online privacy/Girls Around Me

I think you should all read this article and pass it on. It takes about 3 or 4 minutes.

It's really horrifying that an app like this exists (like the author says) not only because of what the 5% of awful people in this world could do with it, but because the majority of the people who use Facebook or Foursquare have no idea that their information is being used for these purposes.

Pass it along, education is power:

http://www.cultofmac.com/157641/this-creepy-app-isnt-just-stalking-women-without-their-knowledge-its-a-wake-up-call-about-facebook-privacy/

Another Reason the South Pacific is Sweet As

There were many reasons that I wanted to go abroad and specifically to New Zealand and the South Pacific area. One of the specific reasons was that I had heard that NZ was particularly progressive, as I had heard of many positive examples of both interactions around environmental preservation (Tom Tietenberg’s environmental economics lectures in Intro to Environmental Studies were fascinating) and around working with indigenous populations (the Maori). I wanted to see a system of government in action (rather than “inaction” as Jon Stewart puts it) that seemed to be thoughtful, progressive, and with everyone’s best interests in mind.

I didn’t get to heavily involved in tracking NZ politics (in my situation, I wanted to get a general pulse of the culture first, which I would say that we did while we were down there), but it was nice to see a parliamentary system where collaborations across party lines had to be built in order to get things done. Thomas Friedman’s column in the Times, http://tiny.cc/kp1vbw, is a nice representation of how things work down under, in NZ and in Oz.

It’s nice to see some of the things that he talks about. Universal health care and an individual mandate and it is working effectively (!). Compulsory voting and receiving fines for those that don’t vote. There is an acceptance (however reluctant) of climate change and a use of incentives to change business practices.

It’s easy to glamorize how other political systems work, especially in contrast to what we’ve got going here. [I, for one, would have loved to seen a democratic primary challenge (although, I would imagine those aren’t too frequent for a sitting president) as well as a rise of a third party.] There are certainly issues in NZ that need to be addressed. But it’s a breath of fresh air to see something different that actually seems to be working, unlike our current system of governance.  

A Snow Day, in March, in Oregon.

My alarm went off at 7:15 am this morning, starting a day where all of my plans and expectations were suspended.

I had gone to bed the previous night with a gnawing feeling of anxiousness. I was approximately 95.5% of the way done with the quarter, and I was looking forward to collecting one more piece of data (via observation of a teacher) for a bitch of an assignment to finish a bitch of a class. I would then turn everything in—for that class and another—and look forward to coasting home with two buddies back to the bay. I knew, in the back of my mind, that I could still end up doing revisions to the assignment, but that could wait for home on Thursday night or home on Friday morning. But I needed to get into the school, collect that last observation data, record an interview with the teacher, burn a DVD, and remove myself of the remaining burdens of the quarter.

NVH: (6:34 am) As you can probably tell, schools are closed today. Snow day!

I jam on my glasses, look out my window, and my jaw drops.

MCS: (7:18 am) It must have came down hard last night. It is blanketing everything over here.

MCS: (7:20 am) Fuuuuuuck. I just need one more goddamn data pointttttt. And a video. Fuck.

I start re-calibrating my perfectly formed plans from the previous night. No more school, university, work, in that order. Instead, I need to now finish all but the last essentials for the assignment, maybe go to the university to drop other things off and then work. And don’t forget to get some allergy shots.

But then other emails start rolling in when I log into my email accounts.

From UO: Eugene campus is closed until 10 am due to weather. Details to follow.

From Supervisor: Let’s cancel our meetings today. Not sure I can get to campus with the snow. If you want to re-schedule for later this week, we can do that.

I walk down the stairs, one of my roommates is up, the other I know is awake but still in his room. I complain loudly that I just needed to get to school that day and there is just no way that anyone should drive today…

Typically, an Oregon snow day consists of 1 inch, maybe 2 maximum. It’s a light dusting to remind everyone that snow, in fact, exists, and that it is cute and white. Waking up and peering out my window, I’m reminded of some Colby moments, where I’ve woken up and been thoroughly disappointed by the sight of snow. Namely, spring snows, because the first snow in Fall/Winter can be exciting, and it’s expected from December through March (though, of course, the winter in New England didn’t sound like that at all this year). Spring snows were the worst; everything was (finally) close to melting, only for Mother Nature to show everyone that she is, in fact, still in charge ‘round here. Two especially crushing snows happened that I will remember distinctly: the first, April 15^th of 2007. I’m a naïve California, giddy that the snow is gone and we can finally get to playing some ultimate again. Wrong. The second: Sectionals, April 2010, where snow is legitimately falling and has been falling for a while and doesn’t look like it will stop anytime shortly and crap we actually have to travel more northwards to play the most important tourney (and potentially last) of my Colby career.

So today’s snow kind of reminded me of that. Except in Maine, it was dealt with. Plows starting before the sun rises, shovels in hand, salt if necessary. In Oregon? None of that shit. Oregonians, honestly, don’t know what to do with themselves when snow hits the ground. Which is all fine and fair, considering the infrequency with which significant snowfall actually occurs, but there is no way that anyone should be doing anything remotely related to transportation. And UO agrees, apparently, via email: campus operations are suspended until 1:00. We’ll figure out your finals at that time.

So after getting work done, debating my assignment’s situation with my roommates and the strict timeline I am on in order to travel home for Break (one roomie, who I happen to be traveling with, is pretty adamant about me faking data to just get everything done so that way I can leave with them), I come to the conclusion that everything is just going to have to wait. There haven’t been many times where I’ve surrendered everything that I have planned, especially because of nature, but it’s a necessary conclusion.

Instead, this morning is dedicated to exploring the effects of the snow. Two different walks and an exploration of the backyard reveals that there are a lot of branches from trees down, cars are covered with snow, and only the main roads are cleared (due to other people driving on them and carving out tire tracks—what are you thinking, Eugeniuses?). I return home, help teach a roommate the finer points of using the power slide of Mario Kart 64, watch updates on the sports world (Tebowmania and the Saints can relate to my suspension of plans, today), and finally decide to make a trek to campus for the allergy shots and turning in everything else. I don’t see anyone going into work, so here I am, back to living in my winter coat that was a second home to me in Maine as I walk across campus.

Everything, today, changed. With time, the snow will melt, school will resume, everything will get back to normal. But how frequently can something of this magnitude change all those plans of the night before?

It better not be tomorrow. I have things to do.

Colby in Popular Culture: Reference #5

Big Boi in a Colby hoodie.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=6aADXY-dKek#!