MacBook than I did on my Windows laptop's ATI Radeon Xpress 1100 w/ 128MB shared RAM. Just so you know, the Intel GMA 950 chipset only does 64MB shared. I can't explain it, maybe there's just less overhead in OS X? Anyways, I didn't buy a Mac to hardcore game as I do not do that. I didn't do that on Windows either.

Just like the hardcore gaming scene is a niche market, so is the Mac market. It has the potential to be a lot more for everyone, especially since OS X is a simple OS to use.

I got published!

2007-07-10T08:04:00.000-07:00

As expected, my Darfur article got published. Not to say that I knew or had high expectations of it getting published, but I'd been told by Gary Thompson and Nolan Dalla that it was "very well done" and "stunningly good" respectively and knew Nolan was going to send it out to his media contacts.

But where it got published first was totally unexpected! So far it's gotten published in two places. I can't express in words how excited I am about this.

My Darfur Article on MSNBC!
and
My Darfur Article on The Hendon Mob
and
My Darfur Article on PokerAllStar

Can you believe it? MSNBC is where I got published for the first time that wasn't Concord's newspaper!

Coming up soon: The Chronicles of Tim Huber as observed by ~~Justin Grathwohl~~ the WSOP PR Interns. It'll be a story about love, fame, fortune, and stupidity. I'm sure anyone who's met me recently has also probably met Tim as well and know what he's like. It will be a good, funny story and at his expense. Nothing will be made up and it will all be unbelievable fact! Don't miss out on The Chronicles of Tim Huber as observed by ~~Justin Grathwohl~~ the WSOP PR Interns!

In other news, I finally got myself a swank new Black MacBook from Apple. Features 1GB of DDR2 667MHz memory, DVD Super Drive, 2.16GHz Intel Core 2 Cuo, 160GB hard drive and all the other standard goodies. It's so pretty. I think this is the most satisfying computer purchase I've ever made. It only cost me $900! Thank you craigslist! What this also means is that I'm selling my Windows-based PC. Here's the specifics if anyone is interested:

Acer Aspire 5100 $600

GENUINE Windows Vista Home Premium
Microsoft Office 2007 Blue Edition (downloaded from MSDN)
1.6GHz AMD Turion64 X2 (dual core) mobile processor
8x DVD burner (DVD-R/W, DVD+R/W, dual layer)
100GB Hard drive (partitioned into two drives)
1GB of DDR2 667MHz RAM (maximum of 4GB DDR2 667MHz RAM)
ATI Radeon Xpress 1100 (128MB shared graphics memory)
15.4" screen; super bright and clear
Built-in WiFi 802.11b/g
Built-in webcam and microphone (webcam is super clear and looks good)
5-in-1 memory card reader (SD, MMC, Sony MemoryStick, SDHC, and xD)
Power adapter included (duh)
90-day trial of Windows Live OneCare installed for anti-virus/spyware protection and firewall
Windows Vista Home Premium, Acer Drivers and Software, and Microsoft Office 2007 disks come with the laptop.

If you're interested, leave a comment or you can e-mail me.

Until next time! Same bat channel, same bat time!

Who's Paying Attention? The Crisis in Darfur

2007-07-06T17:46:00.000-07:00

In a day and age when the broadcast and cable media are reporting on the misdeeds and slip ups of celebrities, some might begin to wonder exactly what is and isn’t newsworthy. What these channels hope to gain in ratings with this “entertainment news,” where hours upon hours are focused on famous people, they lose in newsworthy stories from around the world; stories that it seems the American public does not want to be informed about. In particular, one major story going on in a small place called Darfur in Africa.

Sure, everyone has heard people mumble a few words here and there about this crisis, yet where is the media coverage? Where is the around the clock coverage for something vastly more important than a rich girl’s drunk driving record or a pseudo-celebrity dying from a drug overdose? It is non-existent. Thousands of people are dying, yet the media can’t find anything better to talk about than celebrities and their wild hijinks.

First off, it’s a safe assumption to say that most people have almost no clue where Darfur is beyond the fact that it’s in Africa somewhere. As the picture above illustrates, Darfur is the western region in Sudan which is located in north-eastern Africa below Egypt and next to Ethiopia. This is an area that’s been in constant, bloody turmoil for decades with civil wars and other kinds of in-fighting.

Next, a little background on what is being called a “humanitarian crisis” in Darfur is needed. It is another safe assumption to say that people are vaguely informed on the conflict in Darfur, if at all. It is being called a “humanitarian crisis” because over 200,000 people have died and over two million are displaced refugees sitting along the border of Chad. Yet, the numbers of an actual death count cannot be confirmed due to the entire country being on lockdown. With that situation, no one from the United Nations or neighboring countries can get in to help and get a real look at the situation.

In 2003, the government of Sudan sent out what they called “self-defense militias” to Darfur in response to a rebel group attacking Sudanese government targets. The rebel groups claimed that the government was ignoring and oppressing non-Arab civilians and did not care about the civilians dying from disease and starvation.

A group in Sudan called the Janjaweed also started attacking and raping Darfur civilians soon after the government sent in the militias. The Sudan government has thus far admitted no link to the Janjaweed and the genocide they are committing.

The Janjaweed are a militant group in Sudan that are said to be anti-black African and refugees state that they are performing an ethnic cleansing in Darfur. This includes not just armed civilians, but unarmed women, children, sickly, and old.

While the U.N. has stated that through their investigations that the motives for genocide are not present but that war crimes are being committed. However, reports from refugees say that the Janjaweed come in and slaughter civilians after attacks from the government.

The Sudanese government has promised that they will disarm the Janjaweed, but it is obvious that it has not happened and probably won’t. The Sudanese government has been very resistant to any kind of threats from the U.S., U.K., or the U.N. regarding international sanctions and resolutions.

There have been attempts to create ceasefires, disarmaments and integration of the various rebel groups in Sudan but each one did not receive 100% support from all the groups involved in the peace deals. U.N. peacekeeper forces have also been suggested and tried to be implemented but to no avail.

With the failures of outside influences and the Sudanese government outright ignoring them as well, the Sudanese government has outright launched several attacks on civilians in the Darfur region. Despite there being formal peace deals being signed by Sudan’s president Omar Hassan al-Bashir, hostilities have yet to stop.

Among all the dead bodies and displaced people, the refugee camps are still not a safe place for them. There have been several reports that women walking out of the camps are beaten and raped by militants and even the forces assigned to protect these camps are not safe.

Throughout all of these horrible events people from around the world have tried to raise awareness and funds for the people of Darfur. As evidenced previously, their efforts have been only marginally successful.

The humanitarian aid that is being raised around the world can only be speculated as to who or where it is truly going to. The main thing that seems to be happening with a lot of the charity events is to raise awareness and hope that the money is going to the places it needs to go.

However, at this year’s World Series of Poker there will be a major event targeted towards raising awareness and funds for Darfur, called “Ante Up For Africa.” With a $5,000 buy-in no-limit hold‘em and a star-studded line-up of poker pros and celebrities, they hope to reach an audience thus far untapped and very likely unaware of the crisis in Darfur. Not only will this event bring attention, but potentially even more than just the money raised during the tournament.

The Ante Up For Africa event will be a step up from a lot of the fundraising and awareness drives that have been hosted by the many charities and organizations aimed at Darfur -- especially considering the amount of media coverage the event will attract. It is hoped that some of the cameras that focus their lenses on the stars, will reflect that attention to the real crisis at hand.

In the end, one can only hope that the money raised and the awareness generated will be driven directly toward the people who need it in Darfur and not the government officials and black market. Hopefully, this will be the beginning of a new, effective endeavor to stop the killing. It is time for poker and poker players to step up and do their part.

Dell + Ubuntu = ???

2007-05-25T02:44:00.000-07:00

Every morning when I wake up, I open up Firefox and it brings me to my iGoogle homepage. I spent about 30 minutes to and hour reading the latest headlines from the BBC, Google News, Slashdot, MSNBC, CNN, and Fox News.

I've been following the story and rumors of Dell providing desktops and notebooks with Linux on them for quite some time now and have been thinking about how I feel about it.

Well, I feel really good about it. With a major OEM supporting Ubuntu it will be a very short while until other manufacturers follow suit and at least start putting out better drivers (closed source or open source, doesn't matter to me). This, in my opinion, will be the beginning of the biggest boon Linux has seen since the 2.6 kernel.

When a major player like Dell steps up like it has, it will only be a short time until they start releasing drivers publicly for people to download for their older Dells that people have chosen to install Ubuntu on and even newer models. After the next couple quarters and seeing how well these sell or don't sell will make or break Linux's marketability as ready for the home consumer market.

