Category Archives: Uncategorized

Where I’m headed

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So, it’s official. I’m only a week away from the end of the website design program at MGTC. In fact, I’ll be one of the last to graduate from the class, since they’ve officially dissolved the program at the certificate and diploma levels until they can get enough students to justify the cost (or so goes the official explanation from the CIS department).

Anyway, I’m graduating with an associate’s degree next Thursday. Then the FAFSA needs to be done (by the 30th), at which point I seem rather set to head to Macon State’s WR campus in the fall. While I will take up computer programming there (since there’s no website design equivalent at MSC), I think it may be a minor for me; I might take up political science (again) as a major, instead.

Yes, it is frickin’ summer-fall 2005 all over again. But I think that, this time around, it will be far from the debacle at Oglethorpe.

And why the poli-sci major? Well, I can’t seem to stay away from it in my train of thought, although I know that poli-sci won’t end up paying the bills.

I dunno, maybe it should be the other way around, with poli-sci being the minor and programming being the major (since I can at least become a teacher in the programming/website design field). Plus, computer programming will be a personal focus for me since I want to retake a few classes that I didn’t do well in during the website design program at MGTC (i.e., database networking, PHP, Javascript, mostly back-end and programming stuff). That way, I can be much more acclimated to programming on a daily basis than I was when I first took the classes at MGTC.

Also, making honors and getting an IT job will be other major focuses of mine when I go to MSC.

What is up with Digg’s user demographic today?

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I’m not even linking to the post or the video (oh, who cares anyway…), but there’s a post on Digg (still receiving comments, over 500 of them, of either an alarmist or contrarian nature as of 10:46 PM EST) that links to a video on Ning that manages to combine the following features:

  • net neutrality
  • the Mayan 2012 hypothesis
  • how the Internet will be crushed by the ISPs in 2012
  • boobs

Just…..WTF?

I mean, this isn’t the first time that a post to Digg has managed to inflame the prepubescent passions of Digg’s mostly-middle-class-teenage-libertarian user population, but damn….an alledgedly-poorly-made conspiracy video with boobs (I haven’t watched it; the comments to the post already turned me off to it) managed to get this much attention?

Now you have the net neutrality fans using the post to call for regulation, the 13375 “leets” calling for a revolutionary alliance of “Anonymous” forming a sub-internet that will be free of the greedy corporate and government monsters, the tinfoil-hats pushing for the furtherance of doomsday (12-21-2012), and others who are calling BS on the video.

I only want to know how it gained so much attention in the first place? Or are the public schools out in other parts of the world already (just like it is here in Houston County)?

EDIT: This is also an example of why the new comment system on that website is debilitating to the viewing of recently-posted comments: since it is filled with at least 754 threads (containing 1,435 Comments), having to click to “show 51-100 of 754 discussions” at least 14 times on that page is rather heavy on the JavaScript, leading to several alerts of “a script on this page is running slowly. Do you want to continue or abort the script?”

The only reason why I am interested in seeing the (actual) end of the page is to see the heated reactions to the “Inaccurate” tag placed on the post.

Party politics vs. presidential politics

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I saw a bit of the DLC’s Washington meeting today.

Watching it made me think about the Green Party, and it made me wonder if the GPUSA will ever take on the “big tent” philosophy that is characteristic of the Democratic Party (and, increasingly less, the Republican Party).

Also, it made me wonder if there is a connection between the US’s presidential/gubernatorial, winner-take-all-the-executive-branch system (vs. the parliamentary systems in use in other countries) and the tendency for two parties to converge as the duopolies of perceivably-winged ideologies, with the Democrats taking the center-left and the Republicans taking the center-right.

In most of the stereotypical parliamentary- or semi-presidential-system democracies (Canada, UK, France, Russia), there tend to be at least 3 or 4 parties represented significantly in the parliament, with at least two of them taking command of the center-left or center-right ideological positions (thus guaranteeing them the chances to run the “government”, or the cabinet); those parties which are on the fringe of either position are there to primarily force an ideological position that runs counter to the governing party’s position or practices.

In the US, however, there are only two parties which matter in political discourse, even in the legislative branch; other parties, known as third parties, serve only a purpose of a “dumping bin” for the “votes of conscience” which cannot consider the main two parties because their tents are not big enough to hold any more ideological input than is the flavor of the day.

Why is it so different?

