Saturday, March 27, 2004

Subject for Debate

Another hiatus in my blogging starts today, because I am going to Greece and though internet access may be cheaper than it was on the boat, I doubt my family will permit more than the occasional quick e-mail check.

So I leave you with a topic that many of my readers, being young and inexperienced twits like myself, probably will not be able to speak extensively about: the downside of marriage. In all the discussion of legalizing same-sex unions, people have spoken a great deal about the benefits and responsibilities of marriage (and either about how gay people deserve to enjoy those benefits and responsibilities, or about how their enjoyment of them will somehow destroy marriage). Nobody talks about the disadvantages.

From Fast Women,

I hate you, she thought. Watching me. Hurting Nell. And even then she remembered how sweet he could be, how passionate, how good most of that fourteen years with him had been. That was the problem with marriage. It sunk its hooks into your soul and left scars taht were with you forever. They should warn the people who were getting married about what it was going to do to them. How it shaped your life and changed your mind and altered your reality until you didn't know who you were anymore. How it hooked you on the presence of another person, maybe somebody you didn't even like very much, maybe somebody you didn't even love anymore, and made you need that person even when you didn't want him at all.
Marriage was a drug and a trap and an illusion, and kicking it was hell.

Of course, living in sin, if you did it long enough, could do that to you as well.

From Theodore Roethke,

I Knew a Woman

I knew a woman, lovely in her bones,
When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them;
Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one:
The shapes a bright container can contain!
Of her choice virtues only gods should speak,
Or English poets who grew up on Greek
(I'd have them sing in chorus, cheek to cheek.)

How well her wishes went! She stroked my chin,
She taught me Turn, and Counter-turn, and stand;
She taught me Touch, that undulant white skin:
I nibbled meekly from her proffered hand;
She was the sickle; I, poor I, the rake,
Coming behind her for her pretty sake
(But what prodigious mowing did we make.)

Love likes a gander, and adores a goose:
Her full lips pursed, the errant note to seize;
She played it quick, she played it light and loose;
My eyes, they dazzled at her flowing knees;
Her several parts could keep a pure repose,
Or one hip quiver with a mobile nose
(She moved in circles, and those circles moved.)

Let seed be grass, and grass turn into hay:
I'm martyr to a motion not my own;
What's freedom for? To know eternity.
I swear she cast a shadow white as stone.
But who would count eternity in days?
These old bones live to learn her wanton ways:
(I measure time by how a body sways.)

Comment

11:19 AM

Friday, March 26, 2004

Don't You Want to Work Here?

Look at these photos. Doesn't this look like part of a college spring break trip? Yet these people all work in the corporate office of a Fortune 500 company. Why did I end up in an office with very nice, but very uncollegial, people who were mostly old enough to be my parents?

Comment

5:47 PM

Thursday, March 25, 2004

Rehearsing the Arguments

columbian: How goes the blogwork?

d: Just posted something at De Novo, on how removing "under God" from the pledge is a good idea because we're fighting Islamic terrorists ;-)

columbian: What does fighting Islamic terrorists, as opposed to any other kind of terrorists, have to do with it?

d: Because it was added for the purpose of distinguishing America from the godless communists, and now that we're fighting people whose whole ideology is based on enforcing religious principles. I mostly put it out there in hopes of drawing some comments.

columbian: This is an issue i'm pretty ambivalent enough. I like the idea of having the idea of God watching over the country in there. But if it REALLY bothers people that much, it's not an issue for me - I feel like I have God in my life, and since I'm not Christian, it's not part of my religion to go around forcing it down other people's throats.
Though, to be fair, your rationale behind removing the words doesn't seem to be the rationale behind the lawsuit. I'm curious to see if it'll get thrown out on the technicality.

d: The rationale for the lawsuit is totally First Amendment. But I don't think we get more of God watching over us if we chant "one nation, under God" in the pledge. If some people don't want to be under God they shouldn't have to be.

columbian: They could leave out the words when they're saying it. I don't see why those that do want to be under God can't be, and if the majority do, then leave it in and those who don't want to be under God don't have to say it. With respect to the lawsuit, it seems like the actual plaintiff (the little girl) is not one of those who doesn't want to be under God, or at least it's not clear. Do you think the lawsuit will get thrown out on the technicality that the dad doesn't have custody of the child?

