Last summer, I lamented the oversexualization of pre-teen girls today and blamed corporate America for it. Check it out: someone agrees.
Saturday, August 26, 2006
Sunday, August 20, 2006
There are some exotic foods I am just not ready to eat.
Saturday, August 19, 2006
Downward mobility, or, the millionth reason the dot-com bubble was insane and screwed up my generation for at least a decade
Here is something I bookmarked weeks ago, from one of the few intelligent books I've used in this stupid credential program, called "The Way Schools Work," from 1995. I've left in their references because those years are telling, too. If I'd read stuff like this in the late 90s, then my early 2000s would have come as less of a shock.
The fact is, however, that not everyone can move up. Most societies are fairly stable and there usually are as many individuals moving down as are moving up. Where room at the top constricts, the net mobility downward may exceed movement up, no matter how much education people can acquire. This phenomenon appears to be occurring in the United States, as the society decapitalizes, industry moves to developing countries, and high-paying jobs in the industrial and professional sectors are reduced in number or replaced by lower-paying, less-skilled jobs on the service sector (Bluestone and Bennett 1982).
This situation is a real problem for the United States for several reasons. First, it devalues education, exploding the myth of the payoff for hard work in school. It creates educational inflation as increased educational attainment in the face of fewer appropriate jobs makes diplomas less valuable than before. College degrees are now required for jobs that once needed only high school diplomas. The prospect of downward mobility weighs particularly heavily on middle-class and poor students, for whom education represented their only hope to maintain status or escape proletarianization, or a descent into the working class (Miles 1977).
It also affects patterns of reward and control in school. Teachers no longer can promise their students that if they work hard to learn and if they respect the teacher, they will be rewarded with a good job. Finally, the anticipation of downward mobility can lead to student alienation and unrest as the promised "good life" seems further and further out of reach to an increasingly large group of young people (Keniston 1971, Miles 1977).
Here is something I bookmarked weeks ago, from one of the few intelligent books I've used in this stupid credential program, called "The Way Schools Work," from 1995. I've left in their references because those years are telling, too. If I'd read stuff like this in the late 90s, then my early 2000s would have come as less of a shock.
The fact is, however, that not everyone can move up. Most societies are fairly stable and there usually are as many individuals moving down as are moving up. Where room at the top constricts, the net mobility downward may exceed movement up, no matter how much education people can acquire. This phenomenon appears to be occurring in the United States, as the society decapitalizes, industry moves to developing countries, and high-paying jobs in the industrial and professional sectors are reduced in number or replaced by lower-paying, less-skilled jobs on the service sector (Bluestone and Bennett 1982).
This situation is a real problem for the United States for several reasons. First, it devalues education, exploding the myth of the payoff for hard work in school. It creates educational inflation as increased educational attainment in the face of fewer appropriate jobs makes diplomas less valuable than before. College degrees are now required for jobs that once needed only high school diplomas. The prospect of downward mobility weighs particularly heavily on middle-class and poor students, for whom education represented their only hope to maintain status or escape proletarianization, or a descent into the working class (Miles 1977).
It also affects patterns of reward and control in school. Teachers no longer can promise their students that if they work hard to learn and if they respect the teacher, they will be rewarded with a good job. Finally, the anticipation of downward mobility can lead to student alienation and unrest as the promised "good life" seems further and further out of reach to an increasingly large group of young people (Keniston 1971, Miles 1977).
Labels: business
Sunday, August 13, 2006
Blurry, ouchie torta
I've been forgetting about this for two months, but meet the sandwich that tried to kill me.
I like to think I'm pretty fly for a white guy (uh, girl) at this point, but it turns out that when someone from Jalisco asks you if you want it spicy, the answer just might be, for the first time in culinary history, "no." Alternately, I still have a bit of ramping up to do in my spice consumption before I can properly enjoy real Mexican food.
The business card sports a picture of a dragon in a sombrero spitting fire, which might have been a clue. It turns out a place in Mexico uses as its logo an anthropomorphic flame giving the thumbs-up.
The torta ahogada is essentially a pork sandwich on nice, crusty French-ish bread, covered with chile sauce. I thought maybe this place was just fucking with the white girl, but no, that's really what's done. I ate half of it, then had to stop, pour the excess sauce off and take it home while my mouth recovered for 15 miles. It wasn't until I googled the sandwich for ingredients that I noticed mine had beans in it -- it was so hot, you couldn't taste them.
To summarize, this sandwich kicked my ass, and I need to go to Mexico soon.
