Photos of Condo

Here they are. Sorry for the delay. I'll do pics from the party later.

UPDATE 4/28/06: I've moved the photos here.

America's Online Censors (The Nation)

Never mind about Flickr. Just found out about this and deleted my account. I'll clean out my email account over the next week and then delete that, too. It's not much loss on my part to send them a strong message.

Yahoo! has a Chinese-language portal hosted inside China, with a search engine that filters out all websites and keywords deemed unacceptable by Chinese authorities. It does not inform users that the content is being censored in any way. Yahoo! also offers a Chinese-language e-mail service hosted on computer servers inside the People's Republic. Because the user data is under Chinese legal jurisdiction, Yahoo! is obligated to comply with Chinese police requests to hand over information. Such compliance over the past several years has led to the jailing of at least three dissidents. If I were one of those people or their loved ones, I would never forgive Yahoo!.

2/28/06: To clarify--Yahoo! owns Flickr. Sorry I didn't make that connection before. My brain was fried from grading. More on Yahoo! later. Also, please look at the comments for this post for more.

My new Flickr page (with new photos of the condo)

Since I'm a sheep when it comes to computers (OK, so as a Mac user I belong to a smaller flock, but still...) I did like all the cool kids did months ago and set up a Flickr page to share my photos. It has some pics of my furnished, decorated condo, and from the home-warming part from yesterday.

The party was excellent. The theme was mini, since the place is small. I had:

8 oz. sodas
Coronitas (7 oz.)
Single carton OJ
small bottles of wine
mini liquors

bagel bites
mini corn dogs
taquitos
baby carrots
cherry tomatoes
mini candy bars
personal bags of chips

Had a good time and liked the theme. People came in waves so there was always room.

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Sex Pistols snub US Hall of Fame

I prefer the Clash, both because they are better musicians and because their politics are actually for something, too. But sometimes I'm in the mood for good angry anti-everything music, and they're good for that. This story amuses me. It seems fitting for them to turn down the offer.

To: Professor@University.edu Subject: Why It's All About Me - New York Times

Another trying aspect of my future career...

While once professors may have expected deference, their expertise seems to have become just another service that students, as consumers, are buying. So students may have no fear of giving offense, imposing on the professor's time or even of asking a question that may reflect badly on their own judgment.

For junior faculty members, the barrage of e-mail has brought new tension into their work lives, some say, as they struggle with how to respond. Their tenure prospects, they realize, may rest in part on student evaluations of their accessibility.

my del.icio.us page

I kept reading about this site and signed up the other day. It allows me to keep bookmarks online and to tag them with descriptions. You can search for sites that others have tagged. It's sort of like a collective project of organizing the internet by bookmarking interesting pages and tagging them. I don't have much up yet but you can check it out my bookmarks here:

del.icio.us/rbt

I'll eventually add it to my sidebar.

My Letter in DTH (sort of)

The Daily Tar Heel didn't have room for my letter on their anti-union editorial because of a controversy over a comic depicting Mohammed (some people never learn), but they did put it on their blog. I guess supporting card check neutrality is enough to get called a socialist these days (you used to have to actually want to expropriate something...)

[once again--the title is a link]

Congress debates use of unions - University

I spoke at this. Just said that the right to organize is a bsic human right, etc.

What a difference a week makes...

It's been 8 days since I closed (the day I took that batch of pictures) and a week since I moved. I wanted to give a progress report. This is good because it gets me to tidy up.

UPDATE 10/05/06: The pics didn't work because I switched to a different host. I have pics here.