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(09/28/11 10:47pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Two days ago, I was pretending to study at my house when I was hit by a scary thought: “I’m graduating this year.” Like, for good. There’s no more school after this point. I’ll have my piece of paper that says I can learn good and that’s it. I’m out of
here. Crap, but what else does that even mean? Here is a small list of the things that came to my mind:
First, my binge drinking on the weekends will no longer be laughed off
as boys will be boys but instead as blatant alcoholism. Apparently,
drinking two 40-ounce bottles of fine malt liquor in one night is
considered “disgusting” and “worrying.” Once I get my diploma I’ll have
to start apologizing for my actions like “My Name is Earl.”
On the same vein, smoking copious amounts of the dankest rapper weed on
the reg with my roommate’s dog will only be acceptable if his name is
Wilfred.
Secondly, I will be unemployed, which is odd because I haven’t been
unemployed since I was a junior in high school. Unlike you lazy
jerk-offs, I’ve had a part-time job throughout my entire college career.
This will be a difficult transition to make — suddenly spending my time
sitting around doing nothing but drinking and rewatching “LOST” until I
can figure out what’s going on. But if I must, I will put all the effort
I put into my 3.8 cumulative GPA into this task.
Third, I won’t in good conscience be able to call myself a liberal or
vote for the Democratic Party anymore. I won’t be in college, I’ll have
to start paying taxes and I won’t be shopping at Wal-Mart for the irony.
I’ll be shopping there because I’m destitute.
This is really the only reason why I’m paying attention to the
Republican primaries; I’ll be a conservative shortly, and I’ll want to
brush up on the reasons why President Barack Obama is destroying
America. I don’t want to sound like an uninformed idiot when I’m
protesting with other Tea Party members. That would be embarrassing.
Most distressingly, my mind will begin to rot. Soon, I’ll have no reason
to read except for my own personal edification, which means I might
never read a book again. When that cool kid once said, “If you don’t use
it, you lose it,” he wasn’t referring to your dick, he meant your
brain. That thing is firmly attached, no matter how hard you don’t use
it. Trust me, I study economics.
My friends keep telling me, “Nick, why don’t you go to graduate school
so that you can keep expanding your brain? Or maybe law school would fit
you better because you’re soulless.”
Nope, can’t be bothered. I’m done.
— nicjacob@indiana.edu
(09/27/11 2:22am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Name Newt GingrichHeight 3’3”(estimate)Why he’s still in the raceThe White House is not yet sitting atop a cliff on Paradise Falls.Newt Gingrich — what a man, what a mighty good man. I want to take a minute or two and give much respect to the man that’s made a difference in our world.You might know Newt Gingrich from his fanciful role in the Academy Award-winning film “Up”, where he played a disgruntled old man who learns to live again. Wait, no, I must be mistaken. The guy from “Up” wasn’t a fear-mongering ass-hat with a million fake Twitter followers. I’m not going to front like Gingrich didn’t have his hey day in the political world. He was the orchestrator of the Contract with America in the 1990s, and he was cutting taxes before it was cool. But that was in the ’90s. And since he left office in 1998, all he’s done is make a lot of money riding the Reagan gravy train.Newt is the big man on national security. He believes the government’s most important task is to protect the American people. His website says, “Newt advocates sound policies to keep Americans safe based on timeless American principles.” Yes, timeless American principles like wiretapping and condemning Muslims — our one and only threat according to Newt.org.Gingrich is one of the least electable candidates in the GOP, not because most of his professional campaign staff left him in June or because his campaign is rumored to be $1 million in debt. Gingrich is unelectable because he represents everything America hates right now: pseudo-intellectual, old, white guys who aren’t Rick Perry or Mitt Romney. Maybe the next generation will be able to look beyond the wrinkles of his pale saggy skin, but right now, Americans just aren’t ready for his kind of people. Let’s face it. Unless he’s participating in a Halloween costume contest, he isn’t going to win anything. Every time I see him on the debate stage I keep thinking a little Asian boy and a talking dog are going to pull him aside and remind him they still have to save Kevin and her chicks. Newt, what are you doing on stage? Go save her.