I like to think I'm pretty fly for a white guy (uh, girl) at this point, but it turns out that when someone from Jalisco asks you if you want it spicy, the answer just might be, for the first time in culinary history, "no." Alternately, I still have a bit of ramping up to do in my spice consumption before I can properly enjoy real Mexican food.
The business card sports a picture of a dragon in a sombrero spitting fire, which might have been a clue. It turns out a place in Mexico uses as its logo an anthropomorphic flame giving the thumbs-up.
The torta ahogada is essentially a pork sandwich on nice, crusty French-ish bread, covered with chile sauce. I thought maybe this place was just fucking with the white girl, but no, that's really what's done. I ate half of it, then had to stop, pour the excess sauce off and take it home while my mouth recovered for 15 miles. It wasn't until I googled the sandwich for ingredients that I noticed mine had beans in it -- it was so hot, you couldn't taste them.
To summarize, this sandwich kicked my ass, and I need to go to Mexico soon.
Tuesday, August 08, 2006
Dispatches from the place where middle-middle class feels poor
Not that I don't love my alma mater -- OH, how I love it every time I set foot on the craptastic commuter campus of Cal State Butthead -- but I will be the first to tell you it's a finishing school for rich kids that will not teach you any marketable skills. It's really no wonder about the whiny article in last quarter's alumni magazine that they can't attract poor, nonwhite kids. Really? You mean the first people in their families to go to college want a college with, um, preprofessional majors or something, for their six-figure student loans?
This quarter's magazine spells this all out pretty well if you read between the lines:
* Under the headline "Volunteering" and the subhead "Forget About Cancun," a blurb about a student who "spent her spring break on the Gulf Coast, not sporting a sun hat and flip-flops on the beach" but volunteering for hurricane victims. Worthy, but did you see the assumption that your average Wesleyan student spends spring break at a resort? I spent my spring breaks on campus, or crashing with Rick in Boston, usually working.
* A student returning from a semester abroad writes: "During my four months in Kenya, I contentedly rotated between three pairs of shoes: one for the shower, one for rain, and another for everything else. When I got home I found I had a closet, a suitcase, and a cardboard box full of shoes. Some were still in their original packaging." I think I had about three pairs of shoes at Wesleyan; I know it wasn't anywhere near the seven pairs I have now. I didn't know that made me Kenya-style poor...
* Another article tells of a Wesleyan alum who has a high-up position with the Red Sox. He broke in by dropping out of corporate to take an $8/hour internship. Much is made in the article of this sacrifice, but nothing is said about how he did it (I live on not much more now, but wouldn't dare in expensive-ass Boston). I would bet any amount of money he got steady checks from the First National Bank of Mom and Dad during the $8 days, otherwise he never would have said, "I didn't care about the money at all. They could've paid me less."
* What's the class of 2005 up to? Less than a year out of college as of the printing, someone has been traveling for four months, an absolutely absurd percentage (at least half the alums who wrote in) are living abroad (South America seems hot right now), some are listed as things like "co-founder" and other management positions. I repeat, less than a year out of college...tell me no strings were pulled.
I mean, whatever. Those are not even good examples. And Some Of My Best Friends(tm) never had to worry about money in their lives. But don't wonder why not so many kids from the middle and working class are running to join this particular four-year polo game.
Wes people? Other grads of "prestigious" schools? Thoughts?
Not that I don't love my alma mater -- OH, how I love it every time I set foot on the craptastic commuter campus of Cal State Butthead -- but I will be the first to tell you it's a finishing school for rich kids that will not teach you any marketable skills. It's really no wonder about the whiny article in last quarter's alumni magazine that they can't attract poor, nonwhite kids. Really? You mean the first people in their families to go to college want a college with, um, preprofessional majors or something, for their six-figure student loans?
This quarter's magazine spells this all out pretty well if you read between the lines:
* Under the headline "Volunteering" and the subhead "Forget About Cancun," a blurb about a student who "spent her spring break on the Gulf Coast, not sporting a sun hat and flip-flops on the beach" but volunteering for hurricane victims. Worthy, but did you see the assumption that your average Wesleyan student spends spring break at a resort? I spent my spring breaks on campus, or crashing with Rick in Boston, usually working.
* A student returning from a semester abroad writes: "During my four months in Kenya, I contentedly rotated between three pairs of shoes: one for the shower, one for rain, and another for everything else. When I got home I found I had a closet, a suitcase, and a cardboard box full of shoes. Some were still in their original packaging." I think I had about three pairs of shoes at Wesleyan; I know it wasn't anywhere near the seven pairs I have now. I didn't know that made me Kenya-style poor...
