The birdcage has suddenly exploded with banners. Let's see... we've got the Energy Crossroads conference... pretty exciting (Thomas Friedman is speaking tomorrow!). The BASES eChallenge.... and then, lots of parties. Does anyone feel like their inbox is exploding with Facebook invites? Yeah, this would help explain it.

"Chi-Sino Royale," "Little Miss Kappa," "God Save the Queen" (?), "Ted Leo and the Pharmacists," the Frosh Talent Show, "The Winter of Our Disco Tent" (I love that one)... and, even though they don't have a banner, let's not forget the Queer Formal tomorrow!

100+ startup companies showed up in White Plaza today for the Bases Startup Job Fair. It's part of the Entrepreneurship Week activities, which started last Saturday. Lots of cute Web 2.0 logos to be had and a decent showing from Green technology companies. Check it out:

Mmmm.... Meebo. "Meebo: It fits your life. Or... the complete lack thereof." Great tag line for an instant messaging site.

PBwiki was giving away free Red Bulls... and I'm currently feeling a bit dizzy. But it's okay... I also happen to be typing abnormally fast. "PBwiki: as easy as a peanut butter sandwich!"

Yeah... can I get the marketing people over here?

The Stanford Daily's Loren Newman is reporting that senior Tommy Leep has selected the new Tree for 2007-08, freshman John Whipple.

What do you think of this guy?

Whipple did have a pretty nice stunt when he gave himself a dry ice burn, eschewing his original plan of metal branding.

But other than that, he really didn't do that much to impress me.

It seems Whipple may have won just because his opposition was pretty lame. Granted, the selection process is oh-so complex and mysterious. But instead of getting people on campus talking about their debauchery or craziness, Tree candidates had students fuming about messes they left behind in White Plaza from vomit, paint balls, egg shells, etc.

Is Stanford, even our notorious Tree, becoming tame?

According to ABC News, it was a 4.2 and struck at 8:40 pm, near Lafayette. Here it is on the seismogram.

In an ongoing effort to prove Ralph Nader fantastically wrong (re: “Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum” and “it being impossible to tell the difference between the two parties”), to silence those who don’t think government responds to progressive concerns anymore, and to pass good legislation, the House passed the Employee Free Choice Act today. This bill is relatively obscure, but a great move.

The Employee Free Choice Act allows card check organization of unions, rather than the current election system. Card check means that as soon as a majority of workers sign cards and ship them off to the NLRB, an accredited union that can engage in collective bargaining with an employer pops up instantly.

It’ll be great to see us in March Madness, and it’s great to see us win comfortably over a bad team. There were no jitters here.

THE GOOD:

Fred Washington. He had a great offensive game; he attacked the basket and got to the line thirteen times. Damn, that’s good. Defense was a little off but still pretty good.

Mitch Johnson and his Juvenation Machine: I’m afraid I’ll jinx his shooting touch; let’s just move on here…

Lawrence Hill: Glad to see him get back to his high-scoring, inside-out efficiency game.

THE BAD on the other hand...

Before there was Paris, there was GXM.
Everyone, buy a sex toy. You'll thank me later.

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[9:56PM - Breaking News: Apparently six Stanford basketball players have food poisoning. Sounds like Arizona will win tomorrow.]

The game tomorrow is mostly for seeding purposes, and as a clincher. If we win, we clinch and get a much better seed. If we lose, no big deal, we’re still probably in the tournament. The game is also important as a pre-tournament scouting report. Do we go into the tournament with momentum, or not?

Last time, we played Arizona close, despite the deceiving final score. Most of the game was close until a late 19-6 run. That was at home, and Arizona was playing much better at that time, so this game is certainly within reach.

The recent cratering of stocks caused a lot of panic amongst the chattering classes. Fueling this panic was not just “Black Tuesday in Shanghai” but also everyone’s favorite former Federal Reserve chairman, Alan Greenspan. He reportedly claimed that a recession was “possible,” and investors, who treat Greenspan as some kind of mystic oracle, panicked.

Leaving aside the weird messiah-seeking tendencies of investors (if it ain’t a CEO or Mad Money, it’s Greenspan), the whole question is why Greenspan continues to meddle with the economic matters that aren’t his job to do.

[Revised Saturday, 7:39pm]

Two years after declaring his support for the Iraq war in Kresge Auditorium in 2005, Thomas Friedman returned to Stanford today to declare "Green" as the way to "restore America to its natural place in the global order as the beacon of progress, hope, and inspiration."