The people that want to see Linux grow and actually bring some competition to the operating system market should understand that even with closed source drivers supporting the hardware, 99.9% of the consumers out there won't give a damn about that. They'll worry about if it runs just as well as Windows did or better. And if they can do all the same things they do on a day to day basis as they did on Windows. That's what this new offering from Dell is going to do. It's going to promote this leap to creating better system compatibility backwards and forwards so people can use their systems with Linux or Windows or both.

Dell is taking a huge risk in doing this. For it to be at least marginally successful they will have to make ads and commercials supporting their Linux systems over their Windows systems. They can already offer the systems at a cheaper rate. The E1505N starts at $599 while the E1505 starts out at $699, easily a marketing tool for laptops.

I believe the future on this is still very clouded since it was just launched May 24th. Once advertising begins (if it begins) we'll see how it pans out. I have high hopes for this because I'd like to see Linux at least being thought about by the mass market. I also believe Ubuntu to be the best flavor of Linux I've ever used (Gentoo, Slackware, Red Hat, Mandrake, Mandriva, SourceMage, and many others) because it often Just Works right after installation and you have almost everything at your fingertips and if not, you have Synaptic right there to give you what you need.

Say what you will, but Dell offering Ubuntu is anything but bad for Linux. If one OEM can get behind Linux, what's stopping other OEMs from getting behind it later on if it works out for Dell?

A little while later with Vista

2007-05-25T02:01:00.000-07:00

So, those who've read my previous posts may be wondering how Vista is working out for me after loading all those applications and daily use of my laptop. Well let me tell you, it's great.

While Vista is a bit more resource intensive than previous versions and other OSes (Linux, Mac OS, *BSD) it utilizes those resources that it's keeping to itself rather well. I rarely, if ever, have any kind of inconvenient slow downs or bogging of the system unless there is actually something using up the system like virus scans, WoW, AIM (6.1 has this weird flaw that it'll lock up and hog some serioues resources), or anything else disk and CPU intensive just like any other OS.

Lately I've been hearing a lot of complaints from other people who've had a bit less luck with Vista than I have. However, they can rarely provide anything substantial to argue against Vista other than pointing out slow hardware/software manufacturer support and that M$/Microsuck produces a product full of security holes and a bloated OS. I'm going to take a second to refute those points, because that's all it takes.

1) Hardware and software manufacturers have been slow on the uptake because well, Vista hit retail only a few months ago and I'm willing to bet there's some neat, new and better ways in which Vista interacts with your hardware.

2) If Vista is horrible, how come it's sold 40+ million licenses since it was officially launched (source)? I'd assume this includes OEMs that offered the Express Upgrade, business licenses, and people who bought the retail versions.

3) Sure, Vista takes a bit better of a machine to run and Linux can run on a PII 200MHz. But honestly, are you going to be as productive or have as much fun on that old P2 200 or on that blazing fast computer running Vista?

4) Vista is a NEW operating system. Of course there's going to be bugs and security holes. They don't design it that way. When you're the largest operating system manufacturer in the world, there's going to be people with chips on their shoulders or people willing to exploit your products. That's why holes are found in such large numbers for Windows. Linux and Mac don't have the same problem (albeit there are similar ones) because no one cares since they won't have the same large scale reaction as they would with Windows. Seriously, when was the last time you heard a virus, malware, adware, spyware outbreak problem on Linux? It isn't because it's a secure operating system, it's because the dagnasties behind those operations don't give a damn about Linux users because they have to work 100x harder to exploit it (no documentation for exploits and such). People have a vendetta against Windows therefore they find ways to exploit it and give that info to others. That's what eventaully (hopefully) creates a security fix. I'm sure if Linux or Mac were as popular as Windows, you'd see the same problems being found.

5) Windows is genuinely a good product. It dominated the market because it was good. It's become a household tool because it's good and people are familiar with it. An edge Linux cannot say it has.

6) Like Vista, Linux also requires specific hardware to run best on or you're going to be running into compatibility issues and driver issues (usually none available). Don't get your panties in a bind over this. Linux has been getting better about this but it still lacks solid 3D drivers for ATI and Nvidia cards. Same with wireless, been getting better but they just don't have it all there yet.

7) Upgrading your PC every couple years isn't bad practice to keep it running in good shape if you're on a desktop. Laptop users can generally upgrade their RAM and hard drive pretty easily, but you're screwed for video. And Vista still runs without Aero, so you can still get the goodness of Vista with a subpar video card, just not ALL the goodness.

8) I'd thought to mention backwards compatibility but with most applications written in the last five years for XP working on Vista, I don't think it really needs to be mentioned except that the compatibility layer works like 1000x better than XP's did.

9) It Just Works, and smoothly. By default your computer is scheduled to undergo various maintenance operations. This is amplified when you install and use the Windows Live OneCare (which I plan to buy a year's subscription soon) which also tunes up everything for better performance.

10) Manufacturer support has been speeding up significantly and you should see drivers coming for Vista fairly quickly now except for maybe that 10 year old Parallel port scanner you're using. There's backwards and legacy compatibility then there's asking for the ridiculous.

Seriously, those who slam and bash Vista actually need to use it longer than 5 minutes to see the UAC pop up asking them to delete a shortcut on the desktop. If you don't like that disable it. It's not hard to navigate around the user interface.

Quit your whining. If your current computer can't run Vista, either upgrade or keeping using the very solid XP you're using. If you're not using Windows, keep using what you want to use. Microsoft isn't making decisions for you. They're providing a service to consumers and it's been proven time and again that consumers like Windows despite some of the problems it may have. Microsoft caters to the masses, not the individual. Asking them to cater to your whims and needs is unreasonable and ridiculous.

The shining path of a clean install

2007-05-13T07:21:00.000-07:00

With my finals over and the school year wrapping up, I decided I have a little bit of time on my hands this weekend to do a clean install of Windows Vista Home Premium.

Now, it didn't take long at all for Vista to install. The clean install actually went a lot faster than the upgrade did. It took ~45min to install and take me to the desktop. Right now, I'm using IE7 (shudder) on this clean system. But, some may be wondering "but why Justin? Why did you do a clean install instead of stick with the upgraded system?"

Well, to answer that question is quite simple. As many know, upgrading from one Windows version to another always leaves the new Windows version with some artifacts of the old and various performance issues even with constant maintainance.

Frankly, due to performance issues (re: previous post about disk cleanup and defrag) I decided to do this clean install. I felt I wasn't getting every ounce of performance my system could get with Vista. It's really that simple.

Now, let's get to the details of the clean install process.

First of all, booting from the DVD was nice. Instead of the DOS-like installer XP and 2000 used this one uses a nice, new graphical installer similar to what you get after you install the base windows system in 2000/XP.

After choosing to do a clean install (upgrade choice was disabled as it displayed in text in the window), it brought me to the "select disk" menu. The options to format, delete, make new, and extend are no there by default but getting them is as simple as clicking blue, underlined text under the dialog box. I of course chose to format the first partition on the disk, which is my primary for Windows. It does a quick format (<1min) and I was off to the next step.

I was prompted to enter my License Key, which I did. I left the option to automatically activate when I'm online checked because I have a genuince copy of Windows and I'm not worried about that.

The install process went by surprisingly quick. I'm used to setting aside about an hour and a half for Windows to fully install. This doesn't include installing all the software I use day-to-day because that is a whole other, time-demanding process. Approximately 45min later it was done installing and I was brought to the initial Windows setup. Create a user, password, and all that jazz.

The part that surprised me the most was that after creating the login, it automatically jumped to the performance check. I don't know exactly what it was doing but I'm assuming it was checking what features to turn on/off and optimizing various things.

The picture to the left is the desktop as of me opening up IE7 and the "Snip Tool," which allows you to screen capture selectively or the entire screen. I had done nothing to alter the system in any way.

I've opened up Windows Update and there are 19 total updates for me to download.

For your knowledge, the software that I will be installing as soon as Windows Update is finished are:

Firefox 2.0
Thunderbird 2.0
OpenOffice.org w/ Java
Windows Live OneCare 90-day Trial
ATI Catalyst Drivers 7.4 w/ Mobility Modder for Vista
Wacom Tablet Drivers 5.03-3
VLC Media Player 0.8.6b (cuts through DRM)
DVD Shrink 3.2
Vegas Video 7.0d
Trillian 3.1.5.1
Picasa2
Photoshop CS2
Magic Workstation 0.94f w/ Magic: The Gathering Database
Notepad++
Joost
Google Talk
AIM 6.1 w/ AIM Ad Hack 5.43
Windows Live Messenger
Yahoo Messenger
Combined Community Codec Pack
FeedForAll
iTunes 7
Adobe Reader 8 w/ Reader Speedup
Skype
World of Warcraft
Notebook Hardware Control
Quark Express 7.2
7-zip
SmartFTP
Virtual PC 2007
w.blogger 4.00
Foobar2000 0.9.4.2
IrfanView 3.99 w/ plug-ins
Hello
Nero 7.8.5.0
DVD Decrypter 3.5.4.0
Yod'm3D
TeamSpeak 2
Ventrilo

That should cover pretty much all the software I'm going to start installing as soon as I install all the updates for Vista from Microsoft. I'll make an updated post with how everything works on a clean install.

