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(04/23/15 4:13am)
Despite my efforts, I couldn’t make it into CS 1110 before the waitlist was in the dozens. This is alarming, since the ability to code is rapidly becoming necessary in an increasing number of jobs — and not just for those just in Silicon Valley. As my fellow Opinion columnist Lauren Jackson argued in February, although “not every person needs to be a master coder,” students and employees should become at least code-literate so they can communicate intelligently with programmers. Being able to code is fast becoming a requisite, so it’s hard to understand why the University Computer Science department only allows engineering students to declare the minor in Computer Science. The department is, of course, swamped with a new and unforeseen demand for introductory classes — which can be mitigated in time as the department expands — but the more compelling reason to keep the minor out of the College is to avoid encroaching on job prospects for majors.
(04/16/15 4:18am)
If you’re anything like me, math instruction up until middle school is a haze, an impenetrable fog. I couldn’t tell you what we did. I think there was long division in fourth grade, maybe multiplication tables in second. I remember a teacher telling me five minus 10 equaled zero. The instruction was all very diffuse and general, skipping from basic geometry to reading an analogue clock, as if they were rushing to prepare me for the time, post-5th grade, when I would leave school to work on the homestead. There was no overarching principle. The very divisive Common Core Standards — say what you will about them — are making an attempt to concentrate early education and drive it towards some goal. For math, that goal is algebra. But they can still do better.
(04/09/15 4:15am)
I think we can all agree that crafting the perfect résumé is becoming a bit of an obsession in our modern, hypercompetitive culture. Greatly exaggerating the extent of job responsibilities and selectively choosing extracurriculars that will generate employer interest rather than one’s own interest are certainly problems. Achieving the college ideal is now less about making some friends and learning about Kant than starting several philanthropic organizations your second year and becoming the leader of five clubs. However, we could always derive comfort knowing that a 4.0 was the limit to anyone’s academic endeavors. Despite how many hours one locks onself in Clemons, or how carefully one crafts his schedule, a perfect transcript is will continue to be the upper limit.
(04/02/15 5:38am)
I’m sure most of us have our classes for next semester figured out by now. We’ve checked the requirements for our majors, mapped out our weeks, checked the course forums for the scoop on grade distributions and read professor reviews. The resources of the modern information age have granted us a smooth, logical scheduling experience, more science than luck. The only thing that doesn’t match — besides the aberration that is SIS — is this bizarre, antiquated and irregular practice of arbitrarily assigning scheduling times to students. This isn’t the 1970s. We aren’t doing this by paper: we can do better.
(03/26/15 4:25am)
Last week, in a well-publicized event, star NFL 49ers rookie Chris Borland announced his retirement from the NFL. After only one year of play at a job that is the ultimate dream to many, Borland gave it all up, citing concern for “neurological diseases down the road” due to repeated head trauma from the game. He’s even giving back three quarters of his signing bonus.
(03/19/15 4:28am)
Out from underneath the floorboards came HBO’s six-part documentary “The Jinx,” which details the life of tried-but-never-convicted murderer Robert Durst. Durst, a man tried for one murder and suspected in two others, interestingly agreed to interview for the documentary, a choice which just lead to his headlining arrest on Sunday right before the season finale. New evidence uncovered by the documentary producers and a recorded admission of guilt (while talking to himself in the mirror) motivated prosecutors to reopen the case against him. What’s crazy is that this story is true.
(03/05/15 5:09am)
Somehow — miraculously — out of the frigid maw of this February we have emerged onto spring break. Some people are excited to fly to Europe, some to service trips in the American South or in Central America, some to Cancun and Florida to sit on beaches and drink and still others home to rest. I’m just excited to see my cat.
(02/26/15 5:02am)
My fellow columnist Nazar Aljassar made a compelling argument for why Idris Elba’s skin color shouldn’t impact the decision to cast him as James Bond. Indeed, although James Bond is traditionally Scottish, and although the last movie, “Skyfall,” gave Bond a childhood home, those small inconsistencies are really nothing in the scheme of the James Bond franchise. They’ve “retconned” things before. For instance, Timothy Dalton’s James Bond marries in 1969’s “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service,” a fact that’s never mentioned again. In 1979’s “Moonraker” Roger Moore goes to space in what is probably the most absurd plot ever. One finds it impossible to believe that Bond and the Bond of Craig’s dark, brooding 2006 “Casino Royale” are the same person. The Bond universe is rife with inconsistencies, so why shouldn’t Elba be Bond?
(02/20/15 7:50am)
According to Godwin’s Law, comparisons to Nazism will inevitably conclude a long-enough online discussion. I bet the same would also apply to a long-enough article. Viewpoint writer Bobby Doyle’s recent article, “Why Modi should scare you,” details the rise of Hindu nationalism in India and the expansion of nationalist groups like the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been heavily criticized for the apathy he displayed during the 2002 Gujarat Riots, a brutal clash of Hindus against Muslims following the deaths of Hindu pilgrims. Following those riots, Modi was in fact banned from entering the United States due to U.S. religious persecution laws. Although I do agree with Doyle that Modi and his party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, are decidedly Hindu and right-wing compared to the socialist Indian National Congress, and I agree Modi’s failure to impede the Gujarat Riots was a critical and unforgivable error, I find Doyle’s portrayal of Modi as a ruthless, power-hungry fascist dictator — as evidenced by Doyle’s numerous references to fascism and his portentous warning that a “nationalistic man leading the Indian state should be very scary to us all” — decidedly exaggerated and unfounded.