(09/22/11 4:00am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Consider this an open letter to those treasonous billionaires Mark Cuban and Warren Buffett. Hey guys, what the hell? I’ve been hearing how you guys say rich people aren’t being taxed enough. Oh, how noble and “selfless” of you two. Marky said on his blog, “Pay your taxes. It’s the most patriotic thing you can do.” Bitch, please. The most patriotic thing you can do is light off red, white and blue mortar shells from the porch of your foreclosed home while drinking Budweiser out of a can in December. That is a fact.He also said, “Get so obnoxiously rich that when that tax bill comes, your first thought will be to choke on how big a check you have to write. Your second thought will be ‘what a great problem to have.’” Now, why would I want to choke on how big a check I’ll have to write? I don’t want to die because of taxes.Our country was founded on the theory of trickle-down economics. Like Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann once said, “(I)f our founders thought taxation without representation was bad, what would they think of representation WITH taxation?” I’m sure Founding Fathers like Ronald Reagan and Benjamin Franklin would roll in their graves if they heard about this “Buffett Rule” nonsense coming from our current representatives. Personally, I find it to be a real deal breaker. I had intentions of becoming unfathomably rich and employing a bunch of undeserving poor people, but now that I know I might get taxed at a higher rate, I’m gonna just stay here below the poverty line so I don’t have to pay taxes.Obviously, Marky and Buffett are trolls. At $2.3 billion, Mark Cuban is worth more money than 22 third-world countries, and Buffett is even worse. He’s worth more than the GDP of 113 countries. Yeah, maybe they can afford to pay more taxes, but what about the common millionaire?I wholeheartedly agree with my moderately-wealthy honkey in the House of Representatives John Fleming (R-LA). This millionaire tax hike will be disastrous. Fleming’s net worth is something like $6.3 million, but after paying for those money-grubbing employees, rent that’s too damn high, equipment costs and fast food, he’s left with only a measly $400,000 to scrape a living off of. Obviously, Barack Obama doesn’t care about rich white people — makes me sick to my well-fed stomach. You know how hard it is to be a resident of Louisiana with $400,000? That means you actually have to live in Louisiana. I just don’t get the thought process of raising taxes on the wealthy. Especially after all the good things they’ve done for us over the last five years. For example, it was through their investing that we finally popped that housing bubble. By 2007, it was more like a bulbous pus-filled pimple on the economy’s face. I know it hurt at first — 7.9 million jobs bled from the economy sounds like a lot. But now that it’s almost scarred over, I think we can agree it was for the best. I mean for Christ’s sake, how many times does the GOP have to tell you all how trickle-down economics works before it becomes a reality? — nicjacob@indiana.edu
(09/13/11 12:18am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>President Barack Obama says there isn’t a magic bullet to fix the economy — meaning the economy isn’t just some supernatural beast. The president fails to understand that the American economy is about as stable as mystical beasts are real. You see, the economy is kind of like a werewolf. It’s human at heart and rational in the long run, but it has these bouts of unintelligible rage with a self-destructive nature when it gets all primal. During the downswing of the business cycle, it loses all sophistication by listening to financial advice from MC Hammer and buying up gold reserves. People who don’t understand the mystical and unscientific nature of economics would have you think we need less intrusive government regulations, and we need to gut the hell out of taxes to kill the beast. However, loosening up on government regulations will make its moonlight rampages worse. Lower taxes mean we won’t be able to support the families the economy will destroy after it ravages Main Street. Let me suggest an alternative.Economists always talk about making markets more efficient. Liquidity helps you make better, faster decisions. Consider how hard it is to find a job. It involves going outside and going business to business, looking for an open spot. What if there was a job database that had all the available jobs in America? Think of Monster.com, but extremely simplified and intuitive. If you want a job you just log onto the network, and you will see all of the available public and private sector jobs everywhere in your city, across the state — even on the other side of the nation. This way, looking for jobs will be incredibly easy, and you won’t be subject to a random attack from the markets.What we also need to consider is what makes the economy become an irrational beast — uncertainty. Fortunately, stockholders are easily swayed by expensive ad campaigns. The shinier and rosier it is, the better. Think about how much fun a dog has when you throw a brightly colored Nerf ball. What we need is some dystopian-style propaganda to distract the wolf.I understand propaganda carries a negative connotation; however, we can easily spin it as “marketing.” What we need right now are Kelley School of Business marketing majors to get into public service. School of Public and Environmental Affairs students have obviously failed us so far. They have an unnecessary sense of ethics. The only other silver bullet I can think of is to blow up the moon. But I’ve been told that’s not environmentally sound. The Environmental Protection Agency is such a drag.— nicjacob@indiana.edu
