I haven’t really felt like updating lately, although I have been saving some good stories to put in this space. Considering how little I’ve had to do these last few weeks, I’m not sure what the cause of my malaise is.
So, today I’m going to try to put up a few updates from the last few weeks. None of the stories are especially new, but I found them to be interesting.
Here are a few photos of my recent graduation (May). I think all of these are available at Flickr, and probably are currently displaying in my sidebar. Still, it was a good excuse to give BannerZest a whirl.
BannerZest provides an attractive and easy front-end for creating Flash photo galleries. There are about a dozen themes that may be applied for controlling transitions between photos. BannerZest also offers an SDK for creating additional themes.
My me.com account is working. If you don’t have any other addresses for me, the one below is as valid as any. They all end up in the same place eventually, anyway.
In other news, I spent a good portion of this weekend updating my blog’s layout. It’s quite a bit simpler and cleaner now than before. If you have comments or suggestions, let me know.
In the process of updating everything, I evaluated a couple of programs and plug-ins. I’ll try to make it a priority to write it up. (I actually evaluated something like four SQL tools because a plug-in I installed corrupted a few entries in the WordPress database, and I couldn’t access the damn fields any other way. Although I’m not planning on buying it because I don’t see it being a regular need, Froq was by far the best Mac SQL tool I tried, and if you’re looking for one give them a shot.)
I also went through and read through a lot of my older entries. For a while there, I was updating this site pretty regularly with some substantial updates. I’d like to try to get back into that. Newsvine has been a great diversion, and there’s a community there that is second to none, but I kind of miss trying to build my own thing.
Also regarding Newsvine, I finally found an easy way to integrate the stories that I seed there with the blog here. That was one reason I stopped updating this blog; I got tired of so many duplicate steps. I’ll probably write up a quick tutorial about it later, but the long and the short of it is to use the WP-O-Matic plug-in for WordPress. It’s not perfect by any means, but it’s the best tool I found that (sort of) works.
Ta.
This is a little late, since the festival was a month ago this weekend. However, I’m testing out a version of MarsEdit, and I would like to start blogging more. This is a re-post of an article I wrote for Newsvine the weekend of the festival.
Another Austin City Limits Music Festival has come and gone.
Like almost every year, in spite of buying a three day pass at outrageous prices, I rarely show up early for a full festival day (about half the years I haven’t even gone every day). My philosophy on events like this is that I’m there to enjoy them, which means no schedules, no pressure. So I missed a lot of the acts. If you want a good recap of each of the day’s events, head over to Mel Coulter’s column, where she’s been providing officially sanctioned (press pass and everything!) coverage for the event. Congrats to Mel, and I’ve liked the articles she’s published so far. Rather than try to duplicate her coverage, I’m going to focus on the acts which impressed me the most.
This years festival will be noted for its inauspicious beginnings, as several eagerly expected acts pulled out, either several weeks ago (Amy Winehouse) and even barely a week before the festival gates opened (Rodrigo y Gabriela, The White Stripes). The first day of the festival also saw a small tragedy, as a propane tank explosion at a food service area behind the main stage injured four
festival workers, two seriously (see story).
Despite the setbacks, this festival was fortunate in a number of other ways, with large, friendly crowds excited to see the acts and cooler weather than had been seen in ‘05 (with Saturday at a record 108 degrees) and ‘06. The festival promoters have also worked closely with Austin Parks and Recreation staff to ensure that a repeat of the infamous “dust bowl” festival of ‘05 didn’t repeat itself, seeding the grounds of Zilker Park in early summer with a particularly hardy variety of grass. All in all, this festival may have been the smoothest run ever, with staff settling into routine efficiency.
The one exception might be “the festival crap” store, which ran out of most styles of ACL Fest shirts by early Saturday. Happily I bought mine Friday, but the poor guys who had only Sunday day passes probably weren’t too happy. (Admittedly, all the styles will likely be on sale on-line at the festival website in the near future.) Surprisingly, among the first to go were the “green” shirts made of bamboo fiber which were $15 more than the “regular” shirts from American Apparel.
Not unlike ACL Fest itself, I faced my own set of technical glitches. Apparently, I forgot to charge my Li-ion AA batteries for my Canon digital camera, and I didn’t have replacements with me. Rather than pay festival prices for standard AA batteries that my camera was just going to eat, I didn’t get any pictures on Friday. On Saturday, particularly after the sun went down, I found out that my aging 4 MP camera just wasn’t going to cut it. I made out with barely a half dozen acceptable shots. Before heading to the festival on Saturday, suspecting I might be disappointed with the Canon, I picked up a new 8 MP Nikon Coolpix S51 point-and-shoot. I had to let the battery pack charge, but everything was set on Sunday, when I was finally able to score some decent photos. It’s no digital SLR, but it is small, thin, light, and idiot proof (the last most important of all).