Well, compared to most other countries, the US political system places a great deal of emphasis on the executive branch at all levels; you don’t hear about third parties like the Greens, Libertarians or Constitution party until the presidential election year, not during the midterms. Everybody wants to become president or governor or mayor, and senators are accorded a semi-presidential status of recognition; representatives, on the other hand, carry less weight of popular influence or recognition.

But I think that this also plays into the duopoly that is in force: because the executive, which is functionally separate from the legislative (unlike in parliamentary systems) is supposed to govern “fairly”, the executive is mostly a non-ideological position that is up for grabs from whoever can attract the widest degree of votes from across ideologies and regions; the same applies to senators, since there are only two senators from each state and, thus, a candidate for senator must reach across regions and appeal to various ideologies within their constituent states.

Representatives, on the other hand, tend to reflect and represent a wider and more detailed spectrum of ideology, since such persons are elected from more specific local areas within a state, where the ideological positions of the representative may enjoy a higher popularity in their own constituency than in the state or union at large. It is from the House that we get such individuals as Pelosi, Paul, Wu and Lee, among other colorful figures.

My view, for the moment, is that the only reason why there aren’t any third parties represented in the House is because of a combination of the greater emphasis on who wins the White House or the other side of the Hill and the lack of decision-making power of the House in comparison to other lower houses in other countries (the largest party in which gets to form the government or coalition cabinet). This greater concern for the relatively-non-ideologically-specific executive and semi-executive by the populace rubs-off on both the HoR’s party makeup and the duopoly of the Democrats and Republicans (who are now reflections of the winner-take-all-the-executive-and-semi-executive-branches) at all levels of government.

Now, is this a good thing?

I’m asking this to wonder if the focus of the duopoly on the executive and semi-executive leaves room for the HoR members’ own focus on personal/local ideology (only using the party of choice as a “name brand”) rather than “impartial” vote attainment.

In the parliamentary democracies, the majority parties in power in the lower house, in order to keep from calling a new election, often struggle to create their own big tents by welcoming a wide degree of ideology, sometimes forming alliances and dealbrokered electoral blocs with parties who share very little in common with the core parliamentary constituency of the governing party. Thus, parliamentarians and parliamentary party leaders are often accused of pandering to votes rather than ideologically-driven programs.

So since the “vote-pandering” accusation is less common to cite in this country’s lower house(s), what does it mean for the Green Party that wants its foot in the federal door so badly? Third parties like the Greens are, or seem, less likely to go for the vote-pandering tactic, since the Greens already have a set core of positions on a limited subset of ideology; they’re also not well known by the candidates that they’ve backed (except for Ralph Nader, formerly), so no name-brand to use to one’s electoral advantage.

But if the Greens want to get their foot in the door (that is, into the executive and semi-executive), does it mean that they will have to become more like the Democrats and Republicans by shying away from their core ideological positions and pander to a wider degree of votes?

And does it mean that, if the Greens do manage to get their foot into the door, the effect will allow for the Greens’ own ideologues (including, I’m sure, a few small-l libertarians who may not be as overjoyed for restrictions on free enterprise for environmental safety purposes) to win local constituencies for the HoR?

(Not a criticism) How Compiz Fusion jumped the shark

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It was bound to come from this project eventually:

Why do I say “jumped the shark”, though?

Well, I’m not saying it in a deprecatory manner; I hope to eventually try it out myself to see it first hand.

Rather, I say “jumped the shark” because Compiz Fusion, the window management plugin system for Compiz, has finally come to a point of “not-much-turning-back”; while Compiz and Beryl, the CWM that had forked from Compiz back in 2006 and remerged in 2007, had primarily focused on revolving flat surfaces (the infamous “desktop cube” that was once exclusively a WM feature of Mac OS X’s Quartz Compositor), Compiz Fusion has finally incorporated the distortion of windows and desktop surfaces in various curvatures as a major feature of window management, and it seems like it will become the standard fare of desktop distortions by CF for some time to come.

So….expect many new videos of bouncing desktop balls or waterlogged fishbowls (with fish inside!) or, as you just saw, globes of planets. Revolving cubes are sooooo 2006.

Also, MPX has been merged into X.Org 7.5. Expect Compiz Fusion compatibility (and lots of video demos) later this year, at the least.