(09/07/11 11:04pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Thanks to the efforts of the Indiana General Assembly we can all rest easy knowing undocumented foreigners will be put back into their already desperate place.Of the 42,181 IU-Bloomington students, there were 21 undocumented students sucking up all of our financial resources — absolutely all of them. I’m sure we can all agree those freeloading foreigners are the root cause of the $14 trillion debt our nation is trying to get out of and probably why my roommate’s puppy keeps laying salty diarrhea all over the dining room floor, too.I know I lost a lot of sleep, and apparently my peers have as well. In an IDS poll on Tuesday Sept. 6, 52 percent of the students thought screwing over less than .001 percent of the student body was “necessary and cost-driven.”Phew, for a second there I thought I was just being xenophobic, but apparently I can just hide behind the shield of penny pinching. I mean, we’re looking at some serious money — less than two-tenths of one percent of our entire budget. Using some simple mathematics we find that the state will save more than $426,827.10 if the undocumented students paid their rightful out-of-state dues. But I guess since that one guy dropped out, it’s more like $406,502. Still, this is a triumph for all, because now we can afford McRobbie’s pay raise and IU Mobile’s new crash-upon-start function that’s a hit with the kids. Oh, and we can afford to remodel the Union’s cafeteria so students can eat overpriced sushi and premium salads.All at the expense of the future livelihood of a handful of undocumented students.The policy not only makes it so those 21 students have to pay out-of-state tuition, but it also takes away any state-sponsored scholarship money they might have received. This makes plenty of sense, because now that we know they’re undocumented, we know they couldn’t possibly be smart anymore.Some people tell me, “Hey, fella, if they’re undocumented their family probably struggles to make ends meet. How are they supposed to pay for tuition now?”Like real Americans, through massive amounts of debt. However, since they are undocumented they probably cannot get a loan legally. Maybe they’ll just have to sell drugs or something. I don’t know, it’s not my problem.Let’s keep thinking about the obvious positives to this situation. Consider the inconvenience those 21 students made on our already bustling campus. What if they were all in line for the Starbucks in the Union? That would really slow down my morning. Thank goodness they probably can’t afford coffee anymore.Or what if they all signed up for the same class because it was required for their majors, and now there isn’t enough room for you, too?Well, crisis averted everybody, because one of them already dropped out. Who knows how long the others will be able to stick around?— nicjacob@indiana.edu
(08/25/11 11:29pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>By popular demand, we have extended deadlines for opinion staff applications to Sept. 2.Isn’t that grand? You know one of the interesting aspects of being an opinion writer is learning about the ebb and flow of opinions in the media. Like the ancient Buddhist concept of karma, opinions are not only conveyed, but also received. What does this mean?Well when you write opinions, people will not only be reading what you have to say, but they will also be responding.These materialize in the form of hilarious, poorly spelled comments on idsnews.com.Sometimes, if you’ve really baked the scrod of the reader, you will receive actual hate mail. Being an opinion writer means having a “haters gonna hate” mentality. Like the richest hip-hop artist in the world, Jay-Z once said: “Where are my haters, I love all my haters.”Embracing this mantra into your daily life costs nothing and the potential benefits are astounding.You see, people who can maintain this lifestyle generally become very successful. Other examples include: Billy Mays, Bill O’Reilly and Bill Gates. All of these people have seen the haters, loved the haters and moved on to get money in the bank.So now that you’ve heard what its like to be an opinion writer and know that the deadlines have been extended to Sept. 2, no doubt you’ll be applying.First apply online at www.idsnews.com/jobs and then click HERE for the Opinion application.I’ll wait here while you fill out the application. It shouldn’t take too long.— opinion@idsnews.com
(08/23/11 3:17am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Okay, I’ll admit it; I’m not a terribly bright guy. Sometimes when I don’t know what I’m doing, I just walk around and tend to get into peoples’ way. What I don’t understand scares me. Subjects that I’ve never been able to grasp are things like similes and vacuum cleaners. I prefer to live a simple life tranquilizing myself with reality TV and microwave bacon. I tend to yell at new people when I meet them, but that’s because I’m just confused, and I don’t want to be wrong. I prefer to vote for candidates that share my general confusion with life, which is why I prefer to vote for candidates that share the same level of intelligence as me. The way I think about it, anyone who’s smarter than me knows something I don’t know. I can only assume they’re trying to pull a fast one on me. I don’t like that. I want to vote for someone who had as much trouble in Shakespeare class as I did. I don’t hate Obama because of his policy positions. I don’t like him because he’s smart. Too smart, I’d say. He’s in Washington scheming. I never know what he’s doing there, but no doubt it’s something unsavory and well thought-out.Fortunately for me, conservatives have begun to respond to the fears of desperately confused Americans. They understand the world is a scary place filled with socialists and homosexuals. I’ve never met one of them, but I hear they are everywhere and want to harm my family.This election season has been filled with people who I can get behind, but so far my favorite has been Rick Perry. I’ve looked into Rick Perry’s background, and I think he will be a great representative for people like me. Words are hard. I‘m not sure what flow means or how to sound eloquent. Thankfully, Rick understands my pain. He stumbles through his speeches with the grace of a fraternity star walking down Third Street at four in the morning. Rick Perry is just like me. There’s a lot of things he doesn’t understand very well. From his college transcript you can see he had trouble with English, economics and U.S. history. Good thing none of those subjects are really that important. Perry doesn’t believe in those patchwork theories of evolution and global climate change.That’s why I don’t like Jon Huntsman. He blindly follows whatever the scientists say. What happened to populist presidents who could level with the average American?What we need is a president who can slam a few domestic beers and talk about the things that matter: fence building and who to be afraid of next.
