Exceptionally Bright Moon
Posted by sek8 at July 10th, 2006
There was a beautiful, bright harvest moon tonight. I loved it.
Discrimination against Mac Users
Posted by sek8 at July 5th, 2006
I am enrolling in NYU Law in the fall and could not be happier…. except about their discriminatory policy against students using Macs. Even though the new MacBooks can be used as PCs (by dual-booting and running Windows), they are not allowed. Similarly, I tried to use MTV overdrive over the weekend and was again shut out because I have a Mac! It just not fair!
Chaos and the Mob
Posted by sek8 at February 27th, 2006
Chaos theory states that once turbulence exceeds some critical threshold the behavior of matter (air, water, ect.) becomes unstable and unpredictable. It recently occured to me that this theory has a lot to offer sociologists and behavioralists. Three examples come to mind immediately:
1) The behavior of the seniors in line for the senior basketball game. After waiting for an hour or so in the usual fashion the line system, which has always worked before, became a mob scene with people grabbing handfulls of wristbands from the line moniters.
2) Parking outside of my building in an off-limits lot. Across from my appartment there is a parking lot that is designated off-limits to the people in the appartment complex, but that always seemed to be empty. After the brave disobedience of a few parkers, there are now consistently 12-15 cars parked in the lot illegally.
3) The DukeObsrvr Blog. After a few nasty blog posts in which the anonymous author attacked everyone at Duke, the blog has now become a free-for-all of Dukies hating on other Dukies.
My point is only that perhaps there is something to be gained by studying where exactly the threshold to innappropriate behavior lies in social situations.
Critics
Posted by sek8 at February 26th, 2006
So here is my idea: A graphic novel, told in chapters, about famous people - their lives, loves, everything. It will have a huge cast of characters - muscians, actors, socialites, and politicians; all of whom interact in strange and unexpected ways. Because it is a graphic novel, fashion and accessories will also emerge as predominant themes.
Oh wait…It’s already been done:
And that is why I am no longer listening to people who criticize me for reading US Weekly. :)
A Down-Low Hater
Posted by sek8 at February 21st, 2006
If you go to Duke, then in the last few days you may have heard about a blog titled the Duke Observer. If you haven’t I will quickly bring you up to date. On Friday, a columnist for the Chronicle wrote a column that brought this blog to Duke’s public conciousness (the link to the blog is below if you want to check it out for yourself). The premise of the Duke Observer is an anonymous frat guy’s musings on social life at Duke. The unfortunate part is that he has nothing good to say about it. His values seem to boil down to sex, status, and possibly “coolness” which is usually just a mix of sex and status. Forget traditional college values like “education,” or “expanding your awareness,” or even just making real friends. According to him these things don’t matter, the only thing that matters is how many people you sleep with, how many STDs you acquire in the process, and perhaps how much money you have. Thats all folks. But my point is this: so much hating has to come from sort of insecurity, arrogance, ignorance or maybe just plan meanness. This is why the “Duke Observer” is nothing more, and will never be more, than a Down-Low Hater.
Visit the blog yourself:
Celebrity Look-Alikes?
Posted by sek8 at January 28th, 2006
Recently there have been multiple celebrity sightings in the West-Village area…. Is Durham the new SoHo?
The Author OR Tamara Hope a.k.a. the Stepsister from Planet Weird?
Keith’s Brother OR Tyson from Beauty and the Geek?
Play of Kid N’ Play OR A Guy that lives in my building?
What’s worse?
Posted by sek8 at January 26th, 2006
vs. 
In the last few days, everyone has been up in arms about the apparent deceit perpertrated on the public by James Frey in his ‘memoir:’ A Million Little Pieces. Oprah added the memoir to her book list in 2005, after which it became a best seller (of course). After the website www.thesmokinggun.com published a investigation into the accuracy of the memoir, everyone has been questioning its status as such. After intially supporting the author, saying “What is relevant is that he was a drug addict … and stepped out of that history to be the man he is today and to take that message to save other people and allow them to save themselves,” Oprah regretted her comments explaining that she gave an improper impression that the truth was not important. Now the point is, what is worse: what Frey has done, i.e. exaggerating parts of his life and still claiming truth by publishing his work as a memoir when perhaps it should have been a novel OR what novelist Dan Brown has done by putting a note to readers at the beginning of his novel claiming that the Priory of Sion is a real secret society and that “descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate”? (I have it on good authority that the Priory of Sion is in fact generally regarded to be a hoax, and that many descriptions of artwork/surrounding history in The DaVinci Code are not only inaccurate but flagrantly so…) Outside of the art-history world I have not heard of many people having a problem with The DaVinci Code, as it seems that its ‘novel’ status protects its prevarications from the public both legally and morally…. And so I wonder: are these crimes of literature equal? Or does presenting fiction as fact only hurt when you break the letter of the law?
Read more: http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/01/26/D8FCK8IO7.html
