Graduation

So, to graduate means to move on to something new right? It means that I will be able to have some kind of possitive impact on society because now I have all these sophisticated tools to aid me. What a load of bunk. Help society, that's what they say they want you coming to their school to do, yet the whole time you're there all you hear is how to promote yourself. What can you do to help others, the message I got was, you can't really ever help someone, what you have to do is make as much money as you can not being a blue-coller worker, and then, if you feel so inclined give money back to the school so that they can decide how to help those less fortunate (also known as freshman). I have been told that the best thing I can do with my life is to not let others tell me what to do. Believe it or not I have not yet gotten my diploma and already I have been getting calls asking me to give money back to the school, they want me to raise funds for an institution that should be run out of town for their neglect. No, I don't think I am what they want a graduate to be. I am four years older than I was back then, I am, honestly, four years wiser. But this wisdom comes not from lessons I learned in the classroom but lessons I learned about the classroom, about society and about the wealth of knowledge that sophicates the potential out of university students. Long live Indiana University (IU).

Sometimes it seems we do things that have no purpose. Writing this plog, not just this entry, but actually this entire series seems to be one such thing. There is rarely something that makes one feel as little accomplishment as writing jibberish for a class that he doesn't even really know how his grade is being determined. I don't recall if I have mentioned this before, but this entire blog is solely for the purpose of fulfilling a class project (though it was begun before the project was ever assigned). It has been filled with very few actual ideas of mine and is rearley worth writing let alone reading. So why would such an assignment be given? Is there a point to poluting the web (or any media) with such waste? It seems bad enough that this kind of waste could permeate my head, it seems inhumain to make others suffer through the random stumbling on to such a post. There is no reason why anyone should be wasting their time reading this blog and so it is not only wasting the small amount of physical space it takes up but also steels what time it can from your (yes you the reader's) vibrant life. For this I am sorry, and in the rare case that you are still reading I here end.

PS Check this out! I know I have plugged it before but it is all new now. You should love it.

Links
These are just the links for my personal use during my I450/I451 Class:
1.[macromedia]
2.[flashkit]
3.[IUSFL]
4.[bwcrum email]
more to come...

Gone, but not forgotten

What is the greatest source of wasted time for not only Pastor Bayly but also for the majority of those who are subscribing to World magazine? That's right, it's thier very own system for blogs. So what are the pros and cons of this system. To be able to, at any time, post ideas that one has on any given topic is a very useful thing for a pastor to be able to do, however, with the same token this can easily take up all the free time that the blogger has. The danger, as I see it, with blogging isn't the posting of the blog but rather the time it takes to keep up-to-date with the postings that have already been made.

This blog entry for example will never be checked by me, you can make a comment if you would like, ask me a question, carry on a conversation with other bloggers about this topic, but I will never come back and check on you. This, you might think, defeats the purpose of posting, but in fact here is why it does not. If I have something I want to say the blog allows me to do so in a public-esque forum. Then the public, you, can discuss it. For me to come back in to the forum and converse with you would require more and more time from me.

So is blogging bad. No. Is it good? No. Blogs are good as long as they don't suck your time from all the other things that demand your time. Well, I am just blowing steam, this is now the end. Here is the link to the worldmag blog site [click here]

Wired Again
Okay, so this week on wired I read about mars rovers, censorship, and what I found most intriguing, eternal life. Here’s my question: why does a nihilistic self-proclaimed atheist want to live any longer than he already has to? If his goal is to live until he finally discovers the meaning of life there is plenty of time to do that in most lifetimes. Ironically to provide him with his longevity that he longs for he seeks to conduct research on very young, undeveloped humans. All this is to say there is little here on earth truly worth sticking around indefinitely for. I am not saying that there are not pursuits worth dedicating time and energy to but what makes any one person worth keeping around longer than the rest of us? Well, I guess I have put more questions here than answers but here is what it all breaks down to.

Pop-culture tells us that there is no truth, that God is dead, and that we are simply a product of some unsubstantiated evolutionary process involving processes that are more far-fetched then the idea of Kevin Costner saving a flooded world from disaster. We cannot make statements about others for fear that we will be labeled as criminals of hate. I apologize for cultural taboos that may be here broken but living longer so that promotion of a decedent society can be perpetuated seems like the least noble cause, and I happen to be one to believe in nobility. Thus, forget your riches, forget what this world can do to promote your ego and look to see what your knowledge and skill can do to truly help the world (a novel concept if the world has ever heard one). Anyway, this did have something to do with technology, but it’s a stretch I know…at least I’m thinking.

The Arc Choir

Okay, here is one thing that I would really like to be able to do here on this blog, music reviews. This week, The Arc Choir's "Walk With Me" album [more info].

This album is great and is perfect for February, Black History Month. This collection of gospel music is performed by the Arc Choir, the Addicts Rehabilitation Center Gospel Choir. It is truely amazing. Here is what Fred Kaplan wrote in 1997 concerning the ARC choir.

"Before you slip on The ARC Gospel Choir's Walk With Me [Mapleshade], be forewarned: this is no soothing daisyfield of New Age serenity. ARC stands for the Addicts Rehabilitation Center of East Harlem, its singers are former druggies whose souls were wrested from the flames of hell by the Hand of Jesus, and they want you to know the joy of their redemption. This is raw, raucous stuff, thirty-two proud, strong voices crooning, hollering, and sweetly harmonizing as if at the portals of Heaven's gate, hands clapping, feet stomping, swaying to the tough-love discipline of a tight ensemble order. Pierre Sprey, Mapleshade's proprietor-engineer, captures every ounce of it, with an analogue tape recorder and three PZM microphones — a pair mounted on either side of his custom Plexiglas wedge, another single mic lightly spotlighting the basses. Hamiett Bluiett, the baritone saxophone player who has produced several Mapleshade discs, led Sprey to the choir and to the church where he recorded them. As Sprey says in the liner-notes, "The acoustics were just right for recording a choir: warm and reverberant but crystal clear so that individual voices wouldn't be lost in a haze of murky echo." You've got a front-pew seat at the Kelly Temple Church of God in Christ, the dynamics quake and thunder, and even a heathen like me can't help but be inspired. "

Check it out.

For T452
www.bencrum.com
The Soon to be Updated BC Online
Okay so I don't think this would really count has posting a blog entry, but I did want to have this up here so that everyone can check out BC Online, my personal web-site and soon to be portfolio. There are however two articles that I was reading tonight that I thought were great. First is this one from Wired in which I find that people actually believe in some scams that go around online. I find it hard to believe that some of this email scams actually work but I guess if you find a wealthy enough dumb person it might just fly (I would recomend scamming Hollywood CA in that case). The second article comes from the best News source on the web, The Onion, okay so this one has nothing to do with technology but I think this whole Atkins thing is a joke, so enjoy.