(02/12/15 5:10am)
Why do the Grammys, the music industry’s Emmys or the Oscars, even exist? I watched them last Sunday — against my better judgment — and I have no answer. The Grammys continue to baffle me. Maybe they baffle a lot of people. Ratings for the music industry’s biggest event plummeted compared to previous years, reining in only 25.3 million viewers compared to the 2014 Oscars’ 43 million. This is understandable. Music is perhaps the most subjectively interpreted medium we have and awarding specific artists really makes no sense. But the reason the Grammys are so fundamentally ridiculous is that they seek to bring together, for a time of well-mannered awards giving, a community that just doesn’t exist. In the wake of Kanye West’s harsh criticism of Beck’s Best Album win, we begin to ask ourselves, “Why are all these people here?”
(01/29/15 5:39am)
The University is seeing a massive overhaul of its first-year dormitories in the next couple of years. Along with the ongoing construction of a new dormitory on Alderman Road, there is a renovation of McCormick Road residence halls planned for summer 2017. As portions of McCormick dormitories are taken “offline,” more students will be placed in the motel-esque Alderman Road suite-style dormitories of Courtenay, Dunglison and Fitzhugh, where there are no study rooms nor air conditioning, and where those students will surely lament their fates. Post-renovations, the University administration plans to “take down or demolish” Courtenay, Dunglison and Fitzhugh to make room for new dormitories in the vein of existing hall-style Alderman Road ones. After that, the last first year suite-style dorm on Grounds will be Gooch-Dillard. As a current Dunglison resident, I find this prospect disconcerting.
(01/22/15 4:57am)
To be blunt, I’m a novice in chess. Tactics puzzles and lots of play have enabled me to handily beat your average person, but online players regularly crush me. Indeed, it takes a lot of practice to become truly good at chess, and improvement comes slowly. Players need to analyze and memorize dozens to hundreds of opening lines, immerse themselves in middle game strategic theory and attain the ruthless endgame efficiency of a computer. Ten thousand hours at study couldn’t make you a master of chess. And yet, what’s the point?
(12/04/14 7:31am)
I like to mark up my books as much as the next person. I bracket passages. Sometimes I write little notes for myself in the margins. I’ve even dog-eared a page or two. Importantly, however, I mark up my books: my ragged, Amazon-used paperbacks and thrift-store pulp. Go to Alderman Library and pick out a book: you’ll find the marginalia of a dozen readers before you — odd stars, arrows, checks and scrawls on every other page. At first I found it stirred in me a certain nostalgia for times passed, but now I just find it annoying. Please, stop writing in the library books.
(11/06/14 6:23am)
The undergraduate McIntire School of Commerce, or “Comm School,” continues to reject more and more applicants each year. Acceptance rates have been precipitously dropping, striking a new 5-year low with 2014’s 57 percent offer rate, down from the 63 percent of 2013 and the 68 percent from just four years ago. McIntire’s B.S. in Commerce numbers among several application-based majors in the University, which include the Batten School’s B.A. in Public Policy and Leadership, the neuroscience major and the Political Philosophy, Politics, and Law major, all of which students generally enter in their third year. All of these are competitive, but I’m going to take McIntire as my case example because it seems the most visible and egregious offender: too many people are applying to McIntire, not enough are getting in. This is a problem.
(10/30/14 4:24am)
I have a soft spot for science fiction. Right next to Faulkner in my heart lie Clarke and Heinlein. So I’m rightly excited about Christopher Nolan’s new, anticipated and mysterious science fiction film “Interstellar,” which stars Matthew McConaughey as the pilot of a team of astronauts tasked with finding a new, habitable planet for the human race. Interestingly enough, however, most of the anticipation regarding “Interstellar” isn’t surrounding the plot. Certainly there is excitement about another Nolan flick, but a lot of the excitement is about how “Interstellar” — a science fiction film — is more science and less fiction.
(10/23/14 4:43am)
Hasan Khan’s recent article “Accepting Adderall” raised some interesting points about the use of “study drugs” in academics. Cognitive enhancements of some kind may indeed be the next step on our way to a new era of productivity — whether this future is a utopia or an “A Brave New World”-esque nightmare remains ambiguous. But I take serious issue with one of Khan’s assumptions. Khan attempts to debunk the “steroids in sports” argument against Adderall usage, but in doing so he neglects the realities of academia. In his argument, sports, “based solely on individual achievement and glory,” are negatively affected by performance-enhancing drugs, which offer an unfair advantage. But in academia, a “student’s use of neuroenhancers doesn't automatically hurt other students’ productivity.”
(10/16/14 3:30am)
Edgar Allen Poe was recently wearing a fluorescent-blue t-shirt in Alderman Library. It said read, “Hoos Got Your Back.”
(10/09/14 5:13am)
The popular online television and movie streaming service Netflix produced its first ever original, web-only content with the successful television series House of Cards, starring Kevin Spacey, which it released the entire first season of on February 1, 2013. Shortly afterwards, Netflix released the fourth season of Arrested Development and the launch of Orange is the New Black in the same manner. To illustrate exactly how successful Netflix’s gambit to release entire television seasons on one day has been, when the student body shuffles into John Paul Jones Arena October 18 to hear Kevin Spacey’s Speaker for the Arts address, we aren’t going to be waiting for a reference to Se7en, American Beauty or The Usual Suspects. We’re going to be waiting for a House of Cards reference. We’re going to be waiting for a little of Spacey’s Underwood southern drawl. So yes, Netflix has done well for itself. The question is, is Netflix doing well for us?