d: It's precisely because she's a little girl. If the majority are saying "under God," then she's being coerced into saying it too. Same applies for organized prayer at high school football games.

columbian: This was a bad case to choose for fighting this though, because there's a wide-open loophole for the Court to choose to avoid making a decision altogether.
No one's sticking a gun to her head. You can't legislate peer pressure, or at least you shouldn't.

d: They've already ruled on the organized prayer at football games. That was a few years ago, and they said you can't have it because of the peer pressure. Newdow's argument is that the same should apply to "under God" in the Pledge.
There's a loophole for the Court to avoid it, but if they were going to take that I don't see why they would bother having oral arguments on it at all.

columbian: I don't like these minority rules situations, where if anyone is "hurt" by anything, the majority is also automatically prohibited from doing it.
I know this scenario is unlikely, but what would happen if the court ruled to take the words out of the pledge, but all the kids from religious homes were instructed to say it anyway? You're still facing the same kind of peer pressure, it's just no longer in the legislation anymore... would that be OK still?

d: If "under God" were no longer part of the official pledge, and the teacher didn't say it, and it wasn't written on there for the kids to learn it that way, I bet that it wouldn't be a majority doing it. It's not like the majority was doing it before Congress inserted it into the Pledge.
But look, people can still pray at football games, they just can't have organized prayer. If a kid wants to add, "with liberty and justice for all, plus some candy," if that's not disruptive to the class, I suppose he can say that, and say "under God" on his own too.

columbian: Define "organized prayer" - does that mean the Coach/school can't organize it, or does that mean no one can organize it? because you could have a group of attendees organize it in advance.

d: That means it can't be announced over the loudspeaker or be in the program. If the families of the football players decide in advance that just before the kickoff, they'll all bow their heads and chant Hare Krishna, they can if they want to.

columbian: I just don't see why the father and his daughter, if they believe that strongly in this (and i doubt the daughter even understand this), why the father can't just tell his daughter not to say the words, rather than impose his will on everyone. Indeed, that seems to be EXACTLY what he's accusing Congress et al. of doing.
Why not make it optional? formally optional? that would seem to be a fairer compromise than saying, "No one can learn it this way."

d: But they're not saying "no one can learn it this way." The idea is to have Congress change the official pledge back to how it was in 1953. Back then, if people wanted to add crap in on their own, and they could do it without being disruptive or disrespectful, they could, and people can do that again after "under God" is removed from the official pledge.

columbian: I don't see why you can't just have two versions of this pledge, have both hanging in every school, have the teacher explain it to the kids and tell them to say whichever one they feel most comfortable with, and leave it at that. Can a private or religious school add it back in, or is that still a no-no? or individual public schools? how far do you go with this?

d: But why have both? If you're going to do that, why not have a version that says, "one nation, indivisible, with liberty, justice and equality for all" for the kids being raised by socialists?
You go as far as not having religion be institutionalized in public life. That's the point. If people want to express religiosity as individuals in their private and individual capacities, that's fine. They can express anything they want in those capacities.
Would you want hardcore, 'the South will rise again' types to have a copy of the Pledge that leaves out the "indivisible" part of it? If they don't want to say that part, as individuals, OK, but I don't see why they should be institutionalizing their views. Neither should the religious people, nor should the socialists.
The pledge as it was originally written was a good bare-bones, "any American who adheres to the values expressed in our Constitution can believe this" pledge. This is a republic, we are one nation, we cannot be divided, we pursue liberty and justice for all.

columbian: They're de facto institutionalizing their religious views. Atheists believe in no God, ergo, you remove God from the pledge. That's what irritates me - if you wanted to go about it from your POV, by saying that the rationale behind inserting the words no longer exists, and indeed, it is almost against the US's current worldview, that makes sense. That puts it in purely international policy terms, which was the reason for the insertion in the first place.

d: But God wasn't in the original pledge anyway. We're restoring it to the original.

columbian: Read what i said again - if you were saying that restoration makes sense because the original insertion occurred in response to a worldview that no longer exists, and indeed, current state of international affairs lends itself to removing the words, that i would be fine with.
The way he's approaching it is jsut as much about imposing his own religious views, or lack thereof, on everyone, as he argues keeping the words in is an imposition of religious views. Right, I said that if you were going about it from your POV, i think that'd be a more valid argument, or at least more fair.

