The Daily Universe, in their October 25, 2006 issue, printed a short survey to be filled out in order to determine your political leaning. Fortunately, it also included the brief disclaimer, “Editor’s Note: The following is not intended to be a scientific means of determining readers’ political affiliations. We hope the following gauge will encourage readers to do more research on the current political issues and the candidates running for political office.” For each issue, you could side with either the “Democratic View”, “Republican View” or “Undecided.” Most of the questions were written so poorly and were so badly biased I had a hard time picking either side, so I ended up being undecided on six things, Democratic on one, and Republican on two. The questions follow:
Issue #1
Democratic view: I oppose the death penalty
Republican view: I support the death penalty
Because I love the idea of people using the internet to segment the market and drive down prices for those that are really interested in buying particular products, I will continue the list I started here of websites that offer deals, especially daily deals, for products on the internet:
There’s also a whole directory of these types of sites (it may have been easier just to link to this in the first place, I admit) at froomb.com
Compare answers.yahoo.com, Yahoo’s mostly-free question forum where you can ask any question and get an answer from other Yahoo users, to answers.google.com, Google’s service which is fee-based, where for “as little as $2.50″ you can have the answer to any question you ask, and your satisfaction is completely guaranteed. BYU has a similar idea in its 100-hour board (theboard.byu.edu) where they promise to answer any question within 100 hours. If nothing else, it’s kind of interesting to peruse the different questions people are asking.
[From the Wall Street Journal
The appearance of Minuteman Project founder Jim Gilchrist was met with violence last week at Columbia University when the pro-enforcement hardliner attempted to address a Republican student group. The melee began just minutes after Mr. Gilchrist rose to speak, according to Columbia Spectator reporter Laura Brunts. “Two students in the International Socialist Organization unfurled a yellow banner reading, ‘No human being is illegal!’” she reports — which in turn prompted other protestors and Minuteman supporters to rush the stage.
Mr. Gilchrist was ushered off before he could finish his speech, but he did manage to taunt the hostile audience before the riot began. “Who’s a racist now?” he asked, while hugging an African-American Minuteman member. “I love the first amendment!”
After the riot, one unnamed protestor told Ms. Brunts that the disruption was planned: “I don’t feel like we need to apologize or anything. It was fundamentally a part of free speech…. The Minutemen are not a legitimate part of the debate on immigration.”
…In a statement released by the Minutemen afterwards, Mr. Gilchrist described the incident as “yet another indication that those who support illegal immigration are happy to use communist tactics in their intolerant determination” to deny his group their First Amendment rights.
Would you describe the actions of the students who stormed the stage in protest as “communist tactics?” Is storming the stage in protest an appropriate use of the Freedom of Speech guaranteed by the First Amendment? If you side with the students and defend their decision to rush the stage and silence the representative from The Minutemen project, how do you justify your position? What are the most effective forms of protest? Is it ever wrong to express your opinion?
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A Japanese man by the name of Akira Haraguchi spent the day Tuesday, and into the wee hours of Wednesday morning, reciting the number Pi to 100,000 decimal places. Said he:
“What I am aiming at is not just memorizing figures, I am thrilled by seeking a story in pi.”
[read the whole story here]
At 60 years old, Mr. Haraguchi may not be familiar with the fact that you can just look that kind of stuff up at your convenience on the internet at websites like this one.
It was also a Japanese super computer at the University of Tokyo that set the world record for calculating Pi to 1.24 trillion decimal places.
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This article, written by Steven Kerr, is an interesting insight into our natural propensity as a society to reward one type of behavior, while really hoping often for its exact opposite. It can be seen in all areas of life, in fact the article gives examples in business, law, medicine, sports, war, politics, consulting, education, etc. This is particularly relevant in business, and also in politics - as this year’s elections start to draw closer. Below are a few examples, but the entire article is worth reading several times over (On the folly of rewarding A, while hoping for B.doc):
Official goals are “purposely vague and general and do not indicate . . . the host of decisions that must be made among alternative ways of achieving official goals and the priority of multiple goals …[2] They usually may be relied on to offend absolutely no one, and in this sense can be considered high acceptance, low quality goals. An example might be “All Americans are entitled to health care.” Operative goals are higher in quality but lower in acceptance, since they specify where the money will come from, and what alternative goals will be ignored.