In My World

Recently my university had some problem updating it’s grading system. Something went wrong, which I won’t go into here. A few people asked me if my GPA was calculated correctly. It wasn’t, but that doesn’t mean I couldn’t figure it out myself. After talking to a few people, I learned that most people don’t know how GPAs are calculated. Depending on your school, this article may vary.

GPA calculations aren’t that hard to figure out. All you need to know is how many credits the class is worth (1, 2, 3, etc. credits), what grade you got (A+, A, A-, to F), and what your university gives per grade. Regularly it’s 4 for A’s, 3 for B’s, 2 for C’s, 1 for D’s, and 0 for F’s.

Let’s get started.

Total Grade Points: 31.0
Total Credits: 12.0
Semester GPA: 31.0 ÷ 12.0 = 2.5833

For more information about GPA calculations, check out the Wikipedia Page about Grade Points Averages.

This is the funniest slogan I’ve ever seen. Sadly, it’s true. I just hope they would of picked something else. Ha Ha.

Have you seen anything better? And I mean real slogans for real companies.

We all love our loved ones, so Valentine’s Day makes it possible for us to express it by buying them things to prove it. I belive that this is a alright, IF you express your love to them other times of the year, randomly. Love isn’t just on one day. Love is every single second we live. When you are in love, you feel it. Why show your love on dates on a calendar? Prove it by surprising your loved ones with simple but effective ways. A loving note here; A single rose/flower there (other than Valentine’s Day).

Now, with all that said, I think we all need to step back and look at what truly happens on this day.

TOP 5 THINGS I’VE NOTICED ON VALENTINE’S DAY

1. You’re single; Everyone and everything is rubbing in the fact that you are single. Even friends joking around about “single awareness day” piss you off.
2. You’re single; You buy yourself something and act like it’s from a “secret admirer.” You know you’re not kidding anyone.
3. You AREN’T single but the female friend got A BUTT LOAD of flowers, balloons, bears and chocolate from her boyfriend just to rub in everyone’s face.
4. You AREN’T single but you and your loved one agreed not to celebrate it. You secretly want to flaunt your love on everyone so they can shut up!
5. You’re single; THIS DAY SUCKS, THE WORLD SUCKS, EVERYTHING SUCKS. Tomorrow you feel nothing like today. Everything goes back to normal.

I recently had a discussion with other philosophers regarding the tit for tat (def: retribution, eye for an eye) structure of the politics and morality involved in a policy of affirmative action. We agreed that it’s unfortunate that racial issues seem to revert to some form of tit for tat, but what other possibilities are there with our societal and political structures/mindsets? We concluded that ideally requests for forgiveness from one culture to another combined with a more altruistic attitude on behalf of the offending culture ought to be enough to solve the problems of racial injustice in the world, but, as is easy to see, that hope can’t amount to much more than a pipe dream. So, realistically we argued whether or not any lasting good can come of tit for tat politics.

Those that thought that tit for tat couldn’t ever be good hoped that massive monetary reparations might fix the injustices. The opposition to that is that you can’t realistically convince a powerful majority to do anything like that. Then there is the whole question regarding the image of buying off a group of people as if to say, “Here’s some money, let’s both be quiet and forget anything happened.” The other suggestion was that a strong policy of affirmative action to balance out the scales quickly would hopefully work. If a policy like that could be sold to the powerful majority you have the problem of the individuals, primarily in the lower class, that are going to get trampled while the policy was in effect.

From the perspective of these lower class individuals that tried very hard to get into good schools and had another person hand them a free pass to school based solely on their ethnicity while they get rejected they are being dealt a great injustice. The problem of racism is inflamed in the lower classes who, hypothetically, would have been less racist to begin with because they had more in common with the other cultures than the upper classes did. So far it doesn’t seem like there is a realistic win-win scenario.

The moral issues involved in such tit for tat policies essentially boil down to a utilitarian moral calculus problem. If there is no strong affirmative action then certain injustices continue and various virtues are less able to be grasped by the affected minority. If you institute affirmative action you are bringing down a universal virtue of fairness to suffer sometime until virtues of liberty, justice, etc. can work themselves up from the pits they are in due to the current injustices. This is all to say you either do nothing of moral conscience and hope somehow the problem fixes itself or you create a second wrong to make a final right.

I see the whole problem and think that the problem is mostly with our predisposed responses based upon a flawed political system and societal structure. I think with a proper political foundation and good societal mindset a win-win situation ought to be able to follow as a natural predisposition of correct foundations. Recently having read Michael Parenti’s arguments for the Constitution being the manipulative consequence of an elitist few; my only conclusion is that liberty and equality for all, despite ethnic/cultural differences, is going to require a vastly different political/societal atmosphere in every country that this is to be a goal. And all this is to say “BRING ON THE REVOLUTION!!!”

- Blake Stevens

As of a few minutes ago, Facebook removed their restriction on registration.

My first thought was, “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!”, but after a few minutes of thinking, this could go two ways. On one hand, students all over the world can retaliate and remove their accounts. According to Techcrunch’s article Facebook Just Launched Open Registrations, Facebook is anticipating for this.

They’ve also anticipated backlash from existing users who liked Facebook just fine as an exclusive club, thank you very much.

I’ve previously talked about Facebook becoming the new MySpace earlier and it seems like it’s actually happening. Who would of thought this would happen right after the recent happenings with Facebook.

Already, there is an Open Letter from Aaron Greenspan of Think Computers.

Now, on the other hand (yes, I have two hands), this could work in the favor for Facebook. More potential “users” to advertise to. Also, this would mean more ad revenue, more information they could use to make new products. With their release, they published a news blog “Welcome to Facebook, everyone.” stating their intentions. I found it funny on how hey have a page on [h]ow this expansion affects you..

So what now? What will happen? I personally don’t know. Many users have vowed to delete their accounts once this would happen. Many already have because of the news feeds.

All we can do is wait and see.