d: But Newdow's argument is that having "under God" be part of the official version of the pledge coerces his daughter to express faith. He's not imposing his views; he's saying that if people want to pray, they certainly have a right to. But his daughter has a right NOT to, and not to be pressured to do so.

columbian: I don't think there's pressure in that situation, and no more pressure than there would be if everyone in a private school or religious school continued to go with the "under God" version.

d: But she's not required to go to private school or religious school. Those schools can require prayer and chapel attendance, and many, or most, do.
We're talking about public schools here, and the Supreme Court has said that organized invocations of God, such as prayer at football games, are impermissible. If you don't think there is pressure, you should talk to kids who are atheists and who have felt the pressure to mouth the words.

columbian: You're saying there won't be pressure on a religious kid who DOES want to say the words, or at least whose parents want him/her to say the words, when they switch versions back and everyone is not saying "under God"?
The Constitution says that there will be religious freedom, and there is in this case - no one is legally bound to say those words.

d: Religious kids strike out to do their own thing all the time. We had "meet me at the pole" at my school, where once a semester, kids would meet before school at the flagpole to pray. There's no such thing for the atheists.

columbian: No one's meeting at the pole and NOT praying though.

d: Exactly. The pressure in American society is to be religious, not to be non-religious, and the same is true in the schools.

columbian: Maybe in the South, not so much so up North. I was definitely in the minority up in New York for believing in any kind of god.

d: At Columbia, for chrissake. If you think that's representative of America, or even of New York City...

columbian: I think it's pretty representative of NYC - I had dealings with people in NY who were not Columbians.

d: Mostly people who were college grads, right?

columbian: Yeah, sure...

d: More educated people tend to be less religious. If you went to the janitorial staff at Columbia, I bet you would have found that the majority were believers. There are people filling up all those big churches in NYC.
I'll also bet that at least some of the nonbelievers at college will change their minds, or at least behavior, when they have kids of their own and want someplace to put them on Sunday mornings

columbian: True, people tend to become more religious after they get married and have kids. It's more convenient then too :P

d: Which is part of why your experience at Columbia is not representative.

columbian: First off, it doesn't seem like, in this case, the girl is an atheist, her mom seems to be pretty religious and is protesting the dad's right to use her like this, so this case is really about the dad's will, and I think he is imposing his will NOT to have his daughter (and every other kid in that class) say "under God" on the other parents, whose will is to have their children say it.
However, I think this is one of those issues where the majority of people who agree with me on this one only get riled up when the case is presented, and probably will be ambivalent 3 months later, however the case is decided, which is why there's no real chance of having every kid across america add it in on their own.

d: But the other kids can say "under God" if they feel like it. The idea is to remove it from the official version. Honestly I'm not sure why this distinction is not making an impression on you. If the parents care enough, they'll have their kids keep saying it. It's not like every kid in America stopped praying when they ruled against organized prayer. Newdow can't do anything about that.

columbian: Most people who want it kept in do not care enough. This only bothers on a daily basis people like Newdow

d: But then if people don't care enough to keep saying it, why should it be in there? If people's belief isn't strong in itself, why should the government be institutionalizing it for them, when the government is not supposed to be promoting religion?

columbian: They want the idea in there. I just think that the majority of Americans, while they want it in there, will not care enough to keep it in regardless of legislation. You will have a small minority who continue to say it.
This is not promoting religion.

d: Sure it is. You're saying this nation is under God, that the official view of the government of the USA is that our nation is Under God. That is a promotion of religion.

columbian: It just says God, not "the Judeo-Christian God" or the "Islamic God" or the "Hindu God" or the "Sikh God." Just God, God as in some kind of overlying force to the universe. Some greater force that we hope will protect our country...

d: Then why don't we say "one nation, under the Missile Shield"?
It doesn't have to be a specific one; that's still a promotion of religion, because some people don't think there's any god at all.

columbian: When the Constitution was written, it was intended to keep the government from favoring one church over another, which is not the case here. The only argument you coul dmake is that they are favoring all the deity-based religions over a philosophy that disbelieves in any deity.

d: No, that's not true. The First Amendment says, plain text " Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." Not "an establishment of A religion," but "an establishment of religion," period.

columbian: But then, the government is favoring that second group by removing the words altogether. As it stands right now, they are just as free not to say the words.

d: But the government disfavored the nonreligious in the first place by adding those words in.

