Google has got it right. This company has found an amazing way to not only empower and energize its workers, but to create great things in the process.

What I am speaking of is Google’s ‘rule of thirds.’

Google has found a way to make work fun for the employees and get them engaged and active in what they are doing – by paying them to not work on Google-related projects. The rule of thirds says that employees will spend 33 percent of their time on current projects (Google maps/earth/sky/ Chrome, etc), 33 percent on future and upcoming projects (Google Trends/Mars/ and a new version of Google Talk), and the final 33 percent on personal “pet” projects.

This freedom allows some of the best programmers out there to play around and come up with new and innovative widgets that could possibly be implemented into full-fledged applications.

Facebook was a pet project of Mark Zuckerberg, created originally to keep his mind off of a girl. Many other programs and inventions such as computers and automobiles have come about as results of creative people tinkering and finding new and different ways of doing things.

We each have the ability to come up with these great things, and for some it might not be fully realized. Many classes at Ferris have a final project as part of the curriculum. One of the main points of these projects is to engage the student and allow him or her to apply what they have learned throughout the semester.

I don’t think that any teacher would stop a student from “doing too much” as long as the main objectives have been covered. Doing projects in Access, Excel, or Visual Basic are some examples of things that I have personally taken above and beyond to be more intuitive and simple to use than projects my classmates were making.

Yes, “pet” projects are a great way to learn and engage. I have seen some interesting ones including someone setting up two webcams and a twitter account for their pet, all wrapped up into the animal’s own web page.

So go out there and make a project your pet.

As most of us know by now, Ferris State Dining Services is undergoing several changes over the next few months. Starting the last day before spring break, March 7, the Rock Café will be closed. The south campus’ main dining facility will undergo a complete renovation and is scheduled to reopen in August for the new academic year.

Like everyone else, I like to get the most bang for my buck. For the past year and one-half that I have been a Ferris student, I’ve had this constant feeling like I am being ripped off. No, I am not talking about housing or tuition this time, but rather FSU Dining Services. Every time I walk into one of the four dining halls on campus I constantly feel like I am losing money. Yes, most of my education is being financed by student loans, so technically I won’t be paying for my ripped off meals for several more years.

Over the past few years, FSU Dining Services has been conducting surveys of the portion of the student body that consumes all of the “nutritious” meals served in the dining halls. I am happy to say that finally the administration has used all of their collected data to make an educated decision.

Starting with the Fall 2009 semester, all FSU meal plans will consist of unlimited meals to a certain extent. Many of my friends have approached me over the past month or so saying, “Did you hear? Ferris is socializing our meal plans!” Being a somewhat socialist myself, I always cringe when I hear an individual use the term “socialize” in the negative context.

After hearing all of the facts myself, straight from Lori Helmer, the Director of Dining Services, I have to side with the Dining Services administration on this one. No, Ferris is not socializing meal plans. Rather they are listening what we, the student body, have been calling for. With four different meal plans to choose from, there will now be an option to suit almost every Ferris student.

Under the current setup of dining halls, there are two styles of eating. The Rock Café and Westview offer the cafeteria style dining that is so old that many of our parents associate this style with their college careers. Mascar Grille and Center Ice offer “a la carte” eating where one can pick and choose from a variety of foods and then proceed to the cashier.

When students return to campus for the fall semester, every dining facility will be an “all you care to eat” style. There will be no more “a la carte” takeout from Center Ice or Mascar Grille. There is no doubt that this will provide a minor inconvenience to some students. The good news that comes from this is the copious amount of Styrofoam that these facilities contribute to landfills will be no more.

I can foresee only one problem with switching meal styles to the “all you care to eat” method. Coupled in with unlimited meals, this meal plan implies to me that this setup is a recipe for obesity.

Since we are all college students, we love to proclaim that we are adults now and we can make decisions on our own. Well, here is more of the more challenging tasks to those that have a bottomless pit for an appetite; restrain yourself when it comes to eating.

Even with the current meal plans, anybody can overeat and pack on those unnecessary pounds. I know it is going to be tempting to have those unlimited meals. Just think, you can eat whatever you want, whenever you want.

So my challenge to all of those students that are returning to campus next fall: be happy for change, enjoy receiving the most bang for your buck, and most importantly, try to restrain yourself.