Fortuynism: 22nd century political conservatism

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Pym Fortuyn was a politician from the Netherlands who was assassinated in 2002 during his first election campaign for the Tweede Kamer (the lower house of Parliament). His political outlook, particularly his anti-Islamic and immigration restriction stance, polarized Dutch politics in the aftermath of his assassination, with a huge shift in the political representation in Parliament. However, compared to other nationalistic politics in other countries, his ideology, known as Fortuynism, posited a rather unique focus on the preservation of political freedoms from restrictions by cultures, religions or governments.
Fortuyn, who was openly gay, was pro-LGBT rights (including same-sex marital recognition), pro-drug, pro-euthanasia, pro-abortion, pro-divorce…he would, in most cases, be a political nightmare for a U.S. social conservative.

He also saw the immigration of Muslims en masse to the Netherlands as a threat to the Netherlands; but rather than for strictly cultural or religious reasons, he saw the Muslims as a political and social threat due to the cultural and religious backgrounds from whence they, who would eventually become an important voting demographic in the country, came. In other words, Islam, as both a culture and a religion, was a political affront to the gains in civil rights which Fortuyn, an openly gay man, had long supported.

To that end, he formed his own party (which dissolved at the national level in January of this year after years of riding on the value of Fortuyn’s name brand in the Dutch media and not offering any new or viable candidates), the Pym Fortuyn List and ran for the Tweede Kamer. He gained notoriety in the press, and condemnation from the left-wing parties in the country, for both his stance on the immigration of Muslims to the country and his confrontational style of rhetoric in the public eye. But just before Election Day, Fortuyn was gunned down by an animal-rights activist who was fearful of Fortuyn’s populist-style “scapegoating” of “vulnerable minorities” in the country; the man who assassinated Fortuyn is currently serving an 18-year sentence, and his earliest parole date is in 2014.

Fortuyn’s ideology, IMO, represents a political trend that may gain a foothold in other Western countries where same-sex marital relations (primarily championed by left-wing parties) is already, or will eventually be legalized. In other words, Fortuynism is an early look into the political neoconservatism of the 22nd century.

I can imagine neoconservatism by that time as retaining a few of the features of current neoconservatism while completely dropping others:

  • still *very* economically liberal
  • socially liberal, but increasingly easy on the multicultural and multireligious sauce (and especially hostile to religious fundamentalist ideology, particularly Islamism, as a political or social force)
  • using the military as a tool for projecting domestic economic and social policy (now much more liberal) to an international audience

Yes, I can see the military used further down the line as a big stick for “humanitarian purposes”.

I can also see gay conservatives (aka “Log Cabin Republicans”) gravitating towards places of prominence within this latter-day neoconservatism, as it will be much more aligned with their views while being less hostile to their sexual orientations and subsequent lifestyles.

Of course, just because gay conservatives (who are not really welcomed by the Republican leadership and are seen with wary eyes by the LGBT left) will eventually become the faces of neoconservatism doesn’t necessarily guarantee an immediately more libertarian, Netherlands-like outlook on drugs, euthanasia, the death penalty and copyright/intellectual property laws, which are likely to be the preserve issues of the left and/or libertarians for a longer while.

In other words, an increasingly LGBT-friendly American neoconservatism does not necessarily equate with the Nettherland’s Fortuynism.

On “moving beyond LGBT”

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OK, someone posted an earlier post that I had made on future rights movements to the Aspies for Freedom forum, and the response was interesting. After a few holes in my post were identified, I was going to make a few addendi to the bottom of the post, but it got a bit too long.

So anyway, the reason why I mentioned the stereotyping of the Autism rights movement is possibly because of a portion of the relevant Wikipedia article that had once contained a(n opnionated) mention of the anti-psychiatry movement. Consequently, it may have since been edited from the article for either neutrality or lack of citations (particularly since, from the view of the public, anti-psychiatry is a very contentious issue to take on; I would understand if the autism rights movement organizations would readily dispute any ties with it). Sorry to the Aspies for Freedom forum if the post made any inaccurate insinuations concerning the aims of it or any other autism rights organizations.

Also, I would like to know if the Aspies for Freedom organization is more pro-acceptance or anti-cure. Not that either stance would invalidate the importance of the other or make the organization anti-psychiatry, of course.

Finally, in response to the questions from the AfF forum, I think that it would take another post to expound on the idea of fetish and furry rights. The links that I had provided for such topics may not even cover the basics: since “civil rights” as a political concept has historically involved two major (and evolving) components – prevention of historical abuses against, and inclusion into the political process of a group and similar groups – it is, indeed, very complex to encapsulate what could be considered as a “right” for those who identify with their fetishes, be they sexual, spiritual or physical.

Maybe civil rights, as it evolves, will expand out of the political arena into the social, sexual, religiospiritual and other concerns that involve disenfranchized or unrecognized minorities who would otherwise contribute (directly or no) to society.

