The Great Change: Turning Cathy into a Lawyer

My friend and I went to see the fireworks put on by the town of Santa Clara, CA at its Central Park. We found seats on a grassy patch near a duck pond.

All was well until the fireworks started going off and suddenly a stampede of terrified ducks jumped out of the water and dashed off past us. They couldn't get far because there were too many people blocking their egress, so they'd turn around during the pauses and head back for the pond. Then there'd be another flash and another boom and they'd turn around and start running in the opposite direction. Another boom, and there'd be even greater confusion and they'd start crashing into each other as they dashed around in utter panic.

They were clearly out of their little ducky minds with fear (and the sociopathic little kids who decided to chase after them didn't help) but there was something incredibly absurd about seeing a horde of ducks blaze past us with their webbed feet pitter-pattering on the concrete (dozens of ducks collectively make quite an audible pitter-patter.)

Eventually they did seem to get used to it, and by the time the finale came around most of them stood still near the edge of the pond, either having figured out that the flashing and booming posed no threat to them, or frozen in fear and exhausted from all their frenzied waddling. Despite the inherent humor in watching ducks scramble en masse, it was hard to enjoy something which was clearly putting these cute little creatures in such distress...

One of the best donut shops I've ever been to was Sappy's Donuts in Boothbay Harbor, Maine. I went there when I was a kid on vacation. It was the kind of place that you'd have to get to very very early because they closed up for the day after the donuts ran out. Last fall I went up to Maine (reasonably convenient since I now live in Massachusetts) and went to look for it. Apparently it's become a Thai restaurant.

This leaves me with my previous runner up for favorite donut shop, Dunkin' Donuts, which, for a chain, I think is pretty good. MUCH better than Krispy Kreme and its insulin-shock-in-a-round-shape flavorless donuts. It's no wonder that they sell them piping hot: if you scorch your tongue you won't notice how tasteless they are.

So I like Dunkin' Donuts, and my favorite donut is the chocolate kreme filled. But, alas, even though Boston is crammed full of Dunkin' Donuts (whereas the Bay Area is essentially devoid of them almost entirely), not all of them sell this type of donut. I've come to suspect, upon inquiring, that some Dunkin' Donuts make their donuts on site, and others have them produced elsewhere and delivered. I then began to notice a correlation that donut shops that had them delivered did not generally sell that kind.

One evening I went out to dinner with my sister, and across the parking lot was a Dunkin' Donuts. Well-acquainted with my fondness for chocolate kreme filled donuts, having accompanied me previously on some fruitless quests to purchase them from various Dunkin' Donuts establishments, she suggested I run across and see if I could get one at this particular place.

But as is often the case, there were no chocolate kreme filled donuts for sale. Ever. They don't carry them. Wanting to test my earlier theory I inquired with the clerk, "So do you get your donuts delivered, or do you make them on site?"

"I have no idea where the donuts come from."

Immediately all thoughts of chocolate kreme filled donuts disappeared from my mind as I reeled in utter amazement at the total lack of curiosity demonstrated by the clerk. He works in a donut shop, and not only does he not know where the product somes from, but he apparently also never thought to check behind that door to the kitchen to see if anyone ever made any.

Perhaps there's an explanation. Perhaps he was under strict orders not to divulge to the customers the true origin of the donuts. Or perhaps he had been hired that day, perhaps in the previous ten minutes.

Maybe it's just as well that he works in a donut shop. Imagine the confusion if someone asked him where hamburgers came from.

One of the perks with living in a seasonal climate is the little gifts the seasons give. Spring gives flowers, and today I spotted for the first time in a long time my favorite: the crocus.

They're small but sturdy, they're brightly colored, and they always mean that spring is upon us finally. What more could one ask from a flower?

Edit 3/26/04: Even the New York Times thinks so:

"Oh, yes, crocuses. We'd almost forgotten. The glacial mantle of ice and snow has withdrawn, and in the disorder it left behind - matted lawns, pulped leaves - the first bulbs are rising. And not merely rising, but standing tall, as tall as a crocus gets, quivering in a southerly breeze. The crocuses come up in the colors of repudiation, rejecting winter and all its monochromatic affairs. It's always something to see the stems of the early bulbs cleaving their way up through the soil, a reminder of the power of small things, the undeterred thrust of the season."

The article goes to talk about the first robin of spring and other seasonal harbingers. I have to wonder, though, about the significance of the robin I saw today: it was dead.

I have a friend at school whom I met slightly before the semester began. He was living in California and we'd gotten in touch initially to see if it made sense to join forces for the move out to Boston. (Turns out it didn't). It ended up that he was in my section (and therefore all my classes) and we have similar academic interests so we spend a lot of time together. Of course, I also spend a lot of time with his roommate who was in all my classes AND my writing seminar. In fact the group of us spend a lot of time together in general, sometimes with another (female) friend.

It's all very above board, our friendship, like all the other friendships I have with people who just happen to be male. Which is why the rumor of our dating is so perplexing. Apparently the rumor is fairly widely held among my classmates. At first I was amused by it, because it wasn't true and I smirked at people's ignorance. But where I once smirked now I'm irked because at its core the whole thing is insulting. Why is it that a male and a female can't socialize without a romantic agenda always being inferred?

I've since discussed this with two friends, the one in question and another woman. They disagreed with me when I said it was a remarkably chauvinist automatic assumption. They said no, it was just as unfair for my male friend that he had to labor under the supposition that he was dating his female friend as it was for me to be presumed to be dating my male one. I agree with the mutuality of that unfairness but I still maintain that there is a chauvinist subtext underlying the whole matter.

It used to be that only men were the law students, the businessmen, the people who got to be self-actualized in a non-familial context. Women's traditional roles were familial, so if that's all women were expected to be capable of or interested in, it was more reasonable to believe that any interactions between men and women were part of some mating dance, even if they originated in some seemingly unromantic context (like school). Those biases towards women have been widely discredited as women take their place as equals in what had previously been a male-dominated world, or so I thought. I mean, I came to law school to be a lawyer, to focus on succeeding in this practice. My goal was not to find a husband. So why would people see me interacting with a man and presume, with no evidence other than the fact that I spend time with him (e.g., no holding hands, no saccharine flirting language), my focus was the latter? Women need to be able to interact with men as men would have interacted with each other, in a context devoid of romantic politics. My friend doesn't have a problem with the gender neutrality of our relationship, but it seems like many of my peers do.

There's something very second grade about the whole attitude. Put a man and a woman together and oooooooo.... I can practically hear the singsong jeer: "Cathy and [friend], sittin' in a tree..." But worse, these are grown-ups. These are men and women who seem content to view the world as entirely a matter of male-female maneuvering. There's no aspiration for something better, of having men and women being equals in non-romantic contexts and resigning sexual politics to a separate, more private sphere.

Today's lesson, boys and girls, is all about the wisdom of leaving important public services to the discretionary self-regulation of private companies. The moral learned, for those of you in a rush, is that it's not a good idea.

First, the Saga of the Cell Phone. Elsewhere I've alluded to my dissatisfaction with AT&T Wireless (or whoever they are these days) whom I've had service with (or, should I say, to whom I've been paying money monthly) since 2001. Initially I was satisfied. Their coverage in the Bay Area was excellent. But in Boston I noticed, to my horror and inconvenience, that it was not very good at all. In fact, it was barely present. Calls frequently failed to go through, despite 4 bars on my phone for signal strength. Similarly voicemails took eons to be delivered, and calls were often dropped midway through. That was annoying enough when I visited Boston. It was absurdly useless when I moved there. And in case it wasn't bad enough upon arrival, it got worse as the months have passed. My cell phone plan is now a really expensive voice mailbox, and nothing more. In case of emergency I couldn't even reach 911.

So number portability is a wonderful thing. Time to research new companies/phones/plans is also a wonderful thing, or so I hear because it's not like I've had any. I should have switched as soon as the opportunity became available but I had a pesky little thing called "law school" to take care of. But this week, now that I'm living in a place with no landline to use instead, I've had to make some time. I finally settled on the phone I wanted, the plan I wanted, and the carrier: Verizon.

There are a couple of complications. I'm trying to port a Bay Area number and I can only do that with CA-based telesales or a Bay Area store. Yesterday I talked to a sales rep on the phone who said he'd have no problem overnighting a phone to me. That was good, because I'll be traveling beginning Friday and I needed it before I left. But I wanted a chance to see the phones in a store one more time so today I did so and then called back, and that's where the trouble began.

In a sense I should have seen the trouble coming. The rep I talked to yesterday gave me several bits of nice, but ultimately incorrect information. Then today when I walked into the store I asked to see "tri-band" phones. "We don't have tri-band here," was the response. "You don't have the 8600?" I asked incredulously. "Oh we have that. But we don't have a tri-band phone." "I thought the 8600 was a tri-band phone." "Oh no." "So how do you distinguish the phones from the all-digital ones?" "Well we have tri-MODE phones." It was my mistake for getting the term mixed up, but they were ready to send me out the door before it dawned on them that I, the customer and NOT the expert, might have meant the other. Apparently critical thinking skills are not required on a Verizon employment application.

So when I called back later I discovered a credit check was involved. That was ok, or so I thought, because my credit is good. I gave them permission to pull my report. Then they put on this credit review counselor to ask me questions about my report that only I would know. They said that this was to make sure I was really myself. I answered her questions, but I admit my answers were a little unusual. "What is your address?" for me is not so simple and I have no idea what the report says. I lived at one, moved to another, but am living at another one still. But if she was confused she never asked for clarification. Of course, I can't see what business it was of theirs. If the report said I wasn't a credit risk, and I could identify the information as mine, it should have ended there. But that's where the nightmare began. Because she wasn't satisfied apparently and instructed the sales rep that I'd need to fax in supporting documentation. What? I knew all my addresses, I knew my credit cards (although she didn't want me to give just one or two apparently but every single credit card I've ever had). She asked if I had a private loan and I told her about the school loans, but apparently she couldn't find them on the report. It was all very strange, because I had no idea what report she was even looking at, let alone what it said, but they said the only point of the call was to verify I was me so I don't see what the problem was.

Worse, after she transferred me back, with no indication she had concerns, I was now heretofore banned from Ever. Speaking. To. The. Credit. Department. Again. Ever. I have no idea what the problem was, and they refused to tell me or let me clarify. No amount of pleading would get me transferred back to the credit people. Apparently my file had been suddenly passed off to the shadowy people in the Review Department. Meanwhile, I'm not even a customer yet so there's no transactional record to follow up on and there's no one who's going to take charge and make sure this works out right. Even if I can find the stuff they want me to fax I have no idea if it will solve the problem. And I need it solved, and I need it solved NOW. Thanks to AT&T not bothering to provide service to my phone (and I do believe it to be service-related and not phone-related because it does work reasonably in California) I'm dead in the water. No telephony access. So I could try another vendor, but that's not the point. The government regulates the cell phone industry because it provides a valuable communications service to the public. It regulates the airwaves, which are a finite public asset, by doling it out to private entities. Who seem to be under no obligation to return any service to the public in exchange for the lifeblood of their business. Citizens are still at the mercy of private companies in order to get access to an increasingly indispensable mode of communication.

For me, I've been at least delayed by a small-minded, irresponsible, misrepresentative, apathetic, disconnected corporate policy and process. It might work out, or it very well might not since there's no one at Verizon who is going to ensure that this gets worked out properly. (As it is I have to do all the work.) But this is just a cell phone where I'm at the mercy of a private company providing a public communications service. Imagine if it was a lifesaving drug.

Edit 6/8/04: Well, I'm now all set up with Verizon. It ended up being somewhat painless once I got to the California store. Interestingly, once I was in the Bay Area my AT&T phone started working just fine. I was so tempted to give it a second chance but I slapped myself back into reality. The Verizon phone is ok, but not spectacular. The new phone has poor volume controls, only asinine ring tones, and the reception is not all I hoped for. Dammit.

