just a thought

Originally @ Stanford Daily Other people at Stanford provide amazing insight to discover more about oneself. For instance, I’ve been fortunate enough to follow a series of pieces in The Daily this year that has informed me about my own character (no, that’s not a reference to this God-given gift of a column) by virtue of being a male. I was fascinated to discover from another writer that, because I am a man, I engage both consciously and subconsciously in the subjugation of women. It was furthermore shocking to find out that I am a homophobe due to my association with the Greek scene, a chauvinist by virtue of having a Y-chromosome and a sex-craved, hormone-driven caveman because I have a penis. If it wasn’t for a specific elucidating Daily column I followed each week, the opportunity for this catharsis would never have come about. I’m surprised that I wasn’t aware of how much of a stereotypical type-A sexist meathead I am–I must have been too busy promoting negative gender ster...

Originally @ Stanford Daily Watching my spouse die in the hospital was pretty difficult. At least, I imagine it was pretty difficult for his family, who were there with him. After dedicating ourselves to spending our lives together, in sickness or in health, I couldn’t stand by his side in the hospital because I had no legal right to do so. I didn’t even have the right to make medical treatment decisions for him when he was unable to. Being legally barred by hospital staff from comforting my spouse in his last hours was painful. It was especially tough because he wasn’t a legal citizen–we were unable to expedite his path to citizenship through marriage, a privilege granted to other, opposite-sex couples. His citizenship doesn’t matter now though–even if he had become naturalized, I would be prevented by law from obtaining his Social Security pension or other government benefits. That was the least of our concerns. Even years after the ceremony, after living together for so long,...

Originally @ Stanford Daily Brief disclaimer: With regards to last week’s column, I’d like to offer a sincere apology to anyone who was offended by the content of my writing. I wrote a satire column indicting the United States for its failure to respond to genocide and for its weak justifications for doing so. As one of my editors adeptly pointed out, in making such a critique, one adopts the language of the culture/mindset they are critiquing, bringing some readers to the erroneous conclusion that I endorsed the viewpoints I outlined in the column. I can understand how people may have found such satire offensive. On that note, please do not take offense to this column, which compares the merits of the east and west coasts. This column does not represent the views of The Stanford Daily, its editorial staff, God or the school administration. This column is not meant to degrade, marginalize, offend or disrespect either coast, its inhabitants or anybody anywhere ever. We at The Stanfo...

[Satire] Originally @ Stanford Daily Dear People of Africa (ATTN: Sudan), Re: Application for United States humanitarian aid, Please stop requesting humanitarian intervention in your civil wars, armed conflicts and miscellaneous ethnic skirmishes. While we empathize with your situation, we are not currently in a position where we feel it is appropriate to lend assistance to mediate your internal armed conflicts. As a reminder, please note that the United States is not a global policeman with infinite expendable resources that can be easily deployed to any international theater. The United States recognizes that, for the most part, it is a grave misfortune to be born African. Living in a country with scarce and unequally distributed resources, a corrupt government with no transparency and a dearth of opportunities to improve your position is an admittedly unfortunate position. Regardless, the lottery of birth is structured in such a manner that, given your geographic origin...

Originally @ Stanford Daily If you pay attention to the thrilling world of on-campus controversies, chances are you have heard of the homophobic fraternity e-mail scandal that has caught the attention of so many different groups recently. If you are a devoted<em> Just a Thought </em>groupie, you may remember that I briefly touched on it in my column a couple weeks ago. In light of the continuing coverage and disputes revolving around this incident, another point needs to be made. Political correctness is a campaign, not a crusade. Many people don’t seem to realize that. For those ignorant of how this flash-in-the-pan controversy arose, I’ll give quick background: a fraternity member e-mailed his house list asking people to stop using homophobic slurs. Another member responded implying that the request was a joke. There was no violent hate crime, there was no targeting, there was no consensus of bigotry. The miniscule nature of the initial offense does not excuse it o...

Originally @ Stanford Daily People draw inspiration for their life lessons from different sources. Some choose spiritual leaders, some look to personal experience and some spend their money on self-help books and get-rich-quick tips. I don’t. I glean my meta-knowledge and wisdom from spam e-mails. It’s much more efficient. Most of what I learn from junk mail is pretty trivial information that I’m already aware of. Lonely singles in Palo Alto? Sign me up! Reduce my body fat by fifty pounds in three weeks? Check! Super massive gigantic penis size? I’m on it! Apart from the dietary supplements and erection enablers, though, my spam folder doesn’t offer much in the realm of genuine wisdom that I can bring up in casual conversation (like Confucius quotes–that guy probably killed it at parties). The rare occasion does arise, however, when someone misguidedly sends me some real deep spam. I want to share one such message and its simple wisdom. This e-mail was based on Robert Fulghum’s ...

Originally @ Stanford Daily Back when I was a freshman, my buddy and I liked to play a little game. Late at night on weekends, after coming back from parties, we’d go to our hall’s whiteboard and erase letters in the messages written on it to spell out offensive phrases and curse words. We thought it was a really funny game. One night, I came back late and, seeing a detailed message written out on the whiteboard, erased letters to spell out a homophobic slur (I think you all know it, but if you need a hint, it’s three letters and starts with an ‘F’). A little over a week ago, a gay friend of mine deactivated from his fraternity, joined by three of his friends. They left due to feelings of disappointment stemming from the use of this same pejorative in casual conversation and due to the blunt refusal of people to excise it from their vocabulary. This topic arises all too frequently because certain derogatory terms have become so culturally embedded that it is difficult to conscio...

