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Too Much Good Stuff

November 14, 2007 Alpha Phi Omega / Friends / Life, the Universe, and Everything / Work
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No, I’m not talk­ing about Arco.

I think one of my biggest regrets in APhiO is actu­ally that I let it take over my life com­pletely. :gasp!: Did the Pres­i­dent really just say that? Hear me out… I regret it only because I know there’s so much work to be done out there in the world, and time I spend in APhiO could also be spend work­ing with other, equally needy groups on equally impor­tant causes.

I guess the way I ratio­nal­ize my choice is that with all the work that is needed around the world, each of us can cre­ate the great­est impact by work­ing at a local level first. Think of how much harder it would have been for Zorro to make a dif­fer­ence if he decided to go to Spain to do his work. :) Also, I think that devot­ing myself to one orga­ni­za­tion and really get­ting it in the best shape pos­si­ble for the future lead­ers is bet­ter than just putting in the vol­un­teer hours and noth­ing fur­ther with sev­eral orga­ni­za­tions. Sure, I’ll be doing good work in both cases, but I’ll also be prepar­ing them to do more good work in the future in the for­mer case.

Any­way, this is brought on by the fact that I just saw this video pro­mo­tion for VASCON. They just had the third annual national Vietnamese-​American Stu­dent Con­fer­ence ear­lier this year, and I’ve missed all of them.

I want to give major props to my friends that started VASCON after attend­ing Dai Hoi Thanh Nien Sinh Vien The Gioi, or the Inter­na­tional Viet­namese Youth and Stu­dent Con­fer­ence. The inter­na­tional con­fer­ence is held every two years, and the next one will be the fifth one, mean­ing it’s been ten years since the start. I attended DH2 in Paris and DH3 in San Diego, and they were life-​changing events that I will remem­ber for­ever. I don’t think I’ll be able to make it to DH5, but maybe I’ll be able to make VASCON.

Two-Faced, Part 2

January 18, 2007 Alpha Phi Omega / Books / Education
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OK, part 2 is com­ing sooner than I thought.

I really like Elyson’s recent post on dual­ity and Alpha Phi Omega ver­sus Darwinism.

To quote Card’s Empire (yet again) -

“The great break­through in human evo­lu­tion, the one that made civ­i­liza­tion pos­si­ble, was the dis­cov­ery that two alpha males could form intense bonds of ur-​brotherhood instead of the nor­mal pat­tern of fight­ing until one is dead or dri­ven away. It is the story of Gil­gamesh and Enkidu — a man will plunge into hell for his friend. Thus the male DNA is tricked into sac­ri­fic­ing itself to the ben­e­fit of unre­lated DNA; story tri­umphs over instinct; the monog­a­mous civ­i­tas tri­umphs over the patri­ar­chal tribe. Instead of one alpha male repro­duc­ing his supe­rior genes over and over again, a far higher pro­por­tion of males repro­duce, even though some die in war. All because human males learned how to trick them­selves into lov­ing each other to the point of sui­ci­dal madness.”

Syn­the­siz­ing those two, I’d have to say, yes, soci­ety and civ­i­liza­tion are con­trary to Darwin’s The­ory of Evo­lu­tion. If every­one lived by sur­vival of the fittest, man would kill his neigh­bors and rape their wives. There is no pos­i­tive value in one man help­ing another. But there is nor­ma­tive value. And by def­i­n­i­tion, norms are a cre­ation of society.

Alpha Phi Omega is shin­ing exam­ple of civ­i­liza­tion and human­ity. We ded­i­cate our time and energy to the ser­vice of oth­ers. (The only exam­ple I can think of bet­ter than us is indeed the mil­i­tary, who are will­ing make the ulti­mate sac­ri­fice — their lives — to human­ity.) I want to remind every­one that Alpha Phi Omega has been this shin­ing exam­ple for over eighty years! Our chap­ter alone has been pro­vid­ing ser­vice oth­ers for over fifty-​five of those years. Yes, recent events are a dark spot on our record, but it but a speck of dust against the sun-​like bril­liance of our organization.

With that said, I hope that the hate-​mail, shit-​talking, and other types of per­sonal attacks stop on both sides of the issue, and that we can pick our­selves up and move on as a chapter.

(And yes, I am two-​faced for post­ing this right after my other one.)

And On Your Left You'll See...

December 31, 2006 Dinhternet / Facebook / Retarded Azn Bish / Xanga
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Well, Din­hter­net has offi­cially been up for a solid week. What do you guys think of it so far?

I’d like to point out a cou­ple of fea­tures that have been added…

  • “Since Last Visit” — this will tell you what exactly you’ve missed since the last time you came to Din­hter­net. There’s the counter at the top of the left nav bar for a quick glance, and the “New” tags next to every item that is actu­ally new to you.
  • “Related Posts” — if you like the post you’re read­ing, this item in the nav bar will sug­gest other posts to you on sim­i­lar topics.
  • “Paged Navigation” — now, instead of just “Pre­vi­ous Entries” links on the bot­tom of pages, there is a page sys­tem that lets you know exactly how far back it goes, and lets you skip around the posts more easily.

Are there any other fea­tures you think would help the Din­hter­net? Let me know! (If no one says any­thing on this front, I prob­a­bly won’t be adding any­thing, as I’ve done pretty much every­thing I can think of already.)

Oh, and now that I’m fin­ished bring­ing back my Face­book and Xanga posts, I will start import­ing my old Retarded Azn Bish and Din­hter­net v1.0 posts and com­ments. But since there’s so many of those, it’s going to take a while.

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