Top secret missions in liberal arts

I suspect that the college administration has concocted a nefarious moneymaking scheme with the makers of magnetic card readers.

In the past, you've truly needed your college ID for three things: your cafeteria meal plan (they swipe the card when you enter), to get back on campus after a certain hour at night, and to verify your identity with security if you needed them to unlock your room for you. The second and third things really only apply occasionally (number of times I've locked myself out in my entire career here: three). And that was pretty much fine, because when you attend (or work at) such a ridiculously small institution, you at least recognize people. You might not really know them, but you recognize them as a part of the college.

Lately, the college has been increasing the importance of carrying your ID. In the fall, the front doors to the dorms will ostensibly switch from a key to a swipe-card system. Personally, I foresee lots of doors being propped open and/or simply left unlocked, as they are now.

You already need to have your ID for them to swipe when you go down to the gym. In the past, you just needed to sign in on a clipboard; now they've got a fancy computerized setup.

And now I just got a notice informing me that (at least during the summer), you'll need to present your ID in order to pick up your paycheck. In the past, you went down to the office, initialed next to your name on the list of paycheck-getters, and they handed you your check.

Keep in mind that this is a school with student body of less than 500. During the summer there's only a few dozen student employees. During the school year obviously there are more, but still. I'm confident that the staff has it in them to be able to recognize when someone's not the person they say they are; it's pretty hard to disguise your identity in this small and isolated of a community.

It all seems to me like ridiculous for-show measures, or some sort of insane attempt to modernize things that really don't need any modernization.

The Girl Effect

Letter to the Editor of the New York Times, 23 July 2008

To the Editor:

Re “Eyes Off the Price” (Op-Ed, July 19):

Dan Ariely might have mentioned a far more compelling factor in our shock at gas prices: there is no simple substitute for gasoline. For short- or mid-range travel, most Americans have no alternative to taking the car and paying for gas.

When the price of butter goes up, we might switch to margarine, or olive oil, or jelly, or just eat our bread plain. But when the price of gas goes up, we have no substitutes: pay more, or stay put.

Sweet Jesus, when the hell are more Americans going to get it through their head: YES YOU DO HAVE ALTERNATIVES.  Here, from the official site of the government of Asheville, where our intrepid writer lives:

Asheville Transit provides bus service service throughout the City of Asheville and other local areas with 24 bus routes running from 6 a.m.-11:30 p.m., Monday through Saturday.

Ta-da!  Or how about this option?  Or even this one?  Gosh, wouldn't it be grand if us humans had some sort of built-in way of easily and gracefully moving ourselves from one place to another?  Besides those who live actually within America's largest cities - I mean the people who live in Manhattan or Center City in Philly or similar - suggesting someone "get there someway other than driving a personally-owned vehicle" is like suggesting that they just flap their wings and fly to commute.  It's really not that hard - and we'd be less fat as a nation, too, if more people accepted it as an option.  My boss has two kids, a husband, and zero cars.  They ride their bikes, walk, take the bus, or some combination of the above.  If they absolutely need a ride somewhere, they get a ride from a friend or call a cab.  Simple.  

Here's another point: until more people start taking public transportation, or walking, or riding their bikes, or however-the-hell-else getting to work and the grocery store and that great cafe, the systems aren't going to improve.  There's no motivation to put in sidewalks and more bus routes if no one's using them.  Use them, be vocal about how you want them to be changed, and it'll change.  

In his defense, the writer does go on to make a good point:

And lingering in many minds, of course, is the awareness that as gas goes, so goes heating oil. While it may be possible to forgo a vacation trip or delay a trip to the store, with heating oil, the choice is more stark: pay or freeze. That choice makes a jump in the price of yogurt seem trivial.

This is true, and it is going to be a problem.  Part of it is a problem of our own making (hint: apartments are easier to heat than McMansions; your family of four really doesn't need a six bedroom house), it's also a symptom of our miserable economy.  

The solution of course is obviously to cut taxes and sink more money into the defense budget.  Anything else makes you a terrorist!  (Actually, it's more alternative power sources, more conservation, and...well, I don't know, but I'm not an economist or an energy or economics policy advisor).  

"Is Obama an enlightened being?" NO!

*Sticks fingers in ears* I can't hear you la la la la la la la la crazy idiots la la la.

Barack Obama isn't really one of us. Not in the normal way, anyway.

This is what I find myself offering up more and more in response to the whiners and the frowners and to those with broken or sadly dysfunctional karmic antennae - or no antennae at all - to all those who just don't understand and maybe even actively recoil against all this chatter about Obama's aura and feel and MLK/JFK-like vibe.