Originally @ Stanford Daily Doesn’t going to Stanford make me better than other people? Why wouldn’t it? I benefit from an education consistently ranked as one of the best in the world. Given that society places so much value on having a great education, being a student at Stanford should qualify me as more valuable than other people. Shouldn’t it? In general, we tend to place value on certain categories of possessions or achievements. Expensive goods and luxuries. High profile, well-paying careers. Prestigious educations. Nobody would argue that such things are not valuable. So then why would having nice things not make me a nice person? If I am well-qualified, wealthy and attractive, and I am commendable for my positive attributes, shouldn’t this mean that I am a good person? In the article “The Disparity Between Intellect and Character,” Harvard psychiatry Prof. Robert Coles describes an encounter with a student working her way through college. She approaches him, distraught,...

Originally @ Stanford Daily Given that it is now officially Dead Week, and most people reading this newspaper are struggling frantically to reconcile the demands of their classes with their procrastination, some light reading is in order. Discarding the more cerebral topics of moral philosophy and social psychology for some culinary advice is the best way to accomplish this. Specifically: burritos. The nice part of being a columnist is that I can write exclusively about my personal life and pretend people care or I can make attempts to indoctrinate students to my political beliefs through 750-word snippets, like some columnists. I could depart from the normal litany of cynical armchair reflection to write a poetic ode to the United States of America. Or I could use my writing to pen an incendiary commentary about blowjobs and male domination in an effort to extrapolate my personal experience onto an entire gender. Instead, I’ll use this space to help out other burrito fanatics. ...

Originally @ Stanford Daily There are a few lessons taught to all students at Stanford, regardless of major, interests or lectures attended. Apart from the more routine epiphanies that most of us eventually experience (such as “Palo Alto is too damn far to walk” or “last night’s drunken euphoria is equal in magnitude to this morning’s physical agony”), one assured lesson is “searching for a job is miserable.” The phrase “job market” is a cute euphemism for an experience categorically opposite to that of actually browsing a market. “Job war zone” or “Job game park” would more accurately reflect the brutal nature of marketing oneself repeatedly to different firms. Happily, I ran across an article some time ago with advice for the savvy job seeker looking to differentiate themselves from hordes of qualified candidates. The piece, “5 Ways to Take Control of Your Personal Brand Today” by Dan Schawbel, introduced an interesting concept highly lauded by job market experts: your name is y...

Originally @ Stanford Daily There are currently about 25 armed conflicts actively occurring around the world. That is a lot. In light of the abundance of warfare that continues to plague humanity, an organization should be founded to peacefully resolve such disputes. This association could contain representatives from each country. It could provide a mediation process to arbitrate between warring factions. It could command a military peacekeeping force. We could give it a name that reflects its harmonization of global interests, like “United Nations.” Independently of cultural or religious association, certain values seem to pervade global society. Basic principles like the concept that mass killing is morally abhorrent, or at least not a preferable state of affairs, are omnipresent across all nation-states. If these few universal moral intuitions are present in all people, why are they not honored? Though many groups are quick to justify killing, no present society is founded on ...

Originally @ Stanford Daily There are a lot of smart people at Stanford. I like that. But hey, I’m an intellectual elitist who finds common peoples’ discourse to be banal and irritating. For this reason, I was somewhat surprised to find out about two Web sites: College ACB (collegeacb.com/sb/Stanford) and GoodCrush (stanford.goodcrush.com). For those who don’t know, College ACB is the extension of the old Web site Juicy Campus, which existed as an anonymous forum for college students to post gossip or initiate slanderous smear campaigns. Because I am a manipulative social engineer, I was thrilled at the prospect of having an Internet source to update me on my campus gossip, and this Web site promised to give me intimate details into peoples’ lives that I could then leverage against them for my own social gain. Sadly, though, I found that the site was being used for a very different purpose. College ACB essentially offers an electronic format of what is available to students on S...

Originally @ Stanford Daily Gee whiz, I hope we go to war with a foreign power or get invaded by aliens soon. Imagine the camaraderie and sense of unity that would emerge: cohesive bonds formed between flagrant abortionists and hard-line Catholics, rural white supremacists and Marxist Black Panthers, vehement feminists and old-boy male chauvinists. The “us vs. them” mentality is a useful tool both for erecting and for overcoming interpersonal boundaries in society. The sense of the “other” is an omnipresent reality. As people, we find it easier to conceptualize the world broken down into the groups we identify with versus those we do not. As a philosophy major, I tend to overthink these things. As a Serb, this question has a poignantly personal relevance (yes, this column is all about me). I found myself wondering a few years ago exactly how people who live as neighbors for so long become such fervent enemies. This is not a novel point. Daily columnists probably write this same ...

Originally @ Stanford Daily I used to be unaware of how popular I was. Thanks to Facebook, I now know exactly how social I am, down to an exact number! With the advent of Facebook and other social networking websites, we have all become seamlessly connected. I can talk to my friends anytime from anywhere, see what people have been up to and make plans for the future. But the coolest part of all is that, with Facebook, popularity is now a numbers game. Scoring people is easy: all you have to do is look at someone’s profile. From their page, you can quickly pull up their friend count (arguably the most crucial number for determining how sociable someone is), the number of photos they appear in and other performance stats like number of gifts, bumper stickers, etc. Other variables come into play but are harder to divine, like how many groups someone is in or how many events they are attending. This ability to quantify how social someone is must come as a breath of fresh air to math g...