I had wanted to see LCD Soundsystem on Friday, but events conspired against me, keeping me from the festival until around 7:30. However, my reporter on the ground told me both Peter Bjorn and John and M.I.A. put on great shows. Near the end of her set, M.I.A. invited the crowd up on stage, which crowd, being the helpful sort, dutifully obeyed. This resulted in the predictable security freak-out by the festival organizers (”Not on our liability policy, M.I.A.”) and her mic was cut. From my reporter’s perspective, seven card studpoker caribe portalreglas pokerstrip poker gamereglas texas holdemjoker pokerjuego al instante portales internet,juego al instante,juego al instante onlinejuego al instante portales webstrep poker onlinestrip pokeronline poker gamejuego omaha poker en lineacaribbean poker paginas webcaribbean poker portales webpoker downloadjuegos de cartas de pokerpoker flash gamepoker de 5 cartasjuego al instante portal webbonus pokerfichas pokerjuegos de poker en espa?oljuegos online gratis pokerjuego de poker en lineapoker en linea gratispoker pc gamepoker descarga gratisjuegos on line pokerstrep poker on linepoker de dadosjuego del poker en lineatexas holdem descargajuegos de polly pokerpai gow poker onlinetexas holdem onlineholdem poker reglasdescarga gratis de pokerjuego omaha poker gratispai gow poker lineajuego al instante paginas internetjugar poker sin dineropoquer de dadosplay poker omaha freepoquer online gratisjugar a poquerjugar poker gratis,aprende a jugar poker,jugar pokerpoker on line espa?olganar dinero pagina internetapuesta webpremios dinero paginas web however, it was pretty hilarious.
I walked into the festival soon after Kaiser Chiefs began their set. A round of text-messaging with Chasing completed, I met up with him and caught up on the day’s events. I also filled him in on the news reports about the propane tank explosion (apparently news at the actual festival was scarce). Our group trekked up to a spot for The Killers and caught a half dozen songs (eh) before walking across the park to watch the rest of Björk’s set.
As I told Tommy, I’m really more of a fan of Björk’s older material. But as Tommy told me, Björk isn’t getting any younger (or saner), and who knows when we’ll get a chance to see her again. Easily convinced by this line of (il)logic, we made our way down to watch Björk’s unique brand of performance (complete with an all-female horn section dressed up as…well something vaguely fairy-like).
After a late lunch with the roommate and a detour to Best Buy where I picked up the aforementioned Nikon camera, I again got to the festival grounds late. Luckily, due to the White Stripes cancellation, Muse had been bumped down to the closing set for Saturday, and there weren’t many other big-names I had to see Saturday.
Another round of texting with Chasing, and we met up for the finishing bits of the Arctic Monkeys’ set. Chasing’s brother Skip then wanted to see Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, who were surprisingly good (my first exposure), but perhaps not suited for the size of the venue. I can imagine them rocking one of the smaller stages, though.
Here we split ways with Skip, who wanted to see The Arcade Fire, while we wanted to see Muse. Having seen Arcade Fire in ‘05 at ACL Fest, and being a little underwhelmed by their latest CD Neon Bible, I’ve got to say that those of you who caught Arcade Fire missed out (in my opinion) on the best show of the festival. Muse was nothing short of a revelation, putting on a high energy, loud, raucous show. If Radiohead and Slayer had a bastard child and made Meatloaf its godfather, you might end up with a band like Muse. Good stuff, and I bought one of their four CDs at the festival store (the rest were completely sold out!).
Muse may have been filming a concert DVD, or so I heard. Of note was that the video feeding the “jumbotron” stage monitors on either side of the stage, unlike almost every act, was processed with special effects in real time. If a DVD does in fact come out, I plan to get it. You should, too. (And it’s not just the contact high from the copious amounts of pot smoke taking place around me talking.)
Also of note, the set involved an intermission of sorts during which a portion of a speech by John F. Kennedy was read (probably this one). The crowd ate it up, and a part that I remember being read follows:
It is the unprecedented nature of this challenge that also gives rise to your second obligation–an obligation which I share. And that is our obligation to inform and alert the American people–to make certain that they possess all the facts that they need, and understand them as well–the perils, the prospects, the purposes of our program and the choices that we face.No President should fear public scrutiny of his program. For from that scrutiny comes understanding; and from that understanding comes support or opposition. And both are necessary. I am not asking your newspapers to support the Administration, but I am asking your help in the tremendous task of informing and alerting the American people. For I have complete confidence in the response and dedication of our citizens whenever they are fully informed.
I not only could not stifle controversy among your readers–I welcome it. This Administration intends to be candid about its errors; for as a wise man once said: “An error does not become a mistake until you refuse to correct it.” We intend to accept full responsibility for our errors; and we expect you to point them out when we miss them.
Without debate, without criticism, no Administration and no country can succeed–and no republic can survive. That is why the Athenian lawmaker Solon decreed it a crime for any citizen to shrink from controversy. And that is why our press was protected by the First Amendment– the only business in America specifically protected by the Constitution- -not primarily to amuse and entertain, not to emphasize the trivial and the sentimental, not to simply “give the public what it wants”–but to inform, to arouse, to reflect, to state our dangers and our opportunities, to indicate our crises and our choices, to lead, mold, educate and sometimes even anger public opinion.
Chasing noted that there is probably a bit of unappreciated irony in this speech, but I don’t think it matters too much for the point Muse was trying to make.
Another late lunch (what can I say, on weekends I sleep in), but I did get to the festival grounds around 4:30. A bit of criss-crossing the grounds to locate Chasing, and we made it over to meet his brother for the Bloc Party set.
The Bloc Party crowd was one of the more enthusiastic of the festival, and Kele Okereke made sure they got their money’s worth. At one point he jumped from the stage, mic in hand, and ran the length of the fence separating him from the crowds several times, undoubtedly making a good number of fans very happy.
Chasing had wanted to see Regina Spektor, but we made a detour through the festival arts & crap area. A very talented artist by the name of Collin Welsch sucked us in with her wonderful Dia De Los Muertos images , and we all left with something. I myself picked up three images of the Tree of Life. A bit of t-shirt shopping also complete, we only caught the last five minutes of Regina Spektor.