Intrigue in the nation's capital? The Patriot Act rearing its ugly head?

Actually it's that there's holes in my window screens. At night with the light on bugs invite themselves right in.

The interesting thing is that it's not like a lot of bugs of the same type. No swarms. It's more like one of each species. I have a little bug with disproportionately long grey wings. I had a big bug with a brown body and dark wings. There's been a moth with an unfortunate habit of making itself comfortable on my laundry. There have also been a couple of miscellaneous bugs whose particular exoskeletons I can't quite recall offhand, although some of them have been squished for lack of a better way of ensuring their timely departure from my bedroom. And then there is a really stupid ladybug that keeps flying into the spinning ceiling fan and crashing down on my bed.

Last night the ladybug crashed into the fan again for about the third time. And once again I put it back outside. You'd think it would have learned better by now. I suppose it's possible that maybe it was a different ladybug. To make sure, if it happens again, I'll start counting the spots.

I try to help out the ladybug(s) and not squish it (them) because it's (they're) pretty and aphid-eating. Although if it is in fact the same one every night it is beginning to wear out my patience and I may be no longer able to guarantee safe passage from my room. Still, if it has been a different one every night, why would I only be seeing them one at a time? If I had a horde of ladybugs living in my bedroom, wouldn't I have noticed? Or is it some secret ladybug protocol that they only reveal themselves one at a time?

Of course, WHY would a horde of ladybugs be living in my room? It's not like I have a lot of aphids hanging around. Unless they too only show themselves one at a time...

What is wrong with some people?

My sister went out to her car this morning and found a dead squirrel on it. She doesn't suspect this was a natural occurrence, since squirrels, very sure-footed animals, are not likely to accidentally plummet onto a windshield below.

They are even less likely to plummet onto the windshield and become wedged under the wiper blades without an awful lot of help...

Edit 12/24: Comments reluctantly closed due to recurrent comment spam.

Today's scintillating conversation at school resulted when my friend reported the indignity she suffered when a bee stung her, in her apartment, and worse, while she was still in bed. She said it appears she has two bees' nests outside her window and was wondering what to do. A brief discussion of rocket launchers and flame throwers ensued, along with an inquiry into the various tort liabilities one might incur if one pursued any of these means. We then resolved that a bebe gun would, perhaps, be an effective means of extermination. After all, it was reasoned, you would outnumber the bees, since a bebe is clearly twice as endowed than a single bee.

In my maudlin moments connected to the job search I get frustrated with figuring out how to represent myself. Until I entered an environment where merit was judged so reductively I used to think that past accomplishments were simply enough. I was reading a book the other day about how to play up those things, especially seeing how (for most of us!) our GPAs are not going to be opening the doors. But in reflecting on the whole system, I noted how certain items end up being shorthand confessions for negative qualities, whether they mean so truthfully or not. The GPA is just one example (hmmm, only a 3.09? Not very smart or hardworking...). Or for a person who is unemployed, they acquire a certain "untouchability," because even though their unemployment may be due to no fault of their own (e.g., a layoff) it's so easy for an employer to immediately construe that if a person is unemployed, there must be some aspect of dessert to it. Who would want to hire the kind of person who would actually need a job?

But these kinds of erroneous supposition evidence themselves in many other ways and many other contexts, and my thoughts on it turned to something I recently read in Salon, a discussion on women who wear t-shirts admitting that they'd had abortions. While this subject matter has little bearing on my job search, it was interesting to think about because the same mechanism was in play, trying to communicate something whose resulting message you can't control and is often misconstrued. For instance, some people said that the t-shirts acknowledging abortions would label these women negatively, perhaps as sluts, poor, or people with the poor judgment to have gotten pregnant. And they might even appear as such to people who claim to be pro-choice! The worst is so easily assumed, and the truth of it is so frequently ignored. Very likely those women are monogamous, educated, and responsible, but for some reason still needed to make that choice. But that is the last thing that is presumed, because these biases become very ingrained and we judge people so easily on their basis, even though we may aspire to be non-judgmental.

It was argued that the women wore the t-shirts because they wanted to start rewriting those suppositions. That as long as people kept their reproductive activities in the shadows, the false perceptions would persist for lack of anything to challenge them.

Although it may appear to be a leap of topics from reproductive freedom to job-hunting, the connection between the two, relevant also to many other areas in between, is the way that they all involve communicating to strangers in such brief ways that helping them get past their biases to see your worth as a person may be difficult.

Friday the Thirteenth?
Triskaidekaphobia!
Oh wait - it's the Twelfth.

OK, yes I was late and didn't post it until the 13th. But I wrote it well in advance with every intention of posting it on the 12th, I swear. Since it was going to be so long before the next Friday the 12th would occur I decided to go ahead and post it today anyway and just tweak the date. And really, if I hadn't said anything, people who didn't check the blog yesterday wouldn't have known any better. Given that most people on the planet probably didn't check the blog yesterday, perhaps I should just have kept my mouth shut about it. Hmmm....

At lunchtime yesterday I tried to buy a soda at the student union to go with my sushi, but none of the fountains worked. Just a stream of syrup would pour out, lacking the carbonated water necessary to turn it into soda. I tried fountain after fountain. None dispensed correctly, not for any flavor. Oh well, I'll just buy a soda from a vending machine in the law tower, I decided, apparently forgetting the lesson from the day before when my corporations professor had failed to obtain one from the recalcitrant (and apparently empty) machine. There is another machine next to it that dispenses more nutritious drinks, and I can see through its clear plexiglass that it's full of such product, but alas it has been refusing to take money. Fine, whatever, I'll just go out into the hall for a drink of water.

Figures the fountain doesn't work.

Thank goodness for the Westlaw rep who was giving out free apple juice this morning in the lobby or else I'd have been really thirsty, so totally stymied in my quest for potable liquid anywhere on campus.

Meanwhile, yesterday's lunch prompts me to make a note to stop buying the sushi at the student union. It's consistently crunchy. Given that it's a salmon and avocado roll, such a texture is not really appropriate. How hard would it be for them to wait for the avocado to ripen before using it? Did they really not notice how hard it was when they cut it up? I hope this oversight is only because they are paying such particular attention to the respective quality of the fish.

And finally, in closing I will share another random observation gleaned from my lunchtime adventures: pickled ginger and Wise CheezDoodle "cheese" work together surprisingly well on the palate.

What's the point of getting spam if you can't take the opportunity to mock it? Phishing spam - the kind which trolls for your personal financial information - is the most dangerous if you take the bait, but it also can be the silliest because it depends on its prey to believe it's legitimate. The relative illiteracy of its authors can consequently render it hilarious.

I liked this one I got the other day, ostensibly from a bank where I do not have an account:

Dear Washington Mutual user, We are performing system maintenance, wich may interfere with access to your Online Services. Due to these technical updates your online account has been deactivate. Washington Mutual recommend you to reactivate your online account.

OK, that's just embarrasing spelling and grammatical errors (as well as highly implausible that a bank would be so inept to disable a customer's account while performing system maintenance - someone would get fired for that). But I really liked the earnest logic in its final customer service statement:

Our goal is to have Internet Banking available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, but Internet Banking may be unavailable during the following times for scheduled systems maintenance: Sunday: 12:00am - 6:15am Eastern Time.

24/7 access, except for the 6 hours it's down every week (so they can disable more customer accounts?). Guess it's not likely they'll be meeting that goal any time soon...

A religious discussion broke out on the Huey Lewis and the News chat board, of all places. It all got started because a teenage girl is slowly learning about the band and experiencing some of their music for the first time. She's bright and articulate but clearly seems to be leading a sheltered existence, being homeschooled by her apparently ultra-conservative Christian parents. (She was the person who posted the cheers for Bush after the election. While it wouldn't be fair to hold these views against a 14 year old, I'm pretty sure, based on other posts, she was essentially parroting her dad.) I am, frankly, somewhat surprised her parents even let her hang out on the fan board in the first place with all us heathens...

Anyway, she reported that she got the second album, Picture This, and liked all the songs on it except "Workin' for a Livin'." Someone asked why. Because of the bad words, she said.

What bad words? Oh THESE "bad words":

"Some days won't end ever,
And some days pass on by.
I'll be working here forever
At least until I die.
Damned if you do, damned if you don't;
I'm s'posed to get a raise next week
You know damn well I won't."

This unexpected response then unleashed a discussion about the biblical mandates against using bad words, eventually morphing into a further discussion of what it would take to achieve salvation, etc. It was actually fairly interesting, once it was moved out of the Picture This thread to one in the off-topic area, partly because for such sensitive material it was being handled so civilly.

Still I kept my distance. I'm not qualified to discuss Christian biblical doctrine, and I sort of had this fear that at some point the conversation might turn into a train wreck. Extremism inevitably seems to lead to it, because it exists so fully in its narrow definition of the universe, incapable of accounting for other people's varying beliefs.

No full-on train wreck has occurred, but small bits of harm were nonetheless sneaking through. The girl had never heard of the Koran, and was mixing up Muslims and Hindus (and in a very dismissive way.) [Edit: further research suggests she may actually have been speaking about Jains.] But the bigger problem was the person who swooped in to set the record straight, but may have made things worse through his tone of authority and lack of corresponding accuracy, particularly in discussing Jews. Although I'd wanted to steer clear of the whole thing, I didn't think I could or should, not when these misstatements were allowed to linger publicly, unchallenged. Given how little knowledge some people are working with, it isn't good for wrong facts to become the basis of their erudition. These misapprehensions have so often been the basis for discrimination – or worse. Fearing this kind of reaction I felt compelled to set the record straight.

Yet I feel resentful for having had to do it. I had not wanted to enter the conversation. I had wanted to leave them to spin their wheels alone. By entering the discussion I felt like I validated it, and I didn't want to do that. But being silent felt like it was validating the ignorance, and that's really what I fear. Extremism can take root much easier when there is no alternate information competing with it. I don't only mean extremism as a matter of faith – I mean any narrow world view that fails to incorporate the panoply of differences of all its people. Whether it was misstating that all Jews were of anglo-saxon origin (huh?) or why they don't accept Jesus as the messiah, these were the real bad words, words that left unchallenged end up validating the negative biases underpinning them and can entrench further hatred. Somebody needed to speak up against them. Apparently that somebody had to be me.

Edit 1/3/05: This post could use some editing because I'm not sure if it's quite clear the point I'm trying to make in the last paragraph. The comment I made below will help clarify somewhat, so please read it to get a better sense of what I was trying to say. It wasn't so much that I felt personally burdened by needing to post the correction, but that it was concerning that there was no one else willing - or, more likely, able - to do so. I initially interpreted my emotional reaction to the situation as one of resentment, but in reflecting further I think it was really fear, more than anything else, that motivated me to post. Fear of so much ignorance in the world, and the harm it so often wreaks. (And as it happens, so often on people like me.)

My friend got this fortune yesterday at lunch. I'm retyping it here exactly as it reads:

"Striving for the best will bring you loser to the best."

It was really unfair. My friend is NOT a loser...

As has been mentioned before, I like sushi. But not this much...

I'm also a little concerned about the Google ad I saw included on the site:

"Sushi Sashimi for Sale
Discount Sushi Sashimi. Check out the deals now!
www.ebay.com"

"Discount sushi?"

From an auction?

Is this where other people get their sushi when the restaurant is closed?

Edit 8/8/05: But even if you think it's bad to buy sushi from eBay, surely you need to admit that this is even worse.

But not of spelling bees, apparently.

I found a typo on my cereal box today. There's an asinine and not particularly educational montage on the back, full of useless geographical trivia questions targeted to kids who are maybe 9, yet with the sense of humor of your typical three year old.

One of the "fun facts" included is the following:

"Vikings used birds to help in nagivating their ships." (emphasis added) (oh, and [sic])

So much for education, but what's particularly ironic about this misspelling is that it's on the back of a box of Alphabits. If any cereal was to know how to spell, you'd think it'd be that one.

