Allen Lew's Thoughts

In this week’s Critique of the Week, Allen Lew takes a look at news from a national level. Does he like what he sees? Find out here.

lets face it, snowboarding is like golf for 15 year olds.
At least 90% of snowboarders are white young males and there needs to be diversity in this sport. So I have proposed my own snowboarding version of affirmative action. I have an extra snowboard (156cm) and boots (size 11)and will give them away to the first minority to contact me with an intention to either learn or progress at the sport.

Cheers!

Admit it, it’s true.

Taken from this post from Craig’s list.

I introduce a new column to One called “ Critique of the week.” This one is called “Critiquing Berkeley Media“.

What does Allen Lew think of Berkeley media after a week of reading it all? Plus, the good of expanding the American Cultures requirement.

I got my first news comment today. On the Bic pen story I posted,

err… if this article was posted a bit earlier, i wouldn’t have gotten my bike stolen on the first school day .

Geez, I didn’t realize I had such a responsibility.

I just got picked to be a news admin for one.berkeley.edu, the new Berkeley students portal. It has news on the front page, as well as sections for events, classified ads, blogs, and more. As more my part, I’ll be putting up news about Berkeley and anything relevant from across the country. So far though, I’ve only posted about Bic Pen’s as a lock pick and Best of the Berkeley blogs. I’m still trying to find my voice and style for this, so if you have any problems with my writing let me know. Also, I realize the news on the site is pretty limited. I’ll see what I can do to boost coverage, so if there are more things you’d like to see (more sports perhaps?, campus news?), also give me a comment. Finally, if you have news that you’d like to see, point me to it (the submit news script isn’t working right now, we’re seeing how we can get it back up). Thanks a lot.

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Web Wonder–JibJab-The animators of the political parody “This Land” have released a sequel entitled “DC Land.” It’s hilarious.

I got out of class today thinking I would have to add to my list of Celebrities I have missed while in Berkeley entry. I had already missed Bill Gates at Zellerbach last week, and then I found out Howard Dean would on campus. The problem was he was coming when I had a class and I didn’t think I could miss the class, so I would miss him. As I left to go home, I saw Jackie Goldberg (who demonstrates my entire lack of knowledge of state legislature, because she presented my home town district and I had no idea) wrapping up a speech. I, then, realized though that she was introducing someone. Yes, Dean came out and started his speech, which was totally awesome ( I wish there was transcript on the net). Then I saw Eddie and Joe with Vicky, who were also there, listening to Dean. They then told me about the reception Cal Dems were having for him afterwards. Not wanting to miss a chance to meet Dean, we all went over to MLK student union and helped set up the reception. We waited until all of a sudden, he appeared. It was awesome. We all shook his hand and got him to sign various things and got pictures with him (I should have that up soon). That was awesome. Plus on the way out, we ran into Jackie Goldberg, though without the same enthusiasm. Wow this has been a good week for me, politically speaking.

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Funny Quote-“Hey I met Dennis Kucinich”- Billy Mack after telling him I met Howard Dean.

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Bonus Quote (not related to anything above, but really funny)-‘In my earlier years, I was a mathematician. It was simple – there was only pencil, paper, and wastebasket. But when I got older I discovered a simpler way. I became a philosopher and did away with the waste basket.’ – a friend of Prof. Papadimitriou (stolen from David Marquardt’s profile)

So I went down to the Institute of Governmental Studies library with Mihai to watch the Vice presidential debate. To my surprise, the room was packed with students, faculty, and even the random homeless person (when aren’t they dropping by an event in this town?) for this event. Even the media came by as KRON 4 TV and KCBS 740 AM were there. Yours truly was one of the lucky few who they asked questions to. I, as Mihai can tell you, was able to talk to the media though by pretending to be an undecided voter (which I’m not). Well actually he asked if there were any Republicans in the room and I said I was marginally conservative (which I am) and then kind of had an undecided voter label thrusted on me. Well, it didn’t really matter; my media exposure only amounted to less than a second on KRON (fyi, if you catch this post in the next 20 mins, you can see that second). I’m not sure about the radio, as I have no idea when I would have been on. As Vik said to me when we watched it, “you didn’t even get 15 seconds of fame.” I will someday (not that I really want it).

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Extra, Extra, Read all about– The best of the Berkeley blogs– Find out more about the resident bloggers of Berkeley and their blogs like Prof. Brad DeLong (there’s even a little blurb about students who use Livejournal)

The Associated Press also ran an article today on how the web has been spoofing the candidates. But with all the blogs and the flash animations of the world, we sometimes forget the occasionally funny cartoons in our old newspaper media. With that enjoy some of the ones I thought have been funny cartoons from the old media in the last week (by the way, I noticed that I took these images from the web and put them on a blog; they were still designed and printed for old media).

4 cartoons about the debates and the candidates

I had just posted this entry taken from business author, Seth Goldin. This time I decided to add commentary to it.

1. Canadian pharmaceuticals are dangerous
This lie protects the prescription drug companies, allowing them to charge the consumer super high prices to our poor innocent consumer. The logical solution would be to buy them from Canada where generics are cheap and readily available. The drug companies though are saying that doing this is dangerous to the consumer. Oh please. Canada isn’t some third world country where drugs aren’t tested. so they’re perfectly safe. The only thing dangerous is how the Americans have to sneak them down here.

2. Piracy is killing the ongoing creation of music and movies (notice I didn’t say anything about the movie and music businesses)
First let me say that piracy is illegal. It is copyright infringement and that is a crime, because you are taking something that you don’t own and not paying for it. That said, it doesn’t mean that music and movies in general are suffering from piracy though. For one thing, there are plenty of people who have pirated singles from various artists and then want to buy the cds or better quality dvd versions. These people will also go to concerts and screenings and buy other merchandise, which actually makes the artist more money. And with all the piracy technology that’s come out like mp3s, divx, and p2p file sharing programs, independent artists can now distribute all sorts of music and movies that wasn’t possible to do without a lot of funding. Consumers now have more access to more music and more movies than they did before, not less.

3. Dental work lasts forever
Take a look at how long your fillings last.

4. A bottle of Evian is dangerous to airline security and must be surrendered
There are several more dangerous things to worry about than whether or not an ordinary bottle of water is actually a bottle of acid. However, airport security makes you drink from your bottled water to prove it isn’t some toxic chemical. Wow talk about paranoid.

5. The Microsoft monopoly pays dividends to all users (like IE, for example)
I’m sure all those people who have gotten a virus in the last 2 years know exactly how wrong that statement is. Too many people running Microsoft products have made us all vulnerable to attack by just about any bored kid with computer programming skills. Adding the 40 dollars a year for security programs and Microsoft is paying the consumer back greatly.

6. You can’t start a business without venture money or a big bank loan
All those people making money off some e-commerce site like Ebay can tell you that’s not true.

7. Working hard for your boss and following instructions is the best way to get ahead
I’m sure we all know that’s a lie by now.

8. We need to spend taxpayer money on support for traditional factory farming
Somebody mind telling me more about this?

9. It’s impossible to make a fuel efficient automobile Americans will accept
Hybrid cars have totally disproved this. Car manufacturers just needed to stop making fuel efficient automobiles that suck.

10. Who you know is more important than what you do

Good stuff he put up.