I wish I could give you this feelin’
enj + foblander present:
Over the break I pirated Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro and cut my teeth on this little skate video. Using tools like those for a project like this is kind of like using a backhoe to scoop ice-cream, but why settle for anything less than the best?
It’s Jimmy and I skating on campus, with a cameo from a random guy I saw skating in China. Oh yeah, and there are robots.
I made another blog?
Are you for cereal? I found this hilarious and somewhat inspiring article that breaks down exactly why Chinese is hard.
While several things in the article are true, and funny because they are true I think the overall tone of desperation is for comedic effect. Chinese is hard, really hard, but its fun as hell. Maybe I’m just crazy for liking the challenge, but you can put together the pieces of the puzzle if you ask “why” enough. The radicals start making the characters look familiar, the sounds start becoming distinct, and the culture starts shining through. Im starting my third year, and I havn’t always been a good student, in fact I’ve never been truely studious. I just try to pay attention and I have had increasingly more fun speaking with Chinese people as my skill progresses. I mean, that’s what it’s really about for me anyway, just being able to talk to more people than I can now.
I have two issues with the article. The first one is serious about section 6. where the author talks about dictionaries. He never mentions electronic dictionaries. I payed about 50$ for a decent pocket sized electronic dictionary with a qwerty keyboard in china. All the menus are in chinese so I can’t use close to half of its functionality, but I’ll be damned if I ever use a paper dictionary again. When my skill progresses I’ll probably have to buy a traditional character one too, and eventually I’ll probably shop for a more sophisticated one. With these its much easier to look things up because you can choose between a couple different methods at the click of a button. Book dictionaries are much slower and have fewer options.
My second point is a small note on the cultural boundaries talked about in section 9. The author never mentions Friends, the hit american TV show. I am willing to bet that the average Chinese student of english knows at least twice as much about Friends as the average American that fits the target demographic for Friends. It’s sick how much they know. It is funny to be told you have a Chandler personality (or is it insulting?) out of the blue. My favorite was hearing “Sorry, I’m being a total Monica.”
I’m still waiting for the day that I am proficient enough to karoake Jay Chow…
This essay was conceived after reading about the recent AOL search data leak. A comment about the tragedy of people making light of such a privacy violation lead me to think deeper on the subject. The tragedy. The comedy.
If you ask any person if they care about privacy, they will respond positively. Yet why does it seem that society does not care about privacy? I submit that people are more willing to sacrifice other people’s privacy than they are to protect about their own, hence the aggregrate attitude towards privacy is one lacking any serious enforcement.
I can think of several possible reasons for this. The most important one being that privacy is a hard concept to define universally. My best definition of privacy is the control over one’s personal information. Information can be anything from a person’s naked self, to a person’s thoughts as well as a person’s actions. This control is often maintained by avoiding observation by others, yet sometimes it is simply the expectation that others will not observe.
If that is an acceptable definition of privacy, the control over one’s personal information, how does that fit into our society? Freedom is our society’s most cherished concept. Freedom can be defined as being free from the control of others. One of the most important freedoms we have is freedom of speech, which means we have the right to share information without being subjected to the control of others. This presents an obvious conflict with privacy when that information is personal.
The definition of privacy is further muddled by the fast pace at which technology is advancing. In the past privacy was possible because means of surveillance were very primitive. Here it is important to note that authority and where it lies has a large impact on the debate of privacy. In the past one’s privacy in regard to the public eye could only really be violated by somebody with social authority, because there was no means to prove otherwise. One’s privacy in their personal space could only be violated by a direct observer. Today technology has advanced to the point that one’s privacy in their own personal space can be violated remotely, and furthermore, they can be brought into the public eye without a social authority. Image, video and audio recording all allow for cheap and efficient observation. With the advent of the internet, privacy is decaying at an exponential rate.
The internet has decentralized information, and it continues to decentralize it at a more and more efficient rate. Recording equipment is incredibly cheap, and the means to spread recordings is almost instant. All it takes is bad intentions and a little bit of determination to violate a person’s privacy in ways most people find incredibly uncomfortable. Now we see firsthand how betraying search results can be, how loaded with personal information. We are sending this information voluntarily and it is certainly being collected.
So if all the means exist for a Big Brother situation, or worse, for every citizen to be a big brother, what do we do? How will giving people control over their own information help if they are giving it away? Besides search engines, using credit cards at chain stores tells volumes about a person. We want credit and we want search, we want cameras and we want camcorders, but we have no experience mandating behavior when it comes to these things. There are no laws on the books against aggregating voluntary information, no laws against making recording equipment, and we don’t even know if we want those laws. Laws fighting technology have a pattern of failing, the only hope seems to be mandating responsible use of those technologies.
However if we mandate responsible use of those technologies, we are conceding part of our privacy already. We are conceding control to the organization who holds the data, to the person who weilds the camcorder. Are we ready to do that? Do we already do that? Ask yourself how comfortable you are and realize that privacy cannot be taken for granted. Then ask yourself if its really all that bad.
I just posted a mini essay on slashdot in response to some poor fool’s post bashing wikipedia’s reliability. The poster argued on a false premise so I decided to inform them. What resulted was a rather lengthy prediction of the future and where “media” (as in all the sources of our information) is headed.
I’m really starting to appreciate YouTube.com! They are on the forefront in a cultural revolution that is shaking up the establishment. No longer do you have to have insane amounts of money or contacts to express yourself, in video no less! So I put both of my chinese videos on youtube, and they are no longer hosted here, it saves me money/bandwidth and I like the idea of being a part of youtube. here they are:
apparently this one is not subtitled in english, I can’t find the subtitled version right now, but I’ll change it when I can.
My neighbors Jimmy and I get a bite taken out of us by Vice Kennels’ Belgian Malinois. Classic Edition International provided the music. Word is bond son, wooo we gonna hit em this summer.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0D6MjyGIgnA
This is my (quite old) skate video with Ransom AKA IllaReg’s (quite new) music behind it. Enjoy!
I wrote up a page about my first 2 days in Holland, there are pictures too!
I recently read this article from reddit.
It struck a nerve, so I wrote this frustrating rant in some comments, its transcribed here:
You know why we don’t do anything? Wanna know why my generation aren’t activists?
Because we found out that all these causes are bullshit. At the top of each organization is some self serving prick or group of pricks busy fucking somebody else.
I found out the news was just as “real” as reality tv before reality tv became popular. I found out that there are no major differences between the two major parties. I found out that the EFF is just as guilty of spreading “Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt” as the **AA. I learned that my votes don’t count anyway, that marching doesn’t send a powerful message anymore. I learned that the only way to make things right is to buy politicians.
I learned that half of this article is trite political bullshit. I learned in elementary school that the guy dressed up as a king signalling the end of times was crazy, and I have since learned that so is any normal dressed person claiming that the sky is falling. I learned that fear is the easiest way to control the people around you, and to be very wary of any organization using fear to inspire you.
I am the exact demographic that was rioting in the late 60s, but I DONT GIVE A FUCK. I think you’ll find that I’m not alone in my demographic.