Seriously, STOP DOING STUPID THINGS LIKE THIS. Yes, you have a major hard-on for Obama. We get it. He's all about "change". We get that. But: 1) writing crap like this just gives your opponents some grade-A ammo against you and 2) Obama is a goddamn politician, just like any other politician. He's making lots of promises that sound great during the campaign, but he's slowly moving away from them in order to pull in the center. In the end he's going to be - guess what? - just like any other damn politician. Our economy will still be crap for a long while, we'll still be bogged down in two idiotic wars. He will pander and take dirty money and tell lies, because that's what politicians do. "Enlightened being"? Convincing public speaker, more like. Stop doing this.

Let's talk about balls!

Purity balls, that is.  The creepy, creepy, creepy 'swear your virginity over to your daddy' things.  Time apparently thinks that they're swell and in no way creepy.

It was an elbow in the ribs from his wife that drove Ken Lane to his first purity ball with their daughter Hannah, now 11. Tonight is their fourth, and they are sitting in the gold-and-white Broadmoor ballroom, picking at the chicken Florentine and trying to explain what they're doing here. "My kids are on loan to me for a season; it's important how I use that time," Ken is saying as a string quartet plays softly. "There's a lot for us to talk through--the decisions she'll have to make are more complex. I want to be close enough to her that she can come talk to me. That's what my wife understood. I didn't understand the role dads can play to set her up for success.

"Okay, so far it's pretty benign.  I'm not a tremendous fan of this approach but, hey, fine.  Let's continue to the next paragraph...

In the face of the hook-up culture of casual sexual experimentation, he explains, with its potential physical and emotional risks, he wants to model an alternative. Even with older teenagers, many of these families don't believe in random dating but rather intentional dating, which typically begins with a young man's asking a father for permission to get to know his daughter. Lane was so stymied by how exactly that conversation would go that he even asked Randy Wilson if he could sit at a nearby table and listen in one day when Wilson met one of Khrystian's potential suitors at a local Starbucks. "We're trying to be realistic," Lane says. "I'm not ready to be like India--have arranged marriages. But there is some wisdom there, in that at least the parents are involved."

...And take a screeching hard right straight into Loony Land.  "Random" dating?  Asking for dad's permission to "get to know" a teenage girl?  What the hell?  Amongst the many, many issues with this is the fact that, unless Little Princess is cloistered in an all-girls boarding school, she's going to get to know guys even without Daddy's permission.  Seriously, that's just ridiculous.  You want a 15-year-old boy to sit down with a potential girlfriend's father to ask permission to take her to the movies?  What universe do these people live in?*

So they're a lot of crazy.  Let's move on to Time's take:

Maybe mixed messages aren't just inevitable; they're valuable. On the one hand, for all the conservative outcry, there is no evidence that giving kids complete and accurate information about sex and contraception encourages promiscuity. On the other, a purity pledge basically says sex is serious. That it's not to be entered into recklessly. To deny kids information, whether about contraception or chastity, is irresponsible; to mock or dismiss as unrealistic the goal of personal responsibility in all its forms may suit the culture, but it gives kids too little power, too little control over their decisions, as though they're incapable of making good ones. The research suggests they may be more capable of high standards than parents are. "It's always tempting as a parent to say, Do as I say, not as I do," says a father who's here for the first time. "But it's more valuable to make the commitment yourself. Children can spot hypocrisy very quickly."

SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP.  For one, you know what else is generally regarded as serious and not to be entered into lightly?  Pledges and oaths, you asswits.  An eight-year-old has no idea what they're committing to in this case, for the love of god.  If you're four years away from really entering puberty, swearing to daddy to stay his virginal princess is rather meaningless.  

Secondly, I do agree absolutely that withholding any information regarding sex when kids are being taught about it is grossly negligent and setting them up for failure.  It wasn't really great but compared to a lot of programs, the sex-ed component of my high school health class was pretty solid.  Here are the diseases you can get if you have sex, and some of them can't be treated.  Here are various ways to prevent disease and/or pregnancy.  None of them work perfectly, but some - such as condoms used together with the Pill - are nearly perfect if used properly.  Abstinence is the only truly perfect way of avoiding sex-related unpleasantries**.  Sex can be a big deal both physically and emotionally.

There.  That's what kids need to be taught about sex.  It's supported by scientific fact, not religious woo-woo bullshit.  Teaching about contraception does not take away from the message that sex is serious; in fact, if it's done right, it strengthens that message: Here's what condoms prevent, fun things like gonorrhea and syphilis and babies.  Father-daughter dances do nothing to really support that message, but rather, they treat sex and virginity as some sort of ethereal...thing that has more to do with being Daddy's Little Girl*** than making rational choices about your physical and emotional health.  

