"It's Time To Rethink Copyright Law"

"Shared" via Facebook link. Original article is located at this address:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/27/AR2008052700617.html?referrer=facebook

Michael Arrington
TechCrunch.com
Tuesday, May 27, 2008; 5:09 AM

There was more posturing today in the big YouTube-Viacom copyright showdown that began around the time that Google acquired YouTube and started talking to big copyright holders about paying them to get their content legally onto the popular video site. It spun out of control from there until it became a billion dollar lawsuit.

Normally I'm on the side of whoever's against the copyright holders and their agenda of ever-expanding rights on these types of issues. They will stop at nothing to preserve their expired business models.

In this case, though, I'm just as afraid of YouTube, which still aims to get rights to show all, or virtually all, professionally produced television and film content. Their goal is simple - copy the adsense model and get the same stranglehold on advertising around video that they have around search.

That may be more difficult for Google than sewing up search was, since there are so many players determined to stop them before they get a proper foothold. The music guys got hooked on the iTunes fees and still haven't been able to get off the juice. Their tv and film cousins are fully aware of what happens if a single middleman gets too much power.

What's Best For The Internet?

The front lines of the copyright war are the ISP and service provider skirmishes. The MPAA and RIAA continue to fight consumers directly, of course, but their only real chance of locking down the Internet and file trading/steaming is to go after the companies that allow it to happen. In 1998 the DMCA made copyright infringement even more illegal than it already was, but also gave service providers a safe harbor to protect them against infringement by their users.

Did/does YouTube properly comply with the DMCA? That's pretty much irrelevant at this point. What matters is the law going forward. And since this case is likely to go to trial, there's a good chance that new law will be created. Exactly what is decided, and how Congress reacts, will have a big impact on the Internet going forward.

My position is that it's bad to criminalize natural behavior. And watching a clip of The Office, whether it's legally on Hulu or illegally on YouTube is natural behavior. The only question is whether or not people are getting sued, or going to jail, for doing it.

It's time to rethink copyright laws, and it's time for copyright holders to rethink their business models. The winners won't be the companies that win or lose billion dollar lawsuits. It'll be the companies that throw out everything that's come before, and build new businesses around the natural behavior of people. Remove friction and win.

2008 Update

I know, I know. It's been an extremely long time since I've even looked at this blog. But I thought I'd give you all an update as to what's been happening in the past 6 months or so. I'm now fully moved in to our brand new apartment in the city. It's pretty amazing if I do say so myself, and if I had to pick out its best features I would have to say A) The location, by far; and B) the aged brick wall that gives it so much character. I'll post pictures on Facebook soon, I just have to reduce them so they can be uploaded.

School just ended the week before last, so that's a huge relief. I already got my grades, and I'm extremely happy with them. I'm well on my way to completing both the Politics and the History major. Next semester I'm taking Civil Liberties, The Molecules of Life (for Nat Sci II), Food and Drugs in Chinese History, and History of Modern Ireland. So if you're in any of my classes, let me know!

I finally got an extremely well paying job at a law firm. No more being a host, no more retail, no more cashiering. I'm a full-blown paralegal for Silverstein & Stern. So over summer I'm working M-F 9-5, and during the school year I'm working Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays part time. I absolutely love the work there, my bosses, and my coworkers, so I have a feeling I'll be settling in there for quite some time. Who knows, I might end up working there as an attorney. The office is down at 40 Fulton (the Thomas Edison Building), so those of you in Water or Cliff next year we need to have lunch and hang out during the week!

Plus, probably the biggest news of all, I'm happily taken!

Well, if I'm bored over summer (which is likely to happen as most of you guys went back home and ditched me) I'll continue to post here. Until then, arrivaderci!

War on Terror

Here is something to think about.

SOME OF YOU ARE NOT OLD ENOUGH TO REMEMBER THAT NEARLY EVERY
FAMILY IN AMERICA WAS GROSSLY AFFECTED BY WW II. MOST OF YOU DON'T REMEMBER THE RATIONING OF MEAT, SHOES, GASOLINE, AND SUGAR. NO TIRES FOR OUR AUTOMOBILES, AND A SPEED LIMIT OF 35 MILES AN HOUR ON THE ROAD, NOT TO MENTION, NO NEW AUTOMOBILES. READ THIS AND THINK ABOUT HOW WE WOULD REACT TO BEING TAKEN OVER BY FOREIGNERS IN 2007. This is an EXCELLENT essay . Well
thought out and presented.

Historical Significance

Sixty-three years ago, Nazi Germany had overrun almost all
of Europe and hammered England to the verge of bankruptcy and defeat . The
Nazis had sunk more than 400 British ships in their convoys between England
and America taking food and war materials .

At that time the US was in an isolationist, pacifist mood,
and most Americans wanted nothing to do with the European or the Asian war .

Then along came Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and in
outrage Congress unanimously declared war on Japan, and the following day on
Germany, who had not yet attacked us. It was a dicey thing. We had few
allies.