I was walking through campus today, and down in the eucalyptus grove I saw a group of boys throwing things at a target. I couldn't really see what they were throwing at, but they were at the edge of the grove, aiming towards Strawberry Creek, and it didn't seem there should be anything worth hitting over there.

As I got closer I saw they were throwing at a squirrel. There were several boys - maybe 6-8 of them, around 12-14 years old. They seemed very caught up in the moment, not really thinking about what they were doing to this poor creature. So I said something.

"Guys, what are you doing?" I went into swimming teacher mode. I wasn't a parent; I wasn't a pal. I struck a tone of authority somewhere in the middle. A tone that doesn't make me a hardass, but that kids take seriously anyway. As they did here, because rather than ignoring me or telling me to fuck off, at least a few turned around and answered me. "Are you throwing stuff at a squirrel???" I asked again.

A few of them put up a weak defense. There had been a big crash right before I got there and I thought they'd thrown a brick. "It wasn't a brick - we're just throwing acorns," they responded.

"Yeah, well, I don't think that squirrel is enjoying you throwing acorns at it either."

After the moment had passed I thought of better things I could have said. But I don't think it matters. I think what does matter is that I had bothered to call them on their behavior at all. I imagine there were some kids in that group who really think there's nothing wrong with throwing stuff at an animal. But I think for those kids who had just gotten swept up in it, having someone stop to call them on their behavior probably made a difference. It was a big deal for a bystander to stop. There were other people passing by right then and none of them did, except me. In fact, as I began talking to them the other people that had been in the area suddenly vanished, leaving me to deal with the encounter alone.

So I hope that my having interfered will help puncture that bubble of adolescent immunity lots of kids build up around them, making them more inclined to think these things through and realize that what they decide to do matters. And that when they decide to do things that aren't ok, people will care. And that throwing things at an animal is definitely not ok.

Anyway, by now the squirrel was able to run away and I moved on. But word must have gotten out about my good deed among the local wildlife. Because later in the afternoon, while I was walking on the fire trail to Strawberry Canyon, I passed by a skunk. Who, despite ample opportunity, did not spray me.

I'm sure there's a connection.

The kid yesterday was very precocious. We were typing words on the screen so he could practice reading. I was impressed that he knew how to spell "yellow." Tough word, with all those l's and such.

At one point we were talking about video games and Super Mario Brothers came up. I happened to say the name "Mario" in the course of the conversation, in my typical New Jersey accent, with a soft "a."

He stopped me when I said it and gave me this *look.*

"It's MAHrio," he sternly corrected me.

Anyway, one of the perks with the swimming job is that I get to hang out with kids and listen to what's on their minds. It's often much more interesting that what adults have to say...

One of my favorite comments came from a kid who exclaimed, "A dolphin is a whale with a beak!" I really enjoyed the image that popped up into my head of a whale with a pointy nose strapped on with an elastic band.

Of course, sometimes these uninhibited exclamations can be difficult to hear. Case in point, the student I had in a private lesson once who blurted out, "My mommy's dead!"

Oh dear.

Thank you for not dumping a load of crap on all the people I care about, but I wish you would stop beating up on those whom you have. Quite a large clump of them, wouldn't you say? With quite a lot of crap, too.

Anyway, I would greatly appreciate it if you would cut it out.

Sincerely,
Cathy

After a fruitless conversation where I attempted to explain the concept of "customer satisfaction" to a recalcitrant motel manager in Winnemucca, NV, Super 8 made good on refunding me a reasonable portion of my bill. Or at least it would have been reasonable, had it not involved three separate phone calls to make right... So I will deign to stay at a Super 8 again (although NOT in Winnemucca), though cautiously. I'm not *entirely* sure anyone at the company really gets it either, but I am satisfied enough to give them another chance.

Although like I said, not in Winnemucca. As I tried to explain to the manager there, for someone who's not a trucker I drive the I-80 corridor rather a lot. It may arise again sometime that I will want to stay in Winnemucca, and because they insisted on keeping every penny of my $67, they've guaranteed that it's the last one they'll ever see from me.

Edit: Maybe I should explain better why I'm so annoyed. When I drove back east I stayed in a string of Super 8s, but the first one ended up being a big mistake. Starting before 5am the ceiling started creaking under a lot of footfalls. At first I thought they'd stop as soon as the person(s) got done doing what they were doing. But eventually I realized they weren't stopping. (It's also possible that the reason for this was that it was actually people in the stairwell walking, and not someone above me.) After a wasted hour of tossing and turning and failing to get back to sleep, I gave up and fully woke up. At which point I just packed up and left, since there was no point in staying there anymore.

I complained at the desk on my way out, but the manager was out and the clerk wouldn't do anything. I had to call Super 8 to file a complaint. But they didn't do anything either, and referred the matter back to the manager. Who eventually wrote me a letter apologizing, but doing nothing else. Even more irritated by this point I called her back to say this wasn't good enough, and engaged in a battle of wills. Her argument: because I didn't call the desk to complain and give them a chance to fix the problem, it wasn't their fault and I was on my own. My argument: by the time I was awake enough to have the presence of mind to call the desk, I was already irretrievably awake and there would be nothing they could do to fix it. Furthermore, for the rate I was paying, it wasn't too much to expect that I'd be able to get an undisturbed night of sleep. They failed to deliver, however, and I expected some compensation for that - particularly because for a motel, it was pretty expensive.

To the manager, however, my position was unreasonable. (To me, the fact that I was even required to have this argument was unreasonable. They really care so little about customer satisfaction that they're willing to go to the mat on this?) Fortunately Super 8, when I called them back, saw the unreasonableness of the situation and refunded me a reasonable portion of money.

True, this isn't one of my rants about inequitable conduct by companies. I suffered no great injustice because of the hotel. It was just frustrating and amazingly dumb on their part of blow off my concerns. If the manager - or Super 8 itself - had just given me back the $35 from the outset everything would have been fine. It's a small amount to them, but a big amount to me, but their adamant refusal to make the situation right because *I* failed to follow "procedure" was ridiculous. And just wasted my time.

So in the end she won her battle - the manager never gave me any money back - but she lost her war because she also lost her customer. Stupid.

Yesterday's adventure involved me going to Wal-Mart. Now, normally I don't approve of going to Wal-Mart. But I decided to make an exception. For one, despite some initially crappy behavior, Wal-Mart ultimately ended up being extremely responsible in its reaction to Katrina. For another, it has also gone on record with some enlightened attitudes towards copyright policy. So for these reasons I felt I could reward it with a purchase. Plus, it was interesting to see how Wal-Mart fit into the German world. And besides, I'd been all over Hamburg and there were some things I just couldn't find. So off to Wal-Mart I went...

It was enormous. A veritable orgy of consumerism. If it existed at all in Germany, you could find it there. And maybe only there. I bought a halogen lamp (18 euros! Cheaper than in the US!), a package of 4 mechanical pencils (in Germany it's almost impossible to find mechanical pencils ("Druckbleistift," or "push-pencils") at all, much less the cheap disposable ones you won't cry over when you inevitably lose them), a package of smoked salmon which was cheap AND good (as opposed to the last package of salmon I bought in the regular grocery store), a package of gum (Wrigley's is quite available in Germany, but I hadn't remembered to buy some the last time I was out), and a small package of Oreos, which I was going to share with my German friends but I may end up eating in the next 30 minutes before I get the opportunity.

All told, it cost about $35, and I now have that nicely out of my system. Unless I decide that I just can no longer live without Hershey's Syrup, because they do sell it there, in a bottle prepared for international sale as its label suggests. The ingredients are listed in multiple languages, including Arabic. Not quite the same bottle you pick up at the local Safeway, at least not at $5 a bottle...

Edit: Good thing I didn't share my oreos: they didn't taste very good. I think that's what happens when the "oreos" are actually manufactured by "United Biscuits Iberia, S.L." In fact, I should have known that something labelled "chocolate flavour sandwich biscuits" would be suspect. I mean, yeah, they have the trademark blue and white oreo packaging with the little red nabisco triangle in the corner, but Nabisco should really rethink their licensing...

Anyway, I'll have to take care of disposing of the remaining three oreos myself so that no Germans accidentally end up with their tastebuds traumatized. They'll thank me later, I'm sure.

Tonight at an academic meeting with German students I had an occasion to try German pizza.

It wasn't as good as good New York (or even Boston) pizzaria pizza, but it was vastly better than California pizza. Perhaps proximity to Italy helped?

I told the assembled 19-22 year olds (mostly male) that they should be like their American counterparts and eat it cold for breakfast, but I think they found the prospect unappealing.

Did you know turkeys can fly? It's true:

From the Washington Post 11/21:

"If you can't get a first-class upgrade to Los Angeles tomorrow on United Airlines, it may be because a turkey beat you to the seat.

After President Bush offers his official pardon for this year's Thanksgiving turkey today, the turkey and its handler will be flown first class from Dulles to Los Angeles for a trip to Disneyland. United spokeswoman Robin Urbansky declined to comment on how much the flight would cost the airline, which is in bankruptcy protection, or if the turkey used its frequent-flier miles for the upgrade. United dubbed the flight Turkey One."

I am, of course, proud to say that I am a loyal customer of the airline that even delicious birds turn to for their air travel needs.

Quite frankly I wouldn't mind being on a plane right now, even seated next to a turkey. Today's Thanksgiving, yet out here in Germany it's not likely that I'm going be getting any traditional Thanksgiving fare.

Of course, the airline probably frowns upon eating the other passengers, so I guess it's just as well.

(Although think of the advantages: a decent airplane meal AND more elbow room!)

Title changed 11/25 to be more, um, what's the word... funny?

Did you know (so I've been told) that the maximum number of Friday the 13ths you can have in one year is 3? (I also think the minimum is 1.)

When I was in fourth grade (1983-4) we had three. Each time, the teacher put a ladder in the corridor leading to our classroom as an example of other superstitions. On each of the three occasions I decided to test whether or not walking under the ladder affected one's luck. What I determined was that walking under a ladder was fine, but if you made contact with the ladder you'd have problems. This was true whether you walked under or around it.

Now, when I say "problems" I mean it in a metaphoric way. Like having a bad day. But if you think about why people might have decided walking under ladders could be bad luck - perhaps due to the increased likelihood of things falling on your head - the ladder-contact corollary seems reasonable. After all, if you touch the ladder, things are much more likely to fall on your head than if the ladder is left alone. And if things fall on your head you're likely to have a very bad day indeed.

One of the nice things about living with my mom is that she does the cooking.

One of the downsides is conversations like these:

My mom: "We're either having eggs or chicken for dinner tonight, and we'll have the other one tomorrow."

Me: "But which comes first, the chicken or the eggs?"

To be fair, I guess it was my fault that the conversation took the dismal turn it did. Yet it seemed like such a reasonable question to ask at the time...

Edit: For those of you keeping score at home, the eggs came first.

Over the weekend I acquired a package of "Rachel's Potato Chips," where the apostrophe is made with a picture of a heart. The front of the package also includes three taglines: "Made from the heart," "gourmet traditional" (whatever that is…), and "America's Finest Gourmet." It's all incredibly cheesy and pointless, but nothing to really put me off from eating the chips.

