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Posts by Michael Suen

Jan 13

MiddHARD brings musical destruction to campus

This Friday, destruction is going to be wrought on McCullough. Junior Sanchez and Alexander Technique — two DJs with a history of electronic insanity – will be playing at MiddHARD this Friday starting at 10:30PM.

Junior Sanchez is currently producing tracks for R&B artist Mya, and Alexander Technique is known as “one of the pioneer DJs that mixed rock with rap, electro, techno, and house to create a wild collage of everything people wanted to hear on the dancefloor.”

Tickets are a mere $3 at go/boxoffice. If one happens to stumble into McCullough ticketless around that time of night — which has been known to happen — entry will only be a dollar more.

The organizers from MCAB, VACA, and Ignite the Sound have been kind enough to provide the following promo teaser:

More details can be found on Facebook.

Oct 25

2 Comments

Man linked to Burlington murder charged with trespassing on Snow Bowl

UPDATE:

The Free Press now reports that Vermont State police first investigated the break-in at the Snow Bowl after being tipped off by its area manager Peter Mackey.

Pazos was found hiding in a lift house, carrying a hatchet, replica handgun, two knives, and Maryland identification. The suspect admitted he had broken into the shed two days prior to escape a rainstorm (that Vermont weather gets to you), sleeping on a floor mattress.

Investigators also indicated that Pazos “was a boyfriend of one of Smith’s best friends 10 to 15 years ago, but had no information about a motive.”

Original Story:

The bail has been set at $1 million for the man linked to the Burlington murder of Kathleen Smith in her home earlier this month, reports the Burlington Free Press. According to police, 45-year-old Jose Pazos was discovered Saturday near Middlebury’s Snow Bowl, hiding under “debris and equipment” inside an outbuilding.

This followed pamphlets distributed in Middlebury last week warning residents to be alert, and reports of a large police presence on campus this past Friday. For the break-in at the Snow Bowl, Pazos is being charged with unlawful mischief, unlawful trespassing, and petty larceny. As a commenter noted, there are no other connections between the murder and the College.

No charges have yet been lodged for Pazos’ connection to Smith’s murder.

Smith was found dead by a co-worker in her Old North End residence on Oct. 18. Burlington police have posited that she was killed in an “violent encounter” between Oct. 14 and 16. In a statement, investigators noted that “preliminary information indicates a connection between this man and Kathleen Smith.”

More information will be released during a news conference at 2:15PM today.

(via Burlington Free Press; image via WCAX)

Oct 12

4 Comments

In Town This Weekend? Head to Vermont 3.0 Tech Jam!

The work is tough and our stamina is waning. With each passing night, my hammock and Otter Creek pumpkin ale growler cry to me louder from the closet. But never fear, my baby birds, fall break is almost upon us!

For the loiterers around town this weekend: consider heading over to the Vermont 3.0 Tech Jam, a free (ooh!) tech and job expo this Friday and Saturday at the Main Street Landing Performing Arts Center in Burlington. Over 60 local creative, tech, green, and bioscience companies will be showcasing their work, and promoting job and internship opportunities for young people interested in media and technology.

Hiba Fakhoury ’09 of Ask Hiba fame in fact received a job offer at this event in 2008, levying a connection with a Midd alum to secure a position as software engineer at Pragmatic Technologies, Inc. She returned to Tech Jam the following year to recruit for the company.

Over e-mail, Hiba provided the following advice:

…do some research on the companies that are present, what positions they are hiring for (if any), and what technologies they are working on. I say that because it can be a little overwhelming when you’re there to figure out who to talk to. Plus you can make more of an impression on an employer at the event if you know something about their company (as opposed to saying “tell me about your company”).

I’d definitely recommend to take multiple copies of your resume, and to dress as you would for an interview. I have gotten emails from companies I met at the event a year or so later when they were looking to hire. I would also make sure to keep everyone’s contact information and to try and contact them after the event.

Wise words! If you’re interested in the concept of working for money, or — for the more noble among us — for the experience, it’s definitely an event worth checking out. For more information, see the website here.

A video from the 2008 event:

(via Seven Days)

Oct 6

The PopuList: 6 October 2010

Welcome to your mid-week edition of The PopuList, MiddBlog’s bi-weekly feature that offers readers five links around the web which highlight current affairs in pop culture, news, and politics.

“Building a Better Superman” (Hugh Hart, Underwire)
The much anticipated follow-up in the Superman films has found a director in Zack Snyder (300, Watchmen). He divides critics and audience alike with his highly aestheticized movies, but perhaps we should trust in Christopher Nolan (The Dark Knight, Inception), whom is producing the film. Wired’s Underwire blog identifies what Snyder can bring to the table, and one suggestion sounds especially good: Jon Hamm (Mad Men‘s Don Draper) as Clark Kent himself.