A little disappointed, hot, and somewhat tired, we took a break in front of the “second main” stage for Wilco. Afternoon was well on its way to turning into evening, so shade was blessedly plentiful. The guys in Wilco were their regular wonderful selves, although I was admittedly not paying much attention, instead recharging myself with a quick rest before the sprint to the end.
Chasing’s sister and I made a detour to grab some grub, and then we met up again for Ghostland Observatory, a local band that has seen a lot of exposure over the last year, including ‘06 ACL Fest and ‘07 Lollapalooza. This was another band that put on a fantastic show, and the crowds proved it. Another CD purchased at the festival store. Playing opposite Ghostland in this timeslot were The Decemberists, but I think most people were at my end of the park.
…Or maybe not. After Ghostland Observatory finished up, we moseyed over to watch Bob Dylan. Chasing and I both hold a certain amount of respect for Dylan, but we’re not fans. Tommy and Chasing’s sister, however, ditched us early on and pushed for the front. Luckily, the closing set of ACL Fest is always scheduled alone, and the main stage is built at a spot where the terrain acts as a natural amphitheater. Bob could be heard throughout most of the park, so Chasing and I held back and just relaxed.
Dylan went a little over his scheduled time (city noise ordinances proscribe festivals from playing past 10 PM), but it wasn’t too much after this that it was all over. Tired, dirty, sneezing, but happy, satisfied, and full of new ideas for music purchases, we headed back for our cars through the greenbelt. In all, this was another successful festival, and despite ever-increasing ticket prices, I’m sure I’ll go again next year.
Technorati Tags:
music, arts, austin, texas, acl-fest, austin-city-limits, spiffie
[My mother and I were talking about a new, massive strip mall development in Georgetown, a smallish town north of Austin.]
mom: “So everytime your father and I drive past Panda Express he asks what it is. I told him three times before I turned to him, and said, “I’ve told you before, it’s an Asian place.”
me: “The sad part is he’s probably asked you five times, and you only remember three.”
Or “Why I Know I Am Truly a Moron.”
We have just finished reading Book 9 of the Odyssey in my ancient Greek class. I rather like mythology, so it’s been a real treat. However, we’ve been reading fast enough (~100 lines/night) that it’s been a little stressful.
Herein, then, lies the story of my own mini-Odyssey, whereupon having conquered Homer far away at school over many hours throughout the day, I, attempting to return to my home, am thwarted from my goal by means of cruel misfortune and my own idiocy.
(In Greek the preceding would be about a dozen words; bow down to inflected languages.)
Tuesday night, I decided to relax a little by going for a walk. Because it is July in Texas, I changed into some clothing in which I would not mind sweating, even though it was 9 PM by the time I got home from work.
Since my roommate was getting ready to leave for Chicago the next morning, in case he needed to run out at the last minute, I took my house key off my keychain to bring with me. I then went on a nice hourlong walk around the ‘hood.
You see where this is going, don’t you? But it gets even better.
As I was in the final stretch toward the house, I thought to myself, “Now, I better remember to take my house key and put it back on my keychain.” With the roommate gone out-of-state, there would be no one who could let me into the house.
Now normally I ride to school in the mornings with my roommate, because he works on campus. It is convenient because it gets me to school about thirty minutes early every day, and I have time to get some coffee and review my homework from the night before. Also, normally I would, after class, take the bus home.
Keep in mind that I frequently go through life completely lost in my own little world, oblivious, and so I am very much a creature of routine and habit.
However, since my roommate was flying out Wednesday morning to Chicago, remember, and having gotten up too late to catch the bus, I drove myself to school that day, and I parked in the parking garage, putting my parking ticket in my pocket.
Then, after class, I took the bus home.
Nice.
Walking up my driveway (remember that I am oblivious) I did not notice then that my car was gone. I was, though, aware enough of my own idiocy to think to myself (often I am in the habit of recalling important details just before they become important enough to affect my reality negatively), “You know, self, I bet you left your house key in your walking shorts, and now you are locked out of the house.”
And I was right.
Luckily, you don’t get to be almost 30 years old without learning a few things about yourself. One of the things I know is that I am really pretty dumb, and so often I leave myself ways to save myself from myself. In this instance, I had left a window in the kitchen unlocked. Grabbing a metal folding chair, conveniently (maybe presciently) left in the yard, I removed the screen, opened the window, and (clambering in a very ungainly way) let myself into the house.
Now, overly pleased with myself, I proceeded to get ready for work, cleaning up and changing clothes. Changing clothes involved changing pants, the previous of which I had emptied the pockets. Remember, still, that I am an idiot and mostly oblivious much of the time.
Then, I went out to go to work, and discovered my driveway empty… “Oh yes, my car is still at school, parked in a parking garage.”
“Crap.”
One of the reasons I don’t ride the bus to school in the summer is that Capital Metro combines two UT shuttle routes from back-and-forth routes into circular routes, where possible. I happen to live nearest a stop that is at the beginning of the loop. This means that it takes my 10 minutes by bus to get home from campus (normally it takes 10 minutes each way, during the long semesters).
But it takes 40 minutes to get from home to campus along the entire loop. “Sigh.”
I catch a bus, and ride back along the entire route to campus. By this point, I’m ready to get the hell out of there so I can get to work. I get in my car, and reach into my pocket to get my parking ticket.
Yes, into the pockets that I had emptied at home while getting ready for work. Guess where the parking ticket is.
Thwarted a third time, I fast-talked my way to a normal day-long parking fee instead of a lost-ticket fee (3x). Finally, I was on my way from school, with all my keys intact, to work, where I would complete my labors, and then be able to go home.
