Until they make us stop.

I've come to a very interesting conclusion.

Remember when I was complaining about having to switch the blog I have for multimedia storytelling over to a gmail account? I had signed up using a yahoo e-mail, while this particular blog uses a hotmail account. I didn't have to switch this blog to a gmail account.

I had been wondering why until today when something occured to me: Google and Yahoo are competitors, but no one gives a rat's butt about hotmail.

I'm the victim of a turf war between two Internet gangs...er, companies. I've been caught up in the crossfire as I'm sure many other blogger users have been. Who knows how many people have had to pay the price of this war? I say to google and yahoo, bring the troops home, end this unjust occupation and learn to work together.

The real issue here, I think, is that people assume the Internet is this wonderful, unfettered virtual land of the free, when it's not going to be that way forever. I hate to sound like a hippie whining about the tentacles of the corporate machine but...BEWARE! the tentacles of the corporate machine because they're out to control the Internet.

Sure, right now it's just google being a jerk about who's e-mail you sign up with blogger on, but once google crushes all other search providers it'll be google, and the people who own google, who dictate what you get to see on the Internet.

Next thing you know, you're hooked up to a machine that uses your body heat to harness electricity while your brain is jacked into a virtual reality meant to keep you docile.

Is that something you want, America?

The madness.

I feel another editorial coming on. Two to be precise. One is going to be about the amount of vandalism I see on this campus. Having worked with the custodians and maintenance, not to mention worked such jobs at other places, I actually respect these people and what they do. I'm also not so stupid as to think crap I wrote on the wall would "stick it" to any administrator. All it does is make more work for people who already work rather hard.

That's the one I'll likely articulate and print. The second one pertains more to the Critic's content, which I don't feel the need to defend in print.

So I'll defend it here.

The Critic is not a family newspaper. It's written for college students old enough to not read it if something in it is offensive to them.

If you see your eight-year-old picking up a copy of The Critic, I advise you to slap it out of his or her hand and tell the child that The Critic is not for him or her to read.

I'm no parent, but I realize keeping things out of kid's hands isn't easy. My advice: tell them that The Critic is boring. It's about school budgets, people retiring, ambassadors visiting, and other lame things children don't find interesting. Children, from what I've seen, hate boring things.

I'd be dumb if I thought this was really about the children. It's my humble opinion that it isn't about eight-year-olds picking up The Critic at all. It's about people who find the Holy Sheet column morally wrong (or gross) using their children as a debate point when it comes to ultimately deciding the content of a student-run newspaper.

Let's be honest, your child doesn't read The Critic. If they do at all, they look at the pictures and mess around with the Fun Page (which isn't for children either, so take it away from them).

Through conversations I've overheard, I know the exact people that The Critic is corrupting, and it isn't the children. Some students, as in people who are over 18 and are adults, know their parents would be upset if they were to see what's being printed in the school's newspaper.

This is the point where most student editors would say something about how you're old enough to deal with mature subjects and your parents should've known they were sending you to a college and not a convent, but I'm not going to do that.

Instead, I'm going to tell you that I don't care what your family thinks. The Critic's job isn't to protect people's innocence. It's our job to print things college students would want to read about and inform them about what's going on around the school that will affect their lives. If anything, it's our job to remove people's innocence (not that of eight-year-olds, though. Again, I implore you, keep The Critic away from your children).

We don't get much in the way of letters anymore regarding Holy Sheet. Most people were just mad that their school e-mails were being spammed up. I would hope that anyone who didn't care for the column would feel welcome to write a letter saying as much to us. We're supposed to be the voice of the student body, but I don't see why we couldn't be a public forum for everyone's use.

I'm getting a little off subject.

To sum up:

1. The Critic is not a family oriented newspaper.
2. Don't let your children or your parents read The Critic.
3. Why settle for grumbling when you can see your dislike of The Critic's content in print? Write a letter.

Of course, with all the problems on campus, including vandalism and the deficit, the only one fit to get angry about is a sex column in the school's newspaper...

You win...THE PRIZE!

Looks like the Critic won Club of the Year. We were working on the paper while they were doing the award ceremony, but Ryan, our photo editor was likely eating in the dining hall at the time and grabbed the award after the thing ended. Good times.
















This Critic looks pretty good I think. We had two good front page stories and the stuff on the inside wasn't half bad either. The layouts went smooth too, although we didn't get to use as many China pictures as we would've liked.

We got some pretty good letters too.

Gyarr, it drives me nuts!

It seemed like we had a low turn out at the meeting today, but I knew where everyone was. We're also in better shape than we were last week. I think there's only two more issues to go, and I'd hate to get into a "Just get them done" mentality. I'd like to go out on good ones, but with this being the end of the semester, people are having final projects due and all the procrastinating they did during the semester is now coming up on their backs.

Graduating is rough, don't let anyone tell you different.

It's Reagan's fault!!!!

I went to something interesting today. The school is facing at least a 500k deficit in its budget, and money from the state doesn't look to be coming. The actual deficit might be 900k, but they're praying that's not the case.

Needless to say, there are going to be some cuts around here. I think a few of the jobs they were looking to fill are going to go unfilled and there was talk of cutting some courses with low enrollment or courses that weren't strictly necessary. I asked if that would affect retention and I got some response to the tune of "we don't want to affect students much."

What I should have asked was if we're facing a deficit, why is there an $8k television screen broadcasting nothing in the ATT? Eight grand is spare change compared to the size of the actual budget, but it does make me wonder the extent of this kind of thing.

You know who I blame? The state of Vermont. They sit there in Montpelier whining about how all the young professionals are leaving the state in droves, then they turn around and don't fund higher education. Nor do they support any industry that isn't farming or tourims related. Gee, I wonder why the population is aging? What's here for someone my age? Zilch, that's what.

Perhaps someone should write a letter to the government...

Get it while the getting's good.

This is the audio slide show I did for multimedia storytelling. I helped Kyle move out of my house and took pictures along the way. He's been around for...watch the video, it pretty much says it all.

One thing that irritates me is that while posting that above there was easy, it wasn't as easy as it should be. When I threw it up on the class blog, it was a simple matter of copying the embed code and pasting it. I had to fiddle a little to get this code to work right.

Why must I fiddle?

The Critic looks alright enough for my standards this week. I was a little dissapointed at the deadlines, but that's not suprising considering the break. The proof reading still stinks though. No one actually does it, they just look at the page and say they did it.

I had a job interview today, which I think went well. Meditech went with someone else, which spares me the pain of turning down a high paying job for a lower paying one.

I think something newsworthy will be announced on Monday. I have to dig through my e-mail and find out when it's being announced.

Get the beanbag gun.

How odd...I've got another blogger account which I signed up with using my yahoo e-mail, and I had the hardest time last night getting into it because blogger now seems to insist we all use g-mail accounts, but I didn't have an issue with this one.

The Internet is a mysterious thing.

I just got done running the booth to get the SGA's constitution ratified. Being the editor of the school's paper as well as an SGA member isn't a good thing.

Vacation was too short. Once again, I'm getting the feeling we'll have another fun Critic this week. Coming back from a break is always rough for the paper.