The three most important issues facing America, he said, are "jobs, temperature, and terrorism," the solutions to which "are so large in scale, they cannot possibly be addressed by an America divided along red and blue state lines."

"The power of a new Green ideology is that it can, properly defined, mobilize liberals and conservatives, evangelicals and atheists, red states and blue states, big business and environmentalists around a core agenda that can both pull us together and propel us forward."

"The next president," he said, "will have to rally us with a Green patriotism."

Friedman said that Green "hit mainstream" through the convergence of 9/11, Katrina, and the internet revolution. The "bad news" is that, while Green has hit mainstream, it has not "gone down Main Street."

Talking urinals. From The Associated Press:

SANTA FE - New Mexico is taking its fight against drunken driving to men's restrooms around the state. The state has ordered 500 talking urinal cakes that will deliver a recorded anti-DWI message to bar and restaurant patrons who make one last pit stop before getting behind the wheel.

"Hey there, big guy. Having a few drinks?" a female voice says a few seconds after an approaching male sets off a motion sensor in the device. "It's time to call a cab or ask a sober friend for a ride home."

Transportation Department spokesman S.U. Mahesh said the urinal cakes are a way to reach one group that's a target of state safety campaigns. Men commit about three times as many drunken-driving infractions as women.

The devices were invented by Richard Deutsch. "The idea is based on the concept that there is no more captive audience than a guy standing at a urinal," Deutsch said. "You can't look right and you can't look left; you've got to look at the ad."

Hi everyone, my name is Jason and I'll be a unofficial blogger for Stanford. I'm very excited to get started. I'll be blogging mostly about how we can improve ourselves and also improve the world we live in. I look forward to seeing what you all think about it.

A little more about me - I'm a junior, a Bio major, I like asking strange questions and I'm on the gymnastics team here at Stanford (We are having our last meet this weekend, so come to Burnham Pavillion this Saturday!)

PS - I love xkcd comics.

This world is filled with incredible people and incredible actions. A website, called "Things Other People Accomplished When They Were Your Age," allows you to input your age and out pops a list of people and the incredible achievements they had accomplished by that age.

Here is a sampling for age 20.

• English novelist Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus, which was immediately successful.


• Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard and cofounded Microsoft.


• Charles Lindbergh learned to fly.


• Jane Austen wrote Pride and Prejudice, her second and most famous novel (dang that early huh?)


• The Greek philosopher Plato became a disciple of Socrates.

Holi, the very popular annual Hindu Spring festival was celebrated at Manzanita Park this last Saturday with lots of colors, water and some mud as well! Holi marks the onset of spring in India. So why is Holi celebrated? Well there are various stories in ancient Hindu texts but the three most important reasons can be found here.

On campus, the Hindu Students Council had really done a good job of guaranteeing a good party sans alcohol! People smeared each other with colored powders (gulal) and threw water on each other.

We're inching our way up the Google search results page for "Stanford Blog" and are now the top result for "Unofficial Stanford Blog." Tomorrow, we expect to receive our 2,000th unique visitor [reached at 1:16AM].

Come see the SImp's quarterly show on Friday and Saturday, March 9th and 10th at Pigott Theater. They'll have Theatresports matches on both nights, leading up to the finale on March 10th at 10:00pm, where one of the SImp teams will battle an all-star team of alumni players. Tickets are $5 and will be sold in White Plaza and at the door.

I hate how people make all kinds of metaphors for life. Just to prove how bunk they are, I'm using a random word generator to make 10 metaphors for life on the spot. Tell me they don't make sense somehow =)

Life is like...
1. Accents - everyone has one and they are all a little different - making it harder to understand some people more than others
2. A guarantee - you can find it with anyone, but it doesn't mean much except for a select few who truy honor it.
3. A disaster - (nothing more needs to be said)
4. An infection - it grows on you

Tuesday, March 6 at 7:30pm in the Language Corner
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Then, catch Professor Zimbardo's Farewell Lecture on the Psychology of Torture on Wednesday morning.

Libby was found guilty today in his Valerie Plame-related trial for perjury and obstruction of justice. According to the Associated Press, “Libby is the highest ranking White House official to be convicted of a felony since the Iran-Contra scandal of the mid 1980s.”

This is obviously a big break, as we’ll finally, finally see someone get punished significantly for this Valerie Plame scandal, which, by exposing a covert agent, damaged our national security.

Of course, Mr. Law and Order man, Fred Thompson, assures us that “it was not a crime.” (I actually enjoy his Law and Order work, he should stick to that.) This attitude is typical of Republicans. To wit, then, this is the conservative mentality on crime:

An individual lies about having sex with a woman: he should be thrown out of office, possibly immolated, and is a threat to the nation’s dignity.