Update: So, I've installed everything on that list and it all works. I was finished a few hours ago, but I got sucked into updating WoW and playing a bit. Yeah, I had zero problems patching WoW because I disabled that pesky UAC. However, I couldn't get quark to install because I'm not on XP, even trying to run the setup.exe through the Windows XP SP2 Compatibility layer. I expect this problem to reslve itself once I get myself a copy of Quark 7.2 QuarkXpress 7.2 is working fine and dandy now. Adobe Read Speedup did not want to install at all. Again, everything was fine and working as it should.

My system is running a lot more smoothly than it was when I upgraded from MCE.

My adventure to Windows Vista Home Premium

2007-05-09T07:27:00.000-07:00

Thanks to my buying a new laptop in January I was able to get in on Acer's Express Upgrade program to get a free copy of Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit version. Note, this isn't just an upgrade disk. It will let you install a clean version of Home Premium and the disk is also bootable.

So far, it hasn't been too terrible. Due to the laptop being "Vista Capable" and coming with Windows Media Center Edition 2005 already installed, upgrading to Vista wasn't a horrible process. My laptop is an Acer Aspire 5100-5022, the specs can be found here - which is where I also bought it. It cost me $740 when I bought it and I think I got a pretty good deal at the time. Especially considering the free upgrade to Vista Home Premium. The newer model of the Aspire 5100 laptop (5100-5033) does come with that as well and is down to roughly the same price I paid for mine in January. It features all the same hardware except 20 more gigabytes of hard drive storage space.

The only snag I ran into was I had to disable specific hardware to get it to install fully. The first time I tried to go for the upgrade the sound card, modem, and built-in webcam had re-installed themselves after the restart the Acer Upgrade Kit DVD did. This created some unforseen, at the time, consequences later on in the upgrade process. During the final step to upgrading the old drivers which had been uninstalled and then reinstalled due to the Windows XP driver cache, caused an infinite loop error thus BSODing the last step of the upgrade process and having to start over. Though, it wasn't hard to deduce the problem so all I had to do was to disable those three components completely in the Windows Device Manager. Not something your typical user will know how to do.

After disabling those components, the upgrade process went smoothly and need very little action from me beyond me choosing to do an upgrade or a clean install and inputting my license key. The complete upgrade process took about and hour and a half to gather information, copy the compressed archive files, decompress those archives, install and finalize the installation.

Post-installation my system was running pretty decently. As Home Premium includes Aero, I thought I'd see some graphical slow downs but to my surprise there were none. Aero works smoothly and quite flawlessly. I really like this new UI Microsoft implemented. It's no match for OS X but it's pretty close. The sidebar is much like the Google Desktop sidebar but uses less memory and integrates into the UI fairly nicely. My only gripe is that it can't slide in and out like the Google Desktop sidebar. Configuring it with new RSS feeds and new gadgets is fairly easy and something I recommend. The RSS feeds the sidebar uses are directly related to the ones inside of Internet Explorer 7. Adding a new feed is as simple as subscribing to it in IE7. To remove a feed you just go into IE7's RSS feed side window (Ctrl+Shift+J) and delete what you want.

I also found that 100% of the software I used day-to-day on Windows MCE worked fine under Vista (after getting updates for Vista, which was easy). I have yet to have any of the documented problems people are having with World of Warcraft on Vista.

One of the things I noticed that needed to be done quite immediately post-install was Windows Update. There were about 14 important updates to the OS which also included some updates for Microsoft Office 2003. There were also several driver updates and some optional updates. It's been two days since I installed and I've installed 14 important updates, 8 recommended updates, and 4 optional updates.

I also noticed that my filesystem and disk access time had gone up significantly. So I decided to do a Disk Cleanup of my main drive (C:). I have to say that doing this is nearly as important as doing the Windows Update. I cleared out about 2.5GB of junk from the upgrade process. Another nifty feature I saw was that by default Vista has all hard disks (partitions or physical) set to defragment on a weekly schedule. Being that I wanted to fix recover disk performance I went ahead and did a defrag. After the defrag performance went through the roof in relation to what it was immediately after the upgrade.

After doing that I adjusted the power settings. On a laptop power savings are very important if you're on battery. I was very pleased to find out that my favorite power management tool (Acer's Empowering Technology software sucks up resources and quite frankly, it blows) Notebook Hardware Control had released a new update that included Vista functionality. I uninstalled Acer's resource hungry power management suite and installed NHC.

If there's on thing I'm really liking about Vista it's the power management features. You can choose what it does when it's plugged in and when it's on battery, not one setting for all the time. By default, Vista has the same settings for when you're plugged in and when you're on battery. This means that your screen will turn off after 5min of idle time and your hard disk will turn off after 20min of idle time. As someone who tends to step away from his laptop while it's plugged in for sometimes in excess of 20min, this was an annoyance as minor as it may be. It slowed down time it took for everything to come back up when I came back. I know it isn't the best practice in terms of heat but it slowed everything down a lot up to 10min after "waking up." After adjusting everything to my preferences in NHC and Vista's own power management settings, I thought I was done with post-install configuration.

However, I was wrong. The UAC (User Access Control) was constantly around. It wouldn't let me run NHC without permission. Now, initially this wasn't that big of a deal. But after a few hours the nagging for permission whenever I wanted to move, delete or do something that might remotely be an administrative action got to me. Due to upgrading, my account retained its administrative rights. Which is actually something I appreciate. Since I'm the only user of my laptop I don't really have a security to issue when it comes to a lot of things. I'm also a power user and I tend to like to have complete control instead of being told I can't do something due to my access privileges. Although, you'll know when you'll be prompted for a UAC window because the buttons and labels that would require them have the Windows Security Center icon next to them. But in the end I decided to disable the UAC because I was just tired of the minor annoyances. This is a fairly simple process and shouldn't really warrant any Googling.

That's another thing I like about Vista's setup: everything is simple to find. If a setting or setting window is related to the one you're currently in it'll have links on the left side of the window to those settings as well. So finding things is fairly simple.

After that, I went out looking for updated drivers for some of my hardware. Specifically ATi chip since the Acer Upgrade DVD only installed an old ATi driver and no Catalyst Control Center. Every other new hardware driver was already installed with Windows Update.

After getting everything configured, I decided to find the updates for any programs that weren't working under Vista. This was a whole of two programs: iTunes and NHC. Getting iTunes to work properly just meant reinstalling the current version and NHC had released the update. Everything else I used day-to-day was working perfectly: Firefox, Thunderbird, World of Warcraft, Trillian, Google Talk, Google Desktop, Avira AntiVir, Picasa, and Photoshop CS2. The only hindrance I ran into for one of my near daily programs was Quark Express 7.0 Passport Edition. I had to set the executable (.exe) to run under the Windows XP SP2 compatibility layer, which is as simple as opening the file's properties. After that it worked like it should. As of this writing, I was going to download the Quark Express 7.2 update that includes Vista functionality. But I was presented with this on the update page:

"Attention Windows users:Due to technical issues, the QuarkXPress 7.2 Updater for Windows customers is temporarily unavailable. Quark is working to resolve this issue as soon as possible, and in the meantime you can workaround the problem if you wish by reinstalling QuarkXPress using the 7.2 installer as described here."

A little disconcerting but until it's available the workaround will suit me fine.

So far, all of the peripherals I've hooked up to my laptop have worked fine, if not better than they did in Windows MCE. Hooking up my Wacom Graphire 3 was the most intriguing experience I've had in Windows since moving from Windows 3.11 to Windows 95. Plugging it in and installing the latest Windows drivers brought up the Windows Tablet PC Input bar which hangs hidden at the bottom right of my screen. This is a neat keyboard tablet interface and writing pad for handwriting recognition. I haven't yet fully explored all the features of this but I expect it to be pretty neat. the feature that sounds the most interetsing is the "pen flicks" feature.

All in all, I'm really liking Vista as a whole and can't really complain a whole lot especially considering I got a $150 piece of software for free. I'm not complaining about the fact that I have a 64-bit processor and got 32-bit software. Your average consumer doesn't know the difference and the OEMs would have a harder time charging lower prices and making 64-bit drivers for consumers. Frankly, I'm glad that the upgrade process went as smoothly as it did. I look forward to seeing Vista take off and have more support from hardware and software manufacturers.