* Another article tells of a Wesleyan alum who has a high-up position with the Red Sox. He broke in by dropping out of corporate to take an $8/hour internship. Much is made in the article of this sacrifice, but nothing is said about how he did it (I live on not much more now, but wouldn't dare in expensive-ass Boston). I would bet any amount of money he got steady checks from the First National Bank of Mom and Dad during the $8 days, otherwise he never would have said, "I didn't care about the money at all. They could've paid me less."
* What's the class of 2005 up to? Less than a year out of college as of the printing, someone has been traveling for four months, an absolutely absurd percentage (at least half the alums who wrote in) are living abroad (South America seems hot right now), some are listed as things like "co-founder" and other management positions. I repeat, less than a year out of college...tell me no strings were pulled.
I mean, whatever. Those are not even good examples. And Some Of My Best Friends(tm) never had to worry about money in their lives. But don't wonder why not so many kids from the middle and working class are running to join this particular four-year polo game.
Wes people? Other grads of "prestigious" schools? Thoughts?
Labels: school
Friday, August 04, 2006
So I was in San Francisco last weekend, for a trip I might as well dub "How the other half stuffs itself" for all the money I dropped on food and drink. I've decided I need to stop going to SF on weekends tied to specific activities (homebrew event, marathon, etc) because what I really like is walking and lounging around the city without having to BE somewhere, ever.
Ready for another travel story? I thought not.
Friday: Cows and kooks
By far the best time to drive from LA to SF is 5am. Seriously. Then rush hour happens while you're on the 5 in the middle of nothing but a bunch of stinky-ass cows.
We stopped at a gas station up north and the hilarity began. I went to the bathroom area and tried the door: locked. So it's one of those single-toilet ones. BUT I'm hearing talking in there. "[unintelligible] this won't even be a rest stop in 20 years [unintelligible] her decomposing corpse [unintelligible]..." I wonder at first if it's a psychopath talking to herself, but then I hear a second voice. Occasional water running, but no toilet noises. By now, there are two other women waiting behind me. "How inconsiderate," tsks the older one at the end. A skinny, 40-ish biker dude with long hair, a beard, and cane approaches the men's room and says, "I never understood how women go in those together. Do you take turns? Both sit at once, one on top of the other?" I replied that most of us go one at a time, so I wasn't sure. By this time, I had started knocking on the door. Eventually, the two women emerged. One was wearing a Batgirl t-shirt and pajama bottoms. The bathroom was finally free. I turned to the women behind me and said, "Want to come in with me?" She looked alarmed until I said, "Just kidding."
Friday: Walking, corporate, sausage, and beer
We arrived, drove to our friend's neighborhood (remembering why it's unwise to voluntarily drive in San Francisco), found parking, and decided to walk to our next place, said friend's place of employment. Took about an hour but was scenic - lots of hills. I had Rick take a cell phone picture of a sign that said "Park at 90 degree angle" so I can show my future geometry classes how math is used in real life. Yes, I am a dork.
We got to the office of Big Famous Media, read and digitally signed an NDA, and were signed in and given badges. More serious security than the time I was at NASA, dude. I'm glad to no longer be a journalist, because that would have been a whole different NDA, and my walk-through would have been accompanied by a PR person. As it is, we got a relaxed tour and our pal took us to the absurdly outfitted corporate cafeteria, full of fresh, prepared-in-front-of-you, organic delights at reasonable prices. It's ironic that you have to have a cushy corporate job to get good food cheap, but that's America. I had a delicious artichoke pizza and -- holy East coast obscurity! -- Dr. Brown's Cel-Ray soda.
We caught the bus back to where the car was to confirm that we didn't have a parking ticket, and dumped our stuff in the apartment. Then, since we'd been in San Francisco several hours without a beer (gasp!) we caught happy hour at Magnolia, followed by a nice walk to our dinner destination, Suppenküche, where saurkraut and bratwurst made me way too happy. If I lived in SF, I swear I'd be there several times a month.
The liter of German beer means my memory of the rest of the night is slightly fuzzier :) We put a somewhat sober SF resident in charge and wandered around for a while, stopping at...wait for it...Citizen Cake (I was too full of bier und wurst to partake) and browsing in a used bookstore. Some of our group left, others joined us, and we were introduced to yet another cool local bar. Lucky 13 is a little darker and louder than I usually like my bars, but it was very unpretentious and ungentrified (always a worry in SF), the beer selection was great, and I had a lot of fun. I also misinterpreted a sign that said "BATHROOM --->" and walked in on a guy using the urinal. Oopsie!
And taking public transit back to your bed after a night of alcohol abuse never, ever gets old. Damn you LA!
