Sometimes I stumble across something that is just so magnificent that I have to post it on my blog. This underwater high-def footage from the Galapagos is awe inspiring. Visit Vimeo for the full HD experience and turn your speakers on…the music is from the Dark Knight. It’s a perfect match for the footage. Spectacular!

Galapagos from Darek Sepiolo on Vimeo.

“Gay, transgender ordinance headed to vote“.

This was the title of a recent headline story in the Burlington Hawkeye, the newspaper of Burlington, Iowa. Why I am reading the Hawkeye? Well, it just so happens that the majority of my family lives in or near Burlington. Grandparents, Aunts, Uncles, and Cousins. Burlington is the epicenter of my familial roots.

The basic gist of the article is that the Burlington Human Rights Commission wants to add language “to the city code that would list sexual orientation and gender identification as protected classes.” A city councilman, let’s just call him Jim “I’m not a homophobe if I say I’m not” Davidson, has argued against adding the protection language due to his discriminatory belief system:

Davidson said Wednesday that adding language to protect gays and transgender people would be an endorsement of “lifestyles that are unacceptable.”

“I’m not for anybody being discriminated against,” Davidson said. “But in the past decade, the agenda of homosexuals has been to make their lifestyle acceptable when it is an abhorrent lifestyle. There are a lot of people in this community that feel the same way as me.”

At a work session Monday, Davidson called homosexuality a choice. That being the case, he said, it should not to be treated the same as other protected classes.

“If I were a black person or a Jew or any other minority, I would be very upset to hear that homosexuality is considered the same as me, because it’s not. A person is black not because they choose to be black.”

Davidson is against anybody being discriminated against as long as they are not gay. His logic will make your head spin. Jim, if being gay is a choice, as you say it is (I believe that it is not a choice), wouldn’t that mean that religion should be removed from the list of protected classes? You know, religious beliefs being a choice and all… Oops. Probably didn’t get on the logic sit ‘n spin before you opened your mouth. You are probably correct about the fact that Burlington, like a lot of towns in the U.S., unfortunately, is populated with a lot of homophobic people.

Council member Matt Murray said he respectfully disagreed with Davidson’s position. He argued the council should not parse words, but take a stand against all forms of discrimination.

“What are you afraid of?” Murray asked the council. “No one should have to face discrimination here in Burlington.”

Exactly. Matt Murray for the win. And then, the mayor showcases how he completely doesn’t get it. Not even close…

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Liveblogging WordCamp PDX:
The tag/hashtag for WordCamPDX (only 1 p) is wordcampdx. Aaron Hockley is kicking off the event promptly at 8:36. Very diverse group of attendees.

Just gave a book away to someone who’s only been blogging for a day or two…the baby blogger

CubeSpace is a “green space”. Very exciting.

Lorelle VanFossen is keynoting this morning. Currently watching an intro video set to “when you wish upon a star”….Video is on “How WordPress has changed your life.”

Lorelle enters in as our “fairy blog mother”…anyone who knows me knows that kitschy themes are not my thing, but so far it’s working for Lorelle

Going over how WordPress has supported people who need info in a hurry. The ease of use of the WordPress setup… (continue reading…)

NASPA, the largest association for student affairs practitioners, released a re-designed website last week. The major feature of the new site is a custom, members-only, social networking site. The new, NASPA members-only site is a walled garden.

Only NASPA members can access the site’s features. It’s sort of like iStudentAffairs, except that it isn’t. iStudentAffairs runs off of Ning, an open-source social networking platform. iStudentAffairs is therefore a familiar interface to anyone who has ever used a Ning-based site.

NASPA’s WG is sort of like iStudentAffairs except that it uses tables, has an extremely clunky interface (everything feels like it’s slower than it should be), lacks alt attributes on images, and you have to be a member of NASPA. I’m not very excited about NASPA’s new site. I had really high hopes… iStudentAffairs might not be the busiest student affairs practitioner portal, but it’s definitely the easiest to use, the most current-thinking, and the only open model on the net.

Apparently, as the above screen grab shows, the newly re-designed NASPA template also does not like Firefox 3 on a Mac as the nav bar rollovers are breaking.

Advisor Creates Blog About Flood

Damage from this summer’s flooding in Iowa extended all the way to Oregon State.

Eric Stoller, an academic advisor at OSU, is from Columbus Junction, Iowa; a town of about 2,000 people that was besieged by water in June when the Iowa and Cedar Rivers overran their banks.

“The only way I could do something to help was to put information up on my blog,” Stoller said.