Argh.

*Okay, I can't possibly resist saying this, but I will bet you anything that these are people who do not hesitate to scream obscene condemnations at Islam for their rules regarding male/female interactions.  I bet you anything.  

**So one day in either 11th or 12th grade health class, we're given these newsletter-pamphlet things published by the Wasting Department Money branch of the education or public health department of a local university.  One of the stories - and I remember this so vividly - is "Think Abstinence is 100% Effective?  Think Again!"

...yeah.

So I read it, and it's some girl's boo-hoo story about how she swore she was going to be abstinent until marriage.  Then she had sex with a guy and got pregnant.  So the moral of the story was that humans have sex drives, and abstinence doesn't work if you don't, you know, abstain.  *sigh*

***But hey, if we want to just support father-daughter bonding, I'm all for that.  Dads are great.  The world needs more active, involved dads.  My dad is and always was fantastic: there when I needed him, we did fun stuff together, taught me how to ride a bike and throw a ball and all that.  Father-daughter bonding is absolutely great and something we as a society probably need more of, but intertwining it with virginity turns it into a creepy, possession-themed thing.

A man who got it right

Making good on a promise to a friend to summarize his views on Christianity, Thomas Jefferson set to work with scissors, snipping out every miracle and inconsistency he could find in the New Testament Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

Then, relying on a cut-and-paste technique, he reassembled the excerpts into what he believed was a more coherent narrative and pasted them onto blank paper -- alongside translations in French, Greek and Latin. (source)

Thomas Jefferson, will you marry me?

Fighting terrorism with comfort!

I swear, I really don't want to hate America's armed forces.  I try very hard not to.  I know a couple people in the military.  They're all great people.  And I'm sure that the majority of soldiers think that they're doing something good, and for many of them it's not an easy job, and that's great.  I disagree, but I know I really shouldn't try to judge others for doing what I think is wrong if they think it's right.

But when it's such a massive program run by such self-important dicks, I really can't help it.

The Air Force's top leadership sought for three years to spend counterterrorism funds on "comfort capsules" to be installed on military planes that ferry senior officers and civilian leaders around the world, with at least four top generals involved in design details such as the color of the capsules' carpet and leather chairs, according to internal e-mails and budget documents.

Seriously: please stop spending obscene amounts of money on absolutely useless bullshit.

Guess where I wish I was?

I'm reading London: A Biography by Peter Ackroyd (and I highly recommend it).  In the very beginning there is a chronology.  

It spans from 54 BC to 2000 AD.  The first entry, the 54 AD entry?  It is later explained that there's already a significant settlement where London now is.  

If I had to pick a city that simply is, a place that exists outside of time and human limitation, it's London.  I remember walking through the streets of London and it's walking through history.  Here's a building that was rebuilt after being demolished in WWII, in WWI.  Here's a church that was first built a thousand years ago.  Here's where Chaucer lived.  Here's where Shakespeare's plays were performed.  Here's where kings were crowned and then beheaded, where prisoners were kept for saying no to that king.  Over there was where the fire that destroyed most of the city started.  London scoffs in the face of chronological boundaries.  

The great thing about it, I think, the reason why I love it so much and felt so comfortable there, was I was just one of literally countless people in my situation there.  People have fled to New York City - to find fame and fortune, to just find a living, to find themselves, to find a lover, to find something they don't even know what - for hundreds of years.  People have fled to London for thousands.  London has seen it, done it, and absorbed a tiny part of it, over and over and over again, for longer than anyone can really grasp.

Ssshhhh, at work

I highly recommend going to see Dark Knight - I think it absolutely lived up to the hype. I've also been thinking a bit lately about the nature of evil, and I think the movie raises some questions. There are two categories of Bad Guys in the movie:
1. Bad Guys who do bad things for a clear personal purpose (revenge, money, perhaps even an idea of justice). In this category are the mobsters and most villians, generally speaking.
2. Bad Guys who do bad thigns just for the hell of it: in this case, the Joker.

More thoughts on this sometime when I'm A) not at work and B) not running on quite as few hours of sleep.

Not reading any spoilers not reading any spoilers....

I'm going to a midnight showing of Dark Knight tonight.  

Partly based on the absolutely gushing reviews I've read of it and partly based on my own geekiness, I cannot wait.  I haven't been this excited for a movie since 2003, when the first Matrix sequel was released. 

And if I'm disappointed like that again, I will weep tears of bitter, bitter sorrow.

Franklin was on to something, for sure

Seriously, why would anyone even want a TV when they've got lightning storms to watch?

