Uncommon Sense

2005-12-25T11:56:00.000-08:00

American conservatism vs. European liberalismA couple days ago I stumbled onto an article from the Claremont Institute, a conservative think tank. Unlike many other consevative sites, Claremont is usually pretty solid in its analysis, even if I disagree with it. This article, though, both amused and enraged me. The author, Gerard Alexander, is a professor of politics at the University of

2005-11-17T17:28:00.000-08:00

I have |-|4><0|2ed your interweb!Know me and despair!!!1!

2005-10-11T14:13:00.000-07:00

"In Pennsylvania, It Was Religion vs. Science, Pastor vs. Ph.D., Evolution vs. the Half-Fish"Of course, I forgot to mention the most important thing. The Times has been running stories on the Dover lawsuit, which originated when a group of brave parents decided that science, not creationism in the disguise of intelligent design, should be taught in the classroom. The details of the trial, though,

2005-10-11T13:56:00.000-07:00

I SuckSo I wanted to blog about a couple of things and I bookmarked them, but since they were articles in the New York Times online edition, they have been archived. So sad. The gist, though, may be conveyed:"Buying of News by Bush Aides Is Ruled Illegal"Everyone remembers (or ought to remember) Armstrong Williams, a shill for this administration who was paid to trump up No Child Left Behind

2005-10-03T12:38:00.000-07:00

Soccer Game Canceled AgainMy intramural game has been canceled once more; the first time it was because of rain, the second time because our opponents withdrew from the league. I wonder when we'll finally get to play...WebCTIf you go to college, you might have noticed that a lot of schools these days are using a course-management system called WebCT. It's basically a system that allows the

2005-10-03T10:04:00.000-07:00

Weekend ExcitementThe quizbowl tournament that I was planning to go to this coming weekend has been postponed until next weekend (the 15th). Perhaps this will mean that the people I wanted to play with at Harvard (some old high-school friends of mine) will be free.WaterfireKathryn and I went to Waterfire this weekend. For those not in the know (aparently anyone not living in Providence) Waterfire

2005-09-26T21:51:00.000-07:00

ResearchI talked to Leon Cooper today. Cooper is Brown's resident Nobel Laureate; got his prize for the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer theory of superconductivity. Now he does research in neuroscience, applying analytic methods from physics to biological problems. He was very nice and even loaned me a copy of his book, The Theory of Cortical Plasticity. I am sure this will be an exciting,

2005-09-26T21:43:00.000-07:00

Quiz Bowl updateThis weekend, I took a trip out to Boston with some other Brown folks to play in Brandeis' mirror of Georgia Tech's annual Heinrich Bowl tournament. Playing on some horrible, awful questions, we took third, losing two really close games to Harvard, one close game to Yale, and one to Williams B, in which we negged ourselves into oblivion. How sad.Come October 8th, I'm going out to

2005-02-01T21:14:00.000-08:00

A Little Philosophy It always happens this way. Walking home from work or class, I'm always talking to myself and hashing out thoughts in my head, but when I finally get down to writing them, I always forget what I'm going to say. So to get the juices going, and perhaps remember what I was originally planning to write about, I'm going to look at some philosophy. Recently, I discovered an

2005-01-19T11:43:00.000-08:00

Back To School Yesterday was the first day of the spring semester for Berkeley students, so I thought I'd post some appropriate thoughts regarding school-related issues. Specifically, about that horse's ass of a company, Educational Testing Services (ETS). Like any student who is interested in attending graduate school, I had to take the various mandated ETS tests; for me it was the general GRE

2005-01-05T01:02:00.000-08:00

Not Understanding Media About a week ago, I made a greatly misguided attempt to read Marshall McLuhan's famous work, Understanding Media. I thought, mistakenly, that a pioneering work from a reknowned media critic would present groundbreaking insights in a lucid fashion, thereby paving the road for future media critics to come. How wrong I was. I made it through about 40 pages of this book

2005-01-02T16:04:00.000-08:00

In Criticism of the Praise of Vulgarity As promised earlier, I want to take this time to discuss an article I came across recently while browsing the excellent blog Dispatches from the Culture Wars. The article was published in the libertarian magazine Reason in March of 2002 and can be found here. The article's premise is quite simple: Charles Freund, a Reason senior editor, wants to defend

2005-01-02T01:53:00.000-08:00

Dear anyone who happens to come across this blog: First, I would like to wish everyone a happy and healthy New Year. I hope everyone's festivities have been as safe as can reasonably be expected. I'm quite late to the party, I realize, but when I get up in the morning (well, at around 11 in the morning as opposed to at 2), I'm going to write a lengthy post about an interesting but totally

2004-12-30T15:03:00.000-08:00

I hope, beginning with the New Year, to blog regularly in this space. I've been meaning to do this for a long time, but maybe now I can find the necessary discipline. Not that anyone is, but stay tuned. Jerry

2003-10-14T19:24:00.000-07:00

Soccer Review This past weekend saw two very important games in women's soccer, namely the third place game between the USA and Canada and the final between Germany and Sweden. My plan is to review each of these games and comment on them. Germany 2 - 1 Sweden Well, I predicted (to myself) that whoever won the USA-Germany match was going to be the next world champion and I was right. Not that

2003-10-12T15:14:00.000-07:00

The Recall and the Future of California's Republican Party Coming quickly on the heels of the possibly the most unusual of all elections yet is the commentary on what the election results mean for the two major political parties in California. In particular, much speculation abounds concerning the future of the Republican Party in California, with many pointing towards a revival of Republicanism

2003-10-11T15:42:00.000-07:00

A New Beginning This blog has been inactive for so long because I'm a lazy bastard. I'm trying to start it up again and keep it updated daily, but that's a promise I made once and promptly broke, so I don't know if it'll work. Post-Recall Musings As a longtime resident of the wonderful state of California, where the sun is always shining and the streets are paved with delicious candy, I'm

2003-03-19T09:08:00.000-08:00

Dear anyone who happens to end up here, I have previously attempted to start and maintain a regular blog, but couldn't muster up the discipline required to maintain it daily. Hopefully, this attempt at a restart will fare better, as I intend to focus mostly on things that happen in the city of Berkeley and on the UC Berkeley campus. The thing is, you see, that so many things in this city fill

2003-01-14T15:01:00.000-08:00

The site counter works.

2003-01-14T14:59:00.000-08:00

Testing the site counter.

2003-01-14T14:34:00.000-08:00

Greetings. My family decided to have high-speed internet, via Road Runner installed. Today is the first day of high speed internet in my household, although I will be returning to college soon, so I don't care much about that. I'm a news junkie and just today I was driving home and listening to NPR go on about how our economy isn't doing so well. Anytime there's a discussion on the economy of

2003-01-03T11:30:00.000-08:00

Already I have lied. Despite promising to myself to try and update this site every day, after the first day I forgot and didn't update yesterday. I would have done it this morning around 1 but I was too busy looking at various schematics and trying to figure out how to build an amplifier. Oh well. I'm a lazy bum. Anyway: two days ago I watched "The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover."

2003-01-01T16:07:00.000-08:00

Dear whoever is reading, I've been interested in the whole blog thing for quite some time but have never been able to find enough time to start one up. I've decided to start one come the New Year so here it is. Now, I'm not vain enough to think that I have anything brilliantly original to say or that my Internet rantings are particularly worth reading, but maybe I'll have the good fortune to