So, this is how to convince hormonal teenagers that they should look into an engineering career?

Image courtesy of c0rtex, passed on to me by Ness.

All I can say is that I’m REALLY happy about this week’s issue of Rampway Online. If you haven’t checked out Rampway yet, check out this week’s issue. I’m really freaking proud of these folks. And, by the way, if you’re a student and not involved in some kind of student organization on campus, check out my editorial, too!

Remember President Bush’s faith-based initiative? You know, that’s the program where federal funds aid religious charities. As it turns out you can find among those charities receiving funds the Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church. Yes, the Moonies have ties with the Bush administration, according to a Salon article:

Last December, at his three-day God and World Peace event, the Rev. Sun Myung Moon drew a notable slate of political figures, from Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., to Rep. Danny Davis, D-Ill., and, perhaps most notably, James Towey, director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, who offered some respectful opening remarks to Moon’s Unification Church faithful. Moon followed, and called for all religions to come together in support of the Bush plan for faith-based initiatives.

Finally, after nearly a year of waiting, Naqoyqatsi, the third film in the Qatsi Trilogy is coming to Atlanta! Yes, the film came out in Anchorage, Kansas City, and Bainbridge Island long before premiering in Atlanta.

So where in Atlanta can you see Naqoyqatsi? Only at Cinefest, the student-run movie theater at Georgia State University! I’m sure you’re excited. You may even be as excited as I am, but that’s pretty unlikely.

When, exactly, is it playing? It begins playing September 19, and goes through September 25. Showtimes are 11:00, 1:00, 3:00, 5:00, and 9:00.

Be forewarned: due to technical difficulties, the A/C at Cinefest is on overdrive, so the theater is really really cold. So bring a sweater. A sleeping bag might be useful, too.

So, I’m studying for my Operations Management class, reading through the textbook, and this little bit caught my attention:

When the World Trade Center was attacked on September 11, 2001, U.S. Borders were closed and air travel shut down…. Companies whose employees were hesitant to travel handled business, launched new products, and kept in contact with customers via the Web. Faced with empty casinos, Harrah Entertainment sent e-mails with bargain offers on September 14th to thousands of customers urging them to visit Las Vegas. By September 30th, 4000 customers filled Harrah hotels to near 100 percent occupancy.

Admittedly, it’s not difficult at all to harshly judge Harrah’s for having so little hesitance in enticing the gamblers to come to Vegas. On the other hand, I’m sure their jobs were at stake. They needed to feed their families, so they did what they had to do. In any case, this just further sets in my mind what business I don’t want to get into when I grow up.

I’ll have you know I did not write or have anything to do with the creation of either of these quizzes… at least, my involvement was not voluntary. In the meantime, enjoy.

Which Rampway.org member are you?

Which Rampway.org guy do you belong with?

News reports have it that the TSA is getting ready to implement a color code system that will rate every passenger based on risk: green, yellow, or red. Those passengers marked red will be prohibited from boarding. In addition, those marked red “face police questioning and may be arrested.”

What boggles my mind is that the TSA estimates that one to two percent of all the passengers will be marked red. That’s one or two out of every hundred passengers. To put this into perspective, it means that out of a hundred thousand passengers on any day, one thousand will face the possibility of getting arrested. One hundred thousand may sound hypothetical, however it is comparable to the number of passengers who are serviced by Atlanta’s Hartsfield alone.

The TSA insists that the system is not only focused on terrorists, but also on wanted criminals. Put it another way, as a spokesman for the TSA said, “Not only should we keep passengers from sitting next to a terrorist, we should keep them from sitting next to wanted ax murderers.” On the one hand, I’d agree with the notion that someone with a warrant for his arrest should not be able to simply jump on a plane and fly away. On the other hand, the TSA system is built to circumvent the judicial process. In other words, the system is built to “measure risk”, not to catch known criminals.

Somehow, the news just gets more disturbing by the day.

It’s been a while since I’ve blogged, I know. This will happen a bit over the course of the semester, mostly because Rampway keeps me so busy.

So far, Rampway has been an incredibly rewarding experience. At the beginning of my term, I began to formulate what I should say when I talk about Rampway to folks who hadn’t heard of it before. Part of my spiel always includes that we do stories that have immediate relevance to students. When I first started thinking of the idea of “relevance,” I mostly had the On Campus and Issues sections in mind. As it turns out, things go on downtown and on campus that students don’t know about, but are incredibly relevant — hence, the newspaper boxes and trees story I wrote last year.

Now I’ve come to see the A&E section and the humor section Burlesque as entirely relevant as well. The bulk of the writers at Rampway join Rampway to write for the A&E section. They have great passion for music, movies, art, theater, and other forms of entertainment. A&E is such an important part of our lives as students that when a show or CD sucks, students can identify with the sentiment. What we do in our leisure time is just one way in which we all identify with each other and socialize. Burlesque, meanwhile, continues to be filled with rants. Some of these rants are ones with which GSU students can specifically identify. Kimberly’s article on staring jerks is an especially great example.

In any case, what’s amazing about Rampway this year is the amount of growth we’ve seen in so many areas. The organization ended the 2002-03 school year with a staff of about thirty, some of whom graduated. By now, the staff is almost forty people. In August, Rampway hit a new record for monthly site stats. In fact, the hit count for August was more than double the previous record. How many visits were there? We got 7,777. You could say from that we hit the jackpot.

One final thought, and this goes out to the brunch crowd, regarding a conversation from today’s brunch. Fergus, one of our more prolific writers, wrote a great column on what bothers him about Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. Check it out.