(08/10/11 11:37pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>I’ve been in a fit of depression lately. I realize that my town is about to be invaded and there’s nothing I can do about it. Foreigners from all over the world are coming — mostly from Illinois and the East Coast. I’ve had a vision: Soon the once calm nights of summer in Bloomington will be tarnished with the laughter and joy of students.They are slowly trickling into town with their beds strapped to the top of their sedans, going the wrong way down Atwater Avenue or Lincoln Street. It’s as if they’ve never seen a one-way road before.The government would have you think drunk drivers will kill you, but it’s wrong. Out-of-towner driving is far more dangerous. If you’ve never been to Bloomington before: Stay the hell off my roads! They were made for me and not you. I’m a townie, so I live here year-round. I don’t just pack up my crap and ditch town on May 8, leaving behind a mess of shoddy, thrown-away furniture on the sidewalks. Soon I won’t be able to get a table at the Village Deli whenever I want. The time is coming when I won’t be able to diagonally cross any street I want, whenever I want. But what’s worse is that I’ll have to see the innocent smiling faces of freshmen everywhere I go. They wake up every day like it’s the best damn day of their lives. They walk around with any good reason and act like there’s stuff they have to do. They have no idea how much the world sucks because they have no reference level. They live in their own little worlds where people serve them breakfast, lunch and dinner. What baffles me is that the food sucks, but they don’t even know it. They get to piss and poo all over dormitory bathrooms and someone else comes in later to clean it up for them. They have no bills to pay and they function off of fictional meal points and their parents’ credit card. Most drug dealers do not even accept either of those as a form of currency. I see them laying down over here and over there in the Indiana Memorial Union, taking up the space where I was going to lounge. When I try and stare them down, they proceed to pout back at me like Bambi, and it melts my heart. I really can’t stay mad at them. They’re stupid freaking freshmen. They don’t know squat, and they don’t know what it means to be sad.I’d like to sit each of them down one-by-one and tell them how house parties are nothing like Asher Roth songs. No — that party last night wasn’t that crazy and no one would have taped it because all you did was throw up on your best Ralph Lauren polo and confess your love to your high school ex. But I can’t do that. They have to learn this on their own. This is what college is all about — developing oneself.But please, for the love of all that is holy: Realize your shame early so that we can have constructive conversations about international politics we barely comprehend and praise atheism like other broken, liberal college students. — nicjacob@indiana.edu
(08/07/11 9:17pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Today I’ve decided that I am incorporating myself. I’m going to sell stuff rich people like. For example, the green straws at Starbucks and smugness. Some of the benefits of incorporation include: barely paying taxes, stock options and low chances of conviction. The first and last options are what really clinched the deal for me. There is really no downside to this, except it might make getting a marriage license and opening a joint bank account more challenging. However, I still think I would lead a much more successful and fulfilling life as Jacobs Global Inc. There are so many ways to get around paying taxes through special loopholes and tax breaks for corporations. In 2008, the Government Accountability Office released a seven-year study that discovered 55 percent of American companies paid no income taxes at all in at least one of those years.That’s what I like to hear. I can’t be bothered to pay taxes; I’ve got rich people things to do — like not creating jobs and shopping for cuff links.Only $191 billion was raised from corporate income taxes in 2010, a measly 9 percent of all the revenues for that year. That’s great because why should I have to pay for the benefits of poor people like public transportation? With all the money I’ll save not paying taxes, I’ll finally be able to afford a car. Maybe not gas, but I’ll at least be able to roll down 10th Street in neutral. What’s more, I’ll still be able to receive all of the benefits of a citizen. For more than 100 years, corporations have been considered persons by the Supreme Court. They’re slightly different, however. Kind of like a super saiyan citizen.They get to give as much money as they want to political candidates. No longer will I be limited to the cap of $2,500 to any individual candidate. I’ll be able to give as much as I want to Newt Gingrich. I suppose the reason why corporations get to contribute as much as they want is because only rich people know who should be in office. I mean, think about it. Poor people make bad decisions. That’s why they’re poor right? It would be awful if they got to choose their own candidates.Another great upside of incorporation is bypassing the justice system. You can’t be arrested or convicted. Even if you absolutely wreck the economy by giving it a Subprime Technical Default, or STD, you’ll never get in trouble. And if all else fails, you can just scapegoat someone on the inside — perhaps one of your kidneys. I’ve heard people are concerned about fairness among super saiyan citizens. If Exxon Mobil is considered a person, why didn’t they pay even one red penny to the Internal Revenue Service despite their $45 billion profit in 2009? If banks like Goldman Sachs and Bank of America are considered people, why didn’t they get arrested, convicted or even a stern talking to when they dragged us down into a recession?My only response is shut up and stop being so logical. Go do poor people things, like paying taxes. — nicjacob@indiana.edu