France was not an ally, as the Vichy government of France
quickly aligned itself with its German occupiers. Germany was certainly not
an ally, as Hitler was intent on setting up a Thousand Year Reich in Europe.
Japan was not an ally, as it was well on its way to owning and controlling
all of Asia.

Together, Japan and Germany had long-range plans of invading
Canada and Mexico, as launching pads to get into the United States over
ournorthern and southern borders, after they finished gaining control of
Asia and Europe.

America's only allies then were England, Ireland, Scotland,
Canada, Australia, and Russia. That was about it All of Europe, from Norway
toItaly (except Russia in the East) was already under the Nazi heel.

The US was certainly not prepared for war. The US had
drastically downgraded most of its military forces after WW I because of the
depression, so that at the outbreak of WW II, Army units were training with
broomsticks because they didn't have guns, and cars with "tank" painted on
the doors because they didn't have real tanks. A huge chunk of our Navy had
just been sunk or damaged at Pearl Harbor.

Britain had already gone bankrupt, saved only by the
donation of $600 million in gold bullion in the Bank of England (that was
actually the property of Belgium ) given by Belgium to England to carry on
the war when Belgium was overrun by Hitler (a little known fact).

Actually, Belgium surrendered on one day, because it was
unable to oppose the German invasion, and the Germans bombed Brussels into
rubble the next day just to prove they could.

Britain had already been holding out for two years in the
face of staggering losses and the near decimation of its Royal Air Force in
the Battle of Britain, and was saved from being overrun by Germany only
because Hitler made the mistake of thinking the Brits were a relatively
minor threat that could be dealt with later. Hitler, first turned his
attention to Russia, in the late summer of 1940 at a time when England was
on the verge of collapse.

Ironically, Russia saved America's butt by putting up a
desperate fight for two years, until the US got geared up to begin hammering
away at Germany

Russia lost something like 24,000,000 people in the sieges
of Stalingrad and Moscow alone...90% of them from cold and starvation,
mostly civilians, but also more than a 1,000,000 soldiers.

Had Russia surrendered, Hitler would have been able to focus
his entire war effort against the Brits, then America. If that had happened,
the Nazis could possibly have won the war.

All of this has been brought out to illustrate that turning
points in history are often dicey things. Now, we find ourselves at another
one of those key moments in history.


There is a very dangerous minority in Islam that either has,
or wants, and may soon have, the ability to deliver small nuclear,
biological, or chemical weapons, almost anywhere in the world

The Jihadis, the militant Muslims, are basically Nazis in
Kaffiyahs --they believe that Islam, a radically conservative form of
Wahhabi Islam, should own and control the Middle East first, then Europe,
then the world. To them, all who do not bow to their will of thinking should
be killed, enslaved, or subjugated. They want to finish the Holocaust,
destroy Israel, and purge the world of Jews. This is their mantra. (goal)

There is also a civil war raging in the Middle East -- for
the most part not a hot war, but a war of ideas. Islam is having its
Inquisition and its Reformation, but it is not yet known which side will win
-- the Inquisitors, or the Reformationists.

If the Inquisition wins, then the Wahhabis, the Jihadis,
will control the Middle East, the OPEC oil, and the US, European, and Asian
economies.

The techno-industrial economies will be at the mercy of OPEC
-- not an OPEC dominated by the ed ucated, rational Saudis of today, but an
OPEC dominated by the Jihadis. Do you want gas in your car? Do you want
heating oil next winter? Do you want the dollar to be worth anything? You
had better hope the Jihad, the Muslim Inquisition, loses, and the Islamic
Reformation wins.

If the Reformation movement wins, that is, the moderate
Muslims who believe that Islam can respect and tolerate other religions,
live in peace with the rest of the world, and move out of the 10th century
into the 21st, then the troubles in the Middle East will eventually fade
away. A moderate and prosperous Middle East will emerge.

We have to help the Reformation win, and to do that we have
to fight the Inquisition, i.e., the Wahhabi movement, the Jihad, Al Qaeda
and the Islamic terrorist movements. We have to do it somewhere. We can't do
it everywhere at once. We have created a focal point for the battle at a
time and place of our choosing . . . in Iraq. Not in New York , not in
London, or Paris or Berlin, but in Iraq, where we are doing two important
things.

(1) We deposed Saddam Hussein. Whether Saddam Hussein was
directly involved in the 9/11 terrorist attack or not, it is undisputed that
Saddam has been actively supporting the terrorist movement for decades.
Saddam is a terrorist! Saddam is, or was, a weapon of mass destruction,
responsible for the deaths of probably more than a 1,000,000 Iraqis and
2,000,000 Iranians.

(2) We created a battle, a confrontation, a flash point,
with Islamic terrorism in Iraq. We have focused the battle. We are killing
bad people, and the ones we get there we won't have to get here. We also
have a good shot at creating a democratic, peaceful Iraq, which will be a
catalyst for democratic change in the rest of the Middle East, and an
outpost for a stabilizing American military presence in the Middle East for
as long as it is needed.