The transplanted Iowan is quite tech savvy. In a previous job, he worked as a Web consultant and he also built the OSU Admissions department’s blog. He started his personal blog in 2004, mostly as a way to publish his academic work and social justice views. In June, Stoller began posting flood photos and links to Southeast Iowa flooding news stories.

LIFE@OSU is the official newsletter for faculty, staff, graduate teaching assistants and other employees of Oregon State University. Produced in print every other week throughout the regular academic year and monthly during summer sessions, LIFE@OSU seeks to tell the stories of the people and programs of Oregon State with color and style, using all the tools of print and digital media to do so.

LIFE@OSU is intended to promote a civil discourse on campus and to foster a greater sense of community among the OSU work force.

Student Affairs Technology: To Boldly Go

“They should have explained the basic concepts at the beginning (e.g.: podcasts, blogs, wikis, etc.).”

“Helping me to boldly go where I’ve never been before.”

One of these statements is not like the other two. I’m sure you can guess which one gives me hope as a student affairs techie that we as a profession have not lost our willingness to learn, to explore and to stay positive about new technologies. This article represents a call to action for student affairs practitioners. The microblogging site, Twitter, has a feature that lets you “nudge” someone that you are following. This is me providing a gentle nudge to my fellow higher education administrators. I hope that you nudge me back. Let’s push the envelope. Let’s shift our professional paradigms. Let’s make technology (and learning about new technologies) a part of our daily practices.

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I’ve had numerous friends and family members who have unsubscribed or even flat out refused to read my blog. The reason given was usually that they didn’t agree with me. Some folks have even told me that they are afraid that if they read my blog that our friendship will cease to function/exist. My posts were too radical. Too many posts on social justice, higher education and technology.

I was thinking about how my blog is, not always, but sometimes, an insightful window into who I am. My writing lets you know who I am. By saying to me that you don’t want to read my blog because of what I write about, are you also saying that you don’t really want to know who I am? The complete me is something that you resist knowing? I am okay if you don’t want to read because you think my blog isn’t very good or that you disagree with my thoughts. I think most bloggers are okay with that.

I remember when my mom and my brother unsubscribed from my blog’s automatic email function. I was okay with them not agreeing with my posts, but I was concerned that they stopped reading. My brother might be reading via RSS. However, I am fairly certain that my mom just stopped reading. It felt like they didn’t want to know who I am. They wanted an incomplete me. A more palatable me.

I place who I am on this blog. If you refuse to read my blog, it feels like you really don’t want to know me. Who I am. Please don’t read if you don’t want to, but don’t tell me that you don’t read in order to maintain some sort of false sense of me.

From the Brown University Daily Herald:

Over the past two years, a number of designers have asked permission to use the University’s code, and the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the Ohio State University and the University of Alabama in Huntsville have created Web sites that look and function just like Brown’s.

Though the code for Brown’s site is copyrighted, the University views the similar designs as a compliment, said Director of Web Communications Scott Turner.

Turner learned about OSU’s similar Web site design last October, when the OSU webmaster sent him an e-mail asking if the site infringed upon Brown’s copyright.

“I don’t know if the code they used was stolen. They wanted to imitate us, and that’s their business,” Turner said. “We’re flattered.”

In responses to inquiries about its home page design, the University has notified Web site developers of the copyright on Brown’s code. But the University has also directed them to two open source libraries Brown drew on heavily in developing its code, encouraging site developers to employ the same public resources in efforts to “duplicate” the site, Turner said.

Liz Alcalde, coordinator of public relations for the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences at OSU, said she loved the “really clean application” of Brown’s Web site and looked at the site for inspiration when developing OSU’s.

Alcalde said she knew of no licensing or copyright issues with the designs of the site, and she added that there are some “pretty significant differences in design.”

Despite those differences, the similarities among the three sites have raised questions in the blogosphere. Eric Stoller, who blogs about higher education and technology, posted last month about the OSU site.

University officials said they do not have evidence the code was stolen and did not express any intention to pursue the issue further.

The end.

This is Your Nation on White Privilege
By Tim Wise
September 13, 2008

For those who still can’t grasp the concept of white privilege, or who are constantly looking for an easy-to-understand example of it, perhaps this list will help.

White privilege is when you can get pregnant at seventeen like Bristol Palin and everyone is quick to insist that your life and that of your family is a personal matter, and that no one has a right to judge you, or your parents, because “every family has challenges,” even as black and Latino families with similar “challenges” are regularly typified as irresponsible, pathological and arbiters of social decay.

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