That night, I blew off most of my homework, and went to bed early. Clearly 5 hours of sleep a night is not cutting it.
So this whole updating the blog thing isn’t working out so well over the summer. Unfortunately, you would think a course title like Intensive Summer Greek that counts for two semesters of credit in a 10 week offering and with a course description that starts “Designed for highly motivated students…” that I would have recognized how busy I would be (or should be, if I were doing everything I really ought to be doing). Alas, school demands on my time always seem to hit me by surprise.
So. This just means that I have unfortunately not been able to invest the time in this blog that I would have wished even just 3 months ago. I’ve even unsubscribed from the vast majority of my blog and newsfeeds (down from about 80 to about 30, mostly low-traffic personal blogs of friends).
However, I am going to try to update moderately more often, at least once a week. This will probably occur on Friday or Saturday, starting next week. I hope to pull together a few news-clippings I hit upon during the week (despite my best intentions not to go browsing!), and throw together some “best of my internet” posts until the end of this course, now only 4 weeks away (!!!)
Cheers.
There’s almost nothing I love so much as book shopping. Every year UT Press has a book sale where they sell some of the titles and also have a large clearance sale on “hurt” books. I’ve gone almost every year for a while (I didn’t make it out last year).
Anyway, here is this year’s haul:
Hm. I need a new bookshelf. Anyone feeling generous?
Today I’m more or less laid up in bed. This means I ought to be able to get some further work done on part II of my Immigration series. If you want to know what happened, take a gander at the flickr badge in the right pane. There are pictures there of my now awesomely oversized ankle.
Have a good day!
Or, “Latin & beer: a good combination.”
The weirdness of yesterday was not just limited to my sudden feeling of paranoia.
After the programming class, I went to what has been my favorite class so far this semester: Latin. To understand just how much I’m enjoying the language, it helps to know that I’ve actually added Classics as a dual degree to my math degree, purely on the strength of my experience with Latin these last two semesters, and I’ve done this in what is technically my junior year. Ultimately, this will add a year to my schooling, but I think it will be worth it.
On showing up to the next class, I found that only the instructor, the other “non-traditional” (i.e. older) student, and I had bothered to come. Happily enough, the instructor decided this meant we could go get beer. 
We decamped to the Student Union and proceeded to take turns buying rounds of beer. While we did this, we had some very good conversation. I’m really happy I went. Not necessarily the highlights that we discussed, but some points of encouragement for me (and after all, this is my blog):
That makes me so excited I can barely contain myself.
Overall, it was a very nice and encouraging sit down, and it’s the first time I’ve really done anything with anyone from school. Most of the time I’m running around so much to class, or to the library to do homework, or home so I can get ready for work, that I really miss out on the social part of college.
Here’s hoping the kiddies skip class more often.
Yesterday was kind of weird. There were rumors all week that my school would close after noon for Good Friday. Supposedly the governor had in the past decreed state workers could leave early, but hadn’t last year. Thus, there was some confusion as to whether he would this year.
I have it on good authority that he has not done any such thing in the last eighteen years.
Regardless, he did not, and so my afternoon classes were on as scheduled (my morning class having been cancelled earlier in the week for different reasons).
My first class, at 1, was lightly attended. Just before class, I had stopped by to see the TA, who was returning the test we took a couple of weeks ago. I did well, a 94.
Now, a 94 is good. I recognize that. But it’s not what I consider spectacular. It’s just uhm…expected. Especially since we knew pretty well what the material would be and we were allowed a full sheet of notes (this is a programming class).
I also didn’t consider the test especially difficult. Four questions involved writing methods for specific tasks, not any of which were that challenging. Three dealt with recursion, so there was a trick to each of those. The fifth problem asked to show the steps that an algorithm we had gone over in class took to reach a solution. For you programming nerds, it was asking us to take an unsorted array, and show the steps a quick sort algorithm would take to sort it (using the first element as a pivot).
Now, since I picked up the test immediately before class, I didn’t have any time to talk with the TA about the test. I just ran the block and a half or so from the lab to class.
I did get there a few minutes early, and only two other students were there so far. The girl asked me how I had done, because she could see I was carrying my test. I told her, and she exclaimed with quite a bit of surprise. Apparently I’d done really well. She asked if I had heard what the class average was yet. I said no. Well, the class average was 64.
Huh.
I later learned that there was one 94. The next highest score was somewhere in the 70s, of which there were a few. After that scores trailed all the way down through the 60s, and on into the 30s. The one question everyone missed, except for me, was the question about quick sort.
Anyway, I might take to wearing body armor to school for a while. It’s too bad it’s almost summer in Texas. That will get really uncomfortable really quick, I think.
If you can’t tell by my weather widget in the sidebar, it’s an insanely nice day in Austin right now.
My roommate and I tried a new restaurant/bar, Shoal Creek Saloon. The shrimp and crawfish were very good, as were the cheese fries. I can see going back.
I’ve been looking for stories to post about, but haven’t yet found anything about which I have too much to say. And with the weather as it is right now, I don’t have a lot of motivation to just make something up.
Everyone be good, send me something worthwhile to read, and try to enjoy the Spring!
So I’m back again. Although it isn’t set up currently, shortly demosthenes.us should point directly to this page. I decided that I would be happier on WordPress and happier with a domain that was mine, that wasn’t an assumed personality. There wasn’t really a point to doing so. And thus, here we are.
So welcome (again) to my online presence: davidvoegtle.net.
Needless to say, configuration and site changes are very likely over the next few days. Stick with me, and I hope to have it all worked out in the near future.