WW II, the war with the Japanese and German Nazis, really
began with a "whimper" in 1928. It did not begin with Pearl Harbor. It began
with the Japanese invasion of China. It was a war for fourteen years before
the US joined it. It officially ended in 1945 -- a 17 year war -- and was
followed by another decade of US occupation in Germany and Japan to get
those countries reconstructed and running on their own a gain...a 27 year
war.

WW II cost the United States an amount equal to
approximately a full year's GDP -- adjusted for inflation, equal to about
$12 trillion dollars. WW II cost America more than 400,000 soldiers killed
in action, and nearly 100,000 still missing in action.

The Iraq war has, so far, cost the United States about
$160,000,000,000, which is roughly what the 9/11 terrorist attack cost New
York. It has also cost about 3,000 American lives, which is roughly
equivilant to lives that the Jihad killed (within the United States) in the
9/11 terrorist attack

The cost of not fighting and winning WW II would have been
unimaginably greater -- a world dominated by Japanese Imperialism and German
Nazism .

This is not a 60-Minutes TV show, or a 2-hour movie in which
everything comes out okay. The real world is not like that. It is messy,
uncertain, and sometimes bloody and ugly. It always has been, and probably
always will be

The bottom line is that we will have to deal with Islamic
terrorism until we defeat it, whenever that is. It will not go away if we
ignore it.

If the US can create a reasonably democratic and stable
Iraq, then we have an ally, like England , in the Middle East, a platform,
from which we can work to help modernize and moderate the Middle East. The
history of the world is the clash between the forces of relative civility
and civilization, and the barbarians clamoring at the gates to conquer the
world.

The Iraq War is merely another battle in this ancient and
never ending war. Now, for the first time ever, the barbarians are about to
get nuclear weapons. Unless some body prevents them from getting them.

We have four options:

1. We can defeat the Jihad now, before it gets nuclear
weapons.

2. We can fight the Jihad later, after it gets nuclear
weapons (which may be as early as next year, if Iran 's progress on nuclear
weapons is what Iran claims it is).

3. We can surrender to the Jihad and accept its dominance in
the Middle East now; in Europe in the next few years or decades, and
ultimately in America.

OR

4. We can stand down now, and pick up the fight later when
the Jihad is more widespread and better armed, perhaps after the Jihad has
dominated France and Germany and possibly most of the rest of Europe. It
will, of course, be more dangerous, more expensive, and much bloodier.

If you oppose this war, I hope you like the idea that your
children, or grandchildren, may live in an Islamic America under the Mullahs
and the Sharia, an America that resembles Iran today.

The history of the world is the history of civilization
clashes, cultural clashes. All wars are about ideas, ideas about what
society and civilization should be like, and the most determined always win.

Those who are willing to be the most ruthless always win.
The pacifists always lose, because the anti-pacifists kill them.

Remember, perspective is every thing, and America's schools
teach too ittle history for perspective to be clear, especially in the young
American mind.

The Cold War lasted from about 1947 at least until the
Berlin Wall came down in 1989; forty-two years!

Europe spent the first half of the 19th century fighting
Napoleon, and from 1870 to 1945 fighting Germany!

World War II began in 1928, lasted 17 years, plus a ten year
occupation, and the US still has troops in Germany and Japan. World War II
resulted in the death of more than 50,000,000 people, maybe more than
100,000,000 people, depending on which estimates you accept.

The US has taken more than 3,000 killed in action in Iraq.
The US took more than 4,000 killed in action on the morning of June 6, 1944,
the first day of the Normandy Invasion to rid Europe of Nazi Imperialism.

In WW II the US averaged 2,000 KIA a week -- for four years.
Most of the individual battles of WW II lost more Americans than the entire
Iraq war has done so far.

The stakes are at least as high... A world dominated by
representative governments with civil rights, human rights, and personal
freedoms...or a world dominated by a radical Islamic Wahhabi movement, by
the Jihad, under the Mullahs and the Sharia (Islamic law).

It's difficult to understand why the average American does
not grasp this. They favor human rights, civil rights, liberty and freedom,
but evidently not for Iraqis.

"Peace Activists" always seem to demonstrate here in America
, where it's safe. Why don't we see Peace Activist demonstrating in Iran,
Syria, Iraq, Sudan, North Korea, in the places that really need peace
activism the most? I'll tell you why! They would be killed!

The liberal mentality is supposed to favor human rights,
civil rights, democracy, multiculturalism, diversity, etc., but if the Jihad
wins, wherever the Jihad wins, it is the end of civil rights, human rights,
democracy, multiculturalism, diversity, etc.

Americans who oppose the liberation of Iraq are coming down
on the side of their own worst enemy!

Please consider passing along copies of this article to
students in high school, college and university as it contains information
about the American past that is very meaningful today -- history about
America that very likely is completely unknown by them (and their
instructors, too). By being denied the facts of our history, they are at a
decided disadvantage when it comes to reasoning and thinking through the
issues of today. They are prime targets for misinformation campaigns beamed
at enlisting them in causes and beliefs that are special interest agenda
driven.

