Borat-little review

In case you didn't know, Borat is a movie which came out about a year ago. The story is that a Man named Borat from Kazakhstan, comes to the united states in order to try to learn about American culture. Supposedly most of the movie is unscripted, that is, Borat just runs into random people and compels them to do all sorts of strange things. Borat is not familiar with western culture and continually finds himself in situations where he is doing funny and ridiculous things.

I had actually never seen it until last night. I believe I was told that it was really a must see. But im happy i didn't pay to see it in theaters. It made me smile, but it just wasn't a gut bustingly hilarious movie. And yes, I did see it with friends. It had its moments, but overall, the movie was just plain dumb. The one thing i did like though was how it had a really strange and bumpy plot. It literally felt like a bunch of disconnected footage pieced together, and I guess this was the idea.

Dan

If there was one teacher from my Freshman year who Ill never forget, it was Dan Zaharopol. First and formost, Dan taught Calc 220 very well. Every week he would come in with scraps of paper for everyone with the examples that we were doing that day in class. Since it was a discussion and not a lecture we would spend our time doing lots of these examples. He was really great because he would lead into the problem in a way that made the problems seem less intimidating. He would say things like "so we see this like huge string of number and its kinda scary but actually its not bad.. look" He was silly in nature, but was never afraid to tell people to pay attention.

He also wasn't artificially excited- generally seemed a little tired, but never to the point of being depressing or distracting.

The one thing I really liked about Dan though was that he was a true intellect. He appreciated lots of different types of arts and has allegedly written full length plays. He loved trying to explain complicated theories to us after class, but I think it went over most of our heads. He approached every problem as if it could be solved, even it wasn't a math problem. Dan always did his best. He never complained even when we knew he was getting annoyed like at review sessions

He was an east coaster. He has an undergrad degree from MIT and really loves volunteering at math conferences. He would always wear these corney shirts from them with lots of really weird equations on the back and lots of bizarre acronyms. He wasnt afraid to be himself and has a blog online. http://fclbrokle.livejournal.com/

I think he is the most inspiring person I have met an UIUC
Thanks Dan Ill never forget you

Krannert Center for the Performing Arts

Maybe someday in a million billion years, when the University of Illinois is no longer what it is today, it will get excavated. By this time, for no apparent reason I am going to assume that people have evolved to loose their hearing -for telepathy of course.

Those crazy crazy diggers are gonna come across the KCPA and be so confused. They are going to have no choice but to assume the edifice a sacred burial site. They will look at pictures of the pyramids of Giza, and other classics and see uncanny similarities.

-A set of mounds not one but multiple similarly proportioned polygonal structures-pyramids
-the simple brick facade the repetition of basic building blocks-pyramids
-no clear windows to the outside on the towering walls-pyramids
-Brown/Tan-pyramids
-putting the structures on a mound-greek
-hidden entry from most angles-pyramids

271

I have not written too much lately so I'm going to include a couple of ideas in the post.
First I had the most awesome and crazy morning. From about 10-12 I sat on the quad doing sketches with other kids in my architecture 271 class. I have this really nice TA from France who I had a really long discussion with while sketching, about drawing and culture. I asked her If it was hard to learn all of the words in English for art terms. She said it was at first but she has learned. The conversation had a really nice tempo to it, I didn't feel rushed or pressured in any way and I hope she didn't either. Those are my favorite kinds of conversations, when you can just relax and speak your mind. Im sure the fact that we were sitting in the middle of the quad and the weather was beautiful helped.

I really like that she doesn't seem to project an untouchable ego, considering how well she draws. She drew a beautiful sketch of foellinger, with excellent proportions and vanishing points in a matter of 3 minutes. The one thing which she really helped me with was how to draw the big concrete curved railing while still maintaining perspective, it was really hard.

I think I'm enjoying my art class, though I've never taken an art class. The one complaint I have is that sometimes group communication can and should be a lot better. For example, a TA will just start talking about soemething really important when half the class isn't even aware. Also I wish that our TAs would utilize the dry erase boards to post general comments about what is expected and just general advice.

Best Union Lunch

Today I found the best union lunch. I don't usually eat in the Illini Union basement but from time to time the circumstances call for it. I can't take the credit for this, it was actually my friend Keith who decided he wanted Sushi San so I decided to give it a try.