Well, I’m back; at least for a little while. I haven’t had as much time as I would have liked this Spring Break to catch up on the news and write some new posts. Moving on top of catch-up at work has really been a bitch and a half.
Oh well.
There should be some updates this evening.
I feel bad that I haven’t sent anything to you guys in a while. This weekend I am moving to a new place closer in to town and closer to school. I’ve had zero time to read the news, much less form some cogent opinions to throw up in this space. Sorry.
Updates to hopefully resume this coming week. Otherwise, Spring Break should offer me an opportunity to get some writing done.
How dumb am I? I bought a slew of new books just before I move next week! Half Price Books is really quite dangerous for a book addict like myself. Oh well.
Here’s my haul:
The Gibbon set is really the best of the haul. It looks to be an 1952 copy of the original Britannica Great Books set. There’s a little damage to the bindings, very minor, but otherwise they two volumes are in fine condition.
An additional Latin text was a recommendation from my Latin instructor because the text we use (Wheelock) is wonderful in some ways, but very light on explanation and background in many others; I’ve also needed a genuine Latin/English dictionary for a while. The Hersh book on mathematics sounded too good to pass up (damn impulse buys). The Diamond book was a recommendation from a guy at work. The CSS book hopefully will help out a little with the site redesign I’m working on. The last was another impulse buy.
And there you have it.
So I happened to look at the site from a Windows XP PC running the latest version of Firefox, and I just want to apologize to everyone for the really atrocious background color that apparently comes up. On my PowerBook, in several different browser apps, the page has a nice mellow deep banana yellow; on the PC it was a glaring nuclear mutant banana yellow.
I’ve been seriously considering a style redesign anyhow, since I’ve become more accustomed to CSS and what the different markup terms mean, so as time allows this weekend I plan to do a bit of hacking around with the style.
I’ve also been playing around with Rapidweaver. If you like the concept of iWeb, but the reviews have sort of turned you off (incomplete implementations, more of a “beta” feel than finished app, etc.), check it out. It’s only about $35, and it has every feature I’ve heard advertised for iWeb, i.e. pod-casting, blog support, .Mac integration (and FTP site support, too), themes, photo galleries (HTML and Flash), etc.
The plan is to come up with a unified or closely similar feel for both sites, so as soon as I decide roughly what I want, I’ll start putting it together.
Technorati Tags:
computers, software, recommendations, Apple, Rapidweaver, iWeb
More for me than for you, but if you’re curious, here are some stats for the site for my first full month of demosthenes us.
This next one is pretty amusing. Even though I run a Mac, for almost the entire month of January I was using Camino. That means most of the other Safari traffic is you guys.
Anyway, for those of you who read, thank you. If this is something you like to see, I can do it every month.
Men enjoy others’ misfortune more than women -study: “LONDON (Reuters) - Germans have a word for it — schadenfreude — and when it comes to getting pleasure from someone else’s misfortune, men seem to enjoy it more than women.”
(Via Reuters: Science.)
Nope. Not me . . . really! *Whistles*
I’m sorry I’ve been neglecting you. It’s the beginning of the semester, and so I have a lot to do. I promise to give you some loving tonight before schoolwork completely overtakes me.
A Plastic Publishing Plea: “Plastic::Media::Books: Okay, we’re back. Hold the meta and help out a fellow Plastician.”
(Via Plastic.)
If you’ve been getting a little antsy, like I was, with Plastic down for a couple of weeks, rejoice! The site is back and looks to be working fine.
Huh. Blogging is kind of cathartic.
Just before I started this blog, I happened to get into a long, winding discussion on this issue on another forum. I don’t know that either of us (the two main posters) made any inroads against the other, but it was a fun back and forth over a period of several hours. This post is an edited version of our exchange.
Student-funded center aiding gays questioned at UT: 09:11 PM CST on Wednesday, December 28, 2005 AUSTIN - Since last year, a student-funded center at the University of Texas at Austin has offered counseling, workshops, forums and other services to gay, lesbian and female students.
“All must pay fee, but some oppose mission”? Is it just me, or is this not particularly stupid. There are probably all kinds of organizations on campus that I don’t agree with who receive funds from the University. Yet in spite of this I support their continued funding because I think the overall campus experience is enriched by their presence.
The first salvo basically involved following arguments: try to see it from their point of view and the service itself can be construed as offensive.
main opponent 2005-12-30 01:59 pm UTC I personally support the services, but I think it is different than other social services. I mean, try to look at it from the point of view of a conservative who may think homosexuality is a sin, one of the ultimate evils. To ask them to pay fees to support that really is asking a lot, I think. I imagine I’d be really outraged if I felt that way too.
That’s why it’s different than other services and organizations offered by the university; at worst, people mind find those services stupid or not worth the money, but it’s not a direct affront to their morality. Try to imagine if there was a club receiving funding from UT that annually executed the student with the lowest GPA because they think it makes society better, and there was a large chunk of the population that supported this even if they were in the minority. Chances are you might be absolutely aghast; no matter what anyone tells you you’re not going to believe that’s okay, and you’re not going to want to pay fees to support it. It’s not the same as other “waste of money” issues.
First, the sin factor. Should a Christian Scientist have the right to demand equivalent payback from the University for fees that go towards the Student Health Center because they believe modern medicine is evil? I don’t really think so. Our student service fees fund such a diverse array of services and groups that I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect you can individually funnel your money. When someone comes to a large university like UT, he or she needs to expect, or learn to adapt to, a diverse cosmopolitan environment with people from all backgrounds and walks of life. This part of the university experience is every bit as much a part of a student’s education as anything they’ll learn in Calculus or Biology or Accounting.
