Archive for March, 2009
Not an ideological question
Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on Thursday blamed the global economic crisis on “white people with blue eyes” and said it was wrong that black and indigenous people should pay for white people’s mistakes.
“It’s not an ideological question — the fact is that once again we find that most of the poor who have not even participated in globalisation have been the first victims of the crisis.”
Speaking in Brasília at a joint press conference with Gordon Brown, the UK prime minister, Mr Lula da Silva told reporters: “This crisis was caused by the irrational behaviour of white people with blue eyes, who before the crisis appeared to know everything and now demonstrate that they know nothing.”
He added: “I do not know any black or indigenous bankers so I can only say [it is wrong] that this part of mankind which is victimised more than any other should pay for the crisis.” via LR, FT & BT
Chris Rock from The Black List
“Chris Rock: In my neighborhood there’s like three, four black people in my neighborhood in Alpine. OK, it’s, me, Gary Sheffield, Mary J. Blige, Patrick Ewing. Hall of famer, hall of famer, greatest R&B singer of our time, decent comedian. Who lives next to me, what’s the white man next to me? He’s a dentist. He didn’t invent anything. He’s just a dentist. That’s what America is.”
“True equality is the equality to suck like the white man.” – Chris Rock
So say we all
At one point the discussion lit a fire under the Admiral, and the talk of human rights turned personal for Edward James Olmos. The “Old Man” launched into a passionate speech about casting off the idea of race as a cultural determinant, and said we were one race, the human race. His voice echoed throughout the chamber growing louder until – I kid you not – he was yelling, “So Say We All,” and the crowd answered right back. Hell, even I yelled it, I was in the fraking United Nations with Adama, the gods themselves could not have stopped this moment. It was surreal – the entire audience turned into one massive optimistic/role-playing/saddened goosebump, because who knows when we’ll ever hear those words again?
Kite flying in the Quad
Experimenting with a Canon HF10… I was in a meeting when we noticed this guy flying a kite on Friday afternoon in the Memorial Union Quad at Oregon State University. I had been demoing the video camera and editing video for most of the day. I ran outside and shot this clip. I imported it into iMovie and messed around with the color saturation. The grass is very green and the sky is very blue! I uploaded the finished product to my brand new Vimeo Plus account. The quality is quite good.
Survs – Epic Online Surveys
I was perusing the interwebs the other day, prior to the QuestionPro account termination debacle, when I came upon a blog post that linked to Survs.com.
I had never heard of Survs before and thought that it was worth looking at for an online survey solution:
Survs is a collaborative tool that allows you to build, deploy and analyze online surveys.
It is collaborative in the sense that you can cooperate with your teammates through the journey of building, deploying and analyzing your surveys. You can even share your surveys results, templates and themes online.
Being a web application, no special software is needed. As long as you have an Internet connection and a web browser you can access Survs wherever you are.
The blog is the place where you can keep in touch with all that is happening with Survs. But if you want first hand news don’t forget to check out our Twitter page
Survs is a product of Enough Pepper, a (proudly) small company located in the engaging city of Lisbon, Portugal.
I created an online survey in a couple hours using Survs. The experience was phenomenal. Survs works like Flickr. Editing is very easy and intuitive. The learning curve with Survs is very shallow. I was able to create questions with numerous logic rules (conditional branching elements), side-by-side matrix-based questions, open-ended questions, etc. Survs is amazing. The interface for customizing surveys is extremely user-friendly. It effortlessly allows for a user to create sophisticated surveys. A tremendous benefit of Survs is that they do not require that their logo or branding be present on your surveys. Your surveys can look however you want them to look. It is an extremely refreshing experience.
QuestionPro – failing epicly
QuestionPro used to be my favorite online survey tool:
I just wanted to contact QuestionPro and let you all know that your product is terrific. As a full time graduate student at Oregon State University, I have used QP to create and deliver 2 surveys with functionality that other free services could not provide.
Eric Stoller
Back in 2005, I created a couple of online surveys using QuestionPro for some projects while I was in graduate school. I was impressed with the overall functionality and flexibility of QuestionPro’s system. Years later, I noticed that the above quote of me praising QuestionPro was on their website. In October of 2008, I sarcastically tweeted that I should get some kickbacks for their use of my quote on their student research website. Shortly after I posted that tweet into the Twittersphere, I received an email from a QuestionPro representative asking me if I would like a “partner license.” I’m always up for trying out new levels of technology access, so I said yes and all of a sudden, I had a partner license to QuestionPro.
Higher Education Administration Q’s/A’s
Lately, I have received several emails asking me about my experiences as a higher education administrator and regarding my experiences as someone who has graduated from a college student services administration graduate program. I decided to attempt to answer all of them in a giant college student services / higher education administrator, question/answer blog post. The questions were sent to me via email, Twitter and Facebook. I’ve taken out the identifying bits of info and hopefully, some of my answers will be useful to folks who are thinking about working in higher education or pursuing a graduate degree in higher education administration / college student services…
Jon Stewart – real news
Jon Stewart’s interview of CNBC’s Jim Cramer isn’t what I would call comedy. Stewart’s show may run on Comedy Central, but this interview really picks apart CNBC and Jim Cramer. I noticed that some of the “real news” networks ran stories about this interview. The sad part was they didn’t look in a journalistic mirror and ask themselves why a show on a comedy network was doing a better job of analyzing a legitimate news story. These 3 clips are uncut/un-bleeped. They are not safe for work, my mother or any fans of CNBC.
Part 1:
NACADA Technology Seminar Web Stats
Note the slight increase in traffic to http://nacadatech.net during the NACADA Technology Seminar! It will be interesting to see if the NACADA Tech site continues to be the central hub for future NACADA technology + academic advising events. We certainly showed that a WordPress blog with Twitter + Flickr + Wikis + RSS is a recipe for a successful seminar/conference portal. I wonder if NASPA, ACPA, etc. were paying attention to our little experiment…?
White History Year Resumes
Sad satirical truths courtesy of the Onion:
WASHINGTON, DC—With Black History Month over, U.S. citizens are putting aside thoughts of Harriet Tubman and George Washington Carver to resume the traditional observation of White History Year.
White History Year, which runs annually from Jan. 1 through Dec. 31, with a 28-day break for Black History Month in February, is dedicated to the recognition of European-Americans’ contributions to American politics and culture.