Faculty Senate votes ‘no confidence’ in three vice presidents (News)

2007-05-02T12:06:00.000-07:00

The Faculty Senate is deliberating the motion for a vote of confidence regarding Concord University’s Vice Presidents.

After the motion was presented in the Faculty Senate floor, some faculty members started trying to rally more support for this action by approaching SGA President, Sean Noland.

The unnamed faculty members Noland told about asked for the Student Senate to vote in support of the Faculty Senate’s motion for a vote of confidence.

As Dr. Charles Brichford explained, what happens with a vote of confidence is if the deliberating body votes a majority of “yes” to the motion, it shows confidence in the entity that they want to show support or no support. And if the majority vote is “no” it shows no confidence and that it is urged that the entity in question be replaced. These kinds of motions are usually aimed at replacing chiefs, presidents or anyone in the position of highest authority.

Noland said that he believes that the reason these faculty members approached him was to show the administration a united faculty/student front, maybe to show the administration that they do need some kind of change and that it is the opinion of both the faculty and students to see it.

However, with the typical student’s lack of knowledge of what exactly goes on behind the scenes of the administration, it would be a huge fault of the Student Senate to take any kind of stance on this, Brichford explained.

Noland also echoed Brichford’s sentiments “It would be adverse for the Senate if this was voted down,” Noland said. “The Student Senate should stay out in its best interest.”

He went on to explain that if the vote went either way, it could damage the Student Government Association’s relationship with the faculty or the administration and that is not something the SGA needs to sacrifice right now.

He mentioned that there are other ways to go around this issue that haven’t been used and that the SGA isn’t at the point for a vote like this. What ways those are he did not state.

Brichford said that while it is a “bad idea to get an opinion from the Student Senate” this should still be a subject of “vital interest for students.” He said that this would not affect the student body initially.

A motion like this coming from the Faculty Senate shows discontent among the faculty and should make students wonder, “What is going on to cause this discontent?” Brichford said that what the intentions and what the motion will achieve are unclear to him.

Thursday, April 26, the Faculty Senate moved to a vote on four of the University’s Vice Presidents. According to the official minutes of the Faculty Senate the vote went as follows:

Vice President for Business and Finance Jim Cannon received fifty-one “No” votes and six “Yes” votes. Nine abstentions were made.

Vice President for Admissions and Financial Aid Michael Curry received forty-four “No” votes and six “Yes” votes. Sixteen abstentions were made.

Vice President for Student Affairs John David Smith received eight “No” votes and forty-eight “Yes” votes. Nine abstentions were made.

Perhaps the closest vote was for Vice President and Academic Dean, Dean Turner with only a six-vote margin. He received thirty-one “No” votes and twenty-five “Yes” votes. Ten abstentions were made.

Cannon, Curry, and Turner received votes of “No Confidence” and Smith received a vote of “Confidence.”

What will happen after this remains to be seen. Perhaps a more cohesive relationship between the faculty and administration will arise thus benefiting students later on, or maybe not. Either way, it would be beneficial for students to keep a vested interest in this matter.

Correction: It is the Concord University General Faculty, not the Faculty Senate.

Presidential “pro-temp” resolution sent to committee (News)

2007-05-02T12:05:00.000-07:00

With a new position being proposed in the Student Government Association comes passive aggression and controversy. This has already happened with the resolution 04182007A, which creates (or was going to create) the new Legislative position “President Pro Tempore.”

This position would be a significant boon to bringing more power over to the Legislative side of the SGA from the Executive Board.

One of the major shifts of power the resolution proposes is taking seemingly major responsibilities of the Vice President. The major ones being the coordinator of all standing committees and “[to] serve as ex-officio member of all the committees and commissions of the Student Senate…” This position will also be elected by the Senate directly in a fair election with no bumbling election committee to gum up the works.

During Wednesday April 28’s SGA meeting the SGA Affairs committee proposed a motion to defer the resolution to the committee. What the committee’s motivations were to bring it into the committee are unknown except to the committee because reasoning was not given during discussion or during the committee report.

Buck Skeen, the creator of the resolution and advocate for bringing power back to the Legislative body, said this about the deferment, “[The resolution] will probably die in the committee.”

While it is important for the executive council/board/etc. to have a certain amount of power and responsibility, it is also important that the Legislative body have powers and responsibilities of its own and having a system of check and balances to even things out. Right now, with very little representation vested into the Legislative body the scale is tipped more into the favor of the executive board.

However, it seems certain members and future members of the executive board want to keep the Legislative body as powerless and have as little representation as possible. While never explicitly stated out loud, certainly some of the implications of the actions taken by some of these people make intentions clear.

On the other hand, the people that matter most (the students) are apathetic to what the SGA does. From an outside perspective, it just seems like petty squabbling for who can do what. But it cannot be stressed how important more representation for the students is. Having someone who is in a position of assumed prestige and is willing to stand up and fight for the students and be an actual member of the Student Senate is a lot more than being just being an organization representative or a Senator.

It may be the end of the year but SGA still works and functions during the summer months with ideas, resolutions, and policies being created often. While the last SGA business meeting is this week, next year’s first meetings will be interesting ones and should be looked forward to by anyone who is interested in the student side of the inner workings of the university.

TV survey (News)

2007-04-25T12:08:00.000-07:00

Soon, very soon the time will come when control of the on-campus television channels will once again fall into student hands!

The SGA Technology Committee is preparing a survey for students that will be used to get an idea on what channels should be available on the campus television. It will be deployed on ELLIE (http://ellie.concord.edu) for all students to access. However, at this time it is unclear if it will appear before or at the end of this semester or if it will be printed out and handed out to all returning, on-campus students in the Fall semester at check-in.

The survey will bring new channels to the floor like SciFi, BBC, and many others if students so choose.

How the channels are chosen is through a package selection from DirecTV. Each package includes several channels and a cost of that package per outlet.

For more information about the TV survey contact Lonnie Bowe, Chair of the SGA Technology Committee or Rick Dillon, Director of Housing. The Technology Committee meets every Tuesday afternoon at 4 p.m. and Rick Dillon can be found at the Housing Office in Sarvay Hall.

"How I Learned to Drive" hits Concord theatre April 25-28 (Arts & Entertainment)

2007-04-25T12:07:00.000-07:00

The play “How I Learned to Drive” by Paula Vogel is chock full of everything a good play should have and some things some wouldn’t think a good play would have. It’s full of humor, sex, and some dark issues.

The play pans out in a series of events starting with a monologue from the main character only known as Li’l Bit. It goes from when Li’l bit is 17 about to enter college and bounces from her apparent present age of a full grown to even younger ages, as young as 11 years old. The story takes place mainly during the 60s when Li’l Bit is a teen.

I was lucky enough to be allowed to sit through a half-cue, half-lighting rehearsal to observe the play. The play runs about an hour and forty minutes and does not have an intermission. However, despite this long run time with no intermission it isn’t a hindrance to the audience at all. The play itself is double cast, meaning that each night the cast alternates. Whoever played lead roles the night before plays the supporting cast the next. This should add a bit of diversity to the play itself and will definitely lead to multiple attendances from show goers.

The story itself is captivating not in just seeing the growth of the relationship between Li’l Bit and her Uncle Peck but also seeing the interaction from other family members. To me this relationship was a bit awkward but very well played by the cast I saw.

I will warn you, this play is not for those who find stories about pedophilia and incest squeamish. However, this still shouldn’t be a deterrent. While this relationship is pretty much in your face the entire play, it isn’t over emphasized to the point of grotesqueness. There is also some coarse language and obviously some adult situations (sans nudity), so this is definitely not for kids.

Despite all of the above that may drive some viewers away, the play itself is very well put together and played out. Again, some of the themes while being taboo only enrich the story. You can practically feel the tension when Uncle Peck goes to see Li’l Bit on her eighteenth birthday. I’m quite anxious to see this production with both casts.

This play is comprised of theatre majors from all six of the theatre majors, which according to Dr. Gambill is the first time that’s ever happened for a play here at Concord.

The correct times that the play will be debuting are Wednesday April 25^th and continue to be played through to the 28^th at 8 p.m. in the Paul Theatre in the Fine Arts Building. Tickets will be available from the box office starting at 6 p.m. the night of a play and you must make reservations for them. You must make a reservation before 7:30 p.m. and it can be picked up anytime before 8 p.m. when the play starts.

300 gives reviewer healthy, manly feel (Arts & Entertainment)

2007-04-18T12:10:00.000-07:00

To sum up this movie in a nutshell it’d be “this is the manliest movie ever.” With all the action and violence you’ll walk out of the theater with a beard and a new crop of chest hair despite what your gender may be.

However, going into this movie expecting a deep, intertwined story is a huge mistake. This movie does not require one, it’s that awesome.