It was the writing on the back that did me in:

Rachel's Story

When I was a little girl, I would spend many weekends on my grandparent's[sic] farm. The wonderful smell in my G[sic]randmother's kitchen come[sic] back to me as real today as they were then.¹ I remember she would say, "You should always use the best ingredients you can find. Don't take any shortcuts, because there is only one way to do something right!"²

At the end of the day she would get a twinkle in her eye and say, "I suppose you're too tired to make a batch of my famous potato chips."³ I would beg her to let me do the seasoning and she would tell me that I would have to wait until I was older [sic]that it had to be done just right.⁴ She smiled and told me of a promise that she had made a long time ago to her G[sic]randmother, a solemn promise to make everything as best[sic] as it could be made.⁵ A promise she made from the heart.⁶

I remember those days in that wonderful kitchen and I remember Grandmother's lessons.⁷ They are what guide us at Rachel's.⁸ When you open this bag you will taste a chip made with the best and healthiest ingredients, cooked with care, one batch at a time. As Grandmother did, we make a promise that each chip we prepare is -[sic] made from the heart.⁹

1. Sentences like these make my brain hurt.
2. Apparently, however, that advice does not apply to copyediting. (Though they at least managed to spell "potato" correctly...)
3. The chips were already famous? Who was this woman???
4. Grandma sounds cruel. She messes with her daughter to make her THINK she was going to get to make the potato chips, and then doesn't let her.
5. This poor kid! Her grandmother won't let her help her make the chips because of a promise she'd made to her grandmother??? At some point, YEARS ago, before her own children were even a glimmer in her eye, she'd apparently swore a solemn oath to her own heartless grandmother never to let anyone mess with the potato chips, not even if it was her own flesh and blood who could someday pass along the family tradition for quality potato chips, since clearly they would only RUIN them. What a horrible promise! And a particularly ironic one, seeing how the granddaughter herself grew up to be a professional potato chip maker with apparently no guidance whatsoever…
6. Her ice cold, stony heart.
7. Including, "Never trust your children with anything as important as making potato chips. They'll just do it WRONG."
8. By the way, "Rachel's" is really KLN Enterprises of Perham, MN.
9. Ripped from the body still beating, sliced into paper-thin strips, and then deep-fried in only the finest oils available.

Anyway, this packaging leaves me with grave concerns about eating the chips therein...

I was emailing back and forth with a guy in England late last week.

"We're all excited about the long weekend here," he wrote. "Bank holiday and all."

I wrote back, "Now that you mention it, it's a long weekend here in Boston too. It's Patriots Day, where we celebrate having kicked some English ass."

Funny, I haven't heard back from him since...

I've been commenting over at the Conglomerate on Vic Fleischer's post on how to grow the next Silicon Valley. It comes in response to another essay saying that it takes nerds + rich people to make a Silicon Valley, and you need a way to be able to get lots of both before one can sprout.

This brought to mind the work of AnnaLee Saxenian, whose work comparing Silicon Valley with the 128 corridor in Massachusetts we read in one of my undergraduate sociology classes. According to her, it takes more than nerds to get a Silicon Valley. You need to have an organizational structure that can maximize all that nerd power (to paraphrase rather crudely...)

I suddenly am interested in reading her book... (Perhaps post-bar?) But it is pretty cool that I still remember it. I think it's been at least 11 years since I took that class... (I also wonder if I'd perhaps worked from an earlier paper, since the copyright date listed on the book is a year after I remember taking the course.)

Everyone's favorite airline to kick around is the subject of an article in the New York Times (via Reuters) today, discussing how it needs to further cut costs, including through outsourcing.

What is not mentioned in the article is that United already outsourced some of its functions, and as a result of that decision, has nearly (if not actually) lost customers.

A month ago when I went to Memphis something weird happened to my reservation. As a premier member one of the perks is that I'm entitled to a seat in the Economy Plus part of the plane. It's the part with more legroom, and it's also in the front of the plane (the aspect I care about more). So whenever a seat is available, which is most of the time, I reserve my seats there. But when I got to the airport to check in, I discovered that the system had removed me from the forward window seat I'd booked and relocated me to an aisle seat in the back, and at this late date there were no seats remaining for me to move back to. This was annoying, but seemed like a fluke.

However, when I checked in a few weeks later for the trip to California and the same thing happened, I decided it wasn't a fluke. Something was definitely wrong. So I called customer service. And what a train wreck that was.

Actually, before I called customer service I called reservations. As I was stranded in the security line and unable to talk to the gate agent, I called the reservations number (the only one I had) to implore them to fix this. Or at the very least communicate to the gate agent since I was unable to. It was a painful, unproductive conversation as I had to pull teeth to get the agent to realize that there was a problem (Her: "You have to pay for a seat in Economy Plus." Me: "No, as a premier member I'm entitled to sit there!") or that there was anything that could possibly even be attempted to fix my current situation. (Her: "It's all controlled by the gate." Me: "I know that! So please send a message to the gate! You can do that!" And I was right…)

Once in Denver, like in Memphis, an airport agent was able to fix my seat assignments for my return flights. But they couldn't fix the systemic problem and instead gave me the customer service number. That was when the real train wreck ensued.

The first person who answered the phone had no concept of what he was doing. He kept focusing on how to spell my name. Minutes passed before we got around to talking about what my problem actually was, which, like the reservations agent before, he discounted. (Him: "You need to buy a seat in Economy Plus." Me: "NO I DON'T!!!!"). The conversation descended from there, as he threw what sounded like pre-packaged excuses at me and made no attempt to recognize, let alone fix, the problem. So I asked for the supervisor, and got the same thing.

At this point, having talked to three consecutive people with Indian accents, I suspected outsourcing. It used to be when you called United that you'd get a lot of people with Midwestern accents, so it was a bit of a giveaway. But what was also a giveaway is the complete lack of any personal interest in solving the problem. In the days of the employee/owners of United you would always encounter a strong sense of initiative. And if you didn't… well, then United went through rounds of layoffs. Plenty of occasion to weed out the bad apples. But it seems that in all these layoffs they also managed to weed out the good apples too.

Anyway, at this point after three separate conversations I'd yet to find someone to take any real accountability. The conversation ended, but at this point I'd gone from annoyed by the original problem to furious with the airline's general treatment of me so I called back once more. This time the person was a little better. She recognized that the problem was beyond her capacity to fix and so she transferred me - to a customer support specialist in Chicago.

So here's the thing with outsourcing: apparently they'd outsourced a year ago, and I'd never noticed before. If that's the case, I guess it was working. But in my more recent phone calls it was definitely not working. The lack of ownership and complete indifference to the mission of the company (e.g., not pissing off the customers) resulted in them working at cross-purposes with it. As I told the woman in Chicago, I missed the days when it was the employee/owners who you dealt with because of that sense of pride. But as long as the outsourced people could at least fake that level of interest it would have been ok…

I had a nice, long conversation with that woman who took down all the information and affirmed my sense that something had indeed gone awry in these conversations. Which absolutely saved me as a customer. I already had my 25,000 miles for the year, and I was ready to walk away. Possibly forever. Because I was livid. I have all this loyalty invested with them, but after these phone calls I no longer believed that I could trust them with my business. It's not just that there was the situation with the original seat SNAFU (which still takes the fun out of traveling, because without predictability it becomes very stressful - too stressful to do very much of), but that I was losing faith in the company's willingness and ability to do right by its customers.

All because they outsourced.

Since then I've had better conversations on the phone. The woman also gave me a direct number to Chicago if I ever encountered further recalcitrance. But the airline got off easy. I really wasn't that difficult a customer (I really could not understand why they were so willing to take a small problem and turn it into a big one…) and I really didn't want to leave United, but I was on the precipice. Imagine how many they may have lost when the customers they antagonized were not so loyal.

Meanwhile, as a postscript, it's also worth noticing that they outsourced the web site functionality too. And that was equally a mistake. Because the woman I ended up talking to over there, who was allegedly going to try to diagnose my seat-displacement problem, thought that an effective problem solving method would be for me to give her my username and PASSWORD(!!!!) so she could login as me and poke around. Um, no…. (And for what it's worth, the callback they most reluctantly agreed to make to inform me of the status of the fix has still never occurred. So I still have no idea of what the problem was or if it was corrected, and will be left to find out the hard way.)

Anyway, the moral of this story is that outsourcing is not the panacea that it's often made out to be. It's not that it can't ever work, but it has to be done with the utmost care. Otherwise it will be the Achilles heel of the company. While it may seem like it's just a matter of getting cheap labor for basic tasks, they are not tasks that the company can afford to have done badly lest it risk losing the lifeblood of the company - its customers.

If:

- Every single CPR for the Professional Rescuer course you've ever heard of (let alone taken) in the last 15 years was offered by the Red Cross, and

- When you renewed the certification last year at the same facility they gave you a Red Cross card, and

- You've just been hired to be a Red Cross instructor at this facility,

Wouldn't you expect that when you did the recertification course last night they would give you a Red Cross card? I sure did, but instead they gave me a card from some organization I'd never heard of before (I can't tell if it's the "American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons" or the "American College of Emergency Physicians."). The guy in charge swears it's just as good as the Red Cross card and will be accepted anywhere that the Red Cross one would be, but I still feel very uncomfortable about this arrangement. I know nothing about the organization that has just certified me. Now, granted, the material all seemed to be the same for the most part as what is contained in the Red Cross version - apparently every certifying agency works from the same guidelines - but I know nothing about any subtle differences there might be between the Red Cross course and this one. And given that my legal duties associated with this certification are tied to my training, I don't know if I can safely presume that the certifications are truly interchangeable. Especially since last night was just a recertification course - not a fresh course out of the box with all the videos and books and such. I don't even have the book by this organization - I only have (and have read) the Red Cross book.

It is possible that my attitude on this is particularly negative given that I didn't find out about the "no Red Cross" thing until 10 o'clock at night after a long day and a long four hours in a classroom. I suppose he could be right that it won't make a difference. But given the tremendous liabilities that can attach when making rescues (or even from just having the certifications) I don't think it's necessarily overreacting to be concerned about receiving a certification that was not what you reasonably understood you would get.

The houseboat lives at a marina with other houseboats. (Think of it as a floating trailer park.) It seems to have some sort of homeowner association that maintains the docks, provides parking, hosts the mailboxes, etc. Anyway, out by the mailboxes is a shelf that is apparently called "the happy box." This is where people leave things they no longer want, and other people take them.

I think this is a fabulous idea. I hate wasting things that still have life in them, even though I no longer have any use for them. I've gone to great lengths at times to keep these things from immediately heading to landfills by finding them new homes. Leaving Paris was one such occasion. After my boss stiffed me on shipping home my belongings, and after I mailed home 6 boxes, and after I stuffed my suitcases to the gills, I still had 2-3 bags of things left over I just couldn't keep. So on a blazing hot day, while I was suffering from food poisoning, while I was running out of French money, and after my Metro card had expired, I began my quest to find someone who would want them. I went downstairs and headed west. First I encountered a homeless man. I asked if he wanted it, but he got scared and ran away. Then I encountered a fireman and asked where he thought I could donate it. Was there perhaps a Red Cross-type agency that would? There wasn't, but he thought a church might want it. In Paris there's a church about every three blocks, although in this neighborhood it seemed like a very long three blocks as I shlepped these heavily-laden bags increasingly lethargically from the heat and dehydration down the much-longer-than-I-remembered-it street. Eventually arriving at the church, the people there said, "Bless you. But we can't take it here," and then gave me confusing and incorrect directions to the arondissement's diocese that was completely inaccessible by mass transit and a half-mile away. With the last surge of energy that only obstinance can provide I eventually (after several wrong turns) reached the place. Where they haughtily took the bags with nary a thank you.

So the happy box is much better. People exchange everything: clothes, CDs, books, even furniture (one night there was a dresser, the next night there was a chair). If only there'd been a happy box when I was packing up... There are some definite advantages to living in a community of hippies, and I think this is one of them.

I've always had some environmentalist proclivities, but they were pretty staid and ordinary. Preferring to recycle, valuing fuel efficiency, saving electricity, etc. But since my trip to China my concern for the state of the environment seems to have drastically deepened, particularly with respect to air and water pollution. We aren't talking about simple littering, or even the problems manifest in creating a gigantic pile of garbage in a landfill somewhere. We are talking about the destruction of the fundamental pillars of life on earth. Without clean air and clean water, we cannot survive, and yet mankind is blithely forging full-steam ahead to pollute both.

My time in China made me realize how a little bit of pollution in one place can so heavily impact another. And it's insidious, because it's very hard to see the impact a particular bit of pollution has. With littering you can see the garbage. You know it's your trash, and you know it's your mess you created. And for the most part it's confined within one place. With air pollution, though, it's hard to imagine that your little car could be making a difference. Or even your little smokestack, especially if the gas it belches into the sky is clear. Anyway, it's a big sky up there. So what if a little pollution gets into it?