Second, I think a student execution by a funded group makes a poor analogy; it’s rank hyperbole at best. We’re talking about funding counseling and providing a space for students who might be having a tough time fitting in elsewhere. I think a better analogy would be if there was a demand by someone ignorant to defund all the Jewish organizations at school because [and I want to make this clear that I'm not saying this serioiusly] clearly the Jews have enough money and don’t need the University’s support. Would we say, “Oh sure, that’s a valid viewpoint?” I don’t think so. Do we let a Klansman protest the funding of African American student organizations? It’s clearly preposterous, but we better believe that affirmative action and student services benefiting African Americans are very offensive to some people. Why do we ignore those feelings and sentiments? We do it because we recognize there are viewpoints that are less valid than others. The marketplace of ideas is not required to value every opinion equally.
Next, we move into the heart of the matter. Does a state agency (in this case, the University) have the right to abridge (supposedly) the religious rights of fundamentalist Christians by funding groups they’re morally opposed to? Is such funding abridging those rights? Are these rights applicable to this situation?
main opponent 2005-12-30 03:37 pm UTC I actually do think a Christian Scientist should have the right to refuse to pay the fee for those services. I don’t think it’s a good idea to force people to support anything that goes directly against their religion, even if I think their beliefs are stupid. That’s a big cornerstone of our democracy and I don’t take it lightly.
It wasn’t supposed to be the best analogy in the world, it’s only purpose is to make people realize you can’t compare a morality-and-religion-related service to something like health care. It’s not the same thing. That’s why your analogy isn’t better; it has nothing to do with core religious beliefs. (If there was someone whose religious beliefs seriously said Jews are evil, then I actually don’t think they should have to pay the fee.) Affirmative action and health care are not on the same level as stuff like homosexuality, abortion, etc. If there were a Klansman whose religious (not just personal) beliefs said supporting minorities would be a sin — I don’t know what all they base their ideas on — then no, he shouldn’t have to pay the fee.
I’m not comfortable with telling people that they have to support something when they think it will make them go to Hell; it’s contrary to freedom of religion. The vast majority of people have no religious qualms with health care and affirmative action, even if they think it’s a waste of money or they hate poor people and minorities. I would be extremely pissed off if the university told me I had to support something I found morally offensive, and I think it’s hypocritical to say that people should have to support the same things I do when their religion tells them not to.
I’m an educational idealist. I view the university as the shining light in society, where we send our best and brightest to be educated to then go forth into the world to make it a better place. We do this hoping that gradual change will eventually enable us to send more and more people, so that eventually everyone will not only be able to, but will desire the kind of education one can get from a first-rate post-secondary school. We want people to be smart, to be able to think for themselves, to discriminate among choices in a rational way. We do this because experience has shown time and time again that this works better than any other method we know of for advancing society as a whole.
In a certain way, the public university has strong communitarian aspect to it. The state levies taxes to all (or most) of its citizens to fund a public university (or system) to which it can send students from a broad cross-section of society by subsidizing those students who wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford to attend or otherwise aren’t encouraged to attend. Even after tuition deregulation, the University is still able to assist vast numbers of students through remaining state and federal financial aid, privately funded grants, etc.
The student service fees are a part of this communitarian ideal. We all pay into a big pot and we all have the opportunity to reap benefits of the pot by using those services which most appeal to us. There are Chrisitian organizations, and Muslim, and Jew, and ethnic organizations of all kinds and types. There are interest organizations. There are athletic organizations. There are academic organizations. The point is not that any one person is funding any particular organization; in truth they probably aren’t. But the idea is that we all fund all the organizations so that everyone has an opportunity to feel welcome; everyone has an opportunity to partake of the shared experience of the University; everyone has an opportunity to find a group or organization that they fit in with best. We all fund all of the organizations and not one of us funds any one of them.
The hardcore evangelical right-wing Christian student is no more funding any one organization than I, a secular humanist, am funding any single Christian organization. I’m not offended by that; it seems most odd to me that they should be.
Refunding the fee I think puts the University in a horrible position. Now that the student has had some fee or portion of fee refunded, does the University disallow them from participating somehow in certain areas of student life? How is that enforced? What if there are 100 or 1000 students who demand fee refunds? They haven’t paid for the service, and it seems manifestly unfair to let them participate in services that the other 35K+ undergraduates paid for. But what do we do? Do we put their names on a watch list or roster of some kind? Does the University demand membership lists of every organization on campus to ensure none of the refundees are participating? It would be a nightmare.
main opponent 2005-12-30 04:32 pm UTC Hmm… honestly, I doubt that many people would be concerned enough to go through the trouble and paperwork of demanding a refund that isn’t very large. It’s one of the reasons why I’m not very concerned, really. The way I look at it, the people who would be really freaked out by the fees get the psychological comfort of a refund, and everyone it doesn’t really matter to goes on with life.
I don’t think it’s unfair to say they can participate in the services they paid their share for. For example, say ReligiousKid A gets a refund for the gay counseling service. He might participate in a religious club, but theoretically people could demand refunds for their share of the fees that support his club. If they choose not to that’s not his fault; he still has every right to participate in his club or anything else he helped pay for.
Personally I think this still misses the point. If we don’t verify, we invite abuse. Why wouldn’t a person just request all student service fees be refunded so he or she doesn’t have to pay, and then utilize the services anyway? There is a principle here about the basic purpose of the University. The diversity of the large public school is a huge part of the educational experience, and taking steps towards dismantling that or allowing people to benefit from it without supporting it seems wrong and manifestly unfair.