The movie is based off of Frank Miller’s graphic novel (comic book to some) “300” and reflects heavily on it. Some may point out historical inaccuracies but since the movie isn’t based on history but a graphic novel and it has characters with giant blades for arms, it’s pretty easy to get past those inaccuracies.

When the trailers came out it became an instant favorite of many internet communities and was quoted massively. Even more so since it’s been out for a couple weeks. Places like 4chan.org were particularly enthusiastic about taking various images from 300 and putting in alternate text for a good laugh.

The movie is simply action-packed. There is a small bit of story but the entirety of the movie revolves around the battle of Thermopylae and how it started from the Spartan perspective. After hearing a line like “This is Sparta!” and a kick to the chest of a Persian emissary, one will be amped for the rest of the movie.

The use of slow motion in the movie would sometimes be seen as over used but it illustrates very well the heightened senses of Spartan warriors in battle. It also creates some intense fight scenes and delivers each time.

When stepping out the movie theater for the first time, I wanted to go get in a brawl and take home a woman. That’s the simplest way to say it. The same thing happened the second time I saw it in the theater. The group of guys I was with and I all screamed in the parking lot as well. You’ll definitely feel the intensity of the movie afterwards.

This is probably one if the single best movies in 2007 yet and it’ll be very hard to really top it in the sense of entertainment and best visuals.

Speaking of visuals, the use of colors, contrast and overall lighting were phenomenal! While most of the movie was done with CG graphics, it is very hard to tell most of the time. If you’re familiar with the techniques that were used in “Sin City”, it’s the exact same thing. Mostly green screen and CG effects. It looks great.

And the entire movie is complete eye candy for the ladies since every single male character is donned in a leather speedo and is ripped. So, ladies if awesome battle scenes and action aren’t your bag you can just stare at the man candy on screen.

While the story of the movie isn’t very deep and involved, the overall experience of the movie more than makes up for that fact. If I were some uppity, pretentious critic I’d still be giving this movie a bazillion thumbs up and a gazillion stars of approval. This movie really is that good. It’s totally worth the $7.50 to go see it in theaters.

Clarke Buehling to perform April 24 (Arts & Entertainment)

2007-04-18T12:09:00.000-07:00

Clarke Buehling is quite literally an international sensation in the musical arts. Touring all over the U.S. and Europe, he performs a unique style of banjo playing hailing from the 19^th century. He performs as a solo artist and with his band The Skirtlifters.

Musical talent isn’t his only skill; he has been making his own gourd banjos since 1984 but only takes them as custom orders.

He is largely famous for his older style of banjo playing using old sheet music from the 1800s and old rags and jigs from their eras. He’s played this style of music all over the world in places like England and the Netherlands. He has also played at many folk concerts, colleges and festivals around the nation. He plays and teaches the violin, mandolin and guitar, as well.

He’ll be playing in M-105 in the Fine Arts building Tuesday April 24, 2007 at 7 p.m.

Differences between Center for Academic Technologies, Computer Center explained (Features)

2007-04-11T12:11:00.001-07:00

In an interview with Tim Barnes, Director of the Center for Academic Technologies and he explained the difference between the CAT and the Computer Center and the various tasks that the CAT handles.

The main burning question that students seem to want to be answered is “what does the CAT do?” Well, the answer is really quite simple says Barnes, “it’s administrative versus academic.” Put another way, Barnes explained it as a matter who you would report to for something to get fixed. If when someone reports to get something fixed, in regards to technology, they report to a division head (math, science, English, etc.) the people that would show up to fix everything would be from the CAT. However, if they report to a department head (financial aid, registrar, etc.) the people that’d show up would be from the Computer Center.

All of the computer labs on Concord’s campus are maintained by the CAT. Whether it be the Geology labs over in he science building or the Mac lab over in the Fine Arts building, it’s the CAT who keeps them working. They also maintain the networks and computers in the academic buildings. Barnes also noted that 90% of the technology assets on campus are academic related.

The CAT also handles some non-academic items like maintaining the A/C computer systems, taking care of the campus police systems, administering the financial software for the Concord Foundation, maintaining the Alumni website, and maintaining various servers around campus.

The CAT’s staff also teaches many workshops to faculty, staff and students. Many communication arts students are pretty familiar with the CAT area below the library because that’s where a couple of their workshops take place and many of their technology related classes are taught. Barnes himself teaches a video podcasting class available as a 400G class for comm. arts majors. But where they really shine when it comes to educating people is the workshops they hold during the summer for faculty and staff.

Barnes explained that the CAT teaches workshops on productivity tools, how to use technology classrooms, WebCT, learning objectives, and familiarization of new software. All of this is offered free of charge to faculty and staff. He noted that it’s usually more staff than faculty that shows up, usually the faculties’ secretaries.

If you’re interested in seeing the CAT and the technologies present there, it is located under the library on the left side, accessible by elevator or door. The radio station, genetics lab and WMLT studio are located down there as well.

Concord linked to National Student Clearing House (Features)

2007-04-11T12:11:00.000-07:00

A couple weeks ago it was reported that the registrar’s office did not have a link to the National Student Clearinghouse (NSC), but now they do! But most readers are probably wondering “what’s it matter to me?” Well, that’s what this article is for!

It may not be clear what the NSC is to some, so here’s an explanation. The National Student Clearinghouse is a central database that links all of the federal and private loan lenders. The database holds all the information of a student’s enrollment status, estimated graduation date (which can be changed), and other information pertaining to your loans and school information. This seems a bit scary privacy wise, but it’s built to benefit student, educational institution and lenders to keep an easy, open line of communication. And if there’s one thing this campus desperately needs it’s more open communication.

This comes after what seemed like a long, pain-staking process to get this implemented by the Computer Center, as reported before. This is a welcome addition to campus technology because it will benefit the campus in the present and future.

Before this link was up many alumni, students graduating and even current students were having trouble with their loan companies trying to make them start paying while they were in school. Take my friend Patrick Frazier for example, after he graduated from Concord loan companies had already started demanding payment. From what he reported to me, the loan companies had his graduation date 6 months before he actually graduated. Who’s to say if that’s a mistake in the registrar’s office or the loan company just misfiling updated papers? Who knows and it’s all been sorted out.

Now, with this new link up with the NSC something like that will never happen again and no longer will be students need to send in an in-school deferment document to the NSC.

It’s really hard not to stress just how important of a step towards a more efficient bureaucracy this is. While many people have a hatred of bureaucracy, when it works properly like one would hope this will it works well and benefits everyone involved. More efficiency is very good for Concord, let’s jut hope other departments will step up to the plate as well. Less hassle for everyone each semester should be a goal we all work toward.

Concord/Bluefield Alpha Chi hosts teleconference (Features)

2007-04-11T12:10:00.000-07:00

Last week on April 3rd Concord and Bluefield College’s chapters of Alpha Chi hosted a teleconference between the Center for Academic Integrity and the Executive Director of the Alpha Chi Honor Society. In this teleconference they discussed issues regarding academic integrity and academic dishonesty.

This panel of people included student and faculty representatives from Concord University and Bluefield College. It also included representatives from the Center for Academic Integrity (CAI) at Duke University and from the National Alpha Chi office at Harding University. The representatives were: Dr. Dennis Organ - Executive Director of Alpha Chi, Mr. Timothy Dodd - Executive Director of the Center for Academic Integrity, Dr. Rob Merritt - Virginia Kappa chapter Sponsor, Michelle Stubbs - a student from Bluefield College and Kappa member, Dr. Daniel Anderson - Professor of Business at Bluefield College, Dr. Stephen D. Rowe - West Virginia Beta chapter sponsor, Ms. Corrie Mckee - Concord University student and Beta member, and Dr. James white - Associate Professor of Political Science at Concord University.

The entire teleconference was paid for by a chapter grant from Alpha Chi and was setup by Steve Meadows of the Center for Academic Technologies here at Concord. It was the first teleconference between the respective parties and went over with very few problems.

In 2004 the Association of College Honor Societies decided that its national theme would be academic integrity and many societies adopted this as their theme. According to Organ, Alpha Chi has adopted the theme for a 2-3 year period. The goal is to educate not only students in academic integrity but teachers as well.

Two questions were asked to the panel and they were “what level of honesty should be expected of students who submit written academic assignments, and what consequences should there be for proven dishonesty?” And “what level of honesty should be expected of faculty and administrators who publish professionally, and what are or should be the consequences for proven dishonesty?” The questions were asked in several round about ways and had input not just from the teachers but also.

During the discussion of the student Michelle Stubbs said, “...[we] give our instructors the benefit of being honest…[which] allows [students] to be able to build better relationships with instructors.” Which is true; as an unwritten rule, students do not bother to think that their instructor is going to be truthful about what they say about policies and rules regarding academic integrity and dishonesty.