There’s a lot of talk about terrorism in American political discourse. There are countless terrorism experts and analysts as well as scores of books written on the “terrorist phenomenon.” We are told that the U.S. and its loyal allies are actually fighting a bipartisan “global war on terror.”

While discussion about terrorism evokes certain obvious images of suicide bombers and religious fundamentalists, we should first ask what exactly terrorism is. According to official U.S. law, terrorism is “[violence] that appears to be intended to influence the policy of a government…or the use of violence to intimidate or coerce a civilian population.”

Of course, we rarely ever hear this reasonable definition of terrorism cited by renowned experts, politicians, or mainstream journalists in the U.S.. Naturally, if you use the real definition, all the wrong conclusions that have been drawn begin to surface.

For example, when U.S.-armed Israel bombs and attacks schools, homes, mosques, hospitals, markets, and apartment complexes in the Gaza Strip and kills and injures several thousand civilians over a three week period, that’s international terrorism.

When the U.S. attacked Syria in late October killing seven civilians including three children in an attempt to “goad” or coerce the Syrian government into “cleaning up its backyard” or changing its policies, the U.S. was carrying out textbook international terrorism.

It is also terrorism when Bush or Obama order illegal air strikes on Pakistani villages and kill many civilians. It is in fact a war crime to fail to distinguish between civilian and military objects and targets.

Of course, waging full scale invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan do not fall into the category of terrorism. These are examples of fullscale aggression—the supreme international crime —for which many people were hanged for at the Nuremburg Tribunals after WWII.

Why don’t our self-appointed betters and cultural managers call U.S. terror what it is? It’s because deeply internalized ideological assumptions won’t allow them to.

Simply put, it is assumed that, by definition, the U.S. and its client states “mean well” or “care for human life.” It is presupposed that the U.S. wants to help people achieve freedom and democracy across the world. In reality such assumptions are totally baseless, rooted only in an utterly false conception of the structure and motivations of our foreign policy.

In reality and to my knowledge, no nation-state in history has ever worked towards the sort of altruism that American elites attribute to the U.S.. But historically, the intellectual classes of all of the world’s great tyrannies and empires faithfully lined up as proud cheerleaders behind the banner of their country’s righteousness and benevolence.

Today in America we can have heated debates over whether we agree or not with U.S. military actions or policies, but incidentally, such discussions are of almost zero moral or legal value. They are certainly of no value to the numerous victims of American power and violence.

We can argue that the U.S. should or should not try to spread democracy. We can argue that American/American-sponsored attacks are or are not helpful to the cause of freedom and justice. We can even debate whether or not the monetary cost of U.S. violence is acceptable.

But it is unthinkable to make a principled argument against U.S. terror and aggression—the very sort of argument that is easy to make against the crimes of other states.

There is no need to complicate simple matters. One doesn’t have to possess a doctoral degree in political science or serve 10 years in the military to oppose U.S. intervention on the basis that aggression and terror are morally wrong no matter who is holding the guns.

Let’s face a very simple fact: America is no different from any powerful and violent state. We call the murderous violence of others “terrorism” and we call our own murderous violence “counterterrorism.”

Governments are centers of power—not moral agents. They will show restraint only when an outside force restrains them, such as their respective population, or a foreign power.

What may set the United States apart from earlier terrorist states of comparative size and magnitude (USSR, Spain, England, Roman empire, Germany, etc.) is the degree of freedom of its citizens.

What follows is that the responsibility of privileged Americans (like us) for bringing an end to U.S. aggression and terror is far greater than any historical precedent.

The next question is this: what’s our excuse for allowing the continued violence?

While watching television with my boyfriend, a Wal-Mart commercial came on depicting a happy American family. The family was shopping at Wal- Mart for great prices and excellent selection, as noted by the super store. The family then went home with their purchases and enjoyed a loving family meal. There was not anything strange about the family’s activities, however what was odd was that the family was interracial. The mother was African-American, the father was Caucasian, and their three lovely children were bi-racial.

I am not sure why the commercial occurred to me as odd, since my boyfriend is white. The interesting thing is that interracial couples are becoming more prevalent to mainstream media. This is likely because of the rapid increase of interracial couples in America. The 2006 Census reported that more than five million Americans are interracially married, and even more are cohabitating. The introduction of the “mixed-race” category, the 2000 census showed interracial marriage to be somewhat further widespread, accounting for 2,669,558 such marriages, or 4.9 percent of the total. The report also revealed that men are more likely to engage in interracial dating, whereas black females are less likely.