On the other hand, if an individual attempts to cover up for an investigation about an administration exposing a covert agent as a dirty trick: no biggie, dude.

This will serve rational analysis well when we deal with the next Republican scandal, the Department of Justice Massacre. Essentially, after pressuring their own prosecutors to give Republicans favorable treatment, the Department of Justice fired eight prosecutors and replaced them with their own cronies.

The Democrats will be holding hearings.

YouTube's new channel for the 2008 Presidential Candidates now makes it dead-simple for voters to get in touch with the men and woman who have entered the race. The posted videos are exactly -- and only -- what the candidates want you to see, but they do several democracy-enhancing things.

First, the channel allows voters to see all of the candidates at once and get a sense of (and compare) what each of them is saying, both Democrat and Republican.

Second, it is currently -- and will likely remain -- an attack-ad-free zone, so you don't feel like shit every time you simply wade into the election. If a candidate wants to make a jab at another, he or she pretty much has to own up to it, at least here.

One of Stanford’s boldest artists shares her thoughts on the Stanford Arts Initiative, the work of Jenny Saville, and transferring from the East Coast.

Blog for Stanford: So, you live in Twain. Are you a transfer?
Sara: Yes I am.

BFS: Where are you a transfer from?
Sara: Vassar College, in upstate New York.

BFS: What was it about Vassar that pushed you towards Stanford?
Sara: Well, Vassar only allowed water-based paints. And water-based oils are really trash.

BFS: For health reasons?
Sara: Yes, and environmental reasons. So, I knew that wasn’t going to work, because I want to be an oil painter. So I just looked around; I wanted to come closer to home – I’m from Colorado – and Stanford is a good school in the West. Vassar was a little emo.

BFS: Can you talk about your early experiences with painting?
Sara: I started oil painting when I was about 8 years old, but I’ve been taking art classes since I was about six. I went to the Art Students’ League of Denver starting when I was very young, and I had one teacher up until I was about 13, and then I switched into the adult classes, and my teacher Kevin Weckbach has been sort of a mentor since then.

BFS: And how did you know that painting was it? What about it captured you?

Sign-up online at http://soca.stanford.edu by March 10th!

Sign-ups have been extended for this year's annual "An Art Affair," the largest arts festival at Stanford. An Art Affair, which is organized by the Student Organizing Committee for the Arts (SOCA), will be held this April 14th and 15th, and will coincide with Stanford's bi-annual Community Day. This is the seventh annual An Art Affair festival, and it's going to be bigger and better than ever before.

Now in its seventh year, An Art Affair has evolved into a true Stanford tradition.

The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil. Previously recorded at the "Thinking Humanity" conference, and available here. Accompanying slides are also available here.

Professor Phil Zimbardo said goodbye to Stanford today in a farewell lecture on his signature issue, the psychology of evil. Entitled "The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil," his talk was a guest lecture for Psychology 1 students, but he attracted so many other fans and students eager to hear him speak once more, that the TAs for the course began to block the doors, allowing only Psych 1 students in and challenging people entering to name their TA.

Zimbardo was introduced by Psych 1 Professor Benoit Monin, also a social psychologist, who said that many departments have "fairy godmothers" who help nurture and train the students and scholars there. Zimbardo, however, was more like a "godfather," or, rather, THE Godfather. As a token of the department's appreciation, Monin presented Zimbardo with a symbolic black hat, which Zimbardo promptly wore. Zimbardo then proceeded humorously to give Monin the famous Godfather "kiss of death."

Appropriate enough for a psychologist who studies evil.

Lost amidst the top Democratic presidential candidats' Iraq war one-upmanship (or womanship), is the looming threat that the US is about to embark on another adventure: Iran. It's easy for the very real possibility of an attack on Iran to be downplayed as presidential candidates fiddle vocally with details of troop deployment and funding levels for the war in Iraq. However, the threat of strikes against Iran is very real.

In January, I met with retired General Wesley Clark who was very concerned about the current situation in the middle east. (Disclaimer: he's my candidate of choice in '08.) The increasing possibility of strikes against Iran has become great enough that General Clark has made stopping such actions his top priority--at the expense of a possible presidential campaign. Together with VoteVets.org, General Clark has set up a website, StopIranWar.com, aimed at bringing attention to the situation and to push diplomatic efforts in Iran. The rush to war in '03 couldn't be stopped, but there are avenues available in the Democratically controlled Congress that can be used to push diplomacy over war. I'll be discussing upcoming legislation later here and elsewhere. For now, you can sign the petition. (Bill Richardson has a petition as well as Hillary Clinton)

We usually think of peace as coming from a macro-level: a treaty between two nations, a peace accord, UN intervention, or a cease-fire. But to what degree can the reality at the micro-level influence peace between governments?