Shortly after, Dodd said, “...[students recognize] how important it is to display the highest standards of integrity” in a place where academic integrity is discussed. He went on to say no matter the educational institution where academic integrity is discussed that, “expectations shouldn’t be different.”

Dodd also described the state of academic integrity and dishonesty policies as being “...buried in student handbooks and most students usually don’t spend their free hours reading it.” So that leaves many students ignorant of the policies their school may or may not have.

Dodd also firmly stated his opinion about the faculty needing to go farther than outlining what academic dishonesty and integrity is in their syllabus. He believes they need to go farther and spend a segment talking about it to the class so that students understand what can happen if they are caught.

White had a similar perspective, though harsher, as Stubbs’s stating, “we faculty are a lot to blame.” His comment was in regard to the CAI’s website about faculty not enforcing standing policies of their institution. White also regarded Turnitin.com as an invaluable tool for teachers to head-off plagiarism and other attempts (known or unknown) at academic dishonesty.

The panel concluded that academic dishonesty consequences often fall to the professor instead of going with what is stated in the school’s policies because that leaves a student vulnerable and not able to defend themselves. Dodd stated that he believes an appeals process is essential in cases of academic dishonesty.

If you would like to see the entire teleconference you can acquire a free DVD copy by talking to Dr. Rowe in the library. His office is located at the back of library on the right just before the writing lab in the back.

Restuarant Review: Kimono Japanese Seafood & Steak House (Student Life)

2007-04-04T12:12:00.000-07:00

Kimono Japanese Seafood and Steak House is not your typical Asian food restaurant that you’d find in Southern West Virginia. While not being particularly cheap, you’ll get more than what you pay for in food and entertainment.

When walking into Kimono you will see some of the standard and traditional decorations of any Japanese steak house as well as seeing the occasional pillar of flame from one of the grills surrounded by a group of people. However, if a reservation was not made in advance you just might be waiting for a few minutes for a grill to open up unless you are there for the sushi bar. While there, it was about a ten minute wait until a grill was available since we didn’t make a reservation. All in all, not a bad wait time for a restaurant that was packed.

Not only do they have their popular hibachi grills, they also have a sushi bar and your typical sit-down style dining. The selection for each area is very diverse and seems quite tasty.

Unlike many restaurants here in America, when you are seated at a grill, you are not the only ones there unless you have a group of about ten people. If not, then you’ll be seated with others to fill the space around the grill. This is a traditional Japanese setup for socializing and practicality. If you want to miss out on the fun of seeing your food prepared for you and don’t like talking to others, you do have the option sit at your own table.

The service was nearly spot on, but at the time I was there they were very busy and I’m sure many of the servers were getting very tired. However, the timing of the appetizers was very quick. It took the actual chef a few minutes to get to our table due to the volume of customers but once there he immediately showed his flare with a pillar of controlled flame. He performed well with only a few mistakes in his show.

The food itself was amazing. As is traditional, it started off with a light soup with bits of mushroom and chicken in it followed by a salad with some amazing ginger salad dressing on it. After those comes freshly cooked fried rice and vegetables. Lastly comes the cooked meat of your choice ranging from chicken to filet mignon and salmon to scallops. Now, this isn’t some meager portioned restaurant. You will get a large plate full of food that will fill you up and possibly send you home with leftovers.

While the food and the service are wonderful, the price isn’t at a level most college students could afford on a daily basis. The hibachi meals range from $11.95 to $26.94 per person. However, as far as hibachi grill prices go that’s pretty average. But in the end you wind up getting more than what you will pay for not just in food but in the great time you had while there. This would be a great place for any kind of special treat, a date due to the relaxed atmosphere, or say meeting your significant other’s relatives.

As of printing, Kimono does not yet have a liquor license. They are expecting to get it in early April.

To call and make a reservation the number is 304-487-8008, which I highly recommend to save you and whoever you may be with time.

Corrections and update!

2007-04-02T12:13:00.000-07:00

Last week I published the article about Fiancial Aid and the registrar's office and I'd like to add some updated information about the registar's office.

Quoting from my article:

"[Carolyn Cox] had told me that in late 2005 they were supposed to get a link setup with the National Student Loan Clearing House and was told it’d only take a few days to setup. However, they (being the computer center or the CAT) never set it up and have yet to do so as they’ve been in “testing stages” since last spring."

It is actually up to the Computer Center to deal with all technologies in all non-academic departments and offices. So this was the fault of the Computer Center. Thanks to Steve Meadows in the C.A.T. for clarifying that for me.

Today, a student wide e-mail was sent out from the registrar's office stating the following:

"The Registrar's Office is pleased to announce to the students of Concord University that we are officially members of the National Student Clearinghouse. Membership in the NSC will benefit students by eliminating the need to complete paper deferments and verifications of enrollment for student loans. Lendors will contact the NSC directly for confirmation of enrollment status."

This comes not even a week after my article is published.

One Concord University student's tale of woes: Departments not sharing information (Opinions)

2007-03-28T12:13:00.000-07:00

One would think that with this school being a university that it’d be a little more sophisticated in the ways of working together both locally with each other and with national networks and databases. However, that is largely not the case.

Like many students here at Concord I receive financial aid. Each semester I dig myself a deeper hole into debt all in the name of education. And each semester I, like many, have to deal with the Financial Aid Department. Sometimes this is an easy and pleasant process, but more often than not it is a huge burden on any student wanting to get anything done in a reasonable amount of time.

Each semester whether you want to or not a student is going to have to deal with the Financial Aid Department. And most often when a student goes in they’re going to have to wait at least five or ten minutes. The waiting even happens when there is no one else waiting! It’s nearly as bad as sitting in a doctor’s waiting room. Once the blue moon rises, you’ll be able to maybe get something done.

Often when one goes in you’re met with a seemingly cheery secretary that one can smell their loathing of you from a mile away no matter what your problem may or may not be.

If you’re lucky, you’ll be able to work with Lisa Spencer in the Financial Aid Department because she seems to be the most competent and easy to work with staff member in the department.

A huge show of incompetence is when offices lose your paperwork. Paperwork done months ago and thought to be taken care of. True, sometimes the paperwork isn’t actually done but most often it is. Losing people’s paperwork should never be a problem on the scale that it is here at Concord. The Financial Aid department is notorious for doing this. Remember last year when many FAFSAs had been lost? Well not all of those lost FAFSAs were due to a computer problem at the national Department of Education. A few people this writer knows had to completely redo their FAFSA as well as all of the bits of paperwork that goes along with receiving financial aid. Sometimes they had to do the paperwork twice because they were told it wasn’t done right. I’m sure many of those reading this have had their own problems with this department in one shape or another.

However, when you leave the office, you’re often met with more paperwork than you started with, sometimes new or sometimes old, and have more running around to an office in the Administration building to either the Registrar’s office or the Business office. These offices often have many problems keeping up with each other and for no good reasons.

What’s keeping the Financial Aid Department and other departments from sharing information and making a student’s beginning of the semester just a little less of a hassle? A lack of systems integration and cooperation from the people in charge of technology for the various departments are the problems. This is an on-going problem that shows just how purely lazy some administrators are.

My above statement isn’t just baseless conjecture. Last semester I had to send in a paper form for an in-school deferment of my loans. The reason for this is Concord’s Registrar’s office, or any other office or department, isn’t hooked up to the National Student Loan Clearing House. At pretty much any other university this would never have to happen but due to laziness and incompetence, it is still a large problem not just for currently enrolled students but alumni as well. How do I know this you may wonder? Well, from previous experience of not having to do this at another school and from talking to the registrar herself, Carolyn Cox.

She had told me that in late 2005 they were supposed to get a link setup with the National Student Loan Clearing House and was told it’d only take a few days to setup. However, they (being the computer center or the CAT) never set it up and have yet to do so as they’ve been in “testing stages” since last spring.

If that isn’t a huge show of laziness and incompetence, I don’t know what is. That link is an essential setup for any school. But due to its lacking presence, some students are forced to send in a deferment request so that they don’t have to pay off loans while in school. Sure, it’s a minor inconvenience but in the mean time you’re being called by loan companies and/or collection agencies. This isn’t something students should have to deal with at least until they’ve been out of school for more than 6 months.

Also, this isn’t just an administration problem of information sharing. It goes also from the administration to the faculty and even to the students themselves. Many new students have almost no idea what to do when they get here. Do not know the trials and tribulations they have to go through. There isn’t a standard checklist of things to do or even a glimmer of advice for new students unless they’ve befriended some older students who’ve been through it all. But what are administrators, faculty members and students going to do about it to get this fixed? It has been shown that trying to work together just isn’t possible for some odd reason. We need to come together as a whole (parents, students, faculty, and administrators alike) and demand that these problems be fixed. Not just for the present but also for the future success of Concord!