I guess I just don’t understand why the feelings of fundamentalist Christians are special. There’s nothing inherently, to me, more important about a sincerely and deeply felt Christian belief than there is in any principle for which I stand or in any part of me that makes me me. Why do they get their money back and everyone else has to pay? That’s not fair, and to a certain extent, a little bit of egalitarianism goes along with the public university. By choosing to attend a secular public university, by choosing to place themselves in an environment that they know ahead of time is diverse with people from many, many countries and every background imaginable, they have, to a certain extent I feel, forfeited their claim to religious comfort.
I don’t go to an evangelical church and proclaim my offense at the pastor’s sermon. A person who takes a job as a miner or firefighter necessarily accepts certain risks. When we travel to international states on the State Department’s watch list, we necessarily accept certain hazards. And when one comes to UT, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect them to play by the rules like everyone else.
I draw an analogy to hazards and risks because attending a secular public instituion, I think, probably is a little hazardous for the deeply religious. It’s no secret that they are, as a rule, fairly liberal places because of their size and the kinds of people who are usually attracted to higher education. If the deeply religious are truly secure in their faith, then I guess I don’t see what they have to fear, but if, on the other hand, they aren’t, it might be best for them to seek out an environment where their faith can be nurtured properly. A public university certainly is not one of those places.
Funding services that directly “support” homosexuality does not infringe upon someone’s religion in my opinion. How is the Center directly supporting anyone’s homosexuality? They aren’t giving out grants for homosexual acts. As near as I can tell from the website, the Center doesn’t even necessarily focus on homosexuality, but on women’s issues and issues relating to sexuality in general. “Support” in this context is a loaded word.
I don’t think we’re infringing on anyone’s rights. There is a recognized moral, ethical, and legal difference between a requirement of an organization a person is forced to join or participate in (say for instance mandatory public school education through secondary school) and requirements of orgnizations that a person joins voluntarily. The Boy Scouts of the US has a charter through the US Congress to be the official scouting organization of this country. It is in the minds of many people a de facto public organization. But when a person joins the Boy Scouts, he or she accepts certain rules of the organization. Nobody makes anyone go to UT. In that way, a person has already voluntarily limited his or her rights by accepting the terms of attendence of his or her school of choice. If a person went to Bob Jones University and then started complaining about the restrictive dating policy of that school, I would be no less unsympathetic to the complaints.
Everyone pays into the system with the expectation that everyone else is doing so, too. When we make exceptions for the special, suddenly it’s not a communitarian system. It’s a system rigged so that one group gets to participate by being the squeaky wheel being totally underwritten by everyone else.
main opponent 2005-12-30 03:43 pm UTC I don’t think it’s fair to say “just don’t go to UT then.” They have as much right to attend UT as anyone else, even if they might be more comfortable somewhere more conservative. If UT were conservative and made everyone fund some extreme right wing cause, I’d be very annoyed if someone told me to “just don’t go to UT then.”
Absolutely they have a right to attend, and I’m happy to have them! I want a diverse university; I want there to be viewpoints of all kinds and types. I want to have these discussions because I think they’re valuable for their own sake. But I still think that when one agrees to accept the education that UT provides, he or she also agree to certain ground rules and standards. A person gains substantially from the deal; he or she is receiving the education of a lifetime, and to a certain extent, the University gets to determine what that eduation entails.
Just as one cannot major in Biology and refuse to take a course in Evolution that’s required under the degree plan because he or she is a Young Earth Creationist and it offends deeply held religious beliefs, one shouldn’t be able to dictate what the University does with a tiny, tiny sliver of student service fees that ultimately goes to fund any one particular group. The University has, in its judgement, determined the group deserves funding because it furthers the well-being of students, and anyone who doesn’t think that this plays directly into the education of the students affected is fooling themselves.
Let’s try it another one, just for grins. Let’s say there is a Young Earth Creationist in the College of Fine Arts. Evolution offends this person. He or she pays tuition and fees to the University. Ultimately, that money can be seen to help maintain the University itself, including the College of Natural Sciences. Does this person have a right to demand that the University ensure, without error, that no money of they pay ever goes to help fund any evolution program that might happen anywhere in the University? How would one track such a thing? How could anyone ever by sure? It’s not a reasonable request.
It’s also not reasonable to expect the University to refund the Creationist an amount based on the funding the College of Natural Sciences receives using some kind of sharing formula. At the very least it would require the University to track, fairly exactly, how much money each College is getting from student tuition and fees as opposed to money from other sources. This might already be done, I don’t know. But again, if there are a reasonably significant number of students demanding such refunds, the University is now in a tight spot. Let’s say again there are 1000 students getting refunds in all the colleges except Natural Sciences. Let’s also assume it’s a not insignificant amount of money that’s refunded, but not too terribly much. Now students in Natural Sciences are being short changed, even if it only means that one or two or three additional TAs could have been hired for that 500 student CHEM1 class. Should Natural Sciences be reimbursed in some way from the colleges to which the various other students belong to make up for the deficit? Ultimately then what’s the point of the refund? If Natural Sciences is reimbursed by the other colleges, it’s likely prices will adjust themselves throughout the University to compensate. In the end, there’s no true refund for the protesting students.
main opponent 2005-12-30 06:00 pm UTC I think you’re looking at this from a very liberal point of view; essentially, you’re saying that conservatives are supposed to go to college to learn how to quit being conservative, i.e. they’ll learn not to find gays morally offensive. Saying that is the “wrong” way to think and it should be overcome is what infringes upon their religious rights; like it or not, it’s a matter of opinion. It’s like saying Hindus should go to college to learn that there’s only one God because their many-limbed polytheistic icons are silly and outdated, or that people should go to college to learn that there isn’t a God at all because reason XYZ, or that they should learn threesomes or any other manner of sexual activity is really okay, etc.