There are numerous projects working towards this effect in the Middle East. A version of Sesame Street for the region has Israelis and Palestinians living peacefully in the same neighborhood, and for adults there are groups such as Arabs for Israel and Coalition of Women for Peace. A number of other groups work to foster dialogue and exchange between Israelis and Palestinians. Perhaps these groups can succeed where governments have failed.

Here at Stanford there's a new group called the Stanford Project for U.S.-China Dialogue. The goal here is to cultivate cultural and political understanding between the U.S. and China, by posting articles on various topics by American and Chinese university students. While the two countries are not at war, the group aims to prevent the sort of misunderstandings that have lead to conflict in the past. You can check out the website at: http://dialogue.stanford.edu/

So what do you think? What are other opportunities for cultural bridge-building? Is this the future of peace?

Suddenly, by common consensus, we’ve become a bubble team. We’ve got a strong hold on a spot in the tournament, but we’re not a lock; if we lose tomorrow, we have to become the ogres everyone hates and root against the underdogs and also pray for the committee’s kindness. I don’t want either of these fates to befall me, so I hope we clinch a spot against USC.

Chris Larsen is the co-founder and CEO of Prosper.com, an online person-to-person lending marketplace that has excited quite a few in the world of finance, business, and technology, notably the New York Times, SF Chronicle, and Businessweek.

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Chris Larsen is the co-founder and CEO of Prosper.com, an online person-to-person lending marketplace that brings together traditionally inspired dynamics of lending between friends, family, and individuals, with the benefits and rigors of modern-day credit systems.

Prior to Prosper, Chris co-founded and served as Chairman and CEO of E-LOAN, which closed over $27 billion in consumer loans, and was consistently ranked as one of the nation's most trusted consumer brands. E-LOAN took radically pro-consumer actions such as being the first company to provide consumers with access to their credit scores, and played a critical role in the passage of the consumer financial privacy protection laws. Chris led E-LOAN through a successful IPO in 1999, and oversaw the company's acquisition by Puerto Rican bank Popular, Inc. in 2005.

In this podcast, Chris chats with Julio and Min Li about Prosper's innovative vision, its unique challenges as an eBay platform for money (check out Prosper's cool tools for academics and researchers for performing case studies on its model), and the fine balance between the countervailing forces of transparency and privacy in the world of Web 2.0.

Chris holds an M.B.A. degree from Stanford University and a B.S. degree from San Francisco State University, where he was named the 2004 Alumnus of the Year.

- Min Li

--
Note from Min Liu*:
For more interesting interviews by Stanford business school students and recent grads, check out iinnovate.

*yes, there's a Min Li and a Min Liu ;)

Feel like the only one who hasn't chosen a presidential candidate for 2008? Well, you're not alone. Gallup has a new poll that shows only 15% of registered voters saying they made up their minds about who they will support and only 22% have a "good idea" who they will support.

If you're a tired of hearing about how great Clinton, Obama and Giuliani are, you are not alone. The rest of the country is taking their time. So should you. Get to know the candidates and look at their record. Some may be surprised to learn that one of the candidates got into some trouble for helping to get the Pentagon Papers out, that one of the candidates is a former ambassador to the UN, or that one of the candidates lost a lot of weight and has become a big advocate of preventative health care (hey, it's a Republican so, yeah, that's news).

The loss tonight to USC in overtime, it wasn’t the Trojans beating us, it was their adversaries, the Greeks who did us in. In Greek tragedy, of course, it is hubris and one fatal flaw coming back to haunt you that ultimately dooms the protagonist. That’s what just happened to Stanford.

An introductory video to the arts at Stanford, created for the Arts Guide, an interactive multi-media guide to the arts at Stanford, sent to all prospective freshmen in the Spring. I think this video really captures the essence of Stanford, the passion and creativity of the students here, their dedication to extra-curricular arts and activities, and generally some of the principles and values that make Stanford an incredible place to be. [studentarts.stanford.edu]

I just came back from a show by the Stanford Improvisers (SImps) called “Phantom of the Improv” at the Pigott Theater. I watched 8 members produce an improvised, unrehearsed 50 minute Broadway-style musical called “The Ballet Class” (the title was selected through many audience suggestions and subsequent voting).

It was incredibly fun.