Raymond S. Kraft is a writer living in Northern California
that has studied the Middle Eastern culture and religion.

A certain type of law...

"...To these three sorts of law must be added a fourth, the most important of all, which is inscribed neither on marble nor breass, but in the hearts of the citizens, a law which forms to true constitution of the state, a law which gathers new strength every day and which, when other laws age or wither away, reanimates or replaces them; a law which sustains a nation in the spirit of its institution and imperceptibly substitutes the force of habit for the force of authority. I refer to morals, customs, and, above all, belief: this feature, unknown to our political theorists, is the one on which the success of all the other laws depends; it is the feature on which the great law-giver bestows his secret care, for though he seems to confine himself to detailed legal enactments, which are really only the arching of the vault, he knows that morals, which develop more slowly, ultimately become its immovable keystone."

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract

Inspiration can come at any time

"Well, I should probably head up to class...even though I'd love to stay and finish my coffee while we discuss hormones." I returned the spent cappuccino to the coffee bar that I get coffee at every monday and wednesday, and started up the stairs. I walked into the classroom, and the guest speaker, whom the only thing I knew about at the time was that he wrote the book, The Ha-Ha. I pulled up a chair and joined the semicircle of my classmates that had already formed around him.

The author, Dave King, introduced himself and gave a brief summary of his background and what inspired him to write the book, after the last few stragglers walked in. Then he proceeded to give a brief outline of the book, and as soon as he described the main character I was amazed - even though he is a fictional character, he sounded like a similar person to my dad (drafted into Vietnam, was blown up from a land mine, and it sounded to me as if he had PTSD).

Later came an intense Q&A session, and I immediately asked him if the main character did indeed have PTSD, and when he answered that although the term did not exist right after Vietnam, a modern psychiatrist would most likely diagnose him with the disorder. I was floored; from then on, I listened intently to every word he said. From what he was saying, namely that he went from doing something completely different form what he originally started doing, which was painting and art in college, he turned his life around, even though he was a successful businessman who had built up his business from scratch. One day, a friend called him and profoundly changed his mentality towards what he was doing with his life, and he decided to pursue his passion of creative (and specifically fictional) writing. He went back to grad school at Columbia, and graduated with his thesis, which was an early version of The Ha-Ha.

Then the selling point for me came when I asked him about how he went about publishing his work: he started publishing to literary magazines and to The New Yorker, and a literary agent saw him on the train who happened to hear a rumor about his New Yorker submissions. And BAM! His novel is now a nationwide bestseller. And that's what inspired me.

It really opened up my eyes and made me realize, I don't mind doing math, but I wouldn't want to do it 24/7...actually, who am I kidding, I hate math. I'm not bad at it by any means, but it just isn't for me. I know for sure that I want to major in Politics (specifically American politics), and eventually do law, but I was confused as to what I was going to have my second major in, or if I was going to even double major, or what I was going to minor in if I wasn't. I originally thought it would be Econ, but now because of today I changed my mind. I'm going to double minor, in pre-business and creative writing. Although I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to double minor with the credit limits that NYU has (they're really strict...you're only allowed to take 18 credits, which translates into three regular classes and a class that has a lab). Pre-business is a 9-class minor, and a creative writing minor is another 4 classes. For the Politics major, I have to take 10 more classes, for a total of 23 classes. I have 3 years to go, with 8 classes per year, so I might just make it. If not, I'll just take a class or two in creative writing and call it a day.

So randomly, I met this author from New York in Italy in one of my classes who probably profoundly changed my life - in the course of an hour. Inspiration can come at any time.

Try, try again

Just talked to Rasaalika yesterday, and it's now confirmed that we're going skydiving on Monday (weather permitting, of course). I looked at the weather forecast and it looks like it's going to be a perfect day: 72 degrees (22 Celsius) and not a cloud in sight. What a wonderful birthday treat (even though it's the 10th not the 9th)!

Also on Monday: Matt, Andy, Dean and I are all picking our room for NYU in NYC. We're getting an apartment-style dorm, with a kitchen, dining/living room and two bedrooms for the four of us. Most likely we'll be overlooking Union Square, which is about a 5 minute walk from campus, but we could also have a view of the Staten Island Ferries and the waterfront, although that residence hall is pretty far from campus and would be about a 15 minute subway ride each way. I'll post again to let you know which one we got into, so we can start taking reservations throughout the year for friends and family members who want to visit NYC for free.

Either way, I'm lovin' it.

LP's new single

http://youtube.com/watch?v=VXSaF1fYWvQ

AAHHH! It's finally released! I'm so excited. It's a great single, and the full album comes out May 15th. I can't wait! Check it out.

Single

Yeah...you read it right. I forgot to tell everyone. But I don't want to make a big deal out of it, because that's how I've felt for quite some time now. But if you must know, it happened over spring break, so I'm pretty much over it already.