(07/26/11 10:41pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Let’s talk about sex. Oh wait, excuse me. I meant to say debt because we have a lot of it.According to an article from CNN.com, there is $10.4 billion in federal funds used by the states for higher education that could potentially dry up if there is no deal made by Aug. 2. That’s money used for Pell Grants and subsidizing loans for students. Financial aid is what keeps me in college. If Indiana loses that money, I won’t be able to pay for next semester. And I’m not alone. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, 47 percent of undergraduate students rely on federal aid to pay for college. And in general, 79 percent of all full-time undergraduate students rely on some sort of financial aid.So what can we do? Start a protest.We’re in our twenties, so this is the prime age for political action and car flipping. American students aren’t nearly as active as our counterparts overseas. I feel like we tend to forget that we live below the poverty line, most of us are unemployed and we get drunk a lot. That’s all the fixings for a good ol’ fashioned riot. When tuition was raised to $15,000 per year in England, the students went bat-shit crazy. They hit the streets, burned a few cars and raised hell. When IU decided to raise out-of-state tuition to $28,000 a year, what did we do? We tweeted about it.Old people keep yelling to the government, “stay away from my Medicare!” I say, “keep away from our financial aid!” What the government needs to understand is we are the future, and they need to invest in us. They should be helping us before they give subsidies to oil companies and build enough bombs to burn down heaven. I don’t want to pretend I’m some sort of expert about government finance, but I think I can explain this in its most basic terms.In order to keep a lid on spending, Congress compromised by creating a debt ceiling. This would theoretically keep us from spending too much. It started at a preciously small $11.5 billion. Aw isn’t it cute? Bill Gates makes more than that when he dozes off in a board meeting. Of course, we left a loophole to the idea of a debt ceiling by allowing Congress to raise it when spending punch-dances through the limit. After nearly 100 years of ceiling raising, we are now hovering around $14.5 trillion in debt.Over the last decade, we’ve raised the debt ceiling by about one trillion dollars a year. Congress gets together once a year and talks about reigning in spending for the cameras. They get all hot and bothered, maybe yell and scream a little bit. But in the end, they always raise it. Why? Because they have to. If they don’t, there will be a Chernobyl sized meltdown of the financial system as the government defaults on its obligations. So what would be the effect of a default? We have to travel back in time to 1979. Due to a technical error at the Treasury Department, the United States defaulted on $120 million in bonds. The result was an increase in our nation’s interest rates by six-tenths of 1 percent. That’s three zeros after the decimal point. Back then, the country had a deficit of $800 billion. So doing a little math will tell you that interest payments increased by nearly $5 billion — for a word processing error on a $120 million bond payment. There’s no telling how much the interest rates would increase if we don’t pay off our dues now. But, if we were to take that same six-tenths of 1 percent on top of our $14.5 trillion in debt now, it would mean next year’s interest would increase by $87 billion. And interest payments are something that never seems to get mentioned. This is what School of Public and Environmental Affairs government finance professor John Fox said distresses him the most. He observes that we currently pay around $400 billion in interest payments every year. The only way to reduce our interest payments is to reduce the size of our debt. Unfortunately, even the plan proposed by the Gang of Six, a bipartisan group of senators, reduces the debt by $4 trillion over ten years. That’s $400 billion a year — just barely covering the interest.With all this calamity, what are they doing in Washington? Trying to see who has a bigger political dick. This isn’t a god damn game. We are at the apex of disaster and there’s no promising solution in sight. I suggest the reason why they’ve taken so long to work this out is because citizens are not taking physical action. If you’ve read this column, you’ve gotten the jist of how screwed we are. Call your senator or congressman and tell them to get off their political high horses, sit at the table and do something about this. If they don’t listen to you, flip a car or two. You’d do it if we lost a basketball game, why not for our economy? I don’t care if you’re a democrat or a republican; the only party that will be left is the kegger at the shelter if we don’t take action now. — nicjacob@indiana.edu
(07/06/11 9:11pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>On June 26, Google announced its new social networking service called the Google+ Project. It offers a more immersive interface and customizable security than the current social drug of choice: Facebook.I’ve experimented with a lot of social networks in my day. When I was in middle school, I had a Xanga where I blogged about my 13-year-old worries on the state of the Internet. It was a savage existence on Xanga, the only amenities were text posts and the occasional picture.Later, I moved to MySpace. By switching to MySpace, not only could I post my idiotic thoughts, but everyone could see my interests and how many friends I had. That’s where my experimenting became more of a full-fledged addiction. I wanted everyone to think I was popular, and the only way to prove it was to adjust my Top 8 daily and add anyone with a verified email address. I remember even constantly adding strangers. All I needed to know was they liked me enough to add me back. MySpace made profiles customizable. Everyone could see how unique you were with a mess of sparkly .gif profile pictures and slowly loading videos. It’s truly a wonder nobody went blind from the atrociously colored layouts. Then Facebook came around with picture albums, statuses and “like” buttons. However, the most powerful advancement was the notification. Sweet Jesus, the feeling of waking up to an abundance of “noties” used to make my day. I needed to score “noties” like a heroin addict needed his next buzz. As a result of my severe addiction to social networking, I must stumble around the Internet all day to find awesome posts before someone else does and steals my “noties.”Some people would call me a “shut-in.” Occasionally I’ll look out through the cracks in my Venetian blinds, but all I see in the outside world is a dangerous waste land filled with strangers who wouldn’t even care to “like” a funny wall post. It’s also unbearably humid and there are mosquitoes carrying various blood diseases.Thankfully, in the future, Google+ will replace unsatisfactory real world interactions with an easier to ditch Internet equivalent. Google has created a group video chat application that wants to promote spontaneous “Hangouts.” Now my friends and I do not have to leave our respective Internet strongholds when we want to have a face-to-face conversation. Furthermore, if I want to get out of a lame conversation, all I have to do is pretend I had a bad connection. Go ahead and say goodbye to your current social network because Google+ will not be a casual experience. We’re not talking about the high you get from chocolate, I’m talking about a severe mind-blowing acid trip of a high when your social network is linked to your email, work, videos and calendar — it’ll even be connected to satellites via Google Maps. Open up your social networking eye, your addictions are about to get far worse once Google+ goes public. — nicjacob@indiana.edu