Saturday: As long as we call it "carbing up," everything will be fine
The day began inauspiciously when I shifted positions on the air mattress and my right leg landed in something wet. I rationalized for a moment: well, the desk is right there, maybe someone was drinking some water while using the computer and the cat knocked it over. It was the cat's fault alright, but the substance wasn't water. Hey, cat, do I pee on you in the middle of the night?
The day improved quickly when I ventured out to get coffee and fell over an independent coffee house not two blocks fromt the apartment. We eventually got our act together and formed a party of four at the farmer's market, where I didn't buy anything because I didn't want to carry fruit around all day, but we had some good treats from the Japanese deli inside.
Rest of the afternoon: walking, Rogue ales, Italian-style ice cream served by Asians, free jazz, walking, fries and Belgian beers, extreme bloat.
Back at the apartment, welcoming our LA friend who'd just flown into Oakland (they lost his luggage - d'oh!), drinkin' wine, the air mattress seems to have dried out without any major cat pee stains...life is good. Dinner was a world of noodles, dipping sauce so good I ate it when there was nothing left to dip, and what I thought would be a small cup of sake that turned out to be a perilously full martini glass.
Sunday: Ow, quit it
Here's what you don't want to happen the morning of a half-marathon: you wake up at 4am, very thirsty because you drank a huge glass of sake the night before, with a horrible muscle pain in your shoulder, and already sore in the gluteous region from walking up and down hills for two days.
Despite all this, and running up and down hills so often I considered dropping out of the race as late as the final mile, and having to stop for a bathroom break(dammit!), I only took 4 minutes longer than I did on the flat, pleasant Long Beach half-marathon course last October. Still a crappy time for the SF marathon crowd, which is pretty hardcore compared to LA or Long Beach, but as I've been saying lately, "Not bad for a thirty-something schoolmarm."
Oh, and I have now run across the Golden Gate Bridge and back. That's cool.
We showered (awesome!), I napped (awesomer!), and we had some celebratory food and drinks, then packed up and got on the road eventually. We had to swing by a friend's place south of SF, and we wound up eating dinner at the incredibly cheap and delicious Silicon Valley Indian fast food institution Spice Hut. LA needs one of these. Actually, LA needs a dozen of these. Then we went back to the friend's house where she showed us the backyard lemon tree and gave us mutant lemons the size of a human head.
The drive home...well, don't get up at 4am, run 13 miles then try to drive after dark. We took 45-60 minute shifts and still had to spend some quality naptime in a gas station. But we made it home at 3am, and I was at work at 7:20 the next morning like a trooper.
Long Beach half marathon in October: Two and a half hours or bust!
Ready for another travel story? I thought not.
Friday: Cows and kooks
By far the best time to drive from LA to SF is 5am. Seriously. Then rush hour happens while you're on the 5 in the middle of nothing but a bunch of stinky-ass cows.
We stopped at a gas station up north and the hilarity began. I went to the bathroom area and tried the door: locked. So it's one of those single-toilet ones. BUT I'm hearing talking in there. "[unintelligible] this won't even be a rest stop in 20 years [unintelligible] her decomposing corpse [unintelligible]..." I wonder at first if it's a psychopath talking to herself, but then I hear a second voice. Occasional water running, but no toilet noises. By now, there are two other women waiting behind me. "How inconsiderate," tsks the older one at the end. A skinny, 40-ish biker dude with long hair, a beard, and cane approaches the men's room and says, "I never understood how women go in those together. Do you take turns? Both sit at once, one on top of the other?" I replied that most of us go one at a time, so I wasn't sure. By this time, I had started knocking on the door. Eventually, the two women emerged. One was wearing a Batgirl t-shirt and pajama bottoms. The bathroom was finally free. I turned to the women behind me and said, "Want to come in with me?" She looked alarmed until I said, "Just kidding."
Friday: Walking, corporate, sausage, and beer
We arrived, drove to our friend's neighborhood (remembering why it's unwise to voluntarily drive in San Francisco), found parking, and decided to walk to our next place, said friend's place of employment. Took about an hour but was scenic - lots of hills. I had Rick take a cell phone picture of a sign that said "Park at 90 degree angle" so I can show my future geometry classes how math is used in real life. Yes, I am a dork.
We got to the office of Big Famous Media, read and digitally signed an NDA, and were signed in and given badges. More serious security than the time I was at NASA, dude. I'm glad to no longer be a journalist, because that would have been a whole different NDA, and my walk-through would have been accompanied by a PR person. As it is, we got a relaxed tour and our pal took us to the absurdly outfitted corporate cafeteria, full of fresh, prepared-in-front-of-you, organic delights at reasonable prices. It's ironic that you have to have a cushy corporate job to get good food cheap, but that's America. I had a delicious artichoke pizza and -- holy East coast obscurity! -- Dr. Brown's Cel-Ray soda.
