Most of you know who "Brother" Jed is if you've been around campus at any point during the past two weeks. I googled his name and found exactly what's wrong with the guy. Smock states in an interview with a Wildcat opinion columnist:

"Well, it's been a good while since I've sinned. I don't want to sin, I hate sin. I love God too much to sin. So, sin has been very exceptional in my life for years. If I have committed any sins, it might temporarily be a bad attitude, but not any overt sins like stealing or a violation of the Ten Commandments."

It's been a good while since you've sinned? Talk about pride.

I don't intend to give the guy any more attention than this.

The Tucson Comrade reports that students will now have their own section in McKale Center for men's basketball games beginning in the 2005-2006 season. While this won't have an impact on McKale itself for some time to come, it will for the ASUA election, as numerous candidates have pushed the student section in their platforms only to find that the issue is now irrelevant.

The Arizona Red Star also has more information on the dealings.

Don't get me wrong; I dislike basketball. However, it still makes an impact on the election. ASUA Watch has more on candidate impact.

Just an FYI: ASUA Watch has started evaluating candidates and may finish the presidential candidates by the end of the night.

As most of you already know (hopefully), I'm a geek. My day-to-day computer operations are all in open-source software (Linux, KDE, Firefox, Thunderbird, etc.). Don't start worrying now, I am a capitalist, but it does just happen that open-source software is a better value than its commercial competitors.

Now going off that shameless plug for open-source, one of my daily reads which I need to add to the links here is Slashdot. One read of the comments in the politics section reveals that most open-source users are liberal. It's just a fact; many of these guys have moral problems with commercial software and thus consider open-source a moral obligation. Others like myself take it a little more mildly and oppose software patents (the functional equivalent of Bach patenting the Sonata before Hadyn and Mozart had a chance).

So in essence, Slashdot users are liberal. Now what do they say about the possibly taking the role of ICANN? No Way!! It's quite the simultaneous relief and surprise. I've never seen liberals pounce all over the UN this hard. It's great.

In the wake of the controversy over University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill (over whom Winston must be rolling in his grave), today's Wildcat contains an interesting article about professor David N. Gibbs (whom I have previously mentioned many times over the time I've been writing the Factor).

While I have been very critical of him (as he was critical of me on Democracy Now!), I don't wish to question his integrity. Moreover, I don't think he should be silent about his personal views, as leftist as they might be. Wow, I sound like a liberal.

But seriously, I don't mind. All I wish for is a class in which the professor will show both sides of the issue, and this is what Dr. Gibbs failed to do when I took his Spring 2004 INDV 103 "What is Politics?" class (the class in which one of the students accused him of being a communist). The next semester, I took POL 201 (American National Government). My TA told us that he was a socialist on the complete opposite side of the political spectrum as myself, and I didn't mind at all. He ran the class in an outstanding fashion, despite that I owned all the debates (hee). While he made frequent mention of his own political views, he didn't treat them as holy writ, make us write essays about how he was right, and also presented the case of the other side.

In fact, it's probably better that he did make mention of his own political views. That way, I knew while his class would have a bias, I knew where that bias lay.

So Dr. Gibbs, keep teaching. Cherish academic freedom. Tell us what you really think. Just remember that academic freedom, like all freedom, comes with responsibility, in this case of which is to show all sides of the given issue. If one of those sides happens to be your own, that's perfectly okay.

It's not very often that I find WorldNetDaily more insulting to the military than simply getting more boring by the week, but their latest article on the Lt. Pantano case, while perhaps unintentionally insulting, is insulting nonetheless.

The Marine was charged Feb. 1 with two counts of premeditated murder and awaits a March hearing that could lead to a court martial and possibly the death penalty if convicted.

Pantano and the Navy man agree the Iraqis were stopped trying to flee the hide-out in an SUV. The two men were handcuffed, and Pantano set up a security perimeter. He then removed the cuffs and ordered the detainees to tear apart the vehicle to ensure it wasn't booby-trapped.

"Navy man"?

Go ahead and call Lt. Pantano a Marine as he deserves. But for gosh sakes, your "Navy man" earned the title of Sailor and deserves referral as such. Give the Sailor his due.

You wanted a group blog, right?