columbian: And you yourself said that when those words were installed, it was meant to distinguish ourselves politically, and not to establish any kind of religion.

d: you're basically saying that whatever the status quo is, to change it is to favor or disfavor. But it was meant to distinguish oursevles as Religious, in opposition to the Godless Communists. That was the feature we were using to distinguish ourselves. Note that the change wasn't made to be "one nation, under capitalism..."

columbian: You're in a sort of Catch-22 situation here. I don't see why they don't reset it based on what it was originally installed in there for - THAT would make sense.

d: But you don't think it makes sense to remove the "under God" to ensure that atheists are equally comfortable with the pledge?

columbian: But does it make theists less comfortable with the pledge? You're obviously going to end up favoring one group or another, just as they did when they first inserted the words into the pledge, a sort of 2 wrongs make a right approach. Instead, why not just remove the first wrong by just removing the words for the political reason they were added in the first place?

d: How does it make theists less comfortable with the pledge? Don't theists believe in liberty and justice for all, even if we're not a nation under God? That's what I was saying, the Pledge ought to include only concepts that any American who adheres to Constitutional values can affirm, and belief in a deity is not a Constitutional value.

columbian: Now that's a fair and valid argument, to link it up to Constitutional values. I don't think we disagree fundamentally. I like that the words are there, but i don't care if the words are removed - i just wish it would be removed in such a way that Pat Robertson can't come out and say, "America's going to HELL!" and the atheists can't come out and say, "Another victory towards a God-free America!"

d: Oh, you're looking for an America where we don't make asses of ourselves regularly. That's an imaginary country. We exist on this earth to amuse people in other nations and make them feel better about themselves.

Comment

3:34 PM

Wednesday, March 24, 2004

Playboys, Poets, Philosophers

It just has to look alliterative.

From Mediocre Fred, some wonderful work by Shel Silverstein.

From The Once and Future King, by T.H. White, some advice:

The best thing for being sad
is to learn something. That is the only thing
that never fails. You may grow old
and trembling in your anatomies,
you may lie awake at night
listening to the disorder of your veins,
you may miss your only love,
you may see the world about you
devastated by evil lunatics,
or know your honor trampled
in the sewer of baser minds.
There is only one thing for it then -- to learn.

Learn why the world wags and what wags it.
That is the only thing which the mind
can never exhaust, never alienate,
never be tortured by, never fear or distrust,
and never dream of regretting.

Learning is the thing for you.

Look at what a lot of things there are to learn--
pure science, the only purity there is.
You can learn astronomy in a lifetime,
natural history in three, literature in six.
And then, after you have exhausted
a milliard lifetimes in biology and medicine
and theocriticism and geography and history
and economics--
why, you can start to make a cart wheel
out of the appropriate wood, or spend fifty years
learning to begin to learn to beat your adversary
at fencing. After that you can start again on mathematics,
until it is time to learn to plough.

Comment

9:56 PM

Tuesday, March 23, 2004

Common Cause or the Parthenon?

So Common Cause is all,

Texas: Attend a Meeting in Your Senator's Home Office, Help Protect Public Broadcasting!

The Senate will soon be holding a hearing that could affect the editorial independence and long-term funding of public radio and television.
With the recent loosening of the media ownership rules that give fewer and fewer media companies control over what we see and hear, it is more important than ever that public broadcasting remains strong and independent.

In April, the Senate Commerce Committee will hold a hearing on the reauthorization of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). At the hearing, we expect to see an attempt to give the CPB board power to intervene in the content of programs you see and hear on public TV and radio.

We also expect there to be attempts to change the funding for CPB from every two years to every year. This would critically damage PBS�s ability to produce quality programming � which takes years to develop.

Your Senator is on the Commerce Committee and needs to hear from the public about its strong support for public broadcasting.

Common Cause has set up a meeting in your Senator�s home office. Please click here to learn details of the meeting and to sign up to attend.
We will be providing background information and talking points on the issue to all who attend.
Please consider agreeing to be the leader of the meeting. Leaders will get additional information on how to facilitate the process.

And I'm like, Sure, sounds groovy!
But then the website's all,

Offices of Senator Kay B Hutchison
Meeting Date/time: 3/30/2004, 1:30
Meeting Location: 961 Federal Building 399 East 8th St., Austin, TX, 78701

And it's like, Damn, 'cause I won't be in the country.