Forcing them to pay the fee is saying, “Now now, your religion is too ignorant and backward to understand how things should be. Because we feel your religion is wrong, your rights don’t matter.” The government can’t say any religion is wrong. All it can do is try to keep people from killing each other over it.
Really, I wish college did what you describe. In the real world, if I say I should be able to mess with their freedom of religion, there’s not a whole lot keeping them from disrespecting my rights later on. It’s just plain dangerous to start infringing upon people’s rights because they seem ignorant.
Yes, I’m looking at it from a very liberal point of view because that is my point of view. No, I don’t think learning to think critically, to investigate and question rationally will necessarily lead one to a liberal worldview. I think there are plenty of rational intelligent conservatives out there with genuinely good arguments (George Will comes to mind) for their positions that it would be really stupid to think that. There are also plenty of really dumb liberals who seem to me no better than the kneejerk reactionary conservatives they fight against (Randi Rhodes comes to mind).
Regarding the Hindus, do the Hindu students get to demand that no beef be served by the University? Also, I think this is another poor analogy. Does a group of students have the right to demand all their money be withheld from the Asian Studies Center because, in part, it studies polytheistic religions of the east (including, horror of horrors, idolatrous religions)?
“The government can’t say any religion is wrong.” Oh really? The government gets to tell religion it’s wrong all the time. We couldn’t teach evolution or heliocentrism or modern geology with vast timelines on earth if no public institution could contradict the religious beliefs of any of its participants.
I also disagree that requiring they pay the fee like all the other students sends a message that their religious beliefs don’t matter. They’re forcing an issue that doesn’t exist. The Center does not do what they think it does. Funding a group that exists for counseling and facilitating discussion panels and speakers does not fund homosexuality. It’s such a ludicrous position for them to take that it’s farcical. Helping people, who have to come to the Center themselves to receive services, feel better about themselves and their situation is not promoting anything. No one from the Center is handing out pamphlets on the West Mall recruiting heterosexuals to the homosexual lifestyle. Promoting dialog is not promoting the act. For all the talk I hear about “hate the sinner, not the sin” since nobody is engaging in homosexual sex that I know about in the Center, it sure seems to be more of the former than the latter.
We want people to treat us how we’d like to be treated. But I don’t think this applies here. 1) The students are here volutarily and have of their own free will put themselves under the aegis of the University, 2) The University is not restricting actual worship by the students, but only allowing activity the students disagree with in no different a manner than teaching heliocentrism would offent a biblical literalist, 3) The University has an obligation to be fair in its dealing with all its students. Allowing one group to benefit from community resources without fully contributing to the community is not fair. We fund all the programs together and we fund none of them individually.
Howdy.
I promised some information about myself and what this blog is going to be earlier, and today I’ll make good on it.
I’m currently an older than typical college undergrad studying mathematics at The University of Texas. I also work for an international computer services company part time to pay the bills.
I’m a liberal. Let’s get that out of the way right up front. I believe that in a democratic society the will of the people is expressed through our government, and that society has a moral obligation to its citizens. If a government is dysfunctional, it’s not a poor reflection on government of all types, but a poor reflection on the current state of society.
Although I study mathematics because I love it, my interests are actually fairly extensive. I rather like reading books on the different sciences, history, and language. Although I haven’t read fiction regularly for several years, I did manage to read Harry Potter, and thought they were quite good. I just finished my first semester of Latin in school, and I liked it enough that I’m now considering a second major in Latin or Classics.
Let’s talk about the blog. The post immediately prior is probably typical of the kinds of stories that I’ll be talking about. I hope to also post some occasionally longer entries. I’m currently working on adapting a discussion on got into regarding this article.
So, that’s me. If you stop by and want to say, “Hey,” leave me a comment, or you can e-mail me at demosthenes at demosthenes dot us.
That’s a fair question. Demsothenes was an Attic orator from the period just prior to that of Alexander the Great. Wikipedia describes him as “generally considered the greatest of the Attic orators.” The name ties in a little to my interest in Classics, which I’d like to study more at school if I can manage it.
But really I took the name from a nom de guerre used by a character in Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game. (Although lest you think I’m a total poseur, I do have a fair collection of Greek rhetoric; now if I could just find the time to read it all!) If you haven’t read Ender’s Game, you should. It’s really one of the best of the genre, and the more bloggers seem to gain influence over society through their grassroots journalistic style, the more it seems to be that Card was particularly prescient with his polemicist demagogue charcters, Locke and Demosthenes.
We have “traditional” bloggers like Atrios and Kos and others who influence discourse on the left, and increasingly in the media. On the right there’s Instapundit, among others. There are “proto-bloggers” like Drudge, who showed what the power of the Internet could be (remember his role in the run up to Clinton’s impeachment). Conservative blogs were instrumental in “swift-boating” Kerry in the last presidential election and in putting pressure (however ill-placed) on CBS regarding memos relating to Bush’s National Guard “service.” If you’ve read Card’s book, this seems remarkably like the influential writers on the “nets.”
I realize I’m not the first person to make this connection between those characters and the blogging world, but not every idea need be original. So perhaps the name is a little overlarge for me right now. But I genuinely hope to grow into it, the write about things I believe need to be expressed, to add my voice. More on my beliefs next, and what you’re likely to read here.