Ubiquitous Academicians

Last Friday night, I watched Lions for Lambs, a political, thought-provoking film directed and starring Robert Redford. Lions for Lambs is put together quite interestingly; there are three section of the film which are transitioned between throughout the course of the movie. One section stars the aforementioned Robert Redford as a professor meeting with a gifted, but disaffected student. Redford tries to coax his student into participating more and attempting to make a difference in the world. The next section follows two soldiers spearheading a new plan in Afghanistan. These two soldiers were students of Redford, but, against his wishes, they decided the best way to make a difference would be to put their lives on the line. Lastly, we have a portion starring Meryl Streep, an experienced journalist, interviewing Tom Cruise, an up-and-coming Republican senator. Cruise’s character, who is one of the minds behind the new strategy in Afghanistan, is revealing the plans to Streep while simultaneously attempting to justify many of the United State’s failings in the war.

The movie itself is rather lacking. It is essentially made up of a number of lectures that use far too many words to explain relatively simple concepts, which can be a bit tiresome, and Tom Cruise continues to disturb me, but the underlying message is a good one. Lions for Lambs tells its audience that, in this day and age, every person should become involved in defining events of the time. The film explores both participation in political and military change, but it does not point either out as the definitive path, rather, it communicates the more general political or moral theme of participation in change.

I might not recommend this movie, but I can fully support the message behind it.

Your writer,

Before I go about writing the particular thoughts that come to me at this time, I’d like to offer an apology to all our readers for my recent lack of activity on the blog. Although I’m somewhat tempted to cobble together an excuse for my inactiveness, the simple truth is that I’ve been downright lazy. It’s not that I don’t wish to continue contributing to the blog, for I think of many ideas for it each day, but that I have a severe problem with procrastination. Let us continue on, though, with no further ado.

I would like to show you to a clear and insightful article written by Stephen King. This column, which King wrote for Entertainment Weekly, clearly demonstrates my thoughts on the predicament of video game violence, ratings, and the constant disputes centered around them. The column manages to address my foremost point of frustration with the argument to ban violent video games or make them illegal for minors: it is a double-standard. Brutal, disgustingly violent movies such as Hotel and Saw predominate in today’s film industry, and they are NOT illegal for minors to view. These films trump, in there vehemence, anything that even the most violent video games have to offer.

Secondly, the column looks at the continuous conflicts over video games in the context of the grand scheme of things. King rightfully points out that politicians love to use violent entertainment as a scapegoat to pin the fundamental problems of the modern world on. He also reminds us that many entertainment mediums have undergone similar scrutiny (comics, rock music, etc.).

Stephen King manages to debunk the ludicrousness of the anti-video game debate with great succinctness and eloquence, making this an excellent read for anyone remotely interested in the topical debate.

Lastly, if the subject of video game politics interests you even remotely, I’d recommend you pay a visit to Game Politics, a monumental resource on the topic of video games in relation to politics.

Your writer,

An afterthought: Thank you, Ethan, for managing, unlike myself, to keep up with this project of ours.

I’m in San Francisco for a while, but one thing that is not on my agenda is watching the Olympic torch run. Let me say for the record, I have never watched the entire Olympic games - only sections I really enjoy, such as fencing. This isn’t because I don’t like the events; they merely coincide with other happenings, and don’t take top priority.

Basically, I don’t have very strong opinions about the Olympics. However, when ridiculous hypocrites create an atmosphere of fear and animosity during the celebration of a wonderful attempt at unity and sportsmanship, I am truly disgusted. I’m referring, of course, to the protesters for Tibet. Now I will admit, I’m not very informed on this conflict, so I won’t speak too ardently - but from what I have observed, the Tibetan people really do need our support, and China seems to be out of line. That’s all I will say.

But people - come on! When there is a close ratio of security personnel to spectators, you’ve must admit there is a problem. When people are being leaping around and attacking each other like battle-crazy barbarians, there must be a problem.

Especially when it’s being done in the name of PEACE!

You know, if you really cared about the Tibetan people, you’d be doing something to help them - not ruining this honored celebration.