(06/22/11 7:27pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>This week the Food and Drug Administration revealed nine new warning labels for cigarette boxes. These warnings include images of some dude blowing smoke out of a tracheotomy hole, a helmetless Darth Vader on oxygen and a cute baby getting its first precious nicotine buzz. These images are huge, they’re scary looking and they make me want to never smoke again. This is my problem. Why can’t Washington just leave smokers alone?First they began by segregating smokers from nonsmokers in restaurants, which totally contradicts the rulings of Brown v. Board of Education. I believe it says something in that ruling about how it’s wrong for a citizen to walk past one dining room to eat at another. However, I’m not entirely sure, I just skimmed the Wikipedia page.They then banned smoking from restaurants entirely. Later, when everyone definitely thought they were going too far, the government told smokers they couldn’t light up in bars. What is this bull crap? Nothing feels better than drinking liver poison and inhaling the sweet smoky nectar of nicotine. Next, they got rid of smoking in planes, and most recently legislators in Maine have been trying to restrict smoking in cars. Wow, it’s starting to look a lot like Soviet Russia around here.But why does the government insist on damning smokers when they actively support tobacco corporations with subsidies at the same time?In the last decade, the federal government has handed out over $944 million to tobacco companies. You don’t want me to smoke, but you want cigarettes to be everywhere. I feel like I’m getting mixed messages here. Pick a side; we’re at war.Listen, I understand an obscene amount of people die from smoking cigarettes — 443,000 people every year. Indeed, I also understand tobacco consumption is the highest ranking cause of preventable and premature death in America. But let’s remember the people who have passed by how they lived, doing what they loved by inhaling that good ol’ fashioned, addictive, patriotic tobacco. If I want to slowly destroy my lungs, my teeth, my gums, my bank account, the security deposit on my smokeless apartment and my clothes, it’s my decision to be made and absolutely not something the government should force upon me.I mean shoot, if the government really insisted on protecting my health they would at least provide me with adequate healthcare. So far they don’t, so therefore, they can shut up and stay away from my cancer sticks.— nicjacob@indiana.edu
(06/15/11 10:30pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Before I started studying at IU I would have considered myself a gamer. According to my old Xfire account, I clocked in more than 2,500 hours of PC games in about four solid years.Before I gamed on a PC I owned a Nintendo, Sega Genesis, N64, Playstation, Playstation 2, Xbox, Gameboy Color, a DS,. I was absolutely saturated in video games between the ages of 10 and 18.Then sometime between my junior year of high school and my freshman year of college I nearly quit gaming. I didn’t all of a sudden become “too old” to game. Far from it, I’d say my maturity has not surpassed the level of a 14-year-old boy and is wholly evident in the amount of dick jokes columns I write mentioning Speaker of the House John A. Boehner, R-OH.Nor would I say the quality of games coming out is not up to some golden age standard I set when I was 13. The real culprit is that gaming is expensive; hell keeping up with technology in general is expensive. Between picking up heavy drinking, cigarettes and designer drugs, I simply do not have the resources to maintain the gamer’s lifestyle. I suppose it all comes down to priorities and what metric you measure fun in.Since becoming a true adult in the eyes of the law by turning 21, I measure everything in 30-racks of Pabst Blue Ribbon. I will denominate this as 1 PBRR equal to $20 USD. My best guess for the price of Nintendo’s new Wii U is around $300 or 15 PBRRs. Let’s assume next we need three more controllers for a full room’s worth of gamers, each at approximately 3 PBRRs and the new Mario Kart for Wii U at an estimated 3 PBRRs. We are looking at a grand total of 27 PBRRs. Well, that’s more than enough for an entire semester’s worth of drinking! I just want to play the new Mario Kart, but not if it will cost me all of my drinking money.— nicjacob@indiana.edu
(06/12/11 9:01pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>OK, I know it looks bad around here right now. We had a girl go missing and a homicide occur within the last couple of months. You can’t walk a block without seeing a missing person poster taped to a light pole. But I can wholeheartedly assure everyone this is not normal for Bloomington. This is not Los Angeles or New York City in the 1990s. I’ve been in Bloomington for 247 out of the 254 months I’ve been alive. For 97 percent of my life I’ve been walking the streets of Bloomington, sometimes without shoes or a cell phone, and not once have I been robbed, stabbed or abducted.When I was in middle school, I would walk home from the Indiana Memorial Union to my childhood home near Bryan Park, passing through areas filled with raging drunken college students dotting my way home without a single conflict. Not even an evil eye or a cat call, which might have contributed to my poor self-confidence at the time.Like it says in front of the Bloomington Police Department: Bloomington is a safe and civil city. I’ve seen posts on Facebook about people calling their parents and pleading to them that they live on 10th and College and it’s just not safe anymore. I can only hope these are jokes.Living in Smallwood or in 10th and College Village is like living in a fortress compared to the shacks that a lot of us townies live in.If you have a keycard system or cameras in front of the entrance to your apartment complex you are very fortunate.If you have bolt locks on your doors and locks on your windows, you’re already living with twice as much peace of mind than where I live.I don’t want to make it sound like there isn’t any crime in Bloomington. We have our fair share of criminal activity just like any place. But I want all you freshmen flooding into Bloomington this week to know that you are safe.You are entering a community that can mobilize itself over any injustice, big or small. You might be coming here alone, but once you join us you’ll have 40,000 students who have your back. The students of IU are all members of a club, past and present. It is our outstanding ability to work together that keeps us safe. Just look at the photos of the search parties. You can see frat stars laughing with hipsters who are talking to normies surrounded by old alumni intertwined with professors and coaches. Bloomington is fortunate to have an unmatched sense of community. To all of the freshmen getting their first taste of Bloomington at orientation: Welcome. Despite the current tragedy, you could not have chosen a better place to spend the next four years of your life.— nicjacob@indiana.edu