In addition to Wal-Mart commercials, interracial couples are popping up on online dating sites like eHarmony commercials. The funniest commercial was of an interracial couple watching adult entertainment via Charter cable.

Even actor Robert DeNiro has had two interracial marriages to black women that each lasted 10 years. American advertiser’s awareness of this fact denotes a shift in the nation’s ideas and feeling towards a once taboo topic.

Once called miscegenation, the mixing of one’s kind, interracial marriage became legal with the case of Loving v. Virginia in 1967. Plaintiffs, Mildred Jeter, an African-American woman, and Richard Loving, a white male, married in 1958 in at the height of racism in America. Their historic union made prominent interracial couple in the U.S. through their legal struggle.

Although some people view interracial dating as edgy, the topic of mixed race children supersedes the discussion of dating. Many psychologists believe that bi-racial children suffer from identity issues and racial scrutiny. Some believe that racism toward interracial people is more that those of one ethnicity. Singer Mariah Carey, who is of Irish-American and Afro- Venezuelan decent, said she often struggled with identity as a child. There are many famous and prominent people produced from multi-racial unions.

Actress Halle Berry was born from a white mother and black father, likewise even President Barack Obama came from a similar union of a white mother and Africa-Arabic father. Pro golfer, Tiger Woods famously dubbed the term “Cablinasian” to address his Caucasian, African-American, Indian, and Asian decent. And, unknown to many fans, even Rob Schneider, of Deuce Bigalow, Male Gigolo fame, is of Philippine and Jewish decent.

Some might say the emergence of mixed unions in media may be linked to President Barack Obama. However, the census statistics and advertisements came long before Obama’s presidency. Interracial unions have been on the rise since 1970 when 310,000 interracial marriages were registered. About 1.2 million interracial unions were registered by 1992.

Even though interracial dating is becoming more common, many people still consider the topic taboo. The world is large, and life is too short to worry what everyone has to say about anyone’s love life.

There is a secret language shared between men and women that is cryptic at best and completely befuddling at worst.

Regardless, this language is constant and adaptive as generation after generation finds ways to say that they care for another human being on a greater level than they do for their family pet or basic house plant.

Deciphering that code between the sexes and various of levels of affection is complicated and while I don’t pretend to be an expert, I do pretend to have a pretty good idea.

Signals were simpler back in the days before cell phones and Facebook provided constant watch dog capabilities for friends and significant other(s) to keep tabs on the relationship. In the times when ‘going steady’ was clearly understood and ‘parking’ was something you didn’t tell your parents about the emotions were clear, as was the terminology and the media through which it was communicated.

That slang has been altered slightly and there are certain stages that have been broken up into more distinct and just as readily indefinable but mutually understood terms. For example, that grey area when two people who could possibly be a couple are getting to know each other better without any type of specific commitment is called ‘talking’.

Mostly because that’s pretty much all that happens, and both parties will make an effort to pretend like they are interested in what the other person is saying. At some point, the realization that there are truly less things in common than you had initially anticipated hits home and you’re left feebly attempting to get the point across that at no point with this other person be wearing your pin. (‘Pinning’ was another traditional symbol for making one’s relationship status known.)

But now with texting, instant messenger, Facebook, and all of the other things going on, reading the undertones of one’s actions and their emotions is a lot less simplistic. I personally am doubtful of people who over use ‘lol’. I mean, are they really laughing out loud?

Even more perplexing can be the physical cues we share with our emotionally prospective partners. Hugging can be a problem area. The placement of the arms, the length of the squeeze and how close your hips are to the other person are all physical cues that speak louder than a text probably could. In those few moments we make it clear that we are just friends, possibly more than friends, or that touching you is one of the most loathsome activities of our day.

When it comes down to it, we need to make our messages, both intentional and accidental, abundantly clear. If we are unsure as to how we truly feel about a situation, we can make that just as crystal.

I’m hoping that a revolution of romanticism will swing forth and perpetuate the culture once more. Those ambassadors of chivalry who hold open doors and tip their hats as a lady walks by are few, but are easily recognizable as the guy crossing the finish line last. I’m hoping that it can return to a day when the problems of two people didn’t amount to a hill of beans and “here’s looking at you, kid”.