F i a t Lux

1. Write in your journal

In 1994, there was a movie released starring Matthew Broderick (only 7 years removed from having killed two people in a car accident, and was sentenced to pay a $175 fine) called The Road to Wellville, based on the T.C. Boyle book of the same name. Set at the turn of the 20th Century, the movie follows Broderick’s character William Lightbody and his wife Eleanor undergoing various treatments for mental illness at a sanitarium run by cereal magnate John Harvey Kellogg. They undergo a bizarre battery of treatments including but not limited to switching alcoholism for an opium addiction, colon cleansing, vegetarianism, abstinence, electrical shock, exercise, and masturbation. In the end, the Lightbodys leave, disillusioned with the idea that simply adhering to a few superficial adjustments can truly improve someone’s life.

In entirely unrelated news, it’s ASSU Executive Wellness Week, and I’m going to participate completely. That means attending all ten events and performing all 28 individual tasks. I invited ASSU Senator and Wellness Lover Zachary Warma to tag along on the quest to victory, and he, recognizing his own personal bitterness both with the Wellness and just in general gladly agreed to participate as well. As such, he will be in many of these photos and will be attending all the events with yours truly. I will track both his and my Wellnesses as the Wellness Week goes on.

For now, I’ll I have updates on the things we have done (with pictures by Chief Wellness Photographer Sylvie Greenberg!), and will continue until the conclusion of the Wellness Week.

Our Wellness Czars presumably do not believe anyone can attend their 12 or so hours worth of activities plus 28 things that are to be done separately. But as a Stanford student in the middle of midterm season, I see no better way to lighten my stress levels and feel Weller than to spend double digit hours this week doing every single ASSU Exec sponsored Wellness activity. They are listed more or less in the order I do them, starting with writing in my journal: this very blog post.

2. Give yourself a manicure or pedicure

read more…

Remember, Sarah:: Energy, Budget--no--Cuts, Tax, and Lift American Spirits!

Super Bowl XLIV airs today. If you’re just in it for the ads: 2010 Super Bowl commercials here. If you want to see the game live-blogged, check here.

The America Bowl: US Presidents versus Super Bowls. Why not?

The latest Obama Facebook feed from Slate. ‘Scott Brown joins the Washington, DC network.’

A Washington Post reporter goes in for a full-body scan.

MJ’s MD to be charged with homicide.

Jenny Sanford publishes her “elegant evisceration of a memoir.”

Palin is caught using crib-notes on her palm for the post-Tea Party Q&A. Oops!

read more…

Tea Party-ing

What is the Tea Party? Does it represent a new third way in American politics, an unruly branch of the Republican Party, or the successor of Ross Perot and so many other failed third parties. The Tea Party, of course, held its brand-spankin’-new convention this week, feat. Sarah Palin. This conservative confabulation is the most recent headline to come of the incandescent group. Started as a hybrid of grass-roots organizing and top-down protest, the Tea Party has been making things uncomfortable for Dems and RINOs (and now FCINOs) alike since the Dems came forward with the triple threat of stimulus package, bank bill, and health care plan.

Conservative elites grabbed hold of the tea folks with both hands- Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck at one point vied for the title of “Miss Tea Party” so hard we were afraid to turn on the television. The effects were undeniable. From decently behaved protests to unruly town halls to downright scary signs (rightly reputed by the protest leaders, it must be noted), this groundswell of grassroots anger at high costs and poorly communicating politicians did serious damage to the Obama momentum that had seemed so undeniable mere months before.

The question now is, does the Tea Party have a future? It is a quarrelsome group. The most problematic issue facing those who would like to ride this tiger is that nobody really seems to know just what the Tea Party actually is. According to one interpretation, the Tea Party is just a bunch of folks from either side of the political aisle fed up at Washington politicians mortgaging the US’s future off to China. The appearance of Tea Party candidates appearing in elections nation-wide gives credence to the third-party thesis. While the Tea Party seemed to represent white middle-class anger at both big-spending Bush and same-as-the-old-boss Obama, this idea made sense.

read more…

The first ever National Tea Party Convention, being held in Nashville on Saturday night, will feature Sarah Palin as the keynote speaker. The convention itself is aimed at creating more credibility for the Tea Party movement before the upcoming elections. According to a New York Times article by Kate Zernike, the movement’s goal is “electing a conservative Congress in 2010 and a conservative president in 2012.” To aid in achieving this goal

Sarah Palin will speak at the National Tea Party Convention.

the movement will raise money for conservative candidates, implement new technologies to increase support, and recruit viable candidates.