No torrential, raging downpour tonight as there was in parts of town yesterday.  By torrential, I mean apparently three inches of water in about an hour and a half.  I managed to miss it entirely, though I saw it from a distance while waiting for a bus, and then the bus carefully made it's way through far more water pooling on Cerrillos Rd than I think I've ever seen standing anywhere in Santa Fe.  The southern part of the city?  Not a drop fell.  

Have I ever mentioned how in love with mountain weather I am?

Dog!

This is Clark (for now, the name may change).  He now is my parent's dog.

Apparently he already fetches, which makes my dad extremely happy.  He's mostly house trained and extremely sweet.  He also likes our dearly-departed Tammy's chew toys, which is nice that they're still being used.  

I now cannot wait to go visit in August to meet him.  

Boom!

Lightning that's practically blinding and thunder that you can feel vibrating in your lungs is so much fun.

Aaaaaah!

Octopuses have taken to using Rubik's cubes to soothe their stress.  Creepiest damn picture ever.

Modern science, being completely blind to the grave aquatic threat facing us, is supporting this.

Excuse me, I'm off to doubly-reinforce my windows against the sea-monster threat.  Some people may say it's redundant, what with living on the second story of a building, in the desert, at an altitude of 7,000 feet.  But they'll be the first to go when it happens.

An unfair choice

About 400 members of the Rainbow Family threw rocks and sticks at 10 federal officers Thursday night as they tried to arrest one member of the group at its annual gathering in western Wyoming, the U.S. Forest Service reported.

So what do I like better: reading about rights-stomping full-of-themselves federal officers being harassed with thrown objects, or "l love the earth and all the people let's go get stoned and hug in our 'I wish I was born in 1950 so I could have been at Woodstock' pit in the woods and not bathe for two weeks!"-style 'Neo-hippies' getting smacked around for being intolerable idiots?

Sniffle

Current Santa Fe weather: high pollen counts with winds gusting up to 25 mph.  My eyes are displeased.

Argh

So I go to a July 4th fireworks for the first time in years, in Santa Fe, and what happens?  It rains.  

Argh.

Happy birthday, America!

Things that have pissed me off today

1.  Yes, wait exactly until the moment I leave work - literally the moment I step out the doors of the library - to start raining.  Then do so with a huge clap of thunder but enough rain that I'm torn between just throwing on a jacket to ride to Trader Joe's and assuming it'll stop, or being afraid I'll get drenched because it'll start raining properly.  

2.  I was shelf-reading at work and there was an entire damn shelf out of order.  It was at the very end of an aisle, and when I turned the corner into the next row the numbers had jumped back quite a bit.  Took me ten minutes to get it sorted out.

3. This.  Another tick in the anti-Obama column, and at this point I'm wondering if it really is worth voting for him in November.  STOP GIVING MONEY TO CHURCHES, DAMMIT!  For one, it raises some constitutional questions, such as: Can the federal government legally give money to religious organizations?  Secondly, these things don't need to be done through religious organizations.  We can have secular charities.  We can have state-run soup kitchens and mentoring programs and computer classes and whatever the hell.  Just spend the money there, instead of going through a religious group.  

Here's a hint: Religion is not some magic wand that will solve social problems.  Religion does not help people.  You think religion leads to peace and prosperity and happiness?  The mid-east would like a word.  Northern Ireland c.1985 would like a word.  Sharia law would like a word.  The crusades would like a word.  Half the damn major armed conflicts in human history would like a word, and that word is: WRONG.  Other than driving people apart, religion does NOTHING that secular programs cannot do at least as well if not better.  STOP turning to your invisible woo-woo in the sky as if it's going to make things better.  It's not.  People have been waiting for the big booming voice to fix things since time began, and IT'S NOT GOING TO HAPPEN.

3.  Someone from this group came into the library to talk to my boss today.  The urge to be a bitch to him either by asking questions I'm sure he couldn't answer and/or just slapping him across the face was almost overwhelming.  Jesus christ, you're not fucking allergic to radio signals, SHUT UP and stop ruining things for us sane people.  If you're against it because you're anti-technology, just say so you idiotic luddite.  Otherwise, shut up.

Credit card companies love me

So a while ago I was buying something on Amazon.  They threw an offer at me: Sign up for our no-annual-fee student Visa card and get an instant $30 credit!  Applicable instantly!

Well, the total amount I was spending was $30.16.  Unable to resist such an offer, I signed up, and discovered to my joy that I could use that instant credit for the current purchase.  

I just got the actual card, signed up for the online statements, and paid my enormous outstanding balance of 16 cents.