The same thing happens with water. Your sink is small. Your bathtub is small. The glass of water that you pour is small, and if there's dirt in any of it you'll know. But the river is big, and the ocean it runs into even bigger. The filth you would never think to drink surely will just get lost in the vastness of the world's waters, so why not pour it in? Who's going to notice?

Until you go to someplace like China, an increasingly modern place with fancy modern buildings with fancy modern plumbing and kitchens, and you start to realize all the things you can't eat unless you cook them in a certain way or rinse them in special and expensive water that doesn't come through the taps. Or maybe not eat at all, given the time your food has spent in filthy waters, absorbing into its cells the poison you would never have poured into your glass.

The biggest problem with pollution is the mindset of polluters - out-of-sight, out-of-mind. Because it is too easy for that to happen. Maybe less so in a place like China where the consequences of pollution are so overt - the choking air, the putrid, black rivers... In the U.S. things are a little better, but that may just raise the risk of them becoming much worse. Why not dump the oil you change into the storm sewer? So what if it flows to the Bay. It's a big bay - who's going to notice?

Well, how about the people with the water right outside their window?

(I also noticed the kitchen sink that washed up behind the house too.)

The latest Dilbert newsletter, in "True Tales of Induhviduals," included this:

Our health teacher told us that "1 out of 3 people who start smoking will eventually die." The other two apparently became immortal.

Very silly. But it got me wondering. What if there was something, like, say, smoking, which would lower one's lifespan by half for 1/3 of the people who do it, but double the lifespan for the other 2/3? Would you smoke then? What if it killed 1/3 almost immediately, but made the other 2/3 immortal? What if it was the other way around - 2/3 died immediately, but 1/3 lived forever?

In a building in downtown Oakland I boarded a descending elevator. A man was already inside it, and the "1*" button was already illuminated.

"Excellent choice," I quipped. "Particularly if you want to actually exit the building."

"Well, you could also get out on the second or third and walk down the rest of the way," he countered.

"Or the 7th or 8th and use the window," I facetiously suggested, vaguely recalling some Monty Python sketch that explored the same silly premise.

His face grew stony. "There was a woman who jumped off the Tribune Building a few years ago."

"Oh--"

"My office faced the building."

"..."

"I saw it happen."

"..."

"Haven't thought about that memory in a while."

Well, this conversation had certainly taken an unexpected turn... I apologetically blurted out the only thing I could think of, "Well, there I go again, spreading sunshine everywhere I go," while meanwhile making a mental note never to speak to anyone in public ever again...

The other day I passed by the Bay Model in Sausalito and stopped in for a look. (Unlike some museums, it was free.) It explained a lot about the San Francisco Bay that I hadn't known before. Like how very shallow it is, averaging only about 18 feet deep, and how it functions as an estuary where fresh and salt water combine in such a way as to kick up nutrients from the bay floor to feed the organisms at the bottom of the food chain.

It also explained how man has already drastically impacted the natural balance of the bay. The Bay Model was built, in fact, nearly 50 years ago to model the impact of future man-made activities. One such proposal back then was the damming of the bay to turn the northern and southern parts into two gigantic freshwater reservoirs. That proposal fortunately was nixed. But it illustrates the tension between natural ecology and California's need for fresh water for homes, businesses, and agriculture. The very fact that the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers have been corralled and channeled to supply irrigation to the Central Valley has changed the bay, as has the dredging and filling of the Delta area. All that was done long ago though, and now there's the need to protect what's built, even though there's the modern recognition that having so dramatically affected the natural processes of the watershed has come with a high ecological cost. In the natural state of things the salt water is supposed to penetrate further inland to be exchanged with the fresh. But human beings and farming require freshwater and so California has jealously guarded the freshwater they have against the salt water's incursion, at great costs to the natural terrain.

The biggest harm to the bay, however, happened during the Gold Rush when the massive sprays of water from hydraulic mining stripped off the surface of mountains, sending the runoff downstream to eventually silt the bay. The Army Corps of Engineers regularly dredges now to keep shipping lanes open because the bay seems to have lost its ability to keep itself clear.

The Bay Model, a gigantic concrete inlaid sculpture filling a room the size of two football fields, is no longer used as an experimental model itself. Computers can now do that. But it continues to operate, mimicking tidal flows, dredging, and silting, so that people can understand how those gorgeous blue waters right outside are supposed to work and how what we do helps or hurts it.

On a street corner down by the Civic Center in San Francisco a woman approached me. "Do you live here?"

"Not really."

"Oh, well I was just wondering if you knew how to get from here to Union Square without walking on Market Street. It… it doesn't look like such a good neighborhood."

"It's ok. The people here are just down on their luck. They're not out to hurt you."

She was obviously still anxious, and since I had some spare time I offered to walk down a bit with her. She gratefully accepted and I kept her company for a few blocks. Then she decided she was ok and continued on without me.

And I walked back by myself.

First, some background. I am where I am today because of a series of connections and evolutions of interests dating back to when I first saw Broadcast News at 12 years old. It was that movie, along with Linda Ellerbee's autobiography And so it goes, that inspired a lifelong interest in mass media and journalism. It had quickly become a serious interest, the thing that most captured my attention to ponder and reflect upon, as well as desire to practice within. In high school I joined the high school newspaper and took an elective in television production. When it came time to apply to college, I only applied to schools offering a journalism or mass communications major. Once enrolled it indeed became my major, declared at the first possible opportunity, and along the way I dabbled with writing for the college newspaper, read the news on the college radio station, and interned with a television show and another station's news broadcast, remaining in fact with that newscast for a few years after graduation. It was only because, while in pursuit of my mass communications major, I discovered the complementary interest of information technology that my career path veered toward the tech sector. But where I am now, and what I want to do with my new vocation, all traces back to that middle school discovery.

I mention all this just to establish my ethos on the subject of journalism, because the last time I raised it I found my thesis was shot down in part due to the mistaken belief that I had none.

The thesis I had proposed was one I had based my college applications upon 15 years earlier: that journalism equated with teaching. As I explained to colleges why I wanted to come study there, and what about their curriculum I felt was so important to learn, I tried to demonstrate why I thought the course of study I intended to pursue was so noble. Because to me, there was little more noble than journalism. I cringed as media-bashing became the new national pastime. I lamented all the cynicism surrounding it. Because it seemed to me that everyone was missing the point.

It should be noted that 15 years ago was the first Gulf War, and surrounding that event there had been a tremendous amount of criticism directed towards mainstream media. It's not that I thought there wasn't room for criticism, but I felt that much of the anger was misdirected, where people didn't necessarily understand what "the media" inherently was, or what it was trying to do. Thus I felt that a lot of the criticism threw out the baby with the bathwater, because it overgeneralized "media = bad," without understanding what the inherent value of the media was in order to simply criticize where it was coming up short in realizing it.

That value, to me, was that media - journalism - was teaching. Reporters would learn about the situation, and then convey that knowledge to others. Is that not the essence of teaching, at its most basic? To learn about something, and then share that knowledge with others.

This past weekend I shared this opinion in a conversation with a journalist and professor. And both took issue with it. The professor, it seemed to me, took exception to the characterization of teaching. The journalist meanwhile took exception to the characterization of journalism. I admit, though, that I still do not understand their hang-ups.

Yes, if you lay certain instances of journalism against certain instances of teaching, they won't look the same. What it means to teach a law class, for instance, where the goal is not just to convey data about cases but rather shape students' mental processes is not going to equate to writing the police-blotter column in the local rag. Still, at its fundamental core, the actions are the same. The professor has inhaled some knowledge, and then exhales it through some form of pedagogy to his audience, his students. What the reporter does is the same thing - absorb information, and then share it through some expressive mechanism with their audience.

To the best I could figure out, one of the concerns that was raised was the issue of objectivity. Interestingly, I think the journalist may have felt most strongly that the analogy was poor because while teaching involved an objective retelling of knowledge, journalism did not necessarily. And I think for the professor, the opposite opinion may have been true. But objectivity is a red-herring. After all, what is objectivity? Arguably it's a myth. All knowledge is gained and shared through a filter. Sometimes that filter may have a stronger effect, but there's always a filter. Even something as basic as the language used to absorb the knowledge in the first place is a filter. The cultural orientation of the reteller is a filter. There may be a difference between active filtering and passive, with something like language being passive but something like a persuasive agenda being active, but it makes no difference to the discussion here since both journalists and professors are equally capable of manipulating the redissemination of their information in order to generate certain conclusions in the minds of their audiences.

The other possible objection I was able to infer was that because the form the redisseminations took was so different, that prevented the analogy. Engaging a class over the course of a semester is much different than writing a feature article. And of course it's different than writing an inverted-pyramid hard news article. But the form teaching takes can adjust to the content without it ceasing to still be teaching. A law professor teaches abstract material in a classroom. I teach mechanical skills in a swimming pool. Our pedagogical methods are completely different, but we're still both teaching.

Ultimately the reason the analogy holds is because it comes down to a situation, for both the teacher and the journalist, of "I know something, you don't - let's fix that." And both do.

Edit 11/22: A significant reason for why I think it matters to think about journalism in a more general sense - and less as a specific vocation - is because it matters for issues of things like journalists' privilege. When we discuss whether, say, bloggers should have protection bloggers may well be missing certain key hallmarks of professional journalists, like a salary derived from their reporting efforts. But if we make the comparison more generally, we will see that what amateur journalists do is just as important as what paid journalists do, and when we think about it in terms of that teaching role we will also see why it is so important that they all be able to do it.

I'm back into "donut hole" mode - despite the bar results (although I can't imagine how morose I'd feel if I hadn't passed). The problem is that they appear to do absolutely nothing for me out here. Here I'm unlicensed, and I'll remain that way for at least six months. Which means I may *have* to go back east if I can't find work, because I can't stay unemployed that long. Also, I keep seeing job postings requiring 3-5 years of experience, and I'd actually like to start getting that somehow.

I did get referred to another staffing agency, but I don't think I will pursue working with them further. For one, at the interview I had an awful rapport with the recruiter. Shockingly awful. I would say things like, "I'm concerned about X. Will that be an issue?" And she'd say, "No. X is an issue." And I would just nod despite my resulting confusion because it became apparent that pressing her on any of these issues was not going to actually get my questions answered.

One of the concerns I had, though, was their need for references. Between three moral character applications and a job search I'm having to rely on these people a lot. I want to protect them from further interruption unless there is a really tangible job prospect. The problem here, which makes sense, is that this agency won't place me without having done a reference check first. OK, fine. So I asked, how likely is it that a job will pan out? If it's very likely, go ahead and call them. But if it will be like the other agency - meaning, not likely at all - then please don't bother them unless the prognosis changes. Unfortunately the woman either was incapable of answering the question, or the answer was apparently "not likely." There was nothing she said that made it seem like I was going to end up placed with them.

And I'm not entirely sure that's a problem given the employment agreement they made me sign - the one with the clause making me agree to drug testing! Look, I hardly even drink; I most certainly have nothing to hide. But personal privacy is personal privacy, and I'll be damned if I'm going to let an employer invade it. With the possible exception of jobs involving public safety, where the effect of intoxication could be injurious (e.g., the operation of a transport vehicle), pre-emptive drug tests have no place in the working world. Certainly not without some reason to suspect a problem. Are we to be such slaves to our corporate masters as to subjugate our human dignity to them as a matter of course?

The agency, meanwhile, would probably argue that it gets its clients because it assures them that the candidates they submit are fully-vetted. Fine, vet me fully. Talk to my references. Talk to me. But ultimately if you still distrust me to the point that you feel you need to reserve the right to perform drug tests then you have no business being in a human capital business.