According to Zernike, the movement itself is certainly trying to become more of a “serious political force.” She writes what organizers said: “anyone ‘looking too crazy’ would have been tossed out.” The convention seems to be rather low-key compared to the protests for which the Tea Party is known.

Many Tea Party members are glad to have Palin speaking at the event. One supporter called her “the Tea Party’s inspiration.”Palin wrote an opinion piece in USA Today in which she stated, “I look forward to meeting many Americans who share a commitment to limited government, common sense and personal responsibility…The soul of the Tea Party is the people who belong to it — everyday Americans.”

read more…

CBS has come under fire recently for its Super Bowl advertising policy.  This year, the station rejected an ad from ManCrunch.com, a gay dating site.  CBS does, however, plan to run another ad paid for by Focus on the Family which chronicles football player Tim Tebow’s mother’s decision to give birth to her child in spite of doctors’ misgivings.  CBS has deemed other “political” ads unsuitable in the past, such as a United Church of Christ ad in 2004 and a MoveOn.org commercial in the same year.  What is CBS’s rationale for accepting some advertisements and rejecting others?  One spokesperson explained:

We have for some time moderated our approach to advocacy submissions after it became apparent that our stance did not reflect public sentiment or industry norms on the issue…At CBS, our standards and practices process continues to adhere to a process that ensures all ads—on all sides of an issue—are appropriate for air.

With regard to the specific ManCrunch.com ad:

After reviewing the ad—which is entirely commercial in nature—our Standards and Practices department decided not to accept this particular spot. As always, we are open to working with the client on alternative submissions.

These statements explain little and raise even more questions.  It seems that it is entirely at the discretion of CBS which ads are “appropriate” and which ads are not, and therefore completely within the station’s capacity to promote some values at the expense of others.

read more…

Is Christianity compatible with Capitalism? Are the two systems based on mutually exclusive ethical foundations that make them incompatible? This was the question asked in the recent debate held between Jennifer Roback Morse of the Acton Institute and Dr. Yaron Brook of the Ayn Rand Institute.

The debate was sponsored by two groups, each supporting one perspective of the issue. The Catholic Community at Stanford, a collective group of students and faculty dedicated to liturgical programs and well known for their community service initiatives, invited Mrs. Morse. The Stanford Objectivists, a student group dedicated to studying the philosophy of Ayn Rand and perhaps best known for their unsolicited e-mails to students, invited Dr. Brook.

read more…

In Wednesday’s Stanford Daily, Heather Benz, a senior at Stanford, wrote an op-ed criticizing a news piece that I wrote for the Review in early January. She argues that the piece “misconstrues and obscures the facts about Y2E2.” Benz continues, calling a depiction of the “green building” industry “flawed,” asserting that there are in fact success stories. She concludes with a noble statement about “saving the planet” (and my apparent opposition to that goal).

There are a few things that need to be cleared up. First and foremost, the article that I wrote reflected neither the opinion of this newspaper or me. It was a news article reporting on a paper written by researchers at Stanford’s Center for Integrated Facility Engineering (CIFE). In the process of researching the article, I spoke with multiple people in Stanford’s Sustainability and Energy Management Office, including Joseph Stagner, the Executive Director. I heard many of the arguments that Benz uses in her op-ed from Stagner and others. And I reported on them. The article quotes Fahmida Ahmed as saying: “The occupancy of the building is far different than originally assumed by the designer – Y2E2 essentially became a 24/7 building.” Furthermore, Stagner is quoted as saying: “The building is using about 40% less energy than a standard building of this type would.” Now the article obviously also included remarks that criticized the Y2E2’s planning and energy performance – but, those opinions were solely those of the authors of the CIFE paper.

