All Is Optional

Dear Google,

You win at life for making simple all my searches. It’s hard to imagine life before you. Enjoy your ninth birthday.

Cheers!
Neelofer

Dear Rueters,

Your coverage of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was less than acceptable. What I found most unappealing was your lazy reporting.

Exhibit A:
Presidential candidates from both major U.S political parties took swipes at the president of a country President George W. Bush calls part of “the axis of evil.” They said he denied the Holocaust, supported terrorism and armed Iraqi insurgents.

I believe the following paragraph should contain quotes from these presidential candidates since all of them didn’t exactly agree on the situation even if they did find Columbia’s invitation distasteful. Instead, you quoted Representative Anthony Weiner.

Additionally, you quoted no one from Columbia besides President Lee Bollinger. And, even then, you only took the most dramatic and insulting of his words.

Try harder next time.

Please?

Thanks. Bye.
Neelofer

RELATED:
Speaker Christine C. Quinn: Hear Me Roar
Quinn Roars Back

Dear Ms. Qadir,

Thank you for taking the time to express your views regarding the speaking invitation that was extended to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad by Columbia University. This has been a hotly debated issue, and I appreciate hearing from you. As you know, I encouraged Columbia University President Lee Bollinger to withdraw his invitation to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak at a forum at the University on Monday.

I strongly respect, and remain committed to, the freedom of speech. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has the right to speak anywhere here in the United States – that is part of what makes our country great. I do not support censuring Columbia University or withholding funding, as some have suggested.

However, I do not believe that the right to free speech requires providing a platform for hate speech. I remain convinced that all universities, Columbia included, should be laboratories for a healthy exchange of differing ideas. This episode was not about free speech; it was about providing a platform for a hatemonger.

The idea of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as an honored guest anywhere in our City, much less providing him with the center stage at one of New York’s most prestigious centers of higher education to spread hisvitriol, is offensive to me.

While I fully believe it was absolutely within Columbia University’s rights to have extended this invitation, it also absolutely falls within my responsibilities to urge both University officials and lawmakers to exercise judgment when it comes to offering a venue for anyone who incites violence and murder, and who rules over his own country in a well-documented tyranny of torture and slaughter, as well. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad targets his vitriol against Americans at home and abroad, as well as against Israelis, Jews, women, gays and lesbians, and people of many other races and religions.

The request that I made of Columbia University was not based on issues of academic freedom or freedom of speech – I cherish and respect these pillars of our democracy. Rather, it was a request to carefully consider the ramifications of, in any way, legitimizing the twisted rhetoric and terrorism of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Credentialing someone who is incapable of a dialogue that is academic, honest or democratic is certainly permissible, but it is in no way responsible, nor is it respectful of the Iranian families who struggle at the hands of this dictator.

I am hopeful that you will grant this viewpoint the same level of consideration that I have given yours. Again, I thank you for your correspondence and recognize that it was offered with integrity – the very quality that I believe all American lawmakers, leaders and scholars should strive to perpetually honor.

Sincerely,
Christine C. Quinn
Speaker

RELATED: Speaker Christine C. Quinn: Hear Me Roar

15 Things Kurt Vonnegut Said Better Than Anyone Else Ever Has Or Will:

1. I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, ‘If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.
2. Peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God.
3. Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly; Man got to sit and wonder, ‘Why, why, why?’ Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land; Man got to tell himself he understand.
4. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies — God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.
5. She was a fool, and so am I, and so is anyone who thinks he sees what God is doing.
6. Many people need desperately to receive this message: ‘I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people do not care about them. You are not alone.
7. There are plenty of good reasons for fighting, but no good reason ever to hate without reservation, to imagine that God Almighty Himself hates with you, too.
8. Since Alice had never received any religious instruction, and since she had led a blameless life, she never thought of her awful luck as being anything but accidents in a very busy place. Good for her.
9. That is my principal objection to life, I think: It’s too easy, when alive, to make perfectly horrible mistakes.
10. Literature should not disappear up its own asshole, so to speak.
11. All persons, living and dead, are purely coincidental.
12. Why don’t you take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut? Why don’t you take a flying fuck at the mooooooooooooon?
13. So it goes.
14. I have been a soreheaded occupant of a file drawer labeled ’science fiction’ ever since, and I would like out, particularly since so many serious critics regularly mistake the drawer for a urinal.
15. We must be careful about what we pretend to be.

Speaker Quinn,

I find your comments on Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad rather uncharacteristic. While Ahmadinejad’s rhetoric does not align with that of many citizens across the world, it is by no means any reason to not allow him to speak.

With the rising pressure on Iran to stop its nuclear activities, the world has made Ahmadinejad more of a global figure than he on his own could have accomplished. It is not as if the words he speaks at the Columbia World Leader’s Forum is automatically going to brainwash anyone who can hear him.

I suggest you take a page out of Mayor Bloomberg’s book when he said, “I think who Columbia invites is up to them and that’s what academic institutions do.” Because I, as an academic and a journalist, would love the opportunity to hear Ahmadinejad speak if for no other reason than to hear the other side of a world we barely know. Columbia’s willingness to host world leaders – regardless of their global reputation – is what distinguishes America’s educated masses from those of, say, places like Iran.

New York is a changin’

via Jackie Berg

The number of billionaires in New York City has more than tripled in the last year, according to the Forbes 400 report released today. The report also says that the total net worth of the 64 billionaires, compared to 45 last year, has risen 370 percent to $224 billion. In contrast, the net worth of the nearly two million city residents living below the federal poverty line remained about the same as the previous year, earning $3.45 billion. This means that the 65 richest New Yorkers have 64 times the money of the city’s 1.7 million poorest.

The New York Times will stop charging for access to parts of its Web site, effective at midnight Tuesday night, reflecting a growing view in the industry that subscription fees cannot outweigh the potential ad revenue from increased traffic on a free site.

– Times to Stop Charging for Parts of Its Website

Start by reading my favourite columnists (and the six filling in for him while he is on book leave) at On the Ground.

My first laptop was the free Gateway offered to students at the Pforzheimer Honors College, class of 2003. On the eve of my first college final – introduction to philosophy – it crashed. From then until August 2005, I was a regular at the computer support office, visiting every two weeks. Keep in mind, I wasn’t one of those people that downloaded music illegally or anything to entice viruses and whatever other reasons exist for hard drive failures. Yet, it happened.

In August 2005, I made the switch. I bought my beautiful, beloved 12 inch Powerbook G4. I haven’t talked to a computer support person since.

The reason I love Apple (and firmly believe Apple loves me back) is not simply because they provide me with beautiful, functional technology. I love Apple because its customer relations go far and beyond the polite servitude of Dell employees.

On Wednesday, September 5, Apple released a new line of iPods. Alongside the iPod release, the coveted iPhone price dropped from $599 to $399, pissing off plenty of early adopters.

The next day, CEO Steve Jobs issued an apology and $100 store credit to those early adopters. I can’t think of a single other company that would take care of its base the way Apple has.

Three cheers to you, Apple.

“Mr. Prime Minister, thank you for your introduction,” he told Prime Minister John Howard. “Thank you for being such a fine host for the OPEC summit.”

As the audience of several hundred people erupted in laughter, Bush corrected himself and joked, “He invited me to the OPEC summit next year.” Australia has never been a member of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.

Later in his speech, Bush recounted how Howard had gone to visit “Austrian troops” last year in Iraq. There are, in fact, no Austrian troops there. But Australia has about 1,500 Australian military personnel in and around the country.

Read the full story here