And on the other side of the coin, it’s a flame! While it is symbolic, and crucial to the ceremony, it’s certainly not worth all this insanity.

Basically, I wish people would use theirs heads, instead of charging off to make peace using violence.

Great. A few minutes after I make one of the lamest posts in the history of humanity, wordpress goes and gives me excellent subject matter.

In case you didn’t notice, wordpress has just - and I mean just - updated their site. (Actually, they could have done it anywhere in the past 24ish hours. That’s what I get for using ScribeFire.)

The appearance seems to be the only thing, but I haven’t explored it very closely yet. So far, my opinions are mixed. It’s new and strange, and I’m somewhat lost.
That having been said, I like what I see. Many options seem more accessible - all my blogs are listed across the top of my window, instead of that silly drop-down menu I had to use before (which is still there; but I can smugly ignore it.)

Actually, it looks similar to Vista. I’m not sure how this is relevant, but it’s an observation I have made.

This post is brief because I’ve already posted today - I just figured I’d weigh in on the new subject matter at hand, while it’s still fresh.

I just took a look at our blog statistics. Boy, what a good way to make myself depressed. Yesterday, we garnered a whopping 7 views - pathetic, compared to the 53 we earned on our debut. Granted, we debuted talking politics, at a time when politics were the absolute hot topic - and we posted about Wisconsin first.
We were also new, interesting and both writing.

Only one of these remains applicable.

Still, I will carry on. I’ll make a big deal about it, moping and whining in a manner unbefitting of an academician. But I’ll do it.

So, on to the actual subject matter of this post. I have resolved not to worm out of being interesting, like I did yesterday. Therefor, my subject is something pathetic. Indeed, today I am writing about when free stuff is good - and when it is not.

Funnily enough, I just listed all sorts of free software I’ve been downloading for my new laptop. Obviously, I am a fan of free stuff. (I’m keeping this to free software/media, not free anything.) Just today, I’ve downloaded even more - Pidgin, FoxLingo, and the most intellectual of all games: Line Rider. I also started OpenOffice, but when my horrible dial-up (I know, I know. I need to upgrade.) informed me that it would take 30+ hours, I put it on hold.
Lots of free software comes from the Mozilla Project (http://www.mozilla.org/), which I cannot praise highly enough. Projects such as this contribute more to innovation than most highly paid professionals.
All of this having been said, sometimes free stuff is not so good. An obvious example is software that comes corrupted with Spyware or viruses - trojans, miners, all sorts of creepy little things that haunt the dreams of my computer and wallet. These are not positive things, for anyone. The sad thing is, pretty much all of them come with free software; what kind of idiot would try to sell someone a virus?
There are other downers.
Not all free software is as good as “comparable” programs that you must purchase. In fact, this is often the case. Lots of free things are free simply because they aren’t good enough to be marketed.

There are many other pros and cons, but this post has gone on long enough. Please let me know what you think - and recommend our blog to your friends! The more readers, the happier we are; the happier we are, the better our writing.

This topic came to me courtesy of Chris Brogan (http://www.chrisbrogan.com/) who maintains a handy list for bloggers just like me - who are caught in a slump.

Hello all!

I don’t have too much to say today, because I’m extremely busy. However, I didn’t want to start off on the downward spiral of not writing. Therefor, I’m going to throw out a discovery I made today, with the help of http://www.stumbleupon.com/

http://www.lookatbook.com/

It’s an interesting art project, created by four artists from New York and N. Ireland. I’d encourage you to check it out - the art is astounding, and some of it extremely thought-provoking.

Now that I’ve made this small contribution, with which I have shifted the responsibility of entertaining you over to said art project, I will clear up a small issue.

You are probably wondering why “Ubiquitous” proceeds “Academicians” - there are two of us, and we live very close together. Therefor, the ubiquity is not physical. Neither are our posts anything close to ubiquitous - sparse is much more accurate. This makes ubiquitous almost the opposite of what we actually are. So, why is it there? Well, for one thing, we like the flow of the title. For another, we like to consider ourselves ubiquitous. Thirdly, at some distant point in the future, we may have far more academicians writing for us, to the point at which our writing staff become ubiquitous.
Call it foresight.