Seriously, I have been proud of Senator Hutchinson on this issue. And I don't get to be proud of my senators very often.

Comment

8:26 PM

That Makes It Easier

Even its #20 spot on the US News ranking of best law schools wasn't putting Washington & Lee at the top of my If I Don't Get Into Any More Schools, Where Will I Go? list. Lexington, VA has a fourth as many people as my own hometown, which ain't no metropolis.

Now I discover that W&L; trails only Notre Dame -- guess it's just as well that I didn't bother to claim a wait spot -- on the Princeton Review's ranking of most homophobic universities (aka, "Alternative Lifestyles Not an Alternative"). It's even ahead of the Naval Academy, which as a military institution at least has Congressional permission to be homophobic. And Notre Dame has the Pope's permission. W&L; is a private, non-sectarian university; I don't know what their excuse is, other than being in Lexington.

In Princeton Review's flippant estimation, W&L; has many excellent features: beautiful campus, happy students, interesting and accessible profs, good administration. But the school highest ranked for "Students Most Nostalgic for Ronald Reagan" may be too much even for my contrarian tendencies. I'm not Christopher Hitchens, y'all.

Link via Naked Furniture.

Current Tally:
BOSTON COLLEGE LAW SCHOOL - rejection
BOSTON UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF LAW - rejection

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO - waiting list
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY - no word

CORNELL LAW SCHOOL - rejection
DUKE UNIVERSITY - rejection

EMORY UNIVERSITY - no word
GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY LAW SCHOOL - rejection

GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY - waiting list
HARVARD LAW SCHOOL - no word

UNIVERSITY OF HOUSTON - acceptance, refused with thanks

THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN - waiting list
NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY - waiting list
NOTRE DAME LAW SCHOOL - waiting list offered, not accepted
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA - waiting list

UNIV OF SOUTHERN CALIF LAW SCHOOL - no word
THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS - no word
VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY LAW SCHOOL - no word
UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA SCHOOL OF LAW - no word

WAKE FOREST UNIV SCHOOL OF LAW - acceptance, refused with thanks
WASHINGTON AND LEE UNIVERSITY - acceptance
WASHINGTON UNIV MISSOURI - acceptance
WILLIAM AND MARY LAW SCHOOL - acceptance
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN - acceptance, refused with thanks

YALE LAW SCHOOL - rejection

Comment

8:03 PM

You Can Buy All the Test Prep That Kap Can Make

It's an early-college-before-downloading-lawsuits music day

Commenting on my long digression into the weaknesses of standardized testing, Owen Courreges reveals himself to be my mirror opposite:

What I really don't like about standardized testing is that it takes no account of people like me, who receive good marks but have lackluster performance on standardized tests. I mean, I went to Rice with a 1210 SAT score, which is well within the bottom quartile. However, I graduated in the top quartile (17th percentile). [PG: That's actually the top quintile, which is even more impressive.]

Now I'm applying to law school with a 161 LSAT, which is respectable, but at least five points shy of where I needed to be. I studied and took a review course, with no improvement. My grades won't save me; I'll still probably be turned down from many schools primarily due to my LSAT score, and I don't consider this to be fair.

I don't consider race alone to be at issue -- the material tested upon should be universal. If a person's vocabulary is lacking, they can't blame it on 'race.' However, I do believe that there are many people who do frightening well in school, and yet cannot, for the life of themselves, excel on a standardized test. In my mind, that ought to be the real issue involved, and schools should bear this in a mind. A student of whatever race who excels academically but falls behind when filling in ovals should not be penalized over a relatively small number of points. There needs to be more 'give' to the system.

Normally I would be able to start just talking about the general issue Owen raises, but Kaplan training has screwed with my head, so now I feel compelled to ferret out what his review course (Princeton? TestMasters?) did wrong.

The only stumbles I've had in a career of excellence on standardized tests are the "2" I got on the writing portion of TAAS (now TAKS), which I attribute to having a crackhead grade that section, and the pathos (exact score unknown) of my military aptitude test.
I don't know why they require everyone to take that exam, unless they want to have the info in case they re-instate the draft. It would be futile in my case, as being without political ambition, I plan to head for Canada if the government ever tries to force me to fight when I don't believe in the war.