We caught the bus back to where the car was to confirm that we didn't have a parking ticket, and dumped our stuff in the apartment. Then, since we'd been in San Francisco several hours without a beer (gasp!) we caught happy hour at Magnolia, followed by a nice walk to our dinner destination, Suppenküche, where saurkraut and bratwurst made me way too happy. If I lived in SF, I swear I'd be there several times a month.
The liter of German beer means my memory of the rest of the night is slightly fuzzier :) We put a somewhat sober SF resident in charge and wandered around for a while, stopping at...wait for it...Citizen Cake (I was too full of bier und wurst to partake) and browsing in a used bookstore. Some of our group left, others joined us, and we were introduced to yet another cool local bar. Lucky 13 is a little darker and louder than I usually like my bars, but it was very unpretentious and ungentrified (always a worry in SF), the beer selection was great, and I had a lot of fun. I also misinterpreted a sign that said "BATHROOM --->" and walked in on a guy using the urinal. Oopsie!
And taking public transit back to your bed after a night of alcohol abuse never, ever gets old. Damn you LA!
Saturday: As long as we call it "carbing up," everything will be fine
The day began inauspiciously when I shifted positions on the air mattress and my right leg landed in something wet. I rationalized for a moment: well, the desk is right there, maybe someone was drinking some water while using the computer and the cat knocked it over. It was the cat's fault alright, but the substance wasn't water. Hey, cat, do I pee on you in the middle of the night?
The day improved quickly when I ventured out to get coffee and fell over an independent coffee house not two blocks fromt the apartment. We eventually got our act together and formed a party of four at the farmer's market, where I didn't buy anything because I didn't want to carry fruit around all day, but we had some good treats from the Japanese deli inside.
Rest of the afternoon: walking, Rogue ales, Italian-style ice cream served by Asians, free jazz, walking, fries and Belgian beers, extreme bloat.
Back at the apartment, welcoming our LA friend who'd just flown into Oakland (they lost his luggage - d'oh!), drinkin' wine, the air mattress seems to have dried out without any major cat pee stains...life is good. Dinner was a world of noodles, dipping sauce so good I ate it when there was nothing left to dip, and what I thought would be a small cup of sake that turned out to be a perilously full martini glass.
Sunday: Ow, quit it
Here's what you don't want to happen the morning of a half-marathon: you wake up at 4am, very thirsty because you drank a huge glass of sake the night before, with a horrible muscle pain in your shoulder, and already sore in the gluteous region from walking up and down hills for two days.
Despite all this, and running up and down hills so often I considered dropping out of the race as late as the final mile, and having to stop for a bathroom break(dammit!), I only took 4 minutes longer than I did on the flat, pleasant Long Beach half-marathon course last October. Still a crappy time for the SF marathon crowd, which is pretty hardcore compared to LA or Long Beach, but as I've been saying lately, "Not bad for a thirty-something schoolmarm."
Oh, and I have now run across the Golden Gate Bridge and back. That's cool.
We showered (awesome!), I napped (awesomer!), and we had some celebratory food and drinks, then packed up and got on the road eventually. We had to swing by a friend's place south of SF, and we wound up eating dinner at the incredibly cheap and delicious Silicon Valley Indian fast food institution Spice Hut. LA needs one of these. Actually, LA needs a dozen of these. Then we went back to the friend's house where she showed us the backyard lemon tree and gave us mutant lemons the size of a human head.
The drive home...well, don't get up at 4am, run 13 miles then try to drive after dark. We took 45-60 minute shifts and still had to spend some quality naptime in a gas station. But we made it home at 3am, and I was at work at 7:20 the next morning like a trooper.
Long Beach half marathon in October: Two and a half hours or bust!
Labels: food, germany, running, san francisco, travel
Wednesday, August 02, 2006
It's been days, and I am still full of joy over this Mel Gibson thing. "Fucking Jews," yes, but "sugar tits?" Awesome. As someone at work pointed out, isn't it great when South Park is right? And the open bottle of tequila right in the car was a nice touch.
Not as funny is this, from the Catholic League:
Mel’s enemies will never cut him a break. Their real goal is to discredit ‘The Passion of the Christ,’ and that is why their propaganda machine is in full gear.
Not as funny is this, from the Catholic League:
Mel’s enemies will never cut him a break. Their real goal is to discredit ‘The Passion of the Christ,’ and that is why their propaganda machine is in full gear.
Labels: pop culture