(06/08/11 9:48pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Last Friday Speaker of the House John A. Boehner, R-OH, finally put his foot down on American involvement in Libya. Boehner just wants to make love not war, or at least that’s how he wants to be portrayed.He and 267 other house representatives voted yes on a resolution stating, “the President shall not deploy, establish or maintain the presence of units and members of the United States Armed Forces on the ground in Libya, and for other purposes.” Thank goodness he had the forward thinking to establish this firm position on a war with Libya. This was something only Boehner could pull off. Though Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-OH, tried to pass a similar resolution the week before, it was neither angry enough nor was it long enough. All it had was legal justification and a request for all American Armed Forces to be withdrawn from Libya. Boehner’s resolution was not only longer, but thicker as well. It requires the administration to give Boehner some numbers, graphs and other easily misconstrued documents.Kucinich’s response to his constituents was likely along the lines of saying “baby, it’s not the size of the resolution, but the motion of he ocean.”Now I don’t want to say the resolution is a bad idea. I’m glad we are establishing this stance now, and a resolution is really all Congress can do. I merely intend on nitpicking the presentation of Kucinich and Boehner’s pissing contest. Most people don’t know this, but congressional resolutions have zero power. All they do is kindly tell the American people, the president or whomever the intended recipient of the resolution what Congress thinks. Resolutions have no legal authority against anybody. Most are simply expressing a collective opinion. Think of them as liking a post on Facebook. So here’s the breakdown of the differences between the resolutions.Kucinich’s resolution was quick and to the point — about 150 words — whereas Boehner’s hovers around 1,000 thunder-stealing words that would make Zeus jealous.A fundamental difference between the two documents is the type of resolution proposed. Kucinich’s was a concurrent resolution and Boehner’s was a simple resolution. A simple resolution, a la Boehner, focuses the efforts toward one house of Congress, whereas a concurrent resolution is an opinion held by both houses. This means a concurrent resolution requires more solidarity and therefore holds more political girth. Boehner saw Kucinich had something good going, so he decided to take the idea for himself. Passing a simple resolution makes it look like the Democrat controlled Senate was silent on the issue, while it was the GOP controlled House of Representatives who put the President “in check.”We got us a big ol’ case of politicking before us. If we look at the content of the two resolutions we can see another striking difference. Kucinich wanted the immediate withdrawal of all American Armed Forces from Libya. He wants all of them home, including the remote controlled predator-drones. Kucinich even respects his robo-constituents. The resolution is justified by citing the War Powers Resolution (50 U.S.C. 1544(c)), which requires the president to have congressional consent for the use of Armed Forces. Boehner makes it a point to mention “ground forces” as if we even had any out there, but we don’t. And it mentions neither the War Powers Resolution nor does it mention any other reason why the president should have to comply. The resolution essentially expresses an opinion without evidence. Not to say it is not justified, but the least Boehner could do was cite his legal sources. I mean shit; I cannot publish an article without fact checking even if it is common knowledge. But his resolution goes on to require the administration to send in report after report about the conflict thus far. I feel bad for the administration interns who will have to write those reports and the House interns who will have to summarize those reports in memo form. Mostly because nobody above them is going to read them. The reports are for show, just like the whole idea of his resolution in the first place.— nicjacob@indiana.edu
(06/01/11 10:02pm)
KhanAcademy.org, ResearchGate.com and Kickstarter.com are all great tools for using the Internet for good.
(05/25/11 8:59pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>You know what really bakes my scrod? Websites that do not have adequate search capabilities.If your website doesn’t give me what I want when I want it, then you should know that I hate you and wish a tumorous pox upon your children. This is not just a casual hate, but a severe, psychotic loathing that is expressed through a collection of poorly drawn stick-figure comics.Most search bars in websites are mere trolls. They have no intention of actually providing you with the information you requested. This is beyond a simple annoyance. Dysfunctional search bars make me rage uncontrollably. Sometimes it makes me so mad, I swear at them. I threaten their lives with violence, but the silly machine still doesn’t care. Sometimes you can brute force a search using the “Site:” function.A website without a proper search utility is like a textbook without a table of contents — worthless. So why do most websites fail to provide this access?The first few reasons that come to mind were drug abuse, laziness and spite. Possibly all at the same time too. How can this problem be solved? Thankfully, there is Google.Google almost never fails me. I’ve written about how much Google means to me. Google is my best friend and tour guide for exploring the Internet and life. We’ve had so many good times, like when we found an archive of old Pete and Pete episodes or when we discovered pornography. Google’s loyalty is admirable, it’s brought me some awful stuff from the armpit of the Internet that would make Bing shudder.I love that Google knows what I want even if I spell every word wrong. I can spit gibberish at Google and it will present me with my request as if I wasn’t blackout drunk, typing with my fists. I think that Google should get moderator status on the Internet. I should be able to search every nasty nook and cranny of the Internet. It should have access to government documents, dental records and pretty much anything else incriminating.But for the love of all that is science, let Google do its magic on websites like the Library of Congress and LexisNexis because information databases tend to have the most god awful search engines. It shouldn’t take me more than five seconds to find the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act or the Affordable Care Act, let alone search inside these laws. I don’t want to scroll through nearly 2,000 pages of vaguely worded spittle just to find there really isn’t a death panel. I mean, if Google could accurately search every single website and database connected to the Internet, Fox News would get shut down within hours because people would be able to personally search for Osama’s long-form death certificate. — nicjacob@indiana.edu
(05/16/11 12:46am)
Should we sell a couple of A busses or replace the Union Starbucks with a McCafe?