Skydiving

Wow. I haven't posted in quite some time, and I'm feeling king of--guilty. But I've been absolutely buried in my quest to find the perfect balance between work and play ever since I stepped out of the plane at LAX in December. So here's a brief summary of what's happened in the past, what's happening now, and an outlook into the near future.

I got back to California, and I first and foremost recovered from jetlag, which this time took only a day and a half. Then, out of the blue, my Grandma's surgery didn't go well, and she ended up having complications, so I spent the next full day at the hospital in ICU with the rest of my family, waiting for updates. Everything turned out to be okay, and she was released from the hospital three days later.

After the dust settled, I explained how my time in Italy was with my extended family, which took quite a while. Before I knew it, it was Christmas, and we had our usual family gathering at my aunt's house. That was a lot of fun, and I was even able to get a free massage from my cousin (she's training to become a masseuse). Work on the website filled in the time in between christmas and new years eve, and I started to visit some of my "long-lost" friends. Then for new years I went to a party and we played texas hold-em pretty much the whole night, almost missing the countdown.

New Years day I went hiking after watching the Rose Parade (which this year, of course, didn't rain like last year, when we went in person) and I continued to hike every week with some people from the book club my mom is in. I needed the exercise after eating all of the good food to make up for the disappointingly horrible food that we get here. Then it was pretty much hanging out with my neighbors, going to clubs on the weekends (DV8 was the most memorable), snowboarding, working out, going to birthday parties, working, and going to the beach that took up the time until I found myself again at LAX, headed for London on British Airways, later connecting to Rome and taking the bullet train up to Florence.

That's enough about the recent past. I enrolled in this new "European Union: Politics and Policies" class, taught by Professor D'Alimonte, who is a world-renound political scientist, and a go-to man for CNN, MSNBC, CBS, FOX, and ABC regarding anything to do with US-EU relations or Italy in general. The class is amazing, although it's a lot of work. This past monday I was supposed to go to a conference that the US Ambassador to Italy and many other top officials were attending regarding US-Italian relations, but Italians being on Italian time, my professor showed up 30 minutes later than he originally said he was going to, and as a result they filled in the classes' reserved seats at the conference. So there went that one.

Other than that, classes have been going good. I finished my first 7-page paper of the semester on sunday, and I have another one due tomorrow that's 4 pages (which, I have yet to start writing, and I probably should stop filling in my time with distractions such as blogging).

As far as events to look forward to, I have three major ones coming up: This saturday, I'm going Skydiving over Sienna, which will be absolutely amazing (thank you to Rasaalika for the wonderful idea), and one friday before spring break, which is March 9th-18th, Rasaalika and I are going to Maranello, Italy, where Ferrari is headquartered and all Ferrari's are produced, to have a private tour of the Ferrari plant, which is by invitation only. (Again, thank you to Rasaalika and her amazing father for inviting me). Two once-in-a-lifetime events happening in the span of a semester--let's just say that I'm counting my blessings.

Joseph and I are then taking spring break to tour around Italy (it's his first time in Europe) and we may even be going to Switzerland and France. In Italy, we're going up to Venice, then to Assisi, then coming to Florence, going to Naples (and while we're there we're going to try to head over to Pompeii), and finally ending our journey in Rome.

Then once Spring break is over, there's only 8 weeks until I head back to CA again. I'm starting to feel like my time here is rushed...and I'm trying to savor every minute of it. So don't expect me to post very often...although I'm going to start posting my replies that are mandatory anyways for my EU class. So basically, don't expect too much intellectual stuff, or stuff directly relating to me.

Until I actually have time (or want to postpone working for as long as I can again like I am now), I will only post what I've already written.

Ciao tutti!

The immature-ness of me (and my roommates) shines through...

http://www.tatom.org/documents/CNN.com-StudyNewstudyshows.htm

Well, maybe it's not so immature. Just follow the link, and just FYI I didn't come up with the link, my roommate did. This is a dead serious study that was published about 4 years ago that could potentially, according to the study and the doctors included in it, help reduce the occurrence of breast cancer in women. (Thursday, October 2, 2003 Posted: 9:19 AM EDT (1319 GMT) according to the archive)

Some favorite teaser quotes (trust me, you'll want to read this after these):

"Doctors had never suspected a link between the act of fellatio and breast cancer, but new research being performed at North Carolina State University is starting to suggest that there could be an important link between the two."

" 'I am surprised by these findings, but am also excited that the researchers may have discovered a relatively easy way to lower the occurrence of breast cancer in women.' "

"Since the emergence of the research, I try to fellate at least once every other night to reduce my chances."

Alitalia Update

Not much new...I just had my Italian oral, so now I'm only down to one final E BASTA! I tried calling Alitalia to see if they knew if they were going on strike for my flight or not earlier today, and they still don't know. They said to call back tomorrow sometime in the morning to find out for sure. So the children don't even know if they're going to carry out their childish plan yet or not. I'd rather know for sure that my flight wasn't going to take off than to be stuck here in limbo waiting to hear word.