“Hillary Clinton’s world eyes 2016, not vice president” (Ben Smith and Maggie Haberman, POLITICO)
Smith and Haberman note recent rumors about the Secretary of State’s plan to replace Joe Biden in 2012, but takes this hearsay and turns it on its head to suggest she’ll be aiming for the throne: “The renewed buzz around Clinton’s prospects, though, has been driven by the political weaknesses of Obama and Biden. Fanned by a media eager for conflict and fascinated by all things Clinton, the spark for the notion of Clinton’s return to politics comes from her original argument against Obama.”

“Zuckerberg on ‘Biggest Problem in Social Networking’” (Ben Parr, Mashable)
Today, Facebook announced they would be rolling out three new features: profile data portability, a dashboard for application control, and a more collaborative version of Groups featuring group chat. Zuckerberg admitted the challenge of balancing the information sharing and overload: “‘Right now, the world isn’t there yet,’ he said about solving the problem of defining groups in the social graph. ‘It’s not as defined as it needs to be.’”

“Democrats Look to Cultivate Pot Vote in 2012″ (Peter Wallsten, WSJ)
The voter turnout in California over Proposition 19, which would legalize small amounts of marijuana, has led Democratic strategists to consider making it the “wedge” social issue in the 2012 elections: “Democratic strategists liken the marijuana effort to the 2004 ballot drives to ban gay marriage in Ohio and 10 other states.” But as my friend Peter “Wren” Huston eloquently states: “Some people don’t like weed.”

“Can Pyongyang pull off smooth succession?” (Peter M. Beck, The Korea Herald)
Beck, an international affairs fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations in Japan, discusses the succession of Kim Jong-il heir apparent: youngest son Kim Jong-un. He predicts that we may see collective rule shared among several high-ranking members after Kim Jong-il’s death, likening it to a North Korean version of China’s “Gang of Four.” Extending the China metaphor: “If there is a North Korean Deng Xiaoping, he will likely have to wait.”

Bonus video after the break: If Jersey Shore was an old Super Nintendo video game…

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Oct 3

The PopuList: 3 October 2010

Starting this week, MiddBlog will be rolling out The PopuList, a bi-weekly feature that offers readers five links around the web which highlight current affairs in pop culture, news, and politics.

“Don’t Surrender U.S. Influence to Beijing” (Paul Kennedy, The New York Times)
Recommended by Deng Xiaoping’s ex-interpreter Victor Gao (lecturing at Midd earlier this evening), this op-ed by Kennedy posits the imbalanced economic relationship between the U.S. and China in mockingly abstract terms: “I suspect that on the whole, the American economy will benefit far less because so much of it is structurally founded upon Chinese imports. What doth it profit America if, say, Walmart’s $8 made-in-China T-shirts rise to an epic $10 apiece?”

“Was the Rutgers’ Web Voyeurism a Hate Crime?” (Maureen O’Connor, Gawker)
You’ve probably heard about the tragic suicide of 18-year-old student Tyler Clementi after his roommate secretly broadcasted a video of him “making out with a dude.” O’Connor has coverage of the events following, but notes that “with nobody with direct knowledge of the events preceding Tyler’s death talking, both his and his tormentors’ motives remain unclear.”

“Television’s Two Leagues” (Jason Mittell, JustTV)
Our own Film and Media Culture professor Jason Mittell blogs about the differences of broadcast and cable television shows, specifically in light of the recently canceled show Lone Star, struck down by FOX after a mere two episodes were aired: “Such is the short-term demands of network broadcasting, where the wandering attentions of fickle Nielsen families can kill your beloved pets.”

“Sorkin Vs. Zuckerberg” (Lawrence Lessig, The New Republic)
According to Lessig, the excessively hyped film The Social Network is a great film, but a flawed story of Facebook: “…the most frustrating bit of The Social Network is not its obliviousness to the silliness of modern American law. It is its failure to even mention the real magic behind the Facebook story. In interviews given after making the film, Sorkin boasts about his ignorance of the Internet. That ignorance shows.”

“Why It Might Not Be Easy to Fix Digg” (Alexis Madrigal, The Atlantic)
For those of you who follow social media, or just like procrastinating on the web, may have heard something about how Digg’s new website had alienated its audience by favoring the content of big publishers: “For the site’s casual users, Digg is a way of finding interesting stories. But for the site’s hardcore users, the site is an elaborate social game in which the stakes are actually quite high.”

Bonus video after the break: Donald Duck, affected by the economic crisis, finds a sympathetic voice in Glenn Beck’s radio show.

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