Edit: I was told by Steven Williams of the CAT that it is actually the Computer Center behind the National Student Loan Clearing House fiasco.

A Smoke Free campus is a bad idea (Opinions)

2007-02-28T12:14:00.000-08:00

My opinion requires a small preface. I am not a smoker. I don't smoke sometimes, I don't smoke when I drink and I pretty much don't smoke anything. However, most of my friends are smokers and I don't have any problems with smokers in general. But for some reason a lot of whiny people getting their panties in a knot about having to deal with minuscule amounts of cigarette smoke in the open air.

It's a generally accepted fact that cigarette smoke and more specifically carbon monoxide, can give you cancer later down the road. It isn't a guaranteed thing though.

Now, one can argue that it only takes a small, seemingly insignificant amount of carcinogens to help you on the road to cancer. I firmly accept that carcinogens are a quick way to getting cancer but a minuscule amount from a cigarette in the open air isn't going to effect you much, if at all. You breathe in more carbon monoxide walking from campus to the CVS than you do walking behind a smoker from outside Subway to the Administration building.

There's a reason why there hasn't been any studies on cancer resulting from cigarette smoke inhalation in the open air: it's the most idiotic study to ever do. There are so many factors in the open air that are bad for you that it'd be nearly impossible to say what did what. Just like those truth.org people, it's easy to manipulate the numbers in your favor with a study like that.

Another complaint anti-smoker people have is that smokers “crowd” doorways. This is in fact, false. The smokers are a community and have created several social places that they almost always smoke at. If you are too lazy to walk the extra few feet to dodge the “torrents” of smoke, you deserve a little bit of carbon monoxide to the face. The places where smokers tend to hang out and smoke are pretty obvious and I'll outline them for you right here. You can find smokers outside the main entrance of the Student Center on the ground floor, outside the second floor, the back entrance to the Theatre department, outside the Social Sciences (farthest entrance to the Administration building before the Science building) wing entrance, outside North Towers lobby entrance, sometimes outside the secondary ground floor entrance to the Student Center, Wooddell lobby entrance, and pretty much any other place you see an ashtray. Now that you know where some of the main smoking places are, you can avoid them with ease and stop complaining.

And another thing, smoking in the residence halls should never be banned. One could throw out the argument of the no smoking in indoor facilities in Mercer County but the residence halls are just that, residences and are not subject to that. And regardless, there are already designated places in the dorms where people are allowed to smoke in their rooms. If you don't want to live on one of those floors, stop being lazy and move.

Something some complainers may not know is that there is a 25ft from any entrance rule for smokers. However, this isn't being enforced because Concord doesn't have the man power to really enforce it and I'm guessing the Administration doesn't really give a crap. So many people smoke on campus it'd become the biggest inconvenience for a large portion of people students, faculty and staff alike that it'd never happen.

A smoke free campus is a pipe dream. Just stop being lazy and walk around the smokers and remember that carcinogens are everywhere, not just in cigarettes. If someone wants to kill themselves slowly, let them. Don't infringe upon their liberties because they certainly aren't infringing upon your's. If you want to infringe upon someone's liberties, I'll infringe upon your's with my fist.

Initiative in place to better represent CU's Beckley area students (Front page)

2007-02-21T12:19:00.000-08:00

The Beckley Center. A mysterious entity that not too many Concord students are familiar with until they actually have to take a class there for some unexplainable reason. To the common Concord student, there is little need to worry about this place in Beckley since it has little impact on Athens students. However, President of the SGA Sean Noland believes otherwise.

Now that it is later in the semester, President Noland says, “now that Higher Ed Day is over, the Beckley center is my primary focus.” But what exactly does President Noland have in mind for the Beckley Center? Well, for one he wants to see “better representation for them” here in Athens from business decisions to even in the SGA.

When it comes down to business President Noland also says to want to see “more insight into the issues that are adversely effecting the Beckley Center.” This can range from funding for classes and services available at the Beckley Center among other things. He also wants see Beckley students become better informed and aware “...[of] how the decisions made in Athens affect them.”

President Noland also wants to get Beckley students involved here at Concord by allowing them to “...be able to request budgets from the SGA to enhance student life in Beckley.” He proposes they do this by having student representation from Beckley students in the Athens SGA. The representatives will be six students who are interested and will be available for meetings. The first meeting will be conducted in Beckley and Noland hopes to see at least one student who will take up the effort and coordinate with him.

However, despite these efforts a Concord student may still remain curious as to what exactly a Beckley student since some Athens students are required to make the pilgrimage out to Beckley for random classes.

According to Danielle Richmond and her sources, “ we are all Concord students, but if you take classes in Beckley a portion of your tuition goes to the Beckley facility.” But, she went on to say that this fiscal year is an exception to that usual rule. She said, “they only send money to the Beckley center if you are taking all your classes in Beckley, according to the Business Office.” This isn't subject to enrollment numbers like one would presume but just a straight financial comparison.

There is still a little gray area on what exactly makes a Beckley student but the above explanation makes enough sense for this reporter. I wish President Noland and his initiative to bring better representation for Beckley students a ton of luck. They're going to need it with the typical amount of red tape one has to go through around Concord.

Condom vending machines being purchased for students (News)

2007-02-21T12:16:00.000-08:00

Have you ever had on of those emergencies where there is a sudden need for a condom? Let's face the facts, at one point or another many students have had a need of a condom but they either can't snag one from a buddy or the availability is zero. Well fear no more! This week Jessica Cook, SGA Ombudsman, is ordering two condom dispensers available on campus during most hours of the day.

However, these wonderful contraptions will be placed only in the Student Center restrooms; one in a Ladies and one in a Gentlemen's. The condoms will cost fifty cents each and availability will be whenever the Student Center is open. The condom dispensers should be appearing sometime within the next month or so and will be ready for use probably by the time their presence is noticed.

Ombudsman Jessica Cook and Business Manager Danielle Richmond spearheaded the movement to get better options for safe sex on campus. They originally handed out over 400 condoms, lubrication, and safe use information to students passing by in the Student Center from a table. That supply lasted a very short time and the two quickly concocted a way to have a steady supply for students. This movement is being called a “Campaign for Healthy Options for Students to have Safe Sex” by Jessica Cook.

For the future there are hopes to have more condom dispensers even more readily available for student use by putting them in the laundry rooms of the dorm halls.

This writer believes that one of the motivating factors for these two officers of the SGA to take it upon themselves to get these things available for students stems from not only the need but the lofty rumors that Concord is supposedly number two in STD rates among students in the region. Whether this is true or not, it's a fairly good reason to up the availability of non-abstinence only choices of safe sex. Also, this writer wasn't able to find any studies on the colleges in our region alone concerning the STD rates.

Another way of getting condoms easily and in ample supplies is to visit the Family Planning Center. It's come back to Concord after an absence and its hours are Tuesdays 9am-3pm and STD screenings are Tuesdays 1-3pm and is located in Sarvay Hall's basement. At this locale you can pick up STD information, free condoms, safe sex information, and other nifty items.

Don't be afraid to use the services the University freely offers. They're usually here to help!

Book financial aid has potential(Opinoins)

2007-02-07T12:20:00.000-08:00

If you're anything like me, you almost always have a little monetary trouble picking up all those expensive books at the beginning of every semester. This is largely because of the cost of books in the bookstore, but if you're also anything like me that's the fastest, most convenient way to get books. Sometimes ordering books online just isn't fast enough when you need the books now.

Well, fear no longer about having problems getting those books. There's an initiative trying to be pushed through by a few individuals that will bring this dream to fruition. It's been in the works for a little while and all the kinks are trying to be worked out.

However, for something like this to go through, the State Auditor has to approve. Now, for some reason our wonderful State Auditor thinks a plan like this wouldn't be in compliance with FERPA at all. What the State Auditor doesn't seem to be understanding is that the system that this plan uses stores no kind of sensitive student data at all. It only stores a student's PINDM (that 6-digit number at the bottom of your student ID), the student's name, and the monetary amount of the purchase. How any of that is sensitive information boggles my mind when people are freely giving out their Social Security numbers out on a daily basis to near strangers. Isn't that out of compliance with FERPA somehow? I would certainly think so.

Furthermore, the Banner system (information database used by all offices on campus) has already been modified to accommodate this change. It wouldn't be a stretch by any means to enable this for anyone eligible to receive financial aid.

Not surprisingly, the only way to get these changes is for our State Auditor to approve it in one of two ways. First, being to contact Bruce Walker, Concord's legal council and him write a letter of approval of the idea to the State Auditor. Lastly, the only option after that would be to contact a Federal Higher Education attorney to give his/her opinion on the idea to the State Auditor. But for either of these to even be done they'd have to go through the University President (Dr. Beasley) or through the Board of Governors. Knowing bureaucracy and the speed at which it (doesn't) move we could possibly be seeing this by the time all of us graduate.