Alitalia is on Strike

Great. I'm already stressed out enough with finals, and I find out this morning that Alitalia (along with other Italian-run transportation services) is going on strike. If you didn't already know, I've already had the last leg of my flight cancelled, which resulted in me having five connections. I fly from here to Milan, Milan to London, London to San Francisco, San Francisco to Los Angeles, and Los Angeles to Ontario. Alitalia is the first two legs of that, up until London. So if Alitalia strikes and my flight isn't flying on Friday, that screws up the rest of my flights, possibly resulting in me missing my main flight, from London to San Francisco. I don't even want to begin to think what might happen if that were to occur, with me joining in the thousands of other angry travelers trying to get put on later flights that have only two seats open. Not a pretty picture.

They just had to strike on Friday. Out of all the days that we're here, I just want to go home, and they're not letting me. But we don't know for sure if our particular flights will be canceled or if we'll be lucky and the strike won't go into effect until later in the day.

Fireplaces

A little something I wrote in writing the other day; rather than have it go to waste, I decided to publish it on here (it was the result of an assignment that I didn't understand the question, but luckily I read the question again and I can re-do it now). So here it is:

“There’s something about fires—and specifically fireplaces—that I will always hold dear to my heart; I never knew something so primitive could instill so much joy in me, as it has for millions of people over thousands of years in the past. I’m finding more and more as every subsequent day passes that it seems to be the small things in life that mater the most, and seem to take the pace of life by the reigns just long enough for you to step back and enjoy it for a few seconds.”
I remember parting with the property my parents swore to live on for the rest of their lives, going on a long, solitary, walk covering almost the whole section of property and giving me plenty of time to reflect on my boyhood. I came upon one of my favorite spots on the property, with a hidden view that I discovered when I was eight years old and that remains one of my treasured secrets to the best of my knowledge. I climbed up the tree and simply gazed out over the view for what must have been hours, soaking up every little detail of the natural beauty that surrounded me. I knew that I would be moving to suburbia, with the distance in between my neighbor’s houses going from two miles as the bird flies to two yards at best. But I tried not to let that bother me, as I erased unnecessary thoughts from my memory and started over with a blank slate and recording each and every sensation, not letting an ounce of information escape. And as a result of this, I have one of the most vivid memories of my life, too much information to express through writing, through art, even through a movie—its true and uncompromised expression accessible only to the mind of the boy who wasn’t ready to let go.

A Mighty Wind

"Non altrimenti fatto che d'un vento
impetuoso per li avversi ardori,
che fier la selva e sanz' alcun rattento

li rami schianta, abbatte e porta fori;
dinanzi polveroso va superbo,
e fa fuggir le fiere e li pastori."


"It sounded like a mighty wind, made violent by waves of heat, that strikes the forest and with unchecked force shatters the branches, hurls them away, and, magnificent in its roiling cloud of dust, drives on, putting beast and shepherd to flight."

-Dante's Inferno

Jesi/International Fencing Tournament

Yes, Jesi is in Italy, east of Florence and near the coast. So let me begin with what happened Thursday night.

Andy's birthday was on Friday, so we decided to celebrate it Thursday evening since two of us weren't going to be there on Friday. So dinner that night was very good, at a place near Faces. If you want directions, just let me know. After that, we decided to go to Michael Collins, and that was packed full of people from NYU who happened to be there the same night. When that bar closed, we went over to JJ's for a little while, then I decided to leave. Since I wasn't willing to spend € 15,00 getting myself back home by taxi, I decided to walk it. I hadn't packed for the weekend trip yet, so I was a little nervous. I arrived back on campus roughly around 2am, and packed in about 15 minutes. I went to bed, all set to go for Friday.

My alarm woke up, and me being my usual self I let myself hit the snooze button several times before I actually woke up. When I did, I took a brief shower, and went looking for the pants I had worn the night before to get my wallet and keys out of them. But for some strange reason, they were nowhere to be found--and after about 15 minutes of searching with the help of my roommates, who had been rudely awoken by my searching, they were still lost. Finally, I got the idea to go looking in the room next door to ours (they're frequently in our room, especially after a night of drinking (ooh that sounds bad--don't take it in a sexual way or anything....wow I'll shut up now). And sure enough, one of the "sister" roommates had taken my Levis unintentionally when she apparently picked up her jacket. Now over 15 minutes later than I had anticipated leaving, I had to run to catch the bus. Of course when you're late, there's always more traffic than usual, so the bus got to the train station just 5 minutes before my train was set to depart. Already exhausted and out of breath, I boarded the train as they were blowing the final boarding call whistle.