More on the “online campus”

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I wrote earlier about a future globalization of the students’ union movement that would find its relevance in the age of fledgling web-based college classes. However, what I mentioned in that post was the idea for the creation of an “online campus” as one of the demands of a future web-based student’s union.

So…what is an online campus?

Is it in the current form of online classes run by teachers from afar without any further immersion than could be offered a web-based, primarily-text interface (like Blackboard)? Nah, campi in the real world are much more encompassing than just a mere collection of classrooms: you have student centers, dormitories, libraries, study halls, lunch rooms and cafes, computer rooms, fraternity/sorority buildings, sports facilities, art collection exhibits, chemistry and science labs, airfields….you name it.

So how would an online university bring a similar experience of immersion into its repertoire?

Well, I think the slight rise in popularity of web-based videos of teacher lectures and demonstrations is a good star, at least so that a student can say that he or she can actually pin a face on whoever is giving the assignments or lectures; both text and video comments can enhance the experience for the relationship between the teacher and the online class participants.

Of course, I’m not as sure about Second Life as a medium for online classes, although my own perception of the trend is based on my experience with it (which was weak). But I also think that, if virtual worlds are to become a medium for online classes, then they would have to include an integration with the media distribution methods – such as online video – that would allow the teacher to have greater lecturing or demonstration abilities than are currently available on the web.

Plus, the problem with the web (or graphics-based virtual worlds) as a medium for online classes is that walking in-and-out of the class is rather easy, with the students getting to the assignments at any time before their due date. The web as a classroom is a wall of text that doesn’t even replicate a real-world classroom or the intricacies in navigation and organization between the classrooms. There’s simply no distinction between the online classrooms or integration of the classrooms between each other.

Also, I would like to question my own biases and say that the wiki model for education that has been pushed by Wikiversity may actually cause a further unravelling of web-based education resources – “unravelling” as in “less structure, architecture or organization”; since it is based off of Wikipedia, it may only differ from Wikipedia or other wikis in the way that it functions (less focused on user editing of resources, among other features). Whether that is a good thing for education or no is up to debate: maybe a destructructuralization of educational administration is needed, or it may lead to a lack of accountability over teaching methods, or it may only be suitable for a certain number of disciplines or types of disciplines (maybe those that need demonstration and would thus benefit from web videos).

So I’m just unsure of what the online campus would look like.

Unionism and globalization, both in trade and education

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It was only a few days ago that I was reading this article on Nationalism vs. Marxism, and I take note about the ideological differences on the importance of the nation-state in comparison to the labor movement between Lenin and Luxembourg (Lenin favored consolidating the nation-state as a temporary stop-gap on the road to consolidating an international labor movement, while Luxembourg dismissed the nation-state as an artificial feel-good division between laborers; of course, that was a given because she had the worst of times with the social democrats that had come to power in the late 19th century in Germany).

And now I read this. It’s IWW part deux (the AWU in Australia is also in the talks).

So the labor movement is being globalized to counter the popularity of multinational corporations.

That makes me wonder, though: if that is about to happen (again) with mergers of worker’s unions across borders, will or can the same thing happen to student unionism?

I mean, at the time of writing, you only have a few examples of multinational collegiate institutions. Most are run by corporations and are privately-run (I think).

But if the ability to run a multinational university system was improved or streamlined in the future, will there also be a movement to merge students’ unions (or, as we know them here in the U.S., associated student bodies/governments/assemblies) across university campuses or even countries to keep up with the enlargement of collegiate institutions?

And if so, what would the ideal demands of such unions or associations of students constitute?

Well, if you take into account the rise of web-based e-learning through online classes offered by the rising institutions, such as DeVry and ITT, I think that one of the main demands by the student unions would be for the building of less-isolatory or less-sequestering facilities, such as “online campuses” (or offline, if you prefer), for the students from various countries. They can also, theoretically, protest staff policies and negotiate solutions that are conciliatory to the interests of the students; plus, as with the fraternities, sororities and professional student’s organizations that are already present at the colleges, student unions can provide newcomer students with a basic overview of what goes on in student life and provide go-to’s for the newcomer students in case they may face adjustment issues with the campus.

The student unions could easily become politicized, however, as has happened in, say, Australia. Plus, they could raise the ire of those who are opposed to stuff like mandatory fees for all students on a campus; finally, they could be divided by university or sub-university loyalties, or come into conflict with other established student-oriented bodies within the university.