For $5, tax included you can have the most filling, tasty, and I believe healthy lunch in the Union Basement. I ordered the "Beef Bowl with Vegetables". By volume, the bowl is mostly rice. It wasn't overloaded with meet, and it had a lot of vegetables. I recall lots of boiled cabbage and carrots. While boiling veggies always take out some of the healthy content, the thing wasn't overloaded with beef and so, rice was the main ingredient as it should be.

The other thing I liked was that they didn't have a single dedicated person asking me if I wanted a fountain drink. I hate it when places try to push fountain drinks on you... cough... Sbarro

Awesome Tricks

Here are three really awesome tricks I have discovered to approach really difficult homework.

-Have a stress outlet
When I'm working on something really really hard I like to have something in my hands to to take out anxiety and frustration. Usually I use a needed eraser or sticky tack. Its probably working for me like a stress ball and I find that it helps cool me down incredibly.

-Leave a mess
If you like messy work spaces this doesn't apply to you. For me, I like things clean. When I leave junk all over the place relating to some difficult task, it lets me reward myself for cleaning up the mess as the days go on and the thing gets done. This is great for writing long papers when you have books and stuff all over.

And my favorite trick yet. NAP ON THE FLOOR!!! :)
If you are so tired that you just can't stand it, but you need to get something done, try sleeping on the floor. I think that if I am tired enough to sleep on the floor, I deserve to sleep. The other thing about this is, it usually isn't comfortable enough to captivate you for hours on end.

The Kanye Connection

I think that when music and movies are strongly affected by your place of origin you connect to them for two reasons. The first reason is just for the sake of connecting. like in Hey There Delilah. "whats it like in New York City, Im a thousand miles away but girl tonight you look so pretty" You can basically surmise that the singer is from Chicago.

Sometimes the influence is more subtle like in Mean Girls, how the plot was supposed to have taken place on the north side of Chicago. I believe that Chicago culture had influence in the making of the movie, and therefore the movie is subtly easier to connect to if you are from Chicago.

All this in mind, I think this is one reason Kanye's new album Kicks so much ass. Kanye has obviously been effected by and talks about Chicago in his music. He is allegedly from Chicago so he is not only calling the city home, but he is subtly connecting through mutual cultural influences.

This new CD has proven a solid release. And includes some GREAT SONGS
-Stronger
-Can't Tell Me Nothing
-Homecoming
-I especially like Flashing Lights. It has a really slick retro feel and nice chill/mellow melodic content.


In in addition to the Chicago connection i love this album two other reasons.
-Kanye produces his own music.
-Kanye doesn't sell his music for being trashy. He doesn't present himself, specifically in this album as a gangster/hoodlum. Actually the CD seems to have a nastolgic almost thoughtful feel so Kanye keeps it real. Check this one out it definitely cuts through the noise.

Maher Arar

This was part of an Email which I received from one of my old professors Betsy Sweet, via a listserv. The passage is taken from a book by Naomi Wolf.

>Maher Arar is a Canadian citizen, a software consultant, husband, and father
>-- a North American yuppie. The United States detained Arar when he was
>changing planes at Kennedy Airport in 2002. He was "rendered" to Syria.
>Security forces there kept him in prison for over a year, beating him
>repeatedly with a heavy metal cable. The Canadian government pursued a
>two-year investigation and concluded that it had all been a terrible mistake
>-- Arar actually had no ties to terrorists whatsoever. Canadians were so
>appalled by this miscarriage of justice that the head of the Royal Canadian
>Mounted Police resigned. After he was released with his government's help,
>Arar, emboldened perhaps by living in a working North American democracy,
>sued the U.S. government.
>
>The Bush administration refused to concede that it had been wrong; refused
>to provide documents or witnesses to the Canadian investigators; and finally
>announced in January 2007 that they had "secret information" that justified
>keeping Arar on the list.
>
>So Arar, a North American citizen like you or me, has to live in fear,
>perhaps for the rest of his life (his CCR lawyer says he suffers from
>post-traumatic stress): Arar turns down offers to receive honors overseas,
>for whenever he travels -- if he dares to -- over borders, he fears being
>taken off the plane or train, shipped to another country and subjected to
>torture again.