I worked for such a company once, although not as a consultant. But I knew a lot of people there who were. In fact I'm still friends with several of them, people who have moved on and become successful managers in the industry and who will never, ever use a consultant from that company - not because they don't trust the quality of the consultants but because they can't trust a company that doesn't trust its own people.

It is a myth for any company to say "I'm the employer, I'm in charge. You are the employee, and all your interests are subordinate to mine." In any industry with a flexible labor market it won't work - the labor will leave. But for much of the economy, where labor doesn't have that flexibility, it is not right for employers to exploit the dominance that employees' economic dependency inherently gives them.

I would therefore like to see these drug-testing clauses rendered unenforceable as a matter of public policy. But in the meantime, I won't sign them. I may be in donut hole mode and mopey while my life is up in the air, but I still have dignity in myself and my labor, and I will not surrender it just to have some job.

It's 23 feet long, offered for $750. Or so says a sign posted by one of my neighbors. They also offer to float it up to your home.

Such signs are just one of the several unusual features about life in a houseboat marina, but otherwise it is very much like life in any other kind of residence. You can, you may be surprised to learn, get infestations of ants (yuck), and, despite my aunt's grave concerns to the contrary, get mail delivered. Including gravely misspelled mail, like our Comcast bill. It is an amazing feat of the local post office that they've been able to figure out that it even should be delivered to us at all, much less that they actually do. Still, while we have an address that confuses Google, it's an address that has existed for 30+ years and locals generally know where we are. Except for a very confused drycleaner, who keeps showing up at our door in the mornings looking to pick up non-existing dry cleaning because he's on the wrong dock. And I do have to say that it is very difficult to give directions to our boat, mostly due to the confusing configuration of the parking lot. In fact just the other day someone came by to drop something off for me, and she called to say that since I hadn't answered her knock, she'd just tucked it into the box by our wreath.

"We don't have a wreath."

"Oh. Then I wonder whose house I left it at."

Of course, by now I'm used to this kind of thing.

From our living room window we can see a lot of shore birds: seagulls, herons, various kinds of ducks, etc. They swim around when the tide is up, and when it's slightly out they dip their beaks into the water to feed. We seem to have some regulars - the same lone seagull who shows up on our balcony when he hears cereal boxes rustling (as a result of a past roommate having fed him Wheaties), the same bunch of ducks, and there's this one lonely bird whom I can't identify but whom I tend to refer to as a "dippy bird" due to his unique jerking body language as he rolls his torso over his skinny legs to repeatedly poke his long beak into the mud. The other day I noticed he appeared injured, and today I confirmed it. He limps around, clearly avoiding using his right leg. He still seems to be able to eat, and I guess he can still fly, so I suppose he'll be ok, but it's still kind of sad to see. I wonder how he hurt himself? Obviously there's nothing we could or should do about it, yet it's unpleasant to watch the mallards terrorize him since he's obviously smaller than they are and not so mobile.

Meanwhile one of these days when I can coordinate time, tide, and weather I'd like to go back out in the kayak and visit with the seals (they've been particularly numerous lately, swimming after all the fish). I think I was wrong earlier - most of them (if not all) are actually harbor seals, not sea lions - and thus less likely to be aggressive. Someone told me they were very shy, but in my experience that's not necessarily the case. I was out the other day, not even very close to the pilings they were lounging around on, and they kept coming out to investigate me! It was sort of startling, to see this large, wild mammal swim after me. They were smiling all the time, and a neighbor permanently moored out there said they just like to play (they like to visit the cats he has out on his boat) but I got sort of nervous that they'd tip my kayak over so I ran away (well, paddled away). Which is just as well because you're not supposed to get too close to them (wild and protected animals and all) but sometimes they are hard to avoid when they're actually trying to visit you!

It is really amazing, though, living in this vibrant marina where there's no bars or cages separating you from the wildlife. I can't think of ever having been in any other environment like that. I especially like being in the kayak, bobbing out on the water, and realizing that I have no greater claim to it than any of the other creatures out there with me.

I've talked before about all the harbor seals in the neighborhood, whom I see regularly when I go out kayaking. Then there's the deer I sometimes see when I go out bike riding.

We also have raccoons. And the other night we discovered, to our horror, that apparently they can swim.

Around midnight we heard screeching and splashing. At first we thought it was cats, but that didn't account for all the splashing. A seal perhaps? But this shallow? We poked our heads out the window and shined our flashlights on the water. And there, in the shadows, we saw three raccoons, diving, fighting, screeching, splashing, and then running off in different directions. Alarmingly, one of those directions was up on the floating dock next to our boat.

One of the roommates had once had a dream about a raccoon coming in through the window, so in defense of this now-shared nightmare I ran around making sure all the windows were shut. Although on retrospect I wonder why I thought ensuring the door was locked was also somehow a necessary measure to take against a raccoon invasion...

I wanted to blog for the record what a disgrace the Atlantic City Hilton is. I'm not even sure blogging is sufficient, and I urge the authorities in New Jersey to further investigate the Hilton's ticket policies, which violate the spirit, if not also the letter, of state consumer protection laws.

As I earlier wrote, I attended two Huey Lewis and the News concerts at the Hilton last month. I've seen the band there before, and on those earlier occasions the Hilton had proven nearly impossible to deal with. But on this occasion it topped itself.

At best it demonstrated abject incompetence. For instance, shortly after the band confirmed publicly that these shows over the Saturday and Sunday of Memorial Day weekend would take place, I and other fans called the Hilton to inquire when tickets would go on sale.

"They're not playing here," we were told. Of course, the Hilton had done this on previous occasions, wrongly denying that the band would be playing there on its legitimately scheduled dates. So I wasn't inclined to take this denial too seriously. After fruitlessly debating with them that the band would, in fact, be playing there, I changed tactics. "Fine," I said, "Hypothetically speaking, if the band were playing Memorial Day weekend, when would tickets go on sale?" Six weeks before the show was the response, which would put the on-sale date at mid-April. We had this conversation in early March.

Less than two weeks later, the tickets went on sale.

But that was fine. Annoying, but fine. It's the Hilton's behavior subsequently that pushes the boundaries of the law.

The Hilton's theater is one large, rectangular room. Impermanent seats are arranged with three center sections in front of the stage, angled sections on each side, and a dividing corridor separating all that from further blocks of seats to the rear. In the past the Hilton has sold reserved seats within that configuration. There was, of course, the one occasion where after having started to sell reserved seats it then tried to retroactively declare that the seats would be general admission, but I believe the band may have interceded and the reserved seats were in fact honored. (However, I'm sure there were people adversely affected by the switch, as at least some had now purchased the wrong tickets while the Hilton kept changing its mind.)

This time they sold all the tickets as general admission seats from the outset. There were no reserved seats. There also were no "tiers" of seats, with different prices for different sections. Instead it appeared - noting in particular the seating chart on the Ticketmaster website - that the whole auditorium was up for grabs, and at $55 per seat. I bought a few for the Saturday show, but held off a bit before getting the Sunday ones. It's a fairly large room so I wasn't worried it would sell out too quickly. And it didn't. As of late April it still had tickets. And I went to buy one. But now, instead of $55, they cost $75, for the exact same ticket. No new seating tiers, no better location - the exact same thing.

Moreover, even though they were now selling the tickets for $75, they were still advertising them for $55 on both the Ticketmaster and the Hilton websites (screenshot of Hilton website from 4/20/07; screenshot of the Ticketmaster page listing tickets at $55 yet selling them for $75). Ticketmaster, after several wasted hours of telephoning, adamantly refused to honor the lower, advertised price. In the end, the Hilton actually did - for me and only for me, and only because I called my way up the phone tree to the director of customer service and phrased it as a customer service issue. But it still took hours and hours on the phone with them to get them to make good on the price, and the director of customer service still refused to fix it for all the other customers who were similarly situated as victims of the Hilton's bait and switch.

And the Hilton wasn't done with us yet. The venue was general admission. General admission shows can be a double-edged sword for a fan. Whereas with a reserved seat you know exactly where you'll be, and you only need to show up in time for the curtain, on the other hand your seat is not likely to be all that great. However, with general admission you can often get the best seat in the house - but you have to work for it, by getting to the venue in time to be on the front of the line.

That's the way it's usually done, and explicit conversations with the Hilton about "how do I get up front" resulted in the expected standard instruction that I should be first on line. So I was, both nights, having gotten there more than three hours before showtime each night. And yet, even though I was the first person through the doors, the Hilton refused to seat me any closer than the back half of the theater the first night, and only put me in the front spot of a side section the second night because I wouldn't stop arguing with them.

Meanwhile, it was one lie after another from the venue's representatives - the ushers and maitre d's. "Those seats," one usher said, pointing to all the ones in the section fronting the stage, "are all reserved seats." Which was a lie, because reserved seats were never sold. "We'll come back and move you if anything's still open," was another recurrent lie. In fact, the only bit of honesty that emerged from any representative's lips came from the one condescending usher who said, "Everything the Hilton tells you is a lie." Then he added, "If you don't like it, you should hire a lawyer and sue."

I'm writing this post because I want to take his advice. Except I don't want to sue. I don't have enough in my own personal damages to justify the effort. But I call upon the Attorney General of the State of New Jersey to make a full investigation. New Jersey has some very tight consumer protection laws with regard to ticket sales, mostly in regard to scalping. But it's not just scalpers who take advantage of consumers; promoters can too, and from time to time the state has investigated behavior by promoters for acting in ways counter to consumer's interests, particularly in situations when consumers didn't stand a chance to get a decent seat due to unadvertised holdbacks. Which was the case here.

In this case:

• The Hilton held back three large blocks of its best seats for "high rollers" of indeterminate and unadvertised origin.
• It did so with no indication to the consumer that the ticket they purchased would be limited to certain areas of the theater.
• In fact, the Hilton explicitly represented that the tickets would be valid for anywhere in the theater, as long as you got there early enough.
• Furthermore, the Hilton box office agents at no time indicated that additional hidden fees were required to secure better seats (read: tipping the ushers, which apparently was the unspoken quid pro quo even though the Hilton expressly refused, despite direct questioning on the subject, to acknowledge to this "custom" to its customers in advance).

All of these tactics are completely inappropriate under the law. Consumers have the right to receive the benefit of their bargains, but with the Hilton they do not. And it's not just me who has been affected by the Hilton's bad behavior. Hundreds of fans were affected each night, and hundreds more are affected every night that the Hilton holds another performance with similar ticketing policies, which I suspect is quite often, often enough to make the number of affected consumers reach well into the thousands. Most of these people probably don't have the educational background or inclination to effectively stand up to the Hilton. And why should they have to? A concert is entertainment, a respite. It shouldn't have to be work to ensure that you aren't being taken advantage of. That's what we have laws, to ensure that won't happen. As it was, even for me, it still took hours and hours to not be completely abused by the Hilton, yet at the end I was still unable to make them act consistently with their advertising.

Furthermore, the Hilton, as an Atlantic City casino, is greatly dependent on the goodwill of the people of New Jersey, who let it do what it does. It's a highly regulated business, and the regulators need to know when it is acting contrary to the public's interest. So when, for instance, the Hilton asks the state for a favor (e.g., permission to expand its facilities) the state is in a better position to decide whether it's in the public's interest to accommodate it. At this point the answer clearly is no.

Because not only is all of the above true of the Hilton, but another fact to note is that at no time was sales tax collected on any of these tickets (neither the ones purchased through Ticketmaster nor the ones purchased at the on-site box office), nor was there any mention that the tax was included in the total price. So unless the Hilton is on its own defying standard convention and quietly treating the 13% sales tax plus Atlantic City luxury tax it's supposed to charge on each ticket as something akin to a value-added tax built into the cost of the ticket that they dutifully pass along to the state as required (which seems unlikely given the Hilton's predilection to make a buck wherever it can, since it could easily pass along this charge to its customers as long as it disclosed it) then the Hilton is also a tax cheat and should be prosecuted as such.