Second, I’d like to reiterate some of the basic points that the CIFE paper argues. It, of course, acknowledges that design plans for Y2E2 changed, as Benz mentions. However, it notes how radically energy use of the building went up after basic additions. The report indicates that “actual [energy use] exceeded the initial prediction and design objective by about 65%.” And based on that evaluation, the CIFE researchers commented, “The data suggest that, even when good people try hard, energy performance comes nowhere near objective, and the objectives need to become much more stringent.” In other words – yes, Y2E2 is more efficient than a standard building, but we can do better, especially in terms of planning and laying out stricter (and achievable) objectives. Furthermore, Benz’s arguments about the green building industry simply gloss over the facts laid out by the CIFE paper. She describes the paper’s argument as a “flawed attack on the green building industry, giving examples of buildings across the world that have not performed as expected.” I guess I fail to see what’s flawed about that line of reasoning. There are examples of buildings not performing nearly as efficiently as they were expected to (and there are success stories as well!). What does that tell us? The industry has a long way to go. And that is so contentious?

Finally, I’d argue that this newspaper’s decision to actually report on opinions that run contrary to accepted belief is actually something positive on this campus. Few other sources of reporting have chosen to scrutinize the rhetoric of those in student government or the administration. I also encourage Benz and others to be more willing to accept (or at the very least, listen) to outside criticism. To argue that the green building industry is flawless is to the detriment of the environmentalist movement. As Benz argues, the industry remains in its “infancy” – therefore, mistakes are going to be made. Wouldn’t it be best to acknowledge them so that the planning and construction of such buildings can improve? In the age of “Climate-gate” and other climate change related scandals, skepticism of anything “green” is on the rise (not to say that I’m a skeptic on this topic – I am not). It would do the environmentalist movement good to acknowledge the occasional fallibility of its actions while rededicating itself to improvement.

Now that is a far more effective way of “saving the planet.”

Another issue of The Stanford Review. Let’s have a look.

Former ASSU Senate Chair Eutiqio Chapa spent ASSU funds on a shirt. He wrote an apology for the transgression.

Stanford Law School keeps JAG off campus over Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

Sylvie profiles former William F. Buckley, Jr. confidante Anthony Dick.

Andrea Freund blasts the SHPRC for failing to educate students.

Special fees refund rates increase, and Charlie Capps says this is a good thing.

Marissa Miller worries that male insecurity is going to make things difficult on the marriage front for smart women.

President Hennessey testifies before a few members of Congress on exports.

All this and much much more on newsstands now.

The Stanford Daily website, now showing the spiffy new look that new editor-in-chief Kamil Dada promised before his election, is reporting that:

A study by the National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO) and the Commonfund indicates that Stanford’s endowment took a significantly greater hit than the national average in fiscal year 2009.

Although it boggles the mind as to why it takes a study of 842 colleges to realize that the school that posted the second largest loss of major institutions took a “significantly greater hit than the national average” in FY 2009, I suppose it’s good to hear that it’s official. More interesting than that fact is the silver lining to this disaster: John Powers, CEO of the Stanford Management Company, reported that in fact the venture capital fund shares that were nearly sold in last year’s “fire sale” did not drastically underperform as had been reported. Instead, as was discussed in the Review and in this blog (twice), the issue was about liquidity: the capital calls of the VC funds simply represented a dangerous loss of liquidity until those levels could be restored.

read more…

Copyright Trouble in the Land Down Under?

Scott Brown is sworn in.

Oops! Illinois Democrats nominate Scott Lee Cohen, a pawnbroker accused four and a half years ago of putting a knife to his live-in prostitute girlfriend’s neck for Attorney General. (Via The Awl, who went with the headline “Illinois Dems Determined to Make Voters Nostalgic for Rod Blagojevich Era”)

Provost John Etchemendy relays his thoughts on the Westboro Baptist Church protest.

The Whole Foods Republican himself, CEO John Mackey stopped by the Graduate School of Business to talk business.

Ah snap, it’s an intellectual property feud. The losers of this feud? Australian band Men at Work.

A former Microsoft VP wonders why his company fails to innovate.

Jonah Lehrer takes a psychological look at the sex ed debates, using a rather interesting experiment to back his claims.

Andrew Sullivan, a frequent critic of Sarah Palin, apologizes for not giving John Edwards the same treatment. He’s not the only one to see a connection.

read more…