When I heard that there was a new student group on campus, Student Voices in Action, I was excited. In response to the proposed cuts to several key student services, SVA coordinated large student protests on the Diag and outside the Fleming Administration Building. Shockingly, they had a coherent message. They oppose the changes to the Sexual Assault Prevention and Awareness Center. They oppose funding cuts to the Office of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Affairs. They want Trotter House to finally get the funding to renovate. They demand increased student representation at the administrative level. Check, check and check. To top it off, they have a great slogan: “Royster cut student services and all I got was this lousy T-shirt.” I was so excited, my little liberal heart started going pitter-patter. Then they broke it in two. After meeting with several of their organizers, I realized that some of their other assertions range from the highly debatable to the completely outrageous. They claim the University isn’t committed to diversity, despite a multi-year, multi-million dollar defense of its race-conscious admission policies. They want the University to give students more than a say in the administrative process, with veto power, yes, veto power, over decisions regarding student affairs.

The SVA basically spat in the face of the administration on Monday. They exist for the same reason as 70% of the other “student groups” on this campus: to make unreasonable demands for the single purpose of getting rejected and gaining more ammo to generate more press for their radical messages. Drives me nuts.

Goodspeed Update has Mary Sue Coleman’s response.

Somehow his days on Comedy Central don’t really let me see him as a powerful political figure. If you’ve got to make Liberalism funny to get people to listen to it, you’ve got more things to worry about.

Q: What is a GMTB? A: The short answer is “Gay Movable Type Blogger.” This does not quite paint the full picture, however. A GMTB uses a Mac. A GMTB is excited about “wireless hot spots” and “cafes.” The prototypical GMTB can be found at a Starbucks with a 15″ PowerBook. He will be wearing a black turtleneck and will go on at length about the wonder years where web designers were paid like programmers. The GMTB will blog about you. Do not be alarmed. In order to make sense of their fast moving and confusing world, GMTBers need to write at length about even the most trivial encounter. They will likely Google you and turn even the most minor conversation into an exploratory experience. Every experience is like that of the newborn boy who finds touching himself over and over to be a pleasurable experience. Do not make the GMTB angry. The GMTB has natural defenses known as “Google juice.” With the application of this “Google juice,” the GMTB will sour any future searches on your name. While there is no physical harm to be done, they can make any attempt at finding relevant and useful information about you a linkfest of armchair philosophy, ill-formed opinions, and broad and insanely overblown reactions to everyday occurrences. Should you find yourself confronted by a GMTB and wish to escape, one need only mention that their “CSS” is broken. The GMTB invariably considers the CSS “correctness” and “portability” to be a craft, and the output thereof to be an “art.” By pointing out that the page renders poorly on the most esoteric browser you can imagine, you will be assured a quick and uneventful escape.

Well, I don’t wear turtlenecks, use MovableType, or have a Mac. But I do like wireless hotspots and my CSS does render correctly on everything except for crappy old 4.0 browsers. And I’m blogging this. Wait a second… Damnit!

Beer Beer is another story. Individual six-packs of beer must be bought from bars, and there is a limit of no more than 192 ounces of beer sold to one customer at one time. However, both bartenders and computer scientists understand the notion of iteration, and you may buy as much beer as you want as long as you carry it out in 192-ounce lots and come back empty handed each time.

And I got into Carnegie Mellon. Not the exact program I applied to, but pretty close. I got into CMU’s Masters of Science in Information Technology - Software Engineering (MSIT-SE) program. Looks pretty damn cool.

I think it costs twice as much as UofM’s grad program because the acronym has twice as many letters.

Following numerous lawsuits against Internet users suspected of file-sharing, the record industry will soon subpoena the University for the names of students allegedly sharing music illegally. In January, the Recording Industry Association of America filed suit against 532 individuals nationwide, many of them college students. The suits, called “John Doe” lawsuits, are against users identified only by their Internet protocol addresses. RIAA is subpoenaing the University for the names of the students under its network.

Its a good year to not live in the dorms. I’d be so screwed.

I think there are a few important lessons we should all learn from the book:

• If you’re going to commit treason and aid terrorists in their plot to assassinate the president, make sure you use AOL. And don’t even think about encrypting anything. And when you delete an email, its instantly gone forever.
• Everybody uses Blackberries to communicate. And they’ve always got a perfect signal.
• And they never use capital letters. They don’t need to.
• Not even the president.
• And if you’re an evil traitor, have all your emails forwarded from AOL to your Blackberry.
• The best way to keep the Israelis and Palestinians from killing each other is to promise them lots of money.
• When the Secret Service secures a route for the presidential motorcade, they will won’t notice the FBI snipers hiding in nearby buildings.
• Everyone is really religious and prays a lot, except for the token Democrat.
• And finally, the Iraqis are fully capable of secretly constructing and hiding a nuclear armed ICBM bunker inside a hollowed out hospital in downtown Baghdad.

My father gave me a copy of The Last Jihad, by Joel C. Rosenberg. I’m halfway through and I’ve already concluded that this is the most Republican work of fiction ever written.

After the first few pages, its already set up quite the Republican fantasy: A Republican elected by a landslide after W’s second term, strong economy, massive tax cuts, America safe from terrorism while those crazy Europeans are still getting their butts kicked…

As a book, it fits the mold of books I really enjoy reading. Techno-thriller, lots of guns, secret missions, and all that James Bond jazz.

But there have been more than a few “hey wait a second!” moments in the first half of the book. Like the fact that they seem pretty serious about the whole “nuke Iraq” plan, and a pretty unabashed endorsement of the Carnivore program. Some of them are pretty funny, while the rest of them make you want to shake your head. Theres nothing wrong with writing for a target audience, but this reads like a Bill O’Reilly fiction novel.

But hell, it must be good, since I’ve been reading it non-stop for 4 hours.