thehowe_v7.1

For the past week, U of M's campus newspaper the Michigan Daily has had several stories about an offensive Facebook group started by MSA President Zack Yost. In today's letters to the editor several students expressed shock and dismay at both the MSA reps for being such tools, and the Daily for sensationalizing the story.

All right kiddies, gather around. I've been here for six years now, and apparently it's time I explained something to all of you. Many things change at U of M over the years, but there are some immutable constants upon which the university's community is founded:

1. The MSA is an ineffectual group of blowhards that waste countless reams of paper every so often to get elected to a governmental body that has no real power and does nothing more than meet every week to feel important, boost each other's egos, and boost up their resumes.
2. The Michigan Daily is a joke of a newspaper. It is good for three things and three things only: laughing at the constant plagiarism and poor editing, laughing at the ridiculous crime reports, and doing the crossword/sudoku during class. If you want to read real news, go get a real newspaper. Or, if you're not living in 1990, go look on the internet.

The fact that the president of MSA has turned out to be a total jackass shouldn't come as a surprise to anybody. The fact that the Daily is blowing the whole thing totally out of proportion to try and fill their pages with something approaching actual news also should not come as a surprise to anybody. You kids aren't nearly cynical enough to be college students.

Halo 3 launched today. So begins the war of attrition. My plan is to get a 360 & Halo 3 at Christmas. The question is: can my willpower hold out that long?

It just so happens that today is also the College of Engineering Career Fair here at U of M, which means Microsoft is here. And of course, they had Halo 3 at their booth. And of course, I played it for an hour after class. Tonight, I'm going to a special Halo 3 tournament.

So, can I hold out? This morning I sang the Halo theme song in the shower. Multiple times. Smart money's probably on no.

Apparently, a computer expert in Germany is facing charges of cannibalism. His defense is that his victim wanted him to do it. He put up an ad online that he was seeking a young man for "slaughter and consumption." He quotes his victim as saying, "Now you can see my body. I hope you'll find me tasty." The worst part is, this isn't the first time I've heard of something like that.

In last month's issue of the Michigan Review, a lecture on "European Anti-American Sentiment" was covered. I did not attend this lecture, but I am going to assume that the Review presented the contents of the lecture in a mostly unbiased way. The lecturer, one Professor Andrei S. Markovits, claimed that there is an unprecedented level of anti-Americanism being displayed by both the aristocracy and the "lower classes" of Europe. Now, I know that I'm not always the most socially observant person in the world, but over the summer I spent over a month traveling all over Europe. I visited Finland, Sweden, Denmark, France, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, and the Netherlands, and never in all of our travels did any of the members of my family get the feeling that there was a prevailing level of anti-Americanism. In fact, one Frenchman specifically told us that the vast majority of the people in France don't have a problem with Americans, just with American foreign policy. Professor Markovits, on the other hand, claims that this anti-Americanism extends to nearly every aspect of American culture.

Okay, so granted Markovits probably did lots of research and all that crap on this topic. I still think that he's wrong, and that this isn't the message we need to be sending the American public. The last thing we need is an "us vs. them" sentiment to emerge in the American public, and it's unprofessional schmucks like Markovits that are breeding it.

Well, the big affirmative action lawsuit is being heard by the supreme court now. Generally, I don't have very strong opinions concerning affirmative action. On the one hand, it seems rather backwards to compensate for discrimination against minorities built into the system by giving those minorities a rather large number of points, thereby discriminating against non-minorities. On the other hand, I don't really see any other way to do it. Ideally, we'd want to modify the admission system so that there is no built-in bias against minorities, thus eliminating the need to put in a bias for minorities. However, I don't see that happening anytime soon, if it's even possible at all.

Well, we started bombing Iraq today. Normally I don't talk about political issues, because I'm usually pretty apathetic when it comes to politics. Even in regards to the war that we're undoubtedly now starting, I don't really have any strong feelings. I understand that Saddam needs to be removed, and that he most likely has at least some weapons of mass destruction, and the capability to make more. I also agree that we really haven't been given great reasons by Bush to get into this war. It doesn't sound like Saddam's doing much of anything new, but we decided we needed a war so we called him out on it. I also don't understand why we're ignoring North Korea, a country that has essentially publicly declared they have nukes, and one that really doesn't like us to boot. Ah well, I suppose I'll just have to hope for the best. I still can't get over the delicious irony of going against the wishes of the UN and attacking Iraq for, among other things, going against the wishes of the UN. Wonderful.

I just heard about the shuttle Columbia. It exploded on re-entry this morning. Six American astronauts were killed, along with the first Israeli astronaut. I'm afraid I don't have anything too funny to say about this one. The experts are saying that they can pretty much rule out terrorism. The shuttle was about 200,000 feet up when it happened and they were moving at about mach 18 - there's no way someone could have gotten close enough to do anything. Well, anyways, I guess there's not much more to say. For what it's worth, my condolences go out to the friends and family of the astronauts on board the space shuttle Columbia.