There's one basic, hard-to-teach tool that makes a difference on standardized tests, and that is Thinking Like the Test-Makers. I've been prepping for various standardized tests for a decade, and my brain has been twisted into the approved ETS shape. I probably should have put that time into learning a foreign language, but c'est ma vie.

On the other hand, to some extent the exams upon which grades rely heavily in college are also based upon thinking like someone else, i.e. the instructor of the course.

The basic reason we have tests like the SAT and LSAT are not to measure knowledge -- that task is for the APs and the science portions of the MCAT. It is to measure some undefinable yet somehow quantifiable quality called "aptitude." I am not sure if there is such a thing as aptitude, if it is relevant for law school success or if it can be determined through a standardized test.
Judging by my scores and grades, I have terrific aptitude and a very hit-or-miss ability to apply it; judging by Owen's, he has middlin' good aptitude and a consistently excellent ability to apply it. I rather doubt that these judgments are entirely correct, but they are the ones being made by the law school admissions folks.

The other argument for standardized tests -- perhaps more at the high school level than college -- is that they are standardized. Rice can be compared to UVA in a broad sense, but the rumor about the former is that professors are reluctant to give good grades, whereas most of my teachers would have been happy to give me good grades if they'd just had something to grade. So how to compare a 3.4 from one to the same GPA from the other?

I am in the uncomfortable position of not believing in standardized tests in theory -- if Owen thinks it's rough not to get into the best law schools because he doesn't test well, he ought to try not getting to go to the next grade or graduate from high school -- but taking full advantage of them in practice. Which, if tests don't measure anything meaningful, puts me in the same category as all the liberal kids who are legacies, or whose parents make large donations, or what-have-you.

Comment

7:34 PM

Lord Help the Aggies

Two Texas A&M; players have been suspended indefinitely after they were charged with alcohol-related offenses and accused of shouting racial slurs.
A&M; coach Dennis Franchione said the team will consider allowing center Geoff Hangartner and offensive lineman Cole Smith to return after they attend a multicultural course, perform 24 hours of community service and complete an alcohol awareness program. [...]

Franchione told the newspaper he is pleased with how his team -- which has seen nine members arrested since September -- has handled the situation. He said it would be a joint decision by the coaching staff and the team on whether to accept the players back.
"Adversity only does one of two things," Franchione said. "It drives you further apart or it drives you closer, and in this situation, I think it will drive everybody on this team closer."

Nine members arrested in seven months? At this rate, there'll only be two guys left to drive together by the next post-season.

Comment

7:09 PM

One for Amanda

She's old enough for this, at least:

Coming on Showtime in Summer 2004, American Candidate is a ground-breaking television series in which the American people will identify a People's Candidate that they would like to see run for President of the United States. We are looking for:

True leaders
Diversity in candidates
People who have a passion for creating change

AMERICAN CANDIDATE will attempt to identify one individual who has the qualifications and qualities to be President of the United States. This summer, AMERICAN CANDIDATE will debut with 12 contestants from all walks of life. Over the course of 10 weeks, those 12 will face-off against each other in a series of challenges designed to test their presidential mettle and to show viewers what really goes on in the making of a presidential candidate. Week-by-week, the original pool of candidates will be winnowed down. The final episode will be a showdown between the remaining two candidates, and one person will emerge victorious -- the "American Candidate."

The winner gets $200,000 and a nationwide media appearance after the show so the "American Candidate" can make his or her address to the nation.

If you want to find out what it's all about, go to www.americancandidate.com
or call us at 1-877-RUN-2004 to get an application!

My cousin sent me the link saying, "reality shows going a little too far out there," but this seems a lot more respectable than the majority of reality TV out there. At least, it's looking for the best in people, not the worst.

Comment

6:57 PM

The Girl Scout Cookie Secret

Last week, Crescateer Amy Lamboley bemoaned "a singular disadvantage [of the young, urban, single lifestyle] of which I am reminded every year--the unobtainability of that pinnacle of the baker's art, the Girl Scout Thin Mint cookie."

My dad and I are privately convinced that Girl Scout cookies aren't that fantastic and wouldn't be able to sell for the current $3/box if they weren't being sold by Girls Scouts and didn't have that Girls Scout mystique. There are purported recipes for, odes and even an eBay way to Thin Mints.

