Joe Stump

Pictures of the new place

To the left is a picture of the living room in the new place. Click on it to see a few pictures of the new place. The new place is much larger than our old place and we’re settling in nicely. This week I go to replace all of the outlets and switches in the new place. A few weeks from now I’ll be putting in all new trim as well.
Once we sell our old place we’ll be looking to upgrade our kitchen. After that comes the bathroom and carpet. Once all of that is done we’ll be pretty happy with the place. The kitchen is a complete catastrophe and the linoleum has to go ASAP. Can’t wait!

Remembering the Holocaust

The Greatest Generation fought WWII over 60 years ago and this week people around the world are remembering the liberation of Auschwitz.

There was a young Polish man in the camp who tattooed the numbers on our arms. He did it with a pen and some ink, dot after dot, like a child doing his homework.
So when he made a mistake, he would cross it out and start anew. A lot of people had this kind of mess on their arms.
When it was my turn I demanded: “Pay attention and do it as well as possible!” And then I began to laugh at my own absurdity, because when you are being gassed, it doesn’t matter if it looks good or not.
My number is still visible, 42646, and beside it, the Star of David.

How little we know

I’ve been storing this blog post up for quite some time. Mainly because it deals with such a sensitive issue; namely race and racism. I have been reading some commentary on such things as reverse racism and affirmative action from both the Right by Larry Elder and the Left by Al Franken.

In his book “Ten Things You Can’t Say In America” Larry Elder says that blacks are more racist than whites. While I find this to be a little obtuse I have to think he, as an African American, would know a little more about this than I would (by the way he hates the term “African American”). His views on affirmative action are interesting as well. He basically says that it has served its purpose and that it is time for blacks to stand on their own two feet.

Al Franken has a different view on affirmative action in his book “Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right.” Al says that a baseball coach once told him that if you have two base runners who can both run to first base in the same amount of time, but that one of them has perfect running form he would choose the other runner because you can teach him better form and, thus, get a better time to first from him. In turn, Al translates this into academics. If you have one student who has two middle class parents, went to a good high school and scored a 1300 on their SAT and then you have a student who went to a bad high school, had a single working mother and worked two jobs while going to school and still managed to get a 1200 on their SAT who is to say they are any less qualified than the first student?

I am completely torn. They are both good arguments. I think the problem is that schools rely too much on black and white scores (a la “No Child Left Behind”) and not on extenuating circumstances surrounding each individual. I also believe that using a persons skin color as a scoring method is not the answer - but what is? I would think wealth would be a better indicator of who is in need of assistance, but that could be open to debate as well.

As to the charge that Elder makes that blacks are more racist than whites I have a short personal story to tell. I was talking with one of my newest fraternity brothers, who happens to be black, at the student union the other day. I was there fulfilling some of my alumni advisor duties and stopped to talk to him while he was chatting with a short, rather cute black girl. After she had walked away he apologized for her rather cold reception of me telling me she was a “racist”. I was floored. A few minutes later we were talking about something else when a girl walked by who would make a dead man’s head turn. I made a comment on how pleasing she was to the eye and he asked “You’re into that?” (the girl happened to be black). “Into what?” I asked. There’s a reason by Beyonce and Naomi Campbell are two of the most sought after beauties in the world - it’s because they are amazing samples of the female form - not because there are a bunch of white boys out there with fetishes for black women.

It was after this little conversation that I realized something. Blacks and whites know very little about one another. We instead choose to ignore each other and mind our own business in the hopes of not upsetting the other. This is, of course, wrong. I’m not sure what the answer to our “racial” differences (I’d say “cultural” differences, but who am I to say) is, but I do know the current laissez-fair approach is only a temporary fix.

How little we know

I’ve been storing this blog post up for quite some time. Mainly because it deals with such a sensitive issue; namely race and racism. I have been reading some commentary on such things as reverse racism and affirmative action from both the Right by Larry Elder and the Left by Al Franken.

In his book “Ten Things You Can’t Say In America” Larry Elder says that blacks are more racist than whites. While I find this to be a little obtuse I have to think he, as an African American, would know a little more about this than I would (by the way he hates the term “African American”). His views on affirmative action are interesting as well. He basically says that it has served its purpose and that it is time for blacks to stand on their own two feet.

Al Franken has a different view on affirmative action in his book “Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right.” Al says that a baseball coach once told him that if you have two base runners who can both run to first base in the same amount of time, but that one of them has perfect running form he would choose the other runner because you can teach him better form and, thus, get a better time to first from him. In turn, Al translates this into academics. If you have one student who has two middle class parents, went to a good high school and scored a 1300 on their SAT and then you have a student who went to a bad high school, had a single working mother and worked two jobs while going to school and still managed to get a 1200 on their SAT who is to say they are any less qualified than the first student?

I am completely torn. They are both good arguments. I think the problem is that schools rely too much on black and white scores (a la “No Child Left Behind”) and not on extenuating circumstances surrounding each individual. I also believe that using a persons skin color as a scoring method is not the answer - but what is? I would think wealth would be a better indicator of who is in need of assistance, but that could be open to debate as well.