But yah, this is just an idea about a likely situation that may or may not have many or any fans, given the poor reputation of trade unions (especially teachers’ unions) in recent history.

Ohh…does that Rainbow taste too sweet?

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South Africa has been burning for almost two weeks now.

So yes, economically-driven anti-immigration nativism goes full-throttle with pumping adrenaline, and South Africa STILL plans to handle the 2010 World Cup.

Everybody’s condemning the violence, everybody’s shocked at the picture of a Mozambican man being immolated on the street with the covering of his own flame-saturated blanket, Zuma’s pissed that the nativists – from taxi drivers to miners – are using “his” 2007 hit song as a rallying anthem as they go searching for ‘dem furreners” shack-by-shack so that they can throw them out onto the street and burn their hovels to the ground (and maybe butcher them with a machete), the ANC is blaming everyone from the IFP to some unnamed pro-apartheid organization bent on discrediting it ahead of next year’s elections, and they’re being blamed by the DA, the IFP and the Zimbabwean diaspora community for shifting the blame and shirking more effective anti-violence measures against the rioting citizens.

What the fuck is new in this picture?

Oh, maybe the fact that the Zimbabweans are tucked between a rock and a hard place: they can’t go back but they can’t stay in South Africa (and they mostly can’t afford to head across the Atlantic or the Mediterranean. Otherwise, they might become fish food floating in a boat to God knows where.). So…stay and die or go and die?

But ooh, the Zimbabweans are fleeing from Mugabe, who’s trying to “liberate” his homeland from the clutches of the old Rhodies and big bad Britain, so the Zims who are fleeing must be part of the problem! Them Zims are taking our jobs! They’re sending valuable income back to their home country! They aren’t true black people! Let’s get ’em!

Moving beyond LGBT: looking at future civil rights movements

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So of course you’ve probably heard about the California Supreme Court ruling from Thursday that everyone’s going wild about. George Takei, Ellen deGeneres, and multiple others are finally taking the chance to test the murky, barely-tred waters of same-sex marriage in California.

However, even though this latest twist in a long battle to secure same-sex nuptial rights in a state that is already well-stereotyped as a bastion of LGBTdom is far from over, I’d like to take a look at three up-and-coming civil rights movements that will probably make waves later in the 20th century:

The first one should be obvious, considering that alot of people still look upon homosexuality or transgenderism as sexual fetishes that can be shrugged off or successfully repressed from manifestation like a drug addiction rather than as sexual identities that are just as valid as ethnoracial or religious identities that are given far more credence in the political spectrum. The problem is that those who identify with a particular fetish or fetish subculture are not as easily visible or identifiable in public as are those who espouse a religion (hijabs and yarmulkas), an ethnicity or race (don’t want to go there), or an obvious sexual orientation (don’t want to go there either); most fetishes are explored in either closed rooms, convention halls or internet forums and chat rooms.

Autism rights and neurodiversity, on the other hand, is different from other, more mainstream disability rights movements: instead of just accomodation and acceptance, the autism rights movement demands the de-classification of autism and Asperger’s as afflictions or mental disorders in favor of a re-recognition of the autistic spectrum as a merely “different” “natural” re-wiring of the brain’s synapses; it also advocates for the development of a distinct “autistic culture”. This stance has resulted, unfortunately, in the stereotyping of the autistic rights movement as an anti-psychiatry movement, which places it in the same boat as the infamous Church of Scientology.

Finally, the great debate of how us “highly-developed” humans must relate with the lowly animals that reside outside the periphery of human understanding. The talk of interspecies relations is almost unversally censored in order to exclude any serious, non-condemnatory mention of interspecies sexual relations, while any discussion of interspecies communication is laughed at or hosted simply for novelty purposes. But the fact that we homo sapiens only understand the communication of a paltry few other species at pre-school level, I think, keeps us from effectively reaching out to them in full-breadth initiatives that would allow us to incorporate them and their concerns into human society at levels above the classes of simple “pets” and “zoo animals”; as we continue with the building of facilities and technological contraptions to accomodate the continuous population growth that threatens natural, ecological and botanical systems in various parts of the planet, I think that advocacy for the incorporation of other species into our society’s infrastructures at humane, mutually-respectful levels will increase. To accomplish this, the creation of mutual communication enablements between species is priority #1.

Anyway, I think that these three rights movements will come to gain the public attention later on in the 21st century, primarily because they will force a public reappraisal of how we identify ourselves and how we think about and view the world around us, and those who dwell in it.