I love SImps shows: they are funny, musical and surprising. This show was the best entertainment I could recommend to anyone. The songs were catchy, the actors were funny and real, and the plot had a great ending. The story was basically about a school where a new kid gets into trouble on the first day with a “bad kid,” then joins the homeroom art project of “expressing yourself” with two other students who learn ballet. The bad kid is eventually convinced to join the project as well and give it a chance.

State transportation planners have nearly finished designing a high-tech bullet train system that would take passengers from San Francisco to Los Angeles in just over two-and-a-half hours at 220 mph -- faster than a Ferrari. The electric train, which would extend from San Diego to the Bay Area and Sacramento, is slated to be put before voters in 2008 at a price tag of $30 billion. Given California's population growth rate -- we effectively add another San Jose to our population every two years -- the ensuing commuter flood will jam our highways and airports. An electric high-speed bullet train would be significantly more environmentally- and aesthetically-friendly, not to mention cheaper, than building more highways and/or expanding our airports.

Though the rest of the industrialized world has had high speed trains like this for as much as 43 years (in the case of Japan), America has yet to construct even one truly high-speed train (i.e. over 200 mph).

As always, California will show the way.

Visit the California High Speed Rail Authority Website for more >>

I was given an account and told to post...

Over the last several months the concept of stereotype threat has been on my mind a lot. (I realize I'm linking to my nemesis Wikipedia. So it goes. Follow the link for some very interesting data. If you're super ambitious, you can track down some of the published references.) I couldn't stop thinking about stereotype threat as I was reading an article several days ago which discussed the perception of male versus female leaders:

While more than half our 60,000 respondents said a person's sex makes no difference to leadership abilities, most who expressed a preference said men are more likely to be effective leaders.

Of male respondents, 41 percent said men are more likely to be good leaders, and 33 percent of women agreed. And three out of four women who expressed a preference said they would rather work for a man than a woman.

Like Ingrid Newkirk, but not as scary: Stanford’s loudest animal rights activist talks about Stanford’s animal research facility, famous vegans in history, and why he frequently foregoes footwear.

[Blog for Stanford]: Can you tell me what ARF is about and what your goals are as an organization?
[Jack]: ARF stands for Animal Rights on the Farm, and we exist to promote animal rights. Interestingly, we’re also Stanford’s only undergraduate and graduate student group that focuses on animal rights. Our main goal is to extend compassion to all sentient beings because we think that any being that has interests or can feel pain deserves respect. Just because they happen to belong to a different species doesn’t mean we shouldn’t respect their interests. That’s bigoted, I think.

[BFS]: I’ve heard the speciesist argument before. Is that sort of what you guys are getting at?
[Jack]: Yeah, it is. The most widespread form of disregarding members of other species is eating them, and so we’d like to promote vegetarianism and veganism among all people, but especially students on campus, since we’re a Stanford group. Another activity that uses animals in painful ways is research, and there’s an animal research facility on campus. They don’t release any information to the public about what animal research is going on. We’d like to find out more about what’s happening at the animal research facility and be able to hold a public debate about what types of animal research people might feel are acceptable or unacceptable. Because we feel that when you’re doing research on an animal, you’re harming him or her, and you need to ask whether the benefits outweigh the harms. And if you don’t have any information, you can’t ask those questions. We are doing a disservice to the animals and to ourselves as ethical people.

[BFS]: Is it a medical research facility?
[Jack]: The research facility is in the medical school; it’s in the basement of the medical school.

[BFS]: Oh, so you know where it’s located. Very key.

Last night was Grove's Winter special dinner, and it was.... fabulous. Beef, chicken, and buttery crab goodness... with a lot of Nintendo and Great Book characters floating around. Thanks to our marvelous staff and talented chefs, there were lots of happy stomachs, and lots of happy faces.

It's Tetris

Last night, Stanford's men's gymnastics team defeated #2 Penn State and #9 Iowa at the last home meet of the year. It was one of the most exciting meets of my life, my voice is hoarse from all the screaming. I'm a junior on the gymnastics team, but redshirting due to a knee injury.

It was certainly an amazing send off for the class of 2007, Brice Rolston, Alex Schorsch, Dylan Carney, Peter Derman and Josh Goldman, all whom were honored at the meet. Penn State is hosting NCAAs and this was a huge victory for us and fuels our momentum into the post-season. We have conference championships during Spring Break and 2 weeks into spring quarter we will be at Penn State to chase the NCAA title. Wish us good luck!

If you have never seen a gymnastics meet, you have to come see one. See our youtube videos.

I was definitely sweating it for a while, but I’m glad w