Last year, Stanford Dining began publishing the menus and nutritional information of their dining halls on its website. Since I ate in Branner and Wilbur dining halls exclusively, reading the nutritional information of the foods Stanford Dining requires all dorm dwellers to purchase made me rather queasy. Each entree offered often approached 600 calories, and sometimes more. After totaling the calories and fat consumed during my average dining hall meal, I started substituting salads and cereal, resenting the fact that I was required to pay $10 each dinner to eat Raisin Bran.

I moved into a co-op this year and I thought my connection to Stanford Dining would be minimal, limited only to eating occasionally at Tressider, the Axe & Palm and Olives. After reading the Daily article about the Axe & Palm's plans to renovate their menu with fresher alternatives, I wanted to look and see how healthy their menu truly is. After all, apart from the lack of vegetarian options, many of their salads, sandwiches, and breakfast items sound reasonably healthy and "Californian".

Looking at the nutritional chart was surprising. The Turkey Pesto Melt is deceptively over 750 calories and provides all of the protein you need in a day. A California Cobb Salad is 905 calories. Even not-completely-healthy menu items seem exorbitantly caloric. The Chicken Quesadillas are over 700 calories as well. The 50-50 Onion Rings and Fries Combo is reported to be over 1300 calories.

These food items, teamed with the many sweet offerings in the 400-800 calorie range, make a chain like Subway much more appealing. It's possible that the caloric analysis of the Axe & Palm may not be completely accurate, but if this is the case, how can we be sure what truly is healthy?

What implications does this have for the students required to eat central to the Quad for classes? Is Stanford Dining irresponsible for offering such unhealthy food in the first place? Could this have implications for those with restrictive eating, or provoke this behavior in others by providing a sense that there is no such thing as a healthy meal at Stanford?

On Friday, software giant Microsoft offered $44.6 billion dollars to buy enough stock to take control of Yahoo! in an effort to better compete with internet giant Google.

This makes me uneasy.

A Microsoft acquisition of Yahoo would remove a major player in the internet landscape, merging it into the ever spreading software company. This is just plain bad for us--the consumers. We benefit from Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo competing for our attention. As one company innovates, it pushes the others to adapt. And we get better services. Microsoft taking out Yahoo would lead one less reason for Microsoft and Google to develop better technology for its customers. We lose.

And why is Microsoft even trying to compete with Google? Microsoft is a software company at heart, not an advertising company like Google. They aren’t in direct competition. Microsoft’s recent foray into web search and advertising services can be considered as a hobby...at best. They can boast control of about 7% of the internet search market share. Google holds 65%. Microsoft should instead focus on what they do best--software.

Microsoft has had huge successes with its Windows operating system and its Office suite. They should stick to them. Microsoft keeps distracting itself with so many of these projects, resulting in a noticeable decline in quality in the rest of Microsoft’s products. Microsoft’s latest Windows Vista operating system, its main revenue source, is a blatant example. As Vista fails to satisfy customers due to its poor quality, Apple’s OS X and even Linux gain market share, chipping away at Microsoft’s iron grip on the operating system industry.

Microsoft acquiring Yahoo would not only create an increasingly monopolistic internet, but it would cause a thinly stretched Microsoft to deliver increasingly sub-par software to its customers. Microsoft acquiring Yahoo would not be bad new for Google, it would be bad news for us--the customers.

I have two computers. One is a Vaio and the other is an older Dell. The Vaio is bigger, has a larger screen and is the computer I generally consider more of a workhorse. As such, it is the one I leave parked on my desk in Granada, taking it perhaps on a run to Late Nite or when working in the lounge. The Dell, an Inspiron 600m, is a tad thinner, lighter and more mobile. It's no Tablet PC or MacBook Air (though I'm thankful it's not the latter) but I use the Dell when I'm around campus in class or-- as I am right now-- in Old Union.

I bring this up because the only problem with my setup is that I do not always have all my files with me. Sure, I often use Google Docs or Zoho, two free online office suites, but when I forget to upload a particular file there, I'm out of luck. And I do have a flash drive, but it's simply not convenient to have different versions of my History 150B essay on my flash drive and then a slightly older version on my hard drive of a computer I was working on. You can see how this gets annoying and at some point, also counterproductive for my work.

I have found a solution. I started working as an intern at a four-year-old Palo Alto startup called Sharpcast and their product (currently in closed beta) is the best product out there to help me. I spoke with the powers that be at Sharpcast and so today I have a treat for you all.

It is my pleasure to offer you, dear reader, an exclusive preview beta of Sharpcast's newest product, SugarSync, which is set to debut in March. I will walk you through the features of SugarSync and if you're interested, at the end you can score a free beta at the end of this post.

