Equality comes to urination!
(Safe for work)
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
new city
Things are going OK in my new hometown, though it still doesn't feel like home yet. I'm not sure what I love or hate about here; I don't yet have a crew of peeps, and I possibly never well. Perhaps I've aged out of having a crew (or, even better, of using such old vocab). The apartment is not yet cozy , though it is very messy. I'm in limbo.
Before I ever lived in New York City, I never gave it much thought. It was just another place on the map--large, maybe scary, perhaps exciting, but not anything special. I remember my first college roommate being alarmed that I had never seen the Christmas windows at Macy's, much less did I know that they were something that should be seen. But I lived my life in another orbit, content to do so.
After living in New York, I still feel stuck in its shadow. Everything I do, good or bad, stands in comparison. New York is my own cultural imperialist, the superpower of the Eastern Seaboard. I've become one of those people who annoyingly drops references to New York in conversation. My attitude still lives there.
I'm trying to get over this, but it's hard when I don't yet know what the ethos of this new place is.
Before I ever lived in New York City, I never gave it much thought. It was just another place on the map--large, maybe scary, perhaps exciting, but not anything special. I remember my first college roommate being alarmed that I had never seen the Christmas windows at Macy's, much less did I know that they were something that should be seen. But I lived my life in another orbit, content to do so.
After living in New York, I still feel stuck in its shadow. Everything I do, good or bad, stands in comparison. New York is my own cultural imperialist, the superpower of the Eastern Seaboard. I've become one of those people who annoyingly drops references to New York in conversation. My attitude still lives there.
I'm trying to get over this, but it's hard when I don't yet know what the ethos of this new place is.
Friday, January 2, 2009
college students and debt
I know I haven't been blogging much lately, and I can't promise that trend won't continue. But nonetheless, I was interested this morning in an article in the New York Times about debt, this time focusing on college students.
Anyone who has been on a college campus in the last decade and a half knows that banks are aggressive in courting college students to sign up for credit cards. I personally acquired my first credit card as an undergrad first year, which was from Chase Bank and had a credit limit of around $2000. Being rather anal (now and then), I never let my balance go above about a hundred dollars, and always paid my balance in full until I was in graduate school. But many of my classmates and friends were not so lucky. I know of students who racked up debt in thousands of dollars, fueled by companies that upped credit limits at a moment's notice and who required minimum payments that were often a minuscule portion of the overall amount owed.
The Times article confirms my personal experience and goes a step further to note how universities benefit from arrangements with credit card companies, and therefore play a role in supporting, if not encouraging, irresponsible spending on the part of the students:
This relationship between colleges and banks is yet another element of the voracious appetite for consumerism that, in light of current economic circumstances, is under scrutiny. For students who are freshly independent, the lure of spending comes as no surprise, for the culture as a whole teaches us this rampant materialism from our earliest days. The role of universities is perhaps startling, but it's only a symptom of a much wider problem. After all, universities didn't teach these students to want to shop. The question is whether higher education should play any role in teaching them to curb their want to shop.
An underexamined issue in the article is the degree to which credit that students build in college becomes a necessary asset to them later in life--the main reason why I, back in the mid-1990s, decided to get a credit card in the first place. I heard horror stories about people in their 20s who were not able to get credit cards because they hadn't done it when they were younger, despite their much improved ability to pay their balances. Clearly, the criteria companies use to determine who are good credit risks and who are not need to be re-evaluated. The current system seems to reward people who are good at accruing debt with the possibility of more and more.
My classes often are underscored by a critique of the consumer system even as they are based on analyzing the products of that system. I am not sure how or if Americans can untangle themselves from a situation that so fully marries consumption to individuality, liberty, and happiness. Yet as we try to understand how we got ourselves into this awful economic situation, the call to universities to do their part must be followed by a heeding of the advice they may give. Particularly for faculty, this means an emphasis on academic freedom and and ability to scrutinize consumerism without political consequences.
Anyone who has been on a college campus in the last decade and a half knows that banks are aggressive in courting college students to sign up for credit cards. I personally acquired my first credit card as an undergrad first year, which was from Chase Bank and had a credit limit of around $2000. Being rather anal (now and then), I never let my balance go above about a hundred dollars, and always paid my balance in full until I was in graduate school. But many of my classmates and friends were not so lucky. I know of students who racked up debt in thousands of dollars, fueled by companies that upped credit limits at a moment's notice and who required minimum payments that were often a minuscule portion of the overall amount owed.
The Times article confirms my personal experience and goes a step further to note how universities benefit from arrangements with credit card companies, and therefore play a role in supporting, if not encouraging, irresponsible spending on the part of the students:
College campuses are one place that young Americans are introduced to credit and the possibility of spending beyond their means, a problem now confronting the nation as a whole. For banks, the relationships are a golden marketing opportunity. For colleges, they are a revenue source at a time of declining public funding. And for students, they help pay the bills and allow more shopping.
This relationship between colleges and banks is yet another element of the voracious appetite for consumerism that, in light of current economic circumstances, is under scrutiny. For students who are freshly independent, the lure of spending comes as no surprise, for the culture as a whole teaches us this rampant materialism from our earliest days. The role of universities is perhaps startling, but it's only a symptom of a much wider problem. After all, universities didn't teach these students to want to shop. The question is whether higher education should play any role in teaching them to curb their want to shop.
An underexamined issue in the article is the degree to which credit that students build in college becomes a necessary asset to them later in life--the main reason why I, back in the mid-1990s, decided to get a credit card in the first place. I heard horror stories about people in their 20s who were not able to get credit cards because they hadn't done it when they were younger, despite their much improved ability to pay their balances. Clearly, the criteria companies use to determine who are good credit risks and who are not need to be re-evaluated. The current system seems to reward people who are good at accruing debt with the possibility of more and more.
