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for mssm people

By emile 27 Mar 2002

Alright Folks, no fun and games this time around.

<p>Bad news. Mark Tasker is getting canned. After 7 years of service and with </p>

<p>a</p>

<p>baby due in September, the administration evidently thinks it appropriate </p>

<p>to</p>

<p>eliminate his position. That means Anthropology, Mythic Realm, Political</p>

<p>Geography and the Expedition will no longer be offered at our fine school.</p>

<p>I spoke with a few folks at the school to get some facts so you all would </p>

<p>be</p>

<p>confident when talking to someone else about this.</p>

<p>When asking the administration about it you may hear a few excuses.</p>

<p>(1) There&#8217;s not enough interest in his classes.</p>

<p>Mark is teaching 72 kids this term. Roughly half the student body. He had </p>

<p>to</p>

<p>turn away people from his Anthro. course and there are still people sitting</p>

<p>on the heater. Three times as many people are asking to take part in the</p>

<p>expedition as they have room for this year.</p>

<p>If they mention low attendence in his Anthro course last term, it was</p>

<p>because it was placed in the same time slot as Leadership, a required</p>

<p>course.</p>

<p>(2)Funding</p>

<p><span class="caps">MSSM</span> is facing financial times considerably better than when any of us </p>

<p>were</p>

<p>there. Although not robust, next years budeget is one of the largest to</p>

<p>date. Funding is evidently sufficient enough to justify buying new furniture</p>

<p>in the offices and giving the administrators a raise but not to retain</p>

<p>faculty.</p>

<p>Actually, funding for faculty is evidently in surplus as they are hoping to</p>

<p>get a PhD with no teaching experience to teach the History course next </p>

<p>year.</p>

<p>PhDs don&#8217;t come cheap.</p>

<p>Sure, there&#8217;s more to the issue, but basically, it stinks. It stinks like</p>

<p>only a beureaucratic administration can. But you know what? They want </p>

<p>out</p>

<p>money. Call them. E-mail them. If Tasker or any of the classes you took </p>

<p>with</p>

<p>him influenced your life at all, let someone know. Hell, even if you just</p>

<p>think its horrible to fire someone with no reason after 7 years of popular</p>

<p>service, especially with a child due, call someone and tell them that.</p>

<p>In fact, I know just who you should talk to. Dave Patterson. He&#8217;s head of</p>

<p>the Board of the Directors. Here&#8217;s his e-mail: dpeterson@tamc.org</p>

<p>Wasn&#8217;t that easy? And while you&#8217;re at it, call Mark, he misses everybody,</p>

<p>and he&#8217;d love to hear your support.</p>

<p>Dammit people, if you have any compassion, do something about this. </p>

<p>We can</p>

<p>change their minds.</p>

<p>-One pissed off Lithuanian.</p>

<p>ps&#8230;please forward this far and wide. I know there are folks out there who</p>

<p>care who I&#8217;ve lost touch with. Even if you do nothing else, let someone </p>

<p>know</p>

<p>who will.</p> 

audiogalaxy

By emile 05 Mar 2002

does anyone here use audiogalaxy to preview music before you buy it? i found an interesting “feature” a few days ago. if you have someone’s UID you can essentially log into their account.
audiogalaxy is two seperate components: a web interface through which searches are performed and downloads controlled, and a satallite application, which handles the file transfers and indexing of your local collection. with the right url, containing a person’s UID, you can download files onto their computer and play them. i believe that it onlf supports the transfer of mp3 files, so currently the only potential is that to annoy the heck out of audiogalaxy users by blaring yoko ono mp3s on their computers at 4am, or potentially fill their harddrive with random music. does anyone know of a potential malicious application? are there mp3 virii?

revelations

By emile 09 Dec 2001

i just took the hottest shower of my life, to the point of painful. and low and behold, i was given a question to answer. are people more inclined to do harm to those who have harmed them than to reciprocate kindness? do we lean more towards vengance than the propagation of happiness?

<p>what if it&#8217;s true? what does that say about people?</p>

<p>i detest vengance. what does that say about me? perhaps it&#8217;s a metric of some sort. not like i&#8217;m within a fucking mile of mr perfect, but maybe figuring out the split on those two goals is a basic indicator of what i like to pretend are &#8220;good people&#8221;. </p>

<p>is there any difference between doing good or evil and doing right or wrong?</p> 

probability

By emile 07 Nov 2001

Central Limit Theorum of Random Independant Sample ->

<p><u>C</u>entral <u>Li</u>mit <u>T</u>heorum <u>o</u>f <u>R</u>andom <u>I</u>ndependant <u>S</u>ample -></p>

<p><u>CLiToRIS</u></p>

<p>math is sexy.</p> 

tonight

By emile 24 Jul 2001

if you happen to live in the massachusetts area you should come to the boynton in worcester, ma tonight. and that means YOU!

a dangerous game

By emile 17 Jul 2001

if this successfully goes off as a “suicide by cop” i think were all file-system-check’ed. this is almost as bad as that “probable cause” monkey business. i thought only the big time g-men could ‘suicide’ someone, but that soon could be coming to a theater near you.

digital cameras

By emile 06 Jun 2001

i’m shopshopshopping for digital cameras in the 3 megapixel range. my front runners are the kodak dc4800 (which i had to buy to try out, bestbuy sucks…), the nikon coolpix 880, and the olympus c3040. im also considering the canon powershot g1 and s20 but theyre a bit expensive. anyone have any advice? i’m about to return the dc4800 as its nearing the end of my 10 day ‘trial’. considerations: the dc4800 has sub par indoor performance and red channel noise, and higher than average chromatic abberations. the coolpix 880 is 150-200$ more than the dc4800 and gets bad reviews on cnet, about being too complicated. the c3040 is a nice one, but is the most expensive of the class. i’ve been poking around www.dpreview.com but i can’t make a definative comparison. any input?