(05/13/11 5:43pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>After a long dry spell of not being the first at anything, Mitch Daniels put his foot down. He decided we should be the first state in the nation to defund Planet Parenthood. Er wait, excuse me — Planned Parenthood that is. I think we should all give MD 20/20 a round of applause for having the courage to sign this premier piece of legislation. I just hope he doesn’t show up on ESPN’s Not Top 10. As cool and completely necessary as it is to insult women when they have to make a life changing decision, you’d have to be a douche to do it.Normally MD 20/20 is just a budget hawk. This isn’t his normal steak and potatoes of lean appropriations and a glass of unregulated tap water. Cutting the funding of Planned Parenthood didn’t save Indiana any money, in fact the state lost money on the deal. Indiana is at risk of losing all $4 million of its Medicaid funds for family planning as a result of this law.This could mean that poor people will have to start asking for donations just to get an ultrasound. I mean that’s cool and all. I don’t like poor people either. Isn’t it ridiculous that they get free stuff just for having a hard time? Maybe I’m being too harsh. Maybe there is a silver lining to this hurricane sized shit storm. Sifting through the legislation I realized why MD 20/20 supports the bill, it will create jobs.Or at least a very specific job for artists that only draw pictures of unborn fetuses. I’m confused as to why there was so much emphasis put on pictures of fetuses.By law, within 18 hours of a woman’s abortion, she must be shown a drawing of the fetus . Though the accuracy might be questionable, as artist renditions tend to be a little exaggerated. The law also requires scientists to do objective research on what a fetus looks like as it develops . As if Wikipedia couldn’t already tell us this . There is also a lot of discussion on how someone discovered that a fetus can feel pain at or before 20 weeks of postfertilzation age .The law requires doctors to mention this when they hand over the artist’s rendition . Probably because the caricature will make the head look so disproportionate, the fetus will be offended. But now I’m just hating again. Let’s just remember that Indiana is #1 once again.— nicjacob@indiana.edu
(05/10/11 8:07pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Today, on my way to work, I became so angry I nearly caused an intentional car wreck. $4.16 per gallon of gas — what the hell is this all about? Only two things make me this filled with rage: gas prices and taxes.Listen: I’m not a wealthy man and I drive everywhere — to work, to campus, to my neighbor’s house. My grandma’s Buick is really the safest way for me to get from point A to B. I’ve seen the way you people drive.Some people tell me, “Hey! You live within a 15 minute walk to work and only 10 minutes from campus. Why must you drive? Walking or riding a bike would be much more economical, you get some exercise and it’s safer for the environment.”I think we all understand the many benefits of leaving your car parked, but think about the costs. Saying it’s scorching in the summer is an understatement. It’s like the sun is Bloomington’s BFF and they’re getting all hot and bothered. Best case scenario of leaving the AC behind and venturing outside, you just become a sweaty mess. Worst case — you die. Now how can we blame Obama for high gas prices?I’m not sure if we can and that scares me.The president doesn’t really have a lot of clout in this situation. He cannot will prices down by waving his finger or by telling oil companies to make less money. Economic theory says he could support a price ceiling that brings the price down to some socially acceptable level. But then we’d have shortages causing long lines at the pump.He could do a federal gas tax holiday, like what McCain suggested in 2008, but that would only take the price down a few cents and the long run loss to road budgets could be costly. Lots of people think that eliminating oil subsidies will bring down the price of gas, but you’d have to be an idiot to think that would drive down the price. I agree that the government should end the handouts, but it will not positively affect prices. The corporations will just increase prices to make up the financial loss of removing the government aid. Even if the government transferred the year’s $4 billion in subsidies back to the American people, we’d each only get a check for $11, which wouldn’t even buy half a tank of gas.John T. Harvey at Forbes magazine thinks the rise in the price of gas is a result of the financialization of the commodities market starting in the 1980s. He suggests that oil speculators, using an unregulated financial instrument, are driving the prices artificially high. It looks like oil futures might be another nasty white-head bubbly pimple on the face of America. If Obama wants to burst the oil pimple he must impose stricter regulations on commodities. I support the idea; I just don’t want to be in the room when it happens.— nicjacob@indiana.edu