But Amy doesn't need to hook up with a little girl or the parent of a little girl to get her Girl Scout cookie fix; she just needs to make friends with Girl Scout troop leaders. My older sister, not yet 26 and with no little girls in sight, became a leader because she worked for Accenture and this was one of her office's volunteering projects. She's still doing it even since she quit her job there, leading to AIM conversations like this:

bigG: Have to scramble to get all the Girl Scout cookie stuff together tonight.
d: Are all the cookies present and accounted for? how old are the girls in your troop?
bigG: Yeah, I have to collect all the money from the parents. They're 6-9 years old.

d: Any big sellers?
bigG: One girl sold over a grand worth.
d: Day-um. At three dollars a box... that's like 350 boxes of cookies. If I'm ever trying to sell something, I want her to do it for me.
bigG: no kidding. Her mom is a high school teacher and sold them to her students
portiald: Like, she'd just have boxes of cookies stacked in the classroom? or she sold them ahead of time?
bigG: She ordered extra and sold them.

What with the rate of obesity among young people and the call to remove soda and snack machines from our schools, I'm not sure this mom's actions were entirely ethical, but they certainly seem effective.

Comment

5:40 PM

Sunday, March 21, 2004

At the Other Place

Posts on my uncertainty about life after law school; the difference between free speech in India and in America; the first Mozambique-American First Lady; and Justice Scalia's recusal refusal.

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12:29 PM

Saturday, March 20, 2004

At Home

U-Hand recently remarked, You Are What You Read. Though he meant it more in terms of how the books we're reading affect our mood, the difference between my household and that of my parents can be understood by something as simple as comparing the non-book reading material.

Though the belt-tightening attendant on impending unemployment and law school attendance means I'm on my last issues, my coffee table is still staicked with the Atlantic Monthly, Nation and New Yorker, plus an occasional Economist or Washingtonian if I couldn't resist even at the newsstand price. This is especially likely to occur on family trips, as we all enjoy the Economist's international bent. I don't subscribe to any newspapers, on the rationale that all their content is available online.

My father subscribes to and skims (probably more thoroughly than I do my mags) the Wall Street Journal, Forbes and Fortune. Yes, I'm much farther to the left than Dad, and he's many federal income tax brackets above me, although he doesn't pay state income tax, and I do.

Getting back to U-Hand's point, however, I think that it takes a very strong and long book to have a sustained effect on my mood. Reading Crime and Punishment for a modern lit seminar, for example, did succeed in making me feel jumpy, as it did for many of my classmates.

During the cruise, however, I finished The Tin Drum, and read Mrs. Dalloway, The Death of Ivan Ilych, The Handmaid's Tale and The Metamorphosis, none of which are chipper beach reads (though I did collect a sunburn on the back of my neck courtesy of Tolstoy, whom I read during the Costa Maya stop). While something of The Handmaid's Tale crept into a couple of dreams -- it is a very striking novel -- I don't think the others had much effect on my emotions at all, engaging as they were intellectually.

Perhaps that's because I read books for their intellectual content; the combination of English and bioethics concentrations means that I'm often unconsciously analyzing books as literature or ethics cases more than I am just sinking into them for themselves, particularly when they aren't very long.

I've started re-reading The Once and Future King for the umpteenth time, and that is a sinkable novel, probably due not only to its length but also because it is a combination of history and fantasy. There's also something about a book you've been reading for years. I read it first when I was 11 or 12, and each re-reading has been satisfying in a new way.

Sinkability isn't necessarily proof of literary quality, of course. The sheer masses of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged make them sinkable, even though Rand is more gifted as a propagandist (when reading both books, I skimmed through the last big speeches because I'd already gotten the idea quite thoroughly by then, thank you) than as a prose stylist. They also create a definite alternative reality. Rand tends to have a bad effect on my mood; I feel resentful toward and annoyed by everyone around me. Fools! You're all fools! Also parasites!

The main alteration that reading creates for me is not so subtle as the varying moods of the books, but the blunter difference between PG on Fiction and PG on Nonfiction. A steady course of the latter isn't good for me, I am sure, which is why I deliberately didn't take any nonfiction -- not even that week's New Yorker -- on my trip.

Speaking of trips, there is one forthcoming to Greece. I'm afraid we're on a somewhat regimented schedule, but if anyone has tips or suggestions to share, I'd appreciate it. If the comments are being difficult, e-mail to dnadmin-at-blogdenovo-dot-org.

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11:04 PM