Today is the February 5th election in Santa Clara, and early reports suggest that Stanford voters have already "blown through the ballots".

Polling started at 7am and close at 8pm, but reportedly you will be able to get your vote in as long as you are in line by closing time.

The San Jose Mercury reports that Democratic party voters county-wide are showing up en masse, and even though Obama has been a long favorite here at The Farm, last week, Stanford faculty gathered in Toyon to praise Barack Obama and urge Stanford students to consider voting for Obama in today's election.

Friends of mine in Columbae House have volunteered as part of a larger effort to register voters on campus, and just last week student volunteers reportedly helped to register over a thousand voters over the course of a few days.

Now then, go, vote, and be the change you want to see in the world!

Queer Formal, an annual dance held in Winter quarter, was on Friday at the GCC. I didn't attend this year. I have attended in the past, but this year I had no desire to go. I didn't really realize why until an hour before the event was supposed to start. My house threw a large happy hour as a preparty to the formal. The e-flyer for the formal said:

COME GET YOUR FREAK ON AND LEAVE TO DO THE HORIZONTAL HOKEY POKEY WITH SOMEBODY NEW (or old, or blue, or borrowed)!

*drag is highly encouraged*

So naturally the attire of all the people in my lounge en route to the GCC was . . . a strange mix of formal wear and "crazy fun drag wear". Granted, there were a couple of fiercely beautiful queens in formal wear. But the overall feel was very much a freak show feeling to me - complete with straight guys in drag. I still don't know how I feel about that co-optation of an element of queer resistance against a repressive straight society by straight people at a queer event. I'm happy when people fight gender roles, but I'm somewhat offended when it's done by those who don't understand the meaning and history - at a queer event, I suppose.

I guess what got me the most about Queer Formal this year was that it was marketed in a way that turned it from a formal into any other hypersexualized and freaky fun queer party. Don't get me wrong, I love those parties, which is good because queers hold a lot of them. But Viennese Ball was also on Friday.

Viennese Ball, probably the most formal dance event Stanford holds, is a very romantic, fun, and formal affair. But just by the nature of the dance (tuxes and gowns, leads and follows, etc), the entire event is very gendered to fit a straight society, and I know lots of queer people who are hesitant to attend. Two boys (or girls) in tuxes dancing together at this event would stand out much more than at a Queer Formal. I know that it's likely it wouldn't be an issue for same sex or same gender pairings at Viennese Ball, but many people in the LGBTQ community are very nervous about attending these "very straight" events because of past incidents, current climates, etc.

So the only option for a guaranteed queer-friendly formal event at Stanford is Queer Formal . . . or at least it was. Now, as my friends who attended report, "It was just another queer freakshow." Will we get more respect when we can demonstrate to the rest of the world that even we love romance, and getting dressed up to take out a sweetheart? Or will we be constantly doomed to prejudices of freakness or hypersexuality that we ultimately take up as a defensive measure?

I want a real Queer Formal. There is nowhere else to get this. I can wait until Genderfuk, Terra Parties, Queer parties, any weekend night in the Castro for tongue-in-cheek-drag and "horizontal hokey-pokey". Perhaps I'm just old-fashioned.

Hasso Plattner is the founder of SAP AG, the German enterprise software giant.

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I had an opportunity to catch up with Hasso Plattner at Stanford’s d.school which he helped to start (its official name is the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford) and we talked about the experience of starting SAP and maintaining the company innovative edge as it grew to tens of thousands of employees worldwide.

Hasso has some interesting stories on employee engagement (soccer matches!) and on leaving IBM to start SAP. He also talks about what he’d do if he were starting another company today, thoughts on software as a service, and advice to those that have been bitten by the entrepreneurial bug.

Remember to join the iinnovate fan page on Facebook, and if you are interested in startup jobs and internships please e-mail Julio (Julio [at] iinnovatecast [dot] com).

Thanks for listening!

JULIO of iinnovate

6 people were killed and 16 wounded at Northern Illinois University yesterday when an award winning former sociology graduate student opened fired on a large lecture class then killed himself. No motives have been found by police.

The Chicago Tribune has obtained an interview with the teacher of the lecture class in which the shooting took place (Introduction to Ocean Science).

The blog Cold Spring Shops has outlined many of the events, student responses, and even provided a graphic of the layout of the campus.

Currently this is the leading story at the Chronicle of Higher Education webpage

In the haze of Valentines day bliss and dissertation blues, I completely missed this story yesterday. My tv was off, and I didn't check the news sites.

There are no words to encapsulate this tragedy.

I just got an email in my inbox about Oprah Winfrey being our commencement speaker for graduation this year. My first thought:

"Wow - the senior cabinet got the job done".