This kind of financial aid would be good for the entire campus and enrich student life significantly at the beginning of the semester. So, I urge all you readers who would like to see this happen to write letters, e-mails or make appoints to Dr. Beasley and let him know you want to see this happen.

Wiccan M.O.O.N. X2 (Student Life)

2007-01-31T12:21:00.000-08:00

Last semester one of our staff writers wrote an article about the very same student organization I'm doing my article on, Wiccan M.O.O.N. However, this article will provide actually useful and correct information regarding this organization from a past member and long-time practicing pagan, myself.

Wiccan M.O.O.N. was founded several years ago by Concord University Alumni Beverly Blevins and has been around campus since its inception with varying amounts of members. At the time it was a highly controversial group and was not welcomed nicely by a couple student organizations. Although, due to its presence on campus over the years they have steadily become tolerated. Through these years they've strived not just for tolerance but acceptance, which should be the goal of any religious organization to another.

The name Wiccan M.O.O.N. stands for “Wiccan Magical Organization of Neopagans” and has members who've been practicing various paths of paganism, including Wicca (not Wiccanism as it's referred to by the misinformed), for several years, members who've decided to explore outside of their familial religion, and even has had members who were not pagan at all. It doesn't matter what religious faith or path you follow as all are welcome to join despite the club labeling.

Unlike other religious student organizations on campus M.O.O.N. will not pass out religious material to visitors, passersby, or anything of the like. Many of the people who follow the various pagan paths accept all religions to be true and do not impress their beliefs upon others. While I do admit there are some who have a chip on their shoulder against the mainstream religions, most do not and are willing to talk to most anyone.

Surprisingly, you'll find that despite the stereotypical, lackluster appearance of those you'd coin to be of an alternative faith, many of the people are also well educated or at least intelligent people. Due to the appearance of some of the members, some are put off from approaching them and seeking information. As far as I know, not a single one of the members is a devil worshiper and are all pretty nice people so don't be afraid to approach them. Also, I guarantee that almost each and every person even inquiring in a civil manner will be welcomed with an eager smile and a willingness to answer any questions you may have. Pagans are arguably the most friendly and intelligent people you'll meet. You never know who you'll find out is a pagan.

Remember, it's not what religion someone is that makes them a good or bad person, it's the actions of that person that defines whether they're good or bad. Wiccan M.O.O.N. interest meetings have yet to be scheduled as of this writing so look out for flyers and signs. They will be holding club meetings on Tuesdays @ 4p.m. in Subway. Stop by and check them out!

Magician Mike Super captivates CU students (Arts & Entertainment)

2007-01-24T12:21:00.000-08:00

Magician Mike Super will be returning to Concord on Thursday, January 25^th at 9pm on the Subway stage. Talented and versatile, Mike Super has been creating the impossible on numerous college campuses across the country. Becoming extremely popular, college students voted for him for various awards. In 2003 he won Entertainer of the Year among other national awards from APCA, NACA, and Campus activities magazine.

Mike's stage presence transcends the “trick” and connects to the audience on a personal level. Concord helped “discover” Mike and this show will be his 5^th performance on Concord's campus. Many of his illusions involve audience members, including levitating someone from the audience. Mike's show is simply one of the best stage magic shows you'll ever see.

Mike has been honing his magical talent since the age of six. It's not only his profession these days, it's an obsession with him. He belongs to such prestigious organizations as the International Brotherhood of Magicians and the Society of American Magicians. He's entertained thousands of people and has duly earned the awards he has won.

Students who have been here long enough to remember Mike's last appearance on campus were astounded and simply can't find any other words for his performance. Buck Skeen says this about his last show, “Dude does voodoo. I couldn't believe my eyes.”

I was also around during his last performance and of all the things I've seen on TV and movies, his was the most amazing. He did things with random audience members that traditional stage magicians and illusionists have to use an assistant for. You won't see David Copperfield, Pen & Teller, or Siegfreid & Royd doing these kinds of things with a random audience member.

However, those who haven't seen him doubt his magically ablities. One student said, “I plan to attend the show only because I am very skeptical of the claims he's made.”

For more information on Mike Super you can go to his website www.mikesuper.com or Google “magician Mike Super” for reviews of his shows at various campuses and venues.

If you have nothing to do or even if you have something to do, going to Mike's show will beat it hands down. Come and find out why he's won so many awards. Thursday, 9pm, Subway. Got it? Good. See you there.

World Unified Democratic Government

2007-01-21T21:02:00.000-08:00

Disclaimer: If you do not understand that this is only a theory and perspective I came up with based off of history, government, failing foreign relations and aid and will cover a lot of controversial territory. However, I do appreciate ideas and criticisms, just keep your replies civil in tone. This is just a possible perspective, I am not being literal in my own beliefs and opinions.

Touching on the failing foreign relations and aid, I'm going to reference war-torn nations like Darfur, Ethiopia and pretty much the entire Middle East. These nations have been entrenched in civil wars resulting in genocide, ethnic cleansing, killing in the name of a religion, and many other factors. These nations have been warring for decades if not centuries. The original reasons for some of the fighting is long forgotten, other times it's because a group of militants is wanting to seize power any way he/she can. The foreign aid we send to these kinds of countries often does not go to the people who truly need the help, ends up helping the wrong people, or just disappears. Why try to help nations like these that can't or won't willingly accept help from other nations? Even if it is the responsibility of the strong to protect the weak, if our efforts are futile why should we waste our precious resources in that futility? I say we just let them kill each other off and see who the victor is. After wars like that are done, only then can we sweep in and help out. People that believe talking and negotiations is the only way to true, lasting peace are naive. While that is my preferred method to reach peace, some nations won't bow down to that and need a push with a threat of all out war.

By taking the methods of how the Roman Empire (pre-Christianity) conquered a chunk of the known world at its time, we could create a largely peaceful world government. We, being the strongest nation, have the power, allies, and governmental structure to do so. The countries we conquer would lose nothing of their ethnic, religious, and regional uniqueness. We would simply move in, cultures would assimilate on both sides and a common language set. If a country did not want to peacefully join, one would hope just the threat of war would throw them into peace negotiations. This would bolster both the ruling government and the nation's trade and economic infrastructure. It would be win/win for both.

The democratic structure of the United States is pure genius when you analyze how it's broken down. It could truly work on a worldwide scale. Each nation would in essence be like what states are now with laws, elections, and governmental structure. There would be a vast senate in what would be he federal/national arm of the government so there would be equal representation for each nation. There would be no more United Nations because how they work well, they don't. The Electoral College would be wiped from the board for elections and a new, better system would be put in place to accommodate such a large voting body. The separation of powers between branches of government would remain intact and so would the checks and balances, but with improvements again to accommodate such a vast body.

This isn't a grand scheme for the U.S.'s world domination through war. There can be no truly lasting peace with a nation unified through fighting. There has to be reason and peaceful methods tried first before force is used. If those peaceful methods are futile, war is the only way. You can't repeatedly sanction a nation into peace or do the equivalent of shaking a stick at it to bring peace. Action would be the only effective answer.

I am not proposing a utopia. I firmly believe that it is impossible for humans to live in a true utopia. I am proposing a unifying governmental structure to bring about a lasting peace between nations that will bolster international trade and economies. If a state (calling them that for this system) has the resources to build infrastructure and have the things it needs, there is no reason for it to fight against or commit violent acts against other states. Especially those nations providing it with those resources. There would be no "foreign" dependencies because each state would be a part of the name nation and sharing resources.

The United States hasn't had a civil war in well over a hundred years. This, I believe, can largely come from the fact that we moved from an agriculture-based society to an industry-based society. We beat out the dissidents who thought to break the country apart through force as it was the only way.

One of the biggest flaws in a system like this is unavoidable in any political system and to complain about it is completely and utterly unintelligent. The issue of leaders. I believe that having a singular leader for a system like this would be a downfall and would create the downfall of it very quickly. The biggest reason Rome fell was because a single, crazy, warmongering leader was put in place. Had that not happened, we just might all be speaking Latin and not English.

The Executive Branch would consist of not just the cabinet of the group of leaders, but an odd numbered group of people. A sort of council but not a legislative body.

The Judicial Branch would be nearly the same as the Judicial Branch of the U.S.

The Legislative Branch would work the same our the U.S.'s as well.

This kind of setup would trickle down to states as well. We would see essentially the same setup we already have now but on a global scale.

Right now I don't think this could work. The world nor the politicians of the world are not ready for this. They are too centered on themselves and their own personal welfare rather than thinking about unity on a global scale. Peace on this scale is not attainable with the current state of affairs and I'm guessing probably won't be in the next 50-60 years. Though when the world is ready for it, this would be an effective way to go about it or at least a decent model.