I don't mean to scare anyone by this and I don't want to say that I don't trust our government. I just want to make a point that mistakes are made and need to be considered and remembered as we continue to minimize the threat of terrorism.

Meredith

Meredith has always been a key figure in the lives of myself and many of my res hall friends. Although she appeared to be well past 60 years old, Meredith had made it to nearly every cafeteria lunch period during my freshman year in order to faithfully swipe IDs and guard the gates of the cafeteria.

Meredith seemed to take pride in proving nearly every senior stereo type wrong. She was zealous. At least twice last year she had me open up newspapers to confirm that I was not trying to sneak out food. One time she examined a parcel I had brought into the cafeteria in order to confirm that I was not bringing in a rodent. I think her most aggressive move was making me leave fake alcoholic drink at the check in, which I had innocently obtained in the lobby of the res hall on unofficial.

But Meredith certainly had her flaws. She was known to frequently fall asleep while at the post. Usually she would be doing crosswords as maybe an attempt to stay awake.

Overall she was very likable. She would generally say something like "bye now" or "have a good day now" upon our departure. Sometimes you didn't hear her but you knew what she was saying. I would be lying if I said i didn't notice when I didn't receive the gesture; she was swarmed by some students entering the cafeteria.

With the close of the PAR cafeteria- MEREDITH IS BACK at FAR!!!!!!!!
Admittedly, things will never be the same. There is a lot of hustle and bustle at FAR verses PAR and not nearly as clear of a line of communication for greetings and salutations, but I'm just happy she is still enjoying her job.

Unplugged

Last night I decided that I was going to try a week without internet in my dorm room. So first thing I did this morning was pull it. There are a couple of reasons why I want to try this and I'll talk a little about them.

The most important reason is simply for the sake of change. Often its so good to try different things and this will be different. Basically what I will do is go on computers in labs and libraries, but the netcable in my room is, as mentioned, unplugged.

Tonight I came to the dorm lab bearing my calender, a todo list, and a jump drive, leading me to my second reason for the change. I hope that this will keep me more organized. I find that when I am on aim and facebook that my thoughts become blurred. In other words, its hard for me to kind of keep track of what I am doing when I have such easy internet access. I like the idea of approaching things individually and with an objective, rather than let things just blur together in a rather uncontrolled manner.

I think that I've been spending a lot more time online without the regiment of a calculus class. and, basically, i just feel like I should be more productive. It seems to be working out so far. I do miss internet radio.

Blogs

Blogs

For whatever reason, it seems blogs have gotten a great deal of public attention in the past couple of years, but especially in the past year. If you're like the way I was, you are probably pretty curious about, really, the point of these blogs, and if they deserve the hype. So in an attempt to answer your question and try to clarify my own views on blogging I'll answer.

What is so special about blogging?
I think that blogging is a more sophisticated way to catch up with your friends, than say checking facebooks, and occasionally saying hi. This type of organized writing allows people to actually compose their thoughts on topics and share their views and feelings about the world. Even when "catching up" with my friends on aim or just casual run intos frequently just don't allow us to really share the quality of information which I, and hopefully they wish to share.

The Hype
For this reason blogs do deserve some of the hype they get BUT NOT ALL. I may be wrong about this, but I do feel, that to some extent, blogging is one of google's latest marketin strategies. That is, blogging could actually, in the next decade make news sources obsolete and unnesesary. To some extent we already see this happening with the internet with sources such as youtube. Basically, whatever site is hosting the blog page is cleaning up off of the blogs via advertisements. So, in a way, some of the hype around blogs could simply be due to advertisements, trying to get people to blog. Please note that this is basically speculation, but google has proven to be a very aggressive company.

Convenience
Cooperate horror theories aside, I do like the idea of organizing my sources of information onto one coherent "reader" type of site, which is exactly what blogs, and specifically RSS allow. I can very effectively page through all of my friends thoughts and ramblings, in a much better way than paging through facebook notes, or just digging around for various homepages. Basically what these "readers" do is compile and organize all of the blogs which you have subscribed to, into one organized page where it keeps track of what you have read, what is new, and what is from who.