After changing trains in Foligno, I boarded a Eurostar train bound for Jesi, my final destination. I sat down and began to listen to my iPod, and I looked over and noticed a woman reading a book. I did a double-take, and I said, "Barbara?" she quickly looked up, and then her eyes lit up, and she quickly said "Hi Christopher!" then nudged Jessica, who was asleep at the time, and told her I was sitting next to them. We caught up with what had been happening in our lives since we last saw each other at Prom, then we talked about how things had been going at NYU and Stanford of late. The train arrived at the Jesi station, and I used my Italian skills (yeah right) to get us to the hotel. We checked in, toured around the town a little, and joined the rest of the team for dinner that night.

Saturday: the day I will remember for quite some time. It was my first time seeing a fencing competition, and an international one at that, so I was pretty excited despite the fact that we had to be up and ready by 6:45 in the morning. Jessica fenced and was unfortunately placed into a small pool of fencers (5 instead of six) automatically lowering her standings overall in the tournament. (The rules for fencing and for the tournaments are extremely complicated, so I won't bother to talk about it too much). But in the end, she went up against the person who ended up winning the whole competition during eliminations, and was thus eliminated, as was most of the USA team, during the first tier of eliminations. Only two USA fencers made it to the third tier, the top 16 fencers. Then the number one USA fencer at the tournament was eliminated, and a rookie that has been showing extreme talent recently at the age of 13, made it to the top 8 international fencers. Unfortunately, that's as far as she made it, eventually tying for fifth place overall with another fencer from Belgium (I think). An Italian fencer ended up beating the French fencer, and the day ended over 14 hours after it had began. We were all dead, and we were just spectators the whole day; I can't even begin to imagine what the fencers felt like.

We went for some quick pizza to go from a local place that was recommended by the bellhop of the hotel, and it ended up being pretty good. After that, we called it a night since we were deadbeat tired, and I woke up this morning, got ready, arrived at the train station without a hitch, and got back in Florence around 12 o’clock.

Now, time for work, and time to hunker down until the end of the semester. But I did download a bunch of Christmas songs, so I’ve been listening to those, getting me in the mood of the season and making me anxious to go back home.

Procrastination

I thought it would end after high school, but it only gets worse. Here I am writing this, and I have a two-page essay due the day after tomorrow (with other 6-7 page essays due not too far in the future). And I plan on going down to the gym to work out later tonight. I've had since Thursday night (well, maybe Friday because Thursday nights are always party nights anyways) to do all of my work, and I've decided to wait until after nine on Sunday to start my work. I guess it's really true that I do work better under pressure...but it feels like I'm always pushing the limits. Usually when you feel that way your behavior changes, but procrastination has the opposite effect on you--you end up doing it more and more, seeing how far you can push yourself, always starting to work later and later and challenging yourself more and more. That's what I see it as: my life doesn't have enough challenges in it at the moment, so I have to wait until they build up and then use them all together to fulfill the needs of my extreme version of a Type-A personality that I was born with. So now would probably be a good time to start writing that essay, but I'll probably just let Facebook take up the empty spaces left in the time between now and when I go to bed.

Gratzie Roma, e ciao!

Weird, spontaneous, and random freewriting:

I look outside the window and see pitch black. It’s too early to worry about what time it is, and I have to be at my meeting place at roughly the same time that my train arrives. Not happening.

Two red lights stare back at me from the outskirts of the train station as we are departing, most likely a train being serviced. The wheels grind against the cold steel rails and vibrate the car I’m in; we’re slowly but surely gaining speed. A train just passed, but it wasn’t a blur so I can tell that we haven’t been cleared for full speed yet. We just passed through the second largest train station of Florence, “Firenze Campo Marte.”

Thinking about later today, I realize how long ago it has been sine I have confessed. I’m going to try to do that today at the Vatican. So many people asked me to pray for them at school yesterday. I’ll keep my promise.

The woman seated across from me looks as though she has been having personal problems lately, and also looks like she’s headed to Rome for business. She’s trying to sleep in an awkward position, as anyone who has ever flown an overnight flight or train well knows that the seats aren’t the most comfortable things in the world. Her husband just came back to comfort her, possibly after the loss of a loved one.

It’s amazing to me how many people on campus call themselves religious, yet none of them go to their churches or synagogues or temples. Sometimes I feel as if I’m a lone piece of debris, scattered by the religious bomb that hit the world the generation before mine. “It’s amazing that you go to mass every weekend. I can’t even remember the last time I went. Maybe for Christmas last year.” Phrases like that are not all that uncommon anymore. It’s scary.

The train is moving along at top speed now, and I have to look into the distance in order to see things without having them blurred. There is an eerie fog that settles like a blanket over the ominous lake outside, and the first light of the sunrise is just beginning to utter its first breaths. Numerous cypress trees in the distance line the roads and stand tall like proud soldiers waiting to bravely serve their country.

After a nap, I realize that we’re here, in Rome already. The train operator announces the obvious, that we’re entering the Rome Termini station, in Italian of course. Time to put this laptop away, to rush off of the train, find a taxi, and see the new Pope in person for the very first time.

Grazie Roma e ciao!

