Apr 17 1 comments
lol

The Hipster Threat

Hipsters are a threat to North American culture. Hipsters are everywhere: they’re in our schools, in our bars, in our parks, in our libraries, in our music, and maybe even our own homes. Their treacherous breed will destroy modern society as we know it unless we can stop it. But how can we protect ourselves from the hipsters if we are unsure of what they are? In this post, I will explain what hipsters look like so that we may identify them and deal with them as such.

This is a prime example of a hipster:


Notice her sunglasses. She’s wearing them underground. Why? She’s wearing them because no one wears sunglasses underground, or at least, no one should wear them underground. They’re also huge. Huge glasses are a a staple of hipster fashion, most of the time colorful. Also take note of plaid top. Why plaid? Is she an Al Borland fan? No. She wears it because no one wears plaid. She also wears a skirt despite already wearing pants, and then finishes her outfit with ugly boots. Note none of her clothes match.

Here are some more examples of hipsters:


Notice the glasses again, which contain the classic oversized look. His hair is utterly ridiculous, mustache horrendous, and his sweater is vomit-inducing.


This hipster clearly has no mirror in his house, as his hair is a joke. Hipsters embrace unkept hair, as they see it as another way to do what they think is breaking social barriers.
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Apr 09 0 comments
serious business

Citizens Cry Out For Oakland

As the city of Oakland honored the four slain police officers killed in March, citizens spoke out against the violence against black youth in their city.

During a city council meeting on March 31, Oakland residents expressed their grief toward the death of Lovelle Mixon, who killed Sgts. Mark Dunakin, Ervin Romans and Daniel Sakai, and Officer John Hege. They did so after the board unanimously voted to formally honor the slain police officers.

Citizens were adamant in pointing out that the deaths of these four officers and Mixon were part of a much larger issue.

Paulette Hogan, a Democratic candidate for mayor, said that she was angry about what she noted as the problem of black youth dying in Oakland. She called for more city programs to keep kids off the street, and said that the system had failed.

Other citizens were convinced that if some sort of change didn’t come to Oakland, more deaths would follow.

Kevin Thomas, however, stated that people need to stop blaming the system for their problems and be accountable for their actions. He condemned what he called the “excusatory rhetoric” he said has been used in the past to discuss these issues.

Some commentators were concerned over the issue of race in this matter, and were worried that this will escalate Oakland’s racial tensions, since Mixon was black and all of the officers killed were non-black. They said they had to come up with a solution to bring the community together.

These remarks follow a protest held on MacArthur Boulevard the previous Wednesday, where about 60 demonstrators marched against the police, asking for sympathy for Mixon.

The council presented members of the Oakland Police Department with eight condolence books that were filled by members of the community throughout the week, as well as letters to the families of the fallen officers.

Council members also spoke in memorial of the officers, and recognized the work of the current Oakland Police Department.

“I would take a bullet for any of you guys,” said Councilmember Laurence Reid. “No matter what.”

The Oakland police noted that this was a time for healing. They said that they must work together with the residents to come up with ideas to benefit the city as a whole. They called for a “shared vision of public safety.”

The four officers were killed on March 21 after what started out to be a routine traffic stop on MacArthur Boulevard. Mixon, 26, shot Dunakin and Hege, and then was seen fleeing the scene. Two hours later in a shoot out on 74th Avenue, he was reported to have killed Romans and Sakai before being felled himself by police.

A public funeral was held for the officers on March 27 at the Oracle Arena in Oakland, in which nearly 20,000 people attended to mourn their deaths. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, and Attorney General Jerry Brown all spoke during the funeral. -30-

Apr 08 0 comments
serious business

The Home PC Future: A Retrospect

It was the late 1970s and the age of home computers had just begun. Soon, computers would run entire households: turning on lights, doing your taxes, balancing your checkbook and even preparing your meals. They would do every menial task using a chip the same size as the one existing in pocket calculators, but with the power of the 1949 ENIAC computer, which was the size of a city block. The home computer would completely take control of our lives, and we’d be living the lives seen on the cartoon “The Jetsons.”

Well, they were pretty close.

In 1977, the Apple II home computer launched and it rang alarms declaring the future had arrived. The New York Times picked this up as an opportunity to explore the realm of home computers. In their coverage, they sought to find a reason to own a home computer. The Apple II cost $1,300 when it first came out, and was a lot of money for a regular consumer to invest. There simply had to be a purpose behind buying this computer. They interviewed other computer makers who all boasted the fact that their computers were going to make people’s lives easier, especially businesses. The New York Times saw that there was no real reason why the average household should have this computer, but the possibility still lingered.

The Los Angeles Times took a different approach. They seemed excited about the future of technology. One story titled “Your Own Computer May Soon Combat Bill Gremlins” started out by outlining an outlandish detail of a computerized lifestyle where the computer did everything you could possibly think of. It recognized that computers to many people were something that only belonged to the scientific elite, pointing out some people’s fear of using computers, but referred to a future where everyone had one. They noted that children would most likely be the ones who fully grasp technology, which intrigued me because often adults will say that today; that their kids know how to use computers better than they do, despite it not being an integral part of their lives.

These stories are easily compared to contemporary stories. Technology moves so fast that coverage is very much accelerated as well, always looking ahead. The stories often involve new technologies and how they are supposed to change people’s lives, or how they can be applied with other technologies to better their use. For instance, the advent of web applications has brought a new dialogue into the tech community: is cloud-computing, that is, applications running on servers online and only accessing the data through a web browser (ex. Google Docs), relevant? Many positively speculate its future and its possible uses, while others disagree and say its useless, much like the newspapers did back in the 1970s when discussing home computers.

It is interesting to see how confused and shocked people were of home computers nearly 30 years ago when we think about how we use them today, and how important they are in our daily lives. Back then, people didn’t know what to do with them, and now we don’t know what to do without them.

-(CE)Ian