Everyone knows that Oprah is huge. But how huge? She's been called "one of the 100 people who most influenced the 20th Century" and "one of the most influential people" of 2004 through 2007 by Time.

Her TV show is the longest running day-time talk show ever (22 seasons) and though I couldn't find any numbers, is watched by a enormous number of people.

She also has a really popular magazine called O which Fortune called the "most successful startup ever" in the magazine industry. (I personally find it hilarious that every issue has Oprah on the cover)

Yeah, her show is often "feel-good" and spiritual and people make jokes about how women always cry when the watch Oprah. But that doesn't matter. She clearly knows something about being famous and successful (something every Stanford student secretly or not-so-secretly wants to be).

Her success is even more impressive when you consider that, according to wikipedia, she was born to an single teenage mom and raised in the ghettos of Milwaukee.

Last year, the graduation speaker was Dana Gioia, a poet and the chairman of the National Endowment of the Arts. No sloucher, but not exactly what many seniors were looking for. And the while not everyone was disappointed by Dana Gioia, many were.

I'm glad the Class of 08 was able to step up.

Seniors: still haven't got a job set up for next year? Interested in trying something different? Juniors and Underclassmen: Are you planning to just serve coffee, fold t-shirts, or bag groceries this summer?

No matter where you are in your career path, you need to check out two great resources for snagging that job or internship you want: the Entrepreneur Career Expo and One Day, One Job .com

Entrepreneur Career Expo
BASES and the CDC do a lot of different things to help students succeed in their careers, and this job fair is one of them. This one brings nearly 100 start-ups to Stanford to look for bright, enthusiastic Stanford students to work on their cutting-edge, curve-jumping, paradigm-shifting, web 3.0 companies.

I imagine most employers will be looking for coders and engineers but fuzzies, don't lose hope! History and English majors often make great marketing interns. I believe our own Editor-in-Chief Christian (History major) is interning at SharpCast.

So get out there and strut your stuff. It's Thursday Feb 28th, 1-4pm on the 2nd floor of Tressider. And don't forget to prepare.

One Day, One Job
This is a really cool blog (and a clever name) started by a Cornell grad that discusses entry-level positions at a different company each day. They've covered some pretty cool companies like Netflix, Bear Naked Granola, and Nintendo. It's a great resource for people who people who don't know where to start looking for a job and don't want to do the same old thing.

They also publish articles on job searching, on topics like How to Use Google to Find a Job. For internships, they've started a similar site called One Job, One Internship. Same idea, but for internships. So definitely check out this cool site. Subscribe to the RSS and get the thrill of a new job opportunity each day!

There are an estimated 250,230 new breast cancer cases for 2008, and an estimated 40,930 breast cancer deaths are expected in 2008. (American Cancer Society Cancer Facts & Figures 2008) Researchers have discovered more than 20 factors that increase the risk of breast cancer. Awareness of both these risks and early signs of breast cancer may prevent breast cancer mortality. And though a cure has not yet been found, the search for a cure continues!

With this in mind, we (a team of 13 Stanford students) entered the Stanford Entrepreneurship Week Innovation Tournament-- an international challenge to create as much "value" as possible out of rubber bands in six days (eweek.stanford.edu).

Our entrepreneurial venture??? RubberBandTogether (RubberBandTogether.com).

I recently had a conversation with a female resident in my dorm about how women are underrepresented in the top level positions of academia and industry. Our discussion centered around the fact that as a man, I come into the conversation with assumptions about how women should be treated in the work-force. I recently wrote her an email:

" I'm not trying to start anything here. Like I said earlier, I am 100% in support of getting women equal salaries and top positions in industry and academia. But getting there will be very hard, because of one fact:

Women bear children and are generally expected to the primary caretaker for their children at least through infancy.

Penelope Trunk is an amazing writer/blogger and her blog Brazen Careerist is one of the few blogs where every single post is both worth reading and worth saving for future reference. She also talks about her personal issues, liker going into couples therapy and eventually annoucing her divorce. But it's never annoying, but always mixed with some advice and reflection on the situation.

She blogged 6 years ago about how getting pregnant later in her career has affected her: Slowing down a career to have kids

I had access to education, I had access to the pill, I had access to money and jobs. I felt that society easily accepted my choices to be single, to focus on my career. Everyone told me “don’t worry about kids, you’ll have time.” ... I thought I was so smart, so organized and driven for waiting. But I’m not sure if waiting got me all that much except a high-risk pregnancy.

She blogged recently about what post-partum depression was like for her - a working mother with no time off - and the story is heart-wrenching, real and illustrates the difficulties that women who wish to have a family face when advancing their career.

The part of postpartum depression that no one talks about