Politics abound: cafeteria food, the elections on tuesday, and my classes for next semester

First and foremost, the story behind the cafeteria food. For those of you who aren't on the Florence campus, or who don't eat here, let's just say that I'm not the type to complain, and for me to be complaining about the food here is a big statement. On tuesday, after getting absolutely fed up with the food here on campus, I decided to finally write and put into action the petition that I had promised my fellow roommates and students on campus to write. I wrote the whole thing in a day, and went around knocking on doors that night getting signatures. All in all, we were able to get 83 signatures out of the roughly 100 students on campus, with only two students who were asked to sign refusing to do so. So I think it was a general concensus that something had to be done about the food on campus. We were so successful in getting attention from the university community that it hit back home, and an article was published in the Washington Square News, NYU's newspaper. (You can see the article here, which is cool because it mentions me towards the end). Alexah Farah and I met on friday to discus what could be changed (within reason) and what could be added to the food to make it more tolerable. So hopefully in the next few days we'll see some drastic improvements in the quality and variety of the food here on campus.


That said, since this is a blog about politics, I would be a fool not to comment on the election results on Tuesday. For me, it's bittersweet: my home state, California, re-elected Arnold for Governor, which was definantly a good thing; but I'm afraid I can't say the same thing about the House or the Senate. Now, America, we have a psycho liberal left-wing extremist who is third in line to run our country: Nancy Pelosi. For those of you who had Coach Klein with me last year, you know the famous talks that he gave about Ms. Pelosi, and how he pointed out specifics about here that made it almost impossible for anyone in class to see any good qualities or values in her that could prove to be beneficial to the country as a whole. But ignorant America too busy with their own lives to care about politics followed the stance of the liberal, agenda-seeking, biased media and voted Democrat. I must say that the Republicans had their fair share of screw-ups, from Rush Limbaugh's attack on Michael J. Fox (I disagree with the way he worded what he had to say, but still think it carries some clout), to the Florida scandal, to Rumsfeld's handeling of the war in Iraq (which happens to be blamed solely on Bush by the liberal media, by the way). But these are all very personal problems, and if the american people would have taken a second to step back and to see this point, I think we would have had a very different outcome in the elections. But the bottom line is that the decision has been made, there's no changing it now. I just hope the people realize that they elected the party, especially in the house, that is in a phase of radical extremism behind Pelosi, and the power they trusted them with to completely devalue and screw up our country. Can't wait until 2008!

And lastly, my registration for next semester is a little complicated. I've decided not to take Italian next semester, as I have already taken 4 years of Spanish in high school and can test out of the language requirement for NYU's CAS next year. So in its place, I've decided to take a rigorous poli sci course, "European Union Policies and Politics" taught by one of the two original professors here at the Florence campus, Roberto D'Alimonte. He is the main contact for any political news for CNN, MSNBC, FOX, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, the Wall Street Journal, and the San Francisco Chronicle, and his class isn't offered back at the NYC campus. So I've decided to include that information in my petition that I have to write to our dean, explaining to him that a) I can indeed place out of the language requirement and b) I have significant reasons why I want to take this particular course in place of the Italian class.

So, bottom line, my life has been filled with politics and the political processes involved with them lately, and I'm loving it.

Train Tickets, Hostel Reservations, and Bank of America Fiascos

After finally deciding between going to Rome and visiting my great Aunts and Uncles or going to Germany (specifically Munich) and Zurich (in Switzerland), I decided on Rome. So I went online and bought my train ticket last night, and after researching many hostels in Rome, I had picked out the ideal one. The train ticket confirmation email came, with me (supposedly) leaving this morning at 7:53 for Rome on a high speed train. I went downstairs to print it out, came back up, and when I tried to book the hostel, it said that my credit card had been frozen and that I needed to contact my bank. I thought it was just a glitch, so I tried again, and the same thing happened. Well, then I tried to book the return train ticket, and that didn't work either. I started to get worried, but decided that I would try in the morning, thinking they put a hold on the train ticket for a short period of time.

I woke up in the morning, went online, and tried again. I checked my balance, just to be sure, but I had plenty of money left on the card. But no, it still said that it was frozen. So then I panicked, and not realizing what time it was, I called my parents. My mom helped me through it, and after moving the train ticket to tomorrow at 7:53, using her credit card to pay for the hostel, and getting the fraud freeze taken off of the card (which, by the way, took 2 hours, because you can't exactly dial toll-free numbers from Italy, and the credit on my cell phone ran out from talking to my mom, and and and....it was horrible.).

What a great way to start off the month.

So, now I'm leaving for Rome tomorrow morning at 7:53, I have a hostel reserved, and I can use my card again in about two hours once California processes the info.

But the morning wasn't a total loss: you know how sometimes you have something important to ask someone, but you don't really know how to ask it? Well, that person asked me what I've been meaning to ask for quite some time, and now I feel so much better, finally coming down from the clouds and standing on solid, hard ground.

I'l post again when I get back!

Ciao!

Midterms are OVER!

Midterms are over! Finito! Sopra! BASTA!

Ora è tempo al partito! Vado in Svizzera!