“It’s the Work of Silly Infants,” says Charlie Sheen who just got FIRED!

Post Revolution Egypt; new Prime Minister is sworn in.

It’s a Bird … It’s a Plane … It’s Space Shuttle Discovery! Last chance to see Discovery as it comes home.

Usually flags with stars and stripes would not be a problem at a Kid Rock concert… but this is no ordinary flag.

Kid Rock, who is expected to perform for the Detroit arm’s annual fundraiser in his own honor, will be using the Confederate flag which he has said represents southern rock ‘n’ roll.

This is not so innocent for the NAACP which plans to boycott the fundraiser.

Adolph Mango, head of Detroiters for Progress has said that he will sit out Kid Rock’s performance and expects many to do so.  The Event usually attracts about 10,000 people.

The Confederate flag has long been the center of controversy because of its association with slavery in America.

Just this week the contentious flag was responsible for a Bus driver’s suspension in Oregon and Law students being condemened in Virginia.

The flag flew above the statehouse of South Carolina from 1962 -2000. Legislators finally removed the flag after boycotts of South Carolina threatened the state’s tourist industry.

While it may not seem like a big deal for many people, the meaning behind the Confederate flag is something that should be examined.

While some choose to regard it as a symbol of the secession of southern states, others see it as a symbol of the Confederacy, a racist entity.  Like Mango said,

“It’s a slap in the face for anyone who fought for civil rights in this country; it’s a symbol of hatred and bigotry.”

SGA Senate Meeting

March 7, 2011

This week’s meeting started off with an introduction to a new member of the SGA Senate, Chatura Nagaradona. Chatura’s position as a senate member was confirmed officially at today’s meeting. Following the introduction of Chatura, the Senate members voted for an increase allocation in the Student Organizations Fund. This will allow the Finance Board to maintain their position of providing funds for multiple Student Organizations’ events.

The next topic of discussion during this meeting was the funding by SGA for the Retriever Learning Center. For those of you who are not aware of what exactly this is, the Retriever Learning Center will be a new 24/7 study area in the library for UMBC students to utilize throughout the year. The Senate is currently working towards deciding the commitment SGA will make to support the Retriever Learning Center. Following the RLC discussion, an introduction and confirmation was made for the new Director and Assistant Director of Department of Service, Voluntarism and Awareness. Yasmin and Liz are currently working on an assortment of projects through this organization. They have many ideas and plans for the remainder of the semester.

Next, the Senate discussed this past week’s outreach hour topic. The topic of this past week was the idea of the removal of free hour. After much feedback from a variety of UMBC students, there was a general consensus that students opposed the idea of eliminating free hour. Students stated that free hour was the time for their organizations to meet collectively, for them to eat their lunch, and to meet up with friends. Commuters find that free hour is beneficial to their schedule, in order to get a break while being on campus all day. The next outreach hour, members of SGA plan to discuss registration and advising with students. Do you have any ideas on how to improve advising? Do you have any specific questions concerning registration?  Come out and talk with members of SGA during outreach hours to get your answers! Stay tuned for updates from next week’s senate meeting!

ReadWriteWeb reports that Twitter recently made changes in its Terms of Service. Specifically, Twitter will no longer grant any more requests for whitelisting and it would no longer allow redistribution of its content either for commercial or non-commercial purposes. Twitter whitelisting was a way of allowing developers or researchers to access large quantities of data via the REST api. Although Twitter will honor already “whitelisted developers”, it will not grant any further requests.

The second change in the Terms of Service is with respect to redistribution of content.  This means any one who is gathering twitter data whether a developer or researcher can no longer share it with others even if it is for academic or non-commercial purposes. As ReadWriteWeb points out these changes will most likely hurt researchers who are dependent on third party organizations to provide data for their research.

As part of the new Twitter terms of service, 140kit like other organizations can no longer offer exports of Twitter data for any purposes – whether that’s for profit or non-profit, whether that’s for developers or scholars. You could be writing the next killer app. Or you could be working on the final chapter of your PhD dissertation. (And let me interject right here and say that having your access to research data shut down as a PhD student is beyond devastating.) It doesn’t matter. Exporting Tweets now violates the TOS.

It looks like Twitter just made it difficult for researchers to access data for their research.