My classes often are underscored by a critique of the consumer system even as they are based on analyzing the products of that system. I am not sure how or if Americans can untangle themselves from a situation that so fully marries consumption to individuality, liberty, and happiness. Yet as we try to understand how we got ourselves into this awful economic situation, the call to universities to do their part must be followed by a heeding of the advice they may give. Particularly for faculty, this means an emphasis on academic freedom and and ability to scrutinize consumerism without political consequences.
Monday, December 22, 2008
Thursday, December 18, 2008
google is evil
I was appalled to read this article in Library Journal this morning about the Google library scan deal. Some highlights: Google has put together a byzantine set of stipulations that govern how libraries can utilize the books scanned into Google's digital archive (including the original libraries whose collections were scanned in the first place. These regulations include:
In this sense, Google is not really helping libraries or library users as much as they are helping themselves. The ironic thing is that when book publishers hollered about a violation of their intellectual property rights, Google cried fair use. Now that users actually want to gain access to the digitized books, they are adding fees and confusing procedures.
Google's motto "don't be evil" seems to not apply anymore.
One public access terminal per public library building. Institutional database subscriptions for academic and public libraries that secure once freely available material in a contractual lockbox, which librarians already know too well from costly e-journal and e-reference database deals. No remote access for public libraries without approval from the publisher/author Book Rights Registry, set up to administer the program. And no copying or pasting from that institutional database, though you can print pages for a fee. Of course, you can always purchase the book, too.
In this sense, Google is not really helping libraries or library users as much as they are helping themselves. The ironic thing is that when book publishers hollered about a violation of their intellectual property rights, Google cried fair use. Now that users actually want to gain access to the digitized books, they are adding fees and confusing procedures.
Google's motto "don't be evil" seems to not apply anymore.
Friday, December 12, 2008
the auto bailout
I know I haven't written in some time, and I apologize to anybody who might be reading this. The usual excuses apply: work, life, etc.
But one particular story from the New York Times this morning compelled me to write. It's coverage of the auto bailout, and this time it focuses not on the Big Three, but on the smaller companies that supply parts to the auto industry.
I grew up in car country, and I know these companies intimately. They lined the streets of the main thoroughfares of my home town, low-lying factory buildings standing far away from the street, with huge parking lots filled with American cars. They were far from beautiful--most painted in a muted 1970s color scheme of tan, seafoam, stark white, or mustard--and they had yellow fluorescent lightposts that gave them an eerie pallor and highlighted where the rain had rusted out or chipped off their color. They are the ones that employed my father and his friends and many men like him, the salaries they paid buying the house I grew up in and the ones owned by my neighbors, the taxes they paid supporting my school and others across town.
I have a personal stake in the auto bailout in a way few people I know do, in a way that the commentators blowing about inefficient American cars have rarely considered. In areas like the one I grew up in, the automotive industry is the lifeline, a regular stream of lifegiving revenue that keeps the entire operation afloat. Since I left town, there have been efforts to diversify, but in towns that were built by companies like these, change comes slowly.
It makes me mad and afraid that the Big Three have been held up as exemplars of American industry's behemoth inefficiency when Wall Street's bailout was cast as absolutely urgent and has produced very little. The network around the auto industry has far fewer six- and seven-figure salaries, is by comparison much smaller, and had it come first might not have been as much of an issue. I agree with some of the key critiques--that the auto industry has lagged behind its competition, that it has been environmentally irresponsible, that it quite possibly in need of reorganization. But I also see it as a symptom of the glut in American industry generally, and American capitalism, that has yet to move out of its industrial model in these postindustrial times. For this, every one of us takes responsibility, and every one of us is going to have to pay the price. To me, a bailout is most likely the fairest way for all of us, via our elected government, to be accountable to a collective mistake.
All of us are in a bad situation which is probably far from getting better.
But one particular story from the New York Times this morning compelled me to write. It's coverage of the auto bailout, and this time it focuses not on the Big Three, but on the smaller companies that supply parts to the auto industry.
I grew up in car country, and I know these companies intimately. They lined the streets of the main thoroughfares of my home town, low-lying factory buildings standing far away from the street, with huge parking lots filled with American cars. They were far from beautiful--most painted in a muted 1970s color scheme of tan, seafoam, stark white, or mustard--and they had yellow fluorescent lightposts that gave them an eerie pallor and highlighted where the rain had rusted out or chipped off their color. They are the ones that employed my father and his friends and many men like him, the salaries they paid buying the house I grew up in and the ones owned by my neighbors, the taxes they paid supporting my school and others across town.
I have a personal stake in the auto bailout in a way few people I know do, in a way that the commentators blowing about inefficient American cars have rarely considered. In areas like the one I grew up in, the automotive industry is the lifeline, a regular stream of lifegiving revenue that keeps the entire operation afloat. Since I left town, there have been efforts to diversify, but in towns that were built by companies like these, change comes slowly.
It makes me mad and afraid that the Big Three have been held up as exemplars of American industry's behemoth inefficiency when Wall Street's bailout was cast as absolutely urgent and has produced very little. The network around the auto industry has far fewer six- and seven-figure salaries, is by comparison much smaller, and had it come first might not have been as much of an issue. I agree with some of the key critiques--that the auto industry has lagged behind its competition, that it has been environmentally irresponsible, that it quite possibly in need of reorganization. But I also see it as a symptom of the glut in American industry generally, and American capitalism, that has yet to move out of its industrial model in these postindustrial times. For this, every one of us takes responsibility, and every one of us is going to have to pay the price. To me, a bailout is most likely the fairest way for all of us, via our elected government, to be accountable to a collective mistake.
All of us are in a bad situation which is probably far from getting better.
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
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