I don't think this post will make the NWZCHIK blog on the San Francisco Chronicle like this other one did... (No idea how that happened, but it was pretty cool to have been linked so prominently.) Nevertheless I wanted to mention two items of news of potential interest to locals reading here:

One, that there's an opening on the houseboat. Wanna be a roommate? If so, drop me a line. (Smokers and people with loud alarm clocks need not apply.)

Also, in other "news"... there will be a FREE HUEY LEWIS AND THE NEWS CONCERT NEXT SUNDAY IN SAN FRANCISCO!!! How could anyone pass that up? Yes, for the low, low price of ZERO dollars, you too can enjoy the fabulous awesomeness of the best band ever. Or at least get to see why I'm so keen to keep seeing all their concerts, because hyperbole aside, they really are a great live band, and this is a pretty painless way to see what I mean.

But wait! That's not all! If you act now, you also get a FREE PAUL THORN CONCERT!!! He and his band will be opening the show, also for FREE!!! Come see why everywhere Paul goes he collects new die-hard fans like a black sweater collects lint.

Act now, supplies are limited to this coming Sunday at Stern Grove. Satisfaction guaranteed or your money back!*

* (Figuratively. You're on your own for transport and other incidental costs.)</lawyer>

In visting the website for the organization that does the New Jersey CLE courses I have to take, I saw that they had also been offering a seminar entitled, "THE ANTI-SOCIAL SIDE OF SOCIAL NETWORKING."

Naturally, it was canceled.

Edit: Also predictable? Today's shooting on Friendship Court.

An article in the New York Times describes the current controversy in Ridgewood, NJ, over the abrupt refusal of the newly-hired schools superintendent to begin the job for which he was hired. There is a story here about whether he was right or wrong to do that. There is also a story here about whether town citizens opposed to him acted untowardly in expressing it.

But the story underlying both of those is about math. It seems that in 2000 Ridgewood changed its math curriculum from what it had been to something called TERC math (see another article in the Bergen Record). It isn't entirely clear from other articles exactly what it is, nor is it clear from the Ridgewood Public Schools website, but the limited descriptions seems to suggest that it allows more of a free-form problem solving, letting students use props and calculators to solve problems. Obviously the devil is in the details, because from that limited description it's not entirely clear where the problem might be, but many parents are alleging that the curriculum is so free form as to be at the expense of basic mathematical tools that students needs to function.

As a product of the Ridgewood Public School System, from kindergarten through twelfth grade, with nearly every mathematical thing I know having been supplied by Ridgewood schools, my question is, why did they change the curriculum at all? Ridgewood, as the articles mention, has historically been an excellent school system, an example of what public education could and should be. With the exception of just a few sour notes (in particular those from sixth grade and high school) my experience as a 13-year Ridgewood student generally confirms the platitudes. I graduated from the system well-prepared for college, and for adult life beyond. Even in math.

Basic addition and subtraction was covered in first and second grade. I learned multiplication in third grade and was doing long division in fourth. I don't exactly remember the curriculum from fifth and sixth grades, but during the overall course of elementary school there was an introduction to word problems, problem solving, fractions, ratios, estimation, basic geometry, and measurements (including metrics). Starting in middle school (which for me began in seventh grade but for subsequent students began in sixth due to a realignment of the schools) I did a year each of pre-algebra, then algebra, then geometry, advanced algebra, math analysis, and finally calculus. With the exception of sixth grade, and eleventh grade's math analysis, the instruction was excellent and I learned what I needed to get the top score on the Calculus AP test and perform well on the standardized Performance Tests. I would hate to think that any subsequent students received any less.

However, I can only speak to my experience. Throughout elementary school I had the benefit of special enrichment programs beyond the regular curriculum. Also, in third, fifth, and sixth grades the classes did seem to be divided by skill level, and following sixth grade we were tracked into different programs for middle and high school. (Because my sixth grade teacher was so horrible I only was tracked ahead one year, while others were tracked ahead two years, and skipped pre-algebra in favor of two years of calculus later in high school). I do not know what other students learned in their tracks, or how they learned it. But given that Ridgewood students typically test well across the board, and given that most of them eventually were college-bound (I think Ridgewood tends to send 90%+ of its students onto college of some sort), I suspect the instruction was generally sufficient. Ridgewood, as I remember, did offer remedial instruction along with enrichment instruction so I presume that anyone with particular difficulty in math would have gotten support. Otherwise I'm still left with the question, what was so broken about the way math was generally taught that TERC was seen as a necessary improvement?

Everyone learns in different ways, and it's also true that engaging instruction is more effective than instruction that's boring. Furthermore, it has also been true for Ridgewood Schools that creativity has been highly prized and rewarded. In fact, I think that fact has been the Ridgewood school system's greatest strength and the part of my childhood education that has best served me throughout my life. But creativity is best encouraged in areas requiring critical thinking. In art and writing, certainly. Even to some extent in science and social studies where learning exercises permitting creativity can encourage deeper understanding. And even in math, to the extent that creativity can be applied to problem solving.

But creativity won't change the result of two plus two. It won't change a ratio. It won't change a basic measurement. It won't change math's basic mechanics, mechanics that must be fully mastered before anything else can be discovered. So creativity is all well and good, but creativity involves being able to creatively apply the tools you have to get to the result you need. According to these articles, however, the tools students have are calculators, which are hardly sufficient. Despite the increasing ubiquity of electronic gadgets, they can't supplant the basic human ability to calculate figures, particularly in the many situations when calculators are unavailable. Furthermore, there's something about manually manipulating numbers that can itself give insight into how they work. If kids don't get this basic foundation when they're young, it's hard to see how they will be sufficiently prepared for the more advanced mathematical concepts they will face when they're older, no matter how good the rest of the school system may be.

Of course, who knows, maybe TERC would have made me a better math student. Apart from a statistics course in college, I've never had to take another math class after twelfth grade calculus, and that whole side of my intellect has been largely neglected. Maybe a different curriculum would have motivated me to be more mathematically inclined beyond graduation. Then again, simply having a better teacher in sixth grade would itself have done wonders for my interest, confidence, and mathematical learning opportunities - no additional program needed. Ultimately for all students it's the quality of the teaching, more than any curriculum, that dictates how much they will learn. And maybe, as the article suggests, good teachers are keen to use TERC because they see students engaging more closely with the subject. Still, I find myself wary of the program, partly from an "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" standpoint, and partly from the fear that just because kids will always gravitate towards things that seem fun and easier doesn't necessarily mean that these fun and easier things will be teaching them what they need.

Speaking of creativity in math...

This poem has been on my regular website for quite some time, but my friend and co-author Amanda and I have just decided to release it under a Creative Commons license so that any educators can feel free to use it with their classes. (Google searches suggest some already have.)

The poem came about because at the end of our Calculus AB class, our teacher asked all of us to write a letter to next year's incoming class about what they could expect from it. This was one of the occasions where creativity and math nicely intersected, and instead of an ordinary letter Amanda and I wrote the poem.

Our teacher really liked it, and had us make a tape of us reading it. From what I understand, the poem then entered Ridgewood High School Calculus Class lore, having been used for many years subsequently (along with the great folk song some students wrote in the 70s reminding us that it's "low-de-hi, minus hi-de-low" when dividing derivatives. In fact, I remember visiting my teacher several years after graduation and her introducing me to some students as one of the authors of the poem. They were clearly impressed.

Anyway, in the spirit of law professor David Kopel's semi-recent post on the Volokh Conspiracy about calculus jokes, the new license, and the earlier post about math in Ridgewood, I thought I'd point out my contribution to it here.

I edited my post from yesterday to take out the critique I made of the PBS show on Simon Winchester's quest to write about the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, since it didn't really belong there. I'll put it here instead...

My point was that I kept getting irritated by how his sense of self-importance was blinding him to both scientific facts and the more meaningful thematic lessons from the quake. No, Mt. Diablo isn't the highest peak in the Bay Area; Mt. Hamilton is. And the 1868 quake wasn't on the San Andreas Fault, it was on the Hayward Fault. Plus if you want to talk about historical hubris of building major cities on sites of major quakes, it's much more profound to look at, say, a city like Memphis built along the Mississippi in the wake of the much more major New Madrid quake of the 19th century.

Anyway, it turned out to be apropos that I wrote that yesterday, because this morning around 4:40am the Bay Area was awakened by a 4.2 earthquake on the Hayward Fault.

The Hayward Fault is a Bay Area fault line, but it runs under Oakland, not San Francisco. Winchester knew about the Hayward fault because he went out to a site where he could observe the creep (the land on one side of it is sliding past the other), but he kept focusing on San Francisco, San Francisco, San Francisco, as if nothing else existed beyond it.

When it comes to fault lines and quakes, it's never so local. The consequences will usually be most severe at the epicenter, but the stronger quakes can be felt miles away. In 1989 the quake was centered between San Jose and Santa Cruz, yet there was major destruction miles to the north.

This one last night was pretty minor. Even for people right on top of it there was little damage apart from a few broken windows and some spilled wine. I could feel it out on the boat, since we can feel them when we're sitting on the mud. It shook the bed for a few moments, but was over pretty quick. I always wonder when I feel them where and how big they were. What I felt last night was fairly minor, almost fun. It obviously wasn't causing any harm here with the shaking, but it's hard to enjoy the ride if you're not sure what's going on closer to the center. A small earthquake that's close will lead to minor shaking, but so will a big one that's farther away. At four in the morning you wonder which one it will be that you'll wake up to.

CNN had an article today suggesting that the key to surviving global warming is for everyone to live on a houseboat. After all, if your home can float, it can't flood. Er, well as long as your sump pump doesn't break down. Or you spring a leak.

Actually I can't really throw stones at the idea. Building houses in increasingly broad flood plains that can't tolerate the water isn't a great idea. The article also proposes building regular houses designed to withstand floods (by making the lower floors essentially water and mold-proof). Either way, it sounds like a decent idea.

It is a little weird though how the article describes houseboats' flexible piping as some kind of cutting-edge technology. I've already got some flexible pipes outside my window right now, bringing us our water and gas...

Still, houseboats aren't necessarily a panacea. Things can still happen to them, which is why you still need insurance. I had a hard time getting it when I moved here last year because my regular insurance company was having problems with insuring a home not attached to the ground. Eventually I found one of the few companies that wrote such policies and was all set, although it was kind of expensive. The good news is though that I just got my renewal and my rates have dropped. The bad news? It seems I'm no longer covered for volcano...

I saw this posting this week on EFF attorney Jason Schultz's personal blog:

EFF Seeks Detail-Oriented, Can-Do Referral Coordinator

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), an Internet civil liberties nonprofit organization based in San Francisco's Mission District, is seeking a full-time Referral Coordinator to start immediately. Job responsibilities include answering the telephones, answering general email, doing legal case intake, filing, data entry, helping with membership mailings, and all-around organizational support. Ease with using computers, office applications, and the Internet is essential. Familiarity with (and, preferably, passion for) Internet civil liberties issues is also required. Daily interaction with the public requires compassion and interpersonal skills. Environment is fast-paced, work is cutting edge, staff is hardworking yet laid back and friendly.

Salary at nonprofit scale and includes benefits package. To apply, send a cover letter and your resume in a non-proprietary format to rc-at-eff-dot-org. No phone calls please!

This sounds like the job I had done for them early this year. It was a great job, at a great organization, with really great people.

It's actually not a job for a JD, but it could be a good one for someone thinking about going to law school who also has an interest in these high-tech civil liberties issues. (Or perhaps even a local night law student since I think it's a 9-5 job.) It's also a good one for someone who thrives on helping people. The EFF has become a big point of contact for people having trouble when law and technology collide. It can't help everyone through representation, but just being able to point people to other information and sources of help can be really important too, and this person would play a key role in doing that.

The improv class ended this week. I'd like to do another session, although I haven't quite decided when.

