The Armchair Politician

I ran across this article, which contains several interesting points, and refutes a lot of the common perceptions of the Internet’s effect on politics. It’s the belief of most people that widespread internet access will be able to democratize dictatorships and capitalize socialists. The author, however, thinks that this might not end up coming true. Read the article yourself.

Remember David Everywhere? Well, he’s still made of rubber, and he’s still dancing. Unbelievable.

If you didn’t get a chance to see the first video, do so. Both of these are just incredible–if I had could do shit like that, well, I wouldn’t play so much Pump It Up.

Speaking of which, Kennesaw State put in a Pump It Up arcade machine in the game room! As Jordi can probably assume, I’m happier than a pig in poop, and dumped about $40 into the machine over the past week. Of course, that provided for about 15 hours of dancing goodness, so it’s all good. I just feel sorry for anyone who had to sit in a chair after me, for I was in a perpetual state of sweatiness the entire week.

As a few of you know, I’ve been active in the Model UN program at Kennesaw State. In a few weeks, we’ll be heading to New York to participate in the National Model United Nations simulation. This year, we’ll be representing Poland in roughly thirteen committees. I got lucky and landed on the World Intellectual Property Committee, which, coincidentally, specialized in intellectual property (IP) concerns. As an even larger number of you know, I love to debate current IP policy, including copyrights and patent protection. For the simluation, we’re required to type up a paper stating our country’s position on the three topics assigned. I’ve posted it below, so let me know what you folks think.

Primarily, our paper focuses on the modern challenges of IP protection (the second topic). However, if anyone has information regarding the first (Patent Protection and Phamaceuticals) or third (Traditional Knowledge and Folklore Protection) topics, I would be so appreciative it would be obnoxious. Especially for the third topic, as it was broadly defined, and difficult to research.
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In the past few years, some people who have no clue about the actual technological makeup of the internet have purported a penultimate solution for stopping UCE and other forms of spam: charging for email. Despite the absolute absurdity of the idea, interest in various variations crops up every few months or so. It won’t work for several reasons, all of which are tightly related with each other.
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I just got a phone call today from the company I interviewed with a few weeks back. From now on, I’ll be the System/Network Administrator of iKobo, Inc. Wish me luck!

Jordi and I took a break from our hectic lives last night and saw Eurotrip. It was much better than I expected, and was fucking hilarious at times. While American Pie it is not, it’s definately worth shelling out a few bucks to go see (if only to hear what happens when he receives mail).