As to the charge that Elder makes that blacks are more racist than whites I have a short personal story to tell. I was talking with one of my newest fraternity brothers, who happens to be black, at the student union the other day. I was there fulfilling some of my alumni advisor duties and stopped to talk to him while he was chatting with a short, rather cute black girl. After she had walked away he apologized for her rather cold reception of me telling me she was a “racist”. I was floored. A few minutes later we were talking about something else when a girl walked by who would make a dead man’s head turn. I made a comment on how pleasing she was to the eye and he asked “You’re into that?” (the girl happened to be black). “Into what?” I asked. There’s a reason by Beyonce and Naomi Campbell are two of the most sought after beauties in the world - it’s because they are amazing samples of the female form - not because there are a bunch of white boys out there with fetishes for black women.

It was after this little conversation that I realized something. Blacks and whites know very little about one another. We instead choose to ignore each other and mind our own business in the hopes of not upsetting the other. This is, of course, wrong. I’m not sure what the answer to our “racial” differences (I’d say “cultural” differences, but who am I to say) is, but I do know the current laissez-fair approach is only a temporary fix.

Site Re-Design/Re-Launch

Welcome to the newly re-launched digital home of Joe Stump. A couple of days worth of work has gone into the new site and I’m overjoyed at the results. Most of what has happened to the site you won’t notice, namely the upgrade to JAX 3.0. The new backend has tons of fun toys that the old one didn’t.

As you can see I’ve put together a new designe as well. The new design includes a completely tableless CSS design that, according to http://validator.w3.org, is both valid CSS and valid XHTML 1.1. I’m just happy that the new site looks nice, is well formed and generally runs on better code now. For those of you not running either Mozilla or IE you may find problems. If you do please contact me.

For those of you interested, I relied heavily on CSS info found at http://www.simplebits.com as well as icons found at http://www.gtmcknight.com/buttons/. The new code that you see here allows me to use a WYSIWYG editor, edit my blog roll from a web interface as well as update my quick hits section via a web browser. Unfortunately, not everything is working. Namely photos and blog comments are not currently working. They should be up and running within the next few days. Also, I have not had a chance to port over my old entries (except for the About Me entry). This is going to be a long and tedious task as I plan on editing each one to make sure it’s XHTML 1.1 compliant. And, finally, the archives are not yet up.

Site Re-Design/Re-Launch

Welcome to the newly re-launched digital home of Joe Stump. A couple of days worth of work has gone into the new site and I’m overjoyed at the results. Most of what has happened to the site you won’t notice, namely the upgrade to JAX 3.0. The new backend has tons of fun toys that the old one didn’t.

As you can see I’ve put together a new designe as well. The new design includes a completely tableless CSS design that, according to http://validator.w3.org, is both valid CSS and valid XHTML 1.1. I’m just happy that the new site looks nice, is well formed and generally runs on better code now. For those of you not running either Mozilla or IE you may find problems. If you do please contact me.

For those of you interested, I relied heavily on CSS info found at http://www.simplebits.com as well as icons found at http://www.gtmcknight.com/buttons/. The new code that you see here allows me to use a WYSIWYG editor, edit my blog roll from a web interface as well as update my quick hits section via a web browser. Unfortunately, not everything is working. Namely photos and blog comments are not currently working. They should be up and running within the next few days. Also, I have not had a chance to port over my old entries (except for the About Me entry). This is going to be a long and tedious task as I plan on editing each one to make sure it’s XHTML 1.1 compliant. And, finally, the archives are not yet up.

Site Re-Design/Re-Launch

Welcome to the newly re-launched digital home of Joe Stump. A couple of days worth of work has gone into the new site and I’m overjoyed at the results. Most of what has happened to the site you won’t notice, namely the upgrade to JAX 3.0. The new backend has tons of fun toys that the old one didn’t.

As you can see I’ve put together a new designe as well. The new design includes a completely tableless CSS design that, according to http://validator.w3.org, is both valid CSS and valid XHTML 1.1. I’m just happy that the new site looks nice, is well formed and generally runs on better code now. For those of you not running either Mozilla or IE you may find problems. If you do please contact me.

For those of you interested, I relied heavily on CSS info found at http://www.simplebits.com as well as icons found at http://www.gtmcknight.com/buttons/. The new code that you see here allows me to use a WYSIWYG editor, edit my blog roll from a web interface as well as update my quick hits section via a web browser. Unfortunately, not everything is working. Namely photos and blog comments are not currently working. They should be up and running within the next few days. Also, I have not had a chance to port over my old entries (except for the About Me entry). This is going to be a long and tedious task as I plan on editing each one to make sure it’s XHTML 1.1 compliant. And, finally, the archives are not yet up.

iTools

Apple has really outdone itself with its new application iCal. Apples integration with between iChat, Mail (why not iMail?), Address Book, and iCal is amazing. If you go to email a person in your Address Book who is online in iChat you can just click the iChat link to start a new AIM conversation. Want to tell your friends about a party you’re having? Drag them onto the event from Address Book into iCal and send the invitations - they just double click to add it to their iCal. How cool is that?

LOL

The ultimate goal of science is to unify all forces of nature to a single law that can be silk-screened onto a T-shirt.

LOL

The ultimate goal of science is to unify all forces of nature to a single law that can be silk-screened onto a T-shirt.