As I mentioned before, this improv class differed from the earlier one I took in that it focused more on developing narrative, as opposed to developing characters. Of course, character-playing was still important in this one, and I enjoyed trying to play characters different from me. I've never really been drawn to acting before, lacking either interest or inclination. Plus physically I've always felt stiff and awkward, barely aware of my own physicality, much less aware of how to put on someone else's. But I've noticed now in having tried it that by affecting someone else's body language I end up learning how to better effect my own.

In any case there's something to be said for developing storytelling skills. I've never thought of myself as a good storyteller, which is embarrassing given that I have close relations who I think are quite gifted in it. I've spent much of my life feeling like the unmusical child of virtuosos - not just talentless, but conspicuous in it.

I suppose part of my problem relates to memory. While I do have a very long and very detailed memory in many ways, in the same way I can never remember rules to card games I have a hard time remembering stories in sufficient detail to be able to retell them properly (I have this problem with jokes, too). I also have problems with pacing, as I get nervous and all the details I do remember tend to pour out of my mouth in one unattractive verbal clump. I trip over myself trying to get everything straight, inevitably fail, and, if I'm lucky, merely bore my intended audience.

At least all this is true with regard to stories that other people have written. I'm finding it much less true for stories *I've* created, but it's a relatively recent development that I've been figuring out how to do that. To some degree I've been practicing it on this blog, particularly with my travelogues and such. But with those stories I've had the luxury of time to carefully consider how I'd like to craft them. Whereas with improv there's no such cushion.

In the improv class I've had to learn to ignore that sense of panic that makes me run through everything I know about my story as fast as I can until it's all blurted out indistinguishably. I've had to learn to let the words and ideas form themselves in their own time and trust that this will, in fact, all happen in time.

The results can actually be amusing. For instance I heard myself blurting out the phrase "hippy-hunting hypocrite" during one performance, and then hearing everyone laugh because it had been quite the perfect thing to say. It was good that I hadn't stood in the way of those words finding their way to my lips.

At the same time, however, I'm learning I'm in a lot more control of the story-creation process than I would have thought, even on the fly, as long as I don't actually panic. In one exercise we were given three random images, which we then had to spontaneously weave into a impromptu short story. I was given "an accordion hanging in the window of a pawn shop," "a heroin addict slumped over in an alley," and "a bowl of orange jello." So I told the story of a woman who awoke one day after a night of hard partying in Reno, found herself mysteriously drawn to purchasing the accordion she passed in a window, and then ended up arrested for playing it publicly. As a result she got kicked out of her hotel and ended up spending a night in an alley with the junkie. But when she awoke she found herself safely in her bed, where she realized that she never should have eaten the bowl of orange jello before going to sleep the night before. OK, it's hardly O'Henry, but it wasn't a bad story given the constraints and no time to prepare. Particularly because it was structured: I let the accordion image influence the setting, since I remember seeing lots of pawn shops in Reno, and pawn shops always have instruments. The junkie was pretty easy to link in given the urban grittiness I was describing in my tale. And then it was just a matter of setting everything up so the orange jello could be the punchline. Knowing where I wanted to end up, the rest of the effort was therefore expended trying to get there as interestingly and descriptively as possible.

That's what I mean about controlling the story. I had to juggle lots of pieces: a beginning, an end, characters, setting, plot, drama, etc. I need practice doing it, certainly, because there were parts in the middle where I stumbled. But on the whole, I could do it, anticipating my story's structure and then just decorating the space in the middle of those pillars on the fly.

I had one other opportunity to practice the other day. We did an exercise where I was the novelist typing my novel, and my classmates acted out what I was describing. Someone in the audience threw out a title that I had to make my story conform to, but the rest was up to me.

I set my story in a grocery store in order to tease the instructor. She'd earlier tried to discourage us from using stores as settings for our improv. Everyone always tries to set their situations in stores, she lamented, but it quickly ends up a dead end. "'I went to a store to buy some butter.' What can possibly happen?" Naturally, then, I made my story about a guy named Bob who went to the store to buy some butter...

Bob, it seems, was a very mild-mannered guy. (In fact, the classmate playing Bob really was a mild-mannered guy, so it was easy to have Bob adopt that trait.) But niggling annoyances kept happening to Bob in the store: long lines, inept cashiers, abusive customers... At first Bob took it all, but then suddenly he snapped. "Bob got mad," I narrated from my pretend typewriter. "Really, really mad."

Suddenly flush with the power that his anger earned him, Bob continued to overreact to the various other indignities he experienced in trying to buy his butter. Eventually he stormed out to his car. Realizing he'd forgotten his keys he smashed the window before climbing inside, where he then grabbed the ignition wires and angrily rubbed them together. He slammed on the gas and tore through the parking lot, ramming cars and running down old ladies, before speeding away from the carnage.

At which point I tied my tale to the title given to me, also the title of this post, by pretending to type the conclusion, "On retrospect Bob realized that he probably shouldn't have nibbled those grapes of wrath in the produce section."

The end.

Ever since I moved to the Bay Area I've been interested in learning search and rescue techniques. In the event of an emergency I have no family here to take care of, so as long as I'm ok I'd like to help others.

Of course, I first moved to the Bay Area 15 years ago, and it's only been this weekend when I finally got that training...

The Southern Marin fire district apparently got some FEMA grant money to train lay people to be citizen responders in case of disaster. California is always befalling some disaster or another and efforts are being made in general to make sure the population is ready to deal with them. For instance around here a "Get Ready Marin" campaign is in full swing, running seminars for people to learn what they need to do to prepare for an emergency. Given the recent fires in San Diego and the 5.6 earthquake last week these threats do seem sufficiently real for people to be inclined to take preparation seriously. (Interestingly people used to be advised to stock enough supplies to self-sustain for 72 hours, but ever since Katrina the rule of thumb has become 5-7 days.)

The training I got this weekend was over and above that kind of individual preparation. While volunteers could be helpful in wildfire or other local calamity, it's the occasion of a large earthquake when our help would be most needed. In an earthquake tremendous damage can occur with no warning or chance for evacuation. Injuries will be numerous and serious and widespread. Furthermore the infrastructure rescue professionals need to be able to perform their rescues may itself be out of service. For all these reasons having trained neighbors perform a frontline triage can be invaluable to saving lives by providing basic first aid, performing simple rescues, minimizing additional dangers, and pointing out to the professionals where their help would be most productive so that it can be provided to the most people possible.

Towards these ends we learned about fire suppression, how to turn off utilities, how to search a structure (after first assessing whether it's safe to do so), how to safely remove victims who are trapped, and how to evaluate victims' injuries and begin to provide basic treatment when possible. This course differs, however, from standard first aid and CPR courses in their skills and approach. As one of the firefighter trainers explained it, those courses are for if you are in the supermarket and someone collapses. This training is for when the supermarket itself collapses.

When faced with a situation with so many victims, the goal is to give as many of them as possible the best chance of survival. This may mean that people with more serious injuries are left to fend for themselves. For instance if a victim is not breathing opening their airway might help, and that we can do as we triage. But if there's no pulse the amount of manpower CPR would take to attempt to revive the victim (which is likely impossible anyway given the magnitude of the trauma that put them in that condition in the first place) might deny a dozen more people in a less critical condition from their rescue. There are only so many rescue resources to go around, so the idea is to apply them in the way that does the most good for the most people, even if that means making some tough decisions.

Still, what is the same about every (well, nearly every) rescue course I've ever taken is the admonition to make sure that you yourself are not jeopardizing yourself. Better one victim than two, the philosophy has always been. Nonetheless it's nice to feel that with training certain risks can safely be taken in the effort to help.

So I'm glad I got to do the course and learn the skills I did. I do, however, have a criticism with the training, which is that the one element that was overlooked was how we as trained volunteers will be mobilized. I *think* we are perhaps supposed to contact a volunteer coordinator in our neighborhood, who in theory will give us further instructions, but it wasn't entirely clear. This element is just as critical as any other, as it's of no use for us to have any special training if we do not know when, where, or how we are to employ it. I presume with a few phone calls I can get it sorted out as far as I'm concerned, but as far as the program on a whole is concerned this aspect should be better dealt with in the curriculum.

Haven't you ever wondered how Abraham Lincoln was connected through history... to Huey Lewis?

Someone asked me that the other day, so I put some thought into it. I happen to know that Huey has met Bill Clinton, so I tried to devise a connection via American presidents. At first I thought I needed Helen Thomas to link some of them together, but then I remembered that Clinton had once met JFK. JFK was acquainted with Eleanor Roosevelt. Her uncle was Theodore Roosevelt, and whose father was a strong supporter of Lincoln's. But I don't know if they ever actually met, so I'm not sure this routing necessarily works.

Hoping to get some other ideas I posted the problem to the Huey Lewis and the News fan board. The hardest part of this exercise is making the leap from Lincoln to someone more contemporary, given the large historical gap that needs to be covered. Someone suggested that Lincoln's son Robert was a detractor of Theodore Roosevelt, so if they'd ever met that would be an alternative connection that could then hook up with the rest of my JFK-based one. Someone else meanwhile managed to avoid the presidents almost entirely by connecting Lincoln to his assassin, to Dr. Mudd, to his descendant Roger Mudd, who had worked with Charlie Rose at 60 Minutes. And Charlie Rose will apparently be speaking at an upcoming event where HLN will also be performing (although I wonder if there's not already a Huey Lewis-Charlie Rose connection derived from other circumstances).

It's all very silly, but actually something of an interesting educational exercise. The kind of thing that could make history classes interesting, linking major historical figures to contemporary ones. Which, as a matter of fact, is what James Burke has been working on with his KnowledgeWeb project - an educational tool to help students see connections between figures throughout history and how one influenced another down the line. (Disclosure: I worked on this project before law school.) For those unfamiliar with his work, James is famous for his "Connections" and "Day the Universe Changed" television series (among other things) and related books where he notes and chronicles how various innovations, often seemingly unrelated, influenced, if not actually directly caused, other subsequent ones. (One of my favorite connections that can be seen described on the KnowledgeWeb website tracks how Napoleon was a necessary precursor of the modern computer. I'm also fond of the link between the Alamo and chewing gum.)

I don't know, however, if Huey Lewis has been entered as a data point into his system, although I suspect Lincoln might well have been. I'm also not sure that Lincoln's influence on Huey has been any more significant than it has been on any other American. Although perhaps I'm wrong - after all, HLN did have a record entitled, Four Chords and Several Years Ago...

More housecleaning, so to speak... Here's another old post I drafted in October 2005 while studying at Bucerius but hadn't yet published.

At lunch the other day a Chinese student and I were talking about how Americans lived. Or not so much how they lived, but wherein they lived: houses, apartments, etc. This came up because I referred her to an article about the building boom in China, and she was describing the apartments where she's lived. Which sound big by Chinese and European standards, but small by American.

So I started off by describing the house where I grew up – how big it was, how many rooms it had, the architectural style (it was a Colonial)… And then I described other common types of American houses, like Cape Cods and split-ranch. We even found a website with pictures so she could see what they looked like.

But as I travel the world I get more and more perplexed about why Americans build houses the way we do: out of wood. Certainly there are exceptions (like houses made out of straw) but most houses are wood-frame. Whereas in most other places, it seems, houses are made out of concrete. And we aren't talking third-world places: in developed Europe houses are rarely not made out of concrete blocks. With the exception, perhaps, of earthquake prone areas (but perhaps even then) concrete would seem to offer several advantages over wood, including less flammability and lower susceptibility to hurricanes or tornados. And yet despite the preference for it around the world, we continue to build our houses out of lumber. I wonder why that is. Is there something about the saga of the three little pigs that Americans just don't understand?

Due to high demand 2007 has been extended into the first several days of January.

Yes, 2008 has already arrived and been officially feted - in Seattle, as usual - but what with all the travel, etc., I haven't had a chance to finish wrapping up all the things I wanted to from the last year before plunging into all the new things for the new year.

Therefore I'm hereby declaring the rest of this week to still be part of 2007. Seeing how we've waited this long for 2008 to come along surely we can wait just a bit longer for it to actually get started.

Thank you for your understanding.